#Chapter3
He wouldn't cry for mean monsters. Not today. Not tomorrow. Monsters were not worth ruining eighty-dollar make-up.
/"If you want to act like an ungrateful child, then you'll get treated like one,/" Adam said coldly, jaw ticking as his arms folded across his chest. /"Don't bother coming back out. I don't want to see you for the rest of the night./"
/"I'm not ungrateful./" it was all he could manage to whisper. His throat burnt, the pre-warning of the building tears, and rather than swell beneath the force of irritation and pain, it had his submissive side trembling in the spot, slowly taking control as the massacre of vehemence emotion became too much. I didn't push any more of his buttons, or scream the words at him that I so desperately wanted to because I knew that he would shout back and then there really would be no stopping the tears.
/"I buy you dinner, your favourite, and you sit there talking shit rather than eating it, insulting me and you say that's not ungrateful?/"
/"It's not my favorite,/" Ronan countered, but buttoned it real quick beneath the harsh look it earned. He loved Chinese food, sure, but it wasn't his favorite. Raven, one of his best friends, knew his favorite food. Knew his order by heart, and knew whether he needed to add to that order just by Ronan's mood.
/"I wasn't being ungrateful. You hurt my feelings. I made you--/"
/"And I told you to stop with all the Little shit. We're not doing that anymore, and the quicker you accept that, the better it's going to be for both of us./"
Ronan nodded. Pawed at his cheeks. Tried to disguise just how close he was to that 'Little shit'. He knew it would have acted as a lit match to Adam's already thinning fuse. /"You took away Lazlo, and then you took away Teddy. And that really hurt my feelings./"
Teddy was a brown bear that had been named in honour of him resembling Mr Bean's teddy. Raven had bought him for him two weeks ago. They'd spent hours searching for the perfect stuffie, and as soon as his eyes had fallen upon him, overshadowed by the bright and colourful bears, Ronan had known he was meant to be his.
He'd hidden him and did a super fantastic job of keeping him out of Adam's reach, but yesterday, he'd been on the warpath and not even Teddy had come out of it unscathed. Buying him dinner didn't make up for that. He wasn't sure anything besides giving him back could.
/"You know I didn't mean to hurt you, Ronan./" Adam ran his hands through his short crop of dark hair. It was shaved close to his head, but even still, his fingers managed to glide through the fluff like the ripples of a forming wave. /"But what am I supposed to do? You're blowing everything out of proportion, and playing the victim whenever things get heated. You think it's easy seeing you cry? You think I want that?/"
Ronan didn't answer. Sometimes, it really did seem like that.
/"This is why I don't want to be your Daddy anymore. You're being such a naughty boy. I can't deal with you like that anymore./"
If Adam had smacked him, it would have been kinder. Would have hurt less. Hands curling into fists, his eyes dropped down to his feet, suddenly unable to meet his Daddy's — no, not Daddy. Bad boys didn't get Daddies.
/"I'm sorry. If . . . if i promise to be good, and try real hard, can you be my Daddy again?/" Because it had been almost two months since Adam had initiated the ban, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could cope. He was having to regress in private. Having to hide in the wardrobe and suck his thumb just to cope with everything going on around him. Or he'd wake up in Little space and try and force himself out of it, which always left him feeling sick and icky for hours after.
He wanted the freedom to do it as he pleased again. It wasn't even like it was every night before the ban had gone up. He'd sensed Adam's distance, his reluctance to engage with him like that, and it'd had turned into a scarce thing. But it hadn't been punishable. Not like it was now.
/"We'll see./"
/"Can I have my bear back? Please? Raven bought him for me./" Any mellowing to Adam's statue fled at the mention of Ronan's right hand bitch, and his face broke even in a painfully bare set.
He cursed to himself. Should have known better than to bring him up. Adam had issues with most of his friends right now, but he seemed to harbour a particular annoyance towards the Toussaint twins. Maybe because Angel was a Daddy and Raven was a Dom, and a lot of his other close-knit friends were Littles, but it was tiring. A few months back, he'd been terrified he'd lose Angel as a friend over a stupid text Adam had sent him whilst pretending to be him. It had scared him half to death.
And that fear, that panic at losing his friends, of losing all the people around him, it was one he couldn't get rid of. It wedged in the chambers of his heart, stabbing holes into any sound thoughts that dared venture that way.
He felt broken all the time, and he had no idea how to fix it.
/"It's just a toy, Ronan. Go to sleep./" And with that, he spun on his heels and closed the door behind him.
The sound of his footsteps descending down the stairs was the only cue he needed. Legs crumpling, his knees hit the soft, fluffy carpet and he very slowly began to sing to himself. It was a silly song, but it nurtured the ache within enough that he managed to steer his thumb up to his mouth and crawl over to the wardrobe. The double, mirrored doors opened with a soft creak, and closed with an impending sense of doom. They cut off all traces of light, tombing him inside with nothing but overwhelming darkness and the dusty tang of mothballs tickling his nose.
It wasn't an easy process, getting his breathing to even out and the tears that had begun to fall to dry up, but when he eventually managed, it felt as though years had passed. He could feel the scales of control tipping. Could feel his cowering Littler side becoming the main driver of his meat-suit, and there was nothing he could do but sit there as it happened.
And it broke his heart. Before, sparkles, make-up and all things fabulous had been among his triggers. Now, being scared and alone, surrounded by darkness, was swiftly becoming number one on his list.
/"I wanna be happy,/" he murmured, patting along his body until he reached his thighs. His phone was in his pocket and as he pulled it out, the bright glare of light burning against his eyes, it was just another reminder of how broken he'd been feeling recently.
His friends were his life. He loved them all, and he had so many of them that he could hang out with a different one every day of the month. But he didn't. Because out of them all, only a small handful were what he considered close friends, and even those were becoming a struggle to maintain.
They were all his babes. He had his Sly and Jack-a-roo. They'd made a fantastic couple, just as he knew they would. Then there was Angel-pie and Luci-lou. Pure gold, them two. He loved them so freaking much. Another cupid match he'd had a hand in. Raven. Isaac, his newest addition to the close-friend zone, and Asa, the most dino-tastic boy he'd ever met. They'd met a while back at Lucien's halloween party and he'd decided that if Joel, Lucien's brother and Asa's Daddy, ever stepped down, then he was adopting Asa as his own baby boy, and nobody had a say in that. Summer was his best bitch. She was as sparkly and fabulous as him, and after bonding, or getting her rat-arsed, on their friend Jana's hen do, they'd forged a bond of awesomeness. Her boyfriend/ Daddy Nick was a good friend too, just not close enough to warrant a friendship bracelet. Not yet, at least.