Chapter 22 #3
Shame descended as a sheet of ice, coating him from the inside out. It was immediately followed by a sharper, more primitive fear; the urge to flee, to escape the evidence of his own shocking, desperate depravity.
He had… against a wall... he had…
He tried to move. To push away from the warmth, the solidity that now felt like a cage of his own making. A tiny, aborted jerk of his shoulders.
The hand in his hair tightened.
“Don’t.”
The word was low. Quiet. It was the same tone that had once told him to kneel in this very room.
Samuel froze, caught between two equally powerful instincts.
One shrieked at him to run, to hide, to scrub the memory from his skin and his soul.
The other, older, deeper, and terrifyingly compelling, screamed that he needed to obey.
That safety, impossibly, lay in stillness.
In submission to the voice that had just commanded it.
The hand in his hair shifted its grip, fingers tightening near the crown. Samuel’s head was guided back, turned to the side until he was no longer hidden in the sanctuary of Gael’s neck.
He was face to face with him.
Gael’s expression was calm. The raw, feral hunger from the kitchen was gone, wiped clean. His face was a mask of stillness, his eyes dark pools. They pinned Samuel in place more effectively than any physical restraint.
“Remember what we talked about,” Gael said, his voice even, measured. “In and out. Slowly. In and out.”
Samuel blinked, his mind a slurry of horror and confusion. Talked about? They’d talked about his pathetic life, his emptiness… The words made no sense.
He stared, stupid and lost.
Gael held his gaze, unwavering. He didn’t repeat himself. He didn’t explain. He simply waited, his thumb beginning a slow, rhythmic stroke against Samuel’s scalp, a metronome in the silence.
And then, like a key sliding into a rusty lock, it clicked. In and out.
A shaky, stuttering breath hitched in Samuel’s chest. He pulled it in, a ragged, shallow thing. He let it out in a trembling rush.
“Again,” Gael murmured, his eyes never leaving Samuel’s.
He did. In. The air felt thin, useless. Out. It shuddered from his lips.
“Slower.”
In. Deeper this time, filling the cold, hollow places. Out. Longer, steadier.
Again. And again. And again.
Gael didn’t look away. He didn’t release him.
The world narrowed to the dark eyes holding his, to the slow, deliberate expansion and contraction of his own lungs.
The icy claws of shame loosened their grip.
The frantic, vibrating energy that demanded flight began to dissipate, leaching away with each exhalation.
The shaking in his limbs subsided, replaced by a deep, bone-melting exhaustion and a strange, fragile clarity.
Eventually, the panic was gone. In its place was a hollowed-out calm, and the acute, burning awareness of the man sitting so close to him.
“Good boy.”
The words were soft. They landed in the center of Samuel’s chest and bloomed there, a warm, radiant glow that spread through his veins, chasing away the last remnants of the cold.
A fierce blush heated his cheeks. It felt like absolution.
It felt like a reward he didn’t deserve but craved with his entire being.
“I am sorry,” he muttered, the words barely audible, spoken into the scant space between them.
Gael’s head tilted slightly. The stark planes of his face softened, just a fraction. A faint, almost imperceptible easing around his eyes and mouth. Samuel liked it. He liked it more than he could process.
“Don’t be,” Gael said, his voice still low, but gentler now. “It’s alright.”
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. But in the firm certainty of that tone, Samuel almost believed it could.
The moment held, suspended. Then Gael’s expression shifted again, the softness receding. “Now, you will go into the bathroom, clean yourself up, and then you will come to the kitchen and eat breakfast.” His voice had regained its sharper edge. “Understood?”
Samuel nodded. “Yes… Yes, Sir.”
Gael held his gaze for a moment longer, as if ensuring the understanding had truly taken root. The hand in Samuel’s hair relaxed its hold, the fingers trailing through the strands in a final, gentle caress against the back of his head before withdrawing completely. Then he stood up.
He looked down at Samuel, who still sat curled on the sofa, feeling both shattered and newly assembled. “Don’t take too long,” Gael said, turning toward the kitchen. “You don’t want your food to get cold.”
And then he was gone, leaving Samuel alone in the living room.
Samuel sat perfectly still. He waited. He braced himself for the panic to come surging back now that the source of his calm had left the room. He waited for the shame to descend again in full, crushing force.
It didn’t come.
The quiet held. The warmth in his chest, ignited by those two words, remained, a small, steady flame.
He took one last, big, deliberate breath. In. And out.
Then, on legs that were still unsteady, he pushed himself up from the sofa and walked toward the bathroom.