Sans Raiment

After a bit of a scramble and some feedback from a friend I edited the first chapter a few times. So I’m going to clarify now. It may seen odd that Albel is suddenly going to tell Cliff all about him when they had only been together a few months and hadn’t reached the ‘I love you’ stage yet. And it may seem just as strange that they set up these ground rules of ‘no running off into space if you’re with me’ if they only just began their relationship. So here is my explanation: those ground rules they set up were put in place so that they COULD get to that ‘I love you’ stage.

I decide to double post because of the content of this chapter. After writing about child abuse I didn’t particularly feel that going on into porn was a tasteful addition to the chapter. Nor did I feel up to writing porn after writing it, and I did not think readers would be too eager to read porn right after that. So the porn is in the next chapter.

WARNING: subtle discussion of sexual child abuse. If this bothers you, feel free to skip ahead to the next chapter

The First Letter

The parchment before him was blank. He had no idea where to begin. Albel tossed the quill down and sighed. When he had decided to tell Cliff about his past and explain why he was the way he was, he hadn’t thought much on exactly how he would do so. The idea of writing letters came easy to him, but now that he had sat down to actually write he found himself in a rut. Where would he begin? How much would he tell? Would he tell his story and then explain, or allow Cliff to draw his own conclusions? He was beginning to have second thoughts.

Albel decided that a short break was in order. He took a circuit about the castle courtyard, pausing to look up and watch the snow spiraling down from the sky. He sighed. The sky over Airyglyph never seemed to change, it had been the same since he was a child. It was an ever gray, dismal, cloudy sky. When he had lived in Kirlsa, each time he returned to the capital city he had felt a heavy veil of nostalgia fall over him. When he had moved into the castle he had felt odd for awhile, like he was living in his past. The feeling eventually faded as he got more comfortable living in his quarters.

Staring up at the sky, Albel felt that old sense of nostalgia creep up on him. He decided to go back and try to write the letter again. He suddenly had an idea of where to begin.

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…Even though he had a room at Woltar’s mansion in Kirlsa, Glou preferred to keep Albel close. Perhaps the castle wasn’t the most appropriate place to raise a small child, but he did not want to infringe upon his friendship with his fellow captain. Glou knew that his son was a handful and with Woltar as busy as he was, the count did not need to be chasing a five-year-old around his house.

Albel tolerated living in the castle admirably. For a child that is. He only complained when he began to feel isolated from his fellow children and when the walls of Glou’s apartments began to close in on him. Glou forbid his son from wandering around the castle compound, or from leaving the apartments without an escort, for any reason. They were suffocating restrictions for a child with a deep rooted desire to explore the world.

Albel was a curious child who liked getting into mischief. Glou had lost the boy many times, only to find him hiding in the closets or under furniture. On several occasions Albel tried to distract him so that he could sneak out the door while the man had his back turned. He didn’t honestly think that anything bad would happen to the boy if he wandered around the castle; only a select few nobles and important people were allowed within the walls. Even the servants underwent a careful background check before being hired. Still, Glou did not want to risk endangering his only child.

After his boy had reached adolescence, Glou supposed that his son had grown into the brat he was because of how close he had been kept to his father. After losing his wife, Glou did not think he could stand to lose his son. For months he had ignored the boy, unable to even look at him. Then Albel had come down with pneumonia. For a week the boy had been bedridden and the doctors told him that it was likely his son would die. Once Albel had made a miraculous recovery the man’s attitude had altered. Instead of pushing his son away, unable to look at the child that reminded him so much of his late wife, he felt as if he could not live without the boy. So he kept Albel close and safe. It was infuriating to the child.

But Glou couldn’t be around to watch the boy all the time. So he hired a young girl to serve as a nanny. She had been pretty, with long auburn hair and matching brown eyes. Albel fell in love with her the moment she entered the apartments and looked at him. It might have been because she reminded him of his mother; whether Glou had realized it or not, the teenage girl looked a good deal like his late wife. Perhaps that was even why he chose the young woman.

Once he saw how Albel gravitated towards the girl, Glou felt comfortable leaving his son in her care for long periods of time. Before, he would have shipped the child off to Woltar’s if he could. He started off only leaving Albel with the woman for a few days at a time, but eventually he was gone for over a month with the girl looking after his son. Albel liked the woman and she had come very highly recommended, there was no reason for him to worry. She seemed to become a part of their little family.

The woman looked after Albel for several years until she was dismissed and shunned by society. When he was a child, Albel did not know enough about the world yet to know that what his nanny had been doing to him was considered wrong. It would be years before Glou stirred up enough courage to have the sex talk. The boy did not think that anything was wrong. When the woman bathed him or ran her hands over him he thought it nothing more than a game. To him she was just teasing, playing a game and laughing that sweet, light laugh that made him smile.

It wasn’t until she had squeezed his arm hard enough to bruise that he started to think that the game she was playing might be something dangerous and beyond him. Glou had seen the bruise and been puzzled. Having a child, he knew that kids bumped themselves and fell and got injured, but that particular bruise disturbed him. It was large and he could distinctly see the lines of fingers and palm. When he asked Albel about it he was surprised to hear that the nanny had been the one to grab him.

The bruise sank from the forefront of Glou’s mind for several days. It wasn’t until he observed Albel acting a bit skittish around the nanny that the thought of abuse entered his head. He considered the possibility of such a thing. The woman was kind and loved children. It was likely she had grabbed Albel while he was being unruly and she had exerted too much pressure. Yes, he believed that must have been it. But he couldn’t take a risk, not with his child. He had to know just how that bruise had come to be on Albel’s arm.

Unlike many people, Glou had faith in others. He did not jump to conclusions about people; he gave people the benefit of the doubt. That was his nature. His judgment did not cloud, even when his son was involved; he believed that the nanny was a good, honest woman who had simply gripped Albel too harshly. And even if Albel claimed she did it on purpose, he was able to keep his head and weigh the situation for himself. His nature was to trust and he was ready to trust the woman…until he sat down and talked with his son.

Glou had decided to talk to his son the evening of one of his rare days off. He had spent the day about the city with Albel, buying his son treats and showing him the dragons in the city’s pens. When Albel got tired of walking he picked the child up and carried him on his back. He did not mind; Glou rather enjoyed carrying his son. The boy was a large, warm weight cradled against his body. He enjoyed it simply because, with his war duties, his time with his son was short and the child had already seemed to have outgrown the desire to be held by his father. Albel made a fuss when he tried to hold him any other time.

After dinner the man had watched his son bounce off to his room to play with some wooden dragon toys. He considered letting the issue slide for the night, but he knew that if he put it off once he would likely put it off over and over again. And if there was indeed something wrong with the nanny then he needed to know immediately, before anything terrible could happen to his son. He went into Albel’s room, watching silently for a few minutes as the boy played. Albel cast suspicious looks at him every now and then but was overall thoroughly engrossed in whatever adventure his young mind had come up with.

Glou sat down on the child’s bed and asked for his son to join him. Albel abandoned his toys and went to sit beside his father. Glou studied him for a moment; he noted that Albel was idly rubbing the area where the bruise was.

“Does your arm hurt?”

“A little.”

“Let me see.”

Albel held his arm out and his father inspected it. The bruise had begun to fade into a purple and yellow spot, but it still looked to be painful.

“Your nanny did this, didn’t she?” Albel nodded. “Were you misbehaving? Was that why she took hold of you so strongly?”

The boy fidgeted. He looked to the door, as if checking to be sure no one was lurking in the other room to overhear. The action bothered Glou; usually when posed such a question Albel would vehemently deny the claim or stubbornly insist that, though he was misbehaving, he hadn‘t started anything and certainly didn‘t deserve to be reprimanded.

“Albel?”

The child looked at him. He looked troubled. “Is she in trouble?”

“Your nanny? No, she isn’t in trouble. Why? Do you think she should be?”

“Maybe.”

Glou looked at the bruise. “Has she touched you like that before?”

Albel looked thoughtful. In his child’s mind he did not understand that his father was asking if she had raised a violent hand towards him, he assumed that the man was asking whether or not the woman had touched him before with the same intent as she had when she had left that bruise. But he couldn’t recall how many times she had touched him like that so he said simply,

“Yeah, she does it a lot.”

The answer confused Glou. He had not seen many bruises on Albel’s body that had been so large, nor had any worried him as this one had.

“She’s bruised you before?” He asked, needing the clarification.

“No.” Albel said.

The man let out a relieved breath, but then his son added,

“But she’s touched me like that a lot.”

“Touched you like what, Albel?”

The boy paused. Again he looked to the doorway. It was at that point that Glou began to get alarmed. Had something slipped past his attention? Had something happened to his son? He took hold of the boy by the shoulders to call back his wandering attention.

“Albel, how has she touched you? If she doesn’t touch you violently, then how do you mean she touches you like that often? How does she touch you?”

The boy furrowed his brows. He didn’t know how to explain to his father just what the woman did to him. Rather than wracking his brain, attempting to find the right words to describe exactly what the woman did, he simply blurted it out in the simplest manner he could.

“She touches me.”

That single, small, simple sentence explained all to Glou. He could not believe that such a thing had happened, though, not to his son and not done by such a kind woman as the boy’s nanny. He asked his son many other questions, asking him how she touched him, where she touched him, did she say anything to him, threaten him? Each answer he received cut him a little deeper than the previous confirmation. The man felt his stomach plunge. He felt nauseous.

Albel had been immediately sent off to Woltar’s. It wasn’t until some years later that the boy heard what had become of the woman that had once tended to him. Glou had taken the matter to the king and had requested her arrest. His request was granted and in the middle of that same night when Albel had disclosed all, the woman was arrested and imprisoned. Her fate had been uncertain for several days; some people wanted to hang her, other more sympathetic people wanted to exile her. When asked what he desired to be done, Glou had been waging a war within himself. On one hand he loathed the woman for tainting her son, on the other he understood the value of life and in no way condoned capital murder. After several days of deliberating what he thought should be done, the man eventually told the king that he wished for her to be banished from the royal city. His wishes were met. For the rest of her life, the woman was not allowed to return to the capital city, and wherever she went she was shunned with the stigma of being a child molester.

For his part, Albel did not truly understand what had happened. From the way his father had looked and reacted that night, he knew that his nanny had done something wrong, something terribly wrong. The way the rest of the world reacted was also an indication that something bad had happened to him. When adults looked at him they gave him a sad, pitying look. People were overly kind to him now, they tolerated his attitude and his pranks and his roughian behavior. In retrospect, their sudden acceptance of his misbehaving was perhaps the worst thing for Albel. When he started to realize that people would not scold him or even acknowledge his behavior, he acted out in worse ways.

It made Albel angry. How far did he have to go before someone would take notice and yell at him? That was one of the reasons he had learned to like being at Woltar’s; after a while the old man had begun to treat him like normal again. The boy could trust in Woltar to scold him and chase him around the house when he had done wrong. He didn’t like being scolded and punished, but it felt better than being completely ignored.

When he was at home with his father, Albel would act out violently. He would throw things, break things, endanger himself, all just to hear his father raise his voice again. He wanted to see his father look at him with anger instead of having that pitying look sent his way. He would spend nights lying awake, thinking of ways to irritate his father. Inevitably, his mind would always drift back and wonder why his father had started to let him get away with everything. And as always he came to the same conclusion; that woman had done something to him and ruined him. He hated that woman. She had taken something from him. His world had been remade and consisted of those awful pitying looks and sad stares, of silent whispers behind his back and, worst of all for him, no yelling. There was no scolding, no punishment, no structure. He was allowed to get out of control and very quickly Albel lost sight of the boundaries that he had once lived within. Where Albel had once been a handful he was now a terror to deal with. And Glou simply watched and let it happen, unsure of how to respond or how to check the behavior.

After that, Glou distrusted women with his son, which led Albel to distrust them. It was unintentional on Glou’s behalf; he just didn’t want anything to happen to his son again. He trusted no one, but Albel could see clearly his father’s suspicion of women. That suspicion eventually grew into an unbridled hate in the child. From his standpoint, women were the cause of all things wrong in his life and that seemed a perfectly acceptable reason to hate them.

The anger that his son had towards females alarmed Glou. He wasn’t particularly fond of the sex after what had happened to his son, but he knew not all women were sick like that. He had just had the misfortune of coming upon a sick one. But he could not explain that to Albel; the boy believed that women were the agents of demons.

“They aren’t all bad.” Glou tried to tell him, once the boy was older.

“Yes they are.”

“You have no reason to think such a thing, Albel.” He paused, realizing that perhaps his son DID had a reason for feeling that way.

Albel seemed to read his father’s expression. “They’re all evil, vile, sneaky, mistrustful, greedy, she-bitches who belong at home where no honorable man can see them.”

Glou sighed. “Are you saying that your mother was a greedy she-bitch too?”

He looked at his father for a moment. “My mother was my mother. That makes her different. That makes her a god.”

The man did not know how to respond. He did know, however, that he would need to curb his son’s anger before he did something destructive or, even worse, physically violent. Glou knew many men who hated their wives or women as a whole. It made for a miserable home life and he in no way wished that for his son. But how to erase that blind hatred of woman? It took him days to think of a solution. It was simple and quite logical to him; one woman had caused his son to hate women, perhaps then one woman could make him respect them once again.

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Luckily for Albel, his father was able to cure him of his hatred of women. Under normal circumstances, Glou would have strictly forbidden his son from dating at the age of twelve, but nothing seemed to be normal in their lives any longer. There was a pretty young nobleman’s daughter that lived in the royal court. She was just a year older than Albel and had the perfect disposition. She was sweet and calm, but when pushed she was stern and could give a tongue lashing like any man.

Albel had been attracted to her and she to him. It took a considerable amount of time for Albel to warm up to her, but the girl was patient and showed him every bit of kindness she could. Glou did not know how she had changed Albel, but he suspected that seeing her act as a proper lady and experiencing her kindness daily helped to alter the boy’s perceptions of women. Albel still mistrusted them, but he no longer felt his blood boil when one or more were around him. Eventually his hatred for women was a forgotten thing of the past, a phase he had passed through.

For three years Albel dated the young woman, but when Glou showed no signs of arranging a marriage between the two the girl’s father started to introduce her to other boys. Albel did not mind as much as he thought he should have, but he knew that, though he cared for the girl, he did not love her. A year after meeting her he had begun to train in the military and that had been an atmosphere in which he had thrived. The Airyglyph military was made up of all men and because of that he felt comfortable there.

When he and the young noble woman did at last break up he knew, without much doubt, that he was attracted to members of his own sex. He had learned to like women once again, to appreciate them for their talents and their beauty, to find amusement in their company, and to even enjoy the pleasures of their body, but it was men he found himself most attracted to. Whether it was because of his history with women or because he had spent the beginnings of puberty amongst many other adolescent boys, it did not matter to Albel why he liked men, just that he did. It was a secret he kept hidden for some time.

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…Albel tore up the letter he had written. No, he was not going to send that to Cliff. Cliff didn’t need to know about that. What did Cliff care WHY he liked men, when all that mattered was that he DID like men? He glanced at the small communicator. He knew that he would need to type his letter up, but writing it out first helped him get his ideas out. That way he would know what to reveal and what to keep to himself. So far he had decided not to tell the Klausian anything.

They weren’t particularly happy memories that Albel had been recalling. He had spent years trying to banish the remnants of memories he had of his nanny. It was odd to him to realize that, though he still hated her, he also felt pity for her. He wondered just what had become of her, knowing that she had left the city in shame and disgrace.

The young man shook his head and tossed the pieces of his letter into the fire. He sat back in his chair and let out an aggravated sigh. He had been proud of himself for overcoming his hatred of women; he realized that it could have been a crippling prejudice. But being able to tolerate Nel and her fellow Crimson Blades and flirt with women at parties did not help him write his letter to Cliff.

He would have to reorganize himself and figure out where he would begin. Starting at the very beginning had not proven to be as good a plan as he had first suspected. No, Albel supposed that if he were going to reveal the important things that prohibited him from trusting in Cliff as a lover then he ought to start with the lover who ruined him for relationships with other men.

Albel scowled at the memory of said lover. Just hearing Vox’s name, be it inside his head or aloud, made him angry. He let out a loud sigh. He would rather face an army of angry Aquarians than the memory of his late lover. Thinking of Vox only brought him feelings of pain and humiliation and a deep, burning regret at knowing he had made a terrible mistake concerning the duke. But where to start?

Perhaps his idea of starting at the beginning hadn’t been completely wrong. Albel took out another sheet of paper. He would start with the beginning of his relationship with Duke Vox.

~END

I in no way condone child abuse in any form. It’s mean and nasty and sick *shivers of disgust*.