Unhinged by Onley James

Adam stayed awake long after Noah’s breathing had slowed and he began to snore softly. He hadn’t been lying about fucking Noah awake, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. It was easier to steal the hair Calliope needed to run his DNA when he couldn’t ask questions. Luckily, Noah slept soundly and didn’t even notice when Adam plucked the strands from his head and slipped them into a tiny baggy, stashing it in his bedside table, before drawing the covers up over them both and letting himself drift to sleep as well.

The sun was high in the sky when Adam woke the second time, Noah still tucked beside him. He buried his face in Noah’s throat, his hand curving around his hip to palm over his soft cock, stroking him just enough to get him hard but not enough to wake him. Not yet.

Adam rubbed himself against Noah’s ass lazily as he played with him, loving the sighs and tiny whimpers he made even in his sleep whenever Adam did something right. He released Noah long enough to grab the lube, slicking his fingers, and sliding down between Noah’s cheeks, groaning as he slipped two inside, pumping them in and out of his tight passage. He worried Noah’s ear between his teeth, pulling free and slicking his cock before snugging it up against Noah’s wet hole, sliding home in one smooth motion.

Noah’s gasp of surprise turned into a low moan, his hand reaching back to grip Adam’s hip.

“Morning,” Adam murmured, turning Noah’s head so he could kiss him deep as he rocked in and out of him lazily.

“Oh, fuck,” Noah rasped, voice sleep soaked, lids still at half-mast.

Adam took Noah’s cock back in hand, working him in time with his thrusts, using his panting breaths and tiny half bitten cries to gauge just how close he was and adjusting accordingly.

Adam had wanted to draw it out, savor it, but his resolve lessened when Noah’s whimpers turned into frustrated whines as he tried to work himself into Adam’s fist faster. “Adam,” Noah groaned.

Adam chuckled, pulling free of Noah, flipping him onto his back, catching his knees over his elbows, practically bending him in half as he slammed back into him. They both moaned as Adam fucked into him in hard, deep strokes.

He wasn’t going to last much longer. The tight heat of Noah’s body was too good. “Touch yourself,” he ordered.

Noah did as Adam commanded, working his cock without any real finesse, eyes locked on where they were joined together. Somehow, that was even hotter to Adam, knowing Noah wanted to watch him disappear into his body, as desperate for it as Adam was.

“Come for me,” Adam said, eyes locked on Noah’s cock. When his expression grew pained, like he was too in his head, Adam slapped his face hard twice, then locked his hand around Noah’s throat. “Don’t think about it. Just listen to me and do what you’re told. Come on, baby. Let me hear you. You know how much I love listening to you fall apart.”

Noah’s eyes rolled back, his lips parting. “Oh, fuck. Harder. Squeeze harder. Please. Please, Adam. I’m so close. Please.”

Adam snarled, giving Noah what he asked for, tightening his grip on his neck and giving in to his need to fuck Noah the way he wanted, driving into him, fire running through his blood as he could feel his pleasure building.

When Noah finally cried out, spilling over his fist, Adam was right there, too, giving a few more aborted thrusts before burying himself deep, filling Noah up. God, that would never stop being hot.

He collapsed, pressing his face against Noah’s neck.

“Morning,” Noah said with a breathless laugh. “It’s a good thing I don’t have a job that requires me sitting all day. I think you broke me.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have a job that would question the bruises already forming on your throat,” Adam said, kissing said bruises.

“That’s hot,” Noah said, arms coming up around Adam in a loose hug.

Adam had never really been hugged before—not without it being some kind of learning exercise his father had created—but found he liked Noah’s arms around him, liked Noah’s everything, really.

“What time do you work today?” Adam asked, pulling back to look at him.

“Five, why?”

Adam grinned. “Just want to know how many times I can fill you up before we have to shower.”

Noah blushed. “You need to feed me first.”

Adam sighed. “Fine. Shower, then breakfast. Then sex. Then lunch. Then sex. Then another shower. Then work.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “I’m only willing to commit to food and a shower. The rest is to be negotiated on a case by case basis.”

Adam made a sulky face. “This is why you’re going to end up chained to my bed.”

Noah shoved Adam off him with a snort. “You’re ridiculous. I’m starving.”

Adam’s phone began to vibrate across his nightstand. He almost ignored it until he saw it was Calliope. “Hello, Calliope. How are you?” he asked, voice full of mocking.

This time, it was Calliope who got right to it. “I found your creep’s cabin. Noah was right. He didn’t sell it.”

Adam had called Calliope after he’d ordered dinner last night, but he hadn’t anticipated her finding the cabin so fast. That was what he got for underestimating her. “Where is it?”

“About forty-five minutes outside the city. Just close enough to use it as often as he wants.”

“Gross. Any news on the key?” he asked.

There was the sound of nails tapping over keys. “Not yet. I’m still going through financials. I’ll let you know.”

“Shoot me the address of the cabin?”

“It’s already done, sweet cheeks.”

“That’s why I love you.” Adam disconnected, finding Noah watching him with an amused expression. “What?”

“You seem to genuinely like her.”

Adam stopped short. “Yeah. I do. I like most people when I think about it. I find them fascinating. Like opening up a car and seeing how the engine runs. If you watch a person long enough, you start to see all the pieces that make them go.”

“What are my pieces?” Noah asked.

Adam looked at him for a long moment. “You’re soft.” When Noah bristled, Adam cupped his face. “Not in a bad way. You’re like candy. Sweet. Soft on the inside with a hard shell around you.”

Noah snorted, but he seemed hurt, like he thought maybe Adam didn’t really see him at all.

“The boy I met in that warehouse, the one with the stars on his cheeks, that’s the real you. The you who might have stayed soft and gentle if you’d had different parents. But circumstance has made you build a wall around yourself, made you push back against anybody who even slightly wronged you so that they didn’t see how vulnerable you were. You want affection, but you fear it. You want love but are afraid it will be taken from you if you let anybody get too close. You’ve numbed yourself to kill the pain of the life you’ve lived so far, but it’s made you so…impervious to touch that you need it rough just to get off.”

The color had drained from Noah’s face, and when he spoke, he sounded almost on the verge of tears. “Jesus. You could get a job as a carnival psychic.”

Adam pulled Noah close until they were almost nose to nose. “I like all your pieces. I like you soft and I like you tough. You see all my pieces, too, you know? You see things about me even my family doesn’t. Letting somebody see you isn’t a bad thing if you can trust them.”

Noah swallowed hard. “And you trust me?”

“Yes. Do you trust me?”

Noah nodded. “Yes,” he said, voice thick.

“Good. Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“What did Calliope have to say?” Noah asked after a few minutes.

“She found the cabin. It’s forty-five minutes outside the city.”

“We need to go. Like now. We need to see what’s in there.”

“We’re going to go. But first, shower, then we’ll grab food on the way. Calliope already sent me the address.”

Noah just kept nodding, looking spooked. “Yeah, we need to go.”

Adam didn’t know what else to do so he just leaned forward and kissed his forehead. What did you say to somebody who was about to relive the worst time of their life?

* * *

“What’s Calliope look like?” Noah asked around his breakfast burrito once they were on their way out of the city.

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her.”

Noah froze with food stuffed in his cheek, looking like a chipmunk. “Wuh?”

“Yeah. My father knows who she is, but we don’t. It’s safer that way. For her. She has a family, children, hell, maybe even grandchildren. I don’t even know how old she is or what she looks like or even her real name. I just know she loves romance novels and Pop Funko dolls.”

Noah frowned. “But you gave her the hard drive.”

“No, I left the hard drive at the drop point. She goes there to retrieve it later.”

“And you’ve never been curious enough to stake out the drop point? See what she looks like?”

Adam scoffed. “Uh, no. My dad made it very clear that we are never to break that confidentiality. Ever. He has a way of getting his point across.”

Noah munched his breakfast burrito thoughtfully for a few minutes. “But isn’t that dangerous? For you? Like, wouldn’t it be safer if you all knew what she looked like? Mutually assured destruction or something?”

Adam shrugged. “Like I said, she and my dad are friends. He knows who she is. She understands what my father is trying to do. His end game. I’m pretty sure she lost somebody a long time ago. She feels the need to be a part of this, to right the wrongs or whatever. My father is very…careful about who knows our secret.”

“And now, I know your secret,” Noah said, voice full of apprehension.

Adam gripped Noah’s hand. “I’ll never let anybody hurt you. Especially my family. If it came down to it, I know where all the bodies are buried…literally. If they hurt you, they have to take me out, too, and despite what my brothers think, I’m too valuable. My father would never eliminate a research subject.”

Noah crumpled up his wrapper and tossed it into the empty bag at his feet. “Is that what you are? A research subject?”

“My father would never say it that way. He looks at each of us as his…creations. He thinks he Frankensteined us into becoming useful members of society. While Dr. Shepherd wanted to study psychopaths to better understand her son and how to keep him from becoming a danger, my father wanted us to harness that danger, point it at the right target. But to do that, we have to be able to move seamlessly between who we are and who the world perceives us to be. His money makes it possible for us to operate as two people.”

“He adopted all of you to turn you into weapons?” Noah asked, sounding more curious than concerned.

“‘Look like the flower but be the serpent underneath,’” Adam quoted. When Noah frowned, Adam clarified. “Shakespeare. Macbeth, specifically. In order to right the wrongs of the justice system, we have to look innocent to the world as a whole.”

“Is that why you have a snake tattoo?”

“We all have them. Even my egghead brother Atticus. My father made each of us get one after our first kill, so we’d never forget our purpose.”

“Does it bother you? That your dad thinks of you like that?”

Adam shook his head. “No. My dad loves us. He’s proud of his creations. He calls us works of art. He sculpted each of us into the killers we are. He really believes we’re not a flaw in the genetic fabric of society but a necessary evil. We can do what others can’t. If anything, I sometimes wonder if it bothers him. That he found us, saved us, educated and trained us, loved us…and we can never love him back. Not like he loves us.”

“You don’t feel love at all?” Noah asked.

Adam glanced over at Noah’s taut expression. “Not in the way others can. I’m not wired that way. Sometimes, I wonder if I could still be me if I had the ability to empathize or feel guilt and remorse, but I think my father’s right. My brothers and I have our place in society.”

Noah fell quiet, folding his arms across his chest to stare out the window. Adam had said something wrong, done something wrong, but he didn’t know what. He’d made Noah sad. Maybe just Adam’s past had upset him or maybe the thought that Adam and his brothers didn’t have a normal upbringing. But neither did Noah.

“What did I do?” Adam asked.

Noah’s gaze darted to him. “What? Nothing,” he said a little too quickly.

“Please, don’t lie to me.”

There was sorrow in Noah’s eyes. “I’m not,” he lied again.

“I can’t fix what I did if I don’t know what it was. Please, just tell me.”

Noah opened his mouth and closed it, swallowing audibly, shaking his head, like he was fighting with himself. “You can never love me,” he blurted.

Oh. That. Adam reached out and took Noah’s hand. “I don’t know what love feels like. I don’t know what empathy or guilt feel like. But I know this: I want to fuck you and fight with you and fight for you and make up with you and make out with you and eat Greek food naked with you. Is that enough?”

Noah blinked rapidly before looking away. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s enough.”

Adam still couldn’t shake the feeling he’d done something wrong, but the terrain was getting treacherous. The two lane paved road they’d taken once they were off the highway had given way to a dirt road, which led to a barely-there dirt path that was little more than a trail created by tire treads taking the same route again and again.

Adam was almost certain they’d somehow taken a wrong turn as trees beat their branches against the side of his father’s Rover. Then they were suddenly there, the cabin just before them, sitting in a barren spot in the middle of a circle of trees. The trees were a distance away but uniform, like they’d all decided it wasn’t safe to get too close, like even they knew the place was poison.

“Do you want to go in with me?” Adam asked.

Noah’s gaze shot to his. “I have to. I have to know. There could be something in there that could identify the others.”

Adam nodded, but he didn’t like the sudden stiffness in Noah’s body language. He handed Noah a pair of nitrile gloves and, after a cursory glance for cameras, they exited the car, walking towards the entrance as if they had a right to be there.

There were three locks on the front door. What cabin in the woods needed two additional deadbolts? They exchanged glances before moving around the cabin. The windows were blacked out. Whatever was going on in there, they clearly didn’t want an audience. They checked each one for a point of entry, hoping for just one unlocked window, but Gary was clearly a careful monster. Adam picked up a rock and cracked the pane of glass, reaching in and unhooking the latch, sliding it up and carefully brushing away the shards.

Adam went in first. The smell hit him like a fist, making him wince. Sweat and booze and nicotine. Even in the minimal light, Adam could see it was a bedroom of sorts. He helped Noah inside, then held a finger to his lips, reminding Noah to be quiet so he could listen. When there was nothing but silence, Adam went to the wall and pushed the light switch up.

A dirty quilt lay over a bare mattress pushed in front of a deeply scarred wooden headboard. There was an ashtray on a crooked bedside table and a dresser with two missing drawers. Somebody had taken the mirror and propped it up on a chair, angling it towards the bed.

Adam shook his head, gesturing for Noah to follow him. They ignored the closed door across from where they stood, first checking the kitchen and living room. Both looked mundane. The pantries were bare and the couch sagged, but there was nothing incriminating to justify three locks and blacked out windows.

“Maybe you should stay here,” Adam said when he backtracked to the closed door, noting the locks—plural—were on the outside, though neither were latched.

Noah swallowed hard, but then straightened his shoulders, his mouth set in a grim line. “No. Open it.”

Adam pushed the door open, letting it swing wide. Part of him had hoped they’d find nothing more than another stained mattress, but he’d been wrong. For as dirty and disgusting as the rest of the cabin appeared, this room was pristine, the average boy’s childhood fantasy come true.

A bed shaped like a car dominated the center. There was a rug with tracks trailing through an imaginary town and small matchbox cars scattered across the room beside a toy box overflowing with stuffed animals and games. But there were two things that stood in stark relief to the idyllic room. Restraints on the bed and cameras set up in the four corners of the room.

Noah’s reaction was swift, the contents of his stomach splashing across the hallway floor before he began to shake violently. Adam gripped Noah’s shoulders. “Noah, look at me.”

Noah’s gaze remained unfocused, likely trapped in a vivid memory he couldn’t escape. Adam tried shaking him, but he just swayed on his feet. Out of options, he slapped him hard. Noah’s panicked gaze darted to Adam, like he couldn’t remember where he was or what was happening to him.

“Baby. Listen to me very carefully. Focus on my voice and breathe.” Noah stared at him, mimicking Adam’s deep breaths. “I need you to go outside and get in the car. Can you do that for me? I need to clean this up.”

Noah looked at the vomit covering the floor like he didn’t know how it got there. Maybe he didn’t. “Go. I’ll be right behind you. I promise. Here. Take the keys.”

When Noah didn’t reach for them, Adam took his hand and dropped them into his palm, curling his fingers around the steel. “Go. Go.”

Once Noah was outside the room, Adam set about fixing the mess they’d made, grateful there were paper towels still sitting on the counter, though, from the looks of the place, they weren’t used for cleaning. When he was done mopping up Noah’s vomit, he removed the trash bag and replaced it before tying up the used one and dropping it outside the window to take with them. But he didn’t leave, not yet.

He needed to check for the footage. If Gary was recording, he had to be editing somewhere. It didn’t seem practical to do it in his home, not this far from filming. Adam went through the house, slower, more methodically, taking his time to open every door and closet. He found it in what looked like a linen closet. A sophisticated setup, similar to those used by high-rise buildings, though Adam hoped the resolution was better.

Adam had no choice but to snatch the entire hard drive. He had no way of cloning it or even downloading what was there. He just had to hope whatever they already had would be enough to identify the other players, so Adam could just kill Gary before he became a problem.

With his findings in hand, he made his way back out to the Rover, throwing the garbage bag in the back along with the hard drive. Noah just sat, staring straight ahead, his fingers twisted together in his lap, tears streaking his face. As soon as Adam slid into the driver’s seat, Noah said, “I’m sorry.”

Adam frowned. “What? Why?”

“For puking all over the place? For freaking out? All of it? We just had sex for the first time last night and you’re cleaning up my vomit. Jesus.”

Adam blinked, trying to see the correlation between those two things but missing the point entirely. “We’re going home and you’re not going to work tonight. I don’t give a fuck what Gary thinks at this point. Something on one of these hard drives is going to give us what we need, and if it doesn’t, I’m going to start cutting off pieces of him one at a time until he gives up their names. You’re not going back there.” When Noah opened his mouth, Adam shook his head. “This isn’t up for negotiation. You’re done with that place.”

“But my trailer…”

“You can move in with me.”

Noah shook his head. “No. I’m not giving up my trailer, even if we move in together. I’m not. That’s not up for negotiation either.”

Adam’s eyes widened at the renewed panic in Noah’s voice. “Okay. Call out sick tonight. I’ll have a tow company take your trailer to my dad’s house. He has a garage that fits 14 cars and three boats. I’m sure one small Airstream won’t be a problem. But once the trailer is out of there, so are you. Deal?”

Noah deflated, all the fight seeming to leave him at once. “Yeah, okay. Deal.”