Page 84 of Sick Bargain

“It’s our ward. If we ever get hurt, we come here. It’s fully functional, but only in a few areas. The rest of it is like a prison, housing people who have been put in here over the years. Just like we’re putting Malone here. Director has a use for some of them, but mostly, we’re just completing bargains and… getting a kick out of it.”

Remiel scoffs. “Your own personal playpen of pathetic little beasts to hunt.” I smile at that, and Remiel notices. “You look nice when you smile.”

“Jesus, Remi,” Ghost scoffs at him. “He fucking raped you, and now you’re gonna tell him he looks nice. You need your head checked.”

I look nice when I smile? Most people cringe when I smile. I’ve never been called nice before.

“My head’s never been fine, but neither is yours, so fuck off,” Remiel barks back at his brother.

Menace is having way too much fun dragging Malone by the ropes he tied. Menace is into restraints and bondage, pain play, and finding limits, but he’s not going to give Malone a chance to voice his limits. Whatever happens to Gregory Malone from hereon out, Vile House members who need an outlet will do it. He’s ours now, thanks to my hero.

“Want first crack at him, Rem?” Ghost asks as we stand in the doorway to Malone’s new room.

But Remiel is looking down the hall, recognizing the doors he ran through and the path back to the hospital room he stayed in for seventy-two hours. Director’s team were the doctors who visited him there, and the therapist he’ll be seeing is a woman who belongs to Vile House. We call her Psych, and nothing else.

“Come on, hero. Let me show you.” I take his hand instead of his wrist, and I tell myself it’s because his wrists are wounded. “We’ll be back,” I tell Ghost and Menace.

The room he stayed in is dark, so I flick on the light to let him get a better look at it now that he’s… levelheaded. It looks like any hospital room, up to date and modern, but Remiel isn’t noticing the equipment. He’s remembering his short trip to death, the suffering he survived, and what happened when I eventually came to him afterwards.

“Kyd,” he says softly. “Came and spent a lot of time here with me.”

I grit my teeth and drop his hand as he roams the room. Love Kyd, but I beat his ass when I saw the footage of him cuddling up tomyRemiel. I haven’t even cuddled Remiel, but shit, it looked nice, and I’m envious of it.

Remiel looks at me from in front of the monitors that shouted his pulse. “He said you and my brother got locked up.”

I don’t want to talk about that time. I’d never been more scared. More defeated. “What’re we doing in here? Don’t you want your shot at Malone?”

“No. His fate is sealed, and that’s all I care about. Gone, just like I said.” He sits on the edge of the patient bed. “I want to know what happened to get you locked up.”

“Why?”

“Krypt.”

“Talking isn’t my forte, hero. Stop trying.” I turn to face the hallway, ready to leave him here on his own if he wants to risk running through these halls again.

“Krypt, please.”

Please. Please. Please.The word has never penetrated me before, but it does now. Because Remiel isn’t begging for torture to stop. He’s not pleading for his life, his sanity, or his safety. He’s asking me a question and hoping that I’llpleaseanswer it.

Fuck. Only for him.

“I lost my shit, like I told you the night I put that word on your throat. I shattered, Remiel.”

“But why?”

I spin to see what’s hiding in his eyes. Is this another signal I’m missing? Does he need me to tell him he’s important again? Is his life at risk if I don’t?

“I’m just asking,” he says, sighing and giving up. “Nothing more. Let’s just go.”

I look at the floor instead of him. “I told you that love feels like obsession to me, and then in the next breath, I told you I’m obsessed with you. I admitted I shattered when you tried to fucking die on me because it goddamn broke me, Remiel. I put my marks everywhere on your body so you hopefully never do it again, which means that I give a shit about you. I got locked up in a cell while you were dying because I thought you were dead, and since I no longer had you, I no longer had any fucking reason to keep going. I spent the whole time being electrocuted and broken because… because Ibroke you. What else do you want from me? Jesus.”

Remiel laughs, and my blood turns to lava.

“I’m not mocking you,” he assures me. He stands, approaching me. Slowly, so that I know he’s going to touch me, he lifts his hand and places it right on my chest. My heart. Theburn that matches his. “You know what regrets went through my mind when I was in my moment of death?”

“Your brother.”

He nods. “And you. I’m sick for wanting you, but you’re sick for taking me. We’re sick, Krypt.”

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