Page 17 of Pistols and Plush Toys

Now Brooks was looking up at him, as if pleading with Nikolai not to hurt him, and Nikolai abruptly realized that his lower lip was bleeding. He frowned, leaning down and grasping Brooks’ chin to tilt his face up to better see the wound.

Brooks let out a thin cry and then—then immediately bit his bleeding lip, shoulders shaking, his eyes squeezing shut.

Coldness dripped down Nikolai’s spine at the realization that Brooks had bitten his lip so hard he’dbledin a clear attempt to keep in more sounds.

He hurriedly let go of Brooks’s face and stepped back. Watched as that slim chest heaved.Fuck.He understood why Brooks was scared, understood the optics he had purposefully created. But Nikolai didn’t need to feel this fucking terrible about something he had no choice in. Nikolai wasn’t just doing this for himself or for his business. He was doing this foreveryone.

He allowed himself one last, furious glower, shaking off the guilt as he turned and strode back to the camera. “Open your eyes,” Nikolai said. Not that he was looking forward to looking at Brooks’s stricken, panicked expression.

Brooks obeyed, those big hazel eyes glassy, teeth digging harder into his split lower lip.

Nikolai only just kept himself from barking at him to stop making the injury worse. “I will be turning on camera,” he said instead. “Tell Vitale to agree to my terms. If he’s agree, you go home. Easy.”

Brooks looked at him blankly.

“Understand?” Nikolai gritted out. It came out too harsh, too cutting, but he just wanted this to be done with. He didn’t want to be here in this dingy warehouse, terrifying this young man. And the sooner this was filmed, the sooner they could leave.

Brooks nodded.

Fine. Good. Nikolai hit record.

For a long moment nothing happened. The annoyance grew and he tried his best not to tap his foot in agitation. He gestured behind the camera for Brooks to start, but it didn’t even seem like Brooks was looking at him. His eyes were blank, staring into the middle distance, frozen in fear.

Nikolai frowned. “Tell your boyfriend how you want to come home.”

Brooks opened his mouth, but a full body shudder went through him. He took a short, shallow breath, and then another. Tears welled again in his eyes.

Nikolai wasn’t–wasn’t evendoinganything to him.

It continued. He watched as Brooks fell apart in seconds, his breath quickening until he was gasping, his thin chest pressing against the ropes as he tried to get air. Tears flowed down his cheeks and dripped onto his shirt.

There was scared, and then there was…

“Are you having panic attack?” Nikolai blurted out.

Brooks sank his teeth back into his ravaged lower lip but a choked sob still escaped him. He was heaving for air, butseemingly not getting enough, andfuck,maybe this would be good footage to send Vitale, but watching Brooks made Nikolai feel sick. Without thinking, Nikolai rounded the tripod and walked into frame, striding right up to Brooks and crouching down to be on his level.

“Hey,” Nikolai said, trying for gentler but likely missing by a mile. “Breathe. I’m not hurting you. This is fake video, yes? Breathe.”

He took in a breath of air himself as if to illustrate, let it out slowly, then repeated it. Brooks stared at him, eyes unfocused, but on Nikolai’s next big breath in, Brooks copied him. Together they took another long, slow breath in, held it for a few seconds, then let it out.

Again and again, until finally it seemed as though Brooks’s wild terror had eased back. He sagged in the chair, as much as the ropes allowed.

The skin on his bare arms was indeed red and raw now from thrashing against the ropes.

If Nikolai were the son his father had wanted him to be, he would’ve been pleased by how broken and defeated Brooks looked. But it only sickened him. The only faint, barely-a-glimmer positive was that Brooks certainly looked distressed. It would tug at whatever fetid heartstrings Vitale still had. Because if those big, doe eyes were working on Nikolai, then they’d work on anybody. Of that, he was certain.

“Better?” Nikolai asked when it seemed as though Brooks was no longer on the edge of passing out from hyperventilation. “See, you’re not needing to panic. I will not hurt you if you cooperate, yes? This is simple video. Simple. You can do it.”

There was a long moment where Brooks blinked to clear his vision. Then the man nodded. Nikolai had no idea if the words were even getting through to him, or he was justappeasing his captor. At least he’d stopped most of his shaking and wasn’t tearing into his lower lip anymore.

Nikolai made himself step back, walking back to the camera. It was still recording, and he stopped the video to start a new one. He paused just before hitting the record button. His plan had been to prompt Brooks into speaking, but something told him to do so again would only push Brooks back into panic. He’d misjudged this set-up. It was clearly too much for Brooks. They’d need to do this a different way.

He tapped the record button.

“Vitale,” Nikolai spoke from behind the camera. “I have your lover. He is not doing so well without you, you can see. You should be serious. Elliot is pretty, yes? Would be shame to ruin such beauty. Such shame.” The words were ones he’d heard in piecemeal in his childhood, borrowed from memories he’d shut away and promised himself never to revisit. It was almost too easy to put them to work now.

Brooks was starting to cry again, head hung down as if to hide from the camera. Nikolai looked away so he wouldn’t be distracted. This needed to be done right.

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