An alarming tip came in the day after the Duke's banquet, resulting in a raid by Tano and more than a dozen other officers on a noble estate just outside the city walls, where they found more than twenty lizardkin being used as slave labor. Tano only narrowly kept himself from strangling the Marquise as she protested that she hadn't done anything wrong since they weren't 'actual people'.

He didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved that their rank made the Marquise and her husband the Duke's problem. He knew the Duke was a good man who hated slavery just as much as Tano did, and that he would see the perpetrators punished appropriately. Still, there was no undoing the damage that had already been done to so many lives, all because some rich, entitled assholes thought that keeping a few more coins in their pocket justified ruining lives.

Tano was furious with himself when questioning revealed that the lizardkin had been there for more than a year.

The signs had been there. He should have known. He just hadn't looked.

Immediately after that, the Watch was called to assist with the aftermath of a tenement fire in the poorest part of the city. During what he had thought would be a simple investigation, it was discovered that a man had set fire to the tenement building he was living in, with both himself and his wife still inside. Miraculously, no one but the man himself had died, but several had been people had been maimed, including the man's wife.

Tano was heartsick when he learned that the man was a known trouble-maker with more than a dozen reports of domestic disturbance.

People had been maimed. Even more were now homeless, and it was the Watch's fault.

It was his fault.

He called in all of the precinct Captains and raked them over the coals.

"What is the fucking point of a Watch that doesn't protect the citizens?" he demanded after ten solid minutes of yelling at them loud enough that he was probably heard out in the street. "All of our citizens?"

None of them attempted to answer his question, which was just as well. He probably wouldn't have accepted anything they had to say anyhow.

"Get the fuck out," he snarled. "I want you all back here in the morning, and each of you had better have a plan for implementing new training to make sure this never happens again."

Tano refused to delegate writing the report for the Duke. His failure had caused this, after all. Again, there had been a problem staring him right in the face, and again he had failed.

When the report was finished, Tano delivered it personally to the Duke's Secretary, then went straight to The Drunken Lord, where he sat at the bar instead of his usual table. "Whatever will get me drunk fastest," he said, plunking a gold coin on the counter.

Karchak eyed him warily as he pocketed the coin. "You've never been drunk before, have you?"

Tano shook his head.

The dwarf pursed his lips. "I don't think that's advisable," he finally said.

"I don't fucking care what you think," Tano snarled.

"Fine." Karchak's eyes flashed angrily as he poured something clear in a small glass and set it in front of Tano. "Fermented potatoes," he said shortly.

Tano slammed it, gagging at the horrible taste and the burning sensation that followed. "Give me the bottle."

"I'm not going to let you kill yourself," Karchak said flatly. He did, however, pour another two shots. "You can have more when I'm sure you're not a total lightweight."

He wasn't, as it turned out.

Tano spent the evening getting blind, stinking drunk.

It was only when he woke up to a sharp jab to the forehead that he realized he'd fallen asleep on the bar. He lifted his head woozily, then screwed his eyes shut when everything started spinning.

"I'm impressed that you're not puking right now," Karchak said dryly.

"I am too," Tano admitted.

Karchak grunted. "Happens I've got a room free. It's shitty, but it's yours."

"How much?"

"A gold."

Tano made an indignant noise. "That's twice the normal rate."

"Yeah." Karchak crossed his arms. "They're my rooms and I fucking hate you."

Karchak had him over a barrel - it was either take the room or sleep in the alley out back, if he even made it that far. "Fine." He slammed the gold onto the counter, then tried to stand and almost fell off his stool.

Karchak rolled his eyes as he came around the bar and all but slung Tano over his shoulder. "Come on, jackass."

He easily carried Tano up the stairs, despite their difference in height, literally dumping Tano into bed in a room at the end of the corridor. Tano was unconscious nearly before his head hit the sheets.

⚔ ⚔ ⚔

He was puking out the window over the alley when Karchak came to check on him at dawn. "Good. You're not dead."

Tano clung weakly to the sill and spat. "What do you care?" he asked bitterly.

"Bad for business. Superstitious idiots won't rent a room if they find out someone died in it, and you're too famous to keep it a secret."

Tano grunted, thinking that Karchak's reasoning made sense until he turned and saw that he was holding a pitcher of water. "What's this then?"

Karchak rolled his eyes. "Water. You drink it."

Tano rolled his eyes right back. "I meant why did you bring it?"

Karchak shrugged, trying and failing to feign diffidence. "You didn't even try to negotiate when I ripped you off, and water's basically fucking free."

Tano gave him a Look.

There was a pregnant pause, then, "my dad hit me," Karchak said tonelessly, as if he were commenting on the weather or the daily special.

Tano knew he should be able to put the pieces together, but his head felt like his brain had been replaced with cotton batting.

"I heard about the fire. And about you tearing strips off your Captains," Karchak added grudgingly.

And there it was.

They stared at each other for a moment, united in the strange feeling of hating each other, but both hating something else a lot more.

"Thank you," Tano said at last as he took the pitcher and leaned weakly against the wall. He wanted to drain the whole thing - it felt as if there couldn't be a drop of moisture left in his body - but he forced himself to take a small mouthful, swish it around, and swallow. He waited a moment to make sure it wasn't going to come back up again before he continued drinking in small, careful sips.

Karchak watched him, not making any move to leave.

"What," Tano croaked.

The dwarf's face remained stonily impassive, but he started cracking his knuckles, which he only did when he was feeling nervous or uncertain. "Once is a fluke," he began slowly. "Twice could still be a mistake. But three times..."

Tano blinked, surprised at the echo of the question he'd asked Eldreth a thousand years ago on the floor of her root cellar. He'd always been baffled by the humanoid need to categorize relationships into tidy little boxes. It was even more baffling to find himself suddenly living it. He thought of what Eldreth had said, how comforting and right it had felt to acknowledge that what they shared wasn't romantic. But what he had with Karchak definitely wasn't friendship either.

"It's a disgusting habit," Tano finally offered. "Like smoking. Or cracking your knuckles," the last was added nastily, a cheap jibe to reinforce how very not-friends-or-lovers they were.
Karchak scowled, only looking partially convinced.

Tano mentally cursed his previous choices as he tried to ignore the knives in his skull long enough to find the right words to express himself. "Listen. This meat I'm wearing might have weird ideas about what it finds exciting, but getting off on hate sex doesn't mean I want to share my life with you. Rather the opposite, in fact."

A cold relief flickered across Karchak's face, along with a loathing that was twin to Tano's own. "Good. Then we understand each other."
With anyone else, Tano would have offered his hand. Instead he grunted and took another drink, which was almost the same thing.

"If that's how it is, then... okay."

Despite his difficulty thinking, Tano knew immediately what Karchak was referring to, that he was saying yes to letting Tano fuck him. He had the strange sensation of being intellectually aroused while his entire body staged a rebellion against the very concept. Before they'd started fucking, Tano would have made an excuse, tried to hide how unequal to the task he was. But Karchak would know he was lying, and honestly, what was the point of denying that small humiliation when Karchak had already fucked him over his desk while Tano begged him to stuff his 'slut hole' full of cock?

"I couldn't fuck you right now even if I wanted to, which I don't. On account of the hangover."

"Fair enough. Room's yours until ten."

"Wait," Tano choked out as the other man turned to go. In a couple of hours, he was going to have to face his Captains, and he needed to be able to believe in the righteousness of his anger, because people were depending on him. But in his heart of hearts, he knew that he deserved worse than a bad night and a crippling hangover. "You could use me. If you want."

They both knew that what he really meant was 'please'.

Karchak's eyebrows went up. "You have anything in mind?"

Tano looked away. Shrugged. "You could fuck my mouth." The bed was just a straw pallet, and his face would be at crotch level if he sat.

There was a long silence, and Tano was just about convinced that Karchak would say no when he finally said, "I can think of worse ways to start my day than getting my knob gobbled."
Tano grunted with disgust, set down the pitcher, and closed the shutter. Then he sat down on the bed.
Karchak held eye contact with him as he undid his belt and let it fall to the floor, followed by his pants, then his smallclothes. He stepped forward and took hold of Tano's jaw in one hand. "Open up."

Tano - Lord Commander of the Tinoran City Watch, recently decorated for valor in the line of duty - looked up at the despicable, solidly middle-tier smuggler and fence standing over him. This was the humiliation he'd craved when he started drinking.

"Go on then," Karchak challenged. "Gotta make me hard first."

So Tano took Karchak into his mouth and started sucking, and it was certainly no artisanal blowjob, but it got the job done. Karchak panted softly as he stiffened until Tano was once again straining his jaw slightly to accommodate the other man's girth.

He pulled away and slapped Tano's jaw lightly with his dick, laughing nastily at the irritated grunt he earned in response. "How's your gag reflex?"

"Don't know. I've only had it a week and a bit."

"Let's see then," Karchak said sweetly as he fisted his hand in Tano's hair.

Tano opened his mouth and submitted as Karchak fucked into his mouth. The dwarf thrust experimentally a few times, and it wasn't so bad really. But when he shoved Tano's mouth right against the root of his cock, Tano immediately panicked as he started to choke. Karchak pulled him off, but kept hold of Tano's hair and silently quirked an eyebrow.

Tano shook his head.

The dwarf's only acknowledgement was a short, sharp nod before he started fucking Tano's mouth without going so deep that Tano started choking again. It was hard to breathe, and uncomfortable, and his jaw hurt with the strain of not grazing Karchak with his teeth, but he could do it. And because he could, he did.

"That's right," Karchak said softly. "This is what your lofty ideals come down to in the end, isn't it? Your heart broken about the people you couldn't save, and my fucking cock in your mouth. Me. The low-life criminal scum you can't stand, who doesn't even have the decency to be a proper monster that you could hate without hating yourself."

Tano's eyes slid closed, and tears started running down his face as the other man's words struck a raw and painful nerve.

Karchak chuckled quietly and tightened his grip so that he was pulling Tano's hair painfully, which only increased the pain of Tano's agonizing headache. And yet, even as the dwarf was increasingly overtaken by arousal, he was careful not to thrust too deeply as he continued to fuck Tano's face. And slowly, the awful, frenzied pain that had driven Tano to drink started to fade away to be replaced with a sense of rightness.

"That's right," Karchak said, as if he could somehow hear Tano's thoughts. "We're the same, you hear me? You're not fucking better than me."

Half of Tano rebelled at the statement. They weren't the same! Tano devoted his life to protecting people, not to greed and self-enrichment at the expense of others!

But a darker part of him knew the truth. They were the same, because Tano liked hurting people who deserved it.

They were both monsters. Boring, mundane, mediocre monsters.

Karchak was gasping as he lost the rhythm of his thrusts. "Fucking hell," he gasped. He released Tano's head, pulled out of his mouth, and started tugging furiously on his cock. Tano closed his eyes just as Karchak grunted softly and spurted hot cum all over Tano's face, even getting a little into his hair - a small humiliation compared to all the rest, but a humiliation nonetheless. Still. Spending into his mouth would have felt almost like tenderness, which Tano couldn't abide just then.

Karchak laughed when he opened his eyes and saw the mess he'd made of Tano's face. He grinned and dragged his thumb through the spend on Tano's cheek before smearing it around a little.
"The bath house is available for an extra fee."