Caleo's father was called Marten.

  He was fifty three years old and had been a merchant of reasonable success for most of his adult life, the kind of man who knew everyone in three districts and was owed favors by half of them. He had started noticing the symptoms eight years ago. A stiffness in the joints that the healers said was age, a fatigue that rest didn't address, a slow persistent decline in the functions that should have been robust in a man his age. The healers had eventually stopped saying it was age and started saying it was the wasting, which was the local term for a degenerative condition that moved through the males of certain family lines like water finding a crack, slow and inevitable and comprehensive.

  There was no cure. Everyone agreed on this. Caleo had spent five years disagreeing.

  "The progression is moderate right now," Caleo said. He was holding his teacup in both hands and looking at the surface of it. The high energy was fully absent, the mp turned all the way down, just a nineteen year old talking about his father in a quiet kitchen. "He functions. He works. He's in pain most of the time but he manages it and doesn't discuss it, which is very him." A brief pause. "The healers say three years before it becomes serious. Serious meaning bedridden. After that — " he didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

  I leaned against the counter and looked at him and thought about the locked recipe behind Cum Crafter Level 8. The trajectory the system had been pointing me along since the first notification appeared. Tissue restoration. Systemic healing. Reversal of degenerative conditions. I wasn't at Level 8 yet. But I was at Level 3 and climbing and the Vitalist's Draught was already unlocked and sitting in my recipe list with properties that went considerably beyond anything the Golden Salve could do.

  "I can't promise anything long term right now," I said. "I want to be honest with you about that. There are things I can see developing in my work that might eventually address something like the wasting directly. But eventually isn't now and I'm not going to tell you otherwise."

  Caleo nodded once. He'd known this was coming, I thought. He'd built his expectations carefully over five years and wasn't a person who confused hope with certainty.

  "What can you do now?" he asked.

  "Something that might help short term," I said. "There's a preparation I can make. I call it the Vitalist's Draught. It's different from what I've been selling to the alchemist. More complex. The properties go deeper — systemic application, internal healing, addresses organ stress and tissue deterioration." I watched his face. "It won't reverse what's already happened. But it might slow the progression. Address the pain. Buy time while I develop the longer term work."

  Caleo was very still for a moment.

  "How confident are you," he said quietly.

  "In the short term effects, fairly," I said. "In the longer term… I'll be honest with you, I don't know yet. The system that governs my abilities is pointing somewhere significant but I haven't reached it yet." I paused. "What I can tell you is that what I produce is real and it works. The alchemist's testing machine made a sound it apparently doesn't usually make. The woman at the brothel walked out with no soreness after something that should have kept her off her feet for a week. Morning Dew is healing you right now through the tea and you can probably feel it."

  Caleo blinked. Considered. "I did notice I felt unusually well this morning," he said. "I attributed it to — " he paused, " — the evening's activities."

  "Both," I said. "The Draught is stronger. Much stronger. Direct application, properly prepared." I straightened up from the counter. "There's something I need to tell you about the preparation process though."

  He looked at me attentively.

  "The Vitalist's Draught requires a very specific mixing environment," I said. "The two base ingredients need to be combined at precise body temperature and held there during the combining process. Too cool and the properties don't fully integrate. Too warm and the systemic healing component degrades." I kept my voice carefully technical. "The temperature window is narrow. External vessels don't maintain it consistently enough. The preparation requires…" I paused for exactly the right amount of time, " an internal mixing environment."

  Caleo looked at me.

  I looked back at him.

  "Internal," he said.

  "Internal," I confirmed. "Specifically, and I want to be clear this is a technical requirement of the recipe rather than anything else, the mixing needs to occur internally, maintained at consistent body temperature throughout the combining process, with full absorption directly from the preparation site."

  A beat.

  "You need to mix it in my ass," Caleo said.

  "The recipe specifies an internal environment maintained at body temperature," I said. "Yes."

  He looked at me for a long moment with those blue eyes. The mp turned back up, slowly, something working behind his expression. Then the corner of his mouth moved.

  "Jack," he said.

  "Yes."

  "I have spent five years studying Vitalist pharmacology," he said. "I have read every fragmentary text I could find on the subject. I have a theoretical framework that I have been building since I was fourteen years old." He picked up his teacup. "The literature does not mention internal mixing as a preparation requirement for the Vitalist's Draught."

  "The literature," I said, "is incomplete and fragmentary by your own description."

  A pause.

  "That's true," he said.

  "And my Cum Crafter sub-css notifications have been consistently specific about preparation requirements," I said. "I'm reporting what the system has told me."

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  "Also true," he said.

  He set his cup down and looked at me with the expression of a schor encountering a primary source that contradicted his theoretical framework and deciding how to update his understanding. The expression sted about four seconds before something warmer repced it entirely.

  "Well," he said. "In the interest of rigorous practical research." He stood up from the stool and gestured toward the stairs with the decisive energy of a man who had assessed a situation and committed to it. "Shall we?"

  "Immediately?" I said.

  "My father is in pain right now," he said simply. "Today seemed better than tomorrow."

  I looked at him. The quiet underneath the energy, real and present. The five years of work and the three years of preparation and the graduated set in a travelling case and the father who was fifty three and declining and didn't discuss it.

  "Right," I said. "Yes. Immediately."

  We went upstairs.

  The bed was still a crime scene from the morning's activities but neither of us had the patience for housekeeping right now. I went to the crafting room and gathered what I needed — the bowl, a spare vial of Morning Dew, the careful collections from the previous sessions that I'd been preserving for exactly this kind of application. The Vitalist's Draught recipe called for two parts cum to one part Morning Dew, combined at body temperature, absorbed directly from the preparation site.

  Caleo was already undressed when I came back to the bedroom, which was very him, Im beginning to see. No ceremony, just the efficient removal of obstacles between the current situation and the desired outcome. He looked at the vial and the box with the focused attention of someone watching a process they'd been theorizing about for years begin to become real.

  "How does this work exactly," he said. "The mixing process."

  "I'll need to be inside you," I said. "Both ingredients introduced internally and combined in pce. The Morning Dew will be present from contact with my cock during the process. The second ingredient — " I paused.

  "Needs to be introduced directly," he said.

  "Yes."

  "And held at temperature during the combining period."

  "Yes."

  He nodded slowly with the expression of a man updating his theoretical framework in real time and finding the update acceptable. "And the absorption occurs naturally from the preparation site."

  "That's what the recipe specifies," I said.

  "Remarkably elegant pharmacology," he said.

  "I thought so," I said.

  He turned and got on the bed on his hands and knees and looked back at me over his shoulder with those blue eyes warm and ready and underneath all of it something genuine and serious and real.

  "Make it work, Jack," he said quietly. Not Caleo the cum sommelier. Not the high energy kid or the five years of academic enthusiasm. Just a boy asking something real of the only person who might be able to deliver it.

  I uncorked the Morning Dew and got to work.