Page 93 of Discordant Cultivation

“I can’t—” He shook his head, taking a step back from the trunk. “I c-can’t take this.”

Vale’s brow furrowed, the slightest pout forming on his face. “Why not?”

“I’ll ruin it,” Kieran whispered, tears spilling over before he could stop them. “I’ll break this one too because that’s what I do. I’m—I’m not worth this. I’m not worth anything this expensive or beautiful or—”

The sobs came ugly and desperate, like they always did. His shoulders shook with the force of them as his gauze-wrapped hands came up to cover his face, like he could hide from his own inadequacy.

Vale’s arms were around him immediately, pulling him back toward the limo’s open door and back onto the leather seats. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Talk to me.”

“I d-destroyed the last one,” Kieran gasped between sobs, words fracturing around his stutter. “I’ll pr-probably ruin this one too, b-because I-I-I-I ruin everything—”

“Kieran.” Vale’s hands framed his face, his thumbs wiping away the tears. “You didn’t ruin anything. You created art.”

“I’m broken,” Kieran choked out. “I’ve always been br-broken and br-broken things b-break other things and I don’t—I can’t—”

His mind was spiraling, thoughts fragmenting in a thousand different directions. Every inadequacy, every moment of feeling worthless, every time someone had looked at him with pity or dismissal or carefully masked disgust—it all crashed over him at once.

He was nothing. Worse than nothing. He was a void. A black hole, pulling things in and destroying them because that’s what black holes did.

It hurt so bad. Knowing what he was, what he couldn’t change about himself. It hurt worse than being told his parents were dead. Worse than the aches of waking up alone after seizing. Worse than Vale’s belt. Tonight wasn’t supposed to hurt, he was supposed to enjoy himself and be a real musician, and he couldn’t even do that right.

I need it to stop hurting.

If I kiss him, the thoughts will stop hurting for a minute...

The realization cut through his panic and made him want to throw up. When Vale kissed him before, the world narrowed to just physical sensation—to the taste and warmth and feeling of being wanted even if that wanting came wrapped in violence.

Fuck it.

Kieran surged forward, closing the distance between them with a desperate need. His lips found Vale’s with graceless urgency. Vale made a surprised sound against his mouth before responding with the focused intensity that dissolved Kieran’sthoughts exactly like he’d hoped. Hands found his hair, tilted his head with careful control, and suddenly the panic was distant. Manageable. Buried under the taste of someone who knew exactly how to make his brain shut the fuck up.

“That’s it,” Vale panted against his lips. “Let me take care of you.”

The words should have triggered every alarm Kieran had left. They should have reminded him that Vale’s care came with a price tag written in his own blood and broken boundaries. But his mind had gone blessedly blank, focused only on the warmth of Vale’s body and the way his touch turned everything else to static.

Vale pushed him down against the leather seat, blanketing Kieran’s body with his own weight. The pressure was grounding—almost comforting in its solidity—and Kieran wanted more. He wanted to feel pinned, real, here instead of fracturing into panic. His hips rolled up without his permission, seeking friction, and Vale groaned against his mouth.

“Fuck,” Vale breathed, pulling his tie loose with one hand while the other stayed firm on Kieran’s throat. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

The question felt rhetorical, but Kieran found himself shaking his head—genuinely uncertain. Vale’s desire felt real in these moments. Not calculated or pedagogical or part of some methodical lesson plan. Just raw want that matched the heat pooling low in Kieran’s stomach, the arousal he kept pretending didn’t exist even as his body proved him a liar.

“Maybe we don’t go in at all,” Vale murmured against Kieran’s jaw, his lips trailing lower to find his gauze-wrapped throat. “Maybe we go home and I show you exactly how beautiful you are when you stop fighting what you want.”

The suggestion sent liquid heat through Kieran’s veins, his body responding with enthusiasm his mind couldn’t match.Vale’s hand slid lower, fingers teasing at his waistband, and suddenly the limo felt too small. Too warm. Too full of terrifying possibilities that Kieran’s body was already leaning into while his mind screamed that this was exactly how Vale wanted him—pliant, desperate, using physical sensation to escape the horror of his own reality.

I’m using him to cope with him.

The thought should have been sobering.

Instead, Kieran arched into Vale’s touch and let himself drown.

“We should—” Kieran gasped as Vale’s fingers found the button on his pants. “We should go in.”

Vale’s movements stilled, his face lifting to study Kieran’s expression in the dim light filtering through the tinted windows. “Are you sure?”

No.

But Kieran nodded, hands pressing against Vale’s chest to create space between them. “I want to go in. I want to m-meet other artists. I want to feel normal.”