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Dove had been not eating. Beren hadn’t noticed that Dove hadn’t been eating, apparently only ingesting dinners, because those were the only meals that Beren personally fed him. And now Dove was crying so hard he was starting to not breathe right, because Beren was, maybe, a terrible human being.
“Dove, calm down.” he said.
This was not helpful in the slightest. Dove started crying even harder.
“I’m sorry, master, I’m so sorry!” he wailed. “I-I-“
Beren still had the fridge door open, and he was standing over Dove in a way that was probably not helping the panic. He shut the door and knelt down.
“It’s—” he began, and then stopped. It wasn’t okay, was the thing. He wasn’t about to tell the kid that one meal a day was okay, because children starving themselves in his house and getting malnourished because of it and maybe getting a disease or dying because he was a bad person who wasn’t paying attention to the starving child in his house was the most decidedly not okay thing in the world.
“You have to eat,” he said, not entirely proud of the way the words came out. He sounded like someone was strangling him. Strange.
“I’ll eat, I’ll eat, master, I promise I’ll eat anything—” Dove promised, tears flowing freely down his face and making his eyes all red and puffy.
“Food!” Beren said. His voice still sounded funny. “Good food, three times a day.”
Dove cried harder, and Beren realized that he was holding the boy’s shoulders, and maybe being louder than he should. Dove looked terrified, because Beren was actively scaring him. After starving him.
“I need to calm down,” Beren said. “We’ll—we need to calm down.”
He wasn’t thinking straight, and that would have been a more helpful realization if knowing he wasn’t thinking straight made him actually get his thoughts in order.
“Go to your room,” Beren said. He was going to add something, maybe tell Dove to bring some water, or—something comforting, but Dove turned on his heel and fled before he could. Beren felt terrible about it, but not having Dove actively weeping at him immediately helped. He sat down on the kitchen floor, hard, barely feeling the cold tile. It was a struggle to pull a full breath into his lungs, and there was a dancing fuzziness at the edges of his vision. That must be why it was hard to think. He pressed his fingernails into his palms, hard enough to hurt, and the tiny pinpricks of pain let his lungs expand, just that little bit more. He wasn’t actually suffocating. Reminding himself never felt like it was helping, but he knew from experience that it would, eventually. It just took a while. He stayed on the floor, rocking slightly, watching the green numbers on the oven clock slowly tick down the minutes. It took less than half an hour for him to feel able to breathe again, able to think.
He rubbed his head in his hands. He’d massively overreacted. Of course the boy was scared, of course he had wildly different ideas of what was appropriate treatment. It was a good thing they’d caught this early enough that there wouldn’t be severe complications. Reacting the way he had wasn’t going to help Dove feel more comfortable around food in the future. He’d fucked it up—
Beren shook his head. No, that wasn’t good, either. This wasn’t about him, it was about Dove, who was—still…in his room.
God damn it.
--
Dove had expected Beren to thunder up the stairs after him. His heart had been in his throat, afraid the man would change his mind and reach out to catch Dove’s arm in an iron grip, wrenching him back to punish him while he was still furious, instead of making him wait for it.
When he finally got into his room, though, Master hadn’t even been close enough behind him to lock Dove in. he hadn’t been there at all.
Dove didn’t need the door to be locked, of course. He may not be a very good slave, or a smart one, but he would stay where he was put.
After a few minutes with no footsteps on the stairs, Dove slowly closed the door, wincing as it clicked shut. He immediately second-guessed himself, but the idea of Master Beren coming up the stairs just as Dove opened the door, of him getting even more furious and accusing Dove not only of being ungrateful and stupid, but of being disobedient as well—kept him from opening the door again.
Dove hadn’t seen Master truly angry before now. His every limb was trembling. He’d been beginning to not think about the possibility of being punished here. It had seemed like such a distant idea, inevitable, but far away and unimportant. Now that it was staring him in the face, he felt like a fool.
He curled up on the floor, not quite able to kneel politely, but not daring to be found in a chair or on the bed, like some pampered pet who didn’t know what being in trouble meant. He hugged his knees to his chest, sobbing into them. He was soaking his nice clothes. Maybe Beren would notice, and would decide he didn’t deserve them anymore. Dove would rather be whipped. Maybe Master Beren would decide that since he wasn’t grateful enough to eat the food provided, he wouldn’t have the privilege of eating at all. Dove almost hoped that was what he did—it would be easier to deal with than being hurt, or being naked and cold and vulnerable all the time.
He gripped his knees tighter, and tried not to think about it, letting his tears dry up until the only thing left over was a slight headache and itchy eyes. He gulped, feeling the lack of a lump in his throat with great relief.
It had been a while, and the house was quiet. No slamming doors, no shouting from downstairs. When Dove finally heard the stairs creak under someone’s feet, his heartbeat quickened, but he was able to kneel up nicely and bow towards the door, no longer shaming himself with poor conduct or panic. It helped that Master wasn’t stomping up the stairs, didn’t sound angry, as if the time had been to allow them both to calm down, instead of merely to make Dove’s coming punishment all the worse for needing to anticipate it. That seemed as if it was something that Master would do, actually. He wasn’t a cruel man, apparently not even when he was angry, and that was a relief to know. Whatever he did now, Dove could manage it.
The floor under the door creaked. There was a moment of silence, followed by a knock. The door didn’t open.
“Master?” Dove asked.
“Dove? May I come in?”
Dove blinked.
“Yes?”
The door opened, and Dove met Master Beren’s eyes before he remembered to look down at the carpet instead. The man sighed, like Dove’s constant disobedience was wearing on him, and Dove flinched. He didn’t think that Master was growing tired of him, even though he didn’t do much. The man had seemed happy with him, right up until he’d opened the fridge today, and started asking Dove questions, like he thought Dove might be stealing food, but every answer Dove gave kept making him madder. Dove still wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.
Master came inside, and sat down cross-legged on the floor.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Dove.” He says, and Dove’s head snaps up, glancing at the man’s face. He looks sincere. “I shouldn’t have done that. I got upset, but that wasn’t your fault.”
Dove didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t managing to say anything at all, at the moment, just stare in disbelief, because masters didn’t apologize. Masters never apologized.
Master took in a deep breath, looked away for a moment, over Dove’s head.
“I never thought that you wouldn’t feel free to eat when I wasn’t here, and it scared me badly when I found out you weren’t.” he said.
Dove blinked. He should have stolen food? Beren wanted him to steal food? He didn’t think he was understanding this correctly at all.
“Do you understand?”
Oh no.
Dove still didn’t know what to say, but Master was just. Sitting there. Waiting for him. He had to say something.
“I—I don’t—I’ll do what you want, Master, of course,” he said.
Master frowned at him.
“Can you tell me what it is that you think I want?”
Dove thought his heart was going to stop, and Master Beren held out both hands, like he was trying to calm a wild pigeon.
“Never mind! That was. Hm. I phrased that very poorly. You don’t have to answer that.”
Dove could breathe again, and Master Beren scrubbed a hand through his hair so that the wispy bits on the top of his head stuck up like a tuft of grass showing through snow.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Let’s. Let’s just make some lunch, okay?”
--
It never did become entirely clear why Dove had been punished, but being confined to his room for less than half a day was not nearly a harsh enough punishment to make Dove overly worried about earning it again. He didn’t want to, of course, but it was perfectly survivable if he did.
In a completely unrelated set of events, Master Beren started teaching him to cook. He had lessons twice or even three times a day, once in the morning, once in the middle of the day. Master came home in the middle of the day, just to teach him, and told Dove that if he ever wasn’t home at mealtime, he was to practice what he’d learned, and make sure it tasted right.
Dove was never hungry anymore, and Master seemed happy with his progress. He didn’t punish him for mistakes, either, not even sending him to his room again when he burned a dish beyond recognition or accidentally set the oven on fire.
Fox had used to teach him like that, Dove thought. Thinking of the older boy hurt, like pushing at the sore spot left by a pulled tooth, like a part of Dove was missing and some instinct kept pulling him to remember it, but sometimes, Beren reminded him of Fox. Fox had always been good at training, because he was patient about it, and not mean, but didn’t just start crying and get them both caned like some of the other older kids. Every time he introduced Dove to something new, he’d gone down on his knees, and held Dove’s hand, and showed him how to breathe—in, and then out, real slow—and told him that as long as he breathed, he could know that everything would be okay. If it hurt, it wouldn’t hurt forever, and if it was scary, it wouldn’t be scary forever, and sometimes knowing that wouldn’t help, but sometimes it would.
After training, Dove would just want to cry, but he’d hold it in until after lights-out, and then he’d go into Fox’s bunk and hide under the sheets and just breathe, because the smell made it easier, even if Fox was working and couldn’t hold his hand or hug him about it.
Beren was patient, Dove thought, like Fox was. Dove wasn’t hungry, or hurt, or even all that scared, anymore. He cooked and watered house plants and looked through Beren’s big books of pictures. It was new, sure, but it was good. It was the best he'd ever had it.
And yet, all he wanted was to find Fox’s little bunk and curl up in it. Maybe then, he’d feel like he was able to breathe again.