Page 129 of Discordant Cultivation

Kieran looked down at himself, blinking in confusion at the bright red welts covering his arms and legs, at knuckles split open and bleeding, at splatters of blood decorating the concretearound him. His own tears were streaming down his face, though he couldn’t remember when they’d started.

“Sweetheart, please talk to me. Are you—do you feel a seizure coming? Any aura? Dizziness?” Vale’s breath shuddered out of him, hands still trembling as they moved to cup Kieran’s face. “You hurt yourself. You came down here alone and you—”

The tears on Vale’s cheeks were real. The fear in his eyes was genuine. This wasn’t manipulation or strategic positioning. This was raw terror.

He really does love me.

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I'll never let you go again, I'll never let you leave; We're bound by blood and pain and the lies we both believe…

Vale

Vale’s hands moved on autopilot as he cleaned blood from Kieran’s split knuckles while his mind processed what he’d just witnessed. But his hands were trembling. Barely noticeable—just the slightest shake as he uncapped the peroxide—but there nonetheless.

The song was extraordinary.

Even now, replaying the sound in his head, Vale could hear the electronic beats that Kieran’s body had created: complex polyrhythms built from flesh against concrete, percussion patterns that most people spent weeks figuring out. The honesty in those lyrics…

Beautiful. Devastating. Everything Vale had been trying to cultivate in their collaborative work, achieved through methods that should have filled him with pride.

Instead, ice water pooled in his stomach as he dabbed a wet washcloth against torn skin. Nausea churned in his gut—actual physical nausea at the theoretical image that kept replaying in his mind: walking down those basement stairs to find Kieran cold and still, blood pooled around lifeless hands.

What if I hadn’t woken up? What if he’d kept going until he—

Thirty-seven years of feeling nothing for anyone. Thirty-seven years of watching other people fall in love and wondering what the fuck they were experiencing that he couldn’t access. Thirty-seven years of being fine with being incomplete, missing something fundamental to the human experience. He had music. He had the roses.

And then Kieran.

Only Kieran.

You’re the first person I’ve ever loved. The only person. If you died, I would have nothing. I would be nothing.

“Does this hurt?” Vale asked as he wrapped gauze around Kieran’s damaged knuckles.

“N-no,” Kieran mumbled, still floating in whatever dissociative state the bag had induced. “F-feels... distant. Like it h-happened to someone else.”

Vale’s jaw tightened as he brushed over the welts covering Kieran’s forearms, red marks that would bruise beautifully by morning. Evidence of artistic breakthrough achieved through self-destruction, but without guidance, without supervision, without permission.

He put the bag on himself.

The thought circled through Vale’s mind like a shark scenting blood. Kieran had reached for the tool that represented their most formative collaborative moments and used it independently, seeking the kind of sensory deprivation that led to devastating honesty. He used Vale’s methods to access places Vale himself hadn’t yet explored.

And you could have died doing it. You could have seized alone in the dark and I would have found you cold in the morning.

All that potential, all that beautiful brokenness, gone. And Vale would be left with nothing but the echo of what it felt liketo love someone, a memory of sensation he’d never experience again.

You used my tools without my permission. You sought pain without my supervision. You risked the only thing that’s ever mattered to me.

“What the fuck were you thinking? The words came out sharper than Vale intended, cutting through Kieran’s artistic enthusiasm like a blade. He watched confusion flicker across his face as reality began reasserting itself.

Good. Come back to the present, beautiful boy. Come back to me so I can remind you who’s in control here.

“What?” Kieran’s voice was smaller now, uncertainty creeping in as he registered Vale’s tone.

Vale finished bandaging the last of the visible wounds before stepping back, medical supplies forgotten as a cold rage settled into his chest. “You think you can disappear in the middle of the night, use equipment you haven’t been given permission to touch, and hurt yourself without supervision?”

I control when you eat, when you sleep, when you take your medication. I control your breath, your pleasure, your pain. You should know better.