Slow hand, p.16
Slow Hand, page 16
"My mother didn't know what to do. I’d just turned eighteen, so I dropped out of high school and took two jobs, working from morning till late at night. She worked herself to the bone, and together, we tried to claw our way out of that debt, but it was useless. The bank threatened to foreclose on our house, and my mom panicked and contacted a loan shark who was willing to lend her the money to pay off our debt at once. I didn't know about it because if I had, I would've told her it was the worst idea ever. But she didn't want to burden me with that debt for the rest of my life, and she thought it was a good deal. Unfortunately, she’d missed the small print."
His lungs felt tight now, like they always did when he thought about his mom. God, she had loved him. His dad too, Jathan didn't doubt that. Yes, he was furious with his dad for leaving him and his mom to clean up his mess, but on some level, he understood the desperation the man must've felt. And his good-bye note had made it clear that he’d been convinced that if he were dead, his debt would be canceled.
"The interest added up faster than we could pay off. We lost our house, became homeless, and that’s when Deke told me about the club. He said he wouldn’t tell my mom, and I did it because what choice did I have? But then she got cancer, and that was it. I couldn’t pay. After she died, Deke showed up and told me someone had paid off my debt and that I had to go with him. I was numb with grief and pain and not thinking straight, and so I went with him, and that was it."
"It was supposed to be temporary, for a year," Thierry said. "But no one missed us, so he had no incentive to let us go."
Jathan nodded. "Once that year was up, he refused to release me. Every time I brought it up, he punished me more severely, so I stopped asking."
Ford's hand gently squeezed his. "I don't have words," he said, his voice sounding broken. "Honestly, I don't know what to say. This is so far beyond anything I could imagine."
At least Ford didn’t console him with empty clichés. Somehow, him admitting that he had no words meant more than Jathan had expected.
"My story is a little different, but the outcome was the same," Thierry said. “I was about to graduate from college, but a few weeks before graduation, I discovered that my private college was about to go under. I ended up with an enormous debt and no degree. Still, I thought I’d be okay, that I just needed to transfer to another college, but they wouldn't accept my credits since the college I’d attended wasn't accredited. I never bothered to check that. Then it turned out the college had sold their debts to an aggressive collection agency, and they sold it to Deke, and that’s how I ended up in the club. For a year, I did everything I could to pay on time, but I couldn’t keep up. So he sold me to Master Guido. Because I had no family, I was the perfect victim."
“You didn’t have parents?” Ford asked.
Thierry shook his head. “No. I grew up Mormon. My father was never in the picture because he turned his back on the church, and my mom kicked me out when I came out as gay.” He shrugged. “Not exactly parents of the year.”
Ford closed his eyes for a beat as if he couldn’t believe what they were sharing. But the pain on his face showed how much he cared. "What happened then?"
“At first, it wasn't so bad. He was nice to us, friendly. But then…" Anger flared up inside Jathan all over again, and Thierry winced, maybe because of the fury that had to show on Jathan's face. "It didn’t last long, and then the torment started. He worked us to the bone, starved us, beat us. Played all these mind games to fuck with our heads. And once he showed his true nature, Thierry did whatever he could to get on his good side and avoid punishment, which meant I had it twice as bad."
Even if he wanted to provide details of the beatings he'd taken, he couldn't. He remembered little of it other than the overwhelming pain. Maybe his brain had protected him by shielding him from the horror of it. He was grateful because it sure as fuck wasn't something he wanted to remember. The glimpses that popped up now and then were bad enough. Remembering all of it might just kill him.
"Jathan is right. He was punished much more severely than I was." Thierry's voice was small and thin, and yet he sounded stronger than Jathan had ever heard him. Courageous, like he was taking a stand for the first time, which he was. “Master Guido was always angry. About his job, about us not doing what he told us to do, about…about not being able to get it up. He had an erectile problem, and he rarely got hard. And he often took out his anger on Jathan."
"I'm glad we can at least agree on that," he said, but he didn't sound as angry as he should.
"He punished us by withholding food. We’d have water and dry bread, and that was it. If we behaved, according to whatever his definition of behaving was that day, we'd get a little more. Cookies or candy, which makes no sense at all, but that was how he was. Nothing ever made sense," Thierry said. "We'd be faint with hunger, and he’d drop a package of Oreo cookies in the room."
"Or soda," Jathan added. “We had nothing to drink but water for weeks, and then all of a sudden, a twelve-pack of soda cans would appear. It was crazy. He was crazy.”
It was quiet for a while, and Jathan was grateful Ford allowed the silence because he hadn’t spoken the most hurtful words yet. But they were tumbling out now, and Jathan wasn’t able to keep them back anymore.
“I think he liked Thierry better than he liked me," he whispered, his throat closing on him. "Whenever he got that look of rage on his face, he’d take it out on me. I guess because Thierry was more compliant and I was stubborn and refused to give in."
"You were brave and strong, whereas I was weak and a coward," Thierry said.
Jathan had thought the same thing many times, but now that Thierry voiced it out loud, it jarred him. Was that how it had been? Was it cowardly to do whatever you needed to, to survive? And what had Ford said about men wanting to break him? Was that what the monster had felt? Had he reacted differently to Thierry than to him because they evoked different wants in him?
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. A faint headache was brewing once again, and that, too, reminded him of the horror he’d been through. The last months, headaches had been his constant companion, caused by the utter lack of sufficient food and at times even water.
"Is that how you see it, Jathan? Do you feel that Thierry was a coward? That he was weak?" Ford asked.
Jathan shook his head, the headache throbbing more fiercely. "I don't know. I guess. All I know is that he never stood up for me. Not once."
"I did," Thierry said, his voice cracking. "I stood up for you, or at least I tried to."
Jathan's eyes flew open. He had to be kidding him. "What the hell are you talking about? When? When did you ever try to stop him from hurting me?"
Thierry wiped a tear off his cheeks, then another one, his gestures tired. "As often as I could. Like, when Master Conrad ratted us out…when Master Guido beat you with chains. He wanted to kill you. He legit wanted to kill you. I offered myself to him in exchange for a lesser punishment for you. I know he beat you severely anyway and that you still bear the scars—"
"Don't you dare mention my scars!" Jathan snapped at him. "You weren't there."
"I was! Every time he beat the shit out of you, flogged you, whipped you, every time you passed out, he brought me in to take care of you. Don't you think I know how much you suffered? Don't you know that I cried every single time for you? That I beat myself up, trying to figure out a way to prevent it, to make it less?"
Jathan didn't want to believe him. It sounded too easy, too perfect. "Well, I sure as fuck never saw any evidence of you being successful in that."
Thierry gave up on wiping away tears and now let them roll down his cheeks. "He would've killed you. That time after Master Conrad? He kept his end of the bargain. Ten minutes, that's what he and I agreed on. Ten minutes with you, and then I’d do what he wanted."
Jathan frowned, an icy hand clamping around his heart. "I don't understand. What do you mean, do what he wanted? He never beat you like that. I know he hit you sometimes with his hand, and he starved you like he did me, but he never used the whip on you or the flogger or his belt or those chains…"
Thierry raised his chin, his eyes showing pride and fierceness Jathan had never seen there before. “He didn’t want to hurt me. He wanted me to pretend to like him.”
Jathan swallowed. Was Thierry saying what he thought he was? It couldn't be. He would've known, wouldn't he? No, he wouldn't have. Because every single time that monster had beaten him so viciously, it had taken him days to recover. He’d been slipping in and out of consciousness, sleeping, just lying still and crying, praying that he would die. He’d had no notion of anything other than his own body. All he’d known was that Thierry had been there, but they had shared a room, so he'd always been there. But Jathan had never seen evidence of…
"You let him rape you?" He winced at that harsh word that flew from his lips, and Thierry reeled back like he had slapped him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… I don't understand."
“He didn’t rape me. Not like that anyway.” Thierry turned to Ford, his tone as calm as if he was explaining math. “Like I said, he suffered from erectile dysfunction, and he often couldn’t get hard when he wanted to. It was the one thing we got lucky with because he was never interested in anything anal, not even with foreign objects. But his erectile issues enraged him, among other things, and he took that out on Jathan. But he could get it up when I pretended to like him, when I went on my knees for him and gave him a hand job or a blow job. It was the only way he could come.” He turned back to Jathan, his eyes harder than Jathan had ever seen them. “So I used that whenever I could to improve his mood, to prevent him from taking it out on you…”
He wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be. Not Thierry. He wasn’t even able to, not to Jathan anyway. That meant it was true, and that… "How come you never told me? You never said a word."
Thierry's eyes lost that hardness, and he grew vulnerable again, his bottom lip trembling. His toughness was only skin deep. It always had been. "You never said a word to me about what he did to you. You refused to talk about it, so I hid my pain from you. I figured that you didn't need my suffering on top of your own."
"So all those times you kissed his ass, that you were so submissive and nice to him…"
"I was trying to keep him happy so he wouldn't beat you. It was all I could do to make it better for you. Every time I pleasured him, played his game, and pretended I wanted him, he wouldn’t abuse you. I know I failed, and I should've done more, but…"
Jathan swayed again, his head dizzy and disoriented. Like the ground had shifted underneath him. Everything he had known, everything he had believed, had just changed. How did he…? God, even thinking was hard now. How could he have been so wrong?
22
So this was how that felt, a broken heart. Except Ford didn’t experience it for himself but for these two boys. Even after what Robin had told him and after Jon's warnings, he hadn’t expected this. He didn't doubt the veracity of their story, and yet it was almost impossible to comprehend someone had done this to them. He'd read stories like this in the news and had shaken his head, wondering about the depravity of mankind, but this time, it hit him ten times harder.
These were his boys. His two broken, damaged boys. His sweet, vulnerable boys who had been through hell and back. How had they survived this? How were they still alive? How had they walked away? He'd known it was bad, but this? This was far beyond anything he had imagined. This was… He didn't even have the words. It was beyond description, beyond imagination, beyond anything and everything.
And it had smashed his heart into a million pieces. It beat painfully, his throat so tight every swallow was torture, his lungs so cramped even breathing hurt. An adrenaline rush flooded his body, powered by pure rage, but he couldn't let it out. He couldn't get angry, because they wouldn't understand it wasn't aimed at them, but at him. That…that monster, that cruel psychopath who had bought them as if they were property. Slaves. Who had beaten them, abused them, starved them. Who had held them captive and probably would’ve never let them go…
No, Ford didn't want to think about that. They were out. They were free and safe, with him. And he’d make sure nothing like this would happen to them ever again. He’d keep them safe, take care of them, protect them. God, how could he not? How could he not want to be there for them in any way possible?
Ford wasn't sure about what he’d suspected had been at the core of the conflict between Jathan and Thierry, but he hadn't expected this heartbreaking confession from both of them, two boys played against each other by a madman. They had been so young and naïve. They'd never stood a chance.
"I didn't know," Jathan whispered, sounding broken. "I swear, Thierry, I didn't know. If I had …"
Thierry shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I should have done more. It wasn't enough."
“It does matter,” Jathan said. “It matters more than I can say. I did you wrong… I was furious with you, and all that time, you were protecting me.”
“But you were protecting me as well. If he even looked at me angry, you took the punishment for me!” Thierry cried out. “You always deflected his rage from me onto you…”
“He would’ve broken you…killed you.”
Ford couldn’t watch it anymore, the pain so heavy it was unbearable. "Boys," Ford said, and he had to take a deep breath before he could continue. His heart was so full of all these feelings he couldn’t decipher. So much anger. So much rage and sadness and compassion and…love.
"My sweet, sweet boys… Neither of you is at fault here. Neither of you could’ve done more, could’ve prevented this, could have made it better or worse. None of this is on you. This is all on him. He did this, not you. Thierry, you didn't cause Jathan's abuse. He did that. And Jathan, sweetheart, don't feel guilty about what Thierry did for you. Or for the fact that you didn't know, didn't see it. He did this. He used both of you, abused both of you, played you against each other, manipulated you so you would end up fighting with each other instead of uniting against him, which would've been dangerous for him. You didn't do any of this, didn't cause any of this. This was all him."
Was he getting through? Two pale faces stared at him with hollow eyes, with pain etched into every line. How could they move past this? How could he help them? This trauma, this pain, this burden was too heavy for them to bear. He'd have to help them, but how?
"I know in my head that what you’re saying is true, but I don't know if I'll ever feel it," Thierry said.
"Yeah," Jathan whispered, that one word stuffed with pain.
"Maybe that's enough for now, knowing rationally that you're not at fault. Maybe over time, the rest, the emotional acceptance will follow."
It was the best Ford could offer because he was so out of his depth here. This didn't require a Dom or a Daddy. They needed help. A therapist. A psychiatrist. Someone who knew how to handle this, what to say to them, how to make it better. How to make it stop hurting because god, they were hurting. Ford had known it all along, but to hear the depth of their suffering made their pain almost unbearable for him.
"Now that you know all this, know what we’ve done…d-do you still want us to stay?" Thierry asked, his voice so frail and vulnerable.
"Yes!" Ford almost shouted it. "Now more than ever. I want to take care of you, take away this pain, even though I know I can't. My heart, it’s…it's breaking for you."
Jathan watched him, the distrust less but still there. "I don't want your pity."
Ford shook his head. "It's not pity, sweetheart. It's compassion."
Jathan studied him for a long time, then let out a sigh. "I guess compassion is okay. I don't know. I want to stop feeling like a victim, you know?"
No, Ford didn't know, because how could he? It would be ridiculous to pretend he knew what they were going through. "I… I'm at a loss for words. There's nothing I want more than to say something to make it better, but I don't think those words exist. I've always been a tactile man, someone who communicates through touch as much as through words. So if you two will allow me, I’d love to just hold you, make you feel like you are safe with me."
Jathan and Thierry looked at each other in that wordless communication they’d always shared, even when it had still felt like Jathan wanted to bash Thierry over the head with a baseball bat. "I think that would be okay," Jathan said. "Just… I know you've given us a lot already, and you've been more patient than anyone could've expected. You've paid for us and opened your home, and I know I've not been really appreciative of that. So it's not fair to ask you for more, but…"
"What do you need, brat?" Ford said. The boy could ask him for the moon right now, and he would try to give it to him.
"Patience. What I, what we need, is patience. I can't speak for Thierry, but—"
“Yes, you can," Thierry interrupted him, and how wonderfully normal it was to hear him talk. He’d found his voice, and even amid his pain for them, Ford rejoiced in that. "You know how I feel. Even when you hated me, you knew. For all your attitude against me, you've never truly done anything to harm me. You've always spoken up on my behalf, even when I couldn't speak myself."
Jathan's eyes filled with tears. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for how I treated you. You didn't deserve it, and I made everything so much worse for you."
For one, two seconds they all sat frozen in silence, and then Thierry got up from his chair and hurried over to Jathan. And when he crawled onto Jathan's lap and those two clung to each other as if they were one body, Ford let go of the tight hold on his own tears because this was the single most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.
Jathan held on to him so tightly that Thierry didn't know where his body ended and Jathan's began. Just like in the beginning, when they had arrived at Master Guido's. They’d been close then, the two of them seeking comfort with each other. Thierry’s tears were flowing freely now as he reveled in the sensation of having Jathan's arms around him again.
