Page 68 of Bobby Green

He hated doing this.

Most of the time, he’d just as soon give her sedatives, but she’d been hoarding pills for a long time, and her medication levels were probably down. He needed to clean her room, and he needed her to not be attacking him with deadly footwear, and dammit, eventually they all needed to eat.

He had a gag—not a ball gag, because those broke your teeth and hurt your neck if you used them for too long—but a basic elastic gag that she couldn’t reach after he handcuffed her to the bed.

He hated this. This was worse than the three-point restraint. Every movement was a fight, and he knew, no matter how gentle he tried to be, he was bruising her wrists. He worked out every day, for fuck’s sake. She had no chance to overpower him, none at all, and he was just a big ugly fucking bully, locking her in metal cuffs.

When he was done, she stared at him, angry tears rolling down her cheeks, and he shrugged, his own eyes burning and sore. “V—dammit. You tried to blind me with a fucking shoe.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed behind the gag.

He sighed and shoved a pee pad under her hips, because if she lost control of her bladder, it was easier to change her clothes than it was to change all the bedding.

After that, he stood and began to clean up. The clothes went back in the drawers; the knickknacks thatweren’tbroken went back on the dresser. The broken ones he stacked on her mostly untouched desk.

“I see you left the fucking computer alone,” he muttered, ignoring her muffled scream of outrage. “And….” Hell. “You didn’t slice up the stuffed animals we got you for Christmas.”

He hadn’t wanted to tell Bobby that’s where most of her stuffed animals had gone when she’d been in her early twenties.

He looked from the stuffed unicorn and the stuffed leopard to V, hands resting by her ears now, body sagging into the mattress. “Well, I love you too,” he told her, voice sinking. God, he needed to take the trash downstairs, but first he needed a—

The door opened, and Bobby stood there with two trash bags and two pairs of plastic gloves. Together they picked up the remains of the bathroom garbage she’d strewn about her floor. Reg noted dully that she was on her period. Doctors would know, he thought. Doctors would know if maybe the stuff that went on in her brain didn’t fuck with her meds. Doctors would know if maybe there wasn’t something they could do when things got too overwhelming.

But doctors would take her away from him.

He looked at her, chained to her own bed with padded handcuffs, and wished he could sink into the floor.

“Hey,” Bobby said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “She’s asleep. Should we unchain her now?”

Reg shook his head. “I’ll chain her to the bedframe and put the other stuff away,” he conceded. “She’s… she’s going to need some of this until she gets her med levels back.”

“Okay. Let’s do that, then.”

They gave her room to move and a bucket to pee in—and some paper to wipe. But Reg had John bolt the bed to the floor years ago. She couldn’t get out, she couldn’t get to her computer—she just had to lie there, and rest, and chill the fuck out.

It was the only medicine Reg had.

Then Bobby took him downstairs, and Reg’s breath caught.

The kitchen was clean—everything. Swept, wiped, gleaming, as much as the battered tile and cupboards could gleam.

“Here,” Bobby said, pulling a chair out for him. “I made lunch while you were upstairs. Sit and eat—I’ll take her a plate in case she wakes up.”

“No forks,” Reg reminded him. He had scars.

“I figured,” Bobby said dryly. He set down a sandwich with some fruit on the plastic plate and added a cup of milk. Then, while Reg was looking at it in naked gratitude, he disappeared up the stairs with one on a paper plate for V, as well as a bottle of water.

By the time he got back down, Reg was still staring at the sandwich, just flummoxed.

“Reg? Is it any good? It’s just meat and some pickles and—”

Reg shook his head and wiped his eyes, because his vision was blurry. “It’s great,” he said, and his voice cracked, and Bobby was there. Justthere. Not kissing or groping—justthere, holding him while he cried.

He had no words for what it meant. Not just the help, because he’d had that before. But the aftercare, the quiet support—from a guy who might want sex, but who had been there, in Reg’s life, steady as a clock, and who hadn’t complained once that they hadn’t had it.

The tears dried to hiccups, and Bobby wiped his eyes with a napkin, then bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Eat, Reg,” he said quietly. “Obviously, I’m staying here tonight. We’ve got time.”

Reg nodded and looked away, feeling… God. Young. He felt young. He felt like a little kid, lost among the great and terrible grown-up things that were happening around him.