Page 27 of Hush, Little Baby

He is all softness, his shoulders rounded, his chest not quite flat, the line of his belly dipping then gently ballooning out, no hint of muscle, but an unmistakable, pillowy softness that makes me want to both break him and worship him at the same time.

Charlie catches my gaze and goes red from his hairline to his chest. With a choked noise, he pulls his arms in tighter, one crossing his belly and the other clamped between his thighs, hiding—ineffectively—his soft cock and the adorable pooch of his lower stomach.

“Please,” he tries again, voice breaking. “Can I just do it myself? Please? I—” his mouth works, but he can’t seem to find the right words. “I don’t… I don’t like being seen.”

I crouch so we’re nearly eye to eye, not touching him, not crowding him, letting the silence carry the message that I’ll wait all night if needed.

He doesn’t last two seconds before the silence caves him in. He drops his gaze to the tile, shoulders caving, spine folding down as he shrinks before me. I can feel the tension in his arms, the barely contained panic in his rapid, shallow breathing.

“Let me see you, Charlie,” I say, quiet but direct. My hand closes gently around both his wrists, thumbs pressing the delicate tendons inside. “Let me look at you, baby.”

He shakes his head, lips pressed white. I don’t push harder—just wait. The air between us fills with the sound of his breathing, the slow drip of the faucet, the distant city hush outside the window. He holds out for longer than I expect. But, in the end, I am patient, and he is not built for resistance.

His arms start to shake from the effort of holding them closed. After a minute, I feel the fight begin to slip out of him. I wait until he’s nearly limp before I draw his wrists forward, gently, so they part and leave him exposed.

He is beautiful. A desperate little thing, all hunched and trembling like a caught rabbit. His arms, once so fiercely locked, now slide forward at my insistence, exposing the soft bulge of his belly and the sad, limp weight of his cock nestled in the little tuft of golden hair. He makes a soft noise in his throat, a whimper of surrender, and his hands flutter up as if to reach for something—cover himself, maybe, or ward off a blow. But I keep his wrists gently apart, cradled in my hands, so he has no choice but to stand there and let me see all of him.

He closes his eyes, and when he speaks, it is barely above a wet, shivering whisper. “Don’t look at me.”

“Why not?” I ask, genuinely curious.

He opens one eye, peeks at me, and instantly regrets it. “Because I’m gross,” he mutters, and that’s when the tears restart, thick and sudden and splashing hot onto his arms. He flinches away from his own words, as if the confession is a curse that might poison us both. “I’m gross and ugly and fat and—” he swallows a sob, voice hitching so hard I almost think he’ll be sick, “and I don’t want to be seen like this.”

Oh, sweetheart, I think, a coil of something fierce and fond unspooling behind my ribs.

6

Nikolaus

I don’t know who put those words in his mouth first, whether it was some parent with more cruelty than patience, some lover too stupid to understand the gift of being allowed near him, or simply the slow, grinding brutality of illness and loneliness and poverty wearing grooves into his mind until he learned to mistake survival for ugliness.

It doesn’t matter. Because whoever taught him to look at himself like this is not here now.

I am.

“No,” I say.

Charlie flinches as if I have raised my voice, though I have not. If anything, I speak too softly, the word almost swallowed by the steam curling between us.

He sniffles, refusing to look at me. “You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You are,” he whispers, miserable and certain. “People always do that. They say nice things because they feel bad, but I know what I look like.”

I release one of his wrists, and his hand immediately flies back toward his stomach, trying to shield himself again, but I catch his chin between my fingers before he can fold completely inward.

His wet lashes flutter, his mouth trembles, and for one suspended second, he looks so young that something inside me goes still.

“You know what you have been told,” I correct him. “That is not the same thing.”

His face crumples again, but this time he does not cry harder. If anything, the words seem to confuse him too much for that. His eyes dart over mine, searching for mockery, for disgust, for whatever familiar cruelty he expects to find.

He finds none.

I stroke my thumb along the damp curve of his cheek.

“You are not gross,” I say. “You are not ugly. You are not disgusting. You are tired, and frightened, and very poorly cared for.”