Chapter 26
I'm learning how to breathe poison and make it disappear…
Kieran
Neither he nor Vale recognized the clustered focal seizures at first. Kieran thought he was just too wrung out from the basement, from the song, from destroying his last lifeline to his old life.
But the metal taste in his mouth wouldn’t fade, his body felt wrong, he couldn’t hold his torso up.
He wasn’t going to say anything. He didn’t want to give Vale more reasons to touch him after the last lesson.
But Vale noticed the muscles in his face twitching and contracting in a wave, and Kieran knew he was having absences. He couldn’t hide them forever. After the fourth hour, Vale made him take his sedative and tucked him into the bed they now shared.
The clustered focal seizures continued on and off for two days after that.
He tried to insist that he was used to the smaller ones, he could handle it like he always did, but sometimes his brain would power off for a second and when he blinked, Vale would suddenly be staring at him with impossibly wide eyes, twisting his fingers in his lap like he was scared.
Was Vale scared?
He spent three days cocooned in soft sheets while Vale brought him meals on trays and massaged tension from muscles that remembered electrical currents like phantom pains.
He fed Kieran by hand when exhaustion made lifting a fork impossible, hooked fingers under the collar—back around his throat within minutes of Eliza leaving—to tilt his face up for water, for medicine, to check his pupils… always gently.
On the fourth morning, Kieran felt steady enough to shower without Vale’s hovering presence. The hot water washed away the lingering fog that had kept him floating somewhere between sleep and waking for days.
I need to look like myself again.
The bathroom mirror revealed someone he barely recognized—hollow-eyed, too thin, his hair too long on the sides. The collar sat against his throat like it belonged there and Kieran found himself touching it briefly before dropping his hand.
He found Vale’s electric clippers in a drawer, ran them over the sides of his head until his usual French crop emerged again, sharp and clean.
The familiar cut made his reflection look more like the person he’d been before basement lessons and viral videos, though the look in his eyes suggested that person was long gone.
The house felt different as he padded through it bare foot, searching for Vale’s voice that drifted from the office at the end of the hallway. Not empty, exactly, but charged with possibility—like the air before storms, pregnant with a change he couldn’t name.
“—understand that Thorn is totally indie,“ Vale said as Kieran approached the partially open door. “His artistry requires very specific conditions to maintain authenticity.”
Industry Vale sounded nothing like the gentle caregiver who’d been bringing him soup and stroking his hair. Nothing like the man who bathed him in his medicated haze—Kieran remembered flinching at every touch, but he had been too tired to do more than let it happen.
“The viral response to ‘Library Card’ proves there’s significant commercial potential,“ Vale continued. “But creative control is non-negotiable. Thorn’s process can’t be interfered with by traditional studio expectations.”
Thorn’s process. Like I have any control over what happens to me.
Vale must have heard him walking down the hall, because he looked up as Kieran appeared in the doorway and gestured him over with a warm smile that made Kieran’s chest tight with confusion.
“I’ll need to call you back,” Vale said into the phone, ending the conversation as Kieran approached. “There’s my beautiful boy. Feeling better?”
The endearment should have made him flinch.
Instead, Kieran found himself moving closer when Vale patted his thigh in invitation, settling into his lap and resting his head on Vale’s shoulder.
It should have been an awkward position, from the outside it had to look insane, but Vale’s arms came around him with a protective warmth, and Kieran sank into the embrace anyway.
The alternative—analyzing why comfort felt more dangerous than pain—required energy he didn’t have yet.
“What did they w-want?” Kieran asked, voice still rough from days of minimal use, from singing himself raw for a camera…from screaming in the basement…
Just don’t think about it.
“Atlantic Records, again. They’re very interested in the independent route we’re taking with your work.” Vale’s hand found Kieran’s hair, threading through the freshly cut strands. “There’s also a networking event this Friday. I’d like you to come with me.”
Kieran’s shoulders tensed. “Do I have to p-perform?”
“No.” Vale’s response came immediate and reassuring.
“Usually there isn’t enough time for every producer to showcase their artists properly.
It’s more about showing off and getting drunk on champagne.
” His fingers stilled in Kieran’s hair. “But if you don’t want to go, I’ll back out. Your comfort comes first.”
For a brief, disorienting moment Kieran’s mind flashed to something else entirely: Other people. A crowd. Public space. I could—
His stomach dropped. The thought cut off as quickly as it had formed, replaced by something that felt uncomfortably like guilt.
He should want to escape. He should be planning, calculating, looking for any opportunity to get away from the person who’d broken him down in a basement and then rebuilt him into something that made beautiful art when it bled.
But the impulse to run felt wrong now. Not hopeful. Not like salvation. Just... wrong. Disloyal, somehow, in ways he didn’t understand and couldn’t untangle.
What’s wrong with me? Why does even thinking about leaving feel like betrayal?
He was mourning the impulse itself—grieving for the person he’d been before, the Kieran who would have seized any chance at escape without hesitation. That version of himself had died somewhere between the basement and the performance, smashed into pieces alongside his guitar.
“I’d like to go,” Kieran said. “I think—I think it might be g-good to meet people. To feel like a real artist instead of just someone hiding in b-basements.”
Vale’s arms tightened around him. “You are a real artist, Kier. I think this event could really help you see that.”
Or I’ll have a panic attack. Or start screaming. Or—
“I have something else to show you,” Vale continued, reaching for his laptop with one hand. “The response to the new song has been extraordinary.”
The screen lit up with numbers that caught Kieran’s breath. Two million views. Comments, reaction videos, covers, analysis pieces that treated his angry breakdown like legitimate art instead of public therapy.
Holy shit. People actually care about this.
“Look at these,” Vale murmured, clicking through to show him response videos. A battle rapper breaking down his flow patterns with genuine respect. Metal singers analyzing his vocal techniques. Classical musicians discussing the piano arrangement and book percussion as innovative compositions.
They think I’m good. They think what we made together is actually good.
“And here,” Vale said, scrolling to comments that tightened Kieran’s throat. “People defending you. People who understand.”
Anyone questioning this kid’s authenticity has never lived with chronic illness. This is what real pain sounds like when it finds its voice.
The rawness, the honesty—you can’t fake that level of emotion. Stop trying to tear down someone brave enough to share their truth.
This isn’t performance, this is confession. And it’s beautiful.
Kieran stared at the screen, reading validation he never expected to receive from strangers who’d witnessed his most vulnerable moments and chosen to defend him rather than dismiss him. People who saw authenticity where others had seen conspiracy, who saw the pain he turned into music.
They believe me. They believe in me.
They loved the performance. They had no idea what it had taken to access that rage, no concept of the violation that had crystallized fury into something performable.
The tears came without warning—not the careful moisture of someone trying to look vulnerable, but ugly, desperate sobbing that shook his entire body.
Kieran buried his face against Vale’s chest, overwhelmed by the swell of too many competing emotions.
Grief for his destroyed guitar. Relief at finally being believed.
Horror at what it had cost. Gratitude for validation.
Shame for accepting comfort from the person who made comfort necessary.
“Hey,” Vale murmured, his arms wrapping around him again. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? These are good responses. People love what you created.”
What we created. What you forced me to create through methods I can’t forget and can’t forgive and can’t stop being grateful for.
“I don’t—I don’t kn-know,” Kieran gasped between sobs. “I don’t know why I’m c-crying. I should be happy, right? People finally b-believe me, they think I’m talented, they’re d-defending me...”
Vale’s hand moved in soothing circles across his back. “Sometimes relief is painful. You’ve been carrying the weight of strangers’ doubt for weeks.”
No.
I’m crying because they love what you made me into. And I’m crying because I can never go back to who I was before. And I’m crying because I destroyed the last piece of that person with my own hands.
“You’re safe,” Vale whispered and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You’re talented, you’re validated, and you’re safe with me.”
His hands ached and his back throbbed and his body remembered those fingers in ways that sitting in Vale’s lap made impossible to ignore. His head felt foggy and his mouth tasted like metal. Kieran didn’t know what to do or think or feel, so he just cried until he couldn’t anymore.
Vale held him through it, whispering sweet things to him, his fingers occasionally brushing the collar like a reminder of ownership, while millions of strangers praised the beautiful things a broken person could create in the right hands.