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“You’re awake,” he heard in faint, ringing ears. The voice was soft and happy.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. His head ached. He pressed his fingers to it and winced, even though it felt internal. The slightest touch seemed to hurt.
“What. . . ?” he began to say, his voice croaking. He couldn’t manage to finish the sentence.
“Bruce, do you know where you are?” the voice asked.
Bruce. That sounded right. It sounded recognizable. Like home. Bruce blinked, his gaze coming into focus.
A man sat at his side, staring at him. “How do you feel?”
Bruce couldn’t answer the question. He felt empty and lost. He didn’t know where he was. Or where he had been.
There was nothing sticking to his brain. There was nothing inside of it.
“Bruce, is there anything you can remember?” the man asked gently. “You have to tell me.”
”About what?” Bruce asked, his voice small and rasping. His throat hurt when he spoke. “Who are you?”
”My name is Jeremiah.” He took Bruce’s hand and pressed it against his own cheek. It felt like fire on Bruce’s skin; he was much too cold. “I’m your caregiver and your husband.”
As slow and strange and off-kilter as Bruce’s thoughts were, that still definitely did not seem right. Or at least the combination of words didn’t add up to any kind of sense.
Bruce shut his eyes and shook his head, clenching his teeth. His head was aching, too. “I—I don’t—I don’t know—I don’t know where this is. I don’t understand.”
“You will soon.” Jeremiah lifted his hand and pressed it against Bruce’s forehead, frowning. “You have a fever. That can’t help your delirium. I’ll make you another cold press. You’ll be well in no time.” He got to his feet and brushed his fingers through Bruce’s hair, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. His hand lingered a little too long among Bruce’s curls, eyes big and soft and adoring. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Bruce didn’t quite feel safe and he wasn’t sure why. He drew away, swallowing stale saliva, his mouth hopelessly dry. “. . . thank you. I need—“ He coughed and it threw his body into a shuddering disarray. “—something to drink.”
”Of course. Of course you do. You need water and something to eat that will go down easy and settle your poor stomach.” Jeremiah tsked and shook his head in sympathy, finally lifting his hand from Bruce’s hair. “I’ll get you exactly what you need.”
Bruce didn’t know who he was, where he was, or, least of all, who the strange man serving him tea and kissing him on the cheek was.
Jeremiah—Valeska, that was his last name, Bruce eventually learned—was fairly young, somewhere in his mid-twenties. He spoke with a strange, delicate air and a drawl to his voice. His hair was dyed an unnatural color and he wore a curious amount of makeup, making himself look pale and ghostly, his lips shockingly red by comparison. He was, well, weird. On the surface, at the very least.
”Where am I?” Bruce asked a moment or so after sipping his tea, fingers picking at the toast on his tray.
“You’re in the apartment you’ve lived in for years. Three years, to be exact. We’ve been happily married for two of them,” Jeremiah said, beaming and holding up his hand, the sunlight streaming through the bedroom windows glinting off the ring on his finger.
Bruce looked down and touched the identical one on his own hand in total confusion. “Is—are you sure?” he asked weakly. He wasn’t even sure if he liked men, let alone liked them enough to marry one.
“Absolutely. Your parents refused to offer their blessing, so we eloped. You haven’t spoken to them in months and months. Quite sad, really. Regardless, here we are, happier than we could’ve ever imagined.”
“My parents,” Bruce mumbled. He tried to conjure up mental pictures of them, but nothing came. Vague shapes. The idea of parents. “How old does all this make me?”
”Twenty-two. Only two years younger than me. Can you believe something so insignificant drove such a harsh division between family? Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
Bruce looked at the vanity that stood aside the bed. The mirror showed him an image of a young man, pale and fatigued and sickly, too skinny and lithe to be healthy. A bandage covered half his forehead. His hair stuck to his forehead and his cheeks were pink and soft and had a roundness to them.
He didn’t look twenty-two, but that could’ve been from the illness. Speaking of, actually.
“How did I get like this?” Bruce asked the mirror.
“While we were vacationing a few weeks ago, you had an unfortunate fall and it resulted in your concussion. I believe you might’ve contracted some sort of virus as well. They did mention there could be some memory loss, but I had no idea it would be this intense,” Jeremiah said, biting his lip in concern. “There’s so much you can’t remember about us. About me.”
Bruce shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I wish I knew you, too. Or, well. . . anyone. Anything.” His head throbbed and he set his toast down to press his knuckles against it, squeezing his eyes shut. He heard Jeremiah make a cooing sound of pity and rise from the other end of the bed to cup Bruce’s cheek in his hand, kissing the top of his head.
“I’m going to help you feel better,” he whispered into Bruce’s hair. “I’m going to take such good care of you. I love you, even if you don’t know how much yet.”
Bruce spent the rest of the day feeling lost and babied.
Nothing felt familiar. Nothing seemed to click and refresh any untapped memories. Whenever he tried to remember his parents, he could only think of fuzzy pictures from some kind of party or fancy dress event. Their faces were blank.
”Can I see what my parents look like?” he asked Jeremiah, sitting in clammy pajamas on the living room couch. They lived in a tiny apartment that had been rather desperately spruced up with houseplants and artwork and nice furniture, but the wallpaper still peeled at the corners and the rooms were still claustrophobic.
Jeremiah scowled from the kitchen, not looking up from the cutting board full of vegetables. “Trust me, Bruce, I’d love to show you, but, truthfully, we don’t have any pictures of them.”
”Why not?”
”Because they’ve essentially disowned you,” Jeremiah said shortly, his knife coming down hard against the wood. “No one needs to be reminded of such painful betrayal like that. Please don’t concern yourself with them. They didn’t matter to you before and they shouldn’t matter now.”
"Do I have any other family?" Bruce said, growing increasingly irritated. "Do I have any friends? What about you? Are you close with your parents? Do you have a family?"
Jeremiah slammed the knife against the kitchen counter. Bruce jumped, shocked into silence. "I never knew my father and my mother is dead. My brother is hopefully rotting in prison somewhere. Neither of us have many friends that we see very often because we don't go out much. We keep to ourselves and that's the way it should be." He swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment before picking the knife back up. "Bruce, no one really needs family if they're content to make you miserable. Saying that family comes first is a lie others tell you to try and force you to shoulder their guilt. Seeing them again would only hurt your recovery process rather than aiding it."
"Is this all we do?" Bruce said, his voice hoarse and off-key from its risen tone versus its lack of use, angry and frustrated. "We stay hidden in here when we're not having romantic vacations because we're scared of the outside world? What kind of life is that? This isn't how people live!"
"You're going to upset your stomach, worsen your headache, and aggravate your fever from overreacting like that," Jeremiah said tightly. "You're just getting used to your surroundings. I understand you're confused—"
"I'm not confused," Bruce snapped. "I'm not confused, I'm not so sick I can't cope with any of this, I'm angry that you're apparently controlling enough to keep me trapped here without any friends or family to contact if I wanted to."
"Bruce, you made that decision. That was you. I didn't do any of that. You told me you never wanted to speak to any of them ever again. I happily indulged you because I didn't like seeing you so hurt. You were perfectly fine living the remainder of your life in my arms. You made your choice and that's just the way it is. They don't want to see you any more than I want you to see them. Just leave it alone. We're going to have a nice dinner and we can fall asleep together and you'll recognize it as the perfect life that you just couldn't remember." With far more force than was warranted, Jeremiah cut the top off a carrot, his teeth clenched as the knife hit the board with a thwack.
Dinner was a strange affair. Bruce didn't want to eat much more than broth from the soup because his stomach still clenched unpleasantly and Jeremiah watched him while eating very, very slowly, eyes piercing and rarely blinking.
There was something at the back of Bruce’s mind that he couldn’t exactly put his finger on. Something about Jeremiah offering to take him to dinner. A fragment of a memory without any detail in it.
"How did we meet?" Bruce asked carefully, because he had to know how he could've possibly fallen in love with this bizarre picture of a human being who seemed to be oddly temperamental and possessive. From an objective standpoint, he was attractive, but that seemed to be his only redeeming quality so far. Bruce didn't want to believe he, himself, was so shallow that he'd marry someone for that alone.
"Oh, I love that story!" Jeremiah smiled, laying his spoon down. "It was in a lovely little bookstore a few miles from here. I heard you ask the woman at the front counter for the very same book that I wanted, it was The Perfectionists, a study in the history of engineering, and I was delighted. I asked you if you wouldn't mind if I bought you a coffee and it became a beautiful first date before we'd even realized it. You told me that I have a brilliant mind and I remember how fascinated I was with you and the things you told me. We had conversations that would last for hours after that; we never seemed to run out of things to talk about. We had the same ambitions, the same thoughts, the same feelings—I never believed in soulmates until I met you, Bruce. It was fairly fast, but a few months later, we moved in together and I finally proposed to you after a year of being too afraid to do it sooner. I can't believe you don't remember," he finished in almost a whisper, looking at Bruce with a sort of faraway sadness, vulnerable and raw. "You don't remember how happy you were. Or how happy we were. You don't remember us making love for the first time or staying awake through the night just because we couldn't stop watching each other."
"I'm sorry, Jeremiah." Bruce looked down at his bowl, too uncomfortable to look back up. Try as he might, nothing real and true made itself known. He thought maybe he could remember a dark bedroom and a hand on his neck. Jeremiah's voice in his ear, but no real words. It was blank. ". . . we could fall in love again. If you give me a reason to."
Jeremiah was quiet for a moment, his spoon clinking against the rim of his bowl. It sounded too loud. "We will. I know we will," he said, seemingly to himself.
Bruce was curled up uncomfortably on the couch again, biting the inside of his mouth.
Jeremiah was determinedly too close for comfort.
“I’d planned to take you out somewhere when you first woke up just so we could spend some time together, but you’re still a bit too sick,” Jeremiah murmured, pressing his lips against Bruce’s forehead, his arm around Bruce’s waist. “Maybe we’ll wait a few days. Help you get better first before we get ice cream.”
Bruce gave a tiny nod, not looking away from the TV screen. Some black-and-white film was playing, a murder-mystery, maybe, but he couldn’t follow it. He needed to be invested in it so he wouldn’t have to try and talk to Jeremiah and appease him.
Jeremiah began to kiss a line down Bruce’s face, his fingers softly rubbing Bruce’s hip. His lips lingered on the skin above Bruce’s collar, open and damp, his tongue brushing over Bruce’s neck. Bruce heard him sigh, tiny and gentle, his breath trembling.
Bruce flushed, his shoulders curling in as he covered the burning spot on his neck with his hand, practically feeling it shimmer under his fingers. “No,” he muttered, dipping his head. “I can’t—I won’t do that with you. Not yet. I don’t even know you yet.”
”Oh. Well.” Jeremiah withdrew his arm from around Bruce’s waist, his voice short and clipped. “That’s. . . fine. Perfectly fine.” His lips thinned to a sharp line and he combed his hand through his hair to busy himself.
Bruce didn’t have to, but he almost said sorry. Before he could open his mouth, though, Jeremiah climbed off the couch, leaving Bruce alone with the flickering screen in front of him without a single word.
Bruce hugged his knees to his chest. He felt so horribly alone.
“Here. This should help you fall asleep and stay that way for eight hours,” Jeremiah said, handing him a glass of cloudy water. “We don’t want you waking back up every few minutes from the fever. It’s not good for your immune system.”
Jeremiah had insisted on helping Bruce out of his pajamas so he could shower before bed as if Bruce were completely immobile. He knew Jeremiah was just overly helpful, but it just felt a bit too much like he had ulterior motives, especially given what had happened a few hours ago.
“Are these sleeping pills?” Bruce asked, looking into the glass.
”Yes. You woke up completely delirious a few times before and this seemed to be the only thing that helped. It’s only a few pills. Just enough to keep you asleep through the night.” Jeremiah tapped on the rim of the glass, smiling sweetly. “Drink up.”
Bruce hesitated, watching the particles swirl on the surface of the water. He couldn’t explain why he felt this was a bad idea. That was what his whole day had been comprised of: weird little gut feelings he couldn’t shake. He didn’t understand why he felt so paranoid.
But Jeremiah was impatient and his smile began to falter, his fingers curling in towards his palm, so Bruce tried to shut his mind off and drink the crushed pills. He was being ridiculously paranoid about a man who was just worried and fussy and missing the mind of his former partner.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jeremiah said, his smile softening again as he patted Bruce’s cheek and took the glass from him. “Get into bed. I’ll read to you.”
The last thing Bruce remembered before he fell asleep was a hand stroking his hair and Jeremiah’s voice, blurry and far away, saying, “Then God in all His splendor arose from His throne. ‘Oh, best little blade of grass,’ He said.”
Bruce’s headache wasn’t half as piercing the next morning. His body ached more, though. Whenever he moved, he felt an uncomfortable twinge arch through him.
There was a tray of toast and eggs on the bedside table with a note tucked underneath. He didn't bother with anything besides the slip of paper. Bruce’s finger followed the elegant swoop of the letters: I was called in to pick some things up at work today. I’ll be home by two. Please remember to eat and please don’t leave the apartment because I can’t have you getting lost. There are pills on the kitchen counter that you need to take at twelve. I love you. xx
There was a lipstick mark underneath the ink. Bruce touched it absentmindedly.
At least now he had a chance to figure out what the apartment kept inside it. Just take inventory. Discover what his home life was apparently like, because Jeremiah probably wouldn’t give him a straight answer. Somehow, Bruce felt like he was going to uncover something distasteful. He couldn’t think of what, though. Nothing like, say, a dead body or child pornography, but something wrong or uncanny all the same.
Or at least be aghast at his former self for being so antisocial and reclusive in his everyday life.
Wincing at his body’s protest as he got to his feet, Bruce headed for the closet first.
What struck him as one of the oddest things so far as he pulled a dark sweater he’d picked out over his head was how few pieces of clothing he seemed to own. A few pairs of slacks and no more than three shirts. A single pair of shoes sat on the floor of the closet. Checking in the dresser only yielded a few pairs of socks and underwear.
This bedroom was mostly empty.
A clock hung at a strange angle on one wall and a corkboard with scribbled notes, threaded yarn, and pieces of receipts and lists hung on another. It was nothing Bruce could decipher or make sense of out of context. There was little to no furniture in the room aside from the bed, its side table, the dresser, and the tiny vanity. It had to be some kind of guest room, but Bruce couldn’t think of why he would’ve been put in here instead of a bed he and Jeremiah would’ve shared. He wasn’t dangerously sick.
Every aspect of the apartment became more and more confusing the longer he looked at it.
Another room, presumably his and Jeremiah’s real bedroom, was locked. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was locked. The front door was locked from the outside. And every single window was sealed shut.
None of them would open up. Bruce searched out each window that led out of the apartment, his breath coming fast with sudden, terrified anxiety, and discovered each window had been nailed down all around each frame. Not one of them budged.
Even though he could feel his heart in his throat, Bruce shakily searched the kitchen for anything else that seemed too abnormal. Evidence of something. Anything with a possible explanation. Had he been suicidal before his injury? Was he mentally ill to a detrimental point? Or was Jeremiah just terrifyingly controlling and abusive? He didn’t know what he was supposed to hope for or against.
There were plenty of tools around to kill himself with, though, so Bruce felt that ruled something like that out. There was a small collection of knives with all the other utensils in a drawer. There were screwdrivers and box cutters and other things children weren’t allowed to touch in another drawer. Bleach and other bottled chemicals sat underneath the sink.
It didn’t seem realistic that Jeremiah just wouldn’t care. He clearly cared about something enough to lock up every possible exit to the apartment, though.
Bruce sank to his knees in the middle of the kitchen, hugging himself around the middle. He could feel his hair, a mess of curls he hadn’t brushed out yet, sticking to his sweaty forehead. He trembled from the slick heat and chill of his fever, his breath uneven.
The pain inside him wouldn’t leave. Upon sitting on his legs, he felt the feeling snap through him at the base of his spine.
He covered his mouth when he finally realized what it was from, feeling his stomach heave. He barely made it back on his feet before he retched, his white fingers gripping the countertop as watery sick splattered the kitchen sink.
Bruce couldn’t think of a genuine alternate explanation for why he was in pain whenever he sat down other than the obvious. The windows could’ve been part of something else, just overprotection, maybe. Even if it was frightening, it would still make sense and it could still be fixed through logical discussions.
The idea that his husband drugged him and raped him while he was unconscious couldn’t be fixed. It made the isolation that much more terrifying. What was in the medicine cabinet? What was in Jeremiah’s bedroom? What was in the closet? What? What? What?
Bruce’s elbows rested on the edge of the sink as his fingers clutched at the threads of hair in his hands. His breathing came out like tiny gasps as the pervasive, sour, slimy sweetness coated his throat. He was overcome with anxiety, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
He had to leave. He had to get out somehow. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew he needed to. Maybe he could find help. He could call the police.
What if no one believed him, though? What if there wasn’t enough physical evidence that someone had touched him? There weren’t any witnesses and he could’ve just as easily been lying about it being nonconsensual. What if he was too sick to make it more than a few feet away from the building before he collapsed and Jeremiah just brought him back to this overly-decorated prison cell?
Bruce let out a sob that made his throat hurt even worse after it had been rubbed raw. Sniffling, he looked up at the clock on the oven.
He’d slept in quite late and he only had an hour before Jeremiah was supposed to come home. An hour was long enough to come up with a way out that wouldn’t involve anything too conspicuous. He couldn’t call immediate attention to the fact that he was gone.
Bruce was shaking harder from the fever, nervousness, and lack of food, surrounded by bent nails on the window sill that had been pulled away, the hooked end of the hammer tugging at the inside of the window frame when he heard the jingle of keys outside the apartment door.
His mind suddenly blank with panic, Bruce turned, grasping the hammer for dear life. There wasn’t anywhere to hide in this place that Jeremiah wouldn’t find him.
“. . . perfectly fine, Ecco, just as long as I get them back by Monday,” Bruce heard from the living room as the door creaked open. His stomach plummeted. He forgot about making a quiet escape. He pulled the hammer back and then into the middle of the window, the sound like a screaming explosion in the stillness of the kitchen. The glass shattered and sounded like wind chimes as it fell against the fire escape.
“Bruce?” He heard sudden panic in the voice. “I have to go, sorry—Bruce, where are you?”
Bruce dropped the hammer and scrambled clumsily onto the counter, grabbing the edge of the window frame to pull himself up, unable to get purchase on anything else. The freshly-broken glass dug into his hand, the edge slicing his palm open, and he let out a sharp cry as he yanked it away. The blood flowed thickly to the end of his sweater sleeve. No no no no no no no no no
"What in the hell are you doing?" Bruce heard as he clenched his fingers in towards his weeping palm, his other hand weakly grabbing at the open window. The fabric of his pants slid his leg over the marble and kept his shivering form from pulling himself back up, feeling the glass bite into his other hand as he let out a sob.
Jeremiah grabbed Bruce's wrist in a chokehold, staring at the cut with an expression that Bruce could only think of as hungry before he, Jeremiah, spoke again, his face twisted into something scared and angry. "Bruce, what happened? What's the matter with you? Why did you break my—"
"What did you do to me?" Bruce cried out, his voice cracking. "Why did you trap me in here? Why did you drug me just so you could touch me? I-I thought you weren't supposed to be here, you were supposed to be gone!"
"I left early," Jeremiah snapped, his gloved fingers leaving imprints in Bruce's wrist. "What are you talking about? What do you mean, I drugged you? Have you gone insane? You're agoraphobic, Bruce, I kept this place locked up so you wouldn't leave and having debilitating panic attacks that I couldn't save you from! And you have a fissure that's still healing! Oh my God, I know I shouldn't have left you alone, come here." He grabbed Bruce's arm and pulled him forward, catching his weakened ragdoll of a body.
Bruce wept in his dysfunctional rage, struggling and trying to rip away. He brought his foot down on Jeremiah's and sunk his teeth into Jeremiah's glove, using the flinch to pull himself out of Jeremiah's grip. He could hear his heartbeat where it echoed at the back of his throat as he tried to run; he didn't get more than a few tiles further away before Jeremiah snatched the back of his sweater, choking him and yanking him backwards.
A flashbulb went off behind Bruce's eyes as Jeremiah shoved him into the wall, fingers splayed over Bruce's chest, the impact of his head hitting the surface ringing strong and true with popping lights in his vision. Bruce moaned in pain, fingers fighting against the hand Jeremiah curled around his throat. He felt like channels were rapidly changing inside his mind, unable to collect coherent thought together, the overwhelming fear pulsating through it.
"You're paranoid because you didn't take your medication," Jeremiah hissed, pushing his leg between Bruce's thighs and pinning him to the wallpaper. As vague and blurry as everything felt, Bruce felt another familiar twist of sickness and horror in his insides from what clearly pressed against him from both his and Jeremiah's layers of clothing. Jeremiah's eyes were wide and sparkling, his breathing harsh and rather uneven, his tongue flicking over his lips and teeth. "I can't trust you, can I, Bruce? You need someone to look after your poor, broken little body so you won't be so self-destructive. Look at you, you're bleeding everywhere," he whispered, swallowing hard.
"Who are you?" Bruce gasped out. "I don't know who you are, I can't—I can't trust you either. Who are you? I don't even know who I am, but I can't be yours, I can't be, I don't want to be! Let go of me!"
A sudden sadness overtook Jeremiah's face, his lips red and pouting. "Well." He dropped Bruce to the kitchen floor, letting him fall in a heap. "So much for the cat-and-mouse nonsense," he said with a tight sigh, taking a frying pan from where it hung on the side of a cabinet and swinging it down into the side of Bruce's head.
Bruce woke back up in his bedroom with a headache that felt almost blistering, far worse than the first day he'd regained consciousness. He tried to move, but nothing gave way: cord fastened him to the bed without mercy.
Jeremiah sat at the end of the bed, impassive as he cleaned the sharp end of a switchblade with a handkerchief, singing quietly to himself.
"I had hoped this would last at least a few months later than it did," he spoke up before Bruce could find his own tongue. "I suppose that's all my fault, but I really couldn't have avoided, ah, spring cleaning any longer."
"What—" Bruce managed out, but Jeremiah cut him off immediately.
"I know you have some questions and, now that I've been stupid enough to sabotage myself, you're owed some semblance of an explanation." Jeremiah ran his tongue along the length of the switchblade before continuing to polish it. “No, you know what? It’s definitely your fault, Bruce. We could’ve had a beautiful life together if you hadn’t been so. . . uppity, I’ll say. Nosy. Rude. Cruel. Callous.”
“You locked me in an apartment building after you violated me,” Bruce rasped. He felt so drowsy, so fatigued and nauseous, his limbs filled with lead. Above all, his head was pounding with the fierceness of a judge’s gavel. “How was that my fault?”
”I never violated you,” Jeremiah said harshly, curling his fingers around the handle of his switchblade as he glared at Bruce. “That wasn’t what happened. Not nearly. I made love to you. I may be a bit unstable from time to time, I’ll admit, and my compulsions can get the better of me, but I’m not a rapist.”
”Who are you?” Bruce felt miserable enough that he wished he was unconscious again, but he was terrified of never understanding what position he was in. He couldn't even focus on how repulsed he was by what Jeremiah said. “I can’t be married to you. I can’t be.”
Jeremiah let out a disgusted sigh and threw the handkerchief at him. “Fine. No, you’re not married to me. Not legally. You can’t be married without permission.”
”What are you talking about?” Bruce felt like he was going to be sick again. Really sick.
Jeremiah clicked his tongue, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed somewhat uncomfortable. “Within state laws, you’re not. . . quite technically old enough to choose who you want to marry. Not on your own. You would’ve had to have your parents sign some sort of document for it first, which is, by its own merits, an absurdity, but that’s not the point.”
”How old am I?” Really, really, really sick.
Jeremiah looked back down at his knife, toying with it. “Sixteen,” he finally said. “You turned sixteen two months ago. And you didn’t even invite me to your birthday party. Your parents didn’t want me there, of course, because of the pesky restraining order business, but they’ve never liked me anyway.”
Really, horribly sick. Bruce swallowed and coughed, trying to will the feeling away. “You—what? H-how old are you?”
”Twenty-four. I wasn’t lying about that. I didn’t want to scare you with the sort of age-difference thing.”
”Where am I? Where are my parents?” Bruce could feel tears spilling over his cheeks again and he felt too much like a child, even in his current, most undignified position. “I’m missing, aren’t I? What's wrong with you?"
Jeremiah shook his head before speaking again. "Love is a very difficult thing to live with, Bruce," he said softly, turning the knife over and over in his hand. "It's rather like cancer. It grows like a tumor inside you and it begins to kill you. It eats your bones and turns you into more and more of an empty shell the longer you let it consume you without treatment. You don't understand what it was like to live without you." He bit down on his lip and shook his head again, more firmly, his lip curling and baring his teeth before he smacked the palm against the mattress, getting to his feet.
"I love you. I've always loved you and you never understood because you and your family were so overprotective, so selfish, so snobbish, so judgemental—you broke my heart over and over again!" he snarled at Bruce, whose lip quivered, cold sweat rolling down his back. "We were best friends and you pushed me aside the second you decided real, true emotions were far too much for you to handle!"
"I don't know who you are!" Bruce shouted back at him—or tried to, at least, his voice aching inside his throat. He felt like he was stuck inside a hot car, sweat soaking the back of his sweater and his stomach twisting into knot after knot as the heat swallowed him whole. Why did he feel so unwell? "Jeremiah, I don't know you, I don't know what you're talking about! Let me out of here, please, I'm going to be sick."
"Please, as if you don't know!" Jeremiah said with a high-pitched laugh, sounding as though he was cracking at the seams. "You would act the same way if you remembered everything! You act as though I tore your body apart with my teeth and left you to rot. All I did was kiss you, you know. I never molested you. I never hurt you. But your parents and your butler and your little horrible bitch of a girlfriend and the school board all acted as though I'd tied you down to my desk and fucked you in front of an entire classroom."
Bruce's heart fell to the base of his spine.
He remembered hands around his waist, a voice in his ear, and pressure against his mouth. He remembered fear and confusion warring with an influx of hormones overwhelming him, his fingers twitching, and the nails that had dug into his hips when he tried to step back.
Bruce stared at Jeremiah, dumbstruck and terrified.
"It was after class," Bruce whispered. Even though the memories were vague, he could see them, scribbled in thin, warbled lines at the corners of each shape. "You said we had a connection."
Bruce could feel breath mingling with his. He felt dizzy, his fingers clenching reflectively in Jeremiah's jacket. "I can't," he murmured, his face flushing. "This isn't right."
"What does that matter?" Jeremiah said, shining bright as he shut his eyes, nuzzling his nose against Bruce's. Bruce sniffled and gave a tiny shake of his head, feeling twitchy.
Jeremiah smiled, grim and cold, shutting his eyes. He laughed a little like it hurt him. "Because we do, Bruce. I know that isn't all I said."
Bruce looked down, his breathing fast as things reappeared behind his eyes in technicolor. "You said," he recounted carefully, trying to draw a line to connect every piece that seemed out of place, "you said there was a connection between us, something like that, I don't—you said something else and then you. You kissed me," he said just before his voice died again. His head jolted back up, his expression contorted in anguish. "I trusted you! You were my only friend!"
"I took as much advantage of you as you did of me!" Jeremiah burst out, fisting his hand around his switchblade and jabbing it at Bruce, narrowly missing the tip of his nose. "I was socially numb! I was a sad, pathetic reject who could never find anyone on my level of intelligence and worldview but you, you, Bruce, you and your lovely little mind, your lovely little voice, you told me everything I wanted to hear. You trapped me. You made yourself absolutely impossible to fall for or avoid. Your lovely fucking thoughts and mouth and body and your soul, you were baiting me. I've never had anyone talk to me the way you did."
"Why would it be weird?" Jeremiah laughed, taking Bruce by the hand and twirling him on the spot. Bruce couldn't help but smile back. "It's just coffee. No one's calling it a date."
"This is my fault?" Bruce said through his tremors and clenched teeth. "You stole me away from my home and from my family and you're saying this is my fault?"
"Bruce, you still don't understand." Jeremiah bit down on his tongue, watching Bruce's mouth with the switchblade balanced delicately between his fingers. "I never knew love until I met you. You were perfect. You're perfect for me. Every inch of you, inside and out, was made for me. I was made for you. We fit together like we were meant to be two parts of one whole. You complete me."
"How did I get so lucky?" Jeremiah said with a dreamy sigh, resting his elbow on the table, his chin in his palm. "I feel like you complete me, Bruce."
Bruce laughed and shook his head, turning pink. "I think you finally just found someone who would listen to you talk about nuclear energy for two hours and actually enjoy it."
"No. No, this is wrong, we can't—I can't—we couldn't ever make something like this work, even if you hadn't done this." Bruce averted Jeremiah's gaze and licked his cracked lips, his eyelashes fluttering. "What did you do to me?" he asked, his voice tiny and soft because it didn't hurt his throat as badly. "Why do I feel like this?"
"I. . . tend not to take my medication," Jeremiah said, hesitation in his voice. "I have to make use of it somehow and you were my only vessel. I didn't expect to abuse it so heavily, and I'm sorry. I'm sure you feel very sick and I feel truly, truly sorry about it."
"Did I ever hurt my head? What did you do?" Bruce squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, a helpless whimper behind them. The throbbing at his temples was relentless.
"You'll find that some antimanic drugs have the unfortunate side effect of memory loss and several symptoms of the flu. Delusions. Paranoia. Fatigue. Fever. Nausea. So much more. But that was the only thing I could use to keep you. . ." Jeremiah searched for the end of his sentence. ". . . pliable. Malleable, if you will."
"Malle—" Bruce managed to begin before his body shut him off, retching and spitting up a toxic, empty mouthful of saliva down his front, his stomach too empty to regurgitate something with form.
"I have to go," Bruce said, his voice unsteady as Jeremiah blinked at him, looking miserable and betrayed, fingers curled tightly into his own palms. "I'm sorry. I can't—" He swallowed and shook his head, shoving the classroom door open. His eyes stung and he felt hollow.
"Now, let's not let that happen again, hm?" Jeremiah hummed to punctuate his sentence, tugging the knot around Bruce's wrists tight. Jeremiah kept his body and legs free, but chose to tie Bruce's hands to the head of the bed frame. Bruce had been forced into his pajama shirt again, still shaking and releasing his breaths in tiny gasps, his body feeling too fragile to keep itself pinned together. Hunger clawed at his stomach and his throat stabbed with pain from the nothingness he'd expelled.
"Jeremiah, please, let me go home," Bruce begged, his hair falling in sad, limp threads over his forehead, his mouth tasting like battery acid. "I won't even tell anyone. No one will know. If you loved me, you'd let me leave, please."
Jeremiah took Bruce's chin in his hand, stroking his face tenderly with a gloved thumb. "I do love you, but you're going to stay," Jeremiah said, gentle and even, looking into Bruce's eyes. "You'll stay as long as I need you to. You said we could fall in love with each other again. I'll help you."
And even though Bruce was still sour and unclean, his tongue tasting like sick, Jeremiah kissed him on the lips, soft and sweet.
Jeremiah held his hips, clinging tightly. Bruce felt blank and bemused, dizzy in the head. He didn't know what to think or what to do or what he was even supposed to be doing. At the back of his mind, all he could think of were terrible skits and staged documentaries the school showed in fifth grade about good/bad touches and what you were supposed to do about the adult who made you feel uncomfortable: run and tell a teacher.
Jeremiah's fingers curled around Bruce's side, hot through the damp fabric. His tongue brushed over the slit between Bruce's lips, trying to force through.
Oh, God, Bruce thought, tired and disgusted, turning his head and clenching his teeth together. Jeremiah made an irritated sound under his breath and pushed at his cheek, forcing him to face front.
"Don't be so childish," Jeremiah told him, grabbing a fistful of his hair and kissing him hard.
Bruce made an effort to step away, tell Jeremiah he'd been mistaken or that this just couldn't quite work, but Jeremiah's hands pressed hard into him, fingers splaying over Bruce's lower back and forcing him close. He felt Jeremiah's teeth nip at his bottom lip and he gasped against Jeremiah's mouth, shock freezing him in place. In a moment of what felt almost like terror, he heard Jeremiah's muffled little moan against him and the clear pressure of the erection against his thigh.
Bruce felt like he was drifting in and out of sleep as Jeremiah slid his fingers up Bruce's pajama shirt, the fabric peeling away from the slick skin. Jeremiah was still wearing his ridiculous silk gloves and the sensation felt like downy feathers tickling Bruce's ribs. Jeremiah pressed hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses down the side of Bruce's mouth, the underside of his jaw, the side of his neck to his collar.
"Stop," Bruce whispered, his eyes heavy and struggling to stay open. "Jerem. . . mi. . ." He made a pathetic, vague whining noise when Jeremiah stroked the inside of his hip, licking the sweat off the column of Bruce's throat.
Bruce pulled himself free after he stepped on Jeremiah's foot, stumbling back against the desk, his heart pounding.
Bruce used what little effort was left inside him to try and wrench his wrists free of their constraints, but he wasn't able to move at all without it making him even more exhausted than he already was.
He felt sick.
He felt sick again.
Bruce could feel Jeremiah's fingers working at the fastenings on his pants, the zipper coming down. Bruce couldn't explain why, but it was far more unpleasant to watch Jeremiah slowly pull his gloves off than to see how dark and hungry his eyes were. Not that Bruce could see that well anyway. His eyes were begging to fall shut.
The last thing Bruce remembered before falling asleep again was Jeremiah stroking a finger along his soft cock, giggling and saying, "It's very cute, you know."
Bruce didn't recognize where he was when he woke up again, but he did know the mattress felt softer than before.
It was very difficult to sit up. He heard a soft sound and saw Jeremiah shift next to him when he finally opened his eyes.
”Good evening,” Jeremiah murmured, cupping Bruce’s cheek and kissing his temple. “I decided I might as well move you to my room so you’d be more comfortable. After you, ah. . . fell asleep earlier, I felt a bit worried about your deterioration and I wanted you to be somewhere more like a home.”
“Then take me home,” Bruce said, his voice a coarse whisper. He shut his eyes again because it burned to keep them open. His ears rang and his head throbbed. “Wait, my—my what?”
He felt Jeremiah stroke his hair. It didn’t feel as wet anymore. “Your deterioration. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, you just need to heal, but I was quite concerned for a while that you were dying, especially when I was bathing you. Every time I touched your skin, it seemed to bruise.”
Bruce didn’t want to think about Jeremiah bathing him while he was unconscious. Or what else he’d done. Bruce was so miserable and burnt to the core that he couldn’t even work up the horror and shame the situation begged for. He hesitatingly lifted his hands, no longer restrained, and rubbed his eyes. “What do you want? Do you really. . . you think I’m going to fall in love with you now? After everything you’ve done?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Jeremiah said lightly, rising from his chair and setting the notebook and pen he held in the seat. Bruce watched him cross the room to a vanity. “I made you something to eat. And I want you to eat it slowly. I can’t imagine how empty your stomach must be at this point.”
”I’d love to take you out to dinner sometime,” Jeremiah said, brushing his thumb over the back of Bruce’s palm. The coffee shop bustled around them with all the energy of a usual busy afternoon, but it seemed to slow and fade in pulsating color whenever Jeremiah touched him.
Food was the least appealing thing to him right now and all Bruce could think of was making some kind of escape attempt, trying to find a phone and calling the police, but that would just be a stupid idea by now. He wouldn’t be able to get a few steps from this bed without collapsing. Resigned and hurting from the inside out, Bruce took the tray from the bedside table and eyed the sticky oatmeal and fruit.
Then he eyed the bedroom.
There was another board in here with notes and receipts pinned to it, but with the uncomfortable addition of several photos of Bruce pasted around the threads and slips of paper. Most disturbingly, Bruce noticed a yearbook photo from his freshman year tucked in with everything else.
He didn’t want to think about Jeremiah being attracted to an even younger version of himself, either. The more he looked at it, the worse he felt, so he pulled his gaze away from the corkboard.
There was a dresser with a lock on it near the door and a closet that hadn’t been shut up with multicolored, shining fabrics peeking through the crack, a jacket hanging on the its door. A calendar scribbled over with reminders and circled dates—some covered with hearts in red pen—hung open on the wall.
And so did sketches of Bruce. The wall next to the vanity was nearly papered floor-to-ceiling with graphite, charcoal, and pen drawings of him. They were a very pretty likeness, but he rather felt like dying with them staring him in the face.
“How many drugs did you put in this?” Bruce asked Jeremiah wearily, picking at the oatmeal with a spoon.
“None, for your information. I’m trying to help you by rectifying my mistakes, Bruce.” Jeremiah cleaned the makeup off his face, revealing pale skin that really wasn’t much darker than the white he’d painted on.
Which, well, that brought up a question Bruce had briefly mulled over, but hadn’t gotten around to asking yet because of the myriad of other issues at hand. “When did you decide to start wearing. . . all of that?”
”What, this?” Jeremiah replied, looking at the ruby red lip print on his wet tissue as if he hadn’t noticed he was wearing anything. “I decided that as long as I wasn’t being forced to be professional any longer, I’d try something new. Something to compliment giving in to all my less-than-desirable compulsions,” he said with a fanciful flick of his wrist.
Bruce turned his attention back to the less-than-desirable midnight breakfast. “I would’ve accepted you coming out without you having to go to all this trouble,” he muttered before trying to force down a spoonful of oatmeal.
“Oh, look at what a comedian you’ve become,” Jeremiah said, rolling his eyes at the mirror as he unknotted his tie. “I personally find it unbelievable that you don’t seem to branch out further from your four or five shades of black. Have you ever thought about red? Purple, maybe? Oh, Bruce, once you’re healed, I would love to help you pick out something new to wear.”
”Do you still honestly think this is normal?” Bruce threw his spoon back down against the tray. “Do you think I want to spend any time at all with you after this? After I recover from you destroying my body? We’re not friends anymore, Jeremiah. You ruined that and I can’t forgive you. I can’t forgive any of this.”
“But we can still be friends, Bruce, please, listen to me, it can be just like the way it was before,” Jeremiah begged on the other end of the line as Bruce cut the circulation from his own fingers almost completely off from twisting the cord around and around them. “Just forget about it. Forget about all of it.”
”I can’t,” Bruce whispered, feeling ashamed for the way his eyes stung. “Jeremiah, I can’t just—this was never supposed to happen. It’s better I just try to switch classes. It’s better for you. I don’t want you to. . . long for me.”
“Bruce, there has to be something inside you telling you we’re made for each other,” Jeremiah said, his voice breathier and desperate. Bruce felt his own discomfort and sadness starting to crush then both. “Even if you won’t see it the same way I do, we could still be the best of friends. I love you in every possible way, not just romantically.”
”But I know that’s what you want and I can’t give it to you,” Bruce told him, trying to seem firm. “I know it’s romantic and—and sexual and I can’t give you that. It’s wrong. I can’t be the reason you ruin your life.”
”My life was already in ruins,” Jeremiah said softly. “You’re the only thing that makes it worth living, Bruce. I want you to ruin me. Be my ruin.”
"I think you should calm down and eat your dinner before you get too upset.” Jeremiah stared at the mirror as he undid his waistcoat buttons. “I could very well continue to ruin you and feed you more drugs so you’ll stop being so stubborn you won’t eat, but I feel guilty enough as it is. I’d rather not have you choke on your own spit and die in your sleep, if it’s all the same to you.”
Jeremiah tied Bruce’s hands to the headboard just before he turned the bedside lamp off, kissing each wrist in turn. “It’s just to protect you,” he said.
"Don't touch me in my sleep again," Bruce mumbled, looking up at the vague shadows on the ceiling. "I want you to leave my body alone."
"I will, I promise." Jeremiah stroked Bruce's cheek with the side of his finger. "I know you don't feel as though you can trust me—"
"You're right, I don't." Bruce turned his head to shake Jeremiah off. Jeremiah sighed and settled into bed, draping his arm over Bruce's side. Bruce's lips tightened in a thin line and he shut his eyes, remaining still as stone even when Jeremiah pressed a long, loving kiss to his shoulder.
"Goodnight, darling" was, fortunately, the last thing Jeremiah said that night. Bruce was tired of feeling angry. He was too tired of feeling anything at all.
"Are you serious? Why haven't you told anyone yet? Bruce, he should be in prison."
"Just because he made a mistake it doesn't mean he should suffer for the rest of his life," Bruce said to his fingers twisting together over and over, unable to look back up at Selina. "He never hurt me. And he never tried, either."
"You said he grabbed you and kissed you against your will," Selina snapped, her voice trembling from how angry she was. It made Bruce wince. "He's a teacher! You're a student! Not only is that just—completely disgusting, it's illegal. Sure. Yeah. Fine. Maybe he made a 'mistake', but he could just go ahead and do it again with some other kid! If we don't tell anyone, who's to say he won't go far enough to the point that he actually really hurts someone? We'll be responsible for that. It shouldn't matter how he feels! He already fucked up! It'll be all his fault!"
"You don't know him, Selina! You don't know anything about him or who he is! It was a mistake and that's all it was! He's already suffered the consequences by pushing me away and he doesn't need to hurt any more than he already does!"
Selina shook her head and pushed herself off the concrete step. "He needs to hurt. He needs to hurt a lot. I don't care how much it sucks for him that he made out with a teenager."
"Selina, don't." Bruce's stomach plummeted as he stood and grabbed Selina's arm. "Don't tell anyone else. Please, don't; if anyone should, it should be me."
Selina scowled, searching Bruce's face. ". . . only if you will. Only if you promise me you'll tell anyone who'll be able to deal with him. If you don't, I'll scream it from the goddamn rooftops."
Bruce looked away, his breath escaping him in a trembling exhale. "I will. I swear."
Jeremiah was still asleep when Bruce woke up, when the sky was beginning to turn from deep blue to orange, the birds singing at each other just outside the window.
It gave him time to recount memories. More specifically, memories from around the time he'd been abducted. And he couldn't remember a single thing. He remembered Jeremiah getting fired after Selina had told the principal, going behind his back. He remembered their breakup. He remembered his birthday a few days later and his parents giving him his first car (and, pettily, even among everything else, he really hated Jeremiah for forcing him away from the present he'd hardly gotten to test out yet). He remembered the elation of winter break beginning in full swing.
And then everything was black.
Bruce couldn’t remember when it had happened or how it had happened. Thinking hard enough about it, he conjured up abstract thought and emotion, fear and pain and anxiety, but nothing more. No images. No voices. Just small pieces.
Just thinking made him feel tired again. Bruce had no idea how much he’d slept. He thought it was close to twenty hours in the past few days, but it still didn’t feel long enough.
He dozed off again and woke with Jeremiah’s alarm an hour later.
Jeremiah was gracious enough to let Bruce out of bondage for the day, but he still monitored him as if he were an unstable child television star, scared of every movement Bruce made.
“No, I can’t tell you,” Jeremiah said to his cellphone, fingers tapping in a fixed, steady rhythm as Bruce thumbed through a sketchbook full of Jeremiah’s blueprints. Even though Jeremiah was a frightening, vengeful psychopath, he was still brilliant. And what else was there to do? Jeremiah had shoved another pill down his throat after breakfast.
“Don’t you dare throw this up,” Jeremiah had snapped, his hand fisted in Bruce’s hair. “I can’t have you quit too soon. Your body isn’t used to it.”
And so Bruce was still a bit dizzy, his ears ringing again. Moving at all made him nauseous. He was forced into complacency, curled up on the living room sofa as Jeremiah sat on the other end, talking to who Bruce thought might have been the principal’s secretary. He'd known Ecco and Jeremiah had been friends, but not to the point that she was enabling him to do anything like this. She'd seemed so, well, normal, but so had Jeremiah.
“Because having any sort of connection to my location isn’t exactly going to help my case,” Jeremiah said shortly. “I haven’t—no.” He paused. “It’s. . . nothing with viable evidence, is it? I knew from the start that I’d be a suspect regardless. Leave it to the filthy rich to plaster their personal issues all over national news.”
Bruce thought maybe Jeremiah’s life wouldn’t be so difficult if he hadn’t gone and kidnapped, drugged, and then physically violated a teenager. He turned another page, his throat burning.
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Jeremiah said after a longer silence. “I’ll do whatever I want.”
Bruce shut his eyes and said “ugh” under his breath, gritting his teeth and rubbing his forehead. His ears rang louder and his brain felt like it was shouting inside a concrete box, the walls soaking up the pain and the noise. Jeremiah’s voice faded out a bit.
“. . . not, do you really think I would do something like that? I’m not a murderer, Ecco, I’m not going to kill him. Ever. Shame on you, honestly.” Jeremiah clicked his tongue. “I’ll call you again in a few days from a different phone. Don’t try calling this number again.” He snapped the cellphone shut before throwing it up in the air. The second he did, he grabbed something out of an inside pocket of his jacket.
Jeremiah shot the phone in midair with the little handgun clutched in his glove and it blew apart in pieces, flying every which way, keypad buttons exploding like confetti. Bruce froze to the couch, choking out a wretched sound of horror and shock. If it was hard to hear well before, it was impossible now. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”
Jeremiah giggled furiously. “It was perfect that time! You have to admit that was impressive, just a little! I’ve been practicing,” he added, kissing the gun's muzzle.
“Why were you practicing that in the first place?” Bruce managed, unable to get over the sound of the gunshot, shivering and frightened. “Why do you even have that? Do you always keep that on you?”
”All for protection,” Jeremiah said simply, turning the weapon over in his hand. “I don’t know if you ever knew this, but I’m somewhat paranoid. I like knives because of the intimacy, but not everyone feels the same way I do and not everyone is always looking for a good time. Just gore and violence.”
Bruce stared at him incredulously. "You were never—how did you become like this? I saw every other part of you except for this." He shut his eyes again, his body giving a violent shudder as his surroundings shimmered, his ears shrieking. It was as though he was trying to talk over himself. It was tiring him out again. "You—you said—it was s-something last night about you letting go of professionalism. This is some kind of act, isn't it?"
"Oh, far from it. You know the old saying about business and pleasure? I maintained the two like oil and water." Jeremiah absently pressed his tongue against the muzzle as he rose from the sofa and went to inspect the pieces that had sprinkled in black shards, kicking them together with the toe of his shoe. "I suppose there's always been a more hidden part of myself I never fully accepted until a few months ago."
"I miss you," Bruce whispered, resting his forehead against his knees, Jeremiah's sketchbook pressed between his chest and his thighs. "I miss being your friend."
Jeremiah turned to look back at him, lip pouting and eyebrows furrowed. "Bruce, I believe you fundamentally misunderstand everything I’ve been doing if you don’t think it’s about me trying to befriend you again.”
”No it isn’t.” Bruce felt like he was fading again. “Friends don’t try to take advantage of their friends. They don’t try to hurt them.”
Jeremiah fell silent for a moment, tapping the gun against his palm. When he opened his mouth again, Bruce was underwater, sinking further and further into the black.
”I won’t hurt you,” Jeremiah whispered, holding the cloth soaked in chemicals over Bruce’s mouth, kissing his forehead. Bruce tried desperately to stay awake, struggling as much as he could, but his limbs felt like lead, too heavy to move. He felt cloudy and lightheaded.
Jeremiah pressed his cheek against Bruce's hair, letting out a shaky sigh. “I could never hurt you.”
When Bruce opened his eyes again, he was covered in soap bubbles.
Jeremiah sat behind him, drawing nonsense patterns over his chest with the tip of a finger, humming quietly. All he could feel was Jeremiah’s skin underneath him.
Bruce made an effort to scramble away, but Jeremiah’s fingers clawed and his nails sunk into Bruce’s chest, dragging down, his other hand clenched around Bruce’s arm.
The scratch felt like Jeremiah had pulled his skin off with the motion of it. Bruce let out a pathetic sob as he sank back into Jeremiah, sniffling. Water splashed around him.
Jeremiah stroked his fingers over the red, raised lines on Bruce’s skin. “Please don’t cry,” he murmured, kissing Bruce’s shoulder. “Please, please don't.”
To his credit, Bruce didn’t. He came a bit too close, but he didn’t cry. He hugged himself around the shoulders, feeling small and emasculated. Jeremiah pulled him in closer, Bruce’s back flush against his own chest, and kissed his neck.
“I wish I understood you again,” Bruce said under his breath, making an effort to ignore Jeremiah’s lips on his skin. “I used to be able to look at you and know what you were thinking.”
“Change is difficult to process, I know.” Jeremiah gave him an affectionate nip on the juncture between Bruce’s neck and shoulder and Bruce drew himself in, trying to close the space off as much as he could. “I’m not the man I used to be. I believe something just seemed to, ah. . . unhinge in my mind. I came into myself. All because of you. My love made me crazy,” Jeremiah added with a tiny laugh, the giggle that seemed to be either a nervous tick or a strange habit, his hand pressed into Bruce’s side.
Bruce took in a careful breath and let it out slowly. “Falling in love should make you want to be a better person. Not. . . this.”
”Bruce, I am a better person.” Jeremiah’s hand drifted down, drawing circles over Bruce’s hip. “I wasn't the person I was born to be when you knew me as I was.”
”But I loved you the way you were,” Bruce said, his voice breaking, shutting his eyes. This hurt as badly as his aching head did. “You were my best friend. You were my only friend.”
“If you loved me before—and I know you didn’t, you only loved our relationship, not me—then you should be able to love me now,” Jeremiah said, his voice growing a little too harsh. It made Bruce cringe and curl in tighter around himself.
"What do you mean, I didn't love you? I didn't love you because I didn't just bend over your desk for you that day after class?" Bruce spit out, the vision of the suds and water in front of him without much form, all too pixelated. "That's lust. That isn't even a little like love."
"I only hurt you because I don't have a choice." Jeremiah's nails dug deep into Bruce's skin again, hard enough that Bruce couldn't take it anymore and he whimpered, jerking against Jeremiah. The lower and steadier that Jeremiah's voice got, the more frightening it was. "I don't handle rejection the way most people are told they're meant to, you see. Instead of just accepting what I'm given and stepping away, I try to fight for what I am rightfully deserved."
Tears pricked yet again at Bruce's eyes as Jeremiah refused to relent, fingernails scratching and digging at Bruce's skin. And they kept moving lower and lower. "Okay, fine," Bruce managed, his lip trembling. "I don't care, just stop. Stop."
And he did. Jeremiah pulled his hands away from Bruce and gave him another kiss on the neck. The warm water stung and soothed the nicks at the same time, a kind of pleasant pain.
The position Bruce was in, just on a physical level, felt cathartic and intimate. He could’ve pretended he was with anyone else. He could’ve pretended he was with Selina and that he was safe and at total peace. That his body would be responding positively.
Instead, he could feel half-moon gauges in his skin as it hummed with the fever that wouldn’t leave. His bones ached, dull and lazy like he was experiencing growing pains, but it felt like it drove deeper inside him and was eating at his heart. Every time he moved his head, he felt dizzier.
Bruce had been sick before. One less-fuzzy memory was when he had non-fatal meningitis at age seven and then a flu that lasted for nearly two weeks when he was twelve.
When Jeremiah sang softly against his shoulder, nuzzling the skin with his nose, Bruce hugged himself around the middle and coughed, feeling the sound scrape past his throat as he spat blood into the water.
Bruce made an attempt to free himself, only succeeding in pinking and breaking the skin on his wrists as he bit down on the gag in his mouth. His heart beat at twice its normal rate, feeling a terrified cold sweat running down his back. The gun that pressed against his temple felt like ice.
"I'm going to put something in your mouth and you're going to swallow afterwards," Jeremiah whispered, tapping the capped end of the pill bottle against Bruce's face with his free hand. "If you make a single sound, it'll break my heart, Bruce, but I'll have to put a bullet in your brain."
"Now, don't move," Jeremiah said, his voice rather unsteady even as he tried to maintain a sense of calm, tucking Bruce into bed. "Don't try to aggravate your condition. I'm going to help you get better."
"You need to take me to a hospital," Bruce said thickly, clutching at the bowl on his lap that was meant to catch any other clots of blood that were likely to spew from his mouth. He hadn't been toweled dry very effectively and the comforter and sheets felt damp. "You can't take care of me like this."
"Of course I can, don't be ridiculous. You're safe. You're perfect. You'll be cured in no time."
Every time Bruce took in a breath, it seemed to pull on his chest, like his ribcage was strung together with thread that was strained to a breaking point. He was breaking. Bruce coughed again and he felt like it snapped his spine: he cried out in pain as a sticky clot of red mucus dripped in pieces from his mouth, tears running down his sallow cheeks.
Jeremiah stared at him in dismay. "Your body is just trying to heal itself," he said, swallowing hard as he brushed the back of his palm over Bruce's cheek. "It's expelling waste."
"I'm bleeding," Bruce forced past his shredded throat. "S-somewhere. It's somewhere inside. Jeremiah, please, just let me get some kind of treatment!"
"You're going to be fine," Jeremiah repeated, standing up straight in his silken bathrobe. He was almost paler than the white paint he usually wore. "I'm going to fix you."
"Goodnight, Bruce," Jeremiah told him, smiling sweetly as Bruce's eyes fell shut, rendered too helpless to stay awake. "You'll feel better when you wake up. I'm going to fix you."
Bruce's flashes in and out of consciousness were more rapid now, but at last Jeremiah had left him alone. Bruce could hear his voice, most likely talking on the phone. He left him alone long enough to think.
He was dying and he was going to die soon if he didn't get out of here. He needed to get rid of Jeremiah and escape this veritable hell and, in doing that, he needed to subdue Jeremiah well enough to get himself far enough away from the apartment.
The thought crossed his mind that he'd have to kill him.
It was almost too unspeakable to even consider. Almost. Bruce didn't want to, it was Jeremiah, he wanted him to get the help he very much needed to restore him to the person he used to be, he had friends and family, he had people who would be devastated by his loss—and he was a human person. He could be redeemed. If Bruce hurt him—killed him—Bruce would be taking that life away all for the sake of himself.
But he, Bruce, had friends and family. He had two parents and a butler and a now-ex-girlfriend, but still dear friend, who were probably sick with heartache over him. People had probably been tasked to search for him. People were most likely devoting themselves to seeking him out so he could be brought back home.
And Jeremiah had sexually assaulted him when he'd been drugged out and asleep multiple times.
There wasn't a right way to end this when it had begun so wrongly in the first place.
Bruce would do just enough to help himself and nothing more.
"I'm going to have Ecco come look at you tomorrow," Jeremiah said, sopping up sweat on Bruce's brow with a washcloth. He had been worrying his bottom lip, biting it out of nervousness; it was chapped and cut, an unhealthy red. "She practiced nursing for some time. I'm sure she'll be able to help you."
"I hope so," Bruce said shyly. His entire body burned and his chest was too heavy and he was terrified. "Jeremiah, can you. . ." He sniffled and coughed again, relieved he didn't have to spit anything out of his mouth this time. "Would you kiss me? A-and hold me? Before I fall asleep again? I don't want everything to end like this."
Jeremiah held his breath, blinking wide in wonder. "You—really? Why?"
"I don't have anyone else to live for. Not anything else. Not at this point."
Jeremiah studied him, unreadable for a moment. "Bruce, this could hurt you. It's not as though you're beyond help, not at all, but I don't want to, ah." He giggled, definitely nervous this time. "Injure anything that's already much too fragile."
Bruce tried to take a deep breath, as difficult as it was. "I only want you to touch me," he said quietly, pushing aside the bowl on his lap. "Nothing else. And I want you to touch me with the side of your knife. Something that'll hurt, but not like this." He'd thought of asking for the gun, but he wasn't prepared for that to go too horribly wrong so easily.
Jeremiah made a tiny sound, something brief and needy, gazing at Bruce with dark eyes, pupils dilating. "You're sure? Like this?"
"It's not like you had a problem before," Bruce couldn't help but saying, wanting to laugh out of the anger that spiked through him.
"Your lungs weren't bleeding before, Bruce."
Bruce almost said "I'm sure other parts of me were, though", but he bit his tongue in time. Purposely antagonizing Jeremiah was the exact opposite of what he needed right now. Jeremiah left the bed to tear through a dresser drawer, hasty and fumbling.
"That's very good," Jeremiah said, beaming at Bruce with pride before turning back to the whiteboard. "Very good thinking."
Jeremiah shined the blade of the butterfly knife with the fabric of his bathrobe. His hands shook with overexcitement that had grown at a clip. "This is the nicest one I have," he said, his voice hushed as though he were discussing something holy. "I wanted so badly to show you, but I was saving it for something special. Something like a honeymoon."
Bruce felt warm and pleased and embarrassed all at once, looking back down at his notes, his cheeks growing hot and pink as Jeremiah said, "I hope you all make an effort to listen to Bruce whenever he talks, because he can teach this class better than I can."
And what a honeymoon it was, Bruce thought, making an extreme effort to prepare himself for what was going to happen. His head still spun, his body still cried for relief from consciousness, his chest clenched, but he didn't have a choice anymore. Jeremiah kissed him soundly, licking the blood off Bruce's teeth. The pressure of his body was too much for Bruce's frame to take and it felt like he was buried under concrete.
"Critical thinking, everyone. It's a lost art."
His muscles straining, Bruce reached out and touched Jeremiah's arm, thin fingers tracing down to his wrist, to the loose grip Jeremiah had on the handle of the knife.
"He's very clever. A problem-solver, if you will."
Jeremiah licked the corner of Bruce's mouth, letting out a small moan from the taste that lingered, the hand not wrapped within Bruce's busy outlining the lines and sharp angles created from a body so skinny it was little more than shadow. Bruce's heart and head and blood pounded as he felt the cold knife underneath his fingertips.
Jeremiah cleared his throat and uncapped his marker once more, dropping both the cap and the marker from fumbling. A few titters from somewhere in the classroom were heard. As usual, Jeremiah ignored them. "Now, I want somebody to give me a definition for simple harmonic motion in your own words."
Bruce slid his fingers around the handle of the knife, pushing past Jeremiah and pulling it away from him. Even as his body screamed at him to stop, to just rest, to go back to sleep, he sank the blade into Jeremiah's chest, involuntarily crying in pain so intense he saw bright red. He didn't even hear the sound Jeremiah made and he could barely feel the fingers clawing at his own arm and hand.
"Right. Simple harmonic motion with equal displacement. Back and forth in a balance. It's essentially a push and a pull between two extreme points."
He did it again. Bruce felt like his own skin was pulling itself apart with audible tears, his chest heaving as he moved. He gagged as he penetrated Jeremiah's neck, clotted blood sliding down his own chin. This wasn't right. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He wasn't able to maintain control, his body reacting in panic.
"One cannot exist without the other. If something does not align with simple harmonic motion, it either doesn't exist or it will cease to exist entirely."
Jeremiah's body writhed as Bruce released his grip on the knife, gagging harder. Eyes widening and welling with tears that wouldn't cry this time, Bruce grabbed at his throat, seeing Jeremiah's mouth move and expression twist in betrayal and sad, sad anger through a kaleidoscope vision.
"Once anything pulls the delicacy of nature out of balance,
Bruce couldn't make any noise. His body heaved, fingers digging into his neck. The wedding band that he’d forgotten about, shining and singing, pressed into him. The pain throughout his body all seemed to be concentrated on the inside of his throat now, searing and white-hot. His brain flickered like a broken television, black to white to black to white to black to color to black.
everything comes to an end."
It came as a blessing when he began to black out again. Blood fell in threads and thick drops from his gaping mouth, soaking into Jeremiah's robe, ruining it further. Jeremiah's body twitched underneath him.
Jeremiah laughed, sounding as awkward as he always did, fiddling with his glasses. "Not to be so grim. It's just a reminder that everything ends. That's a blessing, though, not a curse. Nothing should live forever. Imagine how miserable we'd all be."
Bruce collapsed into Jeremiah's fresh, new corpse, his glassed eyes rolled back.
There was nothing sticking to his brain. There was nothing inside of it.
"I don't know where I'd be if I'd never met you," Jeremiah said, his face mimicking how bright the October sun was.
Bruce grinned at him. "I know I wouldn't always be so late to class."
"What could be more important in the first ten minutes of homeroom than spending quality time with your professor?" Jeremiah squeezed Bruce's hand. "If I don't have my excuse to buy overpriced coffee every weekday morning, I'll be far worse off, Bruce. You don't want that to happen to me, do you? You haven't seen my darker, decaffeinated side yet."
Bruce snickered. "I'll have to look out for it after I get suspended for nearly skipping class every day."
"I'm a lot scarier than you could ever imagine. I'm warning you." Jeremiah seemed to have gotten closer to Bruce at some point. Their arms brushed together every time they each took a step. "I may not look it, but I'm capable of very dangerous things."
"I'll believe that when I see it," Bruce said, brushing his thumb over the side of Jeremiah's hand. "You'll have to show me what it is, though. I trust you too much."
Jeremiah was silent for a moment. "I know you do," he finally said, sounding sad in a way Bruce was unable to place.