Echo of Offbeat

Adler dressed himself in his old Vietnam era military uniform (under the guise of reconstructing Bell's memories), striving to make Bell feel as though he truly belonged to his world.

With a deer-like calmness, Bell looked at him without suspicion, trying to grow accustomed to this image under the influence of the drugs. He blamed himself, convinced that this was his former comrade and that he simply couldn't remember due to the accident.

To imply an even closer bond, Adler joked and acted as if they were more than just friends and Bell believed it all, hook, line, and sinker.

Nationality, experience, age, and even the very concept of gender... every concept that could have posed an obstacle to growing closer to him was dismantled and dispersed, meaning absolutely nothing to Bell now.

One day, Adler exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke. Despite the stinging air, Bell gazed at him through the haze with eyes that looked bewitched. Seeing this, Adler realized Bell had been fully ensnared by his smoke and his gaslighting, and he wore a triumphant smirk.

If it meant making Bell trust him more, he was more than willing to initiate physical contact.

That was when he utilized the psychological mechanism known as "The Red Door."

The mechanism for making Bell search for and open a red door which didn't even exist in this world was simpler than one might think.

Under normal circumstances, intimacy would have come naturally. But there were missiles firing from all sides, white phosphorus raining down from the sky, and landmines planted along the path to intimacy.

...it was infuriating.

So, for them to safely be together, they had to reach a secure bunker, and "The Red Door" represented the path to that sanctuary.

Later, this concept was substituted for Bell so that it meant a reward and simultaneously served as the means to extract information on Perseus.

Regardless, both concepts meant a reward to Bell, and that became the driving force that kept him zealously opening the red door.

At first, Bell simply practiced opening the door within his hallucinations. He was rewarded when he imagined grabbing the doorknob and turning it.

As his concentration grew, he was rewarded for the time he spent trying to open the door and find something inside.

On the days Bell managed to discover even a single strand of Perseus's white hair inside the imaginary bunker... those days...

Adler gently cupped Bell's chin as he sat leaning against the bench, holding it much like one would grip the muzzle of an obedient dog.

"You can do this, Bell."

His voice was firm, but strangely affectionate. It was a voice that always managed to anchor Bell's drifting mind.

With his chin held in Adler's grip, Bell gave a small, awkward nod.

Adler's thumb caressed Bell's cheek, then slowly traced down over his upper and lower lips.

Even within his hazy mind, the tingling sensation on his lips sparked his concentration like kindling.

As always, the red door soon materialized before his eyes... that door that always kept him on edge, hovering between opening and staying shut.

At first, he worried the door wouldn't open.

Next, he worried that even if it did open, there would be nothing inside.

And then… he worried that he wouldn't find the promised meeting with Adler, or anything that could possibly make him happy.

Bell took a deep breath and opened the door...

A faint, pale light leaked through the crack of the door, revealing a corridor of stark white tiles stretching out before him.

But nothing was there to welcome him.

Disappointment, despair, and a search that felt as though it would never end persisted for a while.

Occasionally, his consciousness would blur, and parts of the corridor would flicker and glitch like a static TV screen.

If only he could make it to the next room, and the room after that, it felt as though something had to be there...

Sensing the hesitation, Adler's fingers slowly slid down from Bell's chin, pinching his chest.

As Bell flinched, Adler tilted his head and whispered into his ear.

"...Come find me."

Hearing that voice, Bell desperately shifted his gaze inside the labyrinth of his mind, striving to find even a single clue.

Unidentified notes, symbols, scraps of documents, photos cast from a dim projection, and fragmented videos flashing by...

Adler's fingers tickled Bell's lower abdomen, moving slowly as if tracing an invisible spell.

All the while, he deliberately avoided touching the place Bell needed, and wanted to be touched, the most.

As is always the case, the moments right before claiming the most delicious prize are the hardest.

Bell pushed forward, now ready to desperately deceive even his own brain.

And when he crossed the threshold, there he was...

Adler?

No. That was...

He saw a figure standing there in a military uniform, back turned.

It was a strange, but incredibly familiar silhouette.

As a look of bizarre relief and welcome flickered across Bell's face, his eyes closed, Adler didn't miss that subtle movement of the facial muscles.

As Bell ventured deeper, deeper into the room...

"Ah... you... I wanted to meet you."

The murmur sounded like a sigh of relief from a long awaited union, and like the sweetness of biting into a piece of ripe, sweet fruit...

His well trained search dog had finally found something.

To reinforce this behavior, a little bit of effort was required...

"I found it. What you wanted... and I opened the red door so I could be with you. Please tell me I did good. Please, I..."

Bell rambled, exhaling breathless, whispering words as if he were waiting for rain to wet his parched lips.

And beneath the shade of the lamp, Adler listened to those words with an unreadable expression. His shadow loomed heavily over Bell's writhing body.

Broken, messy, and desiring only one thing.

"Good kid."

Adler's dry voice, disguised as tenderness, hovered around Bell's ear.

...Adler showed mercy.

Soon, the promised sensation pierced from Bell's groin straight through his temples.

The feeling felt as though it would fry his nerves, like a short circuit.

Letting out a collapsing groan, Bell gasped for air, his breathing turning shallow.

Adler, never missing a beat, wrapped his cigarette stained tongue around Bell's, swallowing the moans before they could escape...

As the tongue of deceit intertwined with the tongue of truth, tears of rapture pooled at the corners of his eyes.

Pleasure inducing hormones raced through the folds of Bell's brain like a highway.

...And on those days, Adler never forgot his own reward.

The bench creaked to support the movement of the two, and the part that was always loose and annoying let out an even sharper, crying sound.

Looking straight into Bell's face, Adler watched him drown in ecstasy as he let out a voice that sounded almost like a prayer.

Adler thought to himself in a corner of his mind that he really should tighten the screws on the bench once this was over.

​But, if only for a brief moment, Adler's own face contorted intensely as he buried himself deep inside Bell, letting out a low groan.

Another drop of sweat, born from sin and depravity, welled up on his old Vietnam military uniform.

After that, Bell opened the door, opened it, and opened it again.

He no longer needed any encouragement.

Toward that false comfort, toward that corrupt paradise where even rotten fruit tasted sweet, he kept walking through that door.

[Note]

Wrote this post-surgery, fueled by three different prescription meds and two supplements from the hospital. I wrote this a few days ago, I initially didn't plan on posting it. However, because it's a bit different from my usual writing, I'm posting it here as a way to archive it.

Well, Adler's a badass here.