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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

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Daniel Michaelson: The Rules

(TW: self-injury, blood, PTSD)

Danny only has enough time to step back and stare as the French press shatters on the kitchen’s tile floor.

He’s not sure how it happened - he did everything just right. He’d boiled the water with the electric kettle, poured it into the glass, stirred with the wooden kitchen spoon, set the press with the strainer lightly on top, waited for it to brew, and then when he’d picked it up to move it to the table…

Something happened, and he doesn’t know what.

Some spasm in his fingers that ran straight down from his collarbone to his fingernails, some old memory that wormed its way in and caught him off-guard (ever had your shoulder dislocated before? oh, little Red, let’s find out how it feels, shall we? you’ll know better than to pull away from me next time, won’t you?), and his grip wasn’t solid any longer.

His hand just… opened.

The whole thing just slipped through his fingers.

No no no.

It falls in slow motion like a movie, and Danny can only stare, unable to so much as move, as it smacks into the floor right along the rounded glass corner and shatters, boiling-hot grounds and freshly brewed coffee splattering across his bare feet.

He winces at the flash of hot pain on his feet and his right ankle, but his scarred-up left leg (iron cuff, bear trap, bear trap, barbed wire, the knife, there might have been something else too, he can’t always remember all of his punishments any longer) doesn’t feel anything - his scars mostly don’t.

“Oh no,” Danny breathes out loud. “Oh fuck no. Oh, oh fuck.”

Bad dog.

He tries to take a breath and it catches in his throat with the fear, sticks there like sludge, he is choking on terror.

Bad puppy.

What do we do when we’re bad?

He doesn’t have to do this. He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to be sorry, because he’s not there any longer, the voice in his head isn’t real.

Oh, puppy, is that what you tell yourself these days?

He is standing in a warmly-lit apartment kitchen just after dawn. He is not in the cabin, he is not in the woods, Abraham Denner is in prison, and the rules aren’t the rules any longer. Nate is sleeping in the bed in his bedroom, and he can go in and wake him up, and it will be okay.

Ryan is in the other bedroom, and his brother will help, too, he’ll help to clean up the glass and no one will be mad and it will be okay.

Daniel knows all of these things.

He knows if he wakes Nate up, that Nate will hold onto him tightly until he calms down, will let him beg forgiveness and then remind him that he has no one to ask forgiveness from, that breaking things is an accident and not a sin, not a crime, not breaking a rule.

He knows that Ryan will hover, hands out but never quite touching because no one but Nate can touch Daniel anymore, he hates it he hates it so much but he can’t stop people - but Ryan knows and holds back. He knows Ryan will tell him he’s okay, that he’s fine, that he’s free.

He knows this.

Bad dog, a very cold voice whispers. Danny makes a low noise in the back of his throat, a kind of frightened whine, as he feels Abraham’s fingers trail down the back of his neck, down his spine, until they’ve made it to the waistband of his pajama pants.

Danny stands stock-still, feeling like Abraham Denner (who isn’t here, who can’t be here, he’s in prison, it’s over) is standing right behind him.

He can feel the weight of him, the pressure, the gentle graze of a cold mouth along his shoulder, up to the crook of his neck, and he shivers.

What a bad dog, breaking the coffee. You know I don’t like that.

“I-I’m sorry,” Danny whispers to no one and nothing. His blue eyes are wide, and panicked, and hazy with fear.

For a second he’s not sure where he is, if he’s in the apartment or in the woods. Did Ryan remember to look in the woods?

What do we do when we break a rule? What do we do when we fuck up, puppy? Invisible fingers move to his chin and Danny lets his head be tilted back and up, baring his throat for a knife that doesn’t exist, exposing his neck to be cut.

Nothing happens, but the sense of Abraham behind him never wavers.

What do we do when we break something, puppy?

“W-we apologize,” Danny says to the phantom voice, low and hypnotic, that sings always in the back of his mind. The litany of rules and seductions and suggestions that made up his entire world for four years and has followed him out. “We say we’re sorry and then we get hurt so we won’t do it again.”

So say you’re sorry.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says hoarsely, feeling as though his voice is disembodied, belongs to someone else, the body that takes over when he is in the muzzle and his voice is gone.

He tries to stop himself, at first - tries to remember what it means that he is in the apartment kitchen with its tiny table and flower-printed curtains over the window instead of the log cabin in the woods.

Then an icy palm settles along the back of his neck and Abraham’s breath is on his ear, murmuring, you know what you have to do, puppy.

“I’m sorry for breaking the coffee, Abraham,” Danny mutters, in a flat, obedient voice - and his attempt to remember himself is gone, shatters under the weight of Abraham’s memory.

He moves forward with empty eyes and steps one foot deliberately down into the broken glass, listening to it crackle underneath his feet, hissing at the pain that races up his leg, the way his body wants to jerk back, to stop it, and he forces his foot down even harder instead.

Good boy. Now the other one.

His other foot is harder to move - it’s not a surprise now, it’s something he has to force his body to do against its will, and once his feet are a burning agony he makes himself stand still and wait.

Counting, feeling Abraham behind him, counting counting counting heartbeats until it’s been long enough.

Sometimes around sixty-seven or seventy-two or some other number he can’t remember any longer, he hears that low voice in his ears, in his mind, rumbling through his body. The hint of fingers at his chin again, and he turns his head to make it easier for Abraham to touch his scars - Abraham loves his scars, loves to open them back up to bleed again.

Good boy, the voice says softly, and Abraham is pleased, and Danny can’t remember what is happening, exactly, only that he fucked up and he fixed it, all by himself.

Have to be good.

Try harder.

“Danny?”

The spell breaks and suddenly Danny’s legs are searing agony all the way to his pelvis and he jumps, stepping back but that only digs the glass shards in more deeply and he lets out a cry and stumbles, falling hard onto the kitchen floor just as Nate catches him under the arms.

“Danny wh-what the f-f-fu… oh, D-Danny, no,” Nate mutters, but it’s not with the horrified incomprehension Ryan has with everything like this. No, Nate knows exactly what Danny did, and why, and he only glances back over his shoulder towards the bedroom and then slides his arms around Danny, holding him tightly, as Danny buries his head underneath Nate’s chin, fighting back a rush of hot tears and shame.

Danny’s feet hurt so fucking much all of a sudden, and the fuck-up wasn’t breaking the coffee, it was breaking the new rules, the rules of being free, the rules that tell him not to be fixed, not to hurt himself, the rules that tell him there aren’t any rules.

“Shit, sh, shit Nate, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I could-… I could hear him, I could hear him telling me-”

“Ssssshhh, it’s oh-okay, D-Danny,” Nate says softly, without judgement or shame, kissing into his wavy red hair, and Danny twists in his grip to hold onto him like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. Each kiss pulls him back to the world, reminds him of where he is, who he’s with. I love you. He won’t say it, and neither does Nate, not really, but he thinks it’s there.

Abraham said he loved Nate all the time and none of it was real.

“I-I fucked up, Nate, I had to, to fix it-”

“I know. I kn-know, Danny.” Love is in everything Nate does. What he says never matters nearly so much as the arms around him and Nate’s understanding, his reassurance, the smell of him and the sense that there is someone who can keep carrying Danny until he can carry himself. “I’ve g-g-got you. I know, I kn-know, I know. It’s okay, n-n-nobody’s in trouble. I’ll g-get some, uh, s-s-some-”

“Tweezers,” Danny gasps, the pain throbbing in his feet. He can see smears of red on the floor, feel the trickle of it blood over the arch of his left foot. His feet are still covered in the coffee grounds and the kitchen floor is such a fucking mess. “I, I can clean it up, I can clean-”

“No,” Nate says firmly. “Just st-st-stay here, I’ll be right b-b-back with tw-tweezers and g-gah… gauze. Just w-w-wait for me, oh-okay? D-Don’t clean.” He leaves for the bathroom and Danny just stares at the shattered French press.

He is in an apartment, and Abraham Denner is in prison.

Nate is here with him. Nate got him out, and they’re safe, and he never has to go back there again. Ryan is here, Ryan who never stopped looking. Ryan who doesn’t understand but never stops trying to help.

He’s free.

So why can’t he stop following the rules?

#whump #broken whumpee #conditioning #deconditioning #dehumanization #trauma recovery whump #caretaker #Nathaniel vandrum #Daniel Michaelson's story #tw: self injury #caretaker and whumpee #hurt/comfort #h/c #comfort whump #pet whump

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

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Daniel Michaelson: Beaten/Numb

(for @whumptober2019 - combining yesterday and today’s themes of Beaten and Numb - plus @pinkcupboardwitch’s excellent suggestion of psychological whump/mind games. TW: Serious injury/violence and physical abuse, noncon touching, noncon kissing, implied/referenced torture, implied/referenced noncon, I really cannot emphasize enough that Abraham Denner is a bad bad man)

“Red!”

Abraham’s voice echoes across the small clearing and Daniel’s head jerks up instantly where he kneels in the dirt, a bit of red hair flopping over one eye, wincing as the sudden motion aggravates the new bruises around his neck from last night.

“Come here, boy!”

I’m not your fucking dog, you piece of shit. I am twenty… something years old - how old am I? I don’t remember anymore, why don’t I remember how old I am…

No. Stop it. Those aren’t the right thoughts. Be good, Red. It doesn’t matter that you can’t remember things. All that matters is that he wants you now.

You have to be good.

You want to be good.

He’s been carefully looking over the last few carrots from the spring planting, trying to decide just by looking at the thin green tops if they’re ready to pull for tonight. Abraham has a venison roast out of the freezer thawing in the sink - he likes roasts if you put onions, carrots, and potatoes in and cook it forever, until all the vegetables have gone soft and taste like the meat and the venison is as soft as beef.

Daniel knows how to cook everything just the way he likes. He can’t remember if he likes roasts or not - there’s never enough food, and he takes what Abraham will give him and he’s grateful for it.

Thank you for letting me eat, Abraham.

He lets his fingers trail across some carrot leaves, frowning at the lack of sensation he feels. After living here and being forced to use harsh cleaning chemicals and bury his hands in boiling water - after Abraham’s knives and the barbed wire and worse - Daniel can’t really feel much with his hands at all.

It doesn’t matter. His hands work well enough for gardening and cleaning and cooking and worse - and sometimes the lack of feeling is a relief. None of it matters, nothing matters, just that Abraham is calling, and he needs to stand up, but he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want to go.

Because he’s not a fucking dog.

Part of him still wants to refuse, even knowing what happens when he does, even knowing there are worse things than a little bit of cutting that can be done to him.

His heart is speeding up with his anger, pounding into his chest, and that’s not good; Abraham wants him to want to be his good boy, to be happy to be called, not pissed off.

He practices breathing in: inhale - I’m not a person, just the puppy - hold for five, exhale - no one wants me but Abraham now - inhale - My family thinks I’m dead and no one is looking for me - hold for five, exhale - I love Abraham and I want to be good - and feels his heart start to slow, a little, the dangerous anger starts to fade out, replaced by the way Abraham wants him to think.

Part of his brain wails that none of it is true, the thoughts Abraham feeds into his mind with the breathing exercises, at the end of a knife, licking the blood from his throat. Part of his brain wants to scream that there has to be some way out of this hell, but he tries not to listen, because there isn’t, and telling himself there is might make him less numb.

His body isn’t his own. His life doesn’t belong to him. If he starts trying to fight that knowledge again, he’ll scream and scream and never stop.

Be good. Be Red.

Red is numb.

Red is a good boy.

“Oh, little Reeeeeed… come here, boy…” Abraham’s voice is a singsong, but he doesn’t like to call twice. If he has to call three times, that’s breaking a rule.

Always answer when Abraham calls.

“Coming, Abraham! I’ll, um, I’ll be right there!” He glances over at Nate, who is wearing waterproof boots, real pants meant for the outdoors, a heavy shirt to protect against the hint of chill in the spring air, and gardening gloves, digging up some potatoes and tossing them into a basket next to him.

Nate moves slower than he does, thanks to the one busted hand. He has to dig with the little shovel, lay it to the side, pick out the potato, and then pick the shovel up and do it again, since the other can’t quite close enough to grip.

The two of them meet eyes, warm blue on mossy, faded green, uncertainty and more than a little worry written across both of their faces. “Wh-what do you think he wants?” Daniel asks, in a low voice he knows won’t carry far.

With Nate, he’s still a person, just for a few seconds at a time - in stolen kisses and touches while checking traps together, in furtive moments when Abraham sleeps and Nate comes to lay with him on the living room floor, in the old movies they watch sometimes and laugh along with.

On the best days - when Abraham leaves them alone while he goes on supply runs (Danny still securely chained to the living room wall, he’s not going anywhere, and Nate won’t ever leave again, they all know that now) and Nate teaches Danny how to waltz, to tango, to do all kinds of dancing with his chain scraping the floor.

Sometimes they talk about Nate’s career as a professor and how Danny wanted to be an anthropologist. They break the rules and think about a life other than this.

Then, and only then, does Daniel let himself stop being good and really just let himself be Daniel, the person that used to live in his body, when he didn’t have to be good, when he didn’t want to be.

When he lets the careful numbness crack and tries to find happiness, because he’s going to be here until he dies and if he can’t sometimes be happy he’ll lose his fucking mind.

But then Abraham always comes back, and his voice is back in Danny’s head and his hands are on his body, the body that doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to Abrahm Denner because Daniel Michaelson doesn’t exist any longer, just Red - and Red only exists for Abraham, to be hurt whatever way he wants, forever.

Nate only looks away from him, back to the potatoes. There’s a moment where his jaw becomes a hard line and the green eyes go flinty and angry. Then he slumps forward and goes back to work, slowly shaking his head. “D-d-doesn’t matter. You h-have to a-a-answer.”

“I don’t want to,” Daniel whispers, because he can say disobedient things to Nate and know that he’ll never tell Abraham he said them, thought the wrong way, didn’t want to be good. “I don’t ever want to, Nate. I don’t… I don’t want to try harder.” He drops his voice to a whisper, says the words he’s never, ever allowed to say. “I fucking hate him.”

“I kn-know, Danny-” Nate catches himself with a wince, even though there’s no way they were overheard. “R-R-Red. Sorry. I’m w-w-w-working on it, oh-okay? I’m t-trying to f-f-figure it out I, I h-h-have an idea, but… Go on b-before he g-g-gets mad.”

Working on what? What are you figuring out? He doesn’t dare ask. Nate might be having disobedient thoughts, too, fighting the same anger deep within himself that Daniel fights each and every day, the person he used to be screaming to get back out.

Daniel shoves that person even further away, buries him under the puppy. The puppy doesn’t think the wrong things, the puppy wants to be good. Abraham will know if he’s not being the puppy, he’ll know, and then the memory of last night’s fingers squeezing the air from his throat will be the least of his problems.

He hops up to his feet, turning and half-jogging across the yard, trying to be visible to Abraham as soon as possible, to prove that he really is answering the order immediately, just the way he wants. His throat aches as he takes in deeper breaths but he ignores it. He’s good at ignoring it by now, at letting all the different places he feels pain run together into a comforting nothing-feeling.

He’s good at it, but the person-thoughts trickle back in.

I used to be a person. I used to be more than this. There used to be more to living than trying to figure out the next way he’s going to hurt me. I have a little brother, he’s still out there somewhere looking for me.

Stop it. Never think of any life before or after this one. This is all there is. No one is looking. Noe one cares. Everyone thinks you’re dead. You know the rules, Red, remember the rules.

Never think of any home but this.

There used to be a home other than this.

God damn it, no, there isn’t any home other than this, not for me, not ever again.

“I’m, I’m right here, I��m coming right away, Abraham, I’m coming!”

Abraham laughs, the braying sound bouncing off the trees, and Daniel winces but doesn’t slow down as it settles into his bones, crawls under his skin, until he can feel the echo in his fingernails and down to his half-frozen numb toes in the wet grass.

Abraham can turn even obedience into something to laugh at - make out of his willingness to do as he was told a joke about the phrasing of his words, and he feels the grime that lives eternally on his skin all over again.

Dirty and empty and hollow but that’s okay, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that Abraham wants him right now and he needs to be good.

The metal cuff on his ankle shifts as he moves, a flash of old pain as the metal rubs against the skin that’s been some version of raw or open or scarred since he came here, and he can feel the slightest chill in the air right through the threadbare T-shirt and pants he always wears. He’s barefoot - it’s warm enough not to waste boots on the puppy, Abraham said this morning, and even though his feet and his toes are so cold they’ve gone numb, he doesn’t dare disagree.

If he’s good, he can get his feet close to the fireplace and warm them up later, maybe. Or at least take a bath, but Daniel doesn’t like baths, because Abraham always watches him. Makes comments. Sometimes pushes his head under the water in the giant old clawfoot tub. Sometimes does worse than that.

He’s not really supposed to not like it, because he’s supposed to want whatever Abraham wants, even though he hates it - hates his eyes and his hands and his fucking mouth - and…

Daniel stops himself from thinking, slowing to a trot, trying to breathe.

He has to force himself to focus, to think of the ache in his left side, the bruising around his throat. Focus on it, use it to settle his heart, to push away the anger that might otherwise boil out of him and end with being in trouble again. If he can’t calm down, there would be more ways he could be hurt, there would be worse than what’s already been done.

He can be made worse than broken.

There are so many things worse than dead, and Abraham knows them all.

Inhale.

I will never leave here.

Hold for five counts.

Exhale.

I want to be good.

Abraham is standing over along the side of the cabin, near the cellar, and Daniel skids to a stop twenty feet away, his face carefully set into his usual eager-to-please nervousness, trying to hide the disobedient, roiling thoughts underneath the surface.

The cellar doors are open.

No.

I don’t like the cellar. The cellar is dark. I don’t like the dark.

“Wh-why, um, why is the cellar, the-…” He trails off, voice cracking. “Abraham, I-… why are you, I don’t like to see those doors open, I don’t want-”

all alone in the dark, all alone all alone all alone

“No one gives a fuck what you like or want, puppy. Why did you stop so far away?” Abraham has his head tilted slightly to bask in the weakly warm sunlight of spring. The yellow sunshine make his skin seem even whiter, less human than it normally does - brings out the suggestion of deep shadows underneath the high cheekbones, turns his light eyes into glittering opaque glass Daniel cannot read, like the sheen of ice on a lake.

There are things underneath the ice in Abraham Denner’s eyes. Dark things that drag Danny under into the cold water, to keep him there forever.

“I, um, I stopped because I saw the cellar-”

“Why would that bother you, puppy?” Abraham smiles, a bright smile that shows his teeth, only a shade whiter than his skin. It’s never a good sign when he smiles like that. It’s never a good sign when he doesn’t, either.

“It, um, I don’t… I don’t like the cellar-… when you put me in the, the cellar, you, um, you leave me there.”

“Only when you’re bad, little Red. Are you going to be bad today?”

“No! No, I won’t!” Danny swallows back revulsion at the nervous fearful whine in his own voice, twisting his fingers into the fabric of his T-shirt in a helpless, childlike way he can’t seem to stop. “I won’t. I’ll be good. I want to be good for you, Abraham, you know, you know I want to be good now. J-just like Lyken says, in the show, I want to be good.”

Please please please not the cellar, please

“Hmmm… you’re so good at saying what I want to hear, aren’t you? But you’re still too far away. I said come here, Red.” Abraham holds out one hand, white fingers curled slightly, a clear command, invitation, and thread all in one.

Don’t hesitate, never hesitate, never reject a touch.

Daniel’s body jerks into automatic motion before his brain can catch up and remind him that he hates this - this place, this man, the breathing exercises, every single fucking thing about his life but Nate - and instead he keeps his eyes on the open cellar, on the yawning gaping black hole in the ground, the first few rickety steps visible, maybe a patch of the dirt floor beneath if he stood close enough.

He doesn’t want to stand close enough.

alone in the dark

Never hesitate when Abraham wants you, his brain shrieks the reminder, alarm bells ringing. He made him call twice already, he stopped too far away, he’s courting disaster if he hesitates now. He steps forward and ducks his head, leaning his face into Abraham’s touch.

A cold palm rests against his cheek, Abraham’s thumb pressing just a little into the scar that curves over his cheekbone, long fingers just brushing his earlobe. He swallows against the surge of nausea, forces it back before it can make him go any paler than he already is.

Puppies don’t get sick at their owner’s touch.

“Good boy,” Abraham says in a low, pleased rumble, and Daniel tries to feel reassured by it and not dirty and ashamed. For a second, there’s only silence and the vaguest hint of breeze moving his hair, the chill that seems to slip right through the thin cotton of his clothing, raising goosebumps on his arms and making him shiver. “That’s my very good boy. I want to ask you something, little Red - and it’s very, very important that you be honest with me.” Daniel tries to breathe.

I love Abraham and I want to be good.

No one will ever find me here.

“Wh-what do you want to ask?” Abraham’s hand slips down from his face and drops slowly to his throat, curling around, fingers placing themselves perfectly over the bruises, following the map laid out of exactly where Abraham had cut off his air last night.

The barest bit of pressure against the mottled bruising makes a fresh new wave of fear run through him as he gasps, and he’s not choking - he’s drowning. It’s not the lack of air - it’s the overwhelming frozen touch, the look in those odd nearly-colorless eyes, that pulls him under the water for the dark things to devour and holds him there.

“Pl-please don’t-… don’t do that again,” Daniel whispers. “D-Don’t take my air, please, Abraham, I, I need the air…” He’s taking in what breath he can, hands clenching into fists to keep himself from trying to grab at Abraham and pull himself free.

It won’t work, and he’ll just get in trouble for breaking the rules.

“I don’t have to, if you answer my question. Little Red, would you like to go in the cellar today? Just for four hours or so?”

every time he puts me down there, they go, they’re gone for weeks and it’s harder and I get so weak, I get so hungry, I ran out of water last time, I don’t want to be alone, I don’t, I can’t, please no, please not the dark

“No!” It’s more an exhalation than a sound, whistling air around the grip on his throat, the aching of the bruises. He’s taller than Abraham, but staring into his eyes always makes Danny feel so fucking small. “I don’t, I don’t want to go down there, please, Abraham, please don’t make me.”

“No? Only for four hours and you say no?” The hand leaves his throat, sliding along the edge of his shirt’s neckline, trailing along his shoulder. Daniel shivers and holds himself still, dropping his eyes down to the ground, hands still at his sides.

“I, but-…” But what if you’re lying and you leave again. He can’t say the words, because suggesting Abraham is lying is disobedient, but sometimes he does lie. Lies and puts Nate in the car and leaves Danny in the cellar with his hands tied for a month until he runs out of food and begs and begs and begs and somehow Abraham always seems to know when Danny is about to lose his mind from the isolation and hunger and thirst and reappears to take him back up the stairs, dirty and frightened and full of the need, the deep deep need, to be so good it never happens again. “But I, I can’t go down there, I hate it-”

“Poor thing, you’re so scared of the cellar, aren’t you?” Abraham’s voice is sweet, and loving, and Daniel hates this voice most of all - it’s a lie, Abraham hates him, only loves hurting him, because there are things like Danny in the world that only exist to be hurt. “What kind of grown-ass man is scared of the dark, little Red?”

He knows what Abraham wants him to say. He knows, and he hates it, and the person part of his brain tells him to spit in his face, punch him, give him another black eye and take his punishment afterward. But the person-voice is getting very, very small and weak compared to the, to the…

“I’m not a grown-ass man,” Daniel mumbles down at his feet. “I’m just the puppy.”

There’s a silence, and he glances up from behind a curtain of wavy red hair to see Abraham smiling at him, a wide and beaming, proud smile. Danny had, after all, just done a perfect trick. Like putting up his paws to beg for a treat. Roll over, sit, stay, that’s what’s left of Daniel Michaelson.

Daniel’s face burns with humiliation.

“That’s my good boy,” Abraham breathes, and Daniel shudders at the joy in his voice, the way the touch of his fingers changes, becomes more intense somehow, more purposeful.

Daniel turns his head to the side when Abraham’s hand slides up into the back of his hair. He never pushes him away. He never fights back. He closes his eyes, slowly, trying to focus on the way his eyes feel when closed, how his eyelashes are long enough that he can almost feel them brush his skin - he tries to deaden his skin to Abraham’s touch, to not even notice any longer.

Be numb. Be good. Go away in his head and come back when it’s over, when whatever it is Abraham intends to do is over.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Abraham murmurs. “I know what you’re up to, and you know I don’t like that. No escape for you.” The fingers tighten suddenly in his hair, he’s gripped on until Daniel can feel a flash of pain in his scalp and the velcro-like rip of a bunch of hair being pulled out of his skin, yanking his head backwards hard until his back is arched and his eyes fly open to stare up into the blue sky above.

Breathe. See the sky? The sky is still there, no matter what happens to him. No matter how small or inhuman or broken he gets, the sky is still there.

Let him do whatever he wants. Be good.

No one is coming to save you.

“I was thinking I would give you a choice,” Abraham spoke mildly, as though he wasn’t tearing Daniel’s hair out with the strength of his grip, slowly forcing his head further and further back until Danny finally realized what he wanted and buckled his knees, dropping like a stone to kneel in the dirt.

Cold damp from the wet grass began immediately to soak into the knees of his pajama pants, along the front of the shins. He kept his hands carefully at his sides, and now, staring up from the ground, he wasn’t looking at the sky. He was looking right into Abraham’s face as the man leaned over him.

“I’m bored and I want to play a game. You don’t get choices very often, do you?”

Danny tried to shake his head but it only pulled on the grip on his hair and he hissed in pain and went still again, swallowing, his throat aching as if to remind him that his hair wasn’t the only injured place right now.

There was never just one injured place, really.

“N-No Abraham, puppies don’t get choices. They, they like when their owners choose. I b-b-belong to you, so you, um-… You choose because you, you own me, my body, um… I’m just the puppy.“ He recites the words automatically, rewarded with a loosening of Abraham’s fingers, breathing a sigh of relief as sharp pain went back to a dull ache. “What, um, what kind of choice are you going to give me? What’s the game?”

He didn’t want to make a choice. If he didn’t have to make a choice, he felt safer, none of it was his fault or his responsibility. It was all being done to him, and Daniel had learned how to handle that, to go away in his head and let it happen to someone else.

Making a choice made him part of it.

“You’ll like this, puppy. You can choose to go in the cellar for four hours��”

Daniel whines in the back of his throat, a helpless unconscious sound of fear, shifting where he kneels in the dirt. The yawning darkness along the side of the cabin has a physical weight in the back of his mind, a constant drumbeat of panic and the dark things and the pressure he knows will settle over him down there, the buzzing static nothing, the dwindling apples and water day by day by day until it’s gone and still he’s all alone…

“Not your favorite option? Well, maybe you’ll need to think that over. You can go in the cellar for four hours, unharmed, just put your handcuffs on… or… We can learn about something else.”

“Wh-what?” Daniel will do anything, anything to stay out of the cellar, anything at all, and he looks up with a desperate plea in his eyes. “I, whatever it is, Abraham, if you, if you’ll let me choose, I-”

“Ever had your shoulder dislocated?”

Daniel blinks, and the fingers finally leave his hair entirely and brush down the back of his neck, along the line of his shoulder, then back down to his shoulder blades, rubbing at it through the fabric of his shirt. “Uh, um, I… n-no, no I haven’t.”

“Oh, let’s find out, shall we? Last night when I put my hands around your neck you pulled away from me. You’ll know better than to pull away from me next time, won’t you?”

Daniel takes in a deep breath - or tries, but he can’t manage more than a gasp. “I, um. You’re going to- to pull out my shoulder?”

“Dislocate it. Then I’m going to hang you by your arms in the smokehouse until the sun goes down. It’s only nine-thirty, Red. That’s a lot of hours to hang by a dislocated shoulder. Or… four hours in the cellar. That’s not so long, is it, to live in the dark?” Abraham’s hand wraps around the ball of his shoulder and Danny starts to shake, unable to stop himself, to hold still like he’s supposed to.

“That’s your choice,” Abraham says, in a voice that’s nearly a purr. “Do you want to go in the cellar, or do you want to dislocate your shoulder and hang out in the smokehouse for a few hours? You choose, Red. All on you.”

If I choose the cellar he’ll leave for days again, he and Nate, and I’ll be alone in the dark.

“N-No, I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want to choose-”

“Sssshhhhhh. No one gives a fuck what you want.” Abraham leans down as close as he can get, licks along the shell of Daniel’s ear with his cold, cold tongue. Daniel groans unwillingly - it’s an awful feeling, the wet and the cold - but Abraham mistakes it for something else and laughs at him, breaths of cool air against his dampened skin. “Oh, you like that, huh? We can learn more about that little response later. First, make your choice. I’ll count to ten. If you don’t choose by then, I’ll come up with something even worse.”

There is always something worse that Abraham can do to him.

Daniel tries to breathe, to practice his breathing exercises, but nothing comes. Instead he only gasps, half-chokes on his own fear, staring at the blackness of the cellar, then up into Abraham’s delighted, dancing eyes.

“I, I don’t want to, I can’t choose, Abraham, please, please you choose, please don’t make me-”

“One… two… three… four…”

I love Abraham and I want to be good. Making a choice is good. Making a choice is what he wants.

I don’t want to go into the cellar, I don’t want to be alone in the dark.

Please no, please no, I don’t want to hang by my shoulder, I don’t want to do that either.

“Five… six… seven… running out of time, little Red…”

Not the dark, not alone in the dark, please God don’t leave me alone in the dark again

My shoulder’s going to hurt so much, so much

If I don’t choose he’ll do something even worse, so much worse, he can always do something worse

“Eight… nine…”

“M-my shoulder!” Danny bursts out, nearly a shout, reaching up without thinking to grab onto Abraham’s arms in supplication, staring up at him with wide, panicked blue eyes glittering with tears. “Pl-please, Abraham, I can be good, I’ll be so good for you, please just don’t make me go down in the cellar again. Please, my shoulder, we’ll do my shoulder!”

“Good choice.” Abraham presses a kiss to the top of his head, then to the side of his temples, against his cheek where the line of the scar is, licks at the notch in his jaw, down to the pulse beating wildly in his neck. “That’s my very good boy. You try very hard for me, don’t you, Red?”

“I-I do, I can try harder, I’ll try harder-”

“Good. Good, good boy. Now.” Abraham disentangles himself from Danny’s grip, steps back and puts one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping his upper arm in an implacable frozen steel clamping. “Count to five out loud. On the count of five, I’m going to make you so fucking sorry you pulled away from me last night. And you keep your eyes open and on me the whole fucking time.”

Danny nods, slowly, raising his eyes to meet Abraham’s again, trying to practice his breathing, desperately trying to cling on to some calm, some sanity, as his mind screams at him to disobey, to be a person, to fucking run.

But he can’t run. He can’t fight. He can’t do anything, except what Abraham wants.

Inhale. No tears, no tears, no tears. Stay calm.

“One… t-two…”

Hold.

“Three…”

He can feel the tears in his throat, knows they’ll come out in his voice. Abraham’s grip tightens.

Exhale - shaky air, but Abraham doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t say anything, anyway, only stares right into Daniel’s terrified eyes.

Danny can feel the cellar pulling at him, wishing it had been his choice, all alone in the dark might have been better, only four hours…

But it’s never only four hours, it would be days, and he can’t be alone in the dark again.

Be good be good be good.

I don’t want to be in the dark.

“F-Four… oh god, Abraham, I can’t, I can’t, please-”

“One more, Red.” Abraham’s voice is gentle, loving, soft with affection, soothing his jangled frightened nerves. “Be my good boy and just one more number… if you take this well I won’t even leave you all day, that’s how good I am to you.“

“F-f-f-five, please, I’m so sorry I pulled away, I won’t do it again, I can try harder to be good please don’t-”

There’s a sudden horrifying pressure on his arm and shoulder, cracking and grinding somewhere deep within him, then a pop as Abraham pulls his arm apart with inhuman strength and a smile as wide as the sky. There’s a moment where Danny’s arm feels strange and loose, a half-second of horrified anticipation, and then - and then the pain hits and his brain bursts into an agonized explosion.

Danny tries to twist away from it, but that only pulls his shoulder more in Abraham’s steady iron grip, and he hears the sound of a horrible wailing scream tearing apart the air before he realizes the sound is coming from him.

The things that live behind Abraham’s eyes are pulling him down, pulling him under, and they’ll feed and feed and feed on his pain.

He is screaming so loud he cannot hear the lust in Abraham’s voice as he pets into his hair, murmuring, “That’s my good fucking boy, little Red, I wonder what else makes you scream like that…” His fingers card through the wavy red hair as Danny curls around himself, gasping - he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, the ends of his fingers on that side are tingling and half-numbed and the pain throbs and throbs into his lungs, he can’t breathe.

“Pl-please, God, please, I’m so sorry, Abraham, I’m so fucking sorry, I don’t, I won’t ever pull away again, please make it go back in, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’ll be good, I’ll be good-… oh god, oh god it fucking hurts, I’m so sorry-”

“I love you so fucking much, puppy,” Abraham speaks in a thick, throaty voice, pulling Danny to his feet as he screams again, pulling him close, nuzzling through the tears tracks and against the scars, pressing kisses as Danny cries in heaving sobs, but he doesn’t pull away.

He’s too lost in the pain and the strange way his whole arm feels loose, like it could just fall off of him at any moment, the way he can’t take a deep breath, the way every nerve-ending in his body is somehow connected to his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Danny whispers with Abraham’s lips on his scars, cold tongue licking up his tears. “I’m so sorry I’ll never, I’ll never, I’ll be good I want to be good, please, I want to be good…”

When Abraham kisses him, Danny’s mouth is open as he tries to gasp in breath to beg some more, and Abraham’s mouth on his is so fucking cold and steals all of what little air he can find.

But he doesn’t - he can’t - pull away.

Abraham finally pulls back, smiling at him, touching the side of his face with an expression like a proud father. “You’re so gorgeous,” He says softly, the words buzzing and dancing and bursting around and through the white noise in Danny’s head. “You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re hurting for me, my sweet little Red. Just two hours in the smokehouse, I think, that’s my good boy. Then I’ll help you…” Abraham presses a kiss to his forehead, laughing at the wide blue eyes that barely see him, the audible whistling gasps for breath around the ache. “And you, my darling, my sweet boy, my good puppy, can help me. You don’t need a working arm for that.”

Then he drags him by his dislocated arm towards the smokehouse across the yard, laughing every time Danny stumbles and cries out at the new flash of agony.

Nate, still working in the garden, hears the scream and jerks his head up, jaw hardening into that straight line again, teeth ground together so hard they hurt. He can only stare, hearing Danny’s pleading and begging and continued pained shrieking, Abraham’s wild, joyful laughter, braying and echoing around and bouncing off the trees.

Then he looks back down at his work, digging the next potato out of the earth with furious zeal, digging and digging and digging until his fingernails are caked with dirt and the basket is nearly full and still, still Danny is screaming.

The screams eventually coalesce into slurred words, occasional shrieks.

Nate knows what"s happening in there. Daniel, after all, isn’t the first man Abraham’s played a game like that with. Bram rigs the game, he always wins. Anyone stuck playing is always, always beaten.

Last time it was Nate - and his choice was a broken knee (I love you so much… you’ll never fucking run again, will you, baby?) or Ashley choosing what part of him to bury her knife in… and Ashley’s eyes had been staring far too long at Nate’s pelvis.

Nate swallows hard as he listens to Danny’s throaty wail, begging Abraham’s forgiveness for what he’s done wrong, promising to do better, try harder, be good, if only he’ll let him out and make it stop.

His knee begins to throb, a very old pain, in time with Danny’s pleading.

The sound of the smokehouse door slamming shut - and Bram’s joyful laughter as he heads back into the house - muffles Danny’s wailing until it sounds like nothing more than wind, until it quiets down to hopeless, hoarse sobbing.

The sun goes on shining and the sky is a beautiful, bright, clear blue.

It’s going to be a gorgeous spring, and Nate is running out of time.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Daniel Michaelson: Trembling

(for @whumptober2019, Day 20: Trembling TW: serious violence/torture, SW: creepy whumper thoughts, Abraham Denner is a bad bad man)

“Am, am I doing okay so far?” The man’s blue eyes are wide, moving from one lawyer to another, a constant dance of seeking approval and reassurance from anyone he can see.

Of course, no one in the courtroom can see the lawyers he is looking at, only him - he is the center of the frame, wavy red hair falling nearly to his eyes, scarred hands flat on the table but visibly shaking even through the digital image projected on the screen.

“You’re doing great, Mr. Michaelson. We just need to keep going, okay? Do you think you’ll be fine to continue?”

The man slowly nods. “I, I can try to keep going.” The warm blue eyes are rimmed in red by now - his testimony includes several edits and jump-cuts, and the jury doesn’t see the tears but they do see the way his face has changed, over time, from nervous but resolute to sniffing and uncertain and finally to frightened and eager to smooth over whatever offense he thinks he might have caused by not being perfect enough.

He doesn’t give up, he never stops trying.

He’s trying so hard to be brave, and it’s so fucking beautiful.

He’s being such a good boy, and Abraham wishes he were right here in the courtroom so he could tell him so right to his face.

Abraham Denner can nearly feel those tear tracks that shimmer only a little in the soulless fluorescent lights, the way they would give the slightest damp warmth if he ran his thumb down pretty red scar dug deep into his cheekbone, down the softer skin below it, all the way to his jaw.

He could picture how Red would hold himself so still, trembling under Abraham’s touch, but he would never flinch or pull away.

If Abraham wanted information from him, of course, it would all fall out of his mouth like a waterfall of words, whatever he wanted to hear, to know, all his for the taking. Red was all his for the taking, but these lawyers - they did not know how to take him correctly.

Instead, they question and dance around and try to coax without really coaxing. It’s annoying, but it draws everything out, so he tries to sit back and enjoy it. Honestly, who knows when he’ll see his Red all tear-stained and gorgeously tempting like this again?

Little less bleeding than he likes to see, granted, but he can just imagine that part.

His memories provide so many images of Red bleeding.

“Okay, Daniel. Let’s keep going.”

“What is your name? Who do you belong to?” He holds Red by the chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes where the man kneels on the floor, his wrists tied with barbed wire Abraham found in the body’s workshop out back and held out in front of him at chest level, holding himself perfectly still so none of the barbs will cut him.

He’s been kneeling like that for an hour in the smokehouse, in the dark with the scent of old fires and curing meat all around them. Abraham set a timer on his phone and sat back to take some photos, then simply waited, watching him, until the timer beeped.

It’s hot, and Red is pouring sweat in rivulets and rivers, but he doesn’t try to get up, and he doesn’t try to move his wrists even as his arms begin to tremble with the effort of holding themselves up like this.

“Red, m-my name is Red.” The voice shakes, it shivers for him. Red is always shivering for him, one way or another, when he bleeds. “My name is Red and I belong to y-you, Abraham, to you.”

“Good boy. Put your hands on the ground.” He watches Red do as he is told, smiling as some of the barbs finally prick into his skin and Red winces, laying his palms flat on the ground. “Now are we going to try any of that nonsense again? You going to try picking the lock on your chain again?”

“N-No. I’m sorry, Abraham, I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“Good.” Abraham lets one boot come out and press against Red’s wrists, forcing the barbed wire to dig into the skin, and listens to the sound of Red hissing through his teeth at the pain, digging his fingernails into the earthen ground, with perfect contentment.

Those blue eyes stay open, and they never look away from his, even as they well with tears.

Abraham leans down, reaches out, and gently wipes one tear away as it slides down that perfectly scarred cheek. “I adore you, Red,” He says softly. “You’re going to be our perfect puppy forever.”

Red licks his lips, breathing in shallow pants to avoid making any noise as Abraham puts even more weight over the wire wrapped around his wrists, and nods quickly. “Yes,” He says in a gasp. “Yes, I will, I will, please stop, I’m sorry, I’ll try harder to be good-”

“Yes,” Abraham says thoughtfully, and pulls his foot back, listening to Red’s relieved half-sob in response. “Yes, you will try harder. And you will be good.”

“Th-thank you, Abraham,” Red manages in a voice just above a whimper. “Thank you for listening to my apology, thank you for only hurting me a little, thank you.”

The way the lawyers question him is irritating. What Red really needs, of course, is someone in that room to give him some orders, using his true name, the name Abraham had gifted to him, a way to understand his place, to become what he was meant to be.

If they would only tell his good boy what to do or say, of course, Red would understand what they want from him. He would feel safer, more secure, hemmed in the way he deserves to be. Red feels safer in a life full of cages, now, defined bars made up of commands and orders and expectations.

Red likes the rules. He understands his name.

All those lawyers in fancy suits do, though, is ask questions, they give him choices. It confuses Red, makes him struggle to figure out the right thing to say.

No one bothers to get Abraham’s advice about any of it, of course. He’s the bad guy, he’s the villain, just for simply doing what came naturally to him and turning Red into what he had been meant to be all along.

In a world where the monsters all wear nametags and point at someone higher-up when called to accept responsibility, Abraham is a monster all on his own, one they cannot tame, and so they want to lock him away.

They call him a lot of things, in the newspapers that report on the trial - he gets four newspapers every day in jail - but mostly he’s picked up the nickname The Carver in the Cabin, and he kind of likes that one. It’s better than he thought he’d get, anyway, and his guards are quick to let him know that the Carver is the nickname that seems to be sticking.

He likes the guards. They’re his best friends now.

Granted, everyone he talks to is his best friend if you give him long enough - that’s always been true.

Abraham and Ashley have been caught so many times, but until Nate burned the cabin down none of those moments ever seemed to stick.

Abraham Denner could charm the pants off anyone - and often did, shortly before killing them.

Ashley could never seem to charm anyone - something about her was too cold, the violence in her coiled too close to the surface and too visible to anyone who looked right at her. Abraham could bury his.

To him, though, Ashley was always his warm and loving twin sister. To him, she had been arms around him from birth, arms he could still sometimes feel even though she had been dead for more than four years.

Nate’s fault - but he couldn’t feel angry… he couldn’t feel anything but pride at his black-haired prince for being strong enough to pull it off, to leave. No, he’s not mad at Nate.

He’s mad at Ashley for leaving Nate the opening to kill her. She should have known better.

In the video, Red rubs compulsively at the scars around his face, and Abraham feels his mouth go a little dry just watching him, pouring himself a glass of water (next to him, his defense lawyer flinches, just the slightest bit, and Abraham feels good about that). He sips slowly, savoring the cool clear nothing-taste of it while imagining Red’s tears were just for him, just for him and Nate, the way it should be.

Red, a tall and lanky man with heavily muscled shoulders, is hunched over like a child waiting for punishment with fear in his eyes, and it’s all because of Abraham Denner. He’s so perfect, so genuinely and perfectly beautiful.

Nate was his true love, of course - and Abraham fully intended to find some way to see his sweet man again, either a prison visit or, hell, never write off an escape, he’d done more unbelievable things in his life… but he would never walk away from his Red, either.

“All right, Mr. Michaelson,” The prosecutor on the video is saying. “We need to move on to speaking about what happened in this photo. Would you be able to look at this photo for us, Daniel?”

The soft scrape of a bit of paper being moved across the table, and Red reaches out as if to touch it. His eyes glance down, too quickly to do more than take in the basics, and then he looks back up, looking more confused than frightened, pulling his hands back. “We, we have to talk about, um, about that?”

“Yes. We need to understand what was happening in this photo. Would you be able to talk about that now? Obviously if you need a break-”

“No,” Red says quickly, leaning forward, pulling the paper towards himself, shaking his head so his hair falls back over his eyes. “No, I’m fine, I can do it, I’m sorry, I’ll just try harder, I can, I can be good and do this for you-”

That’s my good good boy, Abraham thinks with a grin. He knows the jury watches him. He can feel their revulsion when he smiles at Red’s tears.

He doesn’t care.

Nothing about this trial was ever going to end in anything but a prison sentence, and Abraham isn’t the type to delude himself. He’s not here to try and find acquittal. He’s just here to have some fun before he gets locked away.

“I will show the photo using the secondary screen,” The prosecutor sitting at the other table speaks out loud. The judge gives his approval, and when the prosecutor clicks the remote to pull up a large-scale version of the photo the man is holding in the testimony, everyone in the courtroom sees a photo of Red sitting on the ground, his face turned away and eyes shut but his mouth open wide in a scream, his hands wrapped tightly around himself.

Nathaniel Vandrum is crouched just behind him, one arm around him, one hand buried in his hair to pull Red against his chest. Nate’s chin rests on top of Red’s head and he’s glaring right at the camera - right at Abraham - with pure, loveless fury.

Closed around Red’s left leg is a bear trap. The smears of bright red showing through his torn jeans seem too brilliant to be real in the courtroom’s yellow light.

Abraham takes a deep breath, seeing it blown up so large, larger than life really, and has to take another drink of water before he’s totally bowled over by the incredibly knife-sharp surge of pure joy that rocks through him head to toe.

Joy, and something much darker.

“I stepped in a bear trap,” Red says in the video testimony, staring down at the photo. “He took a photo before he let Nate get me out of it.”

“Why were you in a bear trap, Mr. Michaelson?”

“I was bad and I did not apologize,” Red says, head tilted down at the photo, tracing his fingers along it. “When you do something wrong, you apologize, and you get hurt so that you do not do it again.”

Someone in the jury coughs hard.

Red’s eyes are glittering again, and Abraham can see him trembling, even though this isn’t really happening right now.

He shivers so well, little Red.

He knows just how to shake the way Abraham likes best.

“Are you saying that Mr. Denner forced you into the trap? We need you to be absolutely clear, for the record, Daniel. Can you be clear about this for us?”

Red takes a deep breath, licking his lips, and slowly nods. He looks around the ring of lawyers offscreen again, looking for their approval, and then lets his eyes drop back down to the photo. Abraham looks over to the jury to see some of them glaring right at him with hatred, most of them looking at the photo still, and one old woman dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a tissue.

“Yes,” Red says finally, and his voice is shaking as hard as he is. “He told me to step in the trap as hard as I could or he would, um, he would… he would…” His voice trails off and he hunches over, mumbling too low to be heard.

“Please, Daniel, please try to speak clearly for us, just to finish this last little bit. Then we’ll take another break. Describe what happened.”

“He told me I had to step in the bear trap to punish myself or he would hurt Nate again.” Red looks up, pleading with them to understand with his wide eyes. “He, he said he would really hurt him this time - he’d break his leg or worse, if I didn’t go in the trap, so I had to. The last time I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t take my punishment like a g-… like he wanted me to, he beat Nate so badly, so.. so I had to go in the trap. I had to step in it, I had been, I had been bad I had tried to say no again, and I don’t get to say no. Puppies don’t get angry, pets don’t… I had to, I, I had to be good, I had to…”

They cut the video short again, but Abraham isn’t done with this memory, not at all. He’s going to be thinking about the bear trap for days, running over and over in his mind the moment Red had agreed to do exactly what he said to spare Nate.

The way Nate had glared at him over Red’s head, holding onto him, the way the guilt had shredded Nate for days and days, that Red had been so willing to take a punishment to save him.

“I’m sorry, Abraham, please, I’ll do it. Don’t hurt him, please!”

“I won’t, if you step right in. Not just a little step, either. These things are made for much larger animals than my skinny little puppy. You stomp your foot right into it and take your punishment, or Nate takes it for you.”

Red’s hair is sweat-soaked and stuck to his forehead, even out here in the chill air. He nods quickly, hugging himself around his middle as though it would ever make it any better. “I will, I’ll do it, Abraham, just, just give me a second, I just need…”

“Take a moment. Deep breaths, Red. In and out, in and out. That’s my good boy.” Red’s whole body shakes, but he nods, breathing slow and deep, just the way Abraham tells him to. Nate steps over to him, hands on either side of his face.

“You don’t h-h-have to d-do this,” Nate says softly, gently, and Abraham missed the love in his words, because he was so busy searching for it when Nate looked at -him-. “I c-can take it. I’ve t-t-taken it before, Red. I can t-take it. Don’t d-d-do this just because of m-me.”

Red looks up at him, tears in his eyes, and shakes his head. “I’ll do it. You were so hurt last time, I can do it, Nate. Okay? Okay, Nate?”

Nate just pulls him close for a hug, holds him tightly, and finally steps back. “I’ll b-be right h-h-here to hold you after,” He says, gently, reassuring, leaning in to kiss Red’s forehead, each side of his face, the tip of his nose. “I’ll h-hold your hand.”

Abraham’s not jealous, not yet. He had taken Red to give Nate a friend, after all, and in Abraham’s world there was no such thing as a platonic friend. The puppy’s not a person, and taking is what puppies like Red are made for.

Red nods, stepping back, taking breaths as deeply and slowly as he can.

He turns back to the bear trap, one hand gripped white-knuckled onto Nate’s, as he moves towards it, staring down with abject dread. He shivers, he shakes, and Abraham all but purrs watching it.

Red’s left foot is trembling as he slowly lifts it up above the open trap.

He looks back at Abraham - maybe hoping for some sort of last-minute mercy - but Abraham just smiles and waits, shaking his head. “Will you be good for me, Red?”

“I’ll be good,” Red whispers. “I’m going to try harder. I can be good, just… just don’t hurt Nate.” Then he jams his left foot down into the trap, onto the little metal plate in the center, as hard as he can.

The trap snaps shut around his left leg and Red collapses long before the pain reaches him. He gives out and falls backwards, Nate grabbing onto him tightly around the chest and waist, holding onto him and murmuring soothing nonsense sounds.

Red goes suddenly still, his eyes wide and white-ringed, and he begins to scream. The sound shatters the woods around them, sends a flock of birds flying up into the sky in a burst of wings, bounces around the trees and crisp air, goes on and on and on.

Red screams, and screams, and screams.

The video testimony cuts to after the break, his little Red looking shaken but still resolute, still resolved to see this through. Abraham glances over to the prosecution’s side and sees Red’s little brother, that Ryan kid, ashen under his darker skin (adopted brothers, and still the brother comes here every day but the parents don’t… interesting, that) and staring at nothing now, twisting a little bit of paper into shreds with his hands.

He sees Nate, looking straight at the screen still, his jaw locked tightly and his green eyes totally focused. He doesn’t look to Abraham. He doesn’t see what his reaction was.

But Abraham settles back. He doesn’t care about this next bit of testimony.

No, he closes his eyes and relives, one more time, the moment his beautiful Red put his foot down in the trap.

#whumptober2019 #no.20 #trembling #whump #intimate whumper #broken whumpee #Daniel Michaelson's story #creepy whumper #tw: torture #tw: blood #tw: violence #barbed wire #restrained #bear trap #prior whumpee #secondary whumpee #Nathaniel vandrum #Abraham denner #whumper's POV

140 notes · View notes

ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Daniel Michaelson: Laced Drink

(another @whumptober2019 prompt for Day 20: Laced Drink. I went with kind of a different take on it, I hope you guys like it!. TW: for nonconsensual touching (nothing NSFW or anything), being forced to drink something against their will)

Nate blinks awake to the sound of a mumbling voice, just a little too muffled to understand. He shifts around in the bed, pushing himself up on his elbows where he lays on his stomach under the heavy soft blankets that Abraham layers one atop the other until Nate feels weighed down by them, by their warmth.

“Bram? Is th-that you?”

“Fuck off, baby,” Bram says without opening his eyes, his voice affectionate but still sleep-slurred, nuzzling into Nate’s neck.

He’s still asleep enough that Nate feels safe pulling away from him, shivering only half in disgust, half in something worse.

The voice definitely isn’t Bram - the mumbling is still going, pauses in-between like he’s listening to half of a conversation someone’s having on the phone. Nate groans, trying to stretch and pull himself all the way awake, feeling skin pull over scratches and bruised spots, wincing a little.

Bram’s arm slides off of him when he moves and the other man - the man he hates and fears and somehow, somehow, feels a helpless despairing love for - rolls onto his other side, back to him, and Nate breathes a sigh of relief.

He still can’t quite stop himself from leaning in to kiss one cold bare shoulder, even though he doesn’t want to, even though he hates Bram so, so much.

He can’t help the little thrill of sick happiness when Bram mumbles, “God, I love you so much, baby,” and then relaxes fully back into sleep.

He hates himself - but he can’t help it.

It’s like a spell - a spell he was under for years and somehow broke and escaped and now he’s under it again, hypnotized, charmed, held captive by his mind as much as by any of the injuries he’s had inflicted on him - and there are so, so many ways to be injured he’d never known before he met Ashley and Abraham.

Before they followed him home.

Before they murdered his best friend.

Before they took him away.

They dragged him out of his own home drugged and beaten and worse days after murdering Ross, kept him locked up and bleeding, and still - still he loves Bram, and hates himself for being so broken as to feel love he didn’t ever want for a man who is a goddamn monster who has hurt him in so many ways and hurts Danny in so many more.

In his sleep, Bram seems utterly normal. Relaxed and breathing deeply, all the power and charisma locked away behind closed eyes. He could be anyone other than who - what - he is.

Nate sometimes lays just like this, watching him sleep, idly fantasizing about smothering him with a pillow or sneaking out of bed to get a knife to stab him with, dumping arsenic in his drink at dinner, just anything - any murder at all would be wonderful.

He won’t, though.

He can’t - and he and Bram both know it. They both know Nate will never do anything more than dream, now.

He escaped once, and then only because Ashley Denner hadn’t given a shit whether or not he loved her - so he didn’t, and he’d been able to kill her while Bram was out hunting for new people to slaughter to sate himself.

He couldn’t turn on Bram.

He wouldn’t dare, not for his own sake.

Although lately he’s started to think that maybe, just maybe, he could if it would help Danny.

Danny had just been some younger guy that he kept sort of thinking about, but here in the cabin, trapped, Nate thought about him all the time.

Danny had been funny, sarcastic and cynical and cursing every other breath - and he’d thought Nate’s quiet dry wit was hilarious. When that part of Danny came back - and it did, when they watched old movies or Bram brought back one of those weird kids’ make-your-own-suncatcher kits and they spent half the night painting them (and eventually each other, laughing in whispered gasps to keep from waking Bram up) - Nate thought he might be falling in love with Danny, too.

Maybe it was just because they were captives together.

Maybe he would have fallen for him anyway.

Nate doesn’t ask - you never ask why, that’s a rule, and Nate follows the rules even for his own feelings, because he’s nothing if not a master at simply burying his emotions in a kind of quiet empty cry for help inside his head that he never, ever lets out.

Maybe he can do something to escape, if he could know for sure it would work, that it would let him get Danny out alive. But every time he thinks about it, he thinks about how Bram will really kill Danny if they get caught trying to escape together… and he can’t do it.

He has to get him out of here - but he just… can’t.

He’s not sure how long he has before there isn’t much Danny left to rescue. He goes away a little more each day, no longer answers to his name, only to the stupid dog-name Bram gave him. He sleeps curled up out there on the thin plastic mat in the early spring chill and he deserves so much more than life as a captive Bram keeps just to see how broken he can make someone.

And Danny is so, so broken. Something of him was still in there, though - Nate could see it in the fury that sometimes still lit the blue eyes, an anger he didn’t dare show. He saw it when Danny remembered, every once in awhile, that he could laugh.

Like the suncatchers thing - when Danny had nearly passed out from trying to hold the laughter back, blue streaks painted in his red hair, a swipe of green across one cheek, and the red nose Nate had given him and called him Rudolph for three days afterward whenever Bram wasn’t close enough to hear it.

Danny had leaned over and painted him right back, a spiral in purple on one cheek and a happy face in green on the other, and finally a streak of blue that started at the line of his black hair and went down the center of his face, the cool paint and slightly scratchy bristled moving in a slow, solid line down over his nose, his mouth, chin, and finally straight down his neck over the scars from every time Ashley carved the collar, until they had reached the neckline of his shirt-

And Danny had stopped, looking up at his eyes, and smiled at him. I wish we were anywhere other than here doing this, Danny had said softly, and then grinned at him, only the barest hint of the darkness in his eyes. Because then I would get you drunk enough to pass out and paint dicks all over you.

Then he’d collapsed back into giggles, and the moment of tense waiting for something, something neither of them could really give in this place, was gone, and Nate laughed with him.

Then there was the Blair Witch day.

Danny had tied a bunch of sticks with twine into Blair Witch effigies and hung them around the clearing near the cabin, twelve or thirteen altogether. It’d taken him all afternoon and when he was done, he’d laughed at his own stupid joke until he fell over, hand pressed to the side where his old broken rib still hurt sometimes, pulling Nate down with him until the two of them were covered in dust and dirt, still laughing.

Bram had paused in his work scraping hides to look up and smile at his two good boys getting along so well.

The laughter died in them both when Bram smiled.

If he is ever going to do anything, it has to be before Danny stops being able to laugh, and there seem to be fewer and fewer times when he laughs now.

Nate tries to shake the thoughts of escape, making himself lay back down with the image of Danny laughing behind his eyes, but the mumbling doesn’t stop. After a moment his sleepy brain wakes the rest of the way up and he realizes it’s not Danny maybe watching TV out there - the mumbling is Danny himself.

Nate’s eyes blink back open and he’s immediately fully awake. He slides carefully out of the bed, disturbing it as little as possible, and Bram doesn’t even move. He usually doesn’t, once he’s asleep, trusting in Danny’s chain and Nate’s broken spirit to keep him safe.

Nate hates that his trust is not misplaced.

The floor is freezing cold under his bare feet as he tiptoes out to the living room, closing the bedroom door slowly behind him. The room is dark but there’s a full moon tonight and moonlight shines through the windows over by the door, lighting the whole room in a kind of eerie blue-white, everything perfectly visible but off-color, like watching a black-and-white movie that someone just barely colorized.

He expects to see Danny curled up on his mat like always, in the defensive sleeping position that’s become second nature to him - hands over his head or stomach to ward off the blow, knees to his chest, head tucked in so as little is exposed as possible, wrapped in every single one of the threadbare blankets he is given and usually still shivering from cold, almost always in just a thin T-shirt and old cotton pajama pants unless Bram deems him good enough to earn a sweater or flannels.

Instead, Danny is sitting up on his mat, his back to Nate, talking to himself.

Nate pauses, swallows hard, and just listens.

“Have to look in the woods,” Danny mumbles, words slurred like he’s drunk, shoulders hunched in on themselves. His head hangs forwards, just a little, hair falling over his eyes. “You have to look, to look in the woods, Ryan.”

Ryan.

That’s his brother’s name - he’d told Nate he had a younger brother, they talked about it a lot in the early days, the biological child of the people who adopted him and who then largely forgot they had two sons and cared only about the younger.

There’s a pause, and then Danny says softly, “He says you aren’t looking anymore, Ryan. Are you-… are you still looking?”

Nate moves slowly forward, giving Danny sort of a wide berth, trying to get a look at his face. When he comes all the way around to where he can see him, Danny jumps a little and turns, looking over at Nate.

Even in the dark, his eyes are glassy and fogged-over, and Nate can see the stripes of color high in his cheeks, the shimmer of clammy sweat on his forehead and the tip of his nose, the place Nate had once painted red because he’d wanted so badly to kiss it but didn’t dare.

“Danny-” Nate catches himself and glances over his shoulder, but the bedroom door is still closed, and he can hear Bram snoring, just faintly, through the door. He turns back. “R-Red, are you okay?”

“Ryan’s here,” Danny says, and his voice is still slurred. He can’t quite seem to lift his head all of the way up, and his hands are rubbing compulsively at his thighs, the way you rub at your aching knee on a rainy day. “He doesn’t know where to look, Nate. I told him, I told him you have to, um, to look in the woods. Bram always says no one’s looking anymore, no one misses me, but Ryan does. He’s still looking, Nate, he promises he’s still looking.”

“I d-d-don’t d-doubt it, Red, b-but…” Nate moves slowly closer, cautiously, watching Danny’s face as he does. The foggy blue eyes slide away from him, back to the spot he was looking at before, but Danny doesn’t tense up or try to pull away when he reaches out one hand.

Danny’s forehead is sweat-soaked and slick and burns so hot Nate pulls his hand back with a hiss.

“This is Nate,” Danny says out loud, without looking back at him. “He’s in the woods, too. Can you, can you tell the cops to look for him, too? Nathaniel Vandrum. That’s his whole name, Ryan. Can you, can you tell them? Please, Ryan, are you still looking?” Danny leans forward, pleadingly, lifting his hands to show them to the phantom brother only he can see.

Nate swallows against the guilt at the lines of red, inflamed scars that travel up his hands, cut just over the tops of the visible veins, cut over and over and over again until the marks were deep and permanent.

Each scar is a rule Danny has broken, each cut carved into him until he swears he won’t break it again.

Nate knows exactly how that feels - his own hands bear the same scars, just a few years older.

“Ryan, don’t give up,” Danny whispers, and his eyes are starting to fill with tears. “Please don’t stop looking for me. Please, you’re the only one who will, please don’t stop looking, I’m in the woods-”

“I c-c-c-can’t fu, fucking l-listen to th-this,” Nate mutters, backing away from him, trying to think. He leaves Danny mumbling to go into the kitchen, pulling the tea Danny had made earlier out in its giant pitcher, pouring a small cup of it. It’s hawthorn berry tea, something Danny had found a recipe for in one of the survivalist books the body had had out here before Bram decided he wanted this cabin. It’s sweetened with plenty of honey Danny had stirred in while it was still hot, and it should cover the taste of the medicine well enough.

He can hear Danny still talking to his brother as he moves over to the bathroom, pulling down the cold medicine, pouring a dose of the syrup into the tea and then stirring to dissolve it as best he can.

After a moment’s hesitation, he grabs the thermometer, too.

They say sometimes to let a fever run its course, but if that meant listening to Danny beg his brother to find him - when Nate knew very well no one ever would, no one ever found Bram unless he wanted to be found - he couldn’t do it.

Nate stared at his own reflection in the mirror - he was older by years than Danny but he’d lost so much of his life to Bram by now that he didn’t really feel it. The face that looked back at him seemed hardly recognizable - he’d been smiling in the last photo anyone ever took of him before there was this, a professor in a suit and tie, in his second year of teaching adjunct and deeply in love with the life he was building.

All the photos of him now had shadows around the eyes, buried deep within the mossy green there, shaggy half-chopped black hair with a curl at the nape of his neck where it always ended up just a little too long. All the photos of him now had the scar in his lip, still healing from the last time he’d really angered Bram by trying to stand up for Danny. All the photos of him now showed the rings of scars around his neck from Ashley’s collar.

He’d worn a lot of turtlenecks and high-necked sweaters when he was out, for those few months, before Bram had tracked him back down.

“You can’t let him turn into you,” Nate says to his reflection, but all he gets back is an empty mouthing echo of his own words.

Danny will turn into something worse, in the end, because Bram doesn’t love him. There’s nothing to stop him from going too far, nothing but the fact that he still find Danny amusing. If Nate can’t figure out where all his courage is hiding and do something, Danny will eventually be too injured to recover.

And if Danny dies, Nate will have absolutely no reason left to remember himself.

Out in the living room, he hears Danny’s muttering change into something fearful, the sound of the chain scraping along the ground, and then he hears the younger man start to cry, the sniffling sound of him trying to hold it back but failing.

He can’t listen to Danny’s tears, not for the days it might take the fever to break on its own. He’s barely hanging on by swinging from each time Danny remembers how to laugh to the next.

Each swing on the vine takes longer, forces him to go further, and Nate isn’t sure he can keep himself together much longer if Danny stops entirely.

When he comes back out of the bathroom, he freezes at the sight of Bram sitting on the couch with the side table lamp lit, Danny settled between his legs with his back to him, Bram’s fingers running through Danny’s hair, petting him gently, oh so gently, with one hand while the other rubs at the back of his neck.

Nate can see how badly Danny is shaking from all the way across the room the careful way he is holding himself very still, the blank blue eyes staring directly ahead of himself, tear tracks a visible shimmer along the scarring on his face.

“H-he’s sick, B-Bram,” Nate says, hesitantly. “I w-w-went to g-get a thermom.. thermo… thermometer.”

“Oh, I know, baby,” Bram replies cheerfully, without even pausing in his movements. “I heard you get up, decided to come out and see for myself what my good boys were up to.” He looks over at Nate, raising an eyebrow at the glass in one hand. “What’s that?”

“M-medicine. R-Red hates t-t-t-taking medicine, so I f-figured put some in t-t-tea so he can’t taste it…” He shrugs, trying to keep his voice casual, trying not to let on how much it bothers him to watch Danny’s absolute terror wash through him, again and again, adrenaline not fighting the fever but fueling its rise.

He moves around, setting the glass on the side table (Bram shoots him an irritated look before picking up a coaster and loudly moving it underneath the cup) and crouches in front of Danny, looking him over. He’s even redder, if that’s possible, and the sweat is gone, replaced by a blistering dry heat underneath his skin that Nate can only stand for a moment.

He’s like a furnace, isn’t he?” Bram says in a low, delighted voice. “I could use him for a space heater in bed like this.”

“O-open your m-m-mouth please, D-… Red,” Nate says softly, flinching as he nearly uses the wrong name. Bram only shakes his head, and Nate shoots him a mute look of apology as Danny obediently opens his mouth, letting Nate slide the thermometer under his tongue and turn it on with a tiny, barely-audible ‘beep’.

“Eye-an ish thalk-ing oo ee,” Danny slurs around the thermometer. His eyes keep glancing off of Nate’s and then bouncing around the room and back again.

Ssshhh, Red, g-g-give me j-just a seh… a second,” Nate says softly, gently pushing his jaw up so his mouth closes all the way. Bram’s hands never stop their gentle petting and massaging at his head and neck, and Danny trembles the whole time under the touch he can’t stand but knows better than to reject.

When the thermometer beeps again, Nate pulls it out of Danny’s mouth, holding the little screen at an angle where he can see the digital numbers in black against the light green. He squints, then looks up at Danny’s pale, red-cheeked face again. “106.8. H-holy sh-sh-shit. No f-f-fucking w-wonder he’s s-seeing th-things, Bram.”

“What are you seeing, little Red?” Bram asks in a tone of syrupy sweetness, and Nate is suddenly deeply sorry he even mentioned hallucinations at all. Bram leans down, the hand in Danny’s hair dropping to his right shoulder, sliding down over the upper arms that are becoming muscled from nearly two years of the heavy lifting and chores he’s responsible for, the other leaving his neck to curve around his left arm and hold that, too. “Hm?”

“M-my brother,” Danny answers, his voice shaking, blue eyes searching the room where he was looking before. “Ryan is, he’s still looking, Abraham, he’s still looking for me, I just have to tell him-”

“He’s not looking for you, you fucking whore,” Bram murmurs without the slightest change in tone. “No one is. What’s even left of you now, hm?”

“N-no,” Danny whimpers, and Nate shatters a little more.

But a little of his unwilling, unwanted love for Bram shatters, too.

“No, Ryan’s looking, he says he’s looking-… you have to look in the woods, Ryan, we’re in the woods-” Bram’s hands tighten around his arms and Danny cuts himself off, but his eyes stay on that corner of the room, staring and staring and staring at the brother he can see there, someone Nate has only seen in a couple of cell phone photos Danny showed him before the night they were taken away. “Please don’t stop looking for me,” Danny begs the empty corner, straining against Bram’s grip. “Please, please don’t stop looking, Ryan, please, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“No one is ever going to find you here,” Bram says softly. “No one is looking any longer, Red. We’re all you have now - Nate and me. We’re the only ones who could want something as fucked up as you.” His eyes lift to Nate’s, and the cold inhuman amusement in them shifts, warms, becomes the love and affection he always shows his true love.

Nate could kill him right now.

Only he… only he still can’t. He’s never hated Bram more than this, but he can’t do it, he can’t lift a finger, and Bram knows it.

“Give him his medicine, baby,” Bram purrs, smooth a silk, and Danny begins to struggle in his grip. He’s too sick to do more than pull weakly against the hands that hold him, and Bram leans forward in a sudden violent lunge, throwing an arm around his chest to pull him up tight against him, the other moving to his jaw - thumb on one side, fingers on the other.

Danny freezes, eyes wide in fear, as though only now realizing that he’s been struggling, when you never pull away from Abraham Denner.

Never reject a touch.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says in a sudden rush, struggling to get the words out from around Bram holding his jaw. “I’m s-s-sorry, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean-… I just… it’s just, Ryan’s here, I can see him-”

“Don’t give a fuck,” Bram says softly. “Nate says you need medicine. My baby gets what he wants.”

Nate hasn’t moved, only staring at them, breathing hard.

I hate you, I hate you so fucking much, I love you, I love him, how can you do this to him, how can you make me be part of what you do to him, why can’t I kill you, I love you so much I hate you I love you I hate you

I love him

“I said, give him his medicine,” Bram says, and his voice drops into something low and laced with threat and ice, and Nate nods quickly, grabbing the cup off the side table. A dose of medicine for the fever, stirred into a few inches of honey-laced tea.

He takes a deep breath, looks into Danny’s teary eyes, and says softly, “I’m s-s-sorry, Red. I h-have to, you can’t h-h-have a fever this high. Y-your leg’s probably inf-infected or something, I’ll clean it o-out once the fever’s d-d-d-down-”

“Please,” Danny begs him, begs him, and Nate has never felt more like slime. His voice is a high, ragged plea that bounces off the beams in the ceiling and back down. “Please don’t take Ryan away. Please, please, don’t take Ryan away from me, Nate, please! Please let me keep my brother!”

“F-f-fuck, I’m so sorry, I’m s-s-so s-s-s-s-” He can’t get the words out, his own eyes are hot with tears, but he lifts the glass and Bram uses his thumb and fingers to force Danny’s mouth open as he tries to hold it closed.

Danny shakes his head as much as he can, violently, but Bram’s grip is strong and inexorable and eventually Danny’s mouth is forced open far enough for Nate to pour some of the tea in.

Bram snaps it shut, holding Danny’s mouth closed with about a third of the tea in there. He looks at Nate, glacial eyes cold and delighted. “Pinch his nose.”

“Wh-what? Bram, I, I c-c-can’t-”

“Do it.”

Nate closes his eyes for a second against a wash of shame so strong it nearly knocks him over, and then reaches out and pinches Danny’s nose closed with his own thumb and finger.

Danny, eyes wide, struggles again, fights as hard as he can - but he’s sick and weak and he was tired and hungry before that, and eventually he has to swallow if he wants to breathe. As soon as he does, Nate yanks his hand back and Danny breathes as hard as he can through his nose.

Then Bram forces his jaw open again, to Danny’s low pained wordless whine. “Again,” He orders Nate, and this time Nate doesn’t hesitate.

He all but throws his hand forward to pour more of the medicine into Danny’s mouth, and again they force his mouth and nose shut until he swallows.

A third time, and Danny’s taken all of the medicine and Bram shoves him forward and away from himself as hard as he can.

Danny smacks hard into the floor on his stomach, crying hoarsely, whispering, “No, no, you have to keep looking, you can’t stop trying to find me,” and Nate leans over to rub his back. It’s the only thing he can think of to do.

“I’m going back to bed,” Bram says, looking down at the two of them. He pauses, then leans down to run his fingers through Nate’s black hair and down over his neck. “You can stay out here with him, if you want, baby.”

“Thank you, B-Bram,” Nate says, and he really means it; it’s a sick, awful gratitude he feels, but still he’s grateful, even just for this much mercy. He lets Bram rest a hand on top of his head for another moment before he turns and walks away, back into the bedroom, and closes the door.

It wasn’t much, but it was still mercy, and Bram has so little to give.

Be grateful for every gift you are given.

He manages to get Danny back onto his mat, sitting next to him on the wood floor and rubbing his back as he curls back into his ball. He shakes for a while and cries, but eventually the medicine kicks in and Nate watches Danny’s breath slow, his eyes flutter back closed, a cold sweat breaking out all across him as the fever drops.

“I h-hate this,” He says in a thick heavy voice, slurred now with sleep rather than sickness.

Nate nods, leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead, in that little spot between his eyes where there’s a furrow that never seems to leave. “M-me too,” Nate whispers. “I’m s-s-sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, Nate.” Danny’s limbs have gone loose and Nate pulls the blankets around him as tightly as he can, kisses him one more time, on the top of his head. “I’m so sorry,” Danny murmurs. “I wish…”

“I w-w-w-wish too, Danny,” Nate whispers, low enough he knows Bram won’t hear it. “I wish, t-too.”

I love you.

I hate him.

I love him.

I love you.

Once he’s totally sure Danny is asleep, Nate unfolds himself and lays down on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, wide awake. Guilt is an ever-present beat in him, right alongside his heart.

All he can hear is the sound of Danny begging him not to take his brother away.

#whumptober2019 #no.21 #prompt: laced drink #whump #comforting caretaker #caretaker forced to be whumper #intimate whumper #violent whumper #broken whumpee #prior whumpee #Daniel Michaelson's story #Nathaniel vandrum #Abraham denner #tw: nonconsensual touching #tw: forced ingestion of drink #sickfic #conditioning #dehumanization #caretaker

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Daniel Michaelson: Waterlogged

(For @whumptober2019 day 27, I chose to use the Alternate prompt Waterlogged! Poor Danny. References @bleeding-demon-teeth‘s OC Lyken again, because Bram is just a super big fan. TW: for implied/referenced noncon, some torture/abuse)

Water pours in a rush from the deep gray sky and it feels more like midnight than mid-afternoon. The clouds fight each other, rolling and tumbling in shades of deep dark greenish-gray he’s never seen before, but he tries not to look up any longer - the water just gets in his eyes, then.

At least there’s no lightning, no thunder to terrify him. Only rain - endless, eternal pouring rain.

It’s been raining since this morning, and Daniel has been out here in it since he’d overturned a bowl of food on Abraham’s head after Abraham had slid his hand up underneath his shirt when he was serving breakfast.

He’d felt, for just a second, a snarling furious strength in him, the return of the man he used to be - the person - and it had all happened in a flash of time he couldn’t take back.

He wants so badly to take it back.

Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit, don’t fucking touch me, Daniel had snapped, dumping the food on him, jerking himself away. For just that one second he hadn’t given a damn about the rules, about being good, about any of it. For just a second he’d remembered that he had been a senior in college once, just a few months from graduating - he had a younger brother - he had a family - he had people who cared, who would miss him.

For just a second, all Abraham’s hard fucking work to train him had fallen away and Danny was a human again, knew he was a human, knew he deserved better than this.

Then Abraham’s hand had snapped out to grab him by the wrist and Danny had realized he’d fucked up, just a few seconds too late.

Now that’s very bad indeed, Abraham had said with eggs still in his hair, heedless of the mess, Nate sitting across the table staring wide-eyed at the both of them, fork still halfway to his mouth.

Just fucking kill me, you dick, Daniel said, half-pleading the words, already trying to back away until Abraham stepped on the chain that hooked his ankle to the ring in the wall and Danny stumbled and fell backwards onto the floor. I don’t want to live like this, just fucking kill me already!

Dead would be too easy, puppy, Abraham had snarled at him. I can think of so much worse for you.

B-B-Bram, no, h-h-he’s just h-having a b-bad day, it’s n-normal, he’s going to h-h-have bad d-d-days, remember when I-

Shut the fuck up, baby. The puppy’s been bad. He needs to be fixed.

N-no! Just, l-look, just l-l-l-let me t-talk to him, B-Bram, please!

I fucking hate you!

So angry, little Red. You know damn well that puppies don’t get to be angry. Puppies want to be good. They love their owners. I’m going to make sure you want to be good.

Bram, please, please d-d-don’t, please don’t d-do this, don’t-

I just want to be me again! You can’t force someone to love you! I don’t want to be good and I don’t want to fucking love you!

The last time anyone gave a shit what you wanted was the moment you pointed a gun at my face, Red. You need to remember what the fuck you are. And I can force you to feel anything I want.

He’d tried to fight back, but he didn’t eat enough, and he was so tired, and hungry, and hurting all the time. It wasn’t long before Danny was sitting in the wet mud with a brand spanking new black eye, hands tied hard behind his back, rope wrapped around them all the way to his elbows until he ached with the effort of keeping them held out straight, that steady, pulsing pain in his rib - and the metal grid cutting hard into his face, forcing him to be quiet, to remember his place.

He hadn’t meant to be bad, to get angry - he tried to be good most days, he really did - but sometimes the parts of him that used to exist found their way out.

They exploded in a riot of yelling and anger, and it always ended with a punishment. It was never worth fighting, but somehow he couldn’t seem to stop.

He had made a mistake, this morning - and now there is this.

The rain has long since soaked his hair, pressing the normally wavy red flat against his scalp, hanging in his eyes, darkening it to something closer to auburn. Droplets of water run down the side of his face, briefly magnifying the freckles that stand out as he grows paler and paler.

The raindrops blend with the blood that wells up around the jagged line of metal cutting hard into his jaw, his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose. They mix with the tears that run from his eyes, unnoticed, just more water behind the grid. The trails of pink run to the corner of his mouth, to slip the slightest taste of salt and copper onto the tip of the tongue trapped behind his teeth. Some of it slides down the sides of his neck, becomes another bit of wet in his shirt, or drips right onto the ground.

Water finds a way to free itself of the cage of his skin, but Daniel is trapped in it.

The leather pulls tight against the sides of his face, wraps snugly around the back of his head. He can’t move his jaw even a fraction of an inch, and it hurts, it hurts and it’s bleeding, but he can’t even scream - only whine, low in his throat, with no way to escape the prison of his mouth.

All he can manage is a keening sound swallowed up by the rain.

He can’t seem to find the someone else that lives inside of him, the body that takes over when this thing is on his face. Every other time, he can go away in his head, but today Daniel feels trapped in reality, in what’s really been done to him, and he can’t seem to find his escape.

He wants to escape - he wants to be someone else - he wants to go away in his head, to let the body take over, to let the body feel the ache and the pain and the mud, but he can’t.

It’s probably because of the headphones, because of the smug fucking voice he can’t get away from, loud enough to drown out the rain that has turned his fingers into wrinkled prunes, rubbed his arms and wrists raw with the rope around them until he’s pretty sure they’re bleeding, too.

The headphones are wrapped in plastic to protect them, settled carefully onto his head, the fuzzy speakers pressed against his ears. The noise won’t let him slide away, won’t let him give himself over to somebody else.

He could handle the rain - and the pain - and he could go away from the muzzle, because there’s someone else who lives in his body that comes out to take the muzzle and deal with that for him.

But he can’t fight the voice.

It’s not Abraham’s voice - no, it’s the other voice, the man Abraham listens to on his phone, the man who talks about dog training - only he’s not talking about real dogs, people like Abraham are the people he’s talking to.

Daniel’s head droops, hunching forward, the padlock that keeps the leather straps securely buckled gently tapping against the nape of his neck.

I understand that some of you are struggling with disobedience - too much energy used in all the wrong ways. The man is smug, so goddamn sure of himself, of what he’s doing, of the evil that Abraham and others like him.

There’s a horror there Daniel doesn’t want to access, in the reality that there are others in the world like this - he pushes that back, back into his mind, even further than the anger he’s no longer allowed to feel, the anger that drained out of him with the rain.

His voice is a little hypnotic, nothing like Abraham’s spellbinding singsong - but it catches your thoughts and holds them, and Danny can’t stop listening no matter how hard he tries. Obviously the most efficient method is simply to contact me for one-on-one counseling sessions - my rates are very fair, and I have been known to personally oversee the most troublesome cases myself.

But if you’re dead set on individually working this out on your own, who am I to stop you? The man’s voice in his ear has a thread of unkind laughter to it, and there’s a sound in the background somewhere of the audio - a thunk and something like a cut-off curse, then some other laughter, three or four other people. Shut the fuck up, assholes, I’m recording. In any case, if you really must do this yourself, I’ll tell you - the secret to really succeeding at this is to ensure that you engender a real, true desire to be good, to do good, to behave according to your expectations.

Without that desire, all you’ll see is bad behavior. Maybe it’ll be covered up for a while, you’ll think you’re seeing progress - but all you’re seeing is a lie. Without the desire, the real nerve-deep need to be good, you will never achieve true or total success.

I never settle for a half-trained mutt, and I mean never. There’s no dog out there who can’t be taught to want to be good with the right reinforcement.

As I said, my one-on-one rates are fair and I do offer online video conferencing for clients in locations as far away as Europe and Asia for a small added fee. If you’re unable to make appointments in person, I’d be happy to speak with you via Skype. You can find my rates, well - more laughter, from the man and from everyone else. There’s the sound of a thwak in the background, a sound Daniel knows too well, feeling his own back muscles jerk in sympathy. You have to know who to ask to find my rates, but if you’ve found this, you probably already know who to ask, right?

So ask them.

Now, in today’s episode I want to start off by reading a letter I recently received from a very satisfied customer - and later we’ll talk about, well.. Let’s call him a friend of mine, who is the perfect example of someone dealing with occasional backsliding because he’s not using my methods, just slapdash creating his own like an asshole.

You know who you are, E.

The voice numbs him. It wears away at him. The knowledge that there are other people in the world like this - and that they have in-jokes and friends and whole lives - is terrifying, and Daniel can’t seem to maintain any other real feeling but fear out here, soaked to the bone and starting to shake with the cold still nipping the air.

The terror slowly dulls and blends in until all he has left is a confused mixture of regret and loathing and confusion as to why he ever tried to fight back at all.

He’s been out here for four hours or so, he thinks - he’s listened to four of these things and he’s pretty sure they’re about an hour long. So that’s something, that’s something he can hold onto, but still the voice sinks into his head, twines around Abraham’s, leaves him feeling hollow and empty and inhuman.

Just a puppy.

His arms throb from being forced so hard behind his back for so long. He’s cold and wet and caked in mud all along the backs of his thighs, his legs, coating his feet. Mud cakes the outdoor chain hooking him to the ground. All he wants is for Abraham to take the muzzle off, let him back inside, let him dry off and get warm by the fire.

But he can’t go inside unless he’s ready to be good, unless he wants to be good, just like the hateful fucking voice in his ears won’t stop saying. He can’t go inside unless Abraham believes he wants to be good.

And he can’t call for help. He can’t ask. He can’t do anything but listen, and listen, and listen, and wish that he’d never done such a stupid fucking thing in the first place as try to pretend he’s a person when he knows, deep down, that Daniel Michaelson is gone.

My name is Red.

I am the puppy.

No one wants me but Abraham now… and Nate.

His jaw aches, the top of his nose is a riot of pain as the wire cuts further and further into it. His rib hurts, his eye throbs, his arms hurt, he’s so tired - so fucking tired - of everything hurting so much.

When he’s good, only a couple of things ever hurt at a time. When he’s good, sometimes he goes whole days without a new wound. He could have fixed all of this by just not being bad this morning.

He could just be good, and none of it has to happen, right? That’s what the voice keeps saying.

He’s locked inside of himself, staring dully down at a single blade of grass, trying not to hear the voice of the man in his ears, in his head, the man that Abraham laughs along with and says, now here’s someone else in the world who understands.

He can’t get up - can’t even move his hands.

He can’t escape the rain.

He can’t take off the headphones, can’t get away from the voice that tells him, in so many different ways, that Abraham can unmake him - probably already has.

The voice - the man, the King - laughs at people like Daniel and tells them they can be changed, undone, remade into less than they were, into the puppies that aren’t allowed to be angry.

He’s not allowed to be angry - that was a rule, a rule he had broken, and he’s sure he’s been punished enough. He could prove it, if Abraham would only come back out and let him show it, let him show that he was tired of being in trouble, and that he could be good.

He wishes, so deeply within himself, that he had never done what he did this morning. He wishes he had just served breakfast like he did every day, let Abraham touch him, ignored the coiled twisting hate inside himself, pushed it down until it went away entirely. He wishes he had only tried harder.

When he tries really hard, he can usually be good.

If he’d just been good, he wouldn’t be sitting out here feeling a sort of pressure building in his lungs, an urge to cough against the rain that probably doesn’t bode well for him. He gets sick so much, now - and when he’s sick, he gets punished for being weak.

But when he gets fevers, he sees his brother, and so maybe getting sick isn’t so bad, not if he sees Ryan again.

He must have closed his eyes at some point, maybe even dozed off with the voice still in his ears - because suddenly there are warm hands on his face.

He jumps, jerking back and away, instinctively trying to apologize for flinching - never pull away from Abraham - but all he does is try to force his jaw against the cage and he whines sharply at the pain.

The headphones are slipped off of his ears and the voice - the voice is gone. Danny’s so grateful to Abraham, gratitude that cuts him as sharply as any knife. Thank you for taking the voice away. Thank you for this. Thank you so much.

Be grateful for every gift you are given.

Letting him stop hearing the voice is a gift.

“Sssshhhh, it’s m-m-me,” Nate says softly, and Daniel opens his eyes in surprise, looking up to see Nate crouching in front of him in a raincoat and boots, letting his black hair get soaked but the rest of him stays dry. The mossy green eyes are focused right on him, and there is no mockery there, none of Abraham’s laughing superiority, no sense that he is looking at a disobedient puppy.

Nate sees a man.

“It’s j-j-just me,” Nate says, voice gentle and deep, and the feel of his fingers against the metal grid is so welcome Danny nearly starts to cry.

He whines again - trying to plead, to beg to take the muzzle off his face to let him say how sorry he is, how good he can be.

Nate smiles, a little sadly. “H-hey, Danny,” he murmurs, leaning forward to kiss Daniel’s forehead.

His lips feel so warm against the bone-deep cold settling under Daniel’s skin. He doesn’t even think to shake his head at the name that isn’t his any longer. He just makes a noise in his throat, something he hopes can say thank you and I might love you and kiss me again and save me.

“B-B-Bram sent m-me out. Y-you can come back i-in now. He says it’s b-been long en… enough. I… I c-c-c-convinced him.” Nate’s eyes slide away from his when he says the last bit, and part of Danny wonders what he’s agreed to do for Abraham to earn Danny the right to come in out of the rain.

Nate has the little key that unlocks the padlock at the back of his head. He undoes the buckle, slips the metal grid off of his face, and Danny doesn’t even wince at the tear of torn skin. All he can feel is joy at the freedom, opening and closing his mouth just to move his jaw even though it aches, just because he can.

“Thank you for taking the muzzle off,” Danny mumbles, “and for taking the headphones off my head.” As the ropes unwind from his arms, he slowly lowers them back to his sides, shoulders screaming in protest after so long locked in place, looking down with relief as he realizes they weren’t bleeding at all, just ringed in deep red grooves that will bruise and then fade. “Thank you for taking th’… the ropes off.”

Nate doesn’t say anything - he knows the rules as well as Danny does - but there’s a look on his face Danny can’t quite read. It’s not pity - it’s something like grief.

Like Daniel is already gone, and Nate is going to miss him.

Once the metal cuff welded to his ankle is unlocked from the chain in the yard, Danny gets slowly to his feet, Nate’s good hand on his elbow to help him up. They make their way back across the yard, Nate in his raincoat and boots, Danny barefoot and soaked so deeply he has begun to wonder if he’ll ever, ever feel dry again.

He stumbles back in the door, water dripping down his face still, new wounds carved over old scars, the red lines made by the muzzle still weeping thin trails of blood. Standing on the welcome mat (step inside our happy home, it declares in cheerful rainbow letters and Danny kind of wishes he could tear it apart with his bare hands), he looks from under wet hunks of red hair at Abraham sitting at the kitchen table.

The inside of the cabin is warm, and dry, and Daniel wants to be warm and dry, too. He’ll say anything. He’ll do anything.

He is exactly what the man in the recordings says he is.

“So?” Abraham asks. The fireplace is crackling in the living room, and Danny wants nothing more in life than to sit in front of it, dry off, feel something other than this saturated wet awful. “Have you rethought this morning’s misadventure?”

“Y-yes,” Daniel manages, keeping his shoulders hunched. “I was, um, was wrong.”

Nate slides the raincoat off and hangs it on the hook by the door, sets the wrapped-up headphones and little mp3 player on the countertop, dumps the muzzle beside it with an audible breath of disgust.

Nate hates the muzzle. He only ever calls it ‘the thing’.

Danny turns carefully away from it, trying not to look at the blood still winking red at the ends of all the tiny sharp pieces that jam into his skin when it’s on. He hadn’t been able to go away. He hadn’t been able to be someone else. He’d been Danny in a muzzle - he’d been Red, the puppy, getting punished for thinking he was real.

He feels a sob caught somewhere in his throat, and he manages to choke it back, but only barely.

I’m not real. The man is right. We’re not really real people at all.

“Oh, little Red,” Abraham says with patronizing affection. “Did we have fun out in the rain?”

Danny shakes his head, mutely, and he doesn’t flinch when Abraham laughs, the high-pitched barking sound that rattles his bones inside his skin, shatters apart any sense of himself he had.

Everything is so much easier when he doesn’t fight. Why does he keep trying to fight?

When Nate turns back around, Daniel shuffles a little closer to him, until he can feel the solidity of Nate’s presence beside him, the only person who doesn’t want to hurt him. The only mercy Abraham has is Nate Vandrum, the only affection Danny gets that isn’t tainted and horrible and hurting.

Does he maybe love Nate, or is he just desperate for a feeling other than pain?

After a second, he feels Nate shift a little bit, too. There’s the slightest hint of warmth as Nate’s bad hand - the hand Abraham bashed and broke and never even tried to help heal right - settles at the small of his back, over his shirt.

“What did you learn, then, from your time out there?” Abraham’s smile is a snake’s grin, and his eyes are cold. Danny leans slowly, subtly back into Nate’s touch, trying to use it to give himself some form of strength even as his knees want to give and buckle him to the floor.

If I have to be a dog, I wish I could be his, not yours.

He can hear himself dripping audibly onto the tile. He can feel the water - and some of it is blood and some of it is tears but he doesn’t know which is what any longer. “I l-learned that I d-d-don’t want to be in trouble anymore. I’m s-s-sorry, Abraham. I won’t do it again, I promise. I won’t.”

“Good. That’s what I want to hear. Tell me who you are.”

“My name is Red,” Daniel Michaelson says, meeting Abraham’s eyes, and in that moment he is, he really is. He keeps forgetting - and Abraham keeps reminding him.

Daniel Michaelson slides away, the anger and hate and insistent refrain of I used to be a person fading under the weight of Abraham’s voice, his stare, and the echoing voice of the man in the headphones, the pressure of knowledge that Abraham isn’t the only person who knows that there are people like Daniel in the world, people who only exist to be hurt.

Daniel Michaelson is gone, and Red takes over.

“Your name is Red and…?”

“My name is Red and I belong to you, and I, and I want to be good for you s-so I don’t have to be in trouble again. I do. I want to be so good, Abraham.”

Abraham’s eyes move up and down, taking in the red hair plastered to his forehead, the angry wounds on his face, water trickling slowly down his neck.

Abraham looks over the T-shirt pressed in folds against the lines of his body, showing the torso made skinnier by never enough food, the pajama pants that are slick against his legs, the raw skin underneath the iron cuff that never leaves him, the toes pressing into the bristles of the welcome mat.

Danny shivers under the attention, hugging himself, wishing he didn’t know what Abraham was thinking, wishing it wasn’t written all too clearly on his face, in the gleam of a sudden dark interest in his eyes.

Nate’s hand against his back is the only anchor he has.

“Good boy.” Abraham gestures towards the living room. “Strip. Then you can sit by the fire and dry off, Nate will bring you a towel.”

“Strip? Right… right here?” Daniel feels his face flush deep red, the sting as blood rushes to the newly reopened muzzle wounds. Even as he wants to hesitate, his hands are moving to the hem of his T-shirt, twisting until the fabric wrings out and a sudden patter of droplets hits the floor. “Right now?”

“Right now. Your body doesn’t belong to you, Red. It belongs to me. I feel like I’ve proven that a couple hundred times over by now in every possible way.“

Daniel feels his face flush and keeps his eyes on the floor, skin crawling with the touch of phantom hands, with the knowledge that his body has been broken and bent for someone else.

“B-Bram,” Nate says softly. “C-C-Come on, hasn’t he been p-punished en-enough?”

“You’re the one who begged me to bring him back in. This is what you wanted, right, Nate? Don’t tell me you don’t like seeing him take his clothes off just as much as I do. I know you, sweet thing.” Those eyes slide back to Danny, and all the rain in the world cannot wash the grime off his skin. “Red. Take your fucking clothes off or I’ll do it and then we’ll see if we can’t make those cuts on your hands any deeper.”

Danny meets Nate’s eyes, for just a second, and then pulls his shirt off over his head, peeling the soaked cloth off his skin, dropping the puddle of fabric into the sink.

"Love to see those ribs, sweet thing,” Abraham breathes, and Danny has to close his eyes against furious tears. Then he slides his pajama pants off, keeping his eyes down, his face bright scarlet with the humiliation of it, tossing those in the sink, too.

“Could cut myself on those hips.”

I wish you fucking would, and bleed out, you piece of shit.

No. Be good. Be Red.

When he’s done, he curls into himself, as if there is any modesty left for someone who hasn’t been a person in nearly three years.

He stands naked, dripping onto the floor, rubbing absently at the itching, bleeding circle cut into his face, waiting.

He waits patiently, shivering.

He is good.

Abraham lets the silence draws out, stretching what is left of Danny between revulsion and a desperate need to do whatever it takes to get next to the fire. Finally, in a low voice thick with joy, Abraham says, “Go on. Nate, grab a towel and go with him. No clothes, Red. I want to see my good boy tonight.”

Nate nods, taking Danny by the arm pulling him through the open doorway into the living room. Danny pauses at first, waiting to have his metal cuff hooked to the living room chain, but Nate keeps him walking until they’re right next to the blissful crackling heat of the fire.

“W-wait,” Daniel says, still speaking in a half-pained whisper, trying not to open his mouth enough to hurt his jaw. “My, my chain, you have to chain me up-”

Nate’s own jaw is a hard line, something flinty and cold in his face. “I a-a-asked him to l-let you g-g-get closer. You d-don’t have t-t-to wear it yet.”

“What did you give him?” Daniel isn’t sure he even wants to hear the answer, to know what part of himself Nate still has left to barter.

“D-doesn’t m-m-matter. Sit down.”

Daniel sits next to the fireplace, folding his knees up to his chest, feeling the burst of warmth, dry and welcome and so wonderful on his soaking skin.

Nate towels his hair, and Danny closes his eyes at the unfamiliar form of affection, tilting his head back to make it easier.

Just a puppy, but I wish I were his.

Finally, Nate pulls back. “Y-you can s-s-sit here until y-you’re dry. He said.”

“Will you, um…” Daniel speaks shyly, feeling like a middle schooler asking his first girl to a dance. Or boy, in his case. “Will you stay? Sit with me?”

Nate glances over his shoulder. Abraham is still at the kitchen table, and Daniel can hear the start of a new one of the man’s awful episodes playing on his phone.

Then Nate turns back and drops to sit beside Danny, leaning slowly against him until the fabric of his T-shirt sleeve brushes Danny’s bare arm.

“I c-c-can’t keep w-watching him hah-… hurt you.” Nate’s voice is heavy with the grief Danny had seen in him earlier. “I can’t k-k-keep being cuh-complicit in this.”

“It’s okay,” Daniel says, taking the towel to cover himself over his hips, to find even one small hint of personal privacy. Even if only for a moment. “If I just learn to be good, he won’t anymore. I just have to be good. I can try harder, Nate. I can learn to be good, if I, if I just try harder. I have to want to be good.”

Nate sighs, sliding an arm around Daniel’s shoulders, pressing a furtive, hidden kiss against his hair.

“You w-were already g-g-good. I’ll s-s-save you,” Nate whispers into his ear. “S-somehow, Danny.”

My name is Red, Daniel thinks automatically, but he stays quiet and pushes himself a little more into Nate’s side, tucks his head into the crook of the older man’s neck.

Nate doesn’t say anything about the damp hair. He only holds Danny a little tighter and begins to hum, low in his throat, a song Danny doesn’t know but feels somehow immensely reassured by.

The only other sound is the crackling of the fire and Abraham’s occasional laughter from the kitchen.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Daniel Michaelson’s Story: Nate Vandrum, Two Years Before Daniel

(this is late for @whumptober2019 - it was planned for Day 18, Muffled Scream - but hey, it’s fun, so I’m posting it. This is Nate Vandrum, the Denners’ prior whumpee and Daniel Michaelson’s eventual savior of sorts, during his initial captivity when both twins are alive. TW/SW: knives, blood, abusive behavior, the Denners are awful)

Ashley’s sitting on his lap, facing him with her arms around his neck, crossed at the wrists just behind his head. She is close, so close her eerily pretty face takes up his entire field of vision. Slightly narrowed eyes, upswept at the corners and oddly feline, high cheekbones, wide mouth, white-blonde hair and eyebrows that seem sometimes to nearly disappear against equally-white skin.

The spitting image of her brother, nearly identical - but colder.

"You could have more scars," She murmurs in a voice like velvet soaked in whiskey, and as she leans in he turns his head to the side, looking away from her, trying to find a spot on the wall he can stare at instead.

Looking away is the best he can do. He has spent hours memorizing every mark on the walls while they turn him into someone other than who he used to be.

"Oh, Nate. Don't be so rude." She rolls her hips forward so they press against his, and he swallows hard at the way it doesn’t feel that bad at all. "You know the rules, don't you?"

There are so many rules.

Never pull away from Ashley or Abraham Denner. Never reject a touch. Never ask why. Say thank you for every gift you are given, and remember that every breath is a gift we give you now. Do whatever you are told to do, as soon as you are told.

Take each bruise, each bleeding wound, with gratitude.

Be our pet.

Fall in love.

He'd like to pretend they cannot force the last one on him, but Bram has been gone all day and Nate misses him - his touch, even the bruising ones, his kiss, his everything.

He'd been with them for years, and somewhere in there - somewhere between the pain and the things they do to him and the way they hold him afterward - his deep abiding hatred and urge to escape have been twisted, broken, reshaped.

Ashley he cannot be forced to love, but that's not what she wants, anyway.

Only Bram wants his love.

Ashley just wants his obedience and fear, and those are so much easier to give.

He slowly turns his head back to face her, jaw locked tightly, feeling the ring they put through his lip on one side shifting.

When his green eyes meet her blue, she laughs, a soft low sound from deep in her chest. "Fuck, that's so good to watch. Are you going to admit I’m right now? Hm? My Brammie won't be home til late, it's just… you and me and this argument we don’t have to be having."

Nate can feel the blade in her hand graze, gentle as a kiss, against the back of his neck. He does not stiffen up or go tense - never pull away from the Denners - and Ashley never lets the edge of a blade touch someone accidentally.

This is how she is choosing to touch him, and he has to accept it, even if it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

“I’m not having an argument,” He says, feeling the blade move a little, the softest kiss of sharpness, around the side, up and down the line of the vein in the side of his neck, not quite cutting, not yet. Then over his Adam’s apple, smiling at him as he swallows hard and the blade pricks, just the slightly bit.

“What are you doing, then?” Her voice is a purr, a rumble in her chest.

“Not having an argument.” Nate fixes his eyes on hers, tries to look unintimidated, like the person he maybe used to be. “You’re just wrong.”

She lets the blade slice, just the barest bit, and Nate hisses air through his teeth, picturing the droplet of bright red welling up. She darts her head forward and he feels the wet press of her tongue as she licks it up. He used to get nauseous at that feeling. Now he feels nothing at all. “You don’t get to tell us we’re wrong. God damn do I love it when your blood is hot.”

She is playing with him, of course - this is a game. Ashley Denner has always been a cat and Nathaniel Vandrum little more than the mouse she is not allowed to consume, because her twin brother loves him and has declared he gets to live.

If he stays relaxed, if he looks bored, she might get bored, too, and walk away. Maybe.

She might decide to slice the collar again, the cuts in smooth lines that go around and around his neck but never too deep. If she does that, he must hold still. For every flinch or noise he makes, she’ll wind the knife another time.

He is very good at holding still for Ashley’s knife, now.

Never reject a touch.

She is safer when Bram’s home, because Bram loves him, and he hurts Nate because he loves him, because he has to be fixed, made better. If he’s good, if he does what he’s told to do, Bram won’t hurt him very much at all.

This relationship only works if you understand your place, Nate. You're my pet and I love you - we’re going to be together forever. But if you don’t understand that you belong to me, then I’ll have to break up with you, and then you’ll have to die.

Bram loves him, and he wants to keep Nate as a pet forever, and there are moments when Nate forgets who he is.

He was a professor, back home. He had a whole life before he met them.

Some days, it’s hard to remember that - and in those moments, he loves Bram, too, and all he wants is to make him happy. In those moments he feels like maybe he was meant for this, born to be with Bram and Ashley, born to kneel for Bram, that every single second of his life was leading up to the night they followed him home.

Bram says it all the time. You need to understand that you loved us already. You just didn't know it yet, before we found you.

I love you, Nate, so much, so much you get to live, with me forever. You'll never leave me. You'll never run.

If you leave me, I'll cut parts of you off until you never leave again.

I love you, Nate. I love you. I love you so much.

Now say it back or I’ll get the razor blades out again.

Bram Denner's a psychopath, and Nathaniel Vandrum is sometimes still himself and sometimes a pet, and he has no idea how long he can hold any part of himself together. He has no idea how much more of this there will be, only that it will last for the rest of his life, and one day they will get tired of him and kill him and at least it would all be over, then.

If Bram is a psychopath, Ashley is something even worse.

“You know, when you’re like this, I can see why Brammie loves you so much.” She shifts around again, leaning in close to kiss his cheek, a trail of kisses to his ear, down the side of his neck over the healing cuts that itch and itch, licking at the still-bleeding place she’d let the knife cut in. “You've got a nice jaw, good mouth, pretty nice eyes… I get it, I really do."

Other than the fact that she is clearly female, Ashley Denner looks exactly like her twin brother. Sometimes when they are hurting him, Nate can’t remember which one he is currently begging to stop, calls the one with the knife or the whip or the cane by the wrong name, and they laugh and laugh and hit him harder until he gets it right the next time.

“Thanks for the compliment,” Nate says dryly. He doesn’t stammer yet - the stammer comes later, after he tries one more time to escape and Bram hits him too hard in the head a few times. He doesn’t stammer yet. “But you’re still wrong.”

He is currently tied to a chair because the two of them are both fucking idiots, and they refuse to listen to someone who knows something they don’t.

If she were anyone else, the weight of her hips pressing lightly against his would have been supremely pleasant. Even with Ashley being exactly who she is, it isn’t exactly a bad feeling. He tries to remember when feelings like this came from people who weren’t in the process of slowly destroying him, piece by piece.

“I’m not wrong,” She says, rolling her eyes.

The knife trails down the side of his neck, over his collarbone, traces the line of it. There’s never enough food (not enough sleep, either - when one of them is done with him the other is only getting started) and he’s lost weight since he came here, defining the muscles they force him to exercise to build.

When he is good, he eats enough, but the days he is good are the days he starts to forget who he used to be, and so he’s never good for enough days in a row to fully lose the hunger.

He has to remember who he used to be.

He has to remember that he is a person.

He has to remember long enough to find the opportunity to escape.

“You are wrong.” Another prick of the knife, just above his collarbone this time, and he manages not to wince at the bright flash of pain as the knife digs in a little deeper. “You can’t be identical twins, Ashley.”

“Why not?” She cuts a smooth line across the length of his collarbone and up to his shoulder, and Nate lets his head fall back, teeth ground together as hard as they can to keep his jaw shut, shifting but not flinching away as the skin separates like she’s cutting butter, not him, and the blood wells up in a line.

She licks it away, a low pleased growl in her throat, and her other hand holds him still by the back of his neck, fingernails digging in hard, dimpling the skin until they ache, too.

“You’re a man and a woman,” He manages, voice strained with keeping control. Never reject a touch. Never pull away. Follow the rules.

Be grateful for the pain, because every breath is a gift we have chosen to give you.

“I fail to see the problem with that,” Ashley says against his skin. She moves the knife away and for a second he thinks maybe this will be all, this will be enough to satisfy her.

“Identical twins have to be the same biological sex. It’s a single person’s genes that get split into two eggs. You’re not identical twins.”

She pulls back and looks at him, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully. “We were a single person, once, then we split in two. Male and female, like twin gods in the myths.”

Nate takes a deep breath.

She’s moved the knife back and away, and is watching him with no anger in her eyes. Maybe this time he’ll get through to her.

“Identical twins are always the same biological sex.”

“Unless they’re gods,” She counters.

“No,” Nate says trying to sound patient but his collarbone and shoulder ache from the cuts and he just wants her to undo the handcuffs and let him get out of the chair. “Even those stories about the gods - they’d have been fraternal twins. That’s what you are - you’re fraternal twins.”

“We’re identical.”

“No. You’re similar.”

She frowned. “No. We are identical twins.”

“You are very similar-looking fraternal twins, Ashley.”

“I’m going to tell Brammie you said that when you come home,” Ashley says, sitting back and away from him now, resting her weight entirely on his lower thighs where they connect to his knees. He swallows, knowing what’s coming, but somehow he can’t let this go.

He doesn’t love her.

She doesn’t want him to.

And she’s wrong.

“I’m going to tell him you said we’re not identical.” She changes her grip on the knife and he knows what is about to happen next.

He turns his head away one more time, closes his eyes, and waits.

“He’s going to be so upset with you, Nate.”

The blade of the knife jams straight through his shoulder and out the other side, buries itself with an audible thunk into the wood back of the chair, and Nate only barely keeps his mouth shut to muffle the scream.

Ashley leans in close again, watching him with wide eyes like a child looking into the reptile cage at the zoo, her head slowly tilting to one side until a bit of wavy blonde hair falls across her cheek. “No, Nate. I want to hear you. Turns me on.”

He shakes his head, biting down on his lower lip until it bleeds, the agony spreading from his shoulder down his arm, into his chest, the feel of wet blood running in rivulets down his chest and back.

“I say we are identical twins, Nate. And I say you’re going to scream.”

She smiles, twists the knife as hard as she can, and Nate’s back arches him nearly out of the chair at the pain, still biting his lip, the cry trapped in his throat, keep it down, don’t make noise, she likes that too much and she’ll want too much afterward, don’t-

She twists again, and then time Nate screams, head thrown back, pulling helplessly trying to free himself, the handcuffs rattling hard against the back of the chair. Ashley grinds her hips into his and starts to laugh, a strange high-pitched hyena laughter, yanking the knife back out and somehow that hurts worse and he screams again.

He always tries to hold it back.

He always screams in the end.

“There we go. That’s our good, good boy. Now… are we identical twins, Nate?”

He’s breathing hard, panting really, like the dog they always tell him he is until he earns being a person. He can’t speak for the pain, can barely hear her over the buzzing agony, and all he can do is shake his head. “Fra-... fraternal,” He grinds out.

“Oooh, you are a masochist today,” Ashley says. Her voice is warm and playful but her eyes are very, very cold. “You are indeed. Okay, Nate. Have it your way.”

When the knife buries itself in his other shoulder, he doesn’t try to muffle the scream this time, just lets himself collapse and drown in it, in the sound from his own throat, in the pain that rattles the walls. She yanks it back out and he groans again, head dropping, black hair in his eyes.

Ashley twists her fingers into that hair and yanks his head back up. When he finally opens his eyes, narrowed against the ache, she waits until she is sure he is looking at her and slowly licks his blood off the blade.

“Bad puppy,” She says, and her lips are smeared red with his blood. “You’re a very, very bad dog. Let’s see how much of you is left by the time my Brammie gets home.”

#whumptober2019 #whump #intimate whumper #defiant whumpee #tw: knives #tw: blood #are the denners energy vampires regular vampires or just fucked up #you decide #Daniel Michaelson's story #Nathaniel vandrum #Abraham denner #Ashley Denner #just let it go nate

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Daniel Michaelson: Nate Vandrum’s Nightmare

(for the @whumptober2019 prompt Hallucination - and for @pinkcupboardwitch and @muffinworry who I’m sure are totally fine with this)

There’s a weight on him, and Nate can’t breathe.

He tries, but it’s caught somewhere in the pressure pushing slowly, inexorably, onto his chest. The exhale is easy and simple enough - it’s on the inhale that the weight is worse, and worse, and he can’t quite replace the oxygen he’s lost.

Each breath is a little more difficult than the one before.

There’s no real panic, only the sense that he should panic, he should be scared that he can’t quite breathe, but he’s not scared… not yet.

He’s dizzy but still mostly asleep, caught in a formless uneasy dream where he’s been given some task to do by Bram but he can’t quite manage it, and every time he fails he sees Danny’s wrists and remembers what will happen if he can’t pull it together before Bram’s cell phone timer goes off, before he starts taking pictures, before Danny starts to scream.

But he can’t remember what the task is, and he can’t possibly finish it in time.

Danny, what did he tell me to do? You have to tell me, please, I want to help you.

In his dreams he never stammers - every word comes out crisp and clear and smooth, just like when he was a professor, just like before. Sometimes he wonders how long it will be before he stammers in his sleep, too, before his mind stops remembering there was ever a time he didn’t.

Nate tries to shift, to roll over and pull the fuzzy soft blanket up higher, but the weight won’t let him, keeps him flat on his back.

“I don’t think so, Nate,” Ashley says, tsking softly, clicking her tongue against her teeth.

Cold fingertips with fingernails so long they scratch against his skin find his chin and turn his head towards the ceiling, hold him there with the most delicate touch. The cold pressure feels like someone has laid a block of ice against his chest, soaking into his skin, freezing around his heart.

He can feel the brush of her hair now, the slightly wavy white-blonde of it against his cheek.

Hitch in a breath; not quite enough air.

Exhale.

Again.

“Y-you’re dead,” Nate slurs, without much worry or concern, not yet. He’s still half-lost in himself, in his attempt to remember what chore Bram gave him to do, what task he must finish. He can still see Danny’s pleading eyes, begging him to save him from the next cruelty, and the next, and the next. “Kill… K-K-Killed y-you m’self.”

Breath in - never enough, not enough.

Exhale.

Again.

The cold weight on his chest shifts a little, and he can see now that she’s sitting on him, settled right over his breastbone, wearing the blue jeans and hooded sweatshirt she’d had on when he killed her,.

The great big bloodstain is still spread across the front where he had stabbed her, just kept stabbing until he couldn’t do it any longer, until all his rage at his agony and his misery had been spent. He could still see the tears in the fabric - how many stab wounds, he doesn’t even remember any longer. The bloodstains are brownish and dried and cracking off in flakes that flutter down to his collarbone and neck. Through the rips in the cloth the knife had made, he can see a flash of her skin - no wounds there, just pale white and unmarked.

The ripple of the shadows of her ribs, pale stomach, a suggestion of a curve.

He manages a single deep breath, fighting against the weight, forcing in all the oxygen his starving brain needs, and then exhales in a rush.

Should’ve held onto that air.

Oh well; he’d just have to fight harder.

Her eyes, when he looks up at her, are still the same focused, cold ice-blue, but her cheekbones are more pronounced. Her teeth, when she smiles, are pointed and the gums have pulled back from them, turning every tooth into a fang. Her skin is grayish-blue, not white, and he can see the thin blue veins underneath skin so thin it’s gone not-quite-transparent.

She smells like soil, and blood, and death.

And ice.

“So you did,” She admits, shifting a little bit, her right knee along the left side of his ribcage, left knee along his right. Her hands move up his chest, palms pressing slowly, inexorably, until she’s holding him down by his shoulders, curling over so she’s bent nearly in half, so close they could kiss, brushing the end of her nose against his. “I did not appreciate that, by the way.”

“I d-d-didn’t ap-appreciate the c-crowbar,” Nate manages, his voice thin as he strains to get enough breath to speak at all. “Or th-the needles under m-my fingernails. Or th-the collar. Or the wh-wh-whip. Or, or the-”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” She says smoothly, putting a finger on his lips to stop the flow of words. “You called us psychopaths.”

“C-Call you w-w-worse than th, that,” Nate says, and bites down on the ice-cold finger as hard as he can.

It’s like biting onto a sculpture made entirely of bone, as if there isn’t any skin to give under his teeth at all, and she tastes like nothing.

She jerks her hand back with a hiss and Nate feels a spike of triumph at causing even this slight bit of pain, even though she is dead - has been dead for years, and the dead don’t come back. If the dead came back, Bram would never be able to stop running from the cascade of corpses he and Ashley left everywhere they went.

“You little shit,” She snaps, shaking out her hand, eyes narrowed to angry slits as she stares down at him.

Nate swallows hard, forces another long breath, his fingers clawing into the sheets beneath the covers, trying to remind himself that this has to be a dream, too. She’s dead.

Inhale - just enough air this time.

Exhale - as carefully and slowly as he can.

Again.

He remembers each and every time the knife went into and came out of her skin, every moment he buried it nearly to the handle and then yanked it back out, the way she had looked so genuinely, truly surprised, her eyes open wide right through her death and beyond it.

Now those eyes are narrowed and thoughtful, and she is so, so cold.

“You’ve lost all your manners since you left us,” She growls, sucking on the finger he bit like a little kid, sitting back, one hand still pushing his shoulder down and trapping him where he is. “It’s because of that puppy you killed my brother over, isn’t it?”

“T-T-Tried to k-kill,” Nate says - even now, years after her death, he can’t let Ashley be wrong. He gives her a smile that is nearly a snarl. He is fiercely proud of himself - and Bram is proud of him, too, he’d said as much in the courtroom. The last words they’d exchanged as they led Bram away the final time after the sentencing was finished.

Bram had been led past the prosecution’s table and he’d paused looked right into Nate’s eyes, and said simply, I love you, baby, and I’m so fuckin’ proud of you.

Nate hadn’t said anything - but the part of him that had never left Bram had shivered in helpless joy at the words.

It doesn’t matter if Bram is proud of him or not.

It doesn’t matter.

He tells himself that, and sometimes he even believes it for a while. Right now, though, he knows that isn’t fully true. Stronger than the urge to please Bram, to earn his love and his pride, though, is his desire to protect and defend and care for…

“Danny,” Nate breathes out, turning his head to the side, catching only a glimpse of mussed-up red hair and his wrists pressed together up in front of his frightened sleeping face before Ashley grabs his chin again and turns his face back to her, shaking her head. Now he can hear Danny’s breathing, hitched and stutter-skipping. “D-Don’t-”

“Don’t what?” Ashley murmurs. “Don’t get into his head? Don’t give him pretty dreams? Too late for that. Oh, Nate, you broke so many rules when you took him away from my Brammie.” She rolls her hips over his chest, the feeling of paralyzing ice making its way up into his shoulders and down his arms.

As she pushes herself slowly down, moving down his stomach grinding a little into his pelvis, finally coming to a stop with her hips on the tops of his thighs, she lays herself along him until her chest rests on his.

Her hipbones jut hard into his legs until he thinks he will bruise.

It’s all so very, very cold.

“Do you want to know what your darling dreams about, baby?” Ashley asks idly, gnawing on one fingernail with her pointed teeth.

“No,” He answers, but he can’t look away from her eyes - the way he could never look away from Bram’s, either. They hold you - they mesmerize you - you’re spellbound with them. He had managed to escape Bram only because he fell so hard for Danny that he could break the spell again.

For all that he keeps his voice calm, his heart pounds in his chest, and she’s dead, he knows she’s dead but part of him is wailing inside his mind don’t let her take you away again, they will never stop, you will never escape.

“He loves you so, so much,” Ashley says, leaning down to press a kiss to Nate’s cheek. Where her lips brush, he freezes over. She kisses him, cold lips to his, and when he breathes out next he sees a cloud of air in front of his face.

He can’t move his mouth.

“He was made for you,” Ashley says, gentle and soothing and syrupy-sweet. “My Brammie took a pretty young man and broke him, shattered him like a coffee mug on the floor, ground little Red’s face into it until there was no face left and then glued him back together… but there are some pieces missing, aren’t there? Everything he is, everything he has, everything he will ever be is because Brammie made him for you. There is no Daniel Michaelson left. There is only your little Red, your sweet little whore, who loves you so, so much.”

Nate swallows, trying to shake his head, to protest - Danny is his own person, he doesn’t belong to me, he isn’t mine, more of him comes back every single day, yesterday he dropped something and just cursed at it instead of asking me to forgive him - but he can’t move his mouth and no sound comes out, only a shaking exhale, a fight to inhale again, through a mouth he can’t quite open.

“He dreams,” Ashley murmurs, kissing his forehead, and he feels the ice traveling up to his hairline and along his scalp. A nip to one earlobe and his ears feel like he’s been standing out in the winter in the woods for hours. The end of his nose is next, frozen after her lips have left it. “He dreams of the woods. He dreams of the ways in which he was broken for you. He dreams of barbed wire cutting into his wrists and that beautiful wire grid over his mouth, the blood at his jaw, at his nose, in his mouth. He tastes blood in his sleep.” She smiles, flashing her pointed monster teeth at him. “He dreams of everything my Brammie did to make him perfect, just for you. Just for you, Nate. You’re just like us. You want him all to yourself.”

Nate tries to shake his head, desperately fighting her words, the way she echoes his deepest fears, his worst thoughts - that they kept him too long, that within him is the potential to become like them, that maybe he already is becoming like them.

That maybe every time he takes Danny’s hand, holds him in his sleep, kisses him, it’s something he only does because Bram would want him to. That he wants to be here to protect him not because Danny needs protecting but because Nate doesn’t want to let him go.

Because over seven years, maybe they infected him.

Maybe it’s only a matter of time.

She leans in to whisper in his ear. “In his best dreams, Nate, he dreams that he belongs to you. That’s how fucking broken my brother made him. That’s how perfect he is for you. That’s your perfect little Red.”

Through gritted teeth and an immobile mouth, Nate spits out, “D-D-D-Dan-ny.”

She pulls back, frowning down at him, momentarily confused. “What?”

“N-Name… is… D-D-Dan-ny.”

I tried to kill for him once and I can do it again.

I could kill you again.

Nate takes the deepest breath he can manage, closes his eyes, and jerks himself upright with every ounce of strength he has, hands out to grab her by the throat.

His fingers close around thin air.

Nate sits up in bed, and it’s just him and Danny in the room, in the bed. He can hear Danny’s little brother’s low breathing from down the hall through the door cracked open (hadn’t he closed it before they went to sleep? He’s almost certain he did), but no one is here.

He turns to look down at Danny, who sleeps peacefully, and his arms are splayed apart, not forced together like before. His face is peaceful, serene and young in sleep, and he shifts around, rolling over to face Nate without opening his eyes, mumbling something soft and loving in his sleep.

Had that just been a dream? Some kind of hallucination?

Nate slowly turns back to stare around the dark room.

He slowly lays back down in the bed covers himself up to the chin with the blankets, and slides his arms around Danny as tightly as he can, pulling the redhead closer to him, Danny’s head tucked under his chin like they slept sometimes at the cabin, when they needed each other more than they feared Bram’s wrath when he found them like that.

Just a dream.

Just seeing things.

But when he exhales, Nate can see his breath - and his ears and the end of his nose still feel frozen solid.

As he tries to slow his breathing, he can still feel a pressure on his chest, still hear her low voice whispering, you’re just like us.

Or you will be.

#whump #whumptober2019 #no. 22 #caretaker whump #hallucination #caretaker whumpee #broken whumpee #tw: references to past torture and violence #haunted #ashley denner #Nathaniel vandrum #Daniel Michaelson's story #nightmare #whump drabble #prompt: Hallucination #Nate is my favorite #whumpee #whumper #dead whumper

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

Text

Day 9: Shackled

(continuing @whumptober2019 - this is Day 9, Shackled! Have some intimate whumper, broken whumpee, and creepy comfort!) They keep Abraham Denner shackled right up until they’re standing outside the little door they use to bring him into the courtroom. He’s got handcuffs on, plus another set of cuffs around his ankles with a chain that doesn’t let him move at anything more than a stately walk.

When he carried little Red up out of the cellar, shivering and weak and curled against him like the puppy he was, he felt his heart grow near to bursting with pure happiness.

Red would come around. A little darkness, some time alone, that was all it took sometimes. It would take some reminders, of course, but the important part was started when he said he was sorry, down there in the dark.

He keeps his head held high, shoulders back. He’s not ashamed of himself in the slightest; he’s done absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

He stands patiently while the guards unlock him for his move into court, but he never looks at his escorts. He doesn’t particularly care about them. Just bodies in uniforms, a bit of blood vessel and organ meat.

There are very few people in the world, in the eyes of Abraham Denner. There is himself, his sister, Nate his true sweet love, and his mother. The only real people alive.

And two of those four people are dead now.

He carried Red into the bathroom and set him into the bathtub. Weak and barely conscious, Red had whined, softly, in the back of his throat, tried to reach out to him, but his wrists were still handcuffed together and Bram had hushed him, softly, and turned on the hot water.

Red jumped, eyes flickering open, just barely. Then he went boneless and limp and let Bram wash him, each and every inch of him, without a fight, only shifting uncomfortably when Bram’s perfectly chaste attentions went places he didn’t appreciate. Water ran in rivulets down his face, cutting tracks into the dirt from the cellar, which he gently scrubbed away until his face was perfect again, showcasing the markings from the muzzle. He’d have to put it back on, soon - couldn’t let anything that pretty heal… what a waste if it did.

Water ran down his back, over the handcuffs, which he scrubbed around but didn’t take off.

He took some soap and soaped him up, carefully, and Red only shook under his hands and never said a word of protest, didn’t even try to pull away. Let him rinse him clean. Just stayed still, and stared at him with dull, cloudy blue eyes.

Nate appeared at the doorway, limping a little, and over his shoulder he told him to go get some towels. Nate hesitated, staring at little Red, as though he’d seen a ghost - or a reflection of himself, once upon a time.

“What did I just say?”

Nate nodded again, quickly, and was gone.

If he’d been smart, maybe he would have seen the first stirrings of the way Nate would stop loving him and start loving little Red instead.

Bram looks good in a suit, but then, he always has. Mother and Ashley used to despair of ever finding a man in their own lives who looked as good in a suit as he did. If only Mother had lived long enough to meet Nate. Ashley loved seeing Nate all dressed up in suits… right up until he bludgeoned her to death.

That’s okay. Nate was just turning into a person, at the time, didn’t yet understand that you can only be a person if you’re a Denner. He didn’t know he was a Denner yet; he would, he would, soon enough.

Oh, his hair was looking good today, too. The shampoo in the jail was that awful hotel-quality stuff, made his hair a little brittle and dry, but he’s managed to charm one of his daily guards into bringing him a little bit of something better, and he’s got his hair nice and shining for court by now. Nice and shining for Nate.

He looks good for his perfect true love to see, each and every day. Plus Red’s pissed-off little brother, and he’s beautiful, too. Ryan, he thinks his name is. The lawyer told him. He can’t remember the lawyer’s name, but you don’t forget a face like Ryan’s.

Ryan is too common a name, doesn’t suit the kid’s brother at all. He’d give him a new name, something better. Put a shock collar on him until he answered to it.

He should have tried that with Red, that might have been fun to watch. Ah, well.

If wishes were horses, as Mother used to say.

Wrapped up in towels, Red allowed himself to be carried into the bedroom, where he propped him up with pillows and had Nate heat up some chicken broth, feeding him with a spoon like a sick child, sip by sip.

When he had eaten as much as was safe, Bram took the bowl away, to his soft whispered exhausted protest.

“No, no, can’t have you getting sick again. Now, what do we say when Abraham does something nice for us?”

Red looked at him pleadingly, but there was still a spark of defiance in there. Bram licked ihs lips, felt something in his core heat up at the fight that still lurked under the starvation, the loneliness, the fear.

“What do we say? Or would you prefer to go back down to the cellar again?”

“No!” It wasn’t a shout, but a hoarse whisper… and yet all the feeling of the shout was there. Bram smiled when he reached out a shaking hand to grab him by the wrist, grip weak and barely there, still handcuffed, other hand hanging limply. “No. No. I can… I can do it.”

“Are you going to try harder to be good?”

“Yes,” Red said softly, too tired to fight any longer, at least right now. “I can try harder. I can be good. Th-Thank you, Abraham. Thank you for my soup.”

That’s a rule: thank Abraham for everything you are given.

“And…?” “Um, I… thank you for cleaning me.”

“... and?”

Red’s eyes flickered from side to side, still foggy, confused. Bram smiled and lifted a hand to the side of his face, cupping his cheek with the palm of his hand, watching him, waiting patiently.

“Um, uh, and… and… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m just tired, I’m trying, give me a second to try harder-”

“Ssshhh, take your time. Deep breaths, little Red. In and out. In and out.”

All he has are memories now, but what good goddamn memories.

He doesn't really expect to walk out of this, and he honestly doesn't really mind. It was just a matter of how guilty they found him, not whether or not they found him guilty at all.

He absolutely did everything he’s been charged with - he only said ‘not guilty’ because he knew that his Nate would never miss a day of the trial.

No, Nate still loves him, he knows it.

Nate only burned down the cabin for Red’s sake, anyway, and he can see why - Red’s a sweet thing now, pliant and good and so, so scared.

Bram would burn a lot of buildings down to have Red back to kneel at his feet. If only someone would give him the chance (and the lighter, and maybe some gasoline) to prove it.

He’s disappointed, of course; he had wanted to see them both, hadn’t realized his sweet boy was too scared to face him in person.

That’s okay. It’s fine. It’s all okay.

It’s going to be fine.

Because Red will come see him in prison. He's absolutely sure of it.

What matters isn’t that he sees him now, at his trial - or even that he'll see him in the future. What matters is that he saw him then, as he broke him apart, melted him down, and remade him into something better, more fitting.

He can dream about little Red, what it would be like to have one more chance to see him be the darling puppy he built him into.

He already knows they won’t give him the death penalty, it’s not legal in this state. He’s going to live, and they think it will be a punishment for him, to live and live and live behind bars.

It’s not a punishment, because he gets to live with the vision of his boys behind his eyes every time he goes to sleep, and that’s as close to heaven as someone like Bram is ever, ever going to get.

That photographic memory comes in handy at times like these.

“Th-thank you for saving me from the cellar,” Red finally said, and Bram leaned in to kiss him, impulsively, like a kid at the end of a first date.

Red has always gone still at his kisses before - tried to throw punches in the beginning, tried to bite and kick and scratch and stab. But this time - tired, and scared, and lonely from the darkness - this time, Red lets his mouth go soft, hesitantly presses back.

“Good boy,” He says softly. “There’s my good, good boy. You’re going to try so hard for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, Abraham, I will, I’ll try… please, please can I sleep now? Please?”

Nate stood in the doorway, watching them, and his face was solid as stone, his green eyes impassive.

Yes.

He should have noticed sooner that Red wasn’t just the key to keeping Nate by his side, but the key to Nate finding it in himself to try and leave again.

The love of his life is sitting next to the prosecution and tries not to look at him, but he can’t always help it, and Bram is living for those moments when he gets to see those pretty green eyes locked on his.

Like today, for instance.

Once he’s ready, the guards escort him into the courtroom, and he smiles brightly for the stenographer, who looks quickly away, but flushes just the barest bit. Bram’s always had a way with women and men, and she’s not immune.

Then he catches Nate’s eye, his true love already sitting with his lawyer, gets a good look at the slightly mossy green of them, and he is always, endlessly, rapturously head over heels for Nathaniel Vandrum.

He doesn’t mind what Nate did; he’d forgive him anyway, forgive him everything, until the end of time.

He and Nate meet eyes, for that long second as he walks, and then Nate looks away. He’s cold, every day in court, cold and hostile, but in that moment Bram knows - he knows - that the love is still there.

Maybe Nate will visit him in prison, too.

“Yes, of course you can,” He said, helping Red lay all the way down in the bed. “Just one thing first.”

Red’s eyes were already closed by the time he was on his back in the bed, curling onto his side the way he liked to sleep, full of the chicken broth and a few saltines, looking so sweet and so sad there in the bed, exactly the way Bram wanted him.

He pulled the metal chain out of the closet, shackling Red’s ankle cuff to the little hook he’d built into the footboard of the bed, ensuring he wasn’t going anywhere, even if he did get a bad fucking idea or two.

“There, my darling puppy,” He whispered, petting through the red hair, feeling Red go stiff and tense… and then force himself, muscle by muscle, to relax under the touch.

“Thank you for letting me sleep,” Red mumbled, and curled himself up a little tighter.

Perfect - or not quite, but getting there.

If he’d been born three hundred years ago, he would have been able to take men like Nate and the pretty little Red and go out to some frontier where no one paid attention and keep them as the pets they had been born to be and no one would have been the wiser.

The modern world was a… frustration, but he would handle it like he always had. Things happened, things came and went, but he had done a good job with the skills he had, taking men and breaking them into something less. If he’d gone into government work, he might have a job rather than a prison sentence.

They've heard Nate, watched Red's pathetic little video (that crying should be private, Red should cry for him and him alone), and now Bram is ready to take the stand.

Testifying in his own defense, they say, but he doesn't care about that. He's been testifying for days now and he doesn't give a single damn about defending himself, not to useless bodies that will just imprison him anyway.

No, Abraham Denner just wants to put on a fuckin' show.

He swears on the Bible, thinks they'd have been better asking him to swear on a book of Norse mythology - then again, his father is a trickster god and Loki wouldn't care if he lied.

Not that he has to.

"Can you state your name?"

"Did that the last week already."

"We have to start the same way every day, Mr. Denner. We discussed this."

"Fine. Abraham James Denner."

"And your birthdate?"

"March 6, 1982." He pauses, then flashes a smile at the little brother, Ryan. "Pisces, you know how it is. I'm a daydreamer."

"Mr. Denner, please keep your answers concise."

"I'll do my best, but no promises.”

After a couple of hours of dinner and working on some evening chores, he told Nate to go ahead and watch TV by himself tonight, if he wanted, and Bram made his way back into the bedroom, watching Red curled up in the bed, dozing underneath a blanket, the chain attached to his ankle sticking out from under the end.

Then he climbed into the bed next to him, pulled Red’s back against his chest, and held him, sliding one arm over his stomach, letting his fingers splay out against the warm skin.

Red tensed, every muscle going rock hard all at once, pulse racing. His voice was still slurred with sleep. “Wh-what are you-”

“Ssshhhhh. Sleep, puppy. I’ve got you.” He pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. It’s going to be okay, now, because you’re going to try so hard for me. You’re going to be very good. Can you be good for me from now on?”

“I’ll… I’ll try. I’ll try to be good.” Red swallowed so hard he could hear it, and Bram smiled into the back of his neck as Red tried to make himself relax again.

The two of them laid there until they both fell asleep, and it was fucking perfect.

He winks at the little brother, who grinds his teeth in a way he can see all the way from over here, as they start asking him more questions.

He’ll spend the rest of his life with plenty of time to go over, and over, and over every single second of the last four years.

But first… first, he gets to talk about it - and Red’s sweet baby brother, just twenty-four years old and with the most gorgeous face Bram has ever seen, gets to listen.

#daniel michaelson's story #ryan michaelson #Nathaniel vandrum #Abraham denner #Abraham denner POV #whumper #whump #intimate whumper #whumptober2019 #no. 9 #day 9: shackled #broken whumpee #dehumanization #conditioning #creepy comfort #whumper caretaker #whumper comfort #should ryan Michaelson get a POV chapter? can't decide

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

Random thought but RIP to anyone who breaks Mina’s heart cause I feel like this would be how it goes:

An older Mina, crying: I can’t believe my ex was such a jerk! I hope they never treat anyone like this ever again!

Nathaniel has-committed-felony-arson Vandrum: don’t worry sweetie they won’t :)

Mina: So-and-so cheated on me! -weeping-

Danny: ... okay, you need to make sure I'm the one who tells your dad first... preferably nowhere near matches

#mina asks

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

Is Nate’s fully name Nathan, or is it Nathaniel like Nanda’s?

Nathaniel John Vandrum!

#nate asks #it's my third favorite name

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Text

Blood, Freely Given

CW: Blood, vampirism, referenced dissoci@ted identities, vague referenced severe childhood trauma, brief noncon refs, brief torture references

The automatic double-doors slide open, and their bare feet move over the scratchy mat just inside, smearing mud across the black nylon.

Water drips down from their hair, running in rivulets over the line of their throat, dipping beneath their soaked-through tank top, dripping with a soft pat pat pat pat onto the tile. They move as if floating past the welcome desk at the hospital.

Shadows, thick and velvet, swallow them whole. The shadows feel like arms holding them tight, like the grasp of a lover, like being loved.

When the admin assistant working the welcome desk looks up, light glinting off his nametag, to see who has come in through the door, he blinks as the lights flicker overhead, and for just a second he sees a flash of green hair stained reddish-brown and caked with drying dirt, a haunted blank face and empty glowing eyes… and then there’s no one there.

“Weird,” He mutters, staring as the doors slowly slide closed again. “Fucking weird.”

Outside, lightning flashes and thunder booms right on its heels, a deafening roar of sound that seems to rattle even the solidity of the hospital. The admin swallows, hard, staring out into the total blackness of the storm raging outside the safety of the brick and stone walls that surround them.

He’s already forgotten the half-second of sight, and thinks now only about the thunder and lightning. Water drips along the floor as they walk, ignoring him.

He doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters but finding Ryan.

The shadows move around them, twist and dance around their feet like spirits, like animals, like children who never leave them. People look at the water on the floor and wonder why it hasn’t dried, find themselves baffled at the sight of mud dissolving into the puddles, but they don’t see the feet that make the puddles, they don’t see the drip of water from green hair, off of wrinkled fingertips.

They don’t see Ora Collins, because Ora Collins does not want to be seen.

Their cheekbones are pronounced, gaunt in their face. Hazel eyes glow, set into the lines of their face. Their hair hasn’t grown since the last day in the farmhouse, since the moment Ryan’s teeth pierced their skin. A broken fingernail has never regrown. A cut on one leg doesn’t heal, but it doesn’t hurt, either.

There’s a bruise that is now a permanent fixture on their left arm, a memory that might as well be a tattoo.

Dead and not-dead, they follow a heartbeat that pulses in perfect rhythm with their own. He’s upstairs, they know that. Waiting for them, knowing they’re coming. He feels them as strongly as they feel him.

We feel our own. We always feel our own.

Ora’s eyes flutter shut, and they see through his, the sight of the redheaded man covered in bandages and on the bed, the way blue eyes stare with emptiness into nothing, accepting the pain the way someone else has always stepped up when it became too much to bear.

Ora swallows, their throat moving, seeing on Danny’s body now the ghostly marks of times he has cried in the night.

They see, in that breath, that it began as a child used to feed his own mother, a little boy bled to sickness and then allowed to heal and then bled again. They see the fracture in him, how he hid from the reality in order to forget it, not to know. They see how he lost nights and days and no one believed him when he wondered why.

They see a shimmer of him where he lays in the bed, three sets of fingers, three pairs of wide blue eyes, three reasons to scream. They see how he is only alive because Abraham Denner didn’t know until later that he had someone who would step forward to take the worst of it so the others could survive.

Funny, how much more you know when you’re dead.

Ora rolls their head around, small cracks in their spine releasing tension that will build again, and again, and again. Their mouth waters. This place is full of life, and it is their way now to take it.

Nothing matters but blood.

The shadows move, as a woman heavy in her pregnancy walks past them - stops, and turns to look at the presence she just felt nearby - and sees nothing.

Nothing but the flicker of lights overhead, and a spot of red in a droplet of water on a white tile floor.

The woman shudders against instinctive unease and keeps walking, heading for the double-doors, for the storm that pounds rain into pavement, the dim headlights barely visible through a curtain of rain.

Ora can smell the woman’s blood, and knows in an instant that she is seven months pregnant, and her husband is here for a problem with his kidneys, and she will go home to three other children and cry, that the oldest child will hold her and they will tell each other it’ll be okay and neither one will believe it.

They know also that the husband will recover, and come home, and then the future is murkier, more uncertain. But Ora can see the happy day he sleeps in his own bed again.

They pause, and turn, watching the woman’s back as she walks.

They mouth the words, you’ll be okay, and the baby will be fine. He will come home to you. They make no sound, and yet something in the woman’s shoulders relaxes, and she opens her umbrella and steps out into the night with a new confidence that, however terrifying the moment, everything will be alright in the end.

They might be dead, but they can soothe the restless fear of life as easily as they can feed them. They don’t have to be wicked, they don’t have to be evil, they don’t-

They don’t have to be Ashley.

They will not kill like Ashley did, they will not take captives, they will not delight in torture and fear and they will not feed on screaming.

They don’t have to be Ashley.

That is all that matters.

Ora turns back to look ahead of themself, the soft neon lights of the food court on their right, conference rooms and offices on the left.

Ahead, the elevators.

A man waiting for the elevator is suddenly distracted by feeling like a gust of wind hit his back. He drops his coffee cup, spilling it all over the floor. Lights above him flicker as he drops to a crouch, cursing, pulling out napkins to wipe up the spill. While he’s distracted, the elevator doors open, water drops inside in a soft pitter-patter, and they close again.

He looks up in time to see a flash of glowing eyes and green hair, a torn and mud-stained tank top and shorts, spots dried reddish-brown that can’t be anything but blood. He sees a hint of mud-covered bare feet.

He stares, and Ora looks back at him.

He doesn’t matter.

“Look away,” They say in a croaking voice, cracked from disuse. “Look away.”

The man looks down and forgets about everything but his coffee and his sense that something is very, very wrong.

They press the button for the sixth floor and the elevator lurches into motion, shakily. Lights flicker and power drops and jumps back up around them. They don’t care.

Ryan is waiting.

The elevator doors slide open on the sixth floor and three people sitting in a small lobby look up to see an empty box, with a puddle of water on the floor. The doors slide shut again, and the elevator heads back to the first floor.

A bit of rainwater runs down Ora’s cheek like the tears they no longer cry.

Dead people don’t cry.

Nothing matters enough to be worth weeping over.

Ora thinks of Danny’s eyes in the bed, water gathering over the empty places, running down to pool in the shell of his ear and dampen his dirty unwashed hair. They think of Ryan sobbing next to his bed in the first days when a tube down Danny’s throat breathed so he didn’t have to breathe for himself. They think of Nathaniel Vandrum’s hand silently laid on his back as he leaned over, and the two men meeting in the middle, dropping as always their loathing of each other for their love for a man who has had to make the choice to live too many times.

A doctor walking past brushes against Ora’s shoulder and they shiver at the beat of her heart, her pulse, the hint of her blood they can taste in the air.

A nurse comes too close and Ora’s teeth are sharp, begging to bury in soft skin, pull out the life inside, and hand it over to the darkness that made them. Ora moves with the shadows, and the shadows bay for blood.

But this nurse has done nothing but try her best to save the lives of people who don’t know her, who she will never truly know, and Ora turns away.

They will not be Ashley Denner.

That is what matters.

They find the room without hurrying, taking each step slowly. The tile floor is cold, they know this, but they don’t feel it.

Ryan has life beating in his blood alongside the death. He is made of green hills and murder in the darkness. He is made of eyes open to delight in flowers and of eyes slowly closing from a wasting disease that can’t be explained.

Ora doesn’t have the life, anymore.

They wasted theirs, anyway.

All they are is death.

Is this a second chance? Could they start again? They haven’t thought about it. They walked to Tennessee - walked and rode in the back of trucks and cars, shredding the people who tried to hurt them thinking they were weak and leaving the kind ones unharmed, and drove until the car ran out of gas and then found another ride again - and then returned.

The cold silver-colored door handle turns easily under their hand, and when they step into the room Nate Vandrum is asleep on a sort of couch, a thin blanket thrown over him, the light of the machines in the room lining his face.

Lightning flashes through the closed blinds, and thunder rolls.

Ora is a creature made of rainy seasons, lurking in stagnant pools of water, waiting for their chance to slip underneath protective nets and clothes and glide around candles. They are a heavy death, a slow death, but-

They don’t have to cause death at all.

They will not.

Daniel Michaelson, laid out on the hospital bed, flickers his eyes open and turns to look at them. They see what he sees, eyes that glow in the darkness, a pounding hunger that must be satisfied.

“Mom,” He whispers, voice trembling, and Ora tilts their head, wet hair sticking to their cheekbones, mouth watering at the beat of his heart, the hint of his blood. “Mom, no, please-... God, no-”

“It’s alright, Dan. They’re not Mom,” Ryan says, standing in the open doorway to the small bathroom attached to this private hospital room. He’s just come from a shower and heat mists off his skin, his black curls hang over his forehead and stick to the nape of his neck. His eyes glow, a soft gleaming yellow in the shadows, match Ora’s hazel for strength and more. All their heartbeats led them back to him. “And that won’t happen to you again. I promise. I’ll never, ever let anyone take from you again.”

“Ryan-” Danny’s eyes are impossibly wide, as always, and the darkness deepens the scars on his face until they are canyons cut into a plateau, the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, the lines of glaciers tearing up earth and turning flatlands into valleys. His voice is weak, and Nate Vandrum stirs, on the couch, called close to waking by the fear in Danny. “Help me, please, Mom’s h-hungry-”

“It’s okay, Danny,” Ryan says, soft and loving. He moves to put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, to tuck a bit of hair behind one ear. “Go back to sleep. They’re not here for you.” His eyes stay on Ora’s as he says, with a shiver of something running underneath him, utterly inhuman and his birthright and hidden from him for too many years, “Calm, if you are living.”

Danny’s eyes flutter shut, and his breathing settles, deep and even. A machine over his shoulder beeps slowly as he settles. Nate, on the couch, breathes out in a long slow sigh, and Ora watches his right hand, curled into a painful fist, relax.

“Can I do that?” They ask, hoarsely.

“No,” Ryan says, with a hint of warmth, watching his brother’s eyes move under his eyelids. “That’s from my father, not my mother.”

“Oh.”

Ryan looks back at Ora, relaxing now that his brother is soothed. “You walked a long way. Is she at rest?”

“Ashley? I ate her heart.” Their voice is flat, decayed, like the taste of Ashley’s black heart on their tongue.

“No… your girlfriend. From before.”

Ora looks down at their hands, the dirt pressed into the lines until it seems like they will never be clean. “I buried Penny like she deserved,” They say, voice low, twining around the sound of the machines. Only Ryan can hear them.

“Good. That’s the last thing they took from us, then, made right.” Ora moves closer to him, and he watches them move. They watch him swallow, the movement of his throat. “Are you hungry?”

He’s beautiful, always. He’s so beautiful, even at his worst. Even tied to Bram’s bed he was beautiful, even screaming for mercy he was beautiful, even now, a predator set free, he is so beautiful.

He tilts his head to the side, and Ora hitches in breath they don’t need at the way the thin light from the machines moves over his skin. The flutter of his pulse.

Their only heartbeat is his.

They want it.

“Yes,” They breathe. “I’m so hungry, Ryan.”

Ryan smiles at them, in the darkness, and reaches out. They take his hand and he pulls them close, sliding his other hand up into their hair, uncaring about it being wet, about the water that soaks him as well when he pulls them close. He pressed the back of their head to move them forward until their lips touch the heat of his neck. He’s so warm.

He’s so warm, and they’re so-

“If you’re hungry,” He whispers, “Then feed. I made you - I owe this, and more, for helping me save my brother.”

Ora buries their teeth in his throat and takes the blood like a sacrament. Blood, freely given and offered, blood that won’t kill, blood that won’t cause harm. Blood that won’t take a life and leave the grieving behind. Blood that won’t run from wrists or backs or legs.

Blood, given to them openly and with love.

They will not be Ashley Denner.

That’s all that matters.

---

@slytherynjolras, @whump-it, @bleeding-demon-teeth, @finder-of-rings, @burtlederp, @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @swordkallya, @astrobly, @slaintetowhump, @moose-teeth, @untilthepainstarts, @whumpiary, @lave-whump @raigash @cupcakes-and-pain, @whump-tr0pes| @wildfaewhump

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

Whumptober 30 + 31: Internal Injury and Left for Dead

CW: Blood, just like a whole lot of violence, organ removal, more than mild arson, whumper turned whumpee, character death, dissoci@tion, mild vampirism, some brief threatening pet whump and dehumanization + a noncon reference

TIMELINE: Begins immediately following Possession, end of the Bad Arc. One year after Danny is abducted for a second time.

Nate tastes blood on his tongue, thick in his mouth, but he’s tasted blood before. Bram’s skin is cold but it is always cold, and his panting breaths are heavy against Nate’s ear but he knows Bram’s breathing better than almost anything else, better than he knows anyone’s breathing but Danny’s.

Abraham Denner has been breathing in Nate’s ear, down his spine, inside his mind for seven very long years, and Nate is about to ensure he can never do it again.

Bram groans in pain, like so many other sounds he’s made against Nate’s ear before, whispering, I love you, you’re mine as Nate cried and fought and screamed and didn’t cry and moaned and gave in to him, to his eyes and his love, again and again and again-

Nate pulls back, his teeth and tongue black and red, blood smeared thick like oil around his lips and down his chin, and Bram’s eyes meet his, wide with rage.

Nate isn’t scared of Bram any longer.

His wrists burn from tearing free of the ropes, the scent of new and old blood is thick in the air around them. His hands close around Bram’s neck, a collar of skin, and he closes his grip slippery-red, thumbs pressing down on the windpipe of a man who will not die from this, because he already died centuries ago.

Ryan is in his mind and in his hands, guiding their strength, Ryan is darkness and white teeth sharpened to points. Ryan is glowing yellow eyes that stare out from Nate’s own. He is not alone inside himself, and they are the same, and if Danny is dead then Nate will make sure Bram follows him-

He’s not dead, Ryan’s voice whispers inside of him, and Nate bears his thumbs down harder just to hear Bram’s gurgling, rasping chokes, to feel his hands press against Nate’s bare chest and then claw there, digging in but Ryan is between Nate and the pain, pressing up against his skin, a barrier between Nate and true sensation. He’s not dead. We can still save him.

Nathaniel Vandrum’s life has been narrowed, day by day, month by month, year by year. He spent years under Bram’s spell, eight months a hunted animal. He spent four years keeping Danny alive, he spent a year and a half helping him learn to be human again, spent a year watching Danny suffer from a place too far for him to follow.

He has spent a year watching Danny bleed, and scream, and cry, and slip away inside himself with only Ryan there to bring him back out.

He is tired of watching Danny suffer.

He is tired of this.

He is so fucking tired.

He feels no pain from his broken right hand - Ryan stands between him and the pain there, too. He can feel Ryan twisting inside him, pushing him to close his hands tighter around Bram’s neck, staring down into his eyes. The things that move there thrash with desperate desire to survive but Nate has no mercy left in him.

He should be horrified by someone else being inside his body with him but he can’t be, he can’t let it sink in that he is moving as two people working together inside one skin, or he’ll slip. It takes one mistake and Bram will have him again, and if Bram gets him again he’ll be done, he’ll die before he’ll hurt anyone, but Bram would make him hurt so many people.

“N-Nate-” Bram’s voice is husky, but the anger boils inside it, and he grabs Nate by the shoulders finally and throws him off. Nate slams to the ground on his side, groaning and moving to scramble to his feet just as Bram, blood still pouring in thick black waves from the wound Nate tore open, stands and kicks him hard.

Something snaps in Nate and Ryan isn’t fast enough to take the pain. There’s a burst of it, an ache that overrides him, and he’s still for too long. Only a second... but too long.

Bram drags him to his knees by one arm and slaps him, his palm slamming into Nate’s cheek sending him back to the ground. Back up to slap him again, the other side. Kicked again and Nate coughs out air before he can find more to inhale.

Ryan is gone from inside him, collapsing onto the ground where he’d been standing before he stepped inside Nate’s skin, dark skin glowing faintly with the same yellow as his eyes.

Somewhere, Bram’s sister runs from her own mistakes, but Nate stares up as Bram walks towards him and thinks that Bram has never needed his sister to keep his puppies in line before, and he doesn’t need her now.

“You would… refuse the gift?” Bram’s voice is laced with his disbelief. He raises a hand to touch the uneven skin torn apart at one shoulder, looking at the blood there with something like wonder. “You’d try to kill me? After everything I did for you? After everything I gave you?”

“After-...” Nate coughs again, trying to get back on his feet, but as soon as he’s on all fours Bram kicks him again and sends him back down. His eyes move to Danny - limp on the ground, blood welling up around the blade buried in his back. Danny’s eyes are open, wide and so so blue.

So blue, and so empty.

Danny’s gone.

“No.” The voice is from Nate but it’s not his voice. It’s a whimper. A whine. Barely a protest.

Too late.

“I gave you the puppy,” Bram says, stepping between Nate and Danny, blocking him from the sight of the man he loves most in the world. The only thing left that he loves in the world. “Now I’ve taken the puppy away.”

Nate’s heart does not twist with fear. He doesn’t let himself grieve yet. Instead… he lets his head drop to the ground, into his arms, and he starts to weep. If the tears are anger, not sadness, Bram doesn’t notice. He chuckles, satisfied, and pulls Nate back onto his feet again. One hand gripped tightly around his arm, the other hand cups Nate’s cheek, gently pressing his jaw to tilt his head up, get him to look Bram in the eyes.

“I w-wanted to save him,” Nate whispers.

Too late, Vandrum. Always too late.

“I know,” Bram says with unnerving tenderness, and when he leans in to kiss Nate, the man doesn’t fight him. Bram’s lips are cold.

He spent half a year, once, being the perfect lover. He can do it again, for just a few minutes.

For long enough.

Bram licks his own blood off his lips when he pulls back, smiling now. There’s blackish red on his teeth, staining his pale pale skin. “You can’t save anyone, Nate,” Bram says, reaching up, running his fingers back through Nate’s hair. “You’re mine. Mine, forever. For the rest of fucking time, Nate, you’re mine. Mourn him if you want, but you were never meant for the puppy. You were meant for me.”

“Yes,” Nate says, and pitches his voice to be slightly faint and empty, the voice he used when Bram would wipe him away from himself. He looks into those colorless eyes and, like every day since Bram once forced a muzzle on Danny for months and nearly took him from Nate for good, he feels absolutely nothing.

“Bring Faerie Boy inside,” Bram commands with effortless certainty. “I know how to take care of his kind, too. Then we’ll decide what happens next.” Bram looks carelessly over at where Danny lays crumpled in the dirt. “Faerie Boy can bury the body.”

The body.

Nate has to steel himself with every ounce of willpower not to make a sound in response. He only nods and, making his expression blank, he limps over to Ryan, dragging Danny’s brother to his feet. Ryan’s skin feels like an open flame under his hand, far hotter than human skin ever should be, but the glow in his eyes is dulling. He’s too tired, too new at this. His strength is already waning, Nate thinks, he pushed himself too far.

“Danny’s n-not dead,” Ryan says in a croaking, cracking voice. “He’s, he’s not-”

“I know,” Nate responds, forcing him to move. He knows Danny is dead, though, and that this is just Ryan trying to convince him not to give up, give in, and let Bram rebuild his family - with his true love and his dog - with Ryan in Danny’s place. Bram is behind them, ensuring they go where into the house, and Nate half-drags Ryan up the steps. “T-trust me. I h-h-h… I’ve got a plan.”

Ryan laughs, dry and hopeless, but he allows himself to be moved. His neck is a ring of bright red agony, his wrists look the same. He’s skinny, after a year earning bites of food with obedience to torture, bony under Nate’s hands. His hair is dull and brittle, dried and tangled frizz instead of curls. “Sure… hope so.”

“When I m-m-move,” Nate whispers, barely loud enough for Ryan to possibly hear, just hoping he understands, “grab his l-l-legs to s-slow him down, and then c-c-come back… I’ll l-let you in.”

Nate deposits him on the floor next to the kitchen table without waiting for a response, letting him drop more roughly than necessary, pretending he is still in thrall as he pulls out a chair and sits.

He’s going to have one chance at this.

Bram pulls out a chair and sits across from him, giving Nate a smile. Brilliant, and shining, and loving, even as the love of Nate’s life is bleeding to death in the front yard. Nate might not be able to save Danny, now - but he can save Ryan, he thinks.

He hopes it’s enough for wherever Danny will be after he’s gone.

He hopes it will somehow settle Danny’s soul, to know Nate gave everything to save his little brother, after watching Danny break himself again and again to hold Ryan together.

If we’re damned for loving each other like they told me, Nate thinks with an all-consuming grief and conviction, I’ll see you in hell soon enough.

“We’ll have to go somewhere new,” Bram says, gripping Ryan by the hair, jerking him backwards. Ryan bares his sharp, inhuman teeth, and Bram snorts, ramming his head directly into the edge of the table, making Ryan cry out and slump.

Nate doesn’t flinch.

“I’ll dedicate you. Make you one of us. I’ll finish the dedication and then you’ll understand.” Bram’s hand is still gripped in Ryan’s hair, tightening on the curls until he hisses in pain, but it’s a faint and faded sound. “We’ll take the puppy with us and go find my sister. You know I never like to leave a puppy, Nate.”

Those eyes are back on his, and Nate gives Bram a slight smile - as if pulled out of him unwillingly, as if he’s falling into the depths of his eyes all over again. As if, without Danny to fight for, he has no fight left.

Danny might be dead - Nate’s mind skips from that truth, runs from it as fast as it can, circles around it endlessly - but Ryan isn’t. Danny would want his brother saved, and Nate…

He can do this.

He has to do this.

“Y-yes, Bram,” Nate says, soft and as empty as Danny’s open eyes. “I c-can help t-t-take care of Faerie B-Boy.”

At his feet, Ryan lets out a choked-off sob. Whether he’s only playing the part, or drifting into pure hopelessness, Nate isn’t sure. He can’t risk a look, can’t risk giving anything away for a second. Instead, he moves to lay his hand over Bram’s on top of Ryan’s head. Bram’s hand is cold under his.

Danny’s hands get cold, too, his long fingers feel like ice sometimes in the morning when he wakes Nate with a hug. He pulls his hands into the sleeves of his sweaters, tugs them constantly down to cover the scars on the backs of his hands. His eyes are warmer than his hands can be, as Nate holds one of his hands in both of his, rubbing at them to warm up those cold fingers while Danny smiles-

Danny’s dead. You can save his brother. Focus.

“I l-love you,” Nate says, softly. He knows how to twist his tone just right, to make his voice foggy like the power of Bram’s eyes has once again papered over Nate’s will, his very self, to remake him in Bram’s image.

If there is a heaven, it will be Danny that I beg for forgiveness, not God.

“I love you, too.” Bram smiles, letting go of Ryan to hold Nate’s hand. Cold dead fingers. Nate forces his smile to widen, softens his expression. “My black-haired prince. Red got in our way. But it’s just us all over again, isn’t it? Just you and I.” He smirks, pale lips smeared with drying blood. “And the puppy.”

Nate nods, and pulls Bram’s hand up, to press a kiss to the back of it. Smooth, scarless.

Not the hand he wants to kiss at all.

“That’s why you had to watch it all, you know.” Bram sighs, content in this moment. There’s still blood running from the wound in his shoulder but he doesn’t seem to notice it, and the wound is closing before Nate’s eyes, skin knitting itself together. He won’t die, even if Nate kills him he won’t die. There’s only one way to be sure. Only one way to keep him from coming back.

“Wh-what? Why?” Nate tilts his head, closes his eyes so Bram won’t see he’s disgusted by his touch, plays it off as shivering desire, maybe. Somehow, somewhere back there, he gained the ability to hide some of his unhappiness from Abraham Denner.

They lost with their first attempt.

There’s only one more chance.

“So you would get used to it again.” Bram pulls his hand back and away, lays it palm-down against the back of Ryan’s neck, and Nate tries not to watch Ryan shiver where he kneels on the floor. Bram scratches his fingernails through the red, irritated skin, reopening old wounds from the iron collar. Ryan whimpers, whines with the pain, and Nate fights the memory of Danny’s scream behind his muzzle, jaw straining as the wire mesh cut in deeper and deeper.

Bram took the muzzle off - the new one remade, but it might as well have been exactly the fucking same - before Ryan and Ora came out. It’s still out there, isn’t it? Lying in the dirt, bloodied.

Nate almost loses his iron grip on his own emotions at the thought of Danny’s body in the dirt so close to the tool of torture that hurt him the worst. Not from grief, no - he still has that locked up inside his head, he will mourn Danny when he has saved Ryan, when it’s over, when it’s done. But the fury that comes with the realization that Danny’s eyes, still open and unblinking, will be staring right at the muzzle.

He catches himself. Holds the anger down. Gives Bram a soft, sweet, loving smile. “Used t-to it?”

“Right. Used to it, and… maybe a little bit appreciative.” Bram laughs, his high-pitched hyena’s laughter, smacking the wound he reopened on Ryan’s neck just to hear him cry. His eyes glow such a brilliant, bright yellow they turn nearly white, like staring into the sun - and then falter again, fade and go dull.

He needs to be strong enough to do one more thing, and Nate isn’t sure if he will be. But he’s going to try, anyway.

“I’ll l-learn,” Nate promises, and runs his own hand through Ryan’s dirty, greasy curls, catching in the tangles. He looks down, cold green eyes locking on Ryan’s dulled yellow, back to the color of old, cloudy honey, and uses his good left hand to tilt his chin up, rubbing his thumb over his lower lip. “You’ll b-b-be good for m-me, puppy, won’t you?”

Ryan’s eyes widen, just a little, flicker in the dim kitchen lit only by the light coming through the window over the sink, and through the open inside door. Outside the closed screen door, down the steps, fifteen feet away, Danny lies in the dirt.

“Oh, that’s good,” Bram says, rubbing at Ryan’s back. “What do you say, Faerie Boy? Can you be as good between us as you’ve been for me so far?”

Ryan’s lip trembles under Nate’s thumb. Nate smiles at him, the same soft loving look he’s been giving Bram. He is the personification of what Bram can do. He is the perfect vision of Bram taking control and making him someone he’s not, as he did for years with power, manipulation, and threats. “Bram asked you a qu-... a question, p-puppy,” Nate whispers. “Wh-what’s the r-r-rule?”

Ryan’s eyes well with such human tears. “Al-... always answer Abraham’s questions, never hes… hesitate and neh-... never lie.”

“So wh-what’s your answer?”

Ryan looks up at him, pleading, but Nate keeps his eyes, his face perfectly steady. I’m sorry. Just a few more minutes...

“I...” Ryan’s voice catches. He’s exhausted, struggling to pull threads of himself together. Whatever it is Ryan is, whatever it is he can do, it takes too much out of him. “I c-can be good for you,” He whispers.

“B-B-Both of us?”

Ryan’s eyes close tightly. “Both of you.” He has to spit out the words.

“Good b-b-boy.” Another rub over his lower lip, his skin is rough and chapped against Nate’s thumb. “Do you w-w-want a d, a drink, Bram?” He raises his eyes, lets his hand drop, but not before he taps twice on the front of Ryan’s neck next to his Adam's apple, deliberately spaced apart to make it clear it’s a message. “I th-think I remember how you l-like it.”

Bram smiles, twists a curl around his finger, yanks on it until Ryan winces. “Sure. Whiskey sour. Red made sour mix, it’s in the fridge.” He sighs, mournfully. “I suppose Red won’t get to make me my drinks anymore. Pity, he was always better at it than Faerie Boy.”

Nate swallows. He won’t cry for Danny yet.

Not yet.

He pushes himself to his feet, walking away and moving to the fridge. Slow footsteps, careful and solid. He feels strange, as though he’s far away from himself, watching his body go through these motions from a distance. Open the cupboards until he finds a glass, pull it down and add some ice cubes. Find the whiskey in a different cabinet, expensive small-batch distillery in Portland, he notes absently, pouring a shot, and then two, into the glass.

He pulls the sour mix, stored in a pitcher, out of the fridge and tries with every ounce of strength he has left not to think about how Danny’s fingers were the last to close around the handle, and now they never will again.

Not yet not yet not yet.

Cry when Ryan is safe. Until then, be for Ryan what Danny cannot be any longer. He owes Danny that much and more, he owes everything he could ever give. He pours in the sour mix, adds a cherry from a jar in the fridge. Picks a lemon up from a basket, staring down at it, and then his eyes move to the knife block, but he’s careful not to turn his head to make it obvious.

One chance.

He picks up not the chef’s knife but the smaller, sharper paring knife, and he feels Bram’s eyes on his back as he cuts three identical lemon slices, struggling to do it gracefully with his broken hand throbbing again, fighting him with every step. He drops the lemon slices into the drink, gives the whole thing a quick stir. Closes his eyes and breathes.

I’m sorry, Danny.

He turns around and throws the drink in Bram’s face.

Ryan is moving before Nate has even finished his own motion and he grabs Bram around the legs as he starts to stand up, slamming the man into the ground as he’s knocked off balance, pale eyes widening in surprise as Nate falls on him with his teeth bared and the knife in his hand, bringing it down over Bram’s heart.

There’s resistance, and pain, and Nate doesn’t care about either anymore.

Ryan’s eyes flare, glowing brilliant with one last spark of energy, and the shadows press like velvet against Nate’s back, overtaking all the light but Ryan’s. The kitchen is pure and perfectly black as Nate feels Bram’s blood bubble up cold around the handle of the knife as he forces it down.

Cold hands grab onto his like a vice, and he opens his mouth to scream-

Let me in.

Ryan is in his skin in his heart in his head, pressing the knife down harder, dragging it back towards himself, cutting into Bram’s skin as he fights them but Ryan is stronger than Nate and the two men working in one body open the emptiness inside of Abraham Denner and Nate shoves his hand inside.

It’s cold, like everything about Bram is cold, and it has a little give under his fingers. He grips as tightly as his hand will allow and Ryan is gripping alongside him as they pull backwards. Bram screams, the first true scream Nate has ever heard from him, high-pitched. Windows crack around them as the scream carries on and on and on, Nate’s head is pounding but he can’t feel it. Ryan takes it for him, presses himself along the length of Nate’s body, underneath his skin, against his eardrums, layers himself over Nate’s mind.

He is protected.

He uses the blade of the paring knife to cut the veins and arteries. Cold black blood coats his hand as he pulls out Abraham’s Denner ancient heart.

The shadows recede - or Nate can see through them now, he doesn’t know, the whole world seems strange and disconnected from him - as he pushes himself to his feet.

Nate-

“It’s not d-d-done,” Nate says to the voice inside his head of his dead love’s little brother, and he turns, dragging one leg as he moves out into the sun outside.

Danny hasn’t moved, but Nate didn’t expect him to.

Dead people usually don’t, unless they’re Bram or Ashley.

He is nothing but blood now, and the heart in his hands is still beating. Soft contractions of muscle with nothing to push through, no blood to rush through old veins. But still the heart beats. It’s not over.

There’s a burn pile over by a shed, covered with sticks and trash, and Nate walks to it with Ryan still inside him. The two of them look out of one set of eyes.

Burn it?

“B-burn it,” Nate confirms in a fierce whisper.

There are no tears.

Not yet.

He lays the beating heart down in the burn pile and walks away from it, moving to a shed to open the door. He stares, blankly, at a skeleton that faces him against the back wall, rotted away by now. It’s been a year. Death is still in the air but neither of them can smell anything any longer but Bram’s blood. Nate ignores the skeleton and finds a can of gasoline - Bram is predictable, always predictable - and carries it back out to toss about a third of the can into the sticks, taking special care to ensure some of it splashes over the disembodied, beating heart.

Left here, Bram’s body would eventually reform and wake back up.

Like Ashley.

Nate will not lose anything else to them ever again.

“I’m not your b-b-black-haired p-prince,” He says to the heart, and lights a match.

The gasoline catches immediately, flames rising with the sharp pungent smell. Nate doesn’t wait - he picks the can up again, sloshes it around to see how much is left, and looks to the house. “Go s-s-say goodbye to your b-b-brother,” He says. “I’ll come, t-too, when this is o-over.”

Danny-

“Go s-say goodbye.”

Ryan is out of him in a flash, and Nate is oddly lonely inside his mind as he makes his methodical way back to the porch. Ryan kneels next to his brother, hands out but not quite touching, as Nate moves inside. He passes Abraham’s body without looking at it. He lets the gasoline trail - a little here and a little there, splashes on the curtains, splashes on the rug.

With his leg throbbing, he moves upstairs with gasoline trailing on the steps. He pours a little on the bed, staring at the bloodied ropes tied to the headboard a little too long. Outside, he starts to hear the crackle of the fire catching outside. Good. The heart will burn.

Just like his.

More gasoline for the curtains - he’s getting low, he needs to conserve. He has to be sur the whole house will burn.

Then he stops in front of a room with no door, a room he’s seen in Bram’s texted photos and videos, in a few of the livestreams he watched. He watched them all, desperate for clues. Danny and Ryan had managed to tear the paper that covered the window once and before Bram had cut the video, Nate had been able to pause - and see beyond the rolling fields to a water tower in the distance.

One of his first clues.

In this room there are manacles attached to the wall, a broken chain of iron on the floor, pools of drying blood. Nate pours a little gasoline into the pool, watching the change in texture as it thins and goes oddly shimmery.

In the closet, he finds half-drunk bottles of cheap high-proof alcohol. He lets the trail of gasoline lead to those too, and opens them all.

Done with his work, he drops the now-empty can and walks through the house, reeking of gasoline and blood, and goes downstairs and past Bram’s body one more time without looking down or looking back.

His heart beats steady and calm inside of him as he lights a match and lets it fall onto the porch, to find the first thin trail of liquid.

He stands long enough to watch the flames lick into the kitchen, over Bram’s body. He stares long enough to watch Bram’s long wavy pale hair begin to darken and curl. He watches the flames find their way from kitchen to living room. He watches the curtains burn.

Then he turns and walks down the steps.

His hands have started to shake.

Ryan, kneeling on the ground next to his brother with his wrist torn open and pouring blood, pressing it against Danny’s mouth, speaks to him but Nate doesn’t hear it, turning from Danny’s body - too late too late too late too late - and going back to the other fire, to see Bram’s heart burning, turning black. It will be ash soon, and nothing else.

Nate doesn’t cry, no.

Still, he doesn’t cry.

Not yet.

The wind blows warm over his face and Nate takes in a breath. The world is blood and smoke and his failure to save the most important person in his life. The world is the empty feeling underneath his skin. The world is the grief trying to claw it way back up his throat to make him scream-

“Nate!” Ryan’s voice is right next to his ear and he jumps as Ryan grabs at his arm, spinning him around. The yellow eyes are dull, shadowed, bereft of power - but they still dance. You can’t torture the beauty out of Ryan Michaelson.

You can’t kill the light inside him, or the things that live there.

He smells like green hills and a rainy season over waving grasslands. He carries the scent of a predator that hunts at dusk and at dark. Blood soaks the hills, pours down the river, threads into the homes of sleeping people at night.

He’s smiling.

“Nate, he’s not-... Nate, listen to me!”

Nate jerks back into himself, blinking rapidly as his strange disconnect ends. There is fire all around the two of them, and Nate realizes for the first time that the shed will burn, too. It’s already dangerously close to catching. The air is starting to heat around them. “What? Wh-what, Ryan, I-”

“Danny’s not dead! I-I can’t-... but he’s not dead! He’s still breathing! We still have time!”

In the distance, the first faint sound of sirens. Nate raises his head, staring. “Who c-c-called the c-cops?”

Ryan lets out a peal of wild, half-hysterical laughter, and the sound is beautiful. “Whoever saw that bigass cloud of fucking smoke, Nate! Someone’s-...” He swallows, suddenly, sways as his knees buckle, and Nate catches him, arms around him, keeping him upright. “Someone’s... coming for us. Someone’s coming to h-help, someone’s... someone’s coming...”

“Someone’s c-c-coming,” Nate agrees, softly.

Ryan turns to look at him, then slides his arms around Nate, hugging him, burying his head in the side of Nate’s neck.

“Someone fucking came,” He whispers. “And Danny’s not dead.”

Nate’s eyes move over to the tall, thin body sprawled out on the ground, and watches as empty blue eyes blink once, slowly move to meet his.

He’d seen emptiness and thought it was death, but it was someone else buying Danny - buying Nate - some time.

He gently pulls away from Ryan and moves to the muzzle, picking it up in one hand. Someone else is still watching him, blue eyes following his movements, and he holds it out. “Never ag-again,” He says, softly.

Someone else doesn’t move. Just keeps watching as Nate drags himself to the fire and throws the muzzle in.

But when he turn back again, tears are running down Danny’s face, his lips twisting with the agony, and he whimpers, “Nate, h-hurts-”

Nate and Ryan both run to him at once.

When the fire trucks arrive, they find the three of them together on the ground, Nate and Ryan each holding one of Danny’s hands.

---

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

The Tango: Daniel Michaelson

CW: Noncon kissing/touching, referenced noncon/dubcon, references to violence/abuse, intimate whumper in the extreme from whumper’s POV, pet whump and dehumanization

Tagging Danny’s crew: @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @whale-whumps

Takes place the first Christmas after Danny’s captivity begins. This is set before the Dubcon Drabble.

They didn't know he was watching them.

"I, um, I told you, Nate, I can't fucking do it!" Red laughed, hard enough he bent over nearly in half in the middle of the living room, and his laughter bounced off the walls and the roof.

It was lovely, natural laughter, the kind that died in his throat when Bram walked into the room - so he stayed hidden, for now.

He wanted to see more of the sad shining light in the puppy’s pretty face. He’d have that light for him eventually - once he gave up, once he truly accepted that this was forever. Bram wasn’t in a rush - they were alone here in the woods, and he never hurried a work of art. "I've stepped on you three times! I can't do it!"

"Well, you're p-probably used to l-l-leading, so I'm taking that argument w-w-with a grain of s-salt." Nate had a soft, dry humor in his voice. His humor didn't always leave when Bram walked in, Nate loved him just like he should even if Red wasn't quite there yet.

It was still early.

He had plenty of time.

"Bold of you to assume I knew how to dance before I came here," Red said, still leaning over with his hands on his knees, with the flickering light of the fireplace behind him, the Christmas tree in the corner all lit up with Bram’s favorite, all the colored lights he’d been able to get ahold of, boxes and boxes of ornaments he’d picked up in thrift stores. There were wrapped presents under the tree, things he had gotten for them and a couple of things he’d allowed them to pick out for each other.

There were even presents for him, from them.

It was fucking storybook picture, and it was almost everything Bram had dreamed his life could be, missing just one piece. The most important piece. Ashley wasn’t here, it wasn’t time for her to return yet… but everything else was here.

Red was still in his loose white t-shirt (dream boy on the front, some assembly required on the back - Bram had given it to him for his birthday back in the summer) and pajama pants from the night before. The only visible scars were on his face and around his wrists.

Nate had a plain black shirt and pants - they hadn't left the cabin at all since the big snowfall, three feet of snow burying them in the little clearing. He and Nate had snowboots to wear, waterproof coveralls to pull on, to go out and get the firewood. The puppy had nothing.

He wasn’t going anywhere, anyway.

It was firewood Bram had gone outside for, and he’d told them he was walking traps, too… he’d left them an hour or so ago, and they thought he was still out in the woods, that they'd hear him come back. He had made sure they didn't.

"You g-g-grew up r-rich, though, r-right?" He was so, so good, his Nate, the perfect partner he'd made out of rough edges and fighting. He’d been hard, at the beginning, difficult and lovely, but he was just perfect right now.

Bram loved his life. He loved the cabin with its flickering warmth from the fireplace and picturesque Christmas tree, he loved the trees and the animals he hunted, he loved Red and his scars and the way he still had to grit his teeth before he did what Bram wanted… and he loved Nate most of all.

His true love, his black-haired prince, his perfect man.

"I… yeah, I guess. I, um, I didn't think about it that way, but, um… yes." Red shook his head, shaking his hair over his eyes. Bram wanted to walk in and push it back, tuck it behind one ear where the longest bit was and see the puppy jump and force himself to hold still… but he didn't want the moment to end.

“Rich kids never t-think they’re rich.”

“That’s probably true.” Red rolled his eyes. “But it’s not like I chose to be rich, they picked me up at a group home. I’ve only been rich since I was, um, five.”

"And you didn't t-take dancing l-l-lessons? I thought all rich kids took those."

"Nah. I said no. My, um, my parents didn’t… didn’t care. My brother did, though, he's a great dancer. He could do this with you, he wouldn’t even need to practice. Ryan is graceful as fuck."

"He c-c-could, but I'm h-here with you. I want to dance with Danny."

Red's head jerked up, eyes wide with sudden panic. “Nate, don’t,” He said uneasily, his eyes looking to the window outside and then back. Bram felt his mouth go a little dry at the gorgeous lick of fear he could see run up the puppy’s spine, the way it settled into the air, like the smell of dinner cooking in the crockpot after a long day out in the woods.

He’d done that; he’d trained him to be afraid of his own name. It made him want… a lot of very dark things, all at once.

“Abraham said that’s not my name now,” Red whispered. “I’m n-not allowed to have it. My, my name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner… I don’t want to go back into the-”

“It’s fine, D-Danny. It’s j-j-just us here r-right now.” Nate leaned closer, rubbed a thumb gently over the still-healing scar on his nose, dug even deeper than it had been before, then both thumbs across the marks on his cheekbones and the deep scars that painted each side of his jaw.

Bram watched the puppy relax, slowly close his eyes, moving his head forward to make it a little easier for Nate. “That feels really, um, really good, when you do that.”

“I know. D-D-Danny,” Nate said in almost a whisper. “I’ll s-say it over and oh-over. Danny, Danny, Danny. Your n-n-name is Danny M-Michaelson-”

“And your name is Nathaniel Vandrum,” Red said, and he smiled, just a little bit, nervously.

His name is Nate Denner now. Or it will be.

“Right. When it’s j-j-just the t-two of us, we have our n-n-names, still, r-right?”

“Right. We had names, before we, before-” “We still have them, Danny."

Bram raised an eyebrow, but thought he’d let it slide for now. Nate was good for the most part, and they thought they were alone. He wanted them to rely on each other, they'd be less able to ever attempt another escape that way.

Nate would never leave Red here, knowing he'd be killed or worse in the aftermath of Bram's grief at losing his partner, his best friend, his greatest love… and Red wouldn't leave Nate again, no, not knowing he'd go right back in the muzzle when he was caught. Not after running right into the trap the first time he’d tried.

It’d be forever, this next time, he’d wear the muzzle so long he’d forget what it was like without it.

No, Bram hadn’t been the smart twin, when they were alive and young, but he wasn’t stupid, either. He'd made sure Nate was the only solid ground the puppy had left - and he’d knew Nate was too broken to ever even think about leaving again.

"Thank you," Red said softly. "Thank you for my name." The words were nearly automatic - he'd finally learned how important it was to say thank you for every gift he was given, even if he’d had to learn the hard way.

There was defiance still that lit the puppy up, even if he knew better now than to do anything with it. He could see it sometimes in the set of his jaw, in a fire that would start back up in his warm blue eyes.

Nate loved the puppy's eyes, and Bram didn't mind. He wasn't jealous - he'd wanted them to be three in the bed, the way it was supposed to be. Bram liked that feeling at night, the way Red would try to pull away and he would pull him right back. He liked watching him crumble when he did, watching him fight all the defiance left within himself to let himself be kissed good night. Those blue eyes were never warm for him.

With him, Red was scared and worried, not quite eager to please, exactly, just trying to predict him so he could keep his voice.

Bram was a good man, he wasn't soulless. He was a good partner to Nate, he was good to the puppy. He wasn’t a monster, he wasn’t.

He wasn’t a monster. He simply needed to eat, and needed Red to learn and to understand how to behave, to not run away again. To hold still for him. To let him feed.

He had declared him good enough to earn his voice again two weeks ago, an early Christmas gift, after six weeks of silence. Before that he was allowed out only at mealtimes and to shower or a few other times, where Bram made it clear that there were always going to be strings attached to every piece of freedom, that the puppy would have to earn it by giving other parts of himself away.

Some days he chose to keep it on. Other days he nodded, willing to do whatever Bram wanted if it bought him a little time to take a deep breath.

Each day that Red was kept silent, distant and strangely disaffected, was a day Bram felt a little more affection for him, felt more and more the rightness of his choice. Red was going to be perfect one day, just like Nate.

The six weeks had been a gift, to help him understand.

Nate had not appreciated that it was a gift either. He’d changed, a little, been cold and angry about it being too long and too cruel and inhuman. He'd even tried to tell Bram no one night (just once, and he hadn't tried that again), but they had moved past it. They'd gotten past every other bump in the road of their relationship, after all - even Nate killing Ashley and running away from him they had gotten past, in the end.

When it had come off, the puppy had been smart enough to thank him, in a stumbling, hoarse voice. His eyes had still been mostly lost wherever it was he went in his mind when the muzzle was on, but he'd come back once Nate spoke to him, sat him down, made him a mug of tea to sip and asked Bram, if a very soft voice, if he didn’t mind leaving them alone for a while.

He'd heard the puppy starting to cry before he even made it outside, and he'd gone out to chop firewood whistling 'Camptown Races' with a smile on his face and gone through a whole round of chores, stayed out for nearly three hours. By the time he’d come back in, the puppy was asleep in the bed and Nate was sitting at the table drinking tea by himself, and he’d looked up to Bram and smiled, automatically, like a puppet on strings.

Perfect.

It had taken Red a week to start speaking again without looking to Bram first to see if he could. It had been nearly two weeks before he said more than the bare minimum, really. It had taken until tonight - and a lot of Bram's good whiskey - to get him laughing again.

He'd told them to drink the whiskey - and they'd taken this order, at least, to heart.

"I l-l-like your n-name," Nate said with a smile, reaching out to grab the glass on the side table and finish what was left in it before he turned back. “I always liked your n-name.”

“I don’t even know who named me. Do you think my, um, my birthmom gave me a name?”

“Maybe. It d-d-doesn’t matter, I l-l-like it, anyway. We can have it, just between us. He won't care, if we d-don't use it with him."

He cared a little - but they were so good together, right now, and the more they liked each other the less they could ever, ever leave him.

Tonight, he hadn't hooked Danny back up to the wall before he left for chores, he'd pretended to forget. And they hadn't tried to plan an escape. Instead, his true love held out his hand to the puppy, and after a hesitation, Red took it, straightening back up.

They looked good together. A set just for him, handpicked and perfect. And they didn't know he was here, so he got to see how they were together when they weren't always watching him to see how he would react. He liked that they looked to him first; they should, they belonged to him, after all. But… still.

He liked that they looked at each other, too.

"We'll practice," Nate said reassuringly. The DVD on the TV was paused right at the beginning of the song, so all you saw on screen was the crowd of dancers in the darkened theater, with a man in a red vest and a woman all in black just beginning to move.

"We're too, um, too drunk," Red protested, words slurred only the slightest bit, leaning too much into Nate. "I'm all left feet, I always have been, and we are too fucking drunk!"

"You're never t-too drunk to t-t-tango," Nate said, and pulled the puppy closer to him. Bram smiled, letting his head tilt. They were too wrapped up in each other, and normally he didn't let that stand, but tonight… well, it was Christmas, and they were being so sweet.

Just like he wanted them to be.

“I can’t dance like them,” Red said, eyes glancing towards the movie and back.

“No one’s asking you to dance like that. I just w-w-want you to learn the b-basics." Nate took Red’s hands and shifted them, bent at the elbows and facing up, palm to palm. "B-Ben and I t-t-took dancing lessons for like two and a hah, half years, back h-h-home, I’m pretty good at stuff like this. Now, we'll p-practice some more without music, I'll hum to help you. Then we play the scene. Put your head up. Head up, shoulders back, spine strong. Here, arm out like this. Got it?”

"Got it. You… you stopped stammering.”

“I do th-that with you, sometimes.”

“Right.” Red did his best to get into position. “So Ben was your boyfriend? Before?"

Nate let his eyes cut away, over the wide open room where they'd shoved all the furniture, the couch and side tables and the armchair, to the walls. They'd even rolled up the giant rug, leaving bare wood. "Yeah," He said, still looking off to the side, even as he didn’t drop Red’s hands. "For three years. He broke up with me, actually, six months before I, uh, I m-m-m-..."

"You don't have to say it," Red said softly.

"Met Bram and A-Ashley," Nate finished as if he hadn't spoken. "Th-that's why we were at th-the bar. My r-r-roommate was always t-t-telling me to d-drink it away."

“I, um, tried that with someone once,” Red said, with a wry smile. “You see how it didn’t work so well with me, look, um, where I am now.” He laughed again, a little bitterly this time, and it pulled at the still-healing raw cuts across his nose and each side of his jaw. When he winced, Bram felt a spike of need, the way he felt when he made the puppy hurt and saw him flinch back into Nate’s careful, gentle grip before he set his jaw and made himself be good, be whatever Bram wanted.

“We b-b-both went to b-bars to meet guys and met him, in the eh-end.” Nate sighed, and Bram loved the sound of him sighing. They nearly looked his way, and he shifted subtly back behind the still-mostly-closed door to the kitchen. “I thought I was s-safe, so far away, after s-so long, Danny, I’m s-sorry-”

“It’s, um, it’s okay.”

“No it’s n-not. I used to th-think it was j-j-just bad luck.”

“What do you think now?”

Nate shrugged. “I th-think I was a-a-always just waiting for him,” He said softly. “For both of them, but… but for him.”

Right answer, lovely.

“You weren’t,” Red said quickly. “You weren’t. Life could, um, could have been something else-”

"N-not for me."

"This doesn't have to be it, Nate!"

“It does and it is. I had b-b-before them, and I have after them, and so d-do you and there isn’t anything else. Stop talking that b-b-bullshit or he’ll hear us and he’ll put it b-back on you,” Nate snapped, and Red flinched, pulling his hands back and away, looking down at the ground.

Nate looked at him, and some of the tension went out of his face. “Shit. D-Danny, I didn’t mean- S-s-s-suh… I’m s-s-”

“I know you are. No, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have said- we’re not supposed to talk about leaving or there being anything else, it’s my fault, I-I was-... there is no life before Abraham, there isn’t anything after him, I'm not supposed to-”

“Hey.” The puppy raised his eyes again, and Nate leaned in close. “It’s oh-okay. There’s just us. You g-g-got it?”

Red swallowed, and then slowly nodded. “Got it.”

“Good. Listen to me. J-just don’t think about l-leaving, it’s easier if you don’t. We’ll think about d-dancing instead. Always make yourself th-think about something else if you start to think about leaving. I… I don’t want you to l-leave me again.”

“I don’t want to leave you either,” The puppy said, softly. “I won’t. I won’t leave and I won’t think about it anymore. We’ll th-think about dancing. There is no life before Abraham.”

“The trick is that you do slow, slow, then quick, quick, slow. I’m leading.”

“You tend to,” Red said, hesitant but almost teasing, and there was a voice Bram had never once heard used with him. No, this voice was for Nate alone.

“Sh-shut up or I w-w-won’t be able to do it. Fuck, my f-f-aaa… face is red. Okay, so I’m g-going to go forward, once with my left and then with my right - then with my left. Then we go to the right, then put my feet together, left to right. Did that make sense, Danny?”

“Not at all,” Red said, and laughed again. “I told you, I’m too drunk for this.”

“Y-you’re not, I promise. If B-Ben could teach me, I can t-t-teach you. You’ll do backwards, once right and then right, then again with your right, then to the left, then put your feet together. I’ll count for you. Don’t think about the steps, or numbers. Just think about how it feels to move with me. Okay?”

The puppy opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again and nodded.

Eventually, with practice and a little more whiskey the puppy got the hang of it. He watched them go through the steps over and over, with the movie still paused, quiet except for Nate’s humming and Red’s occasional laughter when he stepped on a foot or simply tripped over himself.

“Are you r-ready?” Nate asked, looking to the TV and back.

“As I’ll ever be.” Red raised his head high, shoulders back, and there was an inherent ridiculousness in the look of him being led by someone shorter than him, but the sparkling life in him was so beautiful. It made Bram want him, want to snuff that life out until he was back to meek and scared, in pain and quiet and curled in on himself in the bed, waiting to see what they’d do to him.

He felt his fingers twitch, just slightly, and told himself, wait. Not just yet.

Bram watched Nate grab the remote and start the movie back up. The violins kicked in, an insistent rhythm, and a man began to sing in a hoarse, rough voice, a cover of a song Ashley had liked, when it came on the radio.

Nate counted out loud, moving the puppy slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, keeping to the rhythm of the music. Nate's left foot dragged only the slightest bit, the cold was always hard on that leg.

On the screen, the actors and actresses did a more complicated dance, but in front of the fireplace and the Christmas tree, sweet little Red and Nate kept it simple.

Bram remembered this movie, vaguely. It’d been one of the few newer films in the body’s collection. Something about a prostitute.

Both of them were so focused on each other that neither noticed Bram slowly stepping into the room.

His eyes upon your face, crooned the lead actor in the movie, someone Bram vaguely recognized but couldn’t remember the name of. His hand upon your hand.

He kept to the edges, along the walls, placing his steps with absolute care and quiet, just like hunting in the woods.

His lips caress your skin... it’s more than I can stand…

Bram grinned. He wasn’t the jealous type, but he liked the way the notes went all sour and off-key together in this song.

"I'm doing it!" Red said brightly, as the chorus started up again.

"Right, congratulations, you can tango now," Nate said, and there was warmth in him that he usually reserved for Bram. However much they had grown to like each other, they would like him more, in the end. He’d make sure of it.

They had all the time in the world now.

No rush.

Just a lot of knives and endless, perfect time.

Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow. Simple, clean, easy steps. They were so goddamn beautiful and they were his.

“G-getting better,” Nate said, encouragingly, pausing when the music went slow and quiet, the hoarse-voiced man speaking again, berating the vaguely familiar actor. “How do you f-f-feel? Like you’ve got it?”

“I think so. I think I’ve… let’s, um, let’s keep going. Don’t stop dancing.”

The violins hit a high pitch and they moved again as the music crescendoed, Nate speeding up the steps to move with the music and Red struggling to keep up with him. Meanwhile, Bram moved around close to the wall, watching the two of them.

Right as the song went discordant and unsettling, just at the end as the actor Bram couldn’t remember the name of was wailing you’re free to leave me, but just don’t deceive me, Nate dipped Red backwards to his clear and absolute drunken surprise.

The two of them burst out laughing, and Nate slid one hand over the red marks along the puppy’s jaw on his left side.

"Please," Nate breathed out, an inch away from Red's face, "believe me when I say I l-"

Bram coughed, and Nate jerked backwards in shock, dropping Red unceremoniously onto the floor on his back.

He landed with a thunk, gasping out a cough as the impact stole the air from his lungs and he rolled onto his side, but Bram had caught the shift from his open, bright laughter for Nate to the terror when he’d realized Bram was there and had heard what Nate was saying and it nearly undid him. By all the darkest, oldest gods, Bram loved the fear.

“B-Bram, y-y-you, you’re back,” Nate said hurriedly, helping Red back up. He looked right at Bram, but the puppy kept his eyes down and away, over towards the Christmas tree.

"Finished up my work in the smokehouse. Thought I'd come back and see what my boys were doing without me."

The two men shared a look, just a half-glance, and Bram felt his smile shifting, widening. That's perfect. Trust me, love me, be afraid of me, and it'll be happily ever after, I’ll hurt you forever.

"J-just, we-... we were just-"

"Ssshhhhh," Bram said, moving over to them, taking his time. "Don't." He stopped by the side table, pouring himself some whiskey into Nate's empty glass. He picked it up - and the puppy’s glass, still with at least an ounce left - and walked over to them. "Finish this, Red. Never leave good whiskey to rest too long."

Red nodded and took his glass, still not looking at him, taking it with the edges of his fingertips to avoid touching Bram. He knocked back everything, barely wincing at the burn down his throat. "Th-thank you, Abraham," he said, and his voice shook a little, and Bram's mouth went dry. “Thank you for giving me something to-to, um, to drink.”

He reached out to trace the line of the puppy's jaw with one finger and watched those blue eyes close tightly as he held very, very still.

"Hey, beautiful," He said, and watched the breath catch in the puppy's throat as his fingertips found the red scar, so long after the second time. Taking so much longer to heal. He traced the vertical slash on that pale skin up the side of his cheek, over the cheekbone where the newest scars were, over to his nose, up over the bridge and down the other side. A line you could read in his face and see exactly what had been done to him. "No one else will ever want you like this, will they?"

“No.” The response was a whisper. The puppy knew the right way to answer questions now, too. It never took all that long to figure that part of things out - not with Nate there to teach him what to do.

“Exactly. You’re damaged goods, now.”

"I-I know," the puppy said, barely moving his mouth, but he didn't pull away. "I know that."

"But we still want you. Don't we, Nate?"

"Yes," Nate replied automatically, not even hesitating, eyes dancing back and forth between them, trying to read the situation, figure out if Bram was mad, or sad, or happy, so he could adapt to it. "We still w-w-want you, R-Red."

“That’s right. We’re the only two people in the world who would still want you after I’ve made you like this for me. No one is looking for you, now. No one wants you but me.”

The young man swallowed, hard, and Bram watched his jaw move, the flash of the fight still in him flickering in his eyes like candlelight. He knew exactly what was going on behind that face - the puppy was thinking about his fucking brother, the one person he refused to let go of.

He had dreams about the brother, woke up crying and Bram would lay there and watch while Nate held him, joy rolling through him in waves, satiated and fed by how intensely and thoroughly the puppy grieved the loss.

Well, it was only a matter of time, anyway, before even the brother was gone... and Bram could wait. But that fight was still in there, inside of him, and he wanted to cut it the fuck out.

“No one,” He repeated, scratching a little at the scar, making the puppy flinch. “No one but us will ever want you.” He wouldn't be able to make it through opening the presents, not at this rate. Not if they were both going to be so sexy like this. "It’s okay, though, isn’t it? You’re just fine with us here. You were dancing with my Nate, after all," Bram said softly. "I saw you dancing."

A red flush went up the puppy's face, nearly as red as his scars, his hair, his name, as the blood that had come out of him when Bram cut him open the first time in the backseat of his own car, somewhere on the side of the road in Oregon. "You s-saw?"

"You're not a bad dancer, Red. Need some practice, though. Next time do I get to watch?"

Red shivered, and Bram moved even closer to him. “If… if you want to, Abraham…” He smelled like fear, like prey, something to be hunted again and again and again, torn open, skinned and laid bare.

Metaphorically, of course.

“I do want to.” How could any red-blooded… well, not man, but his blood was still reasonably red, so it counted... be expected to just ignore something like this? Did other people, out there in the world, see someone so frightened and not just want to claw into that fear and drink it and drag it into bed?

He didn’t love the puppy, but he was getting there with every little shiver like this.

"Hey," Nate said, moving to him, putting a hand on his arm. He turned to look at his true love, trying to get between him and Red, tilting his head the way he knew Bram liked, moving closer. "H-hey, I, uh, Red said he's got a thing he m-m-made for dessert in the f-fridge, we could, we… c-could eat that and do presents? Or y-you and I could g-go into the bedroom." A little more between them, blocking the puppy off from him. He watched Red’s shoulders start to relax. "Just us?"

Nate was trying so hard, and he was so good. Always trying to put himself in front of Bram, to take being hurt so Red wouldn't have to be, interceding on his behalf. Always slipping him extra food when he thought Bram wasn't looking. Arguing with him about the muzzle, about making Red chop wood when his leg was still bruised up. Standing up for him.

He hadn't been so selfless when they'd first picked him up. He’d been wasted potential, all that beauty hidden behind his bullshit argument with his roommate. No, he'd made his love into this, he and Ashley. He wasn't a monster at all.

He'd made Nate a better person by making him a Denner.

He was making Red a better person, too, bit by bit.

This was the best possible place to live. No one asked questions when he went into town. No one had missed the previous cabin’s owner, no one was suspicious when he said he’d bought the cabin. No one cared about what he did out here, so long as he kept his business to himself. No one could hear Red scream, on the nights Bram wanted him to. No one ever heard you scream in the wilderness, and Nate knew that already but Red had had to learn.

It was so wonderful here, and the only thing missing was Ashley. But she would wake up, one day, and come find him, and they would be a family again.

“Dessert sounds great,” He said, and watched the relief in Nate’s face, so easily read. “What’d you make us, Red?”

The puppy jumped to look up at him, nervously. “I, uh, my… my family used to have a cook, and she made us this cake every year for Christmas, so, so I found a recipe in one of the dead guy’s-”

“Body,” Bram interrupted. “They’re not people, Red. They’re bodies. Try again.”

“Right. Sorry, I’m sorry, Abraham, I’ll, I’ll try harder. I found a recipe in one of the body’s cookbooks for the same, um, kind of cake, and I’m, um, I’m better at baking than I used to be. This cake… Ryan hated it, but I always liked it actually - so did, um, my mom. So it’s, so I made-”

“What did you make? I didn’t ask for your goddamn life story. You’re not supposed to think about life before me, are you? What’s your rule?”

“There is no life before Abraham! Sorry, no-... no, I’m not, I know, sorry, I’ll be good, I’m, I want to be good, I remember,” The puppy said in a frightened rush, and Bram grinned at him. They were so different when they were alone, compared to how they were when he entered their minds and made himself right at home. The difference between Red’s laughter trying to dance, or those curses he used to spit at Bram in the first few days, and the way he’d folded into himself now was night and day, and the sound of his voice was better than music.

He was so good now, and all it had taken was a year here. Bram loved people and he knew them so well, knew all their teeny little cracked spots that you could chisel open into wounds, into damage they could never recover from, never undo or take back.

Even if there was a world where the puppy went free, he’d be damaged like this forever, because of Abraham Denner. There was no better way to feed than to know you’d turned someone into something else entirely, and they could never, ever get themselves back.

For a moment, he fantasized about letting the puppy go back to his family, about what it would be like the first time that fucking brother he cared so much about tried to hug him and he pulled away in fear, or when they put food in front of him and he waited to be given permission to eat it, or flinched when one of them raised a hand to touch his hair...

Then coming back to take him again, and seeing all that fragile recovery and hope crumble to ashes. He could live for years on that moment alone.

“It’s a chocolate gingerbread cake,” The puppy finally said, rubbing at his left arm with his right hand, looking nervously at Nate, who kept his eyes on Bram, still trying to read him. “I made frosting-”

“Then go fucking get it.”

The puppy jerked into motion, walking quickly hunched over towards the kitchen, and Bram briefly looked at the some assembly required written on his back.

Wasn’t that the fucking truth.

They took a lot of work, his boys, but they were worth it in the end.

“You d-don’t have to be mean.” Nate crossed his arms in front of himself. While his voice was still low and submissive, the words weren’t, and Bram fought a glimmer of annoyance. But that was part of being in a relationship, really - sometimes you had disagreements.

There were bumps in the road in every love story, and he and Nate had their bumps, too. But they’d gotten over them all - that they hadn’t met under the best circumstances, that Nate had been a fighter at first, that he’d run away a few times, that he’d stabbed Ashley to death, that he’d started seeing someone else behind Bram’s back…

Bumps in the road. Water under the bridge. Bram knew how to have mature adult disagreements with his true lover, after all. You just talked it out, and if that didn’t work, you fucking broke Red until Nate understood the argument was over.

“Yes, I do.” He smiled, tilting Nate’s chin up with one finger. “I heard you call him by his old name, baby.”

“I f-f-figured,” Nate said softly. “When I saw how far in the room you were. Y-you can be m-m-mad if you want.” He leaned forward and kissed Bram, took the initiative and took his sweet time about it, and that wasn’t fair, now was it? He knew Bram liked it when he did that. “Just be m-mad at me, not him. H-he didn’t do anything wr-wrong, did he?”

“He’s always doing something wrong.” He slid his arms around Nate and felt the other man pause, hesitate, and then put his arms around him, too, and all the anger in him melted away. Nate was so fucking perfect, now. “But fine. Just for you, I’ll be nice to him tonight.”

“Th-thanks,” Nate said, with real sincerity, tucking his forehead against the side of his neck. He was still drunk, most likely, and he was always better and more affectionate when he was drunk - always had been - but Bram wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The puppy came back in with the cake balanced on a silver-colored serving tray Bram had brought back from a supply run a few months back, walking carefully until he set it down on the coffee table they’d pushed against the wall. “I, um, I wanted you to see it before I cut it up,” Red said, and Bram just blinked, shocked.

It was a circular tall cake made of at least eight layers stacked on top of each other, frosted up the sides with a cream-colored frosting and topped with tiny little plastic toy pine trees stuck into it, dusted with that fake snow glued onto them.

Off to the side was a little toy deer, just under one of the trees, and on the other side there was a little army man holding a rifle.

“Is that me?” Bram asked, and just… stared at it. “Is that me hunting?”

Red stood back up, rubbing at the back of his neck, smiling a little off to the side, shyly. “Y-yeah. Because you- you hunt deer, and I found some old toys in the d-... the body’s storage shed. So that’s you, and that’s the deer. I-I had ones for Nate and me, too, but I didn’t-”

“Put them on,” Bram said insistently. “Put the ones for you and Nate on. Now.”

The puppy nodded, quickly, moving over to where he still had a mat on the floor, although he never slept on it any longer, he slept in the bed with them nearly every night now. He dug something out from underneath it and crouched down by the cake, adding two more little toy people. One was made of Legos and was just a little man with a shirt and pants and black hair stuck on top. The other was a tiny plastic cowboy. He put the two others behind the hunter, standing right next to each other, then looked up at Bram, who already had his phone out.

“Smile,” Bram commanded, and the puppy did as he was told.

He took six or seven photos, of the worried smile the puppy put on for him, not quite sincere and a little fake and frightened, stretching his scars and pulling at them. He kept the flash on, just so he could make sure the red would be as bright and vibrantly painted on that pale skin as possible when he looked at the photos later.

You spent six weeks with your voice locked away, and you’re so scared I’ll take it from you again, Bram thought. If the way his heart fluttered thinking about that wasn’t love, then what was?

When he was done, he slid his phone into his back pocket, grabbed the puppy by the arm, and pulled him up, hands on either side of his face, to kiss him.

Nate flinched and moved as if to come towards them, but Bram pulled back just long enough to snap, “Stay,” and Nate froze.

The puppy wanted to fight - he put his hands up, palms flat, against Bram’s chest as if he would push himself free. “You even try to get away from me and I’ll put it right back on you,” Bram murmured into his mouth, and all the resistance simply melted away, Red’s pulse a rabbit-fast beat in his throat and he opened his mouth for Bram well enough, then.

Not perfect, not yet - but he was closer every day, and he’d get there.

Bram wasn’t in any hurry at all.

“Thank you,” Bram said softly when he finally pulled away, kissing the corner of the puppy’s mouth. “It’s beautiful. I love it.”

“Y-you’re welcome,” The puppy said, shivering for a whole different reason than before, shifting just a little away from him, and Bram let his hands trail down the sides of his neck, over his collarbone, down his sides. Just proving that he could, that the puppy couldn’t do anything to stop him, wouldn’t dare. “I just, I wanted to make you something, because-”

“Because I’ve been so good to you,” Bram supplied, leaning in to kiss the end of his nose. “Because I still want you, Nate and I, even though no one else ever will.” He kissed each cheekbone, over the red marks. “Because I made you damaged just the way I like you.”

The puppy hesitated - he’d been clearly about to say something, probably anything, else - and then slowly nodded.

“Cut me a slice of cake,” Bram said, nuzzling into the side of Red’s face, against the red line of the scar along his cheek, trailing his lips across it. “We’ll have cake and then it’ll be time for presents, won’t it?”

“Y-yes,” Red said, his voice breathier than before, slightly hitched. “Can you… can you let me go, for a second, please, Abraham?”

He tightened his grip on the puppy, just for one moment, just to remind him that he didn’t move until Bram wanted him to, and that no matter how much he and Nate liked each other, his true love would never stop him from doing what he wanted with the puppy, either - and then he let him go and sat on the couch, watching the puppy move back to the cake with half-lidded eyes.

Nate sat down beside him, still nervous and tense. The puppy gave them their slices of cake, sticking the little people that represented them on the top with a thin half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

When he went to sit on the couch with his own plate, Bram shook his head and pointed, in silence, at the floor between Nate’s legs.

“Y-yeah, okay,” Red said softly, scrambling to settle himself with his back against the couch, one of Nate’s legs on either side of him.

He had a bite on the end of his fork when Bram leaned forward, just slightly, and said, “Hey. You forgot.”

“Forgot what? I didn’t-... Oh, I’m, um, I’m sorry.” Red’s face burned again, flushed bright red, and he wasn’t looking his way but if he had, Bram knew he would have seen it again - the fight, buried under the puppy’s attempts to convince himself not to. But it would still be there in his eyes - all that defiance and cursing and spitting and fighting was still there, ready to be locked away piece by piece until all of it was gone and he was finally, finally perfect. “Th-thank you for letting me eat with a fork, Abraham.”

“You’re welcome. This is good shit. I’m proud of you. Good boy, Red.”

The puppy jerked his head down to the floor, but he could see the edge of his jaw as it tightened at the humiliation in the words and he only nodded, curtly, and ate his own cake like it was made of ashes.

The cake was perfect, and the company was perfect. It was all so perfect. He slid an arm around Nate’s shoulders, felt him make himself relax against him, looked down at the puppy’s shock of bright red hair as he kept his own eyes carefully on the TV as the end of the movie played.

Perfect.

Everyone was here, and it was so fucking perfect.

He couldn’t wait for presents. He was very good at gifts, after all, and he couldn’t fucking wait to see Nate and the puppy’s faces when they saw what he had gotten them.

Abraham Denner looked at his warm, cozy living room holding everyone on Earth that mattered, and he thought, Merry fucking Christmas to me.

#holiday whump #whump #tw: noncon kissing #tw: noncon touching #captivity #Daniel michaelson's story #referenced noncon #referenced dubcon #tw: abuse #tw: violence referenced #emotional whump #intimate whumper #creepy whumper #broken whumpee #defiant whumpee #caretaker #caretaker whumpee #whumper POV #whumper

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