He stared without expression at the framed mirror, big enough for two men, that hung opposite between the under-burdened bookshelves. The candles on the mantle tentatively wandered, sending an uneven light in all directions, out of time with the twitching curtains. An empty anticipation was rolling further and further along the still black line of the sky outside, a bitter taste washed through his mouth as the filter of his cigarette began to burn, and the silent thunder cracked when he noticed the man beside him smiling curiously back at his reflection.

In one motion he flicked the spent cigarette into the fire and stood. His stare snapped to the newcomer, who was gazing up at him, unembarrassed.

"Please, don't get up." The voice was cold, polite, and not very deep. He thought it sounded foreign, somehow.

"What are you doing here?"

The man smiled. His mouth was tinged blue, as though he had spent too long in the snow, and slightly swollen. His whole face was pale. He gave the impression of being underfed. His hair was long and straight, dull gray, and Klaus was reminded of Eroica - the man was handsome, sharp, and unabashedly smiling at him. Klaus found himself offended.

"You've come to visit," the stranger said through drowned-man's lips. "You are early, but it is my understanding that you are not very fashionable."

Klaus spared a glance to his watch. "I am not visiting anyone at two in the morning."

The man gave a light shrug. His shoulders were bony and bare. Klaus disliked him intensely.

"It is a bit peculiar," he replied, his words slow with distraction. His eyes were sweeping over Klaus with an intensity rivaling the more harmful end of the spectrum. "But time does not bother me. As long as you're here, we can conduct our business."

"We have no business." Klaus had realized that he did not know where he was. He studied the bookshelves, and though it was clear that there were characters tooled along the spines, and he knew for a fact that he was reading them, he was momentarily paralyzed by a free-falling sensation as each letter read escaped his memory before he could capture the next. He looked down again to his watch: three o'clock.

"We are bound to have business, Klaus. If you will sit down, we can get on with it."

This was worth a solid glare, which in any case Klaus found refreshing amid the swelling fog of uncertainty threatening to swallow him. Impropriety was concrete enough. "You can call me 'Major.'"

"That's right, isn't it?" The man stood from the hearth, without apology. He was regarding his guest with some approval, and the subtle tautness of the eyes that denotes hunger. "I am sorry if I have not kept track. And, sadly, I do not have time to waste in catching up."

"You talk too much." Klaus felt into his pocket for another cigarette, and finding none, completed his casually baffling survey of the room. His realization that there were no doors quickly melted into an analysis of which piece of furniture was most likely to conceal an exit. The bookshelves were only lightly populated, perhaps that was why; the mirror appeared too large to lift or turn conveniently -

In a second sluggish to the point of lasting minutes, he became aware of the cold that was slipping through his arteries, a feeling both natural and supremely urgent. His mouth began to numb and his lips fell slightly loose as he turned, with an agonizing lack of speed and a terrible clumsiness, eyes narrow with dread - it was the instant when fear clicked neatly into place in his perception, that infinitesimal fraction of time in which danger became clear; but mercilessly stretched across a horizon of minutes, hours. His life seemed to congeal beneath his prickling skin under the pressure of that distorted second until he finally wrought his eyes around and looked upon the hand that lay in friendly consolation at his elbow. It was ashen, ageless and strong.

Time snapped back into place as though someone had pulled a trigger. The man beside him snaked his arm around his waist.

"But," he continued, "I think we can spend the time we do have wisely."

"Who are you?" The unfeeling was hardening along his bones. He was desperate and it was impossible to move.

"Death," he replied simply. Klaus felt the grip slide underneath his ribs. "I have an awful lot of names, really, but I feel simplicity is a virtue."

Death's arm traced along his hips, and Klaus felt a hot, stinging shiver climb his spine. The handsome, storm-gray face was nothing short of lascivious.

Klaus's elbow shot out behind him and connected with the hanging mirror, fear and adrenaline blindly directing his stricken nerves. Lacking a door, he would have a weapon, and hearing the shards cascade to the floor in a rush of silver he made a grab for one that sliced into his palm.

He woke up, and the faint phantoms of chill and pain dissolved. He stared at the ceiling as the memory dulled about the edges, his breathing evened. He looked at the clock: five thirty. He shut off the alarm and went to work an hour early.

"Major?" Klaus looked up irritably from his newspaper to see Eroica standing before him in red and gold (but not enough of it), his arms wrapped tightly across his chest. The idiot had obviously forgotten that they were not on speaking terms. He resumed his article.

There was a brief pause. "It's just that it's a bit cold," the thief persisted, optimistically.

"You're lucky it's pressurized." He flipped a page, the noise lost to the brutal hum of the propellers. "Sit back down."

"I thought perhaps you could tell the pilot. I mean, I've asked him once, but his English is really atrocious. I don't think I've quite gotten through."

"There's no more heat. Sit down." From the corner of his eye, he could see Eroica rubbing slowly at the net-thin shirt that hung over his side. Anyone ridiculous enough to forget that sleeves were an integral part of appropriate business attire deserved to suffer through.

"But -"

"Shut up," The Major growled between clenched teeth, "Before I feed you your parachute."

Eroica did not move, and Klaus did not look up from his paper. Eroica's posture straightened a little as, after the better part of a minute, it became clear that he was no longer the center of attention.

"You know," he began, his voice thick with concern, "You really shouldn't be so tense." He was leaning over Klaus's seat, gauzy vermillion falling in prelude to the thick blond of his hair. Klaus slid brusquely back. "Life is just ... well, it's so short. Think of it," he continued, and Klaus thought with a wary distaste that the man was just barely smirking. "One tiny piece out of place, and we'd go plummeting down into the sea, all of us together, and that would be the end. It's not without a certain appeal, is it? Clinging to your drowned, frozen body, passing the last lonely hours before a cold, still death in watching your face - just you and me - and thinking how you'd never lived, really. And then when the time came, we'd both go floating down again, through that second depth, to lie under the sand forever ..."

The thief was wearing one of those rapturous expressions that made Klaus want to black his glazing eyes. He could feel his face coloring with anger, despite all his resolution not to rise to the thief's all-too-predictable antics.

Eroica was closing in above him, curls brushing at his newspaper. "You should live a little, Major," he was purring. "None of us have very much time do we? It would be such a shame ... and there are other ways I would prefer to die."

Before he could make helpful suggestions or even press himself against the bulkhead, Klaus felt Eroica's hand land gently on his side, just a touch, and a hot, sharp shudder wound its way from the base of his spine all the way to a part of his brain where lay the vague recollections of dreams.

He slammed the paper down beside him, flung the hand away, shot seething to his feet. "Sit down!" he bellowed, thrusting one arm towards the rear of the plane. Eroica looked momentarily taken aback, then only smiled and trotted cheerfully back to his row.

Klaus fell into his chair and buried himself in his newspaper, reading every line twice and three times and furiously turning back pages when he realized he hadn't retained a word.

The fish-white curtains gave a weak flutter on occasion, the intervals between breezes struggling, suffocated by the lethargic dark and the dim furnace. A small, rippling sheet of flame had appeared beneath the grate. Klaus stood and stalked to the windows, pacing past the ill-chalked line of trees jaggedly seeking the starless, mottled sky - this was a dream, he knew it now, but the slow-boiling heat and remembered anticipation were as good as drugs, and the knowledge insufficient antidote.

The voice behind him was coaxing, hardly sharp, a screw carefully turned to pull a wire taut. Nonetheless it sent a lance of something clean to his gut.

"You should not have left." Death was next to him again, and had him pinned up into a corner, shoulder blades jabbing dully at the wooden moulding. His spider's fingers worked their way between ribs to steal his breath and leave him motionless. The thick chill of dread clawed its way up his throat, and he was choked with cold as he watched Death draw nearer, his eyes wide and blank.

The god was purring in his ear. "It was very rude," he said, his twisting grip tightening as he pressed his bloodless face against white skin. "Delays are most unnatural." He favored the Major with a smile that was only cordial, and Klaus felt rather than saw in the grey of his eyes all the churning, cave-cold depth and pressure of the sea. The lips moved slowly over his throat, like shore-waves. "Keep still."

Klaus was doing his utmost to disobey the order, but willing his muscles to heave against the slender man before him yielded nothing but confused twitches. Thought became impossible when Death unscrewed one parasitic hand from his side, snatched up his jaw, and slid his tongue with glacial force into his mouth. There was only white-capped panic.

Klaus woke up, cold almost everywhere, to the hotel room he had checked into that afternoon. He thought he had heard a tapping, some sort of rustle, at his window; he rose and pushed it open, stuck his head out into the sleeping city. Nothing there.

He sat on the floor and started doing sit-ups.

Another twenty minutes passed with set and set again of push-ups, and his temperature leveled slowly to something approaching clammy. His heart rate was familiar, there was little suggestion of abnormal activity, and less of the supernatural. He felt comforted, for the first night in three, his eyes nonetheless set on the latched and locked door that led out into the hall. But when the tapping returned, the accidental rhythm that he recognized as the noise that had swept him out of his dream, it fell unhindered at his back. He stood as nonchalantly as he was able, and turned towards the window on his way to grab a towel.

There, in the frame, something had almost stopped moving. Klaus had one arm out to apprehend the thief before he could escape back to his own bed.

Eroica tripped gracefully over the windowsill, looking sheepish as he fell onto the disturbed sheets. Klaus shoved the man away from his bed and yelled at him to make himself decent, which he should have done before he went climbing up walls.

Eroica brushed off the front of his bathrobe, leaning against an armchair. He was adjusting the lapels as Klaus yanked a shirt irritably across his shoulders, exceedingly unhappy to have been caught less dressed than the admitted pervert.

"I'm so glad you're awake, Major. I've been meaning to ask you -"

"You've been watching me!"

Eroica smiled. "I didn't want to disturb you. People with strange routines do like to keep them. It's a little early even for you, isn't it? Barely three -"

Klaus growled. "You have been outside my window for half an hour." The blood that had risen to his face upon the voyeuristic discovery was absolutely refusing to move. He credited the flush to anger.

Eroica was all blue-eyed innocence. "Nothing but a schoolboy's trick, Major," he said, tugging terry a little farther down his knees. "I never meant to upset you, but I couldn't resist. I'm really terrible about sweet things." He winked, the guileless shade fell straight away, and Klaus wished furiously that he had been near enough to give the thief his fist instead of a glare. Eroica usually failed to wither appropriately under either, but at least the former would have left a mark.

When Eroica's twisted smile didn't even twitch and his eyelashes didn't even quiver and the greenish light from the raining city drenched his hair in grey, Klaus felt cold again and promptly turned away to toss his towel against the bathroom door. He was terrified that Eroica might sense he was more than angry.

But - it was stupid to think that the idiotic English queer could have anything to do with it, and his fear was evaporating into shame when Eroica was somehow all of a sudden at his shoulder, looking smug but kind and unbearably self-assured. "You don't like sweet things, do you, Major?" he was asking, and Klaus might have laughed at the ridiculous misinterpretation. But Eroica slid a gentle hand under his elbow and around his arm, and so Klaus grabbed him by the hair and slammed him soundly up against the wall instead.

Eroica looked dazed. Klaus allowed himself a small smile. He felt partially relieved; the act had cast some of the ever-present unease from him. "Tomorrow," he explained with renewed confidence, "I can do my job, and you can fly back home and wait for your check. Or, I can make sure that you spend a few months getting sold for cigarettes and giving head to Russian inmates before I decide to do anything about it."

Klaus gave the words time to sink in, meanwhile relishing Eroica's uncomfortable posture as he found his struggles ineffectual - and awkward. He seemed suddenly loathe to disturb his robe, and, after a few seconds, ceased to move altogether.

Eroica winced when he let go, and took his time pushing away from the wall and setting himself to rights. "I wish," he sniffed, "That you would not be so incessantly vulgar." Klaus hoped he had offended him, but found it hard to tell.

"Go to bed," he replied, and opened the door to let Eroica (who seemed to have forgotten his original business) slink out. "And be ready by seven if you don't want to play pet to some oversized red doing time for public indecency."

"Goodness," Eroica said dryly, stepping over the threshold, "You're positively titillating this morning, Major. But you needn't worry." He lay one arm across the door frame, and the light from the hall eddied up in his hair, leaving his face dim and colorless. "I couldn't possibly sleep after that show."

Klaus slammed the door, hoping very much to catch fingers, but the thief was too quick.

"You think very highly of yourself," Death had observed, sitting atop him in his own bed without any real preface or apology. He had spoken in low tones for quite some time, pale ankles tangled in the white hotel sheets, about things Klaus was sure he would rather not have heard, even if he could remember them now. The words had been a mist, in any case; a dank fog to obscure some ice-clad threat disturbed from sleep. It had only lifted when the dream had come to an end, interrupted by a knocking at his door not nearly ominous enough in character to suit.

But that was not until the sun had almost risen, and Death had, as promised, made good use of the time at hand. Waxy phrases slid in and out of recollection: grim descriptions hung with bone ornaments of fear, frustration and weakness. All he could vividly recall was that, when Death had kissed him, less urgently, almost gently (because the wait is almost over), he had not gone hot, or cold, or numb or even tense. He had felt nothing but the sheets, pinning his legs to the mattress, twisted in a labyrinth about his hips; the not-man's lips and teeth and mollusk tongue, slippery against the inside of his mouth; the hair that fell against his face and drowned him under a cascade of grey.

And he had seen gunshot wounds, ribs laid bare and stained with living red, flesh parted from flesh, bone shattered into thousands of ivory needles. There had been throats marked and purple, held just barely by years-old rotting rope, run over with green, made sustenance for the pond life. The neat, bloodless remains of a human fire had stared out from beneath a heap of hundreds of its fellows and Klaus felt the weight of it all, sitting contently on his stomach and combing his face with eyes that fed his visions for an hour.

When the dream had disappeared, he had sit up, and felt the toxin Death had slipped between his lips sitting heavy inside him, and had known he was very much afraid. He feared not the act of dying, not the agony that would play prelude, but the room with the broken mirror where Death would finally receive him. It terrified him, and he terrified himself with the hot, unwelcome anticipation that gripped gently at him, but too firmly to ignore, when the kiss invaded his conscious thought, with those legs that had lay against his thighs.

This misery had revealed itself to him fully in the seconds before he had stood up to answer his door, wondering how in a thousand years he would be able to execute his duty properly today, on which rested his life and those of others, and realizing that Death had known that he could not possibly do so.

He hated fear, as he hated Death, and he had known then that they were one and the same thing.

And so, now, as he sank once more onto the mattress, the early morning sunlight finally giving color to his flesh, he steeled himself for the cure for his affliction. Eroica's skin was warm against his hands, his mouth was hot, and alive, and Klaus felt what he hoped was fear ebbing out of him as he kicked the cotton shroud roughly from the foot of the bed.

There was something grimly triumphant about the Major's face, when it wasn't blank, that would have made Dorian reluctant if he hadn't judged the opportunity so very rare. His movements were strange, at once uncertain and forceful; Dorian was sufficiently experienced to recognize fear, especially the kind that Klaus was trying to hide, but he was at a loss to explain the resolution occasionally manifest in some deep and sudden kiss, the intoxicating and breath-snatching death-grip on his waist. He felt it would be an exercise in futility to unravel Klaus' inner struggle, if there was one, and in any case it would have been plain idiocy not to take full advantage of the situation. (He had, after all, risen promptly at half-past five. Sleep was a precious commodity, but even simply catching the Major unawares in his pajamas was worth an hour or so.)

When Klaus pushed himself off of the mattress, collected his clothes and locked himself into the bathroom, Dorian thought he looked profoundly relieved, and extremely isolated. He had hardly expected Klaus to stay and talk, of course, and even the lack of eye-contact was not terribly surprising, but he had seemed, over all, more or less pleased. And so Dorian found himself all the more intrigued, and entirely bemused by what on Earth might be taking place behind those positively gorgeous eyes.

Whatever strange force at work, it seemed to favor him. "Devil's luck," he muttered, smiling at the ceiling as the red dawn crept in between the gaps in the curtains, scarlet tidewater crawling deliberately across the carpet.

He glanced at the clock that sat beside the bed, and saw that it wasn't even seven. At the risk of being shoved out of bed by an irate Major, he drew the sheets back up onto the mattress, wrapped himself in as warmly as he could, and fell into troublesome dreams.