Page 65 of Xerxes Ascendant
Kyle
Sorry for not coming home last night. Epsilon and I did a lot of talking. And other things.
He felt a stab of guilt at keeping his cousin awake and worried when she immediately responded.
Indira
What the fuck, Kylie!?! You can’t do that to me!
I will kill you.
Literally kill you.
Glad to hear your man is back in the picture. Congrats ;)
p.s. you’re still dead.
Kyle
Can you let the House know everything’s fine? Tell them to open without us tonight
Indira
You fucking slut! Hah. Will do.
Make sure you put boy toy through his paces.
Kyle glanced up and found Akira gazing at the screen with that selective perceptiveness of his, one eyebrow hitched in disbelief.
Kyle didn’t have to guess what he was reading.
Boy toy.
Hmm. Maybe he’d call him that in a scene sometime and see what Akira really thought of the name while being made to crawl, beg, and grovel.
“You’re done,” announced Sinead. “Hand it back over.”
When Akira continued to ignore to accept his own proffered device, Derek – one of the Carrion guards that had been posted outside their room earlier that day – reached out and snatched Kyle’s off him too, wrapping huge hands around both runepads to make it clear they wouldn’t be getting them back anytime soon.
Kyle sulked. Akira remained his usual statue-self. Sinead eyed him, evidently unhappy that he hadn’t sent placating messages like she’d ordered, but seemed to come to the eventual conclusion that short of torturing the man – or getting Kyle to use his favourite bossy voice on him – Master Epsilon wouldn’t be doing anything he didn’t want to.
Schooling her face back to grandmotherly charm, she waggled her painted fingers in a restrained little wave. “Good luck, boys.”
“I don’t suppose we could get a toothbrush or two before we go?” Kyle asked hopefully. “Or some deodorant?”
That they smelled of sex and day-old clothes apparently mattered not, for his requests went ignored. Sinead’s men stepped forward on some unheard command and reached for both Akira and Kyle, folding firm hands around their upper arms to haul them roughly from the room. As they passed the bed on which Kyle had gorged himself on curry and cum, he tried not to stare at it. Stars knew what the poor Carrions tasked with changing the orange-stained bed sheets would think, but that was what they got for kidnapping people.
Because apparently Akira’s agreement to help – and their demonstrated cooperation so far – meant shit all to a bunchof paranoid criminals like the Carrion, for they continued to be treated like prisoners even after being frog-marched from the squat, concrete building. The hoods and restraints thankfully didn’t make a reappearance, but the way the pair of them were shoved into a waiting car and made to sit sandwiched between their hulking guards made it clear they remained untrusted.
No one spoke, not even the good-natured Miguel, whose solid muscles Kyle could feel pressed against his left side. He’d enjoyed a conversation with the Carrion earlier that day while Akira had been passed out on the bed, and found him to be a decent guy, if unbelievably wrong in his opinion that Aerosmith was superior to AC/DC.
Miguel had been the one to provide a warning knock so that Sinead waltzed in thirty seconds later to find them dressed, rather than Kyle still balls deep in his man.
Not that that would have been abadthing. But it wasn’t really the professional look they were going for.
And it was that attempt at professionalism – stars, he was beginning to hate that word – that held Kyle’s tongue now.
The silence grated on him, but he resisted the urge to make conversation and instead spent the trip gazing at the man seated opposite him, memorising the sharp lines of Akira’s barely visible collarbones and the angle of his jaw. And Kyle was entreated to small smiles in return when Akira realised he was being watched, drinking in the way his boyfriend’s mouth curved faintly upwards to offer those rare, private expressions of happiness reserved only for him.
