We'll Be Okay [Solby]

Chapter 5

Elton's hands were folded under his chin, knuckles white with barely suppressed fury and terrible indecision.

It was four days after the guys had been taken. Authorities were no closer to locating their friends and everyone was growing more anxious by the day. Kat had flat out refused to go home alone, and was crashing with Corey and Devyn. The trap house members kept casually checking in with each other, the boys' families still reaching out with news of no news. The tension was palpable when they were together, despite the humor they attempted to keep.

They were all terrified.

Elton, for his part, had tracked down anyone he knew with any tech knowledge, trying to get someone to traced the signal, or find out who owned the domain.

Unfortunately, their captors had been too smart for that.

Two days after the original social media post, Sam and Colby's captors had posted a new video on their page. New photos came with it. They hadn't even bothered with YouTube this time, but had posted a photo of the two of them on Twitter. In it, Colby's head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open, in reaction to something that was happening off-frame. Sam's eyes were dark and intense on Colby.

If Elton hadn't known his friends so well, he could have almost misconstrued the photo as depicting a consensual encounter, the kind he was almost sure he was going to walk in on during the TFIL days.

Elton wasn't stupid. Rash and overly passionate sometimes maybe, but not stupid. He had watched the two eighteen year old kids he had dragged around the world interact, living and breathing in each other's space, watched how they looked and moved about the other, watched how their relationship developed, the dynamic they clearly had evolved; Colby pulling Sam out of his shell and Sam making sure Colby didn't fly off the rails.

Elton knew Colby had it bad for Sam. Drunken nights in the camper after Sam had passed out or been too tired or drunk to pay attention had told him that. The shear number of longing looks he had to edit out of the TFIL videos told him that. His heart ached for Colby, knowing his little brother had been hurt when Sam had started dating Kat, but he had hoped that had helped him move on.

He thought he had.

In all these years, Elton had never seen Sam appear to return any of those feelings. He was pretty sure Sam was as straight as they came. This photo though... Elton stared at it, trying to glean any information about what was actually going on in the photo from it.

The indecision was ripping him apart. He so did not want to support these fuckers, at all, but he so desperately wanted to know what was going on with his brothers. They seemed to be in one piece from the most recent photo, but it wasn't... Elton scrubbed his face with his hands.

The over 100,000 views to the page told Elton that many other people hadn't had the same moral concerns he had. The site only accepted Cryptocurrency, a thing Elton had been on the internet long enough to learn how to acquire, but something that he knew would make their kidnappers much harder to track.

He wasn't even sure he could watch the videos if he bought access to them, and it was not cheap, not that that was really the concern here.

He groaned. This was so fucked up.

His mouse hovered over the button.

Whatever he did, he would hate himself.

OOO

Colby had no idea how much time had passed when he came to again. He felt warm, and that immediately struck him as odd. The last few times he had woken up so, so cold. Something warm was under him, wrapped around him, his head pressed against something... something that was moving rhythmically. Colby made a happy noise, wiggling his body deeper into the warmth.