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He was sane once, and happy. Then he met Piotr Vorkosigan. It was all downhill from there.

Ezar's family runs Camp Barrayar, and he's gone to it for years, but this is his first summer in this program. Piotr's a couple years younger than him, but it's his third, he says. Piotr cites that seniority when he he claims the bottom bunk immediately, declaring that it's more defensible. Ezar surveys the top bunk dubiously and eventually climbs up. He immediately hits his head on the roof beams.

"Vorkosigan, let him have the bottom," their counselor orders on his way to breaking up a fight between Fletchir and half the bunk. "He's taller."

Piotr rolls his eyes at Xav behind his back. "Last summer, he ruined color war," Piotr tells Ezar. "It's was all, 'no, Piotr, don't do that', and 'no, Piotr, you can't have fun', and 'no, Piotr, you're the captain, not a general, and they're your teammates, not your army'. He called my parents on me and told them the nurses were starting to place bets on how many campers I could send down there with one excuse or another. Which is not my fault," he adds darkly. "I told them to hydrate first before we went on the guerrilla raid."

"Uh huh," Ezar says.

"And Xav has it out for me," Piotr says. "Just watch. Everything I do. His favorite word is no. But you can have the bottom anyway."

Not that Piotr was going to say no. It takes even less time to realize that Piotr won't say no to Xav. "Loyalty sucks," Piotr says glumly, kicking his feet as he sits on Ezar's bunk. "Just because he made me promise to listen to him when I was homesick and crying my first year, now I'm stuck with it. A promise is a promise."

Which doesn't adequately explain why Xav puts up with him. "It was me or Yuri," Xav tells Ezar later as he helps Ezar unpack. "And Yuri threatened to toss him out into the rain if he was forced to have him in his cabin. This is less dangerous. If he's really unbearable, let me know, and I'll make him take Fletchir's top bunk. Who knows, he might learn something. Expand his horizons."

Fletchir is the most beautiful boy Ezar's ever seen in his life and everyone's scared of him. Fletchir's family runs another camp a few miles away. They almost bought Camp Barrayar last year and no one's really sure why Fletchir's here now. Piotr thinks it's subterfuge. "We rebuffed their last invasion," Piotr tells anyone who will listen. "He's a spy for their next attempt."

One week into camp, Fletchir and his friends surround Ezar and Piotr's bunk bed during a thunderstorm. They pull Piotr out of the bunk, yank off the bedding, and throw the sheets and the mattress into the showers. They kick Piotr a few times, but then Xav comes roaring in, and Yuri and his bunk come over from the next cabin. It takes ten minutes and Ezar getting an elbow to the gut before Piotr and Fletchir are eventually separated.

Fletchir's family comes to get him the next day, glaring at everyone and promising lawsuits. Piotr gets camp-detention, but Piotr's parents own enough of the camp that that's the worse that happens to him. Piotr celebrates his victory by convincing Ezar to scale the flagpole with a borrowed megaphone and declare victory over Camp Cetaganda in the Battle Of The Cabin.

Ezar's life really was much saner before Piotr Vorkosigan came into it. Saner, but less fun.