Brutal Honesty and Zip-tie Stuff

Author's note: You guys seemed to enjoy reading the last chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it, so I spent a little more (like five times as long) time on this one.

PS. Once again, sex is at the end ;)

~

Even as she was sliding down the side of the bathroom stall into a naked heap I knew something had changed within me. My body felt etched in, smouldering tendrils of something rooting out from my spine.

I watch passively as the foremost goon, holding a crowbar, reaches for me. The smouldering tendrils flare into full flame in an instant, taking control.

On instinct alone I close my eyes, a deep calm surging through me. I form the entire scene in minds eye, my focus flitting from detail to detail without any conscious effort, my brain harvesting the patterns, combining facts to deduce and conject more information, my subconscious chewing it all up and digesting it. I feel it happening, yet at the same time have no control over it.

Then it's done. In the space of a moment my subconscious spits out a complete model of the entire situation and its implications, my choices, and their applications. In that second I see the whole moment in a way I've never seen anything ever before, a level of understanding so high that I feel like a god. Everything is painful in clarity.

I open my eyes. I first note that world is tinted. I can't tell what color. It doesn't matter. Not even a second seems to have passed.

His hand still travels toward my chest, casually, with violent energy of a person far too experienced in the application of pain. I follow it with my eyes for a fraction of a second, then, acting more on the model still present in my head than my sight, I move.

I move through them as though in a dream, eyes glazed, biomechanics utterly efficient, arms, my legs, my body twirling in patterns pre-choreographed, not in reality but in my head. His right hand grasps empty air as my shoulder instead finds a comfy home in his balls. The crowbar clangs against the ground as I lift him up with strength I never knew I had, rising to my feet. For the first time in my life I truly comprehend the power of my body when using competent torque application in my joints, translating the force of my legs efficiently into my spine and upwards.

I twist violently, holding his legs tight to smash his head into the wall opposite Jasmin, before dropping him off my shoulder in a ducking motion to escape a haymaker flying through the air my head had previously occupied, the owner of which grunting mid-strike, suddenly finding himself toppling over into the toilet as his right knee is snapped inward, the right kneecap displaced by my flat palm. I slip through his spread legs as he falls to fire my left foot forward into the shin of another giant as he lunges forward. I hit it at just before his foot finds purchase on the ground, with enough power that his entire upper body catapults forward as a result of lower body flying back, his face, accompanied by the funny look of surprise, whipping into the tile and cracking the floor. I smoothly regain my feet, the body of the mammoth man twitching on the floor in front of me. Blood leaks from his head, staining the blue and white with red. I'm not even out of breath. I feel like I should be scared, but the feeling of fear is weirdly absent. I feel like that should scare me more than anything, but it doesn't.

The final man leans against the wall, naturally, casually, not quite as large as the others. He watches me as I watch him, not acting, but assessing.

My subconscious strains to pop something into my conscious thought.

Danger it warns.

Wow. Real helpful. I shoot back. I run a rake of a glance down my final adversary.

The man is muscular, but not overly so, more the build of a superhero than a steroid user. His suit stretches somewhat against his body, tailored to fit. I catch the tail of a tattoo at his wrist, something black, before he pushes himself off the wall in a one sudden, elastic movement, the way in which shoots a spike of worry through my calm. He tilts his head at me, his eyes asking an unspoken question. Then he starts to move. Almost like a dance.

I dance with him. He's fast, extremely so. I sway to the left, to the right, avoiding blow after blow, but unlike the others he converts the energy of one into the other, not giving me the time to counter, to attack. He cannot hit me, nor can I hit him without getting hit. But he's fighting a losing battle, slowly running out of energy. Despite this my feeling of calm is beginning to run out, and I realize it was a product of the model from which I had the certainty of a plan to deal with each possible circumstance. The model is fading, the clear path fading into obscurity, but I press on, it being my only option.

Then he clips me.

I see it happen, unbelievingly watching his fist fly upward ten times the speed of his already, extremely fast pace, and it barely grazes my chin, yet I feel as though I've been hit in the head with a shovel.

Fuck.

My vision flashes red-white, and I stumble back. He sneers at me through my teary vision, his eyes flashing dangerously. His face tells me he discovered the answer to his question, and he likes it.

Not a moment's respite passes before he follows me, flowing at impossible speeds through impossible combinations. I shell up, instinct guiding me through his assault, an almost mechanized movement of muscle and bone. Real dangerous pain floods my senses for the first time in a long time as he lands strike after strike, and the tendrils, the etchings which were fading before...pause.

Then they burn brighter.

As I continue to get my ass beat, a certain... foreign rage floods my system without my control, like a red, unactivated goo, inching its way through my veins. The detachededly aware self within myself, watches my body flood with with that weird unactivated rage (take your time to figure that one out). It's almost like a sensual potential energy, a safeguard on its activation.

"...?" The feeling of a question slams into my consciousness, at which point I realize it wasn't my original subconscious doing all the behind the scenes work of my fight choreography but something completely separate, though similar. A system created within me as a concequence of fucking Jasmin that now sends me messages and makes me scarily badass, if only for a few moments.

Gotta love STDs.

The question, no, the request for permission remains in the back of my head, and I have the distinct impression it's eager to be let loose

I think for a moment amidst the fireworks of pain, and my desperation outweighs the sane part of my brain. I feel myself give permission.

The rage lights up in a wave from center line outward, down my limbs, and they tingle. My tinted vision grows darker. I look up from my guard to notice that the previously machine gun-like blows have slown down. They've slown way down.

No wait. Instinctually I know that's not right.

I sped up.

I drop my guard, relaxing, now able to slip through the flurry, moving only a fraction of a second faster than the man, but it's enough.

My fist finds his jaw in the space of a second and the last thing thing I see in his eyes is a flash of fearful acceptance, as if he knew he was playing with fire, before he drops to the ground.

I stand, bleeding, battered, but still on fire, above a pile of men.

Then the fire goes out.

Ohhhhh fuuuuuuck. My body sags to the side and white and blacks spots flood my vision. The weird tint leaves, and everything suddenly seems a little lighter in color. Once again, no time to comprehend what the hell just happened. I stumble over the bodies toward Jasmin. The guy I crushed the nuts of groans on the floor.

We gotta bounce.

I shake her, but she just flops around limply. Not a lot of time, but I can't just carry her out in her current state. She's pretty fucking naked. I'll have the cops called on me in an instant.

Think goddamn it!

I pull the blazer off one of the mountain men (struggle all on its own) and throw it on her to mask her form. No sense in bothering with the panties nor the bag, she'll just have to survive with a bra and blazer for now. I pick her up to leave, and realize I'm only wearing my underwear.

Ah, fuck it. I kick the one dude's head for good measure, then head out the door with Jasmin limp in my arms, wrapped in a blazer meant for someone three times her size like a blanket.

I glance down the hall. Customers are already looking our way, probably because of the noise (gee, really?), and I glimpse an employee heading from the counter our way. Shit.

I move quickly, my body creaking in protest, shouldering my way through a door marked 'employee only'. I half limp, half stride down a short hallway past a storage room to the back entrance, hearing yells behind me. Ah. They must've discovered the bodies. A small, somewhat dark laugh escapes me. Wonder what they're going to print in the newspaper. Four injured muscle men discovered around a red pair of panties in a coffee shop bathroom? Let them make sense of that.

I call an uber once I'm a block away.

For once in my life I'm lucky and get an old indian guy who barely speaks english. He takes one look at Jasmin and gives me a raised eyebrow.

"Alan?" He questions with a heavy accent.

"Yes." I reply, extremely aware of the fact that I'm carrying a beautiful girl clothed only in a blazer and bra asleep in my arms. And I'm looking pretty sketchy myself in just my underwear. Oh and the blood trickling down the sides of my face. And the bruises everywhere. And my limp. Ah but what is life without a crazy hot woman in your arms and a few unconscious thugs littered behind you? I open the door and set her gently in the backseat, before rounding around and entering the other side.

"She has narcolepsy." I offer as an explanation.

Ah shit. I lied. What happened to trying not to do that?

The whole car ride feels surreal, and faintly deja-vu ish. When I'm not doubting my sanity, I'm expecting to wake up out of this nightmare. Then I glance over at Jasmin's naked curves hidden under the blazer and confirming that,yes, I did indeed fuck the most beautiful girl I've ever seen senseless and proceed to murk four solid blocks of protein, all in the middle of a mens bathroom, so maybe things could be a little worse.

Or who knows, maybe you're just tripping shrooms for the first time. Then another wave of pain wracks my body.

Yeah no. That couldn't hurt this bad.

A buzz emanates from under Jasmin's pristine new blazer. I move the flap to the side carefully as not to expose too much and realize the buzz is coming from inside her bra. Eh... Vibrating tits?

Rational thought prevails as I realize it's her phone. I check to make sure the driver isn't looking before I grab it from her bra.

Kayla followed by a heart is calling. To answer or not to answer? I mean, it is followed by a heart, right? Ostensibly that means she trusts the caller. Ostensibly.

I go with my gut and click the green phone icon.

"Jasmin you better tell me where the fuck you are." An angry female voice.

My throat is dry, and I swallow before answering. "Uh..this isn't, I mean... This is...Alan?" My end lamely once more, my voice still sounding croaky.

"Alan? Who are you? Where's Jasmin?" Worry has crept its way into her anger.

"Um." I think of the best way to approach this. "A confused friend of Jasmin's. Very confused."

Great now you just sound like you're struggling with my sexuality.

Jeez my sarcastic side is active today.

"Where is she?" The voice is tinged with panic, and it rips me back to reality.

I glance over at her, the slow rise and fall of the fabric as she breathes.

"Um, with me. Here."

A sigh of relief. Then it catches. "Why didn't she answer the phone?"

"Uh..." I glance at her again. "She's...not awake."

I mean that's technically true.

The anger/worry combo is back in an instant. "Why?"

I gulp, thinking of everything that happened since I entered the bathroom with her. "S'a little hard to explain..."

"Do so. Now." A command issued by someone used to being followed.

Hmm. See, the thing is I find the whole experience hard to believe, even when looking at my own damn memory, and I can imagine what I would sound like explaining it to somebody over the phone. I might as well hang up.

But then again this person might be in on all this, and if she's not it can't really hurt right? And plus this is a great moment to practice my honesty.

Here goes nothing.

"So, basically we met up for coffee, then she spotted a gang of guys across the street, pulled me into the men's bathroom, stopped time in a toilet cubicle, invited me to have sex with her," I calmly list on and on, not quite believing what I'm saying as I say it, "I... was hesitant at first...but she convinced me. Then the group of bodybuilders came in and I...beat...them...up?" I finish, now somewhat questioning my own sanity for the second, no, third time that day.

"But why is she asleep." Eh. What. Not even a single sound of surprise. No exclamations of insanity.

"Excuse me?" I ask, almost as if I need to be surprised for her at my own account.

"Why. Is. She. Asleep?"

And all at once I'm irritated again.

Are you fucking kidding me.

I've had it with people talking condescendingly to me about crazy shit, including fucking magic, that no normal person experiences, as though they're everyday occurrences.

Fuck this girl.

"She told me to fuck her like a fucking animal, so I fucking did! And I think I choked her out in the middle of my orgasm. She hasn't woken up since." I respond, almost yelling. My Uber rating is definitely going to plunge after this.

"I see." She sees. Okay. Well, my confidence in my own sanity takes another hit for the day.

"What the hell is going on here?" I ask. Why is everyone okay with things that are not okay?

"I can't tell you over the phone. Do you know where Suscitatio Street is?"

"Yes." I answer dumbly.

"Meet me there in fifteen minutes." She hangs up.

For what feels like the fiftieth time that day, I ask myself the same question.

What the fuck is going on.

I tap the driver on the shoulder and give him the new address.

Thank god I didn't choose Uber pool.

The indian guy leaves us on the corner of Suscitatio Street (I gave him five stars), and I realize she didn't give us a house number. It's a small, out of the way suburban street, ending in a forest. The pavement is cracked, stained, the road sprinkled with potholes, but a lot of the houses are renovated. The street is the product of the slow process of gentrification.

I stand like an idiot at the end of the street opposite the forest, carrying Jasmin in my arms. I look down at her for a moment and feel a pang of worry, a protective urge overcoming me.

Catching feelings after nice fuck are we? My sarcastic side taunts.

No. I shoot back.

She just seems so soft, so fragile, which is somewhat from her being a lot lighter than she looks. I blow a stray hair out of her face, and she groans in my arms, her nose wrinkling. Wow. Guess my breath really is that bad.

Her eyelids flutter and I panic and freeze, thinking she's about to wake.

Instead she groans again, turns her head, and deposits a large pool of drool onto my wrist. I sigh, part relief, part resignation.

Things could be worse.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I balance her in one arm momentarily (not an easy thing to do with someone by the way) while I fish in my pocket for my phone, taking a second to wipe my arm on my underwear, leaving a nice wet stain. I come out with, not mine, but hers, a text visible on the screen from (you guessed it) Kayla.

"Come to the forest."

Hrmmmm. Eh what's the worst that could happen. I head suspiciously toward the end of the road, glancing furtively around, hoping not to see anyone. If anyone called the police...well I'd be fucked.

I somehow make it to the other end of the block without incident, the trees staring at me judgmentally a few meters away, but nobody comes out to greet me. A trail retreats from the end of the road into the growth, a few benches visible along the path before it winds out of view. I make a spontaneous decision to head to the first one and plop down until somebody shows up.

I walk tentatively, my new gut feeling urging me to be careful. A small sound startles me and I spin around to find—

—A squirrel. I chuckle at myself. I'm honestly such a wimp.

And then of course my vision goes black as something clubs me in the back of the head. I topple forward, trying to spin, darkness claiming me before I land. My one thought is to protect what's in my arms.

------------

I awake to the sound of lofi assaulting my ears. Then I register the faint patter of a shower barely audible underneath it. I lift my head up to see a door where both sounds seem to originate behind. Then I attempt looking around. Big mistake.

The room spins, my head aches. But for that price I learn I'm in a small, stuffy room with no windows. I close my eyes and from the image in my head I count a bed, a couch, an exit door, and a bathroom door, from which all the sound is coming from. Then my eyes snap open as I register who was on the couch.

Jasmin.

She lays on the couch, still out, cocooned nicely in what looks to be a soft blanket. I feel the chill of an AC on my bare skin.

Wish I had a blanket. I hope she's not in a coma.

I rise to check on her—or try to. My hands encounter the resistance. My feet don't move either. I look down confusedly, and sure enough, I'm literally zip-tied to a bed, which incidentally is too short for my lanky frame. Great.

I'm also incredibly sore. My shoulders hurt, arms hurt, my core hurts, but most of all, my butt hurts. I let out a groan of severe pain, struggling to stretch within my constraints. I look down to notice the wet drool stain on my boxers has dried, so I've been here at least a little while.

The shower shuts off. And then so does the music. Time to find out who gave me the friendly concussion.

I feel like I should be apprehensive, but I'm strangely unworried, seeing Jasmin unbound on the couch. I've also just woken up, and at this point I've tentatively taken in what I did. I mean I did fuck a beatiful girl and then beat up a bunch of dudes in self defense. My ego is kinda shooting through the roof.

And then my subconscious helpfully reminds me that all I'm wearing is a pair of boxers, and I'm strung out like a plucked chicken. Right. So there's that.

The door clicks, then opens and—

—Jesus christ. I gape.

My assailant stands in just a pair of towels, one wrapping her hair, the other wrapping a piece of art in the form of a body.

She's a lot shorter and smaller than Jasmin, almost petite, with full lips, high, elfin cheekbones, and slanted, but regular, eyes. Well, not really regular. They're beautiful in their own way, dark green and capped by naturally symmetrical brows.

"Kayla I presume." I proclaim with my best prepared-and-waiting-villain-in-a-spinning-chair impression, now faking the confidence I had legitimately had only moments before.

Yeah, no, it vanished the second she opened the door. She has that air of self confidence so strong that it somehow attacks your own, if you know what a mean. She has it to the degree with which in the action of raising a single eyebrow she strips me of every shred of self confidence I had left. Fuck.