A Note From Ben: This story is the first one I've done for Two and a Half Men. Since most of you probably don't know me, I should point out that this story is MATURE and rated accordingly. It has a few words that you wouldn't hear on the show. Ditto for the subject matter. I hope you enjoy it. I had so much fun writing it, I finished it in one sitting. These days that's a big deal for me. XD

Peace
by Ben Barrett

"Take your pants off."

"Please, don't make me do it again."

"Shhh, shhh. It'll be okay, baby."

"No more. Oh, God..."

Jake Harper woke up screaming, the same as he had night after night for the last year and a half. God, it was like reliving it over and over and over again. When he closed his eyes, he saw Mr. Polk grinning down at him like a hungry dog might grin at a particularly choice piece of meat. When he drifted off to sleep, he heard the man telling him it was okay, just relax and it wouldn't hurt so much, that he'd eventually learn to enjoy it.

Fucking bastard.

He kicked the covers aside and walked to the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face and tried to get his breathing and pulse under control. Just the thought of the man who had made his life a living hell for two long, agonizing months made him want to grab something breakable and hurl it across the room.

Uncle Charlie had been especially understanding about all of this, telling him it was okay to feel that way, that the man who abducted him from the bus stop had no right to do what he did. That was something Jake found especially odd. His uncle was the cynic, the one who did everything mostly for himself and tried his hardest every day to make Jake and his dad Alan think that he didn't want them there. For him to be so gentle, so loving, was a side of the man that Jake didn't think existed.

He walked over to the toilet and relieved himself, giving a sigh of relief as the pressure of his full bladder decreased into nothingness. He was surprised he hadn't pissed his bed. The dreams never stopped being frightening. Never. It was kinda like what preachers often said about hell. Once Uncle Charlie had suggested to a door-to-door evangelist that a person in hell would eventually get used to the heat, and the man had responded that it was something that a person never got used to, no matter how many days, weeks, years, centuries, millenia went by. Jake felt like he could really relate to that. No matter how many times he had to relive the hungry groping and rubbing of Mr. Polk through his dreams, it never got any easier to endure.

He closed his eyes and let his body take care of this natural function on auto-pilot. At this hour, the glare of the lights on the linoleum was especially harsh. It made his head hurt. Not that it was any better in the darkness behind his eyelids....

"Hey there, sport."

A voice called out to Jake from his left. He saw the friendly face of Mr. Polk, the retired guy from down the block, smiling at him from his rumbling old Chevy Nova.

"Hi, Mr. Polk," Jake replied.

"Need a ride?" Polk asked, gesturing toward the empty passenger seat beside him.

"I don't know. My dad always told me not to accept rides..."

"...from strangers, right," Mr. Polk finished. "But I'm not a stranger. You know me. Everyone does. Besides, do you really want to get on that bus again today?"

Jake had to admit he didn't. Since his Uncle Charlie and his dad had "educated" him about the evils of middle school and bus rides, he'd had a bit of an issue with them. In fact, he'd do just about anything to avoid them. Just yesterday, he'd intentionally dawdled in the morning, first refusing to get out of bed and then eating his breakfast way too slow, just so he'd miss the bus and someone would have to take him.

"All right," he said. "I guess it wouldn't hurt if I got a ride from you."

Polk smiled and opened the door. Jake climbed in and fastened his seatbelt, smiling as Polk pulled away. It barely registered with him that the old man took the wrong road, and that they were headed away from the school. He just figured he probably had some special way of getting there that avoided the slow-as-mud school zones and traffic.

It would be the last time in a long time Jake Harper would have a reason to smile.

For the first few days, the cops combed the neighborhood, looking everywhere for him. His name went out on all Amber Alerts and his face wound up on those HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD? circulars. His family went into a panic, praying every night that he'd be recovered alive and not at the bottom of some river.

As it turned out, he was two hundred miles away from Los Angeles, in a small shack in the wilderness. There, Mr. Polk tied him to a bed and did ungodly things to him. Things that violated him. Things that hurt.

Jake screamed and gave a jump. He'd been standing there in front of the toilet for God-only-knew how long, dozing on his feet with his boyhood still pinched between two fingers.

"Oh, my God," he cried. "Oh, my God!!"

He collapsed to the floor and began to cry uncontrollably. God damn it, couldn't he even use the bathroom in peace? Why the fuck did these memories haunt him every minute of every day? What had he done to deserve this?

"You fucking bastard!" he screamed beating at the floor with his fists. "You fucking sick bastard!"

He lashed out and screamed, swinging his fists at nothing at all. He grabbed whatever was in reach and flung it across the room. In his position that turned out to be a couple of tubes of toothpaste, a roll of toilet paper, and a plunger. The plunger actually made the most noise, bouncing off the mirror, then clacking against the sink before falling back to the floor.

"Jake?"

A knock at the door. It was Uncle Charlie. He'd heard Jake's cries and all of the commotion and had come to check on him.

"I'm...I'm fine, Uncle Charlie," he sniffled. "I just need a minute."

"Okay."

He wiped his eyeswashed his hands, then got up off of his knees and washed up in the sink. He walked out into the hallway, where Uncle Charlie was standing, waiting for him. He was holding a bottle of Jack Daniel's whisky and a small glass filled nearly to the top. When Jake walked out, he smiled at him and beckoned him to follow him toward the kitchen.

"Come on," Charlie said. "We need to talk."

"I don't really want to," Jake replied. "I just..."

"Thought you'd go back to bed?"

Jake saw his uncle's point, as blunt as it was, and gave a nod. He followed him down the hallway. They walked across the living room, which was as dark and quiet as a crypt. The large bay windows behind Charlie's piano were sheets of sheer nothingness, as if the world outside had ceased to exist. Jake found himself wishing that it had. He could just open up the big door, step out onto the balcony, and become part of the nothing. The dreams would stop, the pain would stop, everything would stop.

"Have a seat," Charlie said as they entered the kitchen. He took his usual spot at the head of the table while Jake settled into the seat across from him.

"I take it you had that dream again?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah," Jake answered softly, "but I don't wanna talk about it."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

Charlie shrugged and filled an empty glass similar to the one in his hand. He passed this one to Jake and took a long drink from his own.

"Whisky?" Jake asked. "You're giving me whisky?"

"I figure what the hell, you've had a rough night."

"Rough night?" the boy replied, slamming the entire glass in one shot. "The last year and a half has been rough."

Charlie nodded and refilled Jake's glass.

"This'll help you sleep, trust me," he said.

Jake said nothing, just slammed the glass like he'd slammed the first one. Charlie was impressed. Even though the boy was barely fourteen, he drank like a pro. Someday, when things were better (and Jake was a little older), maybe the two of them could go down to the bar and make some easy money playing Beer Pong.

"Thanks, Uncle Charlie," Jake said, feeling relaxed and more than a little tipsy. "I feel better already."

"Just don't tell your dad I did this. He'd have kittens."

Jake tittered at this, the first genuine laughter that Charlie had heard from him in ages. It was like music hearing it.

"Tell me about it," the boy said. "I think he's more traumatized by what happened than I am."

Charlie didn't laugh at this; it was too true to be funny. Alan blamed himself constantly for not walking Jake to school the morning it happened, for rushing out with only the simple admonition that he should hurry so he wouldn't miss the bus. No matter how many times Charlie told him that it wasn't his fault, that eventually all kids go off to school on their own, it did no good. He was eventually placed on anti-depressants and spent most of his time either working or coddling his son unnecessarily.

"Do me a little favor, Jake?"

"What's that?"

"Try to take it easy on your old man," Charlie said. "I don't think he really means to be so neurotic. He just doesn't know how to handle things, and he's dealing with it the best he can."

"Well," Jake replied, reaching for the bottle. Charlie made no attempt to stop him. "It'd make it a lot easier on me if he'd ease off a bit. I mean, he doesn't have to walk me to the bus stop every morning or come into my room every five minutes to ask me how I'm doing."

His speech was starting to slur ever-so-slightly and Charlie reached over and took the bottle from him.

"You've had enough," he said. "If you have any more, you'll wake up hung over and your dad will kill me."

Jake looked miserably into his empty glass, wishing he was old enough to do it more often. He'd only had about three glasses (or was it four?) and he was already feeling better than he had in a long, long time. Suddenly, that burden he'd been carrying around with him seemed a lot lighter.

"Uncle Charlie," he said, "why did he do it to me?"

"I dunno," Charlie replied. "I really don't. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you exactly why he took you, why he did the things he did, but it would sound like a bunch of excuses. I could sit here and tell you it was probably because somebody did it to him, or because his father beat him and called him a sissy, but those are no answers. They're just things people say to make it seem a little easier to deal with."

"Does it work?" Jake asked.

"No," Charlie said. "The truth as I see it is that some people are just evil. They do evil things because they're black to the core."

Jake nodded and looked down at the table top, no longer smiling. He sat there for several minutes, biting his lower lip and trying to compute all of this through the alcohol clouding his brain. He thought back on his escape from Mr. Polk's shack. He was never sure if he got away because Mr. Polk got sick of using him and wanted a new boy or because he simply slipped. However it happened, Jake slipped out of his shackles while the fucker was away and fled the shack like it was on fire. He didn't stop to look for something to wear, because Polk had burned all of his clothes. Jake knew at the time it was an attempt at holding him prisoner by keeping him in shame. If he had nothing to cover his nakedness, he wouldn't try to get away.

On that note, he'd been dead wrong. The first chance Jake got, he ran out toward the highway, naked as the day he was born. Privacy be damned. He wasn't about to be anybody's sex slave simply because he didn't want anyone to see him naked.

"It's not fair," he said, looking up at his Uncle Charlie. "It's not fair."

"No, it isn't."

They rose from the table and walked back to the living room. Jake plopped down onto the couch and Charlie sat down beside him. He was holding a box of his favorite cookies, which he offered to his nephew. Jake took a handful and nibbled at them in the darkness. Charlie sat there, listening to him chewing and thinking about the circumstances that had led them both to this place on this night. He had to admit he'd been expecting Jake to show up. The dreams kept him awake and wandering the house every night. There were no good nights. He found it heartbreaking to watch his once happy and spunky nephew slowly turning into a ghoul. He barely spoke to anyone, and when he did he was often unhappy. He never joked anymore. He tended to stay isolated in his room as much as he was allowed to.

And the bags under his eyes, Charlie thought with a frown. They never go away. If he's getting four hours of sleep every night, I'm a circus clown.

He and Alan had been taking the boy to therapy, trying to get him the help he so desperately needed. They'd been warned not to push him too hard and to give him a lot of space, and that the Jake they'd known before the abduction would probably never come back. It had been like a punch in the gut hearing that, but the child psychologists who'd been working with him knew better than to bullshit anybody and get hopes up. They'd seen cases like this before, and they knew abused kids didn't just forget about it. They never forgot.

"Jake?" Charlie asked, looking down at the boy. He'd finished his cookies and was settling deep into the couch.

"Mmm?" came a drowsy reply.

"You want me to take you back to your room?"

"Nuh-uh," Jake answered, half-asleep. "Feel safer with you. Don't wanna be alone."

Charlie nodded and put his arm around his nephew. He pulled him into the warmth of his body and sheltered him there.

"We're going to make it okay, Jake," Charlie whispered, feeling fiercely protective with the boy in his embrace. "We're never going to let anyone hurt you again."

Jake mewed and snuggled up closer. He was fast asleep and that was good. He needed some peace.