Upside Down (COMPLETE) Inside Out, Book 2 [BoyxBoy]

Nathan

He said he promised, although he couldn't commit to it. He didn't want the words Keith mentioned to be the last he'd hear from him.

"Just stay here," Keith had said a few minutes ago. "Wait about ten minutes. If I don't come back, then you can come in."

"Keith, but—"

"Please, Nate," Keith said. "Promise me. I'll go and check first. Trust me on this one."

He nodded to it, but time seemed to stretch so much when Keith went inside. Every silent second of Keith's absence suffocated him.

So he got out of the car, out on the empty driveway of the house. He remembered this place; he used to send Keith off here what felt like yesterday but wasn't really recent, during the early moments of their meeting. He thought about how deeply in love he had already been at that time and wondered if he had wasted so much time stalling by keeping their mate bond a secret. Maybe it didn't matter now, because he had him.

He approached the front lawn of the house, his heart starting to race. He tried to open his senses to his surrounding, but there was only silence that felt so staggeringly present. Usually, he could already tell that there were people in the house through their faint senses of being. The quiet scared him. Especially after he saw Tessa's picture from the phone—she looked like she fell down and fainted along the way. Keith thought it was the ex-boyfriend's doing, so he insisted on settling this matter on his own beforehand.

Keith looked like he was going to throw hands, and Nathan trusted him to be competent enough to take care of this matter. But still ... it didn't feel right to leave him on his own. He wanted to be there and protect him as much as he could. Staying still wouldn't do.

Keith would hate it for leaving so soon. But he'd dealt with him before, so he thought it'd be fine.

He moved towards the door, and when he took the next step forward, he felt himself falling.

Nathan screamed, because there was no ground to hold both of his feet together.

As he descended submissively, he felt the light around him slowly escaping, allowing darkness to engulf wherever he was. He could no longer see the reality, all distorted in his head.

Then he heard it: the screaming, the tortured voices that weren't his own. The ghostly, throaty yells cried out for help, and Nathan could no longer decipher his own thoughts. There were too many emotions ... so much anger, so many pain ...

"No!" he finally heard himself. "Please! Stop ... stop this!"

He inhaled sharply when he noticed that he earned his senses again, but he was all the way on the ground now, kneeling, cramming his head in his hands as if to shield the dark visions off. He breathed and sobbed, finding his hands wet of tears and snot, his vision blurry when he caught the light again, his heart pulsating a little too aggressive in his chest.

Nathan heard footsteps crunching on the grasses and dared himself to look around. There were silhouettes of feet around him, concealed in what looked like long fabrics of red. He looked up.

He was cornered by a circle of figures cloaked in red, each of their hand holding a wand.

The wizards.

One of them pointed it forward and muttered: "Rise."

Nathan jerked upward and screamed, an excruciating pain guiding his movements next. He felt hot, like small sparks of fire was eating his flesh from the inside, burning him slowly outwards. He yelled and cried but the pain didn't go away.

"No! Please!" he begged, but he felt as if he was floating. He opened his eyes and noticed his feet moving without his will; even as he closed his eyes, he knew he was walking involuntarily.

Once they were inside the house, the darkness intensified, like the walls shunned off too much of the light outside, preventing its entry. Then another weight of pain shot right at him. It felt cold and frozen this time, something that could suck out life out of a soul, so excruciating that it numbed the person who suffered from it—

In his paralyze, Nathan realized where it came from.

It was from Keith.

Nathan cried out when he noticed his mate all bruised in the eyes and in the corner of his lips, knees fell to the ground, hands lifted halfway to his sides like he just completely lost ability to move, stunned and electrified right in the middle of the big hallway of the house. He was just right in front of his unconscious aunt. "No!" Nathan yelled out. "Keith ... please ... do not hurt him!"

One of the wizards in red touched the tip of a wand to Nathan's side, and his voice was muted to silence.

"Ah, here he is!" came a voice that sounded way too cheery for the occasion.

It was of a boy who looked around Nathan's own age. When their eyes met, the other boy bulged out his eyes on purpose, mocking Nathan's helplessness. But that wasn't just it—suddenly Nathan could perfectly sense—or possibly read—his exact motives.

No.

Without the sense, Nathan could tell from the grim of his shade too. This boy was of his kind, but not willingly so. And apart from the dimness of his silhouette, Nathan noticed something right on the top of his collarbone, a cut that looked a little too old to be there in the first place.

A Changed.

"Hey ... hey, stupid," the boy laughed as he approached Nathan. He cupped Nathan's face with his hand, forcing Nathan to be eye-to-eye with him. "Look at me."

It wasn't like Nathan could do otherwise.

"Look right into my eyes, boy," he said. "I know you know everything by now, don't you? Right?"

The boy was right—the senses, emotions, and thoughts all poured right into him because Nathan had no wall to shield it all from. One of the thoughts was something that he'd always feared for, the exact reason why he had considered not reuniting his bond with Keith all along.

Ivan ... Ivan Fickler ... the voices started to pour in, a wave flooding dangerously into Nathan's head ... Keith ... his heart ...

Keith's heart ...

A Changed ...

"NO!" Nathan yelled out. "PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME—"

"Shut the fuck up," Ivan said, bold and assertive. "Hold up your hand and take this."

Once again out of his will, Nathan was holding a loaded gun, his fingertip ready around the trigger.