Chapter 22
Sleep still feels like dyin’, but I'm learning to be more than flesh and bones that refuse to be free…
Kieran
He knew he was in trouble when he woke to his usual rose—a deep burgundy that was almost black—and realized he was looking forward to it.
I’m getting used to this. I shouldn’t be getting used to this.
But the trouble felt distant, academic even. His body didn’t ache anymore because he stopped tensing everytime Vale entered the room.
The collar had become background music. Present but not uncomfortable. Just another part of getting dressed in the morning, like putting on socks or brushing his teeth. When Vale’s fingers would find it, he at some point stopped flinching at the touch.
Vale asked more questions. Personal things that felt less like interrogation and more like someone trying to get to know him.
“What’s your favorite season?”
“Do you prefer coffee or tea?”
“Do you like ankle socks or calf socks?”
Kieran answered carefully at first, still waiting for the trap.
But the questions never led anywhere dark.
Vale just listened, seeming to file away the information with that intense focus, and then small things would appear.
Kieran’s preferred tea in the cupboard. A book he mentioned once, sitting on the nightstand.
The thermostat adjusted because Kieran said he ran cold.
It felt like being studied, but it also felt like being cared for. The two things had become impossible to separate.
Vale pulled him into his lap while they watched TV together, like he did every night since the TV appeared. Vale’s hand played absently with his hair, fingers gentle against his scalp in a way that made Kieran want to purr like a cat.
His other hand rested on Kieran’s thigh—warm, possessive, but perfectly still. Not moving higher. Not sliding lower. Just... there. Present but not demanding.
Why does he always stop? What is he waiting for?
“You’re relaxing,” Vale nuzzled against his neck.
He hated when Vale did that, it made him feel strange. But he didn’t pull away.
“Is that g-good?” Kieran asked, unsure what answer he wanted.
Vale’s arms tightened around him. “It’s very good. It means you’re learning to feel safe here.”
Safe. The word should have felt like a lie. But wrapped in Vale’s arms, the collar warm against his throat, and all the roses accumulating in the bathroom vase—it didn’t feel like a lie at all.
It had been two weeks since the seizure when Vale asked about Kieran’s music.
They were in the living room, Kieran’s guitar across his lap, the notepad open to pages covered in fragments that barely counted as lyrics. Vale was on the couch behind him, close enough that Kieran could feel the warmth of his legs against his back.
The view count on Temple of Flesh was past four million.
Kieran stopped asking Vale to check the comments after the first few days—unable to stomach another debate about whether his medical emergency was performance art, whether Temple of Flesh was exploitation or poetry, whether any of it was real.
Don’t think about it. Focus on the music. That’s all that matters.
But the anger bled into every chord progression and every lyric fragment. The need to defend himself to people who’d already decided he was a liar lived in his fingertips and manifested as ink on the page.
“What are you working on?” Vale’s hands found their way into Kieran’s hair, combing through it with the casual intimacy that had somehow become normal.
Kieran’s pen stilled. The lyrics were raw, too obviously about the comments calling him a liar. About internet strangers debating whether his seizures were real. It was omphaloskepsis disguised as art.
“It’s not ready,” Kieran sighed. “It’s just—fr-fragments. Nothing coherent yet.”
“May I see?”
The request was gentle, but Kieran recognized the underlying expectation. Fourteen days of peace created the illusion of choice, but they both understood the parameters. Vale asked for things politely, Kieran provided them, and everyone pretended this was normal.
“I don’t—it’s probably t-t-terrible,” Kieran stammered, clutching the notebook. “It’s just me being w-whiny about internet comments. You’ll think it’s pathetic.”
“I won’t think anything until I hear it,” Vale said. “Maybe just play me the melody you’re working on? Without the lyrics, if you’re not ready to share those yet.”
A compromise.
Kieran set the notebook aside and positioned his guitar properly, his fingers finding the chord progression he’d been building. The melody was aggressive but melancholy, questions posed in minor keys that demanded answers the world wasn’t providing.
He played the opening bars, then moved into what might eventually become a chorus—confrontational but unbearably sad, like someone screaming into wind that scattered their words before they could be properly heard.
“Stop there,” Vale said softly. “Play that last part again.”
Kieran repeated the progression, watching Vale’s face for signs of judgment. Instead, he saw excitement building in his eyes.
“The rhythm,” Vale murmured. “It wants accompaniment. Piano, I think.” He was already standing, moving with purpose toward a door Kieran never seen opened. “May I show you something?”
Kieran followed without being asked, curiosity overriding anxiety.
The room beyond was enormous—a formal parlor repurposed into a conservatory. Instruments lined the walls: guitars, violins, a drum kit, keyboards of various sizes. But dominating the center was a baby grand piano that looked older than anything else in the house.
How did I not know this room existed?
Vale moved toward the piano with a familiarity that spoke of countless hours at those keys.
The bench was worn smooth, adjusted perfectly for his frame.
When he settled onto it and lifted the fallboard, Kieran could see the keys showed signs of heavy use—ivory worn thin in places, the edges rounded by decades of contact.
“Play the progression again,” Vale said,his hands hovering over the keyboard.
Kieran positioned himself where Vale could hear him, then launched into the melody. Immediately, Vale’s hands found complementary notes, building a foundation that transformed Kieran’s aggressive questioning into something deeper.
He’s not just playing along. He’s translating my anger into something bigger.
Vale’s fingers moved across the keys with fluid grace, finding harmonies Kieran hadn’t known were hiding in his simple chord progression.
But more than technical skill, there was something emotional in the way Vale played—like he understood exactly what the music was trying to say and was helping it say it more clearly.
When the progression ended, Vale continued playing, developing themes and variations that turned Kieran’s fragments into complete musical thoughts. His entire posture changed at the piano, shoulders relaxed, his face soft and peaceful and serene.
He’s beautiful like this. Lost in the music, not performing or manipulating or controlling. Just... creating.
“It’s perfect,” Vale said, finally lifting his hands from the keys. “Angry and confrontational but melancholic. Like someone trying to defend themselves from accusations they can’t fully refute.”
Kieran stared at Vale’s profile, seeing something that felt dangerously close to understanding.
“Play it again,” Kieran heard himself say. “B-but slower this time. I want t-to try something.”
Vale’s hands found the keys again, establishing rhythm with gentle hammer falls that invited rather than commanded. This time, Kieran began to sing, but it was raw—half-spoken lyrics that rode the piano’s rhythm like poetry.
“I cracked open my ribcage like the spine of a book,
Take a look, take a look at the pages inside…”
The words came out like confessions, like accusations, like someone finally finding language for violations too complex for simple protest. Kieran moved closer to the piano as he performed, drawn by the way Vale’s playing anticipated every emotional shift in his delivery.
By the time he reached the chorus, Kieran was leaning against the piano, close enough to see Vale’s hands dance across ivory with touches that looked almost like caresses.
When the last notes faded, the silence felt charged with something Kieran couldn’t name.
“That’s perfect,” Vale said, voice soft with what sounded like genuine awe. “Anyone who’s ever been told their truth was too uncomfortable will hear themselves in those words.”
Kieran stared at Vale’s face, seeing something there he’d never noticed before. Not the calculating predator or the clinical mentor, but someone genuinely moved by music they’d created together. Someone whose smile felt warm and real and completely devoid of agenda.
He gets it. He actually understands what I was trying to say.
The realization hit with stunning force—for the first time since this whole nightmare began, Kieran felt seen. Not as a project or an instrument or a broken boy to be fixed, but as an artist whose work moved someone else to create something beautiful in response.
Before conscious thought could interfere, Kieran was moving. His hands found Vale’s face and he pressed their mouths together with the desperate intensity of a chord finally resolving after months of dissonance—inevitable, necessary, the only note that could possibly come next.
Vale’s hands came up to frame his face, and for a moment the world narrowed to just them—the taste of someone who understood his music, the warmth of arms that held him, the impossible complexity of needing the very person who’d made him need anyone at all.
This is insane.
But the thought was less important than the way Vale kissed him back like something precious and fragile, like a melody he’d been searching for his entire life but never expected to find.
When they broke apart, Kieran remained close, his forehead resting against Vale’s, both of them breathing hard in the music room’s perfect acoustics.
“Kieran,” Vale panted.