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whumpqin · 4 years

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Quinn - Chapter 1 (This Wasn’t the Plan)

Hello all! It’s been a while since I’ve posted some of my own writing. I’ve decided to make a side story to Elisha, which is what this is! I hope yall are interested in some Quinn whump >:3c

Taglist: (considering this is a similar but also different series, I’m tagging Elisha’s people, but feel free to want to be removed from this taglist! I will make sure to make the difference.) @faewhump @galaxywhump @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @insanitywishes @burtlederp @whumpasaurus101 @simplygrimly (ask if you want tagged!)

CW: nonhuman whumpee, creepy whumper, muzzles, forced muzzling, fantasy racism, kidnapping, smoking, guns, briefly mentioned assassination attempt, manhandled, getting patted down, gut punching, drugging, needles

Word Count: 2,799

It’s a dull ringing that rouses him from his sleep - an annoying tone that he’d sworn to fix and still hasn’t gotten around to.

Quinn groans at the rude awakening, and rolls his head over to see why it was going off by planting his hand on his phone and dragging it closer. It reads unknown against a background of black. Despite the annoyance that makes his tail curl lazily in his bed, he still swipes his finger across the bottom to answer it, bringing it up to his ear.

“Hello?”

The other side of the line is quiet for a moment, before a gruff voice, a little lower than Quinn expects, speaks. “This number was provided in relation to contacting a ‘Quinn Devereux’. Is this who I’m speaking to?”

“This is he,” Quinn says, sliding his blankets off of him, confusion lighting his voice.

“I am calling on behalf of my employer, Mr. Delaney, who has arrived at the meeting place. Except, it does not appear that you are there. I do hope you plan to be on schedule, yes?”

Ah, hell.

Quinn sits up in the bed quickly as alarm saps all the weight from his body. “Uh, of course not! ‘Pologies, I was plannin’ on makin’ it a uh…” he pauses to bring his phone down and note the time, which is about ten ‘til nine. Shit, shit shit- “a little earlier than this. Same place, right? That old abandoned house?”

“Yes. Don’t be late, Quinn. We wouldn’t want this deal going south, now would we?”

“‘Course! I mean, I-'' The phone makes a beeping noise to indicate that the other side hung up, stopping Quinn in his tracks. He looks down at it to be sure, before heaving a large sigh. It’s going to be one of those days it seems.

He needs to work fast. Firstly Quinn rifles through his apartment for nice-ish looking clothes, and though he’s never bought a suit and swears that he’s not going to no matter how much his Ma tells him to, he finds one of the newer button-up shirts that he bought recently. He scans its surface in case it magically had gathered stains on it while sitting in his dresser drawer in exile, but considering he only wore it once for a job interview he figures it’ll do the trick. He slips it on and finds some day old jeans that don’t smell too awful before he takes a look at himself in the mirror.

He’s a little worse for wear, but at a quick glance it’s only those faint dark circles underneath his eyes that catches his attention the most. Quinn combs through his black hair with his fingers, flattening it to look more presentable while also unhooking strands that wrap around his antlers and the bright orange tag against his ear. He pauses there, looking himself up and down.

Bedraggled and half awake, in clothes that are only somewhat clean. Going to a shady place to make a shady deal on behalf of people he barely knows.

“You can do this,” he quietly tells his reflection as he leans against the sink. “Get in, get out, get paid. Get in, get out, get paid.”

He repeats the phrase a few more times, committing it to memory on his way out. He picks up the handwritten letter he’d left on the small table at the front door and stuffs it into his front pocket. Then Quinn grabs onto his muzzle, slipping the buckles around his antlers to fasten it loosely against his face.

As he walks out of his apartment and onto the street, he makes the mistake of checking his phone one he’s properly in the morning light. It reads five minutes before his meeting, and he still has a ways to walk yet. Quinn lets out an exasperated sigh, eyes falling upwards to the adjacent apartment complex. It’s there he notes some curtains quickly shutter closed. His eyes narrow.

There’s someone watching you. Real strange fellow, he remembers the considerate old lady from down the hall telling him.

Tell me something I don’t know, he had responded. Quinn wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out it was just his employer keeping a good and proper eye on information.

To make up for time, he runs. Quinn dips into the alleyways to escape the busy streets of the morning, taking a few turns that he’s become familiar with while walking through the streets. A couple turns here and there, and he exits out onto another main street very close to his destination. He counts himself lucky he remembers the address at all. It would have been embarrassing as hell to have to ask the guy on the phone where he was supposed to have this meeting in the first place.

Quinn jogs up to the specific house, noting the old “for sale” sign that doesn’t even have a number on it anymore. It’s a huge place, once a mansion that was abandoned a long time ago because of bad press or something. He’s never looked at it before; even looking as ruined as it is by time, the place is still out of his price range.

He knocks on the door politely, taking the small pause to smooth out his clothes in a last ditch effort to not look like he had just gotten up a little bit ago, and waits patiently. The door creaks open with several years’ old whine that makes him wince, squinting one eye while he notices a human, dressed in dark clothing with short brown hair and amber eyes, staring back at him. Due to the muzzle making him unable to speak, Quinn offers a small wave before hovering his pinkie over his mouth and thumb over his ear, then pointing to the man. The human offers no reaction, but merely steps to the side. He takes the cue and steps inside the house.

It’s not as majestic as he once thought it might be. It hasn’t been taken care of in ages; the wallpaper is peeling off of the walls and there are holes in the floor, and the more Quinn steps through the house and hears it creak in response to him the more he wonders if the whole thing is going to cave in on him. It’s practically a deathtrap at this point.

He tries to make his reservations known to the human with a pause, knitting his brows in an uncomfortable position as he shoots a glance back at him, but he doesn't get the message.

The human opens up an old door for him that Quinn peeks around. There’s another human sitting in a chair in the middle of the living room, his legs crossed as he reclines into his seat. There’s a cigarette in one hand trailing smoke into the air, filling the room with its scent. His dirty blonde hair was perfectly styled like his fancy suit, and the only thing that didn’t look put together was the rough stubble against his chin.

The man who greeted Quinn closes the door behind both of them and steps around, joining another man with different hair behind the reclining human’s chair. The human in the chair - the boss he’s supposed to speak to, he supposes, flicks out his left wrist to check his watch almost casually. Then, he looks to Quinn with that icy blue stare of his.

“Right on time, it seems,” he says. Quinn tries not to let the dual feelings of discomfort and relief wash over his face too plainly. The man motions to a table he hadn’t seen yet. “Please, take off that muzzle. We can’t talk business if, well, you can’t talk, now can we?”

At his behest, Quinn slides his fingers up to the buckles against his head to loosen them and pull the muzzle off of his face. As it’s drawn away he takes a moment to work his jaws, careful not to bare his teeth too much in the presence of other humans, just in case. Then he places the muzzle on the table.

“Thanks for that. Are you uh, Mr. Delaney?” Quinn asks.

“Yes. I believe you have a message for me?” Delaney sits up in his chair and takes a long drag of his cigarette.

“Uh, yes, I do, I-” As Quinn reaches into his pocket to pull out the letter he’d been given, both of the humans to Delaney’s left and right immediately pull out guns and aim them directly at him. His chest goes cold. “Whoa, whoa, I’m just pullin’ out a letter!”

Delaney brays out a chuckle, puffing out smoke like some sort of dragon. “You’ll have to forgive these two. A bit jumpy after the last attempt, especially with lone messengers like you. Can never be too careful. You understand, right?” His eyes are squinted from his friendly smile, but there’s an emptiness in them that makes Quinn uncomfortable. Moreso when he waves his free hand towards Quinn and tells the guards to, “search him.”

The two bodyguards step forward without putting their guns away. Quinn swallows and stays perfectly still just like his Pa always told him to, allowing the two to move his arms about and go through his pockets. It’s a bit awkwardly invasive with two sets of hands patting him down like they are, but he’d rather have his personal space invaded than, well, the other outcome. The guards dig into all of his pockets, pulling up his wallet and the letter that had come from Quinn’s employer.

The human who found the letter gives Quinn a side eye that makes him draw a blank in terms of words, before opening the letter himself. He draws out the paper that was carefully handwritten and placed, unfolding it like it was a bomb of some sort.

Quinn was watching him like a hawk, so much so that he didn’t notice the other human had stepped away and given his wallet to Delaney.

“So, Quinn, it seems. You’ll have to forgive me for not remembering, it’s hard to remember everyone’s name nowadays. What brings you to this type of work, huh?” Delaney went on, rifling through Quinn’s wallet with curiosity.

“Um, I-I needed the money,” he mutters, watching the bodyguards hand the letter off to Delaney. “For the record, my employer thought it’d look wrong to bring more people besides, well, me. Wants to be cordial an’ all.” It’s not really his message, but he can’t help but feel a bubbling nervous feeling in his stomach as Delaney reads the letter.

“You mean he doesn’t want to lose any more men, so he figured I’d take mercy on just the messenger,” Delaney cooly corrects.

“Well I’m not sure what my employer’d think, but I’d for sure want the messenger t’ be spared,” Quinn says in the attempt at a joke.

When no one in the room laughs, he curls his tail around his ankle.

Delaney huffs a small bit of laughter as he reaches the end of the letter, beginning to slowly rip it up into little pieces and shoving it into his nice suit. “Quinn, do you know what happens when you give someone an inch?”

“They take a mile?” He swallows as the human stands up from his chair and adjusts his cufflinks.

“Yes, good, at least you’re not totally brain dead like some I’ve seen. I’m not about to relent and give that man a fraction of space like he’s requesting. You of all people should know that this is my territory, right? Where I do my business?”

“Right, but-” His breath hitches when the guard next to him grabs onto his shoulders and holds him before he can step forward. “This agreement is so they won’t encroach, is all. Wouldn’t it’d be better to not have any more territory disputes?”

Delaney regards him for a moment, having to tilt his head upwards just slightly due to Quinn’s height. Then he smiles a bit more widely. “I don’t think we’ll be making a deal today. But… I think we’ll take care of it from here. When are you meeting with your employer again?”

“As, as soon as I can.” Quinn’s eyes frantically look around for an exit as the other bodyguard closes in. He needs to get out of here. Now. “I’ll uh, leave you to it then, I guess. Sorry we couldn’t come to some sorta agreement-”

“Let me at least escort you out. My treat,” Delaney offers with an extended hand towards the door.

“Um, I ‘preciate the offer, but, I actually have a uh, a few things to tend to after this, so-”

The bodyguard holding him delivers a solid blow to his middle, knocking the air out of him in one fell swoop. Quinn doubles over, held up only by the strong hands gripping onto his shirt now, gasping to fill his lungs quickly.

“Perhaps I wasn’t very clear. I wasn’t asking, Quinn.” Delaney tilts his head to the side to catch his eye. “I’m not about to let you blab about everything you saw here just yet. Need a few things in order, you know? I just need to know if you’re coming with me willingly, or if my men need to get involved.”

“Hold… hold on a minute now,” he says quickly and yet still breathless as the panic wells in his chest instead of the oxygen he desperately needed. “I’m, I’m just a messenger, I’m not- what-what are you doing?”

Delaney had sighed and looked to his other body guard while Quinn was talking. He points over to the muzzle lying on the table and flicks his hand. “Muzzle him. I don’t have time to deal with his blabbering.”

Quinn’s arms are wrestled behind him before he can realize. The bodyguard is stronger than he thought, and he holds him still long enough for the other one to draw close enough, muzzle in hand. He struggles, lifting his head out of their reach and kicking his legs out to delay the inevitable. One of them grabs his antlers, jerking his head downwards for long enough that they can wrap the buckles around his face. They’re affixed tightly against his face, muffling most of the panicked cries erupting from his throat beyond whines.

“Enough of that whining,” he hears from Delaney as a firm command. He glances over with terrified eyes to see him pull a phone out of his pocket. “I have to make a call. Oh, you two, make sure to get him comfortable in the trunk, will you?”

The two humans nod, and drag him out of the room. Quinn screams as best he can through his nose, kicking his legs and struggling to get away from them as best he can. One of them spits out a curse, unhooking the gun from their side.

“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “I’m not dealing with a spitfire devil today. I’ll just shoot you and get it over with. You want that?” Quinn breathes hard and shakes his head frantically. “Then fucking act like it.”

They pull him out of the house with little issue after that. Quinn’s tail coils, tightening painfully against his ankle as it worries at the fabric and skin, as they approach a dark car with tinted windows. One of the bodyguards walks to the other side and pulls out a few items from the front seat, and Quinn can hear the clinking of chain along with it.

He’s suddenly thrust forward, and his face impacts against the side of the car. His bright eyes go wide, searching frantically for what’s happening, and then he feels metal tightly wrap around both of his wrists. Then he is taken from the side of the car to its back, as one of the bodyguards opens up the trunk. Quinn jerks against the cuffs holding his hands together, frustrated and scared tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

This can’t be happening, he thinks, looking at the interior of the trunk. His antlers are roughly grabbed again, dragging his head to the side. He can’t help but roll the thought around in his head, how this wasn’t supposed to be how it went, as something sharp sticks into the side of his neck. Quinn squirms, a muted whine slipping from his nose as a wave of dizziness hits him and his legs nearly buckle. The guards take the opportunity and throw him into the back of the trunk, and as Quinn lands with a harsh thud his vision blurs from the force of the impact.

“Get comfortable,” the one who cursed at him before remarks. “You’re gonna be with us for a while, I think.”

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oceansevaporatetoo · 3 years

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this cool thing

CW: lab whump, lady whumper, minor whumpee, creepy comfort (abusive/manipulative caretaker), fucky headspace, self hatred, needles, mentions of death, panic attack, disassociation, suicidal ideations, torture, noncon touch, sleep deprivation

here is a description courtesy of @teenytinytumblers: hi im oliver, i have fire powers and also the power of sassiness, im being tortured to find out the source of my fire powers by this shitty lady named dr. bateman, and theres this other dude named liam who likes to punch people, people being me. also my parents abandoned me to the center btw so theres my tragic backstory for you

this is my first time posting writing on tumblr, please lmk if you like it!

I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Dr. Bateman said she’d be back in a couple of minutes with clean clothes—not-bloody clothes—but she’s not back yet and I think I’m going to collapse where I’m standing.

My eyelids flutter, but she said she’d come back and she’s not back yet so I stay standing. I stare at the clock and watch the seconds tick by. Time seems to move faster now that I know I’m nearly dead.

I knew before, I think. I just didn’t understand. There’s no getting out of this.

I am going to die.

And I’m okay with that, I think hazily as the door swings open.

“Oliver,” Dr. Bateman says, putting the clothes on my bed. She looks up at me, and I lower my gaze just before our eyes meet. “No. Look at me.”

A million comebacks flash through my head and I say none of them. I look at her and can almost feel her hand gripping my chin, the tip of a needle pressing into my neck while I beg her to stop.

I blink.

“Good,” she says, her tone nearly motherly. “Now, Liam will be here tomorrow morning at—“

“I don’t want to know.” My voice cracks, and I flinch as her hand goes to the remote resting on her clipboard.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she says quietly, but she doesn’t press the button.

“I’m sorry—“

“I’m still speaking.”

It’s a test. It’s a trap.

I say nothing.

Dr. Bateman jots something down on her clipboard, then looks back up at me.

Am I supposed to say something?

My head spins. I’m going to yawn and I can’t, she’ll be furious— and she’s still looking at me.

“This shouldn’t be this hard, Oliver,” Dr. Bateman says loftily, and what if she’s doing this on purpose, what if she’s trying to get me to mess up?

I can’t even remember what we were talking about anymore, and my head feels full of cotton balls and glass shards.

I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. I didn’t notice.

“Oliver?”

I look at her.

She looks at me a second too long and I break.

I let out a panicked sob, grabbing the nightstand behind me and sinking down onto the floor. I’m staring at the same red shoes that were pinning me down to the ground earlier and I screw my eyes shut, but I can still see the red on the inside of my eyelids and I can’t breathe.

“Honey,” Dr. Bateman’s voice comes from somewhere above me, slightly muffled, and I can’t tell if she’s concerned or patronizing or something else entirely. “What’s wrong?”

“You— you’re going to kill me.” But it’s not me saying that, it couldn’t be, because I don’t even remember my mouth starting to move. I don’t remember my eyes opening.

“Yes,” She reaches over my head to put her clipboard on the nightstand. I want to back away, but there’s nowhere to go, and I press myself into the wood. The look on her face makes me think that my shutting down is waking her up. “But let’s face it. I was always going to do that. Oliver, honey, do you know how elemental powers work? It’s in your chromosomes. Down to the deepest level. There’s no way to get rid of your fire without getting rid of you.”

My head pounds, and I take a shuddering breath. The room is spinning, but not around me, around her.

I’m dreaming, this has to be a dream—

She runs a hand through my hair, as if to be consoling. I shrink away from her.

“Don’t touch me,” I say, and the sentence comes out in a sob. “Please don’t—”

Her fingers curl into my hair and she yanks my head back so I’m forced to look up at her. “I’ll do anything I want to do, Oliver,” she says, her voice dangerously soft. “You’re going to be on the operating table tomorrow, and yes, I am going to touch you. Never speak to me that way again.”

I say nothing. No words would come out anyway. She lets go of my hair, and I let my head drop.

“Now,” Dr. Bateman continues. Her tone is harsh, and I flinch, bracing myself for pain that I’m not even sure is coming. “I have several things to explain to you, and I suggest you just listen. Look at me, Oliver.”

I look up, swallowing. My eyes threaten to close again, and I force them to stay open.

“Thank you,” she says finally. “Now, Liam will…”

I tune her out, staring absentmindedly at the clock right behind her head. My heartbeat is still in my ears and it aligns with the ticking of the clock, like it’s counting down the minutes until I die.

“Oliver,” I look at Dr. Bateman. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“What time tomorrow?”

I don’t know. I have no idea, and she takes the clipboard off the nightstand.

“No, wait—“

She pushes the button, and pain courses through every single nerve in my body.

Pass out, pass out, pass out, I think, and a second later, I do.

“Ten tomorrow morning,” Dr. Bateman tells me when I come to. “What time?”

“Ten tomorrow morning,” I repeat, my voice hollow.

“And where is Liam going to take you?”

“To—” I don’t know, I don’t— “Dr. Bateman, please— just tell me again, I’ll listen this time—”

“I’ve told you three times already, Oliver.”

No. She hasn’t. She hasn’t. I’m not that delirious, right?

Right?

“No— no, you haven’t— I’m not—“

“Are you arguing with me?”

“No no no, I’m not—“

“Well, that’s what it sounds like. But you wouldn’t dare, would you? Not after all that time you spent in 3C.”

“No, I wouldn’t— Dr. Bateman, please—“

“So, where is Liam going to take you?”

Her hand is too close to her clipboard. “Please don’t,” I sob. “No—“

“Honey, just tell me you don’t know the answer and move on,” she says. “There’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

“No, I know it— I— just say it one more time, please, I promise I’ll get it—“

“You don’t know, Oliver. Say it.”

“I don’t—“ I sob. “I don’t know, but Dr. Bateman, please, please—“

I can hear myself screaming. I can see myself screaming, and I scream again to make sure that I’m still here, that I’m not dead, and then I slam back into my body and I’m still screaming. Dr. Bateman says something, but she sounds far away and underwater, and I think my ears are broken, but really, maybe I’m broken, like that broken clock in the other center that can’t tell the time anymore.

“Oliver.”

Maybe if I open my eyes this will all be a nightmare, an awful nightmare that I’ve been dreaming about for hours, for days, for years. My mom will be alive and my dad will love me again and I won’t have powers—

I open my eyes.

It’s not a nightmare.

It’s real.

It’s real, and I’m staring at those red shoes again, shoes the color of blood, of murder, of years and years of torture only to die in the exact same place.

“Oliver.”

I look up at Dr. Bateman, at the woman who took everything from me, and feel absolute, paralyzing fear.

I hate her, I hate her, I—

“I’m only going to say this one more time. At ten tomorrow morning, Liam is going to come in here and bring you to my office. You’re going to say goodbye to everyone, and then you’re done.”

Done.

“Now answer my question. Where is Liam going to take you?”

“To— to your office,” I manage to say.

“Perfect,” she says. “I’ll see you soon. Good night, honey.”

I flinch as the door closes behind her.

I think I might cry, and I will myself to feel nothing again.

#whump #lab whump #minor whumpee #creepy comfort #cw: needles #experimentation #my writing #original characters #dr bateman is a bitch and a hot woman

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itswhumpday · 4 years

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Blood Bags | Chapter 8

[Prologue] | [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7] Whumpee still stands in the same place for a while, not knowing what to do now.

The Whumper must’ve known that the gates were too far away for them to reach - and even if they did get there and managed to jump it, they wouldn’t be able to find civilization before freezing. They should probably find their way back to the mansion. Even if the Whumper locked the front doors, there would be a least seven hundred windows they could try to sneak back into. They could find their way back to their cell in the Pantry, try to get warm and wait for Caretaker.

Or maybe it was just a trick. A way to make them believe they were grateful for this life of misery and torture. Wouldn’t dying trying to be free be better than giving up to despair? Caretaker would say no. Despite their reserves, this much Whumpee knew. Caretaker was always trying to preserve their life. And each passing day, Whumpee wasn’t sure it was just for Whumper’s interest anymore.

A gust of wind brought another wave of shivers through Whumper’s body. They leaned over, coughing. Their face was burning against the cold grass. Whatever is was they were going to do, they had to do it now. Otherwise, they’d die right there.

Whumpee grabbed the nearest tree, pulling themselves upright. In cold days like this, their wrist still hurts, so they let out a small whimper. They’ve decided. Onward and forward. Towards the gates. Caretaker was out there. Maybe if they could find a safe place to wait for them to return… Maybe they could convince Caretaker to take them away…

Dreaming won’t do anything until they’ve started walking. Their knees are wobbly, trembling from the cold. They’ve lost a lot of muscle recently. They manage to push forward, blindly. One tree at a time. Two steps, a lean. Coughing, wheezing. They follow to the side of the road, because it’s the only clue they have of where the gates are.

The night gets darker. The wind grows colder. The tips of their toes are blue - they can see that even in the dark, contrasting with the rest of their skin. Their movements are more uneasy now, slower. Their chest has constricted like a dried nut. Every movement sends a wave of pain. Leaning against a tree to cough keeps them in place for ten, fifteen minutes. Seeing death dance in the edges of their vision, fighting to keep upright.

But the decision had been made. Going back now wouldn’t kill them any less. They keep walking, as slow as it is. They can’t find a rhythm anymore. Their eyes grow heavier and heavier. They feel themselves doze off sometimes steps at a time. For long seconds, they forget where they are, where they’re going. Whumpee must’ve cried, because they feel the burning sensation of cold water against their face. But they’re not anymore. Now there’s only nothing. Somehow that’s even worse.

Moments are jumbled. Caretaker’s cold hands against their feverish face, their parent’s embrace, their best friend’s departure when they were sold, Whumper’s face over the water. Caretaker keeps popping up. Their face when Whumpee screamed at them. Them crying when they thought Whumpee was unconscious. Their soft voice when they whispered “you’re burning up.” Even now, Whumpee can’t help but wonder how weird are the solaces people find in terrible places.

When they open their eyes again, they’ve tripped. They don’t know when. Their face is against the gravel ground of the road that leads to the exit they never got to see. They didn’t even feel the pain. Even the pain in their chest is distant. Laying on their belly like this it’s hard to breathe, though. They watch the dark forest, they don’t know for how long.

A bright light comes in their direction. They can only hope it’s the end.

***

Caretaker is driving so fast up the road that leads back to the house that the gravel of the small road pops on the metal like popcorn. They find the garage soon enough, almost jumping off of the car while waiting for the door to open. They grab their things, hurry to the Pantry. The door is already open.

Whumper is sitting inside. Whumpee is nowhere to be seen.

Caretaker leaves the things on top of the freezer, their stomach constricting.

“Ah, I was wondering when you’d be back. I need another blood bag.”

No.

“My lord?”

“This one simply wasn’t working. Terrible training. Get me another bred one, I liked the kind. But find me a stronger one.”

“Did you…?”

“Of course not. I’m not a savage like my siblings. No. I took them outside, told them to run. Standard procedure. They didn’t even get halfway. And so slow too…” Whumper touched their own neck, even though there was no beating there since before this country was even called that. “I told them to keep going. If they’re free, then they’re free. If they’re not, some animal will have a good time, don’t you think?”

Caretaker bites the inside of their mouth.

“Is that… All… My lord?”

“It is.” Whumper stood up but stopped next to Caretaker. “Actually, no… This time… Try not to get too close to this one.”

***

Caretaker runs outside, not knowing where to begin. They’ve been everywhere in this property. They know how huge it is. How can they hope to find Whumpee?

They shouldn’t even be out of bed, not in their state. How long had it been since Whumper had done that? Caretaker had been gone almost six hours. They could have appeared minutes after they left. They decide to follow the trail to the gates. Whumpee is smart, they would have known to follow it… Right?

It’s dark and there’s so much ground to cover. They run to the gates, but they didn’t find anything. They realize they probably went too fast to see anything and run back, but slower this time. The only track they find is the track of their tires from earlier. They stop halfway, knowing there is only one way. They have to resort to their vampire powers.

Servants like himself never have to do it. Everything is provided by their lord. But every vampire knows how to do it. It’s ingrained in their brain, like an instinct. They close their eyes, concentrate and sniff the air. Scents find him: thousands of small, thundering little hearts. Couped up in the trees, in the bushes, flying above. None of them were Whumpee. But there is one faint smell - human blood.

They rush after it, not taking long to find them.

Their heart breaks instantly.

Whumpee is on the floor, face down against the gravel. It has broken the skin on some places and that’s what they were able to smell.

Caretaker turns Whumpee around, bringing them up to their arms. They feel rigid and wrong. The tip of their fingers is blue, just like their lips, just like their eyelids. A small wheezing noise coming from their throat is the only sign that they’re still breathing. Whumpee opens their eyes a slit, showing wide pupils. And impossible smile forms in their chapped lips.

As Caretaker watches, aghast, Whumpee raises their half-frozen hand and touches their face, a touch as soft as death. They try to say something, but their chest only trembles. Their hand fall. Their eyes roll back and their head goes limp against caretaker’s shoulder.

They don’t shiver, they don’t move.

They don’t breathe.

***

Caretaker doesn’t remember running so fast in their lives.

They must have taken less than a minute to get to the Pantry. They carefully lay Whumpee in their bed. They look too small for it now, like changing the scenery changed Caretaker’s perpective. They lock the door - smashing it in a knot so hard no one would be able to open it.

They turn around, turning on the electric blanket they had bought, turning it to low heat. They couldn’t risk doing it too fast. They attach the heart monitor to the human’s finger. It beeps loudly, uninterruptedly, but Caretaker already knew that much.

They raise Whumpee’s face, not failing to notice how they meet no resistance. They join their hands together, and not much different than the week before, they start pounding Whumpee’s heart to life.

How long they could do this for? What kind of life was this? Could Whumpee’s gesture simply mean a good-bye? If they could have talked at that moment, would they have said “let me die?” When they asked Caretaker to stay even if they were sick, should they have stayed?

They’d had so many friends like them and they had to watch all of them die. But Whumpee didn’t feel like just a friend… They felt important. They felt… Like they were alive again. Capable of changing, of adapting… Of protecting instead of destructing.

The monitor starts picking up on the rhythm of the compressions. Every thirty, Caretaker stops and breathes into Whumpee’s mouth, raising their chest with every breath. It remains half open like they leave it. The blanket starts warming up, but Caretaker barely feels it. They leave it in the same temperature during a couple of cycles of compressions before getting it up again.

They stop asking questions. They stop worrying. As long as they can keep doing this, Whumpee can live. They’re stronger than humans. They won’t get tired from this. They can do this until they’re safe, until they’re back.

It takes eleven minutes. Eleven minutes until the heart monitor lets them know Whumpee has a shocking rhythm going. They grab the defibrillator, making it ready. It hums as it charges. Carefully, Caretaker rips Whumpee’s t-shirt to expose their chest. They place the machine against it and press the buttons.

The discharge makes Whumpee’s body arch slightly and fall back down. Caretaker worries their weak heart can’t take many of these. Luckily, one was enough.

Whumpee’s eyes are suddenly open. They’re gasping, grabbing their chest. They cough violently, rolling to the side. Wheezing comes out of their throat. Caretaker struggles around the room until they find an oxygen cylinder and connect it to a mask. They bring it to Whumpee, putting it against their face. They grab the mask and Caretaker’s hand with both hands, keeping it close to their face, their eyes closing again.

Caretaker watches in awe as their chest fills and empties. They want to pull away to get them covers, to up the temperature. But Whumpee holds them so tight they’re afraid of doing so.

So instead they just lean over and kiss their forehead.

“I’m back. I’m back and I’m here to stay. No one is going to hurt you ever again. I won’t let it. I won’t let anything hurt you again.”

Whumpee’s eyes open again, terrifyingly conscient after everything they had been through. They try to speak again and it comes out a whisper. They let go of Caretaker’s hand and, once again, touches their face with their cold fingers. It’s soft, like a caress. They pull Caretaker closer until they can hear what they say.

“I knew you’d come.”

#I told ya this one was gonna be good didn't I?#hypothermia #whump #vampire whump #vampire caretaker #vampire whumper #resus #cpr whump

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whump-it · 4 years

Text

Rory Confronts His Boss

@haro-whumps @grizzlie70 @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @comfortforthepain @shameless-whumper @iaminamoodymoodtoday @kawaiiloverofanimu @burtlederp @untilthepainstarts @my-whumpy-little-heart @moose-teeth @pepperonyscience @faewhump @saphemme @slaintetowhump @whump-tr0pes

What do you do when your chest wakes you in pain at 2am and then you finally calm yourself down and convince yourself that you're actually going to be ok and yes, you can breathe? You write this at 3am of course.

TW fit mentions of torture, some threatening posturing. Rory stress swearing. I think that's it? Also Rory is actually a bit of a badass and I love him,

The locality training facility was dark and shut up for the night when Rory got there. The car park was empty save for his car and one other, much more expensive, much newer car. He pulled up into a space far away from it. For whatever reason, he didn't feel much like being close to it.

For the second time that day he thought back to the question that Callum had asked him when he had donated himself. Had Rory ever been to the facility. And the answer had been no because it was invite only. Both the interview to become an AP and the job training took place at the locality collection box itself. He certainly had his invite now. And he couldn't have wanted it less if his life depended on it.

Rory heaved a huge sigh out as he turned the ignition off, pulled up the handbrake, and stepped out of the car. He didn't know his way around here but the front entrance seemed like the most sensible choice. As he approached it, a light flickered on inside and the door swung open. His boss, Mr Newman, stood in the doorway. Arms folded. Frowning. Scowling. Foot tapping.

"Rory," Mr Newman said curtly as Rory drew level with him. "On your own I see."

"I told you I would be," Rory said. "I told you I wasn't going to bring him here and I meant it."

"Mmm. You always were a stickler," Mr Newman said, turning and walking back into the building. "Follow me. The door'll lock behind you."

With no other options, Rory stepped into the reception area and let the door swing shut behind him. It clicked as he did and he glanced back, relieved to see that there was a push button to exit as opposed to any sort of swipe or key card exit. He followed along behind wishing all the while that he could be at home with Callum instead. The thought of him being there on his own made Rory restless. He'd only just got him back. He'd made the worst mistake of his life when he'd followed the rules and let Callum donate himself. Callum had had the most terrible three years imaginable until Rory had got him back. The universe had somehow given Rory what he considered to be an underserved second chance. And he was at the locality facility instead of where he should be. At home. Holding Callum. Cleaning Callum. Feeding Callum. Comforting Callum.

He walked the barely lit corridors a few steps behind his boss until they finally stopped at a door. Mr Newman took a key card from his pocket and swiped it down a pad to the side of the door, lighting up a tiny green light and releasing the lock on the door with a quiet click. Inside the room was Mr Newman's lavishly appointed office. A name plaque on the desk. On the very large desk. Bookshelves and certificates and family photos. Two comfortable chairs near a huge window that showed nothing but darkness outside, and a small table between them with a vase of flowers. Mr Newman motioned to one of the comfortable chairs.

"Take a seat," he said, going to his desk to gather up a small stack of papers. Rory did as he was bid although he would have preferred to stay standing. To stay near the door. Every inch further away from Callum was an inch too far. Like a physical ache that his body was tired of feeling.

"So," Mr Newman said, sitting opposite him and looking at the papers. "Callum Morris."

"Morrow," Rory said.

"I'm sorry?"

"His name's Callum Morrow. Is that even the paper work that I submitted when he donated?"

"It's the paper work we have."

"Then I'm just going to go ahead and assume that it is, in fact, not the paper work that I submitted. You know something? It might have taken me more than a few days to actually find Callum again? But it's taken me all of one conversation with you to lose all faith in this system."

"This system employs you and pays your wages so if I were you I'd be keeping a civil tongue in my head," Mr Newman put the papers on the table with calm ease although Rory strongly suspected that it was because he now knew that it was a useless pile of paper. Rory sighed and bent his head forward to run his fingers through his hair. He was tired. He wanted to go home to Callum.

"I should've checked more thoroughly," Rory said, sitting back up straight. "Checked that he really wanted to go through with it."

"That wasn't your job Rory. You know that."

"Well maybe it should've been," Rory said, his voice a little louder. His fingers back in his hair and twisting a bit. Mr Newman stood and walked to one of the bookcases to take down a decanter and glass, pouring himself a drink of some sort of honey coloured liquor.

"Look," Mr Newman said, taking a sip of his drink. "It's the Titanic effect." Rory frowned at him from his seat. "You don't know there's a problem until something goes wrong. That's when you can make improvements."

"Improvements!?" Rory shouted, standing and shoving the chair back as he did, teetering it on two legs before it righted itself. "You think this needs "improvements"!?"

"I can see you're angry..."

"You're damn right I'm angry," Rory shouted, stepping around the stupid little table with its stupid vase of flowers. "Do you know how long Callum was out there? Do you? Three fucking years, that's how long..."

"... and he will be brought to the facility and reconditioned..."

"Like hell he will," Rory said, trying to control his temper and his voice. "He's staying with me."

"You can't do that Rory,"

"Can't I?" Rory shouted, entirely failing in his attempt to maintain his calm. "You show me in your fucking contract where it says what happens when a collector tortures the ever living fuck out of you for three years and then dies. You show me where huh!?" Rory breathed deeply in and out, his chest heaving from his sudden outburst of anger. He spoke more calmly. More quietly. "Just some compassion. Please. It's not as if he's in any state to be speaking out against your programme."

"It's not my programme Rory," Mr Newman said, as calmly as ever. He sipped his drink again and Rory imagined shoving the glass into his face with the heel of his hand.

"That's just splitting hairs," Root said. "You know exactly what I mean. He's hardly in a state to speak at all. And whenever he does it's to beg to go back to be tortured some more because he thinks he deserves it or some shit. So please. Leave him be. Please."

"If his selector is dead," Mr Newman said, draining his glass then refilling it. "Why does he keep asking to go back?"

"He...uh... he doesn't know."

"Well now that is very interesting," Mr Newman drank some more.

"Don't you even think," Rory hissed. "Don't you even think about putting this on me. I did everything by your book. I checked everything."

"And yet we have this poor boy being tortured, as you tell it, for three years by the Selector that you provided him to. And now he's in your apartment locked away and you're refusing to bring him to the safety of his locality training facility."

"I know the Programme inside out," Rory said, stepping closer to Mr Newman. "I have read and re-read every piece of paper work. I have checked every form. It all checked out at the time."

"Yet suddenly it didn't anymore," Rory stepped closer still, making Mr Newman break off his sentence with a nervous laugh. "You don't want to threaten me Rory."

"Like you threatened me on the phone? But you're right. I don't want to. I want to go back to Callum which is exactly what I'm going to do." Rory stepped back and felt the briefest surge of pleasure at the look on his boss's face as he did so.

"Have it your own way," Mr Newman said as Rory pushed the door handle down and opened the door. "You just be careful." Choosing not to answer, Rory stepped out if the office and resisted the urge to slam the door behind himself. He traced his way back through the corridors and out to his car, all the while resisting the temptation to check if he was being followed.

He barely remembered the car ride back to the apartment, the only proof that it happened being that he'd made it and not crashed his car doing so in such a rage filled haze. He fumbled his keys until he finally managed to get into his apartment, cursing at the keys for being so difficult and throwing his jacket on the floor in a fit of temper.

"Callum?" Rory called out. He couldn't see him but he could swear that he smelt food. He walked through to the living area and peered around the corner to see that his dining table had been cleared and cleaned. And that there was a steaming dish of pasta with sauce on it. Accompanied by what looked to be a tumbler of vodka, a glass of water, and a piece of kitchen towel folded neatly as though it were a real napkin.

"Cal?"

"Uh...uhhh....ummm.... I'm sorry...umm... I'm sorry," He could hear him but he still couldn't see him.

"Cal where are you?"

"Umm... I'm sorry. I'm...umm..." Callum peeked out from under the table, cluthing on to his filthy teddy tightly. "I mm... made you f...food and I've waited. I p...pr... promise. I haven't had any."

Rory crouched down and slowly worked his way towards where Callum was still half hiding.

"I've been good," Callum whispered. "M...m...mmm...master Hayden can know I've been good." Rory let his head fall forward as he sighed.

"Yeah," he said. "I know. You've been the best sweetheart. Ok? The best. What do you want me to do? You can say. I want you to say."

"Umm..." Callum nudged closer to Rory, haltingly, stiltingly. An inch at a time and bending as he went until his cheek was pressed to the floor by Rory's knee. "Please eat... please... I'm sorry it's not better. I'll try harder next time."

Rory sighed and gently rubbed his fingers through Callum's hair. "No pain for this ok? And then I'll eat."

Beneath his fingers he felt Callum nod.

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shapeshiftersandfire · 4 years

Text

bottle up lightning

prompt: shock collar fandom: scary stories to tell in the dark characters: ephraim bellows cw: shock collar, creepy whumper, electrocution mention notes: takes place post-movie, in which stella has accidentally revived the bellows in addition to reviving her friends au/related project: project verna

Sarah would like this, Ephraim thinks. The fabric sits heavy around his neck, weighed down on one side by the electric box. The metal prongs dig uncomfortably into his skin, raw and sore and irritated. Even inactive, Ephraim can still feel the electricity racing through his skin. He opens and closes his fist, rolls his head to relieve that perpetual dull tingling in his arm, which he figures is either real and indicative of a serious health issue, or all in his head, which is also an issue in and of itself.

She would be reveling in this. He slips two fingers under the collar, lifting the box away from his skin. After all he’d done to her, one electroshock session every three days, sending one hundred-twenty volts running through her tiny body, he knows how much it would please her to see him like this. He imagines her standing over him with a sneer, that infernal remote in hand, waiting for him to make some excuse for why he’d done what he had. Sometimes, she doesn’t wait. She pushes the button and lets it go, go for what feels like hours, when in reality it’s only a few seconds.

Tell the truth, Ephraim, she sneers. Tell me what I want to hear. It wasn’t you, wasn’t it, who poisoned the water?

She kneels down, her eyes dark and burning and filled with more rage than Ephraim had ever seen in her in life. Go on, she says. Say it.

And when Ephraim refuses, she pushes it, again and again and again. There was no black magic involved, Ephraim. We’ve gone over this. That’s why you’re here. And she raises the the remote, waving it in his face, taunting him.

You rat, Ephraim snarls, and is met with a rush of electricity.

That’s not the truth, is it, Ephraim? Sarah asks.

Sarah, what kind of sick game is— And he’s cut off by another stream of electricity. When it’s over, he lays on the ground, muscles twitching with the last remaining rush. Stop it, he wants to tell her. Stop it, I’m not your plaything. Stop it and leave me alone. But he knows she won’t. She’s having too much fun, if he could even call it that, and maybe he can. Sarah isn’t going to stop until she’s had her fill of him, and that may be never.

(That’s the one thing about Sarah: like the rest of the Bellows, she has that stubborn streak. She’s not going to back down once she has her target set.)

Not a game, Ephraim, she says, standing. A lesson. It’s not fun being on the receiving end of this, it is?

He doesn’t tell her no. He doesn’t tell her anything. Instead, he stares up at her with every ounce of hatred he can muster. First she kills him (and rightfully so, he won’t deny that); then, she tortures him. Perhaps she was more a Bellows than he gave her credit for.

No, she says, of course it isn’t. But then I’m sure it wasn’t fun either, was it? Unless there’s some inner depraved part of you that thrives on the pain and misery of others.

Ephraim grinds his teeth. Never, he’s never taken pleasure in harming others, he’s only ever tried to help them, save Sarah. But it was a job, nothing more. It was nothing personal, he says. Only business.

Sarah snorts. Then consider this nothing personal. Only business. And she presses the button until Ephraim sees black.

But instead of Sarah (and part of him thinks he would greatly prefer Sarah), he gets this weasel of a man who claims himself the grandson of Oliver Waldon, a quiet old gentleman who rarely did anything more than sit at his usual place in the local tavern and say nothing. A harmless fellow. His grandson, not so much.

The bastard saunters into the room, the remote in hand that so many times Ephraim has imagined Sarah holding, and grins at him. “Good morning, Ram.”

“Ephraim,” he corrects, and gets a shock for his troubles. This one doesn’t last as long as most, but it still leaves a dull ache in his teeth and a soreness in his muscles.

“I’ll call you what I’d like. You’re in my house, remember?”

“Not by choice,” Ephraim spits, and earns himself another shock. It leaves him with his face buried in the floor, spit his mouth, and ringing in his ears. “Shit.” And swearing—well he can’t deny now that Verna hadn’t rubbed off on him.

“Swearing, that’s new for you.”

“Yes, well,” Ephraim says with a cough, “you have my aunt to thank for that.”

“Oh, yes,” his captor says. “That aunt of yours that everyone says was so foul-mouthed and horrid, the one that disappeared, right? That one? I’m not shocked.”

Ephraim grinds his teeth, he knows what’s coming next.

“But you are.” And he loses track of all his senses after that, caught in a torrent of pain and lightning. When it’s finally over, Ephraim twitches painfully, coughing into the floor. His tormentor doesn’t come closer, instead waiting for when Ephraim is able to roll over.

Jamie—no, James, Ephraim refuses to call him anything but—sneers down at him, that wretched remote in his hand. And how badly Ephraim wants to knock it out of his grip. But every attempt Ephraim makes to get off the floor is met with a push of the button; he screams, writhing, gripping the collar, trying in vain to rip it from is neck as electricity races through his system.

“You just don’t learn, do you?” James asks. He kicks Ephraim in the ribs. “See that’s the problem with you old-timey people, you don’t fucking learn. Every one of you has your head shoved so far up your ass, it’s back on your shoulders. And you don’t listen.” He kicks Ephraim again. “When are you going to finally learn, Ephraim? I don’t want to do lasting damage, but with the way you’re going you might be a vegetable by Monday.”

“That,” Ephraim says with another cough, “may be preferable to this.”

Another kick, this one hard enough that Ephraim feels something crack. “Ungrateful bastard,” James spits. “I gave you a place to stay—”

“You kidnapped me and subjected me to this savagery!” Ephraim counters, pointing at the shock collar. “You keep me locked in your basement, I could hardly call that passable hospitality.” And he’s on the ground and twitching again before he can say anymore.

“And where did you plan on staying?” James asks. “The Bellows house is an abandoned dump. It’s uninhabitable.” He puts emphasis on the word, as though Ephraim, a seasoned doctor, graduating third in his class, doesn’t know what it means.

(He does, doesn’t he? He knows what uninhabitable means. Or was it inhospitable he was thinking of? Oh dear.)

It’s a moment before Ephraim can respond. His head feels fuzzier than he’d like. He can only just make out what James is saying to him, and it takes him far too long to process once he can finally hear enough. “Well,” he says, slowly, “at least my old ramshackle abode doesn’t come with a shock collar.” A quick buzz rushes through his neck. Ephraim grips the shock box and pulls it away, trying to get some respite from the electricity and the metal prongs digging into his neck. He grinds his teeth at the residual shock running through his body.

He wonders, dimly, how Sarah would have fared in a shock collar. That bulky black box clipped around her pale neck, the prongs digging into her skin. She’d never really feared the electroshock mechanism, but a shock collar… Ephraim can only imagine the fear in her eyes every time he so much as twitched a finger.

How long would it have taken you to give in then?

He’s shaken out of his distant considerations as a hand clasps his shoulder and rolls him onto his back. James stares down at him with a mix of irritation and curiosity. Ephraim doesn’t have the energy yet to sit up. Instead he lays on the floor and stares up at James, waiting for his head to clear and debating how much more he wanted to fight before he lost the rest of his mind.

“You should be grateful to me, really,” James says, not without a note of smugness. “If it weren’t for me, you’d still be wandering aimlessly. You’d have nowhere to go. You’d be homeless.” Ah, yes, the homeless point that he loved bringing up so much, as though Ephraim is glad to be trapped in a basement with a shock collar on his neck instead of out exposed to the elements where at least he could keep his mind clear and he wasn’t at someone else’s mercy.

“I should be,” he says, and he means it more as a derogatory remark, but without his wits about him it sounds like it comes out as something very much the opposite.

“That’s right,” James croons. He runs his fingers through Ephraim’s hair, discomfort flares in Ephraim’s chest— “No—” and then James’ hand comes to rest on his cheek. “You should be.”

And it stays there. It’s enough for Ephraim to snap out of his daze, momentarily, with a flash of anger.

“Don’t touch me!” Ephraim shoves James away. He sits up and backs away. “Shock me all you’d like but I won’t be the object of your depraved sense of affection.”

“That’s incredibly rude of you, Ephraim. Insulting and foul. I should shock you into oblivion.”

“Then so be it. I’d rather that than have your filthy hands on me.”

James’ jaw tenses, his thumb lingers on the button, but Ephraim knows he won’t do it. He’d rather have Ephraim alive and conscious and spitting protests than a brain-dead meat sack.

In an unprecedented move, the remote is tucked away into James’ pocket. He crosses his arms, surveying Ephraim with hard eyes and a shifting jaw. “You’re a psychologist,” he says, thoughtfully. “I’m sure you know all about conditioning. Don’t you?”

Now it’s Ephraim’s turn to clench his jaw. He tries to swallow away the nausea at the back of his throat. “Yes.” It was one of the first things he’d learned in school, one of the most basic things. Pavlov and his dogs—the association between the bell and food. Classical conditioning.

James takes a step toward Ephraim. He crouches down to Ephraim’s level, takes the remote from his pocket and holds it in plain view. “Then you know,” he says slowly, “that I can make you like having my ‘filthy hands’ on you. It won’t take much.”

Ephraim inhales heavily. “You wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t I?” James asks. “Why don’t we find out?” His finger hovers over the remote—

“No,” Ephraim protests. “No, I don’t want—” A shock sends him to the floor. When the electricity fades, when his muscles have stopped contracting against his will, Ephraim fights to keep his eyes from tearing.

“If it means anything to you, Ephraim, I’m not really interested in what you want.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

Another shock.

Damn it.

“Keep this up, Ephraim, I can do this all day, as long as it takes.”

I’m sure you can, Ephraim thinks, and feels another little piece of him lost in a surge of lightning.

[***]

“Ram! Ram!”

The voice is far off, somewhere in blurry distance. It sounds familiar, a voice he hasn’t heard in years. He doesn’t recognize it.

“Ram! Ephraim!”

Someone knows him. Should he know them? Does he? He can’t remember.

He can’t remember much of anything. Those shocks must have addled his brain more than he realized.

Side of effects of electroshock therapy include amnesia, he remembers, from some fuzzy, yet intact bit of his mind. What does he know about electroshock therapy? He must have worked with it. When? What did he do for a living?

What’s he doing now?

“Ram!”

The voice jogs something in his head. A name comes back to him, not a face, no, just a fuzzy white space and a mess of neat black hair. Verna?

Who was Verna to him? How did he know her? How did she know him?

“Ver…na?”

“Ram! Ram?” The voice grows closer now. He raises his head, something shrieks in the distance, a sound harsh enough that he cringes and flinches. “Ram!”

And then hands—hands on his shoulders—No, no! Get away from me!—he lashes out—the prongs scrape his neck—

“No, Ram, Ram, it’s me, it’s Aunt Verna—”

Aunt Verna?

“Oh, God, Ram—” her hands move to his neck—

Get off!

“Easy, Ram, easy, easy, it’s just me.” A pair of small hands close around his wrists, not pinning them, just holding them. “Look at me, Ram. Look at me.”

Inhale. Exhale. He’s been breathing heavily. His vision clears, he comes to his addled senses. He might not remember his name—among other things—what is his name? Ram? Ram? Ram—Ephraim—Ram—Ephraim? It’s Ephraim, isn’t it? And that’s Verna, Aunt Verna, with her hands on his wrists, urging him to look at her—

Ephraim does, he looks at her. It’s Aunt Verna.

And that’s when things come crashing down.

He starts crying—he never cries, he doesn’t cry, Ephraim Bellows doesn’t cry—

But he can’t stop, he can’t stop—

Aunt Verna, Aunt Verna—and he grips her arm

he needs her how the hell long has he needed her how long ago did he get attached to her when did he realize he needed his Aunt Verna where’s his mother where’s Delanie he wants Delanie where is she where is she he needs her he wants his mother where is she

“Aunt Verna—”

“Easy, Ram, I’ve got you—”

Her hands go from his wrists to his face he wishes they would go to his neck get that damn collar off

he tries to focus on her voice “I’m right here Ram I’m right here I’m gonna take the collar off okay” he nods he wants the collar off he wants his mother where’s Delanie

“Delanie”

“She’s okay Ram she’s at home waiting for you”

I need her I need Delanie I need my mother why didn’t she come with Verna why did she leave him alone why isn’t she here he wants her here why isn’t she here why isn’t she HERE

A click and the collar comes off something pulls at Ephraim’s skin—

The collar falls to the ground with a clatter Aunt Verna pulls him into her arms

And everything slows down.

It’s like waking up. His brain processes everything one realization at a time, in slow succession. First, that his head is tucked against Verna’s shoulder, and she’s holding him, not unlike the way she held Sarah, close and protected. Second, that his neck stings something awful, between the chaffing and the electrocution. Third, that his tears have dried on his face, but he doesn’t have the energy to wipe them away. He has a handful of Verna’s dress and he’s not about to relinquish his hold on that any time soon.

Fourth, that the hand Verna runs over his head in slow, repetitive strokes is the best thing he’s felt in a long time.

He sees now what Sarah saw in Aunt Verna: a wildfire that burned hot and furious when it burned at all, and a low simmering warmth, safe and controlled. Aunt Verna is safe. Ephraim doesn’t remember when he last knew safe.

“I’ve got you, Ram,” she whispers, breathless and relieved. Ephraim thinks she should want to kill him, after what he did to Sarah—not that he can fully remember what he did to Sarah, but he knows, faintly, that he did something and by all means Verna should be furious. “I’ve got you.”

Ephraim closes his eyes. His neck burns. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He doesn’t tell Verna he can’t remember what for exactly.

“Yeah,” Verna sighs, her voice tired and worn, too tired to be angry anymore, “I think you are.” She holds him a little tighter. Her chin rests in his hair.

(He wonders, dimly, if she knows what he did. He thinks it’s better not to ask.)

(He’s probably right.)

“Delanie,” he croaks.

“”Yeah,” Verna says again. “She’s at home.”

At home?

No, no, that can’t be right. The last time I saw Delanie—

Something bad happened, something during the night. Ephraim remembers blood and broken glass and screaming—

“Delanie,” he says again, pulling away from Verna, “Delanie, she’s—”

“She’s okay, Ram, everyone’s okay.” She wipes his eyes. This time, Ephraim finds he doesn’t mind her hands on his face. James on the other hand… He tucks his head back into her shoulder. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“I want to see her.”

Verna holds him a little closer. “You will,” she promises. “I’ll take you to see her…”

Ephraim tunes out everything Verna says after that (something about his neck and a hospital, he thinks), but he can worry about that later. All he wants now is to see his mother.

#good even scary stories fandom i'm really three hell hounds in a trenchcoat #ephraim bellows #scary stories to tell in the dark #badthingshappenbingo #shock collar tw #electrocution cw #creepy whumper #project verna #bad timeline

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

The Visit

(I found this prompt while cleaning out my inbox and I’m so sorry I missed it the first time, Anon! With more than 150+ messages I am finding all kinds of treasures I missed when they came in!)

Prompt: "10. True tenderness is silent and can’t be mistaken for anything else" for Chris? <3

CW: Referenced death of whumper, referenced parental death, grief of an abuse survivor/whumpee, religious abuse, frank discussion of death, referenced past child abuse and survivor anger

Essentially a follow-up to this piece after Oliver’s death

Jake borrows Nat’s truck for the trip out to the cemetery, the old stick-shift Ford better able to handle the steep hills outside the city than his own beat-up four door. Chris sits next to him, pale and silent, and it’s a callback to a version of Chris that hasn’t existed in years, not since he was a frightened child.

This is a different kind of silence - heavier, it muffles the music from the radio, makes it seem like static and not songs at all. Jake doesn’t turn it up, or change the channel. He lets the silence draw out.

It’s not the same kind of silence, in the end.

The gates, wrought-iron and looking a mix of delicate and eerily strong, are open for them to drive inside. The rumbling engine of the truck catches the attention of an older woman laying flowers on a gravestone, who looks briefly up at them as they pass, but doesn’t wave.

She only looks.

Chris doesn’t look at her. His hands are folded in his lap, his hair caught low at the nape of his neck, the blue captured by a pale gray clip that holds it back from his face. He asked Jake to get him a suit, for this - he’s never owned one before.

Not since he left the bastard’s house.

Jake didn’t ask why - he just took Chris shopping, and they bought the suit. It’s black, with thin gray pinstripes that match Chris’s hair clip. His button-up and tie are perfectly done - Chris had done them up himself, the vestiges of training he still remembered. He’s wearing black leather shoes, shined up just for this, and he took out all his earrings, the perfect emptiness of the skin making Jake’s stomach flip at the way Chris has removed nearly all of the ways he made his body his own.

Jake drives around a curve on the little paved road, and finally comes to a stop.

The grave is unmistakable - the dirt is still fresh and soft, and hasn’t fully settled. It’s just... dirt, and behind it a little marker stuck in the ground. A simple name, date of birth, date of death. That’s all. The real stone hasn’t come in yet.

OLIVER WILLIAM BRANCH DOB: 09/09/1966 DOD: 04/02/202X Chris stares at the pile of dirt, and Jake sees his knuckles turn white. He’s not rocking, not tapping, not humming. Just... silent, and still. Like he’s carved from stone.

Statue boy, Chris used to whisper, when he was scared. Be a good boy, statue boys don’t move, stillness is better than what I do, statue boys stay still...

“You-” Jake’s voice cuts into the silence, a knife into skin, and he flinches at the sound of his own voice. He’s just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and suddenly he wonders if Chris wanted him to wear a suit, too, if he’s disappointed Jake didn’t think of it on his own. “You don’t... have to do this, Chris.” His voice drops, stays lower.

Chris doesn’t look at him, only looks at the grave. His beautiful face is pale, and looks young - more like when he first showed up - and the blue hair suddenly looks wrong, like he shouldn’t have it yet. It should still have its coppery new-penny shine. The roots are hinting, just a little, at the color it used to be. “Yes, I, I, I, I do.”

Jake swallows against a lump in his throat, and slowly nods, turning off the engine and sitting back. The radio continues to play, pulling on battery power, while the two of them look at a pile of soil that covers a dead man whose life is still carved into Chris’s mind. “You want me to get out with you?”

There’s a quiet, as Chris thinks.

Then he whispers, “Please,” as his thin fingers find the handle to the door and open it up. His other hand grips onto the bouquet of roses they’d picked up to bring out here, wrapped in crinkly paper and tied with a thin string.

Immediately, birdsong filters in, intrudes on the silence, demands their attention instead.

Jake is out of the truck in a heartbeat and around to meet Chris as he slowly steps down. He looks like a child dressed for a party, even with a suit carefully chosen to fit. Or maybe Jake just struggles to see him as anything else, in moments like this one.

Chris leans towards him and Jake slides an arm around his shoulders.

He doesn’t regret this man’s death, only that it couldn’t have been half so painful as what the bastard deserved - but Jake keeps that to himself, because he can see the tears standing in Chris’s eyes, and that’s not what Chris needs to hear right now.

Instead, he just says, softly, “I’m here.”

Chris nods, bumping into him once, twice, three times - a reassurance, a reminder. Then he starts to walk, clinging to the roses in his hand, and Jake walks beside him, narrowing his own long strides to match, so he won’t pull away, so they’ll move together.

There’s no one else here, in this part of the cemetery. It’s just the two of them, walking towards the grave marker, the laid-in dirt. Somewhere, six feet down, is the man who once made the width and length of Chris’s world so narrow that it was condensed to a single hallway, a basement, to the shape of tears.

Jake stands slightly back when Chris steps forward on his own. He doesn’t offer platitudes - he can’t hope that Branch is in a better place, he’s still got his fingers crossed that hell is real just so people like Oliver Branch can experience it - he can’t say everything happens for a reason and then ask himself what possible reason there could have been for Chris to lose everything and be given his own hell in return.

He can’t say it’ll get better or time heals all wounds or you’ll find a way to forgive him or God has a plan because Jake has lived with those words branded in his soul from a thousand well-meaning relatives and church people and his mother’s so-called fucking friends and none of those words did shit, they never helped, they only made it clear that no one wanted to sit in silence with the weight of what had happened, only talk over it until Jake and his mom pretended the pain wasn’t there anymore.

No one deserves forgiveness - you make the choice to forgive, and it’s got nothing to do with whether or not anyone deserves it, you forgive for yourself - not for them.

Time didn’t heal shit, and he’s never forgiven the man who nearly killed his mother and would have kept hurting him if he never got bigger, stronger, better able to fight back.

He can’t say God has a plan, because if that’s true, then it’s a shitty fucking plan, isn’t it? To steal a child from the love that should have been the foundation of his life and hand him over to wolves to be devoured instead?

He can’t say any of it, because he doesn’t believe it, and all those well-meaning words are just knives that tear you open and then demand you comfort the people who can’t stand the sight of blood.

All he can do is give Chris his silence and his presence while he watches Chris lay a dozen roses on top of freshly turned earth.

Chris speaks, and his voice carries just enough, and Jake’s jaw sets, trembles, sets again as he pretends not to hear. As he tries, and fails, not to listen.

“I tried,” Chris whispers, in his slow-stone voice, the one he was trained to use, that he can still slide into as easily as he might throw on a shirt in the morning. “I tried... to be, be good, Sir. I was... I was good. I loved you, and... I didn’t... leave because I didn’t love you-... I... I didn’t deserve to be hurt, Sir. But...” He trails off, and Jake forces his gaze to wander.

A bright red cardinal stares back at him from a tree branch nearby, flits away, lands on a different gravestone. Jake stares at it, wondering with a strange unsettled curiosity if it’s the same cardinal, if it followed them out here somehow, but of course that’s... not possible.

There are cardinals everywhere. Cemeteries just make everything seem haunted.

The gravestone the cardinal rests on has been here a while - there’s a single spray of flowers laid on one side, and nothing on the other. It’s one of those double-stones for married people, Jake thinks.

Chris is still talking to Oliver, and Jake forces himself with all his strength not to eavesdrop, just to be here, to be the strength Chris needs. So he stares at the cardinal, and the gravestone.

Each side has a little clear plastic heart, and Jake knows what those are - the gravetones where you can put a photo of the person inside, and see them, and he thinks those are creepy as hell, but... but he can see why you’d buy one.

A woman and a man. Jake squints. They have the same date of death, he thinks, and his heart twists. Car accident, maybe? That sucks. Chris said once that he remembered his parents died.

He wonders who misses these two, who left the flowers.

Life is not forever - but love is. Beloved parents of-

Jake feels Chris press up to him, cold nose against his neck, hitching in sobs that are nearly soundless, gasping for air.

“Do you want me to talk to you about this?” Jake asks, gently.

Chris shakes his head, twisting his fingers into Jake’s shirt, rocking now, for the first time since they left. His voice, broken, starts to hum to try to drown out his own tears, and Jake slides both arms around Chris’s shoulders and holds him tightly.

“D-don’t, don’t talk, don’t-... don’t don’t don’t, I just n-need, I need, I-”

Chris tenses and then lets out a wail, echoing off the trees, soaked up in the ground around them, a half-scream of stifled pain he’s carried since he was seventeen years old.

“Hurts, h-hurts, hurts, it hurts-”

“Sssshhh, I know, I know it hurts, Chris, I know.”

“It hurts!”

Across the cemetery, the old woman doesn’t look up from her careful care of the stone she is tending, giving them space, a kind of tenderness all its own in allowing them their privacy.

Jake just holds on tighter, giving Chris an anchor, a steady presence he can scream into until all the sound is out of him, until the scream is gone.

Then, it’s quiet. They stand, for a while, in silence, other than Chris’s slow avalanche slide into outright weeping for the man who did nothing but try to destroy what spark he had left, and Jake doesn’t say a word.

He’ll probably cry when his abuser finally dies, too. Assuming anyone tells him.

When Chris, red-eyed and sniffling, pulls back to get in the truck, Jake lets him go, climbs into the driver’s seat, and brings the old truck rumbling to life.

Chris’s knuckles are still white, but as they drive around the curve again, he starts to rock, back and forth, back and forth.

When Chris starts humming, Jake turns the music up a little to give him something to hum along to, and Chris flashes him a tear-stained, trembling little smile in gratitude.

A dozen roses in brown paper lay on top of the grave of a man who could never deserve the grief that Chris so freely feels for him.

The cardinal watches them go, and then hops down from the top of the gravestone to peck at birdseed scattered on only one side of the double-stone grave of two people who died on the very same day when Chris was fifteen years old.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout, @doveotions, @pretty-face-breaker, @boxboysandotherwhump, @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth

#grief #chris the strawberry blond romantic #jake the shelter guy #death of whumper #referenced death of whumper #referenced parental death #implied parental death #abuse survivor tw #child abuse reference #referenced child abuse #trauma recovery whump #grieving whumpee #angry caretaker #loving caretaker #caretaker and whumpee #found family #box boy #religious trauma tw

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

Get Real Angry: Interrogation, Final

CW: Institutional brutality, whump of a minor (in the form of a video Jake watches), beating, electric shock, very vaguely referenced past/potential noncon, violence in response to self-soothing stimming behavior, referenced familial abuse, sleep deprivation, creepy whumper behavior

The final part of Jake’s interrogation during his very bad week. Tomorrow I hope to get his reunion with Chris written, and then Jake’s first day back in class after that, and then we’ll return to your regularly scheduled comfort programming now that this little mini-narrative is out of my head!

To understand the frat guy reference (a reference to @deluxewhump‘s Alex), please read this piece here.

INTERROGATION: PART ONE PART TWO

Tagging @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxck-fxck, @slaintetowhump

When Everly wheels the TV in - big and blocky, on a little metal wheelie cart with a squeaky wheel and rust spots along the frame - and settles it in front of the chair Jake has been encouraged to sit in, Jake is reminded, bizarrely, of a movie he saw a few years ago.

Weird arthouse movie about a guy that takes another guy captive and his boyfriend or whatever tries to hunt him down, they watched something on a TV in an old house… shit, what was it called… Jake’s head hurts, throbs with a kind of foggy ache, and he closes his eyes, head drooping just slightly.

He could drift off just like this, with his wrists still zip-tied, his shoulders screaming pain at him. Since waking up at the sound of the cops banging on the door, sleep has been a twenty-minute nap here and there, as long as they’ll let him drop off, slumped in his chair, forehead resting on the table in the interrogation room.

Everly left for a while, he assumes to get some fucking sleep. They’d set up some kind of weird blaring alarm system that went off while he was gone, going off every hour or so, waking Jake up. His head feels weighted down with the fucking need for sleep.

Once his eyes close, he can’t quite seem to force them open again. God, he could, he really could fall asleep now, with Everly staring right down at him. Rescues talk about it, about curling up on the floor, covering their eyes with their arms to try and find the tiniest bit of darkness in the unending white light, just… drifting away into some kind of doze and fuck, what he wouldn’t give for a real nap right about now-

There’s a slam, palm on metal table, rattling it, and Jake jerks his head back up, staring wide-eyed up at the handler, breathing in harsh pants. Everly’s not even wearing his stupid fake cop uniform anymore. He doesn’t even try to hold up the pretense.

That’s how Jake knows - for sure this time, not just a hunch - that that camera in the corner by the ceiling definitely isn’t turned on.

Wanted to contract you but I was overruled. Jake’s bloodshot exhausted eyes stare up into Everly’s calm, almost pleased flat gray, and he shudders. It’s a thin line between protecting people who need help and being turned into one.

He kind of wants to send a thank-you card to whoever decided he was too much trouble to abduct.

“Wake up, sunshine,” Everly says, pleased as can be, pleased as punch Jake’s nana would have said, when he was little. Tiny little old southern woman, genteel beachside accent, sweet tea on the table, Sunday dinner, what happens between you and your husband is your business, Maggie. Jake shudders, all over.

When you run from a man who won’t stop hurting you with your kid in tow, you have to run from all the people who just can’t give enough of a fuck to help you, too.

“Pretty-… pretty sure sleep deprivation is torture under th’ Geneva Conventions,” Jake mumbles, forcing his head to stay up, his spine as straight as he can make it. Leaning against the back of the chair helps, but shit, what he wouldn’t give-

That’s how it starts, Jake. You think you’d give something up just to sleep, and then they take that, and take more than that, and eventually there’s nothing left.

“Probably,” Everly acknowledges with a careless shrug. “But you’re gonna have one hell of a time proving you were here and not just the unfortunate recipient of a beating outside a bar or whatever the fuck you do in your free time.”

“In m’free time,” Jake slurs - weird how being this tired has made it harder to move his mouth, even, “I mostly feed homeless people. Not… ‘zactly a violent hobby.”

“Weird how that happened to you, then,” Everly says brightly. He picks up a remote on the cart and starts pressing buttons. The TV powers on with a sudden flash of colors and Jake winces as the light hurts his eyes, blinking rapidly, trying to focus.

It’s harder than it should be. Everything is harder than it should be. He’s not even sure he could stand up on his own any longer, his legs feel like noodles precariously balanced on top of concrete blocks.

“No… no folder t’day?” Jake asks, staring as the menu pops up. Smart TV, of course it is. He stifles a laugh at the sight of the little Netflix icon, Hulu, Amazon Prime. “Y’watch a lot of, of fuckin’ TV when you’re torturin’ innocent people?”

“Shut up, it belongs to the police station.” Everly chooses an app off to the corner, something called KINECTREMOT, the letters dancing and refusing to settle as Jake tries to read them. Does it start this way, with the rescues? Does it start with it just getting harder because you’re tired, and then one day the letters start to hurt?

Or is there something else, to that? Something to the training the rescues can’t explain, maybe don’t even remember?

No, Kauri remembers. Kauri’s head is a fucking mess but he remembers more of training than any of the others seem to be. Maybe that’s why his head is a mess. Jake groans, trying to focus, to think.

Everly’s humming to himself, a soft little tune on his lips, as he inputs a login username [email protected] and a password that just shows up as little circles. He fucks it up the first time, has to redo it. Jake holds back a snort.

“Y’tired, too, huh?” He asks, false sympathy dripping from his tone. “Real tired? Wanna schedule us a fuckin’ naptime, man?”

Everly glances back at him, then leans over and grabs Jake by the back of the head, casually slamming his forehead into the metal table, listening to Jake’s cry of pain with a faint grin on his face, then jerking his head back up, to look into exhausted, foggy light-colored eyes. “Have some fucking manners, Stanton.”

“Fair ‘nough,” Jake slurs, head pounding with pain, slumping to the side. “Can I please request a fuckin’ nap, sir-”

“No.” Everly goes back to humming, tries the username and password again. Wrong again. Jake wonders if he fucks it up again, if he’ll get locked out. Since this is clearly meant to be some kind of dramatic reveal, the idea strikes him as funny. Not just funny, fucking hilarious. Jake starts to giggle, unwillingly, almost helplessly. Big tough guy can’t figure out his fucking password for his Big Villain Moment. It’s funny, right? It’s really fucking funny, and shit, he’s so tired the glint of light off the table and the little spot of blood from his head, smeared across, seems funny because it’s like looking at clouds, what shape is this? and Chris on the grass bouncing up and down on his feet and saying it’s it’s it’s a kangaroo, Jake, it’s a kangaroo, in Australia they call them roos, they just say, say, say say say roo I saw a man on TV he said, said roo, he just said roo and that cloud looks like-

There’s a flash of pain, impact of palm across bruises that have already blossomed dark on his face, and Jake grunts, jerking to the side, somehow managing to stay in his seat.

“Stop laughing. Stay quiet.” Everly narrows his eyes, tries one more time to put the password in. This time it works and the screen flashes black with the KINECTREMOT logo across the front, a soft chime of sound.

What he’s looking at now, Jake doesn’t really understand. Some kind of inbox, but for pictures and videos. They’re all labeled with six-digit numbers, a long list of them, with the words PRIMARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY next to each one. Not always the same word. Some of them say one thing, some say another. Some of them just say CALL IN or EMERGENCY.

Everly chooses a search bar option and starts painstakingly entering a number, and Jake stares, dumbly, wondering what the fuck he’s looking at, but with a sick certainty that he really, really does not want to know.

Everly’s still humming that stupid song, and Jake realizes why it’s sticking in his head, now. “Are y’… are y’humming Hotel California?”

Everly stops, blinks, looks over at him, genuinely baffled. Then he laughs, a rumbling sound. Jake hates that fucking smug piece of shit’s laughter. “I guess I am. Hadn’t noticed. It was playing on my way from the hotel this morning. You like that song?”

Jake stares at him, as evenly as he can, his eyelids trying to droop down, body desperate for sleep. “Used to.”

Everly chuckles again. “Yeah, it’s overplayed. Anyway… here we go.” He’s picked one number out - 223499, it doesn’t mean anything, and next to it he reads PRIMARY/SECONDARY and what the fuck does that mean? A long line of little thumbnail images pop up, with labels next to them. INTAKE, ISOLATION DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3.

The drop in Jake’s stomach gets worse. He feels almost nauseous with fear - not for himself, exactly, but for what he knows he’s about to see. “Wait, wait-… what are you-”

“Shut up, Stanton.”

“No. No, I, I can’t-… what are you goin’ t’do?” Jake looks up, bleary, frightened now. Everly just smiles back down at him, that smug fucking shit-eating grin, and Jake pulls hard on his restrained wrists, feels a flash of bright agonizing pain as the plastic, caked in two days of dried blood, reopens the raw wounds. He grunts at the ache, but everything from his shoulders down has hurt like hell since day one.

“You know, I requested authorization for injectables, too-”

“What th’fuck are those?”

“It’s pretty obvious from the name, I think. Got overruled on that one, too. Fuckin’ higher-ups worried about traceable compounds and shit. I mean, I get the concern. We can’t keep you long enough for that shit to get fully out of your system. But it would’ve made getting to watch this part a lot more fun.”

Everly selects a thumbnail, and the screen opens up - it’s like some bizarre fucked-up snuff-film take on a Netflix episode choice, with the thumbnail suddenly blown up to a larger size and a small description next to it. Someone made a computer program for this, Jake realizes with an even sicker drop in his stomach. Disgust ricochets around his body. Somewhere, at some point, someone built a computer program designed to let these assholes show him a video of… of what?

223499 - CONTRACT SIGNING he reads, just as Everly pushes play.

“Why show me this?” He asks, in nearly a whisper. “D’you… d’you think this is gonna make me not want to, to help?”

“No, I think you won’t break today, and today’s all I got. Give me a week and a white room and I’d have you taking food from my fingers, but sadly, our time together nears its end. Here’s what I can do, though. I can show you something you can’t ever prove. And I can watch your fuckin’ face the whole time. I can get you all riled up, all angry, and send you home with that bitterness just roiling around inside you.”

On the TV screen, Jake sees a small table in a blank room. No pictures on the walls, no decorations at all. Just a small table, two chairs, one on either side. Sitting in one chair is a woman in a suit - everything about her screams lawyer. Behind her, leaning against the wall, in a prim pantsuit, is a woman Jake has seen on TV before, that Renford bitch.

Antoni walked into the room when she was on TV once, turned around and walked out, and didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the day. Kauri flinched when Nat had to wear heels for a meeting and came walking down the stairs.

Jake knows pure soulless evil when he sees it, and there it is, looking bored.

There’s another person, too, mostly hidden by the shadows in the corner, but there’s something weirdly familiar about what Jake can see of him, something he can’t quite place. He’s wearing a pastel-colored polo and light slacks, weirdly fussy looking, like he’s dressed in case he ends up on TV.

Which, Jake guesses he kind of did.

They’re chatting - the sound of it too low for Jake’s tired brain to parse into words he can understand. Just easy, comfortable talk. Coworkers chit-chatting about their weekends, waiting for the day to start. Lawyer’s got a mug of coffee in front of her, takes a sip. It’s normal inane corporate chatter and these are people who do unimaginable damage to other peoples’ lives and they don’t feel a fucking thing about it.

“I won’t get what I want today. But I think I’ll see what I’m hoping to see on your face - and I think you’ll go home with something stuck in your head that you can’t get out.” Everly moves around behind him, stands with his hands on Jake’s shoulders, rubbing thumbs in like he’s giving him the world’s most painful backrub. Jake grinds his teeth together to keep from making a single sound. His eyes want to close, to look away, but there’s some sort of fascination that keeps his eyes glued to the screen.

He’s always wondered what the contract signings are like. The rescues never remember them.

There must be some sound - everyone kind of shifts around in their chairs, straightens up, and the lawyer pulls some papers out of a small folder in front of her, slides them across to the other side of the table in front of the other chair, sets a plastic pen down next to the paper. Fiddles with it, shifting it back and forth minutely, until it’s perfectly parallel.

A door behind the empty chair opens, and Jake stares in perfect horror as Chris is shoved into the room, a man Jake doesn’t recognize behind him, wearing the handler uniform and prodding Chris with a black stick.

He’s so… small, isn’t he?

Jake rarely thinks about how small Chris really is. In the video, he’s hunched over, his hair looks weirdly clumpy. He’s wearing a loose white V-neck T-shirt that’s way too big for him, like it’s oversized or they just couldn’t be bothered to get him one that fit. His knees stick out from under a pair of thin black shorts.

“Oh my God,” Jake whispers. His heart feels like ice in his chest, the cold is spreading through his veins, right to the tips of his toes in his sneakers, now bloodied like everything else he was wearing when they dragged him in here two… three? days ago.

Thumbs dig into his shoulder blades and he hisses, jerking forwards away from the pressure. “Recognize him, huh?”

Jake sets his jaw. “I recognize that you’re a fuckin’ monster piece of shit-”

Everly grabs his head and slams it down on the table again. Jake goes limp, groaning at the spark of white-hot pain, little spots in his vision even with closed eyes. Then his head is jerked back up. Motherfucker really likes walking the head injury line. “Watch. The. Video.”

“This… this won’t make me any less angry,” Jake manages to force out between numb lips. “None of it will.”

“Good. Then you’ll fuck up. The angry ones always do.” Everly grabs his chin from behind him and forces it forward.

On the screen, Chris is sitting in the previously empty chair now, the handler’s hand on one shoulder, thumb rubbing back and forth across the back of his neck. He’s shivering so hard Jake can see it in the slightly blurry video, looking around at everyone. There are deep visible shadows under his eyes, and Jake watches the way he sits, with his hands sort of between his legs, can tell from the tension in his arms he’s gripping onto the chair. “Wh-why am, am, am, am-”

“Fuckin’ broken record,” The handler behind him says, a man Jake has never seen, and smacks Chris hard against the back of the head. He jerks forward, whimpering, and Jake would give anything to be able to crawl into the screen and save him.

There are tears in his eyes he has to blink away, but now that he sees him he doesn’t want to miss a second. He’s so little, even though he’s almost the same age he is now. Being in that place, with those people, makes him seem so small, so deeply in need of protection. He’s so fucking scared and none of them even care.

“No one mentioned a stammer,” The man in the corner says. His voice is familiar, too, it sounds like it’s tailor-made for TV. Smooth as silk, with something rotten hidden underneath. “I’m not interested in a fixer-upper, Karen.”

“I’m not selling you one, either,” Renford replies, and Jake’s hands curl into fists behind his back. “He hasn’t been trained yet. No one starts training until they sign.”

“What…” Chris - not Chris, not really, this is whoever he was before he became Chris - flinches and looks backwards up at the handler, as if checking for permission to speak. Jake swallows back bile when the handler nods, and Chris looks back forwards again, his gaze jumping all over the room. He doesn’t seem to see the man in the corner at all, and Jake squints as he realizes there’s some kind of one-way glass along that area, angled so the camera sees everyone, but he’s pretty sure Chris can’t see the man. “Who’s… talking?”

His words are slurred together and deliberately, carefully spaced.

He talked like this when he first arrived at the shelter, for days after. Flat, meaningless syllables dropped and run from, certain he’d be hurt if he made a single sound that wasn’t allowed.

“Not important, trainee,” The handler says. “Pay attention to what is important.”

“Yes, um… yes, yes, sir,” Chris says in a low, weak voice.

“Bet you’d like to commit murder right about now,” Everly says from behind him.

“You’d win that bet,” Jake growls.

“I always fuckin’ do.”

“What, um-… what’s happening?” Chris asks, softly, looking around the room.

“This is your consent form,” The lawyer says, tapping a fingernail on the paper between them. Chris winces, slightly, hunching back into the handler’s touch. “All your information is there as provided by your adult guardian-”

“Joanne? Aunt Jo?” Chris is looking around, confused, blinking. “But, but, but but she… she, I’m supposed to, to live with her now-”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” The handler says, with a laugh.

“What, what, what-what, what, what does that-”

The handler hits Chris hard across the back of the head again, and he bites down on his lower lip and goes silent.

“You’d have gotten her an even higher payout if you didn’t talk so fucking much,” The handler says, grumbling, like Chris is the problem here.

Chris’s expression collapses from a nervous, frightened curiosity to an awful well of pain and grief. “Gotten her, her, her a what?”

The lawyer ignores him and keeps speaking. “… and your legal identification, confirming that you’re overage-”

“But, but I’m not, I’m, I’m n-not, I just turned, uh-” Chris is struggling, and Jake wants to climb into that screen and hold him, calm him down, help him slow his mouth to find the words. Chris’s eyes are wide, and his fear can be read, oddly foggy and dazed, like he’s operating on a slight delay. “I just, just just just-”

The handler behind him grips the back of his neck, like a man grabbing the scruff of an unruly dog, and Chris’s voice cuts off like turning a radio dial.

There’s a moment of silence where Jake can hear his harsh, panting breaths.

“What did we talk about, ‘499? About lying?”

Chris’s hands come up onto the table, tapping on it, not loud enough for Jake to hear. “N-not, not, not to lie to you, but-but, um, but but but I’m, I’m not-”

“Stop that shit with your hands. Now.”

Nothing visibly changes but Chris goes quiet again, staring straight down. His hands stop moving. His shoulders are hiked nearly to his ears and Jake wonders if the handler holding him by the neck tightened his grip.

“How old are you, trainee?” The handler asks the question heavy with loaded double-meanings, obvious enough Jake can read them. Give the right answer or get hurt.

“Eighteen,” Chris whispers, with wide scared eyes. Everyone in the room seems satisfied with the blatant, obvious lie.

“Good. And is that the legal consenting age?”

“… yes.”

“Good boy.” The handler pets heavily through Chris’s hair, and the boy shudders in disgust - Jake has never seen him react to touch like that, not from anyone. Just one more sign of a person that’s been totally erased.

“Pl-please, please don’t, please don’t-don’t, don’t touch me-”

“That’s not an option available to you any longer,” The handler says, pulling the black stick from his belt - and Jake knows what those are, he knows exactly what those are, he’s had one raining down on his back and his ribs and his arms now, had one stuck against his knee to force electric shock into his nerves. He wants to push back, but he’s so, so tired. “Your options are to take the touch as it’s given and thank me for it, or…” He taps the black stick on the back of one of Chris’s hands. The boy’s hand jerks back, but when the handler tsks, clicking his tongue against his teeth, Chris lays the hand slowly back out on the table.

“Why would you ever tape this?” Jake asks, barely aware his mouth is moving.

“Lunchtime entertainment,” Everly replies, blithely. The two of them watch as Chris says something, but there’s a strange rushing sound in Jake’s head and for a second, he’s so… furious… that he can’t even hear. All he can do is stare, the rushing sound drowning him out, and then the black baton comes down on his fingers and Jake cries out, as Chris’s mouth opens in a painful wail, as he tries to pull his hands protectively back to himself only to have them forced back onto the table again.

And hit again.

And again.

Jake’s going to be sick all over the floor if it goes on any longer.

The man who has been watching, hidden in the corner, laughs at the sight. He laughs harder, louder, when the handler forces Chris to thank him for the pain.

It’s his laugh that Jake recognizes, finally. It’s the laugh that turns him from shadowy and familiar to a face that Jake’s seen on TV a dozen times or more. Jake has protested his speeches on the human pet industry, has written essays on the complicity of government in human atrocities with this very man in mind, but when he was thinking of complicity he was never, ever thinking of this.

“You sold him to the fucking Governor?”

No wonder he’s so fucking cozy with WRU. They sold him a goddamn teenager for a personal toy-

“Took you long enough.” Everly pats him on the head, good dog, and Jake jerks away from the touch, thinking of Chris doing the same - and how he pushes into every touch now, good or bad, can’t tell the difference. Has to be told, over and over again. How many days without letting me sleep would it take to get me to give in like that? “Watching you watch this… you know who that kid is. You’ve seen him before. Lie to me or don’t, your face gave it all away. Our informant told us you’ve been bringing a kid who fits the description to your classes.”

Oh, God. The raid was my fault.

On the screen, Chris is signing the contract, hands shaking, the handler’s palm still laying flat against the back of his neck, over the heavy black collar he has around his throat.

“Just a homeless kid,” Jake grinds out, staring at Chris’s terrified shadowed face. Watching as he’s dragged back out, stumbling, with the handler’s grip iron-tight on his thin arm. Chris was tapping in the video, Jake thinks. He tapped before, that’s part of him, not something he picked up. Did he hit his head, before, too? “Could’ve been him. Wouldn’t know. He left.”

“Different story than where we started when I brought you in,” Everly remarks. He puts a hand on the back of Jake’s neck. Rubs his thumb, back and forth, just at the nape where skin and soft, short hair meet.

Just like the handler in the video, with Chris.

“Who called?” Jake asks, holding himself very, very still under the touch. He’s seen Antoni go like this, he thinks - just holding himself like a statue, his eyes straight ahead, not looking. When he has a bad night and spends the day on edge, when any little thing sets him off. “Who told you it was us?”

If it was that fucking frat guy - he’s in one of Jake’s classes, he’s probably seen him with Chris, could even have seen him doing yoga over on the grass, could have seen them in the coffee shop or eating lunch in the big seating area, anywhere, really - Jake will hunt down which frat he’s in and personally set the whole goddamn house on fire, starting with that asshole’s bedroom-

“A Professor Gregory Barnham,” Everly says. The words mean nothing to Everly. They mean entirely too much to Jake.

“My fucking Ethics in Political Philosophy professor?” For a second, his brain just refuses to reconcile what he’s been told. He’s been careful in that class. He’s kept his head down, stayed quiet, and the professor never told him not to bring Chris and the professor has smiled at Chris. Said hello. Nice guy, if definitely not super into the pet lib thing, and Jake had been so careful, bringing Chris in the back, keeping him carefully separate from the other students.

Not careful enough.

That son of a bitch saw Jake with a kid who was slowly coming out of his shell and he thought, better call WRU on this one. Better have that kid all fucked up again.

He’s probably not going to go back to that class. He’s probably going to fail it. He’s probably going to spend the next week convincing himself not to light the professor’s house on fire, and feeling like he kind of owes Frat Guy an apology for assuming the worst.

Sorry, dude, you trusted my intentions enough to be fuckin’ vulnerable about your shitty fucking fraternity buying a fucking preson, I decided to repay the favor by assuming you’re the asshole who could have gotten my family killed-

Jake doesn’t think about calling them his family. The word doesn’t even register in his tired mind. It’s just there, the foundation of the thought.

“Why tell me who called in?” Jake asks. He can’t figure out this guy’s angle. He’s giving Jake too much information, isn’t he? Showing him Chris’s video, the contract signing of an underage kid, the fucking governor the one apparently buying him… telling him who called him in… why give him all of this? Why give him all this information?

He’s too exhausted to try and outthink him. He… just doesn’t get it. He needs three days of sleep and probably some serious medical attention at this point, and he can’t even begin to try and think through this until he gets at least one of those things.

“Already told you, numbnuts.” Everly lets go of him, and Jake breathes a sigh of relief as he steps away. “I’m making you nice and angry. Go on, Jakob Collins Stanton. Go be the face of the fuckin’ movement. I can’t wait to see your fuckin’ dumbshit expressions on TV. Go on, Stanton. Get real… fucking… angry.”

Jake sees the black baton unhooked from the guy’s belt in the corner of his eyes, and his muscles tense, but he doesn’t move.

“Why tell me it was the Governor?” He asks, but the baton is already swinging at his head. When it connects, Jake’s head smacks forward into the metal table, he drops to the ground, and everything goes black.

He wakes up and the metal table and chairs are gone. The TV and its little wheelie tray are gone. The zipties on his wrists are gone and his shoulders scream as he pulls his hands forwards, looking at how deeply the plastic dug in. His head is pounding, throbbing, and he feels even more exhausted than he did before.

He cries, for a while. There’s a cop in the room who doesn’t stop him or help, just kicks a box of Kleenex across the floor.

Eventually they tell him he’s been charged with resisting arrest, but that his bail’s been paid. No one tells him but he sees a calendar on his way out, limping heavily, walking in bloodstained jeans and T-shirt looking like he lost a fuck of a fight, and realizes he’s been here for three days.

Chris has been alone for three days.

Any hint of pain Jake is feeling is washed away by the panic that takes its place. Chris can’t handle being alone that long. He needs touch, needs it, the constant never-ending compulsion for human contact that all of the ones like him have. Who even knows what he’d do - go next door or let anyone who knocked in or, shit, just start testing people, like he does, and that could get him hurt or killed or taken advantage of or-

Unless Nat…

“Uh, um,” Jake stumbles over his words, and the cop glances at him, dismissive. “Natalie… Natalie Yoder. The woman with me. Is, is she… was she let go before me, or…?”

The cop gestures ahead of himself, and Jake raises his eyes to see Nat sitting on a bench with a vaguely familiar man that Jake has never actually spoken to before, although he’s seen him watering flowers outside his yard. He looks like some kind of cowboy.

Natalie looks like hell - rings around her eyes and a few bruises littered across her face - but he can tell he looks worse, because both she and the man who lives across the street from the shelter recoil when they see him.

Natalie jumps to her feet. “Jake, what the hell-”

Jake walks to her, as fast as the cop will let him, and nearly collapses against her, resting his head on her shoulder. She puts one hand up over his hair on the back of his head and the other around him, holding him tightly. “I resisted arrest,” Jake says. “Apparently.”

“Yeah,” Nat murmurs. “Me, too. Jefferson here’s our neighbor, he’s come to take us home.”

“Is… everyone safe, there?” Jake asks, low-voiced, just above a whisper.

“We’ll talk in the car. Come on, we’re all paid up, they’re ready to sign off on us going. I… didn’t know about your dad, Jake.”

Jake stiffens and pulls away from her, looking away. “Yeah, well. I didn’t know about your job history, did I? We both kept secrets.”

There’s a silence, long and uncomfortable, broken only by the sounds of the department around them - people working at computers, talking on phones, chatting over coffee. It makes Jake think of the lawyer in the video, sipping her coffee before they dragged a teenager in to sign his life away, watching with a passive, uncaring expression while they beat his hands with a baton.

“Guess we have some things to talk about in the car on the way home, huh?” Nat says, trying for cheer. When Jake responds with silence, she sighs. “Fair enough. I should have told you.”

“Yeah. You should have. I have some other stuff to tell you, too, about who called-”

“I know,” Nat says, heavily, rubbing at her eye with one fist, looking oddly like an exhausted toddler. “They told me. That landscaping company that works down the street.”

“Wait.” Jake frowns, looks around. No one’s really looking at them, now. “Wait. I got told it was one of my professors.”

“You did?” Nat hesitates. “Then they gave us two different stories, Jake. So… which one is true?”

“If you ask me,” Jefferson says, in a soft, unobtrusive voice, “probably neither of them. Come on, we can continue this little guessing game in my car, yeah? I’ve laid down some towels, I had a feeling you might still be, um… bleeding… like that.”

They leave the police station in silence, Jake sitting in the backseat of Jefferson’s ancient Subaru, beat half to hell but the thing’s still running, somehow. All he can think of is getting home to Chris, keeping his promise.

“Look,” Nat says, after they’ve sat in silence other than Jefferson’s quiet NPR playing from the car’s radio. “When I started the job-”

“Not yet.” Jake cuts her off, and his voice is harsher than he means it to be. His eyes have closed and he’s not sure how he’ll ever open them again. “Chris first.”

“You know, your, um… Chris is really doing fine-” Jefferson starts.

“Don’t care. I don’t want to think about anything else just yet.” Jake’s face throbs. His head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton dipped in acid. His shoulders ache, his wrists look like they’ve been wrapped in razorwire, one of his ribs is probably bruised, he knows his torso is a fucking mess of black and blue, he’s exhausted and starving and pissed off and all he can think about is that fucking handler saying, go on, Stanton. Get real fucking angry.

What does it mean that they want him to be? And if they gave he and Nat two different stories about who turned them in, which one is true? What if neither of them is? What’s their plan? Or is there one? Maybe they just want him to get paranoid and freaked out, see if he stumbles, fucks it up. Maybe this is all just to get him wondering exactly who is out to get him.

Maybe Everly just thought it’d be fucking funny to get him all worked up.

He can’t think about this now. He’s too tired, he’ll only make the dumbest fucking decisions if he tries.

No, he just…

He just has to get home to Chris.

Keep his promises, first. Figure out everything else after that.

Told you I’d come back for you, man.

Jake thinks of the boy in the video, asking about his Aunt Jo, the look of crumbling sorrow in his face at their reply.

I made a promise to you, and I’m going to keep it.

But I am definitely real fuckin’ angry.

148 notes · View notes

ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

Disaster Lads: The Inevitable

The third part of my AU collab with @whumpiary where Cass (Ace) and Kauri meet. Read Part One and Part Two for context!

In Part Three, things heat up, get angsty, and then there’s a surprise at the end you’ve all been waiting for... or maybe you weren’t, but trust me... it’s fun.

CW: CONSENSUAL SPICE. This is not implied, fade-to-black, or suggested. These boys have a lovely time and they’re happy to share it with you. Discussion of abusive relationship/abusive past, conditioning,

Tagging Kauri’s crew: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @18-toe-beans, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers, @moose-teeth, @whump-it, @lumpofwhump, @pumpkinthefangirl, @spiffythespook, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly

“I have stuff,” Kauri says, all at once. “In my. I always… I have stuff for it.”

And God, Cass nearly falls apart at the table at that. He wants to climb over the table, or under it maybe, and have Kauri begging right there. Instead he takes in a deep, even breath, tries to stay calm and in control as he pulls his hand back a little, creating distance. One of them had to, huh?

It’s so much better like this than it had been behind the bar. Kauri’s embarrassed and stumbling and wanting it so bad he can barely get his words out properly and the earnest nervousness of it all is so fucking hot. There was literally nothing more attractive than someone wanting something so badly they were ceasing to function.

“You’re doing just fine,” Cass says with a smile, goes in with the understatement of the century. “It’s kinda cute, actually.”

Cass’ eyes slide briefly over Kauri’s shoulder to where Nick is serving a few tables down. He wonders how much shit Kauri’s gonna get in for leaving a free meal behind. He grabs a napkin from the holder, wrapping up his own untouched burger and shoving it in his pocket to give to Kauri later.

“C’mon tiger,” he says, voice heavy with want he’s not even trying to disguise anymore “Let’s get you out back, shall we?”

Kauri wants to say fuck yes and you go first and it all gets too jumbled in his head and instead he mumbles something like, “Fuck first,” then turns an even brighter red and grins. He pulls the ten out of his pocket and drops it on the table.

“Leave a good tip,” He says, sort of embarrassed. “Since we-... with the food. Brings good luck.”

He gives Nick a sunny goodbye, stopping to go up on his toes to kiss his cheek before he pulls Cass out the door, leaving Nick staring wide-eyed with a weird half-grin on his face as they go.

Kauri doesn’t really make it further than the first steps to the back of the building before he moves his back against a wall and pulls Cass to him, pulling him closer for a hard kiss. The skills were learned all the wrong ways but he wants to use them, he’s good at this. His brain is a blurring, fuzzy white noise of lust and it’s the best Kauri ever feels, just like this.

Kauri kisses like he was made for it. Which, Cass thinks as his thoughts slip back to Kauri’s mention of training, maybe he had been. But the fuck does that matter when he moves his hips like this, when his tongue does that, when Cass is almost struggling to keep up, and shit, when did that happen. He kisses up Kauri’s neck and slips his hands under his shirt, breath quickening at the first thrill of skin on skin.

“Tell me you want it,” he says against Kauri’s throat. Because yes he can feel it, he can feel it so strong it’s basically got him seeing double but he wants to hear it. He wants to hear that same irresistible desperation from earlier. Those practiced, expert hands paired with the overwhelmed little stutter of a guy who’s only just figuring out how to actually say yes.

Kauri arches his back into the press of warm palms against his stomach, pushing back under the hands slipping under his shirt, almost whining with it. His skin lights up at the touch, and he's breathing hard around the next kiss, and the next.

"I do, I want you-" He catches himself before he can slip into anything too practiced, refusing to let that in this time.

Instead, he takes a breath, gives Cass a cockeyed smile, and says, low and soft and his blush is red enough to read even in the dark, "I, um. Gonna need you in some part of me tonight, pretty soon. I, I want-"

His mind supplies an amazing, confused flurry of thoughts of legs around Cass's waist or with his chest and stomach against the wall or bent over or on his hands and knees and he can barely think coherently enough to form words behind yes now again.

"I, I'm not good at saying things right when I'm not acting, uh, I just-..." He slips a hand forwards, deftly undoing the button on Cass's pants and yanking down his zipper so he can slip a hand down, feel the warmth of skin there, different than anywhere else. "I want this," He says, half-breathes. "In me."

Cass jerks up into Kauri’s hand at the touch involuntarily, laughing against Kauri’s mouth, “That’s all you had to say, baby.”

He kisses Kauri hard as he fumbles with the button on the other man’s jeans, one hand snaking beneath the waistband of his underwear to palm at Kauri’s hardening cock as the other pulls his hips in tight to his own.

Working with Kauri’s body is like following the line of a road on a map. It’s so simple and so satisfying Cass could do it with his eyes closed. It would be so easy to fall to his knees, pull Kauri into his mouth with a cruel little ‘my turn first’ and drag it out until the guy was desperate and begging but God all he wants right now is to be inside of the guy, fuck him until he can’t breathe, until he can’t think of anything else.

“You said you had stuff?” he says, voice low and grazing, free hand travelling over Kauri’s hips, down his back, over the shape of his arse while the other works at the guy’s cock. He breathes hot against Kauri’s neck. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants him now.

For once, Kauri isn’t really worried about how he looks. Normally there’s some hint of putting on a show, of looking the right way, training and need working together to make him the kind of lay people remember just looking at for some of the time.

But he’s trying not to do that with Cass. Instead he’s more fumbling, even though his touch is expert, and he breathes in high little moans, hips jerking himself against Cass’s hand. He’s so hard he could scream so fast - Cass is good at this, too, so good, like he can tell every single place Kauri wants him to touch without him ever even saying it.

“Uh, y-yeah, in my… hnnnh, yes, right there-... in my pocket, h-hold on-” His pants are falling down around his hips and he probably looks ridiculous trying to hold himself together, digging into an inside pocket on his zip-up, flashing lust-bright eyes up at Cass, breathing hard. He holds up a condom in one hand and a little single-use packet of lubricant in the other.

“Ta-da,” He says, with a hint of the shy, slightly nervous smile. “Always, um, always have stuff. You’re so fucking gorgeous. D’you want me, um, me to… I can put it on you with my mouth.”

It had taken three full training sessions to learn how to do that, and his jaw had ached for days.

Cass’ smile falters for a moment before returning, eyes flicking between Kauri and the condom. He's so earnest it's almost devastating.

“Uh, no. No, thanks. You don’t have to do that,” Cass flashes a grin before snatching both packets, distracting Kauri with a kiss as he tears the condom open with nimble fingers, rolling it on blind. He tears the second packet open with his teeth, slicking himself up with one hand while the other pushes at the back of Kauri’s hips with enough pressure to turn him. “Now, flip.”

He pulls himself close along then other man’s back, reaching around to stroke him as he slips his slicked-up hand beneath Kauri’s waistband.

“I don’t need tricks,” Cass murmurs against Kauri’s neck as he presses a finger into him “Just be your gorgeous self.”

Kauri lets out a shuddering breath, turning quickly around - so fast he nearly trips on himself and has to throw a hand up on the wall to catch his balance. “I’m sorry, I’m-... sorry, I’m usually better at this part…”

He’s trying not to use his training - somehow Cass seems to know when he does it - but taking away all the training means he’s mostly awkward and fumbling and feels like he’s barely had sex before. Still, he can’t quite help the grin on his face, pressing his forehead against the wall and shifting hands to his pants to undo them and push them lower down to barely stay up around his thighs as Cass presses his finger in.

“Hnnnh, you’re… fuck, that’s good,” He whispers. Something in him, some restlessness he can only rarely settle, is soothed as soon as someone does something like this. Wanted, he’s wanted, he’s someone, he matters to someone, if only for a while. “Can… can you, um, kiss my neck, a little, while you-... that…”

Cass laughs gently, teeth grazing Kauri’s earlobe as he starts to kiss down his neck in response. It’s relieving having someone arch up against him like this. He doesn’t have to think. He doesn’t have to analyse or second-guess. He doesn’t have to navigate the nuances of what they want or don’t want because it’s so fucking obvious and it feels so good to give it to Kauri. Like he’s falling back into the role he’s meant to be in. Like every other moment had just been lead-up, had just been treading water until he could be right back here, where he belonged, his body pressed up against another person, giving them what they needed.

“You feel so good,” he says, adding a second finger, curling them just a little just to hear the way Kauri’s breath hitches. He presses an open mouthed kiss to the join between Kauri’s shoulder and his throat, stroking him slow, easing in a third, “God I can’t wait to be inside of you.”

Kauri lets out a breathy little whine, not quite a moan, bucking his hips forward and then rocking them back, his head dropping forward a little and his eyes closing. Forward, into Cass’s grip around him, the way his hand is moving just a little slow, exactly how Kauri wants it - no one ever knows to start this slow, like this, no one ever just knows that but somehow Cass knows that’s how he wants it.

Forward into his hand, backwards onto his hand, Cass’s mouth on his skin. He’s drowning in the other man in all the best ways. “Fuck, you even smell good,” Kauri manages, his voice higher, breathy, rocking back and this time his back arches and his head falls back on Cass’ shoulder. “Ah! Haaah, ah, y-you, ah, shit, no one finds it this fast, want-... I want you so b-bad, Cass.”

It doesn’t come out practiced or trained, it’s all shaken up in him. He wants Cass’s cock in him so bad he can’t think.

Cass tangles his fingers in those curls and tugs gently back until Kauri’s neck is pulled back in a delicious arc. He sucks kisses along it as he pulls his fingers out of Kauri, wraps them around his own length.

He eases in slowly, so fucking slowly, too fucking slowly, and has to nuzzle along the length of Kauri’s neck, inhaling deep, breath hitching just to keep himself calm. He lets out a barely-there moan, more of an exhale of breath.

He’s so desperate for this, for Kauri. So desperate to make him feel good, to give him what he needs. It would be so easy to rut into him, fast and hard like an animal, have him stretched open and panting in seconds, but it’s good like this, better like this, because he can feel Kauri melting under his hands, keening at every gentle touch.

“Can’t believe I-... I get to have you like this,” he says voice stuttering with his breath as he rocks his hips forward, slow and smooth. He runs his thumb over the tip of Kauri’s cock with just the slightest amount of pressure, matching his own rhythm in gentle strokes “So fucking- God you’re so beautiful. Can’t believe I get t- to do this for you”

Kauri relaxes around him, one of the first and hardest skills he'd learned was how to relax his body no matter how he felt and the skill comes in so handy now. He lets out a soft whine as Cass presses on, the sensation of being filled driving him as crazy as the hand stroking him off.

"Next time I, I want to look at your-... ah, face-... Yes, yesyesyes-" Cass has a steady rhythm, slow but deep, and Kauri rocks his hips back against him, burying him deeper with each thrust.

He feels like he'll collapse if Cass pulls out, just clatter to the ground. Like being full of his cock is all that's holding him together.

Cass hits that spot inside him, then again, and Kauri moans, grinding back. More now harder. The best he ever feels, in moments like this.

“I like the s- God- like the sound of next time.”

He pictures Kauri’s legs around his waist, or his mouth around Kauri’s cock, or making him fall apart with words alone, just begging for Cass to touch him. He imagines fucking him slow, flat on his back, keeping him on edge for an hour as he kisses him soft. He’d give him whatever he wants- everything he wants.

Cass braces one hand against the wall as he quickens his pace, the other wrapping around Kauri’s front, pulling him tight to Cass’ chest as he fucks into him. He buries his face in Kauri’s hair. He wants him close, even closer than this. God, he just wants more. He feels needy and desperate, even now, buried inside of him.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” Cass manages out, thrusting in hard and deep. “So fucking good.”

He drops his mouth to Kauri’s neck again, nipping gently at the delicate skin. He’s close. He’s so damn close.

Kauri’s conscious thought shatters, finally, and he feels the need in him building, heat in him pushing him towards climax but he’s trained for this, too, on a level deeper than thought. Kauri knows how to pace himself, to make it perfect, to time everything just right so that the person inside him finishes before he does.

He wants Cass to finish first, wants to feel him before he lets go.

“C’n… hold on, can do… you want to feel good, let me just-”

Kauri lets out a breathless, half-moaned laugh and tightens himself around Cass, turning his head to kiss into Cass’s neck, nipping at his skin. “Need you to, to come so I can come for you,” he breathes into his ear.

It’s all he needs. Cass curls around the shape of Kauri with a moan, breath caught in his throat as he comes. He lets his mind go blank, his thoughts go quiet, wrapped in pleasure and pressed deep into another man’s body.

He stays there, continuing to rock into Kauri gently as his hand wraps back around Kauri’s cock, the other tracing pretty lines down his jaw, down his throat, down his chest with long, soft fingers.

“So perfect,” he whispers against his shoulder “Come for me.”

The command tips him over, and Kauri moans, rocking forward into Cass’s hand and then going suddenly still and tense, spilling with Cass still moving in him and against him, jerking his hips in small movements as he comes onto the wall and then the ground, soft little cries muffled against Cass’s neck.

He was made for this. It’s what he is, what he was remade to do. In the moment of orgasm and then in the afterglow, Kauri feels like a whole person. He’s wanted. Cass wanted him, and he did it all exactly right. He’s good, a good boy, good at what they made him.

He feels so warm, floating in post-orgasm bliss, wanting nothing more than this moment to last.

“Th-that was… was…” Kauri laughs, breathless, pressing kisses against Cass’s neck, sliding his arms up and around behind him so he won’t pull out too soon, enjoying the feeling even now. “Best sex I’ve h-had up against a wall in an alley… You’re so fucking good.”

"All you, gorgeous," Cass laughs, still rocking his hips slowly, drunk on the feeling. God, he could stay here all night. "You're so good, Kauri. So, so good for me."

He stays there for another few moments, peppering Kauri with soft kisses and letting the other man do the same. It feels like the world stops hurtling on so violently when he can just lean into this, stay here, forget about himself and forget about everything. Just give someone exactly what they need. Exactly what they want. It was so simple.

Everything else was complicated, tangly and difficult but this… He knows he’s good like this.

"Next time... we do that in private, so I can stay just like this for you," he says, another quick kiss against Kauris temple "But for now..."

He grabs Kauri's hand, moving it away so he can start to ease out. His own hand is still tucked around Kauri’s front, under his shirt, feeling every stutter and movement of his body as he pulls out. He tucks Kauri back in before he tidies himself up, pulling the condom off and zipping his jeans back up.

Kauri, used to mostly cleaning himself up and usually cleaning up the other guy, too - it’s part of training, he falls into it mindlessly and the guys never seem to notice and if they do, they just say thank you and don’t give it a second thought - blinks, staring down at Cass’s hands so carefully shifting his pants back up over his hips, tucking him back into them, even zipping and buttoning and he lets out a huff of disbelieving laughter.

What had he done to meet someone so nice?

He turns to say thank you and instead Cass’s mouth is on his, insistent but still soft and sweet, and Kauri melts against him, sliding arms eagerly around his waist to hold him close, draw it out, make it last even longer. Finally, when they break apart, Kauri is still nearly panting, still feeling the languid afterglow looseness in his limbs.

Cass keeps his voice low and soft in that way that seems to make Kauri short circuit, “Still wanna come back to mine?”

“Yeah, I… yeah, I do, I want-... I want to, um, to get a little longer with you. Plus, I can’t exactly write you a letter-” Kauri’s voice cuts off, and then he laughs, a little nervously. “Since I don’t have anywhere you could get me one back. I want-... yeah. If you’re still offering, I do.”

Kauri's easy to fluster, Cass is realising. Intensely so. There's been a permanent blush on his cheeks since before they left the diner, and everything he says is coloured by the adorable tripping over of words. He gives Kauri's hand a squeeze and a little smile, pulling him out towards the street before dropping it again, walking backwards as he talks.

"Well you'll know where I live in about three minutes, so you can just leave me a love note like diner-boy did."

He flashes a grin and walks in the opposite direction than they'd come. Away from the bar, away from the burger joint. He can see the Facility buildings from here, nondescript and unsigned. It’s hard to tell, if you don’t know what they are, if they’re meant to be residential or corporate. Probably because they functioned as a mix of both.

He feels like a teenager sneaking someone in through his bedroom window. Like he’s breaking some private rule with himself that keeps his two worlds separate. He glances back to Kauri, smiles in that easy way, "Hey so it’s no big deal, but, uh... guests aren’t exactly celebrated at the Facility so like, if we see anyone, just be chill, yeah?"

Kauri walks after him like a lovesick puppy and he knows it, a stupid smile on his face but Cass doesn't seem to mind and Kauri can't seem to stop.

All his stuff will be waiting for him at the park even if it takes him a day. He's had to leave his backpack and everything before for nearly a week. Nobody knows about the loose tile in the bathroom ceiling where Kauri keeps things.

It sounds so fucking nice to have a Facility you could just leave if you wanted. Kauri's vaguely jealous as he talks, thinking it sounds like the dorms in Owen's movies.

"I can be chill," Kauri says seriously, with sparkling eyes and a flush still in his face. "I'm good at quiet, I was, I… learned how to be really quiet. I won't fuck it up."

He was nervous, but he wanted more of Cass, for at least a little bit. He could be normal long enough to fool whoever they might run into.

There's a part of Cass that wants to tell Kauri to stop talking. Every time he opens his mouth, some horrible line of tragic comes peeling out from nowhere. Cass tries not to linger on it, the little slips. About learning and training and being good.

"Well we don't have to be that quiet," he says, trying to keep it light. "Just careful."

The door unlocks with a quick little beep as Cass flashes some other guy’s keycard and he pushes it open. He gestures for Kauri to go inside, feeling suddenly embarrassed at how upscale the place must look in comparison to damp alleys and park benches.

"Not really my deal," he says, trying to shrug it off. "But I'm not paying or anything, so..."

The foyer is orchids-on-the-marble-desk kind of nice. There's a completely impractical couch to the left you could probably trade in for a decent car. Cass hates everything about this place but it was still better than Christopher's. And he'd bet serious money it's leaps and bounds from wherever Kauri last slept.

It looks like the lobby in Owen's condo, to Kauri, only even nicer. He presses himself to Cass's side, nervous in his grungy thrift-store clothes, worried they'll kick him out or know what he is by sight, that someone like him only belongs in a place like this if he's got a collar around his neck.

Or it'll be like they said in training - runaway Romantics come to bad ends when someone knows they can't really fight back.

By the time they get to the elevators he's holding onto Cass's waist tightly enough to probably hurt.

"I'm a few floors up," Cass says, a flirty smile trying to smother the sudden tension running through him. "Reckon I could have you begging again before we get there?"

He doesn't realize his breathing has picked up until Cass talks again, and Kauri's answer comes out more breathless than he means it to. He nuzzles briefly into Cass's neck just for the reassuring hit of safe he feels when he's touching someone.

"I'd beg for you right here," He says, and then turns red again. "I'm sorry. I get, um, I do that when I'm, um. Yes."

Cass feels on edge all of a sudden. Out of his element. He doesn't like bringing people back here, he doesn't even like being here. The whole point of going out and hooking up with people is that he can be somewhere else for a night. And he'd ended up hauling Homeless Hottie through the door instead.

"You don't have to come up, you know." The words come from nowhere. Not rude, just a little prickly. "Like I don't need you to be here, it's just a place to crash."

He rakes his eyes over the other man, who looks just as nervous as Cass feels. Jittery. Like someone’s about to arrest him.

"I fuckin' hate this place so if it’s making you feel weird or you wanna leave, I get it," he tries to feel casual about it, watching for the elevator doors to open. Please stay though. I hate it here but I don’t hate you so please, please stay. "It's not like we didn't already fuck, so no hard feelings."

Kauri leaves places. It's what he does, stay long enough for someone to want him and then go when they don't any longer, or when the closed door might be locked and he can't handle it any longer.

Weirdly, though, he doesn't want to leave Cass.

"I'm sorry," Kauri says softly. He's made him mad, somehow, and he's not quite sure what he did this time. He started the whole night by getting Cass mad – Kauri's carefully-remade mind drops the simple fact that Cass had actually gotten mad at Matt, and substitutes himself as being at fault for not just taking the drink and being good with perfect seamlessness – and he's done it all over again without even trying.

"I want to stay with you," He says, sincerely, truthfully. "Overnight. I think I want to know you better for a while. I just, um. No, you're right, if you don't want me in your place that's, that's okay. I was just being-... I haven't-... I get nervous about locked doors but it doesn't mean I don't want something."

Cass nods slow, trying not to prickle over the idea that this place is anything close to his. He flicks his eyes over Kauri, almost surprised at the amount of resolve in his voice. He shrugs. Makes a choice.

"Okay. So no locked doors," he tosses Kauri the keycard that isn't his. Nobody was paying him to give a shit about facility security and he'd snag another one tomorrow anyway. "All I want is a good time, alright? For both of us."

Kauri takes the keycard and stares down at it, blinking, then the tension melts out of him all over again and he slips it into his back pocket. The elevator doors slide open and Kauri is noticeably more relaxed as he’s pulled into the elevator, looking up at Cass with all the humor and lightness back in his eyes.

Cass steps backwards until his back is pressed up against the mirrored wall with Kauri in front of him, hand reaching out to press the button for his level as the doors slide closed again. He tries to let the tension in his shoulders drop, fastening on a grin in its wake "Now tell me what you want."

“I want…” Kauri thinks it through - there’s a pile of responses on his tongue, ready to go, all of them trained and conditioned, memorized and repeated at the other end of a shock stick or tied up in ropes or hit on the knuckles whenever he got it wrong. He rejects every single one, because none of them are the true thing, the thing he really wants to say.

It’s pure sincerity when he leans in closer to Cass, goes up on his toes to kiss him, and says softly, “I want you to kiss, um-... to kiss me stupid ‘til we get into your room and I want to ride you when we’re in there.”

Kauri’s so easy to kiss. He’s so easy to move with, so easy to tug and pull. He’s so easy to want. Cass pulls him in close, and with barely enough space between them to breathe it’s hard not to think God, he’s made for this.

“You’re so good,” Cass says, pressing up against him. The elevator doors slide open behind them and Cass kisses Kauri backwards until they’re up against the hallway wall, Kauri giggling quietly and running his hands up Cass’s sides and back down to his hips to pull them flush again.

The res level is featureless and clinical compared to the foyer. Why waste money decorating something the public didn’t see? Something only meant for those lowest on the company totem pole?

He leads Kauri down the hallway a few steps, pushing him gently into his quarters as the door slides open, kissing him all the while.

“Sorry ‘bout the mess,” he says with a grin, stripping his jacket and adding it to a chair piled with clothes. “My, uh, boss likes things to stay tidy, so naturally I keep it as messy as possible.”

Aside from the debris of his life scattered around – clothes on the floor, papers and books on the inbuilt desk, a couple pill bottles sitting pretty by the lamp – the place is stark and white. Featureless. The king single shoved in the corner lays unmade, white quilt gathered at the bottom a testament to the restless sleeper he is when he dains to occupy it. He feels strange with someone in his space like this. Exposed, almost.

“I’d offer you something to drink but, uh,” he looks around the room, shrugs “I’m not exactly well-equipped for guests.”

“That’s okay,” Kauri answers, sincerely, looking around the room with the opposite of Cass’s expression on his face. There’s a hint of nervous worry when he sees the stark white walls, the slightest hesitation before he lets himself be pulled into the room, but the simple mess is immensely comforting.

Not a cell, not ‘resident rooms’ like his own had been, empty and with just the floor to sleep on unless you earned blankets and a pillow and there were rumors the really good trainees could earn a bed. No, this was like…

“Like a dorm room at college,” Kauri whispers, then winces at a spike of pain ricochets around inside his skull.

don’t think about that don’t remember that that never happened you made that up it’s common to have false memories after training

He shakes it off almost instantly - it’s there and gone, barely a flicker of expression before he makes himself forget he’d ever said anything.

“Are you allowed to have things for the walls?” He asks instead, his voice perfectly light and cheerful, moving forward into the room, grazing fingertips over the pile of clothes in the chair, as if considering something. “I could bring you a picture. There’s a lady down at the farmer’s market who paints, she likes me, she always says she’ll give me a painting if I ever have a place to put one.”

Cass closes his eyes, a smile creeping over his face. He can’t tell anymore if the way Kauri tilts the conversation onto easier topics is intentional or just a very well practiced habit. Either way, it's entirely sweet and a little disarming.

“You know, I’ve never asked,” he says, sweeping in close again, wrapping an arm around Kauri’s waist. “But I’d risk breaking the rules for you.”

He tilts Kauri's chin up to meet him in a kiss, and as he does he feels an unpleasant twinge of jealousy. He can't help but feel like Kauri's unfairly lucky. He knows it's not a rational thought. He knows it's not. But still.

How the fuck do you stay homeless when people seem to be tripping over to try and help you? There seem to be so many people wanting to offer Kauri small kindnesses but instead he opted to turn them all down just to stay on the streets and desolate. And Cass had fought tooth and nail for a single bed in a room without a key.

Like a college dorm room, Kauri had said, before all but flinching away from his own comment. Like a college dorm room. Cass wouldn't know would he? Had never had the chance.

“Where’d you go to college?” he asks, innocent enough. The other questions, the crueler, bitter-with-jealousy questions– were you any good? did you get kicked out? is that why you sold yourself? fucking piece of shit drop out, buried in fancy college debt? – stay at bay.

Kauri's quiet, pressing the kiss closer, deeper, burying himself in it, more aggressive now. The headache threatens if he tries to ask too many questions, the memory of drugs woozily running through his veins, hooked to a wall and forget forget forget in his head obliterating whatever poor son of a bitch had lived in his head before.

Then, finally, he pulls away and shrugs, smiling sunny and bright, deflecting, distracting. "I don't know," Kauri says, voice perfectly, carefully constructed to seem careless, isn't it so funny that I don't know, but really, who cares? "It's not important to what we're for-... what we do. Not like I could write a fucking essay to save my life anymore. Or a poem."

Another flinch, as if Kauri had tripped over something, and he shoves Cass's back against the wall with a sudden aggressive need, slipping a hand into the waistband of his pants while shifting a leg between Cass's legs, an expert move to brush against him from two directions.

"Doesn't matter."

A familiar rush of hot and cold runs through Cass' body at the answer, at the touch, at the rough push against the wall that makes him shudder with a kind of practiced thrill. Kauri knows exactly what he's doing with his hand and the bid for distraction spurs Cass on even more.

Kauri's uncomfortable. He wants distraction. Deflection. To change the subject. But Cass wants to know. Cass wants to push. "So, what? They ju - hah - just keep the slutty parts and fry the rest?"

It's getting mean. He can feel it. A backwards kind of resentment clawing under his skin, twisting his mood. He catches Kauri's lips with his own, fingers brushing under the hem of Kauri's shirt. The kiss is desperate and rough, on the borderline of bruising, and when Cass pulls away he feels a childish sort of challenge pulling at him

Kauri ignores the first question entirely, sliding his hand straight down to brush over Cass between his legs, feeling him soft but he wouldn't be for long, Kauri knew just what to do to get past this moment and his thoughts, and he likes the rough stuff as much as he ever likes tenderness.

He's trained to.

Jesus, I know I asked for a brainless slut, Kor-Bore, but this is something else. Do you even have brain cells now?

He's just started to curve around him, to stroke him back to hardness, when Cass asks, "What if I wanted a poem?"

Kauri's face flickers with hurt, an oddly naive why would you ask that considering the practiced physicality on display. Then he tilts his head, looking up at Cass, and gives him the honest fucking answer while giving his cock just enough of a roll of his palm to feel good.

"I'd tell you to go fuck yourself."

Cass knows an evasive answer when he hears one. It's not some sort of pathetic no homo-ism which would've been funny in its own right with Kauri's hand sitting where it is. It's something deeper than that. Something that hits close enough to home to hurt.

The energy in the room has shifted. Tense and pulsating. The undercurrent of something bitter. Territory Cass was more familiar with than tender kisses in alleyways.

"Seems like you're already doing that for me," he says, rolling his hips forward into the touch. He doesn't bring his hands up to touch back, to hold. It's a challenge in its own right.

How much will you still want me when I'm not acting how you want? When I'm not doing what you need?

Cass has been choked against this wall, threatened against this wall, had his head bashed into it more times than he could count. His eyes track across Kauri's face, land on his lips. He doubts the other man has anything even close to violence living in his veins, but Cass still juts out his chin, looks down at Kauri through lidded eyes. Even the thought of it sends something electric through him.

"You gonna make me sorry for asking?"

"No," Kauri answers easily enough, a short, almost curt single syllable. He can feel Cass getting hard again under his hand, and he tilts his head just a little, looking down, before he gives just enough of a squeeze to keep it interesting.

"I don't do that. I just make you stop wanting to ask."

It's an honest answer - and Kauri grabs him by the belt loops in his pants, pulling him back until they stumble to the bed and Kauri half-falls to seated with Cass standing between his legs, yanking open Cass's pants with no gentleness this time.

"Show you what parts aren't fried," Kauri mutters, half-under his breath, moving to shift his pants down and press a kiss to his stomach in the same moment.

The sound Kauri pulls out of him is more of a grunt than a moan. Cass can feel himself starting to swim. That particular territory on a night out where old restless anger hollows him out and switches on the autopilot. He tilts his head back where he stands, tangling his fingers through Kauri's curls as he closes his eyes. He breathes in.

But this is his place.

This is his fucking bed, his fucking room.

He doesn't want to drift. He doesn't want to leave.

There were two ways Cass knew that kept him attached to the ground. The easiest was a punch in the teeth. The other was harder. Sharing something to make the other person feel closer to you, and then hold onto that like a tether.

It made them like you more, made them easier to stay hooked to. It made it easier to feel what they wanted, even. To ride that wave. But it meant sharing some broken part of himself. Sometimes he lies. Usually he lies. But tonight...

"I couldn't read until I was like 17," he says, voice is low, only opening his eyes after he's said it. "The guy who taught me how also taught me how to fuck."

He traces his fingers down the curve behind Kauri's ear, along the line of his jaw, tilting his face up with a gentle hand under his chin. Cass searches blue eyes and doesn't know what for.

"I'm fried, too."

"I'm… I'm sorry." Kauri hesitates, leaning forward with his shoulders so his chin rests lightly on Cass's stomach, looking up at him. "I can't… I can't read the note from Nick because I can't read. And I can't write you a poem because I can't write, either."

He jerked Cass's pants down over his hips, to his thighs, and kissed into the flat spot just inside each hip, one on each side.

He looked back up.

"I don't know what I look like. I can't look in mirrors. You guessed it right. They fried most of me. Now please push me back on the bed and…" Hold onto me, please, just want this, too, even if it's just to fuck me, just don't make me leave with this the last thing I said "-fuck me or something if you're going to keep me talking about this."

Hearing it all come rattling has something under Cass' skin curdling a little. He doesn't usually go for tragedy. He almost regrets pushing. He almost wants to apologise. Instead he straddles Kauri's hips, knees on the mattress as he pulls the guy's shirt over his head and throws it to the side before doing the same with his own. He kisses him until he's flat on his back on the mattress.

This part is so easy. Puzzle pieces fitting together, gears slotting into place, every kind of made for this metaphor rolled into one.

"We don't have to talk."

He apologises with his tongue, with open mouthed kisses that travel down Kauri's throat to the twisted scar along his collarbone and back up. He rolls his hips into the man beneath him, unbuttons those jeans with one hand and delights in the heat of Kauri's cock as he palms him, feels him start to harden.

His own jeans practically fall off as he stands, loose from Kauri's ministrations, and he kicks them to the side before leaning forward, kissing lines down Kauri's stomach and down his hips and down his thighs as he undresses him too. He presses his cheek to Kauri's leg, planting a kiss on his inner thigh.

"Just one more question." He brushes against Kauri's hardening cock with his lips, "This?" He slips his hand under Kauri's lower back, down the curve of his arse, just barely pressing into him again, "Or this?"

Kauri hums under the attention, he loves being pressed back into the mattress, a hint of weight holding him down. It’s what he wants, what he’s for. Any anger in him drains out with every kiss - Kauri is used to apologies that aren’t spoken or that don’t happen at all.

He wouldn’t even want an apology - he has no idea how to handle them unless they’re laced with reasons that Kauri’s really the one to blame.

Kauri pushes himself up on his elbows, nerves singing, and looks down towards Cass, the shy, sincere smile on his face as he pushes himself closer to sitting up. “Um, your-... your mouth,” Kauri says, hushed, almost shocked-sounding. “Mouth, please.”

Cass holds eye contact as he smiles, running his tongue along the underside of Kauri’s cock before taking him into his mouth. He hums deep in his throat, lets his hair fall in front of his face like a curtain and lets everything else fall away completely.

He will never understand people that don’t love this; that don’t love taking another person in with your mouth, with your hands, and making them utterly melt. It was so simple. So good. Skin against skin, another person to breathe in. He didn’t have to think about anything else, he didn’t have to worry about anything else. He could lose himself in wanting them, in being wanted.

He runs his hands up Kauri’s thighs as he works at pulling delicious sounds from him, finding a rhythm with his mouth, interrupting it again with the swirling of his tongue. Kauri tastes good. He feels good. It’s good, it’s all so fucking good.

Kauri stays up on his elbows at first to watch him, taking the sight of Cass in with unadulterated, if oddly pure, joy. He’d had no idea what this felt like, beyond a sense-memory that told him he’d had one before, the first time someone he’d hooked up with had gone down on him after he ran away.

He never got tired of it - of how wonderful it was to have someone want him so much they would touch him even without taking anything for themselves. It felt so perfectly right, and he couldn’t keep the dopey smile off his face even as he had to shift and finally lay back, focusing his eyes on Cass’s ceiling, his hands sliding into his hair, running through the strands, hips moving gently up to push himself deeper, just a little.

It’s not long before his soft exhalations are full-on moans, and he tries to keep mostly quiet since there are probably other people here but he’s never really been good at that - Owen didn’t want him trained to be quiet at times like this - and he can’t help himself, moaning, “You’re so good, this is so-... fuck, so good, Cass, under the-... yeah, like th-that, just like that-... ah, you’re so so good, so nice, so nice to do this, to, to, ah, ah, ah-” He trails off into a louder sound as Cass hits just the right spot just under the head and his hips jerk, hands buried deeply in his hair, eyes wide and hardly seeing.

It feels so good. For maybe the second or third time, Kauri’s genuinely a little sad he probably won’t see this guy again.

The sounds Kauri makes are so fucking endearing. He moans like he's never had a blowjob, like he's not sure he's ever gonna have one again. Was there literally anything better than hearing someone make sounds like that? It makes it easy to enjoy, to indulge in getting him off.

Cass can’t help but laughing under his breath as he pulls off, licking long and slow along Kauri’s cock.

“Enjoying yourself, big guy?” he mutters, smiling up at Kauri’s blushing cheeks, the mass of dark curls against the sheet before swallowing him to the hilt. Maybe the only thing better than hearing someone make sounds like that was knowing you were the one that caused it.

He speeds up, moaning deep around Kauri’s cock. Hands down the best fuck Cass has had for months.

Kauri’s moans turn into something like loud, high-pitched whimpers as Cass’s throat vibrates around him with his own sounds, his fingers tightening to nearly painful in Cass’s hair and his hips jerking up harder than he intends them to, thrusting into Cass’s mouth unconsciously.

“Y-yes, you’re so-... so good, this is so good, I’m, I’m going to-... wait wait wait if you keep g-going, I’ll, I’ll, um-... I’ll-” Kauri’s body tenses all at once, and he lets out a loud cry as he tilts over the edge, coming right down Cass’s throat.

He’s barely finished before he’s trying to pull Cass back up to him, to kiss him, to tangle every single limb around him and keep them pressed together at every possible level.

Cass finds himself, not for the first time tonight, laughing into Kauri's mouth. The guy holds him like he's gonna disappear the second they're not touching, and Cass wraps his arms around his waist as he kisses him.

I'm not going anywhere. God, please keep touching me like that. I want you, I want you, I want you.

He feels love drunk and loose, even though he's still achingly hard. He rolls his hips along Kauri's thigh, chasing the gentle friction as he rocks forward and back but not reaching for more just yet. Cass doesn't want more right now. Just wants to enjoy Kauri's body warm beneath him, the tiny electric sparks he can feel under every brush off his fingers. The desperate kisses, panting breaths, those pretty sounds still sighing out of Kauri's mouth.

He plants a kiss on Kauri's cheek, reaches down to brush his hand against Kauri's cock one more time. "That was hot."

Kauri jumps a little, letting out a half-squeaked whine at the hint of touch to his already overstimulated cock, then laughs and presses against him even more, tilting his head up and back for another kiss, taking the affection as it’s given with pure gratitude for it.

“Yeah, you’re really good at it,” Kauri says, grinning. He can taste himself on Cass, and that’s a rare thing for him, this happens so rarely and it’s even more rare they want to kiss right after. “You’re so, so good. That was so good.” He can’t stop saying it, and he knows it’s stupid to repeat it over and over again, and he finally just ducks his head, tucking it under Cass’s chin, to hide his bright red flush, as much from the aftermath of orgasm as from his embarrassment.

“I like your bed,” Kauri murmurs, stretching his legs out, tangling them with Cass’s. He’d expected to be curled up on a park bench or lying under someone’s heavy weight by now. Lying like this instead - curled up with someone built more like he is, who seems to feel the same way about wanting touch - is so much better. “It’s really soft.”

Cass snorts, nearly makes a quip about razor wire bed springs and b-grade foam, but he stops himself, remembering where Kauri would've been if not here.

"You're really soft," he says instead, running his fingers in long circles along Kauri's arm, his back, down his side. He can feel his own body relaxing with the rhythm of it, with the feeling of skin on skin.

He wishes it didn't feel so good to have someone tucked into him like this and pressed against him. He wishes he wasn't like this, he wishes he wasn't so needy. There's a tension in him he never knows he's holding and it releases when someone touches him. It's like he's never really breathing when he's not being held.

"I should thank that asshole for tryna spike your drink, huh?"

Kauri actually laughs, breaths against Cass’s shoulder, hands sliding across the muscles of his back. “Or I should, I guess,” He says, ignoring the flutter of nervousness. He's too loose, right now, languid and his eyes are finding it harder and harder to open.

“Used to get drugged all th’ time, anyway,” Kauri says, his voice slightly slurred with sleepiness. “It’d jus’ feel like home.”

Cass huffs out a laugh. He reaches behind himself to tap his fingers on the bedside table, one of the bottles from the random assortment of benzos and sleeping pills rolling away as he does. "I'm outta the good stuff but help your fuckin' self."

He wonders vaguely at what point the venn diagram between Kauri's experiences and his own would start looking close to a circle. He wonders too if maybe he should worry about that. He stares up at the ceiling, hand tracing lazy shapes along Kauri's upper arm.

"Mine put it in chocolates, usually," he whispers, not even sure if Kauri's conscious enough to hear him "Or in drinks. He liked it when I'd forget."

There’s a pause, like maybe Kauri had fallen asleep, before he murmurs back, “It was in our food, th’ water, all of it. Did y’... mmmmn…” Kauri nuzzles in closer, pulling Cass as tight against him as he can get, shifting around so he can bury his feet under the blankets at the end of the bed. “... tell you it’s what you’re for?”

Cass buries his face in Kauri's hair and closes his eyes. He feels sleep tugging at him now. Making his body heavy. Pulling him down.

"Yeah," he mutters, pressing a kiss to Kauri's head "Told me I was made for it."

Kauri tries to think of a reply, but the moments lying together, the languid loose feelings of his muscles, and Cass’s warm body in the bed all work together to ensure he’s sound asleep before anything in particular comes to mind. He holds Cass tightly, and in his sleep he never rolls away, only shifts closer, twining his legs around Cass’s so their hips are flush even sleeping, as though he wants only to be touching Cass with as much of himself as he can, even fast asleep.

They’ve only been asleep for a handful of hours when the sliding door slams open. Cass sits up immediately at the sound, awake and heart pounding before Tucker even has the chance to thump the timered light back on.

“Rise and shine, Ace, we have a lot to-“ Tucker’s voice cuts off as he takes in the scene before him. He tilts his head to the side, blinks, a dangerous smile curling his mouth “What the fuck is this?”

#whump #consensual spice #consensual sex tw #referenced past noncon #conditioning #brainwashing #box boy au #whumpiary #Cass the Disaster Lad #referenced past dubcon #come get y'all spice

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