Page 73 of Under His Heel

“You don’t seem fine.”

“How would you know?” Alex growled.

“You’re being more of an asshole than usual,” Parsons answered. “I kind of thought we were friends now.”

That again. Alex turned to face him. “You sure you don’t want to blow me? Because you sound like you’re into me.”

That got a horrified expression from Parsons, which was just great. Yet another person who thought Alex was too ugly to be of any use.

“Whatever. Just leave me alone. Tracht’ll pay you for ‘watching’ me even if we don’t talk.”

The song ended and segued into a softer ballad of some sort. Alex hated it—he wanted the harsh music from before—and he was on the verge of finding a different station when Parsons said, “Ah, Xiaoyu loved this song.”

Alex pressed the button to skip to another station with extra force. “It sucks.”

“To each their own,” Parsons responded calmly.

Alex should have known that Parsons wouldn’t get mad. The guy was too stupid for any kind of sense. Who even tried to be friends with somebody who knocked you out cold? Alex sure as hell hadn’t attempted to like the people who’d beaten him up.

The new music was incomprehensible screaming, which suited Alex just fine. A quick glance over showed Parsons wincing, which gave Alex a small sense of satisfaction.

Naturally, Parsons ruined it by asking, “Why did you run off on me yesterday?”

“I was sick of your face,” Alex responded.

“Okay, but what was the real reason?”

Man, he was as bad as Tracht once he got an idea in his head. Alex picked at the fabric of the couch and tried to come up with a convincing lie.

The problem was that Tracht was right; Alex sucked at lying. Which made the truth easier than prolonging the conversation. “Saw a guy I used to know. Didn’t want to get into a fight.”

“Used to know…?”

It was kind of hard to hear him over the music, so Alex conceded and turned the volume down. “The guy who broke my nose, okay? He wasn’t done with me, I guess. I mean, yeah, I beat him pretty bad in the end.” Beat him, and taken his wallet. They’d used his account to buy their tickets off the station and disappeared before he came to.

Too bad he hadn’t suffered the same memory loss that Parsons had. Bad luck that he was part of station security now.

“That was smart.”

Alex squinted at Parsons. “Is that sarcasm?”

“Oh, no! I meant, running was smart.” Parsons shrugged. “Better than getting into another fight. You got punished with a piercing the first time. I don’t even want to know what the captain would have done to you if you’d gotten into it with somebody on station.”

Punished—oh. Alex rolled his tongue and played with the barbell. It didn’t even register anymore, most of the time. Kind of funny that Parsons thought the piercing was the punishment.

But Alex hadn’t thought not fighting was smart, just… he’d been too scared of Tracht to risk it. Normally he’d stand up for himself.

“Thanks. I guess.” Alex started flipping through channels again until he found a movie he could tolerate. “Have you seen this one before?”

They watched the movie mostly in silence. Occasionally Parsons would look over at Alex, or make a comment about the movie, but he seemed to get that Alex wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Around halfway through the movie, Parsons’ tablet started making noises.

“Shit. Uh, um—” Parsons looked over at Alex. “I have to take this call.”

Alex shrugged and turned the movie volume down. He watched with fascination as Parsons scrambled to get his tablet set up. In his rush to answer the call, Parsons dropped his earbuds, one of them rolling under the couch. Parsons cussed at it and finally just pressed the ‘accept call’ button.

“Hi, Lin-Lin!” Parsons plastered a wide smile on his face. “How are you?”

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