Introduction to the Abbey
The time passed slowly for everyone in the house. The harsh winter winds were constantly trying to get the icy-cold snow in through whatever cracks it could find. Spencer and Brian spent most of their time curled up in front of the fireplace or in bed leaving the other two occupants of the house to their own devices. Hero, of course, was now attached to Kenny like a leach, but Spencer didn't mind one bit. Kenny had grown use to Russia now. He was getting into learning how to cook different traditional and modern dishes in which his mentor was Brian himself and was engulfing book after book on proper use of many Russian phrases that the others were teaching him. He was half-way from speaking fluently in the language. It was during this time that Spencer and Brian and decided to rent a hotel room for a weekend and left the three other occupants of the house on their own.
"Tala, it's time to write chapter two of my book, but are you ready to relive the past for me?" Kenny asked his roommate as he lay in bed. His eyes were closed and the only other sound was the ticking of the large grandfather clock down the hall. The chimes rang out telling them that it was now eight o'clock at night. Sapphire eyes opened to the darkness of the room. The red head in the window shifted his weight slightly as he stared out at the frozen landscape of the city of Moscow. "Tala?"
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Kenny smiled. "The way that the snow gets into everything and freezes the landscape making it look like a painting that should be hanging in a museum and not out there."
"You aren't talking about the landscape, Tala, you're talking about me." Kenny said as he watched the other man. The two had become considerable close and were wasting no time in reading each others thoughts as the days went by. There was no visible rift in his relationship with the Russian and they understood one another as if they'd known for years that this day would come. "Tala." Kenny whispered softly, seductively as he folded back the heavy sheets.
"You don't want that. Not yet anyway, so don't ask." Tala turned around, his eyes shimmered vibrantly with tears. "You know that my love for you is unconditional, but I don't want you giving yourself up just to make only one of us happy."
"I understand." Kenny replied. "Just come lay with me then, and we'll talk about the past some more."
"Where did we leave off?"
"Well, you could start at the time you said that your mother got sick."
"Oh, right. Well, I was about six when mom got the news of her cancer and told me in her own, genteel way that she could no longer care for me the way she use to.
"Tala, my little wolf." She said as she held me for the last time in her life. "We have had a long time together my darling and you know that I love you very, very much, but I can no longer be the mother that you need me to be, Tala."
"What do you mean, Mama?" I asked her and she started to cry. I knew then that I would never see her again and that she was just trying to be strong for my sake. "Don't cry, Mama, you're going to get better. You'll see, we'll be alright in the end." Can you imagine how hard I was trying not to break down? I was a six year old boy talking like an adult while my mother lay in her hospital bed dying from an incurable disease.
"Tala, my Tala. So brave, yet so very small. You'll make me proud someday, Tala. You're going to get a good life, with a good family and someday, when you're a lot older, you're going to be a better man than those others in your life." She replied. I buried my face in her chest and inhaled the soft Vanilla scent of her perfume. Then, instead of the steady beeping I'd grown use to over the past year, the heart monitor blipped out a straight line and my mother was gone for good.
Three days after the funeral, I was brought to my aunt and uncles place to stay with them. Now keep in mind that my uncle and my mother hardly ever got along because of a long standing sibling rivalry, but because he was the only family I had left, I really didn't have much of a choice. They were nice people from what I gathered during my first few weeks of my stay and I felt like I could trust them with my life after a while. My Uncle Alekzander worked for the Moscow district of the National Russian Bank from seven in the morning to six at night. My aunt would spend her days cooking or sewing up curtains and I was in school for six days a week with Sunday being my only day off except for scheduled school breaks. It was during one of my holidays that the next life changing incident happened and got me sent packing to the Abbey.
My uncle had left at his usual time and my aunt came upstairs to wake me for my breakfast. Everything started out like our usual day and I thought nothing of it when my aunt asked one of her male friends to come over for brunch. She had baked my favourite black forest cherry cake for dessert and made honey toast for me to eat while they talked about the weather. Later that afternoon, I was in my room playing with my new train set that my uncle had bought for me while I was adjusting to life without my mother when they came up to talk to me.
"Hi," I had said and the man smiled a big smile at me, but there was something hidden behind his eyes and I was suddenly afraid. "Want to play?" I asked trying to remain the good nephew and not talk back to my elders.
"No, Tala, Walter came to talk to you." My aunt said softly. Her voice held a hint of expectant pleasure and I could tell something bad was behind their reason to come to my room so suddenly. "I have to go and check on the turkey casserole so you be a good boy and do as he asks."
"Auntie?" I asked, I was a scared little six year old who was left in the room with what would become my Heathen from Hell. She left the room, but before she walked down the hall, she locked the door on me so that my only other means of escape was the window that she knew I wouldn't try because it was a ten foot fall. Even the window was blocked by the big man who turned down the blinds and darkened the room just enough so that I couldn't see anything except shadows. Walter made a soft sound as he walked across the carpet that lined my bedroom floor. He took something from his pockets and grabbed onto my arm as I tried to run. He was strong and I struggled to get away, but his hold on me was like a vice. I tried to scream as he slammed my small form onto the hard bed. Hearing me, he placed a thick piece of tape over my mouth and sat on the back of my legs as he tied my wrists to the bed posts.
I couldn't stop the tears that flooded from my eyes and onto the pillows as he stripped my pants and underclothes off. I hated my aunt and her friend now, and I was going to make damn sure that my uncle knew of my new emotion towards her. I screamed as he slammed into my body, but the tape restricted the sound to a whimper. It continued until the man was called away by my aunt who knocked on the door and asked if he was done.
I lay there helpless as he helped her put me in the tub and wash me as well as change the sheets where the blood- my blood- had stained them. I was dressed and brought downstairs to be seated onto the couch as they went to put the blankets into the garbage. Getting rid of evidence wouldn't help them. Once my uncle got home I was going to tell them everything that went on during the day. I remained quiet until then- I wouldn't even eat." Tala stopped then as Kenny shuddered. "Are you alright?"
"Yes," Kenny whispered as the older placed his arm around him and pulled him closer. "T-Tala?"
"Sh-h-h, don't say it, Ken. I don't want you to be sorry for me. In fact, be happy for me."
"Why?"
"Well, because telling these things to you and actually having a person that's going to listen and not criticize or try to analyze me makes me feel alive again and not so…robotic." Tala explained as he placed a light kiss on the brunettes forehead. "Don't worry, you'll get what you want in the end. You'll see."
"Can you continue?" Asked Kenny as he allowed himself to fall into the others embrace.
"Do you want me to?" The red head shifted his weight slightly before settling down again.
"Yes."
"Alright, lets continue. It was six thirty when my uncle walked into the door and went through his usual routine of putting his briefcase in his study and handing my aunt his coat to hang up before sitting down on the couch beside me.
"So!" He said in his gentle tone he used when talking to me. "I had some hard day today, Tala my boy."
"What did you do today, Uncle Alek?"
"We had a few fussy customers at the bank and then the lights went out, but the best part was the boss threw a temper tantrum at the new secretary because she ruined a major file in the computers. How was your day?"
"Well, lots of things happened today to me."
"Oh, bad or good things?"
"Bad," I replied as my aunt left the room to check on supper. "Aunt Clare's friend Walter hurt me and Aunt Clare didn't stop him." I watched his face change at the mention of Walter's name. He obviously knew the man well and didn't like him. "I don't like her anymore, Uncle Alek. She should have helped me." My uncle said nothing. Instead, he got up and went over to the phone. I watched as my aunt walked into the room and sat down.
After that it was as if nothing had happened and we ate supper in total silence. Then he came to the door. A tall man with wild blue-grey hair and a white mask. My aunt went upstairs and got the things she'd packed for me before supper and watched with shaded hazel eyes as the man put the things into the car. The man didn't smile as he took me by the hand and led me to the waiting car where I was placed in between two other men in uniforms. He got in the front seat and we drove off to the other side of Moscow where the Abbey waited for me. Before we went in, the man placed a cloth over my mouth and when I went to take a breath, I was sent into darkness. He had drugged me.
When I woke up I couldn't move my arms to my sides when I tried. "I was told by your Uncle that you like to lie, Tala." The man said. "You're tied up so you can't run away from me no matter how hard you try."
"No, sir, I don't lie."
"Speaking out of turn, are we? Well, then, perhaps ten lashes will put an end to that. And add one lash to every scream that comes out of his mouth, Vincent." One of the guards saluted the man as he left and my punishments began. I was placed into the room with Kai and the other when he was done. There, I met and became friends with Kai, Brian, and Spencer. Ian wasn't there yet. The others had gotten in off their skills, I however, had been sent to be disciplined."
"Well, now I know why you were the way you were." Kenny said shakily. Tala tightened his grip on the younger Japanese man and placed another kiss on his forehead. Kenny moved his head to look into the red heads azure eyes only to receive a kiss on the mouth. Tala's lips contacted his own in a soft, yet sensual kiss that sent Kenny spiralling out of his mind. Tala wanted to stop the kiss, but something in the back of his mind said go for it, take him. Gently, the older man pushed the younger away, yet kept him locked in the strong-hold circle of his arms. Inwardly, Tala groaned at his own wants were shoved into the back of his mind and Kenny's well-being was pushed into the very front.
'Not yet,' Tala thought as he lay there with Kenny's lithe form snuggled into his side as the brunette slept. 'He trusts me now. I need to finish what I started before I go any further with him. I know he wants me too, but some things are better left until everything I need to say about my past is on the table for him to see so that he will know me better. Damn, I just hope I don't scare him away with my life-story; I need him, but will he stay?' With so many thoughts running throughout his head, Tala stared out the window and into the stormy night that raged through the city of Moscow- the only place he didn't want to belong- as he held his sleeping angel in his embrace. 'Kenny…'
DMQ: HAHAHA! ANOTHER CAPTER IS COMPLETE! BUT WILL KENNY REALLY FINISH HIS BOOK?
