“There’ve been a few situations this past month,” Berga began. “Many deaths. Messy.”
Bay went on alert but tried to keep himself composed. “And?”
"Baikal asked me to check with you," Berga said, and the way he was looking at Bay made it clear he thought that was a good idea. "I know August was your target. He had to be. He was Shepard and now that you’re no longer an unfeeling robot…”
Bay quirked a brow. "You think I killed August to get back at his gang for taking my house?"
He sort of had, hadn't he? But it hadn't been entirely for that reason and that alone wouldn't have bene enough to knock sense into him and pull him from that stupor. He'd spent the better part of two years walking around, caught in a fog. Sila was the one who'd gotten him out of it, who'd saved him from that fate, even if his means had been nightmarish and cruel.
Bay had loved every bit of that cruelty in any case. But he couldn't confess any of that to his friend now, if he did it would only lead to more questions and he wasn't ready to give answers to any of those.
"It wasn't me," he ended up telling him, dropping back in his desk chair. He crossed his legs and slowly shook his head. "I did poison him, true, but that was all. And he's not the reason I've been more myself lately."
Berga didn't appear to believe him, so Bay sighed.
"It really wasn't," he insisted. "I would tell you if I had. I know you need to stay in Baikal's good graces." The position of Butcher was important to Berga, not only because of the status it provided, but because Berga, like Sila, was a little bit…different. Off would be a better way of putting it, but for the sake of being technical, Berga also had a penchant for taking apart others to peek at what was beneath their outer layers. He and Sila just happened to come at it from different angles.
Maybe that was also why Bay wasn't as horrified by his interactions with Sila as he should have been. He'd already surrounded himself with people who didn't come with an intact moral compass. Besides, for a person who hadn't cared whether he'd lived or died up until two months ago, why should it have mattered to him? Even that first night when Sila had hunted him through the woods, Bay had been terrified, sure, but it hadn't been of death.
He'd been scared because he'd felt it. He'd felt the way his heart had pumped wildly in his chest. Felt the way the adrenaline coursed through him and spurred him on despite the way his legs cramped. He'd felt excited thinking about how someone was right behind him, growing ever nearer, and whether that person planned to kill him or not hadn't even crossed his mind.
Bay had been solely focused on the emotions of it all, the twisted, chaotic explosion of them popping off inside of him like accidentally lit fireworks on a crowded dock. Hazardous. Dangerous. Thrilling.
And once Sila had caught him...Then his attention had turned lower, to the agony and the pleasure and—
Berga snapped his fingers in front of his face, frowning at him. "What was that?"
"Sorry," he mumbled and then checked the time on his multi-slate. He was done for the day, but there were a ton of papers that still needed to be graded before the night was through, and now all he could think about was how he could convince Sila to come back over to his place and give him a repeat of last night.
"If it wasn't you, then I’m not sure who's responsible," Berga said, but at least now he seemed to believe him.
“I’ve heard rumor it might have been an inside job,” Bay told him without thinking, mind admittedly still conjuring images of the four metal balls that protruded out of the sides of Sila’s cock crown. How they’d felt when they’d stroked against his inner walls.The way electricity had shot up his spine.
How much he'd wanted more. Then, and now.
Berga's gaze homed in on him dangerously. "How do you know that?"
He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but if it was a choice between Varun and literally anyone else, it was a no brainer which Bay was going to choose. He wouldn’t be the one to put him on the Brumal’s radar, that was for certain. Giving them somewhere else to look could only help Sila in the end. And,if Sila could figure it out, surely the Brumal would be able to, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal for him to stick to his statement now that the cat was already out of the bag.
And now he was thinking in cat terminology as well.
Damn Varun. He better pick up when he called later. Bay was very quickly becoming an addict and he didn't even care.
"You should look into Haroon," he said, before grabbing up his tablet, an indicator he needed to start getting to work. "You should be able to find answers that way."
With any luck, they'd also discover something about his grandmother for him.
"You sound confident," Berga noted. "How?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does to me." And maybe to Baikal, though Berga didn't add that part. He was always careful to keep Bay and the Brumal as separate as possible, knowing that Bay had never held any interest in getting involved.
The Brumal needed to stay the hell away from his Varun, otherwise Bay wasn't sure what he'd do. He hadn't set out to murder August, but things had been different then. He'd only unlocked a portion of his old emotions, so that they were there but muted, just beneath the murky surface. Now?
Now Bay felt everything in vivid technicolor.
If he got jealous or angry or protective on Sila's behalf, there was no telling what he'd be capable of. And no one got away with messing with the Brumal. No one.
