#erik holstrom

[deluxewhump]

Nightfall: The Center of the Labyrinth

Bloodbag!Carlo is stolen back by his previous tormenter and keeper, Erik (Maxim's maker).They strike a temporary deal together.

CW: blood drinking, vampire whumper(s), bloodbag whumpee, physical violence, coercion, intimate whumper, pleasing the whumper is a survival tactic

masterlist

-

“You look so well, Carlo,” said the vampire. Carlo heard that familiar tone in his dreams still. False warmth underlined with mockery. A pinch of contempt, reserved just for him. 

He didn't answer. The study felt damp, like a window had been open to the chilly spring rains. He shivered. How was he back here? He was supposed to never be back here again. How had it gone so wrong?

“Maxim likes you, I take it. Do you like him?”

Carlo lifted his eyes to the centuries-old vampire standing in front of the stained glass window of his study. He wondered when was the last time Erik had seen the window brilliantly backlit with sun, if ever. He could see the golds and rubies and sky blues in his mind's eye. In the night all he could make out was grayscale, and one hue of green so dark it seemed to carry weight. Erik himself seemed to be made of shadows, or gather them to him like familiars. Still, Carlo didn't answer him. 

There was a flash of movement and Erik was in front of him, holding him intimately by the jaw. He didn’t squeeze, but the light pressure was warning enough. “Have you forgotten your manners so quickly? I asked you a question. Do you like your new keeper?”

“Yes,” Carlo whispered, his heart pounding. “I like him.” He could see where age had begun to crease Erik’s face in life, at the corners of the eyes and bracketing the sides of the mouth. The centuries smoothed their skin so lines looked fossilized in stone, suggestions that were no longer biological realities. 

“I'm glad I was able to facilitate such a happy pairing. He takes good care of you, that much is immediately obvious,” he said, releasing Carlo’s chin in order to snake the same hand into his hair and make a fist. Carlo’s head was drawn back as he was forced to look into Erik’s black eyes, eyes that made him feel like prey. “But he has not turned you. So he likes you, but not that much, hm?”

“He offered to turn me,” Carlo lied. “I said no.”

Maxim had never offered. He could hear Maxim in his head now warning him, in his gentle authoritative way, to close his mouth now and have some sense.

Erik’s face betrayed a flicker of surprise before the contempt was back, curling his mouth at the corners. “You turned down immortality?”

Despite his pounding heart, Carlo doubled down in his defiance. “I turned down whatever you are. You call it immortality, but it’s waking death.”

“No one turns down the chance to live forever,” Erik said. “Especially not one so young and desperate as you.”

“And be like them?” Carlo asked, nodding towards the door to indicate the other vampires that lived downstairs. In that moment his hatred for them burned brighter than his fear of Erik. “They’re addicts. They can never be free of their hunger. They’re not powerful. They’re cockroaches. Parasites that flock here to flatter you and feed on your scraps. Half of them will be dead before their natural lives would've ended.”

In a beat of silence, Carlo thought he might’ve gotten away with his insolence. Then a quick, deliberate slap landed so hard across his mouth that his head snapped to the side and his ears rang.

“You forget yourself. The Gift doesn’t need you, tiresome little bloodbag.”

He held a hand to the side of his stinging face protectively, vision blurred with startled tears. He’d spent too long with Maxim, warm and fed and growing bolder, wishing he’d been braver and fought back harder with Erik and his vampires. But this was a small reminder of what would happen if he did. To make it worse, he knew Erik hadn’t hit him with his full force. His cheek would be shattered if he had.

“Look at me.”

Carlo obeyed. Something in Erik’s voice commanded his very bones with its aloof intensity, an uncanny calmness thin as April ice. 

“You can go downstairs with them right now, you know. Right back to where you were when I pulled you out. Or you can stay here, with me, and be grateful. And if you are grateful, and gracious, and good, you will be treated with mercy, and dignity.”

He ought to be relieved by this offer. It was more than he expected. Instead, it made him miss Maxim and the house up in the woods so sharply he felt his throat tightening.

“What will it be?”

He was not defiant enough, not strong enough to choose the vampires downstairs. He couldn’t do that again. His bravery was a fragile flame, and this ancient monster had so easily kicked dirt over it. Besides, Maxim would want him to behave, to do whatever Erik said and preserve himself for as long as possible.

“I will do my best… to do whatever you ask of me,” he whispered. “I swear.”

To his meager credit, Erik didn’t stop to rub this psychological victory in. Instead he wasted no time in pulling Carlo’s wrist to his mouth.

“Don’t stiffen like that,” he complained as Carlo recoiled. "I'm not trying to hurt you."

But you just hit me, Carlo thought incredulously. He tried to relax. He thought of the Valium Maxim had given him at first, those sweet dazed sessions of blood drinking that felt like a kiss, like a hand between his legs. He tried to take slow breaths. 

“That’s better,” Erik encouraged. “It’s alright, this is hardly our first time, is it?”

No, Carlo thought. It isn’t. Erik would be as charming as he was formidable if he were just a little bit more sympathetic to human life. 

But when fangs punctured him, it was surprisingly gentle. He bit off a whimper and took another steadying breath, knowing resisting on any level would just make him sick and sore. Thanks to Maxim, he now knew how good a vampire’s bite could feel, if the vampire wanted it to, and if you knew how to let it. He took a slow breath and pressed himself towards Erik’s unyielding body, like crawling into a lap of stone. 

Erik drew him closer, pleased by his receptiveness. He pulled his fangs from Carlo’s wrist and slipped them like twin needles into his neck instead. Maxim would’ve asked, he thought as he arched into the sensation. He closed his eyes and pretended it was Maxim holding him, that it was Maxim’s fangs making that twinge of pain light over his nerves. He wrapped his arms around Erik’s neck, shuddering and dropping his dead weight into those vampiric arms that may as well have been bridge cables for all their hellish strength. 

For a moment he wondered if Erik wouldn’t just kill him now, drain him until he was unconscious and then dead. The twinge of fear was like a pulled thread in a soft sweater, threatening to dissipate the entire illusion. No, he thought. He’s not pulling hard enough. He’s just tasting you, like you’ve been tasted a thousand times. He wants you alive so he can use it against Max. He gave a guilty gasp of pleasure when Erik delicately licked the tiny incisions clean and free of blood. 

“You’re a different bite than you were before,” he said when he pulled away. 

To be called a bite was the undead equivalent of being called a lay. You could be a good bite or an easy bite. Maxim would never have called him any kind of bite. He opened his eyes slowly. 

“I guess he took his time with you. Brought you around to your senses.” Erik brushed Carlo’s hair back from his forehead in a startlingly tender gesture. “That little outburst earlier seems merely amusing now that I’ve had something to eat. Almost endearing. Perhaps I should’ve made you mine.” 

Carlo made no effort to extract himself from his arms. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because my friends were hungry, and I’d promised them a party. I see it was a mistake, now. There will always be more wayward mortals on this side of town.” Erik put his thumb on Carlo’s lip, slid it over his blunt, nonthreatening mortal teeth. “I should’ve kept you to myself.”

The mirage of Maxim was fading, and Carlo was acutely aware whose house he was in again, whose arms. He didn’t trust this sudden magnanimous affection. Still, he needed it. He could survive much longer with it than with Erik’s contempt.

“Keep me with you, then,” he said drowsily. Erik had taken more blood than Maxim usually did, he could feel it. “And I won’t be all bitten and used up, how you don’t like it.”

“I expect no resistance from you,” Erik said, ghosting his fingertips lightly, softly, over Carlo’s cheek, under his chin.

“You won’t find any,” he promised as his eyes closed, too heavy to fight any longer. 

He felt the vampire lifting him up and setting him down somewhere soft. He could smell a fire in the hearth. The woodsmoke chased the dampness from the room. He could feel its warmth on his face and his bitten neck, tender in a way he’d grown to like. If he tried to get up he’d feel sick and weak. But if he stayed very still and let exhaustion take him, he would be alright.

He fell asleep thinking loyally of Maxim’s house, pretending it was there he slept. 

[doumidas-whumps]

"Why do I have the feeling this is goodbye?"

three scenes from @deluxewhump's series Erik's Journals, featuring her lovely Carlo (and the hands of Erik Holstrom)

scenes from may 2015, dec 2016, jan 2024

[deluxewhump]

Name: Bee

Gender: cis female, she/her

Favorite season: summer! boii. I have a soft spot for a New England fall though.

Average amount of sleep: 8 hrs typically

Dream job: trophy wife (imma get my masters tho imma get my masters degree)

Blog established: September 2019

Reason for URL: I just wanted something with the word whump in it for clarity

Fave whump tropes: pet whump

Projects you're working on: frathouse is my infinite middle project and I'm probably doing that Erik Holstrom AU

Favorite color: lilac

Anything else you'd like to add: I never made an intro I just reblogged for a bit and then posted haphazardly and ran off... Until @whumping-every-day reblogged me and I got out of the gym one day and checked Tumblr and had like 99+ notes 😭♥️ thanks

Whumpmas in July - Day 1 (July 1st)

❤️ Name: 

💛 Gender: 

💙 Favorite season:

❤️ Average amount of sleep: 💛 Dream job:  💙 Blog established: ❤️ Reason for URL: 💛 Fave Whump Tropes: 💙 Projects you’re working on: ❤️ Favorite color: 💛 Anything else you’d like to add:     

[deluxewhump]

The Scry

Chapter Fifteen: the Hearts and the Brains

CW: whumpee with powers, medical whump, needles, drugging, mention of surgery, captivity, nsfw mentions (not explicit)

“It was a crazy thing to do, you know. What we did.”

Carlo moaned. There was blood in his mouth. He was sure that if he opened it, it would come pouring out. His jaw felt wired shut.

“Do you feel the lack of its presence? Can a creature like you tell when such a gift has been snuffed out?”

He hated that gift. And he hated Erik Holstrom, even though he was the one who took it away. He had the wherewithal to hate both.

He managed to get his jaw apart enough to ask for water in a whisper. There was no blood after all. Only the taste of it. Please, he added. Always a good boy for the men in the white coats.

Erik placed a straw between his lips so he could weakly pull a sip of water. He whimpered when it was taken away.

“More soon,” Erik promised, and touched his cheek, almost lovingly. Carlo frowned, lost in memories of Max’s unassuming and harmless touch. He missed those hands, those gray eyes. These ones were heavy and authoritative, petting harder and with some purpose he didn’t quite understand.

“They may have no use for you now,” Erik was saying. “But I won’t discard you just for that.”

“So it worked?” he asked.

“As far as I can tell. Only you can tell us that for sure.”

Carlo tried to send a telepathic feeler into the region of himself it felt like the scrying power came from. But he didn’t know if that was something he could really do or not. Didn’t the ancient Egyptians believe thought and therefore consciousness came from the heart? Didn’t they toss the brains out like bathwater when they did their embalming? Some doctor had told him that once as he lie shivering on their operating table…

“I can’t tell,” he whispered, head falling back in exhaustion.

“It’s alright,” the doctor told him, and fed his arms through the holes of a T-shirt like dressing a rag doll. “You need to recover first.”

-

And he did recover. It was slower than he would’ve liked, and he had the suspicion it was the special cocktail of drugs Erik had given him to sedate him that was keeping him feeling lethargic and confused rather than the small incision and minor surgery itself.

Even so, he knew he should be grateful Dr Holstrom kept his word on that, at least. There was no trace of his power anymore, only a vestigial tingling in his fingers and a pain at the back of his neck when he tried. Even though he was relived it was gone, it felt strange to be all alone in his body.

When he was well enough to come downstairs for dinner, the doctor made him an offer.

“You can stay here, if you like,” he said, slicing expertly through a piece of meat as pink as a tongue. Carlo was reminded of the way those same hands had been inside his skull, double surgical gloves Valentine red with his blood.

“Why?” he asked warily.

The doctor gave him a performatively wounded look, and forked the piece of meat he’d been cutting into his mouth.

“You wouldn’t offer me that if there wasn’t something in it for you,” Carlo said. “And I can’t think of what’s in it for you.”

“You’re not very imaginative then.”

“Sorry,” Carlo answered sarcastically. “I never had to be before.”

“Because of your gift,” Erik laughed, and took a sip of bourbon. “Of course. So many things you’ve never had to do, or worry about.”

“So what is it you want?”

“Just your companionship,” answered the doctor. “I can still think of a use for you. Several.”

Carlo wondered if he’d imagined the tone that came into the doctor’s voice at that last. If he’d imagined the flicker of lascivious want in his dark eyes.

He stared in disbelief. Sure, he’d thought of it himself. But only in a passing, vague way. He thought of all the reasonably attractive doctors that way, and even some of the unattractive ones. It was likely some sort of backfiring, pathetic survival instinct of his, telling him to try to fuck his captors. His torturers. As if it’d make them like him, and subsequently make him safe.

“Are you—?”

“Propositioning you. Yes.”

Heat rose in his face and he looked down to hide it.

“Are you simply surprised, or offended?”

“Both,” he said without conviction.

The doctor set down his utensils and smiled his benign smile. “Think about your current lack of alternatives before you have a knee jerk reaction.”

“I have an alternative,” he answered, anger coming in hot on the heels of his flustered embarrassment. He didn’t realize it had been like that. How many times had the doctor dressed him, touched him, carried him barely conscious from one room to the next?

“Max and Ingrid would take me in, in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t have to stay long, just long enough to get a job.”

“Doing what?” Erik asked, falsely genuine.

“I’m not useless. I have experience, even without the scrying part.”

“Of course, but I’m afraid on paper you don’t. You’ve been detained as a scry for over five years. Do you even have a high school diploma?”

Carlo looked down at his hands.

“I don’t know what you think is going to happen now, but you’re going to want to play your next hand very strategically,” Erik said gently. “I can get you positive press coverage, friends in the places you’ll be needing them… I can get you paid for all the necessary testing and monitoring they’ll be dying to do in the coming months.”

Carlo made a face of disgust. “I don’t want any of that,” he said. “You offered to help me. I did this so I could be left alone and do what I wanted.”

“What is it you want?”

“I…” he closed his mouth before anything stupid came out. He didn’t know. How could he? All he knew was what he didn’t want. “I don’t want to be monitored, or studied, or tested. I don’t want to tell anyone my story, or talk to press. I want the whole scry thing to stop.”

“The whole scry thing,” Erik repeated thoughtfully. It sounded utterly stupid and childish coming from his mouth.

“I have some friends…”

“Oh, Carlo.”

“No, don’t do that. I do.”

“You have nothing,” Erik said calmly. “Do you understand? You let me take from you the only thing you had that kept you off the streets and fed. Without it you have no value, no experience, no credentials, no family, no idea what the world actually looks like for someone who isn’t a precognitive. It will eat you alive. I just gave you a hundred thousand dollar procedure pro bono because I believe in it. Because I believe in you. But you have got to grow up and play ball.”

Carlo pressed his shaking hands into his eyes. “Listen…”

“You listen, ungrateful little wretch. That man, Max? He owes you nothing. You think he really wants some homeless kid at his doorstep because he was nice to you back when you were actually worth something? You think he’s gonna take care of you now like a three legged puppy? You think he and his wife won’t be immediately conspiring on what the hell they’re going to do to get rid of you?”

Carlo rolled his eyes, but the words stuck to him like flypaper. He had assumed Max would be relived to see him. Why? He was probably relieved the problem resolved itself when Carlo disappeared. He never wanted his doorstep darkened by a scry anyway, why would he want to ever see him again? Things would be different. Feelings change.

For the first time he imagined the sting he would feel if Max Kelly looked at him with awkward disappointment, like what had happened between them in his office last spring was just a distant bad dream.

Carlo got up and walked around the table. He felt strangely optimistic, like he could walk out of the dining room and the front door would be waiting at the end of the hall, unlocked.

But Erik grabbed his wrist as he passed like a striking viper. He wheeled him back around so hard he lost his balance and slammed into the table. A plate fell to the floor and shattered. He tried to right himself but the doctor had his arm pinned strategically behind his back in a way that felt very precarious, like any real pressure or struggle would snap it very painfully. Irritated nerves flared in the back of his skull and radiated down his spine in waves. He made a noise of protest, cheek pressed into cool mahogany.

“We’ll get along eventually,” Erik said mildly, as if to show him it took very little effort to subdue him. But Carlo could see where the doctors pressed, dry-cleaned shirt had come untucked from the commotion, and a green vein was raised and taut in his neck. Something about this reminded him the doctor was mortal and fallible, and he vowed to remember this no matter what happened next.

He cried out when he felt a needle stick his arm.

[deluxewhump]

The Scry

Ch 14: Your High Table

Prev

CW: noncon drugging, captivity, whumpee with powers, forced to use powers, vomiting and illness, fasting, creepy comfort and carewhumping

Then began a time he forgot himself, a time he can remember only in bits and pieces. Because it was done so skillfully, so relentlessly, it took him a long time to realize on any conscious articulate level that he was being drugged.

Hazy late summer mornings, long evenings, sunlight on golden floors and a gilded Louis XVI desk, moving slowly as the eternal hands of the clock. He didn’t have his laptop anymore, or a phone. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t focus. Once, he remembered trying to find a landline in the sprawling brick house, but found only a vintage candlestick phone in an office, not in any type of working condition. He held the old round receiver to his ear, cool and silent, and closed his eyes.

He thought he heard voices on the other end, but it was just the beginning of a dream. He came back to consciousness hearing their echo. Even if the phone worked, who would he call? He couldn’t remember Max’s cell. Emergency services would take him, probably, but they would figure out what he was and give him back to Spartan. Or worse. He might be in trouble with the government now, for all he knew. Running away was certainly a breach of contract.

He looked for his phone, but guessed it was in the safe in Erik’s office the size of a vending machine, like you’d find in an old bank. The front and back doors of the house would not unlock. There was a mechanism of some kind preventing it that he could only guess was controlled by an app on Dr Holstrom’s phone or a device like a key fob. Max would’ve pointed it out as a fire hazard. For some reason that thought made him laugh. The first floor windows didn’t open, either. So curious. He didn’t have the energy to entertain breaking one. That seemed absurd, and violent. He was very tired, and mostly just testing his surroundings like one tongues at a sore spot on the roof of one’s mouth.

These ventures exhausted him to the point of delirium, and he could not scry for two days afterward. Dr Holstrom didn’t interrogate him for the reason behind this, probably because the house was full of surveillance cameras and he already knew, but tended to him until he was well enough to work again. 

The cycle was unending. Erik would bring him to his office to scry. Carlo’s senses were heightened. He could smell the bourbon on the doctor’s breath, the mechanical warm smell coming off the computer on his desk, the late summer foliage outside, ripe going to rot. He closed his eyes and listened to an old voicemail recording of Clara Holstrom, trying to focus on her voice instead of the way the magnolia leaves outside the window clicked together like the green carapaces of beetles. Clara was thirty, wherever she was, a Smith graduate with tightly curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a knowing smile, so subtle in most of her pictures it was like she was asking him what he was doing looking for her. 

Clara was hard to find. For weeks he feared she might be dead, and then what would happen to him? He’d never tried to scry anything about the dead, he didn’t know if it could be done. It was like an intricate network of telephone wires, or a web of mycelium under the earth, and he just had to pick through the threads that lit up when he touched them, a map to what it was he wanted. The dead were no longer a part of the network. Sometimes the information he sought came to him like an image, a clip of a movie, a word, a number, a phrase. Sometimes it was a strong emotion, hitting him with full force. That made him sickest. With Clara he got nothing but anger again and again. It felt almost good. Righteous. He shared it with her. But when he came back to the study with Erik Holstrom, he needed to throw up, and his head was pounding like there was an axe in it. 

Dr Holstom pushed him harder than Max during these sessions. “Once more,” he’d say, maddeningly gentle but firm. He’d place his hand on the back of Carlo’s hot neck once he was done vomiting stomach bile into a plastic bag. “Once more for me, now. I know. It’ll be over soon.” And he’d replay the cursed voicemail. He heard Clara’s voice in his dreams. 

But Dr Holstrom looked after him afterward, which was more than Martin Olsen ever did. He’d lay him on the green chaise in his study, covering him with blankets or angling a fan toward him, depending on if he was shivering or burning up. He’d give him sugary juice through a straw, pain medicine that Carlo was afraid to ask what it was but took it anyway, because it worked, and not like Tylenol.

One night Erik brought out an IV pole with a bag of clear fluid and put a needle in the back of Carlo’s hand. He’d whimpered in weak dread as his vein burned with the influx of fluid but stopped a moment later when a delicious, giddy peace washed over him. He no longer felt the throbbing pain in his head, or his churning stomach, or the anxiety of his situation. Later he would remember thanking Erik with an unbridled rush of disgust for himself, but in the moment Erik was inevitable as a god, all-powerful and luckily—by chance— merciful. Someone who cared about him when he didn’t have to. Like Max. 

“Shh,” Erik had responded to his drugged thanks, brushing his hair gently back from his forehead. “I think we are closer to her than you think. I know we are. I so appreciate you and your gift. You are an angel, do you know that? A divine tool. Providence.” Erik kissed the back of his non-IV hand and Carlo had to close his eyes to ride the next euphoric, drugged wave that flooded his every physical sensation. 

One evening he woke up and it was already dark. He stared at the clock on the bedside table for a long time, trying to understand if it was morning or evening. Finally he realized it was evening, and that’s why he could smell food cooking downstairs. It was dark because the days were getting shorter. It was autumn. How long had he been here?

He sat up, doing an inventory of his body and finding he was only a little achy, but not in pain. He felt clearer than he’d felt in weeks and weeks, and it was then he was sure he’d been being drugged. Of course he had. Well, and consistently. But how? He knew there were drugs in the IV Erik gave him when he was done scrying, but it was more than that. He’d wake up midmornings and be unable to keep his eyes open, fall back asleep til afternoon. He’d sit at the table at night and placidly fork whatever food was put in front of him into his mouth. He’d shower in cool water for twenty minutes at a time, getting lost in the way the rivulets came together and separated again on the frosted glass of the door. 

Tonight he dressed and went downstairs to dinner, but this time did not eat. When the doctor  asked him why he wouldn’t touch his food, he answered, “because I need to figure out how you’re drugging me. And because if I fast, I’ll get better results from scrying.”

Erik looked mildly perturbed rather than surprised. He set down his fork and took a sip of his white wine. “Is that so?”

“If I’m fasted, and clear headed, I can probably find her. You really haven’t been doing yourself any favors keeping me fucked up like that.”

“Mind your tongue at my table, child.”

Carlo took a sip of ice water. He was angry, and the little reprimand didn’t sting as much as it would otherwise. “If you compared notes with Martin Olsen, you’d have known that weeks ago. Or if you’d asked me before doping me up so bad I couldn’t remember where I was.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor.” Erik remained polite and composed, but Carlo could tell by now when there was a stiffness in his shoulders, irritation in his jaw. “I didn’t realize how painful your ability is for you to use. My goal was simply to keep you out of pain.”

Your goal was to incapacitate me. “I’ll be fine. I need to fast for a day or two, and then I’ll look for Clara. I don’t think she wants to be spied on. But I don’t really care at this point. If I find her, will you still hold up your end of the deal?”

Erik resumed eating, not bothered enough by Carlo’s antics to miss enjoying a meal. “Of course. I gave you my word.”

Carlo took another sip of water. His stomach growled. Good, he thought. Yes. 

[deluxewhump]

The Scry

Chapter 16: there’s the morning to come

CW: captivity and drugging mentions, short term memory loss, fluff, comfort

For days, Carlo didn’t remember how he ever got downtown. Later, Alex Clair remarked it was nine miles— thirty minutes by car. He would’ve either had to take a bus, Uber or taxi, or have walked the entire way, often on a freeway. 

He remembered later, in bits and pieces. He dozed on the rattling Greyhound bus as it took him west over snowy, wooded stretches of northern Illinois. In between dreaming and waking, he remembered. After leaving Dr Holstrom’s house he had walked and hitchhiked, alternatingly. Everyone that would stop for him didn’t want to go all the way downtown. His head started pounding, and he nearly lost consciousness in a man named Andre’s Chevy Tahoe. Whether it was the aftereffect of being drugged, dehydration, or too much exertion too soon after the procedure, he didn’t know.

He remembered the night Dr Holstrom stopped playing at civility, when he slammed his head off the table and drugged him overtly for the first time. He remembered using every last reserve of strength he possessed to pull an IV out of the back of his hand and roll himself gracelessly out of bed and onto the floor. If the doctor had happened to be home then, he would’ve undoubtedly heard it, and it would’ve been for nothing.

He finally got out of the house by cutting the power from the breaker box. Even so, the locks Erik installed on the doors wouldn't open because the backup generator kicked on immediately in the event of a power outage. He had to find the cord that connected the house to the generator power. It took him an hour, mostly because he kept getting so dizzy he’d have to sit down on the floor with his legs out flat in front of him. Once he found the inlet, he destroyed it with a scimitar he’d lifted off brass display hooks in the library, sweating and sick with the exertion of raising it over his head. 

He recovered on the bottom step of the staircase, touching the gilded hilt of the curved sword like a talisman, trying to catch his shallow breath and waiting for the electronic lock to power down on the front door. It was not terribly sophisticated, after all. Even without a scrap of supernatural ability, he could outsmart a single lock. When he opened the door, he was surprised to be squinting at a thin crust of snow on the ground.

On his way out he stopped at the coat closet and stole one of Erik’s jackets. 

He was lucky to have found Alex. He’d been looking for Max, who he was never going to find, because Max had quit six months ago and moved to Montana with Ingrid and their infant daughter, Sophia. Ingrid had family there, east coast transplants like themselves. 

It took Alex a while to find Max's new number. They weren’t in contact. Max had given it to him on his last day at Spartan on a sticky note, but neither of them really expected to stay in touch. Carlo wondered if it was because of them, the precogs. Maybe after it was all done Alex and Max didn’t want to see as much of each other anymore, because they shared too many bad memories. That’s what he was afraid Max would think of when he saw him, too. 

Alex offered to call and break the ice for him, but Carlo asked him not to. He waited until he was sitting at the Greyhound station in the Montana town Max had moved to. Then he dialed the number. 

-

Twenty four hours later he was sitting on the Kellys’ living room sofa. Ingrid was asleep with the baby upstairs, and there was so much he wanted to ask Max, to say to him. He recognized the furniture— the braided rugs beneath their feet, the TV stand, the paintings on the wall. Ingrid’s easel sat in front of a broad bay window. Lou the cat basked on the wide windowsill, her black fur appearing milk chocolate in the direct sunlight.

Because it was the easiest of his questions, he first asked Max why he left Spartan. Max said he couldn’t look Martin Olsen in the face anymore. He couldn’t make another contract for them, strike another deal, care about their margins and their bottom lines. Something soured for him and wouldn’t come back to neutral. He started working with a recruiter and got a job offer in Kalispell, two hours from Ingrid’s relatives, and together they’d sold the house and gone, all the way from Baltimore. 

“What happened to the rest of the precogs?”

“They went where they were sold. We don’t know anything else.”

“...I  didn’t ask Alex about Zee”

Max grimaced. “Yeah. He was upset. So was I. I thought he quit that day they took them. He was gone for a week, and then he just came back, never mentioned it again. We didn’t talk much after that, except the day I went to his office to say goodbye.” 

“I should’ve taken Zee with me.”

Max actually scoffed. “No. Don’t do that. He wasn’t your responsibility. He wasn’t even Alex’s responsibility.”

 “I thought you might not want to see me,” he admitted. He pulled a pillow onto his lap to wrap around like an anchor. 

“Why?” Max asked, turning to face him better and laying his arm across the back of his sofa.

“Why would you? I’ve never been anything but trouble to you. You never asked for it.”

“I never asked for that,” he agreed. “No. I wouldn’t ask for something like that. You know, actually, I’m writing a contribution to a book. It’s about what’s going on with the precognitives they’re selling to the private sector.”

Carlo furrowed his brow. “A book?”

“I think you’d appreciate the drafts of some of the other contributions. The publishers have been really transparent with us. You can read what I’m turning in, of course. I didn’t think… I didn’t know if I’d ever get to ask your permission to say any of it. My story is your story, too.”

That was a Max-ism for we thought you were dead. He nodded down at his hands. 

“So you never asked for me…” he mumbled, a little ashamed to be fishing but willing to do it anyway if it would get him what he so desperately wanted. 

Max reached out for his hand, which he gave immediately. “Not as a scry. No. Not as a tool to make a fat commission check, or as a participant in…well,  glamorized corporate slavery.”

Carlo had to concentrate in order not to wince.

“But as everything else? Yes, I want you. We want you. Not because you don’t have anywhere else to go. I know that’s what you’re thinking of saying next.”

“I could find somewhere to go. I still have the money you gave me. That would get me started.”

“You earned every cent of that money, I didn’t give it to you. And I know you could. I’m hoping that you don’t. That you’ll stay with us a while. With me. Here. At least until we know for sure there’s no immediately concerning repercussions for your decision. Or that absolute fucking lunatic doesn’t find out where you are.”

“He won’t bother,” Carlo shrugged. “Too much effort.”

Max’s voice went quiet— a touch admonishing. “You’re more confident about that than I am, after what he did to you.”

Carlo nearly flinched. What he did to you. Max’s protectiveness made him feel every hour he was lacking in sleep, every over taut muscle and strained reflex. He wanted to surrender to something, someone, and he’d never wanted it more than he did when he was around Max. 

“He did exactly what I asked him to,” Carlo said truthfully. For some reason, it was important to him that Max didn’t think him totally innocent in all this. 

“No he didn’t. I mean he did, but not the way he promised. And not the way you asked. That’s not on you.”

“I should’ve told you,” he whispered, tears behind his eyes now, squeezing his throat. “Why would I trust a stranger like that? A surgeon. After everything.”

“We do reckless things when we’re desperate,” Max said, unbothered by Carlos’s barely contained tears, his messy admission of guilt. So steady, so even. A ship in a storm. Carlo wanted to tie himself to him with a hundred feet of rope so he couldn’t be swept away again. “And you were pushed to something reckless. By everyone that came in contact with you.”

“Not by you.”

“Oh, I failed you plenty, Carlo.”

“Not in the same way. It’s not the same, you know it isn’t. I didn’t want to leave you. I just… I had to do something.”

“I know. And you did. And you’re here. I can’t promise that I can protect you forever, but I’m going to protect you right now. Not because you need me to, but because you’re gonna let me. You can relax. I mean it. You haven’t unclenched your jaw since you got here. You look exhausted. Have you even slept?”

In laughing at himself, he finally lost control of the tears. He was smiling, vision blurred, cheeks wet. Max didn’t offer but he pitched himself forward anyway, hoping he’d open his arms to him and catch him. He wasn’t disappointed.

He’d never been held before or since like Max held him, an all-encompassing embrace that he could forget himself in, that felt like home and heartbreak all at once. He hoped Ingrid wouldn’t mind, if she saw, and sort of knew that she wouldn't, because she’d understand it wasn’t anything he was stealing from her but that it something else entirely, something almost familial that made him want to sob.

“I’m gonna put you to bed now,” Max said after a while, petting his hair as he held him. “You know that don’t you?”

Carlo nodded against his shoulder.

He slept in the same bed he had at Max’s house in Baltimore, under the same familiar patchwork quilt. Instead of beadboard, the walls were knotty pine, and instead of a steep Victorian eave there was a forty five degree slant on one wall with a skylight carved out of the roof. He was almost asleep under a dusk blue patch of sky when he heard Max and Ingrid downstairs. One of them had accidentally made a loud noise with what sounded like a cast iron skillet, and Max said something that made her laugh.

  If he listened very closely, he could hear their conversation continued, a wordless murmur of their voices. For the first time since he’d become just Carlo, he was glad for the undisturbed, unexceptional quiet in his head. 

[deluxewhump]

Just Being Curious

Elle gives Carlo a mini interview thinking she could use it in a piece for Valley at some point. Takes place before she and Carlo’s relationship gets weird and applies the revised canon. Max is present.

CW: clearly mentioned whump of a minor, slave/pet whump, mention of hypothetical torture, possibility of death and other serious harm

This is something that just got in my head yesterday and wanted to be written down. Idk if Max would allow this type of thing even so informally as this, but I wanted to write it, so he did for this piece’s sake

-

“So,” Elle said to her interviewee. “This is obviously very informal.” She gestured around their private booth in the dimly lit restaurant. The three of them were the only ones in the section, and their plates had been cleared already, leaving only their drinks behind.

“But, one more time, I’ll tell you that you can be as candid as you want to be. If you misspeak, change your mind about something, or want something redacted, just let me know.” She snapped her fingers. “Like it never happened.”

To her right, Max was leaning back with his arms over the sides of their circular booth, watching Carlo instead of her. He’d asked her to go easy. He reminded her this was totally out of bounds of what he’d normally allow, and she was only getting the opportunity because she was his girlfriend, and because Carlo was so open to it. He also insisted on being present, which Elle didn’t love simply because it was highly unlikely she’d get the same answers from Carlo that she’d get if Max was not present. But he wouldn’t budge on it. So she agreed.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” said Carlo. He sighed and stretched as if he was tired from the meal but made a point of sitting up straighter. “Roll it.”

She pressed the record button on her cell so it started counting seconds on the screen. “Contextualize what I already know for me. When did you come into the possession of Mr Holstrom?”

“You’re gonna pull that name, right?”

“Of course. This is just for ease of speaking with you. There will be no personally identifiable information, if I ever even have the opportunity to use this in a piece at all.”

“I was eleven. 2011.”

“And was this in Baltimore?”

“No. Palo Alto, California. He saw me with a man, followed us upstairs, and beat him at cards for me.”

“What then?”

“He took me to his hotel room. He was on a business trip.”

“Was this regarding the gun running or other illegal activities he was involved in?”

“I don’t think so. Just for O&H, as far as I know. There wasn’t a lot of that going on yet.”

“When did the illegal activity start?”

“I wasn’t close enough to that to be able to tell you. I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. Did he do or say anything to you that you can recall in the hotel room?”

She could see from the corner of her eye that Max was now looking at her, but he did not interrupt.

“Nothing unusual,” Carlo said. He was relaxed, confident. “He introduced himself and asked my name. He got me food and put me to bed.”

“Were you afraid?”

“Yes, but not as much as I should’ve been.”

She glanced up at him, her pen still scribbling across her notepad. “Why’s that?”

“Because I didn’t know anything. I was afraid out of… instinct, I guess. Like a basic knowledge that my life was no longer strictly normal. That it might not go well for me. Strangers are dangerous, people are bad, that sort of thing. But I didn’t know all the things that happen to pets at that point in any kind of detail.”

“He took you home with him on the return flight?”

“Mhm. Also uneventful.”

“Did you like it at Erik Holstrom’s house?”

“Elle,” Max said quietly. It was a nudging warning, rather than an outright objection.

“I guess. I had no other option. It was lonely, at first. But I understood my place before long. I had tutors. I played piano.”

“He gave you an education?”

“Yeah. He had me tested to know what level to start me on, and after I could pass a highschool level he let me pick what subjects I continued with and what I dropped.”

She took a few quick notes. Max took his arms off the sides of the booth and sat forward to pour himself the remainder of a bottle of wine they’d split with dinner. Carlo hadn’t had any, on Max’s instruction. Not before Elle’s questions, he’d said.

“What else did he instruct you in?”

“That’s it, really. I helped… mm. I can’t really say much about what else I did without it being personally identifiable, can I?”

“Try. I’ll scrap what I can’t use.”

“I worked in a warehouse with some of his men when I was a teenager. He’d assign me shifts to complete. Mostly sorting stuff. Inventory. Cleaning. Some light lifting.”

“What did the men working in the warehouse think of you?”

He paused to think. “I…think they thought of me more like a spoiled rich kid than a slave. Resented me a little.”

“Did they ever bother you?”

“Yeah, a few times. I don’t want to go into detail on that, though. And it’s probably too specific of a situation to even be helpful to your piece, if you ever do one.”

Max was likely quite proud of him for that stern little boundary he’d just given her, but he didn’t show it. She moved on.

“Did he pay you for your work?”

“Not directly,” said Carlo.

“Indirectly, then?”

“I guess. I mean I had… things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Clothes. Books. A laptop. Just, whatever.”

“At what point were you given internet access?”

“Uhm. It was never off limits, but… I think I was twelve? He gave me an iPod when I was twelve.”

“And you never tried to reach out for help?”

“Help?” Carlo raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. He took a drink of water. “What was I gonna do, call the cops? He didn’t kidnap me. I was a pet in California and a pet in Maryland.”

“Organizations, helplines? You could make friends and ask them for help.”

Carlo laughed. “Things like that are more dangerous than the situation I was in.”

“Can you tell me what you mean by that?”

“It’s just ridiculous to expect someone in that situation to find, vet, and trust some outside person or…entity. I don’t think Erik would’ve killed me if I’d done that but he would’ve made sure I was fucking sorry. A lot of pets would be killed if they got caught trying to pull something like that. And what if these people offering to ‘help’ aren’t who they say they are? That’s way more likely than the other way around. No way. Better the devil you know. I was…” he hesitated, and his next words were less spirited. “I was in a stable environment. Erik was a lot of things, but unpredictable was not one of them, at least not when it came to me.”

“That responsibility can’t possibly be placed on the pet,” Max muttered. “Not when the law backs the owner.”

She wondered if her phone was able to pick it up clearly. She wanted to tell him that yeah, she understood this, but it is what people ask. She stayed focused on her interviewee.

“You felt he was good to you, all things considered.”

Carlo searched her eyes. He was still only twenty-one, but seemed to defy every category her mind tried to place him in. She’d heard from Max he was underfed, bruised up, and terrified of him when he’d arrived, but her mind had trouble conjuring that image. A few years with Max and he was unrecognizable. He even moved like Max, sometimes. Said things in a certain Maxlike cadence.

“I didn’t feel he was going to kill me,” Carlo said. “He didn’t torture me or rape me or loan me out to his friends. That’s where the bar is, when you’re a pet. So, yeah. He was fine.”

“You good?” Max asked him quietly from across the table.

Carlo reassured him with a quick nod. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Elle. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Not at all,” she answered. “Set me straight. That’s perfect. So when you were sold to Max,” she continued, crossing her legs, “what did you feel?”

Carlo’s gaze dropped from her to the table. “Not good. I knew by then exactly what sort of things might happen to me in that situation.”

“So you were strangers. You and Max.”

“That’s right.”

“And you assumed he had bought you for…?”

Carlo smiled, tilted his head. “No idea.”

“What did you think he might do to you?”

“Elle.”

Carlo shook his head at Max. “It’s okay. This is what people wonder. I thought he might want me for work, or sex, or… some people are into torture, snuff films, sex parties. That sort of thing.”

“What do you mean ‘into torture’?” she pressed as gently as she could.

“You know, people who buy pets just to torture them, really. They have interests or urges they have no outlet for, don’t want to get caught, whatever. Buy a pet and you can torture it to death, no one will ever know.”

“That is illegal, though.”

“Oh yeah. But there’s plausible deniability. Just say the pet ran away. They usually don’t even notice for years. Social workers are busy enough as it is with non-pets, they don’t do welfare checks unless someone calls in a complaint on someone.”

“So it’s supported systemically.”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“So what did your first week with Max look like?”

He huffed softly, but didn’t look at Max. “I was a mess. I didn’t trust him. I was reeling from being kicked out of the only home I’d known for eight years.”

“Were you homesick?”

He winced. “I felt… displaced. But Max was great. He had that part time maid, Cecelia. She’d come by with groceries and cook, clean, that sort of thing. She sort of took me under her wing and told me all this stuff about Max and what a nice client he was. That he wasn’t a pervert and gave her tips on holidays. That she knew him and some of his friends. Trying to get my confidence up about him.”

Elle gave Max a cursory glance, wondering mildly if he’d ever fucked his maid.

“It just seemed so unlikely to me, at first. Like oh, this man is just gonna help you because he can? You know? That was very unlikely to me. But I started to buy the Stella Abend thing, because I knew she was real, I’d met her when she worked for Erik, and I heard him on the phone with her. And then when I allowed myself to start trusting him a little, it snowballed really quickly.”

“Into what?”

“Kind of how we are now.”

“And what are you now?” She pointedly did not look at Max. “Is it like a parental thing, big brother, master and slave? I can’t quite figure it out myself.”

“He never acted as a master to me. No. But he would make a good one, if you take it from my perspective. Ideal. I know that’s not a compliment really, but I mean it as one. But it’s those kind of people who don’t have pets in the first place.”

“Does part of you still identify as a pet?”

“Yeah. It’s a little hard not to. I know I’m not, though. I fully understand.”

“Would you reprise your role as a pet for the right master?”

“Alright,” Max interrupted. “That’s good.”

“I can answer.”

“You don’t have to. She's got enough. She’s just being curious now.”

He turned back her. “No,” he answered. “I wouldn’t. Not now.”

She closed her notebook and stopped the recording before Max got any more annoyed with her. He was sometimes slow to forgive. “Thank you, Carlo. I know it’s not easy to talk about.”

“It’s not so bad when it’s you,” he said. He even smiled at her, even after she’d prodded a little too far with her needle at the end. Such a forgiving creature.

God, she thought. I could love him like Max does. It’d be easy. He is lovable, he wants to please. He wants to reciprocate.

Maybe. But there was something in the way, and she couldn’t quite work out the shape of it in her mind. She’d tried feeling the contours of it for jealousy, pity, disgust. She felt it again when Max helped Carlo into his coat and said something close to his ear that was inaudible to her.

[deluxewhump]

i am re-reading erik's journals, the "july 2018" chapter. man, i do so love structured punishment in whump and then "But I would only be punishing him for my own weakness."

bee, you're mad, mad with power. i am gnashing my teeth at "new holstrom". i go crazy for a whumper that is so shrewd and introspective and *human*

you're great at what you do

Anonnnnnnnn <3 thank you so much. The revised Erik is so much better and worse at the same time and never endingly fascinating for me to write, I’m so glad you enjoy.

And yes- I think except for a one-off slap it is all very structured and even-tempered, like a brick wall, and Carlo throws himself at it in different and increasingly desperate ways.

Thank you for taking the time to write this to me 💕💕💕💕

[deluxewhump]

⚠️ - What is the darkest thing you have ever written?

you went right for that one! /lh

As far as explicitly dark, probably several noncon pieces for this blog. I write a lot of dubcon but there’s a few noncon pieces that are different.

But for thematically dark I’d say Erik’s Journals, which is Erik’s Holstrom’s POV on impulse buying a child who has been delivered into a system of pethood/slavery instead of foster care.

[deluxewhump]

Erik's Journals pt 1 (2011)

Note on this project: This is a companion piece to Carlo's story. It is an epistolary mea culpa (of sorts) of the series antagonist, Erik Holstrom. It can be read as a stand alone work. The main themes are legalized slavery referred to as a "pet" trade, and the ensuing psychological and emotional mistreatment of a character, often when said character was a minor. Entries range from when Erik's pet was eleven until he is in his mid twenties. Chapters are marked by year and month of entry. Readers may find themes, content, and the moral relativisms of the narrator disturbing. 46k words.

Content Warning for entire series: institutionalized slavery of a minor (11-18), emotional abuse and manipulation, dubious comfort, pet whump, disordered eating, violence, guns, mutilation (off screen, no main characters), corporal punishment, sexual content/dubcon ( character is 18+), broken bones, death of a parent, unreliable narrator

Journals of Erik H, regarding Carlo H. Sent to Max S. Baltimore, Maryland. November 2018

What is Yours Will Always Be

another note: For anyone who read Carlo’s story; Erik’s journals deviate quite often from the original version of events. The idea to revisit it at all last winter came from a strong desire of mine to develop Erik from a background whump villain who would keep a boy in a cage and never call him by his name in nine years into a more sophisticated character who blames his own evils on the systems that created them.

This was both a new challenge and a way to offer insight into why Carlo struggled with such powerful vestigial feelings of loyalty and homesickness toward his old master, which I think is a major theme of his story. Thank you and I hope you enjoy (or enjoy not enjoying).

June 2011

I will record here the various instances and worthy notes regarding Carlo Holstrom, pet, age eleven, acquired and taken into my supervision June 1, 2011.

I had no intention of buying a pet until I laid eyes on this one last week in California. I had spent the long blue evening on a poolside patio with two colleagues, sipping white rum drinks under skinny palm trees. Our talk always circled back to work, as it does among colleagues. 

As to why I was in Palo Alto, I co-own a shipping and logistics company with a long time friend of mine, Martin Olson. O&H (Olson & Holstrom), as an LLC, has eighteen hundred trucks on over three thousand popular commercial shipping lanes at any time, day or night, throughout the U.S. and Canada. This California trip was planned months ago to meet with the CEO and CFO of one of our most prolific and loyal customers, a dry goods chain that supplies every major grocery store in the south and southwest. 

I was going to return to my hotel balcony early with a drink in hand. That was until I saw a bloated, eager man with gin-blossomed cheeks making his way past the koi pond and tiki bar, up the attached wooden stairs to the card rooms and billiard tables on the second floor. He had in tow the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, wearing a cheap state-issue collar and a look of tempered but unmistakable fear.  Despite the boy’s long strides trying to keep up and obvious attempts to anticipate the man’s every move, the man was yanking him along by the wrist, as if he expected resistance and was too stupid or too drunk to see he was not being met with any. 

I paid my tab and followed them upstairs until I spotted the man’s broad, sweat-darkened back at a card table. I made brief eye contact with the boy, reaffirming the fear and uncertainty I’d seen downstairs. He soon dropped his eyes. I sat down at the same table and asked the man what he was drinking.

I knew from his car-salesman smile and his bloodshot eyes what he was here for, the cheap collar on the young pet was another gleaming clue. It was the same material as a hospital bracelet, steel gray and marked on one side with a discharge stamp. My limited knowledge of how the state dealt with those given up to pethood led me to believe he was fresh from a state home, or some sort of correctional facility. Did they have juvenile correctional facilities for pets? Most were at the very least fifteen, I couldn’t imagine a boy his age in one.

Two sweating Coronas arrived and the cards were dealt. I watched the frightened child until he felt my gaze and met my eyes again. I held it and nodded hello. He was leaving there tonight with me, and I think he and I both knew it, though his keeper did not yet.

It took me three hours and twelve thousand dollars, along with a considerable bar tab. But he left at my side. I did not pull him alongside me like a reluctant dog on a leash. I didn’t have to.

I requested a folding cot and extra linens from the front desk. With them I made him a soft bed between the television set and the balcony. God only knew when he’d last been fed, so I ordered soup from room service, which he ate by dunking the crackers it came with in the broth and eating those. He nursed a can of ginger ale like it was a security blanket. 

Only once did I put a finger under his chin to encourage him to look up at me. “Don’t be afraid,” I told his solemn dark eyes. “Everything is alright now.”

July 2011

I brought him home with me to Maryland. My property is a gated and green six acres punctuated with several very old oak trees, in the southwest of what they call the Valley. Our portion of the Valley is the berg of Foxfollow, in the suburbs of Baltimore.

The house, which I bought to be near our new O&H headquarters in ‘05, was built in 1870, replete with crown moldings, brass accents, the original paneled doors with their crystal knobs and ornate skeleton key mortises, carved bannisters, gleaming mahogany floors and stone hearths. The beams in the west living room are wood from the original Baltimore train station, earning the house a plaque sent to me by the Maryland historical society. On paper it’s a six bedroom brick colonial, three full baths and two half, a generous back porch, an office downstairs and library upstairs, two living rooms, and a solarium that faces east I call the music room, on account of the piano I’d found a home in there. From those easterly windows one can see the city skyline at night, though from anywhere else on the property it feels as if we are in the middle of the country. 

Carlo’s file has been difficult to obtain from the state of California, as his previous owner seems unreachable to give consent to release it. Maybe he finally hanged himself in the closet of a Motel 6. There are several regulations blocking my acquisition of the file by any simple means, courtesy of the state of California and its impressive labyrinth of bureaucracy.

It will have to wait a few weeks, and then can begin an appeal process for it. Without file or title, though,  I can tell you the boy is well mannered, healthy and bright. I had him tested for aptitude. He has an eleventh grade reading level and shows basic understanding of fourth grade math, if lacking any practical application. He does not give any outright indications of having been physically or sexually abused, as per a pediatric psychiatrist. He understands his position, and does not seem to covet any other, or think himself above his station.

Understandably, he fears returning to a state home, does not enjoy crowds, noisy places, or other children, and is timid around my dogs (perhaps because they are hounds, excitable and vocal. This is alright though, as they do not come inside the house).

Carlo has wavy, unruly dark hair and expressive black eyes, a button nose that is slightly broad at the dished bridge, and olive toned skin. He is only little, but he has both an androgyny and racial ambiguity about him I think he will grow into nicely, though I am in no rush for the baby fat to melt from his cheeks, as I am finding it is endearing to me.

August 2011

The file shows just the one previous owner, the one trying to flip him for a profit like a beachfront property. Before that, group state homes.

Titers show proof of MMR, Varicella, Polio, and Tdap vaccinations. Mother: Luca, Chiara. Deceased. Father unknown. No known siblings or relatives. Birthplace - Palo Alto, California, 2000. Blood type O+.

The surname Luca is Italian, or often Romanian, but could be from any number of places, belonging to any number of diaspora. It also could be a maiden or married name, and is not necessarily the boy's blood relatives anyway.

Carlo is adjusting well. I try to imagine how it feels to be in a new place as a pet. I can’t quite, but I can at least grasp at it just by employing my best empathy. I try to remember being so young, and there’s certainly memories, but it is difficult to remember how my mind worked, how each day felt. I remember how I felt about my sister and my friends and my father and homework. I remember learning to shoot a rifle that year, wondering if it would not blast apart the slender hares on our property and make them useless for pelt or stew. I remember trapping one and giving it to Mathilde as a pet.

My father wouldn’t let anyone shoot anything in a trap. Did I understand that? Did I resent him for not letting me pull the rifle to my shoulder and blow it apart at close range? I can’t remember my inner thoughts. Only facts that were catalogued as if by someone else. 

With him, I try to be diplomatic and easy to get along with. Clear instructions and kind words. I bought him a new wardrobe with plenty of comfortable cotton, complete with winter coat and boots he won’t need for months yet. I put a writing desk in the bedroom I gave him, as he seems inclined to bookishness and already has several notebooks, a sketchbook, and a few paperbacks among his personal possessions.

He took a liking to a painting I had hanging in the dining room, a framed John Moore. I noticed him studying it more than once as we ate our dinner at the table in relative silence, interrupted only by Anna returning to refill my wine. 

In the landscape, a castle sits atop a craggy hill lit by silver moonlight that shines through wisps of cloud. In the still bay at the base of the hill is an anchored ship, with rowboats deploying a dozen passengers towards the dark shore. I told him the name of the painting, Lindisfarne Castle and Abbey, Holy Island, by Moonlight, and asked him why he liked it.

“Because it’s quiet,” he said. “But it’s almost got a sound.”

“What sound is that?” I asked, and he looked at me to first make sure I wasn’t teasing him. Encouraged by my earnestness, he replied, “A humming. Like quiet, but louder.” A few days later, I  had it moved to the wall in his room above his desk. 

September 2011 

Carlo has tutors in math, science, and English. I took him into town and had his hair cut, for it was starting to hang in his eyes like the mane of a colt. He looks like a wavy-locked Tsarevich now.

He contracted the flu last week, and I had Dr Amalfi come by the house. It was treatable with tamiflu, soup, and as much fluid as I could get him to drink. I set a cool cloth on his forehead when he was hot and a heating pad on him when he was cold.

He vomited right in his bed the first night he'd fallen sick, and had unfortunately been lucid enough to realize he'd done so. Bright-eyed with fever, he begged me forgiveness and to leave it for Anna, tomorrow, but I'd already stripped the vomit-splattered blanket and sheets into a pile.  "It's fine, sweetheart," I told him, taking his soiled pajama shirt from his clammy, reluctant hands. "Go wash up, and let me take care of this. I want to get some medicine in you."

Even when he returned clean, with fresh sheets and comforter ready for him, he'd been unwilling to meet my eye. Perhaps I should have let him strip his own bed, but his temperature had distracted me too much to even think of it.

I sat on his bedside trying to get a fever reducer and tea into him, and told him how I’d been a medic in the army many years ago, before he was born. To be squeamish about a little accident such as his was not within my scope of understanding, I said, after the manner of things I’d been up to my elbows with in Iraq and Kuwait. I do think that, delivered with an air of nonchalance, made him feel slightly better. 

It did not happen again, as far as I know, though I left a bowl by his bedside. 

The morning his fever broke, I checked on him when I woke. I found him sleepily watching television, and I was relieved.

November 2011

Last week I punished Carlo for stealing chocolates from my office. They were a gift from a visitor, some pretty truffles in a pretty box. I would have given the lot to him if he asked. The sweet is not the point, but the theft. I believe he thought I wouldn’t notice, as they’d been sitting there at least a week. After he did it I wondered if I had subconsciously laid it as a trap. No, I didn’t think so. I was genuinely surprised when he’d taken one without asking. He admitted to it immediately, which was brave at least.  

Come, I'd called him, and bade him lean his forearms on my desk. I struck him only once, swiftly, on the back of his legs like a 19th century Headmaster. He cried, more from embarrassment than pain I think, as I have never hit him. Afterward, I explained why to him again, which I think only further embarrassed him. He understood perfectly well, and reiterating what he'd done wrong was only insulting his intelligence. I am hoping it is not an incident often repeated.

The following Monday, I called him into my study, a room he'd avoided ever since the incident. He glanced about the desk nervously, looking for a clue of some new transgression he might have committed. “You’re not in trouble,” I assured him. “Don’t be skittish.”

I gifted him a new ipod touch and a pair of headphones, as well as a desktop speaker that it docked into the top of to charge and play aloud. He looked disbelievingly at the box in his little hands. "If you need help setting it up let me know," I told him. "Or Anna, she's good with these things. What do you say when someone gives you a gift?"

He hurried to find his tongue to thank me.

-

Yesterday Mathilde brought some friends by for dinner. I had Carlo assist my paid help to serve drinks, entrees, clean up, etc. It’s good and helpful for him to at least be comfortable with that element of pethood.

At one point two of Mathilde’s guests (for though they were in my house, they were not mine) got into a heated argument at the climax of which a glass was broken. The two involved in the argument, a rather soused woman named Natalie and her antagonist Ben, stormed off to clean her dress of spilled wine. Little Carlo came forward to pick up the shards in his bare hands until I clicked my tongue at him, gesturing for him to leave it and come by me.

“Let one of the staff get it, honey,” I said to him from across the table. “I don’t want you getting cut.” 

He came and stood by my chair as I’d beckoned and shifted his weight to his other foot, unsure what to do with himself or his hands. 

“Look for anything that needs clearing whenever you are headed back to the kitchen anyway,” I said near his ear, like the advice was conspiratorial. “Efficiency is key in most things.” Quite seriously, and I think grateful for the clear directive, he took my empty plate and two others with him to the kitchen.

In a spirit of such softhearted warmth that it was foreign to me, and probably in apology to how the incident with the truffles transpired, I have designated a drawer in my kitchen to be Carlo’s, and filled it with things I’ve noticed he liked, sweets and peppermints and truffles. I told him it was his, and to take anything from it any time he liked. 

I want him to obey me with unquestioning haste when I do ask something of him. For the rest of the time, I don’t want him to walk on eggshells. I want him to see this as his home.

He may as well, since it is. 

Next

[deluxewhump]

i am soooooo in love with Erik’s journals! Such a brilliant and wonderfully executed idea! <3

Thank you so much!

Initially my idea was to write Carlo’s journals from that time, but I really struggled with the voice and just didn’t get anywhere with it. Then sometime last year I read a very dark but well crafted book by Hanya Yanagihara called The People In The Trees. It is likewise in first person and the narrator is arguably a much worse man than Erik Holstrom. After reading that I thought, okay, Carlo first person at that stage in his life was proving to be a huge challenge, but Erik I think I can do. Then it became this really enjoyable challenge to write him as reasonable as possible (he is often very sympathetic to Carlo, and there is a reason Carlo still “loves” him but hates Keith, for example ) while still having him be this destructive, net evil force that the reader is often just rolling their eyes fed up with or horrified at.

I am so glad you are enjoying it and I hope I achieved it 💞 thank you for your message!

[deluxewhump]

Erik's Journals pt 12 (2024)

23: Letter

Carlo Svenson

Care of Stella Abend 

722 Main St, Suite 203

Foxfollow, MD 21498.

No return address. 

Carlo Svenson (née Holstrom),

I have tasked Stella Abend with delivering this, so I have no doubt it will find its way safely into your hands. Even as a personal friend of your Max, I’m confident her charming (if inflexible) sense of professional integrity will allow nothing less.

I have left you some money, which you probably know about by now. We have already accounted for taxes, so the two million you see is entirely yours. Ms. Abend will tell you, but so will I; it comes with no caveats or red tape. Do with it what you will. I don’t worry about you in that regard. If you are still interested in one last piece of my advice, I would tell you to invest in some ETF’s— they’re slow and safe. I’ve included the business card of a financial advisor in this envelope. I’d trust him with my last dollar. If Max has an advisor, and you feel more comfortable that way, you can ask him for his number instead. No matter what you do with it, it’s yours. You earned every cent of it years ago.

Carlo.

What can I say to you?

I can’t give the boy I met in Palo Alto a different fate, and I can’t change your past. Please take this little gift in the spirit it was given, which is my interminable desire to care for you in the only way I can now. I am not trying to write you off with it. I also didn’t give it to you so I can pat myself on the back and say I did right by you. I know there are many ways in which I did not. While the future is quicksilver, the past is etched by fire on stone. There are things that remain which I can never repair or alter. I hope this acknowledgment helps lift the needle from the record of them that loops in your mind.

I know what you want to hear. Something revealing about that night in November of 2018. Something that makes everything make sense, that heals the wound you’ve been walking around with ever since, cauterizes it and sutures it with a neat ribbon. I’m sorry, Lo, but I’ve told you all my reasoning already. I had to scatter my assets. I wanted to keep you out of the trial, away from the prosecution. They could’ve detained you for months while they built a case. If I’d had more time, I never would’ve done it in such a careless way. But I didn’t have that luxury that night.

Sometimes the truth is disappointing. I know you still believe it was your fault. That it was an abandonment. It wasn’t. Stella Abend didn’t take you very far from home, did she? I knew where you were from that very first night. The important thing is this: You can’t leave that wound open any longer. You have to let me take the blame for that choice. You have to let it go. Do this for me: when you find yourself ruminating on it, redirect yourself to these words of reassurance. They will remain, on paper, for you to return to whenever you need.

You can always take comfort in the knowledge that I wanted you to come with me. I always wanted you, beginning to end. It was, ultimately, you who turned me down, which I forgive and understand. I even commend it, when I’m feeling generous. Whatever your life becomes now, it is yours, and yours alone. You have always been capable, but now you have something which nicely compliments that capability. Agency.

Know I will always think of you gently. I hope you sometimes pay one of our better memories a visit. I will find myself doing the same, in quiet moments. Perhaps that’s where we will find each other now. We’ve always had an easy telepathy, you and I. As incongruous with the rest of my worldview as it may be, I find it difficult to deny something plainly observable. The further apart we were, the stronger it became. The month I was in Manila, did you not find yourself wandering towards the phone in my study moments before it rang? I could feel you just before you fell asleep, no matter the time of day on my side of the world. I could feel your guard come down and your thoughts curl up like a fawn in a thicket, finding somewhere soft to lay. Did you feel me tucking you in?

Look as often as you can to the future, or at least the present. Know that you have always belonged inextricably to yourself. And that you were, and will always be, my brightness, my trouble, my treasure.

-E.H.

[deluxewhump]

Martin Olson AU: I’m Not Yours

Cw: pet whump, drug mention, alcohol, violence, blood, cut finger and tongue, mild choking, threats, Stockholmy homesickness from Carlo, father/son arguments

Martin was in a mood on the ride back to his post-divorce Baltimore home. He was curt with his driver, and kept checking his phone, his watch.

Carlo’s mood wasn’t much better. They’d been at a cocktail party for longer than he’d have liked. Carlo spent it drifting from the foyer to the living room with a champagne flute in his hand. Every time he finished a glass someone showed up at his shoulder to pour him another so he’d stopped drinking it, but not before he’d become pink cheeked and dizzy with a sickly sweet buzz.

Martin spent half the evening upstairs with the host talking about god knows what, but had not invited him. Instead he’d left him to fend for himself with the other guests, most of which either already knew or guessed what he was. One man went so far as to touch the sleeve of his soft navy sweater to stop him and get a look at his face.

“Martin of all people,” he smirked to no one in particular. “With this coltish little racehorse. Who’dve thunk it. You were Holstrom’s, weren’t you? That verdict was a real shame.”

Carlo pulled away, knowing it was rude. He could feel the contempt on his face, too late to catch it. Luckily, the man only laughed, and moved on.

By the time they were in the car headed home, his buzz had worn off, leaving him hungry and with a slight headache behind his eyes. He wanted to crawl into bed. He wanted to call Erik and hear his voice on the other line. He wanted Martin to treat him with special consideration like he had the first month.

The house was dark and cold. Carlo knew to scrape his shoes on the mat and place them gently where they belonged, to hang his coat on the correct wooden rung.

He paused, coat halfway to the rack. Another coat was on his rung, a black peacoat. He heard a noise in the kitchen.

“My son,” Martin muttered. “How nice he drops by unannounced at all hours.”

Carlo followed him into the utilitarian kitchen, a cavernous display of stainless steel and cold lights and slate tile. Blake Olson was eating a sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in days, a prodigious mess spread all over the marble topped island.

Martin eyed it with distaste. “A little late, isn’t it?” he asked with little interest.

Blake smiled at Carlo around a mouthful of baloney and pickles. “You hungry, Carlo?” he asked brightly.

He was. He glanced at Martin, noticing the tightness around his mouth, those ice blue eyes flat and unamused.

“No thanks,” he answered. He made a wide berth around Blake when he got a glass and filled it with filtered water from the fridge.

“I noticed the transfer you made last week on your statement,” Martin said, laying his palms flat on the cool countertop.

Blake chewed overzealously, giving his father a sarcastic thumbs up. “Oh yeah?” he said when he swallowed. “That’s great, Dad. Really good detective work. As usual.”

“Thirty thousand dollars this time. Do I dare ask for what?”

“I dunno, do you? Go ahead. I’m surprised you haven’t tracked it down already, the way you’re on my ass about every fucking penny I spend. Checking my bank statements. What am I, fifteen?”

“I have access to them because I put money in them,” Martin said cooly. “On a regular basis, so you can make your mortgage payment and pay your child support. You are paying your child support, aren’t you? Or will she have to get a court order for even that level of commitment?”

“Commitment. Whenever that word comes up, I know what’s next.” Blake winked at Carlo like a game show host to the audience. “Next, we’re gonna talk about how I flunked out of Colby a million years ago. Yeah, let’s bring that up again. Just like every time I see you. Like I haven’t done anything with my life since that.”

“You haven’t.”

Blake set down his sandwich. His pupils were normal, Carlo realized. He’d never seen them normal before. A vein was becoming visible in his forehead, running down his temple. “I’m working all the fucking time, Dad. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Just because I don’t want to sit at a fucking desk all day. Rotting.”

“Right, because you’re doing so well staying out all night and shoveling drugs up your nose. You’re working so hard that I have to supplement your coke and whore habit like you’re on my payroll.”

Blake snorted. “Learned from the best.”

Carlo tucked his legs up on the chair, knees almost to his chin. His heart was thudding unpleasantly at this exchange.

Father and son stared at each other across the counter, Blake sporting a barely-repressed rage that seemed to emanate from his broad shoulders like a visible aura. Martin was cool to the point of coldness.

“Richer than God and you want to bully me over 30k,” Blake scoffed, eyes narrowed in contempt.

“Regardless of what I have or don’t have, what makes you feel entitled to any of it? Delusional. You always have been.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Blake snapped.

There was a beat of silence like lead. Carlo pinched the spot between his thumb and forefinger to keep from crawling out of his skin.

“Get out,” Martin said flatly. “Don’t even bother with your mess. Just get out of my house, Blake.”

For a split second Blake looked surprised, a flash of hurt crossing his features and dropping back to smugness. He sighed, picking up his plate with half a sandwich left on it and rounding the island towards Carlo.

Carlo drew back into his chair another inch as Blake approached.

“I know you’re hungry, Carlo,” he said, and dropped the plate with a clatter onto the table. Carlo flinched. “Eat up, cupcake.”

He turned to his father. “Pretty fucking rich, saying I’m the one with the whores.”

Carlo dropped his eyes, praying Blake would just leave quietly.

He flinched when the front door slammed.

“I don’t know where he gets it,” Martin said.

Carlo unfolded his legs, picked up the plate and brought it to the kitchen sink. He began cleaning up Blake’s mess of open jars and ingredients, a dirty knife.

“His mother, for all her flaws, is neither lazy nor a goddam junkie.”

Carlo bumped the back of his hand into a wine glass, sending it toppling into the sink and shattering. He clenched his teeth, nerves like the serrated edge of a saw.

Erik had been sentenced last week. Three years, minimum. Martin had consoled him gently, talking about an appeal.

The homesickness came in waves, and often at the worst possible time. He tried to pick up the biggest shards of wine glass and hissed, pulling back his hand as his finger welled with blood.

“Hey now,” Martin said silkily, coming to stand behind him. “Easy. Let me see.”

Now that he knew Blake, he could see Martin in him. Martin was a much older man with a leaner build, but the set of the eyes was the same, the width of the jaw… even a fleeting expression here and there. Martin tsked at him and reached for a clean dish towel. Carlo almost protested. Everything in this house was pristine, carefully selected, minimalistic. Surely the dish towel was a matching set and now half would be ruined with his blood.

But Martin wrapped it quickly and added pressure, and Carlo remained silent.

“I want you to go with him for a weekend,” Martin said softly. For a moment Carlo thought he meant Erik, and he felt a pilot light of hope snap to life inside him.

“I think he’s in over his head in something but he won’t admit it to me because he’s embarrassed. I want to know what, before it causes another PR nightmare for me or the company. Pretend it’s your idea. Pretend you and I have fought.”

Carlo stared at him. He meant his son. Of course he did. Erik was in prison.

Blake was unpredictable, high or drunk at all hours and his friends were worse. Date Rape and Tax Fraud, Martin had nicknamed the two Blake hung out with the most.

“I—,”

“I know. But it’s important.”

Carlo huffed, whitehot anger rising in his throat like a scream. How could he ask this of him? Was he out of his mind? It went against everything he’d told Erik he’d do to watch out for him.

“Be my good boy,” Martin pressed.

“I’m not,” Carlo blurted. “I’m not even yours.”

Martin leveled with him. “Come again?”

“I— I don’t want to do that. It’s not… they’re a nightmare. No.”

“The other thing you said.”

Did Martin think he wouldn’t dare say it again? It was true. Even in federal prison— he belonged to Erik Holstrom.

“I’m not. Even. Yours,” he snapped.

Martin went from statue still to a blur of motion, grabbing hold of Carlo by both shoulders and wheeling him around, slamming him into the wall. His head snapped back and cracked into the drywall. An instant, deep ache rang from the center of his head outward and he tasted blood. He’d bitten his tongue.

Martin was close, his breath like warm merlot. “You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” he said in a voice so deceptively soft it made Carlo choke a sob.

“I’ve made this entire thing a fucking cakewalk for you. You’re so spoiled you don’t even know the position you’re in. You don’t even know what goes on in your world because I’ve made sure you’re so protected from it you don’t even know it exists. There’s fifty pets in this city alone who would gnaw off their right foot to have the life you have here.”

His heart was in his throat, his mind reeling with the possibilities of what exactly that meant. His head throbbed and he swallowed blood. He’d dropped the dish towel and his finger was now bleeding onto the gray slate tile in slow drips.

“Yes Sir,” he whispered.

He knew when to back down. He couldn’t believe he’d pushed as far as he had, now that he’d done it.

Martin took a hand off one of his shoulders to place it around his neck. He squeezed at the soft junctures of Carlo’s jaw beneath his ears so his head felt tight and dizzy.

“Say it again. Look at me.”

He locked eyes with his surrogate Master. “Yes, Sir.”

Martin loosed the grip on his throat, but left his hand there. He eyed Carlo’s bloody lower lip, raised a thumb to brush against it. He leaned in and pressed his lips there briefly, like he wanted to taste the blood more than kiss him.

He moved a strand of Carlo’s hair away from his forehead.

“I like you, Carlo. Don’t be another thorn in my side and I won’t have to treat you like one.”

[deluxewhump]

There’s an absolutely massive brick house in my new neighborhood and every time I drive by it it reminds me exactly of how I picture Erik Holstrom’s house and I have thoughts and feelings about it.

[deluxewhump]

So in the Martin Olson Au I’d love to know what Martin’s endgame is. I read that snippet where Holstrom eventually leaves prison yet doesn’t immediately claim Carlo. Is Martin’s plan just to keep finding excuses to postpone returning his foster pet? Or does he have something more concrete and legally binding in mind? And does Holstrom feel about this?

I’d love Martin and Erik to talk about it. Preferably where Carlo can hear either one or both sides of the conversation.

[deluxewhump]

try as i may i can't not picture erik holstrom as father/van hohenheim from fullmetal alchemist

Had to google. I get it 😂 I really do I see it.

I modeled him after the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series villains originally. And gave him a Swedish name as a nod to that.