Nikolaus
I don’t know who put those words in his mouth first, whether it was some parent with more cruelty than patience, some lover too stupid to understand the gift of being allowed near him, or simply the slow, grinding brutality of illness and loneliness and poverty wearing grooves into his mind until he learned to mistake survival for ugliness.
It doesn’t matter. Because whoever taught him to look at himself like this is not here now.
I am.
“No,” I say.
Charlie flinches as if I have raised my voice, though I have not. If anything, I speak too softly, the word almost swallowed by the steam curling between us.
He sniffles, refusing to look at me. “You don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You are,” he whispers, miserable and certain. “People always do that. They say nice things because they feel bad, but I know what I look like.”
I release one of his wrists, and his hand immediately flies back toward his stomach, trying to shield himself again, but I catch his chin between my fingers before he can fold completely inward.
His wet lashes flutter, his mouth trembles, and for one suspended second, he looks so young that something inside me goes still.
“You know what you have been told,” I correct him. “That is not the same thing.”
His face crumples again, but this time he does not cry harder. If anything, the words seem to confuse him too much for that. His eyes dart over mine, searching for mockery, for disgust, for whatever familiar cruelty he expects to find.
He finds none.
I stroke my thumb along the damp curve of his cheek.
“You are not gross,” I say. “You are not ugly. You are not disgusting. You are tired, and frightened, and very poorly cared for.”
His lip wobbles.
“And that,” I add, gentler, “is being corrected.”
A sound escapes him, small and broken enough that it nearly ruins my patience. He looks away, shoulders hunched, one hand still pressed over his middle as if he can hold himself together by force.
“I want to go home,” he whispers again, but there is less fight in it now. More grief.
There are answers I could give. True ones.
Cruel ones. I could tell him that he has no home worth returning to, no safety waiting there, no one who will notice quickly enough to matter.
I could tell him that whatever life he had before tonight is already ending, that the boy he was when he walked into that club alone no longer exists in any meaningful way.
Instead, I slide my hand from his chin to the back of his neck.
“I know,” I say.
The admission seems to break something in him. He squeezes his eyes shut, and a fresh line of tears spills down his cheeks. I’ll need to make sure he gets something to drink before bed. With how much he’s been crying, he has to be dehydrated.
“I know you do,” I continue. “But right now, you are going to get warm. You are going to let me wash your hair. And you’re going to sleep somewhere nice. Then tomorrow, you’ll take whatever medication Constantine brings from your apartment, and enjoy a ride on a private jet.”
His brows draw together in confusion. “I—Wait. My… my apartment?”
“Yes.”
His eyes open, alarm cutting through the haze. “What do you mean? What are you doing to my apartment?”
“Getting your medicine,” I say calmly. “And anything else you might need.”
“No.” Panic snaps through him, bright and sudden. “No, don’t—don’t go in there. You can’t go in there.”
Interesting.
“Why not?”
His throat works. For a moment, I think he will refuse to answer on principle, but Charlie does not appear to have much principle left when frightened. He has instincts instead, and shame, and exhaustion.
“It’s messy,” he says finally, so quiet I almost miss it. “It’s disgusting.”
That word again.
I dislike it more every time he uses it.
“Then it will be cleaned.”
“No,” he says, faster, shaking his head. “No, please, I don’t want anyone seeing it. I don’t want—” His breathing turns shallow again, climbing too quickly. “Please don’t let people go through my stuff.”
I study him.
The trembling has returned, but this is not the same terror as before. This isn’t fear of me exactly, though that remains, but fear of being known too thoroughly. Fear of the evidence of his life being held up to the light.
“You have medication there, don’t you?”
“Yes, but…”
“No buts. I will not take you across the country without it.”
The sentence lands between us like a glass dropped on marble.
Charlie stares at me. His face changes by degrees, confusion folding into dawning comprehension, then into disbelief, then into something so stricken and silent that my fingers tighten before I can stop them.
“A-across the country…?” he breathes.
“Yes. I live in New York.”
“No,” he repeats, louder this time, and the word breaks halfway through. “No, I’m not. You can’t—I have rent. I have work. I have—” He stops abruptly, as if even he cannot make the list sound convincing.
A club he visits alone.
An apartment he is ashamed of.
A body he treats like an enemy.
A life held together by overdue notices and borrowed comfort.
I say none of this aloud, but I’m sure he’s thinking the same.
Charlie tries to step back, forgetting the tub is behind him. His heel knocks against the porcelain, and he jolts, arms flailing for balance.
I catch him immediately.
The movement puts him against me, his hands landing on my chest, his breath hot and panicked against my throat. For a moment, he goes rigid. Then, very slowly, his fingers curl into my shirt.
Not holding me.
Not yet.
But holding on.
“Be careful, baby,” I murmur, settling one arm around his back. “Don’t want you getting hurt.”
He should shove me away.
He should scream, perhaps. Bite, curse, or fight.
Rather, he stands there trembling, his forehead nearly touching my sternum, and whispers, “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
The ache in his voice is genuine enough to quiet even my more selfish impulses.
I lower my mouth to his hair, not quite kissing him. Just breathing him in through the veil of steam. He smells faintly sweet.
“You don’t have to understand it all tonight,” I tell him. “Tonight, you only have to let me take care of you.”
“Why are you doing this?”
I cup his cheek. “Because you need someone.”
His expression twists. “I didn’t ask for you.”
“No,” I say. “You didn’t.” I turn him to face the tub. His resistance is mostly gone now, drained out of him by fear and confusion and the brutal effort of remaining awake. When I help him step over the side, he clutches my forearm so tightly his nails bite through the sleeve of my shirt.
The first touch of water makes him gasp.
“Too hot?” I ask.
He shakes his head quickly, then seems to remember he doesn’t want to cooperate with me and stops.
It’s cute.
“It’s okay,” he mutters.
“Good boy.”
The words slip out naturally in an approving rumble.
Charlie freezes, and his eyes dart up to mine, huge and glossy, and for one brief, illuminating second, the terror parts around something else.
Want, perhaps, or maybe recognition. The wounded, starved little part of him peeking out from behind the adult mask and going still at the sound of a language it understands too well.
Then shame slams down over it.
He looks away so fast it must hurt his neck. “Don’t say that.”
I smile at the way the tips of his ears have gone pink, but say nothing, and continue lowering him into the tub, keeping a supportive hand under his elbow until the water closes around him.
The gold shimmer of bath oil spreads across the surface in delicate ribbons.
Steam dampens his hair at the temples, loosening those tired strands until they cling to his cheeks.
He sits upright and stiff, knees drawn toward his chest, arms folded defensively around himself beneath the water.
I roll up my sleeves, and his gaze snaps to the movement.
“I can do it,” he says instantly.
“I know.”
The answer throws him off. “Then let me.”
“No.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “Why do you keep saying no?”
“Because I can.”
His responding laugh breaks into a sob.
I pick up one of the hotel’s cloths, soak it in the warm water, and wring it out until it stops dripping. When I bring it toward his shoulder, he flinches, but not as badly this time.
“Look at me,” I say.
He does not.
“Charlie.”
His eyes drag up reluctantly.
“You are going to sit still and breathe. If the water gets too hot or too cold, you will tell me. If you feel faint, sick, dizzy, or strange in any way, you will tell me immediately. Do you understand?”
His mouth parts, and there it is again, that flicker of bewilderment at being given instructions to let someone else shoulder his weight.
“Do you understand?” I repeat.
He swallows. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
The question is deliberate.
His face flushes. Anger twitches at the corner of his mouth, fragile and exhausted, but there. “I’m not calling you that,” he mutters.
I smile. Not because he refuses, but because he knows exactly what I am asking for. “Not tonight, then.”
His eyes narrow, suspicious of the concession, but as I drag the washcloth gently over his forearm, his face loses that expression quickly.
Such a small thing, washing someone. Almost mundane. Water, cloth, skin. An act repeated a thousand ways across a thousand ordinary lives. Parents with children. Lovers after long days. Nurses with the ill and elderly.
For Charlie, it may as well be a battlefield.
Every pass of the cloth seems to pull some different reaction from him.
A flinch when I lift his wrist. A shallow inhale when I sweep over the inside of his elbow.
A stiffening when I guide his arm aside to reach his ribs, though I keep my touch brisk and practical, careful not to linger where fear has already settled.
He watches me the entire time as if waiting for the moment my gentleness turns to something terrible.
When I reach for the shampoo, he blinks. “What are you doing?”
“Your hair.”
“No.” His hand shoots up, clutching at the damp strands near his neck. “No, don’t. It tangles. It’ll hurt.”
“Then I will be careful.”