In the Arms of the Beast

by K. A. Merikan

  “What is that supposed to mean?” came from him, but it was too late. Laurent was already walking back to his locker.

  Chapter 17 - Laurent

  The whole workday passed so fast Laurent could barely believe it when he was done cleaning the tables. The sun set, casting beautiful shadows across the street, and as Laurent took outdoor seats back into the café, he was struck by the thought that all this beauty and grandeur might come to an end if those who knew what was coming couldn’t stop the impending doom.

  No matter how pleasant it was to engage in a whole new task, learn to make artisanal coffee, and chat to friendly strangers, Laurent couldn’t forget what was going on at the clubhouse, and Beast’s visit had reminded him of that. The secret nature of Beast’s plans had been an itch he couldn’t scratch all day, and his only respite had been working on cracking Baal’s code of action.

  Michael hadn’t talked to him since the lunch break, but he did leave a lot of mess for Laurent to deal with when he finished his shift early, excusing himself with an errand he needed to run. Maybe it was for the better that Michael showed his true colors before they could have become friends.

  “That was a great first day, Laurent,” Mr. Linde said, finishing his spiced tea, already out of the apron they all wore for work.

  Laurent smiled. Mr. Barnave had rarely had a kind word for him, despite Laurent’s endless efforts. “I know I haven’t done everything right, but I promise I will learn every day.”

  Mr. Linde snorted. “You should have seen me at my first job. I messed up nearly everything, and my mum had to beg the manager to give me a second chance. And I wasn’t even raised in a cult. I’m amazed you’re doing this well.”

  “Thank you for this opportunity. Not everyone is as kind.”

  Mr. Linde shook his head. “It’s me who should thank Travis for recommending such a hard worker.”

  They could exchange compliments all afternoon, but Laurent had already spotted Elliot’s black car parking on the other side of the street. “Is there anything else I’m needed for?”

  Mr. Linde waved him off. “Nah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Laurent put the apron into the laundry basket and ran outside so abruptly he stumbled off the sidewalk when a van he hadn’t noticed drove right in front of him.

  Elliot looked out of the open window of his vehicle and frowned at Laurent. “You need to remember they’re a thing, okay?”

  “I didn’t want to keep you waiting.” He was also dying to be at the clubhouse and find out what Beast was up to. Laurent quickly sat in the passenger seat and looked at Elliot with a sigh leaving his mouth. “I wish I had my own car.”

  Elliot started the engine, and they moved up the street where most businesses were winding down for the day. “I’m sure Beast will get you one once you make up.”

  Laurent sank into the seat, even though his heart knew no other way either. “Why do you assume we will?”

  Elliot braked to let an elderly couple cross the street. “Come on, Laurent. He gave up his freedom for you. Of course you’re gonna make up. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Laurent twirled his thumbs for a while, relieved that someone else thought the same way. Through the past few days his insides had been raw with worry, but this day was a beacon of hope. “He came to the café today.”

  Elliot glanced at him briefly before focusing on the road again. “And? Did you tell him you were sorry?”

  “Excuse me? Of course not! He’s the one who should apologize. I can’t believe you’d suggest that. Did Knight tell you to work on me?”

  “He didn’t have to. I know you don’t agree with this, but I think you should trust Beast. He is the prez, and he always does what he thinks is best for everyone. What are you two even arguing about? Is this again about him trying to protect you a little bit too much?”

  Laurent crossed his arms on his chest. “Just because he thinks something is ‘best’ doesn’t mean he’s right. Why would it? I can’t believe you’re taking his side. Especially that our argument wasn’t about that at all.”

  “So what was it about? Are you really throwing away your relationship because of some petty issues? Most people aren’t as lucky as you or I,” Elliot muttered, expressing his disapproval by not smiling.

  Laurent looked out of the window at the town they were leaving behind. The setting sun only reminded him that another day had passed without Beast’s closeness. “Beast doesn’t want a child. Never did. It’s not all as easy as you make it sound.”

  Elliot groaned, but kept his mouth shut for too long. “Maybe he’ll come around? I hope. But I gotta say it’s tough. I know I wouldn’t want kids. Not with Knight. He’d want to spend too much time with them.”

  Laurent tapped his head against the window in frustration. “It’s not a competition. It’s a family. What is wrong with you? Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Today was the first time he spoke to me in days, so it’s not like I’m the only guilty party.”

  “Yeah, but maybe you should be the one to reach out.”

  Laurent pouted, watching the sun turn the sky purple. “I do miss him so much.”

  Elliot remained silent for several moments. “Love isn’t a battlefield, you know. If you don’t make yourself vulnerable, you’ll never get anything meaningful. And Beast is a good guy. He won’t hurt you when he sees an opening.”

  “But it’s not fair that he wasn’t even happy about me getting a job. Made a big thing out of it.”

  “Christ. You don’t need a job, he’ll provide for you.”

  Laurent clutched at his hair. “Not this again! I need to be my own man.”

  Elliot groaned. “What do you need him for then? Jeez.”

  Laurent bit his lip, thinking back to Beast’s thick fingers trailing over the counter at the café, so close to him. “Things.”

  Elliot burst out laughing. “Ohh, you’re horny. That’s what this is, you’re missing a good fuck!”

  “No need to be crude! It’s not all I’m missing.” Laurent put his hands over his cheeks. “I never considered myself thirsty for flesh, but here I am, yearning for him so much. And yet I know it’s no reason to make up.”

  Elliot leaned Laurent’s way to nudge him on the side. “You sure? Don’t let him forget what he’s missing out on without you. Knight told me Beast lived like a monk before you showed up.”

  Laurent fought back a smile, because despite his mind fighting it, he did feel a tickle of satisfaction hearing that he was the first man Beast had pursued in years. “We need to have a serious conversation about the future and where we are both headed before anything else can happen. His touch is like quicksand.”

  Elliot smirked. “You’re so poetic about it. My past self would have been so jealous I’d have strangled you.”

  Laurent shook his head, happy to already see the old asylum building looming against the backdrop of the sunset. “I am very fortunate that you have Knight, then. Do you know what they’re doing tonight?” he asked casually. He didn’t want to sound desperate to find out.

  Elliot shrugged, driving past the circular fort, which appeared in front of the club’s main entrance across the past few days. Behind the wooden palisade were large red-colored tents in a variety of shapes and sizes, and even metal scaffolding on the side that faced the clubhouse. Dressed with rustic decor and velvet drapes under a waterproof roofing, it served as Magpie’s terrace/balcony and was topped with the national flag.

  Elliot chuckled. “Knight and I visited him yesterday. Now I wanna go glamping myself.”

  “Glamping?”

  “Glamorous camping? It’s what Magpie says he’s doing. His tent has everything. I’m not much of an outdoorsy guy, but I could do that.”

  Talk of tents and camping only made Laurent think of Beast, and he sulked in silence, trapped in the conundrum where he was too angry with Beast to reach out to him, yet craved his presence like nothing else in the world.

  Elliot had something to do for
his YouTube channel, and he disappeared right away, leaving Laurent to his thoughts and an eerily quiet clubhouse. He stumbled upon Nao and a couple of the other girls watching a movie in the room with the projector, but it was the embarrassing kind where people had sex with each other in strange places. While Laurent didn’t mind female nudity as a form of artistic expression, he didn’t want to witness such things in company. And all this made him feel desperately lonely.

  His thoughts were preoccupied with Beast and the secretive job he didn’t want to tell Laurent about, but when he spotted Lana and Xavier in the kitchen, he knew they were just the distraction he needed. For once, the boy was calm as an angel, too.

  “How is Xavier doing today?”

  Lana jumped as if she’d been caught eavesdropping on a club meeting and barely kept her emptied plate from crashing to the floor. She wasn’t wearing her usual baggy clothes and instead donned a sleek pair of jeans and a white blouse.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, and her shoulders lowered in relief. “He’s… doing fine. I fed him and he should be asleep for a while.”

  Maybe she was a good person to mine for information. “It’s marvellous to see him so peaceful. Have you maybe seen Travis? I wanted to talk to him.”

  Lana shook her head. “I think he’s running some errands. I was hoping to ask him to watch over Xavier while I deal with a couple of things in town, but I guess I’ll need to find someone else.”

  “I can watch over him,” Laurent said, extending his arms.

  Lana blinked but passed Xavier to Laurent. “Really? You’d do that? Lifesaver.”

  “Of course. No problem at all. Take as much time as you need.”

  It was a tiny baby who couldn’t even walk. How hard could it be?

  *

  Laurent didn’t remember ever hearing a child cry as frantically as Xavier. An hour into Lana’s absence, her son had awoken to give a shrieking concert that grew louder with each passing second. Laurent tried to feed him the already prepared formula Lana had shown him in the fridge, but it was only once he discovered the baby wasn’t hungry that Laurent decided to have a look into his diaper. And that turned out to be the source of the issue.

  Problem was that Xavier kept moving around, and by the time Laurent discovered what was going on, the excrement was smeared all over the little body, and Laurent was close to having a panic attack.

  “No, no, no, Xavier, please don’t move,” he said in a shaky voice, unsure how to grab the child to avoid getting the poop on himself.

  This was a disaster in the making. In his worst nightmares he wouldn’t have fathomed the extent of chaos a baby this tiny could bring. No matter what he did, Xavier wouldn’t stop crying, and the sound was so terribly shrill Laurent considered stuffing his ears with cotton.

  What if their baby was like this? What if he was doing something wrong and didn’t even know it? He had no idea what the child would require. He’d been shipped off to America not long after his youngest brother was born, and none of his siblings had children at that time. He had little recollection of how women dealt with infants. Mr. Barnave didn’t have a wife, and it wasn’t like bringing up children was something Laurent talked to women about.

  What if he’d made a terrible mistake and failed with his own son?

  The familiar clomping of platform sandals boosted Laurent’s sense of shame, but at the same time, maybe one of the girls could provide him with necessary insights. He looked over his shoulder just in time to meet Nao’s gaze as she entered the kitchen.

  She wore a one-piece costume with a flower pattern, and wedges designed to make her tiny form that bit more slender, but she must have come because of the screaming, not for fashion advice, because she shook her head in wonder when she saw Laurent.

  “What the hell is this? Where is Lana, and why are you changing him on the freaking kitchen table? Oh, my God, what if someone made sandwiches here later?”

  Laurent gave a hopeless sigh and looked her way, hovering one hand over the tiny body. “I offered to watch him, but Xavier won’t calm down, and I don’t know if the regular soap is agreeable with baby skin. She didn’t say, because I told her I knew my way with children. Oh, Nao, I’m such a fraud!”

  Her hands dropped when she glanced at the soiled clothing and scowled. “Oh. My. God. What does this thing eat?”

  Laurent chewed on his lip. “Can you do something?”

  Nao blinked and pointed at herself. “Me? I’ve never seen anyone change a diaper. There were no little kids in my family!”

  “Oh, I thought…”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You thought what? That women magically know how to take care of children? Laurent, it’s a skill like any other.”

  “But you offered to pretend to be our surrogate.”

  Nao scoffed. “’Pretend’ is the key word here. I don’t even want kids.”

  Laurent could hardly believe what he was hearing. “How old are you?”

  Nao squinted at him. “Laurent, I warn you… Stop digging your own grave.”

  “Fine. What are we going to do? If I mess this up, everyone will think I’m going to make a terrible father. Oh, God, I am so unprepared!” Laurent cried, already feeling Beast’s judgmental gaze on his flesh. And he deserved it all!

  Nao licked her lips and quickly dove under the sink, pulling out two aprons and a set of rubber gloves. “Let’s just calm down. We can do this. We’ll just put him under running water to clean the mess and wipe him with paper towels. Nobody will know if we clean the sink with bleach afterward.”

  They proceeded with this plan, but since Xavier kept twisting and crying, the operation still proved difficult. When Laurent managed to put the boy in clean clothes, he was positive the nightmare was over, but the crying wouldn’t stop despite repeated offerings of the formula.

  They were at loss.

  “Maybe he’s got like baby insomnia or something,” Nao said, watching Xavier shift around in the Moses basket.

  “Do you have any brandy? We just need to make sure not to give him too much,” Laurent tried, at his wit’s end.

  Nao opened her eyes wide. “Are you insane?”

  At this point, panic had a tight hold on Laurent’s throat, and he raised his arms, on the verge of crying. “I don’t know! It would help him sleep!”

  Nao grabbed at her fluffy blonde hair. “Oh my God, Laurent! Have you not heard of fetal alcohol syndrome? Liquor is really bad for babies.”

  “Milk of the poppy?”

  This time Nao laughed out loud but she sounded like she was on the verge of hysteria herself. “I know someone who can help.” She pulled out her phone and her thumb worked with the speed of a cockroach running from sunshine.

  Laurent wanted to crawl under the sofa and have his existence forgotten when Knight came into the room and managed to calm down Xavier within the span of three minutes. Where Laurent and Nao had been afraid to take him out of the crib, Knight picked the baby up and rocked him in his arms, pacing around the room as if he’d done this a thousand times. The crying first dwindled, only to completely stop as Xavier’s eyes shut, and he fell into a slumber, cradled against Knight’s cut.

  “There we go…” Knight said with a smile, looking up at Laurent and Nao.

  “How did you know what to do?” Laurent uttered.

  Knight shook his head. “I have lots of younger siblings. And many nephews and nieces. Kids are easy to handle.”

  “Are they really?” Laurent washed his hands again and again, because he needed to do something with them. “What if I am not suited for it? I don’t want to send my child away.”

  Nao frowned. “What are you talking about? What’s the point of going through all this to give it up for adoption?”

  Laurent rubbed his eyes. “I meant a place where he would grow up so that he can come back when he is an appropriate age. But I don’t want that. It’s not the modern way, and it’s not the way I want to do things.”

  Knight patted Laurent’s should
er as he passed again from one corner of the room to the other. “You’ll be fine. Sure, there’s stuff you need to learn, but didn’t you always say you’re a fast learner?”

  Nao sat next to the empty crib and propped her feet on the coffee table. “Now I need brandy. We should have looked for it, Laurent.”

  Knight laughed and nudged Laurent’s shin with the tip of his boot. “All new parents go through this. There’s plenty of people you can ask for advice, and I could get you some kind of tutorial with the basics of baby care. Maybe we should start now? Polish that shell with some baby oil?”

  Laurent took one more deep breath and stood up from the armchair, but then reality hit him so hard his lungs collapsed, his knees went soft and he sat right back up in the chair.

  “Oh no,” he said in the tiniest voice. “Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! I left him. I left him at work! I am already the worst father to be!”

  The happy expression dropping from Knight’s face told him all about what Knight thought of him now. “I’ll stay with Xavier. Beast is in the basement. You know where. Just be careful when you go there.”

  Laurent forced his legs to move, but he wasn’t able to find his voice to answer Knight, so he ran out of the room without a word. All day long he’d wanted to find out what Beast was up to, but never like this.

  Chapter 18 - Beast

  “When’s Knight coming back? It’s his turn to get the bagged cement,” Fox said behind Beast’s back.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “He said it was an emergency, didn’t he? I’ll go,” he said and left the underground chamber that was way too small to comfortably accommodate them all. Its low and dark walls of irregular brick were oppressive to the point of producing a sense of entrapment—as if this wasn’t the cellar of their own clubhouse but some ancient tomb with walls that could move and squash intruders to a pulp.

  But Beast had too many mundane problems at hand to let the irrational discomfort occupy him. He nodded, annoyed by the pettiness of some of his brothers. He didn’t have to intervene and remind them why they were doing this in the first place, but understood how the heat of the large standing lamps and the lack of space got everyone on edge.