Chapter 10
I've got stained glass windows made of broken dreams...
Kieran
Kieran didn’t remember falling asleep and hated waking up.
The basement felt branded into his skin—phantom sensations of Vale’s hands everywhere the hood had hidden them, the memory of his own body’s betrayal sharp enough to make him want to claw through his own flesh to find something clean underneath.
He didn’t move. If he stayed perfectly still, maybe the day wouldn’t start. Maybe Vale would forget about him. Maybe—
The door opened.
Vale appeared with a breakfast tray, his movements calm and unhurried, like yesterday’s session had been a piano lesson instead of whatever the fuck that actually was.
“Good morning, sweetheart. Time to get up.”
Kieran pulled the blanket tighter. “N-no.”
“Breakfast is getting cold.”
“I d-don’t care.” His voice cracked. “I’m n-not getting up. I’m n-not doing anything you s-say.”
Vale set the tray on the dresser. “There is a schedule to follow. You can participate willingly or I can help you participate. Either way, you’re getting out of that bed.”
“Fuck you.”
Something flickered across Vale’s face—not quite anger, more like amusement at Kieran’s resistance proving a point that Vale had already decided was true.
Vale stood beside the bed. “Last chance to cooperate.”
Kieran tried to scramble away, but the blankets tangled around his legs. Vale’s hand closed around his upper arm and pulled—not gently, not carefully, he just hauled him out of bed like he was luggage.
“L-let go—”
“Bathroom. Now.”
Kieran planted his feet and tried to wrench his arm free. Vale’s grip tightened until Kieran’s vision sparked with pain.
“Walk or be dragged. Choose.”
Kieran chose neither. He let his legs go boneless, a dead weight refusing to cooperate.
Vale sighed and adjusted his grip, twisting Kieran’s arm behind his back, not quite hard enough to dislocate it, but close, and pushed. Kieran stumbled forward, his shoulder screaming, with no choice but to move or let his arm snap.
They reached the bathroom. Vale positioned him in front of the sink, releasing his arm only to fist a hand in his hair and force his head toward the mirror.
“Look at yourself.”
Kieran squeezed his eyes shut.
Vale’s other hand came up, thumb and forefinger prying one eye open. “I said look.”
Kieran looked at his own face—pale, exhausted, eyes red-rimmed and wild.
“This is what refusing to cooperate looks like,” Vale said quietly. “Undignified. Pointless. You’re going to brush your teeth either way. You’re going to shower. You’re going to eat breakfast. The only question is whether you make me use force every single time.”
“Y-you d-don’t get to—” Kieran’s voice broke. “You d-don’t get to t-touch me like that yesterday and then p-pretend you’re h-helping me brush my t-teeth—”
“I’m not pretending anything.” Vale’s grip in his hair tightened fractionally. “You need structure. Routine. I’m providing it.”
“What y-you did… You—”
“Brush your teeth.”
Kieran tried to turn his head. Vale’s hand kept him facing the mirror, facing his own helplessness reflected back at him.
“I’ll hold you here all day if necessary. Or you can brush your teeth and we can move on.”
The worst part was how Vale’s voice stayed gentle. Like this was reasonable. Like forcing someone to perform basic hygiene while holding them by the hair was just good time management.
Kieran’s hand shook, reaching for his toothbrush.
Vale kept his grip until Kieran finished brushing, rinsing, and spitting. He released him when Kieran was done, turning toward the door like he expected Kieran to simply follow.
“Shower. Ten minutes.”
The door closed. Locked from the outside with a quiet click.
Kieran sank against the wall, arms wrapped around his knees, trying to find his anger under the exhaustion and fear. It was there—had to be there—burning in his chest like a swallowed coal.
I won’t let him break me. I’ll fight every single time.
The anger felt like the only thing keeping him human.
Kieran knew it was coming when Vale appeared in the living room doorway at precisely two o’clock.
“It’s time to go downstairs.”
Every muscle in Kieran’s body locked. “No.”
Vale’s expression didn’t change. “Sweetheart—”
“I s-said no.” Kieran pressed himself further into the couch, hands gripping the cushions like he could anchor himself to safety through sheer force of will. “I’m n-not going down there. You c-can’t make me.”
Vale crossed the room in three strides.
Kieran tried to bolt, but Vale was faster.
His hand closed around the back of Kieran’s neck, his fingers digging into muscles and tendons hard enough to make Kieran’s vision go white at the edges.
The pressure was precise, controlled, and intimate in its knowledge of exactly where to press to make his body stop listening to him.
“Let go—” Kieran clawed at Vale’s wrist.
Vale hauled him off the couch, that grip on his neck steering him like a puppet until they reached the basement door. Kieran grabbed the doorframe with both hands, his knuckles white, every ounce of desperate strength focused on not moving forward.
“Last chance to cooperate.”
“F-fuck you—”
Vale drove a fist into Kieran’s stomach.
The air punched out of his lungs in one violent exhalation. Pain bloomed sharp and immediate, stealing his breath, his vision, his ability to do anything except try to double over around the agony.
Vale’s hand on his neck kept him upright, exactly where he wanted him.
“Be careful.” Vale’s voice stayed perfectly calm, conversational even, while Kieran gasped like a drowning man. “These stairs are old and steep. I wouldn’t want you to break your neck.”
He shoved.
Kieran’s hands lost their grip on the doorframe. His body lurched forward into darkness, feet scrambling for purchase on stairs he couldn’t see, couldn’t anticipate—
His shin cracked against a step. His hip caught the next one. Momentum carried him down, tumbling until he landed hard on the concrete floor halfway down, ass and tailbone taking the brunt of the impact that shot fire up his spine.
He lay there gasping, everything hurting, his throat still working to pull air back into his lungs.
Vale descended the stairs behind him. Calm, measured steps that didn’t falter or rush. He stepped carefully over Kieran’s sprawled body at the landing like he was debris.
“Get up. We’re not finished.”
Kieran’s vision blurred with tears—pain and rage and helplessness tangling into something that threatened to choke him. He tried to push himself up, but his arms shook, refusing to hold his weight.
“I c-can’t—”
“You can. You will.”
Vale waited. Patient. Immovable. Like he had all the time in the world to watch Kieran’s body fail and fail and finally obey.
Kieran’s hands found the wall. He used it to drag himself upright, every movement a new point of pain: his stomach, shin, hip, tailbone, and shoulder where he’d caught himself wrong.
He took the rest of the stairs on shaking legs, each step its own small agony, while Vale watched from below with something that might have been approval.
At the bottom, Vale guided him to the chair with that same grip on his neck and sat him down with enough force that his bruised tailbone screamed fresh protest.
“Good,” Vale murmured, reaching for the hood. “See how much easier it is when you don’t fight?”
The hood went on.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Kieran stared at his bruises in the bathroom mirror the next evening, his body still hollow from Vale’s lesson that day: purple fingerprints around the back of his neck where Vale’s hand had controlled him, a dark bloom across his stomach where the punch had landed, his hip and ass a mottled black-green from the fall down the stairs.
Each bruise was proof he’d fought. Proof he was still himself, still human, still capable of resistance even if that resistance earned him nothing but pain.
The anger still burned. Dimmer than yesterday, maybe. Harder to hold onto. But it was there.
He won’t break me.
He heard Vale distantly in the kitchen—the clink of glass, water running. Medication time.
Yesterday morning Kieran had taken his pills without thinking, muscle memory from years of managing his epilepsy overriding everything else. Yesterday evening and this morning too. But today—
Today he’d realized something.
If he had a seizure bad enough, Vale would have to call an ambulance. Paramedics would see him and ask questions. Someone would see what was happening to him and they would help him.
Kieran left the bathroom to find Vale setting up at the kitchen table: his pills in a small cup, a glass of water, and that patient expression that meant he expected cooperation.
“Sit, sweetheart. Medication time.”
Kieran sat. He picked up the cup of pills, looked at them for a long moment while Vale watched with those too-knowing eyes.
Then he set the cup back down. “I’m n-not taking it.”
Vale’s expression didn’t change. “Yes, you are.”
“No.” The word came out steadier than Kieran expected, edged with desperate hope.
Something shifted in Vale’s face. The gentleness bled away, replaced by something cold and precise and on the edge of anger for the first time since Kieran had woken up here.
“Pick up the pills.”
“No.”
Vale moved faster than Kieran could track—hands on his shoulders, his full body weight pressing down, pinning him to the kitchen chair with nowhere to go. In a heartbeat, their bodies were locked together, Vale’s breath on his face, heat bleeding between them.
“Open your mouth.”
Kieran clenched his jaw.
Vale’s hand forced it open anyway, his thumb and forefinger digging into the hinges of his jaw until Kieran’s mouth opened on reflex. He dropped the pills onto Kieran’s tongue. Kieran tried to spit them out. Vale’s hand clamped over his mouth.
“Swallow it.”
Kieran shook his head frantically, pills dissolving bitter against his tongue, trying to keep his throat closed through sheer force of will.