His fingers hesitated when he went to open the chat prompt.
Why should he bother? Let the asshole stew for all he cared. It was far past time the shoe was on the other foot. Up until now, it’d always been Baikal calling the shots. No more. Rabbit didn’t want to talk to him so he wouldn’t. End of story.
Carelessly, he tossed the device back onto the end table and got ready for bed. His room was located on the upper level, all the way at the end, tucked into the corner. When they’d moved here when he was in middle school, his mom had chosen it for him because it had windows overlooking two sides of the massive home. Back then, she’d still been in her “we need to stimulate your senses as much as possible” phase.
He’d been told to look at anything and everything he could to try and elicit an emotional response he could feed back into the crystal of the beiska. She’d even hired landscapers to tear out the wildflowers that had naturally bloomed on the south side and replace them with glow-hearts, a mechanical flower that changed colors and patterns based on the temperature it was placed in.
Rabbit hated them, but he dared not tell her that.
Rubbing at his eyes, he climbed beneath the snow-white covers and settled in, willing his tense muscles to relax. Void’s message came to mind one more time, but he shook his head, refusing to let it bother him. He couldn’t afford to lose another night to that man. Sleep deprivation would affect his playing. And if his playing was affected…
His mother would arrive and find something else to place the blame on for his lack of progress.
Just like the last time.
Nope. He wouldn’t allow himself to go there either. Hell, he’d be better off with Baikal taking up permanent residence in his head overthatgetting the chance to worm its way in. At least he’d gotten something positive out of his experience with Void.
Thinking about how the other man had brought him to orgasm had Rabbit groaning, partially out of frustration for letting it come to mind in the first place, partially due to the fact his dick instantly stirred.
Rabbit’s king-size bed came equipped with a massage lounge chair feature attached to the right and his gaze momentarily trailed over to it. A stack of music theory books he’d read through probably a dozen times sat on the small work surface just above the chair, one of the fifteen hover-orb lights he had keeping the place bathed in a nice warm glow hung directly over the stack as if taunting him.
He shouldn’t be thinking about Void’s teal gaze in the dim light of the movie theater, or how his touch had felt, searing and dominant.
How he’d sort of maybe liked it.
Not in the moment—he’d been too caught off guard, confused, and freaked out at the time, but in all the moments since…
Rabbit’s hand trailed under the blanket, skating down his flat stomach to press over his dick beneath the sweatpants. At just the slight pressure he moaned, eyes lifting to the large skylight that took up most of the width of his room. He had darkened mode turned off, so he could peer up at the vast night sky and catch the twinkle of one of the million stars there. Even though he wasn’t a fan of darkness in general, looking up at night was different. Instead of causing him to panic, it tended to calm him.
Something Baikal Void would never be able to do, no matter how many times he made him come.
Made him.
Those were the keywords.
Rabbit hadn’t wanted it but he’d gone through with it anyway. Or…Actually…Baikal hadn’t, had he?
It’d been so obvious that he’d been prepared to fully fuck Rabbit that night, even if Rabbit had turned him down, and yet the second he’d discovered his virginity he’d held back.
I didn’t stop for you, little bunny.
Right. No, of course not. Void hadn’t done it for him.
He yanked his hand away, scowling at himself. Stubbornly, he rolled onto his side willing the erection to abate and his head to clear itself of all wild thoughts of teal eyes and phantom caresses.
* * *
Rabbit!
At some point, he must have successfully fallen asleep, because the next thing Rabbit knew, he was coming to with a startle. He was still lying on his side but he was frozen, his body tense, the fuzzy memory of some dream popping like bubbles so that there was only a formless residue left over he couldn’t quite touch or place. He’d been dreaming about something horrifying but…what? Because of that, it took him a little longer than it should have for him to realize the most harrowing thing of all.
All of the lights were off.
Terror loomed over him and his breathing became shallow pants he desperately tried to steady if only to keep from making too much noise. His fear of the dark wasn’t as fresh as his stage fright, but that too had heightened since the event of a year ago. Before, it’d been upsetting but nothing too encumbering. Now, however, his chest felt like it was being crushed beneath a heavy weight.
Even with the advancements in technology, power outages were a thing and it wasn’t like this was his first. But the sky above him was clear, the stars still staring down at his immobile form, so bad weather being the cause was out. The logical thing to do would be to get up and check to see if the neighbors had lost power as well, yet Rabbit struggled to get his limbs to obey.
So what if they hadn’t? It just meant he’d blown a fuse or something of the like. It was no big deal. This was no big deal.
