#jude barncroft

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: Just Acting

Regret [ First | Prev | tbc ]

"Um, mister?" wavers Liv-as-Buttercup. "Where are we going?" She's stalling, playing her part but with no direction, no plan as Jude drags her by the hand back towards the scene of the crime. 

It's only a matter of time before they find the body.

Jude is silent. Buttercup steps on a sharp rock and stumbles and they give her no time to recover. 

"Mister? Um, my Sir doesn't like me going with strangers…" "Yeah yeah, you make your excuses. I'm not falling for it Liv." 

They're almost at the light now, close enough to be seen by the milling partygoers on the veranda. 

Close enough to be seen by someone who knows that Buttercup ought to be upstairs with Ms Hartling right now.

"Mister, you don't understand – he really doesn't like it – I'm sorry, I don't want to get you in trouble!"

Jude stops, and Buttercup misses a step as Liv almost catches herself but decides at the last instant that it's less like her if she lets herself collide with his body after all. He smells like expensive cologne and entitlement.

He grabs a fistful of the front of her costume to keep her close. The other hand is bruisingly tight on Buttercup’s wrist. 

"Which is it," they hiss. "Are you a pretty Pet, or are you gonna drop the act? If you don't want me to do whatever I want to you, you'd better stop playing games and start answering some fucking questions."

Tears well up on cue. Buttercup leans up against Jude's body, pressing her lips out in perfect unhappy confusion. "I'm sorry," she repeats, "I don't know what you want, I'd do it for you but my Sir—" "Who is your "Sir", huh? Some accomplice you're hoping will get you out of this?"

Accomplice rings alarm bells. What has Jude been up to since college anyway? Do they somehow know what Liv has been up to? She always assumed they went back to whatever pointless little town crapped them out in the first place and got a dead end job in some office because they sure weren’t getting a career in acting.

"What did I do?" she pleads, because if she was Buttercup none of their accusations would make sense. "Answer the question.” A yank on her clothes, shaking her like a doll. “Who is this "Sir"? Does he even exist?" "Mr. Calvin Cohen," Buttercup answers earnestly. "If he sees you touching me—" and she presses a little harder against them so that her breasts enfold their hand and trap it between them "—he'll be so angry."

Jude’s forehead is furrowed with comical confusion as they try to sort through the lies. Liv fights the rising urge to laugh. They’re trying to figure out her agenda with every word while she's just bluffing one second to the next.

"I'll just have to take you somewhere private then, won't I?"

Yes. Yes that's perfect – well, not perfect – but a lot better than dragging her into the light. 

Buttercup bites her lip, the way Smith had Liv practice over and over – slightly off-centre, just hard enough to dent the soft flesh. "I shouldn't," she wavers. "I'm not asking," Jude snarls, taking the bait.

Buttercup pulls back a little as they cast about. Not a lot, not enough to be defiant, just enough that they feel the tension in her. When they start back the way they came, she drags her feet. 

"What were you even doing out there on your own if you're supposed to be a Pet, huh? Sneaking around in the dark? Your story doesn't add up." "I, I was… I was hiding from Sir, sir. I’m sorry…" Another scoff.

He leads her, of course, back to the trellises. Jude never had much imagination. Laughter – wild and not exactly compos mentis – threatens once again, and Liv bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. She cannot corpse now.

The wisteria overhead is leafless, but artfully manicured shrubs provide plenty of cover from prying eyes. Liv thinks about fighting, even though she is exhausted and nearly naked and one shout from Jude would bring every security guard in the place down on her head –

– and if she can’t kill them, they’ll identify her, and she’ll be in a whole other world of trouble.

“I don’t know what I did to upset you,” Buttercup pleads, “but I’m sorry—” “Last chance,” Jude growls. “Or if you insist you’re a Pet, I’m gonna treat you like one.”

Good, thinks Liv. Pretending is the first step towards believing.

“I am a Pet, sir,” Buttercups insists. Liv forces her voice a shade huskier. “I can be good for you.” “Good.” A cold and nasty smile.

Then his fist connects with Liv’s stomach, and she doubles over as her lungs freeze up.

It’s a good thing that everyone reacts the same way to a gut punch, Pet or not. Because for a long few seconds, Liv isn’t acting at all.

Jude yanks her head up by the hair and slaps her across the face. Convenient, involuntary tears well up at the sting. She manages to suck in a thin, effortful breath.

Thinking Smith she has the presence of mind to drop to her knees.

I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, sir, I’ll be good for you.

The only word she can force out is “—sir—!”

He pulls a fist back to hit her again, and every instinct Liv has screams to twist away from it or lift a hand or something but – she cannot picture Smith fighting back and so – against every fibre of her being – she holds still and lets him hit her.

She sees stars. Or – not stars exactly – the little pale dancing, wriggling motes that people mean when they say someone’s seeing stars.

It’s easier – when he lets go of her hair – to crumple to the ground than not.

Gil was right, thinks a sick treacherous little voice in her gut. I don’t know what I’m doing.

Buttercup sobs a snotty, tear-thickened sob as Liv’s lungs finally let her take a full breath. “I’m – sorry–” she gasps “--I don’t – what did I do I’m sorry–!”

She doesn't see the kick coming, but pain knifes through her side at the impact. Thoughts flash through her mind of ruptured kidneys, spinal damage, internal bleeding. She wants to fight back. She's at every disadvantage.

"C'mon," Jude jeers, "not gonna fight me? Where's the Liv I know?" "Please!" she wails as Buttercup, "-- sir please whatdidIdo?" "Shhh! Goddamn, keep it down!"

Liv rolls over. Jude's foot slams down on her back, pinning her. The flagstones and the trellises swim. She's in too deep to change tack now. It's all or nothing, double or bust.

Buttercup bawls messily on the ground.

"Shhhh!" Jude repeats with more urgency, "God's sakes, I thought you didn't want your Sir to catch you."

She cries quieter. Pets do as they're told. But she keeps crying. It's the least Liv thing she can think to do.

[just-horrible-things]

Whumptober Day 12 : What Could Go Wrong?

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: Just Acting

Points of Failure [ First | Prev | Next ]

The windows are large, set in ornately molded frames. Stylised leaves and flowers of painted wood conceal the structural steel beneath. The panes themselves are shatterproof and bulletproof. Liv has seen thinner walls – albeit only in the kind of shitty prefabs that probably don't legally count as fit for human habitation.

Her reflection is a mess, makeup smeared dramatically across her face. Self-conscious for a rare moment, Liv wipes her cheeks with the backs of her wrists before shaking herself out of the distraction. Time’s wasting.

There's no key on the sill – she should be so lucky – but there are lockpicks built into the structure of her bodice. It's the work of a moment to tease them out of the fabric. 

She's sailed cleanly through every one of Gil's "points of failure" so far, but this is another – and the first one after the deed is done, the first where she has little to no hope of deniability if she's caught. 

Her fingers tremble on the picks, making the task more difficult than it should be. 

No one, she reasoned, invests in the highest tech locks on windows that only open from the inside. Right?

Someone knocks at the outer door. The sound is muffled by the intervening door, but Liv still jumps nearly out of her skin. She drops a pick and has to hurriedly crouch to grab it from the thick plush carpet.

Once the first pin clicks, the rest follow soon after. The window is unsurprisingly heavy as she heaves it open. Night air rushes in, shockingly cold across damp, nearly-naked skin.

One more failure point cleared, but the next follows immediately – will anyone see her exit? The plan allows for being seen, so long as she isn’t seen and then caught.

There’s another knock behind her. A male voice inquires apologetically after Ma’am.

Liv presses her face to the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes to exclude the light from the room. She can’t see anyone looking at the house – but she can’t see much in the dark.

She glances back. 

Will they let themselves in, if their mistress doesn’t answer, or will they take her silence as a dismissal and go away?

Her nerve breaks. 

She swings her legs over the sill, lowers herself – with trembling arms that almost refuse to bear her weight – and drops.

Air rushes past her for a vertiginous second. Then her feet hit the ground. Her legs fold, absorbing momentum, and she rolls. The jolt shocks through every bone in her body, but she’s fine.

The crushed petunias – or whatever these plants are she landed in – will be treated as evidence in the morning. That’s okay.

As she finds her feet, one ankle protests. It feels like it’s going to be unhappy with her for days – but it’s not broken. Sprained at worst, probably not even that. Liv brushes stray bits of plant matter from her clothes. There’s mud smeared up one leg, but it can’t be helped.

Her heart is pounding. Adrenaline takes the edge off her exhaustion, but it can only do so much for the ache of overworked muscles. She didn’t expect to dance for an hour or more before she made her escape.

Swallowing back the unhelpful impulse to run, she picks her way daintily out of the flowerbed and begins to tiptoe across the lawn, picking her bare feet up as if uncomfortable treading in the wet grass. Her disguise is much better armour than any mad dash for freedom could be.

But she’d rather not test it too hard. The pavillion is directly between Liv and the outer wall. Voices and laughter from that direction suggest that it’s just as busy as it was on her way in, so she avoids it. 

Instead she follows the shadow of the house towards the koi ponds, then turns left to strike out across the fancy little geometric zone that Gil called the parterre. 

She regrets her choice no more than ten steps onto the neatly raked gravel. It’s not like the mostly smooth-edged pebble gravel at her childhood home, across which she used to run carelessly despite the winces of the adults. This stuff’s a lot sharper, and discomfort soon turns to enough pain to see her veering right towards the much-more-tolerable-looking paved path that winds beneath the wisteria trellises.

Low orange lamps imitate candles, casting a soft and romantic light across the foliage. It would be a very pleasant place to walk, even though the trellises aren’t in flower, if not for Liv’s racing heart that beats so hard in her chest it almost hurts, as if she was running flat out – even though she is still walking daintily, playing the part of a worried pet trying to hurry without sacrificing elegance.

She turns a vine-wrapped corner, and almost walks bodily into Jude Barncroft.

“Oh,” she squeaks, imitating Smith’s startle. A hand flies to her lips, she flutters her fingers, then tries to reach for her hair – forgetting that it’s braided tightly tonight. “Liv Ramone,” Jude exclaims, “as I live and breathe.”

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