Alter Arlo

by Nordika Night

Everything was a shit show, and I barely even knew if I could trust myself at this point. I mean, I let a crazy guy with skeleton paint suck my cock while I chased the pain of it, so clearly, I wasn’t all that sane anymore.

“Did anyone see you come in here?” “No one ever sees me.” “I do.” “You’re different.”

“Good and bad are subjective. Good people do bad things for good reasons. Bad people do bad things for reasons that are good to them.”

He was creepy-hot, which was a creepy thought since I’d never even seen his face. All I knew was his name and what the back of his throat felt like against my cock.

“You made my cheeks get hot, so I wore the paint to cool them down.”

He studied me while his cigarette burned down between his fingers. While he contemplated his life, I tried not to notice the erratic beat of his heart under my forearm. Zander always used to say that Cadoc’s heartbeat only ever rose for him.

“It’s my writing, but I don’t remember when I drew these maps. Must have been when we first took Genesis.”

“I…I thought I felt a seizure coming on.” He stared at his gloved hands; they were black tonight.

“Finnegan,” I said, clearing my throat. “What are you doing?” “Trying to make the best use of my time while I have it.”

Whatever flame was burning inside me increased when I tasted Finnegan Ravish. Something felt forbidden about the whole thing,

“I want to touch you without gloves. I want to see you without safety glasses. I want to know what that feels like.”

Finnegan Ravish gave me a hard dick, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

“Restraint? What would you do, Finn? You’re afraid of germs.” “I told you, I’m not afraid of them. The thought of them simply repulses me.” His eyes found mine. “But…not yours. Not with you. Only you.”

Finnegan Ravish had his hand wrapped around my cock. Holy shit.

“You’re a baited trap. A lit fuse. An unstable mix of chemicals.”

When he looked at me, something was different in his eyes. He wasn’t looking at me like he was calculating my involvement in this situation like he normally looked at me. He was looking at me as if I was a…victim?

“You have no idea how valuable the two of you are. And you don’t even understand why,”

“Dire, by now you know Kei is…obsessed with you?” Understatement. I nodded. “Let him be. He needs it. He’s…I need to keep him here. We need him.”

I didn’t know why I cared. It felt weird knowing they were growing closer together. Zade wasn’t big on friends, and I took pride in being the only person he could rely on. For whatever reason, that gave me an importance that was starting to fade now that Finnegan fucking Ravish was stepping into my role.

“He’s not crazy,” I defended, even though he most certainly was crazy. “He’s my stalker.”

I didn’t really know anything about the man with the skeleton face, but my soul knew him or some shit. He was comfortable and terrifying together, and I craved him almost as badly as I craved these cigs.

I could almost sense him. Feel him. Taste him in the dirt and filth down here, my tastebuds eager and my mouth salivating. He was close.

“Night and day don’t matter in perpetual darkness,” he said, his fingers drumming along the column of my throat. “I can be a daymare as much as a nightmare.”

Everything inside me was alive. Under the spell of his virulent disease, I thrived with the sickness and absorbed his venom just to bite back with the antivenom.

“Without your pain, we would not exist. Without your grief, we could not be. Without your loss, I would not appeal to you.”

While I chased chaos in the form of self-torture with Zade, my lover’s twin was chasing fear in an attempt to conquer it. Keiran was simply the conductor of our train to self-damnation, and he took the role with pride.

“To beat fear, you must beat your mind,” Keiran went on. “To chase chaos, you must become chaotic.”

“Want to listen to him scream?” Keiran asked Zade. “No.” “What if his screams are not from pain?” Zade paused. He didn’t answer.

But my knees hit the trolly, and before I could scream from uncertainty, my jaw was being pried open and Keiran’s cock was choking me. “Listen to him choke now.”

“He wants you, lover’s twin. He pretends. He chases you. He wants, wants, wants, but never has.”

“Because he wants to want me as him and I want to have him as him.”

“Watch,” was all Keiran said before he forced himself on me in a role I’d never taken before. The bottom.

I got used to the rape. It was no longer jarring and emotionally damaging. Pathetically, I almost consented to it, starved for any bit of connection, even if I didn’t understand Arlo’s needs or agenda. The damage had been done, and this new frame of mind was working in my favour because it helped me shut out the pain and tune into the way my body reacted.

It was as much permission to be rough as it was begging to be loved the way Cadoc loved. It broke my heart a little bit because this crazed, suffering soul who only knew violence and had a skill for covering it all up in a carefree attitude really was trying to change for my twin. He loved Zan, despite never being taught how to love.

The last bits of chipped paint had grown out and been bitten off a month ago, and for the first time since I knew him, his nails were bare. I didn’t know why it put me so on edge, but it wasn’t natural for him, and it meant he was giving up. I couldn’t let him give up, because if he gave up, I’d give up.

Inhale. Exhale. “Can I come?” Paint. Dip. Paint. “Where?” “Oblivion.” Inhale. Exhale. He looked at my hands.

Finn claimed to never have been a sexual person before, but something about me made him want to be. He picked me, and that shit meant more to me than anyone would ever know.

“I think he might be dead.” I stopped my retreat. “Who?” “The one with the skeleton paint.”

“She fucked me,” he said, still able to be angry in this happy phase. “Rosie fucking Wilson fucked me over. This isn’t the right drug.” I really did laugh that time.

“I don’t wanna fuck you, Zade,” I blurted, the happy drug making my words too candid. “I mean, I do. I wanna fuck you and pretend you’re him.” Another gulp. “But I won’t.”

To lose a love and keep the body. How was that for chasing the chaos?

Instead of mourning the loss of the man I loved, we dumped his body in a lake and ran for our lives. I think his body was the only reason we came back here to join the newly formed community of Genesis. Proximity to Zan, that was it. But now I’d lost Keiran, too, and this time, I had the safety and downtime to be a proper dick about it. Maybe I was grieving them both.

“Don’t die now. I can’t…I can’t live in this fucked up world without hating you.” “So, stop getting fucked up at the lake and trying to drown yourself. I can’t live without hating you either. It’s all I’ve fucking got.”

“Come out, Keiran. I…I missed you.”

“Taken. Held captive. Imprisoned for a bit. Punishment.” He leaned forward and smelled me. “Reward.” “Punishment for what?” “For feeling,” he said. “Want to walk?”

“But this is my favourite beat.” Our beat.

“Because I’m not allowed to heal.” His painted and bloody hand touched my face. “But you are.”

“I can no longer…I do not wish for space.” “Says the germaphobe who always demanded space.” “I want you in my space,” he said, finally looking at me through a pair of safety goggles. “I…I think I need you in my space.”

“We need him, Arlo. You know we need him. Free him.” “Let him go,” Arlo repeated. “If you hurt him, we’re done. We can’t get through this without them, without Kei.”

“It’s not what you think!” Dante screamed. “I promise you, Cadoc. Trust me, for once in your fucking life!” The strain in Dante’s voice had me second-guessing all of this. His heart was ripping in two, and I’d recognize that agony anywhere.