The Flesh Cartel - Episode #7: Homecoming

back down. Fingers stroking his cheek. Petting his hair. Relief so profound he could’ve wept— he’s not mad at me he hasn’t abandoned me he won’t hurt me. Objectively, he knew he shouldn’t feel that way. But in his heart, he couldn’t change it. Didn’t want to change it. Not when the alternative was going back to how things were before. Or going to a monster like the man who’d hurt him yesterday. No. He’d take this, grab what Nikolai was offering with both hands and never let go. Nikolai would show him how.
    “I just went to fetch you some breakfast. I was hoping you wouldn’t wake while I was gone; I didn’t want you to think you were alone.”
    Nikolai’s smile could’ve soothed a wailing baby back to sleep. Dougie focused on it, tried to match it with one of his own. Tried to feel something more than . . . than what? Gratitude, perhaps. A lessening of fear. Tried to recapture the affection he’d felt last night, when he’d taken Nikolai into his mouth and sucked him and it hadn’t been a chore at all.
    For a moment, Nikolai became two Nikolais, then coalesced back together. Dougie rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Nikolai was sitting beside him, leaning in close, still smiling that soothing smile. He brushed the hair off Dougie’s forehead and followed his fingers with a brush of his lips. “You were quite restless this morning. I gave you something for the pain. Perhaps that’s why you look so confused now.”
    No judgment in those words. Mild amusement instead. “Th-thank you, sir,” Dougie managed. He sounded like he’d swallowed a frog.
    No, just Nikolai’s cock, spat some quiet little voice in a far corner of his mind. Dougie shoved at it, pushed it farther into the darkness and slammed a door on it. He couldn’t afford to listen to that voice anymore.
    Nikolai handed him a glass of orange juice.
    “Thank you, sir,” he said again, and made a show of taking a sip. Thank you was easy. Gratitude was easy. And maybe gratitude wasn’t a far step from affection. Maybe that was how all love began. Mothers took care of their babies, and their babies loved them for it. Maybe he just needed to be patient.
    Nikolai was watching him closely, but that soothing smile was still on his lips, in his eyes. Crinkling the bridge of his nose, even. He was so handsome when he smiled like that, like he meant it. “Do you think you can sit up?”
    Dougie nodded. Nikolai took the juice from him and propped pillows behind Dougie’s back so he could lean against them. Brought over a tray with short legs from the table and placed it over Dougie’s lap. Breakfast in bed? When was the last time anyone had brought him breakfast in bed? Pattie, maybe, back when he was . . . fourteen? When he’d caught bronchitis and missed two solid weeks of school. When he’d wept inconsolably for his dead mother and Pattie had tried so, so hard to fill her shoes.
    And now Nikolai was here, filling Mat’s shoes.
    And just as with Pattie, Dougie would do his best to let him.
    Nikolai didn’t have to tell Dougie to eat, not anymore. Even though he wasn’t hungry at all, he dug into the omelet on the tray, trying to look appreciative as he did so. He told himself that his willingness to choke down food was out of gratitude for Nikolai’s kindness and not out of fear of his wrath. But Dougie remembered all too well what had happened the last time he’d refused to eat.
    I can’t let myself be afraid of him anymore. Maybe love and fear could coexist—because what were abusive relationships, if not that exact combination?—but he had a feeling that for that to happen in nature, the love had to come first. And it hadn’t for Dougie and Nikolai, which meant . . . Dougie was sure the fear had to go, even if that meant it had to be surgically excised. Subtract fear. Add love. Nikolai would know the math, have the right prescription.
    “You know,” Nikolai said, and though his voice held the same gentle amusement as his smile, Dougie still jumped. “When I was first brought here, I didn’t eat for almost a week.”
    Brought here? Nikolai? “I . . . You . . .?” Intelligent, Dougie. Really intelligent. He put his plastic fork down, looked into Nikolai’s eyes. “ Brought here, sir?”
    Nikolai picked up the fork, cut off a bite of omelet, and held it to Dougie’s lips. Dougie’s mouth knew what to do all on its own: open, accept, chew, swallow. God knew he’d done it enough, with whatever was