Warning: Detailed bodily functions, extreme physical violence, and dubious consensual touching.

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DATE UNKNOWN | LOCATION UNKNOWN
While being fed in the morning, and somewhere near the third week of his captivity, Spencer's captor asked him a blood-curdling question. She tap-tapped his hand, and he lifted them.

"I think it's gone now. You don't have any more problems, do you?"

"No," Spencer answered. "Thank you for your help."

"You don't need to thank me. It's what I do for you. It's what mothers do."

Spencer swallowed around a dry tongue.

"It's strange that you've stopped calling me mother. I haven't heard you call me this in a while. Why is this?"

It had been about a week since Spencer's hair had been colored and was a mere two days a sudden sickness that overtook him had ebbed due to her constant vigilance and attentiveness to his needs.

He'd awakened the next day after his hair had been colored feverish, with a severe headache. The moment he sat up to begin that morning ritual, he was awash with dizziness, light-headedness, nausea, and had vomited. It was cleaned, a new set of clothes were given to him, and at her insistence, he told her what he knew was the root cause based on one other major symptom—intense and acute pain in his left ear—that was caused by a nasty ear infection.

In the following hours and days, he abided her hand at his chin to tilt his head as the brace was uncinched and she plucked out that noise canceling earbud and the cured molding, abided the heat of her breath as she peered into his ear and the press of her body against his. He abided her putting drops in his ear, tending to him. This was her role in the dynamic, and he would be lying if he said he was ungrateful that she was fulfilling it. For over three days she did these things while he was unable to keep any food down and drugged it nonetheless to keep him indolent during most of it.

But now, in his immediate reaction to the question, he would learn a slow-burning lesson for the next few days.

"You're not my mother," Spencer croaked out without any forethought. It was the first time the title of parentage was so outrightly and unequivocally mentioned, and in return it was instinctual to resist something so unnatural. He knew who and what he was and continued to grasp onto that scrap of himself. He cherished his mother, who at times had delusions far worse than this woman's, but who loved him and who cared for him.

What this woman did for him was—it was a perversion, an abomination.

The words had slipped out with a tone of unbridled distaste, but—on that—it was an impulsive error.

The forceful, unexpected sting from her slap was enough that his head whipped to the side, and his face slammed into the ungiving foot frame of the bed. Catching himself, Spencer gripped his hand around the bar to keep himself upright, tasting blood where his lips had crushed against his teeth.

It was the first time she struck him, and he didn't quite know how to react. He felt like the four-year-old child whose voice had chirped in throes of excitement before his mother whirled about and slapped him for the very first time; the shock was the same. But as a child, he hadn't understood. He was no child and knew what brought about this wrath.

He didn't hesitate to state his regret as soon as he got his bearings straight, hands moving in a flurry, knuckles tapping at his chin: "That was a mistake. There doesn't need to be any punishment."

It did nothing to allay her.

He was backhanded this time and was then pushed down onto his right—an abrupt, rough end to conversation.

He wasn't released, properly fed, or well hydrated for over three days, and his conditions worsened as the days progressed.

His deodorant and his lip balm, both always stuffed under his pillow inside of the pillowcase, were taken away. He was able to bear it all well throughout the first day, and spent the passing hours reminiscing of his real mother:

He thought of when she let him climb into bed with her and she read him literary masterpieces until he fell asleep, or when he read to her. He thought of when she made him his favorite breakfast—sausage with pancakes—both slathered in butter and maple syrup. He thought of when she took him to the swings after he would play chess at the park, and she would push him higher and higher. He thought of when both of his parents took him to the Nevada State Museum when there was a special exhibition of knights' armors throughout history, which began his obsession of grand adventures of knighthood and afterwards she spoiled him with figurines and with stories of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte d'Arthur, The Knight's Tale, of the valiant Sir Galahad, of the tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde, of Lancelot. He remembered when his mother would take him to the library or bookstore and assure the staff that his fictional and academic reading level was collegiate before he was five, that his knowledge of Russian, Old High German, and Middle English was advanced.

The memories were vivid, they were colorful, and they were wonderful. He latched onto each of them and played them in his mind's eye, recalling her cadences as she recited poetry or literary excerpts to him.

It was how he fell asleep. Again, David's comparison to alchemy was apt. For, with every wonderful memory he had of his mother, there were difficult memories too. But the good ones occluded the ones that had been hard to bear.

He wouldn't allow this woman, this imposter, to make him forget his own.

Mere hours later, though—for he was still fatigued—he awakened with a sharp and severe need to use the bathroom. Less than three weeks since his captivity began, his body was regulated, it was trained, and it was obedient to his needs.

He held on throughout the day, but the pains were great. His body didn't care about any training he'd done when he was a child, and he was able to hold things in for hours upon hours. It was newly trained, and he was obedient to the newness. Nearer the end of the day, his need was so strong that he urinated where he knew the drainage cover was on the floor, which he sought with his toes (for he had felt it one day under his foot when he was taken to the tub—it seemed they lengthened the chain a few inches). He couldn't reach it to stand over it, but he thought he could aim in the general direction with a bit of accuracy.

Weeks ago, the thought of doing such a thing had caused him to recoil.

And yet.

His bowels were pinching too.

With a reluctance and a self-loathing that needled him, he then pulled off his pillowcase and held onto it while he squatted as far away from the bed as possible. He put his shame aside and defecated on the floor.

Better there than on the bed.

He wiped himself with the pillowcase, scooped his stool into it with the fabric wrapped around his hands where he hadn't wiped so he didn't have to touch it, then turned it inside out and threw it in the direction of his toilet bowl. He wanted to wash himself off with the hose and just didn't feel clean enough. And he couldn't wash his hands.

He crawled back into his bed, mulling over what he had just done in acute repulsion, and he fell asleep, trying not to think about the smell.

He awakened in a sweat, lethargic, and with the powerful pungency of feces pushing into his nostrils. He gagged, turning his head, inhaling, and marveling at the tightness around his lower abdomen.

There was a light weight on his chest, and he realized that it just might be his pillowcase—with his own excrement in it—that was on him. His sheet cover had been removed from the bed, and the temperature in the room had been elevated. Shifting so he could try to understand what this was, he paused.

With a jerk, he was horrified to find that both of his arms were flanked above his head with his wrists attached to the headframe. He twisted his wrists for the little they could move and padded out his fingers. Tugging his legs, his ankles, too, were each tethered to the foot frame. There was no slack with either hands or feet.

Overcome with an immediate need to bow his back and pull his wrists and his legs inward, he groaned at his inability to move. He barely could. With more harrowing realization, he understood what the tightness around his waist was: another restraint that prevented him from being able to even rotate his hips.

The sound he released might, if he could hear it, be equated to that of a dying animal.

He was unable to move atop the bed, let alone turn. They must have drugged him while he had slept for them to have accomplished all this—manipulated his body—without waking him.

And then the mattress beneath him bubbled and shifted, rippling and undulating. This was an automated, alternating pressure pad.

Noah had some pressure sores. Given their need to otherwise care for their captives, might they have similarly punished him but withheld this kind of relief? It was a dangerous game. Pressure ulcers could rapidly devolve from first-stage to fourth-stage and cause irreparable damage.

He was to be kept in this position for an extended period, and, again, he let out another sound of despair at that realization.

He held out for two hours with the scent, breathing through his mouth, but it was so dry that he had to close it eventually and breathe through his nose. His stomach rolled. He couldn't divorce himself from the knowledge of what it was, or from the way this had come about.

He lasted another half hour before he turned his head as far as he could—which wasn't far at all—and he vomited on his own shoulder. He inhaled tender, slow breaths to fill his lungs at full capacity before coughing out and spitting to avoid aspirating on any lingering bits. The aftertaste was rancid and sour in his mouth.

For hours, he tried to quell his mounting nausea and he found himself tugging despite the futility.

"Please," he said aloud. He didn't know if they were listening. He couldn't tell if the air had changed at all; no one's distinct scent was beyond that of his feces and vomit; there were no taps or pats or claps beyond the sweltering heat. Speaking out was worth the risk. He did so on occasion:

"Please. I didn't mean what I said earlier," he tried to appeal to them.

His mouth was dry, and his throat was too. His hands twisted in the cuffs in his fruitless attempts to worm himself from this.

"Please, I need to be rehydrated. I vomited earlier. I need water. Leaving my excrement here is unhygienic. This is unclean."

A mere hour later, he reasoned with no one: "I know you're not like this. You're not like this."

The pad bubbled underneath him in even intervals, but it didn't ease the ache in his extended shoulders in the passing hours. As the smells worsened and his trembling grew more agitated, his pleas and apologies turned into loud and hoarse begging.

"Please, let me go! I apologize. I apologize for what I said! Please, please let me go!"

He tugged, grunted, and jerked his arms and legs and hips despite knowing that he wouldn't be able to unleash himself, bellowing out his frustration and despair in a long, gritty roar that petered out to a pitched gasp. It was a feeling of complete powerlessness that caused him to gag in renewed nausea, bark out as he stilled and hummed to prevent himself from breaking down into tearful blubbering.

He loved his mother.

"—And it was put to dangle above the dais on the doser to hang; For all men to marvel at, who might care so to look; And by true title thereof to tell of that wonder."

He wouldn't think of the negative memories. He wouldn't. In a soft, desperate whisper, he recited literary pieces that she used to read him, trying to hear her voice.

He loved his mother.

He loved Diana Reid.

In time, in the many passing, slow hours, he was unable to hold his bladder again, and he urinated on himself, the warmth seeping from him and then soaking him front to back. He shook and he mewled. His pants clung to his groin and thighs, and in time he refused to even twitch to avoid the wet, itching sensation below his hips. But whenever the pressure pad shifted, he couldn't avoid knowing.

More hours passed on, where he slept and woke in unpredictable intervals. The damned lizards returned, and they were crawling all over him. They were above his clothes, on his face, at his feet, their sticky tongues darting out to lick any exposed flesh. He kept jerking his head and limbs to rid himself of them. Not being able to avoid the tickling sensation was just as maddening in all of this.

His face itched as the hairs began to push out, thick and coarse, and he rubbed it against his clean shoulder to scratch and relieve it, but it wasn't a fulfilling feeling, and it drove him mad with the need to scratch, fingers twitching.

His bowels began to cramp.

Spencer's body was trained. But he fought this need. He tried to clamp his knees together. In the dragging hours, that fight was waning, and he hummed and shook in grave discomfort. "Please, please, I need to use the bathroom. I can't—"

This couldn't happen, but it was happening. The time was ticking, and his bowels continued to cramp. He could barely voice his concerns, desperate not to experience this imminent shame.

"I can't do this on myself," he begged. "Please, don't make me do this."

But having struggled to hold everything in the best he could as time passed, he finally lost the battle, and he defecated on himself, crying aloud with gritted teeth—

"Oh god, oh god, no, please, please! I can't!"

—as it pushed out of him and smeared onto his buttocks and lower back and thighs.

He blacked out from the sheer ignominy of what just happened.

Upon waking, Spencer vomited bitter bile. Moments later, sickened from all of this, he vomited again. His head was splitting, his throat burned, his stomach cramped, and he was consumed with disgust for what he was mired in. He couldn't not think about his situation.

Every time the pressure pad shifted, he was reminded of his shame.

He tried to continue thinking of his mother and her lilting voice, but he could see none of the good memories anymore. The ones where her hands and words of hatred flew against him or herself or where he would come home to find that she'd left the home in disarray or that she hadn't made it to the bathroom or where she urinated or defecated in cups or bowls because there was something afoot in the bathroom where the government installed cameras to spy on her or where she didn't cooperate with a bath—these were the ones that he recalled, and he couldn't dwell on those, so he thought not to think of her at all.

He wept, begging with an enfeebled voice to be freed from this indignity. "Please, I can't do this. Please, don't keep me like this anymore. I understand. I do. Don't keep me like this, please. You're not like this."

He was laying in his own urine and feces and vomit, unmoving, unable to think past how horrifying this all was, unable to see how imbecilic and short-sighted he had been for not just calling the woman mother. It was a simple word, and his desire to maintain his sense of self hadn't been worth this indignity. It was senseless—utterly senseless. The word had no power, but he'd allowed it to, and for that he was paying.

He endeavored to divorce himself from this—to retreat—but couldn't because his remaining senses were so assaulted by his situation, the hunger and piercing headache panging him.

Her punishments were longer lasting than her husband's, this was clear. She prolonged his tortures to make him think on his actions.

And he did.

By the beginning of the fourth day in these conditions, Spencer was no longer able to shiver, but was given to bouts of gentle fits, weakened with a bone-deep languor. His throat felt like sandpaper, and his foul breath came out thin and thready. He could tell that he'd been given water at some point to soothe his cracked lips and to wet his dry tongue, but it wasn't enough to wash the taste away or to properly hydrate him. The pain of his hunger and his thirst were so sharply mixed with his nausea and the swelling headache that his whole body pulsed.

It was a lesson well learned.

The woman had taught him well not to cross her, not to spurn the hand that fed him, clothed him, bathed him, allowed him to go to the bathroom, tended to him when sick —all the proper things that a mother would do to care for and nurture her child. He would certainly try not to cross her in the future.

And she didn't even have to touch him.

When a warm pressure slid across Spencer's forehead, he flinched and didn't believe it to be real. His head lolled and he moaned. But its warmth stayed.

When the constancy of the touch pierced his understanding and he knew that it was one of his captors, he pleaded, voice frail, dry, breathless. "Please, let me go. Please. I'm sorry, please." He wept. "I can't—this is—I can't." He swallowed. "This is inhuman. This is barbaric. You're not like this." His breaths hitched. You're—you're not—like this."

He, unable to determine who it was, locked onto the sensation of the firm touch against his skin. His feet were released first, then his waist. He wriggled his legs in discomfort and moaned. The pillowcase was removed from his chest, and then his wrists were freed from the cuffs. His shoulders were so tenderized from the constant, lengthy pull that he keened when his arms were eased above then in front him.

The soreness pulsed all around him, and he found himself unable to move from where he laid. There was nothing for it, though: he was pulled up to sit, and his shirts and his pants were tugged.

He understood.

He began the difficult task of removing all of his soiled clothes, weeping as full sensation returned to his limbs in gradual, stabbing pains. They smarted, and he heaved again when he thought he had nothing left to upchuck, nearly collapsing to the floor.

It took far too long, and he was weakened and taxed by the simple task, limbs twitching and jerking. Their patience with him as he removed and folded the clothes must have run out. Just as he was starting with his pants, they were taken from him. The crusted layer of excrement coating his skin was wiped with the pants by his captor, but he wasn't clean enough. Not clean enough.

He needed to be clean.

This punishment continued, though. A large, gloved hand gripped the back of his neck and lowered him to kneel in front of the bed. "I need—I can't continue like this," he croaked. "Please."

The grasp moved from his neck to his hair, gripping beyond the brace. His blinded gaze was forced back and up, and he sucked in a breath as he was given a rough shake that would have felled him if he weren't being held. The hand forced his head back down, and another tightened around his wrist, guided it to the fabric below.

He understood.

He began to gather the clothes. The grip remained in the straps of leather; Spencer couldn't otherwise keep himself upright. With a hand clasped over his bare wrist, he was made to stand and reach forward on feeble, quivering legs to remove his bed sheet from the corners and then gather all the soiled fabric into a large mound. The decompressed pressure pad was under the sheet, and it too was gathered up along with everything else.

It left him faint and winded, teetering on his legs.

He hoped that this was to end, that he would next be carted off to bathe, but such wasn't the case.

Pushed back down to his knees, Spencer's face was shoved into the mound of fabrics, and he blubbered in pants and profuse apologies in a voice that rasped and hissed and wheezed as his neck was held down. "I'm sorry. I won't—I'm sorry, please—I won't say it again. I won't say it again."

And he meant it.

One swell of pressure wrapped over his neck, and now there was another between his shoulders, keeping him pinned. The smell was everywhere—of his urine, feces, vomit and bile, his sweat and body odor. It was everywhere. It was overpowering, overwhelming, and he would pass out. He gagged and moaned.

The hands were steady, though, and before long, a leather belt fell upon his mid back and traveled down to his buttocks and the back of his thighs, up and down and angled and straight—far too many times to count.

Ten lashes. Five more for every—

He could only utter hoarse, pained moans and wheezing sobs as his hands and arms trembled in earnest atop the mattress, grasping the mounded fabric. He teetered on his calves, unable to stand on his knees as he had been forced to do before, trying to writhe his body away from the assault.

Five more for—

The hold on him was firm, propped him, prevented him from sliding away from the bed. The fevered beating of his heart was so great that he thought, again, that he may pass out as a heat and a chill swept through and over him. He gasped, unable to take a full breath as he tried to speak.

"Pl—stop this, please."

Five more—

The lashes continued, and he understood. He understood. Oh, he understood very well, and with more clarity as each lash fell upon his backside.

He would never, ever repeat his error. He would call her mother when she asked—even when she didn't ask—if it would allay this type of violence. He'd be better. He'd be so, so much better. He could have avoided this by saying one simple word.

When he was released, he slumped to the ground in a boneless heap and rolled onto his side. Making a slow rotation until he faced a sky he couldn't see, he whimpered as the cool ground relieved the heat of his burning back.

With clattering teeth and trembling hands, he was moved to beg in a weak flutter. "No more. No more of this, please."

All he wanted was to stop the hurt, to be clean, to sleep. He couldn't think about his hunger or his thirst anymore. There was still dried fecal matter between his buttocks and on his legs, the bitterness of vomit in his mouth, the astringency of ammonia from the urine on his legs.

He never felt more debased in all his life.

A short-lived, heated, heavy spray of water fell upon him, loosening up the layer of filth. He writhed and turned and tried to hide himself. It ended and he was rolled and sat upon, denim scratching against and irritating his tenderized skin, his hands squeezing to his sides beneath the strong legs of the man. The woman grasped his head from above, and he shuddered, understanding.

They would extract another tooth.

Knowing didn't prevent the thrum of panic that trilled through him and came out as a full-bodied tremor, but he was too far gone to turn away or struggle as a hand clamped at his cheeks. He sobbed. The Jennings mouth gag was wriggled past his lips, he whimpered, and it was fitted between his teeth with little force, cranking open. The extractor clamped on his top left incisor, and it shimmied and tugged and pulled before the tooth was dislodged from its root.

A low groan ushered the tremors he was overcome with as the pain made his blackened vision flash white. With a gag, his stomach cramped again; he no longer had the capacity to vomit. The pain channeled elsewhere, and the coarse jeans that crushed him were further dampened with a dribble of urine. The man lifted from him.

He was then turned to his front with his hands stretched away from him. His warm breaths pushed against his face, bouncing from the cold ground below, and he waited in dread. Beyond his own pungent breaths, the scent of something far worse pressed near his nose, a clear presentation of what was about to happen to him.

It was so astringent and sour that he could taste it with his inhalations and moans. Everything blackened for the briefest moment before the scent was pulling him to panicked attention again.

Hips twisting, arms tugging to pull away, Spencer endeavored to roll himself to his back to save himself from what he was about to suffer.

"No, ple—" He sobbed in foreboding. The pleading rolled from his lips: "Please, don't do this. Don't do this." It receded. "Don't, don't, don't, don't don't, don—"

The sole of a boot weighed down on his neck, pinned him to the floor, and he whined nasally in the seconds before vinegar was poured and burned like lava over the raised lashings covering his backside.

In convulsive throes from the agony, the sound of his own voice resonating in his head—like that of an animal being gutted alive—became a foreign and simultaneously intimate noise from within.

That couldn't be him that the sound was coming from. It couldn't be. It was horrific.

He was convinced, in this moment, that his skin and the flesh below were melting from his bones and was convinced, without question, that he would die at their hands. It burned, yet he grew cold all over. He was afloat and he just couldn't take in a large enough gulp of—

Spencer awakened with a full-bodied jerk, and the ground below him pressed against his back. Warm water fell upon him like a gentle rain, but his limbs were overcome with quaking. His breath came out in slow, trembling, deep inhalations and exhalations as he laid on the floor for minutes. But for the mixture of blood and his saliva pooling and sopping under his cheek, his mouth was no longer dry, but there was a lingering bitterness. Hands turned and then hefted him.

Sensation.

That was all he knew—sensation. He was oversensitized. Time was unwoven in crawling breadths as he struggled to differentiate between the hands. The tub wasn't filled but rather the water sprayed upon him with a continuous, warm drizzle. Its bottom was matted.

One of them restrained him at the wrists and the other pillowed his heavy head in their hand while folded handtowels were slipped beneath his neck. His head hung off the side of the tub, and nothing happened to him for another few minutes but for that soft rush of warm water against his skin. The mixture of drool and blood was still slipping out of his mouth.

An ungloved hand brushed over his forehead again before it moved to tuck under his chin. He sucked in a sharp breath and winced as his teeth were brushed. His mouth was rinsed, and he lacked the strength to control its outpour. He breathed in a wheeze, sputtered, coughed as the cleansing rinse was poured into his mouth and dribbled out.

Through the fog that he weaved in and out of, citrus and lavender wafted from the other side of the room. Reasoning punched through, and he hoped that the sheets and his old clothes were to be thrown away or incinerated.

A comfortable warmth curled around him—a swelling heat—and then the hands returned. He was washed.

A drooping skeleton was procured before his blackened vision as he mapped out where the fingers were lingering with a pressure that he felt down to the bone. They rubbed his scalp in small circles around the brace, then the rest of his body. The hands were gentle, but the towel was rough upon his skin, ensuring a thorough cleaning. He was grateful. He'd stewed in filth for far too long and this felt right to him. Proper.

He didn't move—he couldn't—and was maneuvered any which way his body was folded as he was cleaned. His legs were left bent, knees steepled after they and his feet were cleaned.

With a kind, forward nudge, his chest met and rested against his thighs. He cried out, weak, shaking, when the towel rubbed against the raised skin of his lower back and buttocks before both were rinsed with cool water. Afterwards, his back was pushed against the cooler, smooth surface of the tub.

The soft swell of lips pressed against his knuckles. The gesture jolted a flickering light in him; he, in turn, spared no effort to stifle or blow it out. The man pulled his head back and he leaned without resistance as he was shaved and the tub began to fill with water, hot enough to bring forth steam but not to burn or irritate his tenderized skin. The distinct scents of lavender and chamomile and sandalwood began to engulf his senses along with other flowers that he couldn't identify by smell. All their known and imagined forms grew before his very eyes, pulsing hither and thither with gusts of an unfelt and unseen wind, weaving around the skeletal form.

He found himself relaxing under their expert hands as his arms and shoulders were massaged, as his torso was, as his legs were.

Humerus, ulna, radius; sternum, ribs, iliac; femur, tibia, fibula. He mapped it all out on the skeleton, and the flowers wove around and crawled all over it.

As the tensions eased, that light mist in his brain grew thicker, and he fell into a trance-like, grey haze before long, where all he could register and think about were the soothing appendages that melted away the pains alongside an all-consuming tingling sensation.

He moaned.

The front and sides of his neck were kneaded by the woman after she ran a damp towel over it and cleared any residual shaving cream. Clavicle. Vertebrae. His face, too, was wiped down with the same damp towel before he was pushed forward again.

Chest to thighs, his eyes slipped closed as the woman lifted his heavy, lolling head and used her thumbs to massage his eyebrows under the loosened brace—supraorbital—his temples—temporal—the dips below his ears—styloid.

He could see it all. Fingertips pressed against the top of his earlobes and circled, massaging the space behind them. They moved to his scalp, vacillating between frustrating, tender flits and fulfilling, unyielding pressure between the loosened straps of leather.

Before moving to his hands, his head was placed back on his steepled knees. His hands were taken into hers, and they were massaged in slow, diligent motions. She pressed into his palms with her thumbs, running them up and down before rolling her digits in circles, squeezing and rubbing each of his fingers from palm to tip, front and back. Carpal, metacarpal, proximal and distal phalanx. Again and again, he watched the bones manipulated and the growing stems and flowers ripple over them.

His breaths came out even, and a long and soft hum of comfort quivered from his throat before a pitched sound that could have been a titter came from him.

He wouldn't deny it. It felt good. It felt so good. He didn't want it to end.

But it wasn't only the woman who massaged him, no.

While hands worked at his own, the tense muscles on the back of his neck and shoulders were worked. Moistened palms pushed from the vertebrae to the sides of his neck once, twice, and again.

As this continued, the stems and leaves of the flowers before his eyes twisted, undulated, braided and wound around each other like sinews over the bare bones while the hands on his body rolled from the center of his back to his shoulder blades and on his shoulders, kneading out the soreness. Soon, there was no skeleton, but the facsimile of a lone body made of flowers, stems, roots. He pitched another laugh.

The skin of his mid back was moistened with oil or cream or whatever—he didn't care—rubbed. Spencer let out a shuddering moan at the mixture of the pain and relief when the hands turned downward and went down to his lumbar and sacrum, the thumbs circling and heels digging while the fingertips rested upon his curled hips. The fabric of the man's shirt scratched pleasantly against his shoulder blades as the man pressed forward, the heat of his breath warm, inviting, tickling against the back of his neck.

Spencer was malleable like clay in the hands of his captors, and he was overcome with pleasured shivers as the pains dissipated—so consumed with the relaxation that he writhed and rocked in sudden shock when he urinated again in the water, mewling and trembling as his teeth clicked while he let out a breathless groan, fingers twitching from the overwhelming sensation.

He was oblivious to the passage of time, but the hands pulled away after a duration of the kneading, and he found himself pulled out of a deep, sleepy haze and aching for the comforting feeling again. It was so great an ache that he wept, mewled.

His hands were released from the restraints. Upon their absence, a light of clarity pierced him, and he wondered if he should find this as vulgar and wrong as it truly was.

He should.

And yet.

Spencer was pulled up and made to stand and step over the tub. In his weakness, he had to grasp the man's shirt front and back with shaking hands, and the man had to grip him at his wet waist to help hoist him up as his feet barely made it over the lip of the tub. He leaned against him as the woman's hands continued to massage his shaking muscles, working on the back of his legs. His knees bobbed like they were going to give at any moment, and so he was half dragged with the one arm still around him, feet unable to step one in front of the other.

The bed had new, fresh-smelling sheets, and he was made to lay prone—face turned, a folded towel underneath his head to catch the water—so this massaging could continue. He sighed out in pleasure. Each muscle from his neck to the bottom of his feet was relaxed and kneaded—not one was left untouched. He was vocally weeping and moaning from the merciful relief of the oils and ointments and practiced hands.

Virtually a pile of human purée and unable to lift a single muscle, Spencer was clothed in new, warm clothes and was finally pulled to sit up. Before he could tip over, he was braced by the man as the bed dipped on his other side. The leather brace was removed from his head while the fabric pressed against his eyes. He managed to bring the tips of his fingers up to keep it in place.

His hair was then dried, and his breathing evened out again as the woman's fingers ruffled through his hair and the heat of the dryer surrounded him. He hummed a long and low drawn-out note. His jaw was patted as his fingers began to slip as a result of his sleepiness, and the man instead kept his hand over his fingertips.

When all was done and the dryer kicked off, the leather brace returned. It wasn't wet, so he surmised that it was another same-like one. He stayed leaning against the man for a few more minutes.

A pleasant scent wafted under his nose and steam drifted around his face. It was the presentation of a strong herbal tea, and his glands pinched in salivation. It tipped at his chapped, dry lips. The man's hand cupped the back of his head as he drank. It was hot enough to be uncomfortable, but not so much that it burned his mouth or throat—rich, flowery, and distinct enough for his addled brain to slot the flavors of lavender, hibiscus, rose, lemon, ginger, and a touch of honey into place. More flowers were procured before his eyes, a kaleidoscope of colors, petals bursting from the mouth of this floral being. Fields of them. It was soothing as it went down his throat. He continued to sip tentatively as his belly began to distend from a simultaneous feeding.

Afterwards, the man wrapped his arm around his shoulder, and he was unable to support the heavy weight of his lolling head. A hand pressed it to the man's shoulder, and there he left it.

The woman's hands both pressed against his kneecaps and the fabric of her clothes dragged against his. He began to wring his hands as the padded restraints wrapped around his leg and then his wrists.

He had already apologized to them both, but something within him urged him to apologize again, now. So he did, eyes hot with tears, hand trembling as it dragged and circled on his chest to express the depth and sincerity.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please . . . please, I didn't mean what I'd said."

His tears, of course, caught in the suede, so they couldn't see how genuine he was, but he hoped they knew it. He never wanted to endure something like that again, and they must know that he never meant to do anything that would put them in the position to censure him in such a way again.

Her hand cupped his jaw, and he leaned into the touch, grasping his shirt. He couldn't bear to say anything more, and felt too ashamed to continue speaking, to condemn himself for his denial of her.

It was as if she knew it, though. A mother's intuition.

A mother knows.

He lifted his hands up in slow measures when they were tap-tapped. But before she began to speak, her soft lips fell upon both sets of knuckles. His head tilted again at the gesture, and his breath sighed out.

"You're not bad, you know," he was reassured. "You're very good. A very good boy. My —-— boy."

Something so very pleasant filled him with the words, overfilled him, and he was unable to keep it in as he smiled with closed lips, breathing out again in contentment.

"Sometimes you make a bad choice and say awful things. But. We can correct you. We make the good inside of you better—fix your mistakes."

He nodded.

"You realize . . . the correction has to hurt."

Throat thickening, heart speeding, he was unable to respond. Discipline was understandable, but the physicality of it was . . .

The man's hand around his shoulder lifted to his head and patted the side of his face.

He felt prompted to give a reply. He lifted his hand to the side of his head. "I understand."

"It hurt us more than it hurt you to do all of that."

Oh. I—I don't want—

"But I still love you," she then declared.

His hands clasped around hers.

Better love than punishment.

"We both love you. That's what families do. We love each other and we help each other, even when we hurt each other. I forgive you because I love you."

His fingers squeezed around hers again. Heat pooled behind his eyes and to the tips of his ears, and his throat became tight and thick.

Lips fell upon his knuckles again from the woman, another tap to his shoulder from the man.

It was all so atrocious.

This wasn't love.

He knew it. He did. He knew this was wrong. But in this moment, they weren't unkind, and this was pleasant. This was a deep love. A nurturing love. Something that he hadn't felt in many, many, many years. He had been but a little boy, then, and his parents—his parents, they were still together. The last time he was wedged between his mother and father like this was when he was young. He'd ached to feel that again for years.

And here it was.

Spencer knew why they had to punish him like this. He had misspoken, and that had warranted their punishment. He could see that.

His hands were held, and the nail of each digit was clipped and filed. His head tipped down and tilted at the care she took for each fingernail, her touch gentle, the soft gusts of her breath warm as she blew the dust away.

He could come to love this kindness.

Was it so bad to want this if he just complied?

He heard Jason's words as a demand.

Break.