Chapter 17
The same old game, but now I'm changed, rearranged my social frame…
Kieran
Kieran slept in fits, consciousness drifting in and out while his shoulders screamed and his wrists went numb from the position and he tasted metal.
At some point during the night, his body gave up trying to find a comfortable position and simply accepted the pain as a baseline.
Now, everything hurt in a way that felt almost normal.
Vale arrived with a tray—water and oatmeal, the domestic normalcy of it completely at odds with Kieran chained to a wall like a prisoner. He set it down and unlocked the handcuffs, catching Kieran’s arm as they dropped like stones.
“Easy,” Vale breathed. “Let the circulation return slowly. Flex your fingers.”
Kieran obeyed, watching blood return to his hands with pins-and-needles agony. Vale held the water glass to his lips, and Kieran drank without protest, too exhausted to maintain the pretense of resistance.
“You did well last night,” Vale said, setting the glass aside and offering a spoonful of oatmeal.
Kieran ate in silence, accepting each spoonful like a child being fed.
“Today we’re going to build on that endurance,” Vale continued. “You’re going to learn to maintain focus no matter what distractions occur. No matter what your body does.”
What does that mean?
But Kieran was too tired to ask, too tired to do anything but finish the oatmeal and accept Vale’s help standing.
His legs shook, his muscles protesting from hours in the same position.
Kieran’s mind floated between all the places on his body that hurt as Vale guided him back upstairs to use the bathroom, gave him his medication, and then suddenly he was back in the basement with no sense of how much time had passed.
Vale guided him to the chair, positioning him with careful hands. The handcuffs clicked around one wrist again, but this time the other end was secured to the chair.
“Sing your song,” Vale said, kneeling in front of him. “From the top. And maintain your focus no matter what happens.”
Kieran’s pulse quickened, recognizing the threat in those words even if he couldn’t identify the specifics. Vale’s hands settled on his thighs, warm pressure that felt familiar—he touched Kieran like this before, under the hood, in the dark where Kieran couldn’t see what was happening.
But there’s no hood now. I’m going to have to watch whatever he—
Vale’s hands slid upward.
“Wait—” Kieran’s voice came out tight. “N-not like this. Not where I can—I can’t see you doing—”
“That’s exactly why we’re doing it this way,” Vale said, fingers finding the waistband of Kieran’s pants. “You’ve gotten used to disconnecting. This is about learning to stay present.”
Kieran tried to pull his legs together, but Vale’s position between his knees prevented it. His breathing was already getting shallow, panic building despite knowing that his body would respond anyway. It always did.
“The hood was—at least I c-couldn’t see—” The words came out fragmented, exhausted. “This is d-different. You can’t just—
“We kissed,” Vale reminded him, his voice gentle and reasonable as his fingers worked the button free. “You kissed me back, Kieran. That showed me you were ready for this next step.”
“That’s n-not—” Kieran’s throat tightened. “It-it’s not the same.”
“It’s all intimacy. And that frightens you. You have to persevere through that fear.”
“I d-don’t want to s-s-see.” The protest came out weak, defeated before it even finished. Because what did wanting matter? Vale didn’t care when he said no under the hood. This would be the same. Just worse because he’d have to watch.
Vale paused and for a moment Kieran thought he might actually stop. “This is hard for you. I understand that. But great artists push through discomfort. They don’t let fear stop them from growing.”
“This isn’t gr-growth, this is—” But Kieran couldn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t name what this was when Vale’s thumb was tracing circles on his hip as his other hand freed Kieran from his pants, when his voice was so gentle, when the alternative to compliance could be something worse.
“Sing for me,” Vale said, and his voice had shifted to that tone that meant the discussion was over. “Start the song. Show me you can perform through this.”
Kieran’s voice came out thin, shaking:
“Built a temple out of skin and bone...”
And then Vale’s mouth was on him, warm and overwhelming, enveloping Kieran’s exposed cock in wet heat that made his entire body go rigid with the wrongness of it.
It was different from hands in the dark.
This was intimate in a way that made his skin crawl even as nerves fired signals he couldn’t control—Vale’s lips sealing around his shaft, tongue pressing flat against the underside as he took him deeper, the suction pulling a gasp from Kieran’s throat.
His voice fractured on the next line, the melody shattering as he tried to reconcile singing with the sensation of Vale’s mouth bobbing on him, drawing blood southward and forcing his length to harden against his will.
Don’t think about it. Just sing. Just get through this like you got through the sessions under the hood.
But he couldn’t not think about it. He couldn’t disconnect the way he had when the hood had stolen his sight and he could pretend it was just his body responding to stimulus, not a person, not Vale specifically, not this particular violation—hot and messy, saliva dripping down his balls as Vale sucked with deliberate rhythm.
“My altar’s made of fractured glass;
My hymns are sung in blood and trust—”
His voice broke entirely as Vale did something with his tongue, swirling it around the sensitive head, flicking against the slit. Kieran’s hips jerked involuntarily, his cock twitching deeper into the warmth.
Vale pulled back, a string of saliva connected his lips to Kieran’s glistening tip, breaking as he licked it away. “Keep singing. Your voice is beautiful when you stop fighting it.”
“I’m not—I can’t—” Kieran gasped, trying to find that disconnection he learned under the hood.
But it was impossible with his eyes open, impossible when he could see Vale kneeling between his legs and he could see the evidence of Vale’s own arousal—his pants tented, a dark spot of pre-cum staining the fabric as his hand pressed against it restlessly. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Look at me,” Vale commanded. “Eyes open. Stay present.”
Kieran’s eyes opened against his will, met Vale’s gaze, and something in that eye contact made everything worse.
There was hunger there, barely masked desire that had nothing to do with pedagogy and everything to do with want—the way Vale’s pupils dilated as he held Kieran’s stare, his free hand gripping the base of Kieran’s shaft to steady it before diving back in.
He wants this. Not just as a lesson. He wants me.
The realization should have been horrifying. But some twisted part of Kieran recognized it as the first honest thing Vale had shown him—no justifications, no clinical distance, just raw want visible in his expression before he caught himself and smoothed it away.
“Sing,” Vale said, softer now. “Please.”
And that please—the same way Vale had asked in that moment under the hood in previous sessions, the vulnerability in it—made Kieran’s resistance crumble.
His voice came back, broken and raw:
“And every sermon that I preach;
Is about the god we made from dust...”
Vale’s mouth resumed its work, and Kieran sang through the sensation, through the shame of his body responding, through the horrible awareness of Vale’s hands moving to touch himself, stroking it in time with the rhythm of his mouth on Kieran’s cock.
Vale’s moans vibrated around Kieran’s shaft with each deep-throated swallow.
Kieran’s mind couldn’t hold all of it at once.
The song kept coming, mechanical now, disconnected from meaning.
Vale’s hand blurring on his cock, his hips bucking into his own grip as he sucked Kieran harder, tongue lashing relentlessly until Kieran’s balls drew tight and his voice hitched on a high note.
When Kieran’s body betrayed him one more time, his cock pulsing and flooding Vale’s mouth with spurts of cum that Vale swallowed greedily, and Vale stood with hands that weren’t quite steady, his own release dripping from his fingers onto the floor—neither of them spoke for a long moment.
Vale adjusted his clothing, that clinical mask sliding back into place even though Kieran had seen it crack. “You maintained the performance. That’s progress.”
Progress. He calls this progress.
He left without another word, and Kieran sat cuffed to the chair, staring at nothing and trying desperately to find that disconnection he mastered under the hood. But the hood was gone now. Vale had taken even that away—the ability to pretend this was happening to someone else.
Now he had to watch himself break.
Time became fluid after that.
Vale returned at some point—Kieran had lost track of whether it was hours or days—and released him from the chair, guided him upstairs to use the bathroom, shower, fed him something that tasted like nothing, then brought him back down to the basement before Kieran’s legs had fully regained their strength.
The next session involved ice. Vale’s justification was something about temperature contrast, about learning to perform through physical discomfort, about endurance and focus and all the familiar words that were starting to lose meaning.
But the real lesson was simpler: Kieran’s body would respond regardless of circumstances. It would betray him repeatedly. It would teach him that resistance was exhausting and compliance brought relief, however temporary.