Asher’s other hand went to the back of Levi’s neck and the two grips together turned Levi’s body and slammed him face-down on the table in one motion. Levi’s head cracked against a bread plate, air leaving his lungs as Asher wrenched an arm behind his back, the pain in his shoulder bright and immediate.
“Does this feel real, Levi?” Asher asked, pressing hard against him and whispering in his ear. “Or is it still nothing?”
“Asher, what the fuck man? Let him go!” Tyler shouted.
“Let me go!” Levi tried kicking behind him, to pull his arm free, but Asher yanked at his arm harder, straining the joint. Asher’s grip on his hair tightened and Levi’s head slammed back down onto the table, the edge of the cracked plate catching his forehead; blood dripped from his eyebrow into his eye.
“Tell me you love me back,” Asher whispered in his ear. “Just…just tell me you love me.”
“Fuck you,” Levi wheezed.
“WHY?” Asher shouted in his ear. “I know you do. Iknowit. I can feel it. Why won’t you—why can’t you just say it back?”
“Hey — that’s enough. Let him go, we can talk about this,” Elliot said, his voice low and urgent.
Asher released Levi’s arm and grabbed a steak knife off the table, yanking Levi’s hair back as he pressed the blade to his throat. “Back the fuck up, both of you,” he warned. “Back up and sit down or I swear to god I will open his throat right here.”
“Man, just let him —” Jasper started.
Asher pressed the knife harder and Levi flinched, the thin skin of his throat splitting enough to drip blood down his collar. “Sit down,” Asher snapped at Jasper. “If your foot leaves the floor, I’ll take his fucking eye out. Do you want to pick which one, or should I choose?”
Jasper sat.
“Say you love me,” Asher whispered, his quivering lips returning to Levi’s ear. “Please. Levi, please, I need to hear you say it.”
“No.” Levi blinked rapidly, blood and tears in his eyes blurring the room. Part of him was thankful for that. He wasn’t going to cave this time. He couldn’t. If he did, they would just end up doing this again. More pain. More death. More fucking monsters made from his memories by a god damn headset that was creeping through his mind.
“Then say you’re mine.”
“No.”
“LEVI —” The knife trembled at his neck. Asher’s breathing was wrong — panicked-fast, ragged, like the sound of something running out.
“I said no!” Levi shouted as the knife pressed deeper into his skin, the serrated teeth catching the edge of the wound and tearing the skin open.
“Fine.” Asher stabbed the knife into the table. “You won’t say you love me. You won’t say you’re mine.” In one sharp yank, Asher pulled Levi’s pants down to his thighs, and it wasn’t until the cool air of the room hit his bare skin that Levi realized what he did. There was a sharp, high shriek from somewhere in theroom—Maddie or Zoe, he couldn’t tell. “If they’re not real, and I’m not real, then none of what I do matters, right? Nothing I do to you in front of them matters, because this is all a fucking game to you.”
“Don’t —” Levi’s voice broke for the first time as Asher’s bloody palm stroked up one leg, the glass shard catching the sensitive skin on his inner thigh. “Asher, don’t do this—”.
Asher said nothing as he squeezed Levi’s thigh once, digging the glass deeper into both of them, before he pulled back. Levi’s blood turned to ice at the sound of the metallic clink of Asher’s belt buckle, louder than anything else in the room.
“Please don’t do this,” Levi whimpered, his face burning as the fact settled over him that Asher wasn’t bluffing. “Asher —”
“Say you want me to fuck you. Right now,” Asher snarled.
“No!” The defiance was back, smaller now, running on fumes. “I’m not going to humiliate myself for you anymore.”
“”I will do it, Levi, I will do it right here on this table and they will watch me do it and you will let me because you — you said I’m not REAL, you said it, you said it in front of all of them and if I’m not real then NOTHING I DO MATTERS —”
Asher’s whole body shook like the frame of him was coming apart. Levi could feel, through all of it — the blood, the pain, the bare skin, the hand with the glass — Asher’s heart hammering against his back.If I don’t give him something he’s going to do it. He will do it. He’s past the place where he won’t.
Levi closed his eyes. “I want you to fuck me.”
Asher yanked his head back harder. “Louder.”
“I want you to fuck me,” Levi said the words louder, his breath catching on a sob he didn’t know was building in his throat. “Please. Just…j-just take me to the room. Not here. Please.”
“Tell them.”