Exposure

Chapter 15

Joseph's POV

(Warning expletives ans graphic violence)

White was always about rationality and talking things out and it sickened Joseph. How could he possibly tell him to hold himself back when he'd been used so easily. Joseph understood that White didn't actually know his situation but surely he could see from his state that he couldn't just calm down.

Joseph had been betrayed, outrightly. It made too much sense that Aesop needed him to get his win rate up, he wanted to get out. God, it was so obvious! How get Joseph let himself be fooled like that?

On the other hand Joseph was so hurt. So in pain that it pulsed in his chest and dropped heavy stones of  misery into his legs which his anger used as momentum to surge forward.

He loved Aesop.

He still loved Aesop.

And a small part of him was desperately scrambling trying to find a small glint of hope in any of the evidence. In darkness, even a dim light was hope. He needed him. This couldn't have been Aesop's fault. He could've been manipulated, blackmailed or threatened into doing this.

It was the seer. Aesop was different. Aesop made Joseph's chest well up with floods of love and content. Aesop couldn't have faked those smiles. Aesop wouldn't have removed his mask, his protection from being close to anyone, just to fool Joseph.

The hallway in between the two wings was dusty and dimly lit but Joseph felt like all his senses were heightened. He could see the sprawled chairs and the cracked tableware. He could feel his breath, hot and forceful, blowing out through his nose like bull.

He grabbed the door to the survivor's wing and swung it back. It crashed against the wall and rebounded but Joseph had already stormed through, the tip of his sword dragging along the floor behind him.

A few survivors were in the middle room, talking but they were rendered speechless as Joseph made his way to the centre of the atrium and looked around with eyes filled with blue eyes that resembled a penetrating fire with the way they flickered with anger. The survivors hadn't moved a muscle since Joseph had burst in. They were frozen in both fear and shock but all their eyes were glued on him and the sheer amount of rage concentrated on his face.

"Where is he?!" Joseph bellowed, thrusting his sword into the stair banister, carving a chunk out of the dark wood. No one answered him, the survivors were rigid as corpses.

Eli's POV

Eli had heard the general murmur of conversation had cut off like a record stopping. Then a foreign yell and an angry yell at that. Aesop sat bolt upright when he heard the voice. Which was a suspicious reaction. Normally Aesop would've remained relatively indifferent to disagreements that were not his own.

Eli eased the embalmer back to laying down in his bed, convincing him that he was still tired from last night and telling Aesop to wait in his room whilst he went to check on everything.

A foolish mistake but Eli was ignorant.

He tapped down the hallway to the top of the stairs,
"What's going..." Eli's voice failed him as he looked down at the seething photographer.

Joseph head flicked to focus on him and burned into the seer's skin,
"You..." Joseph's murmured like the calm before the storm "You fucking bastard!" He yelled, his voice booming like a shock wave and echoing throughout the silent room.

Eli was trying to play the hero, acting 'brave' as he called it but anyone on the outside could see he was being careless. He knew what the photographer was here for and Eli's ego was ballooning, smudging a smug smirk across his lips,
"What? You can't seriously be mad that he left you for me. You're a psycho that abused him into 'loving' you and then you took advantage of him. He needs someone who can really be there for him without having the mind of a killer. He's better off this way, so piss off." Eli said smoothly as if Joseph's aura wasn't giving off waves of bloodlust.