Chapter Seven
They took Seb from me again.
I did something wrong. Something—I dropped a sword in sparring? Yeah, that’s it. I dropped a sword, and they kept Seb overnight for extra drills, but he always comes back from those bruised to all hell.
They’ve been training us to depend on each other.
An ouroboros partnership—we’re supposed to complete each other, be so wholly in sync that we’re one unit, one being.
Not all their methods work, but my gods, this one has; I can’t function when Seb’s not around, and they know that.
When I fuck up, they take him from me, and he’s not here, he’s not here.
Help me, Urzoth. Please, please make me strong. I need to protect Seb. I need to be strong for him, so please, give me your strength. Or—or just stop this. You could, couldn’t you? You’re strong enough. You can save Seb. Help him, help me, please—
Someone else is gone this time, too.
Who else did they take?
It’s only Seb. But I have the distinct feeling that someone else is missing.
Seb’s gone.
He’s not here—
—because this is a dream. I’m asleep, in my bed in Vegas.
No, no, Philadelphia. I’m back in Philadelphia, and I’m asleep.
So wake up.
My phone’s in my hand before I’m even all the way awake, and I’m delirious with sleep and residual panic so I’m only half conscious of the call ringing until he answers.
“If you’re calling for bail money because you got arrested stalking your little cheerleader, know I’m gonna take soooooo many pictures of you in the holding cell.”
My eyes pop open. “Seb?”
The hindbrain part of me relaxes, muscles releasing so forcefully I press the heel of my palm to my forehead and sink deeper into my bed.
He’s okay. He’s okay.
Fuck, breathe.
“Yeah?” His voice hangs in the silence. “O? You all right?”
“I called you.” Gods, I’m catching up like molasses this morning.
“Uh, yeah. I assume you don’t need bail money if you’re this chill? What happened?”
It’s—Friday. The day after the game. I pull my phone down to check the time, thinking Seb’s gotta be at work—
When I see a missed text from Alexo.
ALEXO
Dark chocolate peanut butter cups
“O?” Seb’s voice is thinner with the phone away from my ear. “You there? Shit, you’re not actually in jail, are you?”
Dark chocolate peanut butter cups?
“No, I’m fine.” I shove the phone back against my head. “I—I need to go, sorry.”
“Woah, woah, there, Mr. Felony—explain yourself.”
“I did not commit a felony.”
“Or whatever stalking is considered. What happened? Did you see him? Did he see you? Gods, that’s a creepy question.”
“I saw him, and yeah, he saw me. It was … wonderful, actually.” I shove myself up to sit, and as I do, every detail of last night flash floods through me. Alexo’s body writhing against mine. The sheer delight in his eyes as he smashed the shit out of those statues.
His panicked reaction when I grabbed his ass.
The tang of nausea burns in the back of my throat. No. I will not jump to conclusions. I will not overreact. If he wants to tell me what that was about, he will.
Or he’ll tell me … dark chocolate peanut butter cups?
“Listen, Seb, I’ll explain everything in a bit, okay? I gotta—”
“You called me.”
“I know, I—”
“No, I mean—you didn’t intend to call me. Did you?”
It’s not the first time I’ve woken up in the middle of seeking him out.
When we lived together, I’d sometimes sleepwalk into his room, or he’d save himself that jump scare and fall asleep in my bed.
But when I moved to Vegas, I obviously couldn’t physically seek him out anymore.
Sleep-calling him became a thing. A thing I was very quick to work on with my therapist, and I haven’t done it in several years.
“Fuck,” I growl to my bedspread. “I’m sorry. You’re at work. I’ll—”
“Don’t you dare hang up, big guy.”
I obey. If only because hearing his voice is still wiping away the last of the night’s restlessness.
Was Alexo in the dream, too?
It stabs through me, a gut punch of memory.
They took someone else from me. Him.
No. Gods damn it, no. Whatever I’m doing with him cannot be sparking my Camp Merethyl shit. I won’t let it. The two are entirely unrelated, and I refuse, flat out refuse to let him become a gods-damned trigger.
But everything I do is tied up in Camp Merethyl, isn’t it? It always is.
“One call is not a failure, all right?” Seb tells me. “Do not beat yourself up about this. I swear to the gods, O—I can hear you chastising yourself from here. Don’t. And don’t push me away to punish yourself.”
His words have me glaring up at nothing. “What’d you say?”
“Don’t—wait, which part? Don’t beat yourself up? Don’t push me away to punish yourself?”
“Yeah, that.” Chilling sweat breaks out across my shoulders.
Do I push him away because that’s how they trained me to punish myself?
Every time I fucked up, they’d take him. I don’t think he even realized that’s what they were doing; it was always under the guise of specialized training. He was perfectly fine without me—they punished him in other ways.
But now, when I act too fixated on him, I push him away. To punish myself for being too much.
No—I’m not punishing myself. I’m trying to break unhealthy cycles. I’m removing a vice.
Only he’s not a vice. He’s my gods-damned person, and I have been treating him like an incentive.
I hunch over in bed, screwing my knuckle into my temple, and tell him about last night.
Everything. When I describe the magic smash room, he does take an embarrassing amount of interest in it—“Why haven’t you and I gone there?
I hate you.” I give him the PG version of what happened in the car; so much of these details about Alexo feel porcelain delicate, things entrusted to me and me alone.
At the end, I can hear Seb’s smile. “Orok’s got a boyfrieeeeeend.”
“Shut up.” But I’m smiling now, too. And the dream is gone, my anxiety stable. “I really do have to go, though. I gotta get to HQ to review game-day tapes.”
“Ugh. They not only make you play rawball, but you have to then rewatch what you played?”
“Oh, that reminds me—since we won when you were at the game last night, I now need you to come to all my games. I’ve decided you’re my good-luck charm this season.”
Seb lets out a defeated “Please don’t ask that of me, I beg of you.”
I laugh. There’s something weird about it, and it takes me a minute to realize I haven’t laughed like this with Seb in …
gods, I can’t even remember. Since before I moved back.
I’ve been keeping him in such a restricted box and monitoring my every interaction with him that I haven’t let myself enjoy him, enjoy us.
He laughs, too. And it sounds relieved. Lighter.
“You aren’t a punishment or a reward.” The words gush out of me, driven by an abrupt need to reconcile this. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”
“I don’t give a shit, O. I really don’t. Do better; do your worst. Just let me be a part of it.”
My heart thuds, throat pinching.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“Fuck yeah, you do,” he says back, that grin in his voice, and ends the call.
I do need to get to HQ, but I flip to Alexo’s text thread and write, Is that a code I should know?
He texts back while I’m getting dressed.
ALEXO
No. It’s something real about me. My favorite dessert. And I figure that might be an important piece of information if you’re deathly allergic to nuts.
No allergies here. No food issues at all, except eating unbearable amounts of protein throughout the season. But here’s something real about me: when it’s offseason, I go vegetarian.
Tell me something else real.
I get to HQ, find a seat in the theater-style room with the other defensive tanks, and while our coach is setting up last night’s game footage, I watch the three dots in Alexo’s text thread appear and vanish and reappear.
ALEXO
I’ve lived almost everywhere, and my least favorite climate is right here. Fucking hate snow. And this humidity is a bitch. Give me warm, dry crop-top weather, please and thank you.
Mm. His crop tops.
“Monroe?”
The defensive coach is looking at me expectantly, so I stuff my phone away and focus.
We take a break a while later, and I text Alexo about living in Vegas, and how the weather was amazing but the scorpions terrified me.
He responds about how he fell in love with dance—his aunt could only afford one ballet class, so his cousin took it, and would teach him the moves after every session.
He grew up with his aunt and cousin? Where? What happened to them—why does he live with Tem now? Was he married to Alexo’s aunt? Is it part of the family shit he’s dealing with?
I don’t ask any questions though, and neither does he. It’s offerings only still, a trade of sorts.
He’s busy with cheer practice, and I’m getting pulled between my own practice and media junkets for the Hellhounds, so over the rest of the week, we don’t see each other, but we text nonstop.
Our next scheduled interaction is during the away game on Thursday in Manhattan—we have the game, of course, but the evening after is a gala for a charity that works closely with the national pro rawball league. Alexo and I are scheduled to attend it together.
There’s going to be overlap now, our staged PR events and things I consider real, and this is one. A big one—this charity means a lot to me, and I’m excited to not only attend with Alexo, but to have him with me in what feels like our first real public outing.
I content myself with texting him, and we feed each other little details:
His favorite color is pink. I almost tell him mine is, too, because of his hair, but I censor myself and say mine’s orange, which has worked out well with my new team’s colors.