So. You guys are so amazing, right? You know I do love you, right? But. I did say "But wait" at the end of the last chapter. So. You are gonna hate me. But. And there's a huge but . . .
Warning: Discretion is highly advised for detailed, intimate dubious consent.
But.
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DATE UNKNOWN | LOCATION UNKNOWN
Something changed.
It began with the evening preceding detox day, days ago. Punishment was a rarity and was often dealt in retaliation to his uncouth behavior. Such was no longer his way. When violence came, though, he sought not to question its reason, but there was causality, and that causality invariably laid with him.
But he was good. Always.
So when both the mother and father had neared and he was suddenly beaten with fists, feet, and the belt, he'd disconnected, fallen away from it, and later woke up clean on his bed. There were aches from welts upon his back that had already been soothed, bruises on his legs and torso from what he later surmised might be from kicks. But he found that he wasn't alone. The father was sitting at the foot of the bed with a hand wrapped around his ankle. The mother was leaning over and grasping onto him, weeping.
Later, he padded his fingertips across his skin, palpating at the sore bruises below to assess the damage.
A mere three days later, he was beaten again just before he was to be turned down to sleep. Since then—for the passing days—he'd been hurt by both multiple times, and he couldn't fathom why.
He tried not finding reasons for this because he knew, ultimately, that his body was not his own. They must be stressed, and he must be the channel by which they would express their frustration. It would pass, and better days would follow. In fact, better times came within the aftermath of the inexplicable beatings; he was fed, his aches were soothed, and they both found reasons to linger.
This morning, despite it not being a bath day, they'd bathed him. The fault laid with him: he'd awakened with an intense dizzy spell that had him curling back on the bed and sweating. His head pounded, and then he promptly vomited all over himself. The mess had gotten in his hair, in the brace, on the side of his face, and on the bed.
He was sure it was vertigo. It passed in little time.
The dizziness, the pounding headache, the unbalances among other things—these had never fully gone away but had waned in their severity and frequency. Some hadn't waned at all.
Because it wasn't a wash day, he'd begged the mother not to punish him and apologized for the trouble, thanked her for her attention, and told her he loved her. Although he often defaulted to those words, not one ounce of value was lost with them. No, he knew all the moreso just how true the last sentiment rang for him.
She'd patted him, told him he was good, and relief flooded through him.
He was bathed, he brushed, and he was fed something small, light, and easy on his stomach so as not to upset it. With a kiss beyond the brace and an assurance that she would return after work and have something more fulfilling prepared for him, he was left alone.
It was now a few hours past, and Spencer was sitting on the bed with his back to the corner, idling his mind with detangling jumbled numbers and words in the crawling hours to ebb the hunger.
But then the air changed, and he ticked his head upward. He knew it wouldn't be the mother, for she wouldn't return in another four or five hours.
He instead smelled the faint leather and grease, and so tilted to the father's direction. Perhaps they were to engage in a game or few of chess.
What followed was the initiation of a strange series of activity that he would later remember in punches of clarity for weeks and months to come.
First came the pacing, which he detected by the gusts of air passing him left and right, then right and left—again and again. Spencer's hand began rubbing against his thigh in perturbation as he stared out blindly.
It was new, the pacing—a clear sign of anxiety or nervousness that caused stress hormones to pump through one's system. Whether or not the father would do this outside of this room was irrelevant. He was doing it here, now, in front of Spencer—the first time in all his days that he could properly recall—and it was alarming.
In time, the father was bent before him, unfettering him hastily, removing the restraints—all of them completely.
Spencer's hands curled into each other until he decided to just initiate conversation. He was hesitant, careful, and fearful.
He tap tapped the back of his own hand, and there was a pressure on his leg indicative of the father's attention. "Have I done something wrong?"
He waited, the hand remained, and time stretched between them.
The question went unanswered. Instead, a hand fell upon his arm; he was pulled to stand, to stumble to the toilet. There, he was urged to urinate and defecate, rinse and wipe himself, and wash his hands. Afterwards and without delay, he was led back to the bed.
It wasn't the right time for these things. And upon sitting, upon the gusts that pulsed against him again, he knew that the father was back at the pacing.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. The restraints weren't returning, the man was pacing, and Spencer knew that something was categorically not right . He dreaded what this could be; they were in unknown waters now.
He tapped his hand again. Moments later, a hand was tapping his leg. "What have I done?"
There was no answer, and he shrank back, confused, a gnawing terror pulsing from his gut.
Minutes passed with him rubbing his leg in dread, churning over what he could have done or what was happening.
And then the hand came, tightening around his neck, wrenching him from the bed and dragging him to the floor.
His hand was moving before his mind was catching up to this, circling his chest. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry."
At this point, he knew not to ask what he did or why this was happening, and just accepted that he'd done something wrong. It must be why he'd been beaten and whipped in the passing days despite his splendid behavior. Whatever this was, it was his fault.
The hand remained, and the other struck his face in an open-handed slap. In shock, he held up his hands plaintively.
When the body lifted away from him, he laid still, shaking, waiting. And then the pacing again. Upon the floor, even with little vibration to detect, there were thudding steps moving about and air wafting past him—left to right and right to left again and again.
The first strike of the belt against him made him cry out, and when the next came, he curled and tightened himself for protection, bringing up his elbows to cradle his head, tucking his hands in the back of this sweatshirt. It rained over him a few times more before the electric cord followed, lashing him enough times and with enough force that he thought his skin might rend even beyond his clothes.
Between and during some of the lances, his hands twisted and moved to his chest to plead and apologize and ask for leniency.
He'd been good. He was always good. And he shouldn't question why this was happening to him, yet—
He was wrenched about, a weight sat on him, and he was grabbed by his hairs and the leather, slapped again and again with a force that filled his mouth and nose with his tangy blood. It was forgotten when his jaw was grabbed with calloused, meaty fingers gripping so tightly that the nails broke his skin before his head was cast away.
He lay trembling on the floor in the aftermath of this. The pressure in the room was changed, and he was left alone.
Not long after, while he was still curled upon the floor, the pressure changed again, and the scent of earth and herbs and pine was upon him, but that wasn't right. Her shaking hands were upon him, pressing at his face, touching his lips. She wasn't due for hours.
Was this a tactile hallucination? Was he going to have another seizure? It had been so long since the first one.
But it drew away—her hands, her scent—and the father returned. The violence melted away, and, oh, it came, the tenderness:
A hand tucked around the brace and into his hair before it shifted to cushioning his face. He, accepting, turned to it with a moan of appreciation, with a shaking hand that didn't go beyond reciprocating by grasping the father's wrist.
Not long after, he was pulled up to sit before smooth, cold glass was touching his lips and frigid alcohol was pouring down his throat.
They were always warm. Room temperature. This one was ice against his lips and tongue.
This was an aberration. But beyond this understanding, he knew what this event was to become and knew: this was sudden, a reaction to something beyond his understanding. His mind halted for only a moment before he guzzled down the rest of the bottle, breathing slow and deep to steady the thrumming within.
He was too pained for this. If he was given enough of the beer and drugs, then they might numb his aches. He hoped they would be enough. They should be; he'd not eaten much.
Unhinging his jaw to receive the second bottle, lifting his hand to assist in the pouring or take the bottle himself as he had become accustomed to doing, he readied himself to take in the tablet—
No tablet.
The third bottle instead pressed against his lips and began to pour down.
He had learned to accept unbalance, change, broken patterns, but they were rare.
Spencer, hands rubbing his thighs in anticipation while he breathed heavily, choked and coughed in confusion and then understanding when the father indulged his past yearnings: a fourth bottle touched his lips, and he was glad to drink it.
A breath sighed out from him when it pulled away after a sip. Was this an apology for the beating? A way to help him cope with the pangs by blanketing his senses? It was appreciated. The father cared. He knew he did.
In turn, Spencer pressed his hand near his mouth and extended it in a gesture of genuine appreciation. "Thank you."
The hand fell upon his neck and the thumb tap tapped.
It was a relief.
The hand moved from neck to jaw; the thumb moved jaw to mouth. That thumb traced his wet lips. It was the return of that intimacy they'd fostered so long ago. It left, returned as not one but two digits with a full-sized tablet tucked at his lips.
It was bitter in his mouth, gritty under his tongue. He wondered if he should swallow it down, but one never came without more beer to wash down the acrid taste.
The thumb returned to his lips, brushed, tapped, pulled away. The mouth of the bottle came, and down he swallowed the bitter tablet. And then another tablet came, placed in his hand. He tilted it in his fingers before tucking it between his lips. The cold bottle was placed in his hand. Another tablet was given to him, and he downed it with another swig. It happened in this manner twice more. He drained down the whole bottle, belly filling, before it was taken away.
These would all be potent soon, and for that he was grateful. Five unsimilar tablets, though.
He was eased to the floor; a benevolent hand braced against his neck.
Every stitch of fabric was then removed from Spencer's body. This was the first time that he could remember it was being done with such delicacy. The last time something similar happened to him, he'd been stripped with the promise of punishment and pain.
It wasn't the same now, no. The hands were lingering upon, gliding over, and caressing him, dipping underneath the fabrics and peeling them away with no sense of haste or that anxiety that had been present before.
The preferred touches. He did come to like these.
The trailing fingers induced a few shivers to pass through him.
The father's hand stroked and rubbed his bare belly, trailed below his navel, twisted and slipped under the fabric of his boxers to ease them down. The fingers unhinged, the body lifted away, and the boxers tugged down with both hands.
The cold concrete flooring pressed into the skin of his back before the abrasive jeans rubbed against his naked upper thighs and the sides of his legs again. A hand cradled his face and he in turn stilled. It stayed, and he breathed, skin burning.
The aches were going to ebb.
Then the thumb tap tapped at the edge of his lip again, tracing. His stomach clenched when a flutter of cold metal flickered against his skin, when the brace shifted. Before long, it was loosening. Not much longer after that, it was sliding away from him, and hands were replacing it. The light beyond his eyelids wasn't fully perceptible. The room, as normal, was darkened.
His hands flickered up. "I won't look."
There was a double thumb-tap of approval, of praise, and the hands tucked under his. "You won't look."
A wispy stroke to his face and the warmth of the drugs were starting to leave a heat behind that touch. Maybe. It was a little too soon for them to act upon him.
And with a shift of the body above him, there it was as it had once been upon his face: the brush of a nose, the heat of his breath, the lingering lips. The fingers trailed, touched his jaw, and tipped it to his left. They went to his right ear, plucked out the molding and then picked out the bud.
There were still problems making out the sounds of shuffling fabrics or the ventilation fan in this ear, where everything was a dull whisper, a pop and gurgle.
Another tilt to his head and fingers at his left ear. The left was better. Sounds still registered but were tunneled. A puff of warm air, a breath that wasn't soured with beer but was sour nonetheless, and then it was wafting at his ear with the press of a bristly cheek next to his.
"Mine."
Was that—had he heard that correctly? He tilted his head as if to catch that fleeting, tunneled sound.
But it came again, a softened rumble. "You're mine."
An assertion. A fact. And with that deep rumble a clawing, feral, raw sensation in the pit of his belly, a warmth and a gratitude.
Yes, he already knew this. Unequivocally. He was theirs. But they were his, too. Yet something about that uncontested declaration from the father strengthened that notion.
One hand was still upon his abdomen, still lingering. The other was peeling the tape at his nose and tugging the tube from his nostril in slow measures until the weighted tip popped out and he was shivering.
Before long, his hands were taken again, the body above him was shimmying back, and he was pulled up to sit.
No gestures. Just a hand pulling his away from his own body. The curled knuckles of his clenched fingers were made to brush against the cottony, flannel shirt as the fingers beneath his plucked loose and pulled at the buttons.
Why?
Why this now?
What had changed?
The hand landed upon fastened buttons, stopped, waited. He wasn't dumb. His participation was key to this—whatever this was.
Perhaps the man wasn't satisfied anymore with passivity. He didn't always drift into a fog during these, but he wasn't active—was barely reactive but for the stretching of his neck when the fingers would latch on to it.
The hesitation to continue his part was met with a tap tap, with hands curling under his.
"Take them off."
He knew this already, yes, but it was—he'd never done this before. With anyone. He was numbed to the movements of his hands as a dread consumed him.
I'm not enough anymore, was the panicked thought. His face pinched. If this were true, then he held no more value to the father.
And yet, he had heard it, hadn't he? Mine. His. This might be a test. Of his loyalty? His devotion to them? Their purpose—that which he had stopped trying to wrap his mind around?
They should know it. They had his devotion. If they needed proof, he wasn't one to withhold putting a theory to rest. But it was just—
An impatient tap tap.
He continued. Off the shirt went. Below, a t-shirt, and the contact of his fingers to the skin, the swell of muscles beneath the fabric, and the body in space was becoming more formed.
A test or—
What if it wasn't a test? What if it was just . . . that which he yearned to hear from him? That which was explicit with the mother, but which he still had yet to hear from the father?
Maybe a declaration of Mine was enough. One syllable, four letters, and therefore he could reason that they were equal in weight.
A shuffle, hands on his wrists, bringing them down to the pants.
His fingers shook. Fear? Anticipation? Or perhaps, more realistically, the drugs at work. Maybe all of it.
Heat was consuming him, and wherever the hands began roaming over him as he worked his own trembling hands, it blazed hotter. Where the press of a face to his neck was and he lifted his shoulder in discomfort yet—the brush of lips and—
He made an aborted hum.
'Fascinating. I believe you just responded physiologically to stimulation of what is considered an erogenous zone.'
Ah. His fingers skipped at the button. How distant and terrible a memory to be recalled.
He couldn't. He couldn't do this. He stilled his hands. Pulled them toward himself and began to wring them around each other.
The fingers squeezing under his jaw told him otherwise, though. You will do this, they said without any motions to indicate such a command.
He would follow. And he knew. He remembered—
'—you'll have to think about your partner, too. Think of what you can give.'
The term partner wasn't apt here. He and the father were not on equal footing. He knew this. But perhaps he might do just as well, be good enough. And he received much from them. If his participation was now needed, should he not fulfill this? His body wasn't his, so was he not bound by duty? By—
'—you'll learn to like the other things besides.'
Yes, maybe that, too. It sometimes swelled—a spike. It came with the curl of the fingers around his neck or lingering about, both the father's or the mother's at other times. It came with the right snap of the hips when he and the father were engaging.
'There's nothing wrong with waiting for the right person to explore with.'
He'd wished for this to be Maeve. But this—this was fine. Acceptable. He hoped she might forgive him. Perhaps now he was ready for that exploration. Would the mother eventually join in this as the days would pass? They already shared an increasing intimacy with each other. Had she been here earlier?
Shuffling, and then the remaining clothes were peeling away. There was no longer even the thin cloth of the father's boxers to separate their nakedness, and his back was touching the ground again.
Those wandering hands were leaving tendrils of fire behind. The puff of air was near his left ear again.
Spencer couldn't stop the tremors as the father repositioned himself. His legs were eased apart with the pressure of the naked knees before the foreign thighs nestled under and between his legs. He was seated on the naked thighs.
And then the hands roamed from his navel outward to his obliques, meeting behind at his sacrum, kneaded; back to his navel, obliques, sacrum, kneading; again.
It wasn't unpleasant, and he found himself shifting under the touch.
Underneath him, flesh was swelling and heating. But nothing was done to him. The man waited and he waited.
In a short matter of time, the tipping sensation came, a touch of nausea, a slight pounding in his head, an overwhelming, petering heat.
This was wrong. This should be wrong.
Wasn't it?
No. No, because he was theirs and they his. No two objects touched without exerting an equal and opposite reaction.
But when the hands wrapped above his thighs and—as done with his hips—began to run along them, the thoughts fizzled for a second. Wrong wasn't wrong but pleasant. The growing buzz in his head pleasant. The petering heat coming from within and pooling everywhere pleasant. The aches from before dulling. Yet the pounding in his head increasing.
The hands occasionally trailed up and down his thighs, the thumbs dug, pressed. Up from his knees, stopping just at the apex, thumbs kneading there before dragging down and then repeating the movement, and then again.
He began to fold his legs and wriggle himself backwards to resist the transgressive pleasurable sensation of it.
A belly was pressing against his, a hand was gripping around his side, the air was against his left ear again, and fingers of the other hand were threading through his hair.
It came again, that warbly rumble. Another Mine. And another.
"Mine. You're mine."
There was no rush, and the ache would ebb. It would. And the father set to move with an impassioned tenderness.
The hips didn't move in that perfunctory manner. It wasn't passive. It wasn't a violent attack that he'd experienced during any retaliatory punishments. This was deliberate. Careful.
Each jolt came with the body above him pushing him into the floor in a manner that convinced him that the particles of his flesh and those of the concrete were actually colliding, melding, that he and the ground were swallowing each other up in some cosmic phenomenon.
It might be poetic.
Tender and sensitized, Spencer knew sensations—not of the rubbing of denim and flannel upon patches of exposed skin—but the friction and moistness of another person's foreign flesh upon his own: sticky skin gluing onto and peeling away from his own, the warm palms and fingers fanning across his abdomen, on his shoulders and his clavicles and his neck, grasping his shoulders, tucking under his chin.
His actions vacillated between not wanting to feel the bare skin colliding with his because it was wrong—putting a hand to separate them—and wanting to feel every contour: his shoulder or chest, the hairs upon his arms, the sinews of his straining abdominal muscles, the tears—tears?—upon the father's eyes and cheeks as he reached to push it away from his own neck or his own face, as he gripped his fingers into the the hair. His hands were losing their precision and dexterity as incoordination took over.
He was grabbed at the wrists, they were locked above him to the floor in the moistened hands, and the hips below surged while his back scratched against the flooring below.
While one hand stayed locked around them, the other went to his neck as the father's head lowered again to his ear. The fingers kneaded and tightened in a manner not found unpleasant. Yes, over time, if the hold wasn't preventing him from breathing, it was good.
And yet, that is what these did—tightened, withheld—the moment after a guttural, rumbling sound with the lowering of his head.
"Mine. You're mine."
Then it was two hands, and they wouldn't give him an ounce of slack. With them were cruel, painful, frenzied thrusts.
The father wasn't like this. This wasn't him.
To open his eyes—to have an eye removed—or to breathe. He couldn't concentrate on both.
His feet peddled. His own uncoordinated hands moved up, clenched, scratched at the hands and arms; they pushed the face away to get him to just loosen his fingers, struggled at his own face and neck to try to breathe beyond gurgles and aborted whimpers and mewls. Between the rending severing him below, the pounding in his head, the swelling disorientation, and his intermittent inability to take in any air, he genuinely thought—
'We're keeping you.'
'We'll bring you back to that place you love so much and that's where you'll rest. But not too soon.'
'Not too soon.'
Was it now?
There was still no more tenderness. Concurrent with the off-and-on squeezing was the painful, violent pitch in the thrusts—feral, frenzied.
And so, he was repeatedly strangled with enough vigor that he came moments away from passing out—neck craning, back flexing, legs kicking or squeezing, muscles stiffening—before the hands would loosen from his neck. Soon, though, they weren't releasing early enough, and he was succumbing to the dark.
Whenever Spencer regained his senses, they seemed duller than before, and then the fingers would linger and knead at his neck in that tender manner before the strangling began again. The hands tightened, and every driving motion below was more powerful.
Supplications for leniency would never reach his lips—he'd learned far better than that. And not even his hands would cooperate. His own arms were flopped against the ground and he tried—he tried each time to stop this assault, fingers twitching, clenching, straining, reaching for nothing but the air or the very edges of the knuckles around his neck to try—just try—to dislodge the digits. Whatever resistance he tried to put up, it seemed to spur the father.
He awakened with a spasm and found he was no longer on the floor, but bent over the cold metal of the bedframe, that his heavy head was forced down upon the mattress. The pivoting arched his pelvis higher, the pressure behind him mounted and then—
A brief, decadent spike was washed over by the rending sensation within his bowel. His fingers were unable to grip, and the brief thought flitted that the man—the father liked this.
His senses pulsated in and out of focus. He passed out again.
When he was aware of everything, they were upon the mattress.
It continued like this—an endless cycle where his cognizance whipped back and forth—being seated upon or astride or with the father jack-knifed over him, where his face was smothered into the fabric below, or his wrists were trapped in those hands, or they were wrapping around his neck.
It could be the asphyxia; it could be the drugs; it could be both. But his grasp on everything ebbed and flowed.
With lips pressing to his ears, the assertion of Mine was accompanied by Won't take you and Can't take you. He would have bouts of reawakening, finding that he was on his front or on his back again and again and that he was growing ever more weary.
At one point, while he was prone on the bed and the father was mounted atop him—pummeling within him with a languid slowness while his legs caged and crushed him—his head was wrenched back with a grip under his chin to arch him, and fingers that moved with a delirious fervor pressed at his lips.
Spencer just knew sensation. This was all he knew.
Another tablet was pushed at his teeth, he dropped his jaw open, and in it slipped before the mouth of another bottle of beer was crushing his lips. He gasped and wheezed around it, he coughed and sputtered. The fingers curled over and pressed down upon his lips to ensure that he swallowed. The other hand kept his head wrenched up. Soon, the fingers left his mouth and kneaded his neck while the other kept his jaw braced.
As this fevered assault dragged on, every sensation would pulse to such an extreme that a floating, ascending feeling would engulf him. Alarmed, he was unable to fight the plummet and the quick fade in the moment just before there was nothing at all. He would come to with a full-bodied jolt—like he'd finally landed on the ground after a tremendous fall—with the realization he and the father were still attached.
It could have been only seconds that passed, or it could have been minutes.
It didn't matter. Things never went on this long; and never was he subjected to these variances all at once. There was violence that would cause a roar or keen of pain to break free, hands tearing the hairs from his scalp, fingers gripping his neck and crushing it, spittle flying in his face, pops of that deep rumble punctuated with harsh thrusts—
"Will—not—take—you—"
—then lingering hands and slow, pulsing hips, scoring nails and kneading fingers.
This surely would kill him. His thighs were slick—was that blood he could smell alongside sweat? He hadn't bled this badly since his punishment months ago.
The father's stamina wasn't dwindling, but Spencer was shattering and fading.
And yet.
New sensations began to oscillate—an unpredictable gentle and ungentle whiplash of fracturing realities—as a heat and coiling tension built within him.
There was an occasional nauseating but pleasurable intensity in the undertow of the fading agony that made his legs clamp and quiver around the foreign body, made him hold his breath until it rasped out in a cry, made him undulate and twist and lift his hips and rock.
He knew human anatomy.
He knew what this was.
His body was naturally finding an iota of gratification and arousal from the bouts of tenderness and chasing after it. Or—
A turbulence within him grew at the sizzling beginning to pool below his navel, trickling further below and prickling elsewhere. He knew, too, that this could be the drugs that he'd consumed.
But a billowing, rhapsodic wave was drowning him.
Don't do this. Don't do this. To do this is to permit. The thought was foreign in his mind. To permit meant he had autonomy. No such thing existed here anymore.
He tried to scream out an enraged cry beyond the raw ache of his throat, but to catch that sensation was a stronger and more immediate need. His hips rolled, and that rage turned to desperation—passion—as his muscles clenched, as his fingers curled into fists around the fabric beyond his head so he could push himself towards that which pressed against and inside him.
He wished for the pain to occlude any other sensation and cause it all to dissipate. That would feel right to him. But knowledge punched through this, and he tried to concentrate on the brainwork instead of the sensations and coiling tension, instead of on the way his back arched and his weak hand grasped onto the rippling shoulder or how his fingers gripped into the roots of the father's hair, instead of the way his body rocked.
His reaction to the drugs, the stimulation of the friction between them, that driving spike each time he was struck just so, and the concurrent asphyxiation—
—Euphoria—hydraulic—hydraulic—hy—hy—damn it, damn it. Three syllables—starts with H. Hydraulic euphoria—not right. Incorrect—
—was physiologically sound. The perfect blend created a sensory overload that produced this reaction from him—a heady, stimulating, hedonically gratifying neurochemical event.
But it was more than that. He knew that it was more than that underneath the physicality of it. It must be. Because he was theirs, and to devote himself to this, to think about what he could give, reciprocate, and learn to like—it might be this moving forward. He would—he could learn.
But it was wrong. Wrong. Not right. But he was—he was theirs, and to devote himself to him meant it should be—
He needed the pain, and not the euphoria. He needed the pain. Better the pain than—
—than—
"F—oh, fuck!"
A spasm caused him to shiver, and he was sure that electricity lanced through him. A violent jerk consumed his whole body, and his breath sucked inward and burned his sore throat. He was unable to hold it for long, and he was unable to suppress the painful, rumbling moan—or whatever it was that bubbled from his mouth—as he widened his legs and bent his knee to feel that electricity again.
Lips crushed against his, silenced him, swallowed down any further exclamation.
He needed more. More friction. Tension. Immediately. If he could but grasp himself, usher in and facilitate an additional element of—
His hand went down between his body and the father's with intent, for the express purpose of trying to obtain that which he'd never fully been able to.
Except, his fingers barely reached his own groin before his hand was wrenched away and the hands of the father tightened around his own to cease him, to prevent, to warn.
He understood.
This was not his own to take or have. This, too, was his. Naturally. But.
"I—" he gasped, throat burning, "um, need—I—"
He couldn't demand.
"Please—I—"
The force of his need was agonizing, but he clasped his hands into tightened fists and rocked, trying to bring them toward himself, to move them despite the tightened grips that were around his wrists. The lips were there again upon his—
'—you'll lean into it. Meeting halfway or even pushing yourself into their space shows that you want this'—
He did. Want it. He did. And so he pressed forward. Met halfway—
No—this was—no. Wrong. But he was theirs and his body was not his. To be good, to stay, to be kept, to be—
'Mine.'
—his. Hers. Theirs. They were his and he theirs. Oh, the pounding in his head, the heat—
He awoke to teeth skimming his skin and the shifting of the father's body atop his, to hands roaming and then grasping his.
It didn't matter what Spencer wanted to feel or not feel, whether his body was his own or not. His hands were made to reciprocate the touches, to drag across the sweaty skin, to grip.
The father pulled him, held both of their bodies upright, and arms wrapped around him in an embrace. Too much. Far too much. Gravity. A cramp lanced through him, and yet. On his neck the breaths tickled, the teeth skimmed. Around his torso and back, the arms wrapped. Below the thrusting deepened with the upward snapping and undulation of hips.
He wanted to fight it, he truly did. But he bore down with an unversed, frenzied, experimental, eager ache, trying to drive away the pain to chase after what grew around it. His arms wrapped over the shoulders, cradling the father's head, chest to face, as one hand firmly grasped a buttock, squeezed, kneaded, while the other trailed up his thigh, to his back, wrapping on his shoulder.
The roots of his hair were pulled—
'You can grab my hair.'
—and a wet and tearful face was smothered into the cleft of his neck. Hot, heavy breaths were tickling his skin and then a tongue followed. And then teeth scraped across the skin, the mouth lingered, the column of his aching neck stretching to allow, to permit—
'—to stimulation of what is considered an erogenous zone—'
" —mine—you're—"
—before he was bitten. It was jarring enough to make him refocus on some kind of waning resistance. His hand pushed up at the jaw to distance them, but the mouth then moved to his own again, teeth clacking, heated breaths pulsing—
'—don't lock your lips, move them—'
—as he was releveled to the bed. Despite the sour tongue, he was gone—endeavored to deepen, gripped the back of the father's hair before the lips dislodged and his own was bitten. The father sat up and pulled Spencer's hands to feel everything again: the moving hips, a thigh, his belly—
'The brain works better if the hand works, too.'
—Spencer's hands, his mouth—these were not his own and were made to supply it all in his obedience, to create a vivid image of their likenesses. Somewhere beyond him—not a part of him at all but something he was viewing with a transfixing horror and fascination that he couldn't pull his eyes away from—he saw them. He saw the one shifting, moving, rolling in throes of lust, and the other reacting to it in fevered, swinging shifts of fighting and craving, a heated want.
His eyes fluttered, and a large hand slapped over them.
Oh god. God, no. This was too much. It was all too much. Spencer cried and rasped out through clenched teeth.
The pleasure compounded. The motions of the father—always robotic and dispassionate, always controlled and steady, always guttural with a constant inward pressing that never exited until the sudden cessation of his assault—were rolling, undulating; a propulsive punching, a stretching, a repetitive, unpredictable absence and a slow fullness, filling and unfilling, a heat and then cool air and then grinding heat heat heat and then the cool—
Spencer threw his head back and rasped out before shoving it into the chest. When he lifted his head away, a hand clamped over his fluttering eyes again, and he distantly remembered—
Won't look. Won't look. Can't—can't—
He might vomit from the build.
He could scarcely breathe, couldn't register a sensation for a moment beyond heat, sweat, cold, density, an alarming drumming in his chest. He wasn't within himself at all, but everything was so rich. Everything.
As it dragged, Spencer crested closer and closer to something inevitable. His thoughts rushed incoherently. Something crawled and vibrated on and under his skin, in his belly, below his navel, lower. He might pass out. He was sure that he was about to pass out.
The momentum pitched into something frenetic, speedy, shallow as the father pressed—hands that had lingered before now desperately moving, gripping and stretching, scratching and scoring, tearing, foreign thighs quaking.
And then fingers returned to his neck and squeezed just enough to let him get bursts of air. Every terribly pleasing sensation coalesced. It was about to happen. He was nearly about to roll up that peak and reach—
A painful, desperate bark of laughter broke past his lips as he threw his head back again, hands gripping at his own hair while he raised and pulsed his pelvis in fevered pitches.
"Fuck. Oh fuck." He tried to turn and dig his face to the fabrics below, and the laugh came again before—
You were spring; And I the edge of a cliff—
"Cliff—fuck, oh fuck, fuck —climax, cli—"
The lips were upon him, and they were both breathing and then kissing and—
He pulled back and mewled.
He understood. It was intense. The build was intense. If there were nothing there to prevent it, he might have started rubbing his feet. He settled for arching his back, locking his ankles, rubbing a hand at his thighs instead because he was going to burst.
And a shining waterfall rushed over me.
He was near it. He was near it. He was. He was, he was, he was—near—close—
"Oh, fuck. Fuck! Oh, god, god. Please, I—need—to—"
But the fingers tightened, the mouth crushed against his again, and he was seized with his need to breathe. He tried to turn his face and disconnect their lips, get that air. Everything dulled as his fingers skipped along the fingers locked around his neck. His thoughts, though, locked around his need.
Please let me do this. Let me do this, let me do this, let me have—
His hands fell, his legs went limp, and he blacked out again.
When he regained consciousness, he heaved his chest to try to get the air into his lungs; his whole body rippled, trembled, convulsed, pricked from the experience and he could still feel that fevered, wild, unhinged pulsing from the father. His face stung. His euphoric sensations had ebbed as he was overtaken by his need to breathe, and he realized that his inhalations and exhalations just weren't as fulfilling as they should be.
He couldn't take a proper breath, his throat ached, and his head and ears pounded. He could hear nothing beyond the rush of blood.
His hands were taken again, foreign fingers weaving in between the digits and locking them together—
'You can hold my hands when we kiss.'
—and his own fingers tightened.
The languid rolling returned, and the face burrowed into the crook of his neck. The hands finally let go of his, lingered and trailed from his hip to his belly, but the father continued propelling himself.
He was bitten again. On his clavicle, again on the curve of his shoulder, on his jaw, and lastly at the crook of his neck with such force that the skin broke as he was torn into. He could only rasp as the teeth clamped down on his flesh and rumbling, hot vibrations petered from the father's mouth as the momentum below began to decrease until it all finally, agonizingly slowed to a stop.
Hot and heavy breaths pressed and stuttered against his neck, and the teeth unhinged. The connection below, though, remained as the father's muscles trembled and his hips jutted. His penis punched within him once, twice, and again—a desperate effort to chase after something. A breath sighed out long and hot against his skin.
Spencer's head was pillowed by both the father's hands—
'It's okay to touch my face and cup it in your hands—'
—as shaking lips passed over his skin again and again. A drying, hot tongue lapped, sour breaths puffing over him in a strange reverence wherever the mouth could reach. In its wake, cool air wisped against his heated skin. Lapping waves were procured before his eyes. Whipping sand. Below, as he felt the slow withdrawal, the unhurried dislodgement of the phallus from within, cool air brushed over him, in him, from the absence of hip-to-skin.
Where a mouth had been on his own and on his neck, it travelled down to kiss and tongue and inhale his shoulder, chest, waist, belly, navel, tongue dipping—
'You should use your tongue.'
No.
It was tiring. This was too long. He couldn't know how long. He was fatigued, bone-weary. He pushed at the father's head, tenuously gripping his fingers into the locks of hair to try to wrench him away. His hands were then held again before they were kissed reverently, suckled.
He couldn't—he was free falling again, and he swore, he swore he could feel himself just a moment away from exploding in a spectacular mess of crushed bone and gushing blood and—
Spencer awakened again and wept—in want, in being overwhelmed and inundated, in weariness—as the sensation of lips and a tongue continued to move across his tenderized skin. His stomach quivered as they descended again and the father pressed his wet cheek against his belly, lips kissing and rubbing—
'—other places too—'
'—responded physiologically to stimulation of what is considered an erogenous zone—'
But for a brush—a wisp of lips—the mouth didn't linger on his penis. It didn't matter. It was overwhelming, and he was far too sensitized. He kicked his head back with an aborted cry and whatever resistance he went for to avoid the overstimulation was prevented with hands pushing down at his pelvis and then forcing his legs apart.
The father never stimulated him in such a manner and he wondered, vaguely, what ever prevented him from doing so, what moral forbearance made that act—of all his other indiscretions—prohibitive to him. Apparently it still was, for beyond the brush of his lips and the heat of his breaths, his head skipped down and continued to kiss his thighs near the vertex between his legs, suckle and bite at the sensitized flesh. He gripped the hair to push the father's face away—pull it nearer—no, push it away—
'—to stimulation—'
—tried to twist his body, tried to clench his legs closed, moaned and gripped his hands in his own hair again, rolling his hips and shifting his legs further apart as a hand gripped —
He nearly craved more attention all the very same.
Instead, Spencer's hips were tilted, and the flesh of his buttock was sucked upon, nipped, bitten, while another hand massaged the mound of flesh with violent attention and then scratched, and—
And he awakened, tired, and as his lashes flitted open, the hand was there again to cover them, thumb stroking. He had the energy to lift his arms, to reassure the father that he wouldn't look. He wouldn't, and there was no punishment needed.
Everything was pounding, and his limbs were heavy.
How long? How long was this? How long was he passing out?
The father had started it all again while he'd blacked out. It was a numb pressure from beyond him while the father's hips pumped against him with no sense of haste.
Maybe he, too, might finish what he was so near to reaching before. But.
Tired.
He shifted, but—
It was gone.
There was no more pleasurable spike, and he didn't know if he wanted that to be the case. He might cry. He'd been so close. So he tried to twist as the father ground against him to feel—
But it was gone.
He'd wanted—
The father's forehead pressed against his, gripped the sides of his face in an act of desperation before hot whiffs fell upon his face in a way that told him he was being spoken to. But if he were being spoken to, the words were dull in his ear. The sour breaths were aborted, the cheek that was against his and the sweat—again, tears?—against his own face. But for the ringing, the rushing, gurgling pops, silence prevented him from discerning the words.
He was kissed again gently, and he sought to return it in kind, grasped the face between his hands. The lips stretched into a smile against his, and a thumb brush against his cheek again and again.
And then the father grasped his hand, tucked is own under it, and then—
"Thank you, thank you, th—"
He said it again and again with a shaking hand.
What for? He was never thanked by these two. It was a marvelous thing to be thanked, to be appreciated, to be—
The hand moved down—to his jaw, on his neck, his chest, across his belly—until shaking fingers drew the shallow U of a smile under his navel as the man continued to pulse into him. It remained pressed there as if to brand that gesture into his skin. He might cry for another purpose entirely, for something beyond this, for something beyond the lost spikes of rapture.
He found his own hand moved over the father's, pressed against it, above the smile, grasped, and though sluggish he rocked, rotated his hips despite gaining nothing from it, for the pure reason that he wished—
'—think about your partner, too. Think of what you can give—'
—yes, this. To please him. To do this for him. Perhaps later, he might do better. So Spencer sought the father's hair, gripped, pulled the head toward him. A nose was brushing against his cheeks, lashes, and then lips were against his own again.
And then the father sat back up and shuffled backwards, not quite dislodging himself. Spencer's hands were brought together.
At last, he was made to brush with his fingertips—for the very first time—the twitching, distinct, unmistakable, slick phallic flesh that had been at the center of all his violations, the center of this transient, evanescent summit that he'd nearly reached.
He didn't know whether to be intrigued by the manifestation of this form, or to be sickened by it. He gagged from the broiling feelings. His fingers splayed. He tried to stretch them away, yet twitched with a need to wrap them firmly and understand its shape and contours the same way in which he was coming to understand the shape and contours of the father's face and body.
But the body slipped away from his own.
It was a feeling of utter and complete, irreparable despair and loathing that enveloped Spencer, for the emptiness wrapped around him in places far deeper than anything physical and he wanted every fullness back.
This was the first time something so grave and enthralling had been done to him in all of his captivity—where he was made to feel all of the father's exposed flesh so acutely, where he was made to and became willing to feel every sinew and expanse of flesh along with every motion of what the father was doing to him. But the fingers had wrapped around his neck, crushed it, withheld—not just once, but multiple times.
He was beyond sore. It was the first where he was gnawed on and bitten savagely like a carcass in front of a hungry wolf.
It was the first time that he nearly orgasmed with his tumescence, and he was overcome with shame and disgust—that he'd wanted and still wanted that sensation fulfilled, that he wished to have become fully erect to share this with the father. He was deplorable. It was a lasciviousness, a wantonness that he had never quite felt the breadth of in all the days since this all began, and yet he wanted it back.
The father orgasmed. He knew he did—at least once. He wouldn't know if he ejaculated or not; he knew he was bleeding, though, and couldn't properly determine if the slickness was that or semen. He wouldn't check. He couldn't. But he knew the frenzied thrusts and the twitches and uncontrollable brushes and scratches of his hands and squeezing of his thighs were from his orgasm.
He helped him achieve that which he hadn't been able to before. He did that. He gave him this. Something rushed in him at such a knowledge—a web-thin but tensile energy that pulsed in him.
He was better than good, yes.
Today he'd formed him into more understandable masses—muscles under flesh, sweat on his tongue, tears on lashes. He hadn't quite been as real before. It had only been a phantom presence that had assaulted him, one that sometimes held the face of those who had left him years ago.
Now there was flesh, a voice which he heard the first time and which expressed the possession he had over him.
Minutes passed, during which time Spencer took unfulfilling, gaping intakes of air, moaned with whatever breaths he could. With no rapture to overwhelm him, the dull aches were returning multifold.
—
The father didn't lead or send him to the tub to bathe. Instead, he was fettered to his bed where he laid, his fragile, burning, bleeding, sweaty, sensitized, aching, soiled, naked body brushing on and sticking to the fabric of the sheets. Every inch of the foreign body soaked into nearly every part of his own flesh—like they had exchanged parts of themselves with each other, the father now a permanent part of him, and he now a part of the father—for all the touching and kissing and licking and sucking and biting he had done.
They always let him bathe after. And then the father would sit or lay with him.
He grew faint and was overcome with trembling before he rolled. He vomited off the side of the bed onto the floor and moaned in agony.
There wasn't a part of him that wasn't throbbing. His shaking right hand reached for the worst of the bites on his neck. In the end and just before he reached the wound, he grew too afraid to touch it. He instead buried his head in the crook of his left elbow and his painful breaths became aborted, shuddering gasps.
The bed dipped again. The father—still naked—sat atop him and wrenched his hair. The fingers wrapped around his sore neck. Before long, he passed out.
—
Spencer came to with a convulsive gasp and breathed raggedly, pained everywhere with new sores that bit at him. His penis and scrotum, too, were throbbing, sore in a way that they hadn't been before.
He was still nude on the bed. He was still unbathed, he realized upon smelling the musk and sweat clinging onto his skin. The brace wasn't returned, or the buds, or the tube.
It was all too cumulative. Too much newness.
The inexplicable beatings, this violence and intimacy all mixed into one, and those words—
'Mine. You're mine. Will not take you.'
—her scent and touches. She had been here. She had. He understood. This had been a farewell. Not too long from now, he might never again know of any pains or joys or comforts or pleasures or sorrows at all, would he?
She would be tucking him into the earth. They would both be.
Or, rather, she might be forcing the father's hand. Maybe the mother was shifting her eyes to someone else. Maybe she didn't find him getting well enough yet, but he could try. He could try.
Or perhaps she wanted to finally end his suffering, but the father wanted to keep him.
Had he wedged himself between them?
Or maybe something was forcing both of their hands, an outside force, a pressure from a people that were nearing them.
No.
He preferred the salvation of freedom in death. There was no restoration from this. There was nothing for him beyond this room. He didn't want it. He didn't want change.
No, he didn't fear the more profound darkness itself, nor did he dread it. Knowing that the permanent darkness was imminent, he found himself accepting the prospect of death. He welcomed it.
And yet, with his death they would shift their focus on someone else.
They would find a new person to torture, to threaten, to break, to kill, to parent, to nurture.
To love.
A heated spike lanced through him, an ardor against the next — Boy, a person who wouldn't be him, and an overwhelming, abject sorrow that he would lose this.
Hadn't the father told him he was different? Hadn't he told him that they wouldn't kill him? He was theirs! They were his!
But perhaps it was just as well. His throat was afire, broken in ways where it couldn't be put together again. Breathing was a torment, and with each small bend and tilt of his head, there was a crackling shift. Below his navel and within his bowels, something was truly ruptured. It might not be long until sepsis would begin his slow and violent death.
And the grey mist was so profound, thicker than when he would retreat—viscous, like molasses. The many times he'd lost consciousness was more than he could count.
Yes, it wouldn't be long now; if not by their hands, then with the systematic shutdown he was surely to suffer. He would ask them to end it for him. They might give him this mercy.
He saw it all, saw the otherness he'd spurned. His corpse was before him and yet he saw beyond the edges of fertile earth the claws of lush greenery surrounding him beneath a clear sky. The ghost-memory forms loomed above him as insects crawled over him. Bruises and scratches and the marks of clamping teeth peppered his skin.
And then he was being examined under bright, humming, flickering fluorescent lights for them to see every blemish on his body. The camera clicked again and again, capturing and retaining each wound while a clinical voice spoke over his naked body and catalogued it all.
Good. To be freshly unearthed was to punish them.
For them to see him any other way would be unjust. If he were decomposing for weeks or months or years, skeletonizing in some places, adipocere preserving his flesh in other places, they wouldn't see it all. They wouldn't know it.
They never came. The mother had been right. She cared. These two cared. Who else would?
So yes, they deserved to see all that had been done to him, if he couldn't see it of himself.
He couldn't stay awake. He was so fatigued, and he didn't want to fight dissolving into the fog. He wasn't in dread of tomorrow or what was soon to come. So he allowed himself to tip over the edge, knowing that his death would be an end to this confounding existence.
It would be an end.
—
He awakened from falling with another choking gasp, heart pounding against his chest in a slow tempo. At some point, he vomited again on the bed during his sleep, and the pungency assaulted him. Its taste was nauseating, and he didn't understand how he hadn't aspirated and choked on it. But at the burning in his chest, he wondered if maybe he had.
He was unable to shift or lift his arms or his legs or his head. They were too heavy and yet he was weightless. There was a strange, dull throbbing everywhere. His mind somehow cut through the fog and he just knew.
It might be time. And he was very, very ready.
He didn't know if he fell back asleep again and if he was dreaming, or if he was awake, but he saw her before him.
Or—or was he there?
Had he already died and there was some otherness? Maeve was here. If not an otherness, then his mind had allowed for a last, blessed escape.
This place wasn't ever given a proper name.
Therapists would call it an adaptive technique to cope with severe trauma.
That was her voice.
She was sitting and cradling his head in her lap, and she was brushing his hair with her fingertips. It was surreal, watching her looking down at him with such tenderness, seeing her smiling at him. She was sitting on nothing, and he, laying on nothing except with his head pressed to her thighs. She was clothed just as he'd last seen her, just as he often saw her in his dreams or here. He, however, was nude and exposed to her, though untouched by all he knew should be covering his body.
Where were his clothes? Were they folded?
The fingers brushed again, and he shivered. This wasn't unpleasant. But he didn't want her to touch him. She shouldn't be—she shouldn't be touching him. He wasn't hers anymore. He had allowed himself to become enraptured by others. He wasn't hers. What they had wasn't theirs anymore. He was disgusting.
She lowered her head and spoke in a mild tone. Not to me. Never to me.
He thought of how sorry he was.
For what?
Her lips didn't move, but it was surely the timbre and cadence of her voice swathing his senses. She wasn't speaking to him. Her voice was inside of him instead of projecting from her. It was . . . very nice.
Was it nice? Should it be wrong?
He didn't dwell on it but thought of her. He was bad for her. If he'd never met her at all. If he'd ignored her compliment on his article. If they'd never begun exchanging letters. If they'd never begun calling each other and never given each other their real names. The day he started that correspondence with her, it was a death sentence he gave her. He let her die. He—
Stop, Spencer. Stop. It was mild, her command. I would have died much sooner if it hadn't been for you. You protected me. Let me keep protecting you. You've been through a considerable trauma. So much hurt, and for such a long time.
Yes, yes, he had been. He hadn't—he hadn't been able to escape any of it. It chased him like a devil spectre that possessed his shadow, something that couldn't ever detach from him, a being that stomped on his grasping fingers as he held onto the edge for his life. And it was like Maeve was the only thing holding him up from just falling, from drowning while he was here.
And he was weak. He was so weak.
On that you're wrong, Spencer. Very wrong. It wasn't just me. And you're not weak. I don't want you to give up, Spence. I don't. You've held on, but I think . . . Let me help you. I want to help. I don't want to see you suffer any more. You're not at a crossroads but are meeting the inevitable end. I don't want you to want it, but I want you to be okay with it.
If she could. Please, please, if she could help him through it. He was ready to face his death, but a small, weak thing in him made him terrified of traversing it, made him turn around and look at the faces of the ghost-memories that he would never see again. He didn't want to see them. He hated to see them.
He was supposed to have protected some of them. He had released himself of that burden so long ago. He had forgotten the weight of his empty revolve. There had been nothing keeping him from fighting against them anymore.
Defeat, my Defeat, she began. My deathless courage. You and I shall laugh together with the storm.
Her voice washed over him, calmed him.
And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us. And we shall stand in the sun with a will. And we shall be dangerous. We shall be dangerous, Spencer.
She continued brushing his hair with her fingers. Her warm fingers wisped against his skin.
We found the meaning of life with each other, Spencer, where we neither were defeated.
But he had been. He had been. They broke him. He let them break him. And now he would be without them. The mother and the father.
No. We both defy death by not letting it be our final defeat, then. Let it be our triumph, Spencer. I wish we could have shared it with each other and touched each other and collided with each other, you and me and my loved ones and your loved ones. But life is like a labyrinth like that. Let me help you reorder things—help you find the exit.
—
A hand touched his tenderized shoulder, and the lips of the mother kissed his forehead.
He was made to sit and was faint, weak, sweaty. The father sat against him, held him upright with an arm wrapped tightly around his back, latching onto his naked torso.
Spencer couldn't tell where the mother's earthy scent ended and the father's leathery, greasy scent began. He wondered where his own fit in. It would no longer matter soon.
The mother's hand tucked behind his head and tipped it back. Cool, bitter liquid dipped into his mouth, hydrating it and washing away the acrid aftertaste of his own vomit. It was difficult to swallow, and he choked and spluttered but couldn't quite cough it out. He was sure he aspirated some of it.
His hand shook as he tried to apologize, but he couldn't even lift it to make the simple gesture. His jaw was tapped consolingly, the water trickling in small measures instead. Some of it just dribbled past his lips, dripped onto his chest. When done, his arms were unshackled from the bed.
Maybe now they might bathe him. Noah was clean, and so was Marion.
This was happening.
The mother tucked her hands under his. "My — boy. My good boy. My best boy. I have a — now. This time, you're coming back to me. You're coming back."
He didn't understand. Trying to understand only left him frustrated, which he certainly didn't need. Maeve helped him make his peace; there was no need to let anything negative in, or let in anything that would disturb him.
So this was appropriate. This was well timed. Not much longer now, and he would be released, tucked underneath the earth's surface like a seedling in the forest to grow.
His leg was freed, and lips fell upon his forehead again. And then she kissed his cheek. And then his jaw. And then her mouth was on his, pressing, separating, entering, while she braced both gentle hands on his face. If he wasn't so overcome with sluggishness and weakness, he would have reciprocated. He, too, would brace his hands on her face—know her contours better. Now, he wouldn't be able to know her as he'd known the father.
Instead, her breaths pressed upon his face, her lips moved over his, then they were pecking about again and again.
She pulled away. An arm slipped behind his back, and another underneath his knees. He couldn't even prevent his head from lolling back and stretching at his neck. But the gentle hand of his mother pushed his head and rested it against the father's chest.
They were going to bathe him.
Yes. Yes, please.
At the very least, he wanted to be clean. He deserved at least that. He was ready to be dipped in the tub of water for the last time.
But no. They navigated beyond any stretch—north, northeast—to the door.
The air changed.
Then, up, up he ascended.
There was no sterility in the air anymore, but comfort and life: carpets, polish, wood; spices, citrine, lavender; basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, earth. He was taken through and across. After traversing a threshold, it smelled like freedom: fresh, pure, clean, frigid open air.
His skin was covered in goosebumps as he shivered against the father and was taken further and further away from all that he was familiar with. The earth's scent was rich beyond their mixed scents. Soon, he was settling onto lush and prickly grass beneath his naked skin as he seated upon it. The biting cold flurried past, and—
No.
No!
This wasn't right. This wasn't fair. This wasn't the conclusion that he and Maeve discussed. It was supposed to be in there. Not—
Was this a hallucination? Was this a coping mechanism as he prepared for the reality of his end?
No.
His back was leaned against a kneeling frame—the mother's—as she sat behind him and held him firmly. The fabric of her clothes brushed against him, and the press of her body warmed him. She tucked her head into the crook of his bruised neck, and, not having enough strength, his face slipped toward his shoulder as she placed her right cheek against his left cheek, swayed with him from left to right like trees in the wind, switching between kissing him tenderly again and again and puffing her breaths upon his cheeks, his mouth, his jaw. She spoke to him, and no sound reached him.
Why?
Why did they give him this taste? He would have rather died down there, where he was hidden from all of this, where he forgot that this all existed. He truthfully didn't know how the others were released, but this—
Why did they put such sweetness on his tongue, this nectar in his blood? This wasn't a release, and this wasn't beauty or hope or some eternal thing. This wasn't a new beginning. After all he had forgotten, this was a persecution. This was his cruel end.
Surely the universe wasn't this unfair.
Why didn't they want him anymore? Why couldn't he stay on with them? They could do anything—anything they wished to him. He would take it. He would take it. But he couldn't take the prospect of not being able to be with them—of them replacing him.
He didn't want them to let go.
His mouth formed around words that he was too afraid and weak to say. And so, silent he remained, tiring, fading.
The mother's left hand unfurled from his body and cupped his jaw. His mouth was eased open with that hand, and his heart clamored dully in his chest. A shadow of feeling ghosted over his tongue, something clamped on it, and there was a small stretch.
She moved her hand to wrap around him again.
The cold, sharp tang of steel sat against the side of his tongue as a fading weariness overtook him.
