Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Damon looks so cute when he’s being brainwashed.

Kai reaches forward, moving a lock of strawberry blonde hair out of the other’s eyes with a fond little sigh. Damon doesn’t react, doesn’t even blink. He keeps staring at the phone in front of him; the one Kai has stashed between the mattress and the bed frame for sessions just like these.

The video playing on it is the same one that the influencer agency sent Kai a couple years ago, back when he was still all innocent and sensitive and failing to go viral, ugh. It’s got all the classics; snuff film clips, crime scene photos. All set against subliminals, screams, and flashing colours that would send an epileptic into a fit. When Kai had first clicked on it while checking his business email, wedged between a notification from Instagram and a sponsor request from Raid: Shadow Legends, he felt like his brain was being ripped in half. It was honestly a miracle that his parents didn’t happen to be home, or else he would’ve been shipped off to the nearest psych ward, covered in his own tears and spit.

Now, it’s like watching the weather channel. Kind of boring, if he’s being honest. Tame.

Not for Damon, though.

“You’re taking it really well this time,” Kai praises from across the mattress. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you look forward to this now. Am I right?”

Damon’s on splayed knees, back arched forward as he watches the screen from its place against the sheets, right between his twitching hands. He’s breathing loud and shallow, practically panting, and his wide green eyes sparkle with every flash of the video. He doesn’t answer Kai’s question, but of course he doesn’t. How could he?

Kai fiddles with one of the rings on his fingers as he watches, practically drinking in the sight like a decaf frappé. Way too cute.

When the agency found out that Kai had received an Eden’s Garden acceptance letter a year into his recruitment, they honestly seemed more thrilled about it than he was. I mean, come on, the Ultimate Talent Program? Maybe he would’ve been excited about that if he was still naive and stupid, crying about what wasteoflife123 or whoever the fuck said about him online, but now? Eh, he’d have more fun staying home and suicide baiting rival creators with his burner accounts, honestly.

Then the agency came to him with their plan to turn orientation into a killing game, and their excitement made way more sense.

And maybe it made him a little bit of a freak — and, I mean, he was. That was the whole point of brainwashing him, wasn’t it? He was indoctrinated, not stupid. Even he could tell his changed thoughts, wants, and motives didn’t exactly come from a natural, normal place. Not like anything could be done about it, though. Might as well have fun.

But among the promise of blood shed, chaos, and strife that the killing game provided? There was one idea that practically made him salivate. At the next agency meeting, he proposed it, heart hammering in his chest.

Kai wanted to be allowed to brainwash one participant of his choosing.

He felt his cheeks burn red as he grinned at the agency big wigs from across the board room table. A personal servant, a punching bag, a science experiment; he wasn’t sure of what the end product would be, only that he wanted one. Bad. Somebody smart would probably say he was just eager to fuck someone else up the same way he was. Reenacting trauma, or whatever.

Good thing there was no Ultimate Psychologist in his class.

Picking who to choose was more tough than Kai thought it would be. Maybe the cosmetologist could be fun; have her do his hair and makeup while they laughed at the others’ suffering. Or what about the pirate? Having a big guy under his thumb was fantasy worthy for sure.

Less than a day in, though, and he thought his mind was pretty much made up.

Wolfgang, all prim and proper, acting like some kind of moral hero? The guy was practically begging to get mindfucked into oblivion; although, honestly, if the way he acted near the end of the mock trial was any indication, he might’ve been kind of unhinged already. Was it weird that that just made Kai want him more? A little mental illness would help the video take effect, anyway. After all, that was how it got Kai so bad.

He couldn’t wait to count every mole on that pretty, porcelain face while Wolfgang got brainwashed senseless — and then Damon became his roommate.

Damon was.. a curve ball.

Kai already knew the guy was an arrogant asshole from what he had said after the mock trial, but some stuff about him ended up being a surprise. It was hilariously easy to get under his skin, for one thing, especially when he played up the bratty, borderline hysterical act. What was even more hilarious, though, was how Damon would stick around and do things with or for him anyways. Kai first noticed it when he asked him to help figure out Cassidy’s blackmail. He fully expected a no, obviously — he just wanted to use the interaction to rile Damon up again.

“I can take a look.. but only a quick one.”

Imagine his shock.

And it kept happening; he got Kai’s ring when it ‘accidentally’ rolled under the fridge. He actively seeked Kai out in his free time to ask him questions about his talent. He asked to share the fucking bed?!

(No, seriously, what was that about? Kai knew Damon was trying to strike a deal in return for him coming to the game tournament, yeah, but he could’ve just as easily asked to have them take turns with the sofa and the bed every night, no? No matter how uncomfy the alternative was, who asks to sleep side by side with someone who pisses them off in almost every conversation? It didn’t make any sense—)

That night, hours past Tozu’s announcement, Kai stared at Damon’s back as it rose and fell with the breaths of someone deep, deep asleep. Freezing hands, tucked to his chest, buzzed with the idea of the warmth he could sap from the other, skin pressed against skin. His mind got all fuzzy at the thought, and his face burned.

The lawyer was the obvious choice, though. He was.

Wolfgang’s body was discovered the next morning, and Kai found he didn’t care nearly as much as he thought he would. He had a new target, after all.

The real question, then, was when to act. Kai knew he had to focus during the trial at least a little — where would the fun be in the agency tipping him off about who killed who? — but it was hard when every two minutes he’d start to zone out and slip into planning mode, eyes glued to the way Damon squared his shoulders back in that stupid cardigan with every argument. The guy hadn’t shown any of the signs of mental weakness that Wolfgang had, hell, that Kai had; for the video to work, he would have to be caught at the right time.

The mathlete was found guilty. An execution, one of the many opportunities for gratuitous violence that the agency built into the game, brought her life to a fiery end. It was sick, gruesome. Totally, disgustingly exhilarating. Kai knew he wouldn’t be able to stop picturing Eva, bloodied hands clawing through protractors and compasses and all that other geek shit, for weeks. It made him light-headed.

But it didn’t take his breath away quite like seeing Damon — stoic, cold-hearted, “Eva’s right” Damon — turn away from the sight, nose red and cheeks covered in tears. Fucking bingo.

After the elevator opened back up on the main floor, Damon was the first to speed walk away from the group, head down. Kai slid past Eloise and Desmond, tripping on his own feet.

“H-Hey, Damon, wait up!”

He didn’t wait up, of course. Didn’t even look behind him. Damon kept going all the way to the dormitory hallway, shouldering Kai’s door open and marching in like a man on a mission. Kai made it to the entrance just in time to see Damon ripping the extra pillow and blanket that he had brought over from his own dorm off the bed.

“Uh, wh-what are you doing?” he asked. His voice came out nervous and pitchy, and maybe it wasn’t even 100% an act, at that point; just the idea of having his own personal plaything as soon as that night had him antsy. Clumsy, lanky limbs closed the door behind him, gaze never leaving the other.

No answer. Pillow and blanket under one arm, Damon speed walked back toward the entrance. He only came to a stop when they were nearly chest to chest. Though their height difference was pretty much non existent in every day life, this close, Damon had to look up. A red-rimmed, cold glare tried to cut Kai down in a way that went right to his core.

“Move.”

Shit, shit, fuck.

“What — what happened to staying together at night for safety?” Kai tried, pulse pounding in his ears.

“I don’t care,” Damon replied immediately. “Move.”

If Damon went back to his dorm, it’d make things a hell of a lot harder to pull off. Not impossible, no, but complicated. Long to plan out. Kai didn’t have the patience for that anymore; not after getting a taste of what Damon looked like at his lowest.

Kai wanted to shove him lower, hold him under water while he splashed and struggled, just to hear the sounds he made while scrambling for air.

“H-Hell, no!” and slipping into that bratty lilt was easy as breathing. He grabbed at the gold chain around his neck and squeezed. “A deal’s a deal! You can’t abandon me here!”

Damon glowered at him for a moment, the wall clock’s ticking the only sound in the otherwise dead quiet room. Kai watched him set his jaw, like he was deciding on something. When he spoke again, his voice practically dripped with venom.

“Let me out or I’ll scream.”

If asked, Kai would never be a big enough man to admit that his offended gasp was genuine.

“Oh, that is so not funn— kgh!”

Damon took the opportunity to push past, and Kai stumbled cheek first into the entrance wall. He whipped around just in time to see Damon plant his hand on the door handle.

No no no no nonononono—

“Damon!”

He wrapped his fingers around the other’s wrist, perfectly manicured nails digging into flesh. Damon didn’t immediately open the door, and Kai let out a sniffle; wet, pathetic, and fake as the colour of his hair.

“Please, p-please,” and at least the desperation was real, right down to the way his voice frayed around the edges. “I’m so fucking scared right now, man, you — you can’t leave. Not after that, Damon, please.”

Kai could feel that barely-there, bone-deep trembling, right under his palm. The knob still wasn’t turning. With every second of hesitation, he let his breathing get more ragged, more pitiable.

And then Damon took his hand off the door. He turned, none-too-gently pulling his wrist out of Kai’s death grip, never meeting his eyes. On less of a war path and more of a walk of shame, he trudged toward the sofa. First the pillow went down, then the comforter. Kai watched every movement with his heart in his lungs.

“I’m going to sleep,” Damon rasped, moving to sit on the sofa’s edge. He bent down and started unlacing his shoes. “If you talk to me, I’ll leave.”

Still staring, Kai dumbly felt for the light switch on the wall beside him, rings grazing against pink wall paper. The entire room fell into darkness, only lit by a couple of warm table lamps.

Haltingly, Kai stepped toward the bed. He watched Damon fold himself under his covers briskly, face tucked toward the backrest. Noisily kicking off his sneakers to mask any other noise, he quickly slipped his arm under the mattress and ripped his phone out. Its pink metal case was cool against his clammy skin.

Another glance. Damon hadn’t budged. Kai felt a thousand miles above his own body.

He immediately shoved the phone under the blankets and climbed in after it. Turning away from the sofa, Kai scooched down until even his head was under the fabric before daring to click the on button.

A selfie from a photoshoot he had done for Teen Vogue — and ugh, the whole thing had been so cheugy, yeah, but the stylists made him look stunning in a way he was still trying to replicate — lit up his lock screen. His eyes darted to the top bar as he swiped in his pass code. Still plenty of battery left. No Wi-Fi, and no data, but he wouldn’t be needing either of those tonight.

A manic, breathy little laugh, quiet and short enough that there was no way Damon heard it, escaped him, and the screen fogged up with condensation. The pads of Kai’s thumbs slipped through it as he pulled up the agency executive chat.

you: i picked who i want

He grinned, curling in on himself.

you: here’s what i need to make it happen

★

“It’s because.. I trust you.”

Damon shot up in bed, his dehydration headache spiking behind his eyes with the motion. A wince crackled through grit teeth. What the hell?

“You took my side way back at the beginning, remember?”

His head whipped to face the stereo near the ceiling. That tinny quality, the way the sound filled up the whole room; there was no mistaking where that voice was coming from. Her voice.

“We were the only people who refused to listen to that lawyer.”

He took in a shuddering breath, and his hands twisted in the duvet across his lap. Screw this.

Damon threw the cover away and got up. Snatching the cardigan he had shrugged off and tossed away an hour into laying down off the carpet, his stride never stopped. He had one arm in a sleeve when he got to the bed.

“Kai,” he hissed as he got the other in. The guy didn’t stir, laid flat on his stomach and sleeping away like everything was totally fine. It pissed Damon off, now more than ever. “Kai!”

That head of pink hair snapped up.

“Hmmah—?” he gasped, making about as much sense as he usual did. Damon watched bleary golden eyes blink at the head board. “What time s'it..?”

“I’m leaving,” Damon grunted. “Come with me or don’t.”

That got Kai’s attention. He looked over his shoulder so suddenly that he could have given himself whiplash.

“Huh?!”

“And you helped solve the mystery behind that whole case.”

Damon was already halfway back to the sofa.

“I’m not staying here while Tozu has fun with the intercom,” he bit out, pushing a socked foot into one of his discarded shoes and trying to ignore the way the heel got smashed in the process. His molars creaked in his jaw. “I-I’m not going to just sit here and take it.”

Kai, who had dragged himself out of bed, braced a hand against the canopy frame. With the other, he rubbed at his eyes.

“Dude, what are you talking about?”

“No one thanked you, though.”

“That!” Damon snapped, and Kai startled as he gestured impatiently to the ceiling. He was too keyed up to feel even slightly bad. “Are you deaf?! Tozu’s using recordings of my conversations with her to get to me!”

There was a moment of tense silence, where the remnants of Damon’s shouts — more hysterical and desperate than he would ever admit to — reverberated off the walls. Kai’s face had fallen, and now he just stared. It danced on Damon’s nerves like nothing else. He was about to launch into more yelling when Kai brought his knuckle down from his eye.

“Um,” he began, stilted. “The intercom isn’t even on, though.”

“I’m.. really sorry about how things turned out.”

And Kai didn’t seem to have heard it at all.

Damon felt his feet carry him backward; one step, then another. Through tunnel vision, he watched Kai’s expression veer scared.

“Are — are you hearing Eva right now?”

“That’s not fair.. this isn’t fair..!”

It was absurd. Having voices in your head was for the mentally ill, which Damon wasn’t. He wasn’t, and he knew that, so—

His back hit the wall, and he flinched so hard that his teeth clacked together. Kai kept getting closer, shaking palms out in front of him like Damon was some feral, wounded animal. It pissed him off. It made him feel sick. Meanwhile, her words only got louder, and more distorted. They overlapped like some kind of demented remix.

“E-Even if I didn’t kill, somebody else would’ve eventually!”

“Damon, b-buddy, you’re kinda scaring m— h-hey!”

He didn’t realize he was sliding down the wall until his ass hit the carpet.

“They’d cry and snivel and try to guilt you! They wouldn’t be honest like me!”

The room felt way too small, and his chest felt way too tight. Quivering, prickling hands slowly raised in his peripherals, until he felt them cup over his ears. He gasped at the way the sound dulled, just slightly, and his eyes pressed shut. His nails found purchase against his scalp and dug.

“I hate you! I hope you all rot!”

“Oh, shit!” he barely heard Kai cuss, directly in front of him, then. Feather light, fretful touches grazed his cardigan in a way that made him curl in on himself even more. “Damon, I-I’m gonna go get help, okay?! Just — just hold on!”

“I want to live! I deserve to live!”

Loud, panicked footsteps trailed away. She kept screaming. He kept wanting to scream. The sound of the door opening creaked through the madness.

“I’m.. going to LI—”

And when it slammed shut, everything came to a stop.

It took Damon about five seconds to process the silence over the sound of his own breathing, and another five to let his hands tremble downward, sliding off his ears. He swallowed around a sandpapery throat. His scalp seared with pain.

But it.. it was over. A-And whatever ‘it’ was?

He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, tasted the coppery blood left behind from biting his cheek.

It was just a fluke. A one-off, after seeing somebody die right in front of him. Other students were probably going through the same thing as him, o-or would be, soon. His hands clenched into fists against the carpet fibers as he willed his heart rate down, down, calm down, Damon. He was better than this. He was better than all of them.

Because the difference between him and the others was that he would never admit to it. Kai would burst back in soon with Ingrid, or Jean, or whoever, and he would deny that it even happened at all. What? he'd ask, deadpan. There wouldn't be a hair out of place. Kai's just projecting, obviously.

His legs slowly stretched out from their fetal position as he imagined it, tension draining from his body like a steady drip. Damon would be the picture of calm and collected strength, just like he was on every debate stage, testimony be damned.

Viridian eyes fluttered open, dark spots dissipating. These feelings, these happenings, they were temporary for someone like him. He knew they were. It was only a matter of ti—

There was something glowing at his feet.

Chapter Text

Damon hit play on the video because of course he did.

And Kai knew he would. If there was one thing the guy had proved about himself during the previous two investigations and trials, over and over again, it was that he would never let a lead go unpursued; even one that was a painfully obvious trap. Prodigy among prodigies, his ass.

Kai eased the bathroom door open, painstakingly slow. The light from above the sink spilled out into the darkness, a bright yellow gash against plush, pink carpeting. It widened, inch by inch.

Just in time to spotlight Damon letting the phone slip from his hand, fingers twitching around nothing.

“Shit,” Kai hissed as he rushed over, nearly tripping over his stupid trendy shoes again. He scrambled to his knees to come face to face with the other, who was looking more and more lucid with every second. Green eyes blinked fitfully at the empty air before finally seeming to register the person in front of him.

He could pin point the exact moment when Damon consciously processed what he had just been watching, all in the shrinking of his pupils.

“Ah.. a-ah,” and hazy alarm shifted to pure, unadulterated terror. A big gasp of air, like it was the last he’d ever take. “AH—!”

Kai slapped a sweaty palm over Damon’s mouth, who immediately choked on the half-baked beginnings of his own scream.

“Can’t let you do that, buddy,” Kai breathed, grin wobbly. His room walls were sound proofed, yeah, but Christ. A little delicacy, Damon, come on.

He unabashedly scanned every inch of the other’s sweaty face as it pinched with micro-movements of betrayal, rage, and cold, overwhelming fear; all fighting to manifest into some kind of resistance past the dissociation the video forced on him just moments before. Kai didn’t tear his eyes away for even a second as he scratched at the carpet, nails soon clacking against metal.

The video hadn’t stopped — the familiar sounds straight from the depths of hell came unmuffled as he raised the phone to Damon’s line of sight.

The effect was immediate. His pupils swelled from pin pricks to pools in the harsh blue light, and the muscles in his face relaxed, just a little. Kai felt his grin grow wider.

“C-Close call,” he laughed nervously. He tapped at the volume button a few times, watching unfairly long eyelashes flutter at the interruption of the audio bar. A particularly agonized shriek tore through the phone speaker, though, and Damon full body flinched like he was the random woman getting stabbed to death on a basement floor. Geez. Tears spilled over and onto pale fingers.

Slowly, carefully, Kai peeled his hand off Damon’s mouth, still holding the phone up with his other. He brought his knuckles back to his own lips, and his tongue darted out to try some of what had settled between skin and golden rings.

A thrill ran up his spine, and he doubled over, slamming that hand against the floor to catch himself. God, how were tears low cal? He gasped and shivered where he sat. They tasted just as rich as every high carb abomination Kai had ever whipped up during a 1 AM binge fit — richer, even. Fuck.

Through sweat-matted bangs, he peered up at Damon, who still only had eyes — glowing, glittering, wide open eyes — for the video. A giggle, breathless and wet, pushed through him. Salt sang on his tongue.

“You,” and Kai said it like a cuss, like a prayer. His shoulder already ached from holding up the phone for that long in that position, muscles straining, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered when he had a front row seat to Damon’s brain getting bleached with every flashing cut. “Y-You’re perfect.”

The video was twenty minutes long. It was the longest twenty minutes of Kai’s life. And, by the looks of it, it was the same for Damon.

Because he was a wreck.

His whole body shook like a leaf. Tears in the lashes, both cheeks flushed bright red, corners of the lips shiny with drool. Somewhere along the way, his cardigan had slipped a little off one shoulder. It showed off a sweat soaked collar.

Kai savoured every little debauched detail as he snapped a few more photos for his camera roll. No filters, of course. Damon didn’t need any. He was flawless already, on splayed knees and looking fucked out of his mind. None of his fans would ever see this. It was a privilege for him and him alone.

A few dozen pictures later, Kai pushed his phone into his jeans pocket with trembling fingers.

“Damon,” and he practically sing-songed it. Like some giddy, stupid kid who just hit his first hundred followers all over again. The guy blinked, over and over. Air rattled in his lungs and past chapped lips. A viridian gaze, usually all sharp and distrusting and with full wits about it, twitched away from the spot in the air where the phone screen had been before locking with another. Kai tilted his head. Honey-coloured eyes crinkled at their edges.

“Hey.”

A beat passed. Damon audibly swallowed, and Kai watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, Eve’s selfish hunger burning in his stomach.

“..hi.”

Kai’s smile faltered.

It sounded like Damon’s vocal chords had been ran through a paper shredder. Lke he’d just finished screaming, begging for mercy, for hours on end. Because the person he was calling out to didn’t just not give a shit, no. They enjoyed it. They relished in the pleading and the tears and the desperation behind every syllable. So it was all pointless, in the end. Just wasted effort from one of humanity’s so-called brightest. And that was — th-that was so—

“—mgh!”

Hot.

Kai cupped both of Damon’s cheeks, clammy skin meeting clammy skin, as he kissed him. Spit slick lips slid against each other, and finger tips grazed feathery, strawberry blonde strands. It made Kai’s entire hands tingle. Was this Damon’s first time? It had to be, right? A bookish, socially inept dork like him? He probably never even held somebody’s hand.

Kai’s head spun, and he floated on the feeling. First he took his innocence, and now he was taking his first kiss — oh my God, he sounded fourteen again, what the hell was Damon doing to him?

A quick bite and pull against his lower lip, and Damon was practically panting into his mouth with how easily he caved. Kai grinned into the kiss before diving in for more.

His tongue ran across Damon’s incisors. Despite his snake-like habit of going on the defensive, bristling and hissing at everybody around him, they were just as dull as anyone else’s. Typical. He felt around everywhere he could reach as his hands slipped lower, down the slope of his shoulders. It was all Kai’s now, anyway; his gums, his molars, the little bundle of scar tissue in his left cheek. Kai imagined Damon chewing away at it while he studied in the dead of night, pen pressed into his dimple. Doing what the Ultimate Debater did best.

Kai’s hands slotted against slim hips, and he pulled away, pushing the other’s lower back against the wall as he did. Without a tongue cramming itself down his throat, Damon immediately gasped for air, and he crumpled forward. His forehead landed against Kai’s chest with a thump.

And now, here was that very same Ultimate Debater; barely able to string a word together and heaving hot breaths into the fabric of Kai’s overshirt like some needy, brain dead super fan. He dug his nails into the meat of Damon’s hips, heard something hitch in that rasped up throat.

Wolfgang would have never been this fun. Not in a million years.

“Oh, yeah,” Kai spoke, like he was just remembering something for the first time. “You didn’t get much sleep, did you? You must be exhausted.”

A pathetic, wordless nod between pants.

“Mm, well, I’m not a total monster,” Kai continued, and he gave that right hip one last squeeze before reaching down and picking up one of Damon’s hands. They had stayed obediently planted between his knees for the past half an hour. “If you need to rest, then let’s rest.”

Damon followed him to the bed like a lamb to the slaughter. No resistance at all, though his steps were clumsy, and his breathing was still shallow. When they got to the edge of the mattress, Kai turned Damon around so his back was facing the blankets. It was like manipulating a confused, hunky puppet into place — so different from the few times they had touched before, when Damon was stiff as a board with a mouth to match. Kai almost snorted at the memory. A little psychological torture sure went a long way! He winked at the other, giddy.

And then shoved Damon backward, who let out a startled grunt as he fell. His back hit the sheets. Kai immediately straddled Damon’s thighs with an eagerness that even he would admit was badly hidden.

While he got to work unbuttoning the cardigan, he couldn’t help but steal a few glances. Damon blinked up at the canopy like the answer to whatever the fuck was happening to him could be found in its pink fabric. Pale, twitching hands twisted in the covers.

“I— I-I—”

“Dude, relax,” Kai laughed as he got the last button open. “Arms up!”

The fact that Damon’s arms immediately, albeit haltingly, started to slide up the mattress until they laid on either side of his head was just the cherry on top of the whole night. Hell, it was almost enough to make Kai dive back in and taste him all over again, butterflies kicking up a storm against his rib cage. He looked so hot in just his waist coat and dress shirt, too, ugh.

But there would be tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that, too. This was only the beginning. Just Kai and Damon, Damon and Kai, in the fucked up honeymoon getaway of his dreams.

So he tossed the cardigan onto the floor before crawling off the prone body beneath him.

“I don’t know why you even try sleeping in that thing,” Kai said over his shoulder. When he got to the head of the bed, he laid down on his side and patted at the space across from him. “Come here, Damon.”

Kai didn’t even bother looking in his direction. He just stayed there, head resting against a silk pillowcase while he heard and watched Damon shuffle to his side. The way the world was meant to be; at his every beck and call.

Stilted as ever, Damon eased himself down to mirror Kai, until their faces were just inches from each other. A clouded over gaze flicked from his eyes to his lips, back and forth, like a boomerang post. Over and over and over. So obvious, so stupidly blank. So easy to use and abuse, just like he had fantasized about since that first agency meeting.

He reached out toward Damon, who flinched again — but as cold fingers threaded through the sweat-matted strands of his bangs, Kai watched him practically melt into the touch, lashes fluttering.

“What’cha thinking about in that pretty little head of yours?” he grinned, scratching into his scalp just a little. “If you’re even capable of that, anymore.”

Damon didn’t answer. Between rapid blinks, Kai could see his eyes practically rolling to the back of his head with every brush of his fingertips. A shuddering sigh, like it went against every fibre of his being to just fucking relax for once, and they stayed shut.

Kai let a few seconds pass before he slid his hand out from strawberry blonde hair and tucked it against his chest. As he stared shamelessly at the sleeping body in front of him, he fidgeted with the fabric of his pullover between thumb and forefinger.

Damon didn’t have any acne scars – didn’t seem to have any pores, honestly. No tear burns, either. Model jawline and flawless nose and how was it fair that some guys were blessed from birth to just look so perfectperfectperfectperfect—

Kai kissed him again, gentle this time, barely a touch; like every stupid fairy tale he read in the back of the elementary school library, where the other boys couldn’t see. He pulled away, just an inch. His heart hammered against his palm. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper.

“I’m gonna ruin you.”

Even more than he already had. That was a promise.

★

“Good morning, my amicable student friends!”

The worst part of agreeing to be part of the agency’s killing game wasn’t the lack of internet. It wasn’t the tragic variety of foods that would fit his macros. Hell, it wasn’t even Diana’s gross ass optimism, though that was definitely up there.

“Mmgh,” Kai groaned, folding his pillow over his ears and flipping onto his other side in one swift motion.

“It is now 8 AM!”

The worst part was Tozu’s annoying fucking voice. He swore the agency cranked up the volume in his room a little bit every morning just to mess with him, god damn. This was why everybody online made fun of British people.

“May the thrill of yesterday’s first blood start your day on the right foot!”

Of course, the pillow wasn’t enough. It never was. Kai huffed before cracking an eye open.

Damon stood at the other side of the bed, facing away, and the events of the night before coursed through Kai’s consciousness like a shot of espresso. His chest swelled as he remembered everything; the set up, the panic attack, the trap.

The results.

Kai felt a smile grow on his face as he watched Damon adjust his clothes, so wide that his cheeks hurt and his teeth ground together. He pushed himself up to his elbows and reached out. His fingers touched to the an elbow.

And then Damon ripped his arm away.

Kai’s face fell. Damon looked over his shoulder, green eyes looking very sober and very pissed off and very not what Kai was promised, before taking off toward the door without a word.

“Damon?” Kai tried. No response. He threw the covers off himself as a hand landed on the knob. “Uh, D-Damon?!"

He scrambled to a stand just in time to watch Damon march through the door. Shit.

Without the time to fix his hair, and still wearing yesterday’s crumpled outfit, Kai speed walked after him. Thankfully for his image, nobody else was in the hallway.

“Dude, hold on!”

Damon didn’t even hesitate at the call, just kept tearing past dorm room after dorm room instead. Which shouldn’t have been possible. Make one participant of his choosing watch the video, and then he would get an obedient plaything to fuck with as he so chose; that was the deal. That had always been the deal.

The slight height difference made gaining on him easy, at least. By the time Damon shouldered into the courtyard, he was almost in arm’s reach.

“Damon!” Kai hissed. His hand wrapped around a trembling wrist just as they reached the rose. “What the hell's—”

“I was sleep walking!!”

Damon’s yell was so loud that it made Kai’s heart jump into his throat. He choked on it as Damon wrenched away from his grip again, whipping around to face him.

“I-I sleep walked, okay?! That’s why I ended up in the bed last night!”

One of those artificial breezes that the agency cooked up for the courtyard ventilation system blew past them. It smelled as stale as everything else. Kai watched Damon’s eyes darken. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. More final. The Ultimate Debater at his best.

“I room with you because it keeps me from getting murdered, Kai. That’s the only reason. I don’t know you,” and Damon enunciated every syllable of that last part, like he was talking to an idiot. He squared his shoulders back. “And you don’t know me. So do us both a favour and stop pretending otherwise.”

He held his glare for another beat before walking right past him and back toward where they came from. Probably to eat that disgusting slop Tozu tried to pass off as breakfast in the kitchen. Kai heard the double doors open and slam shut.

“You okay, sugar?”

He flinched, and his gaze snapped over to find Ingrid stepping out from behind the gazebo. A watering can was in her hand. Of fucking course.

“I-I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. That was.. harsh of ‘im, though,” she said. “You wanna talk about it?”

Haltingly, his eyes slid back over to the spot where Damon had been standing. A daffodil laid on the cobblestone there, having been crushed underneath his shoes. Its white petals were littered around it like splattered blood.

“..no, I don’t.”

Chapter Text

So the brainwashing didn’t stick.

Kai watched Damon pick at his cereal from his place a few chairs down the dining table, wedged between the streamer and the one who smelled like a walking, talking onion. He had an impressively intense resting bitch face on, even by usual Damon standards, as he chewed; not too proud to skip the safety of group breakfast, but still proud enough to stare straight ahead and give one word replies to all of Ingrid’s questions.

So totally Damon. So not at all what Kai was promised.

That night, after he was sure he heard Damon’s breathing even out from across the room, Kai clawed his phone back out from under the mattress. Even his new lock screen — a photo from the previous night, in all its degenerate glory — couldn’t make him crack a smile. He hid under the sheets.

you: you need to do the intercom set up again. it didn’t work

Of course, one of the agency executives responded in a matter of seconds.

Tozu: Terribly sorry. That wasn’t part of the agreement.

Kai clenched the phone case so hard that it creaked.

y ou: ?? no, what wasn’t part of the agreement was him acting like nothing happened the morning after

you: he needs reconditioning. it’s not my fault that your stupid video sucks, it’s yours

Tozu: Any further meddling would only serve to tarnish the integrity of the game. I’m sure you understand.

Yeah, he could go and tell that to the mathlete’s ashes in the furnace. Integrity of the game, Kai’s ass.

Tozu: If you want to create the ideal opportunity for the video to take, you will have to do so yourself. You’re an influencer, for heaven’s sake! Act like one and influence.

If it wouldn’t have woken Damon up, Kai would have whipped his phone at the stock image picture frames lining the wall, chest heaving.

He decided to lay low for a while; let things play out while he sat back and watched, for the most part. Blend in with the faceless nobodies — yes, Diana, your story about how you landed Sabrina Carpenter as a client is totally interesting, and no, Cassidy, your whole shtick isn’t exhausting at all — and pretend like he wasn’t constantly watching the other out of the corner of his eye. It was too risky to try to get Damon into a vulnerable state again, not without agency help.

But this was a killing game, lest he forget. The perfect opportunity was always right around the corner.

“Who — who did this?!”

In this case, literally.

Toshiko found Coffee Breath’s body under an arch in the back of the courtyard, about an hour past lunch. She had been on a walk with Ingrid at the time, apparently. Almost everybody came running at the sound of her scream.

Kai had arrived at the same time as Damon, which wasn’t on purpose, for once; he had been chatting Jean up in the dining room, thank you very much. LARPer tail was better than no tail, okay? He was getting desperate!

Damon’s reaction, though, was.. disappointing as ever.

Like, yeah, he was upset. Clearly a little nauseous to find Ulysses laying in a puddle of his own blood, throat cut open, sure. But so was literally everyone else. Where was the shock and awe? Where were the dramatics? The first time Kai saw a corpse online after the agency sent him the brainwashing video, it felt like his heart was about to pop inside his chest cavity. So what the hell?

A body has been discovered! All students must proceed to the courtyard immediately.

Kai scooched closer to Damon for the first time in days. They were right beside each other, then.

“It’s.. i-it’s happening again,” he whimpered. Deciding to take a risk, Kai reached out. The wool of Damon’s cardigan sleeve was fuzzy between twitching fingers. “He’s dead, dude..!”

And maybe it was because he was distracted — it was almost definitely because he was distracted — but Damon didn’t rip his arm away. He just glared ahead at the others, green eyes flicking from face to face to face.

Kai used the opportunity to be Damon’s shadow for the entirety of the investigation. It went a lot like what he saw from the last one; Damon going up to people, gathering their testimonies and their alibis, taking note of anything suspicious in the area. It was honestly kind of impressive given the whole, well, everything about the situation. You know, Damon was really smart when he wasn’t panting at Kai’s feet.

The last thing to do was inspect the body. Kai was so busy putting on the prissy act that he nearly missed it.

“I-I’m just gonna,” and he shielded his own eyes with a manicured hand as they knelt down beside the corpse; him, Damon, and, at some point elbowing herself in along the way, Cassidy. Instead of looking at the boring ass way that boring ass Ulysses died, though, Kai opted instead to sneak glances at Damon’s right hand, planted in the AstroTurf.

It was as clean as ever — you wouldn’t believe how many guys just walked around all day with dirt caked under their fingernails, ugh. Not Damon, though. Honestly, he looked like he followed a whole ass hand care routine. Like those cringe, pink aesthetic vloggers Kai sometimes got on his feed. As if anyone could do pink better than him. Damon’s skin was probably just as soft as it was the night of Eva’s execution, when he had been led to the bed, fingers laced together.

Blood roared in Kai’s ears. He wanted to press that palm to his cheek so hard that it’d leave bruises for a week.

“Uh, Bargain Bin..?”

Kai blinked; once, twice. Then, he looked up a little. Damon was staring at Ulysses’ corpse. Which wasn’t weird, this was an autopsy. That was.. kind of how it worked.

Except he wasn’t moving. At all. Damon just stared at the gash in Ulysses’ neck, unbreathing. Kai felt his lips part. Time slowed down to a crawl, then froze altogether.

Because he would recognize that wide-eyed look anywhere.

“Hey!”

And then Cassidy shoved Damon so hard that his head slammed right into Kai’s nose, because of course she did.

“Shit!” he hissed. Pain exploded across his senses, and he cupped the lower half of his face with both hands. Through stinging, tear-clouded eyes, he saw Damon blink fitfully as he righted himself, nose bridge crinkling. No, no, come on! “Cass—!”

“Fuck, s-sorry, Kai!”

But it was too late, obviously. A head of blonde hair whipped around to face her.

“W-Why the hell did you push me?!”

And Kai fantasized about what the execution of the Ultimate Pro Gamer would look like for the fifth time that week, nose throbbing.

That was another thing the agency didn’t let him in on; the many personalized ways he and his classmates would get fucking bodied if they tried and failed at being killers. On the one hand, it was the same valid reason as not knowing who the culprit was before every trial; where would the thrill be in that? On the other, though, Kai thought it was kind of a waste. Like, after everything the agency had exposed him to over the last two years; the propaganda campaigns, the red rooms? He had some pretty creative ideas.

“You were totally blue screening, dude!”

A VR headset that drilled a needle into her brain every time she lost a life would be fun. Cassidy already acted like she ate a lobotomy for breakfast every day, anyway — might as well give her the wounds to match before putting her out of her misery. They could even use an edited copy of Sublime Slam Sisters Extreme! Talk about a nauseating call back, right? Especially for the people who went to the video game tournament.

The butterflies fluttered against his insides again. Especially for Damon.

Kai was lucky his hands were already against his lips to hide the way the corners of his mouth twitched up. His gaze flicked back to the guy in question.

“I — I was just.. thinking,” and the alertness behind Damon’s eyes was almost all the way back. He turned his head to look at Ulysses’ body again, grimacing. “About what kind of weapon could have caused an injury like — like this.”

Spoiler alert: it was a pair of hedge clippers from the gardening shed. Hedge clippers used by Mark, to be specific.

Apparently, he caught Coffee Breath in the middle of one of his narcoleptic episodes and decided to take advantage. Something something “you all would do the same thing if you had the opportunity”, something something “can’t be in here another second with you freaks”; honestly, Kai stopped listening to the inevitable crash out after a while. Mostly because Jett was sobbing like a little bitch, which was infinitely more entertaining.

And who could forget the main event?

Mark was dragged onto a tiny stage, behind a sprawling DJ station. It had huge, towering speakers facing either side of him; the kind that Kai had only seen when he got comp’d tickets to a Boiler Room set once upon a time. Immediately, just as the neck chain came off, two others sprung out from the station console.

They wrapped around his wrists and pinned both palms flat onto.. turntables, if Kai remembered the word correctly. One for each hand. The rest of the class was separated from him by a thick pane of glass.

Softly, music started to play. It was a song that anybody with even five seconds of screen time a day would recognize; one of Mark’s many productions that went viral as a trending audio. Hell, Kai had probably used it in the background of a thirst trap or two, himself. Hyperpop at its best.

Mark’s posture bent forward, more than it already was on a good day. The mics hidden all around the execution room picked up the sound that crackled from between his grit teeth. It made a thrill shoot up Kai’s spine. Not Mark’s favourite from his discography, he guessed. Either way, though, the guy refused to start scratching. He just stood there, pinned and seething.

The music started getting progressively louder — so loud that it muffled the whimpers Toshiko was letting out into the fabric of Ingrid’s apron. Mark stayed still. Kai resisted the urge to get closer to the glass.

And then the turntables started glowing red.

All of a sudden, Mark started pulling at his wrists. Scratching sounds, just a fraction of a second long, blended with the music. The turntables glowed brighter while the music got louder. Eloise stepped up to Kai’s left.

“Wh-wh-what’s — what’s happening to him..?!”

And that was when the first tell-tale waft of air blew through the courtroom vents, a smell that got Kai’s heart racing like nothing else possibly could. The unmistakable scent of burning flesh.

Mark’s mouth was moving while he tugged and twitched, clearly groaning and cursing and begging through spit-covered lips; but none of them could make out a word. The music was blasting, then, and only getting worse. Smoke drifted up from the turntables. Kai heard Jett retch into his own helmet from somewhere behind him. Toshiko was full on bawling. The scratches overtook the music until it was nothing but a garbled mess, like a toddler getting a feel for the console.

Everybody, even Kai, blocked their ears — except for Mark, of course, who could do nothing but stand there and take it through struggles and wails. Through the smog, the blood trailing down either side of his neck was stark against pale skin. Olive eyes were practically rolling to the back of his head. Kai thought he’d never looked better.

Only for a gigantic music note to fall from the ceiling. Its iron form crushed Mark’s body and destroyed the speakers in one sickening, deafening crunch.

In the dead silence that followed, the only thing the students could hear were Mark’s disembodied hands, still pinned to the turntables and sizzling like bacon. Nothing and nobody else made a sound.

Well. Almost.

“Damon..?”

Pushing past the fuzzy, euphoric feeling that watching an execution gave to him — especially an execution that fucked, like, Christ, Tozu — was hard for Kai. It made him want to kick his feet and giggle like an idiot. It made him want to revive Mark’s handless corpse just to do it all over again. This was the ultimate goal of the killing game; to capture the beauty of death and depravity in 4K, to make the world finally understand! Kai’s brain was all fluffy around the edges just thinking about it!

But he’d have to be dead himself not to turn at the familiar, beautiful sound of the Ultimate Debater gasping for air behind him.

He had stayed back, apparently. On his trial platform. It wasn’t like there was any getting out of being a witness, though; if you didn’t go to the viewing area only a dozen steps away, then the booming surround sound, smell-o-vision, and several monitors hanging from the ceiling made sure you didn’t miss a detail. And so it made sense that Damon stood there, white knuckling the guard rail and panting, shoulders up to his ears. It was all by the agency’s careful design.

Kai’s pulse pounded in his ears. He’d have to thank them later.

Diana was the one who called out to Damon, before. She started walking toward him. Her steps were unbalanced, like a kid wearing dress up heels.

“Damon,” she tried again. Her hand was getting dangerously close to his back. To comforting him. It pushed Kai out the remnants of fluffy dissociation and into an ice bath. “A-Are you—?”

“Stop!”

Everybody but Damon turned to look at him. It was as good a reminder as any of the role Kai was supposed to be playing; the mask he was supposed to be wearing, in that moment. Shit. On command, he got all teary-eyed. It matched the flush on his cheeks. He marched up to the trial area.

“Kai?” Ingrid whispered. She held Toshiko to her side, who stared at him from behind her fan with puffy eyes.

“H-He’s,” and he pushed through the crowd, sniffling, until he got between Diana and the platform. His body shielded Damon from view as he turned to face them all again. “He needs space, guys.”

“He needs a fuckin’ Ativan is what he needs,” the slut whose name he refused to remember grunted from the side of the group. In that ugly Outback Steakhouse ass accent, too, ugh. Desmond, one hand pressed to the small of Eloise’s back, frowned at Kai.

“Has he.. done this before?” he asked. Which was perfect, actually. The best excuse Kai could have asked for. Just for that, he hoped whatever death Desmond inevitably went through was slightly more painless than the others’. Just a little bit.

“After the first real trial, yeah,” Kai explained, flying by the absolute seat of his goddamn pants. He could feel his undershirt sticking to his sweaty back. Fuck. “We got to our dorm room, a-and he just.. like, broke down. In the bathroom.”

Diana was still giving him that Disney princess, about-to-burst-into-tears look, just like the one she gave to the mathlete before she got merked. But she wasn’t moving any closer, nor was anyone else.

It wasn’t enough, though. He needed them gone, like yesterday. The window of opportunity was rapidly closing, and unlike last time, he wasn’t going to let Cassidy or whoever the fuck else mess it up. A swallow around a sandpaper throat.

You’re an influencer, for heaven’s sake! Act like one and influence.

“Look, you — you guys know how Damon is,” he tried again, gesturing behind himself for emphasis. “The last thing a guy like him wants is everybody staring at him while he freaks out. I-I’ll stay with him down here until he calms down, the rest of you should go to your dorms.”

Wenona crossed her arms over her chest; probably to try and fail at hiding how they trembled. A perfectly plucked eyebrow raise.

“You don’t look like you’re in the position to be comforting anyone.”

And God, even when she was trying to be nice, she was bitchy.

“I’m — I feel like shit, yeah,” he laughed wetly for good measure, swiping the back of a hand across his cheek. Another sniffle. “But.. I think sitting with him for a bit’ll do me some good, too, y’know? S-Some quiet after..”

They didn’t really need him to finish his sentence, did they? The smell of Steak À La Mark still hung in the air, after all.

Kai rubbed his forearm, looking down at the floor; the picture of meek and mild and a little shaken but not too shaken. Damon kept huffing and puffing like he had just ran a marathon, and the others kept gawking.

“..alright.”

He was never more thankful to hear that stupid southern twang.

“Let’s give ‘em some space, everyone,” Ingrid croaked in a frail voice that was totally unlike her usual. Still, though, she tucked Toshiko closer, and turned toward the elevator. Kai looked up. One by one, the others followed her. Soon, everybody was filing past the door, like a line of ducklings on Xanax.

Except, of course, her.

Diana fidgeted with her chameleon bracelet as her eyes flit from Kai, to just past his shoulder, and back again. She pressed glossy lips together. Kai had to work hard to keep irritation from bleeding into his weepy expression.

Leave, leave, leave, leave—

“I’ll,” and when she smiled, it was wobbly. “I-I’ll see you both at breakfast tomorrow, right?”

Kai wanted to roll his eyes so, so badly. Instead, he nodded. Like the well-meaning, bone-weary guy he was pretending to be.

“Hurry up, already!!”

And Diana scampered off at Kangaroo Jane’s scream, heels clacking all the way to the elevator. Just after she got inside, she threw one last worried look over shoulder. He held eye contact with her until the doors slid shut.

Ding.

Kai gave it fifteen seconds — just fifteen solid seconds, in case Toshiko forgot her fan or Jett forgot his last remaining brain cell or whatever the fuck else. But the floor display sign above the elevator stayed on ‘G’. Nobody was coming back down from the ground floor.

Nobody was coming to interrupt what came next.

Slowly, Kai turned on his heel. The few slow steps he took to get back on the trial platform were muted under the sounds of shallow breathing. He came to a stop in Ingrid’s place, right beside Damon’s. His elbows settled on the marble railing that separated them, and he leaned his head into a clammy palm. A long exhale through the nose as he looked the other up and down; shivering, shuddering. Completely shell-shocked.

“..you liked it, didn’t you?”

Kai heard the breath hitch in Damon’s throat. His grin grew wider, inch for inch, as Damon turned his head with all the fluidity of a buffering video editor.

Amber made unflinching, searing eye contact with viridian. Deer, meet headlights.

“Don’t look at me like that, man,” Kai simpered, faux casual. “I’m not the one who got off to Mark’s execution.”

Not the only one, anyway, but whatever. Details.

Damon flinched hard. His eyes screwed shut like it would make Kai disappear, and he winced away, back to facing forward and panting between grit teeth. That was okay, though. Expected, even.

Kai leaned over the railing at the waist, the edge digging painfully into his stomach. He barely felt it at all. If Damon wanted to keep being in denial, then he had no issues with helping him face reality. That was the agency’s core mission, after all.

“I wonder if I can guess your favourite part,” Kai laughed, and his voice got a little lower, a little more intimate. “Was it when his ears started bleeding from how loud the music was?”

A full-body shudder, pale knuckles twitching above marble. When Damon spoke for the first time since the verdict, it sounded like his larynx had been stuffed with broken glass.

“S-Stop it—”

“What about when he screamed and swore and begged for his stupid life, writhing in pain while his skin melted off? Be honest.”

Damon was turning honest to God green. He sank slightly, knees buckling under him, and his shoulders shook. Kai’s mouth brushed against the shell of his ear. The railing was going to leave a bruise on his stomach for sure. He couldn’t care less.

“Or maybe,” Kai whispered, their little secret. Every syllable was savoured. His cheeks hurt from grinning so wide. “You just can’t decide, you sick fuck.”

Damon choked on an inhale.

“I—!”

Kai grabbed the back of Damon’s collar and wrenched him backward in one brutal motion.

The blonde stumbled, tripping blindly off the lip of the platform. His body crashed shoulder-first against the tiled floor. Kai watched Damon curl in on his side, heart in his lungs. A crackling, pathetic, squeak of a groan went right to his core. It was pitiful. It was fantastic.

..and yet.

Kai felt his smile melt off as he stared. Something bitter crawled up his throat, slotted itself snug right beside the euphoria that pushed behind his front teeth. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“..you know what pisses me off, Damon?”

He stepped off the platform with a heavy thud. Then, he stalked the couple of paces it took to stand right over the other. Kai glared downward. Damon just blinked forward, unseeing, at the far wall.

“When I watched the video, I got permanently, irrevocably fucked up,” he said. His voice was hollow, practically soulless. As he spoke, Kai used the heel of his sneaker to roll Damon’s shoulder backward, until he laid stomach up. His foot rested on the heaving plane of the other’s chest. “I couldn’t talk the same, or even think the same. My entire world view was shattered and rebuilt in twenty agonizing minutes. It was the worst day of my life.”

Damon, for his part, had completely slipped back into the same submissive state from the night of Eva’s execution. Glossy eyes, flushed cheeks, limp limbs; the whole debauched package. It should have been a relief, the second chance Kai had been waiting for. Photoshoot worthy.

“..but you.”

He bore down on his foot, all his weight behind it.

“You got to keep going like nothing even happened,” Kai sneered. “L-Like your brain locked the memory away, just to protect you..!”

He watched Damon’s eyelashes flutter, a pinch growing between dark blonde brows as Kai ground his big toe under a collarbone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw those perfect nails scrabble with the grout between the tiles, weak fingers faltering at the ends of splayed arms. It wasn’t even a resistance, just a way to bear through the pain while he laid there and took what he was given.

Even that didn’t make him feel better. Not at all.

“That’s — that’s not fucking fair!” Kai bit out. He leaned down, foot still planted, until their faces were only a couple of feet apart. “Do you think I like being like this? That if I could, I wouldn’t go back in time and smash the shit out of my computer, before the agency could ever find me?!”

That horrific sting flooded his senses, and Kai was crying; not on purpose, not as a manipulation tactic or as part of an act, but honest to God crying. Of all the traits to maintain through his brainwashing, of course. Of course.

Tears landed on Damon’s red cheeks like summer rain. They rolled down the angles of his pretty face and into his hair line, around his ears, off his chin.

“I wish I could be innocent again, even just for a second!” Kai yelled, borderline howled. It felt like his face was melting off. “I’d do anything to forget! What makes you so special, huh?! I hate it!”

His legs couldn’t keep him standing anymore. Before Kai knew it, his knees failed him, until he was straddling Damon’s stomach in one heavy slump.

Past splintering ribs and collapsing lungs, the first sob tore out of Kai’s chest. Then another. He curled inward, chin falling right over Damon’s shoulder. The floor was ice cold against his forehead as he wailed — like some snot-nosed kid. Like there was any saving him, then.

His hands, reflexively, clung to and squeezed at what they could reach. Trembling fingers found fuzzy wool fabric. He wept into the skin of a sweat-soaked neck, cardigan in a vice grip.

Please, please, please, please, please—

That single word echoed inside his head for so long that Kai forgot what he was even begging for, after awhile. In that moment of weakness, of miserable, gut-wrenching, teeth-pulling vulnerability, his world narrowed down to just two bodies, one on top of the other. Just him and—

A wet gasp, like someone flicked their tongue up the curve of Kai’s spine. His eyes shot open.

—Damon.

There was only a moment of silence before Kai started giggling.

It started small; little hiccuping breaths into the spot of skin above Damon’s carotid artery. He held onto the fabric impossibly tighter, felt its fibres sheer beneath his nails, as his head reeled.Laughs kept bubbling out of the wound that his sobs had torn through his chest. It was agony, but it was bliss, too; like finally grabbing hold of a hang nail with your teeth, ripping the skin up to the first knuckle along with it.

Wasn’t it funny? Kai couldn’t stop giggling, back shaking, practically convulsing as he hung on for dear life. Wasn’t it rich, how things all shook out? Because if there was really no saving himself, it was fine. No, really, it was! Kai grinned against the curve of Damon’s jaw, ears ringing.

He would just have to drag someone else down with him. The answer was simple as that.

“Ugh!” and he pulled away, back to sitting against Damon’s stomach. With his wrists, he smushed his tears past his temples and into his hairline. A sniffle broke into another laugh. “I am such a drama king, Jesus!”

Kai let out a big, shaking, self-satisfied sigh as he looked down at Damon’s face; still frozen in that half-horrified, half-fucked-out expression, strawberry blonde bangs splayed out over his eyes. They needed a trim, and that wasn’t even mentioning the dark roots starting to creep up from his scalp — not in the trendy, intentional way Kai’s were, obviously, but in the way that showed someone was skipping out on their maintenance routine. Tsk, tsk!

Kai nearly swayed where he sat, dizzy. Whatever could have possibly been keeping Damon so distracted?

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Kai continued, heart in his gaze and in his voice and in the knees squeezing either side of a stuttering rib cage. “If your brain wants to lock up memories, then I’ve got the key, Damon.”

Slowly, he pressed his palm to the other’s chest. It slid up, inch by inch, until his hand wrapped around the crook of his neck and shoulder. Kai tilted his head. He watched his own thumb push down in the gap between Damon’s collarbones, further and further, until his breaths got all wheezy and his lashes got all fluttery.

“All it takes is a little blood and guts, and I’ve got you spiralling back down to my level,” Kai whispered just above parted lips. Like he wanted to steal even the few strained breaths that managed to squeeze past.

A quick peck, so soft it could barely be felt, and Kai let up. He watched Damon rasp for air, flushing an even darker shade of pink. Fleetingly, he wondered if he could find some box dye in the gachapon to match it. The colour of his own hair suddenly seemed so pale in comparison. Ugly, unlike Damon. Never like Damon.

“Mr. Ultimate Debater, right in the palm of my hand,” he mused to a cloudy green gaze. It was just the way Kai liked it. “What more could a guy ask for?”

The next morning, when Damon interrogated him with a gap in his memory and a set of mottled bruises on his side, Kai explained it away; he’d had a panic attack, and when Kai tried to calm him down one-on-one, he flinched back and tripped off the trial platform. The best lies were based on truth, right? One of the agency executives had told him that once. Something like that, anyway.

And though it wasn’t an outright acceptance, when Damon left the dorm room in record time without so much as a ‘thanks’, avoid eye contact like the plague, Kai took it as one.

Days passed. Damon kept self-isolating, unknowing or maybe just unwilling to face the branding on the back side of his brain, and Kai kept watching him out of the corner of his eye, biting back a smile. Another two trials came and went, five casualties total. Damon’s reactions followed a predictable pattern; he’d start to get a bit spacey during the investigation, then teeter on the borderline after the execution, before slipping right back into his conditioning with a push and a shove from Kai. Then he would wake up the next day, back to bristling and hissing, and the cycle would restart.

It didn’t piss Kai off anymore. Instead, he found it kind of cute; the way Damon’s mind tried to play hard to get. A secret game of cat and mouse was its own kind of fun, to his surprise. Their own little routine.

Which brings us back to the beginning of our story — the two of them sitting across from each other on Kai’s bed, phone flashing bright from its place on the sheets, a reward for good behaviour. The dorm after a trial's end acted as their personal slice of paradise, even with the flames of hell licking at their feet.

Which means, of course, that it can’t last.

“And how is our most esteemed pet project doing?”

Even through an aggressive flinch, Kai grabs the closest pillow within reach.

“Fuck off, boomer.”

And twists around to whip it at Tozu’s face without hesitation.

As the pillow bounces off his superior’s gawdy ass mask, the muzzle knocked a little off kilter, Kai almost wants to gloat. Grin mean at the old fart in a way that he knows gets under his skin at agency meetings.

But Kai’s annoyed, actually. And it serves Tozu right for using those slimy hidden passageways to interrupt a private moment between Damon and him — so he gives the other his best bored stare instead, which should piss him off even more if he caught the guy at the right time. Something about students respecting their headmaster, or whatever. He’s as much of a LARPer as Jean.

An unimpressed red eye leers down at him. Bingo.

“Charming as always, I see,” Tozu deadpans, as world weary as your average Stella Dolla cashier, before squaring his shoulders back. Pretentious prick. “But my question still stands.”

Kai’s lip curls.

“Since when do you care? You’re the one who told me to figure it out on my own.”

“Mm, I did, didn’t I? Yet,” and Tozu tilts his head. A gloved hand slips out from behind his back and points at the phone. As if on cue, a shriek rips from its speakers. Nobody flinches. “You are using my intellectual property. So I regret to inform you that your plans are entirely my business, Mr. Monteago.”

Tozu starts walking past him and closer to the head board, to Damon. Kai doesn’t let him out of his sight for second.

“In truth, the agency has become a bit concerned. As you’ve seen in the trials and through his Ultimate title, Mr. Maitsu’s strength lies in his intellect. Unlike yourself, of course.”

Kai had gotten better rage bait from tweens in his comment sections. Still, he stiffens as Tozu turns to face him, now standing directly beside—

Red velvet fingers grab a handful of golden hair and lift. Damon’s blown out pupils meet Kai’s.

Every part of him wants to lunge across the mattress and break all twenty-seven of the brittle bones in Tozu’s decrepit ass hand. His brain shrieks possessively, mine mine mine mine mine, over and over again. It makes him practically vibrate where he sits.

“This,” and Tozu gestures vaguely, dismissively, with his free hand. Kai watches Damon’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat. There’s no resistance, but of course there isn’t. “In-between state you’ve clumsily molded him into — it’s unbecoming of his potential. He’s obedient as agreed upon, yes, but ineffectual. Practically a husk, and a temporary one, at that.”

But violence against the headmaster is forbidden by the rules, and all the rules apply to Kai. They had made that perfectly clear to him before shoving a duffel bag into his arms and sending him off to the train station.

Kai’s face twists into a pissed off sort of smile, all teeth, facial muscles twitching.

“And what would you suggest I do about it?” he grits out, even though he knows it’s exactly what Tozu wants. Of course, the guy who engineered the brainwashing video from the ground up would take pleasure in bringing people to heel. Tozu isn’t slick — Kai nearly rolled his eyes when he made Damon ask politely for more information during the first trial. Totally, grossly transparent.

He doesn’t care if it makes him a hypocrite; Tozu’s an old freak.

“I’m so glad you asked!” the old freak in question chirps, and he lets go. Damon’s gaze automatically falls back down to the phone, like a puppet cut from its strings. It should be hot but it’s not because Tozu is there and he’s still goddamn talking. “The agency has decided to graciously offer you a favour! You see, we believe an overnight stay for one Ultimate Debater in the security room’s restraint chair w—”

Kai’s body moves on its own.

He rips Damon forward by the collar. Someone’s knee knocks against the phone screen, doesn’t matter whose. The sounds of a saw tearing through someone’s femur pause as he slams Damon against his own chest, caging him in with both arms. Hot breaths puff against Kai’s chest, but he’s dead weight otherwise.

In tense silence, Kai and Tozu stare each other down, guarded terror meeting mock surprise.

“Mr. Monteago,” and he drawls it out, almost a hushed sing-song, leaning forward at the waist. Wide eyes burn through him. “You’re being hysterical again.”

The leather bites into Kai’s skin as he pulls at the restraints for the thousandth time that night. His vision burns. There’s drool and tears dripping off his chin, onto his shirt.

“Treason will not be tolerated,” the voice says past his shoulder, barely audible over the surround sound. Her throat sounds raw. “Reinforcement conditioning will be your first and only warning.”

It mixes with the dried blood that’s caked all over the fabric, seeping. From the victim. His heart squeezes. F-From the kid, it was a fucking kid—

“I-I’m not!” Kai barks, and he’s shaking. He’s shaking all over and he hates it, but he can’t stop. His arms ache from how hard he’s squeezing. “I — i-it’s just that it’s not necessary—”

“Under Mara’s supervision and guidance, Mr. Maitsu will push past his plateau,” Tozu cuts him off as he stands up straight, all jovial. Like he wasn’t just boring into Kai’s soul five seconds ago. “Ah, and you can rest assured that the subliminals designed to condition a loyalty to you will remain, as per our agreement. Though it may manifest a bit unusually, what with his cold personality.”

Hours have passed when the screens finally click off. He’s not struggling anymore. His shirt is cold and sticky against his skin.

The voice is back.

“Are you ready to obey?”

Tozu’s hand is above Damon’s shoulder, moving closer.

“Hm! How very exci—”

“I said no!”

Tozu freezes completely, smile and all. It feels like waiting for the guillotine to drop. The warm press of another body slumped into him is as grounding as it can be, in a moment like this. Kai swallows.

“His — his brainwashing is my responsibility. It’s mine to handle, in any way I want. That was the deal,” Kai stutters around something assertive, because it’s all he has left; bravado and bullshit. His face cracks into another dirty grin, sweat sliding down his temple. “And the agency’s fucked, sure, but you assholes never go back on a deal. I-Isn’t that right?”

There’s a pause, even more intense than the first. Tozu hasn’t moved an inch; Kai’s logical brain knows this, sees this. But it feels like his shadow is growing larger over them both, inch by terrifying inch. And all he can do is cling to Damon and brace for it.

But then.

“..you’ve always been an interesting case, Mr. Monteago.”

He walks away, in the direction of the clothing rack. The empty wall pushes inward and then slides into itself. Tozu takes one step into the dark hallway, shoe thudding on concrete, when he stops. Kai hasn't breathed.

“I do wonder where all your sentimentality will lead you, by the end of our game,” Tozu muses, as if to himself. There’s a smile in his voice. “We’ll be watching.”

And the door slides closed behind him, silent.

★

It’s warm.

Like the Okuhida Onsen his grandmother used to take him to as a kid, back in Takayama. He’d sit in the shallow end and stare out at the sun falling behind the peak of Mount Yarigatake, knees against his chest. The sound of Grandma chatting with her friends nearby was a lull. It made his eyes heavy, made him think about the alley cat he met on the way there. Warm fur. Raspy meow. Maggots coming out of its rotting corpse—

He gasps, another rush of heat flooding through him, like a ripple effect from his brain to his toes. Ripples on the water. There’s blood in the hot spring, and it might be his own.

Breathlessly, he nuzzles at the body he’s pressed against. Like he could climb inside, crack into a place right past the sternum and nestle in with the gore between heaving lungs. He bets the push and pull, the rhythmic up and down of breath, would be comforting. Even warmer than this. Than the Okuhida Onsen, even.

“Damon.”

His eyes open because Kai is talking and that’s a full sentence. Through bleary vision and low light, his eyes find that necklace chain. Distantly, he counts the links as his fingers twitch dull scratches against a black pull over. One, two, three, f—

“I’m — I’m crazy about you, Damon.”

Another wave. It pulses in time with the way Kai is squeezing him closer. He hopes it bruises him, inside and out. Eyelashes flutter. He hopes it aches for days.

He’s pushed back so the curve of his spine meets the mattress, presses into it. His head spins and all he can see is pink; pink canopy, pink hair, pink cheeks. It all blurs together like a hand in a blender. Hand. There’s a hand outfitted with rings, holding his own above his head. Could a blender cut through solid gold?

His tie slips out from his collar with a pull. Then his dress shirt is unbuttoned, right down to where his waist coat starts. Clammy fingers splay the white fabric open delicately, like surgery. Damon arches into the touch.

Kai’s mouth meets his skin, and he chokes.

There’s a — a suction. Like when he would help his dad with the dishes, and all the water would get sucked down the drai—

Teeth bite down on the same spot just as suddenly. His voice comes out broken as he moans. It hurts and it makes his brain buzz, too. What had he been thinking about? The thoughts slip through his fingers like broken glass.

There’s a moment of reprieve when Kai lifts his head an inch. Huffs of breath make his entire chest tingle. He wants the reprieve to be over.

“I wonder what you’ll do when you find these tomorrow,” Kai says in that voice that makes everything else in the world go quiet. Soft lips move against his collar bone. “While you’re getting undressed for your shower.”

More suction, more teeth. He thinks about how it might feel for them to sink into his jugular, next, and his eyes nearly roll to the back of his head.

“Hh, K-Kai—”

“Maybe you’ll break early, just at the sight of ‘em.”

He doesn’t really get the words, hardly ever does when his brain feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton and barbed wire, dizzying fluff and white hot sharpness. All he knows is that Kai is saying them and that’s what matters.

There’s wet laughter against the seam of his chest. It makes him wanna laugh, too, but he’s too far gone for even that. He doesn’t remember how.

“I’ll press myself against the bathroom door, just to hear the sounds you make while you try to keep it together,” Kai murmurs, before diving back in for another swipe of tongue and teeth like a man starved. A full body chill, but it's hot. It's so hot. He holds onto the hand pinning him down for dear life and hopes Kai devours him whole.

“Hah, the stupid mental gymnastics you’ll pull to try to and tell yourself that everything’s okay. That you’re as sane as ever,” and there’s sharp nails running down the tender spots all across his front, agonizingly slow. Tears well up, and he throws his head back. Silently begs for more. When Kai speaks, it’s right beside his ear. “It’s gonna be perfect.”

And all he can think is that it already is.