#burtlederp does art

[burtlederp]

Ah, so I guess it's one of those nights.

@ashintheairlikesnow here's god of smoke and ashes, Antoni!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

“I’m not telling you again.”

If you’re still doing the sentence prompts?

CW: Vampirism, blood drinking, minor whumpee (OC is 17), captivity, referenced dehydration and starvation, forced turning, wishing for death, religion

1905, somewhere outside New York City

-

"Come here, little one."

The boy presses himself back against the cold stone wall behind him. There's a cuff around one ankle, dull iron, and a chain that scrapes the floor when he moves. He swallows, shaking his head rapidly from side to side. Dirty hair falls dull over eyes that sparkle vibrant green in the near-total darkness.

He can't see her.

But she can see him.

"No." His voice is a whimper, a nearly-animal whine, pure fear. "Please, please, please no, not, not, not tonight, not... not tonight, please."

She sighs, chuckling fondly, and pulls a match across her palm to light the lamp that hangs on a hook down here. The wick catches flame, and now he sees the pale, pale skin, the deep red lips. The predator's gleam in glinting dark eyes.

She crooks a long, sharpened fingernail . He can see the hem of her dress, lace-edged, the skirt that sweeps up to curve her hips, the narrowed waist, the high neck. He's stared at illustrations of the Gibson girl put up in shop windows in stores that sell to richer women than he's ever known. She's an echo right down to the soft, upswept hair.

Like a man with an expensive coat hiding a knife, he thinks, that he means to slaughter you with. She's a monster who looks like an angel.

"I'm not telling you again. I'm hungry," She says, and gives a little pout. "I want you to feed me."

He pulls his arms in close, shaking his head again. Tears already threaten. He's so tired, all the time. There is never time enough to heal from one bite before the next and the next and the next-

"Come now, little pet. It's just one last time." Her voice is gentle, but he knows they lie. They all lie to get their fangs in you.

"What, what, what d'you mean?" The boy has a thick country Irish accent, still. Fresh off the boat, they call him when he tries to speak to the boys his age in his tenement. Half of them have accents like his, or thicker.

Not that he'll see any of them ever again.

Not since his parents-

Not since-

He chokes on a sob he can't quite hold back, turning at the waist to rub his fingers over the rough, cool stone. It helps. The motion, the texture, it helps. It calms him down, a little.

Everything here is wrong.

He misses home. He misses the green hills that were never so full of dirt ground in as the city streets are. He misses the air that didn't smell like offal day and night. He misses a world where it was all less overwhelming. He misses a world where his parents were alive to help him understand it.

"Oh, you're sad tonight," The monster wearing a woman's face says, taking the lamp off the hook and carrying it closer. The shadows dance off her cheekbones, they seem to give her a sneer rather than her soft smile. "Let Malorie be of aid to you. Tell me what you need, sweet boy."

"Can, can, can I have a-a drink? Miss?" His voice is hoarse from thirst, and he's parched. It has rained for two weeks and he's drunk the rainwater that leaks in through the walls, plus the few sips they give him each day. Food is a bit of moldy bread, cheese, maybe a thin soup. It isn't enough.

They don't seem to notice, or care.

But then food or water is something they left behind, isn't it?

"Hm." She steps forward, closer to him. Her eyes flash in the dark, reflect the bit of light, and he cringes back from her fangs as she smiles down at him. She moves to crouch before him, and sets the lamp down on the floor beside her. "Is it thirst that drives you, little one?"

"Please." His lips are chapped and cracked. He tastes blood, sometimes, and spits pink-tinged spit to blend with the soil beneath him. He tries to look pitiful - it's not hard to succeed. "Please. I'm, I'm so so so so... so thirsty, ma'am, just a cup, please-"

She looks down, unfastening the line of tiny pearl buttons on one sleeve, then rolling back the fabric to expose her wrist. A stray curl of dark hair falls down to brush her perfect cheekbone.

"Ma'am?" He can't understand what she's doing - none of them had ever started to undress in front of him before. "A drink, ma'am? Please?"

She looks up, and her eyes gleam like a cat's in the dark. Her teeth are very very white. He can see the venom shimmering on her fangs.

"A drink you want, you beautiful boy," She says, and he stares with uncomprehending horror as she moves her wrist towards her own mouth. "And a drink you shall have."

She tears her own wrist open with her teeth.

He gasps and tries to get up to run, but he's weak and dizzy and when she yanks at the chain that binds his ankle to the wall he goes down hard and lands with a thump, the breath knocked out of him.

While he wheezes air into lungs that won't take it, she pushes him onto his back and forces her wrist against his mouth, her other hand pinching his nose shut.

He cries out in horrified disgust against her cold skin and the thick brackish fluid that flows over his tongue. She stares down at him, avid, with huge eyes.

"Drink, sweet boy," She murmurs. "Quench your thirst."

He must drink or suffocate, and his body chooses for him. He swallows even as he gags, and swallows again, and she lets go of his nose so he can frantically pull in air, tears streaming to pool in the shells of his ears and soak into his grimy, dirty hair.

She is a blur through his terror, but her smile is written in stone in the yard beside a church.

"My turn," She says, and when she buries her fangs into his neck, the boy screams again.

And then goes limp as the venom takes hold, and the vampire begins to purr, her fingers gripped like claws into his shoulders.

There is no pain.

Only the fear.

I'm going to die, he thinks, and stares up into the darkness that wipes out even the lamplight. It seems like it's growing, within him and without.

His mouth is full of blood. It tastes better than it did when first she made him drink. The heaving of his stomach stops. He starts to swallow willingly, even eagerly. Nothing has ever quenched his thirst quite like this. It doesn't taste at all like he'd thought.

I'm going to die.

He wants to go home.

He wants more to drink.

He's so hungry.

He wants more blood.

When she pulls her wrist away, he whines and tries to grab at it, to pull it back. She laughs, swatting playfully at him.

"Not yet," She chides, wagging a finger. She licks her open wound and it closes. She laps at the remaining blood and he tries to sit up, to get some too, only for her to push him down again.

Then... pain.

Agony hits, a bright stripe straight up his spine, and he arches away from the ground, throwing his head back and screaming loud enough to bounce off all the walls. It recedes, and then comes again, through his stomach this time. The throb moves to his hips, thighs, into his calves and all the way to his toes.

He curls into a ball on his side, but the pain keeps growing. It takes over. He can't feel the floor he lays on, only the constant spark of nerves blaring alarm. He feels like he is being crushed under a rock, burned by the hottest fire, stabbed with a hundred knives.

"Wh, what, what's happening-... t'me?!" He coughs, and then sobs as the action hurts more than anything else ever has in his life.

"You're dying." She picks at her fingernails, already bored.

He turns to look up at her as she stands, licking her chops like a cat. Tears run down his face, and every time he blinks the air seems pink-tinged. "What...?"

"That's your body shutting down. You know, you're very fortunate." She wipes a droplet of the boy's own blood from the corner of her mouth and then sucks her finger clean. "Very few people get to be born twice. I'll see you tomorrow night. I would prefer if you didn't call me your mother."

Before he can even begin to form a question, she turns to walk away, hanging the lamp up on its hook as she goes, blowing out the flame.

The pain ripples again, he is broken like a brittle shell against the shore. His very bones feel as though they're tearing apart inside him.

He's going to die here.

And he won't stay dead. His parents will wait in Heaven for a demon son who will never be allowed to step foot into Paradise.

He gulps in air, lungs burning, and tries to remember the prayer through his panic. "Our Father, wh-who art in Heaven, hallowed be be be Thy Name-"

His throat blisters even saying the words, and when he tries to cross himself, his hand shakes too much, his joints crack and shatter. He can feel it, he can hear it. They crack and reform, break and bend.

He screams.

He screams until his throat is raw, until it bleeds, until his heart stops beating and blood runs from eyes and ears and from under his nails.

He whispers every prayer he's ever known when he can. He begs for salvation, he begs to be spared eternal bloodlust, he pleads for something other than damnation. He prays he'll see his parents in death and not become a monster like this.

His prayers are swallowed whole by darkness.

He dies, but he does not die for long.

-

Tag list:  @mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @endless-whump @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump

[comfy-whumpee]

On His Shoulders

Whumptober Day Five: Misunderstanding. CN: angry whumpee, violent trauma response.

@iaminamoodymoodtoday, @wildfaewhump, @ishouldblogmore, @lektric-whump, @that-one-thespian, @raigash, @burtlederp, @rosesareviolentlyread, @eatyourdamnpears and as always, @ashintheairlikesnow writes Savvie.

When Kieran came home, Jax was sitting on the sofa in the dark of the early dusk, staring at the wall, and not moving.

It was a Thursday, one of the days Jax’s dad took the kids after school and gave them dinner so that Jax could have a break. It was a day when Jax often came out worse than he had the day before, because he allowed himself to be miserable. He carried the sky on his shoulders, and some days, he needed to let it fall.

Kieran noted how Jax didn’t look over when the door closed, which was unlike him. Normally he was the first to check that the person knocking was who he expected, and the first to peer inside their car before getting in. He set the burglar alarm at least twice every time he went out, second-guessing whether he had remembered unless someone was there to reassure him. Surprise gifts gave him panic attacks, and surprise romantic gestures, even more so. He was always waiting for the day Savannah Marcoset sent him a message to show she was still watching and waiting for a chance to snatch him again.

But not today. Today, Jax stared at the wall, and didn’t move when Kieran took off his shoes and hung up his coat. He didn’t even twitch, except to blink, when Kieran approached.

He didn’t move a millimetre even when Kieran sat down next to him.

“What’s happening, love?” Kieran asked softly, keeping his voice light and his hands visible on his knees. “You’re frozen.”

Jax nodded stiffly, barely an inch. His jaw worked for a moment, but no sound came out.

“Did something happen?”

The faintest jerk of his head to the side and back again. Nothing discernible had happened.

“Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”

Another tiny jerk. His stare burned a hole in the wallpaper, fixed as a laser.

Kieran thought of what else he could say. It was hard talking to an atlas carved from marble. “Can I help?”

Another jerk-shake.

“Do you want me to leave?”

There was no movement to that one. Kieran knew that asking someone to leave could be hard for Jax, when he was thinking about Savvie. But he also knew that asking someone to stay, sincerely, was even harder than that. So he lingered, trying to understand. He tried to lean back and show Jax there was no threat here.

“Is this a fear response?” he asked. He dearly wanted to ask Alfie, but Alfie was out. Jax twitched his head for no, anyway. “Is it a… Sadness thing? Energy thing?”

Two more shakes in quick succession, the movements sharper, less tightly controlled. “C’mon, love. You can move. We’ve gotten this far. I just want you to get comfortable.”

It was deeply wrong to see Jax so perfectly still, but for the occasional twitch. He must have been holding himself in such meticulous restraint. Kieran couldn’t see even his fingertips moving, nails dug under the seam of his jeans but as frozen as the rest of his body.

“Jax,” he began, lifting a hand to push a lock of hair behind his ear--

--and Jax jerked away from the motion like it was a raised gun, hands flying out to shove hard at Kieran’s shoulders, voice lashing out, “No! Get off me!”

Caught completely off guard, Kieran tumbled from the sofa to the carpet, looking up in surprise more than hurt.

“Don’t touch me,” Jax said, suddenly on his feet, fists clenched at his sides, face tight and pale. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Kieran raised his hands, staying on the floor. “I won’t, love. I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t call me that.”

That stung. Kieran swallowed. “Okay. I won’t.”

Jax’s jaw was tight, tight enough to almost hide the wobble in it. He glared at the wall behind Kieran’s head. “I was trying not to do this but you had to fucking - you wouldn’t leave me the hell alone. Just leave me alone.”

“I will. That’s okay, if that’s what you need.” Kieran shuffled back. “I just want to help.”

“Don’t fucking bother.” The worst twisted out of Jax’s mouth with force, and he turned to look away. His shoulders were stiff. He pulled away from the sofa and made for the door, and then turned, lingering for a moment. “Why can’t you stay away from me?”

Cold understanding washed across Kieran’s skin and he breathed out a sigh, lowering his head. “I’m sorry. I did the wrong thing, didn’t I?”

“Everyone always does the wrong thing,” Jax replied, acid dripping from each word. But something felt off, underneath. Something bleak.

He’d been trying to hold back this mood from the second Kieran walked in. He’d teetered on the edge of it and held on until the fear snapped him out of it. The fear of being hit. Survival mode had kicked in, and the core of Jax’s survival had always been his defiance.

“I can go,” Kieran offered, looking up with concern at Jax’s angry, distant glare. He was distracted by memories, half-present. Kieran shivered. “I can stay the night somewhere else. Your dad can keep the kids. It can just be you.”

“Don’t you dare bring the kids anywhere fucking near this.”

Kieran winced. “That’s okay. That’s - it’s okay. If that’s what you want.”

“Shut up!” Jax snapped, taking a step back as if physically hurt. “You don’t fucking know a thing, stop acting like you get it - stop talking about my goddamn kids.”

I thought they were our kids.

He should go. Jax wanted him to go. This was different, to how he’d seen Jax before, rough and desperate and violent, and Kieran was horribly ashamed to admit that he was scared of this Jax.

“I’m sorry,” he tried, wavering.

Jax turned again, heading through the doorway to their bedroom, and slammed the door shut so hard the windows rattled.

The anger ate him alive on any day he failed to keep it sealed. It never lasted long anymore. Every outburst was the last sputter of a candle about to blow out.

In the sudden silence of the living room, Kieran exhaled the breath he had been holding. He got up, stiffly, to tidy away Jax’s coffee mug and the magazine he had left open.

The lurid headline caught his eye. Hate the artist, love the art: why we know too much about our music heroes’ personal lives.

Skimming the article, Kieran saw it. Amongst a small list of other imprisoned musicians was, from the classical scene, violinist Savannah Marcoset, serving life.

Kieran knew immediately that Jax had read the article from top to bottom. Probably twice. The conclusion, he saw with dismay, asked, Are we not capable of engaging in our simple love of music, away from the grand moral implications of our Spotify stream?

The page was crumpled in the middle, as though Jax had crushed it in his hand.

Kieran threw the article away and set about making dinner.

From the bedroom, there was the loud thump of Jax kicking a piece of furniture, and faintly underneath, the sound of his first sob.

[haro-whumps]

Group Whumpees 14: Headway

CW: slavery, multiple whumpees, aftermath of abuse, property destruction, migraine, actually a pretty fluffy chapter all things considered

Tag List: @bleeding-demon-teeth​ @theycomeinthrees​‌  @redwingedwhump​ @whimperwoods​ @inpainandsuffering​ @whole-and-apart-and-between​ @whump-whump-whump-it-up​ @whumpingupastorm​ @newandfiguringitout​ @lonesome--hunter​ @looptheloup​ @icannotweave​  @deluxewhump​ @whumping-every-day​ @yeet-me-out-a-window​ @what-a-whumpy-world​ @burtlederp​ @swordkallya​ @finder-of-rings​ @fairybean101​ @adventuresofacreesty​ @arlennil​ @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight​ @lumpofwhump​ @thatsthewhump​ @pinkdiamondprince​ @shameless-whumper​  @whump-only​  @kiretto-laorentze​ @eatyourdamnpears​ @whumpzone​ @bluebadgerwhump​  @fanastywhump @jo-castle @muffindaddy @whumpsy-daisies

Please let me know if you were not alerted or if you asked to be added to the tag list and I missed you, tumblr’s been messing up badly lately.

Masterlist

Nyla was… conflicted. 

But it didn’t do her any good to be conflicted, so she put on her smile, fastened her shoes, and got to work. 

Master had been very generous the day before, giving them a truly absurd amount of time to just sit and relax--threat of ghosts notwithstanding. But now it was time for her to resume her routine, as much of it as she still had.

And, since they’d been preoccupied with ghosts, or non-ghosts, or whatever it was Greyson had seen and Master Galo had dealt with, that meant Master Galo’s “crash course on queerness” needed to happen this afternoon. Which, hm, well, it was rather unreasonable to be nervous about it, right? Master was kind, and the last gathering had been a net positive. Maybe it was just because it was something to look forward to, and Nyla was nervous about things to look forward to.

Also there was that dumpster out front and Nyla wasn’t sure what it was for (perhaps another volley with the art pieces?), but she would deal with that when Master ordered her to.

She was passing by the front door when it opened and her heart leapt into her throat. She whirled, stepping back, but a familiarly massive outline stepped in and she relaxed, smile turning a little less forced.

“Welcome home, Master,” she greeted, kneeling as she took his extended hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. He was damp with sweat and smelled like cut grass and warm air. “Did you enjoy your volunteer service?”

“Yeah; it’s gorgeous out. Partly cloudy and kinda hot, perfect early summer day.” Master Galo pushed his wet hair away from his face, Nyla watching the way his arms flexed and moved and observing her own lack of fear response.

Don’t think about it.

“I’m starving though; any idea when lunch is?”

“Apologies, Master, but it won’t be ready for another half-hour yet,” Nyla said, knowing Sasha had only just gotten it in the oven. Her smile tugged at the corners of her eyes, face tight.

“Sweet! Enough time for a shower then,” Master Galo said with a bright smile, loosening some of Nyla’s nerves.

Nyla gave a short bow, hands clasped in the folds of her apron skirt, and took a deep breath as she rose back up, watching Master Galo’s back as he climbed the steps two at a time. Alright then. (He really did have a nice back) Alright then.

Do your job, Nyla, focus.

It’d be easier if she had anything to focus on. She almost wished Master Galo would host something, bring over guests or Guests of his own. Something Nyla could be active for, something that would require planning and management and preparation. 

But it wasn’t her place. Master Galo would do as Master Galo pleased and she would facilitate where she could and be good and patient and pleasant and useless if Master wanted her to be because it was fine, it was fine.

“You were right,” Nyla said, voice quiet and weirdly flat for her. Evan looked up at her inquisitively, a winter boot balanced on his good thigh and a polishing rag in hand. “We’re entirely out of things to do.”

Evan snorted. “Told you.” He waved the boot good-naturedly, though smug as a cat,” I mean, c’mon Nyla, it’s barely even summer.”

“I’m bored--I’m, stir-crazy,” she whispered, ridiculously daring but if she didn’t complain to somebody she was probably going to explode. 

“I think Greyson is the only one who isn’t--or, well, I mean, there was that whole thing yesterday…” Evan trailed off, and Nyla chanced a small, barely-audible groan. 

“What am I supposed to do?” she lamented, and Evan carefully scooted himself sideways, making room for her on the boot bench. 

“Come sit and be bored with me. I’m always down to complain about things, and hearing you go at it is pretty new.” He patted next to him, and Nyla glowered at the clean, unassuming wood before plopping down next to him. She huffed, lifting up the hem of her dress and pulling a loose threat taut so she could snap it.

“I just wish he would give us tasks. I wish we’d had the… talk, this morning.”

“Yeah.” Evan handed her the matching boot to his own and she diligently started polishing, feeling instant relief at having something to do with her hands. “Waiting for it… sucks.”

Nyla felt a strange little curl of emotion in her and nudged him with her elbow. “Well, you would know better than I.”

“Hey!” Evan gasped, looking at her in honest shock before laughing, open mouthed and still surprised, and Nyla smiled. “So now little miss perfect is going to scorekeep?”

“Little Miss Perfect, I like the sound of that.”

“We should bore you shitless more often,” Evan said, leaning forward with playful curiosity dancing across his features.

“Don’t get used to this,” Nyla said, turning up her nose and deliberately sitting with pristine posture. “I’m just having a psychotic break real quick and then I’ll be back to normal.”

Evan laughed, and she smiled, a pang of pain shooting behind her eyes as she did but she was having a nice time, so she smothered any wince before she made it. “Well I better take advantage of it while I can, then.”

The sound of the water shutting off had both their heads snapping upwards, despite the fact that neither of them could see through the ceiling, and Nyla’s perfect smile was back in place, tension in her temples. “...It seems you may have to wait,” Nyla stated, setting down the boot and brushing out her apron, gathering herself. She quickly finger combed her hair, smoothed down her apron once again, and Evan caught her around the wrist.

“You okay?” he asked. Ah, she’d fiddled too much.

“Just nervous, I suppose. Nothing that won’t be resolved after lunch.”

Evan nodded slowly, letting her go, and she changed her perfect slave smile to her “don’t worry the family, I’m fine” smile. Like usual, he seemed to buy it, and Nyla slipped her perfect smile back in place with a whirl of skirts and went to serve Master Galo lunch.

He’d demanded that Grey ‘take it easy’ yet again, and Nyla decided, rather selfishly, that that meant she would take his duties as butler from him that day. But then, was it truly selfish, when Sasha would just as likely faint if she was asked to, and Evan couldn’t walk on that leg of his? Lilah was able to do it, sure, but old habits die hard and Nyla couldn’t help but want to keep their littlest as far away from their owner as often as possible. Even though this one was kind.

Then the five of them were crowded together on a couch, Master Galo standing with his laptop hooked up to the TV in front of them. Nyla subtly covered Sasha’s hand with her own, where it gripped her sleeve, and Lilah leaned against Greyson with her legs hooked over Evan’s good one.

“Alright, so, queer shit 101,” Master Galo said with a bright smile to the group, hands propped on his hips. “I am going to attempt to keep things basic while still covering the bases, but please ask questions if you have them. In the great words of someone older than me, I don’t know what you don’t know. And I also don’t know what misconceptions you might have, though given Auntie Bethany, I can make some more or less solid guesses. So, without further ado.” 

Master Galo hit a key on his keyboard and the slide changed, “Queer! Our first term, the word used for the entire community of people who are neither cis nor straight. In recent years people who wish to gatekeep, meaning to exclude people from our community, have voiced backlash against the word ‘queer’ as being ‘too-inclusive’ and have recruited well-intentioned but ultimately inexperienced youths to cycle their rhetoric. That is bullshit. Queer is our word, it is a good word, just because ignorant and hateful people are bigoted against us does not mean it isn’t our word, and it’s an all-inclusive label for anyone and everyone who finds their home among us.”

Lilah tentatively leaned forward, hand extended, and Master Galo pointed to her with arched eyebrows. It wasn’t as threatening as Nyla might have once considered it. “What’s ‘cis,’ sir?”

“That is on my next slide, I promise. For right this current moment, just know that queer is the big main umbrella word for everyone. It covers all the bases, all your base are belong to us.” Lilah nodded as Master Galo chuckled at his own joke. Nyla didn’t get the reference, but she recognized that he’d made one. 

“Cool, so, you will see many squares with lots of stripes throughout this presentation. You don’t have to memorize anything, I just think they spruce up the slides, but for reference this one is the queer flag. You may or may not be familiar with the rainbow flag, that one’s a little different, we’ll get to that.”

Master Galo flipped slides. “Transgender!” he announced happily, a blue, pink, and white flag on the TV behind him. “You have seen this flag on various articles of clothing and buttons I own. And stickers. In general I have this flag around a lot, but! That is because, I am trans. You know this,” he said, making a broad gesture towards their group. 

“The word ‘transgender’ effectively means ‘anyone who isn’t cis,’ and yes I will explain. So! Say there is a little baby, and the midwife or doctor lifts the little newborn body up to examine, and says ‘she’s a girl!’ Now, say, years down the road, that person thinks of herself and says ‘yeah sure I’m a girl.’ That is what’s called ‘cisgender,’ when the gender you were assigned at birth matches up with your own sense of self. Now, say that same baby grows up, but says ‘actually, I’m not a girl.’ That would make that person transgender.

“I am what’s called ‘binary trans;’ I was assigned female at birth, grew up, discovered I was actually a dude, and here we are. Thus, I am called a transman. The same thing happens for transwomen, but in the opposite direction. Transmen are men, transwomen are women, but some people are neither a guy or a girl. They are what is called,” Master Galo switched the slide.

“Nonbinary!” Nyla squinted, tentatively raising her hand, which Evan and Lilah were also doing. “Okay wow, lots of questions, Nyla?”

“I… apologize, sir, but I’m not sure I understand. They’re not a man or a woman?”

“Correct.”

Nyla shared a quick, anxious glance with the rest of her family.

“Okay, don’t worry,” Master Galo said, holding up his hands with a small chuckle, “I will explain. First, Evan and Lilah, was that your question too? Yeah, figured as much, okay. So, I have found the easiest way to visualize nonbinary genders is like this: Say men are blue, and women are red. Or pink, but that’s just a light shade of red, so, anyway, color theory is not today’s presentation. Back on track! If you’re imagining gender like a color wheel, that means some people are gonna be purple, right?”

Nyla nodded slowly. Okay, that made sense. A combination of traits both male and female. 

“But, on that same vein, not all other colors are purple. Sometimes colors are green, or yellow, or orange. Men and women do make up the majority of the human population, but not all of it. There’s lot of ways to have a gender, and none of them are wrong.” Lilah raised her hand again and Master Galo pointed.

“How does that--I mean, if you have a vagina or a penis, shouldn’t that be, I mean, hard? To…”

“Okay, okay, good point. Very good point Lilah, I jumped the gun a little. Backing up a bit!”

Master Galo clapped his hands lightly, no force or noise to the motion, and Nyla had the brief thought that the gesture made him look somewhat teacherly. Which made sense, given… everything happening, but there was something distinctive and pleasant about that thought. Hm.

She wasn’t gonna worry about that. Focus.

“So, biological sex and a person’s gender are two seperate things. Often, they go hand in hand. That’s where cis people come from. However, while biological sex is, y’know, biological, gender is a social construct. Which means, it has more to do with perception and sense of self, and nothing to do with your actual physical body. So, since this is the 100 level course, I could frame it as, gender’s in your head and sex is in your genitals, make sense?”

Another round of slow, wary nods. 

“It’s technically a little more complicated than that, but we’re not gonna get into that today.”

Evan raised his hand again, and Master Galo pointed at him with a smile.

“So… Sir, do you, have a dick?”

Master Galo’s lips instantly folded in and he raised a hand to cover his mouth, his shoulders shaking a little, and Nyla felt a spike of anxiety, crown of her head feeling taut. But it was laughter, a wheezing chuckle escaping her master when he said, “Uhm.”

He took a deep breath, “So, no. I do not. I don’t really want or need bottom surgery and am comfortable with my genitals the way they are. Bottom surgery is not a necessary component of transitioning, and some people, like myself, don’t have it done. However,” Master Galo continued with a rush of air, “it is generally considered extremely rude to ask a trans person about their genital structure unless you have the explicit intention of sleeping with them. I am aware you meant nothing by it!” Master Galo rushed, hands held up as Evan began to flounder. “You weren’t intentionally being rude, it’s chill. Just, for future reference, if you ever meet another trans person, that’s on the list of questions you don’t ask.”

Master Galo cleared his throat, looking a little red, but in good humor about it. He turned back to his screen with a, “Now, Lilah, you bring up an interesting point.” Master Galo flipped forward a few slides, to a screen with a yellow square that had a purple circle in the middle of it.

“Intersex! Sex, like gender, is not actually straightforward. There are many ways to be intersex, ranging from genital structure to chromosomes to secondary sex characteristics. But ultimately sex, like gender, is on a spectrum. Just because the majority of people fall easily into little categories of, urg, ‘biologically male’ or ‘biologically female,’ which for the record are not phrases you should… use, but since this is an intro to queer shit I’m making this as understandable as I can. Anyway.” Master Galo seemed to gather his thoughts. “Right! People fall into one category or the other most of the time, but not all of the time! And the ‘not all of the time’ people are intersex. Some intersex people do not feel that their biology automatically makes them queer, and do not percieve themselves to be part of the queer community. Others take comfort and community among us, so it’s always up to the person.

“Anyway, flipping back a few slides, nonbinary! This is the umbrella term for everyone who does not fall completely into ‘100% a man’ or ‘100% a woman.’ There are many ways to be nonbinary, but for the record, many nonbinary people prefer to be referred to with they/them pronouns. Not all! But, like how men use he/him, or women use she/her, many nonbinary people are referred to with a singular ‘they.’ I am aware my aunt may have had grammar-based arguments complaining about nonbinary people and gender neutral language, but I promise the singular ‘they’ predates my aunt by multiple centuries.

“Genderqueer,” Master Galo said with another slide, “This one goes hand in hand with nonbinary. Effectively, it means ‘neither fully masculine nor fully feminine,’ and is, as the word ‘queer’ might suggest, an inclusive, broad term for people who don’t have a particularly hard line definition for their gender.

“Genderfluid, meaning that a person will shift between genders depending on the day. So like, some days this person would wake up and say ‘I’m a girl today,’ and other days ‘I’m a boy,’ and maybe some days they wouldn’t feel like either of those at all. Again, this varies from person to person, but the general idea is that they flow between genders.

“Agender, meaning they have no gender at all.”

Again, Nyla, Lilah, and Evan’s hands rose. Nyla was surprised to see that even Greyson’s hand lifted, if only a little, on that. Master Galo smiled with a huff, but Nyla didn’t feel threatened. “Let’s go with Greyson, yeah?”

“How would someone simply not have a gender, sir?”

“So, if we’re imagining genders as like a color wheel, agender would be like, white, blank. No color. No gender. People ask them ‘are you a guy or a girl’ and their answer is a flat out ‘no.’”

Nyla was struggling with that. Nyla was struggling with that one pretty hard. Her brain felt tight. She got the concept, but…

“Master?”

“Yes Nyla?”

“Would it be alright if we understood in theory but not in practice?”

“Yeah, this can be hard for people to wrap their heads around, mostly I just want to introduce you to the concepts. That’s perfectly reasonable Nyla.”

Nyla dipped her head in thanks, her family nodding as well. Master Galo flipped the slide.

“Neutrois. Hand in hand with agender, if we’re using the color thing then, like. If agender is white, then neutrois would be black. People who are neutrois might describe their gender as ‘null’ or ‘void’ and other descriptors of the like. Again, I just want to introduce you to the concept, you don’t need to be able to conceptualize it perfectly.

“Okay last one under the trans umbrella,” Master Galo said, “Bigender. Someone who is multiple genders simultaneously. So, for simplicity’s sake, you could say someone who is both a man and a woman at the same time.” Master Galo smiled at them. “There are many other genders people have, but again with this being the introductory course, I just wanted to hit the big ones. Any gender questions?”

Nyla tentatively raised her hand. Master Galo smiled at her, and his expression took the edge off her anxiety.

“So, we know you, had surgery on your chest, sir,” Nyla said, hoping she wasn’t being rude by bringing it up, “do nonbinary people also engage in,” she floundered, not sure what the word for it was, but she wasn’t going to ‘um’ or stutter (even if he’d said it was okay, she could do better, and she would). 

“Some do,” Master Galo mercifully cut her off. “Some people are fine looking the way they do, or use cosmetics to accentuate certain features, and some receive surgeries. It all depends on personal comfort. And also sometimes to alter others’ perceptions, I knew someone who had no real issue with their chest but other people would assume they were a girl because of it and surgery was affirming and helpful with other people’s way of viewing them, which in turn lowered their discomfort.”

“And, sir?” Master nodded. “If a person’s name is, very feminine or masculine?”

“Most of us change our names!” he said brightly, “Like how I picked Galo for myself. Many nonbinary people will also change their names to something a little more ‘neutral.’ Again, not all though.”

Evan raised his hand that time. “You picked your own name, sir?”

“Yup! When I started to transition I changed my name. I should show you all the movie it came from sometime; it’s real fun you might enjoy it.”

“Sir?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“What was your name before Galo, sir?” Evan asked. Master Galo made an unidentifiable noise, but Nyla didn’t think that it was good. Her spine lengthened and her hand left Sasha’s on her arm to clench neatly in her lap.

“Sooo, you don’t get to know that,” Master Galo said, ducking his head with a slow gesture of his open palm towards Evan. “The name I had before Galo is what is called a ‘deadname,’ the name a trans person was assigned at birth that has since been put to rest. Again, I know you are being curious and I would definitely like to encourage you to continue asking questions, but, that’s another one of those questions you should not ask anyone who is not me. Asking for someone’s deadname is considered rude, and referring to someone by their deadname is extremely rude and actively malicious.”

“Sir, I wasn’t--”

“Easy, Evan, I know,” Master Galo said with a patient smile. “It’s good that you ask me these questions, and not someone else, because you’re learning, and I know you don’t mean any harm. But, in sum, the name I had before is not relevant, and it is not something to be shared. Any other questions at the moment? We’ve had good ones.”

A brief bout of silence, and Master Galo flipped the screen to the only flag Nyla did recognize.

“Onto sexual orientations! Sexualities, they’re called. You will probably recognize the gay flag, this is another one of those umbrella terms meaning ‘anyone who isn’t straight’ while also having the capacity to mean ‘someone who is exclusively attracted to their own gender.’ It is a term meant for everyone in the community, much the same way queer is. Yes, Evan?”

“Are you gay?”

“No, actually, I’m pretty much straight. I’m aware that men can be attractive but don’t really feel attraction to them.” Master Galo cocked his head. “You worded that kind of intensely there, you alright buddy?”

Evan was already stiff, and Nyla recognized the way his mouth twitched when he was biting down a snarl. “I’m fine.”

The lack of an honorific made the family tense, eyes on Evan because he was, like a moth to flame, doing something stupid again, but Master Galo either ignored it or didn’t notice. 

“Cool. So, along with ‘queer community’ and ‘gay community,’ you may or may not have heard the phrase ‘LGBT.’ This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, and is sort of the most widely-in-use acronym for the queer community.

“Lesbians! What would the world do without them,” Master Galo said, flipping to a slide with lots of pinks and oranges. “Nowadays, lesbian is the word for women who are exclusively interested in other women, but historically it was used to describe any queer woman at all, back before bisexual really entered into people’s vocabularies. For the record: nonbinary people can be and often are lesbians. Anyone who has literally any ties to femininity and is attracted, more or less exclusively, to women and people with ties to femininity, counts as a lesbian. 

“Bisexual! People who are attracted to 1. their own gender and 2. other genders. Sometimes it’s phrased as ‘attraction to men and women,’ which, for the record, is a fine way for you to conceptualize it here in the introductory course, but I want to be clear that bisexuality does and always has included nonbinary peeps.” Master Galo smiled. “Bixesual is a perfectly good and normal thing to be; there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, and if Nyla had to guess she’d say he was deliberately not looking directly at any of them in particular.

“Pansexual! Hand in hand with bisexuality, pansexual people are attracted to others regardless of their gender. It can be difficult to distinguish between the two, but for some people the differences between sexualities are important. For some people, not so much, and they identify as bi and pan simultaneously. Again, we fall back on the ‘it all depends on the person’ idea. I will state that pansexuals are not attracted to everyone, they’re just attracted to every gender. Just because someone is of a certain gender doesn’t mean others won’t still find them ugly.

“Asexual! The umbrella term for people who don’t really feel attraction to other people, no matter the gender. We love respect cherish and support asexual people,” Master Galo said, oddly firm on that one. Lilah raised her hand.

“So, they just, don’t? Anybody? Sir?”

“Yeah, so, like, a straight man would only feel attraction towards women, and no attraction to men. A gay man would feel attraction to men, and no attraction to women. A bisexual man would feel attraction to men and women. And an asexual man would not feel attraction to either.”

Lilah nodded. “Okay, thank you sir.”

“However, ace--asexual--is an umbrella term. There are multiple ways to be asexual.”

Nyla frowned minutely, but then her smile was back in place. She wasn’t really sure how there could be multiple ways to not feel attraction to someone.

“There’s the spectrum of sex-positive, sex-neutral, and sex-repulsed asexuals. Sex-positive asexuals enjoy sex, the action, they just don’t think anybody’s hot. The activity is fun, but no one they look at hits that ‘oh hot I wanna have sex with them’ vibe. Sex-neutral asexuals don’t find anyone attractive, and don’t have any particularly strong feelings towards sex. It’s on par to like, going for a jog or having dinner together. Sort of a bland ‘whatever’ feeling. Sex-repulsed asexuals don’t find anyone attractive and do not, under any circumstances, want to have sex with anyone, ever. All of these are good and well! There’s no ‘wrong’ way to be asexual.”

“Next up we have grey-ace. 99% of the time, they don’t find anyone attractive, but every once in a blue moon they’ll see a person and go ‘oh hot.’ They are still asexual, they just have occassional feelings of attraction to seemingly random people. Or maybe they have a highly specific type! Again, depends on the person.”

“Last up for the ace umbrella, demisexual. Demisexual people are capable of feeling physical attraction, but only after a strong, meaningful, romantic bond has been formed. This is different than waiting in a relationship until you’re close. The person does not feel attraction, at all, until a committed bond has been formed.” Master Galo paused, letting them turn that over in their heads, but when no one asked any questions he flipped the slide once more.

“And wrapping up our crash-course on queer terminology, aromantic. Aromantic is similar to asexuality in all aspects, except that instead of talking about physical attraction, it’s about romance. Some people just do not feel the inclination to form romantic bonds with others. They still might, depending on the person, just like an asexual person still might engage in sexual activity, but the attraction isn’t there. They don’t see people and go ‘I’d like to see if this could work out as a romantic relationship’ they’re just in it for friends. Grey-romantic and demiromantic people are, again, much the same, but with romance, feeling that 99% or only gaining the capacity for a romantic relationship after a strong, meaningful, committed bond of friendship has been formed.”

Master Galo took a big breath. “Any questions?” he asked with a proud smile. 

Nyla honestly felt like she had too much information rattling around in her brain to even begin formulating a question, but Evan raised his hand.

“I don’t mean to be rude, sir,” Evan said, sounding like he was struggling not to grit his teeth.

“I know. Go ahead.”

“So, since you’re a transman, and you’re straight, then you’re only attracted to women..?”

“Yep!”

“And then, if a woman is attracted to you..?” Evan trailed off.

“That would still be considered ‘straight’ attraction, yep. The woman in question might be straight, or bi, or pan, or maybe ace! It’s all up to her. But her attraction to me would be ‘opposite-sex attraction’ yeah.”

“Was that rude sir?”

“No, no, you’re good, bud. And now you know!”

“Thank you sir.”

“Of course! I’m glad you’re asking questions. Anyone else?”

Another beat of silence.

“Alright, cool, good talk team. To wrap it all up, there are all sorts of ways people can experience gender and attraction, and none of them are wrong. Everything I talked about today is good, natural, and worthy of respect. Go ahead and let me know if you ever have questions in the future, I’m perfectly willing to talk about it.”

He took in a deep breath.

“The queer community has long faced oppression on a global scale. However, many cultures saw queerness as natural and didn’t much question it until, ah, interlopers became involved, and rerouted the course of history. But regardless of acceptance or ostricization, all cultures have their own queer histories, their own words and perceptions. 

“In recent years, and I mean really recent, queer people have started making great strides in changing legislation and public opinion of us towards the positive, though we still face a number of obstacles. You have probably noted that I am not fond of police. This is in no small part due to the fact that I am transgender. And then of course people like my aunt and various religious institutions will also condemn myself and my peers, due to malicious misconceptions or just straight up bigotry. 

“So I understand why you all may… struggle, with this information, for a bit. But I assure you, nothing is as bad as my aunt made it out to be, and if you ever want to know more I’m happy to talk with you about it.” Master Galo beamed and propped his hands on his hips. “Which about wraps this up.”

The doorbell rang. Everyone, including Master Galo, tensed.

“I think I’ll answer that,” he said. “Uh, dismissed? No, wait, wait here, we’ve got a group project I wanna work on this afternoon.”

Nyla was not in a habit of thanking god for much of anything, but she thanked god for that. Finally, a task.

Master Galo made a pleased noise and a bit of chatter Nyla could identify as friendly, there was the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, then the door swinging closed.

She was on her feet and smiling when he returned, leaning his big arm on the doorway and looking happy. “Sweet, so, the stuff we ordered has started to arrive, which leads me to another thing I wanted to talk about!”

Master Galo rounded back in front of the couch where he’d been, clapping his hands together and smiling. Nyla tentatively sat back down. ‘So! I would first like to establish that I am not suggesting you break up your current sleeping arrangement. However, you’re not gonna be able to fit all the stuff you collectively ordered into that one room without it turning into a nightmare, so I’ve thought about it and it’s my idea that you all should have rooms that are your own space. Not to sleep in, obviously, just rooms that you can use to store your stuff and you can decorate them to your own interests and you’ll have a private area you can go to if you need alone time. Sound good?” Master Galo asked, looking to Nyla, to Lilah, scanning over the group.

“You are quite generous, Master,” Nyla said, but no, no, that wasn’t quite right, for him. “Thank you,” she tried again, simpler, far too rude for Mistress, but for Master…

He smiled at her, pat her on the head far too briefly, and said, “You’re welcome. Let’s go check out what arrived, yeah?”

All of Nyla’s dresses, the skirts and top Sasha had ordered from that company, and a couple of Lilah’s things were in the first two boxes, and Evan’s t-shirts and jeans were in the third. “Sorry Greyson, looks like your stuff isn’t here yet.”

Greyson nodded, outwardly impassive, and given that it had barely been his idea to order anything at all that made sense. Nyla and the others followed Master Galo to the basement, their Master helping Evan down and hastening the process, and showed them the rooms he’d selected for them. Nyla hesitantly stepped into “hers.” 

It felt wrong. She’d cleaned and examined this room countless times before, but now, standing inside it felt incorrect. 

The bed had been folded up into a couch, which was standard for the beds housed in the series of apartments in the basement. The sitting area and kitchenette that existed in the middle of these rooms were indicative that these were for long-term guests, not, not slaves. The closet, filled with more hangars than she remembered, the dresser, the small desk, they were for people, not Nyla. 

Except, apparently, they were for Nyla now. 

“Oh, shoot, that lock is totally broken,” Master Galo’s voice came from elsewhere in the apartments, “Here, go for this room, then, sorry I totally hadn’t noticed that earlier.”

A broken lock? It was something Nyla had failed to notice, too. Her heart rate accelerated and her head felt tight; Mistress would cane her for missing something so obvious, but she deliberately swallowed and took a deep breath. Master Galo was not Mistress. She couldn’t keep expecting him to act like her.

He was so much kinder. Gentle, and careful, with a sweet voice and warm hands that only ever touched her--

Nyla yanked a hangar off the closet’s bar with far too much force, utterly graceless, and it caused all the other hangars to clatter together and make a right ruckus. Her heart picked back up again, because she was clumsy, noisy, a fumbling little blushing nuisance! She unfolded her first dress and willed herself to remember that making noise was okay, it was allowed now, she could make noise and still be perfect, no one was mad at her, no one was going to come hurt her.

And where was her smile!?

She really was falling to pieces, she thought to herself, pulling another hangar off the rod properly and fitting another dress onto it. Smiling. She was smiling, she was grateful for this unexpected and unasked for privilege (weren’t they supposed to ask for things? Why was this happening unprompted?!), she was graceful and perfect and, fine. She was fine. Her temples felt tight, but she was smiling and composed and fine.

It really was satisfying to see her dresses hung up all neatly, though. When her skirts and sweaters and undershirts arrived, she’d be able to finish filling the closet, and it would look so neat and it would be hers and it was selfish, to be so vain and materialistic, but maybe since Master Galo had ordered it, that meant it was okay?

She rubbed at her right eye and stroked her hand down the material of the first dress, admiring the ruffles around the neckline and the neat, black stripes of the sewn-in green vest. She would get to wear that. She would get to wear all of them, with their pretty patterns and their pleated skirts and their ruffles and lace and bows.

It felt far too pretty for the likes of her.

She wished she knew how to properly show her Master gratitude.

She wanted, she--wanted. She didn’t want to be caned or cut or bleed or cry, but she wanted to do something, something physical, something to show just how much she appreciated everything he was doing for them, to make him happy, like he’d made her happy.

But what did a slave have to give, except her body and her service? He’d already made it clear that he didn’t want either of those, aside from her now mind-numbing chores, and that was hardly something to make him happy. More of just an expected base behavior out of her, out of all of them.

She didn’t know his favorite foods; Greyson never reported any particular signs of delight no matter what Sasha tried, at least nothing that stood out from his regular compliments. She didn’t have any way to engage with his hobbies. She couldn’t kneel at his feet and beg him to hurt her with her lips on his shoe. His base state of friendly and cheery made it impossible to tell what he liked best. The only real, solid thing she knew he liked was when they asked him for things, and it was the receiving of things that Nyla wanted to express gratitude for!

It was the weirdest, strangest, most unfamiliar form of frustration she’d ever felt. Maybe--maybe it wouldn’t count as Attending him if she offered a massage? Greyson was better at it than her, and she hadn’t had much practice in the last decade and a half aside from occasionally working a knot out of Sasha’s shoulder or soothing the nerves out of Evan or Lilah. But she’d been trained properly, and she could quickly skim an internet article sometime to refresh herself.

Oh but if Master Galo figured out she was trying to Attend him, even just a little, he might get mad, and she wouldn’t be able to handle that. She would just have to be extra-perfect for him. Sit and not kneel, smile, be unobtrusive but able to fulfil his every whim or need, maybe ask him for things? But what else could she possibly want that he hadn’t already given her?

She brushed down her apron and left “her room,” walking primly to the family bedroom and pulling out all the clothes from her drawer, which were smaller in number now that her other dress had been sliced open. She went ahead and grabbed Evan’s clothes too, and Master Galo was in the sitting area in the middle of “their rooms” when she walked back. She nodded to him, and he smiled at her before tilting his head and gesturing at the clothes in her arms.

“What’s that?”

“My clothes, as well as Evan’s, sir, from the shared dresser.”

“Oh, good memory,” he praised before returning to his phone, and she couldn’t help but flush faintly under his casual approval. She went into “Evan’s room” and found him sitting on the couch, elbow on his good knee and hands pressed together in front of his face. He looked mad.

“Are you alright?” she asked quietly, so faint ideally their Master would be unable to hear. He looked up at her, dark eyes glinting with what she just knew meant trouble, and hauled himself up onto his crutches. He made as though to walk past her, and Nyla turned in confused alarm, which morphed into full alarm when he closed the door.

“Evan! Master Galo is--”

“Right there, yeah I know,” Evan said, voice mercifully quiet even though he flipped the lock. Nyla could scream if she wasn’t rooted to the spot in shock. Evan took the clothes that were his and gave her a brief “thanks” before he threw them on the floor.

“Evan,” Nyla hissed in bubbling horror, staring at the rumpled fabric. 

“Hey, it’s ‘my’ room, right?” Evan sneered as he sat back down with a heavy thump, wincing when he jostled his wound. “Which means I can make a mess of it if I want, right?!”

“Evan, these rooms are gifts--”

“That we didn’t fucking ask for. We’re supposed to ask, right?”

“He told us, it’s because we don’t have space in the main room for the things we did ask for!” Nyla hissed, “And keep your voice down!” She didn’t mention that she’d been having the same doubts. She was trembling, clutching her clothes to her chest. “I--I need to go. I need to finish putting my things away.”

She stepped away from him, needing to pause at the door to summon her smile, to suppress her wild shivers, to take a deep breath and gather herself, and when she flipped the lock she heard Evan call after her, “I’m sorry.”

She turned back again, carefully crafted smile slipping, and Evan had his face in his hand, the other clutching the edge of the cushion. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just--sorry. I’m sorry Nyla.” He ran his fingers back into his hair and gripped, hard, pulling at his roots. “I’m sorry.”

Her shoulders dropped, chest squeezing, and she swaned over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him. He startled, letting go of his hair, and she reached up her free hand to cup his face. He closed his eyes as she leaned up and kissed his cheek, and nuzzled his face against hers as he pet a hand down her hair.

“Just try to work through whatever this is before you leave the room, okay?” she asked softly, trying to be gentle with him, to not get scared and frustrated like she normally felt when he got like this. Master Galo wouldn’t hurt him like Mistress did; she didn’t need to be scared, didn’t need to be frustrated with Evan because he had more time now. “Master Galo’s in the sitting area.”

“Yeah,” Evan answered her, finger combing his bangs to the side. “Yeah. Sorry. I will.”

She kissed his forehead as she stood, and was able to summon her smile much easier this time. She rubbed at her right eye, brushed down her skirt, and went back to “her room” to finish hanging up her clothes and arranging her underthings in the drawers. 

When she finished, she skimmed her fingers over the dustless wood of the dresser. “Her” dresser. Pink with floral designs, old fashioned and expensive, an ‘antique’ that was as good as new. It was… surreal. She left the room, crossed to her Master, and slipped to her knees, then rump, to sit next to his feet. Her hands folded neatly in her lap, and she blinked away the weird feeling in her eye.

“Thank you, Master,” she said again, wishing she could say it better, express it better.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” he said gently, leaning forward in his seat and petting his fingers through her hair. She allowed herself to tilt her head, eyes slipping closed, and she savored the touch. His knee was right there, it would be all too easy for her to lean in and lay her head against it. But no, no, she was better than that. He hadn’t expressed a desire for her to submit to him in that way and she was going to be perfect for him.

“Master,” she started, reminding herself that he liked questions, that technically all times were good times and she couldn’t pester him with too many, “is there a way you would like to be thanked? I am grateful, and want to show it to you properly.”

“No, Nyla, you don’t need to,” he said gently, and he sounded almost sad. “Just saying ‘thank you’ is enough.”

She tried not to feel disappointed. At the very least, she wouldn’t show it. “As you like, sir.”

The others joined them, Sasha sitting as close to Nyla as she dared, Greyson kneeling at Master Galo’s other side, Lilah sitting on the couch in a way that made them all panic slightly but reaped no consequences. When Evan joined them, a noticeable stretch of time later, Master Galo made no comment on his late appearance, only smiled and put his phone away.

“Great, you’re all here. So, about the project I mentioned. You may have noticed the dumpster out front. I would like everyone to please work together and move all of my aunt’s canes, chains, whips, restraints, muzzles, cages, knives, and the like into the dumpster. Anything she used with the purpose of hurting or humiliating you, I would like to see go. I’ve got a power drill and I’m gonna work on her, uh, dungeon, and rip up those D rings in the den and music room, but just, like. Anything you can think of. Anything used with the purpose of you guys’ pain. Get rid of it, please.”

Someday, Nyla would stop being surprised by all of Master Galo’s many surprises.

Even so, an order was an order, and like many of Master Galo’s commands she found this one easy enough to obey. Nyla rose with all her grace, curtsied, and walked a direct path up two flights of stairs to the fireplace in Mistress’s boudoir.

Mistress had never used the fire pokers on Nyla. Lilah, sure, Evan, occasionally, but Nyla had kept herself perfect, too perfect to burn. But the fear, the ever present knowledge that she could burn, at any moment, at her Mistress’s slightest whim, the moment she stopped being flawlessly, untouchably perfect, had kept her tense as a coiled wire. She stopped by the main floor’s fireplace and grabbed those pokers too, one set in each fist, and all too gleefully hoisted them into the dumpster out front. 

She diligently visited every fireplace in the house, after that, removing everything that could and would have burned her, had she not kept herself perfectly poised on her self-made pedestal. Evan was in Mistress’s room, Lilah the den, Sasha the music room. Greyson, Nyla wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but wasn’t going to get bent out of shape over it. She rubbed her right eye, then temple, and returned to the basement.

Master Galo’s power drill was loud, making her wince and the space behind her eyes sting, but she entered the Punishment Room regardless. He’d collected a small pile near the door: the shackles he’d removed from their anchors in the wall, the thin mats Nyla was pretty sure were intended for yoga that had served as sleeping pallets to the two cells, the oil and wax sconces and dishes that had hung from the walls and ceiling. The wooden horse. All of the tools, the whips and floggers and knives. Nyla gathered up an armful, and Master Galo paused in his drilling to smile at her. 

“Hey, thanks.”

“Of course, Master. Do you require any other assistance?”

“No, I think I’m good. Dismantling my evil aunt’s evil shit is kinda cathartic, really.”

Nyla bowed, and trotted back up the steps with her load of chains and whips and manacles. It was satisfying to hear them clatter down into the dumpster. She felt weird. Good?? Strange.

“Oh, are you hauling stuff for Master Galo?” Evan asked. Nyla nodded with an affirming noise. “Great, so he’ll stay down there. Lilah, hand me that cane, Grey, don’t throw that in yet.”

Nyla looked and saw that Greyson had brought the dog cages up from the utility room. Greyson cocked his head at Evan, but set them down on the drive. Evan, crutch under one arm and heavy, metal cane in his dominant hand, proceeded to beat the shit out of the cages.

The family mostly just stood there, and watched, as he reduced the cages to little more than messy heaps of broken wire. He was panting, hard, by the end of it, and tossed the cane into the dumpster.

“Did you reopen your--” Lilah asked, cut off by Evan’s, “I’m fine.”

“Okay, it just looks like you might’ve ripped a stitch out, from all’a that.”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t have done any differently,” Evan said, laughing a little and pulling Lilah in for a hug. “Fuck, that felt really good. You guys should try that.”

“I think th-that’s a y-you thing,” Sasha remarked, and Nyla chuckled. Then giggled. She rubbed at her eye, and headed back inside to grab another armload from the basement. She got the wooden horse up under her arm and shimmy-stepped her way up, the thing large and cumbersome but she couldn’t wait to get it out of the house. Greyson helped her lift it into the dumpster, and Nyla grabbed a third round.

It was on her way back down to grab a fourth armful that the pain struck her, right as her foot came down on the top step. She recognized it instantly for what it was. Ordinary pain was, in a rather hard to describe manner, very different from migraine pain. It was impossible to confuse the two.

A migraine. She was having a migraine. Oh of course, her head had felt tight all day! And her eye, that was her aura, oh, she was so stupid! How could she not have seen this coming?

Oh, god, the pain was settling in fast this time, too. It never set in all at once, but the speed was less gradual than usual, right then. She whimpered. The basement would be no good. Master Galo was using power tools down there, right across the hall from the family bedroom. Her normal migraine spot, under her nice, dark, quiet bed, wouldn’t work this time.

Think, she had a limited amount of time before the pain got bad. Where should she go? The butterfly room? That was nice and dark, no windows, but would it be quiet? She naturally gravitated towards the idea of a bathroom, where the tile would feel cool against her forehead and she could turn off the lights. Upstairs, probably, she went upstairs, hoping to escape the noise of things landing in the dumpster and her family moving and talking around her. Near the back of the house, not the front, not near the driveway. The bathroom off the lilac bedroom? She went straight for it, closing her right eye since she couldn’t really see all that well out of it.

God, it hurt so bad. She closed the door, plunging the bathroom into merciful blackness. It was quiet, just what she needed, her family and Master would be busy for a while yet, they wouldn’t need to come looking for her. She could just stay where she was, curled up against the bathroom floor, in the dark, in the silence.

God, god it hurt.

And she knew it was only going to get worse.

--

Galo had the bars unscrewed and the dungeon stripped down to nothing more than walls, the floor, and an archaic looking chandelier that he did not have the electrical expertise to deal with. He needed someone with, like, training to deal with that.

Nyla hadn’t come back for a while yet.

Which, okay, it was a big house and she probably had plenty of grudges to act out against inanimate objects, but it was weird that Nyla of all people would start helping haul away the stuff he piled up and then stop midway through. It wasn’t like her.

And when Galo’s brain told him to worry, he was starting to come to terms with the fact that it was usually right. Did it count as anxiety when it was true?

He hauled up a load after scanning the basement, and finding no one there. He got rid of the evil library books as he paced through the first floor, as well as the armchair from the den. He found Greyson and Evan, but no Nyla. Hrm. He asked if Greyson would please take care of the D rings in the den and Evan volunteered himself, which, whatever worked. Upstairs he ran into Sasha in the music room, and he pried up the D rings like he said he would since she didn’t exactly seem like the type for power tools, and was glad to hand the task over to Lilah when she gravitated towards him, leaving the drill in her capable hands.

But where was Nyla?

It was ridiculous to think that she’d been kidnapped by Barbra but Galo couldn’t help but jump to that conclusion. He stalked through the second floor, trying not to be visibly distressed lest he upset the other slaves, but running out of places to look. He opened the door of a guest bathroom, if only for the reason that it was closed, and his eyes widened with horror to see his girl lying in the fetal position on the floor.

“Nyla!” he shouted, rushing forward and dropping to his knees. She flinched, worse than he’d ever seen her jump, and curled in tighter, a muted scream passing her lips, and Galo’s panic bubbled over.

“Nyla, Nyla what’s wrong, what happened?!”

“Please!” she begged, sounding so small. “Please, please no, migraine, Master, please stop!”

Oh--oh. Oh, and his yelling would only have made it worse.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, guilt consuming him as he bent and caught sight of her silent tears. “What do you need, what helps?”

Galo didn’t know anything about migraines, other than “head hurt.” He knew they were awful, horrible things, and Nyla deserved to never ever have one. But he didn’t know--would medicine help? Was this one of those things that nothing helped, and she’d just have to wait it out? How long did they last? An hour? Should he touch her?

“Painkillers. Dark. Quiet. W--” she choked on a sob, high and pained and Galo’s heart broke into a thousand pieces. “Water, please, cold.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go get painkillers and a glass of ice water? Do you--is the bathroom good? Is this a good place for you to be?”

“My bed,” she whined, hands over her eyes and body trembling faintly.

“Okay,” Galo said, mindful of each word, keeping his voice as quiet as possible. “Can--can you walk? Should I carry you? Should I touch you at all?”

“Just, don’t rattle me, please, don’t--hit my head, please, Master--”

“Never,” Galo breathed, and his heart broke all over again, to know that she still feared him so much, that Nyla had so little trust that she thought he would ever hurt her, much less when she was like this. “Never, Nyla, please, please believe that. I will never hit you.”

Nyla’s breath hitched, a little gaspy inhale, and then she slowly reached one hand out, and gripped Galo by the pant leg. Galo froze, standing on the edge of a brand new precipice, and tried to make his brain work, tried to think fast for once in his goddamn life, but his brain continued its sloth impression and he couldn’t process what this meant, though he felt its importance.

“Help me,” she begged, though it felt more like an admission than a plea. 

“Please, I don’t want the others to see me like this; I hate it when they see me like this,” she continued, and that felt closer to normal.

“Okay, okay, I can’t promise we’ll be able to avoid them but I’ll try my best. I’m going to pick you up now, alright?”

“Okay,” she whispered, barely moving her lips, but he understood why she wouldn’t want to nod her head, right then. Carefully, he gathered her up in his arms and stood. She curled in immediately, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, and he felt like he was holding the most breakable, easily-shattered entity in the universe. He felt a surge of protectiveness, a bone-deep need to take care of her, to make it better in any way he could. 

When they passed by the music room, its door open and Lilah inside with the drill, Nyla whimpered and pressed her hands hard against her ears. She wasn’t just pressing her face into his shoulder at that point, it was like she was actively trying to burrow into him, curled up so tight and stiff against him he felt she might shatter. He moved away from there as fast as he could, wanting to spare her everything he was able to. He tried to keep his gait smooth as he walked, slow on the stairs, and he actually did manage to avoid running into any of the others slaves.

He settled her down onto the cool sheets of her bed, wishing the slaves had softer pillows and wondering if he could get them any without them freaking out about it, and settled a palm between her shoulderblades.

“I’m gonna get that glass of water and those painkillers. Do you need anything else?”

“The blinds,” Nyla gasped softly, and Galo shut the blinds of the tiny skylight tightly, angled up so practically no light filtered in at all. He moved quickly, giving Greyson a probably-unconvincing smile as he passed him, but Nyla had asked that the others not know, so Galo wasn’t going to say anything. When he returned, he helped her sit up and handed her the medicine and the cup. The cool water seemed to help. 

Galo knelt by the bedside, elbows and forearms laid out in front of him on the mattress and his chin on the sheets. He stared worriedly at Nyla’s face, and wasn’t even thinking when he reached out and stroked a hand over her hair.

Realizing halfway through what he’d done, he snatched his hand back with a quietly hissed, “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to touch your head.”

“T--” Nyla swallowed, “Touch is fine, Master. Just, no… patting, or, percussion. Touch feels, good sir.”

“Yeah?” Galo whispered, no more than a breath. “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked quietly, stroking a gentle palm down from the back of her head to mid-spine. 

“...Yes,” she admitted tremulously. “But--they last a while, Master.”

“Shhh,” Galo hushed, “I’ll stay. The others are busy and they’ll be fine, just focus on you for a little while, shh.”

Galo pet gently at Nyla’s hair, her shoulders, her back, needing to reposition a couple different times as certain parts of his body got tired or sore or lost blood flow. By the end of the first hour, Galo’s anxious concern had burned itself out, and the mild worry that remained was going to bat pretty hard with his boredom. By the end of the second hour, he’d fallen into a light doze and had been there for a while, his hand covering Nyla’s much smaller one, his thumb stroking very, very slowly over the skin on the back of her hand. He was fully asleep by hour three, Nyla’s fingers curled around his tighter than she’d ever dared before, so what a shame that he was asleep for it.

His impromptu nap came to an abrupt end when Nyla shifted, eyes flicking open but otherwise staying exactly where he was. Oh his neck was gonna have a SERIOUS crick in it.

“Nyla?” he asked softly, “Do you need anything?”

She shook her head slowly, and he perked up to see her voluntarily moving it. “It’s mostly gone now, Master.” She sat up very, very slowly, rubbing at her neck, and Galo mirrored her from his spot on the floor. 

“Okay, that’s good,” Galo said, still speaking quietly, “Is it like, a fade-out kind of thing?”

“Yes sir,” she said, slowly stretching out her legs and wincing a little.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Sore, sir. And hungry, and--exhausted.”

She sounded tired. Galo was pretty sure he’d never heard her sound quite this tired. Carefully, watching her face for any sign of a negative reaction, he reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. 

“I’ll get you something to eat, yeah?” he offered softly. “You can stay here and rest.”

Nyla shook her head again. 

“I can get up, sir. I don’t want to trouble you and the others will have noticed our absence and I need to walk out the stiffness and eating here would get crumbs in the bed, Master.”

Well, Galo could only really argue with one of those, but doubted Nyla would buy that she wasn’t causing him any trouble anyway. He stood, his own body protesting the movement, and stretched his arms up high above his head.

“Thank you.”

Galo glanced down, letting his arms drop, and smiled kindly when Nyla didn’t continue.

“Of course, Nyla, I’m here for you if you ever need me.” Then, because Galo was allergic to Emotional Moments, “Sooo, are we telling your friends we got abducted by aliens for the last,” he glanced at the time, “three and a half hours, or?”

Nyla giggled weakly, which, ten points to Gryffindor!

“I don’t mind them knowing, sir. It’s just when I have the migraine that I…”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Galo said. Not wanting to be seen while vulnerable.

So what does that mean that she let me? he thought with a flip in his stomach, but pushed the thought from his head.

Sasha seemed anxious when they entered the kitchen, but interestingly enough that anxiety did not seem to spike when she caught sight of Galo. Though that might have been because she simultaneously caught sight of Nyla, who was, as near as Galo could tell, Sasha’s main comfort in life. Best friend? Were they best friends? They might be best friends.

Galo wished he knew more about the lives of the people he Literally Lived With. 

“Migraine,” Nyla said with a tight smile, by way of explanation, “Master Galo helped me.”

That did successfully key Sasha up, and Galo smiled, lips pressed thin. He should leave. His presence was an intrusion and would only make them feel like they couldn’t talk freely. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then?” Galo offered, moving away from Nyla and sliding his hands into his pockets. Open. Nonthreatening. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

“You don’t have to, Master.” Or maybe he didn’t. “I’m sure you’re hungry too, sir.”

Nyla sounded uncharacteristically nervous, but that also made sense. She was vulnerable, at the moment, fresh off a migraine and not at her absolute best.

So why was she asking him to stay, then? He wished he knew what she was thinking.

“Yeah?” he asked, searching her face and then Sasha’s, who seemed more shocked than anything. “Okay, cool. We can eat together.”

It was stiff. 

Which, yeah, expected. Nyla apparently got peanut butter cravings post-migraine, which, huh! Who knew people got cravings after demon headaches, not Galo!

Sasha did not like that Galo was there. Galo did not fault her for that one bit. Nyla was coming down off a migraine and Galo was preventing Sasha from fussing over her, and Sasha really only seemed to know what to do about him in the mornings because they’d had their nice routine and Galo really didn’t hang out in the kitchen beyond that. He should, like, dedicate some time to Sasha. Lock himself in the bathroom and let her sniff him through the door, he thought with a private chuckle to himself.

He now understood why Lilah had asked for extra kitchen stools, since there was quite literally only the one. Galo had the closest thing to an argument that he’d had, with Nyla, firmly insisting that she be the one to seat herself, then awkwardly stooped over the counter with all his bulk and height.

“Ahaha,” Galo ‘laughed’ self-consciously with a rub to the back of his head. Maybe he should’a sat after all. “Sorry, don’t mean to loom imposingly. Really, I can just… head out.”

Sasha looked away, lips thin, but Nyla’s eyes remained on him. 

“You, are not all that imposing. Sir.”

Galo blinked, and was peripherally aware that Sasha was now also looking at Nyla like she’d spouted a second head. Nyla was flushed, and staring at Galo’s shoulder rather than his face, but swallowed and continued.

“When you first arrived, the size of you was frightening, sir,” she said, her voice quiet but Galo was far too enraptured to have missed even a single word. “But you kept Barbara from stealing me, and rescued Evan, and yesterday you gave Greyson both comfort and lenience.”

Nyla reached out her hand and placed it, very delicately, on top of Galo’s on the counter, Galo’s eyes tracking the movement in a fashion that might be described as gobsmacked.

“You have always been kind to us, Master. Stay.”

“Oh,” he said, as something important clicked in place.

[rosesareviolentlyread]

Howdy!

So, despite being a lurker, and then a semi-active person for a while I’ve never made an intro post! And, well, as one of the mods for @whumpmasinjuly now speed running the event to catch up, I figure I can be living proof that better late than never! 

I’m Rosy, she/her/hers, a 22 year old Bi baby using writing as a coping mechanism for our hellscape. I’ve always enjoyed whump, without knowing it until I found the term last fall. I’m also a comfort whore, so always know that nothing I write has a sad ending, there’s fluff coming.

I love exploring OCs, vulnerability, interesting conditions for whump, and world building/making my ideas way too complicated. That or writing random requests to prompts. There’s really no in between. I've either thought about it way too much or not at all. Which I guess is to say, if there’s a prompt or scenario you’ve always wanted written drop it in my ask box, I enjoy the challenge! I’m really passionate about creative writing as a tool to explore, which ties into my work with nonprofit alternative education models. 

I’ve got a few things posted on my blog, but none are the main stories I’ve been working on, because busy but also as said above I tend to...spend forever researching/drafting haha. If you’re interested in checking out the ideas I got in the pipeline, check under the cut! Feel free to let me know if you’d like to be tagged, some will start being published in the next few days.

And lastly, hope y’all don’t mind, but I thought I’d tag some friends & my fav authors in the community that have helped me start to get more involved!: @sableflynn @bleedingandfeverish @straight-to-the-pain @softsweetsuffering @mottinthemainpot @burtlederp @killtheprotagonist @slaintetowhump @wildfaewhump @ashintheairlikesnow @deluxewhump @0idril0 @whumpywhumper @moose-teeth @endless-whump @bloodandbandages @whumping-every-day @card-games-and-pain @starrywhump @nowhumponmain @orchidscript @untilthepainstarts @whump-tr0pes @albino-whumpee @whumpiary ok gonna stop tagging people now wow I read too much/talk to people a lot

My WIPs: 

(Note: I’m trying to edit at least one of each to post this week but my muse hops around a lot so consistent and chronological these stories will not be. They’re ordered vaguely by where my muse is rn)

Elias: The newest one, a spur-of-the-moment addition who’s got a few more prompts coming. A boy who’s gotten the shit end of the stick in life ends up in the basement of a frat, tortured after the mob boss who took him to get a ransom from his shit-stain brother decided to cut losses and gift Elias to his nephew, passing him off as a boxboy in the process. Some well-meaning college students decide to rescue him, only to get into who knows what, certainly not me. Variation within BBU, thanks to @deluxewhump for the idea. Mainly recovery from torture for now

Studying About That Good Ole Way/Fae bb: A modern magic world loosely inspired by @0idril0 & @whumpywhumper’s Nico/Clint & Marcus/Lucien series’ respectively. Under the increased scrutiny of the modern age, magical creatures come forward with their existence. Fae have always lived in a state of fear but now more so, as their existence as a source of magic means they can be used for great feats, both by humans and magic folk alike. In fear, some hide their young as changelings in the hopes that in growing in non-magical communities, they will not develop their full magical characteristics. 

     Faith is a young girl from a ‘perfect’ anti-magic Christian family, who goes to a liberal arts college to study Theology. In her thesis work to understand how to reconcile God with the magic community, the exposure to the magic sparks her transformation into her full, natural Fae self. A professor/local pastor offers to help, which does not go well. Her brother Adam, who abandons his family and his church after it disowns and demonizes his sister, is left to pick up the pieces. Religious whump, torture, intimate whumper, some body horror/gore, recovery angst, a not-great himbo caretaker trying his best, found family eventually.

Once You Are Real: Victorian Magical vaguely Steampunk Fantasy world. A shopkeeper specializing in magical refurbishment & repair comes across a life-sized porcelain ‘doll’, broken and pieced together in webs of golden cracks. He quickly discovers that not only is this ‘doll’ actually a construct, it’s a sentient construct, the most advanced he’s ever seen, capable of distressing amounts of emotion and physical feeling. An uncanny valley of past pains that now sits on his bench to fix. Caretaker fluff, emotional angst, psychological angst, discussing human condition, some creepy/intimate whumper flashbacks. 

The Paths We Travel: A trio that takes place in @wildfaewhump ’s Pathverse. Technically the first piece of this is posted, but I’ve rehauled it since then so I’ll be rewriting that intro. 

     Oren is a former A-Class, used to experiment with the extent of Class-A’s potential. He’s now sickened by his own abilities and seeking to hide, to find a new person other than the one he was. He’s trying to write his way to freedom, all the while avoiding his own history that’s written into every part of his person.

     Cass presents an easy out, a friend-with-benefits that’s a bridge between his old life and a new one. Cass is a wealthy Class-C who’s parents hid her ability since she was the only child, and heir, to their pharmaceutical fortune. She’s on a mission to rebel and take hold of her identity, as only a privileged girl can, not understanding the consequences that may follow for a free path. 

     Alice is a Class-C who has lived her life working with a more private sector company, where her empath abilities were combined with drugs to offer high paying clients orgasmic and euphoric experiences without those nasty side effects. When Cass decides to rescue her while at a party on a whim, it’s a whim that thrusts the trio into a collision course. Drug/withdrawal whump. Recovery whump. Some real shitty caretakers, but they mean well. Exploration of not great people getting better together maybe? I control none of my characters please send help

Bakery Box Boy: Della, an older woman in charge of a popular bakeshop in a lakeside New England town is gifted a refurbished Box Boy as ‘help’ by a nosy neighbor convinced it’ll be a good way to help her finally grieve her recently deceased son. Della disagrees, and our poor BB is caught in the middle. Featuring a strong willed tough older woman caretaker, and a Box Boy who’s been refurbished about 3-5 times. God this is from a post from forever ago, but dammit it got too developed to throw away so it’s got at least a few prompts in its WIP folder I’ll get to editing eventually.

[raigash]

Whumpblr Introduction! (WIJ Day 1)

Hi Everybody! My name is Leah, and this is my (semi)introduction to the whump community! I’m 19, and I go by she/her! I’ve been hopping around blogs and commenting for a while now, and recently I’ve started working on a story, so I figured now was as good a time as any to put myself out there!

I was born in Gulfport and lived there until May of last year. I would say spring is my favorite season, when the gardenias and magnolias bloom ❤️ After i graduated high school, I moved to Orlando to start...I don’t know? Life? Disney’s always been a huge part of my life and childhood, and I always wanted to be a Cast Member and help make magic for someone else the way I’ve had it made for me! I wouldn’t say frontline cast is my dream job, even though it’s without a doubt where I want to be right now. My dream is to find a place within WD Creative Endertainment. (As amazing as it would be, it’s unlikely. My real dream job is a traveler who just lives off the world around, doing odds and ends jobs and meeting new people, learning and telling new stories, and helping who I can along the way. I’m a vagabond at heart)

I don’t have a singular favorite color, the pastels have all got a strong grip on my heart. However, blue and pink together is without a doubt my favorite combination. My blankets are blue and pink, my pillows and clothes, my walls, I LOVE THE COLOR SCHEME. My blog is even blue and pink, with some sunset tones over top. I can’t particularly say I have a favorite whump trope either, I don’t think? I’m just a sucker for a creepy intimate whimper who makes the line between comfort and torture a blurry one for their poor whumpee. And comfort afterwards. Lots and lots of post-rescue comfort.

At the moment I’m working on a project called Inky Depths of Bloodstained Pages. It’s the story of Rosalind, who finds herself displaced in the world after being kicked out of her home. With little else than a marrow-deep love of the art of words and a knowledge that the world around her is grander, more deeply connected than it appears at first glance, she tries to find a place she can belong. Pascal, upon witnessing her almost uncanny aptitude at capturing people within her tales, is more than happy to find a place to put her up while she figures some things out. And boy, does she have a pleuthora of things to figure out. A fair deal from this story is drawn either directly from or is an abstract representation of my own life. I have a couple more ideas for another story I intend to start soon, but those are secret until the pilot drops. I intend to continue putting up poetry/prose clippings I work on too, though they don’t always tend to veer to the whump side.

And I suppose that’s really it! I could continue rambling on for forever and over sharing everything, but y’all don’t need all that. I’ll save my verbosity for comments on the amazing things the blogs around me write ❤️ Thank y’all so much for being such a welcoming and friendly community (ironically, considered the subject matter we deal with)

Tagging a couple people I look up to and live in the community! @ashintheairlikesnow @deluxewhump @wildfaewhump @spiffythespook @burtlederp @redwingedwhump

[burtlederp]

Febuwhump Day 2: "Does That Hurt?" Here's my oc Caleb, who lost his arm and shoulder when he was a lad. That being said, he's still a lad, but when he was a smaller lad. Did it hurt? Terribly so. Does it still hurt? Somedays more than others.

[burtlederp]

@untilthepainstarts so my finger slipped after i saw the term 'goblin man' to describe martin (btw sorry i couldnt be bothered to look up what your fc for martin was, i just drew him as i picture him in my head)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Disaster Lads, Part Four: Tucker Likes a Show

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

In Part Four, Tucker gets to know Cass’s new friend. A certain shark smells blood in the water.

CW: Referenced past noncon, referenced past dubcon, conditioning, PTSD/trauma response, attempted drugging, mind control, threatened noncon, head injury

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

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

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

Cass shifts just barely closer to Kauri beside him, legs curling up to shield the other man just slightly but refusing to look directly at him. He keeps his eyes locked on Tucker’s every movement as the door slides closed.

“None of your business,” Cass spits, voice husked from sleep.

The door slides shut with a soft click and Cass feels himself tense, breath caught in his throat.

“Everything that happens in this room is my business, Ace.”

“It’s Saturday, Tucker.”

“Consider yourself permanently on call,” he says with a shrug, hands sliding into his pockets as he walks forward “Now I’m dying to know… Who’s this?”

Kauri swims out of sleep with difficulty - it’s been a while since he’s slept in a bed where he didn’t feel the need to doze, his body had been making the most of the early hours of the morning to get whatever real rest he could. At first, he doesn’t really know what he’s hearing - some voice he doesn’t recognize, maybe Cass is on the phone or something or maybe he missed there being a TV last night - he just shifts around, pushing himself up on one elbow, blinking blearily upwards.

Only to stare up at a man who is incredibly well-dressed for six AM on a Saturday and who is staring right back at him, with a smile that Kauri really, really doesn’t like. His eyes drop almost immediately to focus on the man’s neckline, a safer place than his eyes. 

Kauri skims his gaze across the room - but shirt and pants have both been thrown haphazardly off the bed, too far to reach without getting up. 

His heart is starting to pound already - he knows that look, he lived under that look for a long time - and Kauri shifts slightly backwards in the bed, as though putting distance between them would help. “I-I’m sorry, I’ll just, um, I can go-”

“Oh, no no, there’s no need to rush off,” Tucker says, voice lilting sweetly as he sits on the edge of the bed “I think you and I should get acquainted.”

“Thought you said we had shit to do,” Cass interjects.

“And then you decided to bring something more interesting home.”

Cass holds the man’s gaze, back straight and tense. He feels like he’s walking a tight-rope and some bastard is hitting one end repeatedly just to see how well he’ll keep balance. A very specific bastard with blonde hair and glasses.

“Want to give us a moment to get decent?”

Tucker shrugs like it’s a non-issue, eyes flitting to the bed sheet that one of them — probably Cass — had thankfully pulled up in their sleep. “You’re covered up aren’t you?”

For now.

Cass suddenly, desperately wants to reach for Kauri underneath the sheet, hold his hand, give his arm a quick squeeze, tell him it’s fine, it’s okay, I’m handling it, don’t worry. But he’s played this game before. He knows how much worse it can get when you show your hand. So he pulls himself further from Kauri, instead, wrapping his hands around his knees as he glares at his minder.

“What’s his name?” Tucker asks, questioned aimed at Cass even though he’s looking at Kauri like he plans to dissect him.

“Daniel.”

Tucker slides his eyes over Kauri’s shrinking form, looking amused, before looking back at Cass. “I think you’re lying to me.”

Cass raises his chin, shrugs, wild hair framing his face and brushing along tense shoulders. Prove it. Tucker smiles, pulling a face like Cassius should know better than that which, really, he should.

The man focuses all of his attention onto Kauri, tilting his head forward and keeping his voice soft and careful like he’s talking to some scared animal. 

“Why don’t you tell me, sweetheart… Is Cassius lying to me?” 

Kauri feels an absurd, half-hysterical, wild urge to slide onto his knees on the floor, where he’s supposed to be when the handlers come into the room. Something about the plain white walls that had been reassuring last night suddenly feels too tight, closing in on him. 

Kauri’s shoulders hunch, self-protective, and he presses himself back against the wall, as far from Tucker as he can get, but there’s nowhere else to go. 

“He-... he, um, he-...” Kauri swallows, hard. Fix it, make nice, be good, 645898, be good. “I told him my name was Daniel,” He lies fast, and he’s still good at it, it sounds sincere. “He’s not lying, I l-lied to him… I-” His voice catches, and he clears his throat, nervously. “I lied to him, sir. He didn’t lie to you.”

Be good. Be good, you have to be good for them.

“My n-name is Kauri, sir.”

Cass can’t help himself from crumbling as Kauri starts speaking, he folds forward, hands rubbing over his face. Shut up, shut up, just shut the fuck up, you’re gonna make this so much worse.

“Oh, he’s a loyal little puppy isn’t he? Lying for you like that,” Tucker says. Already it’s worse. Cass stares at the bed sheets, shaking his head like that’ll make it go away. He can feel Kauri’s need to placate rolling off of him in waves. Be good. Make nice. It’s only gonna get worse, worse, worse.  “How long did it take you to train that? Or did you just… you know…"

Tucker taps his temple twice, smiling like the devil. Cass glares. He should say something. He should move. He should stand and get dressed and throw Kauri his clothes and haul him the fuck out of here. But he doesn’t. He never fucking does with Tucker. He doesn’t know how.

“Kauri. I like that name,” Tucker says with the shark grin, looking back at his new toy. "I like the ‘sir’, too. You should be taking notes, Ace."

Tucker tilts his head, examining both men thoroughly. Cass glowering, Kauri cowering. Two little kicked dogs. What a fun fucking morning this was turning out to be.

“Tell me, Kauri, did Ace tell you what he does here? What he does to people? Or did you just...” his eyes trail down the young man’s half exposed body, practically sneering with judgement, disgust. “Get straight to business?”

Kauri tries - he does - but he wilts under the sneer, one hand moving to rub at the wicked scar across his collarbone, reflexively pressing against the metal plate still hidden under his skin, the part that couldn't be removed. 

He's tucked into the corner, as far from Tucker as he can get, but it's not far enough. Wide blue eyes skip to his and then away again, unable to focus on any one thing. 

Tucker talks just like a handler. Looks at him the same way, like he's not a person at all. Is he one? Kauri can't help the creeping doubt. 

"No, sir," He says, softly. Voice not quite trembling. "Yes, sir. We didn't t-talk about that."

“Well then you're in for a treat,” Tucker tuts. The longer he speaks to Kauri, the closer his manner and tone draws to that of someone talking to a frightened child. Cass hates him for it, and still he doesn’t do a single thing. 

“What do you think, Ace?” Tucker says, voice lilting playfully as he stands up from the bed. Cass is shaking his head before Tucker even suggests what is to come next, staring furiously at the bed sheets, jaw locked tight. “Shall we play puppets?”

Cass slams his eyes shut. No. No, no, no, fucking no. Kauri is good. Kauri is good and he doesn’t deserve this. Letting him stay was meant to be a good deed for Christ’s sake. Meant to be a way to get him off a goddamn park bench and Cass should have known. He should have known this would happen. 

“Why don’t you ask him to stand up for me?”

“Ask him yourself,” Cass grinds out. He'll do whatever you ask. You don't need me to do shit because he'll do whatever you want. 

“Is that really what you want?"

Cass looks up, gaze sharp and biting. He looks like he wants to say a great number of things but knows he won't be the one punished for whatever he spits out. He deflates, just barely, eyes dropping again. “At least give him his fucking clothes, Tuck.”

“Play nice and I’ll think about it,” Tucker shrugs. “But either you make him stand up right now, or I will.”

Kauri hasn’t moved. He’s still pushed up against the wall, tucked into the corner as though there’s any protection to be had there, his eyes flickering from Cass to Tucker and back again as though watching a strange and terrifying game being played in front of him. 

Every time he tries to open his mouth to offer to just do what Tucker says, one of them speaks again, and his mouth snaps back shut. He can’t keep up with them, they’re moving too fast. They both know the game, and Kauri has no idea what it is, and he doesn’t know how to be good unless you tell him how. 

He doesn’t want to move from the wall. It’s the only bit of free will he has left, his absolute certainty that he wants to stay as far away from Tucker as he can. “I, I don’t want to stand up-”

Cass finally, finally looks at Kauri. He wants to communicate everything he possibly can in the half a second he can bear to hold his gaze but all he can think is I’m sorry. This is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, "Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴜᴘ."

Cass speaks and Kauri’s moving immediately, it’s nearly instantaneous, even as he’s hyper-aware of his own nakedness he slides off the bed and is standing, hugging himself tightly to hide the barcode inside his left wrist, keeping it pressed against his right side along his ribcage. 

“Wh-what-... wait-”

"Make him sit."

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sɪᴛ.”

Kauri’s eyes are as wide as saucers, staring at Cass as he sits down, abruptly, without even a hint of conscious thought before he does so.

"Make him stand."

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sᴛᴀɴᴅ."

And Kauri’s back up again, still staring at Cass. All at once Kauri realizes that he’s not going anywhere unless Tucker, whoever he was - some kind of handler, definitely, although not exactly the same kind - wants him to leave.

Tucker laughs, leaning against the wall like he was watching a dog perform a particularly impressive trick. He makes eye contact with Cass, turns his finger slowly. Cass resists the urge to roll his eyes before giving the direction. 

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, ᴛᴜʀɴ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴄɪʀᴄʟᴇ," Cass’ eyes flit to Tucker, who tilts his head, mouthing something, and adds. “Sʟᴏᴡʟʏ.”

Tucker watches Kauri move, smiling like he’s watching a show dog perform a perfectly well practiced trick.

Kauri turns, hunched over still hugging himself. There are scars, here and there - small ones, moments Owen lost control and didn’t hold himself back enough. They’re tiny things, easy to miss in dim semi-darkness, but obvious in the light. And the deep twist of scarring along his collarbone. The dark brown leather bracelet is the only thing on his body, and Kauri - who is trained out of shame, who had been carefully and violently nurtured into feeling no shame for things like this at all - is bright red by the time he’s facing Tucker again. 

He doesn’t usually care - but in front of Tucker, he suddenly wants nothing more than to put his clothes back on. More clothes, even, to pull something of Cass’s on so he can be even more covered, even less laid bare. 

"It's okay Kauri, I know this is probably a little confusing," he says, mock sympathy painting his voice as he comes forward to hold the man’s jaw, long fingers squishing his cheeks together. "See this is what Cassius does. He reaches into people's heads and he makes them do the things I want them to do. Like magic.”

He grabs Kauri by the arms, grip bruising, and turns him to face where Cassius sits on the bed, hands locked around his knees, eyes hollow and refusing to look anywhere but the sheets. Kauri goes perfectly tense, every muscle rigid, but the idea of disobeying - of trying to free himself - is a distant, foggy thought he can’t slip his fingers around. 

“To be honest, that's probably how he got you here in the first place. Just crept into your head and made you feel like you wanted it,” Tucker murmurs in Kauri’s ear, just barely loud enough for Cass to hear it too. His voice is flat, devoid of the mocking lightness in it before. Full instead of utter disdain. “He doesn’t need fancy drugs, he doesn’t need threats. Just his voice. Isn’t that clever of him?”

“You’re lying,” Kauri says, voice shaking but there’s a sudden flat certainty there. Every… every time Cass makes him do something, he says his name first. Kauri picks up on that fast. His name, and then the command, and then he does it. He hadn’t understood why he grabbed the asshole in the bar’s arm, but he does now – Cass had said his name first, then the command. 

But Cass hadn’t been commanding him hardly at all after that. And he hadn’t said his name that way, not up against the wall in the alley. 

Cass closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He can't stop shaking his head. This was meant to be a good thing. One good thing. Of course Tucker has to twist that away too. His stomach is turning just from the implication of what’s being said.

It hadn’t been like that. He doesn’t do that. But it doesn’t matter whether he did or it didn’t, did it? He could have. He might have. That was all it took to lose trust.

 "You do have good taste, Ace, I'll give you that. He looks kind of like that guy from Dimmer Switch, don't you think?”  Tucker says, holding Kauri at arms length as he circles him slowly, the perfect picture of power and vulnerability. Predator and prey. His hand skims across the glossy pink scar on Kauri’s clavicle with morbid curiosity as he speaks, Tucker’s eyes light up with all the glee of a fucking kid on Christmas as an idea suddenly hits him. “Ooh, I know. We should make him punch the wall like in the breakdown scene. You know, the one where he breaks his hand?”

“No,” Kauri says, weakly. He hasn’t seen the movie, though he knows everything that happens in it. Owen has told him the plot over and over again, piece by piece, breaking it down. But he can’t watch the movie, because he might see Vince’s face. 

“St-stop it.” He tries to find real strength for his voice, even as being so close to a handler - any handler, it never mattered if it was his handler, they were all always hurting him - makes him feel like a trainee all over again. “You’re just trying to ruin him having something nice. Stop it.”

“You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” Tucker says with a smile. “And look, I think it’s working, don’t you?”

Cass looks up at that, glaring at Tucker with full venom. He can feel adrenaline crackling through his veins. When it came to fight or flight, Cassius had barely ever chosen anything but the former in his life, but he knows better by now than to try and act on it. He wants to launch himself at Tucker’s smug fucking face and bash it into the floor until even the thought of smiling like that makes him flinch.

Instead he re-adjusts the iron-grip on his own wrist, focusses so hard on Tucker that he doesn’t risk glancing at the person he’s hauled into all of this.

“You’ve made your fucking point, Tuck, just let him go,” he grinds out, voice flat and empty despite the rage in his eyes.

“Oh, I will. But first, I want to watch him hit the wall until his pretty hand breaks,” he says. He grabs Kauri’s wrist, hand wrapping around the leather bracelet. He brings Kauri’s arm up to eye level, quirking an eyebrow with mocking apathy. “What? He get you into bed so fast you couldn’t even take off your accessories?”

Kauri has a snarl on his face, growing anger on Cass’s behalf - Kauri knows what it means to sink into yourself, he knows the feeling written all over Cass’s face. Kauri has been that person too many times, it’s nearly all he knows, all he remembers except for the people he’d met after he ran away.

But when Tucker grabs his wrist, Kauri freezes, and the anger fades under a low-level, growing panic. He jerks his wrist, trying to free it from Tucker’s grip.

“What if he d-did?” Kauri asks, breathless, trying to cover up the panic by lacing his voice with as much anger as he can pull back into himself. “Are y-...” He has to gasp in a breath to make the words more than a whisper, fighting the drumbeat in his mind of stop it stop being bad stop being defiant make nice make nice be good be a good boy stop it. “Are you fucking jealous or something? You want in on me, too?”

Tucker scoffs, almost impressed by the little outburst. He takes a moment to rake his eyes over Kauri's naked body, "What would you do if I did, hm?"

Cass feels his blood freeze.

His hands twitch, trying to pre-empt whatever's about to happen. He doesn't dare move yet, he doesn't dare look away. He wishes for once, just for once, that he could feel what Tucker wanted, that he could know what he was thinking.

You're not my type. That's what Tucker says. That's what he's always fucking said with every dick joke, every innuendo, every half-intoxicated pass Cass might've made at him he'd smirk and shut him down with a simple you're not my type.

But Cass was an acquired taste, really, wasn't he? Loud mouthed and defiant. A penchant for violence. Rough around the edges in every sense of the word. But that wasn't Kauri.

Kauri, who blushed easily and stumbled over his words like a school boy with a crush. Kauri, who'd fucking melted at being called good. Kauri, who even right now, even attempting to dig for something aggressive was shaking with waves of make nice, make nice, make nice. Was that what Tucker wanted? Was that his goddamn type?

"You look like you're about to faint, little puppet," Tucker continues, hand just as tight around Kauri's wrist. "What would you even do if I decided I wanted you?"

Kauri feels the weight of eyes on his body, he always has. A sense of feeling complete if someone wants him, is thinking about him, will touch him like this. Even people he hates. Even the handlers pressing him up against cold white walls was better than nothing. 

And there had been so much nothing.

“I’m not about to faint,” Kauri says, his voice still too soft, too airy, but his eyes lock on Tucker’s and hold. Barely. “Y-you’re still just trying to hurt him. You don’t like that he… that he got to be happy for a second. Besides… you don’t need to be jealous.” 

He steps forward, calling Tucker’s bluff, pushing into his personal space now, cocking his head to the side in the practiced little head-tilt, trained into him until he can do it without even knowing it, looking up at Tucker with wide blue eyes focused only on him. 

Handlers who want you to fight don’t like it when you don’t. Kauri wants to see which kind of handler Tucker is.

“What makes you think I’d say no?”

I can’t. But you don’t need to know that.

Tucker laughs.

"Oh I like this one, Ace," he says. "He's good at playing slut, isn't he? Is that how you bonded?"

Tucker sweeps a foot out, a quick kick to the side of Kauri's legs to have his knees buckling, crumbling to the floor. Kauri goes down hard with a soft cry, his knees cracking into the hard floor with a sickening lick of pain up his thighs that’s entirely too familiar. 

Cassius starts forward, ready to get to his feet before he stops himself just as suddenly. He has no way of knowing what will happen here if he makes the wrong move. He has no way of knowing who else in the Facility is up yet, who else might be called in. It wouldn't be the first time someone caught trespassing was signed up for clinical testing the next day.  

"Tucker, that's enough," he croaks. It's so weak.

Tucker shifts his gaze lazily to Cassius' face, giving him a bored sort of appraisal. "Or what?"

He laces his fingers through dark curls and yanks Kauri's head back hard and fast, his other hand trailing a line down his throat.

"See I don't think he would say no," he muses "I think he'd say please."

Kauri swallows, hard, his heart threatening to pound its way right out of his chest, feeling oddly distant and foggy now. Being scared won’t fix it. Being good won’t fix it. He’s trapped with Owen who can’t be pleased, who will only get upset, whose hands will go around his neck-

He flinches back from the hand on his throat like Tucker might burn him with it - or choke him - and lets out a broken cry, before he clenches his hands into fists and tries to, to think. But being trapped with Owen means being trapped with what Owen did. Which makes him angry.

“You might not b-be able to understand me,” He says, his voice still mostly air but it’s pissed-off air and that has to count for something, “Since I’d b-bite your dick off if you tried, I’ve d-done it before.”

He moves with Tucker’s hand, tilting his head far back, and spits at his face.

Tucker slams Kauri's head into the metal bed-frame without a pause for thought, the crack so loud it's like a gunshot ringing out in the tiny room.

Kauri cries out as his head connects, a bright flash of white behind his eyes with the pain on its heels, and slumps against the bed, the world a dizzying spin around him, throbbing pain and a trickle of something he can feel run down the side of his temple.

Tucker reels back, pulling his leg back to kick Kauri in the stomach. And Cass moves. He's on his feet and shoving Tucker backwards before he can think better of it.

"Tucker, don't," he says, terse and frantic. "Don't. I'll do whatever you want, alright?"

He doesn't look at Kauri. Kauri doesn't exist.

"I'll do whatever the fuck you want. I won't complain, I won't make a fuss. I'll stay on grounds, I'll go to the fucking meetings, whatever the fuck you want. Just... Just don't."

He feels cut loose, terrified and more vulnerable than he's been in forever but he refuses to show it, face curled into a snarl, voice harsh and biting. Tucker laughs, pulling off his tie with one hand, eyes wild.

"That little bargain might've tempted me earlier, Ace, but your friend here fucked up. He fucked up bad. And I plan on rectifying that little misstep."

“Wh-why is it…” Kauri’s voice trails off, slurred oddly, and he looks up at Tucker without standing up, bright red blood trickling down from a slice across his temple  into his right eye. He blinks it away, or tries, reaching up to wipe at it with his hand. “... that err’... ev’rybody can call me a slut but I’m n-never ‘lowed t’be mad about it?”

His ears were ringing, sort of, a weird muffled sound that existed inside his skull and not outside it. Kauri shifted back, wiping at his head again. 

Something jarred loose, with the blow to his head. Somewhere under Kauri’s panic is a darker, cynical, harder-edged anger, a pulsing want to defy, fight back, kick and scratch and bite until they remember he’s a person, not a pet, they can’t take his name away from him only they can and they did and Kauri’s weakness ended up stronger than the boy he had once been.

“Why are you… all… th’ same?”

“Act like a slut, people will call you a slut,” Tucker says, eyes still on Cassius. “Isn’t that right, Ace?”

Cass shrugs, crossing his arms, “Been begging for you to call me a slut for years and you still won’t.”

Tucker smiles, taking a few steps backwards so he can survey them both. Cass doesn’t miss the way Tucker is carefully winding his tie around his knuckles. Can’t risk bruising the hand he shakes with, can he now?

“Either way,” he says “I think all three of us know that the only way this one isn’t headed straight to jail for trespassing is if you both sit down, shut up, and play nice.”

Cass does his very best not to flinch. He’s schooled by now, at keeping his face blank and passive even as his heart starts racing. Something must flicker behind his eyes, though, or maybe Kauri’s face shifts behind him, because Tucker relaxes back on his heels, the satisfaction of finding a new chink in the armour painting his face with that insufferable smugness.

“Oh, we don’t like that, do we?” he says. “Sit down. Now. Or I get out my phone, and I’ll escort your friend downstairs to wait for the cops myself.”

Part of Kauri is astute enough to think, small men like hurting smaller ones to feel big, but the words never make it out of his mouth, because the part of him that knows things isn’t the part that keeps him alive sometimes, and the good boy deeper down steps up to the plate to force the words back down his throat.

His eyes are caught on the tie wrapped around the man’s knuckles - Owen does that sometimes, when he has a meeting the next day.

“So that’s… th’ trade?” Kauri manages, still slurred but getting better. He doesn’t move off the floor for now, but sits back on his heels, sliding easily into Position Two, hands on his thighs, kneeling on the floor. Muscle memory. He doesn’t have to think.

“Y-you… get off on th’ blood… and I get to leave?”

Damn it. Kauri winces as soon as the words are out of his mouth. He feels like his brain is going to split into two, and he knows better than to talk back to handlers, but he can’t stop himself. It feels like before all over again, like training. 

“If blood g-gets you hard-”

Stop it stop it stop it why am I still talking jesus Kauri stop

“-then you’ve got bigger problems than the slut you’re making bleed.”

Tucker laughs lightly, walking forward to stand directly in front of Kauri and tangle his fingers through his curls. Kauri shudders, trying to pull back, but Tucker’s grip is too strong. 

“He’s funny, this one, isn’t he?” he says. A hard tug to pull the man’s head back, wide blue eyes locked on his, Kauri’s mouth slightly open as he pulls in quick, shallow breaths. “Or at least, he thinks he is.”

“I don’t think I’m-”

The first backhand hits with the low thud of knuckles hitting cheekbone. One. Kauri’s head snaps to the side, moving with the slap rather than trying to brace himself against it, making it hurt less than it would otherwise. Cassius locks his gaze carefully on a patch on the floor, sets his jaw, and folds into himself. Two. Kauri grunts, this time, the barest hint of sound. Cass hears the hits beside him, counts as they land, despite himself. But he can’t bring himself to give a shit. Three.

Another grunt, higher-pitched, closer to a cry.

What the fuck did it matter? Cass thought. People got hurt all the time. Kauri had been hurt before. He’d get over it. 

Four.

It wasn’t Cass’ fucking fault. He’d warned Kauri back at the bar, back at the burger joint. He’d said it again and again. I’m not nice. And Kauri had come back with him anyway. wasn’t his fucking fault.

“You know what, I think, Ace?” Tucker says after five, panting just barely. Cass registers dimly that Kauri’s probably hurt by now. But five hits wasn’t many. They hadn’t all been to the head. He’d survive. “I think Kauri, needs some help calming down.”

Kauri, one side of his face bright red from Tucker’s hand, makes a soft, distressed sound. He knows three ways they’ll calm him down, the handlers, when he’s bad. They fuck him or drug him or hurt him until he’s too injured to speak. Fucking is the only thing that doesn’t make him feel worse, the only thing that feels better.

He doesn’t want the man, but it never matters what he wants, in the end.

Cass blinks slowly, eyes blank and bored as he turns to look at the blonde man standing beside him. He snorts a laugh. Looks to his left. There are a couple bottles of different pills on the bedside table. A few sleeves in the drawer, too. 

“What ones do you want?” 

“You’re the expert, Ace, just something to smooth the rough edges” 

He grabs a bottle on the edge. It’s only Valium. But Kauri’s slim enough. He pops off the lid and passes it over.

“Don’t have many left so don’t waste ‘em,” he says. His voice is flat, apathetic. “One’ll fuck him up plenty.”

“Two it is, then,” Tucker says, finally releasing Kauri’s hair to fish out the pills before grabbing at his jaw. “Here we go. Open nice and wide for me.”

Kauri doesn’t expect Cass to help. It’s clear what they are to each other, he and the man. Cass is the trainee. The man, Tucker, is the handler.

Kauri knows how that works. He’s watched a lot of trainees get hurt right in front of him and never helped, either. Not after they hurt him so badly he knew not to try again.

Kauri jerks back from the grip as best he can, gritting his teeth together and turning his head away. He doesn’t try to spit any words now, because that would mean opening his mouth. And that means pills. He can’t read the words on the pill bottle, has no idea what the man is going to give him - what they’re both going to give him.

"Kauri, just take the pills," Cass says, halfway numb. The quicker he took them, the quicker he'd be out of here. The quicker he was out of here, the quicker they would both be able to forget the fact they ever met.

Kauri freezes, for a breath, but the words don't have the weight of a real command. But…

He stares at the pills and opens his mouth anyway, like he had been commanded, letting Tucker force them into his mouth before he snaps it shut.

"Good boy," Tucker says, patting Kauri on the cheek with a smile. 

His mouth fills with bitterness and his stomach twists, saliva flooding his mouth, as he shifts the pills carefully around to slide them under his tongue and keep them there. If Tucker turns away - even just for a second - he can spit them into his palm and throw them under Cass's bed with no one the wiser. 

He even has one more skill.

He speaks, and he's so good at this you can't tell between the slur of the pills he's hiding and how he slurred before.

"Takes a big man t'drug a small one." 

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Kauri And a Cat (Drabble)

I promised to reward anyone who drew a specific, amazing fanart idea I was sent in an ask with a fake fanfiction drabble that featured the Colton (belongs to @shameless-whumper)/Kauri pairing.

I have written one of the owed “fake Cori fanfiction” drabbles and still owe, I think, four more. Well, I’m still working on @burtlederp’s actual prompt (”And they were roommates!”) - but I also offered a second prompt since there was a second piece of art, and the given prompt was “Kauri and a cat”. 

So… CW: referenced dubcon spiciness (no, I don’t know how it got there either but I blame @shameless-whumper), dehumanization and pet whump, but also… an actual cat. And a cute Kauri.

Tagging: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @18-toe-beans, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers, @whump-it, @lumpofwhump

At first, he doesn’t recognize the noise. It sets off some sense of familiarity inside of him, some deep life knowledge from a world that is supposed to be totally erased from inside his head, but at the same time the sound doesn’t mean anything.. It’s a high-pitched noise, inhuman, a sort of yowl muffled through the glass door of the balcony.

Kauri looks up, blinking, then glances back over his shoulder. The sound comes again, stirring some hint of I know what that is, but he doesn’t, he can’t remember.

There’s no motion from the hallway. Owen left for a meeting with some people, and the cleaning lady came about an hour ago, staring at Kauri as he opened the door with a flat hostile nothing on her face.

The cleaning lady does not like Box Boys, but it’s not like usual, where the few people who have seen him treated him like a dog or some kind of status symbol for how rich Owen is… instead, she looks at him like he is made of poison.

Like every week, Kauri said hello as he let her in, using his cheerful, soft voice, the one Owen liked the most. And just like every other week, she said nothing in response, eyes flickering to the heavy white-gold collar and then right through him, as she pushed past him and got to work.

When the cleaning lady comes, Kauri is a ghost. A half-life, a thing made of wandering legs and pretty, expensive sweaters and pants. Part of Owen Grant’s home décor.

The whore in the house, part of him whispers, and is ashamed. But it’s a small part, and a very quiet voice, and even the pain that follows sharp in its wake is barely a headache compared to all the other incorrect thoughts he has. 

She’s currently in the bathroom and moves onto Owen’s bedroom next, so he’s out here in the living room, curled up under a fluffy blanket, pretending the cleaning lady thinks he’s a Platonic or Domestic, that she doesn’t know what he’s for and what positions he knows. 

If he was a Domestic, all he’d have to do is clean or maybe do household finances. Platonics, he thinks, are usually caregivers - live in the house but they don’t have to go in the bed or know the extra positions. Not that anyone was safe.

But he would have been a good Domestic or Platonic, he thinks; and then he wouldn’t have to know the things he knows to keep his owner happy.

The yowl comes again, and this time Kauri lets the blanket slip off his shoulders and quietly stands, moving with careful silent steps towards the balcony. Keira is settled into her docking station charging - the cleaning lady doesn’t like her, either - and so he’s alone as he creeps, heartbeat moving faster, to investigate the noise.

There’s a crash and a clatter, and he jumps, his hand still stretched towards the doorknob to head outside.

Finally, he slowly closes fingers around the cool metal, turns the knob until the door unlatches, and-

“Oh,” He says softly, staring down at a perfect, fluffy white cat with bright blue eyes. “Hello.”

Why hadn’t he known it was a cat before he saw it? Why had the noise been locked away, but he knew it when he saw it anyway? Were cats one of the things he shouldn’t know anymore?

Kauri’s head starts to ache.

Merry Christmas, little birds!

Oh my gosh! Oh, oh gosh, oh look, Mommy thank you! [ERASED], look, it’s a kitten!

Oh, neat! Cats are awesome! I want it to sleep in my bed.

No, my bed, it’s clearly my cat, right Mommy?

Well, actually, it’s everyone’s cat-

My bed!

No, mine!

Mine!

Guys, come on, stop fighting and let me enjoy the memory of the two of you being excited by the cat for at least thirty seconds.

The cat meows at him, and sits with perfect regal dignity to look up at him with slowly blinking blue eyes that nearly match his own. He drops into a crouch, reaching out to pet the beautifully soft white hair, feeling the cat bump up into his hand for more. “What are you doing here, huh? You’re very sweet.”

It makes a low noise, not quite a meow and then twines around him, fluffy white tail swishing back and forth, back and forth.

Kauri glances around, seeing the little planter it must have knocked over on its side dirt spilled out but the little succulent inside seemed to still be mostly intact. “Hey, that wasn’t very nice, little kitty.” He puts it back to rights, wagging his finger at the cat who reached out with a delicate stretch of her neck to lick at his finger.

Kauri melts.

“Okay, fine, just between us you can do whatever you want for forever,” Kauri whispers, and it licks at his finger again. He grins, settling back into sitting on the balcony floor, petting her as she moved into the space between his legs and lays herself down into a kind of boneless half-circle of cat on the floor. 

How long he stays like that, Kauri has no idea. He pets her until his feet went a little numb from the sitting, stands to get the feeling back into them, and then crouches and petted her again. She let him rub at her belly a little - although she batted him with half-clawed paws before too long - and she really liked the scritching behind the ears.

“I wish Mr. Owen would let me have a cat,” Kauri murmurs. “But I guess Keira would probably choke up trying to pick up all this fur. That’s okay. You can just come visit me, okay? I’ll sit here and pet you, I don’t have anything else to do.”

The cat blinks at him, silently, tail swishing contentedly. Kauri smiles at her, giving her one let good pet.

Then he hears the cleaning lady calling, “Mr. Grant’s pet! Come here and unfasten what you have left behind!”

Kauri remembers all at once, the night before and what was still attached to the headboard and footboard of the bed, and he winces, face flaring a bright and vicious red. He’d forgotten to take it down before she showed up.

“Well,” He says softly to the cat, who only looks at him in return, then slowly groomsone white paw. “I have to go, um, to go handle that. Will I see you again?”

The cat blinks once, then turned away from him, leaping gracefully up into one of the chairs, then to the balcony railing. 

Kauri watches with shock as the cat jumps onto a little ledge cut into the brick wall of the condo, where it crouches down, wriggles its haunches and then took a flying leap down into the balcony of the condo next door.

When she lands, all he could see was the swish of slightly curved white tail.

“I hope I do, anyway,” Kauri murmurs, and walks back inside, closing the balcony behind him, to go discover new shades of ashamed of himself while the cleaning lady watches him unbuckle all the leather bits that attach to the bed.

Why hadn’t he known it was a cat just from the sound?

Why wouldn’t he be allowed to remember cats?

The headache had really started to pound before he even makes it to the hall, and Kauri carefully banishes all thought and told himself, you weren’t made to think, and you don’t care about cats, anyway.

But the next week, when he hears the yowl again at the door, Kauri was up like a shot to open it and greet her with a little bit of tuna he’d managed to sneak away from lunch and a shy, friendly smile.

Keira the Roomba beeps at his heels, interested - Kauri thought so at least - in getting her sensors on the new thing she had never seen before.

Keira beeps.

The little cat stares then slowly, confused, batted at the black metal and plastic with one paw.

Kauri melted.