Their Little Beauty (MxMxM+GF)

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Waking Up

He was running, everything seeming as though he were trapped inside a vast tunnel with no end in sight. Footsteps bounced around him, echoing like haunted shadows nipping at his heels.

"I found you, Bri".

"No!" he screamed at the voice, willing his burning legs to go faster. But with each step he took towards nowhere, his movements became slower, weighed down by the rising ground of sticky black tar.

"I'll be back. Remember: if you tell them anything, they'll all be next", the mysterious voice warned tauntingly, whispering so close to his ear he felt the tickle of breath.

"Don't you fucking touch them! Never, you fucking hear me?! Don't you dare fucking touch them!" he roared out with an anger and hatred like he'd never felt before. He trudged through the sludge, fighting as it grabbed at his waist with sentient-like hands.

He couldn't let it get to them.

A malicious and ominous laugh reverberated through the dark phantom space, chilling Briar to the bone. He knew that laugh. He knew who it belonged to. But why was Harlow here, now, in this space, when he'd left Briar alone for close to two years?

When had he come back?

"Argh!" Briar screamed, a pain shooting through his head so strong he collapsed into the sea of black hands. They grabbed him tight, not giving him even an inch to move or moment to think as they continued dragging him further and further below the sticky surface that swam into his nose and down his throat, gagging him until it settled into his belly and airways.

And it swallowed him whole.

~~~~~

"He's having another nightmare; his heart rate is too high. This is the fifth one this week" Quinn worried, wiping the sleeping boy's perspiring head with his sleeve and gently dabbing the injured temple.

"We aren't allowed to wake him, remember. The doctor said-".

"You think I don't bloody know that?" the man snapped at his husband, immediately regretting it. Sighing heavily, he collapsed into the nearby chair and burrowed his face into shaking hands.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, love. I'm sorry" he whispered, voice breaking as shame rushed to his eyes in the form of fat tears. Two arms wrapped around his shoulders from behind, drawing his head to rest into the warm and dark crevice of Devon's neck. Quinn hid his shame there, seeking a moment to simply hide away from the world and its overwhelming reality.

"It's alright, Q. I know you didn't mean it. We're all under a lot of stress, so give yourself some slack. We're all doing the best we can to keep going as normal".

Didn't Quinn know those words to be true. He and Devon were arguing almost every day, Jesse had become an anxious wreck and had slipped into old habits, where they ate very little and slept even less. Everything was collapsing, the three of them trying their very best to at least keep themselves from falling apart.

It had been a week since the assault, and nothing was going as well as they- or the doctors- had hoped. Briar, during his brief moments awake, were mostly spent in confusion. One day, he couldn't remember where he was or why he was there, the assault and what came in the days before gone from memory. On those days, it wasn't uncommon for the man to become agitated at the gaps in his memory, and scared of the sudden changes to his body, physically lashing out on one occasion towards a nurse who approached him from behind.

Other days, he was more aware of where he was, but was completely distant. His lovers had no real way of knowing what it was exactly that kept the boy trapped in his mind, looking out of the room window for sometimes hours on end. These instances were the worst, because it was as though Quinn and his lovers didn't exist to their sweet man despite being in the same room. Always, in the same room.