Chapter Ten Deserve to be Loved #2
“Brought you a refill.” Aaron set the mug down on the first clear-ish space he could find.
Except it wasn’t clear. It landed squarely on a stack of notes, the heat bleeding through the paper, leaving a perfect, scalding brown ring over the crime scene inventory.
Kenny didn’t say a word.
Why would he when Aaron slid between his knees and climbed into his lap, folding himself into Kenny’s chest, resting his head on his shoulder, breath warm against the hollow of his throat. Totally, utterly soft.
Kenny exhaled, Aaron’s pliancy piercing him like a blade sheathed in silk.
“Morning,” he whispered into Aaron’s hair.
Aaron mumbled something unintelligible and curled deeper. Kenny held him, cradling the back of his neck with one hand while circling his thigh with the other.
Eventually, Aaron blinked himself into the room. “You been up long?”
“Since five.”
He looked down at the desk. At the files. The photos. And traced one finger along the edge of the top page. Luke’s name. Luke’s life.
“Fuck,” Aaron whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Are those the others?” He nodded towards the images.
“You sure you want to see this?”
“Not my first rodeo.”
“I know. But you can choose your last.”
“You’re looking, I’m looking.” Aaron lifted his head. “I’m basically your sidekick, anyway. Though, I’m way more main character energy.”
“Which leaves me as…?”
“The love interest.”
“I can deal with that.”
So they went through it. Together.
Kenny talked him through the other victims. Showed him Luke’s timeline. His route from Newport Square to the green in Ventnor. The markings. The lack of struggle. The sweet. Aaron studied the photo longer than Kenny expected.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “They’re not being killed because they’re weak. Like, even though they all sound as if they’re vulnerable—care kids, runaways—they’re usually the feisty ones. Survivors.”
Kenny lifted a brow. “Spoken like someone who’d know.”
“You know I’ve got deadly prickles.”
“And they slot right into me.” Kenny dipped closer, nuzzling his nose into the crook of Aaron’s neck. He felt the subtle give, the way Aaron’s shoulders eased, his breath snagging as if he might let himself fall.
But of course, Aaron fought it. He tangled his fingers into Kenny’s hair, not quite pulling him away, not quite keeping him close either. Then he tipped his head back, baring his throat in mock-offer, words wrapped in barbed wire when he said, “Say something mean to me.”
Kenny leaned back. “Mean?”
“Yeah. All this soft talk’s making me twitchy. I can’t have a full trauma spiral and do my hair in the same day. One thing at a time. Bite me back into myself.”
Kenny hummed, playing along. “I could chastise you for leaving your clothes all over the bedroom, if that’s what you need.”
Aaron’s mouth curved sharp. “Yes. Please. Call me a chaotic little fuck again. That was deeply satisfying.”
“You are a chaotic little fuck. One of your socks ended up inside the toaster. Also, maybe retire the pole striptease routine that I have to clear up after?”
“Don’t kink-shame me.”
Kenny huffed a soft laugh and kissed the edge of his jaw. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”
“No. I’m lucky you’re a filthy enabler with a control kink and a martyr complex.”
Kenny raised an eyebrow, gliding a hand up Aaron’s bare torso beneath the open fleece. He flicked the metal ring of his nipple piercing, just enough to make him jolt. “Control kink?”
“You think I don’t know?” Aaron rolled his eyes. “I love it, by the way. Cause I get to fight you for it. I don’t let anyone else treat me as mean as you do.”
Kenny gave his nipple bolt a lazy twist. “Good. Because if you let anyone else, I’d rip this out with my teeth.”
Aaron’s breath hitched, but he smiled. “That’s better. Own me, old man. You fucking own me. Now say something nice before I combust.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “Something not literally everyone already knows.”
Kenny peeled off one side of Aaron’s fleece to reveal his shoulder and licked his skin. “You taste fucking perfect first thing in the morning. Like sin. Better than coffee.”
“Coffee tastes likes shit.”
“Alright. Better than air, then.”
“What does air even taste like?”
“Life.”
Aaron melted then, and he grabbed Kenny’s face to kiss him. With tongue. Heat. And impossible hunger. And Kenny hummed, gripping him close, possessive.
Until he realised what Aaron was doing and pulled away. “Nice try.”
Aaron growled in frustration, then turned back to the pictures. Kenny adjusted the fleece back over Aaron’s shoulder but slid his hand inside it, stroking his spine, warming his fingers on Aaron’s skin.
Aaron tapped the photo. “Look at his jaw. It’s still clenched. He never gave up.”
Kenny followed his gaze, seeing not just the photo, but what Aaron saw beneath it. “Go on.”
Aaron shifted on his lap. “The killer’s picking those who survive shit no one sees. Who carry it like it’s their fault and learned early how to vanish to stay safe, but not enough to go unnoticed.”
Kenny kissed his hair. “You’re good at this.”
Aaron gave a brittle laugh. “Yeah. Shocker. Can’t imagine why.”
“Osmosis.”
“Maybe it’s in your spunk.”
Kenny chuckled. “Highly transmissible.”
Aaron slumped back onto Kenny’s shoulder, and he felt the way he stilled.
Not the good kind. Not the kind that meant surrender.
This was the brittle, held-breath kind. His body leaned in, yes.
But not fully. Enough to whisper I’m tired without ever saying it aloud.
And how Aaron had reacted then, with the need for fight, then compliments, then hunger…
it was all there. In the rhythm. The push and pull.
The performance. Something more was going on.
So Kenny laid a hand on the bottom of his spine. “You working today?”
Aaron closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
There it was. The tell. The tension tightening his shoulders, the way his limbs seemed to brace. The armour clicking back into place. Invisible but palpable. Kenny could feel the sharp edges pressing into his hand. Protective spikes grown from years of needing them.
He didn’t want them there. But he understood why they were.
“The lurcher?”
A pause. Then, “Poor thing.” The words rasped out of Aaron, rough and low.
But instead of unpacking it, instead of letting himself get soft again, Aaron twisted in close and, pressing his mouth to Kenny’s throat, he sucked hard. His teeth grazed until the sting bloomed sharply.
Kenny didn’t push him away.
No. He wouldn’t. He let him take what he needed and exhaled the sudden pain, cupping the back of Aaron’s head, tilting his neck to allow him more.
Because that was the thing about Aaron: softness scared him more than bruises.
And Kenny knew how sometimes, letting him bite was the closest he could get to saying help.
Classic deflection. Distraction through sensation.
Aaron didn’t want to talk about it, so he turned pain into play, made it physical, something he could control.
It wasn’t avoidance. It was preservation, masked in teeth and heat.
Aaron finally let go with a pop and leaned back enough to break contact.
“I’ve also got to go to some homeless shelter thing.”
Ah. Kenny tilted his head, watching him from the corner of his eye.
Aaron didn’t quite meet his gaze. His attention landed somewhere vague. Kenny’s hands, maybe. Or the table. “Blackwell wants a photo op. PR fluff. Me and Chaos playing therapy dog and handler. You know… human-interest garnish.”
There it was.
Not nerves exactly, but unease. The tell. Aaron always made himself small when he sensed a performance coming. As if bracing for the moment he’d stop being a person and start being a prop.
“You okay with that?”
Aaron shrugged. “You told me to go for that job.”
“I did, but only if you want to and only if you’re comfortable with it. If you’re not, don’t go.”
“Said I will now.”
Kenny caught his jaw and kissed him. “Call me if anything feels off.”
“Why would anything feel off?”
Kenny flicked his gaze to the files. The photos. The victimology.
“Right.” Aaron slipped off his lap, stretching, bones popping. Then sauntered to the door, turning back. “I’ll walk in. Leave you to your corpse fetish. But…can you pick me up? From the centre? After? Wanna check on Lucky before I come home and it’s too fucking cold to walk home.”
Kenny heard what he wasn’t saying.
Not in the words, but in the rhythm beneath them. The shift in cadence, the slight downturn at the end. It was the tell Aaron didn’t know he had: when the bravado slipped, when sarcasm became a shield instead of a sword.
This wasn’t about weather.
It was about control. Or the sudden lack of it.
Aaron was voluntarily stepping into a performative space, a place where he’d be on display, shaped by someone else’s agenda.
Blackwell’s. And Aaron, for all his sharpness and swagger, didn’t handle that well.
He’d been objectified too many times before he ever had a say in who touched his body or used his story.
So now, asking to be picked up wasn’t about transport.
It was about escape.
Reclaiming the ending.
And Kenny, fluent in every flicker of his body language, every emotional micro-shift, recognised it immediately.
“Do you want me to come with you?” He gestured to the desk, the files, the stack of half-read reports. “I can leave this. Say the word.”
Aaron’s mouth tipped into a smirk not quite reaching his eyes. “As if. Who the fuck else is gonna rip the mask off this freak, eh? Go on, Shaggy. Go get ’em.”
“You know that makes you Scooby-Doo.”
“’Cause I’m a good boy.”
The words landed between them like a trigger pulled in slow motion. Kenny felt the weight of trust Aaron threaded into that phrase when he gave it freely.
“You are.” Kenny held his gaze. “My good boy.”
“Pervert.” Aaron winked, quicksilver bright, then he was gone, Chaos trotting close at his heel.