Chapter Text
It’s late.
His phone goes off; Roman is calling.
He has to be drunk or bored or fucking with him, or this is an emergency, an opportunity, something important or something so banal it’ll make him soar across the continent himself just so he can punch him for the time wasted. There’s no knowing with Roman, which almost makes the game of guessing a little bemusing, but it’s gotta be impressive enough to not just warrant one of his usual annoying texts.
Kendall picks up at the second ring, distracted and glaring blearily at the school papers in front of him.
“Yo.”
Dark noise pours into his ear in response, indistinct and constant, a buzz of vague, aggressive movements. Kendall frowns, surmises, okay, so, a party or whatever, he’s drunk and bored, he’s fucking with him, is this an emergency–?
He never liked that fucking school he’d been sent to. He'd told Dad that, that he doesn't trust that fucking place. And Roman has been weird for a while now, but he’s changed since going to that fucking school. Dread floods his stomach as he reminds himself of that.
Another few seconds with no greeting and Kendall calls out again, “Rome?”
He forces a chuckle. The dread flows into his lungs.
“You fuckin’ buttdial me, man?” he tries to joke. “Hello?”
He perfectly predicts the shift of fabric. The sound clears up just so, like something being uprooted from the numbing drone of being underwater, up into the gasping surface. In fact, that’s what he hears. Gasping. Breaths.
A strange and sharp ripple of disgust is already jabbing through him before he can even begin to process it all.
“Roman, what the fuck?” he snaps.
He should hang up. The second he noticed that girly whine for what it is, he should’ve. His mind is picking up pieces, dropping them, snatching them up and throwing them off too far away to fully register, but the fragments of sounds, the - murmurs? Shuffling steps that could be a crowd, no music playing, just words, voices, sounds, grungy, tar-soaked sounds that form a disturbing rhythm, a thick pattering- no, hammering against something solid, fleshy, a body getting pummeled with audience commentary quietly, conspiratorially, included, and crushed between them all is this faint, distinct yowl.
And he knows in his fucking soul that that’s his brother. Not some girl, not some tortured whore being passed around a sleazy party backroom. It's him. He knows it's him.
Because Roman mewls. And it’s not a sound he was ever supposed to know and it is a sound being dredged up from the swampy recesses of his mind and he knows it as intimately as he knows his own hand that Roman, his brother, his fragile, submissive little sibling, he whimpers when he’s fucked. He can’t help himself. Every breath is edged with it, a cry like a whelp being kicked, a weak retaliation to every thrust forced into him– not forced. Not forced.
They didn’t–
“Roman.” He’s panicking. He can taste it, acrid in the back of his mouth. “This isn’t fuckin' funny, this is fucking childish, it’s late, what are you– Rome?”
Sloppy, filthy, terrifying sounds. The sharp staccato of his little brother’s pitchy little breaths, parts pleasure, parts pain, panic-drenched and far too wet. Like he’s drooling. Like he’s facedown with thick saliva pooling from his swollen lips, tongue lolling, mouth slack as he moans.
Shh... Shh, an old, forbidden memory coos. Shut up, you’ll get us in trouble.
And the images are unraveling in his skull before he can stop them, a basement, a laundry room, a dark room, a short row of metal bars, the jostling of a small cage. Bare skin, bruising flesh, stringy fluids trailing weakly onto the floor. Roman moaning and writhing, too weak to push back. Hands, too many hands on him, and footsteps, the crowd shifting, murmuring encouragements, incoherent words continuing to blur, getting louder, definitely growing louder, men’s voices, he must be surrounded by fucking men right now, what the fuck?
Finally, he’s almost completely able to make out two of them: “Get him.”
“Rome?”
The whimpers cut off with a forceful gag, a gurgle, a new violently slapping rhythm.
Ice flashes through him. And instantly he’s turning and screaming for a car, a copter, a jet, whatever it takes to get to fucking St. Andrews.
He doesn’t hang up the phone. And the sounds only continue on, drooling sobs following him on the way out.