TOPPLED INTO LOVE.

Chapter: 8.

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“Oh, my, God!" Eric whispered as his gaze fell deeper and deeper into those beautiful pale of grey. Like a spike being driven through his heart...that magnetic gaze captured him and at that moment he understood what it meant for one's heart to throb. He could literally feel his heart beating outside of his chest.

Snow was captivated by those strong black eyes, he blinked and then tripped on air. The spell broke as his brother reached out to grab him before he fell face flat into the ground, but Eric beat him to it. The boy was holding onto Snow in a flash and he wondered when and how he got there so quickly. Jason's mouth was wide open in shock, he has never seen Eric rush to someone's aid more quickly in the past fourteen years he has known him.

"Hey, are you alright?" Eric's gentle voice melted into Snow's ears and his heart throbbed loudly the second he felt Eric's hand slowly reaching up to his face. Gently, he pushed the white bangs from his face so he could look closely into those grey eyes. 

"T-Thank you." Snow stuttered, a shade of red tinting his cheeks. 

"You are so beautiful..." Eric gasped aloud in a sheer daze. "What is your name?" 

"Snow." He replied and Eric felt his skin tingle. Snow's steel-like gaze gripped him and he was nearly reaching for a kiss. 

"W-We need to leave, right now!" The older man called out once his head returned to normalcy. He too has been lost in his own world as he and Jason found themselves in an intense stare-down.

"Leave? Where?" Jason eventually had control of his body, he got out of the water and made his way towards the other three.

Eric couldn't reach for that kiss he so desperately needed as Jason neared him and he was forced to peel his eyes off Snow and instead have them resting on his best friend.

"The D.A is all over the place waiting to take you both away." The man spoke again.

Eric saw the man in his hands tense at the mention of the D.A and he slowly got up, pulling Snow with him. 

"D.A?" He asked. 

"Yes. Dark Agents. They are deadly and without conscience. You must never trust a D.A." The older man knew he would live to regret saying that but they needed to know.

"Why would they want to take us?" Eric fired back, his protective mask coming back on and Snow fell deeper for the man.

"You broke the rules, they believe you both are homosexuals." 

"So?" Eric asked again now standing head-on with the shorter man, but Eric would not stare into those brown eyes for longer than two seconds. The man oozes this strong aura that scares and excites him all at once. 

"That is an unforgivable sin." The man told them and they both burst into loud laughter.

Snow frowned, he may have liked the new boy a little too much but he didn't like that they weren't taking his brother seriously. This was true and they could get into big trouble. He needed to do something so, he walked in front of Eric and folded his arms across his puffed-up chest. Eric's laughter was knocked out of him that instant, he met Snow's eyes with his own apologetic gaze.

"Dude, what planet are you living on?" Jason laughed softly. "We are not gay!" He met Eric's confused look and his own eyes widened in size as realization sets in at how wrong that statement sounded. "That did not come out right." Eric shook his head and he smirked. "We are gay but not into each other but even if we were, what's the crisis?" 

"It is considered the unspeakable sin in SinCity and the penalty is death." Snow spoke his longest words to anyone that wasn't his brother. 

"That is just sick!" Eric seethed. 

"We have to leave." Snow met his brother's eyes as if he was pleading that they get going.

"Snow is right, we don't have much time, we have to leave now so by the time they discover you are gone, we would have made it out of here." 

"I'm Eric, this is my best friend Jason and you are?" The black boy asked seriously. 

"My name is, Lover." 

"What?" Both boys asked with a toothy grin. 

"Lover, that is my name." The older man replied and they burst into another round of laughter. 

"Seriously!" Jason cried between laughs "Who names their child... Lover?" 

"Our mother." Snow replied shyly and Eric was mesmerized by him once again.

"I would love to ask her why?" Jason chuckled.

"She is dead." Lover deadpanned and the laughter seized in a flash.

"I'm sorry." Jason felt guilty for laughing.

"I can't call you Lover sounds so..." Eric paused searching for the right word to use. "L, will just do for now, is that okay?" He asked.

"Perfect." Lover smiled at him since that was what everyone called him. The only people that ever called him Lover were his mother when she was alive and his brother.

"We should go back to the room for a change of clothes, we are near-naked," Eric suggested.

"No, you can't do that. There is a DA waiting at your room door." Lover told them.

"We saw them when we left the room. So that was why they were there." Eric's face twisted into a frown. 

"Let's go, guys, come on!" Lover made a turn for the left. 

That was not the way out of the hotel.

"Where are you taking?" Eric asked, confused.

"Well, obviously, we can't leave through the front exit. I know another way out of here." 

"What way is that, Lover?" Snow asked and for a moment there Eric looked at him confused, he was certain he felt a pang of Jealousy pinch at his chest but when he remembered it was the older man's name he settled down.

"We go down the Underground tunnel." Snow gasped at his brother's guidance.

"Isn't there any other way? That place is crawling with D.As. How are we ever going to make it out of there?" He asked, eyes spotting wetness in their depths and his words brought the other two to a sudden halt.

"Hold up!" Eric frowned.

"Time out," Jason told Lover.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Eric shoved on Lover's chest but he didn't budge.

"If I wanted you both killed I wouldn't put my ass out on the line for it and more importantly, not my baby brother. Helping you alone means designing my death warrant, not just mine but my brother's, and get this, I would rather die than have any harm come to him." He stared at them for a while. "Trust me, both of you, that is all I ask." He resumed walking again and they reluctantly followed. 

********

The man knew his way around as he led them behind the hotel, through a short gate, and then they emerged at a narrow passageway that seemed endless the farther they walked. Daylight began to disappear behind them the deeper they went until the last chink of light faded and they were engulfed in absolute darkness.

Lover stopped and pulled out a thick black rope from his pocket, it was as if he came prepared for anything, he then proceeds to wrap the fabric around his wrist, and once it was tightly secured in place, he passed it on to Jason who stood behind him. "Wrap it around your wrists." He instructed. 

"Why?" He asked.

"So we don't separate or take a stray part then get lost, also because after this passageway is a very dark tunnel, you have to be absolutely quiet and careful, there are no lights in the tunnel and the only way we all can walk the same vennel, is if you all are grabbing onto this rope, no matter what do not let go of it. Understood?" 

They all muttered their yeses and wrapped the soft rope around their wrists, grabbing tight as instructed.

Just as he had told them, the tunnel was dark, too dark that they couldn't even see each other's backs. Lover led them, he was used to this place and he could go around the tunnel in a blindfold; they did it in training when they were still in the academy. 

As they got deeper into the tunnel they felt cold, especially for Eric and Jason who wore nothing but swimming shorts and a loose towel draped around their waists. They all were disturbed by the rotten change in the atmosphere, the chill in the air was pronounced, and they felt frozen to the core not just by the cold in the stone which surrounds them, but by the sorrowful feelings they felt inside. Soon the air became too thin to breathe, the sound of water dripping into the dirty puddles on the ground they stepped on echoed roundabout them, filling their eardrums with dreadful rhythms. 

Lover had called it a tunnel yet it was big and wide enough to accommodate them, it no longer seemed they were in a tunnel but somehow still underground. A horrid stench greeted their noses and Snow choked on the disturbing smell of rot and decay.

"What the fuck is that smell?" Eric nearly barfed. 

"That is the rotten corpses of decapitated men and women." Lover replied without a care in the world.

"What?" Jason nearly cried.

"This is the Undergrounds, this is where you both would have woken up if you had eaten the breakfast served to you this morning."