Abused

I didn't realize falling asleep but after an unknown amount of time my eyes flicker open. My lids feel heavy and the first thing I hear is Aaron's retort: "You shouldn't pick up night activities that you can't handle, Nad. You're simply too exhausted during the day after spending the nights in Zak's little vampire cave playing vampire bi-.." But he doesn't really get to finish his sentence as I cut him off with a playful punch in the shoulder. "And you're a total asshole, Aaron", I chuckle. He rolls his eyes at me and somewhere I am able to hear a sigh. I'm pretty sure that's Nick as he's the only adult in the group and doesn't always understand me and Aaron completely.

I'm leaning on something that must be Zak as it's warm and feels muscular. I open my eyes completely and am greeted by his eyes. "Good morning, Nad." I yawn. "Where we at?" I ask lazily. "Almost Poveglia." Right, I fell asleep in the boat, again. The more conscious of my surroundings I become the more I realize that it's actually noisy as hell and I don't really get it why I fell asleep. Aaron must be somewhat right (although Aaron is never right) and maybe we should sometimes do less stuff and more sleeping with Zak during the night hours. But it just somehow always happens so that we want to entertain ourselves when our bodies would need to sleep.
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I sit up properly and try to see something, but it's really getting dark. The sun is setting and the sky is slowly turning black. It's probably the thing that's giving me the chills. This absolute and complete darkness. There are no houses, no traffic lights, nothing. Just silent darkness and the fucking annoying sound of crickets. "Look, Naddie, there it is! The island of horrors", Aaron whispers dramatically and points out. I follow his finger with my gaze and able to make out the outline of an island. I gaps. There it is, then. I have spent many hours convincing myself that I'm gonna be just fine. This is his dream and I'm not going to ruin this for him. I'm not going to let this go completely wrong like it did last time. Zak probably feels my body tense because he wraps his big arms around me and soothingly plays with my hair. "You've got nothing to be afraid of, Nad. I'm not gonna let it hurt you", he whispers silently. His tone sounds slightly concerned, but I don't want to speculate the deeper meaning behind it. "Yeah", I reply, "I know." Then I look at him in the eyes. "As you know, I'm gonna bite the ghost where it hurts if it has a bad mind of doing something!" Zak laughs. "That's my Nad!"

We get off the boat after the guy who dropped us here said his words of warning and prayers for our souls. Last time I didn't take their warning seriously but after the first night here I've started to believe in pretty much everything I hear without questioning it. I'm squeezing Zak's hand hard and he's carrying a night vision camera on his left shoulder. Aaron and Nick are carrying some cameras too and Billy has a bag full of EVP-recorders, ghost boxes and some other ghost-detecting stuff. They all walk into the nerve base and Nick places something on the table. It's made of copper and I roll my eyes at it- "Seriously, dudes?" He clears his throat. "We are not gonna lose Nad again this time. We got this lock and we're gonna give keys to everyone else but Nad. If this is the best way of keeping you out of harm's way then we're gonna do it." There he goes again all father-like. "This also makes it impossible for our little lovebirds to sneak outside to do some mature rated stuff", Aaron whispers with his naughty voice. I try to playfully punch him but I miss and end up hitting my first against Zak, instead. He narrows his eyes at me and pokes me in the side. "Nad, you be good."

Bill and I make ourselves comfortable in the nerve centre as Zak and the others head out. Before leaving with his camera - and yes, I'm almost jealous because the camera gets to sit nicely on Zak's shoulder all night and I have to be locked inside a nerve centre on Poveglia- I make a pouting face at him. "No goodbye kiss?" I ask, pretending to be hurt. "No, no goodbye licking!" Aaron answers and chuckles. Zak walks to me and gently plants a small kiss on my lips. I playfully run my hand in his hair, tangling it so that his Zak-fin isn't perfect anymore. "What did I tell you about killing the hair?" he whispers. I smirk. "Oh, I don't know. You said something?" He growls in frustration. "You pay for this after the lockdown", he continues so that the others can't hear it. "Then make me pay, big boy", I whisper back and Aaron screams at us. "Dirty talking, they're totally talking inappropriate stuff! Nick, stop them!" He pretends to cover his eyes. Nick sighs, again. "Let's just go guys. It's a big island we don't have much time." The others follow him outside and I grin when I hear the sound of someone placing the lock on the door. I should have known that Aaron was serious about that. He probably would've gotten me the collar, too, hadn't Nick stopped him.

A creepy feeling of being watched enters my mind but I push it aside and try to focus on watching the screens with Billy. I swallow hard and try to focus on looking how sexy Zak looks like with the adrenaline of ghost hunting running trough his body and the look of excitement in his eyes. Oh my god, it is going to be a long lockdown!