Sick Bargain (Vile House #1)

by Nordika Night

“Reeven Matterson, founder of the pathetic Matter Cult. You’re fucking nothing! You wanna know why?” I stand, shivering with need. Need for what? I don’t know. “Because I fucking made you nothing.”

“Are you powerful?” Krypt asks, voice jittery. “Yes.” “Are you deadly?” “Yes.” “Are you the hero?” “My hero. My own hero.”

“I’m the antihero,” he snarls at me. “And you’re still mine. Fucking feel this, Remiel.” He drops his hand to squeeze my throat. “What?” I bark at him. “Feel what?” Like a bad omen, he whispers, “Fear.”

My hero doesn’t want to be the almighty. He wants me to be his deity. He wants to be scared.

“You don’t have all the power here, asshole.” He forces himself against my chest, sitting until I feel the prick of a knife against my stomach. “You wanna fuck me bloody, you’ll do it while you look at me.”

Because Remiel Sauder has become everything to me. My property. My obsession. My fixation. My dream. I’ve never dreamed before.

“I pick you as mine. I pick you to turn me into something I’ve never been before. I choose you to show me a way of life I’ve never lived. I don’t need you, Krypt. I fucking want you.”

He wants me. The real me. Keegan from town and Krypt from Vile House. I don’t like being wanted. I love it. I hate it. It’s too much and not near enough.

My love is warped. It doesn’t feel the same as it does to others. It’s alarming and scary and dangerous. It’s a complete fall into obsession and the obliteration of everything else. If Remiel becomes the focus of my love, it will annihilate him. Wipe him out. Strip him bare and turn him into a husk of his former self. He’ll die.

This was supposed to be about fear. Now I’m the one who’s terrified.

I need time alone with Remiel. After everything last night. After the job I’ve just been given by Director. This might be my last chance to… He might not need me, but I need him.

I want him to understand me and become as sick as I am, to understand that maybe we’re matched because we’re both so broken. His brokenness led him to me, and my brokenness helped empower him. We’re matched in pain, but both undeserving of each other.

Because I got attached. I don’t know what love is, but I know what obsession is, and Remiel is the focus of my life. I’ve never had an obsession quite like him, and the loss of it feels too much. It’s impossible. It’s wrong. There’s no longer a Krypt if there isn’t a hero.

I’m begging him to stay, but I’m begging the devil not to take him. “He’s mine!”

Don’t fail him. “Remiel.” Don’t take him from me. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Please, give him back. “Remiel.”

I fooled myself into thinking I could enjoy him until death eventually claimed me, but I’ve been lying to myself for days now. I’m not just enjoying him. I’m dragging him down with me. I’m choosing him over saving my family. The flipped switch of my priorities overwhelmed me.

Until Krypt. Who made me his world. For deranged reasons, sure, but it was the first time I’d ever been important. And I think that’s why I want him. Because I’m Remiel Sauder, unimportant and destined to die, and apparently, I’ll take attention in any form I can get it. And Krypt’s attention is all-consuming.

Krypt has a trigger word. I have one now, too. Important. Am I important to you? He couldn’t even answer, and in the blink of an eye, that spreading poison dripped into every fissure of my brain and spread through my bloodstream.

Because right there at that table, with his phone pressed to his ear and the words ‘suicide pill’ coming from his mouth, I knew I was important to him. I regretted it. He was right. It is regrets that go through our minds in our moment of death, and right then, I regretted nothing more than scaring him.

Not even death, Remiel.

He’s here. He came. Because… Not even death, Remiel. Not even death can take me from him.

My life isn’t mine anymore, anyway. I have nothing to live for, and I’ll never be important to anyone. Krypt might possess me, but he doesn’t actually care about me, so what’s the fucking point? My brother has Vile House, and my sister… she has my brother. They’ll be better off without me, and so will this world. It’s time. Time to go.

He’s purging himself of his demons, half dead with the effort of it. Now, it’s my turn to scare him back to life. Living for real this time.

And when you walk out of here, alive and mine, your blood will be purified and you’ll give your life to me for real. Your whole life, and so fucking help me, Remiel, if you try to end it early again, you will not like who I turn into.”

He’ll be able to build a new identity under my possessive watch. Because I need him to want to live.

He doesn’t want to know what I’m going to do to him. Instead, he meets my eyes and says, “Fix me.” I offer him a real smile. “You’re already fixed, Remiel. Now you just need the reminder.”

“Look at me.” He rips his eyes from the fire and looks at me. “You are important to me.” A tear falls down his cheek.

“Being important to me is not an easy thing to be. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt so much more than it feels good.”

Me. Him. Us. Whatever the combination of us creates. A sick bargain that’s become a way of life.

I might be in charge of him, but I want to worship him.

“Please… please kiss me.” To kiss is to consume. It’s a claim. A chance to steal oxygen and mingle exhales.

I’m a twenty-eight-year-old man, and Remiel Sauder is the first person I’ve kissed.

“Pain does nothing?” He shakes his head again, and I notice his cock has once again softened. “Pain feels negative. Fear feels like…” “Living,”

“You called yourself sick, and until you said it, I’d considered the word… an insult. But if you’re sick, Remiel, if whatever pumps through your heart and coats your brain is a sickness, it’s a fucking blessing. Not an insult.” I pick up the leather strap and hold it in front of his mouth. “I want you, too, Remiel. I pick you, too.” He chokes out a weak sob, still drooling. “And I want your sickness to meet mine, and whenever we get too tainted and Moros can’t handle us anymore, I want to die sick with you.”

SICK Remiel taught me to relish the word instead of fear it.

“Sick,” he whispers. I help him press the brand to my skin, and the pain of it connects our damned souls for all of eternity.

But it’s the word trailing down my throat that shocks me most. Because it’s personal. For him. The S starts under my chin and the R ends at the hollow of my throat. The word ‘shatter’ in bold, mismatched letters, the R accidentally marked over with a sliced X. This part of your body is forever tainted. Every time I look at the way you swallow or the bob of your throat, I’ll shatter. Because it broke me, Remiel.

Until Krypt claimed my bargain, I’d never been seen before.

It’s the first time he’s kissed me with something like absolute desperation, and if he doesn’t stop, I’ll start to expect it. The slow kiss at the asylum was everything, but this one is everything else.

“He won’t survive without you,” she tells me, making me stop. “You made him dependent on you.” When I look back at her, she doesn’t look angry. “So fucking come back,” she finishes and walks away. So fucking come back.

“Do you expect me to love you?” I ask instead. He squints at me, blue eyes curious. “Why would you ask that?” “Because we’re attached now, aren’t we? We’re… us. A kouple… with a K. Wherever the fuck the future goes, we’re going together. Most people call that a relationship, and relationships come with love.”

“Is that my path? You’re fixated on me now, but it’ll drop off?” “You don’t feel like a fixation,” I tell him. “You feel like an obsession. But I can’t tell what that means. Is love an obsession, or am I too volatile for that?”

Love, to me, is caring enough about someone to know what they need and wanting to give it to them. It doesn’t have to be romance and kindness and compassion. It can be rough and unhinged and aggressive if that’s the language we speak it in.”

I don’t want to go to Axel Graves and live out my final six minutes regretting not speaking to Remiel like he’s a real person instead of an object of my possession. I want him to feel important and hopeful so that, if I’m gone for too long, he won’t kill himself because of it. He’ll be hoping for my return.

Two men, in bed together, not fucking or sleeping. Not bleeding or crying. It’s new for me, and it feels so good that I close my eyes again to appreciate it.

I’m not a man who enjoys being touched in such a way. My hands cause harm and my body is a weapon, but with Remiel’s leg against mine, I don’t feel so dangerous. I feel at ease. So much so that the monsters inside me slumber.

“I don’t trust that. Your brother hates my brother, and it’s obvious to everyone. I don’t trust him to keep Soren alive.” “He will.” “Why?” “Because I asked him to.”

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’ll please answer it. Fuck. Only for 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 I broke you. What else do you want from me? Jesus.”

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