Suddenly, Baikal was tugging at his clothes, tearing the black button up shirt off his body haphazardly, seemingly unaware of the buttons he sent flying in his wake or the way Rabbit protested. His hands roamed down his chest and then over his arms before he spun Rabbit around and did the same on his back.
“There aren’t any marks,” Rabbit told him solemnly when it hit him what Void was doing. He felt the moment the other man stilled behind him, but he didn’t turn back around. “You’ve stared at me naked enough times to know that already. She wouldn’t do anything that could leave evidence behind. It would jeopardize her career.”
“Rabbit.”
“I spent a lot of time in the dark,” he said. “Sometimes she’d be there yelling instructions, other times she’d leave me alone for hours. It’d be recorded live and sent to her multi-slate so I knew she was always watching even if she wasn’t physically there.”
“That’s why you’re afraid of the dark.”
“Partially,” he admitted. “It wasn’t this bad…before.”
“Rabbit.”
“Not yet.” He wasn’t ready to explain that night yet. “Ease me into this, remember? This is already a lot for me.”
“You’ve never told anyone before?”
He hesitated, then said, “One person.”
“The guy in the video.”
He nodded.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Rabbit tried to say, but Baikal shut that down.
“It was abuse!”
“I had a roof over my head and—”
“You’re so stressed and anxious all the time you barely remember to eat every other day!” Baikal swore. “I should kill her.”
That finally had Rabbit spinning back around, grabbing onto Void’s arm. “Don’t.”
“Let’s leave,” Biakal suggested. “Get out of this house. We can go back to mine and you never have to return here. You never have to see her again, Rabbit.”
“This is my home,” he said weakly.
“This isn’t a home.”
“Yours isn’t one to me yet either.”
Baikal flinched as though slapped, and for some reason that had Rabbit feeling guilty. He may be an asshole, but at least in this he was trying to be helpful for Rabbit’s sake and nothing more.
“Can we figure this part out later?” Rabbit moved in closer, tentatively placing his arms around Baikal’s neck. “We’ve already covered so much.”
“We’ve barely scratched the surface,” he disagreed. “I know there’s still a lot you aren’t telling me. She had to have done something more to get you to willingly agree to tie yourself to a mafia prince. I’m telling you I want forever, Rabbit.”
“You’ve been pretty upfront about that for a while now,” he said.
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” Though, Rabbit did find it a little ironic that their script had seemingly been reversed. “You really care that she hurt me, don’t you?”
“Are you kidding me?” He reached up and held onto Rabbit’s wrists. “I’m seething right now.”
“Maybe we should take a cold shower instead of a hot one then. Speaking of,” he glanced over toward it pointedly, “we’ve wasted a lot of water.” He went to take a step toward the shower stall, but Baikal pulled him to a stop.
“I’ll have all of you,” Void swore.
