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

LXXX

"These are for you," Alan said, handing him a bundle of keys. "And so is this" — a plastic ID card — "and this." — another key. "Thanks for all your sacrifices."
"My sacrifices?" Aspen echoed, examining the ID card. It had a passport-style photo of him and declared him as staff/founding member.
"All the butt plugs and cages I made you wear to teach Spencer a lesson."
Aspen harrumphed at that and then examined the key. "What's that one for?" he asked.
"Oh!" Alan exclaimed and then grabbed him by the elbow before Aspen found himself practically being dragged into the lower floor of the establishment and past a row of doors until they reached one and Alan plucked the keys from Aspen's hand to open the door.
"Off with their pants!" said a voice from somewhere, and it made Alan snort.
"I already forgot about that feature." He pulled the key from the lock to hand it back and then pushed the door open.
"I know you already have a space at Aphrodite, and I'm sure you have space at home, but I wanted you to have space here, too... Just in case."
"Careful, or people might start thinking you let me go too soon and you regret it
now—" Aspen started, a teasing undertone in his voice.
Alan, however, retaliated by backing him into the room and then against a wall that was all built-in closets.
"Don't say that," he said slowly, and then abruptly let go, winking at Aspen before turning away.
"Speaking of letting go... Word on the street is you hooked up with Bram Berg."
"Ugh," Aspen made, straightening out the cuffs of his dress shirt. "First of, what street? Second: I hired Bram just like all the other people he sees do. And third, why does everyone know who Bram is when I had never heard the name until a few days ago?"
"The street's name is Dorothea," Alan said, shrugging, and it took Aspen a moment too long to remember that by Dorothea he meant Thea, and to remember that the only other person to not call Thea Thea was their brother. "Did she not tell you who Bram is?"
"No?" Aspen said, crossing the room to sit on the bed.
The bed was, if that was even possible, even more luxurious than the one in his room at Aphrodite, which made Aspen wonder if all rooms here were furnished like this, and — if the answer to that was yes — how much it must have cost Alan to do all that.
"Oh. So what do you know about him?"
"Not much," Aspen said evasively. Up until that point, he had been okay with knowing next to nothing about Bram Berg. It was enough to know that he was Noah's cousin, and that he had provided something that Aspen — even though he had told himself to stop thinking about it — yearned for. "I know he runs the record store below his studio and that Noah's his cousin."
"Noah?"
"The Silva's assistant."
"Right," Alan said, exhaling lowly. "And... Leo? Did you—?"
Aspen blew a strand of hair from his eyes and then reached up to brush it behind his ear. "Leo and I haven't spoken to or seen each other in a few weeks, even before I went on vacation to Amsterdam. Truth be told I was ... am... trying to put distance between myself and them because I am trying to figure out if Aphrodite is really what I want for the rest of my life — I suspect I'll feel this way about Wonderland too, in a bit, and I kinda feel like I owe you an apology for that in advance — and Bram was ... a welcome reprieve from all those thoughts, but apparently you and Thea know something about him that I don't, and now—"
The bed dipped when Alan sat with him and a moment later, Alan wrapped an arm around Aspen's shoulders and pulled him closer. "I wish I could tell you what I know," he said. "But if Thea and Leo didn't even though at least one of them—" he trailed off. "How did you find Bram?"
"Noah," Aspen said, sighing. "Fuck me," he muttered. "Did I get myself involved with some big name in the BDSM world and now everyone is laughing at me because I didn't do my due diligence by googling him? I didn't even know his last name..."
"It is a small world," Alan said. "Which is why Thea was trying to get you to go to the munch and meet people."
Aspen let himself fall backwards onto the bed. "Fuck me," he repeated.
"Big is relative," Alan said, as if it was some attempt at consoling him. "And if Noah is his cousin and they didn't tell you either, maybe it doesn't matter."
"Does Bram know who you are?"
"Certainly," Alan said drily.
"I also found out your Alan is Leopold Silva's ex-boyfriend."
Abruptly, Aspen sat up.

But before he could say anything, the door to the room opened and Spencer poked his head in. "Hi, Aspen!" he said.
"Spencer," Aspen returned. "'Sup?"
"Not much," Spencer said evasively. "It's just that June's lined up a bunch of cocktails for the menu on the bar — She had to go to class, so she just left — and since I can't drink," Spencer gave Alan a pointed look at that, "we both figured we need someone else to taste test them."
"Daydrinking sounds just about like something I could really use right now," Aspen said, getting up. He collected his keys and his new ID card from the bed where he had dropped them and then followed Spencer back up to the main floor.
"Isn't June your ballet friend?"
"Yeah," Spencer said. "Her parents are restauranteurs, so June's had her barkeeping 'license'—" he painted quotation marks into the air "— for a couple years now. She never uses it, though, but we figured she'd probably come up with some dope drinks."
"And is June—?"
"Oh," Spencer interrupted him with a laugh, "Hell no. I say this lovingly, but June is one of those people who doesn't really know how to have fun."

They finally got to the bar and Aspen slid onto a stool, reaching for a shotglass with a suspiciously milky liquid inside.
"That one's the eat me shot," Spencer explained, but before he could tell Aspen what was in there, Aspen had already raised the glass to his lips and emptied it.
The brief taste of the drink on his tongue before it burned its way down his throat made him wonder how a person who didn't know how to have fun could make a drink like that.
Maybe he'd see her again — and meet her properly this time, too — to ask her about this.