by J. A. Rock
Ilia struggled to his knees. Nick slapped his lower back. Then his ribcage.
“Get. Up.”
Nick struck the back of Ilia’s neck. He didn’t use anything but his open palm, but it hurt enough that Ilia half wished he’d thrown himself over the balcony rail. He moaned and tried to curl into himself. Nick yanked him off the bed and onto the floor. Ilia landed hard on his left hip and arm, and clenched his teeth against the pain.
“Up.” Nick kicked him in the gut. “Now.”
Ilia got to his feet. His stomach heaved, and a second later, he was down again on his hands and knees, gagging.
Nick pulled out a business card, which he shoved in front of Ilia. “This.”
Ilia couldn’t focus on the paper. Found himself checking Nick’s hands for blood. Upsiller’s blood. Didn’t see any. Didn’t smell it. Didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
“I want to know what this is,” Nick repeated.
Ilia finally got his attention on the card. It was from the massage place where Patrick worked. And when Nick flipped the card over, there was the name Patrick in Mikhail’s wide scrawl. Followed by the date of the appointment and, Red hair. Hazel eyes. 22.
Ilia opened his mouth. Tried to speak. “That was—” his voice gave out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “That guy gave me a massage.”
Nick nudged him. “You’ve been screaming, Eli?”
Ilia nodded wearily.
“Anyone come to your rescue?”
He shook his head. Only one man had ever come to Ilia’s rescue.
“So you thought you’d kill me? With this?” Nick pressed the glass slowly to Ilia’s throat. Ilia fought back a sob. “I saw the damage you did to what I’m sure was a very expensive cabinet.” He flicked the business card, sent it fluttering to land beside Ilia. He stroked Ilia’s hair. “Why did your nerve fail? Hmm?” He poked Ilia’s Adam’s apple with the glass, almost playfully. “Why didn’t you do it?”
Ilia clenched his hands into fists, pain tearing through the right one, and waited. His breath came in gulps.
Nick glanced over at the card. “So. You wanted a masseur who met certain… specifications?”
“Mikhail…pi…picked him.”
“Ah. I know this place. It is expensive. Only the best for Mikhail’s princess, hmm?
Ilia swallowed and felt the point of the glass dig in. So close. If there was an afterlife, he was so close to Mikhail. Another millimeter, and the glass would split skin.
“This date is recent,” Nick said. “Did you have your piercing then?”
Ilia nodded. The panic was receding. He felt almost peaceful.
“Mmm. And did this… Patrick? Did he do your back?”
“Yes.”
Nick leaned close. “How did that feel?”
It had hurt. It had been good. He’d been ashamed. He’d felt Mikhail’s gaze. He’d wanted Patrick too much. Had wanted Patrick to fuck him hard and make him feel like a whore.
And now look at him—didn’t need anyone to make him feel like a whore. He was a whore. The shame worked like a weight to pull him forward, and he dug his fingers into the carpet. He’d sucked Nick’s cock instead of fighting. He’d let Nick hand feed him scraps. He’d had God knew how many hours to get free of this place while Nick was gone, and he was still here.
Worthless piece of shit. Maybe you like being here, like being his, you fucking trash.
No. He’d only ever wanted Mikhail. He’d been ashamed of his fantasies about Patrick, and Mikhail had forgiven him.
“Anything you want. We will make it happen.”
Mikhail would invite Patrick into their bed. Patrick would suck Ilia while Mikhail watched. The idea had been enough to make Ilia hard.
“Eli?” Nick pressed.
“It was... okay,” he rasped.
“Just okay?” Nick set the glass aside and eased Ilia onto his stomach on the carpet. Ran his fingers through Ilia’s hair, then moved his hand down his back.
Ilia gave one small yip as Nick tugged on a ring, and said, reflexively, “I’m scared.”
He hated himself for the confession. Didn’t want to show weakness. Wanted to beat Nick at this game by refusing to play.
But fear was the truth.
Nick made a crooning sound. “Nothing to be scared of.” He tugged the ring again, lightly, and Ilia’s whole body went rigid. “Just tell me what the massage felt like.”
“It was good,” Ilia whispered.
“Details,” Nick said. “I want to know exactly what it felt like.”
Ilia closed his eyes and tried to remember. Didn’t have to try hard. Nick moved his hand to Ilia’s nape. Circled the soft skin there gently with his thumb. “He, uh...he started on the back of my neck. And he went across my shoulders.” Speaking hurt, but if Ilia put his voice in a lower register, it came out rough but intelligible, instead of a wheeze.
Nick’s hand drifted across Ilia’s shoulders.
Ilia recounted what Patrick had done, and Nick kept touching him. His touches sometimes corresponded with what Ilia was describing. Sometimes they were random. Ilia tried to imagine Nick’s hands were Mikhail’s. Wondered what it would have felt like, to have Mikhail touch him the way Patrick had. But Mikhail had wanted to watch.
Please. I’m sorry.
He wished he knew if Mikhail could see him. If Mikhail hated him.
Eventually Nick moved to straddle Ilia, pressing his hands deeply into Ilia’s muscles as Ilia faltered through the rest of the story. He started pulling the rings. Harder and harder, until Ilia’s voice broke with the effort of holding back tears. Until Ilia didn’t want to talk anymore.
“Come on,” Nick whispered, patting his shoulder. “Keep going.”
“No,” Ilia said.
“No?”
“Fuck you.” Ilia arched under him. “Get the fuck off me.”
“Eli.” Nick sounded disappointed.
Ilia bucked again. “Get the fuck off me!” he screamed. Pain burst in his throat again, but he didn’t care.
To his surprise, Nick stood and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Ilia heard the beep-beep-beep-beep of the code as Nick set it.
CHAPTER FIVE
I
It was a day and a half, at least. Maybe two full days. Ilia couldn’t keep track. There had once been a small mahogany table beside the bed. A clock set at just the right angle that Ilia could see it when he rolled over in the morning. Beautiful, quartz. Gone.
He’d planned to make a noose out of the sheet. To throw it around Nick’s neck as soon as Nick opened the door. But he fell asleep so often. Fell asleep staring at his own blood on the sheet. Dragging his fingers along the stiff patch of fabric and thinking about skating on a dark lake. He’d fucked up his chance to ambush Nick. He’d lost.
He wanted water so fucking bad.
When the door finally did open, Ilia was lying on the bed, dazed. Every breath he drew was shallow, ragged. He felt bizarrely grateful to Nick. For coming back.
Then he was ashamed, so fucking ashamed, when Nick sniffed the air and looked around the room, his gaze landing on the corner by the dresser. Ilia flinched at the revulsion in his expression. “Clean that up,” Nick said quietly. “And have a shower. I’m taking you with me today.”
II
“Try anything and I will shoot you,” Nick said.
Ilia was too tired to run, and too afraid.
The fear came and went. Some days, he felt ready to give up, ready to throw himself off the balcony. Other days his adrenaline was high, and he wanted to fight, even if it meant getting shot.
But always, when it came time to act, fear won out.
The next couple of weeks passed in a haze.
Ilia didn’t understand why Nick wanted him at his side, but he sat in the back of the car while Nick was driven to and from errands and appointments. The driver, Mayrsolt, had been Mikhail’s driver. He was the man who had waited in the car while Ilia had waited for a kiss th
at didn’t eventuate on that first date. Always in the background, from the very beginning. Now, Ilia sometimes caught his eye in the rearview mirror, and wondered if they were both measuring the loss of Mikhail in their own ways.
Sometimes he sat in the car with Mayrsolt while Nick was inside someone’s house delivering a “message.”
“If he moves,” Nick always said to Mayrsolt before climbing out of the car, “shoot him.”
Sometimes when Nick was inside and Ilia heard gunfire, he thought, Now. Now is the time to drive away. While he’s distracted. Please, just drive.
But he didn’t ask, and Mayrsolt didn’t offer.
Ilia just waited and hoped Nick wouldn’t come out at all. That one day an intended victim would be quicker on the draw than Nick.
Sitting there one day, waiting, Ilia caught Mayrsolt’s shuttered gaze in the mirror. Ilia opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t say a word.
“This is how it is now,” Mayrsolt muttered, and adjusted the mirror so Ilia’s gaze couldn’t find his again.
On the way back to the apartment that afternoon, Ilia got down on his knees on the floor of the car and sucked Nick off. There was food in it for Ilia, if he did what Nick said.
III
After the two days he’d kept Ilia locked in the bedroom, Nick had tied the halves of the black ribbon together again and re-laced the piercing. So tight it pulled. Pulled until some of the holes became irritated, until fluid trickled from them, and Ilia’s skin burned day and night.
Nick had taken the glass doors off the cabinets.
So maybe Ilia had scared him. Just a little.
IV
Nothing for a while.
No errands.
Nick sat watching TV for days. Made Ilia sit on his lap and watch too.
Leaned forward sometimes and took one of Ilia’s rings in his mouth and sucked. Flicked his tongue against the place where the metal entered flesh. He liked to take the ribbon in his teeth and pull. One night, he slowly unlaced Ilia with his teeth over the course of an episode of Two and a Half Men.
He kept the ribbon in his mouth and made Ilia look at him. He chewed on it. He held it in, his cheeks bulging, until he couldn’t anymore. Then he spat it onto the couch along with a flood of saliva, and grinned. Wiped his slick chin with the back of his hand as Ilia stared at the drenched ribbon. On the TV, canned laughter.
V
One day, Nick brought a man to the apartment. Big guy. Face colorless. Nick shoved him inside and locked the door. Trained his pistol on the man, tossed a coil of rope toward Ilia.
“This is him. This is our rat.”
Ilia stood there dumbly. He didn’t know the man. Wanted to ask how Nick knew. If he was sure.
I thought Upsiller was the rat.
“Tie him up,” Nick said.
Ilia didn’t move.
Nick fired a shot.
Ilia almost didn’t register what had happened. The gun had a silencer, only made a weird hiss. But then he saw a bullet hole smoking in the floorboard by his feet.
The man had a shaved head but had missed some hair between the rolls of skin at the base of his skull. Ilia stared at the bristly skin rolls while he tied the man’s hands behind his back. The man kicked Ilia hard in the knee, and Nick responded by shooting the man in the shoulder.
Ilia jerked, as though he was the one who’d been shot. Blood sprayed on the underside of his sleeve. The man’s groan sounded wet, like a wound.
Ilia’s hands were shaking too badly for him to finish tying the man, so Nick shoved Ilia out of the way and took over.
“He sold Mikhail out,” Nick said to Ilia. “You want to see him suffer, don’t you?”
But this didn’t feel like justice. And the man didn’t seem like the reason Mikhail was gone.
Nick placed a hammer on the floor in front of the man and asked him questions. First in English, about Mikhail. Then in Chechen.
The man was on the kitchen tile with his bound hands splayed behind him, supporting him. Nick crouched beside him and picked up the hammer.
Ilia swallowed and tasted blood. Didn’t know if it was just the smell of it from the man’s wound, or if he’d had his mouth open when Nick fired the gun. If he’d breathed in the man’s blood, like thick, sour mist on a wet winter’s morning.
“How many times do you think Mikhail did this?” Nick asked Ilia over his shoulder, his tone almost playful. “I think he was better than I am. I think he hurt people more, and for longer. I waste too much time.”
Ilia dug his fingers into his arm and imagined he was in a car with Mikhail, on their way to the country. Because sometimes Mikhail had needed a retreat.
Mikhail had noticed the shapes of the clouds over the mountains and gotten excited about seeing deer. And he had never hurt Ilia.
“Look at me,” Nick said, his gaze still on Ilia. “I’m just like my big brother.” And he brought the hammer down on the man’s fingers.
VI
Nick unlocked the study so they could use the pull-up bar. He’d wound the rope several times around the man’s wrist but left a length of it free.
The man struggled hard, his shoulder dripping blood on the carpet. Nick finally landed a blow to his temple that left him dazed. He hauled the man up so that he was standing on a chair and tossed the end of the rope over the pull-up bar.
“Please,” the man slurred. “I didn’t fuckin’ do anything.” He regarded Ilia with blank grey eyes. He had a thin scar running from the hinge of his jaw down to his neck. “C’mon, kid.” His voice was quiet, almost gentle. “You know I didn’t do anything.”
Ilia’s thoughts were as disordered and incomplete as they would have been in a dream. If he waited long enough, if he didn’t think too hard, this would be over.
Nick had hoisted the rope until the man’s arms were extended out behind him and he had to bend at the waist. His shoulder had mostly stopped bleeding. His mangled fingers hung pulped from the knuckles. Nick stood behind him, holding the rope with both hands.
Ilia turned away.
“C’mon, kid,” the man muttered again.
“Don’t, Nick,” Ilia whispered, knowing Nick would hate him for it.
“That’s right,” the man said to Ilia. “You know I didn’t do anything. You know. You don’t want—”
Nick kicked the chair out from under the man. There was a crack as both the man’s shoulders dislocated. An unending scream.
Ilia went to his knees in the study. In the room where he was supposed to have become something better.
A part of him had dislodged too.
And he was glad, because after an absolute crush of pain, he felt peace.
VII
It made sense to be hollow. To practice watching without feeling anything. It made sense to go with Nick on errands. To scrub the blood from the floor. To do as he was told, and to revel in the small rewards. Some nights, Ilia ate dinner, and he felt a sick warmth. I earned this.
VIII
“I have a tame wolf, don’t I?” Nick asked one night in bed, kissing Ilia.
You have a broken toy.
IX
He still lived at home, but he was spending most nights with Mikhail.
His mother asked where he went.
“Out.”
His father asked too. And Louis Porter wouldn’t take “out” for an answer.
His father shouted, and Ilia wondered that anyone could still make him feel so small, when Mikhail had promised him he was a treasure, and Ilia believed him.
“I won’t come home, then! You’ll never fucking see me again!”
He’d gone to Mikhail’s. Mikhail had opened the door in a bathrobe, looking hairy and normal. Not like a killer. Not like a God. He’d folded Ilia into his arms. He’d kissed Ilia’s hair.
“You don’t have to go back home. You are mine now. Just mine.”
X
Mikhail bought Ilia the apartment.
The sanctuary.
Ilia changed his p
hone number but not his email.
His father sent him a message.
Come home. Let’s talk about this.
Ilia hadn’t replied.
Months later. Police surveillance must’ve caught Ilia and Mikhail out together. Another email from his father. He hadn’t read it closely. Had just noted key sentences.
You have no idea what you’re getting into.
That man is dangerous.
Come home.
We can talk things out.
We can talk.
Please.
Ilia deleted it.
XI
The patterns on the rug were spinning like jagged wheels, like the cogs in a large machine. Outside, Ilia could hear the low murmur of voices on the television, then Nick’s laughter cutting through the sound. He laughed like Mikhail had. A booming laugh. The laugh of a man who didn’t care if everyone in a crowded room turned around to look.
A voice answered that laugh.
Not the television.
Ilia closed his eyes.
The next time the men spoke, they were standing in his doorway.
“Yes, it is grief, I think. You saw the news? Very tragic, but of course my brother was no saint. I thought that you might make him feel a little better. Make him want to get out of bed.”
“I can try. I can also recommend a grief counselor.”
Patrick.
Ilia’s eyes flashed open and he tried to lift his head. Couldn’t quite manage it. “No. Nick, no.”
“Hush now,” Nick said. “It will be good for you, I think.”
“Should I set my table up?” Patrick asked.
“Just use the bed, and don’t worry about stains. It’s seen worse, hmmm, Eli?”
Ilia didn’t answer. Mikhail’s blood. And his own. Nick hadn’t changed the sheet since the day Ilia had bled on it. He went still as Patrick took a few hesitant steps into the room. “Hi,” Patrick said. “How are you?”