“Good.  Good,” he whispered, trying to encourage that way of thinking in Alex.  Not wanting to be hurt was good.  Not wanting to be hurt was key to everything, both taking down Dick and freeing Alex.  But just as expected, the excuses came back.  Dick had piped all that steaming bullshit into his son’s head and polluting his thought patterns.  Unfortunate that some of that happened to be right.  It was going to be dirty manipulation in the end, wasn’t it?  Andreas had wanted to keep his tactics cleaner, but Alex wasn’t going to reach the right conclusions on his own.<br/><br/>Good thing he was probably far better at manipulating  than Daddy Dick.<br/><br/>“Do I want to get to him?  Yes.  He’s scum.  And he’s right that I can’t take care of you like he can.  I can do far better,” Andreas promised, tucking his fingers under the other man’s chin and attempting to guide those pretty blues back to him.  “When all of this is over, I’ll teach you how to live.  You’ll be right at my side, experiencing the world, embracing it, not cowering in fear.  Doesn’t that sound better than what you’re doing now? Working some crap job, getting harassed by everyone, being afraid to step wrong for fear of punishment you don’t deserve?”