Ash laughed. "Honestly, I didn't think it would feel this good to tell someone. And it was in the past and a dead thing that was settled. I didn't think you needed that shit in your life, in your head. Why would I bother you with it?"
"So it could make you feel not fucking alone, that's why! I'm your brother. Jesus... Think he's the reason why we're both violent fucks?"
Ash snorted at that. "Fuck no." He thought about the words before he said them. "His was a way different kind of violence, Ivy, a guilty kind. The two things aren't even in the same sphere."
"Ah. I just wondered." To be fair, Ivory could see why he would wonder that. "And... Ash, I think your girl might come back to you."
Ash rubbed his forehead. "Why do you think that? Because... I don't." Which was what was killing him if he was being honest.
"Well." Ivory leaned back in his chair, having taken the day off to deal with Ash's bullshit, because he was awesome like that.
"Because if you think her running was entirely your fault then, no offense, but that makes you the most narcissistic fuck alive. It sounds like she doesn't even know what she meant when she talked about disappearing, or what was missing for her. I think she'll come back because... because I think she has to figure that out so she can tell you. Also, you're kind of adorable when you're in love."
Ash threw a cup at him and he laughed and Ash had to grin, feeling alive again. Maybe Ivory was right.
Maybe he just needed to wait and hope, as the Count of Monte Cristo would say. And he had ended up with Haydee the slave, so maybe there was a chance Ash would end up with his.
Jezebel's life for a few weeks was a haze. Not the acute, wonderfully focused, lustful haze that her Master had given her, either.
Don't think about him.
It was a bad, bad haze instead. She switched her drugs as she needed to, since classes had started back. She would go through the lectures in a downer spell, sitting in the back sometimes so she could drink and hide it.
And once her homework piled up on her, she would switch to Adderall and burn through the work in a focused kind of haze. Though it still wasn't the controlled type of focus that her Master gave her.
No. Stop it. Don't think about him.
And then she was back to being down. She would do awesome work and turn it in miserably, with no pride in it, because it still wasn't her best work. She wasn't at her best and even not at her best, she was still academically amazing. But, her Master wouldn't have let her settle for that.
He's not here. Stop thinking about him!
Jezebel vaguely remembered switching apartments with her roommates' friend, vaguely remembered passing out someplace different, showering someplace different. For a while, she would see him around, looking for her probably.
And she would hide like a rat, too scared to have an adult conversation with him. She had hurt him, she knew, and maybe that meant she deserved this feeling of pain. But staring at the sun that day with him had been like waking from a dream-
You mean like this is a dream?
Had been like realizing the happiest moments of her life were lies-
You mean like this is a fucking lie?
Had been like raising above foggy waters that she could drown beneath-
You mean like you're drowning now?
Weekends were a nightmare-
What are these razor cuts?
Started to get worse-
You're going to die.
Started to get unbearable-
There's a cure and you won't take it.
Started to get dangerous-
Let me help you, kotik.
And then, Jezebel finally broke and she couldn't even remember what she had taken, couldn't remember the cocktail. All she knew was that she was suddenly standing in front of a very familiar door, and she couldn't remember how she had gotten there.
She raised her hand to knock and fell to her knees instead. She vaguely remembered crawling to the side of the wall, in the back alley, and curling up, cuddling in her jacket.
She wasn't where he was, but maybe this was enough, to just be near that dark world where everything made sense. Maybe she would start to make sense again.
She laughed softly, with her eyes closed, and remembered telling him it had felt like she was disappearing.
She had been lying and now she knew what disappearing felt like. It felt like curling up on that wall, as a shadow of the person she had been. It felt like hurting the most loving person she had ever met. Goddamn him and how wonderfully amazing he was.
Jezebel didn't know how long it was before someone touched her shoulder, and she heard a voice that wasn't his.
She growled at it to go away and rolled over, tugging on the cheap pleather collar she had taken to wearing for comfort.
That voice spoke again, but she was halfway back asleep, and only dimly aware of someone telling her it was too cold at night, and this was bad. That voice could go fuck itself. She was so freaking tired from being scared all the time.
She growled again when she was tugged to her feet, forced up with her arm around someone's shoulder. And then there was another voice. "What the fuck?"
"I don't know who she is, but ask Ash what to do."
There was arguing and Jezebel wished they'd all just shut up and leave her alone to her misery, because she'd hurt the one person who had ever actually liked her for her, and deserved it.
But then it was all erased, washed away, because she heard that voice, his voice. And he was cooing above her. "Kotyonok," he whispered. And he spoke a sentence in Russian.
Jezebel had spent most of her free time, while drugged, learning that Rosetta Stone course. Somehow, it had stuck this time because she whispered back in Russian. Something about her being crazy.
He laughed and lifted her and finally, finally, she was back in the arms of that wonderful demon, the only person she had met so far who wouldn't put up with her bullshit, who would keep her secure from herself.
Jezebel groaned awake, already knowing where she was. She felt too safe, too wonderful, and there was only one place that made her feel like that.
She opened her eyes and looked out of the bars of her cage. But then she frowned because there were bars and it was a cage, but the view was wrong.
And there was someone else with her. Her cage was not big enough for two people to cuddle so comfortably. It took her a minute to piece it together, but she realized she was asleep under his huge sex bed.
And he was with her. She rolled over to look at him and he was already awake, smiling at her. "Good afternoon, Pet."
***