WARNING: There be slight gay in this chapter! Nothing important to the plot or characters, since it doesn't make it into the canon, so you can calmly skip it.

"That is a bad idea," Kazar said, and immediately regretted it. Turan's expression shifted from playful to hurt to completely blank.

"Is that so?" he asked, pulling back.

Kazar took a moment to swallow, thinking he'd better not choke on his next words and die of asphyxiation before managing to set this whole mess straight. He gave a careful nod.

"Yeah. I mean, I probably have some rare, incurable disease and would totally give it to you. Scratch that, I probably have all the rare, incurable diseases. Honestly, do you want to die so young just because this one time you were too horny to know better? Do you? I mean, no offence, you can die in whatever way you want, but man. That would be just pathetic. And I don't wanna be responsible for no one's death, even if it's you. Also seriously, where the tsteni did this come from? Because last I checked, you hated my guts. You told me I smell. Repeatedly." Kazar knew he was babbling. The situation required it.

But he must have said the right thing, because Turan was staring at him now with an expression that was slightly amused. Most of it was just pissed off, but Kazar though that Turan's pissed off was rather attractive. As opposed to Turan's blank mask, which just didn't do his facial muscles justice.

Turan narrowed his eyes. "Just how many times in your life have you gotten lucky?"

Kazar opened his mouth, then closed it and looked away. He realized that was the wrong thing to do a second later and deflated a little. A long silence followed. "You know that I never get lucky," Kazar grumbled finally.

Turan's eyebrows rose, but he managed to keep a straight expression. "Don't you think that alleviates the danger somewhat?"

"No, man, I do not. Besides, if not that, then something else is bound to go wrong an-" Turan's face was suddenly very close to his. Too close, if Kazar was to do the judging.

"Now you are just being cute."

"I..." Kazar blanched. This was not going well. "Why are you making this difficult? I'm really just trying to look out for you."

"Mmm-hmm."

"No, seriously. You could end up crippled for life or something. Burned. Missing body parts. Dead. In a gutter. In a puddle of puke. Something terrible is going to happen, trust me. I know this for a fact. There is no way this will be a good thing, good things don't happen to me."

Turan's expression shifted into something that made Kazar want to run for his life.

"So," Turan said, tone conversational, "if, hypothetically, we did get laid and neither of us ended up dead, this." He waved a hand between them. "Would be a good thing?"

Kazar cursed his stupidity. He cursed it in Suunhan, and he knew some seriously filthy words in his mother tongue. Then he stopped thinking entirely, because Turan's hand was on his shoulder and Turan's mouth was touching his.

Kazar did the only thing he could do – squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the ground to crumble under his feet. He was so concentrated on steeling himself for the inevitable that he barely registered when the kiss ended. The ground was still steady. He chanced opening one eye.

Turan was watching him and shaking his head with a funny twist at the corner of his mouth. It almost looked like a smile.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone more pathetic than you," he said after a beat. Then he patted Kazar's head once, and left.

A/N: The novel - which I am going to call SK from now on, less confusing that way - was supposed to have two full-out gay couples at first. But then I realised that the romance added nothing to the story, and decided not to try to put it there. It might still crop up, but it's extremely unlikely, since I haven't yet managed to create a couple of characters that had any natural chemistry. And if a homosexual couple ends up appearing in SK, it definitely won't be Turan and Kazar.