Page 60 of Discordant Cultivation

Vale adjusted his clothing, that clinical mask sliding back into place even though Kieran had seen it crack. “You maintained the performance. That’s progress.”

Progress. He calls this progress.

He left without another word, and Kieran sat cuffed to the chair, staring at nothing and trying desperately to find that disconnection he mastered under the hood. But the hood was gone now. Vale had taken even that away—the ability to pretend this was happening to someone else.

Now he had to watch himself break.

Time became fluid after that.

Vale returned at some point—Kieran had lost track of whether it was hours or days—and released him from the chair, guidedhim upstairs to use the bathroom, shower, fed him something that tasted like nothing, then brought him back down to the basement before Kieran’s legs had fully regained their strength.

The next session involved ice. Vale’s justification was something about temperature contrast, about learning to perform through physical discomfort, about endurance and focus and all the familiar words that were starting to lose meaning.

But the real lesson was simpler: Kieran’s body would respond regardless of circumstances. It would betray him repeatedly. It would teach him that resistance was exhausting and compliance brought relief, however temporary.

The ice burned against his skin, trailing cold water down his chest and thighs. Then Vale’s mouth was warm in contrast, and Kieran’s mind couldn’t hold both sensations at once. He couldn’t maintain the narrative that this was violation when it also brought sensations his body interpreted as pleasure, regardless of what his conscience wanted.

“You’re learning,” Vale murmured between sessions that blurred together like watercolors running in rain. His voice had taken on a quality Kieran hadn’t heard before—softer, almost reverent. “Learning not to flinch from intimacy. Not to hide from what your body wants.”

My body doesn’t want this.

But the distinction was getting harder to maintain when Vale’s touch started feeling like the only constant in a world that had become unmoored from time and space and logical progression.

Another session. Or maybe the same one.

This time when Vale positioned him against the wall, his hands secured above his head, the contact felt almost familiar. The leather belt had been replaced with something softer—Vale’s hands, moving across the welts with careful attention to what made Kieran gasp versus what made him flinch.Fingers traced the raised, reddened lines on his back, pressing just enough to send jolts of mingled pain and heat through his nerves, with thumbs circling sensitive spots that forced involuntary twitches.

“You’re so sensitive,” Vale murmured. “The sounds you make. The way you—”

He stopped himself, breathing hard, and Kieran recognized the moment for what it was: Vale’s control slipping again. The careful justifications cracking. The truth underneath becoming visible—Vale’s erection straining against his pants, pressing insistently against Kieran’s hip as his hands trembled with barely restrained need.

“Sing for me,” Vale whispered against his ear, his hands moving with renewed purpose, sliding down to cup Kieran’s ass, squeezing the flesh before dipping between his legs to stroke his hardening cock through the fabric of his pants. “Please. I need to hear you.”

And so Kieran sang.

Not because he was forced. Not because he was afraid of what would happen if he refused. But because the request had been genuine, and responding to genuine need felt easier than maintaining walls that had already crumbled.

His voice filled the basement with lyrics about heresy and confessions, about structures built on fault lines, about learning to find beauty in collapse. And Vale’s hands moved in rhythm with the melody, pulling responses from Kieran’s body that felt almost like collaboration: the unbuttoning of his pants with deliberate slowness, freeing his cock into the cool air, and wrapping firm fingers around the thickening shaft. Vale stroked him steadily, thumb smearing pre-cum over the head in slow circles that made his breath hitch and his voice waver on the high notes. Kieran’s hips rocked forward, thrusting into Vale’s grip as heat coiled tight in his core.

When it was over—when Kieran’s voice gave out on a moan and his orgasm tore through him, hot spurts of cum coating Vale’s hand and dripping down his wrist in sticky trails, while Vale ground his own release against Kieran’s thigh with a muffled groan, soaking the fabric between them—Vale released him from the restraints. Neither of them spoke. Vale simply caught him when his legs gave out, lowered them both to the floor, and held him while Kieran’s body shook with exhaustion that went deeper than the physical, their fluids cooling on skin and cloth in the dim light.

“You’re doing so well,” Vale finally whispered into his hair, and there was genuine warmth in his voice, affection that felt real even if everything else was twisted. “So much better than I imagined. You’re becoming exactly what you were meant to be.”

What am I meant to be? Your instrument? Your prisoner? Your—

But Kieran’s mind couldn’t finish the thought before exhaustion dragged him under.

When he woke, there was something around his neck.

Kieran’s hands went to his throat, his fingers finding smooth leather. A collar.

Vale sat in the chair beside the mattress that had appeared in the basement at some point—Kieran didn’t remember it being there before, but maybe it had been. Time was unreliable.

“A reminder,” Vale said simply.

Kieran’s fingers traced the leather, finding the small buckle at the back. Not locked. Not even particularly tight. He could remove it anytime he wanted.

But his hands fell away without trying.