#noncon survivor navigating consensual spice

[newbornwhumperfly]

a red seed…

so, i whipped up a little Gifte for my dearest pal @much-ado-about-whumping cause they voted and also they’re just wonderful therefore deserving of Giftes ❤️❤️❤️

a little context ~ déomas is bel’s lovely whumpee from their déomas and rhys series and cassander is my whumpee (a sex slave, from my series morja and company, who has yet to make an appearance!) who bel and i have lovingly crafted together! this is just a sweet little nonsense crossover ❤️

CW: Allusions to noncon/dubcon, dubiously consensual sex work, homelessness, complicated abuse survivor navigating safety in thorny ways, bittersweet ending

title is insp. by margaret atwood’s poem “eurydice” - “even in this domain of hunger…you hold love in your hand, a red seed you had forgotten you were holding”

~

“You look cold, honey.”

The voice is low and soft and startles Déomas out of his stupor. He’s been huddled in this alley for a while, trying to bear out the cold of the crisp autumn day behind the bakery. The stones in the wall are warmed by the crackling oven within and it provides a meager sliver of solace. Déomas’ clothing, bright and thin and clinging in all the right ways, isn’t exactly sturdy.

Normally, Déomas somewhat admires the season, with the bursts of rich color - crimson and yellow and burnt orange - on the foliage, the bright roses in the cheeks of passersby, the candied apples glistening and spiced chestnuts roasting in the stalls of street vendors. 

But the season is less…cheerful for an urchin such as Déomas. A streetwalker. The vendors keep their eyes on him when he walks down the street with sharp suspicion - with good reason, Déomas has pilfered food for survival many a time. Can’t blame them for protecting their wares from wandering hands. 

A principle Déomas cannot afford to adopt.

He’s been trying to avoid…this. Not in the mood to suck cock or spread his thighs, doesn’t have the fucking heart to coo platitudes at some bastard with loose coins as he ruts between Déomas’ legs or down his throat or into Déomas’ clever, coaxing hand. What he’s in the mood for very rarely matters where Déomas is concerned but he’s tired. 

Still…it’s only going to get colder and he’s shivering. So he tries to glance up through his curls with some artfulness, to let the weary heaviness of his lids lend him some allure. Tries to lick his cracking lips moist, draw attention to their plump shape (and away from his cherry-red nose, runny, fuck, he’s catching ill). 

It’s…not what he expected. Usually, the men who seek out boys like him in dark alleyways are a little older, all swagger and spoiled whim, wanting their bored egos stroked. 

The creature standing over him looks more like Déomas than the men he services. He’s willowy, young, perhaps in the middle of his thirties, and he’s beautiful. Golden-brown skin, heavy-lidded amber eyes, a halo of tawny curls, his mouth held soft and smiling. To Déomas’ first glance, he seems like a statue - graceful and poised and…sad, his russet shawl blowing around his face in the chilly breeze. 

Still…appearances can be deceptive and very often are. Déomas flutters his lashes in a manner that will make the man think about all the ways Déomas would look pretty at his feet. Purses his lips pathetically and clutches his own patchy cloak around himself. 

“Y-Yes, good sir. It’s…quite a hard night…”

Perhaps this man wants pathetic - Déomas can do pathetic. He tries to look small and helpless, huddled against the wall. 

The man’s breath doesn’t catch, he doesn’t wet his mouth with his tongue, doesn’t swallow in wanton excitement. Instead, he kneels right there on the cobblestones, seemingly heedless of the cold mud seeping into his trousers, and extends a hand. 

“Oh, it is, truly. What do you say to the idea of going somewhere a little warmer, out of the chill?”

So he wants to play a savior. Déomas can work with that. Men have paid less of a price for the pleasure of his company. He slides his fingers delicately into the outheld palm - it’s soft to touch, warm, shocking against the iciness of Déomas’ flesh. 

He allows the man to draw him to his feet, hiding his weak-kneed wobble (gods, how long has it been since he’s eaten?) by leaning suggestively, tripping, against the man’s side. Déomas isn’t groped, does not have ale-laden breath panted against his neck, doesn’t even get an arm looped possessively around his waist for his trouble. He just…smiles, warm and pleasant, steadies Déomas on his feet. Odd. 

“What might I call you, goodsir?” Déomas purrs, wide-eyed, demure and polite, as he follows the man down the street like a lost kitten. Ingénue orphan - poor helpless whore, doesn’t want to be trapped in this profession on such a cold night. 

“Cassander, but you can call me Cass.” 

His voice is a burr, rich and heavy and murmurous, a clean brook tumbling over old stones. 

Déomas thinks that this man - Cass - will lead him to an inn. Perhaps a tavern, if he’s feeling cheap, where he can fuck Déomas semi-privately in a back booth as he nurses an ale. Instead, he draws Déomas into the very bakery he was huddling behind. 

Déomas is too startled to really register it all, pulled along, windswept into the whole thing. Sat down at a little one-legged table, in the corner by the window, draped with a lace tablecloth and a beeswax candle. Served two mugs of piping cider, spicy and sweet and heavenly against Déomas’ half-numb palms. 

He sips it, dizzy with the wave of warmth, the glare of candlelight, the murmurous buzz of chatter, and is surprised it isn’t mulled. Men usually try to get him drunk when they buy things for him. But even without the bitter punch of alcohol, the fruity beverage warms him right to his core, the apple-taste sinking into his very bones and thawing something tight and frozen there. 

This Cass is still smiling, chatting softly to the baker’s apprentice, who is laying out a plate- no, a platter of sticky buns. Melted brown sugar and glazed pecans, all clumped over flaky golden dough fresh from the hearth and steaming in their dish, fogging up the frosty window glass. 

Very stupidly, Déomas sort of wants to cry. 

Cass pushes bun after bun upon him, coaxing him to eat his fill, to wash it all down with more sweet cider. Doesn’t speak much, except to make a soft, idle little comment about the fading sun upon the cobblestones or a customer with an excitable daughter. He almost doesn’t care that it surely, surely, comes with a steep price. Nobody is kind to Déomas without expecting something in return. 

But he hasn’t had a hot meal in ages. He’s too exhausted, too sore inside and out, too shivery still at every gust of air from the bakery door swinging open and shut for patrons, to mind it too much. Perhaps Cass will want Déomas to lick his cock and call him master or daddy or baby. Maybe he’ll want to share Déomas’ talents with a friend. He’s had worse for less. And, oddly, he is grateful. He might not even mind so much, being a good little whore for someone so pretty and graceful. 

He’s so enraptured by his meal, fingers sticky with syrup, belly full and heavy, mouth singing with spices, he only takes idle note of the coin Cass lays on the table. It isn’t much - the bakery caters to those with little money to spare, after all - but eyeing the man’s clothing, Déomas has discerned that this man isn’t wealthy. 

It’s hidden well, but his clothing has been mended, again and again, stitched in places where the fabric has been torn or worn through with holes. The red of his shawl has taken on a faded hue. And his makeup…

Oh, he must be going slow. Déomas somehow failed to notice, a combination of the dim evening light and his own dizzy hunger, but the man has a little cream spread over his skin. Not everywhere, just…places. The corner of his mouth (a little too pink to be quite natural, now Déomas thinks of it), under his eyes, along the slender column of his throat. Hiding bruises. The lids of his eyes are tinted with a soft, pearly powder, and his cheeks - which Déomas thought were flushed by the cold - are rouged. 

“Didn’t tell me you were a whore.”

Blunt, yes, but he’s just a little shocked it took him all of half an hour to figure it out. He ought to have recognized tart paint when he saw it - Déomas has often enough covered the handprints of grasping clients or the mark of some righteous citizen’s quick backhand.

Cass offers his same soft little smile. 

“You didn’t ask.”

Fuck. Déomas isn’t sure how to feel exactly but he leans back, crosses his arms tight across his chest, eyes narrowed. 

“So…just got out of the business and pitied the poor sluts who couldn’t climb their way free, is that it?”

Déomas shouldn’t be so fucking thorny. He winces as soon as he says it. Why is he such a bitch? He doesn’t back down though. His hackles are raised - from trusting little sex kitten to hissing alley-cat in moments. People in his line of work can’t afford to be philanthropists so he must…must be a favored courtesan of some pathetic man with a fat purse and a lonely wife. That’s got to be it, right? Déomas half-expects the aging whore across from him to spit back at him, maybe to spout some nauseating holier-than-thou platitude about seeing the light. 

Instead, Cass surprises Déomas once more by laughing. It’s not even sharp. Just…soft and amused and so sad, that sorrow which flows beneath all his grace and warmth like a dark river. 

“Not at all. I just thought you seemed cold, honey.”

Cass stands, brushing crumbs off his lap delicately, drawing his shawl up over his lovely halo of curls and fishes another few coins from his little drawstring purse, lays them before Déomas on the table with the empty dishes. 

“It’ll frost over tonight, I should think, so this is for a room down at the Bluebell. They don’t ask questions but the doors lock well and it’s clean, warm - this should buy you a night.” 

Still so patient, calm, measured. It makes Déomas feel a little cornered, like he wants to bolt, fidgeting in his chair, neck prickling, flushed and hot and sharp. He still feels like being a bit of a bitch because his belly is full and his holes are unfucked and he’s warm and untouched and none of this makes any sense.

“You’ll come visit me later, is that it? If you don’t have to go running off to your…paramour?” 

Drawled with a sneer - it’s shaky, choked, pathetic. He’s so tired of the game of it all and he won’t be caught by surprise by anyone, he won’t. 

Cass goes a little still. A shadow passes over his face, dark and horrible, his amber eyes glimmering with tears and for a moment he looks so miserable that Déomas feels ill. It passes and that placid, demure expression is back. Strained, now. Weary.

“No. I have…an appointment at the Dragon’s Head tavern, I’ll likely, uh, stay the night there.”

Oh.

Déomas flushes - this time with the hot stab of shame lancing through him. The whore tavern. Rough and seedy and a place someone like Déomas often finds himself. Not someone like this glowing, graceful creature. 

“Oh, I-“

“It’s okay, honey.” Cass interrupts softly. For a moment, it seems like he is going to reach out and touch Déomas but thinks better of it. Instead, he catches Déomas’ gaze and it’s like his eyes burn through the redhead, piercing his chest and his heart and deeper, deeper still. 

“Just…take care of yourself, okay? You deserve a night to sleep inside, away from the cold, without paying anything.”

Déomas wants to scoff, to protest that doesn’t. He really doesn’t. This whore doesn’t know him. 

He can’t say any of that with Cass’ sad, kind eyes on him. So, like a coward, he glances away. Cass doesn’t seem to fault him for that either, though, and just sighs. Not a sound of irritation, just…resignation. 

“It’s true. Whether you believe it or not.”

He’s gone before Déomas can retort, a flurry of cold wind and red shawl, into the evening. Déomas doesn’t watch him go, doesn’t look over his shoulder to watch Cassander glide quietly down the cold streets while Déomas sits in the bakery, safe and sound and alone. 

It isn’t true, he’ll tell himself, even as his fists clench so hard they tremble around enough money to buy him safety and privacy for a single night. He’s wrong about me - he doesn’t know me.

Yet, under all the tangle of frost-tipped thorns, a little hidden patch of Déomas’ tired, wounded heart melts and softens like snow under the morning sun. 

~

hope you enjoyed seeing our blorbos from our brains hang out 🥺❤️🥺

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Intrinsic: Jameson in Therapy

Prompt from Anon:  If you're still taking prompts... "Have you tried NOT doing that?"

CW: Noncon survivor discussing future consensual spice, Jameson’s masochism, frank references to noncon and pet whump, brief internal victim-blaming, world-building detail about WRU

Dr. Berger tucks a bit of graying hair behind one ear, smiling slightly at Jameson from her place in the soft armchair she uses during appointments. “Well,” She says, thoughtful, “have you tried not doing that?”

He looks up at her from where he sits curled up on the long sofa, knees to his chest, picking absently at loose threads across the knee of his baggy blue jeans. As always, she is careful not to let her eyes move to the places where hair is slowly growing back in over bald spots where the straps of a leather muzzle had rubbed, careful not to look at the scars he wears on every inch of exposed skin - she’d made the mistake of being caught looking, however briefly, and had discovered that the newest of her clients was deeply insecure about the visible evidence of his captivity.

She’d apologized, but it had taken time to develop enough trust to come back from her initial mistake. She would not jeopardize that now, after they’ve made so much progress and she’s begun to see a shift in how he talks about and relates to his new life, his world.

He even told her the name he chose for himself, and that he’s been telling the others in the house, one by one. Accepting that it won’t be taken from him like his original name was - that it belongs to him, and is his to share or not. 

She would never, ever admit it, but... Jameson is one of her favorite clients to work with. He’s working so hard, every week that they meet he trusts more and more that the path he’s on is one that will move him forward. 

“What?” 

His voice is slightly rough - someone who has screamed enough to have permanent vocal chord damage, she thinks. She makes a note to speak to Jake Stanton about having a physician check on the potential for nodes or other issues that might pop up later. She’s not a medical doctor, but… well. She’s had a lot of clients with vocal chord damage in the sixteen years she’s been working in the pet lib movement, and you start to pick up on the little signs and symptoms they don’t necessarily declare out loud.

“My question is really just me being a little facetious, I won’t lie, but I do want to talk through the spirit of the question. When you mention feeling guilty that you are having a physical response to your housemate, that you are attracted to them and have been struggling with... well. I’d like to really dig in to where that guilt comes from. Now, I am aware that adjustment houses tend to discourage relationships between household members during their time in residence to cut down on the chance for conflict, but that’s not where your guilt lies, is it?”

He goes back to picking at the hole slowly wearing through his jeans. Dr. Berger waits, giving him the silence and time he needs to think his way through the question and the possible answers. After a long time, he says softly, “No. It’s not. I don’t give a fuck if Stanton wants me to hold somebody’s stupid hand or not.”

She has to force her smile not to widen, wondering if Jameson is aware of just how like Jakob Stanton he really is. No wonder they don’t always get along. “Okay. So can you talk to me about just what you sense of guilt, this worry you feel, is rooted in?” 

She watches with some small surprise as the angry, defiant recovering Box Boy who has spoken frankly and openly to her about being maimed, injured, treated as an object, referred to as an animal... blushes.

“I want-... It’s not the, um, the response. That I hate.” He won’t look at her now, and he’s one who loves to stare her down whenever he thinks she’ll be shocked or disgusted by what he has to tell her. But this… this, he’s ashamed or embarrassed to say. “They’re fucking gorgeous, that’s... anybody would like them. It’s… it’s what I want from them that... scares me.”

“You are accustomed to a certain level of unwanted physical attention, it’s not at all uncommon in Romantic rescues to continue to feel sexual attraction and desire after freedom-”

“No. It’s. It’s not that I-... I know that’s normal. It’s… I want…” He shifts, uneasily. “I want… I want Allyn to hurt me.”

The last sentence is whispered. It’s not sharing a thought, it’s confessing what he feels is some kind of sin he is committing or intending to commit. Dr. Berger sometimes feels like a priest in a confessional booth, although she’s never been one to suggest atonement - no, fear of oneself is where the core of most of her clients’ pain lies, in her experience. Instead, she works on reconstructing the impulse or fear from its foundations, breaking apart the horror of its weight and reconfiguring it so it’s easier to understand. 

To take control of, to direct.

She helps them to own themselves, not to fear the prospect but to see in it freedom they have always deserved. 

Fear is the absolute last thing any of her clients should ever have to feel again. They have been taught to devalue and debase themselves, to fear what their bodies can be made to do. If she does nothing else, Dr. Berger hopes she is able to help them be just a little less afraid of the bodies they live in.

“You want your housemate to hurt you?” She asks, gently. “Do you mean in the sense of a serious injury, or…”

“No. Um. No, I fucking… I think about them, um. Hurting-... like… like they used to do. Biting me, or... or scratching... I th-think sometimes about Allyn h-holding a... never mind. Just. Hurting me. I’m-... made to be hurt.”

“You are made only to be yourself,” Dr. Berger reminds him, her voice low and without any hint of judgement. “We’ve talked about your captors before and how you were held. You believe that you were made into a masochist as part of your training, and so you’re frightened that your mind is thinking about your housemate in ways similar to how you were once forced to think about your captors.”

His nose wrinkles - he’s more dismissive than most of the language she uses, and early on delighted in insisting on using words like owner, handler, master. Things he thought might shock her. But Dr. Berger has heard nearly everything she thinks there might be to hear, by now. She only smiles slightly at his expression, jotting quickly down on her notepad a few notations. 

Finally, he offers hesitantly, “I-I guess. Allyn is… good. They’re soft, and nice, and they’d never-... but I want them to. And it’s-... it would make-... them be like Robert, or… wouldn’t it? It’d be… treating them like… I don’t ever want to be what I was again, so why the fuck can’t I stop thinking about it?” 

He is so rarely vulnerable. Dr. Berger doesn’t take for granted the gift he gives her by letting her see past the wall of anger and derision he has built to keep himself safe. In many ways, he reminds her of when she saw Jake Stanton after his own brush with WRU’s handlers and their methods. Bristling, defensive, and with wounds that cannot be bandaged. They instead need to be exposed to the light.

“Intrusive thoughts that contain elements of your captivity are absolutely normal. You are still in the early stages of making progress, and progress is never linear, Jameson. There is no starting line, no ribbon at the end of the race. There is only moving forward, bit by bit, even if sometimes we move back.”

“You mean I move back,” He says, sullen now. “You don’t do shit. You’re already fine.”

“Mmmn, that’s not… quite accurate. I actually see someone myself, you know.” Dr. Berger smiles at his obvious, visible surprise. “My mentor once told me he never trusted a provider of therapy who did not themselves seek it out. I have my own progress to work towards, just as you have yours.”

“Problems are probably real fucking different, though.”

“Well, that’s true.” She allows herself a warm laugh - and is rewarded when he doesn’t bristle or assume mockery like he used to, but relaxes and even gives her a very small smile in return. “But I would advise you not to compare yourself to others. Your situation, while not unique in some ways, is still unique to you. You’ve been through a kind of horror that no one else has - even if others have experienced some similarities, the traumatic events they experienced will never be entirely like yours.”

He nods.

“But-” She holds up one finger “That doesn’t mean we can’t use what we know as a framework, a foundation you can build your own way on. Think of an ancient Roman road paved into a highway in modern Italy, for instance. The foundation was there, a path laid by people who came through before. But you can take what you need and use it to find your own way. I know that you’re scared of your thoughts, I know that you are frightened of wanting to find gratification or satisfaction in pain because you think it means a return to how you were treated before, or that you are inherently changed in damaging ways by your captivity, but…”

When she trails off, he leans slightly forward “But?”

She chooses her words carefully. “Jameson, would you be willing to consider something that may make you a little uncomfortable?”

He looks at her, depths of feelings in his brown eyes, and slowly nods. “Why not? I’m already fucking uncomfortable. All the time.”

His thin shoulders under the oversized band shirt he wears make angles under the fabric as he shrugs, although in the time she’s been seeing them those sharp edges have already begun to round out, the lines of his jaw and cheekbones are softening.

She’s seen it over and over again, the physical changes reflecting the rebuilding of an entire life. It never ceases to amaze her, how hard each and every one of them works. 

“Okay. This may be hard to hear at first but I think it will help you.”

Eventually he nods. “Yeah,” He half-rasps. “Yeah, okay. Just say it. Everything… everything else you’ve said has helped. Go ahead.”

“Okay. So, what I would like you to consider… perhaps what you see as an enforced flaw, a crack that was put into you, a danger you present to your housemate due to your conditioning and mistreatment… it might be in fact an intrinsic part of your sexual expression, and simply an aspect of your attraction to them, and the wish you stated to me to perhaps escalate your current relationship.”

He swallows. The color drains from his face, except for two spots of bright red high along his cheekbones. “What?” His lips barely move. 

“Jameson…” Her tone dips, reassuring and soothing. “I know what you were told. I know you were likely given a series of half-truths and whole lies designed to engender dependence and teach you to loathe yourself and therefore disconnect from your body. But… that body? It’s very real, and it’s entirely yours. I think that we need to look into the possibility that you already had certain tendencies that were exploited and twisted. Those tendencies are not inherently unhealthy or damaging if you learn to pursue them in a safe environment.”

He blinks, once, twice, his eyes glittering. 

She’s made a misstep and she knows it immediately, clear as the tears Jameson never allows to fall. She didn’t time it quite right. They should have spent more time working up to it…

“Are you saying I’m just-... like this?”

“Not the way you are suggesting,” Dr. Berger says softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t express myself clearly enough. Please let me elaborate a little.”

“I fucking hope you d-didn’t mean that I’m-... that I’m just fucked up,” He says, looking away from her, down at the floor. She pretends she doesn’t see one hand go up to curve around the side of his neck, recreating some of the weight of the collar they are so often taught to rely on for a sense of safety.

“I absolutely did not mean that. One thing WRU excels at - one of the reasons they have been so successful - is that they utilize very effective techniques that encourage a sense of complicity and responsibility in the people they abuse and violate. I’m going to hazard a guess that you were told that you chose what happened to you.”

“I signed up for this,” Jameson whispers automatically, rote and robotic, without hesitation. At least, Dr. Berger thinks, she’s been doing this job long enough that hearing that no longer gets to her like it used to. “I wanted to be some rich asshole’s-”

“Yes. That. One way I think they are able to convince so many individuals so thoroughly isn’t only because of the standard methods of sleep and nutritional deprivation, the repetition, memorizing, the mistreatment… no, I think one thing WRU does is find in each of its victims a core truth they can exploit and cause you to fear in yourself, making you more vulnerable to the idea that this company is somehow saving or helping you by ‘making use’ of it. They find your weak point and use it to shatter you, but what WRU never realizes is that the very weakness they exploit is also often the same piece of you we can recover, that we can reclaim. In your case… Jameson, have you ever heard of consensual masochism?”

He’s hooked, she thinks, on this line of logic. On the lifeline she’s thrown him, something to grab onto. A way to begin to believe, in some small way, that he isn’t ruined. They all think they’ve been ruined, by the time she meets them.

None of them is.

“No, I-I haven’t. Does this mean… there are people like me who aren’t, you know, fucktoys-”

“Recovering Romantics,” She corrects, gently. “And yes. Masochism is a not-uncommon mode of expression that many people engage in consensually in the context of healthy sexual expression.”

He swallows, hard. She watches his throat move. Sees the look in his eyes, the minute changes in his expression. The hand pushing against the side of his neck slowly drops. She can see the gears turning within him, a shifting point of view maybe. She can see what he doesn’t want to speak out loud.

There’s another silence. This one is more comfortable, and as always she gives him all the time he needs. 

“How-” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat, blinking rapidly again. His knees slowly uncurl and his feet, clad in old hand-me-down sneakers, find their way to flat on the floor. Without his ever-present scowl, he looks years younger. Terrified.

Hopeful.

“How can I-... how do I-...” He takes a deep breath. “If it’s just… part of me… how do I make it safe?”

-

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @moose-teeth @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @vickytokio @whumpfigure @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @thehopelessopus @butwhatifyouwrite @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Can we see Jameson and allyn sharing a soft moment please? 🥺👉👈 - theo-

Happy blog anniversary, @boxboysandotherwhump - I give you softness and angst with a hint of spice, my specialty

CW: Survivors of noncon/dubcon navigating early steps of consensual spice, panic attack, memory of sadistic whumper, referenced death

Timeline- Several months after their arrival at Jake's safehouse

The first time it happens, they're in the literal closet.

Jameson doesn't miss the irony, exactly, but he can't really think about it, with his back pressed against the spaces where he's carved in their names - his own must be somewhere near his lower spine, maybe - and Allyn leaning in, close enough that their breath is warm against his face.

Part of him files the moment away for later, first kiss in an actual fucking closet like seven seconds in heaven, a game he remembers in a foggy way but could never define if anyone asked him.

Besides, it's not actually his first kiss, just the first one that hasn't felt like forcing his head underwater until his lungs burn.

How they went from curling up together in the dark, in the way they have now or working through nightmares here where the cold white light cannot find them, to Allyn pressing themself, soft and only slightly pinked, to Jameson's chapped lips, is beyond him.

He hopes the roughness doesn't bother them. They don't seem to mind, hands on either side of his head against the wall to brace themself, their hair falling forward to make everything smell like them, all the air he breathes is theirs.

"You broke a rule," Jameson whispers when they pull back, and his voice is more hoarse than usual, roughened with the emotions he never lets out. "Big guy's gonna blow a gasket."

Allyn breathes hard, sitting back on their knees, weight resting on Jameson's thighs. He can barely see their gray eyes sparkle in the dark. "Only if somebody tells him," They whisper back, sunshower rain barely misting, tasting like green leaves and ozone. "Are you gonna tell him?"

Jameson doesn't answer. He just carefully puts his hands on their waist, just above their hips, fingers closing in the loose sweater they sleep in, and pulls them back to him.

This time, their hands move to hold his face, and their thumbs rub light as a feather over the short hair growing back in over his bald spots, running wrong-way to feel it, making him shiver.

He makes a sound.

They make one, too.

It feels natural and he's not afraid, and yet... His heart jumps with each unwelcome image, a burst of dread, not quite fear.

He tries to remember what the therapist said, that it might be normal, not bad, to have a flicker of thought that he wishes Allyn would scratch their fingernails, manicured and painted, down his back, that they would close their teeth on his lip, suck a bruise into his neck and make it something he can't possibly hide.

It might have been there all along.

Their hands shift, fingers just slightly grazing the angles of his shoulders, dropping to his sides, sliding down to find the hem of his T-shirt and slide up underneath it, cool palms against the scars layered over his stomach, heated and shifting under their touch and he can feel the blade of the knife-

"Wait." He breaks the kiss, but there's nowhere to go. His heart moves from beating a rhythm against his breastbone to his throat and then to his knees, a lurch that nearly makes him sick with sudden panic. "W-wait, Allyn, wait-"

Their hands freeze, then move away, his shirt dropping back into place. Still he can't breathe, he can still feel it, not Nanda or Brute or the ones whose names he never knew but Robert.

He feels like one of the ones dragged into the basement who never came back out, the smell in the house, the bones they probably found if they looked after he called from the only payphone he's ever found to report it, he feels-

"Wait."

"I'm waiting." It's not impatient. It's soft, and they move back, giving him more space. The air cools when it doesn't come secondhand from their lungs and he gulps it down, hands shaking as he slowly raises them to cover his face. "Jameson? Are you-... Did I-"

"N-no, you're fine, it's f-fine, I'm... I'm fine, I'm okay. It's okay." He's not and it isn't. He's bones waiting to rot and being a fucking masochist is the only reason Robert left him alive. He should be in the basement, too.

Where he left Robert, lying right on top of all his fucking trophies, the IDs scattered everywhere like seeds that might grow back into the lives Robert stole, before Jameson stole his.

Scars on his stomach, layers of them, the newest ones from Robert's knife as he fought not to die, time's up, turn the tables, let Robert scrabble and claw while the pet stares down, unblinking, uncaring-

Jameson hears a whimpering sound and realizes only when Allyn pulls fully away that the sound is coming out of his own mouth. He curls up, as tightly as he can, stomach burning, lit with flame like salt in the wound.

"I can't," He says. "I, I'm sorry, I fucking c-can't-"

"That's all right," Allyn says, voice still gentle, falsely calm. But he can hear how it trembles. "Should I leave?"

"No!" Jameson shudders, seeing eyes in the dark, shakes his head as fast as he can. "N-no, pl-please, please d-don't leave-"

"Okay. I'm right here. I'll stay right here." Allyn swallows with an audible click in the silent darkness. They sit together for a while, how long Jameson doesn't know. Until he stops shaking, anyway. Their hand finds his and he holds on tight.

Then, hesitantly, rainbow spotted through rain, they say, "I guess there's a reason for the rules, huh."

Jameson's laugh is shaky and too high-pitched, but it's real. "Y-yeah, I fucking guess there is."

-

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @moose-teeth @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @vickytokio @whumpfigure @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @thehopelessopus @butwhatifyouwrite @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Same Bed: Lost (And Found)

CW: Trauma recovery, healing internal and external injuries, references to noncon and choking, brief suicide mentions at the beginning, references to past pet whump, consensual spice between survivors, brief masochism funtimes

The Same Bed: Part One: Jake | Part Two: Krista | Part Three: Chris | Part Four: Vincent | Part Five: Antoni | Interlude | Part Six: Nat | Part Seven: Owen | Part Eight: Tonight | Part Nine: Reunion | Part Ten: Too Late | Epilogue: Lost (And Found)

(using the “Lost” prompt for @whumpmasinjuly day 2 for this! Loosely interpreted, but still...)

-

“Hey.” Jake drops the stack of folders, stuffed with paperwork, onto the table. “I brought these by for you to look over. I think I have it all taken care of, though.”

“Cool.” Jenna doesn’t look at him, sitting with her chin in her hand, watching a TV in the corner. Jake follows her gaze to see the chyron running along the bottom of the screen, a news anchor talking animatedly. The volume is so low he can’t hear it, but the subtitles are on. 

NOTED FORMER CHILD STAR OWEN GRANT FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE…

Jake takes a seat across the table. “Suicide? That’s what they went with?”

“That’s what I paid the coroner to go with, yeah,” Jenna says, leaning forwards a little. She’s cut her hair short, to her chin. It suits her. “Figured it’d be better to have open-and-close suicide case then a bunch of cops looking for a murderer they’re not gonna find. Cops hate that shit, but they love getting to wash their hands of something and say it’s not their problem. And that Grant asshole doesn’t have any living relatives to push for it to be a crime, right?”

“Right. He just had his mom, some distant cousins that hated him as much as everyone else did.”

“Good. Yeah, the coroner’s going to find that Owen went a little off the rails after losing his mom. It’s believable.”

“Yeah. He definitely went off the rails, anyway.” Jake hesitates, and then offers, reluctantly, “Thanks, Jenna. For your help. I know how you feel about Kauri-”

“You know how I felt about Kauri,” She answers breezily. She sits up, then, pulling one of the folders in front of her, opening it up and looking over what she sees inside. “It’s been years, Jake. He’s not who he was then, and neither am I. Plus, I don’t like the idea of people fucking with us after we’ve started to really get better. It wasn’t that big of an ask.”

“Jenna.” Jake barks out a laugh. “I asked you to drive around with a dead body in the trunk to help Antoni get rid of it, that's not a small ask!”

“It is,” Jenna says, almost primly, “When I don’t mind doing it. I didn’t mind following him to make sure he went to that house like we thought he would, and I didn’t mind helping Antoni out with the body. Besides, I used Vincent Shield’s money to bribe a coroner to say Owen Grant is dead by his own hand, you can’t tell me that’s not some poetic fucking shit right there.” She sighs, looking over at him. “You can always ask me for help, Jake.”

“Can I? Since goddamn when? You’ve been calling Kauri a whore for a decade-”

“Nah, I haven’t done that in a while. Since I decided to stop like five years ago. Since, you know, I realized… I was just taking out on him what I wanted to say to the other pet in the house I ran from.” Jenna sets the file down again. A frightened young woman’s face looks back up from a printed out copy of stolen WRU records. Someone new to hunt for, someone listed as ‘assisted walk-in’, an abduction in flowery language. Someone they can save and if they make it public, WRU can’t try to take them back without running afoul of the law again.

“Jenna, I don’t-... I don’t understand-”

“People change. I changed. Just… let me have changed, Jake. I was scared, and pissed off, and just… lost… for years. I was angry at her for nearly getting me killed, and Kauri reminded me of her, so I took it out on him. But, years back, that little one, uh, your brother-”

“Chris.”

“Right. Years back, Kauri called me for help with him. And I helped, because I’m not a complete asshole, just like seventy percent of one, and after that… I don’t know. Kauri really stepped up for that kid, and I could see how scared he was. Kauri and I are never going to like each other, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one of us.”

“Well… yeah, okay. Thanks. I won’t push you on it anymore.”

“Welcome. And thanks. Congratulations on the marriage, by the way.” She waved at the ring on Jake’s finger. “Good fucking luck with that. Marrying two people sounds way worse than marrying just one.”

“Nah.” Jake shrugs, and opens a file himself. He circles what he sees - ‘referred by foster mother, assisted walk-in’. “It’s way, way better. They’re pretty cool to be married to.”

“If you say so. No marriage for me, thanks. Too much like being kept all over again.”

“That’s fair. Live the life you want to live, right?”

“Right.” She smiles, then, looking around the little kitchen in the small brick ranch she lives in. “Damn straight. Live the life you want to live, all yours, on your own damn terms. Okay, so I say we start with this one, she’s part of a bonded pair. We can get them both.”

“Where are they located?”

“That’s the best part. They’re handler’s pets. They’re local.” Jenna grins at him, sparkling and full of mischief. “Ready to break into a handler’s house and fuck some shit up?”

Jake can’t stop himself from laughing. “Clearly not as ready as you are.”

“... so yes or no?”

“Yeah, Jenna. Let’s do it. Let’s plan a raid.”

“Cool. So how do you feel about setting his house on fire?”

“... I might know someone who can help us with that.”

-

“She’s said sorry like seven fucking times.” Jameson lays on his side on his bed, his back pressed to the wall. “If she says it again, I might lose my goddamn mind, Allyn.”

“She just feels bad.” Allyn smiles at him, laying a hand against the side of his face, their thumb rubbing over his cheekbone, over a small scar. He shudders, closing his eyes as sparks seem to light and dance down his skin, buzzing just under the surface. When they move their hand away, he can still feel the weight of it, the ghost of pleasure. 

“I know, but I already told her, I don’t mind hurting for her. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t even that bad, I’ve been hurt worse than that!”

Between them on the bed Trash Cat lays curled in a contented little ball, eyes closed. Her ear flicks whenever Jameson speaks, as if listening to him, keeping track of the emotion in his voice. Reading it for potential trouble. 

“But she never wants to hurt you. She never wants to hurt anybody. I get it.” Allyn’s hair falls in loose red waves over shoulder and neck and lays against their face. He tucks a little of it behind their ear, watching their freckles shift as they smile at him, flashing white teeth against pink lips, sparkling gray-blue eyes. 

He listens to their voice, tastes the rainshower that comes with it. 

“I don’t mind hurting,” He repeats, but softer this time. “If it’s the right person hurting me.” There’s an unmistakable flirtation in his voice, then, although it’s tentative. He’s never sure how to start this, now that he isn’t having to guess at a master or owner’s mood, read the tension in the air and break it down by handing his body over to the whip and the cane until they are both bonelessly satisfied. 

No, this is… something else.

Something honest.

Something equal. 

If Allyn hurts him, he knows, it will be because he asked to be hurt. Not because it’s his place. The idea feels like wandering in a new landscape. Touching unfamiliar trees that at least still have bark and leaves, but wondering at colors and shapes he’s never seen. Lost, even with map in hand, because the place he is in is so like but not at all the same as the world he knows.

Jameson shifts forwards, as best he can, back curving a little so he can kiss them. Their lips are warm and soft and his own are a little rough and chapped. For a second they go still, and then they’re kissing him back. It’s perfect, at first, too perfect, and then both of them drop the instinctive training and the kiss goes clumsy and they both laugh as they bump teeth.

Trash Cat chirps, lifting her head to look back at them, and then slowly stands up. She stretches in a perfect arch before stalking down to the end of the bed.

“She’s giving us our space,” Allyn whispers against Jameson’s lips, and giggles. The sound of their laughter sends warmth down his spine, and he moves closer, until they’re touching from collarbone to knees, even their feet twining together. His bandaged hand moves slowly up their side, feeling the slight curve, nearly an angle, from narrow waist to larger ribcage. His thumb is so, so close to their chest, and they inhale in a soft hitch. 

“She just doesn’t want me to push her off the fucking bed in a minute,” Jameson answers, a little breathy, and he hates his hoarse voice - can remember he had a normal voice, with Nanda, before Brute and Robert made him scream until it was gone over and over until it stopped coming all the way back. 

“Can I-... can I try something?” Allyn asks in a whisper, and when Jameson nods, they give a little smile and reach up, taking his hand from their face and holding it in their own. Their soft sotto voice is like subtle droplets on Jameson’s tongue, a burst of the way the air taste just before it really starts to rain. He watches them, meeting their eyes with his own, as their thumb settles just over the center of his palm. Beneath that, a healing cut, where Nat had jammed a GPS tracker as deep as she could get.

And Jameson hadn’t screamed.

He knew how to hurt.

“Can I push down?” Allyn’s eyes search his. “While I kiss you, can I… push down on the cut a little bit?”

His mouth goes dry. Jameson’s body is a lightning rod, and he stares at the storm and wants to beg for the roll of thunder that follows the strike. He nods, a little jerk of his chin. “Yes,” He breathes.

Their lips are on his own, again, opening to slide their tongue against his, and he hums into the kiss, pressing his body to theirs. Warmth stirs deep in his stomach, his body waking up, answering the firmness of their kiss.

Then they press down, pain racing down Jameson’s arm and into his body, and he moans, unmistakable and louder than he means to be. He’s rolled onto his back with Allyn pressing into his hips before he can think, and Allyn’s mouth is on his neck, teeth bearing down on soft skin as they roll their own hips against his, and he moans again.

The front door closes, muffled downstairs.

Allyn pulls back, startled. Then they burst out laughing, leaning over until their forehead touches Jameson’s. “Oh, no, I forgot she was home.”

Jameson breathes in soft gasps, and laughs, too. He tips his head back, baring his neck. The place they were biting is cold where air and the remnants of drying saliva meet. “She’s not home anymore,” He offers.

Allyn leans down to bite again, and presses their thumb into his hand at the same time. 

“I love this,” Jameson groans, eyes fluttering closed. His hips move to meet theirs right through their clothes. It doesn’t occur to either of them to take them off… not yet. “I love, love this-”

“I love it, too,” Allyn murmurs, nipping at his earlobe.

Neither of them says what they really mean. Both of them have loved men who could never fully love them in return. Both of them know the words have always been hollow. But both of them think it, if not consciously, then with every inch of skin where they touch.

I love you.

-

“Antoni.” Kauri’s voice, still hoarse as he heals from the hands that had tried to choke the life from him, is laced with a kind of affectionate irritation. “I don’t need it.”

“You do.” Antoni sets the mug down on the side table next to the bed. The tea within is faintly pink, see through, not marked with milk. Kauri can look down into it and see, a little muddied, the image of a cat face painted on the bottom. He sighs and looks up at Antoni, whose eyebrows raise. “You do,” He repeats. “Tea is good for sore throat.”

“Yeah, for like… when you have strep or the flu or some shit,” Kauri groans, but he pushes himself slowly up to seated, back cushioned by approximately eleven million pillows Jake and Antoni have both insisted on keeping near him at all times. Not that it isn’t really, really nice to have one to sit on when he leaves the bed and ends up in a chair like a dumbass. “I was choked, Ant, it’s not the same. Not even the first time I’ve been choked. Not even just Owen! There was this one guy I went home with once…” He smiles, but the laugh dies in his throat before it comes out as he meets Antoni’s dark eyes.

“I remember,” Antoni says. “I remember that night.”

“Of course you do.” Kauri sighs, and pats the bed beside him. Antoni sits, just at the edge, as if he might flee at any second. Like he wants to run from the pain still marking Kauri’s skin. 

Kauri leans over, and places a hand over his. Long fingers that have been slightly cool for so long are warm from too much tea and time under the covers. His ring glimmers in the light, back on his finger where he plans to never ever take it off again. It overlays Antoni’s own. 

“Ant,” He says, softly. “For the thousandth time. It isn’t your fault. I knew what might happen when I went into that room. I was… I was ready for it.”

I was ready to die.

“I should have been inside faster,” Antoni says, and he leans slowly over until his head rests on Kauri’s shoulder. The soft, messy nearly-black hair tickles Kauri’s cheek and he smiles, pulling Antoni’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, gently, one by one. Bruised knuckles, torn and bloodied the night of the rescue, now healed but still scarred. “The fight with the other one was not supposed to take so long. We had a plan, and we nearly-... you could have been dead-”

“I’m right here,” Kauri says, voice low. He turns and breathes deep. Antoni’s hair smells like tea-tree and mint shampoo, and there’s always something of a kitchen around him. Smells like flour and baking things and sweetness. “I’m right here, Ant. I am alive, I’m right here, look, I feel like a flip flop left out in the mud but I’m here.”

“If not for Vince-”

“Then you would have saved him.” Kauri smiles, and he keeps that smile in his voice. “And that’d be something, wouldn’t it? Secret runaway pet saves multi-millionaire movie star…”

“It would not matter. It would be nothing, if Jasha and I lost you.” 

“You would still have had each other-”

“It would be nothing. You are the… the piece of puzzle that holds two others together. You are color, we have none without you.”

“Bullshit.” Kauri’s smile widens, though, and he flushes a little at the praise, at being told he is needed. Not just needed but wanted. That, at least, he’s never quite lost, and he wonders if that was inherent in Liam Harker, the man who once walked around in his skin. What parts of him have survived within Kauri? 

Maybe just a need to be loved, and wanted, and needed. 

Maybe Liam had that, too.

“Kasha, I love you,” Antoni whispers. It’s hard for him to say the words. Kauri kisses his forehead. Then the tip of his nose.

He pulls back. “I love you, too, Ant. You and Jake and I… we’re forever.” They sit in silence for a few minutes. In the background, a soap opera plays, which both of them are entirely ignoring. Then Kauri says, softly, “Antoni… will you go get my phone? I forgot it in the bathroom and I don’t think I have the energy to go get it on my own just yet.”

Antoni stands, retrieving the phone where it lays on the bathroom counter. When he comes back, he climbs right into the bed, lying on his side under the blankets, near to Kauri without quite touching him. Kauri doesn’t push, this time. 

Antoni offers touch, when he wants it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Kauri says, taking it and tapping idly on the screen, listening to his fingernail click against the shining black. “About a lot. Since I, uh, didn’t die. Lots of time to think when your partners won’t let you leave the fucking bed.”

“Mmhmm.” Antoni doesn’t take the bait, but he smiles a little, pleased with himself. “What do you think about?”

“I think I should call my mom.” Kauri says it all in a rush. He barely gets the words out, even so. The old drumbeat begging him to run from what’s behind him is still so strong, it nearly drowns him out inside his own mind. But he clings to this thought, because he needs Antoni to either encourage him or talk him out of it. “Well, Liam’s mom. I was thinking, if I had died… she’d been trying to get ahold of me, but what if I died and like, she found out Liam was alive and then I got his body killed anyway? Before she could see him?”

“You are Liam, Kasha,” Antoni says. He watches Kauri with inscrutable eyes, looking up at him from where he lays propped up on one elbow. 

“Yeah, but… what if I’m too different, and she hates me for stealing him? What if she thinks Liam is lost, and Kauri is what came back from the dead?”

“You cannot do this,” Antoni says, shaking his head. “Steal him. WRU stole, and he is not lost. You are him. I think it is a good idea to call your mother.”

“But… what if she hates me?”

“Then you never speak to her again, and she can go fuck herself.” Kauri’s eyebrows nearly raise to his hairline, and Antoni laughs, low and soft and deep. ‘What? You think I can’t swear?” He takes Kauri’s hand, and presses warm lips to the back, right in the middle of blood vessels and nerve-endings, making Kauri shiver pleasantly. “Call her. Kauri Grant is brave, and strong-” He kissed again. “Smart, and good. I think that Liam Harker would like this Kauri Grant. So I think Liam Harker’s mother will like Kauri Grant as well.”

Kauri swallows. “Are you-... are you sure about that? I’ve done some pretty seriously fucked-up shit to this body, Ant. Remember when I spent like a month straight on ecstasy?”

“I do, yes.”

“Plus, there have been, like, seven orgies…”

“Sssshhh. Kasha. Listen to me. She will love you. She loves you already, she is Liam’s mama and that means yours. And also… it will probably help if you do not talk to her about the orgies.”

“Right, right, keep a lid on the orgy talk. Got it.”

“Oh, one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t talk to me about the orgies, either.”

Laughing hurts, but Kauri discovers that once he starts, he can’t quite make himself stop. 

-

“And… and, and then they… laugh at me.” Chris sits with his knees pulled to his chest, the heels of his feet just barely balanced on the edge of the chair, arms wrapped tightly around his calves. He won’t look at everyone else, keeping his chin tipped down so the shimmering light purple of his hair hides his green eyes. “And, and, and say, um, you-you wanted me to, and when I, um, when I say I, I, I-I didn’t, they, they, they… get angry.”

He has a silicone feather pendant on a small cord stuck in the corner of his mouth, slightly muffling his speech. 

“They say then, um, then why did you you you sign up? Like… like they, they don’t already know that, um, that I didn’t, and… and then they, they say, let’s go again, and I start… I, I, I start crying, because, because they sound just, um, just like… like my-... like him. And they, um, they put me on my, my my my my, my, my… on… on m-my… stomach…”

There are tears in Chris’s eyes, running down his cheeks, but no one moves. No one speaks. Not yet. 

“And, and, and then… I wake up.”

There’s a breath of silence, and then a man to the left of Chris leans towards him, putting a hand to his back. “I have dreams like that, too.”

Chris looks over at him, resting his head on his knees. His eyes are red-rimmed, wreathed in shadows. “You, you do?”

“Yeah. I’ve been married for, like, what, three years now?” The man gives Chris an encouraging, soft smile, rubbing at his back a little. “And free for ten. And I still, sometimes, I wake up just gasping for air because I remember how it felt. And sometimes I dream that my wife is the one hurting me like he did. Probably-... probably all of us have nightmares, right?”

He looks to the rest of the group of twelve, seated in a circle of folding chairs in a small side room in a community building they rent for these meetings. The others, men and women from their early twenties through their late forties, all nod. 

“It just… it goes with getting better, is that-” The man’s eyes flicker to the therapist ostensibly in charge of this meeting. Dr. Francis just nods, gesturing with one hand for the man to continue. He has a cup of bad, bitter decaf coffee in his hands, slowly warming the styrofoam cup, with powdered creamer stirred in and bits still floating a little on the top, refusing to fully dissolve. “That your brain doesn’t always know that you’re safe. And nightmares are just… how your mind tries to, to put together the two parts of your life.”

“It’d… it’d be, be, be be-be nice if it could, um, could do that some other way,” Chris mutters, and there’s a scattering of soft laughter, kind and well-meaning, from everyone else. 

“It would be,” The man says, and gives Chris a final pat on the back before sitting back. “But that’s not really how brains work.”

Dr. Francis clears his throat. “Isaac is correct,” He says, and moves to take his own seat, sipping his coffee and steadfastly making no expression at the awful taste. “It is, indeed, more common than not to have nightmares, and for many those nightmares can last for years. But they are just that - nightmares. They are your minds working inside of you to put together a life of subjugation with one of freedom, and struggling to reconcile the details. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing that. It’s only that our brains must adapt in order to survive at a lightning speed. But… it takes so much longer, doesn’t it, for our brains to realize those adaptations are no longer necessary.”

More nods from everyone around the circle. 

“It… it, it does help,” Chris offers, without uncurling himself. “To know everyone else, um, does, does those dreams, too, that it it it doesn’t… they wouldn’t ever, um, hurt me… they wouldn’t.”

Dr. Francis nods. “But someone did. And our bodies and minds catalog those hurts, and hold on, because they are trying to prepare you for that pain to start again. Your body is trying, as hard as it can, to keep you safe. Let’s take a moment to close our eyes, and just-... you can do this silently, everyone - just say thank you to your body for keeping you alive, and safe, to get this far. Just a quick thank-you. All that fear and pain, that was adapting to survive. Let’s thank our bodies for those adaptations.”

There’s another silence, heads bowed and eyes closed. It looks like a prayer. Some of their lips even move, but no one here is thanking God, not really. Instead, they’re whispering a prayer of thanks to nerves and bone and blood that bruised and broke and sent screaming pain signals to brain cells that rearranged, rerouted, made new pathways of survival where none had previously existed. They are giving their gratitude to lungs that fought to expand even with hands around their throat, to a heart that refused to stop beating even as it broke again and again, to hands that slapped and punched, feet that kicked out, lips and tongue that held desperately to the memory of words they weren’t supposed to say.

Words like fuck you and I don’t want this and stop touching me.

Words like we did not sign up for this.

Words like no.

Dr. Francis ends the moment of silence by clearing his throat again. Some of the men and women in the circle have glimmering eyes when they look back up, rubbing just under them in ways they think are subtle, but which everyone recognizes and no one remarks on. 

“Now,” Dr. Francis says, “We have someone new here tonight, and he would like to tell his story. Would it be all right if I call him in? Remember that there is no wrong answer here. And he won’t be listening to any of your stories, just telling his own.”

Some of the group meet eyes, and then they look back to the doctor and nod. Some carefully, others more enthusiastically. A few even smile, kind and soft, agreeable. 

The doctor stands and steps out of the room.

“It’s the guy who came with you, right?” A woman asks Chris, and he nods without uncurling, chewing on the silicone feather. He starts to sway, just a little. “I wondered why he didn’t come into the room right away. He’s one of us, right?”

Before Chris can answer, the door opens again. Dr. Francis steps in first.

Vincent Shield steps in after him.

He moves with a slow, slightly shuffling step, showing the aches that haven’t quite faded in a body still working hard to heal itself. His movie-star megawatt smile is subdued, simply lips pressed together. The shadow of a bruise still wreathes his eye on one side, another clings to a cheekbone. Finger-shaped bruises are finally fading enough from his throat to not be immediately visible for what they are. 

“Hey, Chris,” Vince says, voice low and slightly rough. Chris hums a greeting. There’s a whisper from a few of the circle participants, people who have seen his movies. Their eyes are wide, surprised, but no one comes at him. No one even stands.

They respect the circle, and the people within it.

“Okay, Vince,” Dr. Francis says amicably. ���The circle agreed to hear your story tonight, and welcome you to our meetings from here on out. Gang, let’s make some room for Vince to sit down.”

“Uh, Dr. Francis-”

The doctor looks over at a woman in her thirties, while others are shifting their chairs with soft scrapes along hard floors so Vince can unfold a new one and put his own into the empty spot, slowly sitting down, looking around and smiling with a nervous shyness utterly at odds with the empty friendliness he has on the red carpet. 

“Yes, Trin?”

“He’s… he’s not a Romantic, though,” Trin says, glancing to the side. “Sorry, Vince, no offense.”

There’s a bit of low laughter, not unkind, from the participants. “It’s not exactly something anyone should apologize for not being,” Isaac says, good-naturedly. Trin blushes a little and looks down and away, shrugging, smiling a little uneasily. “But she has a point, Dr. Francis, this is group for Romantics only, isn’t it?”

“Normally, yes. But Vince’s story is a little different. He’s been seeing me for a couple of weeks now, and I think it’s worth all of you hearing it. So many of you struggle with feeling separate from the world, and that’s because of the laws and societal isolation, of course, but… I want you to hear this. Your stories, your experiences, they are connected with the experiences and stories of people outside of WRU, outside the system. I think it could help to see that you are not set apart in that way. Vince, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Vincent Shield sits back. He doesn’t look like a movie star - his hair is shaggy and unwashed, he’s wearing an old Nirvana t-shirt he borrowed from Nat and sweatpants, a pair of sandals that don’t even match. You’d never know who he was, if you saw him on the street.

You might wonder if Kauri Grant was having a bad day, but looking at Vince, you’d never see the movie star beneath the real man. 

“Hi, um. Hi everyone.” Vince smiles. “Dr. Francis asked me to talk to you all tonight. He thought it might help, and I’ll… I’ll talk about my, um. What happened to me, and then you can… I’ll step out and you can vote if you want me here. If you don’t, no harm no foul, I totally get it. I’m not sure I even want me here.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I’m… I’m really lost, if I’m honest. I’m totally lost at what to do with… everything now. I have this entire life and it’s just… hollow. I’m just doing what everyone told me I wanted to do, but-...”

“But it’s not what you want,” Trin suggests. 

“It isn’t. I’m not sure it ever was, or if I just… was told so many times…”

“They tell you that you want it, the way they treat you.” That’s another young woman. “They tell you you’re a flirt, but they make you flirt to get everything, to get food, to get a place to sleep. They make you… they make you pretend, over and over, and tell you that you’re not pretending.”

“They call, they, they call you a slut,” Chris whispers. “And, and, and if you say you’re not, they, they, they say you’re so good at acting that, that, that you must really be…”

“Right.” Vince clears his throat. “Shit. I didn’t know that I would feel… I told myself for forever that what everyone told me was true. But I can’t… I can’t lie to myself any longer. I just can’t. It’s been eating me alive for so long, and I don’t know what it’s like not to feel that way, and… I guess we’re going to find out. But Nat suggested… therapy, and… maybe not lying to my therapist so much this time.”

“You lied to Dr. Francis?” A third person, a man Chris’s age, asks in a scandalized hush.

Vince smiles - it’s a real and sincere smile. He shakes his head. “No, my old therapist. I’m not seeing her any longer. I wanted to start over. I’m… I’m starting over. So. Uh, where… Dr. Francis, where should I start-”

“Anywhere you like,” Dr. Francis says, voice low and gentle. 

“Uh, okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll start kind of like I start when I go to AA, if you all don’t mind?”

“I go to AA,” Isaac offers, a kind of hand outstretched, in words if not in gesture. “Every week. I’ve been sober for two years.”

“Congrats,” Vince says, sincerely. “I’m, uh, it’s been… a few weeks, but after I got to Nat’s I kind of, I fell off the wagon. I wasn’t sleeping, every time I closed my eyes I saw him... what happened. At the end. Drank until I blacked out and woke up on the floor with Nat’s, uh, that Jameson guy pouring water on my face. Then I got so sick I could barely move, turns out when you stop drinking and then start again, your liver gets really angry… it doesn’t matter. I’m starting over. So here’s to… three days sober, I guess?”

“Here’s to three days,” Isaac says, and smiles. “Three days is a start.”

Vince looks up, then, letting his eyes drift over the ceiling. He shifts and his chair creaks beneath him, as if castigating him for pausing for so long, for letting the silence draw out. Then he takes in a deep, deep breath. He fills his lungs with the oxygen until it burns, lets it slowly, slowly push out again.

“My name is Vincent Shield, and I’m an alcoholic. Sorry, just. That bit’s habit. Anyway… When I was twenty-one,” He starts, still not looking at anyone. His voice shakes a little. It’s thin and strained, pushed out past twenty years of keeping secrets and bruised from Owen’s hands. His throat wants to close around the truth, the way it has always wanted to close. The way he allowed it to close over and over for so, so long. His hands find the sides of the chair and grip, white knuckled. “When… when I was twenty-one, my best friend - my only friend, really, kind of my only real family, my parents had already stopped talking to me by then - told me he loved me.”

The room is silent, except for the soft hissing crackle of the coffeemaker and the hum of air conditioning blowing cold air through vents. 

“I told him I didn’t… feel that way about him. He said okay. For a little bit, things were okay. I thought it was fine… and then he-... he acted normal for a while, but… but then he drugged my drink. And when I woke up, I was tied to a bed.”

Vince swallows.

“Naked.”

Perfect silence, nodding heads. They’ve been tied to beds, they’ve woken up naked, they’ve faced down what had felt like such a unique horror to Vince. A terrible thing that it felt like didn’t happen to other people, and here is an entire room of people for whom it was so commonplace they were told their entire lives revolved around it.

Here they all are, with new lives, hobbies, friends. Things they do that aren’t pretending to be someone else, or being… or…

“I was raped.”

It comes out all at once, a single breath of air, a slur of syllables. Iwasraped.

The next words, somehow, harder to say. He forces himself to speak more slowly. He makes his mind dwell on each and every single word. On what it means, on what it’s always meant, on what damage it’s done. He fights not to cry.

Vincent Shield confesses someone else’s sin.

And grants himself absolution.

“Owen Grant raped me… and it wasn’t my fault.”

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @thefancydoughnut @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @hackles-up @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf @keeper-of-all-the-random-things

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Anything Else

I should stop listening to the Rent soundtrack when I have shit to do, you guys. This is just a character-study bit that began as me wanting to think over the way Chris is navigating the physical aspects of a relationship and it got, uh, a bit spicy at the end.

CW: Consensual spice + heavy references to past noncon.  This is a survivor navigating the physical aspects of a relationship with no context for consent or his own natural asexuality, so keep that in mind and stay safe. References to conditioning and training, noncon touch.  PTSD/flashback references.

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxckfxck, @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout, @doveotions

There are things they can do that don’t scare him. There are ways he can live in his skin that don’t push too far into fear or uncertainty. There are moments that his heart and brain and body can sing in unison without the edge of tension or terror.

He finds out what he can do in moments alone in Laken’s dorm room or laughing in his room when Dylan is out for the night with his friends. 

Chris had thought Laken would go distant or weird like Dylan did after his first escape into the stairway from his own terror, but that’s not what happens.

Laken stays.

They were given the chance to be frightened of him, disgusted, like he’d been told everyone would be if he was too much himself, not silent and still and perfect statue boy in the bed doing exactly what he was told.

No one wants something like you for your mind, darlin’

But... Laken stayed.

They stayed, and asked, and listened. He can’t tell them everything, the secret is too essential and it hurts but he can’t even tell Laken no matter how badly he wants to, but he can explain that he doesn’t know how to be together that way without... it maybe happening again. Without getting scared. Without having to stop. Without needing to do whatever they told him to.

So you’re telling me you were... uh, hurt. Before.

Yes.

Was it someone you knew?

He has no idea what that question is supposed to mean, and he wants to laugh at it, laugh and cry and curl up and hold himself. Sir was all he knew, the only person on Earth as far as Baldur was concerned. Was it someone you knew? He wants to scream.

Yes.

More than one person?

Chris almost doesn’t tell them. He has to close his eyes to do it, but then he sees the handlers behind his eyelids and feels a shudder of an old instinctive fear roll through him and forces his eyes open again.

It’s harder to admit to this.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Laken cleared their throat, reached over to take his hands in theirs. Held his gaze, dark eyes steady on his. Listen, Chris. I’m still here. When... if you want to talk about it, I want to hear you. If you can’t, that’s fine, too. Thank you for telling me this, for trusting me to know. It helps me to have, uh, some context. 

He still can’t tell them how. He can’t tell them what happened, or that he knows who Sir is and where he is and that he got kicked out of office for trying to sell a Senate seat - Jake told him that. He can’t tell them that he used to live in a single hallway, that he played games that hurt and he didn’t know that there were any games that didn’t. 

He doesn’t tell them that he still can’t even look at navy sheets without feeling sick, can’t smell Sir’s cologne without throwing up, can’t eat olives can’t drink martinis can’t drink gin and tonic can’t watch Sir on TV can’t can’t can’t there are so many things where he can’t. 

He doesn’t know exactly what Laken thinks happened to him. They never ask directly. No one ever does, really, but he knows they all think his childhood was weird and they’d probably be even more freaked out if explained he doesn’t actually know if it was or not.

Sometimes he hopes it was good, before, but mostly he just... tries not to remember them. Not to remember her, the woman whose voice he still hears sometimes. 

Maybe it’s always been terrible. He doesn’t know that either.

But the world is bright and beautiful, and he doesn’t want to know.

Laken doesn’t ask him what happened, not directly. But they start asking about other things.

Can I hold your face when I kiss you? Can my shirt come off if yours doesn’t? Do you like hands in your hair? Do you like it when I touch you here? Do you want me to do this? Do you want to touch me? Do you want me to do that? 

What do you want?

He doesn’t have an answer for that at first. What he wants is irrelevant but that’s not what they want to hear, they keep telling him that’s not true. They keep asking. 

Every single time, they keep asking and asking and asking.

Eventually, halting and uncertain, speaking slowly and with his heart in his throat, he has answers.

This. Not-not not not this. Maybe that-... but maybe, maybe not. W-wait, I, I can’t, I-I-I can’t, that, that I can’t do that. 

I don’t know. 

I don’t know. 

I don’t know if I can...

I don’t-... I don’t know.

With every I don’t know, or if you want to, Laken just says softly, ‘if you want to’ isn’t ‘yes’, Chris, and they don’t. Easy as that.

With every time they don’t, he breathes out, exhales a little more fear and pain out of himself, into the air. Lets it dissolve into dust and carbon dioxide. 

When he tests - like he tested Jake, over and over and over again, until he knew he had to stop testing but he couldn’t, he had to know, had to know that every time he tried Jake would push him away - Laken can see the look in his eyes, and they hold him.

You don’t really want to, They whisper. You don’t really want this. I can tell, when you say it like that. Don’t say ‘I want you’ if you don’t mean it, honey. It’s okay. It’s okay. Just stay with me, Chris. Just stay here. Don’t go in your head, it’s okay. Stay here.

Chris waits for Laken to lose interest every time they’re together and he can’t... can’t go any further without freezing up, losing himself to it, feeling training slip in and take over and make him move with a robotic perfection that unsettles Laken, has them pulling back and away. 

All that happens, though, is a press of fingers against his face or his neck, pulling his shirt back down, whispering it’s okay, come back to me, Chris, we’ll stop here, it’s okay. Come back to me.

But bit by bit, step by step, piece by piece, he realizes there are things he can do.

He can go further if he’s not on his back, for one.

He can do things for Laken that he doesn’t want done for himself - can even enjoy them, fall into delight at the way Laken flushes and their eyes get dark and gorgeous, wide and with the whites showing a little, looking at him as if they’re seeing something they’ve never seen before. He can revel in making Laken gasp and move underneath his fumbling uncertain natural movements to trace the kind of skin he’s never touched before. 

He wasn’t trained for this but it feels so weirdly natural to touch them this way, anyway. He isn’t trained for this but it’s better because he’s not, because it’s real, because he wants to do this for them with certainty he feels almost nowhere else.

He can smile down at them as they smile back because no one else has ever done that before, not like this, not free without eyes on his back and whispered commands and mocking laughter. 

It’s just them. Just Laken with the longer curly hair spread across the pillow, laughing at the look on his face.

Stop it, Chris, you look like a spooked deer. Haven’t you ever seen someone having a good time before? They wince, after asking, because of course the answer is... no. He hasn’t. 

Not like this.

Not someone who cared if he did, too.

He doesn’t need anything back, he’s happy to be with them like this. The first time he brings Laken to their edge and over it he can’t stop staring at their face, breathing as hard as they are, the sounds they’re making. His heart is twisted up in a mix of awe and happiness and fear and jealousy that he didn’t get to know this before, how good it could feel when you were here because you wanted to be, to give something to someone who would stop if you wanted to.

It felt so good to touch them when he knew they wouldn’t ask him to. He gets warm and shivery, low in his stomach, in a way he’s only felt once before a long, long time ago. He doesn’t need it to go anywhere, he just wants to keep the feeling forever.

He doesn’t say I love you, because he doesn’t know how to know when he should do that, but he’s pretty sure he loves them. He feels it and he thinks it as they move under his hand, his other under their back against the binder Laken never takes off, and every whispered Chris Chris Chris Chris and the way they lapse into Spanish at the end feels like maybe he was waiting for it for a long time and he never knew that before.

He loves the way they look when they’re coming undone because of him and the way they look after, heavy-lidded lying there with hands in his hair.

It doesn’t feel like petting. 

It’s the same movement - fingers through shining hair, again and again - but it doesn’t feel like petting. It feels... so good. It’s not the same at all. 

He loves the way it feels to have set the pace, to say how far they went. He didn’t know it could be that way. He didn’t know it could feel good like this. He’d never tried to find out. He kind of understood why Kauri had chased it for so long...

In the moments after though, with the two of them lying on their sides in hardly anything with Laken’s back to his chest and his mouth against the back of their neck, he feels... safe.

He’s never felt safe in bed outside the safehouse in his life. At least, not the one he can remember. 

Laken turns their head to nuzzle into his cheek and he grins at them. Are you sure you don’t want me to, y’know... do you?

I’m, I’m sure. He kisses them, all on his own without being told to, and that feels good and right and natural. I just like, like like being with you. I-I don’t want to do anything for, for me. This is... this, this, this is p-perfect, I don’t want anything else at all.

He doesn’t. He just wants to live like this, lying in someone’s arms - in their arms, in Laken’s arms - on scratchy cheap sheets with Laken’s paisley comforter on top of them, tracing and tapping fingers on their slightly sweaty skin, feeling their smile against his hair. 

I love you, he thinks, but never says.

He thinks Laken knows, though.

Even if they don’t know why he doesn’t know how to say it to them.

He never hears the voice whispering in his head when he’s alone with Laken this way. Sir can’t ruin this.

No one can ruin this.

(not yet)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

so like. we've talked about danny wanting nate to tie him up to reclaim agency and stuff. would nate ever want danny to tie him up? *eyes*

Yes. Absolutely yes. Enthusiastic yes.