18. Kyle

CHAPTER 18

Kyle

K yle was casually leant against a graffitied street sign, ankles crossed and his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans, when the Masters left the building after their meeting. Each one glanced at him with the same levels of curiosity and caution he gave them in turn; he'd been at House Epsilon long enough for them to know who he was, and while he'd met most of them individually over the years, he'd never been around all of the Coterie together like this. The air felt charged, tense, like one wrong word or move would set them all off.

Epsilon was flanked by Masters Rho and Theta, their heads bowed in quiet, but agitated discussion. All three of them drew up short at the sight of Kyle at the bottom of the building's steps.

"Careful with that one, Epsilon," Master Rho remarked testily, giving Kyle a sour look. "I've just had a Randall leave me in the lurch when she knew I was already low on staff. And just before the weekend, too!"

Having heard many tales from Indira of how ruthlessly Master Rho ran her House, he felt no sympathy for what was clearly a problem of her own making. But he watched her expression carefully, cataloguing it to gift the description to his cousin later. Indira would be very pleased to know she'd caused her ex-House Master a fraction of the aggravation Rho had inflicted on her for years.

"It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you," Kyle said to his own Master.

Epsilon shot him a knowing, private smile. "Kyle isn't going anywhere," he told them.

Rho beamed smugly in approval.

Master Theta, on Epsilon's other side, wasn't as easily placated. His gaze was bitterly suspicious as he glanced at Kyle. "Perhaps he should be," he muttered, his voice low yet still audible. "You don't want him around when the Mackenroths make their move, Epsilon."

Master Epsilon's face showed only his usual impassive professionalism. "If you'll excuse me," he said curtly. "I have House business to attend to."

At those words, Kyle's heart sank, fearing that Epsilon had meant nothing by his invitation outside of light-hearted banter and that Kyle was to be left there with the other Masters, dismissed and found unworthy of the man's desirable company.

But it was Kyle who was snagged in his gaze, Kyle who he turned his face to in exclusion of all the others, and Kyle who he allowed to pace at his heels as he crossed the road.

"I did not realise you would make such good time here," Epsilon murmured, taking huge strides with those long legs of his so that Kyle was forced to jog to keep up. "It was not my wish for you to find yourself caught in a swarm of House Masters."

"A swarm," Kyle repeated, partly to keep the subject from lingering on his embarrassingly hasty arrival, and partly in the warm delight of holding Epsilon's attention like this . Outside of work, when the man hadn't even needed to acknowledge him, let alone engage him in conversation and divert them, with a subtle twist of his hips and a sidestep, into one of the smaller alleys that fed onto the main road. "A swarm is a good word for them. Makes them sound like bats."

"Or insects," Epsilon offered, his tone mild but bearing a hint of sharp disdain. "Making a great display of looking busy, but with little to show for all the scurrying around."

"Your meeting didn't go well?"

"What is the point," Epsilon muttered under his breath, "of being in a swarm if they scatter and flee when the bird arrives?"

Kyle didn't know how to respond to that, or how deep the analogy was intended to be. He tried for a joke instead.

"My mum told me to never accompany strangers into dark corners of the city," he said teasingly, nudging Epsilon with his elbow.

The man glanced sideways and raised an eyebrow. He didn't need to say anything: Kyle had already realised how dense such a comment was when their shared profession was literally born from dark city corners, and there was hardly an excess of well-lit or safe areas on Xerxes.

Even now, the level should have been brightening as they moved into the morning hours. But with the power still out it remained as dark as night, the only pinpricks of light those from the remaining emergency lighting sources.

"I've never heard you talk about your mother," Epsilon murmured instead of offering a sardonic reply, surprising him. "What was she like?"

Kyle hadn't heard Master Epsilon talk about a lot of things, including his own name. Perhaps he was asking Kyle to open up to him to make it easier for him to do the same.

And perhaps Kyle was deluding himself with that optimistic na?veté his boss often accused him of, and Epsilon was simply keeping the conversation away from himself, like usual.

"She was kind," Kyle said anyway. "She was the one who convinced my dad we should take in my cousin Indira after my aunt and uncle died. Said we shouldn't abandon family, despite his protests that we could barely feed us . Mum worked extra shifts at the factory to cover the cost, sometimes 18, 20 hours at a time, and it meant we barely saw her despite her quite literally giving her life for ours." Kyle stared at the murky shapes of his boots as they trod the grimy concrete, his voice lowering to nearly a whisper. "The only job I could find when she died was the vacancy that she created. Sitting at the very machine that killed mum, wondering if the marks I stared at on the steel press each day was the blood from where she'd been caught in the belt...or just rust."

"This fucking city."

Epsilon sounded off, so Kyle forced a grin to his face and shrugged. He hadn't meant to sound so pitiable.

"It was only for a few months, at least. Some people never get out of the factories." They turned another corner, sinking even deeper into the black, spindly veins of Xerxes. "Whoring pays far better, and at least I don't have to worry about dying from it."

Epsilon made a choking noise and then cleared his throat instantly afterwards, as if that's what he'd been trying to do all along. There was a long silence before he spoke. "You applied to my House the day you turned eighteen."

This time Kyle's grin was genuine, and he dared to meet Epsilon's eyes. "I applied to all of them, but you were the only one to respond. I've never regretted it."

"Neither have I," Epsilon breathed. They'd come to a stop in one of the dark and nameless passageways, Kyle not having noticed when, and now they stared at each other. Something held them both still in that cold, silent space, a weight that felt mightier than the brick walls around them and yet more fragile than a spider's web.

Epsilon swallowed and Kyle's eyes greedily followed the movement, darting down to his delicate throat and back up to those resolute brown eyes. The window to the soul, perhaps, yet only when the other man had his guard down like he did now. Master Epsilon wore his self-possessed competence as a shield, but there were moments – brief and precious moments – when Kyle was gifted a glimpse beyond the calculating, occasionally cold-blooded professional to the man beneath.

Softness. Tenderness, even, in the care and compassion he showed to his staff but pretended meant nothing, his hidden yet gentle side that Kyle had fallen in love with as much as the ruthless ferocity. The breathtaking contradiction of him: submissive and Dominant, vulnerable and powerful, needy and needed .

"Akira," Epsilon whispered. The word seemed to fade before it had even reached the unforgiving hardness of the shadowy walls towering around them, as though it were saving itself for Kyle's ears alone. "My name is Akira Miyasaki."

Akira.

Perhaps Kyle should have taken a moment to appreciate the enormity of the gesture, of how much trust he was gifting Kyle in sharing it, but thought seemed too insurmountable a task at that moment. Kissing, however, wrapping this beautiful, fragile-but-not man in his arms and devouring his mouth so he could shape the syllables against his lips and feel them branded there forever – Akira – was something that required no thought at all.

Akira.

And Akira breathed Kyle's name back to him, giving it a reverence Kyle himself had never considered it held, as though he was also hearing it for the first time. Fingers wrapped in hair, dipped under clothes and around each other's waists, until it became impossible to work out in the darkness where Kyle ended and Akira began.