Reclaim
Nissim
All Locklann had ever done was fight.
Perhaps that wasn’t what it had been like in the very beginning, when everything about his life had still been innocent and wondrous, but the very second the reality of that wonder had began to settle in, he had began fighting. And from then on, it had been a fight against that wonder and a fight against his desire to feel it. Because someone like him had never been supposed to see the world as this amazing place in which anything could happen, because the reality was that it couldn’t. Nothing could happen. Because life was just an eternal trial for what would happen after it. He only had one chance to get it right and deep down he–along with everyone else–knew that he never would. Because he never could. It was the one thing he would always fail to do. The one thing even Locklann couldn’t successfully complete. Life.
But ever since Nissim, and all the other ones before him, that fight had stopped. Suddenly it no longer mattered where he would end up after he died, because maybe there was no way that anything–even after death–would be more painful than life itself already was. Suddenly the fight to stay alive at all had overtaken the fear to end up in hell, because what could it possibly matter where he’d end up when all he had ever known was suffering? How could he wish for something he had never even known existed?
Nissim had never seen it in anyone else. He had known people who longed for pain and he had known people who even seemed to need it, but never before had he seen anyone whose life was completely dependent on the existence of it. Never before had he seen someone who had so fully accepted that pain would always be an essential part of his life and never before had he seen anyone who, if you looked at it superficially, so desperately longed for his life to never get any better. Not running from abuse, but running straight to it instead. Welcoming it with both arms outstretched, no matter how badly he dreaded it at at the same time and no matter how the trauma from the past covered every single inch of his entire body.
Yet all he wanted on top of that was to love and be loved, which would under every other circumstance be the biggest contradiction there had ever been. The two didn’t go together. Abuse didn’t come with love. Abuse came with fear and hatred. Abuse could be disguised love, but it would always be conditional. It would always come from wanting things–whether it would be a situation or someone else’s entire being–to be different. And that wasn’t love. No matter how people would like to convince themselves that it was, that they were only doing it out of love, it would never be love.
Nissim loved him, but even his abuse didn’t happen out of love. Nissim didn’t love him unconditionally either; that was the whole point of why they were here. He loved him for who he was, mesmerised by his beauty and amazed–every single time–by just how much he could handle that he really wasn’t supposed to be able to handle, but he still wanted him to be better. He was still striving for the perfection he would permanently destroy the very second he had reached it. Nissim didn’t hate him for who he was, but he didn’t let him off the hook either. He didn’t let him have a second of rest, because Locklann no longer existed for himself. Locklann only existed because Nissim wanted him to exist, and that was all the love that made sense for him to feel and all the love that made sense for Nissim to give. Nissim was his God. He made all the decisions for him. Nissim could let him go forever or he could decide to kill him, but he would be dead either way. Without Nissim there was no life, because Locklann was already dead. With Nissim’s pain as his heaven and Nissim’s neglect resulting in a never ending hell. His suicide eternal. The pain would never end and always be too hollow.
Nissim stepped towards him and closed the distance with a hand enclosing around Locklann’s throat. He began to squeeze it, while making sure their eyes were connected. Nissim wouldn’t allow him to look away, because Locklann needed to see it. He raised his arm, forcing Locklann to move onto his toes to be able to remain standing, no matter how difficult Nissim was making it for him to do so. “What did you do, Locklann?” He asked. His voice was calm but dark. There was no question behind his control. He was fuelling his own anger, but it wouldn’t come to an explosion until he would want it to. Not yet. He had to wait for the responses to determine just how bad this secret was. Because Nissim would set him free, but not without making Locklann pay the price. “What did you do to make Daddy angry, baby?”
Locklann had no perception of time. They could’ve been standing there mere seconds--opposite each other, Locklann waiting for Nissim to inflict whatever he would--or it could have been hours that they stood there. Locklann’s thoughts had become a chaos and in no way could he find a chronology in them anymore. And so time had become something vague, something for the people that lived in it, but not for those half on the outside, where day no longer meant awake and night no longer sleep, where weekdays no longer meant school, and Sundays not rest. Sometime, over the years of his life, it had all stopped making sense. Perhaps that’s what happened when you’d fallen through it a few times.
He blinked when he realised his eyes were hurting, but he never looked away. He was breathing, almost calmly, but there was enough elevation in his breathing to give away his fear. Nissim would notice. Nissim always noticed. There was a secret in the back of Locklann’s mind and he was trying to spin around it so Nissim wouldn’t read it in his eyes, while all too aware Nissim would find a way through every barrier Locklann would put up. And he was happy for it, because ultimately he wanted Nissim to find it and discipline him. Whatever it meant. However much it would hurt. Regardless of how unfair it would feel.
His hands had began to tremble, but he kept his arms outstretched as he waited. There was no hint of hesitation in his posture, even though he was fighting the instinct to run. He continued to look at Nissim, regardless of the pain and fear. And the weakness in his knees.
As Nissim closed in on him Locklann nearly flinched, but much of his motion was controlled by his determination. He’d just spent two weeks missing him. There was no way he’d run away.
His head moved back at feeling Nissim’s hand close around his throat. He sucked in a breath of air, wondering whether he was going to be allowed a second one, and a third. The grip wasn’t too tight yet, but that said very little of Nissim’s intentions. In fact, it foretold little good of what he might do next. Nissim was just waiting for it... waiting to detonate.
He was forced onto his toes, which tested his conscious further. He was already seeing stars, he was already weak, but that had never deterred Nissim. He’d do what he had to do, regardless of what marks it’d leave, or how far it’d push Locklann past his limits.
Locklann’s teeth gritted and for the first time his eyes quickly darted away, trying to find safety from the gaze Nissim held at him. Two brief seconds it took him to regain the courage to look back again, Nissim’s question unanswered with anything more. What had he done...? He could taste it, still, on his lips. He knew that was impossible, but apparently the water of the lake hadn’t been enough to eliminate the memory. Nor had the smoke of the cigarette worked any better.













