Chapter 58
The weight of blooming into something new; A flower made of trauma, photosynthesizing you…
Kieran
The moment Kieran’s hands touched Alex’s shoulders, reality crashed back with nauseating clarity. The post-seizure fog lifted just enough for him to process what he was seeing—Jericho’s body twisted at the bottom of the stairs, Alex restrained and hooded, Vale watching him with expectant pride.
What am I doing? What is this?
His lower lip began to tremble as his gaze bounced between Jericho and Vale’s face, panic rising in his throat like bile. But then Vale’s voice echoed in his memory, calm and certain:
I know what’s best for you, sweetheart. Trust me to take care of everything.
Vale knows. Vale always knows. He’ll handle this.
Kieran’s head throbbed with familiar post-seizure pain, made worse by Alex’s mangled attempt at ‘Poison Saviors’. The melody was wrong, hollow, missing every emotion that had made the original beautiful. It grated against Kieran’s skull like nails on glass.
He’s not sitting right.
The thought arrived clinical and detached, as if Kieran were watching a masterclass video instead of standing in a room with a corpse.
“You n-need to sit up straighter,” Kieran said softly, his hands guiding Alex’s shoulders back with gentle pressure. “Your posture is all wrong. The song c-can’t—”
Alex’s playing stopped abruptly as he twisted away from Kieran’s touch. “Please, I can’t do this anymore. Just let me go. I’m sorry I came here, I’m sorry about everything—”
Vale’s foot connected with Alex’s broken shin again. The scream that erupted from beneath the hood was raw, agonized, making Kieran flinch and his headache spike to unbearable levels.
I can still fix this. I can make him understand.
Kieran moved around to Alex’s front, his hands finding the hooded face with gentleness that felt disconnected from his own body.
He sat down across Alex’s thighs, straddling him as he pressed their foreheads together, feeling the heat of panicked breath through the weave, the trembling that shook Alex’s entire body.
His heartbeat. I can almost feel his heartbeat through the hood. It’s so fast. Too fast.
“P-Please stop screaming,” Kieran whispered. “My head hurts. My heart hurts. You just need to f-focus on playing. The song has to be right.”
His thumbs found Alex’s cheekbones through the fabric, stroking gently the way Vale stroked his when he was overwhelmed. Soothing. Grounding. The gesture felt right even as something deep in Kieran’s chest screamed that nothing about this was right.
“Thorn, listen to me.” Alex’s voice was muffled but desperate. “We need to call the police. I’ll vouch for you, I swear. I’ll tell them it was an accident with Jericho. You don’t have to—”
“My name is K-Kieran,” he corrected quietly, his forehead still pressed against Alex’s. The intimacy of the position was strange but necessary, like he could somehow transfer understanding through skin contact. “Not Thorn. Just K-Kieran.”
Jericho called me Thorn. She’s dead now. Her vocal cords are—
He pushed the thought away before it could fully form.
Alex went very still. “What?”
“Would s-singing help?” Kieran asked, his mind unable to hold onto any one thing.
It kept skipping like a scratched record, landing on random observations that had nothing to do with survival.
“If you sang the words while you p-played, would it be easier? Sometimes the lyrics show you where the emotion is supposed to g-go.”
He found himself humming the opening phrase softly, demonstrating the melodic shape the way Vale had taught him. His voice was gentle, encouraging. Pedagogical.
What am I doing? Why am I teaching him?
But the thought slipped away like water through his fingers.
“You’re insane,” Alex breathed, the words carrying horror and disbelief.
Kieran pulled back slightly, his attention caught by the angle of Alex’s left wrist as it gripped the guitar neck. The wrongness of the position nagged at him with irrational urgency—more pressing, somehow, than the blood drying on the concrete behind him.
“Your wrist is wr-wrong,” he said, adjusting Alex’s hand position with careful focus. “You’ll get a stress injury like that. T-Tendonitis, maybe worse.”
Vale would be so disappointed if I let someone develop bad habits. Technique matters. Technique is everything.
The correction was automatic, muscle memory from months of Vale’s careful instruction about proper technique and injury prevention. Alex’s wrist relaxed under Kieran’s guidance, falling into the correct position despite his obvious terror.
Better. That’s better. Now he can play properly.
“P-Please keep trying,” Kieran said, stepping back to give Alex space to play. His voice carried the same gentle encouragement Vale used during difficult lessons. “It’s going to be okay. You just have to f-focus on the music.”
The words felt true even as some buried part of him knew they were lies.
“So gentle,” Vale murmured, approval warm in his voice. “You’re perfect, sweetheart.”
Vale’s fingers found Alex’s collarbone, digging into the hollow with enough pressure to make Alex arch away with a strangled shout. Kieran watched Vale’s hands work and thought, distantly: He’s using the same technique he used on me before.
I don’t like that.
“I tried to be gentle with you too, Alex. But it didn’t help you. Neither did hurting you, really. You just don’t understand the way Kieran does.”
A strange flutter of pride bloomed in Kieran’s chest—warm and wrong.
Her neck. The angle of her neck. I can’t stop seeing—
But Vale’s voice in his mind cut through the spiral before it could take hold:
Trust me, sweetheart. We’ve done so many lessons in trust. Let me handle this.
“Just keep t-trying,” Kieran said to Alex, his voice steadier now. He reached out and smoothed the hood where it had bunched near Alex’s ear. “Vale knows what he’s d-doing.”
His gaze drifted back to Jericho’s body despite himself, and the trembling started again.
Nausea rolled through his stomach as he stared at her twisted neck, remembering how quickly they’d connected in the studio, how perfectly their voices had blended together.
He’d wanted to surprise Vale by having her appear at the concert for their duet.
Now her vocal cords were rotting in her throat.
She was nice to me.
I killed her.
I killed her.
Vale’s hands cupped his face, forcing his attention away from the corpse. “Focus on me,” Vale said firmly. “Not on her. On me.”
Yes. That’s easier. Just look at Vale.
The warmth still felt wrong. He held onto it anyway.
Vale turned back to Alex with renewed focus, his hands finding pressure points that made Alex jerk and cry out.
“You want to know why you failed?” Vale’s voice carried cold fury beneath the velvet as he crouched down to look at the broken bone.
“I gave you connections. Opportunities. Access to people who could have changed your entire trajectory.”
Alex’s attempt at the song faltered again as Vale’s thumb disappeared into the wound in his shin, screaming words Kieran didn’t hear. It was just noise. Ugly noise like Alex’s attempt to play his songs.
Kieran wondered, vaguely, what emotion Vale was trying to open in Alex by pushing into his wound. It made him nauseous, so he stopped wondering anything at all.
“I spent weeks helping you develop your sound,” Vale continued, his voice rising with each word.
“And you threw it back in my face. You said you needed ‘creative freedom’ and ‘artistic independence’ like those weren’t just excuses for your own limitations.
You tried to smooth it over by saying you had feelings for me. ”
Kieran moved behind Alex again, his hands adjusting the man’s posture even as Vale’s fury made his own knuckles ache with phantom pain. He hadn’t seen Vale this angry in months.
His shoulders are climbing toward his ears. That’s not good. It’s hard to play with emotion if he’s tense.
Without thinking, Kieran began kneading the knots in Alex’s shoulders, working the tension loose with gentle pressure. The way Vale did for him after difficult sessions.
“Years of wasting what little talent you had,” Vale spat, striking Alex’s ribs. “And then you decided to whisper poison in some nosy girl’s ear.”
Alex screamed, the sound muffled by the hood, and Kieran flinched at the volume. “P-Please,” Kieran whispered, leaning close to Alex’s hooded head until his lips almost brushed the fabric. “Just try to f-focus on—”
“Close your eyes, sweetheart.”
Vale’s voice cut through his attempt at comfort, and Kieran’s eyelids dropped immediately.
He heard Vale move to the equipment storage, heard a drawer open and close, then felt the familiar warmth of Vale’s body pressing close behind him.
Something cold and hard was pressed into his palm—smooth and plastic that felt foreign against his skin.
Vale’s larger hands wrapped around his fingers.
What is this? What am I holding?
But the question dissolved before he could chase it.
“What are you doing?” Alex’s voice cracked with new terror, higher now, desperate. “What’s happening? I can’t see—please, what—”
Vale’s breath was warm against Kieran’s ear and he felt Vale kissing his neck. Their joined hands hovered in the air, and Kieran could feel Vale’s cock hardening against him. His stomach fluttered and flipped.
Maybe we can just go upstairs and pretend this never happened.
“Do you remember when you smashed your guitar during ‘Library Card’? Why you did it?”
Kieran’s jaw tensed, his headache spiking as Alex’s shouting intensified into incoherent pleas. The sound bounced off the walls, seeming to multiply until it filled every corner of the basement.
“It f-felt bad,” Kieran said slowly, searching for words through the fog. “Like a remnant of my old life. I was d-disgusted by it, so I broke it. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.”
“Exactly.” Vale’s voice was soft, loving, the tone he used when Kieran had given the perfect answer. “Sometimes we have to destroy things that remind us of who we used to be.”
Destroy things. Yes. That makes sense.
“Kiss me,” Vale whispered.
Eyes still closed, Kieran turned his head blindly toward Vale’s voice, their lips meeting with desperate familiarity. The kiss made his headache recede, made Alex’s screaming fade to background noise, made everything else disappear except the warmth of Vale’s mouth against his.
This is nice. This is safe. Vale’s kissing me and everything is—
Vale pushed their joined hands downward.
The resistance was brief—fabric, then something softer that gave way with a wet sound. Alex’s shouting cut off with horrifying abruptness, replaced by a gurgling that made Kieran’s blood run cold even through the haze of the kiss.
“I love you,” Vale whispered against Kieran’s lips.
Kieran opened his eyes and the world tilted sideways.
Their hands—both sets of fingers wrapped around a black handle that disappeared into Alex’s throat. Blood was already seeping around the blade, dark and thick, staining the hood where it pressed against his neck.
“No.” The word came out as barely a whisper. Kieran’s hands started shaking, the knife trembling in the wound. “No, no, no—”
Panic exploded through his nervous system like electricity. He yanked the blade free without thinking, and blood erupted from Alex’s throat in rhythmic pulses that sprayed up onto Kieran’s face and chest. Hot copper flooded his mouth where the arterial spray hit his lips.
Kieran stumbled around to Alex’s front, his legs giving out as he fell to his knees. His hands pressed against the wound, but there was so much blood—it pulsed between his fingers with each weakening heartbeat, slick and warm and impossible to stop.
“I can f-fix this,” Kieran gasped, his voice high and desperate. Alex’s body was going slack, slumping in the chair. “I can—Alex, stay with me. Just keep p-pressure on it—”
Apply pressure. That’s what you do. You apply pressure and you call for help and—
But there was no one to call. Just Vale watching. Just the soundproofed walls as witnesses.
Alex wasn’t responding. His chest was still moving, rapid and shallow, but the gurgling sounds were getting weaker. Kieran could feel his pulse fluttering against his palms, growing fainter with each passing second.
The metallic scent of blood mixed with the familiar basement smell, creating something nauseating that made Kieran’s empty stomach heave. His hands were completely red now, Alex’s life literally flowing through his fingers despite everything he was trying to do to stop it.
“P-Please,” Kieran sobbed, pressing harder against the wound even as more blood welled up around his palms. “Please don’t d-die. I didn’t mean—I didn’t know—”
I was just holding it. I was just kissing him. I didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t—
Vale’s hands closed around his wrists, pulling him away from Alex’s body with gentle but inexorable force. Kieran fought against the grip, desperate to keep pressure on the wound, but Vale was stronger.
“Wh-Why?” Kieran’s voice cracked as Vale’s bloodied hands cupped his face, wiping away tears that only smeared more blood across his cheeks. “Why did you make me—why did we—”
He tried to look back at Alex, but the guitar had slipped from the dead man’s hands and hit the concrete with a discordant crash that seemed to echo forever.
The guitar. Someone should tune that guitar. The fall probably knocked it out of—
The thought was so absurd, so wrong, that it broke something in Kieran’s mind. A sob tore from his throat.
“Stop looking there,” Vale said, his grip tightening on Kieran’s face until it was almost painful. “There’s nothing there for you to worry about. It’s just us. Just our love. Nothing else matters.”
Just us. Just love. Nothing else.
Kieran’s breath hitched as Vale continued, his voice dropping into that hypnotic register that always made everything else fade away. “We’re safe together forever. No one can hurt us. No one can take you away from me.”
Vale’s lips pressed against his, and Kieran’s mind fractured again, split between horror and the familiar comfort of Vale’s touch.
Don’t think, sweetheart. Just be mine.
Kieran’s resistance crumbled as the words wrapped around his consciousness like silk restraints.