8. North
Chapter 8
North
W as there a right time to confess to the man you’d forcibly moved in with that you were a serial killer? It wasn’t an urge I had because of some deep-seated need to come clean about my sins. I didn’t even feel bad about withholding the information.
But if I told him I’d killed enough people that I could use the bodies to barricade his front door, maybe Ranen wouldn’t feel so anxious about streaming again.
That’s the part that bothers me. I’ve seen him on camera enough to know he loves what he does. Fuck, half the reason I became so… attached… to watching him was because of the light in his eyes when he performed, and the power he seemed to control over everyone and everything because he knew his body. He was bold and sensual—absolutely mesmerizing.
If I hadn’t wanted to kill the man who hurt him before, the fact that he’d threatened that part of Ranen’s confidence was enough to make me want to take him apart. Slowly.
Other than checking the text Wylder sent me to tell me he was taking his time with our little project , I’ve only half answered the texts I’ve been getting. I know my dad is probably concerned about me, about what I’m doing… but I don’t have it in me to try to explain it to him.
How do you explain the fact that you saw someone for the first time while they were jerking it, and somehow you knew they were yours ?
After shooting Dad another “things are fine” message, I toss my phone onto the bedside table and stand. With Ranen still shying away from working, his cam room has become my temporary bedroom. He’d worried at first that I’d think it was weird to sleep on the bed where he performed, but I’d waved him off.
But after sleeping in here for over a week, the scent of him on the sheets has all but faded. I want to fix that problem. Now.
My eyes instantly find him when I step out of the bedroom—he’s at the breakfast counter, chatting away with his phone in his hand. I have to assume it’s his friend Olly, since he’s one of the only people I ever notice Ranen talking to. As much as I’d like to make him disappear so Ranen’s attention is completely focused on me, I have to remind myself that it’s not nice to kill everyone he knows just because I’m jealous.
Because fuck, I think I’m a jealous person. I’ve never thought about it before, never had a reason to explore the emotion… but it’s there, burning along my skin and threatening to make me…
Misbehave.
“Hey,” I say, and I watch his body tense for just a moment before it floods away and he turns to me with a smile. It’s like that every time I walk into the room and he doesn’t notice me. I wonder if he’s going to be jumping at shadows for the rest of his life, or if he’ll get over it once he knows the man who hurt him is dead—which he will be.
How could I show him a dead man without letting him know what kind of man I was? I know myself well enough to know that when I kill him, I’ll want Ranen to know it was me.
Shit, how do you have a relationship when you’re a killer?
“Hey, North.” He smiles at me, and I push my worry to the back of my mind.
Then a second voice spills from the corner of the room and I have to school my features into a neutral expression.
“Hey there, son. Didn’t know you slept in so late. Are you sure Ranen here isn’t the one taking care of you?”
My dad is standing at the stove, stirring a pot of something that smells suspiciously like his favorite soup recipe.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” I ask the question in a pleasant voice, but I know he can tell I’m suspicious—he’s grinning like an asshole when he hands the ladle to Ranen, who smiles at him and turns to the stove.
“Well, your brother told me you were staying here.” Because of course Wylder dug into my business when I asked him to work some jobs for me. “I thought I’d bring your friend here some soup, since you had me watching over him.”
Friend.
He says the word like it’s lined with secrets and lead, ready to sink me down to the bottom of the ocean if I’m fool enough to let myself get involved with someone who has no idea who I am—what I really am.
And somehow, he’s apparently here to make it worse.
“Boyfriend.”
I don’t miss the way Ranen’s eyes widen, and then his ears go red when he realizes I’m using the same lie on my dad that he did on his landlord. The red spreads to his cheeks, and I smirk. I like the blush on him so much more than the bruises.
Dad draws up short.
“Boyfriend?”
Well, shit. Is that okay? If it was fair for Ranen to say it to his landlord, it’s fair for me to say it to my dad, right?
Since when did I care if something was fair , anyway? Still, I throw a look over Dad’s shoulder to Ranen, but he’s already turned back to the stove and is stirring the soup.
The way his mouth lifts up in an amused smile as he does tells me I’m probably not in trouble.
Probably.
It’s a good thing I don’t mind it, even if I am.
My eyes turn from him back to my dad, who’s looking at me with a strange expression.
“I didn’t know you were dating, North.” He only lets himself stumble over the fact for a second before a smile slides across his face that I recognize as a complete mask. “That’s good. You need someone to keep you grounded.”
Am I supposed to feel bad that I didn’t tell him about my fake relationship? It seems like an easier explanation than trying to tell him I saw Ranen and decided he was mine without getting any input from him first. And honestly, Dad knows me well enough that there’s every chance he’s realized the truth, anyway.
“Are you staying to eat, Atlas?” Ranen’s voice comes out sweet, interrupting the silent conversation I’m having with the man standing across from me. That same warm expression stays on Dad’s face when he turns to him.
“Sure, I can stick around. We didn’t really get a chance to talk when we met before. I’d love to get to know the man who finally made my son sit in one place.”
Asshole . Of course he’s going to stay and prod now that he knows something’s going on.
Of course he’s going to make sure I don’t get to just drop a word like boyfriend without giving him some kind of prior notice.
Between him and Wylder, I’m going to end up never living this down.
When I look over at Ranen and see the soft smile on his face as he turns to the cabinet and starts pulling down bowls to dish up the food, I realize it’s worth it. If I have to listen to them giving me shit for the rest of the year, seeing that smile in person, a genuine smile instead of the one he puts on when he’s working?
It’s worth it.
It’s later that afternoon, after Dad finally decides to leave, that I find myself thinking about the things Ranen has said to me over the past week. I’ve caught him looking into the room I’ve been sleeping in more than once, his eyes wary and his expression torn. I know he enjoys his work, and I can tell he wants to get back to it... but I can’t say I blame him for being cautious.
It’s not like I can tell him I’ve been carefully making sure that anyone who said anything negative about what happened is disappearing from the world. If I left him anonymous pictures of dead bodies, he’d probably just assume it was his stalker.
But... maybe I don’t have to go quite that far yet. It’s not like anything will make him feel better until he knows the person who hurt him is gone, but I can still make sure that he knows he’s safe.
“Ranen?” I say his name softly while he’s at the sink cleaning up after dinner. He looks up at me with that same soft expression, and I feel myself being drawn in further. This is the problem. This is why I’m here to begin with.
It’s his expressions, the way he’s so open and honest, and the way that warmth seems to spill from his eyes, even though he has every reason to be completely shuttered off after what happened to him.
I don’t have to know him to know I want to keep him. Which means I need to do the best I can to make him feel better.
“Your dad seems nice.” His voice is conversational, and he doesn’t sound offended that a stranger showed up and stayed for lunch.
Of course, I’m a stranger who showed up and stayed forever , so maybe I prepped him for it by accident.
“He could have called first,” I answer, but I shrug as I say it. I’m sure I’ll get an earful from him the next time I talk to him, but he did seem to genuinely enjoy the conversation he had with Ranen. I learned how to fake being a polite member of society from him, but I know my dad well enough to know when it’s a mask and when he means it.
I think he meant it with Ranen.
It was… interesting.
“Like father, like son, right?” Ranen’s gentle tease brings me back to the present, to what I wanted to propose to begin with.
“Right. Listen…” I take a breath and step closer to him, then look over my shoulder at the room I’ve been sleeping in. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
His eyes instantly widen, and I see it the second his guard comes up. Ranen’s gaze trails with mine to the open door behind us, and I hate the small, worried frown that flicks across his lips. “What’s that?”
If I were someone else, I might have tried to figure out how to broach the subject gently. Since I wasn’t…
“I know you’re worried about streaming again, and I wanted to know if I could help with that.”
His eyes widen, and I wonder for a moment if he can see straight through me—if he knows what I want to say, which is that I’ll personally dismember the man who hurt him and make him decorations for his apartment with his bones if that will make him feel better. Then a blush spreads across his face, and I realize that’s not what he’s thinking at all.
“I-I mean… I haven’t… you don’t have to—”
I interject before he can blush himself into a complete frenzy. “I can watch and make sure no one hurts you. I can be there to make you feel safe. Not… there .” I put emphasis on the word, though images of fucking him on camera for the world to see dance through my head at the mention, and I don’t hate the idea at all. “In the hall. Where you can see me. So you know you aren’t alone.”
That’s the best I can do, given how my bluntness seems to have backfired. Someone else probably would have been more sensitive bringing the topic up, might have figured out a way to broach the subject so he understood what direction they were coming from before they spoke.
But I’m fascinated by the way the blush on his cheeks deepens when he looks up at me, the way he doesn’t back away when I take a step closer to him.
“You’d watch me?” His voice sounds so small.
“If that would make you feel safer, yeah. Look.” I risk it and stretch my fingers out. I want to touch him—all I’ve wanted to do is touch him, and I’m tired of trying to resist. “I can’t get rid of the man who hurt you yet .” I put more emphasis on the word than I should, and I know that “get rid of” is the only way I can be ominous about exactly how I intend to do it. “But I can make sure you can get back to doing what you love. You deserve to keep living your life, Ranen. Some asshole thinking he can hurt you doesn’t have to change that.”
“North…”
I don’t know if it’s sincere enough. I don’t know if it’s too much, too intense. But I reach my hand out and gently run my fingers through his hair, enough to tip his head back so I can search his face. “Let me keep you safe.”