COMPLETED | Take Me Down The Rabbit Hole (BDSM | 18+)

LXII (A/N at the end!)

The next morning, Luna Luther's Instagram page was still open on his phone, and Aspen scrolled further down her posts. One or two pictures towards the bottom of her feed depicted Luna Luther in color, holding what seemed to be an iPad with the cover of the book Aspen had devoured last night.
He clicked on it to read the caption, which said Thank you so much to all my readers on Wattpad and Archive Of Our Own for believing in me! The book I started publishing on those platforms is now available to read through Amazon KDP.
The comments, unsurprisingly, did up with a reply from Aphrodite_Dungeon reading Congratulations!
Perhaps this would be a prime opportunity to make fun of Leo the next time he saw him.

However, Aspen really needed to stop wasting time lurking in corners of the internet he had no business lurking in, so he reluctantly cleaned up his apartment and got ready for work.
The day passed by in a blur, and before Aspen knew it, he was pulling into the parking garage for Alan's condo.
Over the day, a need had manifested inside Aspen, to tell Alan that a giant pit of unhappiness had somehow opened up inside of him, and he desperately needed someone to fix it.
When he unlocked the door to the apartment, he was met with the smell of—
"Hello!" Spencer called from the kitchen. "Alan is at the corner store!"
Aspen took his time to take his shoes off and put them away properly before he shuffled into the kitchen.
"What is all this?"
"Roast chicken. I'm widening my culinary horizons."
Spencer turned his head. "Oh, boy. You look like seven days of bad weather."
"Can you keep a secret?"
A mischievous glimmer entered Spencer's eyes. "Like no other."
"How much do you know about Alan's first boyfriend?"
"Next to nothing. I've never met him, and all I know about him is what his profile on the Aphrodite website says and that is..."
Spencer didn't finish the sentence. Aspen didn't need him to.
"He's been in the city. And he's been spending time... with me." Aspen didn't want to disclose that he had the feeling that at the moment Leo was in New York just so he could do what Thea said Aspen should beware of: Tinker with Aspen's moral complex.
"I signed a NDA so I couldn't outright tell Alan this," Aspen continued and Spencer snorted out a short laugh. "But Leopold is... peculiar. I hate that word, but he has this way about him. And he moves like Alan."
Spencer hummed. "This has been going on a while, huh?"
Aspen pulled out a chair at the dining table and flopped down on it. "Yep," he moaned.
Someone shuffled behind him and then a hand pat his back. "You're okay," Spencer said. "We all take a little while to figure out."
"How did you know that... this was right for you?"
Spencer sighed. "I know many people think that I feel indebted to Alan for taking me on and paying for me to get clean, but the truth is that he instantly felt like family. We had a long talk before he sent me off to rehab, and the day I got out, he was there with balloons and a cake to celebrate me. Aside from June, I've never had anyone in my life like this. But then when he brought the whole BDSM thing up he didn't expect me to stay on board for it. He said it was something he immensely enjoyed and he would be glad to have me in a setting like that. It just felt right."
"Sometimes it feels right," Aspen mumbled. "More often than not, these days, it doesn't, though." Aspen hesitated, glancing at the door to the apartment. "Leo let me sit in and participate in some bondage sessions with his clients and there's so much... power to be had when a person trusts you like that."
Spencer pat his back again. "Look, dude," he said, and all of a sudden, he sounded like the 23-year-old he was, "I know I'm one to talk, but to me, it does sound like you know what you want."
A lock clicked and the entrance door opened to reveal Alan. "Hi, boys!"
"Hi, Sir," Aspen and Spencer chorused at the same time, causing all three of them to break out into laughter.
Spencer momentarily turned back to his chicken, leaving Aspen to sort out the groceries Alan had brought in silence.
Alan clapped him on the back in passing. "Everything okay?"
"Of course?" Aspen said, praying Alan hadn't heard any of his conversation with Spencer. "Why wouldn't it be?"
Affectionately, Alan reached out and twirled a strand of Aspen's hair around his finger. "You look like a deer in headlights, Aspen."
Aspen inhaled sharply. "I just have a good old identity crisis."
Alan nodded. "If you find out what you need to make it better, don't hesitate to ask me for it."
Don't hesitate to ask me for it.
Aspen inhaled softly. "Will do, Sir. Thank you."
A moment of silence. "Sir, have you ever heard of Luna Luther?"
Spencer whirled around. "You've read a Luna Luther book?!"
Aspen pursed his lips. "Yes."
"June loves them, and she won't shut up about the first one. She said it reads like a fanfic that someone started writing when they were 16, and you can tell how much the author matured with her characters."
So Spencer's darling Juniper was a book critic as well?
"That... Sounds about right, actually."
Alan had been standing by, leaning against the kitchen counter. "I've never heard of this person."
Unsurprising. Aspen nodded. "I didn't think you had, I just—"
He broke off after seeing Spencer's face. The younger man was staring at him as if to say 'don't fuck this up'. Aspen acknowledged that with a tilt of his head.
"Thea recommended her books to me and I was up all night reading the first one. She makes her characters sound as if they know everything and nothing. I feel like that."

*

Hello! 

On Friday I posted a snippet from my rewrite of Take Me to Wonderland to my conversations tab! I know many of you are waiting for June and Aspen's story to return, and while I can no longer make any promises that that will be soon, I will be devoting a significant chunk of my time during Camp NaNoWriMo to this project. Thank you all for being so patient with me and for your enthusiasm!

x villainfuckery