Page 24 of Discordant Cultivation

But Vale’s pulsehadquickened, not from exertion, but from proximity. From feeling every struggle, every breath, every helpless attempt to escape that pressed their bodies together in ways that had nothing to do with art or education.

He’d been achingly erect.

Vale pulled up his notes on the previous students, searching for any documentation of similar responses.

Nothing. Just a singular note about his last project, one of his failures, developing an unhealthy romantic attachment to him after six weeks of lessons. But Alex had been weak.

Kieran wasn’t weak.

Vale poured whiskey he didn’t drink.

It was inappropriate.

But having Kieran beneath him, feeling him struggle, hearing those breathless pleas, controlling him so completely—

Stop.

Vale forced himself to analyze the methodology failure instead of his own unexpected response.

Four cuts. More than he’d ever needed with previous students. And the result wasn’t emotional openness—it was complete dissociative shutdown.

He pulled up Kieran’s medical records, scrolling through them with new attention to specific details.

Epilepsy diagnosis at the age of two. Extensive medical testing. Countless procedures that would have involved restraint, needles, and invasive touching by strangers. His foster care records showed a dozen physical altercations, defensive injuries, and bullying.

The previous students had broken because the pain was novel. Shocking. Something their sheltered lives hadn’t prepared them for. They found authenticity because the bleeding made them abandon their pretense.

Kieran had been surviving pain—medical, physical, emotional—since he was two years old. One cut wouldn’t faze him. Two wouldn’t either. Even three, he tried to endure.

But the fourth—combined with being physically trapped, weight pinning him down, unable to escape or protect himself—that had finally been too much.

Not because of the pain.

Because of the helplessness.

Because Vale used his body to restrain him instead of leather cuffs. He pressed their bodies together in ways that were intimate and violating and impossible to contextualize any other way.

I broke him wrong.

The thought settled in Vale’s chest with uncomfortable weight.

He’s a different species entirely. And I just pruned him like he was the same as the others.

Vale stood, moving to the window where he could see the greenhouse in the distance. The roses needed attention. Pruning, fertilizing, and specific care that differed from variety to variety.

His mother had taught him young: he couldn’t treat all roses the same. Heritage varieties required different care than modern hybrids. Some needed harsh pruning to thrive, others would die from the same treatment.

You have to understand what you’re cultivating before you can shape it properly.

Vale had been treating Kieran like a conservatory rose—carefully cultivated, requiring precise pressure to bloom.

But Kieran was something else entirely. He was a rose emerging from concrete cracks—visible only in the shifted parallax.

I need a completely different approach.

8

Mouth full of cotton, throat like sandpaper dreams…