They were nearly at the end of this bout of fucking, when Sergei gave that damned scarf still looping over his shoulders a playful jerk and whispered in his ear if he would mind if he choked him a little?

Irving enjoys a range of Christian pleasures and graces: singing with friends, watercolors, study, climbing exercises, handball.

It feels too honest, somehow. Too desperate. Kuan-hung's too thinned out by the hour, exposed in the liminal space between his dream and now that's still folding closed, scarring over. He rubs his cheek against his pillow, ducking his head down lower, as if he can creep closer to Fu Meng-po's voice. As if there's a body nearby to press himself into, if he just reaches far enough for it.

This is how it happens. There's always a mother, a daughter, and a man.

Little wakes from unconsciousness into different company.

--For 'twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood
From off my hands, here in the view of men
I will unfold some causes of your deaths.

This has all happened before, and it is happening again.

Six years later, Fitzjames and Crozier broach a delicate topic in the privacy of a well-heated room.

Sequel to More Fools Than Wise.

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his …

On the one night of their journey that suspends itself in the in-between, not yet Hetao but no longer home, Wang Zhi joins him for dinner.

Hal gets stabbed; Hickey gets invasive.