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It was what he drank, he thought. The water had something inside that made his eyes useless. His other senses were overworked without his sight, but there was nothing in this barren room to entertain them regardless.
He couldn’t say how many times he’d already explored the dimensions of this closet-sized cell. Ran his fingers along the seams of the corners a hundred times, slid his palms across the smooth walls a thousand times more. Now, his hands occupied themselves with the threads of his thin, simple clothes. Threads unravelled themselves bit by bit under his fingertips, disappearing into the void beyond his reach. He hated how he had turned into this idle, fidgeting creature, waiting in the darkness for something to happen.
His meals were sparse and seemed to have no set intervals for him to map out a schedule. It was humiliating to eat in endless night, blindly trusting and simply putting whatever that had been placed in the bowl into his mouth. Maybe because of that, he felt that the food itself was tasteless, barely identifiable. Chewing and swallowing things he couldn’t taste made him question whether it was actually there. But… he wanted to have a chance at escaping, so he ate to keep up his strength.
The rare instances when the door to his cage opened were so unexpected each time that he had given up on trying to prepare for it long ago. It was impossible to keep track of how long he’d been here already. He tried to avoid thinking about it.
There was so little to do in this room that most of the time, Blade could almost convince himself that it wasn’t real, and if he reached out there would be nothing to touch. His hand would fall through, molecules of the wall dispersing between his fingers, and the rest of the world would flutter away, leaving him to hang in limbo for eternity.
Those were the times when he lashed out, afraid of an insubstantial world like that, and he ignored the bruises and cuts he would accumulate as he kicked and hit the walls in futility. He knew he couldn’t destroy this cell. He just wanted to feel something so he would know he still existed.
There was little that he did that could influence the outside, but sometimes after such outbursts and a certain period of time had passed and Blade laid on the textureless ground heaving out his panic… the door would crack open… and hands that were not his would reach in and pull him out.
Blade held unending resentment for whoever it was, for keeping him like this, blind, terminally bored, slowly turning into something he could barely recognize. But the temptation of change was irresistible. Out here, he could experience things that were vastly different from the hard, smoothed walls of his cage.
Cushioned fabric, muffled vibrations of appliances in the adjacent room, the wood grain of a table pressed against his fingertips. A breeze rattling the window. Water running through the piping within the walls. Even the air felt different, his lungs expanding and decompressing more easily as though there was too little oxygen in the cramped confines where he lived for interminable hours.
There was one thing Blade could not bear about being outside, and it was the feeling of open space around him. Perhaps he had grown pitifully accustomed to being surrounded by walls, but this vast emptiness made him jittery. Unmapped dimensions, unseen limits. His useless eyes made him feel as though he could become unmoored at any second, so he couldn’t help but cling to whatever he could reach.
And here––the cottony clothes of the one who always held him, soft against Blade’s chafed skin. The finely-made fabric, creasing inside his clenched fists. He was sure that the stranger was a man, having been held in strong, sturdy arms, and leant against a lean chest countless times. Broad shoulders, long hair with the quality of spider silk which sometimes brushed against Blade’s face. Even the voice register his understimulated ears picked up, though heard only through soft, steady breaths, seemed to sound deep and distinctly masculine.
The stranger never spoke out loud, but touched Blade like they knew everything about him, handling his body with a familiarity Blade couldn’t endure. When he struggled against it, the stranger easily pushed him down and subdued him. Like every instance before, his wrists were brought together and cuffed to something above his head, and Blade could only turn his face into the cushion he was laid against, filled with embarrassment that he’d become so powerless.
It must be something about the water, he thought repetitively. His keeper must have put something inside to make him this weak, dizzy after that pathetic amount of exertion. He refused to acknowledge the possibility that he had already spent a long time in that little cell, wasting away as his muscles atrophied.
Blade’s bruised legs were then draped over the stranger’s lap so they could be attended to, cool salve smeared over the fresh bruises, nicks and blisters patched up with an adoring care that Blade loathed. His hands were given the same treatment, and Blade wanted to rip all the bandages off again, snarling at this gentle attention he was being given.
Sometimes if he resisted lashing out long enough, he would be fed a proper meal—overwhelming vibrant flavours bursting across his tongue like fireworks as he grudgingly accepted each bite. His brain, starved for any change of routine, made him unable to resist the whims of this stranger. Even if it overloaded his senses, as his mouth burned from too much flavour and his skin felt like it was rubbing against the grit of sandpaper, Blade would take almost anything over returning to that empty room where nothing happened.
He was never hit, starved, or otherwise physically abused. Whether Blade yelled, cursed, or broke the things around him, he was never retaliated upon. If Blade spilled his food, he was given a bath, warm water and pleasant-smelling soaps rubbed into his skin. If he managed to land a strike on his captor in a fit of blind rage, he was captured in a soft blanket, securely embraced until his own violent outburst eventually wore him out.
Blade was never forced to do anything he didn’t want to do; if anything, he suspected the one who kept him would be happy to do everything for him. The stranger seemed only interested in loving him, which was an unfathomable concept that stretched Blade’s ability to endure.
When it became intolerable and Blade inevitably reached his limits on playing at placidity, he rebelled, and his belligerent behaviour was rewarded with his return to the empty room.
In the past, Blade tried to fight this, too. He had learned since then, however gradually, that no matter how much he struggled, he would be stuffed back into the little closet in the end. It was better to accept it and let the stranger place him back, like a toy unwanted for the time being. He was sick of being knocked out and waking up to airless silence, eyes opening to an endless void, wavering walls of the cell pressing down on him like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.
Sometimes, he imagined that it was all a dream. The boredom. The darkness. The stranger who cared for him against his wishes. None of them were real.
Other times, he wondered whether he was waking up or falling asleep. Whether he opened his eyes or closed them, there was no difference. It was too hard to distinguish between dreams and reality, even when his dull nails pinched and pinched his skin until it tore.
With the outside world available for comparison, the little room somehow became worse every time he got locked back inside. Blade doesn’t understand why when rationally, he knew that nothing about it changed. That was its core foundation, after all––that the room remained perpetually the same and so it drove him insane.
There was nothing logical about his anxiety, however, and he found himself growing suspicious of invisible things he couldn’t feel.
Maybe it was getting smaller? Perhaps there was less oxygen? Had this smooth bump in the crease always been here? Was he really alone in this cell?
But… who was that breathing in the corner?
His thoughts whirled and whirled around questions that grew more absurd the longer he sat in silence, waiting for the time he would be let out. At some point he was able to arrive at the conclusion that his brain was so bored, so understimulated, that it had begun to make up things to excite itself.
But awareness didn’t stop the hallucinations. He couldn’t control it. That was the most frustrating part.
When his keeper came to fetch him from the room, it was a relief to escape the shadow-spun daydreams of his degrading sanity. He felt pathetic for feeling so relieved, though, and it made him irritated and uncooperative. The leather cuffs squeezing at his wrists again were disgustingly familiar and almost even comforting.
When the time eventually came to put him away, Blade found himself unwilling to part ways. “No,” he snarled, and struggled not to focus on how his voice had become so soft-sounding, thin and raspy from disuse. “I don’t want to go back there.”
He fought against the hands that came to grab him, securing more restraints around his limbs. He kicked and punched and attempted to bite, teeth clicking at open air, reduced to struggling like a desperate animal filled with dread at the sight of the chopping block.
“No! No, goddamn you!” His shouting became wordless noises and spat-out half-formed expletives. Strands of his own hair fell into his mouth as Blade writhed in his binds, pressed down against the floorboards by a heavy body.
His head was wrenched up by his tangled hair, neck craning backwards against the strain. He smelled the pungent chemicals before the damp cloth was smothered against his face. His senses, so underutilised nowadays, were easily overwhelmed and Blade felt his eyes roll up before the world fell away to nothingness yet again.
The next time he stirred back into consciousness, he knew instinctively that he was back inside the room. He didn’t even need to open his eyes. It was useless to do so anyway.
The restraints were gone. His hair and clothes were tidy once more. The darkness remained, eternal.
Blade slammed himself violently against the door. It didn’t even rattle, sealed so tight that he was sometimes shocked he hadn’t suffocated already.
“Let me out! Fuck! Let me out, bastard!” He rammed his shoulder into the unmoving door and bashed it with his fists.
He tore at his hair, raked his nails across his own skin. Blade threw himself madly against the walls of his cell, again and again. If he just kept at it long enough, maybe he could crack his own skull open. Maybe his insides would splinter into pulp. He could reduce himself to a pile of dislocated joints and viscera this way. He didn’t want to live like this forever, sitting in the dark by himself.
His body protested against the abuse he was heaping on it, but he would rather take physical agony over the misery of loneliness. Blade was barely thinking, every thread of thought obliterated by all the rage and frustration that had been building up inside of him.
“I hate you! I’ll kill you! I swear I’ll fucking destroy you!” To his horror, a sob escaped from his throat, wet and shuddering and pitiful.
His head spun, made more disorienting without his sight. Warm blood trickled down his wrists, drying stickily between his torn fingers. He was so tired.
Drained by his tantrum, Blade’s voice turned quieter, weaker. He fell to his knees and pressed his head against the door’s unyielding surface, just as smooth and blank as the rest of his cage. His body ached from his own battering. His breath shivered in his throat. He was so tired of not feeling in control of himself.
The next thing that came from his mouth was nothing more than a broken whisper. “D-don’t—“
Blade squeezed his eyes shut, drawing his legs to his chest and curling an arm over his head. “Don’t leave me in here,” he mumbled, muffling his gross, pathetic pleading into the crook of his elbow. He hated this. He hated himself. “You can’t… you can’t leave me alone.”
That was the worst part of it all. That despite how he refused to admit it, in reality Blade had already given up on ever leaving this place. He could hardly remember what his life was like before this darkness, this small room. There were no connections or names, no faces left to recall. Everything had faded away, worn smooth by the days he spent in all-consuming silence.
Now his worries circulated around whether his keeper would decide to leave him alone forever. If Blade had finally rebelled enough to make himself tiresome, and the stranger decided that it would be better to abandon him than continue dealing with such a troublesome thing.
“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t help his disobedience. It was all he had left. Blade sucked in a desperate breath, but it failed to grant him any relief. The sound of his own breathing echoed around him, unbearably loud.
“I’m scared…”
His next rise to awareness saw him back in the bathtub, the trickle of water ringing in his ears.
Warm water lapped at his bare body. The scratches on his skin stung in the soap suds. The air felt humid and thick in his nose, smelling of flowers and mild tea scents. Blade sighed, blinking into the darkness that was now his daily curse, and turned his head to press his cheek against the tub’s glossy ledge.
The stranger washed his body with steady, patient movements. There was no haste, every hurt and part of Blade was seen to attentively. It was that unending care again, the one that made Blade want to automatically reject it.
Long fingers stroked over his stomach, up his chest. They smoothed over the contours of his throat, then carded silkily through his hair. Blade couldn’t bring himself to respond to the intrusive touches. He would have fought them before. But now he was too exhausted to even contemplate it.
Before the water in the tub could cool to an uncomfortable degree, Blade was pulled out and dried off. He sat on a ledge somewhere inside the bathroom, leaning against a wall with a towel protecting his naked skin from the cold tile surface. The stranger always thought of everything, protecting Blade from even the slightest of discomforts whenever Blade was granted the mercy of their attention outside of his cage.
Soothing balm was rubbed into his skin and his cuts were bandaged. Blade didn’t need to lift a single finger. All he had to do was sit there in a sullen slouch and everything was done for him. He was dressed in a similar fashion, the usual simple, soft clothes he had never once seen but could still recognize that they were fine quality and tailored for comfort.
The kitchen was next, it seemed, as the stranger led him to sit in a chair in front of a table where delicious smells wafted around him. Food was lifted to his face, savory juices smearing over his bottom lip. It was a routine reflex to scowl and lean away, still embarrassed after all this time to be fed like a child.
But the little parcel of food followed his movements doggedly and after an additional moment of token protest, Blade opened his mouth to receive it. His brain was too worn out to guess at what he was chewing, so he simply chewed, swallowed robotically, and opened his mouth to accept the next bite.
When his stomach grew full, Blade lowered his chin, turning his face against any more. There was a delicate clink of porcelain as the stranger set down their utensil, then warm hands were coming around his shoulders to draw him into a gentle embrace.
His damp hair was tucked tenderly behind his ear, an arm wrapped securely around the slender part of his waist. Blade held himself stiffly like a statue and set his expression into an ornery frown, afraid that his body would betray his true thoughts. It felt safe being held… It was an anchoring comfort that convinced him of his own solidity, when most of the time he felt like a ghost wandering in the flickering dreams of its last dying moments.
They stayed like that for a certain portion of time. However long it was, it was not enough for Blade, whose gut dropped to the floor when the body hugging him began to move out of it. Blade was going to be put back in the room. He knew it with a learned intuition born from trying to anticipate the moods and whimsies of the only person he’d been able to interact with in the entirety of his damaged memory.
Fear clouded his mind. It was almost a knee-jerk action to reach up and grasp ahold of the stranger’s clothes. Even though he couldn’t see, Blade couldn’t bring himself to lift his gaze, unwilling to even risk making eye contact.
The movement beneath him stilled, and in the pause that lingered afterward, Blade struggled to speak. He knew that he had to explain himself. But there were no words to summarise the violent terror that rose in him at the thought of going back inside that cramped little closet.
“...please,” he whispered.
A hand petted down the back of his skull. Blade felt a kiss on his forehead, warm and affectionate and lovely.
The door clicked shut behind him, sealing him in once more.
Blade sat there without moving for a while, staring into nothingness, mind blank of any thought or emotion. The sound of his breathing swelled, bouncing off the walls of his enclosure in eerie dripping echoes.
He heard scuttling inside the concrete where there had only been resolute silence before.
Somewhere between his head and the endless void beyond, something began to edge closer. A shrill ringing started up in his eardrums. He stretched out his arms, expecting to feel solid walls closing in around him. Instead, they fell through empty air, flailing in the darkness like he'd missed a step on the stairs.
Blade took a deep breath, trying to settle the manic beats of his heart. He felt like a drowning man, grasping for a buoy between the swollen hungry waves. He reached out again.
His hands failed to touch anything. There was nothing in his little world. Gradually, the emptiness became an infinitely expanding horror.
Blade began to scream.
He screamed until copper was gurgling at the back of his throat. He screamed until his ears fell deaf from it the way a human’s nose can desensitise itself to awful smells, feeling the agony of his vocal cords without hearing any of it.
The world outside his cage was an intangible thing. The one who kept him here was surely listening to his bloody screaming, but even that small mercy slipped out of his grasp. In that moment, Blade was impossibly, wretchedly alone.
At some uncertain, wavering point in time, Blade stopped bothering to yell. He stopped eating. He stopped moving. The only time his body received sustenance was when his keeper carried him out of his cell and fed him by hand.
Blade leaned deep into the stranger’s touches, unable to resist the meagre comfort he tried to draw from every point of contact. Each time he sensed he was about to be put away, he mutely reached out to pinch a piece of their sleeve between his fingers. An unspoken plea that was ultimately always ignored, and he quietly went back into his little room in the end.
He could barely look at himself or consider the way he behaved these days. Who was this shy, meek creature? Who was this broken thing, this silent doll? Blade couldn’t recognize himself anymore, but he was unable to find a way to grasp for control. It had been a very long time since he’d had any agency over himself.
The rage and madness had been extinguished. There was no kindle to burn, no longer any fuel for it to consume. It had drowned itself out, and all that was left was this horrible sort of nauseating uneasiness sinking slowly into his bones.
In his dark room, Blade curled up quietly in the corner, feeling small and sick with confusion.
The ‘Stranger’:
His Blade wept without sound now, a trained behaviour which Luocha hadn’t been actively seeking to impress upon him but was pleased with the outcome anyway.
Luocha brushed kisses on Blade’s temple and enfolded him in his arms, and the man fell into his embrace so naturally and so eagerly Luocha couldn’t help give him more loving pecks, tasting the salt of tears on his lips. His pet wobbled cutely in his lap, turning to hide his face in Luocha’s chest.
Luocha’s hand slid comfortingly up and down Blade’s spine, feeling every knob beneath his palm. He sighed. His poor Blade was like a little bird, thin and frail from the weeks of infrequent nourishment and inactivity. Luocha knew he could nurse Blade to a better state of health… but this current condition delighted Luocha endlessly.
High cheekbones and a sharp jawline, a narrow waist he could easily wrap his arm around. Breakable wrists Luocha could capture in one hand without effort. Slender long legs, thin ankles like a wispy fae creature straight out of a rococo painting.
His little bird was lovely and fragile in both mind and body, and Luocha loved that Blade had to rely on him for every one of his needs and wants, even if he simply wanted to walk up the stairs.
The hand not occupied with holding Blade close went to bury fingers into long, silken hair. It drew his pet’s attention, and Blade slowly lifted his head to glance toward Luocha, pretty crimson eyes glossy with tears. Luocha had restored Blade’s sight some while back, but the dependency had remained the same. Blade was such a pretty crier.
Luocha cooed at the way Blade’s spidery hands came up to cling onto his clothes. Such a helpless pretty bird, he admired with an adoring smile. Luocha had been right to steal him away from the world. They didn’t deserve Blade, his delicate heart, his fluttering soul. The outside world had hurt his Blade so much and so deeply, and Luocha was glad to take those painful memories away from him.
Luocha leaned down, gently pressing his lips to Blade’s in the softest of kisses. His little bird gasped quietly into his mouth, fists shaking against Luocha’s chest, the fabric of his shirt being creased permanently in their desperate grips. When Luocha pressed into Blade’s mouth, he heard an adorable little whine rise out of him.
Blade kissed him back, of course, because that was what he mostly wanted to do nowadays: to please Luocha. His obedience was very cute, but Luocha didn’t mind the occasional few days when his Blade retreated into himself and failed to respond to anything at all.
Luocha thought that any mood of Blade’s was equally charming, and he was more than happy to take care of a mute Blade who was like a cracked porcelain doll, hollow from despair. Blade’s sadness was as lovely and beautiful as the anger he used to have.
When he had his fill of Blade’s lips, he moved on to the stark line of his jaw, then to the swan-like neck underneath. “So pretty,” Luocha crooned into the dainty tendons he found there.
Luocha swallowed the hoarse sob that rose out of Blade’s throat. His poor Blade had shattered his voice in those days of terrible screaming, and he’d never truly recovered from it. Luocha had thought about restoring it as he did with Blade’s eyes, but he found that he rather liked having a reminder of those tender days when Luocha had yet to fully break him down.
“Please,” came the rasping, whispery croak. Blade tilted his chin to allow Luocha easier access to his pretty throat, and started shivering again when Luocha took advantage of it to nuzzle into the space between his neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply.
Tears began falling from his eyes, like liquid pearls rolling from garnets. “Don’t leave,” Blade whispered, closing his eyes like he was bracing himself for punishment.
Oh, but with just those few words, Luocha heard the entirety of Blade’s broken soul as though he had personally laid out every piece of it in front of him. The things that frightened him to tears like this, the nightmares he relied on Luocha to chase away for him. The fear of being sent away into the dark. The fear of abandonment. The possibility of Luocha’s disappointment or disinterest. An irrational hopelessness which Luocha had installed into Blade to make him easier to manipulate.
“Of course,” Luocha told him, smiling into tender skin as Blade clutched onto his shoulders as though Luocha was the only thing holding him together. “My Blade is so cute and weak. I could never leave him alone or I fear he would never survive to see the next day.”
Blade went down with only a small push, collapsing against the bed’s headboard while Luocha arranged those slender legs so he could sit between them. Blade’s long, pretty hair splayed over the blankets like sleek rivers of ink, pooling around the crevices of pillows. Luocha rewarded him with a pleased smile when Blade shyly hooked his calves around Luocha’s waist.
“The world would eat you whole. They couldn’t ever resist a vulnerable, broken thing like you. You can hit me, scream at me, and break my things. I will never leave you behind. You can even run away, my love. I’ll always find you again, so don’t you worry…” he murmured, pressing a palm firmly against Blade’s stomach and feeling tremors wrack through the thin muscle. His Blade was so sensitive, after months of deprivation.
“Long ago, Blade was strong, fierce, and beautiful,” Luocha narrated as he watched his little bird shudder into the cushions. His voice turned sorrowful as he recalled his poor beloved’s harsh past. “But he was angry and tired. He was filled with bitterness he had absorbed from those around him, and he kept having his heart broken, over and over again. Old Blade was someone so unloved that he didn’t know how to tell the difference between a hug and a punch, and so responded with violence regardless of which he received.”
A distraught whimper burst from Blade, registering the retelling of what he now perceived to be his past crimes against Luocha. Immediately, Luocha leaned down to reassure him, covering almost his entire form with his own and pressing tender kisses over Blade’s skin. “Shh, it’s okay. I know it wasn’t your fault, love. I just couldn’t bear to see my Blade like that anymore… so hurt and alone. There was no one to care for him, no one to be kind to him…”
Blade made a startled noise, endlessly adorable, when Luocha’s fingers slipped under the hem of his shirt and began to undress him. Luocha felt Blade reach over, but his hands only rested lightly on Luocha’s forearms, neither protesting nor encouraging the movement. Sometimes his little bird got confused and couldn’t decide what he wanted. But that was alright. Blade could entrust all his life’s difficulties to his keeper. Luocha was glad to deal with the tedium of decisions and choices for him.
“Now Blade is fragile like a flower and no longer as strong.” Luocha placed a loving kiss against the delicate curve of a collarbone. His hands slid into place around Blade’s ribcage, the skin there soft and thin with frailty. “But if he wishes to go to battle, I can fight for him. If he gets hurt, I can heal him. Whatever he wants, I can take it for him. He no longer needs to worry about anything. I am here for him.”
“Thank you,” Blade replied with a hoarse, barely audible whisper. He looked barely aware of what was happening around him. Blade clutched at his arms like he was trying to press his body into Luocha’s hold, and he could keep Luocha with him as long as he surrendered himself to him.
“Thank you,” he repeated, looking so hopeless and broken, eyes red-rimmed, pretty face damp with tears. His shoulders quivered. His gaze emptied of light. Blade seemed to bow into himself, bones folding up, becoming impossibly smaller before Luocha’s eyes.
“I… love you,” Blade whispered lifelessly, like he thought it was what Luocha would want to hear but still wasn’t quite sure.
And Luocha smiled at him, pressing his lips over Blade’s chest, cradling Blade’s bare torso between his hands, this trembling body which belonged inexorably to him. “I love you too.”