21. Kyle

CHAPTER 21

Kyle

T hey came for Kyle as soon as he opened the door.

It was in the brief moment of disorientation when both of their eyes were still adjusting from the transition of the outside glare back into Xerxes' gloomy interior, and perhaps if Kyle hadn't been riding high on spending the last hour bathed in warm sunlight and the intoxicating pleasure of Akira's company, he might have been more careful. Might have exercised the caution that was bred into all Lowers, for the city could be an extremely unfriendly place.

But although Kyle hadn't seen the men waiting for him before the hood came down over his head, he heard them – heavy breathing, a quick exclamation of satisfaction – and felt their hands all over him, efficiently pinning his arms to his sides and yanking him through the doorway into Xerxes' streets.

Kyle's pulse spiked with fear.

The suddenness of it all had rendered him mute. Yet even when he found his voice and tried to cry out, a solid blow to the stomach drove his breath from him.

His body tried to double up from the pain but he was completely unable to move, held in place by his unseen assailants. The hood was cinched tighter around his neck and he began to panic as the fabric pulled taut across his mouth and nose.

"I don't fucking think so," growled a low voice, dangerous and sinister. Kyle recognised it as the tone of an extremely pissed off House Master who knew exactly how hard to hit someone, and would take his pleasure in doing so.

Akira!

Kyle's momentary hope for a rescue was quickly consumed by a rush of guilt. This wasn't a play scene in which men like him and Master Epsilon controlled what happened next with safe words and consent: it was genuine, real-life violence. And there were too many of them.

Akira needed to run while he was still free. If he was still free. Oh stars, if he was caught too…

A howl of agony beyond the hood made Kyle flinch.

No.

He doubled his struggles as shouts erupted around him, tossing himself against his captors without care or regard for himself. In response, his left arm was twisted up high behind his back, and Kyle grunted as the pain brought tears to his eyes. The rough fabric of the hood scratched at his face, but at least it hid his humiliation from them.

"Settle down or I'll break this," someone snarled irritably in his ear, giving Kyle's pinned arm a further vicious wrench that sent scalding pain lancing through it. He was dragged backwards, and would have stumbled if not for the hands holding him upright. "You won't need your fucking arm where you're going, you little-"

The words were abruptly cut off at the same time as the warmth and pressure of the man on his left disappeared, Kyle's arm jerked sharply away from his body and then released. There was a sickening crunch of bone and a shriek split the air, high-pitched and terrified.

Kyle scrabbled at the hood with his nearly numb left hand, tearing and clawing desperately at it and then the ties that were keeping it secured around his neck when it failed to pull free. He didn't even notice the remainder of the hands on him vanish, only the ones that abruptly clamped down over his own; warm and uncompromising and trying to hold him still.

He wouldn't be still. He wasn't going to let them take him, wasn't going to be led meekly to whatever fate they had planned, wouldn't-

"Kyle. Kyle! "

Akira's voice again, no less furious than before, but now close enough that it had to belong to the man daring to hold onto him.

Kyle faltered and let his hands be pulled away from his own neck, risking renewed helplessness in the trust that Akira was there for him.

The hood loosened and then drew up over his head to reveal the most beautiful sight Kyle had ever seen.

Akira, his hair dishevelled and his right cheek smeared with blood, those brown eyes wide and concerned.

"Are you alrig-"

Without warning Akira shoved him back against the metal city wall, driving the wind from Kyle's lungs for a second time. Through his breathless haze, he saw why: one of Kyle's assailants had lunged, the flash of metal in his hand suggesting he was armed, and the horror of it all returned in force as he watched that jagged blade come down towards Akira's perfect, bared neck.

And then Kyle blinked and the man with gang tattoos was on the ground, blood gushing from his chest, and a whole and unhurt Akira was gathering up Kyle's hands between his own once more. Grim shadows loomed from both directions of the alleyway, closing in on them with menace.

"This way!"

Akira tugged him insistently towards the door in the wall that still burst with light, pushing him through first and following on his heels. Shaking off his shock, Kyle helped him wrench the heavy metal door shut barely a second before the first of the men reached them, and then he held onto its handle with desperate, straining fingers as the pressure increased from the other side.

The door clicked and automatically locked itself. Kyle tentatively let go, but it rattled and banged as the men threw their weight against it.

The metal was strong. It wouldn't break easily.

He hoped.

A sharp inhale echoed in Kyle's ears. He spun to find the Master warily facing off against two more men who must have passed through the doorway earlier in the fight for the extra room, perhaps, or the same curiosity that had brought the two of them out here earlier. It felt wrong for the burly, unshaven brutes to be standing in the peaceful rays of sunlight that had brought Kyle such peace a few moments ago, brass knuckles adorning both of their right hands and the distinctive claw mark tattoos of the Carrion on their cheeks.

"Step aside," one of the gang members said brusquely, jerking his chin at Akira. "Our orders were for Randall only."

Kyle swallowed.

But Akira merely smiled – a dazzling thing, more breathtaking than the surrounding view and more dangerous than the way the metal catwalk ominously creaked beneath their feet – and lunged at them.

Kyle, who had intended to help him out in what he'd seen as a rather terrifying set of odds, could only stare. The Master of House Epsilon moved in a blur of deadly grace, ducking and weaving around the two opponents with dance-like elegance that before now, Kyle would have said didn't belong in a fight. The brutal punches the other men threw at his head or torso appeared ungainly, slow, and directionless, and unequivocally failed to land.

For where Akira had been, he was no longer. And where either of the Carrions weren't – weren't expecting, weren't looking, weren't protecting with their arms – there he was, striking with fast and efficient moves.

And not always with his fist. Akira used the edge of his outstretched hand across one of the men's throats to send him down to his knees, where the man gasped and choked and pawed at his neck. When the Master did clench his fingers, he struck as often with the back or side of his fist as he did the front, and his smart, shiny shoes frequently found themselves embedded in the men's stomachs or hooked around their ankles.

Kyle watched it all with breathless awe. When this was over, he was going to take his man – the one tossing another to the floor and casually breaking his fingers like it was nothing – and kiss the fuck out of him. Maybe bend him over one of those railings for good measure.

The Carrion slumped to the grated floor with a low keening noise, staring at his damaged hand.

Unfazed, the second attacker leapt over his friend's hunched form and charged. Akira stood poised, his body relaxed but ready, and when the other man came into range he knocked him out cold with a brutal blow to the temple that made Kyle wince in sympathy.

Akira imperiously brushed down his suit and was turning back towards Kyle when the ground gave way beneath their feet.

The gut-wrenching sensation of falling stole any noise Kyle may have made, and he clawed at the metal grating of the catwalk as he slid down its suddenly angled surface. But his fingers couldn't find purchase, and now there was only air beneath him, and fuck he was going to plunge down to the Earth and be grateful there were only five thousand metres to suffer through instead of ten and-

Kyle came to a jerking, painful halt a lot sooner than he'd expected, and he raised his head to find he was hanging just below the loose catwalk. Akira's fingers were closed firmly around his wrist, his other hand tightly clutching one of the railings where he crouched at the very edge of the dislodged platform.

There was no sign of the two Carrions. Kyle didn't dare look down, too worried he might see their bodies falling into oblivion.

There wasn't really much of an optimistic spin he could put on that, no matter what they'd planned to do to him.

Akira made a soft noise of exertion, and it was so heartbreaking familiar to Kyle – how many times had he heard that same sound last night as he slid into him? – that he stared up at the other man for a moment, frozen. And then the catwalk swayed and rattled, reminding them of how fragile the remaining support was that was tethering the metal walkway to the wall…and the two of them to life.

"Let me go," Kyle urged, sharpening his voice into an order when Akira failed to immediately obey. "I'm going to kill us both, let me go!"

He didn't dare wriggle, worried he might accidentally dislodge the other man's position, but he wasn't going to watch Akira eventually tire and fall, either.

"Damn you, Akira, let go of me!"

The Master blew out a long, unsteady breath. His arm was beginning to shake from the weight, and there were beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

He met Kyle's eye and nodded briskly. "I'm going to let go of you now."

"No! Fuck no, please no," Kyle begged, instantly terrified and hating himself for it. "Don't, please. I'll give you whatever you like – you want me to never talk back to you again? I can do that. Or if you ask me to get on all fours and neigh like a horse for you, I'll do it! Whatever you want, Master, just please, please don't drop me!"

Akira raised a scathing eyebrow. "Are you done?"

"I don't know," Kyle babbled, his heart pounding so fast he was surprised it hadn't exploded. "Was it enough or do I need to beg some more?"

"I'm going to let go of you now," he repeated, "so I can swing you onto the walkway of the level below. Is that acceptable?"

Kyle looked down and saw the catwalk for Level D only a metre from his trailing feet.

"Oh. Yes."

"Please don't fall any further than that," Akira said icily. "I'll have to come after you, and I'm afraid neither of us will enjoy the experience."

"Noted," Kyle said, trying to sound like he hadn't just been pleading for his life. And then he saved his breath entirely, swallowing down his fear and replacing it with concentration and an outstretched hand.

Being swung out over the abyss was unsurprisingly grim, but when Akira let go of Kyle's wrist on the reverse swing, his chest slammed into the railing of Level D without even needing to reach for it. Kyle hugged the bars like his life depended on it, refusing to acknowledge that it actually did , and by the time he'd sufficiently loosened his terrified muscles to clamber over the top and onto the relative safety of a catwalk that didn't creak beneath his feet, Akira had already landed lightly beside him with more of that effortless grace.

Kyle reached for him. He reached for Kyle.

And they spent more of those quiet moments tangled in each other, not just sharing space but also the horror of what had almost happened.

It took a long time for Kyle's body to relax, the adrenaline continuing to pump through him, but Akira didn't push them to move even when the door on Level C above burst open and three more Carrions came swarming out into the sun. They snarled threats down at them and one went so far as to spit in their direction, but while they remained four storeys apart with only a dangerously swaying, near vertical section of catwalk to traverse the distance between them, Kyle and Akira were safe.

The men disappeared back inside the city, presumably to find a way down to Level D. But the closest elevators were a long way from here and it would take them an hour to return, at least. Kyle and Akira would have enough time to disappear back into the streets.

"They…the two who were up there with us…they're dead," Kyle whispered in revulsion when he'd recovered enough of himself to speak.

"I expect so," Akira agreed coldly, glancing out over the railings to the sea of clouds that suddenly seemed a lot less cheerful than before. "It was the least of what they deserved."

Stars . "What do you think it was that they wanted?"

Akira sighed. "You."

Kyle's gut lurched even as he told himself he'd known that. The men had gone for him, not the Master. He had only been in their way, and they'd said so themselves. "But why-"

"Our mayor is not a patient man, Kyle, nor one used to being denied."

Master Epsilon had told him and Mish that Mackenroth wouldn't indulge his brother's demand for Kyle, that they had nothing to worry about…but of course, his boss was a fucking liar. Akira had done what he always did, pretending everything was fine while quietly fixing problems in the background so his staff would never know what he sacrificed for them, or how dirty his hands got doing it.

But while Kyle had been given glimpses of those efforts from time to time, through the ire of the other Masters when Epsilon refused to run his House as they demanded, the constant pressure on him to fall in line, and how the harassment of the police never escalated into something worse as a result of Akira's bribes, Kyle had never realised that the man practiced the same false reassurances on him as well.

It should have made him furious, and there was admittedly a streak of that rage in there, but mostly Kyle felt…sad. Because Akira shouldn't have to take on the weight of all those worries alone. He loved that the Master felt such a fierce need to protect his House and its workers from Xerxes' pervasive evil, but he didn't want to cower in the man's shadow and beg for salvation.

He wanted to stand at his side and deliver it with him.

Although if today was any indication, Kyle wasn't exactly going to be much use. How much more fucking competent could the man get?

"I had no idea you could do that," Kyle said. His voice was steeped in admiration, and he traced a finger down Akira's cheek where the blood had begun to dry. It wasn't, he was pleased to realise, Akira's own. "The way you fought, what was it?"

"Wado-ryu karate. With the dangers of our profession, I thought it appropriate to learn how to defend myself."

"Is that why you're so flexible?" Kyle asked without missing a beat, inappropriate images coming to mind about all the ways he could make Akira bend for him.

The comment earned him a snort. A fucking snort , from a man so dignified and put-together that Kyle had accused him more than once of being a talking mannequin. For an expensive suit store, naturally.

"Will you teach me? To fight like you?"

Akira's gaze dropped to his, startled, and then he smiled shyly. "I'd like that."

"Me too." Kyle cleared his throat. "Obviously, because I asked. You…you know what I mean."

He paused as a thought struck him.

Kyle ran a daring hand down the firm curve of the other man's ass and squeezed it. They both groaned. "Wait. Are you still wearing the toy I put in you?"

Epsilon lowered his head and looked up at Kyle through his dark eyelashes, his expression enticingly coy and mischievous.

"By the stars," Kyle cursed. Through all that fighting and falling and climbing? "We should take it out."

"Right here, Sir?"

Kyle eyed the man with amusement and a not-insignificant amount of temptation. "No, pet. You're coming back to my place."