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“Oh, Case.” I run my hand along his back, trying to soothe him as he shudders with another barely contained sob. I press kisses to his temple and cheek, ignoring the salty tears I find along the way. “Is this the first time something like this has happened?”
“Kinda, yeah.” He sniffles. “My first time going anywhere without Carter, and I end up on a bathroom floor hyperventilating, calling you to come save me. Impressive, right?”
“I think your first time could have gone a hell of a lot worse, honestly. I’m proud of you for trying.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” His fingers tense, pressing almost painfully into my skin. “Maybe I’m just not ready yet.”
“It’s okay if you’re not. There’s no timeline for any of this.”
“It’s only been a week,” he adds, his fingers loosening as he starts to drag them along my skin. I tilt my chin to watch as he begins tracing the first head of my Cerberus tattoo. “It’ll get easier, right?”
I stare at his trembling fingers, following their path along the sharp teeth and dripping blood. He still can’t shower. Can’t sleep in a bed. It’s easy to tell he’s lost weight since the safehouse just by looking at him. He can’t go out in public without panicking. Carter seems to barely be here. And don’t even get me fucking started on the four empty tequila bottles stashed halfway under his bed.
I’m not at all convinced.
“What if it doesn’t?” I ask him. Not because I want to be a dick, but because I need to fucking know. “What if it doesn’t get better, Case?”
“Then I’ll - I’ll go back. To the house.” His fingers pause on the flames behind Cerberus. The exit from the Underworld. “But not yet.”
I want to throw him over my shoulder and bring him back to the safehouse. I want to sleep with him in my bed every night. I want to give him baths and bring him food and watch him swim endless laps in the pool. I want him to be mine to take care of.
I want, I want, I want - but I can't.
Not yet.
“Okay,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Not yet.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Casey
The saga of Travis and Carter begins a new episode after Carter finds out Travis has been low-key stalking him at work. After a brutal argument in front of half the bar and Carter's new co-workers, Carter declares that he wants to start having sex. And not with Travis.
I don't hear anything after that, so I figure he changed his mind once he cooled off. Which works for me. Him and Travis are kind of exhausting. I love him to death and really want him to be happy, but a tiny part of me dies every time he talks about his problems. He can't decide if he can have sex with men who aren't Travis. I haven't even been able to masturbate without panicking. He wants to find himself before he inevitably returns to the love of his life. I'm not even going to bother trying to find myself, I'd just like to find the will to live at this point.
So, it probably makes me a bad friend that I'm glad he's taking a break from his drama, but I'm deciding to forgive myself. It's the least I can do. I can't sleep or eat and our stopper broke, so my baths are now me racing against only a few inches of cold water swirling down the drain. I can forgive myself for being over Travis and Carter, the Middle Years.
Now that he's discovered how terrible I am at living on my own, there's no point avoiding Jake any longer. We text pretty much all hours of the day, as well as the night if he's pulling late-night guard duty. We talk on the phone whenever I'm finally ready to try and sleep in my floor-nest, his voice low and silky as he reads our book to me until I drift off, the line always still open when I wake again.
We eat one meal a day together on video call. Usually breakfast, since his days and evenings are pretty busy. Anytime I try to eat only cereal, he frowns at me and raises an eyebrow, and I hurry back and grab a protein bar or a fruit cup to accompany my sugary bowl of goodness. He told me good boy once and I had flushed bright red and spilled my juice all over the table. I don't blame him for not doing it since, but I would give just about anything to hear it anyway.
I don't usually have much to talk about since I don't leave the apartment unless Carter drags me out - and even then, I spend the time locked in an anxiety spiral, barely registering what happens around me. He has plenty to tell me, though, filling me in on the latest safehouse gossip. It's never anything that's actually revealing - he doesn't tell me any of those personal moments that us survivors hate having witnesses for - but he has no qualms telling me all about the budding prank war between him and Ace, or the time Bryce tipped his kayak and squawked for help while Matt laughed his ass off in the kayak beside him, or how Nolan tried teaching Maison how to cook and Maison started a fire that required two fire extinguishers and completely ruined any chances of them enjoying barbeque ribs for dinner. It was 200 for 5 hours, not 500 for 2 hours!
He also shares triumphs. Nolan giving him the middle finger without immediately locking up with fear after. Bryce making the entire table - survivors included - belly laugh with his startlingly accurate impersonation of Barack Obama. Matt using his first sign language word at dinner.
Each one hurts to hear, but I try not to show it. What have I accomplished here?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
I feel like my dignity is hanging by a single thread when Carter comes home one night and announces that he's been having sex. It's not going well. Of course, his definition of not going well is awkward and fumbling encounters that leave him unsatisfied and missing Travis. No panic attacks or triggers or endless stretches of self-loathing. But we all recover at different speeds according to Jake, and I'm determined not to get jealous of Carter for being in turbo mode. At least… not too jealous. Not jealous enough to be a bad friend.
I manage it somehow, even giving him some decent advice about exploring his kinks and trying to figure out what he wants with sex when Travis is out of the picture - since apparently he and Travis have rough, kinky sex even outside of their pretend roles at the compound. Does he like the sex with Travis because it's Travis? Because it's kinky? Both? I tell him he needs to find out.
We dive into the world of BDSM together, trying to figure out how someone goes about exploring that world in a town like this. I last five minutes before making an excuse to walk away from the computer, fumbling in the kitchen as I make a pot of coffee like a sloth. The image of a man being whipped on a cross plays across my eyelids every time I blink. I keep my eyes open until they burn and fill with tears.
Carter doesn’t seem to mind so much. He can apparently look past it since it’s all consensual. In fact, he seems to squirm and blush at some of the things he discovers along the way. Including some pictures on a local kink club’s online group that he gets accepted to after answering a few simple questions and agreeing to their rules. The club is having an event in a town nearby.
