Lovies, it's 2:30 AM and I just typed this up. If there's errors on it, yawn oh well. Don't expect anything from me.

“You’re still here.”

He doesn’t have enough energy to move or to mumble or to even open his eyes. Since I left him this morning, he’s only acquired enough energy to slide into a corner and curl up against the hard wood. His face is bleeding, his white shirt is red, and there’s a trail that’s followed his every movement from my harsh entry the night before. He asked for it. He asked for it all.

“Shower. Up,” I command, holding him tightly in my arms, too tightly I know, since a gasp escapes his lips and the blood that had dried on his forehead cracks as he creases his brow. I wash those gently away, gently, gently. It’s not in my nature, but I do it for him. At times, even I can be tender.

“Nansten,” he mumbled, trying to pronounce my name with his swollen and split tongue that has grown from the infection developing around my teeth marks. He had howled when I did that, but never pulled away. “Nuf… tum,” and even I can’t interpret that. After I have washed away what I could from his wounds, I set up the bath for him, making it hot and soothing for his muscles that seized from his slumber on the hard wooden floor. I refrain from using bubbles, knowing the soap would irritate him and knowing he wouldn’t have enough energy to remember to enjoy it.

“I’m going to make you something to eat, don’t drown.” I say it in a way that he would assume I didn’t care whether he did or didn’t. The tone that made it sound like I would go to his funeral and merely stare at his grave for a minute before walking away with a shrug. He doesn’t know, mostly because I don’t tell him, how much I really do love him. If he knew, he’d walk away. He doesn’t… or can’t accept that. The only way to keep him here with me is to break him until the point of unconsciousness and leave him. He’s always there when I return, mumbling things from his perpetually swollen face. He was quite beautiful when I first met him, but there’s never a long enough stretch for it to completely heal.

There was one time I left his face be and just pounded his chest and sliced through his arms and legs, but he knew what I was doing and cried for the whole night next to me on the bed until I rolled over and taped his mouth shut. He didn’t bother to take it off though his hands were free.

“You’re ugly. I can’t fuck an ugly duckling, Ralin.”

And he cried even harder. Even as I wrapped my arms protectively around him and told him he belonged to me, he didn’t stop. I could hear the moaning through the tape. A part of me felt bad, a part of me relished those sobs since it meant another night in his company.

It was few days that he would let me sit with him, while he recuperated in the, and feed him. It was only the days where he had no strength left to do it himself that he would let me. He told me once I was a nurturing man and that I felt bad deep inside for what I did and I slapped him and called him names and threw him into walls until he couldn’t get up anymore. But it was true. I loved him.

“Don’t you dare leave me, bitch,” I whispered harshly, the one night that he said he couldn’t take it. I told him that and then punched him so hard I had to call a doctor to fix his jaw. I told him that my friend had just fallen into the house one night and said he got mugged. It was the second time this week. Whatever I said, Ralin went right along with it. There was never any objection. He fabricated the story, had fun making descriptions. Eventually the doctor knew our names, knew our games, and knew our lies.

Ralin desperately defended me until the doctor assured him he wouldn’t press charges. “But if he dies, I will call the cops and I will have you put away.” And that was the only night I ever made love to Ralin. All the other nights I beat him to a pulp and fucked around with his body when he couldn’t stop me.

Ralin falls into me as I help him from the tub and I reprimand him only because I know he wants it. He cries only because he knows I want it. He’s feeling better now with the food inside him. I walk briskly away from him and lie on the bed, waiting for him to crawl out of the bathroom and claw him way into the bed with me. It’s almost creepy in the way he does it, slinking from the bathroom, dark hair, uncut for months, slipping down his shoulders and covering his face, body course and gouged from scars and fresh wounds. He’s pale, always has been, and skinny, looking neglected though it’s not because I don’t pay attention. I do, honest, and I take good care of him though most people don’t see it that way. Give Ralin a good person who would love them and whisper sweet nothings in his ear and he would be back here, begging me to strike him, in minutes. I took good care of Ralin in the way he needed it. Whatever he had lived through before he came to me, it made him want… need this abuse, this horrible punishment every day, with an occasional passionate embrace a few times each month. Me being the way I was brought up… I needed to hit something… every day.

“Nathan… I can’t… get on the bed by myself,” I hear him call out, his head pushed into the side of the mattress, tears wetting the floor by his hands. Poor thing, I think. Today is a day for nurturing. I gave him too much last night and his body isn’t able to take another today.

“Then sleep on the floor,” I mumble, rolling so my back is to him. He comes up, shaking viciously as his timid hands pull softly at my flannel shirt. “You are pathetic Ralin. I don’t even have the urge to beat you. This is your punishment for being a horrible person.” I flip quickly to him and yank him straight into my chest. The tears are genuine as they always are, but he needs this comfort for just this moment. No horrible strikes today though the onslaught of insults can never stop. “You’re a horrible person.”

“I know. You’re so good to me, keeping me here like this,” he sobs, kneeling before me, neck drooped so low it might break so I place him in the bed, full of affection and love, like I knew he needed because it would hurt. It would hurt differently. His heart was stronger than his body. I couldn’t hurt his body today or he would most likely die, but I could hurt his heart. I could always hurt his heart. And I don’t respond to him, just tuck the covers up around him, all warm, so beautiful as he opens his eyes to look at me, cheeks puffed, lip enlarged, but still beautiful. He wants me to yell, but I won’t. Not because I’m sparing him, but because silence and an angry glare will hurt more.

Eventually he falls to sleep, isolated from the world, captured in my arms where he’ll always be safe from everyone but himself and I. He will always live and be happy in his misery until the day he dies. That, I tell myself often, will be soon. Eventually, he’ll be able to recover in the after life and be reborn again into another beautiful creature who may be given the chance at happiness. Someday… he won’t need punishment. Someday he’ll need love. Perhaps I’ll be able to give it, as I always wanted to and as I was never allowed.