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Chapter nineteen

Let Me

Elliott had napped the entire ride back.

Niko thought several times of waking him to talk, but figured it was best to let him sleep off the exhaustion of his injuries.

When they’d arrived back at the facility, everyone greeted them in the control room with genuine concern and worry for Elliott.

It gave Niko, despite everything, a quiet blossom of warmth to see.

Elliott, for the most part, seemed a little bewildered by the attention, as though not sure what to do with it.

Loolae inspected his bloodied eye and Oliver nervously fawned over him, asking several times if he was okay and even once if they should take him to a hospital.

Even Zann stood off to the side, arms folded across his chest, his brow knotted with worry. He cast a glance at Niko, raising his eyebrows, but Niko only shook his head. “He wasn’t even there. Got ambushed by Clair Suzuki, instead.”

He got the others caught up on what had transpired, and eventually Elliott slipped off somewhere further into the facility, claiming again that he was tired.

Niko had been so stupid. He had been unthinking.

He’d taken Elliott for granted, had assumed the man would always be here.

But this last failed hit and subsequent ambush showed just how horrifically close he’d come to losing Elliott Kestrel forever.

If Niko had taken only a few seconds longer to reach him, he would have.

And the last thing he would have ever done before he had was reject, accuse, and scorn the other man, just because Niko had been too afraid to let himself be vulnerable around him.

The deep anguish and grief of that thought stole Niko’s breath away.

The shame it brought him made it hard to even move.

But he had to. He had to make this right.

He’d let the wrong things matter. He’d let something so trivial in the face of it all get between them.

He had to confront the pain that lay tangled inside himself.

He had to talk to Elliott. He had to apologize.

Niko wheeled through the facility until he found him alone in one of the lounges—not the one he’d usually haunted when researching for Niko’s missing family, but one far deeper into the facility, full of scattered chairs.

Elliott sat in one, long legs stretched out and feet propped up on another chair.

He had a single small hologram hovering in the air before him.

This time, it wasn’t a wall of Honeybliss files, but rather a simple newsfeed cast from his phone.

Niko glimpsed one of Elliott’s commonly used old professional portraits on it.

The old photo’s trimmed and maintained hairstyle, dress shirt, and bland smile—free of injury, free of exhaustion—were a harrowing contrast to the Elliott before him now.

“Elliott, hey,” he started. The blond man merely stared over at him with the same cool expression he’d taken to lately, the cornea of his right eye a shocking crimson still.

The bruising along the corner of it had spread and darkened.

It pained Niko to see. “I—I wanted to say I’m sorry.

I was an asshole. I shouldn’t have said what I did about you after we— What we did. It was wrong.”

Elliott remained silent for a moment, before speaking. “You’re right. It was wrong. I don’t appreciate that you went there.”

Niko huffed out a nervous sigh, casting his gaze around. He nodded.

“Is that really what you think I’ve been doing with you, Niko?” Elliott continued. “Forcing you into something just because I like it that way?”

“No.”

“Do I like being the one to top you? I do. Do I like it when you let me dom you? Even more. But that’s not why I try to do it. Or only why. I do it because I see that you love it too. That we have compatibility in what we both want and need. It actually works out quite well—when you let it.”

“Mh,” Niko grunted out. He stared at the floor, unable to meet Elliott’s gaze. From the corner of his eye, he saw Elliott swipe the phone hologram away, then sit up a little straighter, pulling his feet off the adjacent chair.

“You had a safeword. You could have used it at any time if you were uncomfortable, and I would have stopped. You knew that.”

“I know. I, um, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I just— I was just ashamed, afterwards. Not of you. Of myself.” He’d finally said it out loud.

“Why are you so ashamed of that, Niko? Of being with me like that?”

Niko wanted to leave. Every instinct told him to turn tail and get out of there before he had to talk about it. There was nothing worse than talking about it. Acknowledging it. But the only way out was through.

“I—I don’t. Actually know,” he finally ground out.

“There has to be something driving this,” Elliott said. “You won’t let yourself be vulnerable with me. Even in private. You struggle. You fight it. Even when it’s obvious how badly you want to. There’s something that always stops you. To the point where you’re lashing out instead, lately.”

“I—” Niko tried again. He needed to be open with Elliott, even if he didn’t know what he’d find if he was.

He spoke slowly. “I think it’s a lot of things.

I think it’s my old bounty hunting job and the black market I spent a lot of time in— You had to be tough, right?

You had to push everyone around to get respect.

You had to be more powerful than everyone else, or they’d eat you alive the moment you showed an ounce of weakness.

None of that shit survived there. In a life like that, you aren’t allowed to be vulnerable. ”

He paused for a moment, his thoughts turning to, of all people, the delicate and graceful Xermotl hidden away in Deleera’s compound. I’m not weak , she’d protested, pleading for anyone present to listen. Maybe he and Sweetheart actually had a lot more in common than he’d ever wanted to admit.

“But it’s more than that, too,” he continued.

“It’s— I think it’s my accident. Um, the fall, I mean.

Not… really an accident. It’s tied into that too.

It’s why I disappeared, why I didn’t answer anyone’s calls anymore.

I didn’t want them to see me as weak. I can’t stand anyone helping me.

I can’t stand anyone even acknowledging it.

The way I am now. I can’t let any limitations hold me back.

I’ll push myself until I break. I’ll push myself until I fucking die.

” He said it with complete sincerity. “I’d do that before I ever let myself rest, or let someone take care of me, or acknowledge that I might need help sometimes.

I want to provide for people. I want to be the one everyone can rely on.

I want to be the one who can do everything.

“The one thing I cannot do in this life is be helpless . I can’t fucking stand it, Elliott.

I can’t stand sitting back and letting someone else take on my risks or burdens or—or take care of me, or have to pick up my slack.

And when you ask me to let go and be your—” he glanced away, unable to look at Elliott when he said it, “—submissive lover, some part of my brain goes crazy and thinks that it’s not what I should be doing.

That I’m being weak, somehow. Even if—if I like it.

It’s so hard for me to keep calm when you do things, like, just…

I don’t know. Massaging my legs, or having to go pick up something across the room for me.

Even though I fucking appreciate and love when you do! I’m such a fucking mess.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. It was all coming out now, apparently.

Years of what he couldn’t put words, nor even solid thought to.

This was something he knew he probably should be working through over several deep sessions with a therapist, rather than pelting it all onto Elliott.

Especially right now. “I think it all goes back even further than that, though. It goes back to when they killed my family. I was so useless and helpless. I wish I had been there. I wish I’d been able to change it, prevent it.

Do something. Keep them safe. Anything. I wish I’d been able to help my surviving family more, afterwards— I tried to be strong, tried to take care of Zann.

Tried to take care of Dad. Dad was falling apart, and I couldn’t even help him—”

“Niko,” Elliott interjected softly. Niko fell quiet, and Elliott reached out to gently take his right hand in both of his. For a brief moment, Niko stiffened, wanting to reject the comfort and compassion, even now. He wasn’t worthy of it.

Elliott sensed it. “Are you going to pull your hand away from me?” he asked, patiently.

Niko swallowed. He didn’t want to do that.

He didn’t want the walls that he himself had erected again and again like a fortress.

The same he had stubbornly reconstructed, every time a nail came loose.

He wanted to melt into Elliott, to just let himself accept the love given.

To hide away in the arms of his boyfriend for days, until it didn’t hurt so much anymore. “No.”

“Good. Niko. There’s a lot to unpack here.”

No shit, Niko thought.

“But I want to do that with you,” Elliott continued. “Thank you for being honest.”

Niko nodded. He couldn’t look at him, so stared down at Elliott’s beautiful hands instead. He’d missed him.

Elliott fell quiet for a moment, thinking.

“Okay. I’m going to start back at the beginning of what you said, and go from there.

You’ve spent years in places like Dainna.

You had to hunt people down, fight, prove yourself and your reputation over and over.

You had to put on an air of toughness, because anyone who appears weak gets picked off or destroyed in one way or another, right? ”

“Yeah.”

“I want to deconstruct something for you, then. The preferences you have in private sexual relations have nothing to do with being weak or strong. They—”

“I know. I know that,” Niko cut him off.