Chapter 18: Chapter Seventeen

[A/N] I'm posting another chapter ! I have a word count requirement I have to meet and the only other option is finishing the Her Brother My Master epilogue but I wasn't in the right mood for it just now.

So here we go.... Arran's POV....

[Arran's POV]

The lock was sliding, I had to pull the door toward me by the handle while turning the key for it to open. The air was cold and damp, there were black spots on the ceiling in the entrance below the unused bathroom on the second floor. Everything was empty, there was no point in keeping much here other than a bed and some basic supplies.

There was no padding down the hall, no electric eyes staring at me from inside the kitchen, feigning disinterest, taking the opportunity to rub the entire length of her across my legs while I was on my laptop, pretending not to notice her.

I'd had my friends stay here before, while I was busy out of the house, she played hard to get but she waited for me. They videoed it, her waiting at the door, sitting there, black tail curling behind her and then disappearing into the rest of her fur. And then when I arrived, before I could open the door carefully slinked away back into the kitchen and pretended not to notice me when I entered.

She was an odd cat, but no one got close to her without finding out how thick their skin was in millimetres.

She would never leave the house, not for long, she'd even scratch me when I tried, and it was just as well, she was the only reason I had the house in the first place.

I'd kill whoever took her.

I climbed the steps and entered the living room, the same one I'd had that kid in, passed out and chained to the radiator.

I tossed my jacket onto the sofa and dropped the heavy bag onto the floor as I entered the room, part of me still expecting her to turn a corner, huff at me and disappear again.

Instead there was a loud scuffling and I massaged my temples in annoyance.

Elliot.

Sort of small and quiet. He looked frightened all the time, so it made very little sense that he stood so still, calm but tense, wary but alert, watching nearly unblinking, with eyes that practically dilated when he looked at me.

I exhaled as I sat down for a minute, there was a pulsing in my head.

When I touched him it felt odd, I wanted to squeeze and wait to see a reaction, feel that buzzing in my finger tips.

When he looked at me I felt powerful.

It was ridiculous, and coming from a lack of sleep, just like that was.

I glared at the bathroom as there was another scuffle inside, got up and grabbed the bag and walked over, opening the door to see the dog inside jump and struggle to climb inside the tub and growl.

It was almost cute, the kind of growl that came from a dog that barely knew how to growl. I could probably make a more threatening noise. It looked petrified.

I wouldn't have taken the time to hunt down the damned thing if I hadn't thought that kid had my cat.

But he didn't have a single scratch on him.

So I'd rescued that idiot dog for no reason. I'd had to wash him Molly had kept him in such a state with the others. If I hadn't I wouldn't have known if this was really the same white dog that the boy had been dutifully traipsing the streets looking for, hanging up a poster on every face and wall near him, leaving a trail behind him.

Now the dog had realised the bathroom could be its refuge and discovered how to close the door from the inside.

"Sit." I ordered, my voice sharp, and the dog sat immediately, quivering slightly where it sat in the bathtub.

I dumped the heavy bag onto the sink and grabbed the nail scissors from inside the cabinet, cutting it open.

Milk watched me with alert eyes as I glanced back at him.

I sighed, looking for a container but finding none, so I grabbed a couple handfuls of the dry kibble and chucked it in the tub with him, it was empty and dry and the drain was closed but Milk just stared at me.

"Eat it what the fuck are you looking at me for?" My voice was low as I snapped at him.

He tilted his head briefly to his left, then continued tilting his head at the tub with the kibble in it next to him, lowered his head to sniff it, then looked back up at me, then back down at the tub, and began to eat.

"Fucking hell. Who raised a dog with so many trust issues..."

I ran my hands back through my hair, annoyed.

I'd have to go back and find that kid, to give him the dog back. Really I should have told him right then... but something stopped me, a niggling feeling that he looked a little too unsurprised by me hunting him down to be clean of all sins.

There was definitely something odd about the dark eyed gangly, white kid that stared at me like he was watching me eat him alive.

I could still feel his hand against my face. If he thought he was humiliating me by slapping me I didn't give a shit about things like that, but I got the peculiar feeling he just wanted to try it out, and that was the kind of strange that left me with the light nagging need to corner him and dissect all that.

I'd have to go back there anyway, I knew exactly what my step dad would say when I called him up in the morning, there was no rush. I didn't need to take care of the dog, he could fix him when it was back in his hands...

Until then, I had a gloomy frightened visitor that made annoying high pitched noises when I got too close and got on my nerves.

"Come on, get out." I ordered when the dog was finished slowly eating the kibble in the bath tub.

He didn't move until I started to move towards him, to grab him by the scruff of his collarless neck, and then he jumped out in a panic, scrambled slightly to get up and out of the tub, and ran out the door beside me.

There was still kibble in the tub, about half a handful. He hadn't eaten anything but half of my sandwich yesterday when I caught the dirty mutt and he wasn't eating enough today either.

I exhaled and pinched the bridge of my nose.

"What's wrong with the food?!" I growled at it.

It whined and hurried to hide behind a chair.

I felt my jaw creak as I ground my molars together. Were all dogs this annoying?

I got a bowl from the kitchen downstairs and brought it up, filled it with water and shoved it in front of the chair, put some more kibble on the floor and left the bag in the sink as I grabbed my jacket and went back down to leave the house again.

The fresh air felt great, the cold not so much, I punched each of my pockets and stormed down the street.

I was in a bad mood when I returned again.

This time with different dog food. They were looking at me weird in the pet store and I didn't like it. It could have been the dark look on my face or my sudden impulse buys for dogs but either way it annoyed me.

After two more bags of treats opened and tested and mostly semi chewed on but ignored or eaten with very little real interest I was ready to put him back in the bathtub and let him sit in all the food.

I thought these animals were meant to eat everything? Figures a weird kid like its owner would find a matching dog. I opened a can and dumped it onto the wooden flooring. He looked a little mistrustful but at last he began to eat a little more than before. Not enthusiastically enough.

"You like it or you don't like it?"

The dog was startled by my voice and backed up a bit and I brushed my face with the palm of my hand, backing up a couple steps.

"How are you a dog?" I narrowed my eyes at it.

I grabbed the rest of the things from my bag and tossed them at him. A couple squeaky toys, some plushies, some weird plastic ring looking thing, a ball, something that looked like it was probably for cats but only came with a price tag.

I stood over him and pointed at the crap on my floor as he startled backwards, away from it. "Get on with this. I'm not in the mood for your picky behaviour. It's a fucking toy, nothing to complain about."

I moved back away and grabbed my backpack.

I figured he would be an annoying little shit with the toys too, so I got six or seven or... my eyes counted the number of them as they littered the floor, looking like there were less than when I'd bought them and they'd spilled over the cash desk. Eight.

He sure liked the toys though, and still pausing occasionally to watch me with those wary eyes, but his attention was now interspliced with the toys, each one he taste tested, chewed on and huffed at, dropped and jumped on, growing a little more energetic as I left him to his own devices.

I heard him growling occasionally, pouncing and then shaking the plushie of a pickle in his mouth like he was some kind of ferocious animal, the kind that was picky about food and hid in the bathtub from me.

I watched him with a dead stare for a while on the sofa, pausing to reply to the unanswered texts before going down to make my dinner.

The guy was gone, burned and melted to sludge and buried, but that didn't mean there was nothing left to do. The instinct to gather together again immediately after the incident, to return to the parking garage and check out the state of the place, or head down to Sultan's farm to check the grass was growing back was natural, but not worth it.

Everyone had to get on with whatever they were doing, we had to keep low for a while, and make sure no links could be made if an investigation did turn out something.

Ironically the one thing I wasn't worried about was that kid going to the police.

Maybe it was how severely bullied he was clearly being, used to being shoved around by others and humiliated, or maybe it was the fact that he didn't seem like the boy that wrote that diary at all, he didn't look like he cared.

I pulled a steak out of the fridge and slapped it on the pan with some salt and pepper. I didn't care enough to add anything more than that usually but I added the half a cucumber from the fridge and some carrot slices.

I normally ate down stairs but the hostage needed watching over, especially if he finally decided to act like a dog.

When I returned he got a shock and scampered back into the bathroom.

I rolled my eyes and sat down at the table in the corner and started eating.

Instead of closing the door this time though he watched me carefully through the entrance.

"Need to get this dog back to that Elliot kid now..." I sighed.

It's ears perked up when it heard the boys name, one and then the other.

After all my efforts of hunting it down just so I could watch the kid freak out when I demanded my cat back, and he didn't even take it. It was nearly laughable, if it wasn't so annoying.

As I was eating I texted them back again. I sat for a while considering carefully if I wanted to answer my father or not and eventually ignored it and looked down.

Next to my leg there was Milk, sitting patiently, looking up at me.

I frowned at it.

Milk tilted his head, one way, and then the other way.

I looked back at my food.

He whined.

I raised both my brows.

His eyes were on my food I realised.

I shook my head to myself. I wasn't about to give a dog my food, who trained the selfish little shit. With the floor covered in dog food and it wants my steak...

I continued eating, text notifications continued to ring. I set the phone on silent.

Another whine.

I stilled, looked down at it, looked forward and felt the throb of a headache.

~⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣~

Fern called just as I was stepping out into the street to smoke.

I answered the call and waited for him to tell me what he wanted me for.

"Everything work out? He's still taking care of the house?"

I shook my head. "He's not gonna do anything unless he gets wind of what we've been up to."

"Unless you keep giving him grief."

"I'm not doing shit."

"That's the point kinda, isn't it."

I exhaled, I liked the way the smoke looked under the lamplight, bright white, like a ghost disappearing.

After a moment of me not replying he continued. "Pike is okay?"

I looked down that the orange glow hiding under the ashes of the cigarette, with the gloom of the evening it looked like a small furnace between my fingers.

"He's staying at his mothers house. Helping me out with something small. Getting his mind off it..."

"I can't talk about-"

"No."

"Okay." There was a short silence. Neither of us spoke, neither of us hung up. I could see him preparing to say what he had called about in the first text, and I waited patiently for it.

"I think you should ask your dad to pay for the rehab."

I ran my fingers back through my hair and sighed.

"I know." He replied before I could answer. "I know what he's like. But Pike can't pay for it all. He looked fuckin' weird with all his piercings out working through the night at ViaPizza, and dead on his feet, that managers not right either, the one who was yelling at him, that's fucked up, can't pretend you'd take that..."

"Nothing is for free."

"Yeah but your dad is the only one that has money. We can't do shit. None of us. Even with his job he knows he's screwed."

"He'll take out a loan."

"On what?"

The headache got stronger.

"I'll talk to him, that's the most I can do."

A short pause. "Thanks." It sounded sincere, but I didn't care, I cared about the conversation I'd just talked myself into with Beckett.

The pleasure that would show in his permanently compressed, disappointed expression, the way his moustache would crinkle and his eyes would glint when he saw me request something like that. I think I'd rather cut my fingers off and sell them. Shame no one was in the market for severed fingers.

"Then I'll say goodnight."

"Yep."

"Don't just smoke. Eat something as well."

"Sure." I replied, and probably both hung up at the same time.

He couldn't know that the majority of my meal was sitting on the floor being chowed down by that ridiculous fluffy white dog that whined at me and put his paw on my leg.

[A/N] As always thanks to the Wattpad Creators Program and warm boa constrictor hugs to my patrons... ⸜(｡' ˘ ')⸝♡⋆˙