The stinging reminder on the back of my neck was one way to wake up. It was either that or the nightmares. The pain of having a tattoo was kinder than the images in my mind. Nothing was worse than the obvious future my nightmares foreshadowed.
I was preparing for the worst. I knew that no amount of nightmares or casual kidnappings were close to the real deal. Whatever was out there, my mind was incapable of fabricating it. Movies weren't the best source of information, not when I was dealing with real life. And what mattered right now in my life was making sure that the people I loved were far away from death's desperate reach for a new victim.
For a few days after the kidnapping, I laid in bed wondering what to do next. There were too many things to worry about, too many scenarios that ended in my clumsy death.
Dorian started getting worried. It hit me then, when his face was an inch from mine in an attempt to get me uncomfortable so that I'd spill the tea, that the only true family I had was sleeping next to a bomb every night.
"If you don't stop being in my personal space, I will actually press my gay lips to your lips."
He gasped and jumped backwards like a ghost had dragged him by his neck.
"Not again, please," he begged, his face wrinkling as he fake cried.
"Thank you."
"Wait, we literally sleep together."
"Sleeping in the same bed because you're too poor to afford a comfortable living space isn't the same as pushing your face close to mine to find the tea inside my pores."
"Tea . . . inside . . . pores," he said out loud, typing the words into his phone.
"What are you doing?"
"I've been trying to go viral on Twitter."
"Oh, okay. Good luck."
He put his phone away and crawled back to the bed. We sat in silence, staring at each other like we were trying to communicate telepathically.
"Nothing?" he asked.
"Still nothing."
"One day."
When we went to sleep, I waited until I knew he was fast asleep and snuck away. I was afraid that I'd wake him up if I started panicking about my situation. The night Elijah brought me home, I woke Dorian up with my crying. I came up with some bullshit lie to him calm down and make him believe it was nothing. Unfortunately for me, this was Dorian. He didn't believe anything and I knew he'd start snooping around. If he somehow accidentally stumbled upon my new secret life, there would be no turning back.
I needed to protect him. And that was the reason I decided to message both Cedric and Elijah. I sent them a simple message to meet me at a location. This was yesterday.
The burning on the back of my neck woke me a few hours before I needed to get up and get ready. The strange part about the burning was that my tattoo was perfectly fine. It was a ghost pain, like an actual memory of the pain I felt when I first received it. It made no sense to me, but considering all things recently, I believed stress was getting to me.
Still better than the nightmares.
I told them to meet me at the parking lot of a mall. It was currently one in the morning, but there were hundreds of stores and bars all around, some still open and alive. It would make me feel safe and I didn't want them near my apartment.
My nerves were on fire right now. I wanted to scream and fill this empty silence, but then I'd wake up three people and that would mean three more killers to worry about.
I had nothing planned. I didn't rehearse what I wanted to say or how I wanted to reveal that I was in two fucking gangs. I shouldn't even be in this mess. I moved here with my best-friend to start life all over, not to end it sooner.
There were a few times where I blamed myself. It was my fault that I was in this mess, it was my fault that I attracted two men, it was my fault that I said yes to the job, and the longer I continued listing why it was my fault, the more ridiculous it sounded.
It wasn't my fucking fault. I was the innocent victim here and I was not going to blame myself for any of it. Elijah and Cedric knew what they were doing and they could have stopped. So did I blame them for being attracted to me? Yeah, I fucking did. Attracted to what? A basic white boy? Nice. Fucking nice. Now that white boy was fucked and not in the way we want.
Expert gang members and they couldn't keep their own members in their pants? They just HAD to drag me into it.
An hour passed and I realized I would not be able to contain the anger boiling inside of me. The nerves were fading, but the fiery emotion building up wasn't any better.
I quietly took Dorian's keys and borrowed his car. Once I drove away, I turned up the radio and distracted my brain with some mindless music. I sang along to every word I knew, and when I didn't remember, I spoke the gibberish language and pretended I knew the lyrics.
The mall was closed and the parking lot was mostly empty. I picked a spot far from the building and close to the busy street. The closer to witne—people as possible, the better. Right across the street was a Spanish bar blasting reggaeton.
I probably looked suspicious as hell sitting in my car alone, in the shadow of a large tree, staring directly at the bar full of women in tight black dresses and high heels, whipping their ponytails to the music and getting down to shake their goods.
Yeah, a creep for sure.
Every now and then drunk people would walk by, shouting random things at their friends or the air, fighting, throwing up. One group stuck around for a few minutes watching the bar, talking gossip about certain girls inside who were cheating on their boyfriends, allegedly.
As a former bartender, this was the most entertaining time of the night. The stories told got me through most of the boring nights. Reality television loved these people, hence the reason it's such easy entertainment.
Sadly, this entertainment wasn't enough to scare away the nerves cooking in my stomach. I got a text message confirmation that Cedric was almost at the location. My car would soon have some friends to sit with under the tree.
"Hey," I said out loud, testing my voice. "I have something to tell you both."
I sounded pathetic and clearly unprepared. How was I supposed to practice what I was going to say, when I had no clue where to even begin? How do I tell two gang members who were into me and had no clue about each other, that I unintentionally joined their gangs?
My phone sounded off and I picked it up immediately.
"I can't find you," Cedric said.
"Go to the front of the mall and look across the parking lot, you'll see my car under a tree."
"Ah, I see you, be there in a second."
After he hung up, I turned up the radio just a little bit. The sound of people's voices seemed to calm me down and made me feel like I wasn't totally alone. I was actually terrified to face him. I ignored his messages until I told him to meet me here. I had no idea how to tell him I got kidnapped by Lords, the gang he was investigating.
His big and aggressive truck suddenly emerged from the dark and rolled up next to me, parking lazily since there didn't seem to be any rules at night. Cedric turned off the engine and hopped out. I kept my car on just in case I needed to make speed away, but I got up and stepped out of my car as he approached me.
Fuck me.
I hadn't seen him since I got kidnapped, but I must have forgotten how incredibly hot he was, because when he stopped in front of me and stared at me with those eyes, I felt my legs go weak and my heart drop down to my ass.
He was wearing a plain grey shirt and some jeans, but it wasn't his clothes that got me riled up, it was his face. His beard and mustache were trimmed beautifully, not too close to his skin but enough hair that it was considered more of a beard rather than a stubble. His hair on the top was growing longer, so he had brushed it back and left it glistening with gel. He looked like a fucking man.
"Everything okay?" he asked, his serious voice sending cold shivers down my spine. He crossed his muscular arms over his chest and waited for my response.
"Um, no, not really," I said, preparing for the worst.
"If you didn't want to go on a date with me, you could have just said so."
I felt somewhat responsible for letting him believe that I ran away and ghosted him. I should have at least said something so he didn't worry, but honestly I couldn't mentally do something I wasn't strong enough to do. I was scared and that was my simple excuse.
"Cedric, I didn't leave that night," I began, feeling my heart starting to go wild. "I like you, I really do. But . . . that night . . . I was in the parking lot when a group of guys came out of nowhere . . . and attacked me."
His arms dropped and his eyes inspected me up and down. "What?"
I took a deep breath and released it through my nostrils before I spat out the line, "They kidnapped me."
"What?"
"I'll explain more in a few minutes," I told him.
"Few minutes? No? Explain right now what the fuck happened," he demanded, stepping into my bubble.
"I know, I know!" I said, raising my hands defensively. "It sounds mad, but I promise I will tell you everything . . . in a few minutes."
"Why a few minutes? I don't get it."
"Someone else is joining us."
"Who?" His head turned as he searched for this mysterious person I talked about.
"They're not here yet."
He also took a deep breath, but it was out of irritation. "Well, in that case, you should take this and put it away before anyone sees it." He opened the passenger side of his truck and reached in, pulling out a large box with a lock. "You were supposed to get this when you came in, but since you disappeared for a few days, they gave it to me to give to you."
I accepted the mystery box and let my eyes curiously scan it. "What is it?"
"Put it away before someone sees us."
I took the box inside the car and sat down, wondering where to hide it. "Why is it locked?"
"Oh, right." Cedric shoved his hand in his pocket and took out a key, which he kindly tossed to me.
Upon receiving the key, I wasted no time and shoved it into the keyhole. As soon as I lifted the lid and saw what was inside, I slammed it back down and closed it up with the lock.
"Ah ha ha," I said suspiciously.
It was the mask. My mask. The one I picked at my bloody initiation. The one that looked like a morphed depressed demon.
"Sorry," he said.
"It's okay," I said quietly, but not enthusiastically.
"Can I at least know you're not hurt?"
"I'm physically good."
He went to nod, then understood what I was trying to imply and changed his nod to a confused head tilt. "What?"
"I'm not happy about being kidnapped," I muttered as I placed the box on the passenger seat. "I was almost killed."
I noticed Cedric's jaw clench tightly. He was losing his patience, but I didn't want to say anything until they were both here. In fact, it shouldn't be long now until Elijah arrived.
"Right, yeah." The wait was killing him. I lost count of how many times he grunted. You could see the worry in his eyes from a mile away. I imagined he was blaming himself, thinking of all the little things that he might have done to cause this.
As I was about to pick up my phone, we heard the loud thundering sound of a motorcycle crossing the streets. It roared for a few seconds and then it disappeared, only to come back a minute later, as it pulled up to my right, just barely under the tree.
I swallowed the painful knot in my throat, but it came back up. My hands started shaking and I closed my eyes, unable to believe that this was happening.
I peaked from the corner of my eyes and watched as Elijah removed his helmet and hopped off his motorcycle. I couldn't see well from my position, but he was wearing a black shirt, black baggy pants, a shiny silver necklace that stood out in all the black, and an extremely stylish black jacket with white and grey stripes.
That was when I realized they could have mistaken this as a date—they looked too good. I might have been cryptic with my messages. But my plan was to reveal everything to the both of them at the same time, I couldn't just leave hints.
Fuck.
I exited the car and almost instantly I felt like throwing up. I wasn't a pussy, I swear. This was terrifying though.
"Who is this?" Cedric asked, keeping his green eyes on the mysterious dark boy.
I brushed my hands through my hair as Elijah slowly, painfully slowly, marched towards us. I felt like Bella in the movies who couldn't do anything with her hands except sensually touch her hair.
After what felt like an eternity, Elijah joined and stood next to me, watching Cedric with confused brown eyes.
"Is this your dad?" Elijah asked.
I covered my face in embarrassment and turned my back to them. I'd rather watch the girls dancing than watch their expressions when I told them the truth.
"Cedric, this is Elijah. Elijah, this is Cedric," I said quickly.
"Wait a minute," Cedric said. "Do I really look that old?"
Elijah thoughtfully hummed. "Maybe it's just the dark, I'm sure you're not that old."
I couldn't concentrate with them talking like this.
"Nice bike," Cedric complimented.
"Thanks, nice ride."
"Thank you!"
I turned around and stared at them.
"I'm in both of your gangs," I announced fearlessly.
I received only silence for a couple of seconds as they took in what came out of my bold mouth.
"G-Gang? I don't know what that is," Cedric said dubiously, his eyes snapping to Elijah.
My eyes also followed to Elijah, waiting for what stupid response he came up with, but he seemed lost all of the sudden, like something had pulled him away.
"Okay, if you guys are going to act dumb, then how about this." I turned around and brushed my hair away from my neck to show the crown in the color cyan.
"Hmm," Elijah said, coming back to earth. "I understand being proud, but isn't this a bit much?"
I ran to Dorian's car and pulled out the box containing proof for Elijah. I unlocked it with the key and bravely pulled out the mask and hovered it over my face.
The mask wiped off the stupid look on his face. Now they both just gazing at me, frozen like statues.
I put away the mask and stashed the box in the back seat where it was safe and hidden. When I returned back out, Cedric grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me close.
"Lucian, what did you do?" Cedric scolded, his hands gripping tightly.
I broke free from his strong grasp and pushed him away furiously.
"I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" I screamed, the emotions deep inside causing me to shiver with panic. I knew I couldn't hold it for much longer, but I tried my damn best.
"Is this who kidnapped you?"
"No, Elijah wasn't the one who kidnapped me," I lowered my voice so we wouldn't attract unwanted listeners.
"They thought he was a spy," Elijah replied, completely composed, but not making eye contact with anyone. "Lords kidnapped him and I got to him in time."
Cedric walked circles while he pressed his fingers to his temples.
"I didn't ask for this," I told them.
"But how do you join two gangs? How is that possible?" Cedric asked.
"I didn't have a fucking choice, okay?" I stressed angrily. "I'm just a normal guy who came here from a small town in Wisconsin. I accepted the only job I could get at that time and it ended up being the worst fucking mistake of my life."
"This has to be your fault," Cedric said, shooting Elijah a threatening look.
This made Elijah finally look at him. "My fault? Did you forget he joined two gangs? I did what I had to do in order to keep his heart beating. But please, enlighten me with your amazing reason why he's in Devilian."
Cedric went quiet. He knew he wasn't innocent. He took me on a job that I was never supposed to be a part of and it changed everything. If it never happened, I would have never been personally invited by Ciaran. They were both to blame, because without their selfish actions, I would have never been in this situation.
"Cedric, do you remember when I told you about that night at the warehouse?" I asked him.
"When you saw the man get killed?"
"Elijah was there. He spotted me hiding behind the boxes and he didn't tell them I was there. He tried to get me out of the warehouse by firing me and deleting information about me from their computers. It worked for a while, but then they got suspicious and it turned out Elijah didn't delete everything. They kidnapped me because they thought I was a spy, so Elijah saved me and the only way to save me was to declare . . . that we're boyfriends."
"I'm going to assume you know the situation with Lords right now," Elijah started talking to Cedric. "Akio respects how much his father liked me. I was held captive for a long time by people who wanted information about Lords. I never said anything, but I suffered a lot for it. When they finally found me, I found out the old man died and passed everything to Akio. He rewarded me, he put his trust in me, and so I used that to save Lucian's life."
"And now I'm in fucking Lords. As a fucking wife."
Cedric was giving us this deadly serious look, his brows furrowed, his forehead wrinkling intensely, but he was also looking at us like we were stupid.
"You're being oddly honest," he said to Elijah.
"I care about Lucian and I understand the seriousness of this, do you?"
"Are you insulting me?"
"Am I?" Elijah casually stuffed his hands inside the pockets of his jacket.
"I will beat the shit out of you," Cedric growled.
"I will beat the shit out of both of you if you don't stop," I warned. "You both put me in this situation. I don't know shit about this kind of life. I don't know how it works or what to do. This is why I called you both here. I am scared—no, I am terrified. I don't want my friends to get hurt because of this."
"If they find out, they will kill all of us," Elijah said, nodding his head like he had been talking to himself.
"I agree," Cedric said softly. "Ciaran won't care what excuse I give him."
"He can't go back to Devilian," Elijah said, walking up to me and feeling the back of my neck. "It's too dangerous. One windy day and it's over."
"He has to go back, and soon. They're waiting for him. They need information from him."
"Maybe I can cover it with makeup?" I suggested. "As long as it doesn't rain, I'm good."
"Do they inspect bodies?" Elijah asked.
"No, Ciaran already checked him."
"Okay, get him to Devilian tomorrow and don't leave his side. We'll meet afterwards to discuss what we're going to do next."
"I think I can make this go by smoothly. Our leader also likes me very much."
Elijah closed his eyes and lowered his head, lifting his hand up to cover the right side of his head. He smiled suddenly, but his lips quivered until the smile appeared to be forced.
Cedric looked at him then at me, I simply shook my head with my eyes wide open.
"Please stop," Elijah begged, then started to sob. "No, no, no, no! Stop saying those things! You don't know anything!" Full tears were rolling down his face. He went silent for a minute, his body trembling feverishly, and then he began to wail loudly like a father who had witnessed his child die.
"What the fuck?" Cedric whispered, stepping back as Elijah began to punch my windows—or should I say, Dorian's.
I grabbed Elijah and pulled him away from the car, but he was unbelievably strong and kept going.
I realized too late that I had asked Elijah to meet me somewhere he was afraid of. I should have been more careful, I should have remembered. Darkness triggered something inside of Elijah that no one could explain unless you had gone through what he did. I brought him to what he feared the most, and the worst part was that he knew all along, but he kept quiet about it.
"Elijah!" I tried to get his attention by stepping in front of him. I had no idea how to deal with something like this and I couldn't just force him into my car and drive him to the nearest gas station, where it was brightly lit. I knew it would take an army to get him into my car. "Look at me! Please look at me!"
"What is happening?" Cedric said.
"He's deathly afraid of the dark. He hates the night, he hates any dark places or corners, and I basically dragged him here without thinking what it would do to him."
"Oh."
"Elijah, please open your eyes and look at me!"
His eyes suddenly flung open, they were red and glistening.
"They're going to kill me," he cried.
"Nobody is going to kill you. You're safe, Elijah." I wrapped my arms around him and tightened my embrace. He accepted my hug and felt less tense. I could still hear him crying, but he was no longer freaking out. "I'm sorry that I brought you here. I'm sorry that I forgot."
"They're going to kill you, too," he whispered in my ear.
"We all gotta die someday," I replied in the same tone.
Elijah rested his head on my shoulders, making no move to break our contact. I watched Cedric the entire time while acting like Elijah's hug shield to push all the bad thoughts for now. Cedric could sense the intense emotion floating in the air, it made him step back as if he were interrupting something.
"I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said, his eyes not meeting mine.
I wanted to stop him, but I was scared Elijah would return to the bad places. I wanted to keep him believing he was safe until he was okay again.
"I'm sorry," I told Cedric, hoping he heard it as he got into his truck.
"They're everywhere," Elijah began to sob again, struggling to breathe properly against the fear. "And they are so loud."
Not sure that I could make this embrace tighter and warmer, but I tried to make sure that all of him knew I was there holding him, keeping him safe from anything attempting to hurt him.
"I won't let go until they're gone, okay?" I told him.
"Th-they will n-never leave," he stumbled over his words, catching his breath at the end like he had been running for miles. "I tried to kill myself, b-but they d-didn't go away."
"If you ever feel like hurting yourself, please come to me instead, okay?"
"You won't be mad?"
"No, I won't be mad."
We stood there in the darkness, the place that shook his core, until the voices in his head were quiet once again. We stood in the parking lot long after he settled down, afraid that he would go manic again. I also had to be sure that he could safely be on the road again. If not for him, then for everyone else on the road.
Once Elijah was gone, I jumped back into the car and drove straight to my apartment, quietly sneaking in and placing the car keys where Dorian had left them. I hid the box with my mask under the bed. I knew how horrible the location was, but my options were limited. Besides, it was only temporary. I was planning to move out of this apartment immediately after my visit to the Devilian gang tomorrow.
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[Author's Message]: Omg I can't believe this chapter is here! AH! Don't worry, I know what you guys are thinking - Lucian WILL reveal more to them in the coming chapters, this first interaction had to be short but hopefully it got you guys excited. More relationship stuff will be next chapter and it will continue through the many more chapters. I know some of you think this is slow as heck since it took 17 chapters for them to meet, but I promise it's for a good cause. Things should speed up now after this chapter and soon you'll get your boyxboyxboy fill.
(Ps: While writing the hugging scene, the song "Dusk Till Dawn" played in the background and I noticed the lyrics and who it was sung by and I literally screamed at the coincidence. If you don't know already, Elijah is played by Zayn, and the song lyrics literally say "You'll never be alone, I'll be with you from Dusk Till Dawn, baby I'm right here, I'll hold you when things go wrong" like WTF are the chances? I'm messed up about this LMAO. This was meant to be.)