Page 70 of Follows with Intent

But Vic only stared. His hands came back to Nico’s thighs, and again he pressed his thumb against the thin fabric of the running shorts. What had seemed, earlier, to be part of the costume’s appeal—the knowledge this body was almost completely on display, that Jadon would be looking, wouldn’t be able not to look—now made Nico shout into the gag, trying to draw his knees together. Vic moved his thumb slowly but insistently. Nico screamed again. With Vic between his legs, though, there was nothing he could do, nowhere he could go. Vic bent and kissed him through the shorts, and then his thumb came back again. Groping. Mashing. Determined, Nico thought with a kind of bewilderment that straddled horror and a kind of manic hilarity. Determined to get me hard.

Finally, Vic sat back on his heels. His smile had flattened out into a blank-faced fury. Then he slapped Nico, and Nico felt his lip split under the blow. His head jerked sideways. Droplets of blood sprayed the tile. More drops landed on his thigh, hot. It was hot on his chin too. Hot dripping onto his chest.

Vic’s own chest was rising and falling, but his face still had that terrible blankness. He hit Nico again. And then again. For a while, pain and the physical disorientation of the blows rendered the basement for Nico in snapshots: the fluorescent light fixture overhead; exposed drywall painted with something that looked like liquid rubber; the red of his blood like pomegranate seeds on the small, white rectangles of porcelain. The final blow rocked Nico sideways, and the chair went with him. He fell hard, his injured shoulder ablaze with pain as he landed on it again. The tile felt cool against his cheek. The smell of bleach and mildew met him, mixing with the taste of blood, like he had a mouthful of loose change. The world continued to spin, and Nico closed his eyes. I can fall asleep, he thought dizzily. I’ll go to sleep.

But when Vic moved, Nico opened his eyes. From where Nico lay, still tied to the chair, Vic looked enormous. His face had relaxed again, the wide mouth hinting at a smile. Little drops of blood flecked the back of his hands. Some of them had tails curled like commas. A pause in the sentence, a dull voice said in Nico’s head, before we start again.

Maybe Vic noticed his gaze. Or maybe the movement was reflexive. He turned his arm and wiped the blood on the back of his jeans. His erection bulged in front. He took deep breaths, but even deep and measured, they still sounded excited.

Upstairs, a doorbell rang. Nico flinched. A glower crossed Vic’s face. The bell rang again and again. It kept ringing. Nico could imagine a child’s hand pressing the button. Or teenagers trying to stir up shit. Vic made a disgruntled noise and went upstairs. He didn’t look back.

Adrenaline and fear had kept the worst of the pain at bay, but Nico could feel it waiting for him, ready to rush in the moment he started to lag. A part of him wanted to close his eyes again, lean into the cool tile, and stop. But that way lay death. If he lets you see his face, he’s going to kill you. The thought came back with the quality of a struck bell. He’s going to kill you.

As awful as the campus assaults must have been, Nico knew, this was worse. Because he’d been escalating. Either he was learning what he enjoyed and trying to get more of it—more of the hurting, more of the control. Or his usual tricks were starting to wear thin, and he had to work harder and harder to get the high he was chasing. And he’d been planning for this: the rubberized paint on the walls. The tile. His eyes fell on a drain at the center of the floor. When it was over, Vic would bleach every available surface and wash away any sign that Nico had ever been here.

Nico strained at the ropes again, but he still got nowhere. The ropes around his wrist had a tiny amount of slippage, which was why they’d chafed the skin there so badly. And if he twisted and pulled, he could get the loop to the heel of his hand. But then, no matter how he compressed his hand, he was stuck. There simply wasn’t enough room to slide his hand free.

He squirmed in the chair, hoping the fall had loosened the construction. Wood squeaked and protested, but no matter what Nico did, the chair refused to give.

Upstairs, Vic was yelling.

It wasn’t fair. The surge of outrage and indignation only lasted a moment, but it left Nico on the brink of tears. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It was like the last time—he’d gotten caught in the crossfire through no fault of his own. And this time, Emery wasn’t going to save him, and Jadon—he could hear Jadon’s furious shout: You can’t take care of yourself.

No, Nico thought. I guess not. But the memory of Jadon, of how hard he’d tried to keep this from happening, of what this would do to him—

Destroy him, it’s going to destroy him.

—was enough for Nico to make an effort again. The rope around his wrist seemed to be the weakest link. If the ropes had a little more give, or if he had something to ease the passage of his hand. Blood, maybe. If he could get his wrist to bleed, maybe that would—

And then his eyes fell on the bottle of lotion. The one Vic had taken from his shorts. The one he’d dropped on the floor. For my zinc stripe, Nico thought, and another giggle washed through him. He fought it off and began to squirm around, rocking his body back and forth. The chair moved with him, inching forward and back as wood screeched against tile.

The sound seemed tremendous, but Vic didn’t come running. After what felt like an eternity, Nico had to stop, the muscles in his back and abdomen screaming. He listened, and from upstairs came a strange thump-thump noise he didn’t recognize. A gun? Was Vic shooting someone? But then Vic’s shouts picked up again, sounding even more distant, and Nico realized he was wasting a golden opportunity. He rocked and wiggled and squirmed. And slowly, he spun the chair around until, searching blindly behind him, he closed one hand around the bottle of lotion.

It took a fumbling moment before he got the lid open. Then he squeezed the bottle again and again, emptying the lotion over his hands. It stung when it made contact with his scrapes, but Nico barely felt it. He turned his arms. The lotion was slippery and ran along bare skin. He could feel it soaking into the ropes. When he felt like he’d coated his wrist as best he could, he pulled his arm up, bringing his hand to the loop enclosing it. He could feel his hand sliding, sliding, sliding—

And then stop.

Tears sprang to Nico’s eyes. He huffed around the ball gag.

Jadon sleeping in his car. Jadon waiting in the hall with two coffees. Jadon, and the run through Forest Park. The prism of the Jewel Box opening in the autumn morning.

Tears turned to rage, and Nico began to yank. Control was gone. Planning. Reason. He was an animal with his leg caught in a trap, and he went wild. The lotion made his arm slip back and forth within the circle of rope, his hand jamming against the opening each time he tried to draw it free, pain building as he brought all his strength to bear, trying to force his hand through the opening.

And then his hand slid free.

Disbelief froze Nico. Then he fumbled with the rope around his other hand. His fingers were slick. The rope was slippery. But he found the knot and undid it. When he brought his arms around in front of him, he was shocked by the blood—it coated his arms up to the elbows, mixed with the pearly streaks of lotion. Pain blazed to life in his shoulders and elbows, which felt locked solid after being immobilized for so long. But he fought through the pain, loosening the knots around his ankles. The ball gag went next, his jaw on fire. And then he was free. He got to his feet, slipped on the tile, and caught himself. His hips and knees protested too. His next step was slow, uncertain, shortened like an old man’s. And the next. But then his body limbered up, and by the time he reached the stairs, he took them two at a time.

The door at the top of the steps was open, and beyond it lay a small landing with another door, clearly some sort of transitional space between the upstairs, the downstairs, and the outside. Nico reached the landing and wobbled as a wave of dizziness rushed over him. Black spots ate away at the edges of his vision. Blood pressure, maybe. He’d been still for so long, and now—

He had to grab the door jamb to keep himself upright. He glimpsed a kitchen to his right: walnut cabinets, an old trestle table, mustard-colored laminate counters with matching wallpaper. Then he felt steadier, and he flipped the deadbolt and let himself out into a darkened carport. An old Buick was pulled all the way up under the aluminum awning, old, close to twenty feet of chrome and fins. An Impala was parked behind it. Beyond that was the sloping driveway, the street, the dusty glow of a streetlight, a yellow-brick house with a vinyl decal in its front window of a witch riding a broomstick and the words WE KNOW HOW TO HAVE A GOOD TIME in spooky script.

I have to get to the house, Nico told himself. The concrete pad was rough under his bare feet as he took his first hobbling step.

Arms closed around him. Vic’s breath whispered against his ear, loud and rasping. Nico screamed, and this time, without the gag to stop him, he gave full voice to his fear and rage. Vic grunted, his arms tightening, and lifted Nico’s feet from the ground—no easy feat, considering Nico was taller and had been eating way too many carbs under Jadon’s influence. Staggering slightly under Nico’s weight, Vic took a step back.

Their reverse journey flashed through Nico’s mind: the vestibule, the stairs, the bleachy tile and the rubber paint on the walls. He screamed louder.

And then he remembered Jadon in the park, his arms around Nico.

---