“So what’s the plan?” Laurence’s voice was hoarse, even though he willed it to be anything but. “Fuck with my mind? Just because it’s what your dad wants? Goddess, Freddy, get a fucking spine! Stand up to the bastard!”

“I have been standing up to him for years, dear boy.” Freddy feigned interest in his own fingernails for a moment. “He isn’t falling for it any longer. I’m afraid you are rather buggered, as are we all if Icky can’t get over his profound fear of hurting anyone.”

“You won’t get me off this plane, Freddy. I’ll barricade myself in the damn bathroom if I have to.”

Mikey snorted softly.

Laurence looked between them. There was an undercurrent there. Something he could use, if only he could sniff it out.

Why was Mikey here?

How had Freddy even found him?

“You’re right,” Freddy said absently. “I picked him out of your memories.”

“Leverage,” Laurence grunted. “You can’t seriously think he can make me do anything you can’t.”

Freddy eased away from the barrier and sauntered toward the far end of the viewing platform. “I can make you do anything, Laurence,” he mused. “But none of that would fulfill Father’s order. Not directly.” He gestured vaguely back toward Laurence, and a small wooden table appeared out of nowhere.

Mikey stepped toward the table and reached into his jacket to withdraw a battered old tobacco tin.

Laurence knew what was in it before Mikey even popped it open, but he stared anyway, like it was a goddamn Clockwork Orange moment. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Syringe. Needle. Packets of heroin. Lighter. Spoon. Rubber strap. Your basic junkie first aid kit. Every smack addict had at least one.

Mikey placed it down on the table and stepped back from it.

“What would work best,” Freddy said, “is if you do it to yourself.”

Laurence stared at the tin. It held him in a grasp he couldn’t define. It was sexual and vile, thirst-quenching and horrifying. Like the most empty-eyed pornography, it aroused and disgusted in equal measure, whispering seductive lies which were more alluring than the truth.

He tried to look away.

The evening light flickered amber and gold across the reflective surface of the syringe and brought to mind the soft, delicious glow of a hit ready to shoot. It was a thirty-minute orgasm in liquid form, and all he had to do was put it in a vein.

He groaned and kicked the table, and scattered the tin and its contents across the floor. The syringe rolled toward the edge of the veranda.

One of the small packets split open and spilled powder across the wood, stark and white.

“I’ll kill you,” he snarled. “I’ll fucking kill you both.”

“Possibly. But not yet.”

Laurence managed to rip his gaze from the spilled smack and look to Freddy, but it had a hold on him, and lured his eye right back to it.

Goddess. Sober for over a year, and yet the moment he even so much as looked at a needle it was right back with him like it was yesterday.

Frederick could cure him of this, couldn’t he? If he could make an entire imaginary world, he could sweep Laurence’s addiction away like it never happened.

“Yes,” Frederick admitted. “It wouldn’t fix whatever drove you to drugs to begin with, but yes. I could.”

“But you’re not going to,” Laurence said bitterly.

Frederick sauntered toward him, neatly sidestepping the mess on the floor. He gripped Laurence’s jaw and tipped it back until Laurence was forced to meet his eye.

“No,” Freddy said. “I’m not.”

Laurence squeezed his eyes shut as tears welled in them. The despair was crushing him. To have such hope, to have a fucking cure right here, and have it taken away was worse than anything he could have imagined. He could be normal, live day by day without the constant background need, without the threat of post-acute withdrawal syndrome.

He could wake up, go to work, go home, and go to sleep all without thinking about heroin even once.

He sobbed softly, unable to hold back.

“I know what Michael has done to you,” Freddy said. “I know the lies that you tell yourself to pretend that it wasn’t rape. You like to believe you had a choice, don’t you?”

Laurence shuddered and recoiled from Freddy’s hand. His eyes snapped open and he wiped tears from them. “What?” Numbness spread through his chest.

He didn’t want to go there.

Goddess, please, he didn’t want to go there.

Freddy slipped his hands into his pockets. “You think it was reasonable for him to abuse you the way he did?”

“I…” He swallowed, then hiccuped. “No, but…”

“Don’t like the r-word, do we?” Frederick’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Quite understandable. Does it help to know that you aren’t his only victim?” He reached out and idly straightened Laurence’s shirt collar. “That if you’d stopped Michael, you could have prevented him from abusing others?”

“That’s not fair,” Laurence choked.

“What was it like,” Freddy continued, “sucking his cock for a hit?”

Laurence felt like his legs had been cut right out from under him. He dropped like a sack of fertilizer and buried his face in his hands. “Shut up!”

“Time and time again.” Freddy’s voice sank down until it came from beside him. “Michael lost count. I bet you did, too. Both telling yourselves that it wasn’t rape because there were no bruises. Because it was a transaction, business. Because you were friends. Here’s a funny thing people forget all the time, Laurence.” A heavy hand gripped Laurence’s shoulder. “If you weren’t in a position to refuse, it’s rape. And you know that, don’t you? Deep down, you’ve always known what he did to you.”

Laurence cried so hard that the hiccups came in force. The little gulps of air which made him sob and pop in equal measure. The sounds his dad had nicknamed him Cricket for.

“I’ve heard it said that addiction is a symptom,” Freddy mused like he was discussing the weather. “It’s a side-effect of one mental health issue or another, a desperate attempt to medicate oneself when all else has failed. You have that gaping hole in your self-esteem, don’t you? The one you tried to fuck your way through. The one which told you again and again that you weren’t worthy. You weren’t worthy of your parents’ love, you weren’t worthy of anyone you met, and now you aren’t even worthy of Quentin.”

That was cold.

Laurence wailed so hard that he felt like a damn toddler all over again. “Stop! Goddess, Freddy, stop! What do you want? Why are you doing this? Just stop!” He gasped for breath. His chest ached from the crying, and taking in air hurt. He was exhausted. Numb.

When Dad died, he’d felt like this. It was impossible to sleep, yet he was too drained to stay awake. He didn’t want to go to bed because it felt wrong, like if he could just stay awake the day his dad died wouldn’t end, and Dad wouldn’t have ever have died yesterday or last week or even last year. He could live forever in a day when Dad had still been alive.

He wanted to live forever in a day where he’d been worthy of Quentin. Where they’d woken up together, entwined as one, and kissed.

A day when Quentin still loved him, before he ruined it all and shot up again.

You haven’t done it yet.

He clung to the thought, but it was slippery and weak.

Freddy snorted. “I can read your mind, Bambi. I know what you’ve seen. And I know you’re hiding it from him.”

The thought evaporated.

Laurence wheezed as he turned toward Freddy. It was hard to see him, blurred as he was through tears, and Laurence didn’t bother trying to focus.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “I’m begging you, Freddy, please don’t.”

“You watched,” Freddy hissed. “Once. But you and I both know the truth, don’t we? We know how long it went on for.”

“Please-” Laurence shook his head and tried to push Freddy away.

“Thirteen years, Laurence!”

And then the duke’s arm came down.

The rod cracked across Quentin’s chest.

Quentin screamed.

Laurence screamed. His body convulsed and he threw himself away from Freddy, crawling across the floor to get away from him.

There was nothing Laurence could do as the duke struck his own son again.

And again.

And again.

Quentin’s screams were like nails on chalkboard.

He couldn’t take this. Not again. He yowled, a primal sound which bore his pain out into the world that Freddy had constructed where it could go unheeded by people who didn’t care that he suffered.

No.

People who wanted him to suffer.

His hand slid on something, and a slight antiseptic smell assaulted his nose, like an opened box of Band-Aids. He didn’t need to look down to know what it was beneath his fingers, but he couldn’t help himself.

He’d slid right into the scattered smack. The powder was smeared over his skin like talc.

He couldn’t breathe.

It sang to him.

The song was clear and beautiful.

The song was a lie.

It promised peace and warmth. Happiness.

Oxygen.

Escape.

It swathed him with its lullaby, pretty words of comfort and joy. It promised him air in a world which had none.

A line of blood cut through the air. It drew an arc across the duke’s bare chest.

Laurence hissed. He knew what came next.

He couldn’t watch it.

He couldn’t.

He scrabbled across the floor, desperate to piece together the tin’s contents before it was too late.

Laurence barely noticed when the mountains melted away. He didn’t care that he was in an armchair or that the tin was on his knee.

He rolled up his sleeve and prayed for divine intervention.

It didn’t come.

But he could breathe at last.