Angel looked at Asia. Asia looked at Angel. On the other side of the room, Tobias cleared his throat, uncomfortable.
“Commander,” he began, “I have a question about –”
Asia held up one hand to forestall comment, and Tobias fell silent. Asia didn’t look away from Angel; veritable storm clouds were gathering in her eyes, and were they in a less public place, she’d likely have a storm cloud spinning on one open palm too.
“What you’re asking me to do –”
“Is no less repugnant than the time I ordered you to kill a pregnant woman,” Asia said.
The look on Angel’s face said he disagreed.
Asia threw her hands up. “How have you made it this far along in human existence and been so unrelentingly straight? How did you survive the Greeks and the Romans and the Seventies?”
“I’m not going in there and you cannot make me,” Angel said.
Asia’s eyes flashed silver, eerily, and Tobias felt power spark in the room. He knew that he and the rest of the boys hadn’t seen the full extent of her power; he’d always thought that was a shame, but now he suspected that was for the better.
“I can make you, but I shouldn’t have to, because orders are orders and you’ve been given a bloody command!”
DJ poked his head into the room; he wore a pleasant smile. Tobias attempted to ward him off, hand gestures and spikes across the web and all, but DJ was just coming off a kung fu high.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“I have to go undercover in a gay bar,” Angel said flatly.
Tobias’s heart plummeted into his shoes. No way. Angel was a womanizer nonpareil, the original Casanova, Romeo, Don Juan, James Bond. DJ’s pleasant smile turned into an amused smirk.
“Oh really? How about that?”
“I won’t do it,” Angel said.
“Yes, you will,” Asia said.
DJ tipped his head to the side, blue eyes gleaming, and Tobias recognized Chadstone in the mannerism. “Should mom and dad really be fighting in front of the children like this?”
“You’re doing your job, and that’s final,” Asia said.
The tension in the room rocketed upward, and Tobias realized that Angel’s gift was circling the room, closer and closer to Asia, ready to strike.
DJ grinned, and oh, but he was both beautiful and terrifying. “Now now, Lieutenant Rastaban, surely you aren’t unwilling to do something one of your subordinates would have to do.”
Angel turned a fierce glare on him.
DJ peeled himself away from the doorframe and strutted across the room, and there was something distinctly sinuous and dirty about every line of his body. “I danced in a gay strip bar once. Surely you can just flirt with a man a little bit, ask him out on a date?”
Angel spluttered at the display. Even Asia looked alarmed. DJ draped himself across the nearest piece of furniture.
“Come on, Angel,” he said, “come osi.”
(500 words)
Angel blinked. Then he sighed, defeated. “Fine.”
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