Chapter 28
Sabastian
Finally untangling myself from a sleeping boy, I left the bed. My nipples were sore, and with a glance at them, one was redder than the other. Which wasn’t surprising with how hard Oakley latched onto me.
I was glad that I had him take an extra pill, or it’d have been an even longer night than it already had been.
Pissing into the toilet, I kept an ear out for any movement or sound from the boy. He was still dead to the world, which was expected. Taking two anti-anxiety meds would do that to anyone, I’d think.
Oakley had tossed and turned a bit through the night before he ended up sucking on me. At least some part of himself remembered that no teeth rule.
I’d have offered him the pacifier, but something in my gut told me that he wouldn’t have taken it.
I hoped that when he woke up, he would be in a better state of mind where I could get some answers. I desperately wanted to know what had set him off, which really could have been anything.
Not wanting to leave him alone in the bedroom, I made sure that the camera was still on and working before making my way downstairs.
I wasn’t the type of person to sleep in late, even if I had nothing to get up to do. Well, there was always stuff to do. People to track down, people to punch until I got answers.
Today, none of that, though. Today, I’d be staying home and making sure that Oakley was okay.
I’d have loved nothing better than to go back to bed and hold him until he woke, but I didn’t want to crowd him. If he woke up wanting space, then he’d get it. If he woke up and wanted to crawl into my lap, I’d take that too.
Between trying to earn his trust, which would take weeks, if not months, to showing him that he deserved to be cared for, was tricky. The emotions were expected, and so was his acting out to get attention, even if that had yet to happen.
Anyone who came from being held captive, no matter if it was human trafficking or a child who was failed by social services, would have tons of work to overcome that trauma.
I didn’t even know half of what Oakley went through. Other than being hit and abused, I had no clue what kind of mental torture he suffered at the hands of a man.
In the kitchen, I debated on what to make for breakfast. The boy wasn’t the greatest eater in the mornings, let alone any time during the day unless I was there encouraging him to eat. But even then, he still didn’t eat as much as I’d like him to.
He was skin and bones. At least the deep shadows around his eyes had lessened over the past few days, as he caught up on sleep.
I didn’t want to make something and have it go cold before he woke up, either. Figuring it’d be best to wait, I made myself a cup of coffee. While that brewed, I brought out my laptop to the table, booting it up.
I did have to get something ordered and delivered before someone’s birthday.
I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that Oakley was almost eighteen. He looked closer to being fifteen, if that. Lanky and on the shorter side, he wasn’t likely to grow into his age any time soon.
It was making it difficult to keep my distance, especially after last night.
Oakley’s humanity was going to my undoing.
Looking through some websites and sipping my coffee, I was no closer to figuring out what to get the boy for his upcoming birthday. I knew he wouldn’t want anything flashy, but I wanted to spoil him. Shower him with gifts, if he’d let me. But I knew he wouldn’t want much, if anything.
I had an idea, but would he get mixed messages from it?
Not any closer to knowing the right answer, I glanced up at the right time to see none other than Oakley shuffle into the kitchen. The stuffed animal was hanging loosely in one hand, while the other rubbed at his eyes.
He was so darn adorable.
“Morning.” I didn’t tag on any nicknames. I couldn’t tell what mindset he was in, and I didn’t want to push him one way or another.
With most of the people I played with, I knew what mindset they were aiming for, and it was easy to help them get there. At the club, it was where one went to get into a mindset, having a room dedicated to just that.
With Oakley, it was hard to tell where his mind was at.
Heck, I didn’t even know how little he could go if the circumstances were right.
Would he be one of the few who fell into wanting bottles and maybe even diapers once in a while?
Or would he be one that went to that midframe when he couldn’t regulate his emotions and thoughts?
Either way, I would be there for him. Day and night.
Oakley paused, his eyes bounced from me to the chair he’d all but claimed as his own, to anywhere else that wasn’t me.
“Pick wherever you want, sweetheart. I won’t be upset about whatever you decide.”
It took him a few long minutes before he shuffled towards me. With each step, his eyes grew uncertain, as if he doubted himself.
I waited, knowing he needed to start making some choices on his own. I couldn’t be there every second of the day, telling what he could or couldn’t do.
Some things would need to change. New rules needed to be put into place, ones I should have thought about sooner.
Finally, Oakley stood before me, one hand twisting the hem of his shirt, the other twitching with the stuffed animal in its hold.
I scooted my chair back and opened my arms. No words were needed as he crawled into my lap, legs hanging off the side across my own.
He let out a sigh, resting his head against my shoulders as I wrapped my arms around him.
“You can always seek me out for comfort.” I was pretty sure I said that once, but I’d say it many more times if it got through his head.
The boy lacked many things, and being held seemed to be the biggest thing he missed.
“Please don’t….hurt me.” His voice was small, and I almost missed it with how quiet it was. His body trembled as he pressed himself closer.
What the hell kind of torture did Donny do on this boy?
“Never. I promise to never hurt you.” That was something that’d take time to prove to him. “I’ll never lift a hand in anger, I’ll never force myself on you, and I will never, ever, do harm to such a sweet boy like you.”
Oakley sniffed, then took a deep breath like he let go of the entire world.
“No…you…won’t….monsters?”
I pressed a kiss to the top of his head, trying to figure out what he was talking about.
“I won’t send monsters after you.” He nodded quickly, which was enough to answer my confusion about what he was trying to say. “Can you tell me what Donny did? What did he make the monsters do?” I could only assume Donny was the one to start the fear, or at least grow the fear, in the boy.
I didn’t expect an answer, and right when I was about to ask something else, he spoke. His voice was timid, and his entire body shook. All I could do was offer him more comfort, tightening my arms around him.
“Sir…Donny, I mean….he…he’d leave me alone at night. No lights, nothing. He’d…he’d go outside and call for the monsters to come get me. Sometimes, he didn’t have to call them at all.
“They’d scratch at the windows. They’d call my name. ….then they would come to get me and hold me down. They’d touch, and scratch me. And put things in me….and…and….”
I didn’t need any other words to know the sick game Donny played. I pressed my cheek against the top of Oakley's head, shushing him the best I could.
“They can’t get you here. I won’t allow them. Not in the day or the night.”
“They don’t come out in the day,” Oakley spoke the words like I should know that. “Only at night, when I’m…sad.”
“Like last night?” And the other couple of nights he’d woken up in panic.
Oakley nodded, trying to shift closer to me.
“Have you ever seen the monsters?”
“No. But they…can touch me.”
“Do you think, maybe it was Donny that did the touching and hurting, and not the monsters?”
Oakley held his breath, as though he was thinking about that option. It was possible, with some of those pictures that were taken, that Oakley could have easily been drugged out of his mind. There was no way he couldn’t remember some of the things that were attached to him if it were otherwise.
The question was now, would Oakley’s thinking change? Would he learn that the monsters weren’t real, not the ones outside in the dark? Or was that going to be forever a part of him, something he couldn’t overcome?
“I don’t know.” Oakley finally answered. “He…he always said no one would want me since the monsters had me first.”
“I’m sure he told you a lot of things, didn’t he?”
Oakley nodded against me, his hair brushing against my cheek.
I breathed deep, not sure what to say, or how to even go about any of this. Oakley was broken in so many ways, it was a surprise he was even currently in my lap.
“I’ll be sure to tell you a lot of things, too. Like how good you are. Like how happy I am that you trust me enough to be in my lap right now. Like how much I adore you.”
Oakley gave out a half-grown, half-sigh type of sound, trying to burrow deeper into me. I chuckled, picturing his reddened skin at my words.
“Good boys get rewards. Remember?”
“Yeah.” Oakley squeaked the answer out.
“That means, you get good touches, treats, and happy moments like watching something on TV, or maybe even a bath.”
“I like this.” He made no move to leave my lap, which I was more than happy with. “Sir….his treats made me feel funny.”
Wasn’t surprised.
“None of those here. Ever. The only medicine I want you to take is those white pills, to help your anxiety. Like last night, when you needed two pills instead of one.”
“They keep the monsters away.” He pulled back enough to look at me for a single second. “You keep them away.”
“Oh, Oakley, sweet little one,” I sighed. “I want to take away all the monsters from your life. The ones that scare you, the ones that are on your shoulders, the ones that haunt you in your dreams. Any bad thing, I want to take away for you.”
“Please?” He looked at me with hope, fear, and uncertainty swimming in his eyes.