When September Ends

Chapter 1: Taken

Harry's green eyes slowly blinked open to stare blearily up at the ceiling overhead before turning his head to one side to take in the unfamiliar room in which he found himself lying on his back, lovingly tucked into a large and comfortable bed. The raven didn't have the slightest idea where he was; the last thing that he could remember was leaving the corner grocer near his house with the half-gallon of milk his mother needed in tow and setting off towards home. His head was muddled and his thoughts were confused.

The bedroom door swung open with a quiet creak and a man stepped into his line of sight holding a metal breakfast tray in his large hands. Seeing him awake his handsome face broke into a kind smile, dark eyes overflowing with love.

"Did you sleep well, my darling?" he purred, crossing the room towards him. "Have you any idea how much I've missed you, Harry?"

"I..." through the warm fog still clouding his mind Harry struggled to speak, beginning to push himself up onto all fours. "How do you know my name?"

The dark haired man chuckled lightly, shifting the weight of the tray of food onto his left arm and using the other to gently push him back against the pillows. "We've been married for five years this coming month, darling." He told him, sliding the tray across his lap before grabbing the chair from behind the desk and setting it beside the bed so that he could sit down. "I know that a lot has slipped from you over the course of your illness. Eat. You need your strength."

"Married...? I'm nineteen!" Harry yowled, attempting to get up again only to once more be firmly but gently pushed down again by the man as he patiently righted the breakfast tray the raven had nearly tipped over.

"At heart, I'm sure, but you turned twenty-five just three months ago now. It was a small affair; just the two of us. But you were still very weak back then. Couldn't even sit up on your own." With graceful poise of wrist and fingers he picked up the fork lying beside one of the plates on the tray and skewered a sausage link on the end of it before offering it to him. "Open."

Harry stared at him, too dumbstruck to even muster a proper glare at the implied suggestion he couldn't feed himself.

"Harry, darling, please. I know that you've all but certainly regained the strength to feed yourself by now but doing simple things like this, well, they've become habit. So let me keep doing this for you for just a while longer: ween myself off of it." The strange man-likely, he'd now reasoned, the one responsible for drugging him unconscious and kidnapping him off the street-offered another smile. This one smaller, slightly self-conscious but no less warm as he poked him gently in the lips with the sausage. "Open, darling. I want you to eat all of this and gain back all the weight you lost to being so ill. I even made all your favorites for you: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes and eggs benedict. And your tea, of course. I know that this is a lot, but every calorie counts for you at this point."

His efforts to speak again were mistaken as permission to feed him by the stranger who promptly shoved the sausage into his mouth. Left with no choice but to chew if he wanted to avoid choking to death he was forced to postpone his questioning for a moment.

"Now, I don't want to rush you-especially since your body isn't used to consuming so much at once anymore-but I can't stay for very long. As much as I hate leaving you on your own in your condition I have to go to work soon."

Work? He was going to work as if it all were completely normal and he didn't have a teenaged boy he'd accosted and kidnapped sitting in one of the beds in his house? Then again, he was delusional; that much, at least, was starkly clear.

Oh well, his kidnapper's impending criminal fallacy would be his greatly appreciated boon and would give him the chance to escape and find his way home.