Page 8 of The Cat's Mausy

“Because I am going to make you an offer you cannot refuse,” Felinus said, changing lanes once again and turning into a parking lot.

“The last offer you made me, you went back on it almost immediately,” Issac pointed out, then frowned as he leaned forward to look at the doors of the building they parked in front of. “Why are we at a clinic?”

“You did say to test you, baby boy,” Felinus said casually.

Issac scowled, seeing people in scrubs inside the warm glow of the lobby. “I am not on drugs!”

“Then you won’t mind having a check up and a few tests done.” Grabbing the back of Issac’s neck when Issac reached for the door, he dropped his voice into a dangerous growl “Maybe I’m not being clear, Issac Maus. I intend on investing in your future, but to do that, I need you to be healthy and deal with any medical issues now. You don’t have enough fat on you to butter toast. If you aren’t on drugs then something is very, very wrong and I won’t let you die on me. So you are getting checked out. If you try to run, you’ll just get a check up out of breath and over my shoulder. Got it?”

Issac took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he nodded. It wasn’t as if he had much of a choice.

The clinic staff was completely made up of women. Issac was brought into the back almost immediately after giving his name without having to sign in and was put through the normal vital checks people go through when they come to the doctor. The door was closed very purposefully in Felinus’s face when he had attempted to follow, which almost made the humiliation of being poked and prodded by the smiling woman in scrubs worth it. Until, of course, she tried to get the blood test out of the way and he passed out in the chair, apparently nearly hitting his head on the way down.

He woke up shortly after. A small bottle of juice and homemade cookies were pressed into his hands by two additional women who had rushed over, before leaving him alone in the exam room with a plate of more cookies.

The doctor was another woman, who smiled at him and introduced herself as Dr. Najjar when she stepped in barely two minutes later. “So,” she said, washing her hands, “what brings you in today?”

Issac set the half-eaten cookie on the plate, dusting his fingers off. “Apparently,” he said dryly, leaning his arms on his knees, “I look like I’m on drugs, and since I’m not, there must be something wrong with me.”

Najjar sighed softly and picked up a tablet. “Well, Issac,” she said, looking at something on the screen, “while I don’t like what that phrasing implies, I can’t disagree with the concern. Just from your vitals, you are extremely underweight and I’m greatly concerned about how you’ve gotten in this state. I’d like to support you in getting you to a reasonable weight and find a way to prevent something like this from happening again. But for the moment, I’d like to treat this like any other check up and maybe something will be made clear. Is that okay?”

Issac shrugged. It didn’t really matter how this was handled. He was losing time he could be using to study and work on his thesis, anything that got this over with so he could get back to that was what he wanted.

The doctor nodded, frowning at him but started asking him the same sort of questions he had been asked when Dimitri had dragged him into the free clinic last year. At least the ones he remembered being asked. He had spiked a fever of over a hundred and three and the details were blurry, to say the least. But he answered them all the same. No family history to speak of. No surgeries or hospitalizations. No allergies to anything he had come across. No medications. No drinking, smoking, or illegal drug activities. She glanced up as he hesitated over the question about sex partners.

“Is that supposed to be the total number I’ve ever had or just recent ones?” He asked, feeling his face warm as she studied him. It wasn’t that he thought she was judging him but… he felt stupid for needing to ask.

“It’s both,” she said, kindly and smiled at him. “I had skipped the one asking if you are currently active since,” her eyes drew down to his neck. “There is no judgment for what the total is, it’s just something that we need to ask so we can assess risks and possible treatments.”

Issac sighed and took a moment to think and count. “Fifteen,” he said slowly.

Najjar didn’t write that down right away but continued to look at him as she slowly reached for a pamphlet with the letters STI on it behind her. “You aren’t sure of the number?”

“It’s… complicated,” Issac said then waved a hand when she raised an eyebrow. “All but one were over five or six years ago. I’m not active. I’m too busy with grad school.”

Her eyes darted back to his neck and up again. Doctor Najjar truly did not seem to care about what he had done but she was, it seemed, going to call him out for lying to her.

“This isn’t,” he started then sighed. “This wasn’t a normal thing I do… It just kind of… happened.”

She nodded slowly. “Many people get pleasure from biting during sex,” she said as if describing a perfectly normal medical term, “both from being bitten and the act of biting. So long as it’s done with consent and the skin isn’t broken there is nothing to worry about. But if you or your partner do break skin, you should seek medical treatment immediately. Even if it’s kept clean, the human mouth is full of very nasty things that can cause infections. Sex is an excellent stress relief for most people and we do offer free contraceptives and protection here if you’d-”

“Thank you,” Issac said quickly, “but no. I don’t need any of that. It was a one-time thing. I’m not looking to repeat it.”

Najjar’s eyes darted towards the door and she set the tablet aside carefully as she leaned towards him. “Do you feel safe at home, Issac?”

A laugh bubbled out of his chest and suddenly he found himself unable to stop, doubling over as he struggled to breathe and felt his eyes prickle with tears. He held up a hand as she started to approach and gasped as he tried to pull himself together. “There isn’t a home to feel unsafe in,” he heard himself say. “There hasn’t been a home since I was ten years old and the system just bounced me from family to family until I aged out.” He let out another harsh laugh, wishing he could stop but unable to as he continued, “Then they just booted me out and I started college immediately using scholarships I had scraped together. The dorm ones weren’t very good so I stopped applying for them in favor of ones that covered more tuition and haven’t bothered with housing for the last five years.” He took a breath and felt it shudder painfully in his chest. “I go to school full time in the Spring and Fall then I work all summer and winter to scrape enough money and scholarships together to survive not working so I can study constantly and get my degree.” He looked up at her, feeling tears roll down his face as he struggled to breathe. “There’s no place to feel unsafe.”

Najjar’s professional mask had cracked as she looked down at him and he could see the pity mixed with alarm. “Are there any friends-”

He shook his head, hard enough that he felt dizzy. “I don’t have any friends,” he hissed, holding his head, “family is all gone. It’s just me. I’m all I need. Everything else is just a waste of time. Feeling safe is a luxury I don’t have time for, same with friends. I just need to finish my degree.”

“Feeling safe is not a luxury, Issac,” she said softly, stepping over to him and touching his knee. “It is a basic human need. To be perfectly blunt, if you were a minor we would have called the police on the man that brought you in here tonight to report neglect and abuse. Does… does he know any of this?”

Issac shook his head, slower this time to not make himself dizzy again. “I only met him last night,” he admitted. “He knows I’m homeless and a grad student but… that’s it.”

“Issac,” she said, squeezing his knee, “are these markings consensual? Did he get your consent to do any of this?”

For a moment, Issac considered telling her no. He was sure if he did they would call the police and Felinus would be dragged off to spend at least a night in jail before the other Italians got him out and started hunting Issac down for the arrest. But besides the fact that he didn’t need any more issues with the mafia than he already had, Issac knew he couldn’t lie. The consent might have been dubious to start and he certainly wasn’t happy about the car ride or the check up, but Felinus hadn’t actually done anything that Issac hadn’t agreed to. As humiliating as it was to admit, he had liked everything about last night, so much that he couldn’t even lie to himself that he had hoped to repeat it when Felinus had turned up again. “I wanted him to do it.”

---