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“Just go apologize,” he told himself, climbing out of the bed. “We can fix this.”
He paused to listen. Faintly, he could hear Kevin snoring in the other room, but otherwise no one seemed to be up and moving. Opening the door, he peered out and frowned. The room was empty. There was a blanket and a pillow on the couch where someone had slept, but they weren’t there now.
Maybe he’s in Kevin and Mark’s room, he thought. The two would have given up their own bed if Thomas had said anything about not wanting to share with Danny. Maybe one of them slept out here, got uncomfortable and crawled into the other’s bed. It wouldn’t be the first time they shared a bed.
He sighed, resigned to having to wait until someone else woke up, and walked over to the kitchen. He heard Thomas say something about staying in the room and after being threatened with a knife he was in no hurry to leave until the situation was figured out.
He just hoped that when it was, he’d have his boyfriend back.
* * *
Seong swore in triumph as he finally knocked out the final apprentice and leaned back with an exhausted sigh.
“Are we clear,” Felinus asked darkly, a phone halfway to his ear.
“We’re clear,” Seong confirmed, stretching his aching fingers. Peacock’s apprentices had been keeping him busy all night with their nonsense attacks on Thomas to cover the fact that a fourth apprentice was trying to keep them from being able to land. It wasn’t particularly hard but he wondered just how many computers Peacock had at his disposal for how many things Seong broke. It was going to take them days to get their drivers and components reinstalled and connected to make functioning machines, not to mention all of the coding Seong had deleted off them by sending in a virus that specifically attacked Seong’s own fingerprints. “Serves him fucking right for using my stuff,” he muttered.
“What was that,” Bat asked him.
“Nothing,” Seong sighed, rubbing at his face and digging out his own phone. “How soon can we get to Thomas?”
“There’s an escort that will take you and Tiger directly to the hotel once we get off the plane,” Brutus said, standing next to Bat and touching his waist when the plane turned. “You’ll stay with them while we make sure Peacock stops breathing.”
Seong glanced at Tiger next to him, then back at Brutus, jabbing a thumb at the biggest, deadliest, and youngest member of the Zoo. “You aren’t taking him hunting?”
“It was decided, on the off chance the escort tries to take you directly to Peacock instead of to Thomas, that you should have someone who can remind them what a terrible idea that would be,” Bat said, seeming to lean into Brutus a bit longer than his stumble called for. “Tiger volunteered to be that reminder.” He smirked. “Besides, he misses Thomas and his friends.”
“Kevin makes me laugh,” Tiger rumbled when Seong raised an eyebrow at him. “He and Mark have joined Thomas in meeting Issac and I for coffee on their spring break. They are funny.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty great guys,” Seong agreed, looking down at his phone. He stared at it, a notification that hadn’t made a sound sitting on his screen. Thomas’s name was at the top of the block and the words “Call me” underneath in a text message. “Fuck,” he swore, nearly dropping his phone in his efforts to unlock and dial on speaker phone.
“Snake-”
“Shh,” he hissed, listening to the ringing with increased dread.
The call connected, the audio nothing but the scraping of fabric and flesh against the speaker.
“Don’t you want to say hello,” the voice from Seong’s nightmares cooed.
A gagged scream came through the phone, metal scraping against the ground.
“What a shame,” Peacock mocked. “If only you had better behaved yourself, you’d be able to talk to Popi.”
“You fucking son of a-” Seong snarled.
“Do not finish that insult, Popi,” Peacock snapped, his voice still able to grab Seong like a vise on his throat. “AlleyCat is already in time out for self-sabotage. Don’t make me add you to it before we even see each other.”
Time out, Bat mouthed confused.
Seong shook his head. He didn’t have the time or words to explain Peacock’s sadistic pleasure of punishing his apprentices. He also didn’t want to think too hard about Thomas facing one of those punishments. He knew long before the Zoo what a man gagged and tied to a chair sounded like because of Peacock. “We are not seeing each other,” he said firmly.
“Of course we are, Popi,” Peacock said lightly. Thomas made a sound of discomfort on the other end. “That’s why you are here. To come back to me. You even sent your apprentice ahead to smooth things over.”
What the fuck, Bat mouthed, looking at Brutus and continuing to speak silently to him.
Seong looked down, narrowing his eyes. “That is not what happened. He’s not my apprentice.”
“Again with the lies,” Peacock sighed. “You both keep claiming he’s not yours but-”
