Staring at Julian's door, Nathan hesitated, wondering if he should even be up here. Donovan was out on errands after they'd finished hanging out, Rick and Tanner were doing god knows what, and Ian was somewhere. Now was the first chance he'd gotten to sneak back up to Julian's room, but he wasn't sure if that was safe. The first time had been an accident and everything had gone fine, but so did things with Ian half the time.

What did Julian's bad half look like?

He did his best to knock lightly but loud enough for Julian to hear. It wouldn't do much good except to let Julian know he was here. Julian couldn't open the door from the inside, but walking in on him seemed hazardous to his health. After a short moment, Nathan opened the door and took a step in to find Julian lying on his bed and reading a magazine. Julian's expression jumped to surprise, and he hopped off the bed and shut the door quickly. It made Nathan nervous, how he'd just locked them in together with no hesitation.

"I thought you were Maggie." Julian touched his own chest with a sigh of relief and then shifted some sort of switch by the door.

"What is that?" Nathan's curiosity got the best of him.

"It's a do not disturb indicator. My emotional state is fragile, and it tells Maggie I want some space. I have mandatory check-ins at curfew, but for the most part, I can keep her away if dealing with her is too stressful."

That explained why Julian had seemed unworried about anyone walking in on them during his last visit. It must have been flipped when he'd come in. Somehow, that made him feel worse about all of this.

"I honestly didn't think you'd be coming back," Julian said with a smile that made him feel abruptly less safe in this room.

It was that or the hand that trailed over his arm. Perhaps he shouldn't have worn short sleeves up here. Last time he'd been without a shirt entirely though. Julian was eyeing his skin, and Nathan pulled his arm away with a glare.

"Do I need to start running?" Nathan asked with legitimate fear.

"No," Julian answered, but he didn't sound at all convincing. There was a very direct look in his eyes that said otherwise. "You know, if you let me cut you, it will look nice when it's done." Julian reached out to touch his arm with his abnormally deft fingers and traced the line of his upper arm muscle.

"I'm going to take a hard pass." Nathan pressed his back to the door but really had nowhere to go.

Julian sighed with dismay.

Nathan had seen Julian's designs and he was right, at least about how they looked. They were smooth and expertly detailed, but he was not interested in the slow agonizing torture that would be.

"Let me..." Julian purred, pulling Nathan forward, and he stumbled from how strong the kid was. Despite his size, the muscles in his arms and hand were toned, and he pulled him all the way to the bed where he pushed him.

Nathan tumbled backwards, panting in terror, and Julian chased him, leaning over him on the bed. "No!" Nathan tried to shove him off, but Julian slipped past his hand and planted his fingers into his shoulder joint. The sharp pain forced him to halt, and he trembled under his hands.

"Please? It won't take that long." Julian bit his lip in excitement, but had yet to brandish a blade. The lust in Julian's eyes for his skin creeped him out just as much as when Ian examined him too long.

"Why would I consent to you torturing me for however long you'd need?"

"Torture?" Julian's voice ascended an octave, and he retracted his boney fingers from Nathan's joint to hover them in front of himself. Julian had lifted himself enough to allow Nathan to slide off the bed and huddle against his dresser defiantly.

"It doesn't... hurt, and to your perception, it will go by in a flash. Is that the only reason you don't what me to?"

"What do you mean?" Nathan asked, careful not to show too much interest.

That question was enough though, because it twisted Julian's smile and he hopped off of the bed to rummage through his drawers. Dragging a small table to the end of the bed, he put several bowls out and then went to Nathan, offering him a hand.

Which he refused to accept. Curiosity about the process was no acceptance of it, but Julian didn't seem to differentiate that in his head. Not surprising considering he was a mental patient.

"I promise it won't hurt," Julian promised suspiciously as he bounced his hand with enthusiasm.

"Even if it doesn't, won't someone notice?" Nathan tried to protest with reason, but Julian shook his head.

"I'll do it here," Julian gingerly traced his fingers over his shoulder and down to the bottom of his sleeve, somewhere people seldom saw. "This part of your arm is also least perceptive to direct pain, unlike the softer parts. Here for example." Julian pinched the soft skin of his under arm, and Nathan smacked his hand away.

"You said there was no pain," Nathan whined.

"There isn't, but the least sensitive areas are the easiest to work with because they won't rouse you."

"Rouse me?" Nathan wasn't liking where this was going. If he planned on hitting him over the head with something, he'd like to know now.

"It's easier to show you." Julian pulled him back to his feet and wasted no time in pushing him onto the bed.

Nathan fell reluctantly, unsure of what was going on. "I did not agree to this." Nathan raised an eyebrow and took a shallow breath, but Julian waited patiently for him to speak this time. "It won't hurt?" Nathan grit his teeth.

"Nope. You'll feel nothing. Take off your shirt," Julian said a bit too close to Nathan's ear, and he flinched away, his heart pounding. "If you would enjoy a design and your only reservation is the pain, then you have nothing to worry about. Come on, Nathan... when have I ever lied to you or hurt you?"

The kid had a point, but also had every grown man in this place terrified of coming up here. There had to be some reason he was locked in, but Julian had been so kind to him last time he was here. All he'd done was help him work through his stress and calm down enough to face Ian. In a way he owed him, and Julian was right about him liking his designs.

Who didn't get a prison tattoo?

Julian prodded him until he took off his shirt with a shaky sigh. While he did so, Julian returned back to the head of the bed and lit something in a wooden bowl. It smelled potent and he coughed as Julian turned on a weak fan that blew it toward his face.

"Is that incense?" Nathan asked.

"It's not." Julian slipped on a slim mask as he came back to the bed, but lowered it to speak. "On your stomach." Julian nudged him, and he let out another whine as he complied.

Julian put one leg on either side of his hips and sat gently on him in a way that had Nathan's vision spiraling. Sweating trickled out of his pores and he gripped the sheet much too hard, envisioning Ian as he was on top of him. Nathan was clammy, panicking, and his breath came too fast, but a sharp pain from Julian digging his fingers into his back made him still in fear.

"Calm down," Julian said, leaning down to the side of Nathan's face. "I like girls, seriously. I'm just going over the muscles in your back. You're tenser then a brick wall. Just relax. I'm not going to molest you, harm you, or cut you until I let you know."

Relaxing wasn't going to happen, and Julian must have realized that because he sighed. It was painful at first, Julian's fingers pressing into his muscles, but after a moment, it sent a pleasant feeling through him. Nathan groaned in frustration as he unwillingly released the tension in his muscles and fell into a calm as Julian's fingers ran over him.

"Don't be so discontent." Julian chuckled. "This has to feel nice. I've never had to work through so much tension in muscles before."

"Before?" Nathan asked. Who else's muscles had he melted like warm butter?

"Yes, I am a trained masseur. Well, as trained as I can get at fifteen. Through my training, I worked with many people who volunteered for the program I was in in middle school. It was some early interest medical program and I had nothing better to do. None of those volunteers quite take the cake to you."

"None of them had to deal with Rick and Ian," Nathan mumbled into the mattress.

"True. I need something small that will fit on your shoulder. What design do you want?" Julian asked, and Nathan grumbled into the bed sheets.

Now he expected him to think?

"How about a rose?" Nathan said nervously, knowing that it would herald the start of this soon to be nightmare if Julian had lied about anything.

Roses were his mother's favorite. Some time, long ago, a deadbeat had bought her some. That gesture has started the relationship that had ended up with him in his mother's arms. There had been happiness when he'd been born, but not long after that man had abandoned her. Despite all that, his mother still smiled whenever she saw roses. Without them, he might not have been born, and with his mother's smile on his mind, he accepted what was to come.

"Sounds nice. I'll make it simple." Julian clapped enthusiastically, but his fingers returned to his back not a moment later.

Speech failed Nathan as Julian's fingers pummeled the stress in his shoulders to chalk dust before moving to his lower back. It was only a brief reprieve of his fingers running through the muscles there before he returned to the top and worked over the ones around his shoulder blades.

By then, Nathan was half a marshmallow and his eyes drooped from the relaxing feeling spreading through all the tension he'd accrued in the last couple months.

"There you go." Julian's voice was muffled, as if he'd slipped the mask back up over his face. Do me a favor and think about sleep."

Sleep? It wasn't going to be hard with Julian's fingers drifting over all of his pain and sprinkling it with release. The mist in his face had been difficult to breath earlier, but it was now weighing him toward unconsciousness. For a split second, he panicked as he realized it was dragging him under, but it was a passing thought as Julian's touch coaxed him into relaxation.

"Julian..." The word was the last that slipped from his lips as everything floated in the blackness around him.

"No worries, Nathan. You'll be safe here." The light touch on the side of his face eased him into the nothingness. Consciousness slouched away like a muck that had been drowning him and he fell into the first sleep he'd had here that felt like peace.

#

Everything was so warm, and he turned and pulled the blanket closer to his face. This was nice, just sleeping somewhere safe, with no fear of someone accosting him. Where was he though? It took him a moment, but he remembered he was in Julian's room, and he snapped his eyes open to find Julian sitting in the corner.

It was dark in the room, which wasn't out of the range of possibility with the days growing shorter with the season. Creepily, like a jaguar waiting in the shadows of the underbrush, Julian was peering up with dim eyes that melted into the darkness around him.

"Have you been staring at me the whole time I slept?" The question wasn't serious, more of exclamatory, but Julian answered all the same.

"No, I was meditating." Julian's voice was so calm.

It took Nathan a moment for the memories to flood back, and when they finally did, he stiffened in apprehension. He really didn't want to inspect himself to see if any pieces were missing. Instead, he wiggled his fingers and toes, and they were still there, but he distinctly remembered agreeing to something insane.

Moving his arm, he didn't feel any pain, but how could it not hurt if Julian had cut him. Afraid to look and yet terrified not to, he glanced over to his arm. Bandages wound around his upper arm and were neatly tied in a small knot at his shoulder. It was very clean, unlike the mangled bloody mess he'd expected. Nathan pressed his fingers to it, and there still wasn't any pain or blood seeping through the bandages.

Julian stood up and came over to sit on the side of the bed. "It's all done." A pleasant smile lifted Julian's face.

"What did you do?" There had been no pain. Hell, he couldn't remember anything after his eyes had drooped. Why hadn't he woken up even once?

"Nothing strange." Julian chuckled. "I relax your muscles, which draws your body closer to unconsciousness. The smell in front of your face is sharp to start, but once you are exposed to the idea of sleep it's a heavy sedative. It's all natural and won't knock out a conscious person, but if you're relaxed it will pull you under. Doesn't last long, but I work quickly. You did rouse a few times, but the herbs create a pretty heavy haze so you fell right back into sleep."

"Is it going to start hurting later?" Surely there was something about this that was nefarious.

"It shouldn't," Julian said, turning his head a bit as he looked to his bandaged arm. "Does it hurt now?"

Nathan shook his head quickly.

"Good. The cuts were clean and I only took off layers of skin, so you are not injured in any way. I put a salve on it that numbs the stinging you would normally feel if uncared for. It does need to air out after a day or so, so you have to take off the bandages, clean it and I usually put another salve on it to keep it clean and painless. If you come back tomorrow, I'll make sure it's done properly."

Everything Julian had said so far didn't sound like the ranting of a mad man or someone who carved people like pumpkins. It sounded like he'd done this process a hundred times and that it was perfectly safe and harmless. That, and he applied something to it to dull pain and promote healing.

What exactly was he?

"If you don't hurt people then..." Nathan was confused here.

Everyone in the house thought he was some psycho who carved people. If this was how he normally carried out the process, someone wouldn't feel anything for the entire time, from cutting to healing.

Why then was he a monster?

"Oh, I definitely hurt people." Julian's words were bitter, and Nathan cringed, though not in fear. There was something in his voice, not quite sadness or anger, but something between. "The two boys I killed, I had for the better part of two days. Every line of pain I sliced through them healed a small part of a wound that had opened and festered all over my own."

"Why did you hurt them if you don't normally?" Nathan knew very little about what Julian had done, only what Ian had warned him about.

Julian's gaze was sharp but not hostile, and it was a different than Ian's or Rick's. It wasn't rage, spite, or a sick desire to cause pain. It was cold, calculating, and practical.

With a small sigh, Julian rolled up his sleeves and extending his wrists out to him.

"I detailed them later, but there is no disguising the difference in the cuts. I can cover them, obscure them, and disguise them, but they are always the same thing."

Nathan frowned at the cascade of crisscrossed scars down from his wrists to his elbow.

"Those boys never touched me, not where anyone could see. "Sometimes, I cut myself because I hated who I was, and sometimes so I could feel something. There is a point that you can reach where you are in so much pain that you just feel nothing–like you're a void, crushing everything inside of yourself, and opening your flesh releases everything inside of you into the air. After getting out of the hospital for the third time, I was fed up."

"What those two did to me made me feel worthless, like I had nothing to offer the world. There was nothing wrong with me, but there was with the monsters who preyed on me, and I was not prey. So yes, I tortured them while indulging in everything they said made me an abomination. A monster. They called for one and I answered."

Julian stopped as he realized how still Nathan had grown, stuck sitting right next to him, and his expression lightened.

"I had never hurt anyone but myself before I killed them. I don't hurt people, but I can hurt people. There is a very thin line for me, and I suppose that's why I'm here, but I will never regret ridding the earth of those scum."

"But..." Nathan found his voice, uttering the last with a careful, fearful ring. "You still have nightmares." Ian had told him that Julian woke screaming, and though Nathan hadn't heard him personally, surely the terrors still haunted him at night.

"I do." Julian sighed. "I killed them, yes, but they never really died. When I close my eyes at night, I'm still a freak."

"Julian, you're not a freak." Nathan said quietly. Weird as hell, scary as shit, a little unhinged, but not a freak.

"Why? I'm not normal." Julian looked as if he were sinking in on himself.

"Well, you're not...normal," Nathan said honestly, and Julian grit his teeth and looked away from him. "What's wrong with not being normal though? You're smart and know things I couldn't dream of learning, but even with that knowledge, you're kind and quick at noticing the changes in people's moods. You knew how to soothe me even when I didn't know what was up or down.

"Normal people don't empathize with others nearly as well as you do, and they don't go out of their way to help others. Before I met you, I imagined you were some evil goblin in a cave up here, but now that I know you, I think you're cool, and I would love to be your friend."

Julian blushed, and Nathan was surprised when Julian leaned into his arm and averted his eyes. Did he want a hug? Nathan was terrible at telling these things, and he was a guy, so it wasn't like he regularly got touchy feely with people. The way Julian was so frightened to meet his eyes as he leaned on him made Nathan sad.

Using his best judgement, he took a breath to calm himself and wrapped his arm around Julian's shoulders. It was like hugging a rock, and he wasn't sure if he should stay where he was or retract his hand. Both could be offensive or hurtful, so he remained until Julian turned back to him with guarded eyes.

"I would like a friend," Julian said, his voice was so soft that it was almost a whisper.

"G-good," Nathan stumbled over his words as the blush crawled his own face. "I need someone to take care of this rose shaped cut I got on my arm. Got it in some drive by stabbing."

Julian chuckled and leaned back into him, closing his eyes. "Thank you, Nathan."

"For being your friend or your canvas?" Nathan chuckled with him, but it fell away in Julian's silence.

"For telling me that being different is okay."

Word count: 3381 --- Edited July 14th, 2020