Once lost, Now found

Chapter Seventeen

Luca

WARNING. This episode will contain explicit content of child abuse. Read at your own discretion. I do not endorse or condone child abuse but this particular episode will delve into Luca's past as he tells Cas about his childhood.

“Babies are sexless creatures and It is interesting to note that, according to my mother, as a baby, I didn’t take kindly to a dummy. She tried various tricks to induce me into taking it, but I steadfastly refused. Apparently, I’d spit it out each time she tried to coax me into chewing the damn thing. She even tried coating it with sugar, but as soon as I had licked off this outer layer, it would go. Today, I am not very fond of sweets or cake. Could this distaste, and all that followed, have had a bearing on my current dislike for them? Games, they'd say. My mother often said I played tricks and games on her just to in her craw, but as with my father and ‘his’ game, by the time I reached the age of about seven, I had fully accepted those ‘games’ with my father as part of growing up. It was part of my initiation into the world of the grown ups. Apparently.

I think I must have realised it was wrong or I wouldn’t have obeyed his command to keep schtum so willingly. By now, even at my tender age, I felt empowered because I had come to know, by instinct, these were ‘grown up’ things in which my father engaged me so furtively. It was ‘our little secret’. Also, because it was virtually the only show of affection I ever received from him, I felt honoured and hankered after repeat performances. This was at a time when such things were never spoken about so fear and ignorance stopped me mentioning anything about these ‘games’. Even at seven years of age, I thought I would not be believed that I would be the one who would be punished. ‘Times,’ thank God, they are changing. I was bribed or rather, paid with a couple of bars of chocolate, which I hated, although he supplied the actual cash, I had to trot off to the local off-licence to purchase myself.

Yet looking at myself back then in the few family photographs, taken about this time, I see a scrawny looking kid, grinning at the camera. There was very little going for him. From those snaps, I must be honest, I am puzzled as to what my father saw in me. All I had to offer was my age or lack of it. My looks, such as they were, can hardly be detected in those scarce time capsules. Sickening thing really.

My father’s relationship with my mother had, for many years, resulted in separate bedrooms, separate lives and separate sexual desires. His principal craving was for the son and not the wife. I am also convinced he was seeing other men. Often, if I was out with him during a school holiday, he became agitated if we happened to bump into the ‘odd’ friend of his. From what I have learned subsequently, my father had a long standing predilection for young men, boys.

As for my mother, well, she was always elsewhere. Relations, friends, work, it didn’t matter; she went anywhere and did anything to avoid being at home with her spouse. And, because of the sexual opportunities afforded by her absence, my father didn’t mind in the least. I don’t think she had any idea ‘our little secret’ was being performed on the very chairs and sofas she’d scrimped and saved to buy, or, in the working class, kitsch bathroom she had so lovingly decorated. I wonder what would have been said had she known how often she’d rushed through the front door and dashed up to use the lavatory, not realising that the last thing to be flushed away was my father’s sperm, dutifully coaxed from his straining penis by her puny little brat of a son. Yet, that was my life until I hit my early teens and realised that's something I simply couldn't do, anymore. I would be severely punished for my defiance unbeknownst to my mother, I was just a normal teenage boy acting up and needed a good lashing or two by the father who couldn't get his own way, not anymore. As far as I was concerned, enough was enough and I decided the world was a much bigger place, my mind and body sought out different things and different people and as for my parents, they could rot in their own hell they created for themselves. It was a sad reality, but a real one.” I finally spoke up, I let myself be cut open by old wounds, only because the past haunts me in my future and I thought, very carefully for days about how I would go about it, how to explain without much detail. But then again you don't need the sordid details to know exactly what was happening and I think Cas was kind of relieved I didn't disclose all that much, but what I did, was enough to make him blubber like a baby on the end of our bed. 

"No no no….." He repeated over and over holding his pillow to his face. I wasn't sure for a brief moment how to console him and he was sure as hell shocked I didn't break down myself. But I wanted Cas to know why at night I wake in pools of sweat, why some nights I don't sleep at all. Because, let's face it, who wants to see that man in nearly every dream you have. My nightmares will always be my nightmares, I don't remember a time I've dreamt of anything good, even though I have the most loving and loyal man one could ever ask for in front of me. "Please, don't, never ever speak of it again. I couldn't bear it, seeing your small face and the tears….oh god, the tears." He cried into his pillow. 

"Hey." I skimmed my fingers over his back, he flinched and looked up at me all puffy eyed and pained. "Please don't cry Cas."

"How can I not ... .? Luca, you ... .you ... .god, I love you so much." He said, throwing his arms around me. "I love you, forever and ever."

"I know….I know, I love you too, forever." He was shaking in my arms and then I felt it. Finally I felt my own damn tears and not because of the shit I endured for many years, but because the man I love broke his heart, for me. "You're my forever...Cas, forever." He silently nodded in my arms holding me with a tight grip and we both lost ourselves….in that moment.