Chapter 8: The Initiation
The whiskey in Nat’s glass was a cheap burn, a necessary fuel. She stood at her bedroom window, the blinds parted just enough to see the slice of balcony. The cold seeped through the glass. Two days had passed since the kitchen. The apartment had moved in a tense, silent rhythm. Conzi had left early each morning, returning late, her eyes avoiding everyone. The textbook was gone from the table.
The balcony light was off, but the glow from the streetlamp below carved Chris and Bambi out of the darkness. Bambi, with her pastel hair in chaotic spikes and sleeves of ink, looked like a neon bird perched on the railing. Chris was speaking, his voice a murmur lost to the city’s hum. Nat saw him lean in, his mouth close to Bambi’s ear. Bambi’s head tilted, a submissive gesture at odds with her punk aesthetic. She nodded, fast and eager.
Nat’s hand tightened on the glass. She should look away. This was not her experiment. This was…
Bambi slid off the railing and knelt on the cold concrete. The dew would soak through her fishnet tights. Chris didn’t touch her. He simply unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a soft, deliberate rasp. He unbuttoned his jeans. Pushed them down just enough. His cock, already thick and heavy in the faint light, emerged. Bambi didn’t hesitate. Her small, tattooed hands came up, one gripping his belt for balance, the other wrapping around the base of him. She looked up at him, her face a pale moon in the shadows.
Chris’s head turned. He looked directly at Nat’s window. He knew she was there. He’d known the whole time.
“Show her,” Chris said, his voice carrying now, clear and flat. “Show Nat what happens to little sluts who eavesdrop.”
Bambi whimpered, a sound of pure excitement, and opened her mouth. She took him in, not with tentative licks, but with a desperate, hungry acceptance. She swallowed him deep, her lips stretching obscenely around his girth. Nat could see the strain in Bambi’s jaw, the tears of effort that immediately welled in her eyes. She bobbed her head frantically, a messy, noisy rhythm of gagging and sucking. Salvie dripped down Chris’s shaft, onto her hands, glistening in the ambient light.
“You’ve been listening, haven’t you?” Chris pressed, his hands now resting on her head, not forcing, just guiding. “Listening at doors. Hearing Conzi get what she deserved. It got your little cunt wet, thinking about it.”
Bambi moaned around his cock, the vibration earning a low grunt from Chris. He pushed forward, gently at first, then with more insistence, fucking her face. Her nose pressed into his pubic bone. She gagged, her body convulsing, but she didn’t pull away. She took it, her throat working violently.
“Tell her why you’re out here,” he demanded, pulling her off by her hair. A string of spit and pre-cum connected her lips to his swollen tip.
Bambi gasped for air, her voice wrecked. “Because… because I’m a nosy little whore. I wanted to hear… I wanted to know what it felt like.”
“To get fucked like a dumb animal?”
“Yes!” she cried, lunging forward to take him back into her mouth, as if the words themselves were a trigger.
Chris let her work for a minute, his hips pumping in a shallow, relentless rhythm. He watched Nat’s window. An invitation. A challenge.
Then he pulled Bambi up by her arms. He turned her, bent her over the cold metal railing. The city sprawled below them, indifferent. He yanked her tiny skirt up, revealing she wore no underwear. Her ass was small, pert, marked with more ink. He spat into his hand, rubbed it over himself, and without ceremony, drove into her.
Bambi screamed, a sharp, echoing cry swallowed by the night. He was too big for her, and he didn’t care. He fucked her with the same brutal efficiency he’d used on Conzi, but Bambi was different. Her cries quickly melted into mewling pleas. “Yes! Fuck! It’s so deep! You’re splitting me open!” Her words were slurred, drunk on the violation.
Chris held her hips, slamming her body against the railing with each thrust. The metal creaked. He was breathing hard, his focus split between the tight, clenching heat around his cock and the dark square of Nat’s window.
“She’s watching you,” he snarled into Bambi’s ear. “Nat’s watching you get ruined. Does that make you come, you filthy bitch?”
“Yes! Oh god, yes!” Bambi sobbed, her hands scrambling for purchase on the slick rail. Her orgasm hit her suddenly, a violent shudder that made her legs buckle. Chris held her up, pounding through it, his own release building. He pulled out at the last second, his cum striping her lower back and the cheeks of her ass in thick, white ropes.
He let her go. Bambi slumped against the railing, trembling, gasping, spent.
Chris turned, tucking himself away. He left her there, a used and dripping mess against the city lights, and walked back inside.
Nat didn’t move from the window. The whiskey had gone warm in her hand. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. Not from disgust. From a chilling, crystalline understanding.
She heard his footsteps in the hall. They stopped outside her door.
A knock. Not demanding. Patient.
She put the glass down. She smoothed her shirt. She opened the door.
Chris stood there, smelling of night air and sex. He looked calm, but his eyes were electric, scanning her face for a reaction. “You have questions,” he stated.
“I have observations,” Nat corrected, her voice steady.
A faint smile touched his lips. “Better.”
“You used Bambi as a message.”
“I used Bambi because she wanted to be used. The message was a bonus.” He leaned against the doorframe. “You recorded Conzi. You watched Bambi. You’re mapping the pattern. But you’re outside the system. An observer. That’s a limited perspective.”
“And you’re offering me a promotion to participant.”
“I’m offering you the other side of the experiment. You wanted to understand my methods to deal with Erna. That’s a tactical goal. But you’re curious about the machinery itself. The energy transfer.” He paused. “You felt it, watching. Don’t lie.”
Nat was silent. She had. A low, unsettling thrum in her own belly. A dark curiosity that had nothing to do with Micha or Erna.
“What’s your hypothesis, Nat?” he asked, his voice dropping. “About yourself?”
She met his gaze. The charming, easy-going roommate was completely gone. In his place was something else—a ruthless architect of desire. She thought of her voice memos, her clinical notes. They were sketches. He was offering the real canvas.
“I hypothesize,” she said slowly, “that power isn’t about taking what you want. It’s about knowing what someone else needs to give, even when they hate themselves for needing it.”
Chris’s smile widened, genuine this time. “Now you’re speaking the language.”
From down the hall, the front door opened and closed. Micha’s voice, weary, called out, “Nat? You home?”
The spell snapped. The hallway was just a hallway again. Chris pushed off the doorframe. “Your boyfriend’s home,” he said, the casual mask slipping back into place so smoothly it was chilling. “Think about your research parameters.”
He walked to his room and shut the door.
Nat stood in her doorway, Micha’s footsteps approaching. She could still smell the sex on the air. She could still see Bambi’s trembling form over the railing. The data was no longer abstract. It was a pulse, a summons, deep in her blood.
She turned to meet Micha, her mind already elsewhere, constructing a new hypothesis, one where she was no longer the observer, but the variable.