just-horrible-things - Tumblr blog

just-horrible-things · 20 days

Text

On The Amnestic Issue

The issue of strong amnestic drugs is not a highly publicized one. It is not a polarizing topic of debate like immigration, reproductive rights, or the human pet industry. Most people do not even have a strong opinion on amnestics. They are not front and center in the public view. The pharmaceutical industry and its supporters have done an excellent job of suppressing debate.

This is not an issue to take up lightly as a bit of collegiate activism to soothe the soul. Even to write about the topic is to invite lawsuit, defamation, and harassment. You probably haven’t heard much about anti-amnestic activists, not because we don’t exist but because that is how effectively we are silenced. I have friends who have been jailed for speaking out, and many more who have been publicly targeted, harassed, accused, and made into laughing stocks.

This is not an issue to take up unless you truly feel passionately about it.

But I am passionate, and I think you should be too. I think we all should be.

Detractors will attempt to paint anti-amnestic discourse as radical left wing pet-lib propaganda. They will attempt to paint us as far right anti-vaxxer paranoids lashing out against the medical industry. But the amnestic issue ought to concern you regardless of your political alignment.#

Whatever your stance on the human pet industry, whatever your stance on pharmacological reform, the amnestic issue goes far further than either of those. This is not about criminals or contractees, although they form part of the picture. This is primarily about the effects of strong amnestic drugs in the general population, the failure of our government and regulators to protect us from unregulated use, and the complete lack of unbiased, verifiable information about amnestic safety even in a medical context.

Use of prescription amnestics has more than doubled in just the last three years, despite the complete lack of any independent studies demonstrating benefits in the vast majority of use cases. Un-monitored, un-reported “home use” is estimated at anywhere between half as many people again, and three times as many, and in many cases these unprescribed drugs are being used to “medicate” entirely non-medical issues such as domestic quarrels.

Crime involving the forced administration of strong amnestics to unconsenting victims is estimated to have increased twenty-fold since these substances were first approved for prescription. The volume of illegal amnestics circulating in the black market is completely unknown, and the lack of separation between the markets for aggressive criminal use and for unregulated “self-medication” is bringing naive would-be patients into contact with hardened drug dealers and organized crime.

In the context of our progressively failing criminal justice system, some victims are even administering the “cover up pills” to themselves rather than face the traumatic experience of trying to push a report through to court. In a recent survey, 20% of university students said that if they were victims of “date rape” they would rather take a pill and forget, than take the issue to the police. Cited reasons included shame, fear of stigmatization, fear that the police would do nothing, and, conversely, fear that the police would respond with excessive force.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the second most popular reason given was simply that taking an amnestic would be “less effort”. The same attitude is reflected in a growing media trend towards portraying drug-induced forgetting as the “easy option” : a quick, effortless, and effective solution to any and all of life’s problems.

Needless to say there is no evidence to support the idea that amnestic abuse actually improves happiness, health, or any other measure of wellbeing. And it should be beyond obvious that choosing to forget certain problems such as unpaid bills, unsettled debts, or an angry spouse will not actually cause these problems to go away.

Even industry giants such as Santex Pharma and WRU have recently put out statements advising against unregulated, unsupervised home use. These statements describe the medical applications and the use in the pet industry (respectively) as highly controlled, carefully monitored use cases and not comparable to the growing trend of unlicensed use. Santex state, both in their recent statement and elsewhere, that every approved use of their strong amnestics has been rigorously safety tested and found both safe and effective. They cite a number of published studies, in addition to an undisclosed quantity of private, internal investigation.

Every single published study involving strong amnestics was either conducted or funded by a manufacturer of strong amnestics, a business that uses strong amnestics as a core part of their business model (i.e. the human pet industry), or a subsidiary of one of these businesses.

There are no published independent studies. All attempts at independent studies have been heavily suppressed by the above industries, or else taken over by these business interests long before completion. It has long been well known – if rarely successfully prosecuted – that pharmaceutical companies regularly misuse statistics, massage data, and even outright fabricate results to produce conclusions that are favorable to their bottom line.

Even those few independent investigators who have resisted the pressure exerted by the industry have found that no reputable publication – scientific or otherwise – will take on the risk of publishing their results if they fail to corroborate the claims of safety. When such studies are made publically available on the internet they are invariably taken down within weeks or even days, and the authors – if remotely identifiable – can expect a slew of life-ruining lawsuits. In many cases even criminal charges have been leveled against such investigators.

Consequently it is extremely difficult to form an accurate picture of the extent and form of the risks posed by the use of strong amnestics. However, certain themes come up over and over in these vanished studies. The use of strong amnestics, especially but not exclusively long term or at high doses, has been associated with any or all of the following:

cognitive decline or impairment

anterograde amnesia (loss of the ability to reliably form new long term memories)

anxiety and depression

emotional instability and dysregulation

intrusive thoughts

increased rates of suicide

increased mortality (all causes)

false recall (remembering fictive events as if they were real, or events that happened to other people as if they happened to oneself)

nightmares, night terrors, insomnia and other sleep disturbances

migraines, cluster headaches, and other forms of headache

increased impulsivity

increases vulnerability to addiction

impaired executive function (difficulty making and adhering to plans, reduced decision-making ability)

While none of the above symptoms have been conclusively linked to amnestics on account of the industry stranglehold on data, it is worth noting that the incidence of all of the above problems in the general population has increased sharply over the last few years, with no other obvious explanation for the increase.

Some of the most striking evidence has come from the study of parents who made the choice to forget a child when that child entered into the human pet industry. The fact that WRU discontinued this as an official service after only a year and a half speaks volumes. But small numbers of parents (and an unknown number of other friends and relatives of new human pets) continue to seek out this option either under the supervision of a medical professional or independently “at home” with illicitly procured amnestics.

While the desire to forget is perhaps an understandable response to the loss of a child or loved one, the outcomes of such a choice are rarely happy. Suicide rates in this group are extremely high, as are rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses.

Testimonials can be found on parenting boards across the web urging other parents not to make the same decision. They describe intense feelings of guilt, crushing anxiety, dread and/or a sense of “impending doom”, and a constant, gnawing awareness of the period of “lost time”. Feelings of hopelessness, futility and lack of purpose or fulfillment are extremely common.

One mother described the feeling as not only having lost her now-unremembered child, but also having lost herself.

The wider societal impact of amnestic abuse is also making itself felt as the prevalence rises year on year. Courts have already agreed that forgetting a crime or other offense does not absolve the perpetrator of any guilt or responsibility, but how exactly to handle such cases is far from settled.

Detractors of pharmacological reform are quick to point out the double standard here. Amnesia can be enforced by the state in the name of correcting entrenched behavioral patterns and preventing reoffense, but those who have already self-administered this treatment are still considered just as guilty and just as likely to reoffend as if they had not forgotten.

Neither is it clear how to help or compensate victims of amnestic-related crimes. The use of amnestics to cover up crimes – most commonly date rape – is nothing new. Even prior to the invention of the modern drug class, weak amnestics such as alcohol and benzodiazepines have long been used for this purpose. However, the rise of the strong amnestic has both expanded the criminal’s toolkit for cover-ups and opened entire new spheres of crime.

Every month it seems that allegations of a new kind of crime hit the courts, from corporate espionage cases in which corporate agents are accused of using amnestics to wipe ideas, trade secrets, or experience in the field from their competitors, to domestic abuse allegations involving the long term use of amnestics to keep the victim ignorant of their own abuse. While some of these cases are clearly less plausible than others, there can be no doubt that criminal elements are hard at work finding new ways to abuse these substances.

If you follow the mainstream news cycle, you are also doubtless already aware of the rise of “perpetual amnesiacs” – a small but highly visible minority of amnestic “addicts” who take the drugs repeatedly in high doses to forget practically everything.

(While strong amnestics are not physiologically addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, phenomena such as gambling addiction and pornography addiction have long taught us that people can become addicted to all manner of things that are not physiologically addictive drugs.)

These “perpetual amnesiacs” usually have substantial problems before the amnestic abuse. They may be homeless, in debt, stuck in abusive relationships, or addicted to other substances. They begin taking the amnestics to forget their very real troubles. What separates the addict from other “home users” is the very high doses involved, and the taking of additional doses as soon as further difficulties arise.

These afflicted individuals become increasingly disengaged from life, drifting from one short term pleasure (often other substances of abuse) to another, and taking additional amnestics whenever consequences threaten to disrupt their existence in the moment.

Most become homeless if they were not already, and over time almost all develop severe symptoms from the list above. Reporting has focused particularly on impulsivity, cognitive decline, and anterograde amnesia. We hear of the violent deaths of addicts killed attempting the wildly ill-conceived crimes that their impulsivity leads them into.

Eventually the “perpetual amnesiac” needs no further doses of the amnestics, because their ability to form new memories has been completely destroyed.

Despite industry insistence that these sobering results are only a result of the extremely high doses taken by the addicts, the recent news coverage has awoken public fears regarding the safety of strong amnestics.

However, reporting of these concerns has been notably muted and seems to have almost ceased as I write these words. All major news agencies seem to now prefer to parrot the company line that it is the quantity and the frequency that is the problem, not the drugs themselves. One can only imagine that money or favors have changed hands to facilitate this shift in focus.

One can only hope that the public will remember nonetheless, and that the plight of these most severely affected “perpetual amnesiacs” will prompt at least a few to look into the effect that amnestic drugs are having on us as individuals and as a society, and that we might start to look beyond the horizon of the company line.

-- A. Correspondent

#my writing #verse: bbu #(ish)#noncon mention

24 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 22 days

Text

Pirate Lady

This is a very, very far time jump in the storyline of Pet Safety. And a small one in Angel's story .

Because there's a happy ending, eventually, and I think, you deserve to see at least a part of it.

Enjoy.

Content: Hints at the BBU setting. Mentioned past death of a family member.

The doorbell rang.

Usually, Rosa would open the door at the Woodward house. But these days nothing was usual any longer.

Bradley's father was dead, his mother a disheveled mess, and his older sister had pulled the consequences she'd always said she would and ran off. She'd called eventually, told him she was safe and far away. He thought he'd heard the sea in the background.

In front of all that, it was off-putting how much Bradley's life had stayed the same. Sloane hadn't asked him to tag along. He would have, probably. But alone, on his own, he hadn't mustered the courage. He'd pulled out his long packed, long stashed bag, stared at it for a while, and then stuffed it back and went to bed.

Rosa had hugged him particularly long that night, and he'd let it happen, a little surprised, but still glad. Rosa's hugs were the best.

Rosa.

Even she had changed after his father's death.

She was still quiet, still utterly reliable, cared for Bradley, made his breakfast, brought him to school and picked him up again, helped with his homework, but she was... more, even though he didn't know more of what. Vibrant, maybe. Alive.

Her movements were less mechanic, her smiles more rare but also, when they showed, somewhat deeper.

He liked her like this, but somehow, the change in her was more terrifying than all the other things happening around him.

And it all culminated in this one day, when it was Bradley who answered the door, because Rosa was in the basement, storing away some things from his late father's wake.

Another person to offer belated condolences, he'd figured, when he saw a the shape woman dressed in black through the milky glass. He hated these visitors, with their fake smiles, their feigned interest, and their casual contempt of teenagers.

With a sigh, he opened the door.

The woman was short, with dark brown hair, playing into red. She was dressed rather like a fighter than a mourner, he realized, in black jeans, black blouse, and a leather jacket. The most fascinating thing about her, however, was the black eyepatch covering her left eye.

Her other eye was gray, like a sword, Bradley thought, and she stared him down wordlessly.

She didn't seem like someone to visit his parents. She was way too cool.

She was, however, also pretty scary.

"Um," Bradley said. "I don't think you've come to the right place."

She looked at the house, the facade, the inside behind him, and then back at his face, almost wistful. "You do look like your father," she said. It didn't sound like a good thing.

"He's dead," Bradley said flatly. He didn't particularly know why he felt the urge to say it. It came out like an excuse.

She smirked at that. "I know," she said.

Nothing about condolences. Nothing else, either, even though the muscles in her neck clenched. It seemed as if she wanted to speak, but... couldn't.

He felt a pang of sympathy. Like when he was asked to read his English homework in class. This woman was way too dangerous looking to be afraid of teachers, he thought. She couldn't be afraid of him, now, could she?

"Are you... are you looking for something?", he offered.

"Ro...", she began, before her voice broke off. Her breath was shaky. "Rosa?"

"Rosa?" Bradley couldn't hide his surprise. Rosa didn't have any friends. Rosa didn't... she didn't have anyone, except for him and Sloane. Right? She wouldn't keep secrets from them. Or. Did she?

A weird jealousy hit him. "Why?" he asked, more sharply than intended.

She flinched.

The scary, cool, biker pirate woman in front of him flinched at the sound of his voice.

What the hell.

"Sorry," he hurried to say. "Sorry, I, uh. I don't know. I'll... I'll get her. Wait a second." He turned over his shoulder and called "Rosa?"

"Coming," Rosa called back from the basement.

The pirate woman's hand clasped around the railing. She seemed to have paled, suddenly. For a moment, Bradley was afraid she'd puke right there, on their front porch.

Then he heard Rosa come up the stairs, and stepped back.

"How can I-" Rosa began, and then froze. Like he had pressed pause in a video game. He'd never seen her like this. He'd never seen her in shock or afraid or even at loss of words.

The pirate woman's lip twitched, curved into a slow smile, that spread over her entire face, like a sunrise, and in that light Bradley suddenly realized how stunningly beautiful she was.

"Hi," she whispered. "Hi Rosa. I've missed you."

Rosa didn't say anything.

"It's time," said the pirate softly. "For us."

Still silent, eyes glued to the strangers', Rosa reached for a coat from the racket. It was one of Bradley's moms', an expensive designer piece, long coat in a dark red.

Rosa put it on, almost mechanically, then kicked off her rubber clogs and slipped into a pair of sneakers. They were Bradley's, he realized dimly, but couldn't even find himself to bother.

Rosa lifted a hand to undo the strict bun on her head. Long, black hair fell over her shoulders. She smiled now, too.

And Bradley was struck with the realization that he'd never actually seen her happy. Never.

She was, now.

She stepped forward, past him, without as much as a sideglance.

"Ro… Rosa?", he asked slowly.

But he didn't exist. Not to her.

"Blanca," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse. "Blanca. Blanca. Blanca."

"Yeah," the pirate whispered. There were tears in the corners of her eye. "It's me. I remember, Rosa. I… I remember." She lifted a hand.

Rosa took it.

Hand in hand with the stranger, their fingers interlaced, she walked through the door, down the steps, through the house's neat little yard, to a car parked in the street with its motor running.

A tall man pushed the door open from inside.

Rosa got in without looking back even once.

A cold draft was blowing into the house, and Bradley shivered.

"Rosa?", he whispered.

She was gone.

pet safety tag list (ask to be added or removed!): @gottawhump @flowersarefreetherapy @whumplr-reader @highwaywhump @tauntedoctopuses @pigeonwhumps @whumppsychology @labgrowndemon @whumpinggrounds @somewhumpyguy @whumpzone @tragedyinblue @theelvishcowgirl @light-me-on-pyre @whumps-and-bumps

#others' writing #aaaaaa #they find each otherrrrr #so glad for them #looks like bradley's got a way to go to figure his shit out still #I hope he does figure it out

22 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 24 days

Text

Shoes

Felt inspired by the prompt by @worldofwhumpcraft I reblogged earlier - obviously, the part about shoes, mostly. I don't even know what this scribble is, or where in canon it would happen (rather early), but have it anyway. Just consider it a bonus scene.

[Pet Safety]

Bea gets her first shoes.

Content / Warning: BBU, BBU recovery, caretaker is new owner.

While handing Adrian the two huge packages from his hand truck, the doorman tried to look past Adrian’s shoulder into the apartment. Adrian raised an eyebrow and leaned to the doorframe instead, his broad shoulders blocking the man’s view - and maybe, probably also intimidating him the slightest bit. Adrian was big. It was only appropriate to use it sometimes.

He signed off on the tablet the man was holding out to him.

"Anything of interest to you in my apartment?", he asked coolly, handing back the pen.

"I’m sorry, Sir, uhm, I…"

Adrian tilted his head. "Yes?"

"The… the pretty, uh, the…, she’s not actually a woman, right? I mean she is, but, like, do you still call it that, when they’re, you know…?"

"Her name’s Bea," Adrian said. "She is a woman."

"Is, she… there?"

"I got insurance for her, if that’s what you want to ask."

"No, I… I know that, it’s in the files, uh, yeah, thank you for providing it. I just… I’ve never seen one."

"A woman?" Adrian folded his arms, making sure to emphasize the muscles on his upper arms.

The doorman actually blushed. "A…"

"I don’t think I want you to see her," Adrian said. "I think I want you to apologize for that intrusion into her - and my - privacy, and I think you’ll need to do without a tip."

"It’s…" He cleared his throat. "Sorry, Sir, I didn’t want to invade your privacy, I… I just thought they, … I didn’t know you’d be that sensitive, I… I mean, don’t you work for WRU?"

Adrian closed the door into the man’s face.

"You know, Adrian Delgado," Bea said from where she lounged on the couch and paused painting her toenails. "You are allowed show me off. I don’t mind. I…" She paused, gestured at the eyepatch. "I know I have this, but I can still offer everything I am made for. I am - we all are made to be looked at, you know?"

"Made to," Adrian scoffed. "I fucking hate that phrase. How about, conditioned or, well actually, tor-"

Bea frowned.

Fuck. He worked for them. He worked for them, he was a good employee, a loyal employee, and he really should stop letting his guard down in front of someone who’d been made to - conditioned to never lie to WRU.

"I don’t like it," he said. "It’s disrespectful."

"Because I’m yours," she said solemnly and nodded. "Nobody should get to look at me, but you."

Adrian carried the first box into the living room. "Not that, either. Because I think you should get to decide who looks at you."

"That’s stupid," she said and closed the yellow nail polish, wiggling her toes at him. "I cannot decide things."

"You did decide on a color for your nail polish."

"It’s yellow," she said.

"Your favorite color," Adrian replied.

"It’s my favorite color because of how you smile when I say that it is." She smiled at him, in a way that made his heart ache. "I don’t decide things on my own. I decide things for your sake. But…" She winked. "I am pretty good at it, right?"

Was there a right answer? Was it right to tell her she was being good? Was it wrong? Was he enhancing her conditioning, using it, breaking it? Fuck. He was supposed to know these things.

"You are," he said. "You’re good at making me happy. I feel like you’re getting better at making yourself happy, too." He got the second box and stacked it onto the first.

She looked at the boxes with a nervous frown.

"I got you something," he said.

Her eyes widened a little bit. Not in excitement, he realized. In fear. "Thank… thank you, Sir," she said, voice dropping into a sweet lilt. "I’ll be good."

"It’s… It’s nothing bad," he hurried to say. "It’s… not for me. Nothing to hurt you. It’s-" He should just show her. He leaned over to pull a box cutter from his desk drawer.

Bea froze, staring at the blade. Her smile became soft and pliant. "You are free to hurt me, Sir," she said. He thought he could hear her hide a sob. "Do… do you want me to scream?"

"This is for the box," Adrian said. "The box." He cut open the packaging tape and threw the cutter back into the farthest corner of the desk, as far from Bea as possible. "You hear me? I don’t want to hurt you. Ever."

"It’s what I’m for," she whispered.

"Not anymore," Adrian said with clenched teeth.

"Then what am I for?" She looked at him, with a tint of hurt in her eyes. "Not for you to hurt. Not for you to fuck. Not to serve you, not to seduce you, not to serve the man at the door or anyone else. What do you want me for, Sir?"

"Adrian," he corrected her, more harshly than intended. "I want you to be-" Free, he thought. Free. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t free her. Not yet.

This was such a mess.

"Happy."

"Happy?," she asked with a frown, that smoothed away once she seemed to develop an idea. "Then let me sleep with y-"

Adrian cut her off roughly. "I want you to know you can move around. That you’re not… restricted." He reached into the cardboard box and pulled out one of the smaller boxes inside. "I got you shoes. I… I didn’t know your size, so I got a bunch of different sizes." He pulled away the paper and lifted a pair of yellow sneakers.

She looked at him, confused, then at her feet. Then back at him. "Pets don’t need shoes."

He knew. At the facilities, most trainees walked on bare feet. At the homes of their owners, it varied. Guards had shoes, of course, standard were heavy boots, equipped to fight. Domestics usually received these ugly clogs that wouldn’t allow them to run but stand stable when they cleaned the floors. Platonics, depended on their tasks. But Romantics? Either nothing, or insanely high heels that emphasized long legs and sinuous movements.

"I think you might find them… comfortable," he said. "It’s a good brand, they’re very light-weighted, and they allow you to run, walk, dance, they’re suitable for anything."

"I can do everything you need me to without shoes." She looked at him cautiously. "Do you want me to run, Adrian Delgado?"

"No, I…" He shook his head. "No."

Bea traced thin scars on the side of her feet with a finger. "Jack wanted me to run, sometimes. A game. Let the pack chase me, then. But he-" She tilted her head and glanced at the sneaker in his hand, almost longingly. "He didn’t give me shoes."

He reached out to hand the shoe over, and she took it gently, ran her fingers over the fabric, weighed it in her hand. "I," she began. "I would like to be better at running."

"You will be," he said. "Shoes will help."

She furrowed her brows, as if trying to understand if he was teasing her, then nodded and slipped into the shoe.

Wordlessly, Adrian knelt down in front of her, to check the size. She stayed perfectly still for him. Of course she would.

"Too big," he said and handed her another box. "Here, try these. I usually go for a run in the morning, before work, twice a week. Around the marina. You can come. Train with me."

She unpacked the other size. "Why?"

Adrian looked up at her. "Because if there ever comes a next time, when someone chases you," he said. "I want you to get away."

"What if it’s you?"

He felt her toes through the fabric, checked how firmly the shoe sat around her foot. This one fit more snugly. Good. He nodded to himself, only then realized he owed her a reply. "Always, yeah" he said eventually. "When you’re ready, Bea, run away. Don’t look back."

"You’re strange," she said.

Adrian smiled, and settled back on his heels. "You know, Bea. You’re the only one from whom this sounds like a compliment."

"You know, Adrian." She reached down to rest her hand against his cheek. Adrian’s heart threatened to skip a beat, when she met his gaze. "Yes. I think it is one."

#others' writing #aaaaaaa #aaaaaa these guys #no coherent thoughts sorry only aaaaa #love them

41 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 24 days

Text

"If these are the wages of sin, I should be the envy of every labourer in the country, for I've been paid handsomely for little labour."

#my writing #short #dialogue

7 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 26 days

Text

Bluebeard's Pet Part II

part one

This is a whumpy retelling of the folk/fairytale figure of Bluebeard in three parts. It replaces Bluebeard's new wife with a male "pet" (slave/concubine). It takes place in an indeterminate year in a fictional medieval Europe.

cw: slavery, pet whump, slave auction, stocks, power imbalance, language barriers, gruesome elements like torture, execution, and draconian policies throughout, whipping, sexually explicit scenes, dubcon because of social status, light “knifeplay” (non diegetic bdsm), alcohol consumption, slight praise kink

Part Two: The Golden Cup

Slowly, Luca began to feel safe with the Baron, even alone. Especially alone. He liked sitting at the councils for an hour or two, but almost no one spoke in English at those meetings and some of the people who approached the table glanced at Luca like his presence was an insult to them personally.

Alone, Baron Illés welcomed Luca’s tentative warmth without taking any invitation any further than it was meant. After that first blunt conversation about the role of a “pet”, Luca had been worried he would never be used to that sort of open frankness. Was it true what the priests had always said, that the countries of the east were filled with libertines and impious women? An instinctively cautious part of him feared the Baron would simply take what he wanted and tell him it was custom here. Don’t be prude, he might say, or more in his style; you’re more English than you look, aren’t you? He’d never felt like one of them in that land until he’d been taken away.

But the Baron never touched him more than a brief, nearly reverent touch to his hair or his face, or in returning any physical closeness that Luca initiated. This made him bolder as well as hungrier, and soon he found himself inching closer to the nobleman whenever he could, hoping to be met with one of those swordsman’s arms around his shoulders or about his waist. If it was a deliberate tactic of winning him over, he admitted it was working.

Best of all was the Baron’s praise, which he gave easily whenever Luca came closer on his own or initiated some new form of contact. “There now,” he would say, pleased but never lascivious. “Good. Here you are.”

After his years being largely ignored at Thistledown, unless he was being snapped at to do something differently, and weeks of casual abuse by slavers he couldn’t understand, words of encouragement directed into his ear in the kindest English had a profound effect. He was almost ashamed of it, but he couldn’t stop seeking it— like a drunk being poured another cup of strongwine. Often accompanying this praise was a chaste, dizzying kiss pressed to his hair.

One evening, the Baron asked for a lock of it. He had to go on a short trip to the north, he said, and it might be a fighting sort of trip, if some intel proved true. He would like to wear a lock of that beautiful dark hair of Luca’a in a silk pouch around his neck, under his kaftan, if he found himself in a battle. It was good luck, after all. Flattered, Luca consented. The Baron pulled a curved dagger from a hilt at his belt, and motioned for him to come closer. The golden hilt shone and flickered like a dragons hoard in the firelight.

Ah. Something alluringly wicked about being asked to come closer to a man holding a drawn blade. He thought the Baron was able to sense this delight in him, this preclusion to a certain kind of sinfulness. He remembered the invitation to bite when he was in those humiliating stocks, and the wink the Baron had given him when he said he wouldn’t. That was their agreement. Good treatment and good behavior, and from that stemmed this strange trust, this courtship.

He knew a slave once that had been indomitable- feral in his refusal to obey a single request or command. Luca had asked him once, after he’d been beaten to a pulp by the master and a young, zealous priest, why he would not simply pretend to submit— especially when it was a small matter. Why would he not pick his battles as the rest of them did? Was he not exhausted of it? But the slave said he’d rather die than give them any satisfaction. He would rather be beaten to death like a mule than be complicit to anyone who dared say that had enslaved him, be it the master or the priests or the King of England himself. He did not share that conviction. True, he’d never loved the priests or the master, he cared not for the King, and the slavers who had arrived armed on the island in the blue fog of dawn would never have a sliver of his love, or anything but obedience that comes from powerlessness, and fear.

With the Baron, it was a different sort of dance. The more he learned of who he was dealing with, the more interested he became in submitting to him out of curiosity, and interest. The more curiosity and trust he showed, the more interested the Baron became in him. In that regard, they were made for each other.

He went and sat where he was beckoned, on a great carved bench by the hearth, turning towards the Baron and tucking his legs up under him so they were facing one another. He was trembling, which he attributed to old treatment and old instincts, days when he was kicked and beaten like a dog until he felt like one. The Baron’s eyes were warm and calm. “Just a lock of hair,” he said, sensing keenly his new pet’s discomfort. “I won’t hurt you.”

His heart pounded wildly, like the hare, as Constantin Illés lifted that arabesque curved blade, dragging it lightly and harmlessly along his loose linen shirt. He could not hide the way his breathing became shallow and more labored, his lips parting at the scrape of the blade against his collarbone. He knew this man would not cut him unless he meant to, and if he meant to he could cleanly cleave out his heart in a matter of moments, like the huntsman in the old fairy tale.

“Good,” the Baron crooned, praising his stillness. One little word, good, but Luca felt it between his legs and nearly whimpered aloud.

The Baron’s eyes never left his as the blade made its way lovingly, slowly, up his neck, past his artery, and kissed the unblemished beauty of his face, cool and flat. He was caressing him, Luca realized, holding his face with the dagger like he liked to do with his hands.

“You’re forgiving me this indulgence, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Luca said with eyes low.

“I thought so.”

The Baron reached his free hand and lifted a lock of Luca’s hair up away from the rest to cut it. The blade made a little hiss, so sharp it did not even pull as it separated the lock from his scalp. He stared at the dark, curling softness in the Baron’s palm.

“Now I will take you with me,” he said matter-of-factly. “And we can speak to each other under the full moon.”

The full moon, he realized with a start of dread. The Baron would be away when he was supposed to tell him his final decision. He hoped the offer still stood. As far as he knew, it did. He would have to tell him now, or wait. The high of fear and arousal the blade of the dagger had given him was fading, and left a hollow space in his chest.

“It’s almost full now,” he said cautiously. “Do you still want me?”

It was coy, girlish. He cringed later to remember it. But the Baron took it correctly as an invitation. “I do,” he answered with a grin, tucking the lock of hair into a green pouch of silk. “You have only to allow me.”

Standing together in the middle of his ancestral chambers, the Baron stripped Luca slowly of his clothes, as if unwrapping a present, with the utmost patience of a circling wolf. Luca panted and squirmed under the heavy hands that roved over his hot skin, quickening him to the sort of desire he’d only thought of in private, guilty moments when his mind did not lend to images of bare breasted nymphs by the creek or even of a stable boy his own age he’d exchanged clumsy touches with once, but of this— of lying down for the master, the Lord. Of being a possession, and being possessed, not as a slave but as an object of desire. He could imagine it, but the real thing was startling.

Still fully dressed, the Baron kissed him like one would a wife, on the mouth, lowering his rough beard to kiss his chest and his belly, to nuzzle between his legs and kiss his naked inner thighs until he was moaning. When the Baron undressed it was swift and automatic, the way a knight removes a breastplate and helmet. He was just as at ease naked as he was clothed in rich silks and furs, no less a noble in his every blink and breath. He asked Luca if he’d done this particular act before and Luca answered truthfully, no, though he would have had the good sense to lie if he had.

“I won’t hurt you,” said the Baron, and not for the first time that night. “I promise.”

At this Luca blushed so deeply he felt the heat like a fever on his chest as well as his face. There was oil, and fingers, as he knew there might be if he was lucky, and then the act itself, the consummation he had agreed to under the last full moon.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

No matter the civility the Baron treated him with in the light of day, no matter the emerald Hydras or the anklets or the trays of fruit and honeycomb, this was a feral act— animal and base. It was so illicit, so condemning and yet so privately desired that he soon felt the pleasure that lived just underneath pain; he felt both speared and crushed and wondered how he’d ever live with anything less than that ever again, that overwhelming fulfillment. The Baron did not have to ask if he’d hurt him, for he knew he hadn’t, they both knew it. Luca finished with a whimper and a cry, almost shamefully, from a light but persistent touch. But the Baron was pleased, and praised him low in his ear as Luca came over his hand.

He slept in the Baron’s bed that night, a mahogany four poster like a great sleigh.

In the morning, a servant came with fresh water in a basin. She saw Luca under the master's covers and froze for a moment before catching herself and setting the basin in its place on the dresser.

He would have expected her to be a little scandalized, maybe. But it wasn’t that. Scandal or plain surprise had not been in her eyes. It was fear. They’d locked with his and he’d felt it as instinctually and purely as he knew it was the light of the sun coming through the thick drawn curtains and not the moon.

Who had she been afraid for, if not herself?

Before he left on his trip on horseback with a sword at his hip, the Baron gave Luca a thick set of skeleton keys. He held them out halfway, almost playfully, making Luca reach close and take them.

Until that moment, Luca had not considered the fact that he, a pet, would be entrusted with anything in this great man’s absence. There were others more credentialed and titled than he, surely, but maybe the Baron didn’t want those people having the keys to all his personal compartments. The status of pet here was more respected than he'd thought, farther from slave than he'd ever imagined.

The heavy and intricate keys were of varying sizes, some small as to open the drawer of a cabinet or some ornate box, and some as large as Lucas' hand from wrist to fingertip. His master told him these were the keys to every room in the castle, every lockbox and secret compartment, from the Baron’s private offices to the few old prison cells in the dark bowels of the castle he said he had converted to wine cellars.

Here was the key to the kitchens and a key to the stables once it was shut up after dark. Luca was uncomfortably aware that any slave or pet planning an escape would envy the keys to the stable after dark. The Barons' knowing eyes seemed to read this very thought from him so he had to turn to the keys and pretend to be mesmerized by the teeth of one in particular. He seemed to possess an uncanny ability to read people, Luca thought, which might be why the servants all scurried from him like frightened mice and hurried about their duties in the day like they couldn’t wait to be out of those chambers.

But Luca had nothing to hide. He had no intention of escaping a home better than any he’d ever had, and very dreamed of having. The Baron loved him, he thought for the first time, and felt a surge of love returned for him. That was a dangerous thought, but he’d had it, hadn’t he? It could not be mistaken for anything else.

The last key on the ring looked older than the others, as if it were moldering or barnacled from being at the bottom of the sea in a shipwreck for the last sixty years. The Baron hesitated when he came to it, looking like he might say something but deciding against it.

“What is that one?” Luca asked. He’d told him the rest, painstakingly. Why leave out the last key?

“Oh,” said the Baron. “It wouldn’t much interest you, I’m afraid. It’s a little room at the end of the east wing, past the old chapel. There’s the most beautiful stained glass in the chapel, that might please you. But the other... it’s nothing. Cobwebs and the hobbies of rich, eccentric men. In fact… why don’t we agree that you simply won’t go to that room? That would be best. I try to respect your privacy and your wishes, and I know you will respect mine.”

He left the ugly key on the ring.

While the Baron was gone, Luca ventured to the nearby village. He’d been in most of the castle, the Bailey and the stable and the aviary. He wanted to see the people of this strange country, not servants or Lords but the people who owned shops and pulled carts and swept the steps of their homes every evening. He brought some money in a belt against his waist, tucked tightly to deter even the most skilled pickpockets. He doubted there would be as many in the little mountainside village as he’d heard there was in London, but he would hate to lose any of the Baron’s money and have nothing to show for it. He left his ring and his anklet in the castle, and dressed in the most modest linen clothes he could find.

The village center was lively at mid morning. It was a sunny June day and the snow caps on the blue mountains were almost gone entirely. He passed a church and a well, an outdoor market with stalls and booths, a post office with a coop of crooning and fluttering pigeons, and a number of residential apartments as well as a small inn that seemed to serve mostly as a pub for locals, even in the midday. There was no wall surrounding the village like there was the castle and the town within.

He was eating a soft boiled egg he bought from a booth, it’s yolk as orange as the flowers that dotted the hillsides and still warm, when he noticed a remarkable fountain in the middle of the square. It was white, cool marble, and had the now familiar Hydra carved into the side, one of the serpentine heads jutting out to serve as the fountain.

He approached to look at it more closely. On the lip of the fountain was a large golden cup. Puzzled, he looked around. No one was paying the golden cup any mind. On closer inspection, he noticed it was inlaid with a ruby on either side. He picked it up. It was heavy. Was it solid gold? Truly? Even just coated in gold, it had to be worth half of the town.

A girl came close to wash her hands in the stream of cold mountain water that came from the Hydra head.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Who does this cup belong to?”

The girl looked at him with wide eyes but shook her head. Likely she did not speak English.

“It belongs to all of us,” a woman responded in her place. She had come out from the tavern and looked a bit disheveled, with dark hair slipping slowly out of a kerchief on all sides. Her English was thickly accented, and she smelled of ale. She lifted the cup to fill it and took a demonstrative swig.

“I’ve never been somewhere where someone would not steal a gold cup from a public fountain.”

“Then you’ve never been in Hwenn.”

She was being coy, and he was curious to the point of annoyance with her coyness. “What keeps someone from stealing it? I don’t understand.”

Her playful smile dropped at his impatience. “I was going to get you a drink,” she muttered, gathering her dingey skirts and standing from the edge of the fountain. “Maybe give a pretty dance for a pretty boy. But you are rude.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry.”

“There,” she pointed. “Go around church and see why no one steals golden cup.”

He followed where she had pointed, noticing two carrion birds high in the sky, flying their slow arcs like rangers of dead flesh. He turned the corner of the church and stopped fast.

Blood rushed to his ears leaving his feet rooted and heavy where they stood. The sunny June morning went as cold for him as if a dark shadow had blocked out the sun. He could no longer hear the din of shopkeepers or the chirping of birds, the creaking of the wheels on the cart that passed him.

Three men and a woman were nailed to crude wooden crosses on the side of the busy street. Dead. Their mouths hung open in echoes of screams, faces badly decomposed and eyes plucked out, likely by vultures or crows. Luca covered his face with his elbow when the warm breeze brought him the smell of death.

An old woman saw him staring at the bodies and shook her gray head, covered partly in a black shawl. She muttered something disapproving in a tongue he did not know. He turned away from the hideous display of corpses and into the inn.

It was cool, and relatively quiet inside. The rough beams of the ceiling were so low he had to duck a little at the entrance, but then it opened up a few more feet above his head.

He paid for an ale and drank it slowly, wishing it was the heady burgundy his master had in endless supply.

“You alright, lad?” asked the barkeep.

“He’s just seen the way they do justice in Hwenn,” laughed a man on the stool next to him. He shared Luca’s own accent. “I know that look. And I’ve never seen you around before. You come from some place were they throw thieves in jail to rot for six weeks, dont you? I come from a place like that. I admire how they do things here.”

“They were thieves?” Luca asked. “The ones on the crosses?”

“That's right. And the next thief that comes along will take one of their foul places. Sometimes they get to be almost skeletons, in the summer, before that happens. But someone always tries their luck. Don’t you think a gold cup out in the middle of town is a bit suspicious? Wouldn’t you think hey now, wait a minute, maybe I ought not to try and nab this here shiny piece of bait?”

“Who sets this bait?”

The barkeep gave the man a lingering look and walked away, tossing a dish rag over his shoulder.

“Do you know where you are, man?”

“Hwenn.”

“And who is the Baron of this fine fief, those in Hwenn are under?”

“Illés.”

“The Bluebeard Baron.” The man spread his hands. “No safer or fairer land than this.”

“Safer?” Luca repeated.

The man gave him a leveling look. “Murderers and rapists are boiled to death in a giant pot. They wheel it out special for that, it’s somewhere in the castle the rest of the time. Go fifty leagues from here. You’ll be robbed blind and left for dead in a ditch if there ain’t a wall around you, and even then. Not here. No. No one even takes the cup.” The man lowered his voice to a mumble for his next half-treasonous sentence. “The King ought to take a page from Bluebeard’s book, if you ask me.”

Luca slipped off the barstool, leaving half a cup of undrunk ale and heading back out into the sunshine. He felt drunk, but not from the weak tavern ale. He left the village and made his way back to the castle, where he climbed the many flights to the Baron’s chambers and fell asleep in his ancestral bed, sunsick and dazed. When he woke it was a dusty pink dusk, and fireflies lit the field below his window.

He took the ring of keys and began a thorough search of everywhere big enough to store a cauldron that was big enough to boil people inside of. He was getting more and more confident the man in the inn had been yanking his chain with every cellar and empty room he searched. There was no man-boiling cauldron. That was a story to scare misbehaving children with. Or naive foreigners like himself. In these days of growing reason and humane law, no one less than a King would be allowed to terrorize a fiefdom under such iron cruelty.

Something drew him on, through the last light of dusk and into full night. He carried a light with him, a torch from the wall that’s light was better than a lantern. He opened the door to what he assumed would be the last wine cellar, full of dusty bottles in their hundreds of slots. It was empty, except for a wooden platform on which sat a massive iron pot, bowl shaped like a witch’s cauldron and big enough to fit three grown men inside, black on the bottom from fire.

—

The Baron returned within the time frame promised. He brought Luca gifts from the northern regions he’d visited: a pale blue cloak lined in softest mink, barrels of the citrus fruits he’d mentioned missing from his long lost home (bought from a southern trader), and a seventeen key kalimba with a stag head painted around the sound hole.

“My pet,” the Baron held him tenderly, kissing his hair now even in front of the servants. “I’ve missed you, Luca.”

That evening, Luca plucked a gentle tune on the kalimba to steady his nerves as he thought of the question that had been burning in his mind for days. The song he remembered was long, and he couldn’t remember all the stanzas. He remembered a maiden growing jealous of a Knights affection for her fair younger sister, and drowning the younger girl in the river.

And he courted the eldest with diamonds and rings

Oleander yolling

The other he loved above all things,

Down by the waters rolling

“I went into Hwenn,” he said softly, still plucking the tune with his thumbs.

“Oh?”

“It was very nice.”

“Did you see the fountain?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I’m going to build an amphitheater there this year.”

Music, art, theater. What sort of man cares for these things, brings them to other people, common people, even? The same man who has men and women crucified for petty theft?

“There were four corpses in the street,” he said in a rush, before his tongue became tied again. He ceased his song on the kalimba. “Thieves. Crucified thieves.”

The Baron frowned. He had peeled an orange in his large, deft hands and was pulling the flesh apart into sections to eat. Luca couldn’t help but think of the way the Baron liked to pull him apart thusly, teasing him to the edge of pleasure half a dozen times before letting him finish— a game they both enjoyed.

“Not likely thieves, then, if they were on the crosses. Murderers, maybe. Horse thieves, occasionally, but that’s a graver offense. If they were convicted of that they’d have been hanged. Possibly put on the crosses afterwards, that’s up to them.”

“Who?”

“Hwenn. The people. They like to do that to foreigners. They don’t like to do it to their own.”

“So the people put them up there? After they’re dead?”

“Did it bother you? I’m sorry if it did, pet.”

“No,” he said defensively. He wasn’t some naive bride who had never seen death before. “I just… I was told they were thieves. That they tried to steal that gold cup.”

The Baron laughed and ate a piece of fragrant orange. “That cup. They love that thing. One day it’ll get lifted in the night and taken where the winds may blow, but they’ve had it there for nigh on a year now.” He laughed again at the thought.

Luca laughed with him, partly at himself. Emboldened by the Baron’s easy demeanor, he added; “a man told me it was your doing. That you kept such order by crucifying petty thieves and… boiling men alive in the town square.”

The Baron’s face fell. He looked at him closely. “This rattled you a good deal, or you wouldn’t have repeated it to me.”

Luca shrugged. He supposed he deserved the loss of levity the conversation had taken. He had pushed too far. He’d nearly made a flat out accusation

”We are beset on all sides by enemies, Luca. I know you know this.”

He did not, specifically, but the Baron never tried to make him feel stupid.

“We have kept them at bay for two hundred years. Kept their armies and their customs and their God out of our land, battled them from the very steps of our kingdom, kept them from crossing the mountains. And what do we get for support from our Church? Our King?” He sighed. “Skepticism and a demand for more taxes. These enemies use every weapon at their disposal. One such weapon is not artillery or horses, but gossip. They start rumors. Priests, generals, Sultans, gossiping like old women until someone writes something in a book and then it is the truth for time immemorial. Is it the truth? What else did you hear?”

“That was hideous enough. I left.”

“Then you did not hear that I drink the blood of my enemies? That I steal their wives for my concubines and rape them, that I murder their children in front of them with venomous snakes?”

“No.” Luca had foolishly waded out of his depth, heedless to the strong current just past where he could reach. “No.”

“You will. In time, you will hear those stories too.” He raised the back of Luca’s right hand to his lips, his recently trimmed and oiled beard still scratching like bristles as he kissed it. “I hope you don’t dwell on such vicious propaganda. I know you have been through more in your time in England than you like to let on, but I would have you think on pleasant things now.”

Yet he looked into Luca’s eyes with that searing golden gaze that so disoriented unsuspecting envoys and dignitaries. “Hideous, you said. What do you think is the proper response to criminality in a land so precariously eastern as ours?”

Luca didn’t know if he meant ours as in his and his peoples, or ours as in you are a citizen now too. “You ask that of a slave?”

“You’re not a slave.”

Luca tilted his head, beseeching the Lord to leave him of answering anyway.

The Baron narrowed his eyes, not unkindly. “Are you afraid?” he asked, and his tone had gentled.

What could he say? “I don’t know.”

"Well," the Baron said, and offered him the last slice of orange as gently as if he were feeding sugar water to a hummingbird. "You needn't be."

In the Baron's bed, Luca dreamt of the Hydra, its many serpentine mouths dripping green venom that burned the earth like Greek fire where it fell.

This retelling initially drew on Angela Carter’s short story The Bloody Chamber (her own Bluebeard retelling) as well as folklore surrounding Vlad Dracula (specifically the golden cup). Luca’s kalimba song is a very old one with many iterations, but the version I’m referencing is Two Sisters by Emily Portman

@starfields08000

#others' writing #really enjoying this

66 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 28 days

Text

"Rich words from a man who broke beneath my father's hand and knelt before his throne."

"Little dog, you're not half the man your father was. Aren't you too old to still be eating the scraps from his table? If you want me at your feet, you'll have to work harder than that. And be careful. Who can say which of us will end up on his knees, and which on the throne?"

#my writing #dialogue #short

16 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 29 days

Text

technically a follow on from this piece. could probably stand alone. this piece has been 80% done in my google docs for three years so if you see any big holes in it uhhh. no you didn't.

if you've ever wanted some vague exposition on cass' powers or choices, then this is for you

content warning: mentions of death, victim blaming, aftermath of violence/assault, referenced dubcon/noncon, brief mind control

The common room at Bergen Estate gets quiet at night. Most of the charges prefer their own rooms as it gets dark. Hiding from the bogeyman.

But Harley liked the large, dark emptiness of the common room.

The curved chairs, the pillars, the rows of books and video games lined up along the shelves. The big oak tables. Bean bags in the corner. Rugs here and there. The whole place had the energy of some sort of bizarre combination between a kid’s playroom and a university library. But Harley wanted a space to think, and this was the easiest one.

Their intuition had been right and wrong in equal amounts tonight. They’d known they would be called to Christopher’s lounge tonight. And they were. And they knew that they would be fine after. And they are. But… if they were so fine why do they feel so God fucking awful?

“Harley can go, right? It’s not like we need them.”

Every time they try to push the memory from their head, it bobs to the surface again like an apple in water.

“I have to say, Harley… I really am so disappointed in you.”

They stare out the large bay window, at the leafless trees silhouetted in the mix of light from the garden and from the moon. The whole thing looks ghostly. Gothic. The dark through the glass makes the whole window reflective; a giant mirror just waiting to show them their face. But it’s dark in here too. It’s a dark room reflected on a dark night. That’s why it’s so obvious when there’s a shuffling flash of light behind them, making their heart skip.

The door opens, someone steps through, and then it closes. Dark again. Harley stiffens, freezes, trying to catch another glimpse of who it is in the reflection of the window but it's back to shadows on shadows on shadows.

They listen as the person shuffles to one of the cushioned seats. Shuffles. Like it hurts to move. They sit so carefully that Harley can barely hear them. Then there's quiet. Stillness. An exhale.

Harley doesn’t move. They know stillness. They know silence. Have known it for longer than they’ve been here.

But then there’s another exhale.

And another.

Any hitch of breath that might be happening in between is more or less silent. Which means, usually… crying.

Harley feels themself cringe. The Bergen Boys don't cry. Those are the rules. Not Christopher's rules but the deeper, unspoken ones between the lot of them. You don’t complain, you don’t ask for help, you don’t cry. Or if you did, it got beaten out of you quicksmart. Everything else was a free for all as far as Harley has ever been able to tell.

So the shadow person has come to the common room in the middle of the night. Assuming, like Harley had, that it would be empty. That it would be safe.

Guilt washes over them all at once, guttural and nauseating and they realise all of a sudden that intentionally or not just by sitting here, listening, they're imposing. Intruding. Doing the wrong thing. And then the fear beneath that, on top of that, around that, that if they wait too long and the shadow person notices them, they may well end up on the wrong side of thrown fists. Again.

Harley shifts on the couch where they sit, exaggerating the whisper scrape of fabric on fabric, and leans back on the left side where they know the leg creaks.

The shadow person's breathing stops immediately and Harley hears them stand.

"Who's there?"

Harley freezes again, regretting making their presence known. Cassius.

"I can see you. On the couch. Get over here." His voice is sharp and violent. Deeper than usual. There's a childish part of Harley, not as far beneath the surface as they’d like, that wishes desperately they’d just stay silent and hidden. Safe.

But, like they were told, they uncurl their legs. Stand. Turn. Start to walk.

Harley can see the moment that the light from the window must catch their face. Cassius' face softens, eyes fluttering closed and body sagging with what was maybe relief.

“Harls,” he says, running a hand over his face as he sits back down. Harley doesn’t miss the wince. “Jesus Christ, man, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” The apology flies out of them like a verbal flinch. “I’ll leave.”

“No, ple-” Cassius stops himself, eyes shuttering closed. Harley watches him take a deep breath, brow furrowing briefly. You don’t cry. You don’t complain. You don’t ask for help. “You can stay. If you want. I don't mind.”

Harley hesitates for a moment, glancing around half-uselessly, before choosing a seat across from the other charge and folding into it.

“What are you doing up so late?” Cassius asks, as though they’ve bumped into each other at a truck stop. At a bar. Fancy seeing you here.

Harley shrugs. “I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep. I kept…” thinking about what you were doing. They bite down on their tongue to keep themselves from saying more. It’s stupid.

They trail off as Cassius looks up at them and the dull light from the window catches the shape of his brow. At the blood smeared along his temple. The bruising already flaring up along his cheek. “Did… did Beauche do that to you?”

Cassius huffs out a half laugh, running his tongue between his teeth and the obviously bruised tissue of his cheek. He drags his hand up, knuckle brushing softly against his brow. “Yep. What a gentleman, huh?”

“But Christopher said he wouldn’t be violent.”

Cassius scoffs, “Yeah and Christopher’s such a shining beacon of truth, huh?”

Cassius sits back in his chair, eyes hard, and Harley holds their breath. With the shadows of the trees outside dancing across his face, the shading of the bruises and the swelling there, Cassius looks half monster.

Then his expression softens, his body relaxes. “Nah, it was my fault." He lets out a sigh, hand running back through his hair. "The guy wanted me to cry.”

“And did you?” Cassius’ glare is immediate. Has Harley slamming their jaw shut so quickly their teeth click together. “Sorry.”

Cassius shrugs a shoulder in acceptance of the apology and leans back in the chair. He closes his eyes and all at once it’s like some mask comes down. He looks exhausted and hurt and… young, actually. Harley always forgets that. He’s younger than them. About a three year gap between them.

“Why are you up?” Harley says, after the silence gets unbearably fragile. “Here, I mean. I thought you’d be…” They struggle for a tactful way to put it. “In the other wing.”

“Nah, he didn’t want me to stay, thank fuck. And Christopher doesn’t like me coming in af-... Um. He doesn’t like me coming in too late,” Cassius says, picking non-existent dirt out from under his finger nails. He clears his throat a little as his face flinches in and out of a frown. “Plus, the sooner I see him, the sooner I have to… you know…”

He gestures loosely at his face and Harley frowns. The sooner he’d have to do what? Get rid of the bruises? Get rid of the pain that keeps making him flinch and close his eyes? None of them talked about it but they’d all seen it. Bruises fading on Cassius just to bloom on his brother in minutes. Always after a visit to Christopher. Always without a word spoken.

Harley can’t help their own contempt, “Isn’t that a good thing for you?”

Cassius looks at them with an expression Harley can’t place, dark eyes flicking between both of Harley’s, as though searching for something. He looks angry. Murderous. Violent. Then he snorts and it’s gone. “Yeah. Sure.”

He drops his head, hands fidgeting between his knees. With the angle and the shadows, Harley can only just make out the shape of his nose, his eyes half hidden behind his hair. It sticks out at awkward angles around his head like a terrible crown. Frizzy waves in some parts, kinked curls in others.

It'll suit him more when he leaves and he grows it longer.

The thought comes unprompted, unbidden and with the utmost certainty. Like the predictions always do. Just a slice of truth falling into the head with the right prompt. An understanding that that's just… how things will be.

It's not the first time Harley's thought something like it. That Cassius will do much better once he leaves. The notion of it is almost horrifying. Cassius has been here longer than they have. It’s hard to imagine Bergen Estate without its golden boy.

Harley chews on their cheek and “If I ask you something, will you answer truthfully?”

Cassius shrugs. Smirks. “Probably not.”

Harley rolls their eyes and looks away, annoyance settling in their gut. They don’t even know why they bother with Cassius. He’s always the exact same. They're about to stand up to leave when Cassius clears his throat and-

“I’ll trade you for it,” he says softly, dark eyes shining with something unnameable in the dim light. “You ask me something, I ask you something. No lies.”

“Promise?”

Cassius just shrugs. Which is probably as good a promise as Harley’s going to get, really. They sigh and trace the patterning of the rug with their eyes before pursing their lips together and looking back up at Cassius with a focussed sincerity.

They swallow. Inhale. Hands grip the arms of the chair. "You hate it here.”

Cass’ eyes skitter to the side and back. "That's… not a question."

"Why don't you leave?"

“Same as you, dumbass. Legally binding contract.”

“No, I mean-” Harley bites down on their cheek and tries to figure out the right words to say what they mean. “You can make him do whatever you want, right? You can make anyone do what you want. So why don’t you just… make him get rid of you."

Cassius exhales in a way that could almost be a laugh. But probably isn’t. “It’s… complicated.”

“Because of Henri?”

He shrugs, looking bored as he meets their gaze. “Sure.”

“No lies.”

Cassius sighs, leaning back slouched in the chair. He shrugs. “Just because I can make someone want to do something, it doesn’t mean they’ll do it.”

“Like… he’d resist you?”

“No.” Cassius pulls a face. “I mean yes, maybe. But no… It’s like…” He makes a sound hallway between a sigh and a groan. He rolls his neck, eyes roaming around the room like he’s trying to figure something out. He leans his chin on his hand, fingers skirting over his lips before looking back to Harley. “Hᴀʀʟᴇʏ, sᴏʟᴠᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ʜᴜɴɢᴇʀ.”

Harley stands instantly. They turn on their foot and move to the door and for the first time in their life everything is certain. Everything is clear. Everything makes so much sense and all they have to do is… Is to…

“Um…”

Cass half smiles. There's something vicious and cruel behind his eyes. “Dᴏ ɪᴛ, Hᴀʀʟᴇʏ. Sᴏʟᴠᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ʜᴜɴɢᴇʀ.”

They step forward, compulsively, and for some bizarre reason they start raising their arms in front of them, as though their body can’t figure out a way to solve the issue even though they want to and as soon as that thought hits them the frantic desire starts to dissipate, filling instead with deep dread and panic.

They turn their head towards him, eyes wide. Frozen. "I…"

Cassius’ gaze is dark and heavy. Hungry and calculating. His jaw sets. “Hᴀʀʟᴇʏ, ɢᴏ ᴋɪʟʟ Cʜʀɪsᴛᴏᴘʜᴇʀ.”

The feeling that floods them is white hot and immediate. Desire and rage running through them like lava. They’re not sure they’ve ever moved so fast, wheeling on a foot, making it to the door, but no sooner are they reaching for the handle then-

“Nah, ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ɪᴛ. Cᴏᴍᴇ sɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ.”

All at once the desire dissipates, and the panic sets in like shame. Like failure. They come back over. They sit back down. Then their thoughts catch up and they look at Cassius with fury. How dare he do that? How dare he go into their head and make them feel that?

Cassius just smiles. Shrugs. “Sorry. Figured I’d show not tell.”

‘’I could’ve killed him.”

Cassius shrugs, unshaded and unconvinced. “Nah. You would’ve got halfway down the hall and changed your mind.”

“But what if I didn’t?”

“Then you would’ve gotten to his room and realised you didn’t know how. You wouldn’t have killed him.”

“I might’ve,” they protest, still indignant.

Cass shrugs, smile lazy and tired, “But you didn’t.”

They try, for a few moments, to hold on to the anger. The indignation. It’s so, so easy to hate him when he’s far away. When they can’t see him or only see him at a distance. It’s much much harder three feet away from him, where the moonlight show the bags under his eyes as dark as the bruise blossoming above his temple.

“He takes you away from here sometimes,” they say eventually. “You could… when you were away from here. You could leave. Make him let you leave. That’s not that hard.”

Cassius just looks at them, chin resting on his hand, fingers covering his mouth. He raises his eyebrows at them expectantly, foot bouncing like a motor. He’s probably trying to look annoyed. Sarcastic. But he just looks like a sad little boy.

Understanding clicks in.

“But Henri…” Harley voices for him.

Cassius shrugs a shoulder. A tear manages to make it all the way to his cheekbone before he swipes it away with the side of his fist. The Bergen Boys don’t cry. “Told you. Complicated.”

This isn’t how things are meant to be. Cassius is meant to stay in the other wing, up on his damn pedestal and away in Christopher’s bedroom. He’s not meant to cry in the common room. He’s meant to be the golden boy in his golden room. It’s meant to be easy to hate him. He’s meant to be arrogant and selfish and mean and rude and-

“Your French isn’t better than mine,” they say suddenly. They can’t quite say where the compulsion to say it comes from.

Cassius blinks, “What?”

“In the office before, you said your French was better than mine. It’s not.”

He looks at them for a moment, frowning and annoyed and then suddenly he’s laughing, eyebrows shooting up in exhausted amusement, “You’re weird as fuck, you know that?”

“What? No I’m not,” Harley spits, suddenly self-conscious and antsy.

“Yes you are,” Cassius says. “I did you a fucking favour and a half tonight-“

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“And you know what, you’re welcome by the way.”

“I never asked you to-”

“Oh, save it. Yes you fucking did. You know what I can do. You know what I can feel. You were basically fucking screaming at me.”

And that, they do remember. Closing their eyes. Drowning Christopher’s voice out in their head. The huge loud static of I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this.

The air stills. The atmosphere between them settles like dust in the shadows and darkens again. Guilt creeps over Harley's shoulders and rests with heavy claws. They shouldn’t have said anything.

“My French is more usable than yours,” Cass mutters.

They’re truly unsure if he’s being genuine or just trying to break the ice that’s frosted over. They try for the latter, “Your grammar sucks.”

“Yeah, well we didn’t get much further than ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi’, so I don’t think I did fine,” he gives them a dead-eyed smile that they assume is meant to cast the comment in humour. They don’t really find it very funny.

After a few awkward beats, Cassius gives up the ghost. He clears his throat, “Alright. My turn,”

Harley readjusts in their seat, straightening their spine, tucking their hair behind their ears to listen for the question. They wait one moment. And then two. The whole time the golden boy seems to scrutinise them, looking into their eyes as he sizes them up, makes some sort of assessment.

Cassius’ voice is low and jarringly sad as he finally lands on a question, “Why do you hate me so much?”

If it was possible for Harley to feel every cell in their body crystallise… that was what this feeling was. “I don’t hate you.”

Cassius smiles. Tilts his head. The blood along his temple catches in the light. “No lies.”

Harley frowns and looks away, turning their head to look out the window across the other side of the room. They wonder if he remembers the day they met as well as they do. It was in this room. Just a few feet from where they were sitting now. He’d been sitting on the arm of the couch making some smart mouth comment to someone and they’d thought he looked friendly. And then his eyes had met theirs and prediction hit like an epiphany:

You’re going to kill me one day.

Unprompted, unbidden and with the utmost certainty. A slice of truth falling into their head.

You’re going to kill me one day to save yourself.

They knit their fingers together in their lap, pressing knuckle to knuckle. They press their lips into a thin line. Something with wings — a bird or a bat, they can’t tell — takes flight from one of the trees outside the window. Darkness reflects darkness back.

After it becomes clear they’re not going to answer, Cassius prompts again, “Was it something I did?”

They shrug one shoulder. Like he does. Look down at their hands. The shadows across the room dance and shimmer.

“Is it because of…” out of the corner of their eye, Harley sees him wave a hand at himself. “You know. What I do.” A pause. They see his Adam’s apple bob. “The way I do it.”

Harley frowns, ducks their head lower so they don’t have to look at him, even in periphery. They manage to shake their head this time.

“Is it…” Cassius stops and starts. Stalls. Clears his throat. “Is it something I’m going to do?”

Harley finds themself looking up, despite themself.

They meet his eyes. Time stops for a second.

Cass looks so full of grief for a moment that Harley’s certain the rest of the world must’ve been robbed of it. All shoved into one person to hold for a second. His voice sounds wrecked, “I’m sorry.”

They almost believe him, too. And they hate him all the more for it.

Did he have to be so perfect at this, too? Did he have to be forgivable for this, too? Can’t they just hate him? Can’t they just hate his guts and let him get whadt he’s owed for the things that he’s done, does, is going to do? They want to ask him. They want to tell him. All of it. They want to see his face as he tries to figure out how to respond. They want to know how he feels when he finds out he’s gonna be a murderer.

“It’s okay,” is what tumbles out of their mouth instead.

“Yeah,” Cass laughs and another tear makes it out of him. They hate him for it. He swipes at it with the side of a closed fist. “No it isn’t.”

They hate him as he stands up.

They hate him as he cuts the conversation short.

They hate him as he passes and gives the back of their chair a pat.

“See you around, Harls.”

They watch the window for the flash of light as the door opens, a yellow glow spilling into the room for a moment like blood from a cut. And then the door shuts with a click. And the room is back to its inky darkness. And the golden boy is gone. And Harley isn’t.

And their hatred is an unspooled ball of yarn in the middle of the floor.

#others' writing #oh this is sad and sharp and messy

37 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 30 days

Text

Thank you for the kind words, and for reading! I'm glad our blorbos entertain more people than just us.

(Ariadne would be Concerned by this attitude, haha.)

Unlikely Salvation

Moodboard

Dystopian urban fantasy dealing with themes of oppression, discrimination, redemption, and interpersonal relationships built on foundations of trauma.

Full credit to co-author @whump-sprite who is responsible for the most of the characters and the setting.

Synopsis They say the War On Magic ended years ago, but the people still fighting it in the shadows know better. When Resistance healer Alex Morgen finds government torturer Ariadne Milonas broken beyond belief on the basement floor, he knows he’s going to help her. Even though she has been his captor and interrogator for the past three months. When he finds out that his own sister was the one who did it, he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to go back.

Writing Please forgive the many holes in the timeline, writing in order does not come naturally to me.

Ariadne Backstory Ninja — Flirting Squeamish Memorial

Arc 0 - Interrogator Insisting that he knows nothing doesn’t do Alex much good when his twin sister is known to be one of the Resistance movement’s Inner Circle.

Learning — Too Far, Almost —

Arc 1 - Everything Changes Taryn Morgen breaks Ariadne’s bones in about a hundred places, and Alex Morgen puts her back together. By the end of the first week, Ariadne knows that nothing will ever be the same again. She doesn’t have the first idea where to go from there. But neither does Alex.

Shattered Day 1: Rescue: 1, 2, 3, 4 Driving: 1, 2a, 2b, 3, 4 The First Night Day 2: Truce: 1, 2, 3 Indecisive Boots Off Begging in her sleep Day 3+: Hands 1 Driving Again Onwards Fallen Over Hands 2 Gas Station Hands 3 Go back to sleep Violence Marks Can’t Go Back Breakfast

Arc 2 - Two Fugitives Both traumatised, both cut adrift from their previous lives, Ariadne and Alex at first stick together only because two wanted fugitives stand a better chance in a hostile world than one alone. Through living together, working together, eating together, struggling together, surviving together – they become more human to each other. Slowly they become close.

Not leaving List — Running Healing a stranger Alex stabbed - 1, 2, 3 Uneasy comfort Talking about it I swear Ariadne burns herself - 1, 2, 3 — Riot - 1, 2, 3, 4 — Plants — Wish I was at home for Christmas — Missing Taryn

Arc 3 - Return to the Resistance It’s Ariadne who suggests that Alex should go back to his people. It’s Alex who says that she should come with him. For obvious reasons the Resistance are reluctant to accept an ex federal interrogator into their ranks. But Alex won’t stay without her.

Reyan has questions Ross - 1, 2, 3 But can you teach her to think? Alive on sufferance Dreamt of that car ride Taryn loses a fight Traitor - 1, 2, 3, 4

Arc 4 - Ariadne, Resistance Fighter Safehouse Carry you Scars - 1, 2 Ariadne Meets Vic Dev Tortures Ari - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Alex in the Snow Ariadne Carries Anders - 1, 2, 3, 4, tbc? Mind Magic - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Arc 5 - Ariadne Captured Ariadne Interrogated - 1, 2, 3, 3.5, 4, 5 Dev Rescues Ari - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Home Again - 1, 2, tbc

Minor AU Scenarios (some of these are definitely not canon, others merely probably not canon. I reserve the right to change my mind) Braden Sharp’s Revenge - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Ari caring for a whipped Alex Forced to whip Alex - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tbc Alt rescue from Ariadne Interrogated Connor Burned - 1, 2, tbc? Vivisect Or Be Vivisected (with Archangel Daniel) - 1, 2 Ari told to crawl

Major AUs Riven’s Chewtoy Healer and Handler

See Also: @whump-sprite’s blog (no longer active) for more Resistance writing

Tags: For the ‘verse: #verse: resistance, #unlikely salvation, #unlikely salvation alt For characters: #ariadne milonas, #alex morgen, #taryn morgen, #anders reyan, #dev

Current status: Active. Most of the holes in the story are all plotted out and just need writing up as prose.

Masterpost updated 26/09/2023

#meta

76 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 1 month

Text

All We Have Is Each Other

CW: Intimate whumper, captivity, defiant whumpee, biting, creepy whumper, obsessive whumper, noncon kiss, vague noncon references, drugging. For @amonthofwhump Tropeathon Day 1: Duel

The Motherfucking Gallaghers Masterlist

Takes place during Jax’s second captivity. As always, Jax is used with oversight and permission from @comfy-whumpee)

Savvie rolls dice every time she uses the mortar and pestle in the kitchen to grind up one of her collections of pills and mix it into Jax’s drink.

She’s always gambling with the drugs. The first part of the game is seeing whether he’ll drink it before he realizes there’s something in it. If she doesn’t mix it well enough, he’ll see the cloudy bits floating around in the glass and look at her with terrible sad eyes. Sometimes she can’t take it. She just takes the drink right back out of his hand and pours it out, makes him a new one.

Other the other hand, sometimes his sad voice and sad eyes piss her off worse than anything else could, and she just tips it up until he chokes and makes him finish it anyway. Or shocks him, pressing the button to the remote and watching his muscles lock up, knowing he’ll look sweeter once he’s fighting the way his muscles jerk afterward, the unconscious twitches he can’t quite get rid of as the aftermath works its way through him.

Sometimes he even looks scared. Those nights are some of her favorites. Savvie never loves Jax as much as she does when he is scared of her.

But... she can’t keep him scared all the time. What kind of marriage would they have if she did that? No, the drinks aren’t to scare him, they’re just to make… to make things easier. And she doesn’t always do it! She doesn’t always drug him, but it’s enough that he never trusts her. She knows that. He doesn’t… trust easily.

That’s okay.

Their relationship got off to a rough start, that’s all, what with Jax starting off as one of the staff, bought and paid for. Plus, Jax’s dad convinced him Savvie was evil, once upon a time when he ran away from her. Taught him to hate her. She had to have her uncle fly all the way to England to bring Jax back, and it’s taking years to undo all the damage that stupid old man did.

That’s okay. He’s getting better, he’s definitely getting better. He is. He has to be getting better.

Still… he’s not an easy man to be married to. Not with having to keep an eye on the remote to his shock collar so he can’t take it off and try to run away again, not with the way he watches her sometimes like he wants to dunk her head into the toilet and hold it there until she drowns. Putting stuff in his drink just lets Savvie be able to relax.

She doesn’t have to worry about what he might do when he’s so high he can’t do much of anything. Besides, it’s only like one out of every ten nights, sometimes twenty, sometimes she even goes for a month or two without doing it.

She really doesn’t even want to. If he would just learn to be happy without it, she wouldn’t have to keep drugging him, would she? If he’d just stop being so difficult about being her husband… but that isn’t fair. He can’t be any better than he is, not really. Jax just… isn’t wired that way.

So she has to help him a little, to make it so he can have nights when he can’t stay mad at her. Or at least nights when his anger isn’t able to simmer in there behind his eyes while he says Yes, Miss Savvie or No, Miss Savvie like there’s a gun to his head.

Still. Trying to give him these evenings where both of them just relax… it’s always a gamble.

Even if he drinks whatever she makes without realizing it’s spiked, he doesn’t always react the same way. If she’s lucky - if her dice rolls well - the drugs make Jax… softer. He’ll lean against her when some of his strength slides away, not seek out touch but loathe it less. Those are the nights she can coax a sound out of him that isn’t clipped or tense. She still thinks about the night she gave him a back rub and he genuinely fell asleep sitting on the floor between her knees, his head drifting until it rested on her leg, the knots of tension slowly loosening beneath her kneading hands until she got distracted by the movie and forgot what she was doing.

Sometimes he smiles, when he’s blurry and unfocused. Smiles, enough to show teeth even… God, sometimes he even laughs at some of Savvie’s jokes. It’s rare, but it happens. She loves those nights the best. Those are the nights that their marriage almost feels normal… if she just ignores the dilated pupils and the way he can’t stand up on his own.

Sometimes he gets so foggy he can’t stop laughing, which is irritating but at least adorable to watch and take videos of to make him look at later on the next day when he sobers up again. Sometimes the side effects make him too scared to smile, his eyes darting nervously everywhere watching the movements of shadows he swears are watching him. She… tries not to give him those pills anymore.

The nights tend to end with her telling him to take off his shirt so she can enjoy the view, or even his pants, too. She usually waits on that, though, because it doesn’t matter how good the drugs are - he always hesitates when it comes to taking off his pants, as soon as his fingers touch the boxers with their oddly rolled waistband.

It reminds him he doesn’t want to be here. Makes his addled mind come back to the collar he wears around his neck, to the reality of the life they’re living, the marriage Savvie has built all by herself whether he wanted to or not.

And he… he didn’t want to.

So normally she waits on the getting naked bit until they’re in the bedroom and what he wants matters so much less that neither of them think about it any longer. The drugs, at least, make it harder for him to slow her down in there.

Savvie tries not to think about that, because she doesn’t remember it that way. She likes the nights best where he doesn’t even try to fight, just lets her pull him upstairs and she gets to bury her hands in his hair and tell him what to do and have him, languid and loose-limbed, follow every command without the tension and misery he usually carries into their bed.

She doesn’t always roll well.

Sometimes, she rolls snake eyes… and she gets this, instead.

“Fuck’s sake,” Jax groans, words slurring around the edges, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He pushes clumsily away from her, nearly falling off the couch before he manages to catch himself. “For… f’r fuck’s sake, Savvie, what the fuck.”

His wedding ring glints, light from the TV bouncing off the deceptively plain platinum band. She’s hit all over again with a wave of love for him, for the life she’s built after he was brought back home to be hers forever, just like he always should have been. She’d been an idiot not to see it, not until he was gone and she spent years in prison dreaming about getting him back.

“Fuck’s sake what?” She asks, voice light, smiling at him and poking him in the shoulder where they sit on the couch.

He doesn’t slap her hand away, but she sees him look at her and… he wants to. His expression is dark. The light is bouncing off his hazel eyes, too, giving them a strange sheen of white that wipes out the color, obscures even his dilated pupils slowly taking over the iris. “What the fuck was it?”

“What was what?”

“What the fuck did you give me?” He goes to push himself to standing only to have his knees buckle beneath him, crashing him to the floor, barely catching himself on his hands. Savvie’s mouth waters, and she swallows, trying to ignore the flutter of fascinated interest in watching his fingernails scrape the rug as he tries to steady himself. “What the fuck is it, Savvie?”

“It doesn’t matter,” She answers, without changing her own tone, leaning forward with her arms resting on her thighs. Her hair falls in heavy waves down her back and over her shoulders. “It’s not anything that could hurt you.”

This time, he doesn't say Miss Savvie or try out the sad eyes. Instead, he looks away. She can nearly hear his teeth grinding. “Yeah, but once I’m all fucked up, you will.”

“Don’t be rude,” Savvie chides him, but she doesn’t move. He looks good, on his hands and knees on the floor. Well, he looks good all the time, really, but he looks even better on his hands and knees. She knows the physique he’s built with the workout routine she makes him do, knows the muscles there hidden beneath the green sweater and jeans he’s wearing. “You’ve been stressed all week. I’m just trying to help-”

“Fucking shit, the hell you are!” He manages to sit back on his knees, then collapses back until his back hits the edge of the couch cushions, upright through sheer force of will and a bit of good luck. His hands lay limp at his sides, now. When he turns to look at her, his eyes don’t focus quite right - but the fury in them is clear.

Well.

Tonight’s not going to be the best night for them, then, she supposes. She feels the edge of a headache starting up, and sighs, looking mournfully at the movie she’d pulled up for them to watch. Another night, then. A night when the gamble pays off and doesn’t backfire. A night when he can’t remember how to be angry at her.

“Fine,” She says, heavily. “I’m not trying to help you. I’m trying to help me.”Her own voice changes - drops almost a full octave from her usual carefully constructed diction and sweetness to something sharper. “I’m making tonight easier on me. Making you less… less-” She can't think of a good way to end the sentence, so she just lets it hang there between them.

Jax snorts, looking away again. His head keeps lolling forward until his chin nearly touches his chest before he jerks it back again. “Yeah, I fucking know,” He manages, but his slurring is getting worse. “Shit f’r brains.”

Savvie sniffs, but the fake tears aren't coming as easily as they usually do. She probably accidentally gave him too much again. It’s just sometimes so hard to remember exactly how much the dose is supposed to be…

“I don’t enjoy you being cruel to me any more than you enjoy it when I do it to you, you know,” She says, suddenly… so tired. She spends so much time and effort creating a marriage herself out of a man her uncle bought for her once and abducted for her the second time, and she’s doing this all on her own - no one helps her, not really. And Jax never gives up.

She’d been sure he’d start to settle in and understand by now, but he just… he just doesn’t. And she’s so tired. Her fingers toy with the little black remote to his shock collar. Maybe she should just… just give up on having a good night and punish him for the cursing until he just bites off his stupid tongue.

No, wait.

She likes what he does with his tongue, when she gives the order. He’s so good with it now. Maybe… maybe just a small shock. Just to remind him he's hers. She takes a deep breath. “Jax… get on your-”

“On m’knees f’r discipline?” He starts laughing before she can finish, cutting her off, letting his head fall totally back against the arm of the couch until he’s staring at the ceiling. He sounds wild, almost like an animal. Her quiet watchful husband is feral, and Savvie resolves never to give him the pill she gave him tonight ever again. “Yeah, fucking… fuckin’ do it. Second I don’t play along, there y’go. Bzzzt.” He cackles, a cracked bark of laughter she’s never heard him make before. “Shut me up so you don’t hear me say it.”

Savvie’s heart twists. “Say what?”

The laughter dies in him as suddenly as it appeared. He turns his head, or tries to - it mostly just falls to one side until he’s looking at her. Their eyes meet, his all black pupil and hers with nearly no pupil at all. “How much I fucking hate your fucking guts.”

“You don’t hate me.” She says it firmly, as if he’s being ridiculous. “Don’t be mean, Jax. You don’t hate me at all.”

She takes a deep breath. Married couples have fights, even ugly ones sometimes, and they work it out-

“Yeah. I… I really do.” Disgusted, that’s the tone in his voice. Disgusted with her. “I do. I hate you.”

“Why do you hate me?”

The look he gives her is such a blatant are you a complete fucking moron that she can hear his voice even though he doesn’t say a word.

“No, hold on.” She waves one hand, dismissing her own question. His eyes briefly follow the movements of her fingers, distracted by whatever the drugs make him see there. Trails of light, maybe. It’s probably beautiful. “Hold on. I know why-”

“Do you?” His question is sharp, snapped, even as his every muscle can barely tense enough to move. “Do you fuckin’ really?”

“Yes. I do.” Savvie’s too tired to talk him in a circle tonight. She’s just… too exhausted by her bad gamble, bringing neither the snuggly Jax or the scared one, but this angry, vengeful animal instead.

Her headache is getting worse.

She grabs her glass of wine off the coffee table and chugs it so fast a little drip escapes the corner of her mouth and runs down her chin. She has to wipe it away, wincing at the… at the idea of how that looks. Her mother would have had a fit about it. If she hadn’t died years ago. “Because I had you kidnapped.”

Jax is silent, for a beat. He squints at her. “Fuck… what’d you say? Might be hearin’ shit.”

She laughs, softly. Not her usual laughter, crafted to fill up a room and put all eyes on her. This laugh is barely there, but far more genuine. “No. You're not hallucinating, that shouldn't happen with what I gave you tonight.”

“Oh, good, not this fucking drugging, then, jussss-” His head falls too far to one side and he forces it back up, groaning. “Jusss… others.”

“Only one of the pills does that. And you were cute when you thought there were monsters in the bathroom.” She gets that flat stare from him again and this time she can't hold eye contact, looking down and away, still fiddling with the remote to his collar. “I just. I do know what I did, Jax.”

“Yeah, I fucking know you know-”

“I had you kidnapped.” She takes a deep breath. It feels oddly good to say, like a scene in a movie confessing to a priest. A foul-mouthed priest she’s been sleeping with for over a year. The thought makes her smile, just a little. “My uncle had people watching you, and when I was ready, he knew where you’d be and he abducted you for me. I know that. I know that you’d run, if you could. I’d take your collar off right now if I thought you’d stay without wearing it.”

Jax is silent for so long she briefly wonders if he's flat out forgotten how to talk. Then he shrugs - or tries to, his arms don't quite follow his commands. “You’d find somethin’ else, some other reason for shit ‘round my neck. You fuckin’ like it.”

For the first time, she doesn't deny it. “I do.” She laughs at the way he looks almost comically surprised, unable to keep his usual closed-off expressions in place with the drug coursing through his veins. “What? Can't a girl have a kink?”

“Sure fuckin’ can, but you… you don' have a kink, you got… goddamn victims.”

“... I… yeah. But it-... that's not my point. It isn't about the collar, Jax. Your wedding ring does it for me, too. I could barely wait to get you home after we signed the marriage certificate.”

The glare is back. His hatred is blistering her skin. She watches him try to stand, making it nearly upright before he falls back down again with a heavy thump.

Her mouth twitches. “You want help, sweetie?”

“Ffffuck you.”

“Well, I mean, if you’re asking so nicely.” She giggles at her own joke.

He mumbles something she can't quite hear, trying to stand one more time but quickly giving up. He makes it onto the couch, at least. Savvie stands, turning to grab his ankles, shifting so he’s lying on his back, head and feet each cushioned by the arms of the comfortable, overstuffed couch. He struggles weakly, and it's hard work, but she gets him where she wants him. She barely breathes, taking in his chest rising and falling under his sweater, how his inhales are coming more sharply.

She can't help herself.

Savvie climbs on top of him, like she’s done a hundred times. She straddles him, sitting on his hips and leaning down to kiss his neck, nosing under his jaw. At first, his head tips back in resignation - but then he curses and pushes at her weakly instead. “Don’t.”

She grabs his wrists and shoves them above his head. He’s so weak, the drugs have taken all that muscle and made them… useless at holding her off. There’s a shiver of excitement down her spine. “Uh-uh, sweetie. You’re the one who said to fuck you, remember?”

She feels a thrill at saying fuck, like she’s still a kid sneaking swears in her room when her parents won’t overhear.

“Don't,” He groans. “Sav-... Savvie, stop. G’t off me. I hate you.”

“I know.” She smiles down at him. His eyes meet hers, tired and bleary. Furious and almost resigned. “I know you hate me, Jax… but I love you.”

She leans down, her hair a waterfall curtain, blocking them both off from the world. She can smell the cologne she buys for him, blended with her own pricey perfume. His wrists jerk against her grip and she digs her nails in until he grunts in pain and the skin gives beneath.

“Savvie,” he whispers.

“Sssshhh.” She lets go with one hand, shifting both his wrists to her other one, and presses a finger against his lips. “I love you so much,” She whispers. “And I don't need you to love me back, sweetie, I don’t. I just need you to lie for me.”

She kisses him, then, pressing her lips firmly to his. For half a second, his mouth is slack and unresisting even as his body shudders with disgust. He’s warm, his skin burning up beneath her. Her mouth moves against his, trying to get him to answer her, to open up.

His lips gently part. For a brief moment, Savvie feels the rush of victory.

Then he bites.

Pain blooms in a sudden flare as his teeth bury themselves into her lower lip and he jerks his head to the side, sensitive skin tearing.

“Shit!” Savvie jerks backwards, staring down at him wide-eyed. She can taste her own blood in her mouth. It’s smeared on his lips and his teeth like badly-done lipstick as he gives her a smile that's really a snarl. “Oh my God, Jax-... how dare you-”

“Fuck you! Don't fucking touch me!” He gets his arms more or less under his own control and shoves her off of him. She crashes into the coffee table, the legs giving out, tumbling her to the floor. Pain spikes hot and demanding along her hip where she hits the hard angle of the corner and she finds herself the one lying on the floor, while Jax slowly sits up, wiping blood off his lips.

Her blood.

Savvie pulls her fingers from her mouth and gasps. There’s a smear of red, bright and vibrant, the unmistakable sense of blood trickling down over her chin. She tongues at the wound, then winces as the pain flares bright, like he’s bitten her all over again. She considers tears - looks at the loathing in his eyes, the absolute rage written in the lines of his face - and then decides they’re wasted on him tonight. Instead, she just shakes her head. “That hurt.”

“Good. Don' like bein’ the one fucking bleeding for once, huh?” His eyes drift closed. He struggles to open them again, to keep his eyes on her. “Shit feelin’, isn't it?”

“God.” She swallows. Blood on her tongue is making her feel nauseous and she gets to her feet carefully. Her mouth and hip throb. She’s going to be so bruised tomorrow, going to ache so much. “You’re awful sometimes, you know that?”

“Yeah.” He grins. He hasn't bothered to try and get the red off his teeth. “I know. So… so fffffuckin’ get rid of me, then.”

Savvie snorts, limping a little as she moves to pick up the spilled wine bottle from the floor. She could shock him now - that’s what she would usually do. Or call Isaac and have him carted off to spend another month locked in the kennels with the dogs. He… probably doesn’t care about that, though. Anything to get away from her. Anything is better than her, to him.

“Get rid of you?” She drinks the last swallow in the bottle, washing blood down her throat with the wine. “Then what, Jax? I should just… live here alone, without you, for the rest of my life?”

“Fucking-... yes, or go fucking die. I don't fucking care.” The flush of hot anger bleeds away, his voice softening a little. “I don't… don' care, Savvie. I don’t care about you.”

“No. You do.” She feels a burst of desperation to make him understand. “You hate me, right? That’s caring about me, still.”

“Savvie-”

“No. I love you. You are mine, and I am keeping you. This is love, Jax. What I feel for you is true love.”

He shakes his head, swaying a little where he sits. He tries to push her away again as she takes him by the arm but his burst of energy seems to have used him up. He lets her, in the end, get him onto his feet. She leads him on his unsteady legs out of the room, and he stumbles along with her.

“S'not love,” He mumbles. She keeps an arm around his waist to help him balance. “Fucking… fuck you. Let me leave, Savvie.”

He doesn't have the strength to push her away, not anymore. He has to use her to stay up as they take the stairs one at a time, although after three or four he jerks away again and uses the railing, leaning heavily against it as he drags himself upwards, inch by inch, step by step.

She lets him pull away, watching his determination to not need her, how badly he doesn’t even want her. There’s a canyon inside of her, something dark and deep that hurts so much worse than her hip or her torn open lower lip, threatening to claw its way out as she watches the man she has forced to play the role of her husband do anything he can to avoid her touch.

Her jaw sets. “It is. It is love, and you know what? It’s all the love you’re going to get. Ever. No one else will ever love you.” Savvie’s voice stays low. “You’re not… you’re not lovable, Jax, but I don’t care, I love you anyway. Nobody else would. No one is ever going to even want to love you but me.”

He slumps. The fight’s all gone out of him, for now. Her gamble failed tonight and Jax is buckling under the weight of what runs through his veins, the heavy expectations in her eyes and her smile and her devotion.

“Fuck,” is all he says, barely a whisper under his breath.

Savvie sighs, touching her fingers to her lip again. The bleeding has slowed but there’s still a spot of red. “Goes both ways, though, I think.”

He doesn't look at her. “What?”

“This… how much you hate me… how I had to kidnap you, and put that thing on your neck to keep you here, how you wish you were anywhere but here with me… you know, I, I get it.”

He has to stop at the landing and lean over, resting his forehead against the wall.

She lays a hand on his back, leaning over to speak right against his ear. “I get that your hate is all the love I’m going to get, too, Jax. Nobody else will ever love me, either.”

Her throat feels tight, and she can’t tell if she really feels the twisting nerves in her stomach, the sense of dread, or if it’s part of her act for Jax. Sometimes even Savvie isn’t sure when she means the things she says. Sometimes, even worse, she really does.

“All we’re ever going to have is each other.”

He doesn’t answer her. But when she takes his arm in her hand, he allows himself to be dragged along towards her bedroom. The fight might be gone, but so is the feeling. There’s nothing in his eyes that shows he even heard her.

That’s okay. She can be honest, in the dark, in the middle of the night, knowing that he’s too drugged to remember anything she said when he wakes up again. She’ll lie to herself again by morning. So will he.

She just needs him to lie.

@whumpyourdamnpears consider this my evil savvie gift to you

#others' writing #oh this is raw

74 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 1 month

Text

They dared to dream. And if all those dreams came to nothing, who among us has not known the tyranny of nothing? Who can truly say that they have not tasted that ash?

#my writing #short

10 notes · View notes

just-horrible-things · 1 month

Text

Files

Adrian plans to move against Jack.

In the timeline, this connects the pieces Gauze and Choices.

[Pet Safety]

Content: BBU, BBU recovery / pet lib setting, vaguely referenced past facility whump, vaguely implied past whump of minors.

Adrian stayed up long. It hurt the wounds in his neck to lay down anyway. As in the nights before, he’d sleep upright in the armchair in his living room. And if he was sitting already - well, he could read up on Jack Donnell.

He’d pulled the files of all Donnell’s pets before the inspection; he still had them saved on his work tablet. He knew the database queries by all WRU’s employees were recorded "for compliance reasons". He just hoped they weren’t paranoid enough to also regularly check their access of files on their own computers. If they did, he’d tell them it was about Bea.

Her case file was the first in the dossier, because she’d been Donnell’s latest acquisition. Adrian had only skimmed through it, back then. His job was to check the Guards, not the other designations; and he’d long learned that reading too many case files would make him angry and restless and lose the focus he needed.

Especially those about Romantics.

Especially those about second hand Romantics.

He did take the time to read it now.

Romantic pet 400168. Taken in eight years ago, at age 18. His stomach revolted already. It was almost 50-50, he knew. The chances, of an 18 year old trainee being, in fact, 18. It was illegal to process minors. So everyone was always of age.

She looked tired on the first photos. But stunningly beautiful already. And… almost happy. Relieved, to be at WRU. Adrian wondered, how long that had lasted. He didn’t want to know. So he scrolled on.

Specifications looked like a classic case, except for one line. 'English language training. Defamiliarization with native language (Spanish).'

Some training notes, that sounded smug and highly satisfied.

Sale to a corporate lawyer, who paid extra for someone 'who looked like a virgin and fucked like a whore'.

Seven years with the guy.

Then refurb.

Hadn’t looked or felt like a virgin any longer, Adrian thought grimly; but then reassessed.

'Runaway. Rebellious behavior. Disloyal. Refurb and disciplinary measures necessary.'

'Intended sale to family friend.'

'Specification: Strict defamiliarization with Platonic/Domestic WRU Pet 278017. Strongly discouraging bonds with other pets. Fear response (new prospective’s wishes) ; to be enforced by training with Guard trainees.'

Adrian stared at the closed door to his bedroom, behind which Bea was sleeping. Good for that first owner that his name was blacked out in the files, and that Adrian couldn’t access it without risking his own life, and hers.

Bad for Jack Donnell, that Adrian knew his name.

The contract was simple; it included that there’d been some faults about her second wipe, issues with discipline and short term memory; and the buyer’s response that he knew her well enough and he’d still take her.

The photos on that contract were different. Still a perfectly pretty face, still barely any marks on her body. But the look in her eyes, this time was… haunted. Afraid.

Just as Jack had ordered.

Teeth clenched, Adrian swiped to the next files.

The Guards’ documents he’d seen before, had had his suspicions about before as well. Before Bea had confirmed them. 'They all fight.'

Background of experienced fighters, all of them. Former soldiers, mercenaries, martial arts fighters, gangsters. Some had been recruited directly into WRU from prison, instead of serving long sentences. The missing one, the one Bea had called Mac, was one of them. His former self’s list of crimes was impressive. Adrian was pretty sure it had only grown longer during Jack’s ownership. Including assault on Bea. At least in a better world, where hurting someone like her wouldn’t be a misdemeanor at best.

Whatever Mac had done to her though, whatever the others had done, in this life or their past - the one who controlled it all now was Jack.

Adrian’s hands were tied to come after Jack in his official capacity as Pet Safety Inspector. But there was always another option. Pet lib. If he could find out, where this arena was, where Mac was held, where the others fought sometimes as well, if Marta could send a team there, if they filmed and found and published evidence, even his boss would have no choice but to allow Adrian to act.

Seizing all his pets. Revoking his pet owner’s license. Smile at him, while dictating all the fines he’d have to pay.

It was far less from what Adrian truly wanted to do to the man. But at least, it would be something.

"You know, Adri, you’d also save the pets." Marta said, after he explained his plan to her, a soft frown on her face. "Which is, what pet lib do, right?"

"Um." Adrian tilted his head. "Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. That’s why I’m talking to you."

"No. You’re talking to me about revenge."

"Revenge would be for me to-" He stopped talking with a side glance to Bea and the runaway he’d helped during the raid, Noor, at the other end of the room.

Marta and he spoke Spanish, so he was painfully aware that Bea wouldn’t want to listen in - but she could. And she shouldn’t hear these things from him. He was a better man than her owners had been. He swore, he’d keep her from violence.

"Revenge would be more violent," he settled.

Marta scoffed, not convinced. "Sure. So. Anyway. If we do this, I don’t want you to confiscate them. I want to get them out for good. You find out where and what this place is, when they have their next fights. I find a safe space for a handful of recently freed, traumatized Fighters. It’ll take a while. So you take it slow, too, alright?"

He looked over at Bea, and she smiled back on instinct.

He would need her help to make out this place. She’d been there before, and it would hurt her to remember. Taking it slow was the best he could do. For her. After all, this was all for her.

And of course, to also save the other pets.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah, alright. I will take it slow."

---

Pet Safety tag list (ask to be added or removed!): @gottawhump @flowersarefreetherapy @whumplr-reader @highwaywhump @tauntedoctopuses @pigeonwhumps @whumppsychology @labgrowndemon @whumpinggrounds @somewhumpyguy @whumpzone @tragedyinblue @theelvishcowgirl @light-me-on-pyre

#others' writing #plottttt #I am looking

30 notes · View notes