35. Lost The Music
35
LOST THE MUSIC
RIOT
He’s even quiet in his sleep. Peaceful, like he isn’t trying so hard to be above everyone else, letting himself relax into whatever he dreams about. While everyone else shouts throughout the house, complaining about Lockan Tate taking away their shot at Yates, Soren sleeps through it all like he doesn’t give a single shit about it, like the closed bedroom door blocks out everything unimportant.
And I like that. I like him like this. I’ve never seen him at ease before. He’s either insisting he’s on a higher pedestal than everyone else, laughing in the face of danger, or quick to anger whenever his authority is questioned, but he’s never calm. He’s never willingly vulnerable.
But his back is to me like he trusts me enough to be safe, and his muscles are pliant under his tattooed skin. The Misfits tattoos are still on his arms, but Menace is working on a design to cover them, and I know he’ll go right back to being a smug bastard as soon as the gang tats he’s been embarrassed of get hidden under his true identity.
Soren’s hair is a bit darker than Remi’s, a bit shorter, too. After he showered in my bathroom when we got back to Vile House, he went to bed with it wet, and it dried all fucked up. Short little sections sticking out at odd angles like a kid, adding an innocence to him I know he doesn’t possess.
Maybe he does, though. Because the calling card I found in my sock drawer earlier is a dagger straight through my heart. The skeletal torso on the front splashed with teal is pretty, but his handwriting on the back is chicken scratch.
I like salty snacks. Crackers. Chips. Nuts.
I don’t like being alone. My mind isn’t safe.
His mind isn’t safe, and he’s telling me through a calling card because he thinks I don’t already know that. It’s cute, and it shows he’s either delusional enough to believe his faults don’t show, or he really is innocent, thinking he’s hiding it better than he does. But the next calling card makes me laugh.
I like that Remi has Krypt and I respect how much he needs him.
I don’t like thinking I’ll need someone that much.
Oh, he already does, just in different ways. Soren doesn’t need a controller like Remi does; he needs a follower. Someone who will go with him from mood to mood and understand that he shifts his needs on and off like a switch. I don’t mind chasing him around because I know he’ll take me right where I want to go. My pride can take the hit because, in the end, it’s me steering him from behind.
I’m tempted to look for more cards hidden around my room, but I don’t want to wake him yet. I close my eyes, hold his cards on my chest, and let all my fragile facades fade away until I’m so empty I can finally start looking for myself.
Sinking deeper and deeper into the well of emptiness where my true self slumbers, I poke at the boy there and rile him into looking at me. His eyes are mine, but they’re glassy instead of riotous, and I don’t know what the look in them means. My mind whirrs, sorting through my history and coming up with nothing concrete. I don’t fucking know who I am or why I ended up this way. I don’t know when I started masking and manipulating, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve done it from the very beginning.
Memories of Krypt, dejected in his room, his eyes turning into jail cells for the demons he started carrying. They come at me, and the longer I look at them, the more I realize I knew what was happening to him all along. I never did anything about it. I offered him company and a brother to talk to, but I didn’t do anything noteworthy to change his situation. The word sick was thrown around in the hallway as I sat with him in his dark room. The way our mom’s blond hair came into view every time her head whipped with the force of her hissed whispers.
No wonder he hates those things… Sick. Blonds.
Going deeper, I find the place where I lost music. No, I never lost it—I lost the ability to interpret it. In my early teens, I played with Krypt, and something about the song broke us. He split one way and I split the other, yet we remained tethered together in shared history and familial bonds. He kept playing, even after we killed our parents, but I never could. The notes came naturally, but they stopped making music. They were just sounds that expressed a feeling I could no longer name.
My masks got more detailed after that. If I could no longer control my music, I’d control my situations and surroundings. I learned the art of acting at a young age, but it wasn’t until I lost the music that it turned into the art of pure, selfish manipulation.
I layered lies on top of secrets, dramatized it all with charm and a well-placed smile, and got my personas to do my bidding. Establishing the exact right kind of connection with someone would get me exactly what I wanted from them in the moment, and eventually, I developed so many different disguises that I could pluck them out at random and slip into the role and the power they gave me.
So, where did the real me disappear? Did I lose myself when I lost music?
Would anyone recognize me if I looked at them with a bare face? Under all this confidence I carry around, I’m too cowardly to find out.
The calling cards in my hands slip through my fingers, and I tighten my grip on them, snapping my eyes open. Soren is at the side of the bed—my side of the bed, and I never heard him wake up or get out. His blue eyes calm me, bringing me back to reality, but I latch onto his calling cards like I’m attached to them.
I am.
“I’m just setting them down,” he assures me like it annoys him. I watch him set them on the bedside table and then look at him again when he climbs on top of me. I spread my legs so he can settle on his stomach between them, his hips on my thighs and his chest on my stomach. “Tell me,” is all he says, his breath scented with toothpaste.
“Tell you what?”
What is this? He’s just… on me. Settled. Like he belongs here and it isn’t weird for him to be so touchy. Is this cuddling or is he pinning me down… gently? So baffled. So right. Soren crosses his arms on my chest and rests his chin on them, looking up at me all cute and sleepy. The fuck?
“Where’d you just go? Your mind was so busy you didn’t even hear me call your name.”
I shake my head to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Was asleep.”
“Riot,” he groans.
I glare.
“I’m not calling you Killian while you lie to me. This is my ‘just in case’ morning, and you’re ruining it by being afraid of yourself.”
“I’m not fucking afraid.”
He turns his head and rests his cheek on my chest instead, and with his eyes no longer on me, the pressure is off. The pressure of what I must look like to him while so unguarded, grasping for masks but trying not to put any on.
“I, uh, was trying to remember when I stopped playing piano.”
“And?” he asks, his chest expanding against my body with each breath.
“I don’t know. It was the piano in Krypt’s room. We played together one night, and I think we were both so lost that we, uh, like, left ourselves in that song. Or I did. He somehow kept playing, but I never could. Any time I tried after, the music sounded wrong.”
“What made you play together that night?”
I recall the day, trying to remember why we sat at the piano together. “I’d had a good day. Krypt—Keegan, at the time—was all pissy because Gia was giving him a hard time about school. He sucked at it.”
“I’m aware. Best friend, remember?”
Right. “I was good at it. So, while Gia praised me for doing well, I drank it in and was too selfish to notice her ripping him apart for not doing well. She called him sick, told him it wasn’t his fault but that he’d never be like me because he was sick and I wasn’t. Selfishly, I just fucking grinned that she knew I was the best.”
Gia, our mom, was sicker than both of us. I hate that I used to beg for her attention and praise.
“He got angry. He got so angry that he scared her, and when Dad got home, they locked him in his room. I think it dawned on me that night that I should have been teaching him how to mask this whole time. I was too self-absorbed to even consider that before. I just went and spent time with him, got him out of the house, had his back, and made sure he wasn’t alone, but I never actually did anything to help him.”
“Yeah, you’re a dick,” Soren says, fingers drumming on my chest to soften that blow. “But so was he, and he probably didn’t want your help anyway.”
“I broke into his room that night, didn’t know what to say, so I sat down at the piano with him. I think he realized how fucked his life was, and he was so caught up in being sick, as Gia said, and I finally clued in on how that was killing him, and we just started playing together. Like an agreement to do better. To change our situation. I mean we were old enough and big enough to fight them but, maybe because we didn’t want to lose each other, we never did. We were both aware of what we were doing that night, but we didn’t talk about it, and when the music ended, I don’t know, I was different after.”
“Different how?”
“Cracked. Like, I cracked in half. The old me stayed somewhere in that fucking house, and the new me built more personas that’d give us the power to change our lives. I forgot to be me and only focused on getting Krypt out.”
“You never call him Keegan,” he says.
“He asked me not to.”
Soren nods, like Krypt maybe told him the same thing. My brother is more of a person as Krypt than he ever was as Keegan, and I respect him enough to abide by that.
“I don’t even know if I did it because I wanted to protect him or if I did it to prove to myself that I could. Guess I lost music and myself.”
Soren straightens his head, chin on my chest, eyes on mine. “Not lost. Set aside for when you’re ready.”
“What…” I blink at him. “What the fuck is this? Are you smart now? You speak this deeply? I thought you were a narcissist who only gave a shit about himself.”
He grins, watching my throat swallow. “Yeah, well, back in Reaper City, you got put in that box Remi and Selena are in. I don’t give a fuck about much other than my pride, but the few fucks I do have go there. And there you are.”
And there I am. My throat gets tighter, and breathing seems hard. His heartbeat pounds in my chest again. “You capable of love, Soren?” I ask, a mocking tone to my voice to hide how serious the question is.
“Yeah,” he says honestly. “I’m narcissistic, not a narcissist.”
“The fuck does that mean?” He’s delusional if he thinks he isn’t a narcissist. But then again, no two brains are the same, and maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just Soren Sauder.
“I can do whatever the fuck I want, which means I can love. Can you?”
I snort at that. Such a Soren answer.
Looking at the ceiling instead of him, I think about my appointments that studied my personality. “Psych says I use love as a strategic tool rather than an emotional connection. Like I use my brother to make myself feel better about his life now, instead of actually loving him. I don’t know. I want to. Like I kind of crave it.”
“Psych tells me my love is superficial and never lasts long. That I want love just to be worshipped.” He moves his body, drawing my attention. “She’s not always right, is she?”
She usually is, and he definitely wants to be worshipped, but I think he wants me to say no. He wants to hear that we can maybe love each other. “No.”
His cheeks pinken, and he licks his lips as he lifts onto his elbows above me. “Well, just in case she is…”
When he kisses me, music fills my head, and I know exactly how to interpret it. Because he’s the one playing it, but I’m the one orchestrating.
His lips are soft against mine, not playful, but honest. Gentle because he wants to be languid, and sincere because I’m kissing him back the same way and he doesn’t have to take all the blame. Warmth spreads through my body. A wave of something so foreign yet so comfortable that my arms slide up his back, lifting his shirt so I can feel his skin. His Vile House tattoo is intact, and I picture it on his smooth, muscled skin as my lips open and our tongues meet.
Soren licks my lips, smiling as he lifts his body to let me pull his shirt off. He’s only in boxers, and as much as I want to see all of him, this mussed morning look is new to me, attractive because it’s like seeing him from an angle I’ve never been allowed to look from before. I tug it over his head, tossing it aside and meeting his eyes. So blue in the early morning light and so wide with all his conflicting thoughts.
When he opens his mouth to potentially ruin the moment, I pull him back down and shut him up with my tongue. It’s even better this time because neither of us are running our mouths to downplay the moment. We aren’t fighting instinct, pretending we don’t enjoy this because it’s outside of our normal personalities, or trying to outdo one another. This time, we’re working together, and fuck if that doesn’t make our music pure harmony.
His fingers weave into my hair, and mine trail down his spine, feeling every inch of him as he subtly grinds against my body. Aligned, his cock hardens against mine, rutting together through our boxers so slowly that my breathing slows with his motions. I’ve never felt calm and aroused together like this, needy for something but in no rush to get to the finish line.
He deepens the kiss, his tongue diving into my mouth, and I cup his ass, rocking him between my legs so we’re grinding together. Soren has a lithe, athletic body riddled with some gnarly scars, but he’s sexier because of them. He’s a bit leaner than I am, which makes him fit perfectly between my legs. When he lifts up to pull my shirt off, I pull him back down with my legs wrapped around his hips, letting him go through the motions of fucking me while we’re still dressed where it counts.
Would I? Could I?
He feels good there. So good that I moan into his mouth when he humps me, our cocks rubbing blissfully.
“Still thinking about masks and music?” he rasps.
“Soren?”
“Yeah?”
I drag my teeth over his bottom lip. “Shut up.”
He smiles, but it turns into a groan when my thighs open and I grab his ass to grind him against me. Because I’m not thinking about masks and music.
I’m already maskless…
I feel the music…
All without thinking about any of it, and before the moment shatters, cracking into shards I’ll never find again, I want to live in it with him because he’s the only one I’ve ever been able to experience it with.
When he quietly moans against my mouth, his hips pausing where he wants them to, I drink in the feeling of seeing him this way—hearing him this way. He’s the one who said he couldn’t handle softness all the time, but he initiated this by being on me, and there’s something so euphoric about the gentleness of our bodies existing together. I never thought it possible that we’d forever be caught in a race to Death’s doorstep, but we’re not running towards anything but bliss and orgasms right now.
“Fuck,” he moans, fingers tightening in my hair and lips turning messy with distraction. “Shut up,” he adds, embarrassed by how much he’s enjoying this. He moans louder.
The gentle moment becomes overpowered by a desperate need to mark him as mine. As I rock my hips against his, grabbing his ass to grind us together, I nudge his head up so my mouth can get to his neck. Soren moans again, especially when I suck a mark into his skin, making his breathing pick up.
I suck his skin harder, and when he curses me out with a voice soaked in pleasure, I bite down on the side of his neck with my new teeth and make him come in his boxers.
“Oh, fuck you,” he moans, long and drawn out. “Fuck you so hard.”
I will fuck him so hard. Next time. Because this is hot as fuck, but he’s most beautiful while laughing through his insanity, and I can’t wait to bring him there again. I’m his god, and I have that power.
His cheeks are bright pink when he lifts his head to look at me, a perfect contrast to the purple mark blooming on his neck. I grin at him just to be a smug bastard, and Soren reaches between our bodies to cup my cock over my boxers.
“Shit.” I clench my teeth when he squeezes, pulling a power move over me because he can’t be alone in his orgasm. He’s an even more smug bastard than I am, and he needs the bragging rights.
“Yeah,” he says condescendingly, rubbing my cock perfectly. “Ninety seconds, Kill. Think you can last?”
Fuck him for turning our ninety seconds into a challenge. I clench every single one of my muscles to stave off an orgasm that’s coming at me faster than I thought it was.
“Easy,” I answer.
He cheats. He rubs me, grins at me, and then bites my jawline hard, adding his own teeth marks like art on my skin. It’s hot, but when he says, “Tattoo those there. I fucking dare you,” I come in my boxers without any warning.