Chapter 12:
“What the actual fuck were you thinking just now?” Flix demanded, pressing the blade in hard enough he drew a bead of blood, but hardly noticed past the red haze over his vision. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? How close you came to having your face melted off or your liver filled with flesh-eating parasites?”
“Baikal—”
“First of all,” he stopped him, already knowing what excuses Ani was about to make. “Baikal Void doesn’t give a shit about you. You being the leader of the Shepards means absolutely nothing to him. You think that was going to protect you? Wrong.”
“He wouldn’t want to start a war between us,” Aneski stated, glaring when Flix laughed.
“Baby, it wouldn’t be a war. It’d be a slaughter. You really want all your friends to die horrible and meaningless deaths because you’ve got a stick up your ass?”
“Don’t call me baby in that condescending tone, Flix. I’m warning you.”
“You? Warning me? That’s fucking rich. Berga came this close to destroying you, yet you still have the energy to mouth offto me?” He shoved him again and pulled back, bringing the knife with him. “Damn it, Ani, what the hell is wrong with you?!”
“You are!” he yelled. “You’re what’s wrong with me!” He ran a hand through his red hair and asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Stop,” he snapped. “Stop playing dumb.”
“Aw, but I’m so good at it.” He really, really was. Flix was an ace at playing things casual and cool. That was how he’d earned the reputation as the easy-going member of the Satellite. He was theapproachableone.
“Yeah,” Aneski stated, nodding his head. “You’re good at luring people in. Tricking them into thinking you care. But it’s all just bullshit. Everything you’ve ever said or done has been nothing but complete and utter bullshit! You deserved everything I did to you.”
“I deserved worse,” he corrected. “Too bad your heart wasn’t in it.”
“At least Ihavea heart!”
Flix considered that outburst. He’d already gathered that Aneski was angry with him on a much more personal level than simply believing he was involved with his brother’s disappearance. But…He recalled what Berga had said in the cafeteria and latched on.
“You had a crush,” he risked pushing, banking down the hope that he was right in order to keep his expression taunting. There’d been some signs in the past, but Flix hadn’t been able to trust himself, had feared he was seeing things from his own personal perspective instead of as they truly were.
Perspective was his specialty—twisting it, contorting it. The problem was that he sometimes found it difficult to tell if his own head was playing tricks on him in a similar fashion to how he played everyone else.
“I’m curious,” he said. “After I turned you away that day, did you ask yourself if I ever cared? If I ever loved you? Did you cry?”
The day after Russ’s funeral, Aneski had sought him out. Flix had been juggling a lot at the time, and knowing he couldn’t tell Ani what he knew had torn him up inside. How couldn’t it? Aneski had been a blubbering mess, sobbing and desperately clinging to him, begging to know anything about his brother.
It’d sort of broken Flix’s heart, so he’d taken the easy route and shaken Ani off.
And ignored him ever since.
“Stop,” Aneski growled, but now that he was making progress, there was no way Flix was going to listen.
“You did.” He grinned, this time the expression real as a spark of pleasure zipped through him. Not at the thought of having hurt him, but at the idea that he could. That he’d meant anything to the Tiny Terror. That he’d meant enough that his sudden absence had affected him at all. “Did you sob and wet yourself to thoughts of me, Ani?”
Flix had—or, at least the wetting himself part. He couldn’t count on two hands how many times he’d woken up with stained pants after an intense wet dream featuring the redhead.
“Stop,” he repeated, voice shaking slightly at the end.
“You started this,” he reminded. “But you should have recalled the Devil always has the last word.”
“You aren’t going to hurt me,” Aneski said it, but he didn’t sound as positive about that as he had back at Flix’s place the other day.
“Why are you here?” Flix asked. “Did you hope to trick me back to your secret lair? Want to tie me up again and have your way with me? Come on, Ani. If this were really revenge, you wouldn’t have wasted so much time playing with my ass. What’d your friends think about that anyway, hmm? I’ve been so curiousto know. Popcorn ever around when you had me squirting for you, or did you keep me all for yourself?”
For a second it was obvious Ani didn’t know whether to glare or frown, two emotions warring within him.
