Archive of Our Own

Prince William adjusted the collar of his uncomfortably fitting formal attire -- a somewhat militaristic uniform fashioned after his grandfather's and worn primarily for diplomatic functions -- as he waited just beyond the entrance to the palace on the receiving platform for the arrival of his grandfather's ship. It was far too early in the morning to be awake, much less dressed as he was, but the chill in the wind kept him alert.

"What do you think she's like?" Thomas wondered aloud, sounding as tired as William wasn't allowing himself to be.

"Green," William answered concisely.

The terse edge to his tone shut Thomas up without protest and the twins waited for the arrival of their grandfather's ship in silence from then on.

She was Princess Anella, granddaughter of Skrull Emperor Dorrek VII, and William's intended bride. Despite living in the twenty-first century, with technological leaps and bounds the likes of which only science fiction authors had before managed to envision, the House of Magnus was still willing to forge political alliances the old-fashioned way. The very old-fashioned way. As the successful peace treaty between the Skrull and Kree had been sealed with the marriage of his daughter, Anelle, to the Kree hero Mar-Vell over two decades ago, Dorrek VII no doubt felt secure in this practice and recommended it upon the completion of the new treaty negotiations with Earth. While they weren't actively at war with the Skrulls, as the Kree had been, King Magnus nevertheless consented to the marriage as a means of solidifying their new alliance.

So it fell to William, being a whole three minutes older than his twin brother, as the only one of the House of an appropriate age for Anella and without previous romantic attachment, to be committed to the arrangement. He was informed yesterday that it would be expected of him, in the first subspace transmission received since his grandfather left Earth to negotiate the new treaty. His mother must have already consented to the marriage, being a part of his grandfather's off-world delegation, or -- William suspected -- it would not have been settled upon at all.

It wasn't the first time in his life Will felt he was only playing the part given to him on his family's stage, reciting the appropriate lines at the correct time without any emotional attachment beyond duty, but it hadn't occurred to him yet that he was allowed to be angered by the newest situation in which he found himself.

Eventually, silence gave way to the roaring of engines and the landing platform was taken up by the large ship used for off-world travel, the wind kicked up by the ship's arrival sweeping both his and Thomas' hair wildly askew. Soon enough, a ramp was lowered and the imposing form of his grandfather emerged from the ship, followed soon after by his mother.

"William," his grandfather greeted upon approach. "Thomas."

"Hello, grandfather," Thomas answered with all the politeness he usually never bothered to muster, while William only nodded his greeting in a stoic fashion. Having not decided what to say in the face of his situation, he hardly trusted himself to open his mouth at all.

Maintaining his stoic front in the sudden, warm embrace of his mother was another issue entirely and he suspected she was attempting to break his resolve before he made the decision to be that upset over the arrangement. After hugging Thomas in much the same way, Wanda pulled away and her arm around her father's. "Come along, William," she said in the doting voice she always had for her children, "we have many things to discuss."

Helpfully, Thomas nudged William forward when he feet seemed to root themselves firmly into place. Managing not to trip over himself at the unexpected push, William resolved to somehow get through the day and quietly commit fratricide later that evening.

As it turned out, there was very little that required discussion, making the conversation a mere formality.

In accordance with the wishes of Dorrek VII, the new treaty with the Skrulls would be sealed with William's marriage to Anella, but -- in a compromise insisted upon by King Magnus -- they were to be permitted an engagement period to familiarize themselves with each other. Somehow, to William, that did not sound like the best compromise his grandfather could have agreed to.

Without being asked his opinion on the terms of the treaty, William was told he would be disembarking within two days to return to the Skrull throneworld and retrieve his bride-to-be. Together, they would select an appropriate date for the wedding and he was to discreetly acquired the services of a wedding coordinator to begin preparations. As overwhelming as the idea was of being very soon married, the necessity of traveling to another planet in another part of the galaxy was too baffling to think that hard on. Thus lacking the ability to protest, William agreed to the terms set before him and promptly excused himself from the meeting.

It was much later in the day when Thomas finally found him, sitting alone -- and still in his full dress uniform -- in the private library the two of them had used for their studies as children.

"So," Thomas said as he settled himself into the squishy armchair across from where William was putting up a terrible pretense at reading Tolstoy, "I've been thinking."

"Hmm?"

"Tell mom you're going to Hammer Bay for the weekend."

Will looked up from the impossibly thick hardback. "Why?"

Thomas offered his twin a sly smile. "Because I want to go to New York."

"Hammer Bay isn't New York, Tom," Will deadpanned.

"No," Thomas explained with slow care, as if William needed to be walked through his logic, "but Hammer Bay is still in the country and it won't look like you're trying to escape your Skrullwife if you stay in the country."

William frowned at the nickname. As much as he was growing to hate the idea the more he actually slowed down to think about being thrust into it, he didn't think Anella deserved any ire. Like him, she was just an innocent pawn being moved about for purposes not actually her own. "Don't call her that," he finally decided, sounding a bit more annoyed with his brother than he intended.

"She's a Skrull," Tom explained, trying to laugh his brother's annoyance off. "And she's going to be your wife. It's fitting." With his justification clearly lacking and not remotely on the verge of convincing William of his joke's appropriateness, Thomas dropped all attempts and insisted: "Just tell mom, okay?"

Lying to their mother and wandering off to New York for the weekend, especially after a morning like this, didn't sit well with William. His frown deepened as he thought about it (or, more specifically, thought about the consequences involved in getting caught). "I don't know, Tom."

"You need to get away from this place before you have a mental breakdown!" Thomas exclaimed. He gave up all pretense of sitting and having a polite conversation with his twin, bolting up from the chair to do something with his nervous energy. "Look, I'm going to be in New York anyway. Just come with me? Please."

"Tom," William said warningly. "I really don't know about this."

After a few nervous paces, Thomas turned and presented William with a cocky grin. "Bachelor party?"

When his brother merely looked confused by the declaration, Thomas went on, "Okay, look. We both know you're not going to tell anyone the truth about how you really feel. Just let me give you a bachelor party, at least. I want you to have a good time before all this ... happens." He said it in a tone that articulated exactly how William felt: defeated and helpless. There was very little either of them could do about the situations they were continually thrust into.

The idea of wandering off to another country with Thomas for the pure and simple purpose of partying in celebration (or perhaps mourning) of his nuptials seemed like an unbelievably bad idea to William. Not only was it the sort of thing he just didn't do, but there existed the potential of being seen, thus exposing themselves and their family to ridicule if anything made it to the press. "No way -- "

"I'll take you to a gay bar!"

The exclamation was given so quickly, both of them missed most of it and had to take a moment to piece together what Thomas had just said. While William looked surprised (and uncomfortably embarrassed), Thomas seemed struck with the realization of his offer, but then resolute in his decision to keep such a promise. For confirmation, he repeated more slowly, "I'll take you to a gay bar."

Though not still that surprised, William nevertheless needed further clarification. "What?"

"You. Me. Bachelor party. Gay bar." Tom paused, looking a little saddened to be laying the facts out in front of them like this. His brother was gay and refused to tell anyone, even if it meant facing a politically orchestrated marriage to a woman. "We can pretend you're not about to embark on a life of monogamous heterosexuality."

Quiet for several moments, William made a passing attempt to finish the paragraph he'd been staring at for ten solid minutes before Thomas interrupted his solitude. Eventually, however, he closed the book and set it aside in favor of rubbing his forehead. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Thomas wondered, quiet but still demanding. "I'm offering to be your gay bar wingman, here, bro. You need to give me a definite answer."

Feeling like the conversation had gone to a serious place it needed to be steered away from, William looked up and put on one of his better fake smiles. "Maybe. And only if you promise not to talk about my Skrullwife."

"I promise," Thomas answered with a small smile of his own.

As Thomas predicted, their mother had no problem with William taking a weekend excursion to Hammer Bay, even without security escort, and made the excuse for him that he just needed time to think about his future now. So, it was a very short trip from the palace to his family's usual hotel in the city. After checking into his penthouse suite and placing a 'do not disturb' request on the door, Will teleported several timezones away with his luggage and arrived in the penthouse suite of The James in New York.

"You're late," Thomas announced from the bathroom, less at the noise of William teleporting (there was very little) and more at the feeling of his brother's arrival. "You missed dinner."

William placed his luggage in the closet before heading to lean into the impressive en suite, prepared to find his brother working on perfectly sculpting his coif. What he found instead was Thomas still wrapped in a towel from the waist down, mucking in a tray of strongly smelling white paste, which he was applying to his hair with an applicator brush. " ... what are you doing?"

"Bleaching."

"Your hair."

"Yeah. What do you think?"

"I think I'm going to call for room service."

"I already did," Thomas announced proudly. "It should be here in a few minutes. Go watch television or something."

Backpedaling out of the bathroom to leave his brother to the bizarre task, William settled onto the edge of the bed and grabbed the remote for the television, turning on something for background noise until his food arrived. By the time the uninteresting show faded into a news program (prompting William to turn to an actual news channel for a broader report), a tray -- containing a burger and fries, along with two beers -- arrived by way of room service.

Anticipating his brother's want, William took one beer into the bathroom, where Thomas was struggling with a hand-held mirror and the wall mounted one to watch himself paste the hair at the back of his head with bleach. He left without comment, settling in comfortably on the bed with his own beer and dinner, watching the national news while he ate.

"Violence erupted in Los Angeles today in wake of a report from the World Health Organization stating that the human birthrate has fallen to an all-time low this year. Homo sapien protesters congregated outside fertilization clinics in the greater Los Angeles area, protesting the clinics' supposed preferential treatment toward Homo superior parents. What started as a peaceful protest against Homo sapien stem cell research escalated into rioting the likes of which Los Angeles has not seen since the 1992 -- "

Unceremoniously, the television switched to something the flavor of MTV and the volume sprang up past the casual comfort level. William glared first down at the bedside table, where the remote had formerly been, and then up at his twin brother, who looked positively ridiculous with his head covered in the white paste from the bleaching kit. It looked like Thomas had given up on the brush and just globbed it over his entire head in an effort to bleach every strand of hair.

"I was watching that."

"It's depressing! Who cares about that stuff?" Thomas demanded, setting the remote on the bathroom counter, far out of his brother's reach. "As long as they're not rioting here and getting in the way of our partying, it doesn't matter."

William rolled his eyes. "Your hair looks ridiculous," he finally said, his comeback weak and unrelated to the conversation. Thomas wasn't very politically minded and William had long since learned not to bother.

"If by 'ridiculous' you mean awesome, then yeah, it does," Tom's voice called, echo-y and distorted, from the bathroom.

While finishing his dinner, Will zoned out to the reality show now on, unable to look away from what turned out to be a very compelling train wreck. He was working through the last of his fries when the show ended and the sound of running water in the bathroom heralded his brother rinsing the bleach from his hair. Soon enough, the sound of water was replaced by that of a hair dryer and the all too familiar noises of Thomas primping with hair gel and other such styling products.

When Tom eventually emerged from the bathroom, William's curiosity got the better of him and he sat up to get a good look at his twin's hair. What had been jet black, like his own, was suddenly a very pale blond -- almost white -- which prompted William to suppose that, with the emergence of Thomas' speedster powers, he was striving to be a little too much like their uncle.

"Don't say it," Thomas immediately protested.

"Say what?"

"I don't look like Uncle Pete."

"I wasn't going to make that leap at all, Tom," William lied, smirking unrepentantly, "but since you brought it up, maybe you were already thinking it. Tell me, do you feel overshadowed, as a speedster in this family, by our uncle?"

Thomas pulled a face. "If I wanted to look like Uncle Pete, I'd slick my hair back and be weirdly overprotective of my poor, defenseless twin. How dare they marry him off to some Skrull princess! He's so innocent! He's never even dated a girl before!" Thomas protested in a fashion more outraged than woeful, clearly trying for his very best impersonation of Pietro.

Though summoning the television remote from wherever Tom had left it was such a simple display that it was hardly an argument against being called defenseless, Will did so nevertheless. The volume sank back down to a comfortable level and William returned the channel back to that of the news, where the story of the Los Angeles riots had long since given way to another round of hourly stories.

"Sorry," Thomas apologized, when he realized his brother was paying more attention to the news than him, "I forgot I wasn't supposed to mention that."

"It's fine," William lied, a sullen tone creeping into his voice. "Just don't do it again."

In an effort to cheer his twin up, Thomas grinned mischievously and moved over to the closet to retrieve two garment bags. He held out one to his brother. "Come on, Will," Tom offered in a sing-song voice, jiggling the hanger invitingly, like a kid trying to entice a cute animal with a treat, "I was in London last week. You know you want to walk into the club wearing Huntsman. We can totally upstage these Manhattan guys in their off-the-rack Armani."

"Why do I get the feeling we're not putting on Savile Row just to go to a gay bar?" he wondered, raising both eyebrows at his brother.

"Well ... "

"Tom."

Thomas went from looking innocent, to uncomfortable, to sly in point-two seconds. "I figured we could pregame the gay bar. There's a club not far from here. Great atmosphere, great drinks, great -- "

"Kate Bishop," Will accused.

" -- she is great!"

"You're trying to impress her," William protested. "She's the richest homo sapien heiress left on the east coast and she has a boyfriend, but you're still trying to impress her. It's not going to work, but I admire your perseverance."

Standing, William took the garment bag held out for him and draped it carefully across the foot of his bed, dragging down the zipper to get a good look at the suit Thomas had made for him. Thankfully, they were still the same size, despite Thomas' claims on being taller (he wasn't, really). Inside the bag was a very elegant charcoal-on-black pinstripe suit, which Tom had already paired with a crimson shirt and a surprisingly understated tie.

"Okay. I'm impressed," Will admitted after a moment. "Have you been reading GQ? Did you hire a fashion consultant?"

"Shut up," his twin urged, somehow still looking pleased. "Get dressed. Do something with your hair, it looks like you slept on it. We're going to be late, but not in a fashionable way."

The thump of the music hit him square in the chest the moment Will ascended the final step into the VIP lounge. The club below was crowded, with throngs of hopeful twenty-somethings lined up around the block outside, and the lounge on the second floor was no different. Somehow, without as many tables cluttering up the place and an opaque floor made of thickly swirled glass bricks leaving the scene below partially visible, it seemed even more crowded. Kate must have been throwing a party.

Within minutes, it became obvious to William why else his brother wanted to pregame their outing, as Tom was besieged by several giggling women, each more eager to see him than the last. William was introduced to them all in turn, enduring whatever flirty twin jokes they decided to throw out there, and was actually happy with the arrangement when Thomas had them seated in a semi-circular booth and had a round of drinks ordered.

It was only after two increasingly delicious cocktails, the garnish of which he was still occupied with, that William caught a glimpse of the party's hostess at the bar while Thomas had been dragged to the dance floor by a pair of his admirers. Kate Bishop was great, he could give his brother that much. She walked with the air of someone who owned half the world (the best half) and was still looking for a pretty enough case to put it into, somehow wrapping style in a graceful package without tying it all up with swagger. Will liked her a lot. A good deal more than he suspected she liked his brother.

And all the more when she turned away from the bar and headed for his table, one of the bartenders falling all over himself to follow in her stiletto-ed footsteps with a bottle of chilled champagne and several glasses.

"Hi, Will," she greeted, only helping herself to the table once the champagne had been set down and the bartender had cleared much of the clutter left by Thomas and his lady friends.

"Hello, Kate," William answered. He couldn't help smiling, as the entire situation struck him as planned. She'd known from the beginning when they arrived and had been conspicuously absent for her own, no doubt wildly entertaining, purposes. Thomas would come back, with a vapid girl on each arm, to find the true object of his affection seated at his table.

"So I hear congratulations are in order," Kate said while the champagne was being poured.

Even over the music, William heard the exaggerated exhale that accompanied his disappointment. "I wish he hadn't told you."

"Oh, honey," she said sympathetically and reached her glass over to his to clink them together in a forced toast, "I'm the best person to tell. I don't need the money from selling anything to the tabloids and I don't have a political agenda." Kate paused for a sip of champagne, urging William by proxy to take a drink from his glass, too. "Besides, I don't think Tommy knew what to do. He was so distraught when he called me!"

The idea of his brother -- Tommy? -- calling Kate Bishop in the midst of being distressed was sort of, well, strange. Thomas usually ranted and went for a run to Alaska when he was particularly pissed off about something, which left calling Kate at the bottom of his Methods for Dealing With Stress strategy list.

"He called you?" Will asked after he choked down his champagne.

"Yesterday morning. It was about three in the morning for me, so I was just getting in." And, clearly, she wasn't at all bothered by that fact. Will was stuck trying to figure out if it was because it wasn't a booty call or if it was because Thomas was expressing feelings. "He told me everything," Kate went on, her hand settling on his in a comforting manner. "I hope you don't mind."

Feeling suddenly absurdly exposed, though at least not to a perfect stranger, William just laughed. "I think you had me figured out that time we went shopping for shoes, Kate, but the rest ... really should have been kept private."

"I know. I told him the exact same thing, but his mouth gets in front of his brain and he just -- "

" -- says things," Will finished. "Yeah."

Kate smiled sweetly across the table at him and gave his hand a little pat. "So, I told him to bring you to New York this weekend and let me introduce you to a few of my friends. They'll be meeting us at the bar later and I'm sure you'll like them."

Oh. The realization that his brother had conspired with Kate to set him up hit William like a ton of bricks, while Kate went on to describe her mysterious friends with all the adjectives a guy like him would hypothetically want in a one-night, pre-marriage stand: tall, dark, handsome, muscular, well-dressed, manicured, articulate, and -- with emphasis -- very discreet.

"...which," Kate said with a laugh, "makes this sound a little seedier than it is, but believe me when I say I've known these guys through college. They're wonderful, Will, I promise."

William cleared his throat after another, much larger, drink of champagne. "Now I'm nervous."

Kate only laughed, as if his admission was silly at best, and took it upon herself to top off both their glasses and fill the third, as if she had some precognitive ability and knew that at any moment Thomas would show up. He did, remarkably enough, and without his escort of admiring ladies. (Which lead Will to suspect he'd been stopped short in his tracks upon seeing Kate and made a convenient excuse to get rid of the two girls.)

"Kate," Tom greeted when he approached the table.

"Hi, Tommy," she answered with a sly little smile cast in Will's direction. "I was just filling your brother in on our plans for tonight. Won't you join us?"

It was amusing for William to watch the expression on his brother's face go from mortified to pleased in a matter of seconds as he realized what Kate had told him while watching her slide over in the booth to make room for him to sit beside her. Suddenly, he looked like his birthday had been rolled up into every national holiday and his mountain of combined gifts was topped with cake. Kate Bishop was a terrible woman and William kind of loved that about her.

Thomas sat and gulped down his glass of champagne in a move William had long since labeled 'stifling with alcohol.' Seeing his usually cool twin on the verge of sweating bullets was steadily making Will's night even better.

"Let's finish our champagne," Kate went on conversationally, as if entirely oblivious to the fact that Tom was turning into a stammering teenager next to her, "and the cheesecake platter I ordered us, then we can head out."

"You won't be missed here?" William wondered, not even touching the decadence of the cheesecake she mentioned yet.

"At my own party?" she laughed. "Hardly. As long as I keep the bar open, no one will notice I'm gone. I already let Eli know I was having a girl's night out after ten."

Though Tom was visibly chagrined to be included in this 'girl's night out,' he managed not to say anything and just finished off his glass of champagne, oblivious to his brother's amusement.

"Great," Will said. "Sounds like a -- "

Downstairs, a resonant boom resounded through the club, shaking walls and sending up shrieks of alarm through the crowds on both floors. Glass shattered in the distance and the DJ in the main club stopped spinning with an abrupt drag of a needle across vinyl, highlighting the frightened shouts of patrons below in sharp relief.

"What's going on?" William wondered, even as Thomas got to his feet with an alertness several glasses of alcohol shouldn't have allowed for.

A fire warning cut Kate's response short, setting off a blaring alarm and kicking on the automatic fire suppression system. As it rained down, the club began accumulating water and one of the main breakers was tripped, throwing nearly everything into pitch black but for a few emergency lights. What was rapidly spreading panic turned into absolute chaos as everyone began stampeding for the nearest exit in confusion and distress. Downstairs, the sound of distinct gunfire -- not bullets, but tranq rounds -- broke through the cacophony of screams.

"It's the NHR!" Kate shouted over the noise, tucking her feet up into the booth to stand on her former seat and step up onto the table, wantonly kicking aside glasses and bottles to get a better footing. She grabbed Thomas' collar and jerked him closer to the table before he was swallowed up by the pushing crowd. "We have to go!"

With the first shout of 'NHR,' several patrons ignited into a full-on display of their homo superior powers, just to get the hell out quicker. Between different flashes of energy from various sources, there was just enough light to see that the New Human Resistance was steadily picking its way through the crowd downstairs and beating a path up into the VIP lounge.

"Will!" Kate shouted, even as she reached down to jerk him out of the way of a wildly thrown energy blast. "They're after Eli! Can you find him?"

Eli Bradley, to the best of Will's limited knowledge, was widely believed to be the biggest dealer of mutant growth hormone in the state of New York, which didn't make him any friends with homo superiors in power or with the homo sapiens who wanted to preserve what was left of their species. As far as Will was concerned, though, Eli was Kate's boyfriend and didn't deserve to be dragged off by terrorists. In a blink, his eyes flashed bright blue and he dropped into the trance-like state associated with his locating ability, trusting in both Kate and Thomas to keep him from being carried off by the scattering masses.

Thomas was keeping an eye on the progress of the militant faction heading upstairs, one hand unconsciously grasping at Kate's arm in a protective fashion. "Will!" he urged at the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairwell. "Hurry!"

"Downstairs!" Will gasped when he snapped out of it, climbing up into his seat and toward the back of the booth. "We can go through the staff door!" He saw it in his head, following the path of least resistance from their location to where Eli was standing between five terrorists and a fallen girl with a tranq dart in her neck.

The urgency in William's voice was all Kate and Thomas needed to know the situation was bad and about to get much worse. They both scrambled over the back of the booth and into the neighboring one to follow him. By the time their feet hit the water accumulating on the floor, a large group of masked NHR members had burst into the lounge and popped off a few shots into the crowd wantonly, using the 'shoot 'em all and sort 'em out later' method of tranq and retrieval. They clearly weren't just after Eli.

With the crowd rapidly thinning, either due to use of the fire escape or encounter with excessive force, Will was able to lead the way to the staff stairwell, between the upstairs and downstairs bars, and haul the door open. The stairwell was empty and Thomas shot out ahead of them, grateful for open space in which to unleash his full potential.

"Tommy!"

Kate's shout was unheeded and she hurried after him, only drawing up short at the downstairs door when several suppressed gunshots heralded the sound of a body hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Will's heart twisted with a sick wrench as he felt the pricks of numbness his twin had succumbed to and he looked to Kate for reassurance. Unlike Thomas, William had no military training with the Red Guard and in spite of said training, his brother had just been taken down by a group of terrorists. He would be lying if he said he wasn't scared.

"Shield me," Kate demanded, giving Will only moments to react and form a protective blue aura of energy around her before she burst through the door and dove behind the bar. William followed, using only a small wall of the same energy to protect himself as he ducked to follow Kate. She had already grabbed for the nearest thing to a weapon she could find: a small tray of kitchen knives. "Draw their attention."

Something about the rough bark of her voice when she gave orders, like they both knew what the hell they were doing and were capable of this sort of thing, made William want to sit up and listen. He forgot his fear and his lack of training almost immediately. All that mattered at the moment was getting to his feet and giving Kate the window she needed.

William popped over the bar, shielding himself fully with his energy aura, and drew their attention with the crack of a lightning bolt. While he went for a more passive approach -- scaring the hell out of them, rather than frying them to a crisp -- Kate hauled off and threw three of her knives, lodging one in the side of a modified combat rifle and the other two in the accommodating flesh of a pair of terrorists.

They could both see from their new vantage point that Eli was on the floor, muscles bulging with an obvious overdose of MGH, with half a dozen tranq darts in his chest. Clearly, Kate wasn't about to pull any punches.

"Fuck, Kate!" Will exclaimed when they ducked back down, alarmed and impressed by her accuracy.

"They'll be fine," she snapped as she readied several more knives, "if they get to the ER soon."

On the other side of the bar, amid the screams of now injured terrorists, a radio cracked to life and a rasping voice ordered immediate evacuation.

Will didn't need Kate to tell him that it was time to go again. He just moved down the bar from his previous location and popped up again, this time not shying away from where he aimed his bolt of lightning. Kate moved her location, as well, but only landed two more knives when she popped up before the Resistance cell activated their evacuation protocol and teleported out.

All their injured and however many of the targeted sapiens they tagged were also teleported, leaving several bystanders-- like Thomas -- on the floor as collateral damage. Eli was gone, along with the girl he was protecting.

Kate swore like a sailor on shore leave and slammed one of her remaining knives into the bar. "Let's go before the cops get here," she muttered, stepping out from behind the bar to haul Thomas off of the rapidly flooding floor.

William hurried over to help shoulder his brother's weight. "What does the NHR want with Eli?"

"He deals," Kate answered succinctly and without any emotional commitment on the subject. "They're sapien nutjobs."

"What about all the other people? That girl they took." With Thomas' arm draped over his shoulders, William reached with his free hand to grasp Kate's wrist and teleported the three of them back to The James without delay.

Without missing a beat, as if teleportation was an every day thing for a New York socialite, Kate helped Will haul Tom's dripping dead weight to the bed.

"They've gotten even more nutjob-y lately," she finally explained, having no qualms with helping William get his twin out of his sopping wet suit. "They'll take humans by force and say it's for their safety. I didn't think it was true until tonight. I'd heard rumors, but ... "

Kate straightened and turned away from the bed. After kicking off her shoes, she padded barefoot into the bathroom to get out of her soaked dress.

"For their safety?" William demanded. "How is shooting someone with a tranquilizer like a rabid animal and kidnapping them 'for their own safety'!?"

"Maybe they want to prove we're being systematically sterilized by the homo superior agenda," she answered archly, sarcasm virtually dripping from every syllable. "I don't know. Like I said, they're insane. I thought it was all talk and threatening phone calls until tonight."

With Thomas out cold and bundled up in a blanket, William turned his attention to getting out of his own clothes. Tomorrow morning, Tom was going to have a conniption over the state of their bespoke suits, but for now all he could do was drape them over the back of a chair and hope dry cleaning could help.

"Can I stay here tonight?" Kate wondered, appearing in the doorway in a hotel robe, looking remarkably vulnerable without stiletto heels and a set of kitchen knives. "I know sleeping with a woman isn't the ideal way to end your bachelor party, but I promise: no funny business."

In spite of everything, Will cracked a smile. "Sure," he agreed. "I think I've got something for you to wear in my suitcase, if you want."

She nodded and headed for the minibar, making the executive decision that the two of them were in bad need of a stiff drink.

"You're awfully composed for a woman with deadly aim whose boyfriend was just kidnapped by radical terrorists," William finally pointed out while pulling some dry clothes from his suitcase for them both.

"Eli can handle himself," Kate said calmly. "And I have friends in high places."

Will smirked and pulled a faded t-shirt over his head. "That sounds appropriately menacing, so I'm not that worried."

After downing one of the glasses of the whiskey she poured each of them, Kate allowed herself to crack a slight grin. "Me, neither."

With that, she grabbed up the offered change of clothes and retreated back into the bathroom, leaving William to the drink on the minibar, which he promptly added another tiny bottle to before gulping down.