These Cages We Build for Ourselves

Chapter 7

The moment Aster's back in his room, he opens his laptop, logs into Mythic Frontiers, and blocks Nash. The guy's too nice, too kind—and that's not a path Aster's interested in going down. Nash reminds him too much of Thoma, the only person who ever truly cared about him. In the end, even Thoma didn't care enough.

And at least Thoma had some fucking self-respect. He didn't come in all sweet and protective from day one. They built up to that, slowly and mutually. They had a relationship.

Nash is just a sloppy mess of uncompromising niceness. He's too easy to like, too easy to trust. But people are always more complex than that, and Nash is no exception. He's a werewolf without a pack—there's definitely baggage there. Not that Aster particularly cares about werewolf politics, but uncovering that tidbit confirmed what he's been telling himself: everyone has hidden depths. Trusting the surface-level kindness people present to the world is dangerous. Even good people are flawed. Even those with the best intentions can hurt you.

At least the teleportation drama seems to be over. Layna informed him on his way in that those girls had fled right after their confrontation with Aster. Apparently, there had been quite the investigation to figure out what happened to Aster, and Sable is still off trying to find someone to track the spell. Aster gave Layna a quick explanation of events and entrusted her with the task of filling everyone else in, so he's hoping it's no longer his problem. She likes gossip and wants to fuck him, so he's sure she'll do the best she can to keep everyone off his ass.

He feels only detached amusement at Layna's obvious interest, but the slight tug of his ruby earring reminds him that's only because he's still emotionally muffled. He always intended the spell to be temporary, just long enough to get somewhere safe and process his trauma properly. But "safe," he's realising, is far more elusive than he anticipated.

Sable comes to visit him later, just to check in, but Aster has nothing to say about the incident. By this point, he's just tired.

With his free board period nearing its end, Aster hits the streets to scrape together some cash. He spends half a day chasing a hundred-dollar reward for a missing cat, only to find its bug-eaten corpse in a house's crawlspace. Too depressing—and too legally dicey, considering he's technically trespassing—to bother calling in.

The next day, work finds him. Sable hooks him up with a job clearing tracing spells off a woman and her two kids. It's the kind of thing nobody should need to go to some homeless teenager for, but Aster knows the world's uglier than most care to admit. Not everyone can just go to the police. Power has a way of muddying even the simplest situations. Removing the spells doesn't solve all of their problems, because there are other ways to track people, but it buys them time.

The pay's so shit it's insulting, but Aster's unquestioning cooperation keeps Sable in his corner long past when he should have run out of patience for Aster's bullshit.

On the drive back, Sable swings through a drive-thru and buys Aster a milkshake, as is tradition. It started with a particularly fucked up job where some bastard got their claws deep into a kid with an intellectual disability. The kid couldn't talk, but he sure could scream. Whoever did it didn't even bother tracking the mother. They'd just made removing the spell as excruciating as possible for the kid.

By the end of it, just getting Aster to behave enough like a reasonable person to get in a car had been almost more than Sable could manage. The milkshake Aster demanded did more than it should have to settle him, because he did hangry better than most toddlers. Since then, Sable has treated it like a vital part of some aftercare process. If anyone besides Thoma's ever shown Aster genuine kindness, it's Sable. Since it's heavily transactional, Aster doesn't mind.

Aster keeps playing Mythic Frontiers in the evenings and it goes back to being what it was always supposed to be: an idle distraction. He tries to ignore the twinge of... something when he banks a rare piece of leather armour instead of selling it. Maybe he'll roll a new character someday who can use it. He even keeps a few pieces of heavy armour neither he nor Nash can use with their current characters, as if to prove a point to himself. Later, when bank space gets tight, he sells them.

He lets himself think about Nash sometimes, but only in strange and specific ways. He doesn't dwell on Nash's kindness or his soft, awkward smile. Instead, he focuses on Nash's broad frame, the strength of his body, and he rewrites his personality entirely.

One night, Aster abandons the game and lies back on his bed. His hand finds himself through his boxers as he imagines the night Nash rescued him going a little differently. It's late, Nash says, and his place is closer. Aster should stay the night. Aster agrees, though the fantasy wavers a little with how far he has to suspend his disbelief. Aster slips his hand into his boxers and starts idly stroking himself.

But oh no! Nash doesn't have a spare room. They'll have to share a bed. Of course, the big, strong werewolf has ulterior motives, and then...

The fantasy blurs, his ruby earring seeming to hum as it struggles against this turn of events. The scenario is all kinds of unrealistic, partly because he can't imagine Nash actually being so predatory, but mostly because Aster would kill him if he tried—not just lay there and take a good pounding like he's trying to imagine.

It takes him forever to come, and it's frustratingly unsatisfying when he does finally get there. Afterward, he reopens the game and unblocks Nash. It's the least he can do after the guy gave him an orgasm, even if it was a shitty one.