Chapter 34
Back to the pit, back to the pit; Why do I love the things that make me sick?
Kieran
Two weeks of gentleness almost made him forget.
Kieran stood in the home studio, headphones heavy against his skull, watching Vale through the control booth glass. His palms had healed to pale pink scars, and the puncture wounds across his chest faded to raised lines.
Two weeks of cooking breakfast together. Of Vale watching TV with him. Of gentle touches that felt protective rather than predatory. Two weeks of kind and caring Vale, and Kieran let himself sink into it, let himself believe that maybe the lessons were behind them.
You know better. You know how this works.
“From the top,” Vale’s voice came through the headphones. “Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”
Kieran adjusted the microphone. They were recording “Broken”—the song that started everything. The sad song he’d been playing when Vale first noticed him.
He closed his eyes and sang.
“I’m just a broken boy that nobody wanted,
Dreams get destroyed when your body’s haunted...”
The words came out controlled, guarded. He knew the melody, knew the lyrics by heart—he wrote them in a foster home bathroom when he was sixteen, pressing the words into a notebook like they could somehow contain the desperation that felt too big to survive.
But that was the problem. He knew the song too well.
He could perform it without actually touching the wound it came from.
“Cut.” Vale’s voice was soft, patient. “You’re holding back.”
I know. I know I am.
“I can g-go again,” Kieran said into the microphone. “I just need to—”
“You need to stop protecting yourself from it.” Still soft. Still patient. But Kieran heard the shift underneath, the subtle recalibration that meant Vale identified the problem and was deciding how to fix it.
Please. Not today. We’ve been so good together, so normal. Please let me just try again.
“Let me do one more t-take,” Kieran said. “I can get there. I-I just need to focus.”
Through the glass, he watched Vale consider. The moment stretched, and Kieran felt hope flutter in his chest—maybe this time, maybe Vale would let him find his own way to the emotional core, maybe—
Vale rose from his chair.
No.
The booth door opened with an electronic click that made Kieran’s spine stiffen despite himself.
He didn’t run. He hadn’t thought about running since that night in the green room when Vale broke down a door to save him.
But his body still remembered what being in the basement meant and braced for whatever was coming.
“You’re thinking too much,” Vale said, stepping into the recording space. “Living in your head instead of your body.”
Kieran’s breathing went shallow as steady hands settled on his waist—one palm spread across his lower back, the other curving around his hip.
“I can d-do it,” Kieran tried again, his voice smaller now. “Vale, I c-can get there on my own, I just need—”
“Shh.” Vale’s lips brushed his ear. “You don’t have to do it alone. That’s what I’m here for.”
That’s not what I want. I don’t want this.
But underneath the fear, he could hear Vale’s voice in his head: You know this works. You know you need this.
Vale’s hand slid up his chest, his fingers finding the raised scars where glass had bitten deep. “These are healing nicely. Do they still hurt?”
Kieran swallowed. “S-sometimes. When I breathe too deep.”
“Mmm.” Vale’s fingers pressed in, and Kieran gasped at the bright flare of sensation. “Like that?”
“V-Vale—”
“The first time you sang this song for me,” Vale continued, “you ran. Do you remember? I touched you, and you bolted like a deer who’d just realized the meadow was actually a hunting ground.”
Kieran remembered. The terror of that moment, the desperate flight, the days of looking over his shoulder before Vale simply... appeared again.
“And then you sang it on the street,” Vale said, other hand sliding up to rest against Kieran’s throat. “And it was magnificent.”
I know. I know it works. That’s why I’m so afraid.
“I don’t w-want—” Kieran started, but Vale’s hand tightened on his throat just enough to make the words dissolve.
“What don’t you want, sweetheart?” The question was patient, curious, like Vale genuinely wanted to understand. “Tell me.”
Kieran’s eyes stung. “I don’t want it to h-hurt. I know I n-need it, I know it helps, b-but I don’t want it.”
Vale pressed a kiss to the back of Kieran’s neck—a reward for honesty.
“I know you don’t,” Vale said. “That’s not what this is about. You’re not supposed to want the pain. You’re supposed to understand that it’s necessary and trust that I would never hurt you without purpose.”
Kieran nodded despite the fear still coiled in his chest. He did trust Vale.
That was the most terrifying part—not the pain itself, but the certainty that had settled into his bones over the past months.
Vale hurt him with purpose. Vale hurt him with care.
And somehow, impossibly, that made it bearable.
“Good boy.” Vale’s approval washed through him like warm water. “Now. I’m going to help you find what this song needs. And you’re going to let me, because you know I’m right. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kieran whimpered.
Vale’s hand pressed against the scars on his chest—not hard, but firm. The pain was immediate, sharp, radiating outward from wounds that hadn’t finished healing despite what his eyes told him. Kieran’s breath caught, then emerged as a broken sound that was almost musical.
“Sing,” Vale said against his ear. “Just the chorus. Let me feel how the sound moves through you.”
Kieran opened his mouth, and what emerged was nothing like the controlled performance from before. The words scraped out of him raw and desperate, carried by vocal cords that vibrated against Vale’s palm on his throat.
“I’m just a broken boy that nobody wanted...”
Vale’s fingers pressed harder against the scars, and Kieran’s voice cracked on a sob that became part of the melody.
“Dreams get destroyed when your body’s haunted...”
The pain bloomed through his chest, unlocking something that protective distance had kept safely contained.
He was sixteen again, curled up in a bathroom that smelled like mildew, writing words that felt like the only alternative to disappearing entirely.
The foster parents who looked through him.
The caseworkers who forgot his name. The endless parade of temporary places that were never, ever home.
“Close my eyes and count to ten...”
Vale’s hand gentled on his chest, shifting from pressure to something almost like a caress. The contrast made Kieran sob harder, voice breaking apart and reforming into prayer.
“Maybe I will wake again...”
When the last note faded, Kieran sagged back against Vale’s chest, shaking with the aftermath of another emotional excavation. Vale held him and kissed the top of his head while murmuring praise that felt more sustaining than oxygen.
“Perfect,” Vale breathed. “Absolutely perfect. Do you feel that? Do you feel what you just created?”
Kieran nodded, unable to speak, tears still streaming down his face. He felt hollowed out, scraped clean, like Vale had reached inside him and rearranged everything that made him who he was.
“That’s the version we’re going to record,” Vale said, turning Kieran in his arms to face him. “That’s the version the world is going to hear. And they’re going to know—everyone is going to know—that you’re not performing pain. You’re living it.”
He kissed Kieran then, tenderly and gently, and Kieran kissed back because this was the part he understood. The pain, then the praise, then the warmth that made the pain worth surviving. It was the rhythm of his entire existence.
“I’m so proud of you,” Vale whispered against his lips. “So proud of what you’re willing to give for your art. For us.”
Us.
The song was real now, honest in ways that his protected version could never have achieved. What Vale had done to unlock it—that was the cost. And Kieran stopped pretending he wasn’t willing to pay.
“Can we...” He swallowed. “C-can we record it now? While it’s still—”
“While you’re still open,” Vale finished, understanding immediately. “Yes. Get back on the mic. I’ll run the board.”
He pressed one more kiss to Kieran’s forehead, then released him and moved toward the control booth. Kieran watched him go, feeling the absence of Vale’s warmth like a physical ache.
This is who I am now. This is what my art requires.
He stepped back to the microphone, adjusting the headphones, and waited for Vale’s signal. Through the glass, Vale gave him a small nod, fingers poised over the recording controls.
The red light blinked on.
Kieran closed his eyes, letting the residual pain in his chest guide him back to that place, and sang.