"So...love...how'd that come about?" Antithesis asked this while removing the last of the glass from Tyrant's hand.
The previously distraught man had calmed considerably, now sitting in relatively content-looking silence. He simply shrugged and mumbled, "Fuck if I know. I don't even know if it's truly love. But it feels sticky and disgusting and sickening, so...I assumed…"
He didn't look up at Antithesis, currently or previously. He'd ceased crying a few minutes ago, but it still looked like tears could fall any moment. His eyes were grossly bloodshot, and they had a tired look about them. As for his hand, nothing had dug too deeply into it. Blood soaked his skin and half a roll of paper towels, but that was from the sheer magnitude of cuts on him. Antithesis had wrapped his hand once already, but the soaked bandages had proved useless, so he'd stopped the bleeding before wrapping it again. The strips of gauze only darkened a shade or two.
"That's a valid assumption," Antithesis said as he wrapped the last bit of gauze around his hand. "How's it feel?"
Tyrant moved his hand about. "Stiff. Kinda stings, too."
"No, not that." Antithesis poked his chest, and Tyrant stared down at him. "This. Your 'love,' as you assume it to be."
"Oh. That. Uh...good, I guess. I don't mind it, but it's a little...strange…"
Antithesis nodded. "That's common. I felt that before, too. And you don't know how it formed?"
"Well...I guess because of how genuinely interested you seemed in me...it felt nice to be kind of...needed…" Redness spread on his cheeks. "And, um...you're really...loving in bed…" The redness brightened. He looked admittedly adorable, regardless of how much of a mess he looked.
"I never thought that I was that way," Antithesis admitted somewhat playfully. "Is that why you stopped faking your reactions during sex?"
For the first time in the past fifteen minutes, Tyrant looked up. His wide, doelike—albeit horrendously red—eyes made him seem so much younger than twenty-five. "You...you noticed…?"
"Yeah. It was pretty easy to tell." He wiped his hands with a clean paper towel. "You started out really loud and outspoken, but as time went on, you became softer and cuter. That's how I knew you were faking at first."
"Yeah, I was," he mumbled, embarrassed. "Although it was really arousing, I was kinda disappointed with how rough you were at first, so I faked it. But then you started to seem more passionate, and my softer reactions were so strong that I couldn't fake it anymore."
"You could've just said that you weren't a fan of roughness."
He shrugged. "I didn't wanna seem like a pussy."
"You wouldn't have. I don't see you as a pussy now, though you cried while professing your love for me earlier."
He nodded but didn't reply. Antithesis disposed of the remaining garbage in the bathroom's trash can, then turned his attention back to Tyrant.
"You look like a wreck," Antithesis commented. He reached out and ran his fingers through Tyrant's knotted, ratty hair. "You plan on brushing this shit sometime soon?"
He shrugged. "You can do it if it bothers you that much."
"You trust me?"
"Brushing hair doesn't require skill. Just start from the bottom, not the top. Get the wide-toothed comb, then the thin-bristled brush. Both are on the sink."
Antithesis retrieved the two instruments from the light blue sink before sitting behind Tyrant. "Why do you dye it so much?" Antithesis asked as he began brushing his light blue tresses.
"I got bored with my natural color, so I dyed it blue when I was around nineteen. Then Royal came about, and I just decided that I liked the idea of changing my appearance a lot."
"What is your natural color?"
"I think you've seen it before. It's blonde. Kinda the color of sand, but a little lighter. I think I had it that way when I came back from West."
"So you admit that you were in West?" Antithesis asked. "Your hair was lavender, too, not blonde."
"Oh, right. I never denied that I was in West. I just didn't tell you what people I met."
"Right. Still not willing to say?"
Tyrant paused for a moment, then replied, surprisingly, with, "I was visiting family. I go once every few months so they don't think I hate them. I don't. I just got bored in West."
"Ah. I'm surprised, Tyrant. You revealed a lot, though that's not desirable."
"It's not like I told you my real name. Shit, I don't even know yours." He turned to look at Antithesis over his shoulder. "Not that I want to. Even if I...love...you, I still don't want to know that. It might be dangerous."
"I know. Ulterior told me." He finished brushing, and he now ran his fingers through Tyrant's smooth hair. "It's surprisingly healthy, considering your rough treatment of it."
"I regrow it every time I want to dye it. Otherwise it'd be breaking off hourly." He leaned back so his head rested upon Antithesis's chest, and Antithesis wrapped his arms around his middle. "You smell like shit, by the way."
"So do you, Tyrant."
Tyrant sighed, looking away in silence. They remained that way for a few moments, until Tyrant abruptly sat up and turned to face Antithesis. "Oh, I need you to come with me to Pits tonight."
"What for?"
"Well...you see...there's some matters that need attended to." His normal tone started to trickle back into his speech.
"Involving what?"
"Some, ah...ya know...drugs," he said, the last word bluntly.
"Why do you need me to buy drugs with you? Is this another learning experience?"
He chuckled. "'Buy,' you say...that's hilarious."
"So we're stealing?"
"Mmm-hmm! Now you've got it!"
Suddenly Antithesis wished the meek Tyrant would return. Then again, that meant watery affection, which Antithesis was not up for at the moment. He supposed he could tolerate a little more violence, at least for the time being.
Once nightfall descended upon North, Tyrant and Antithesis rode out on separate skis to the mainland. Tyrant justified going separately as a way to split the attention of those they were stealing from.
Most of Pits looked the same, according to Tyrant, but the area they were traveling to was different—it was beige, not white. That, and within their Pit was a shack with a large C—their group was called "Chemikals"—painted on the top. They were located near the middle of Pits, in an area known as Deep Shit. Though Medix produced and sold most of the drugs or medicines in North, illegal or not, Pits produced some of their own in order to avoid being taxed. It was illegal, definitely, so Tyrant justified it again by saying that they were doing a "drug raid on behalf of protecting Ulterior's profits"—something good. Even without that, Tyrant still would've stolen. Antithesis wasn't knowledgeable on his current drug history, but pulling a bottle of pills from a man's rectum reveals many things otherwise lost.
Antithesis's ski was the lesser of the two that Tyrant owned, but he'd had the courtesy to at least equip it with a radio. Ceasing movement for a moment, Antithesis picked up the speaker and turned it on. Once he had connection, he said, "Tyrant, how far are you from the mainland?"
'Bout ten minutes, he replied. You?
"Give or take fifteen."
Careful of the rocks. I didn't reinforce the bottom of that one, so if you're gashed, you're sunk.
Antithesis nodded. "Tyrant would be landing in the eastern dock, while Antithesis would go west. They wouldn't meet until the end of their trip, though they did have earpieces in case shit went foul. Antithesis had the more difficult dock, filled with jagged rocks in shallow water.
I have stink bombs in case we need, Tyrant added. They smell like booty and grape juice, and they also produce smoke for concealment. What do you have?
"I took some of your knives and a set of spiked knuckles."
Ooh, my baby likes the sharp things. Arousing.
Antithesis rolled his eyes and hung up the radio, then continued to his destination.
Navigating his dock proved far easier than expected—contrary to what Tyrant had said, there were only three rocks, and they were relatively small. Either Tyrant had been gravely mistaken or had just been fucking with him. Both seemed plausible, but the latter seemed more likely. Nevertheless, Antithesis tethered the ski and stood upon the stone dock.
Currently resembling a concrete skate park, Antithesis almost hesitated to believe that this had once been an underground prison. The sloping pits were smooth, or at least looked that way. Wooden poles stood atop the pits, dim lanterns hanging from the tops. Pits was the largest area in North, taking up about a third of the island. However, according to Tyrant, something resembling the underground rail system existed in the aboveground pits. A few steps forward confirmed this.
Two sets of rails were on either side of the dock, one on the left and one on the right. Upon those rails were spots to attach...something else onto them.
"Tyrant," I said into the earpiece.
Don't use the rails, he said immediately. Too loud. Too obvious. It doesn't take that long to get to their base. Only about fifteen minutes by foot. Go straight ahead. There'll be a barbed wire fence with a sign that says "Turn back from Chemikals." Little to the left of that is a manhole that leads to a stash house. That's where you're stealing from. Take as much as you can that's labeled with a W or an X.
"All right. Thanks, Tyrant."
Onward he went, walking at first, then jogging, then sprinting as quickly as he could. It seemed that all his seemingly extraneous exercise in prison and in North had paid off, as he was barely fatigued when he reached the barrier.
Three lines of circular barbed wire stood between Antithesis and further progression. Sure enough, a sign was there, but with far more butchered spelling than he'd thought.
Tern bak frum Chemikals, it read.
Now Antithesis saw why they were in the drug business.
To the left he went, and Antithesis found the manhole in the wall of a pit. He felt around the outside of the cover, searching for any lifted areas. When he found nothing, Antithesis took notice of a small button in the middle of the metal circle. He pressed it, and puffs of air released the cover from its spot. It clattered to the ground, and Antithesis looked in. It was a decent circumference, large enough for Antithesis to crawl through comfortably. In he went, leaving the cover behind. He knew that he should have put it back, but there was probably no good way to put it back from the inside. He'd just crawl quickly—that'd be enough to avoid detection.
Unlike sewer systems usually concealed by similar pieces of metal, this tunnel was completely smooth, much like the rest of Pits. Without hesitation he moved onward, the space almost pitch black in lighting. He relied solely on his sense touch to navigate the space. Luckily for him, the space was completely straight-on, so there was no questioning where to go. Rather, it was when to go there.
About five minutes after he'd entered, a dim light appeared in the distance. Even quicker he crawled, and the light got brighter and brighter. When the light became ideally bright, he stopped and looked down.
As Tyrant had said, the room beneath was full of drugs. Bags and bags of powder in block form lined one wall, and a crop of green plants sprouted in the corner. Glass tubes with little spouts sat on a table, and others of a similar construction with tubes stood on the floor. White unmarked bottles lay in three bins. Based on what Antithesis could see, there was no door that led out of the room, save for the tunnel he was in now.
The tunnel was about five feet from the ground, with the rest of the tunnel dropping down about five more feet. Based on what he could see, three rungs of a ladder hung from the bottom of the concrete.
Carefully, keeping his hands and legs outstretched on the walls of the vertical part of the tube, Antithesis climbed down the tube. When he reached the rungs with little incident, he climbed down them like a normal person, then dropped down into the room itself.
Tyrant said to take anything labeled W or X. He poked around the space, and he found that ground leaves represented the W, and a few of the bottles he'd thought were unmarked had X's on them. Pulling out the sack he'd taken with him, Antithesis loaded his bag with anything and everything he could fit in it. Just before it was bursting, he sealed the bag and slung it over his shoulder. He looked up at the tube, then widened his eyes.
Attached to the smooth outside, barely visible, was a security camera.
"Fuck," he mumbled.
Without thinking, Antithesis grabbed a block of powder and threw it at the camera. Once a cloud concealed the camera's view, he jumped far higher than he'd ever done before, and he climbed and crawled as quickly as possible.
"Tyrant," he said into the earpiece. "There was a camera."
No response.
"Tyrant," he repeated.
Still nothing.
"Tyrant!" he shouted.
Silence.
Growling softly, Antithesis continued onward. The outdoor light gradually increased in brightness, until he finally reached the entrance.
And came face-to-face with a man in a mask.
