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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 months ago

Text

Silver

Bleeding in Moonlight: Chapter One | Chapter Two |

CW: Some brief moments of dehumanization, referenced captivity and torture, referenced death/murder

“I have no idea where we’re even going.”

Eden flexed his fingers, stretching them out and then closing them back around the steering wheel. His head felt like it was full of wet cotton, heavy and soft and soaking into every wrinkle of his brain.

Apparently driving on two hours of sleep wasn’t the best way to handle these things. Not that they had a choice. Well, they did have a choice, but Anaya wasn’t about to let him make it. She was determined to keep going as long as they could.

“Just drive east,” She said, as if she could hear him thinking. “We have a full tank of gas, we can go for hours.”

“Hours?” He couldn’t quite suppress the way his voice sounded pouting, a toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of a store. He took a deep breath and tried to straighten his spine.

Still, every pothole, bump in the road, or swerving too-tight turn brought an answering whimper or soft whine from the back and Eden’s nerves were fraying more every single time.

His heart twisted at the simple sounds of pain, sure - he knew it had to hurt like hell, lying there with a stitched-up leg and only some expired hydrocodone from an old surgery Eden had had years ago for the pain, but Eden’s own head was throbbing with a lack of sleep, his eyes felt hot and dry, and a muscle in his jaw had begun to twitch as he kept grinding his teeth.

He had to push down the urge to snap at the boy to quiet down. It wasn’t his fault, Eden knew it wasn’t, but the anger still rose with every pulse of his heartbeat he could feel behind his eyes.

Added to all the other bullshit about today, they were in the middle of nowhere, a good hour from the next place Eden could think of to even grab half-decent coffee. They needed to find somewhere where they could park, somewhere nobody would look in the back and then ask about a thousand increasingly uncomfortable but honestly really understandable questions about the naked teenage boy back there.

The naked teenage boy covered in scars and wrapped in blankets, who badly needed a haircut and a hamburger and who hadn't spoken a fucking word since they started driving.

“Not too many. Four more hours of driving would get us to Missoula,” Anaya said, a little distracted, looking down at her phone. “I have a friend we could crash with there. Vanessa… she has an extra room, she says. Yeah. Four hours and twenty minutes to Missoula and then we can spend a couple days figuring this out-”

“Anaya.”

She blinked and looked over at him. “What?”

“We absolutely cannot take him to Missoula.” Eden had the urge to drop his head into his hands even as he made his careful way on the winding road, the darkly forested mountains they had been camping in rising high and dagger-edged behind them. Like they were angry at them taking the boy out of the woods and towards civilization.

Well, that was a weird thing to think.

“Of course we can,” Anaya said, frowning, puzzled.

“No. We can’t. Missoula is in Montana."

"Yeah, I'm aware. But it's also only four hours away."

"Going to Missoula... that is a full on crazy idea, Naya, and you know it.”

“I don’t know it. Why exactly is that crazy?” Anaya, bristling, set her phone down and twisted around in her seat to look back at the blanket lump behind them that was Misae, whose eyes were closed even as his expression was pinched with pain. “We all need sleep, right? All three of us do. Vanessa won’t ask too many questions.”

“If we show up with him, she probably should!”

“Why?”

“Anaya, for God’s sake… Taking a minor across state lines is fucking kidnapping!”

“Sure, if we had kidnapped him, but we didn’t! Somebody else did!”

“Okay, first of all, that isn’t how kidnapping works. We’re not playing fucking flag football with a human being. Also, we don’t know that he was kidnapped at all!”

“He said his family is dead! That means he was kidnapped by whoever killed them!”

“We. Don’t. Know. That. It just means they’re dead, it doesn’t say anything about how they died or how he ended up where he is. You’re… you’re just guessing at things we can’t prove, that might not even be true!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Her voice sharpened.

His own voice rose in response, louder than he intended. “He might have lied to us or something!”

The boy in the back flinched, hands moving to cover his head, visible as a sudden shift in the rearview mirror. Misae groaned, muttering something to himself. Eden’s chest twisted in dismay as he realized there was a tiny spot of red starting to show through the blanket, which meant the poor kid had started bleeding through his bandages at some point. He needed them changed. Eden must not have done a good enough job putting pressure on the wound. The stitches were doing their best, but Eden’s first aid kit wasn’t great, and stitching someone up in the woods in a hurry was never going to work well anyway. He needed to redo the stitches, hopefully after a few hours of sleep and with steadier hands. Guilt prickled. “Sorry... I'm sorry, man. I don’t really think that you’re lying, exactly, it’s just… Maybe you told us what you thought we needed to hear so we’d help you. I’d honestly understand if you did.”

“Eden!” Anaya smacked at his shoulder. “You can’t just accuse him of lying!”

“I’m not trying to be accusing! I’m just trying to keep us from getting thrown in prison. Taking a minor over state lines isn’t just illegal, it’s a felony. We do not have enough knowledge about this situation right now to commit felonies for total strangers, even if they are bleeding all over my backseat!”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You took out the backseat.”

“... please don’t do that thing where you nitpick everything I say because you’re mad at me even though you know I’m right.”

Anaya opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away. "Yeah, okay." For Anaya, that was a white flag raised high.

He took the truce she offered gladly. “Okay, so, we don’t know him well enough to commit a felony on his behalf, even though he’s bleeding all over my trunk.”

She relaxed a little - his acknowledgement of the nitpick was his way of flying a white flag, too. Then she sighed. “Well…” Anaya trailed off, then turned back around and looked at the road ahead as if it were personally offensive to her. “Okay, I can see your point. Maybe… maybe you’re right about this. Still, we don’t even know he’s from Idaho at all, he might have already been taken over state lines? We’re… there’s no way we’re the bad guys for helping him, is there?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I don’t think we are, and I absolutely agree that he needs help. I’m just… I’m just too tired to think straight about this, or maybe I’d have a better idea of what we should do. We need to stop so I can nap, so we can all nap. Yeah?”

“Fair enough.” Anaya tipped her head back against her seat, her black hair spilling in messy waves all around her shoulders and down to her ribcage. The clear light of morning turned her skin Eden fell in love all over again.

He usually did, every time he looked at her.

“Naptime for everybody,” She said, a little dreamily. “Sounds good. Does that sound good to you, too, Misae?”

The boy had to hear them, they weren’t keeping their voices particularly low, but he didn’t answer. He was lying down in the back of the car, everything but his injured leg curled up as tightly as he could get, existing in a kind of numb silence.

Shock, Eden had thought at first. Now his mind skipped back to the sight of the scars the kid was covered in, and he wondered if he just was too used to being hurt and simply didn't think this kind of thing was worth even remarking on. Or... maybe he was used to getting hurt worse if he spoke up about the pain. Maybe it had been safer to be silent.

Still... at least the kid seemed to be getting some sleep. He'd clearly dozed on and off for most of the drive. He didn’t even seem to be listening to them now, when they were specifically talking about him.

When Eden checked the mirror, all he saw was that reddish-brown hair with gray scattered throughout, sticking out like a puffball above the blankets he’d curled himself up beneath, which Eden did not allow himself to think was cute. The red stain on the blanket - was it a little bigger than the last time he’d looked?

Shit.

“Right." He hummed, changing lanes. "Also, not to like harp on this or anything, but… what if somebody’s still looking for him?”

Anaya’s thoughtful frown deepened. “He said that his family-”

“Is dead, no, I know he said that. I’m not talking about family, not exactly. But that guy with the gun, he said something about finding bodies on their land before, remember? Like this isn’t the first time. And he was clearly hunting that wolf. So… would they just give up looking?”

Anaya’s worry had her thumb shifting upwards, until she was absently nipping at her thumbnail, catching it between top and bottom teeth and worrying at a torn spot of skin along her cuticle. “I don’t know. I guess I figured they would, if he wasn’t on their land anymore, but…”

Eden sighed, half-smiling as he reached out and put a hand over hers, pulling it back down and holding tight. “Stop that, baby.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Stop eating your hand,” Eden said, with long-suffering affection. Her fingers twined into his and he gave a short squeeze. She squeezed back.

“Eden, seriously, I’m not eating my-” Naya glanced down at her thumb, the nail already torn at one corner. She smiled a little. “Oh. I guess I was. Well, anyway, we should still help him, right? We can’t just leave some kid to bleed to death alone. If we don’t go to Missoula, what do we do next?”

“I honestly… I don’t know.” He had to pull his hand back - this road was way too full of curves to be safe to drive one-handed - but the simple gestures, old habits long built between them, settled his racing heart a little. He and Anaya had been together since before he’d dropped out of his residency, even, as friends at first and then they had realized more or less at the same time that 'just friends' had started being more without either of them noticing it. The memory of their simultaneous attempts to officially ask each other out, awkward and sweet, made everything about the day seem suddenly a little easier to handle. He took a deep breath. “I’m just saying that we don’t know anything about this kid, except that he got shot and he’s running from somebody named Bill.”

“We also know that he’s a werewolf,” Anaya pointed out. When Eden didn’t respond, she frowned, narrowing her eyes at him. Eden chanced a glance sidelong so he could see it - her squinty eyes always made her adorable, even if she’d get really, really mad if he told her that.

She saw him thinking it anyway.

Her eyes narrowed even more, but the corner of her mouth twitched upwards. “Eden Yarrow, you quit that.” Anaya hissed, badly hiding the smile that kept trying to creep over her, “This is not me joking. He’s a werewolf! You saw him being a wolf! We both saw that he’s a werewolf!”

“No, we didn’t. We definitely saw a wolf. We’re agreed on that. Then, later, we saw a kid hiding under my car. Two totally different events that happened literally hours apart.” He paused, letting the silence draw out. The radio droned in and out of whatever stations it could pick up this far away from anything at all. He winced when he heard a scrap of a sermon. The sound was too familiar not to feel like ghosts haunting him down to the bone, the echo of his father’s own thundering disappointment. “We don’t, technically speaking, actually know that they’re even related events.”

Anaya didn’t respond, but the sheer weight of her answering stare burned hot against his right cheek. He could have seen it with his eyes closed. He was vaguely afraid he’d end up with some kind of burn as a result.

Eden tried to wait her out. The silence drew out. The radio played part of a hip-hop song and then went back to static.

Naya had always been better at the quiet game, though, and after only a couple of minutes he gave up trying and just sighed. “Okay, I admit it would be a really big coincidence-”

“Yeah, I’d say it would be one hell of a coincidence!” She drew the word out, gave it syllables it didn’t even have. “I mean, sure, it’s a coincidence, in the same way that Batman and Bruce Wayne are coincidentally never seen in the same room at the same time-”

“Don’t you bring Batman into this.”

“Fine. Clark Kent and Superman, then.”

“Now you’re just listing every superhero.”

“Look, if you want to play this game, I could do this for days. We’ll die of dehydration before I run out of superheroes and their secret identities.”

He didn’t know if she looked as smug as she sounded, but he knew if he looked he’d start laughing and this whole conversation would be a wash.

“... Fine. Yeah, okay, you win. I’ll accept it. Werewolves are real. Men who turn into fucking wolves on the full moon, totally real. Oh, and cherry on top of the sundae, there’s one in the back of my car right now. Pure insanity, but sure.”

“Insanity. Right. But wouldn't you-... wouldn't-" The corner of her mouth twitched upwards again. She muttered under her breath, and had to put her hands up over her face. Her shoulders shook a little.

Eden sighed. His headache was getting worse. Even his arms felt weirdly heavy. They passed a road sign advertising a rest stop coming up, and he shifted into the right lane, not bothering with a turn signal. There was nobody but them and a handful of tractor trailers and like two other cars on the road right now anyway. “What?”

Anaya shook her head. She still had her hands over her mouth. “You won’t like it.”

“Why not? Just tell me. What’s so damn funny?”

“Would you say it's insanity... or..." She said, her voice slightly cracked with suppressed laughter. “Eden. Listen. Wouldn't it more accurately be... lunacy? Get it? Like the moon? Lunacy? Werewolves and the m-”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Eden muttered. “Isn’t the guy in the relationship supposed to do the stupid dad jokes? Anaya, I am not laughing.”

“Hi, Not Laughing, I’m Anaya.” She threw her head back, the sound of her laughter bouncing around the inside of the car. A little delirious with her own exhaustion. It made Eden feel warm to hear it, even as he heard the boy in the back shift around for the first time. In the mirror, he caught sight of those unsettling light brown eyes, glinting gold with reflected sun, as the kid lifted his head enough to stare at Anaya like she’d grown four new arms.

Wolf eyes.

He had to admit it.

The kid did not have human eyes at all.

He took the exit for the rest stop, relieved to break eye contact. It had felt almost like a physical weight, demanding to be recognized even though the kid remained quiet.

He was unsurprised to see a few semi trucks already parked alongside three regular cars. A small family sat eating what was clearly a kind of picnic breakfast at a small table in the morning sunlight. Another man had a dog on a leash sniffing around the edges of a trash can.

The boy must have seen the man with the dog, too. He made a sound, low in his throat, shifting over to get a better look through the backseat window. The sound he made was like a rumble, eyes laser focused on the man and his dog, and suddenly the mess of his hair seemed almost to stick out more than it had before. He shifted as Eden’s car passed by the two, his injured leg dragging a little as he tried to kneel, hands against the glass.

Eden pulled into a parking spot at the very end of the row, as far away from anyone else as he could get, and just sat there, blinking. Then the nature of the sound seemed to suddenly make itself clear to him all at once. “What the hell? Dude, are you trying to growl? Anaya, he’s growling. Like a-”

“Wolf?” Anaya asked the question in a tone of pure and perfect innocence. When Eden glanced at her, her eyebrows were raised nearly to her hairline. “Would you say it was a wolflike sound, there, Eden? Canine, perhaps?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” He snapped, but his heart wasn’t in it. Anaya reached out to take his hand, pulling his knuckles to her lips to kiss them, one by one. He found himself relaxing until his head dropped back against the headrest. The world swam in front of him, the trees that lined the rest stop shifting in and out of focus.

God, he needed some sleep.

Anaya yawned, Eden yawned - and then, in the back, he heard the unmistakable sound of Misae yawning, too. Anaya rolled her shoulders, then shifted to open the door and step out. “I’m going to go check and see if this place has one of those coffee vending machines. You want anything?”

“Granola bar or protein bar, if they got one. Also coffee. Not that it'll do much good. Anything for you?” He looked back at the mirror again when there wasn’t an answer. “Hey. Wolfboy.”

Misae looked away from him. Eden could read his expression well enough, though. He looked… hurt. His shoulders slumped, inching up towards his chin, and he sat back down.

Anaya frowned. “I think we just insulted him.”

“Oh.” Eden cleared his throat. “Uh… Misae. Is ‘wolfboy’ bad? Not a good nickname?”

The boy’s eyes dropped down as he licked at his lips, taking in a deep breath and then slowly letting it out. His eyes cut off to one side, refusing to look back. An uncomfortable, heavy silence weighed all of them down.

Just as Eden was about to give up waiting for him to speak and tell Anaya to go on and get the food, Misae cleared his throat. His words came out halting and hesitant, speaking slowly. “It’s fine. Just water, please.”

Anaya nodded. “You got it. Any food for you? You’ve got to be hungry by now, right?”

Misae didn’t respond this time, no matter how long they waited. He just blinked.

Anaya sighed and then shrugged at Eden. “I’ll get him something,” She said, voice low, and then walked away, the car closing gently behind her. Misae watched her go, eyebrows furrowing a little in something like worry. The two men watched Anaya disappear into the rest stop building.

After a couple of minutes had passed, Misae whined. The tone was a little different than it had been before - not pain, but… concern. It was a deeply familiar sound, one Eden had heard a hundred times in his life or more.

“Oh, stop it, she’s coming right back.”

Silence from the back.

Eden caught himself, and then made a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh. Even he wasn’t sure which he meant to do. “Sorry. I know you’re not a dog.”

"Was... shifted, for too long. Can't remember which I am sometimes."

"Oh. Uh... Sorry?"

Silence.

Eden sighed. “Boy, you are not a talker, huh.”

The quiet drew out for a while longer. Eden’s mind wandered, and he found himself picking up the silver bullet, turning it in circles so he could run his fingers over the markings carved into it. They looked almost like… runes. Only not like them at all. But the idea was the same - symbols drawn in straight lines and dots, the occasional half-circle curve. Some of them had been partly obliterated by being fired into a human being - or not a human being, maybe, at least not all the way - but he could still get a sense for them by running his fingers over the curves of the thing.

It felt oddly heavy in his hands. When he tipped it to one side and then the other, something seemed to shift inside it. Was it full of buckshot? It was a miracle it hadn’t filled the kid’s body with shrapnel. If it had broken apart the way Eden had thought it would…

Well, sewing up the wound wouldn't have been enough to save him.

His lips pressed together into a line. Then, he turned to look back at Misae, who was watching Eden and the bullet, his eyes locked with unconcealed dread on the way the silver glinted in the sunlight. Eden’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Hey.”

Brown-gold eyes flicked to his, then back to the silver.

“Will you hold this for me?” Eden held the bullet out, only to watch with wide eyed as Misae flinched violently backwards, crying out in pain as his injured leg was forced into motion. He stopped only when his back was pressed against the back windshield. He had to clutch at the blankets and pull them back up to cover himself, but briefly all his scarred-up nakedness, the parade of bruises in various stages of healing all over his body, the mix of uneven welts and sharp, perfect straight lines of damaged skin were all on terrible display.

Eden looked nervously out the windows, but nobody seemed to have noticed them. Good. The idea of having to explain what Misae doing in his car was... not even scary, just something so exhausting he couldn't even stand to think about it. He dropped the bullet back into the cupholder. “Silver really freaks you out, huh?”

Misae slowly nodded, but he didn’t relax or move back close. “Bad,” He said, hoarsely. “It’s bad.”

“Silver is bad? Like, it hurts you? Like mythology?"

“It hurts.” Misae’s chin jerked down in the nod, and he crossed his arms in front of himself. His face was pale, white under the darkened freckles. “It… burns me, cuts me, doesn’t heal.”

“It doesn’t heal?” Eden thought of the wound that was still, somehow, bleeding even though he’d stitched it up and bandaged it heavily. “Like, ever?”

“If it comes out, it will. Different then.” Misae’s shoulders hunched near his ears and he looked down, hair falling forward to shadow his eyes. “Heals too slowly. Always scars. I don’t… like to see silver.”

“Oh. Uh… sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think… that it would scare you like that, but that makes sense. Hey, about earlier… do they call you that? The, uh, the people… where you’ve been living? Do they call you ‘wolfboy’? Is that why it bugged you when I said it?”

Another long pause. Speaking with Misae felt like dropping a coin into a well and having to wait way too long before you hear it splash. Eventually, those narrow shoulders shrugged. “Sometimes they call me that. Sometimes other things.”

“Other things?”

“Worse things.”

“Like what?”

Misae looked at him through shaggy bangs, lips thinning.

“Yeah… okay. You probably don’t want to just tell me the nasty bits, you barely know me.” Eden sighed, leaning over until his forehead touched the steering wheel, closing his eyes. He wondered if he’d just… doze off, if he kept them shut for too long. He started talking just to try and keep himself awake. “This has been… the weirdest day, man. I have a werewolf in my car. An injured werewolf. An injured teenage werewolf.” With his level of exhaustion, it suddenly seemed like a reasonable possibility. Sure, why wouldn’t there be werewolves? Why not? Why wouldn’t there be a werewolf with knobby elbows and long legs in the back of his stupid old car?

Maybe Bigfoot was out there, too, and they’d catch him hitchhiking. Or fucking little green aliens in flying saucers. Why the hell not? Or even vampires, maybe.

Maybe they’d find a vampire staked through the wrong part of their chest next with a thumb out for a ride and have to take them on a road trip, too. Like a fucked-up road trip movie. Maybe he’d walk into a fairy circle of mushrooms one morning and vanish, never to be seen again. Or wake up in three hundred years the same age he was when he went to sleep, or…

Maybe all of it was real, legends and myth. Maybe he didn’t notice because he’d never tried to read between the lines of reality before.

If he was having thoughts like that, he desperately needed sleep. He had to force down a half-hysterical giggle and make himself focus on his next train of thought. It was getting more difficult to think at all. “The guy who shot you. The one we saw in the woods. Who is that?”

Pause. “Austin.”

“... Is Austin one of the people… you live with?”

“Sort of.”

“What… what does ‘sort of’ mean?” God, it was like pulling teeth that just kept growing deeper roots every time he asked a question, fighting harder to give him nothing. Kid didn’t exactly make himself easy to rescue, now did he?

No. That wasn’t fair. He’d gotten right into the car, he’d let Eden and Anaya drive him away without protest. He just… didn’t seem to find it easy to speak.

“Austin lives in the house.”

“Where do you live?”

Silence again, other than the soft sound of Misae breathing.

Did he not want to answer? Or did he not know what Eden was asking, not pick up on it? Maybe he thought Eden was making fun of him somehow. Eden frowned, trying to think, to reword the question. “I’m asking seriously. Did you not live in the house? Where did you sleep? Come on. Talk to me, I’m trying to understand.”

Misae shrugged again. “Outside.”

That seemed to be all Misae was willing to give him.

Eden listened as the boy behind him just laid back down against the back of the car, hissing through his teeth at the pain in his stitched-up leg. Eden glanced back in time to see him cover himself until even his hair vanished beneath the layers of quilted cotton blankets. Just an unmoving lump with a red splotch near the bottom.

The boy was literally hiding from having to continue the conversation.

“Okay, guess we’re done with that, then,” Eden muttered, rubbing his hands over his face. His stubble was scratchy under his palms along his jaw, and the sensation sent a warmth through him. Felt pretty damn good, even though he knew it would drive him crazy if he didn’t get a chance to shave in the next couple of days.

He decided, glutton for punishment that he was, to try one more time. “Are these people going to keep looking for you, even though we got you off their land?” After a long pause, he let his frustration bleed into his tone, and stopped trying to gentle it. “Just fucking answer me, okay, man? Are the people who shot you going to keep looking for you now?”

Misae’s muffled voice came, barely audible from under the blankets. “Yes.”

“What happens if they find you?”

Silence.

“God damn it, kid-”

“Containment!” Misae’s voice trembled, now, enough for Eden to hear it. The word seemed forced from him against his will, spat out like poison. He wondered suddenly if he wasn’t hiding from the conversation itself, but trying to hide his tears from view. Ashamed or even afraid of his own emotions. “Quarantine.”

A pit opened somewhere between Eden’s chest and his stomach. He shivered, despite the warmth of the sun shining on him through the window. Goosebumps raised on his arms until he rubbed at them with one hand. “What?”

He glanced over at the rest stop building and saw Anaya through the glass doors. She stood off to one side at the vending machines, choosing something, looking down at her phone while she waited.

“Been in quarantine so he could fix us. But… but I left.” Misae hitched in an uneven breath, a whine at the edge of his exhale. Twisting canine noise into human speech. “Left.”

“Why did you leave?”

Misae looked to the side, his hopelessness a heavy weight in the car, pressing the both of them down. “Bill decided no one would ever get better. Can’t be fixed.”

“What does that mean? ‘Getting better?’”

“Not… becoming. We might still hurt people. Make them sick, too."

“... You hurt people?”

“I… I didn’t mean to…” Misae licked at his lips again, looking away and then back, and Eden had trouble with the combination of a very human body echoing very canine traits over and over again.

“So you were… kept in quarantine to keep you from hurting people?”

"From making them sick."

"... oh."

Eden felt like the next pause between sentences like a hammer bashing at his brain. His heart beat too hard. He looked up and saw Anaya heading back their way, a coffee in each hand, somehow balancing a water bottle between her arm and her side and with protein bars stuffed in her pockets. He swallowed, feeling a surreal and completely pointless urge to tell her to stay away. Get out, run, get help.

To what? Save him from the exhausted, frightened, injured boy in the back who clearly couldn’t have hurt a fly in his current state? The thought was ridiculous. Misae was the epitome of fucking harmless.

Bill, whoever he was, was clearly a liar.

Then again… Eden thought of the wolf racing in the moonlight, stumbling through their campsite.

In the end, Misae was the first one to speak again. He just said, voice flat, “Silver was supposed to fix us. Make us safe. But Bill said it wasn’t enough. It’s… it’s like rabies.”

“What’s like rabies?”

"The bite."

Eden cleared his throat. “Okay, so… that’s why you’re on your own? Because of what this Bill guy said about it not being treatable? So you ran away?"

Misae’s throat moved, adam’s apple shifting up and down. His lips twisted into something like a snarl before he closed his eyes tightly. He pulled one knee to his chest, the injured leg still stuck out straight, and closed his arms around it, hiding most of his face. His shoulders shook, and the tears in his voice couldn’t be hidden no matter how soft and hoarse he kept his words.

“I thought I did a good enough job pretending."

A pause.

“I didn’t know Austin would see me when I climbed out of it.”

“Out of what?”

“... The hole.”

Eden stared sightlessly ahead, feeling somehow like it would be easier for Misae if he wasn't looking. His heart beat hard and ice pushed through his veins. "The hole?"

"We were all buried together. I had to wait. I was... I was the only one who climbed out of the... it was a g-grave..." Misae began to cry, sobs shaking thin shoulders, hoarse rasping sobs that filled the whole space inside the little car.

Anaya returned, balancing coffee and water and granola bars stuffed into her pockets. She opened the car door and then froze, staring. Her eyes went from Misae to Eden. "What-... what happened while I was gone?"

Eden felt like his own eyes were too wide, ringed in white, when he met her gaze.

"We, uh." He cleared his throat. "Get in. You were right. Let's stop to sleep in Missoula."

@finder-of-rings @burtlederp @scoundrelwithboba @shrimpwritings

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paingoes · 1 month ago

Text

Rubies - Trial III

the prosecution makes its argument

(Content: living weapon whumpee, past trauma, referenced child abuse, referenced caning, past emotional abuse, war, guilt, parental death mention, child death mention, emotional whump, crying, angst, comfort)

In the Emperor’s quarters, the dead far outnumbered the living. Delta knelt upon the bearskin run and ran his fingers through its thick white fur. He wanted to reach for the mouth of it, to feel the teeth, but he dared not move without permission. The fresh cane marks along his calves made sure of that.

“Here, boy.”

The Emperor had taken to calling him boy, which he found strange and overfamiliar. To his handlers, he had always been One-Oh-Seven. More and more, it has simply been Delta. There was no need for numeration when there were no others.

He rose up off of the carpet, taking silent steps until he stood in front of the weary form of the old man.

The doctor was nowhere to be seen. For this, he was grateful.

A hand heavy with time and with rings pressed against his forehead. Did he look sick? He didn’t mean to. The Emperor would find no fever there, at any rate. Delta ran cold.

“Are the stars all in alignment tonight, poppet?” He withdrew his hand. “Will today be a good day?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

There was no gap in between their words. There was no hesitation. He would be punished for lying just as quickly as for failing, so he was careful not to lie. Of course today would be a good day.

Delta was excellent.

But the Emperor still searched him. It was not illness he had sensed.

“Is everything alright?”

The concern in his voice only made the sting worse. Delta looked down in shame.

It was sullenness. That was all. He was cold all over, soaked with shame. It was bad, he knew. He was supposed to take all punishment without complaint, but Delta so seldom needed correction. It hurt all the more when it did come. He couldn’t get the chill of it to leave him. He’d been torn into.

Unfit, the doctor had said. Unworthy of the privilege. Disgraceful.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Delta responded, the shame of it deepening. He hadn’t meant to sulk about it. He was only proving their point.

There was nothing wrong with his ability to perform, which is all the Emperor had really been asking. A little emotional hurt had never impacted his powers before — thank god for that. Today would be no exception.

With that, the Emperor rose up. Delta followed a half-step behind him. He was getting on in age. It was never hard to keep up.

They walked all the way past the war room, out onto the deck of the ship. The air was thin in the upper atmosphere, but it was getting more bearable upon the descent. There were a collection of advisors and generals gathered about by the railing. Delta kept his head bowed respectfully, careful not to look them dead on. With the Emperor there, he knew they wouldn’t dare touch him. But it was a deeply ingrained habit and one he saw no reason to break.

There was a pressure at his shoulder. It was meant to be reassuring, but it only scared him worse. He could see the target below. Its perimeter was painted in a pale orange color.

They wanted showy this time.

Space was made around him as they clicked the collar off of his neck. He closed his eyes. The light was painful. All the hearts beating so close were distracting.

Disgraceful. He felt the sting of fear in his chest and prickling at his eyes. It was going to hurt. He was getting frigid in a way he hadn’t before. He didn’t want to be hurt.

He zeroed in on the target anyway, visualizing its delimitation among the pale. He wished they’d given him something to hold onto. All he had now were his own hands and his nails cutting indents into the palms. Showy. The world snapped as the target was turned to dust.

The collar clicked back on. Blood was already pooling in his throat and in his sinuses. The migraine aura descended. He swayed, but not fall. The Emperor’s hand steadied him there. It moved calming circles into his back. He heard the applause, but to him it sounded miles away.

“Incredible.” The Emperor had whispered into his ear. “You were wonderful.”

And like that, he was glowing. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t supposed to feel a thing, but the warmth of the praise made itself at home in him. It was the only time he let himself feel anything close to pride — and he could have lived in its light. It was almost worth it. He felt sick enough to die and it was almost worth it.

~~~~~~

Silas placed the blank sheet of paper down onto the desk and slid it towards him. His expression was grim.

“I want you to write down every target you can remember hitting. Names and dates. It doesn’t have to be exact.”

The room was small and dark, not much bigger than a broom closet. Maryam sat beside him at the table. He had a legal right to keep her there — and thought he had not asked her to, she volunteered to accompany him.

Delta rocked his leg a little as he felt at the rough graphite of the pencil.

He took the order for what it was. He had a good sense for it. There were some things he struggled to remember, but in general, his memory was better than most. He had been allowed no distractions. He’d had no choice but to focus in.

He started with the earlier days of his imperial career — the battleship he’d crushed on the water, the first show of strength before the purchase was made. And then there was all that came after. He was never told until the day of what he would be after, but he remembered them all the same.

Marisol

Pyrha

Holliday

Basalt

Clover

Killian

Versus

He wrote mechanically, appending the dates as best as he could. He’d already made up this list in his mind several times. He’d have offered it to Levon if things had gone differently, but as it stood, he’d never been given the chance.

Regina

Ursa

Deidra

Anatol

Timber

Jocobe

Weissan

He soon ran out of space on the page. He write in a smaller script around the margins.

“That’s enough,” Maryam said, eyeing the prosecutor nervously. Delta kept writing.

“You can stop now,” Silas agreed, reaching to take the paper back.

“I’m not done,” Delta snapped.

He recoiled just as soon as he’d said it. He didn’t know where he’d gotten the nerve to speak like that, to talk back at all, and especially not to them. He dropped the pencil and drew back into the chair, fully expecting to get smacked in the mouth, bare minimum.

The hit didn’t come. Silas took the paper and examined it without much reaction. It was a long list — and that was only with the Emperor. He hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet.

“Can I ask you something? For my own curiosity?” Silas said.

Delta looked up at him.

“About how far away from the target are you when activated?”

“…A mile, sir.” Delta tapped at the chair.

He nodded. “What’s the closest you’ve ever been to someone you’ve killed?”

He heard Maryam scoff beside him, but he thought it was a fair question, if an abrupt one. He had to think about it for a second. As the answer came to him, he felt the shock of ocean water, stealing just as much breath from him as it had the first time.

He held his hands up to demonstrate, having no other way to quantify the distance. Right up against his body. He’d garroted him, wrapped the chains around his neck and held him there. The water had done the rest. He hadn’t even used his powers.

“Daniel Martino,” he answered quietly, “The same night I got picked up.”

It was his most recent kill — and if Levon’s word was anything to believe in, it would be the last.

He hadn’t told anyone about it until now.

“Your handler?” Silas asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Silas and Maryam exchanged a look he could not read.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t fault you for that.” Silas folded the paper into his pocket.

The clemency caught him off guard. Delta looked down, embarrassed all the same.

The shades were drawn in the conference room. It was a stormy day outside — Delta could imagine how the static might’ve felt on his skin had he been out there. For now, all he could do was imagine it.

“Delta,” the prosecutor drew his attention back, “I asked you a question.”

Silas was sharper with him when there was a crowd. He was familiar with this tactic. It didn’t register to him as a surprise, only as a kind of dull pain.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Delta said weakly, but sincerely. “…Could you repeat it, please?”

He usually would not have been bold enough to make requests, but then he usually wouldn’t have zoned out in the first place.

“Were the accounts of lateral violence within the Institute true?” He asked, then clarified: “Were the students there encouraged to hurt one another?”

“Yes, sir.” Delta closed his eyes. He did not need to guess the next question.

“Did you ever use your powers to injure the other students?”

Not because he wanted to. He didn’t know if he was allowed to answer with that. It had been a yes-or-no question — and his handlers had gotten mad whenever he tried to explain himself around it. He didn’t know if the same rules would apply here.

“Yes, sir.”

He caught the concerned looks of the others at the conference table. The council members had shown him no scorn so far, in spite of everything. He dreaded losing it. But in his mind, it was an inevitability. He couldn’t make himself look back.

“Did you ever kill any of them?”

It wasn’t the same as injuring. The administration had loved to use him as a threat long before he was in the imperial service. He’d always be the first they brought out they sent to scare the others into submission. After the first few times — cracked ribs, broken arms, and painful shocks — any actual violence wasn’t needed. The threat alone was enough.

That wasn’t the same as killing. While the punishment had been painful, the kills were quick. Those were for safety alone. Nobody ever died as a punishment. They died because they were about to kill everyone else.

It’d been a yes-or-no question. The answer was yes, obviously.

“Yes, sir.”

He kept his eyes down. Kitty shifted a bit to his left. He didn’t want to see the way her face changed when she found out.

Silas ended his line of questioning. The lights dimmed further as the video began to play.

PYRHA 08

SOL 07

The caption showed against the grainy white backdrop. He could see the town in his mind before it was shown on the screen. It was before the disaster. Jade was pushed up into the edges of the home. All their streets were still cobblestone. From above, as he had seen it, the town looked to be built into a crescent moon shape. The blue tops of buildings stood out against the pale sand.

“…There was this burning, endless light…”

The voiceover played over still frames of the cloud. The images clipped together in animation. He saw the tip of the airship approaching the edge of the sky.

Whoever had produced the documentary had no knowledge of the cause. How could they? It was a superweapon, they were sure, but how could they have known what?

All they could do was to quantify it. The ground temperature had reached the same peak as the sun. The duration lasted ten to fifteen seconds — 12.945 seconds, Delta corrected in his mind. There’d been no warning. 2,031 people had died. About five hundred families.

The focus was the math — and more than that, the footage. Few of his attacks had ever been so well documented. But almost as an aside, they had spoken to some of the eye witnesses.

A girl with chestnut brown hair smiled sadly into the camera as she held up the picture. The image quality changed again as a video from inside her house began to play. He could not tell if she was the infant or the child holding onto it inside the cedar living room. The camera shifted angles to capture their mother grinning on the couch, clapping along to the silent song.

There was some primordial ache in him that would not sleep. It’d always burned too hot. After the first few times, he’d learned not to touch it.

He felt it burning now, pressed up against his skin with no escape.

“And my friends always made fun of me for being such a townie, because I had to ride the bus two hours just to get to school,” the girl chirped softly, “And I remember that morning, my mom telling me not to stay too long after classes. She wanted me to come straight home that day because-“

Her voice broke.

“Because we were going to go out as a family.”

The clip cut away to the moment the sky tore open.

Delta stood up before he knew what he was doing. He stumbled blindly away from the table, pushing out into the hall.

He’d taken her parents from her. Ripped her away from them, the same way he’d been ripped away from his own. The loss cut through him sharper than he could ever remember.

He was crying. He couldn’t stop it. The sorrow and fear enveloped him in equal measures. He’d walked out. He hadn’t been dismissed, he’d never walked out like that in all his life. But he couldn’t stand to hear anymore. He didn’t want them to see him cry.

He wanted his mom. It was silly. He didn’t even know what she looked like. She clearly hadn’t wanted him.

“Delta?” Levon called after him. He stopped dead. He was recall trained — he wouldn’t dare move farther. But he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. He didn’t think he could.

He sank to the floor instead. He tried to hide his tears, but his body shook from the effort. He was still good about being quiet when he was hurt. He was trying very hard to be good about it.

A soft sob escaped him anyway. Levon bent down onto the floor beside him.

“That was too far. I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.” Levon placed one hand lightly onto his shoulderblade. His thumb worked over the knots that had formed there, so bound up and painful.

“I’m sorry,” Delta said. It was always the first thing to come out of his mouth these days, no matter how much they tried to correct it.

He remembered how young he was at the time. He remembered how proud he’d been.

“I didn’t know,” Delta said through tears, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know, baby,” Levon’s voice got quiet. It didn’t echo. No one else could have heard. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”

Then, even quieter, the admission: “It’s not your fault.”

Delta sobbed into his sleeve, leaning over so that his face almost touched the ground. He wished he could stop it. It was taking everything out of him.

He felt a gentle tug at his sleeve. It was an invitation. He accepted it before he could stop himself, too desperate for any semblance of comfort. Levon pulled him into the hug. His cries grew muffled as he hid his face in the fabric of the shirt.

“I’m so sorry, baby.” Levon said, the pain audible in his voice. He carded his hands through the boy’s hair, doing all he could to soothe him.

“I didn’t mean to,” came the soft whine in response.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @floral-comet-whump @littlebookworm69

@lordcatwich @human-123-person @paperprinxe @whomeidontknowthem @chiswhumpcorner

@bacillusinfection @dietofwormsofficial @ichortwine @whump-queen @lumpywhump

@jumpywhumpywriter

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hold-him-down · 6 months ago

Text

Hold Him Down (pt. 1)

TW: Med Whump, Gratuitous Med Whump, Medical Restraints, Chemical Restraints, Noncon Touch, Referenced Noncon, Parker Destin, Institutionalized Slavery, Noncon Drugging, Conditioning, Referenced Food/Water Restriction, Referenced/Described STI testing, Referenced/Described Shock Collar, Whumper POV, literally over 4k words wtf, get leo a pet fish and warm hug when.

Notes: This is one of those things that I'm, as usual, not sure needs to or should exist, but I spent so much time writing it that I couldn't just NOT post it, sooo here it is. Parts 4-6 coming eventually. Takes place in the 12-ish hour span after Leo is prematurely returned from our best guy, Parker Destin. This may be one that I revisit and try to refine down the line.

✥ ✥ ✥

From behind a two-way mirror, Handler Otto Gray and an unfamiliar intake handler stand, arms crossed over their chests. They watch Leo quietly, relieved that, at least for now, the dust has settled.

His eyes finally closed, a few hours earlier, following a massive fight that ended in a sizable dose of Lorazepam. Even drugged, it took what felt like ages for him to settle down, and even longer for his body to finally go limp. Hours later, the salty tear-streaks are still visible on his cheeks.

The doctor asked them to wait on cleaning him up; in spite of the second handler’s objections, in spite of the apparently innate desire to put this unconscious boy in his place, the handler turned on his heels and left in a huff. Otto hesitated, sparing a quick glance at Leo. He wondered, briefly, how he had managed to fail so spectacularly, before dismissing the thought all together. Against his better judgment, he squeezed Leo’s hand briefly, then he checked to make sure the restraints were appropriately secured and exited. Today was sure to be a long day, sure to be even longer if they could not get a handle on whatever panic-induced psychosis Leo was clearly grappling with.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, shift change happened. The handler who had spent the evening scowling at Leo’s lifeless form clocked out, muttering a, “Good luck,” to his replacement. Otto stayed, though, with a quick glance at handler Nick Ford, according to his name tag, and a muttered greeting. Hopefully, he thinks, this one is better suited for this type of work than the last. The doctor comes up behind them, and the three stand in silence for a moment.

“He’s asleep?” the doctor asks, which is a question that could ordinarily be answered with a quick glance through a chart, but Leo has a notoriously unpredictable response to sedatives and that, if nothing else, has been noted numerously in his file.

Otto nods, his jaw locked. “I think so.”

Leo’s wrists are red, raw where each strap hugs them, but for the last few hours, they have been still. Mostly.

“For how long?” the doctor asks, thumbing through the notes from the night before. A colorful account of the events that led to this moment, which, although maybe not immediately helpful, might lend insight into the inner workings of Leo Evans.

“A couple hours,” Handler Ford supplies, and Otto is struck suddenly with a potent distaste for how this night has played out.

It’s not out of the ordinary, exactly, for a worker to require this level of support after a contract. He hoped, though, maybe naively, that Leo was more resilient than this.

He’s been drugged out of his mind, and as hard as he fought it, the drugs eventually dragged him under. To Otto’s understanding, it was only after several hours of trying to calm him down using other methods that he was eventually medicated, and, to Otto’s understanding, the doctor intends now to keep him drugged until he’s under control. He idly wonders if there’s a chance at modifying those plans. Leo is tough, sometimes damn near impossible to work with, but they had found a kind of balance when Otto was his handler. And he thinks, now, he can perhaps spare everyone some heartache if he can have a go at his former trainee.

Otto peers in closer to the window as Leo gasps, his wrists pulling once, lightly, at the straps.

“Alright,” the doctor says, at the same time that Leo’s eyes crack open. As Handler Ford reviews the notes with the Doctor, Otto studies Leo. He hadn’t been an easy trainee. He had been downright defiant at times, resistant to every standard training tool the DLS employed. Otto had been called in in his second month, after his primary handler was fired for, more or less, losing his patience with Leo one time too many, with Leo landing in the ICU. Even after that, success came in short, nearly unpredictable bursts.

When Leo had finally been cleared to take his first contract, that would usually have been the end of Otto’s time with him. But, at least in some of his most challenging successes, he liked to keep an eye on them, if not just to see how they did. He would tell you he did this to improve his own methods, and to help him understand the longer term implications of his work. That wouldn't be the whole truth, though.

Leo was one of the select few that Otto found himself keeping an eye on. He had gotten through his first contract easily, and Otto recalled the feeling of immense relief as he read through Ms. Smith’s post-contract interview. Leo had been put in a short term holding site and almost immediately secured his second contract. That one wasn’t set to terminate for three months still, so when Otto got the notification that Leo’s file was being updated last night, he called in some favors with the intake department.

He stands here now, mostly frustrated, a little bit confused, and perhaps, maybe slightly sympathetic. Simmering beneath all that is anger, misplaced but a constant undertone that, he worries, may drive some of his decisions today. He buries it as deeply as he can. It serves neither him nor Leo.

Leo blinks hard toward the ceiling, but seems to clock his circumstances quickly. His head turns toward the mirror and for a moment, Otto thinks Leo can see him, right through him, right into the place Leo used to occasionally access and attempt to exploit.

Otto stares at his eyes, red, heavy, and unfocused, and wills Leo to remain calm. Leo swallows, and pulls again against the restraints.

Stop, Otto silently commands. But he doesn’t. Of course, he wouldn’t.

“What are the odds he’ll take it on his own?” Otto hears from next to him.

“What?” Otto responds, shifting his focus.

“The meds?” Handler Ford says as he holds up a small cup of pills in one hand, a syringe filled with an off-white liquid in the other.

“Oh,” Otto responds. The odds, he thinks, are nonexistent. The good news is this isn’t explicitly his problem anymore.

“Any pointers?” Handler Ford asks then. At Otto’s look, he says, “You worked with him, right?”

Otto nods, but doesn’t offer any pointer. Handler Ford stares at him intently, so, out of some misplaced desire to prove that he is not, in fact, completely incompetent with his trainees, he says, “A long time ago. I did his initial training after his first handler got canned.”

“What for?” Ford asks. He’s stalling, Otto thinks.

“Assault,” Otto supplies. He inclines his head toward the room, and turns away from Handler Ford, re-orienting himself toward the window.

“Wish me luck?”

“Good Luck,” Otto says, not unkindly, as the handler disappears behind the door. Moments later, he is in Leo’s room.

Leo’s demeanor immediately shifts, from alarmed and fighting to gain function to panicked, but he stills, he swallows, he forces his eyes on the handler, and takes a breath. Good boy, Otto thinks.

He’s whispering something, but Otto can’t make out the words. He thinks he’s heard Parker’s name, and Handler Ford shakes his head.

Leo nods, then, and takes one of those deep, shuddering breaths that usually mean he’s on the edge of some big feelings. Otto, once more, leans closer to the window.

Handler Ford begins listing out the things he needs Leo to do this morning, and Leo’s brow creases as he takes it in, nodding after each item, but seemingly oblivious to the actual requests.

Inside the observation room, the doctor joins Otto.

“Do you know what happened?” Otto asks the doctor. Otto, immediately realizing he could be asking any number of things, clarifies, “That led to this. He didn’t have an issue after his first contract.”

“Sometimes they get freaked out after spending some time with a particularly cozy buyer,” he replies.

Otto nods.

In the room, Handler Ford’s hand is on Leo’s neck, pressing under the collar. Leo stays still, but Otto can see the fear in his eyes, behind layers and layers of grief. It’s odd, seeing him like this.

“You didn’t last too long, did you?” Handler Ford is saying, dripping condescension, as Leo swallows, holding in a fresh wave of tears.

✥ ✥ ✥

“It’s nothing personal, Leo.” Parker’s driver waits for Leo just beyond the threshold. In his hand, Parker holds out a DLS-issued bag.

Leo nods.

Parker grabs his face between his hands and presses his lips to Leo’s forehead. “You have to understand I didn’t plan for this,” he’s saying, but Leo’s ears are ringing. “I would have waited to take on a worker if I had any inclination I would be called away.” His words are kind, Leo thinks, but there’s almost a note of condescension under them.

Leo feels a sort of emptiness spreading throughout him, a cold void that precedes what he could only describe as terror. For what’s next. For losing this thing, that he isn’t sure he should want, but he wants, so desperately. He clings to it.

“Parker, I– I can,” Leo starts, taking a step back. He can, what? fix this? do better? be better? “Please don’t do this…”

Parker’s thumbs glide across Leo’s cheeks.

“I thought they beat that out of you,” Parker says, his lips pulled into a half-smile. Leo falters, the words he has prepared are completely knocked out of him.

“I– I’m sorry,” is all he can now formulate. He can feel his circumstances changing as every second passes. He’s going to be sick. The feeling of bile rising wars against the knowledge that if he is sick at this moment, it will be unforgivable.

Parker’s hands drift down to Leo’s shoulders and he pulls him into a half-hug, pressing his forehead against Leo’s.

“Don’t worry about it,” Parker says. He wants to say more, Leo thinks.

Instead, Parker uses the grip he has on Leo’s shoulder to push him away and rakes his eyes slowly over Leo, from his head to his toes. He smiles and grabs the collar of Leo’s shirt, poking out from under a deep blue sweater. It’s Parker’s favorite.

He inclines his head briefly toward the door and Leo counts every breath he takes.

“They said not to send your books and clothes and things,” Parker explains as he pulls open the front door. “It’ll just go to waste. I can donate it, if you’d like?”

And Leo, in that moment, hesitates. Can he ask Parker to keep it, for when he gets back from his trip? Maybe, he thinks. Maybe Parker hasn’t considered that Leo could stay in the house and look after it, and he doesn’t need to send him away.

And then it occurs to Leo that maybe Parker is using this time to help figure out the gaps in his training, because they’ve been butting heads lately, and if that’s the case, he wants to tell Parker that he will take this time seriously, and will be better suited to be what Parker needs him to be when he returns.

Leo opens his mouth to say this, to say any of it, even just to tell Parker that he will try harder when he gets back from his trip.

But the panic wraps itself around Leo’s throat, and Leo says nothing.

✥ ✥ ✥

“Are you ready to behave?” The words distort around the edges and Leo blinks hard, willing himself to focus.

This handler, Leo thinks, is unfamiliar to him. There is a fuzziness to both his vision and his thoughts, compounded by blurry memories of the night before. The handler is standing just outside of his line of sight, offering terse reprimands each time he fails to respond. He is trying, though. He wants to tell them he’s trying, but his tongue feels too thick and his voice won’t work.

There’s an added danger that Leo tries not to acknowledge, even silently. They’ve put a training collar on him, but they haven’t gone so far as to shock the world into focus. Even if his limbs didn’t weigh a thousand pounds, he would not be able to lift them. Thick canvas straps wound tightly around each wrist and ankle keep him in place, and Leo blinks at the unexpected wave of terror: these people can and will hurt him with no regard for the fact that he is wholly unable to protect himself.

The drugs help him accept these facts, but do not help him to forget them.

Memories of the night before claw their way to the surface. Of the sound of his own screaming, of gloved hands pinning him down, of his clothing being pulled off of his body. Of Parker's favorite sweater, which he held tightly to his chest, as it was ripped from his arms. He flinches at the memory of himself, just [some?] hours earlier, as he begged them to let him keep it, as a needle digs its way deep into his thigh. The darkness was quick to swallow him up after that.

And then there are other memories, too, from later in the night. Distorted flashes of the handlers coming to visit him, of cold hands pulling off the thin blanket that had been draped over him. He wondered if the drugs might ease the pain. When they didn’t, he allowed himself a moment of relief in the hope that this might all just be written off as a drug-induced nightmare in the light of day.

And now, the drugs fading, and the light of day doing nothing to erase ache deep inside of him, he swallows, blinking slowly, and longs only for the reprieve that unconsciousness may bring. That maybe they will drug him again, before they touch him again. His stomach turns over, and he draws his focus to the lights on the ceiling.

“He’s lost some weight,” he hears the doctor say, but they aren’t speaking to him, so he closes his eyes and taps each finger on the pad beneath him, just to see if he can feel them all.

“His buyer kept him hungry,” the handler replies. He can, he thinks, feel them all. “My understanding is he kept him on a pretty strict eating plan.”

Leo recoils, hearing Parker’s voice in his head. The DLS has asked that you start out on a kind of strict meal plan for a little bit. He blinks back tears at the unwelcome memories. Of Parker, event after event, selecting everything he ate, everything he touched. Of the imperceptible nod Parker would give him when he reached for something at the dinner table. Or the terse shake of his head when he moved to something unacceptable.

Leo wants to tell these men that Parker didn’t keep him hungry. That he was just enacting the plan he had been given.

“I’ll need a copy of it,” the doctor responds, and Leo squeezes his eyes shut, forcing his mind blank.

“It’s in his file,” the handler says. Leo’s ears ring.

“Good.” The doctor presses his hands fingers into the back of Leo’s neck, the collar momentarily tightening as the fingers explore under it. “He’s dehydrated,” he says, and Leo can picture the handler typing his notes. “Are you going to tell me the buyer restricted his water intake too?”

From somewhere far away, the handler laughs, and Leo’s expression tightens, momentarily stunned by the mockery.

“It’s alright,” he thinks he hears, but the voices are so far away now. He doesn’t know that he’s crying until he feels a thumb wiping at his cheek, and Leo sucks in a breath. “You’re alright.”

The world stands still for what could be seconds or minutes or longer. When the doctor’s hand finally migrates upward, and a light is shined into each of Leo’s eyes, he is momentarily blinded, but immediately aware that he has lost time.

The doctor’s fingers, inches from his face, snap once. “Hi, Leo,” he says simply. And then, “I’m Dr. Grant. Are you with me?”

Leo swallows, which hurts, and other memories slide to the surface of the night before. He tries to nod. The movement makes his head pound. “Yes,” he whispers, but based on the doctor’s– what was his name?– grimace, he doesn’t think it came out right.

The doctor sighs and seemingly gives up on Leo’s active participation, instead pulling the blanket down to Leo’s waist and putting a stethoscope to Leo’s chest. It’s nothing, Leo thinks, but it’s never just this. He closes his eyes again and begins counting in his head. Every so often, he forgets where he left off, and he starts over.

The doctor explains what he’s doing as he works, and Leo wonders idly if it’s for his benefit or for some other reason. To pass the time, and maybe to distract himself, Leo imagines a new doctor in the adjacent observation room, learning this trade. He wonders if it’s a good doctor or a bad doctor, and opens his eyes just enough to glance toward the mirror, to see if he can spot him back there. There are no good doctors here, he decides, and starts counting again.

The doctor looks at Leo’s wrists and describes them to the handler, who writes it all down. He examines Leo’s arms and his shoulders and his chest and his stomach as he searches for signs that Parker hurt him beyond what would be considered reasonable, which he didn’t, Leo wants to say, and that Parker will come back for him after his trip, and that he needs to be ready to go home. Then he starts counting again, because the idea of telling this man that Parker will come back for him will be met with laughter, and Leo doesn’t know if he can handle it. He’s pretty sure he can’t.

Fingers prod at Leo’s stomach and he can’t suppress the accompanying flinch, and as the drugs start to wear thin, he feels himself less and less able to accept what is being done to him.

“Alright, Leo,” the doctor says, and Leo opens his eyes and is met with mostly, he thinks, concern.

“I’ll be back.” The doctor shoots the handler a look, and Leo wants to close his eyes again, but as the handler approaches, Leo knows, acutely, that it’s a bad idea.

“Are you going to cause a scene?” the handler asks, before lifting the blanket from Leo’s lap. Leo shrinks back, an instant passing in which his entire body goes rigid, but shakes his head ‘no.’ He hopes it’s enough.

He holds his breath, waiting for it to be over, or, waiting for it to start, and feels the handler’s eyes sliding down his body.

He thinks he might be shaking, but he isn’t sure.

The doctor returns a moment later, and after a quick assessment of how things have evolved, issues a quick but gentle, “It’s alright.” It’s not, though, and Leo locks his jaw to keep from crying. He wants to ask if he can close his eyes again. Sometimes they would let him, when things were about to get really bad, in initial training. Sometimes, if he asked clearly, and if he caught them on a good day, they would let him.

“No wonder he was returned,” the handler says, leaning back against the wall.

“Can I close my eyes?” he whispers then, before he can catch the humor in the handler’s expression. The doctor looks at him once, and nods. Leo doesn’t hesitate to clamp his eyes shut, unwilling to chance opening them at all, maybe ever, and instead continues counting in his head.

“Continue working on your empathy,” the doctor says evenly, but Leo is pretty sure he isn’t speaking to him so he works on breathing and counting and nothing else.

He tries to block out the words. This is another moment in training, and it too will end eventually.

“They put him through hell in training. He has a right to be mistrustful.” And then, to Leo, he says, “I’m going to give you something to help balance you out,” and his touch disappears. “Just hang tight, Leo.”

Without warning, a hand clamps around his neck, pinning him in place. His eyes fly open, his arms pull instinctively against the restraints, as the tip of a syringe is pushed past his teeth and to the back of his throat.

He gags, his head knocking back against the thin pillow, but the handler’s grip is merciless, and in the next instant, a thick, bitter liquid is sliding down his throat. Tears well in his eyes, and he would swear the culprit was simply the bitterness of the medicine.

It’s mistaken for something else, though, and the handler releases him as the doctor runs a hand through his hair and says, “You’re alright.”

Leo’s shaking harder now, and his fingers grip into the pad he lays on and he urges himself to still. His chest aches as he tries to catch his breath, the taste of the medicine still heavy on his tongue. But still, almost immediately, he can feel his body lightening, the tension pulling back until the shaking eases, and the doctor nods, and approaches. Leo can’t feel the fear he knows he should feel.

He can feel nothing.

Even with the memories of the night before, even with the doctor and the handler so close to him, he can breathe again.

Still, Leo can’t contain the subconscious jerk of his body as a flash of sharp pain shoots through him. The doctor issues an apology, along with a soft, “almost done,” and turns the swab, over and over, as Leo’s legs fight against the hands that hold them in place. He tries to find a place in his mind to retreat into, but he hasn’t been there in months, if not longer, and in that moment, it offers no reprieve. He thinks he cries out, locking his teeth and pressing his head back into the pillow as hard as he can to distract himself from what goes on lower. When the doctor is finished, he wipes Leo down and drapes the blanket over his lap.

What he doesn’t say is ‘Good, Leo,’ because they would both know it to be untrue.

Still, in the next breath, the restraints are being unbuckled, and Leo is lifted at his shoulders until he is sitting, and his wrists are being examined, and there is a hand rubbing his back. He blinks slowly, willing the room back into focus, and he can hear voices but he isn’t able to follow their conversation.

“It doesn’t need to be this hard,” he thinks the handler is saying, and even though his head is hung low and his shoulders are scrunched to make him as small as possible, in his peripherals he can see the doctor shooting the handler a sharp look. “What?” he bites back. “It’s true.”

“Alright, Leo,” the doctor says then, ignoring the handler entirely. Leo keeps his eyes locked on the ground and he takes the blanket in a white-knuckled grip.

The doctor lets him catch his breath, rubbing his back every few seconds. Leo thinks he’s using it to get a read on his heart rate, but he doesn’t care just then. The doctor explains what’s next, and moves to ease Leo onto his side. Leo, for his part, cooperates, lowering himself slowly, watching as his fingers shake. He wraps his arms so tightly around his stomach he think he might leave bruises, but when the doctor touches him, he doesn’t flinch.

“There’s some bruising,” the doctor says neutrally, but Leo can’t look at the handler to see if he types it. It could be from the handlers, or it could be from Parker’s friends the night before. Leo chokes on his next breath, and in spite of the drugs, he can feel the panic rising.

“Leo?” the doctor says. “Are you doing alright?”

The handler takes a step forward.

“I don’t consent to this,” Leo whispers, so softly he isn’t sure anyone hears him. The look the handler levels on him is scathing. “I–I kn…know it doesn’t… I know it doesn’t matter.” His voice is soft, slurred around the edges, but clear enough. “But I… I j-just– I want to make sure you know.”

The doctor says nothing, and the handler frowns. Leo wants to ask him to type it into his chart, but the doctor moves behind him, and Leo’s vision is suddenly and immediately blurred by his tears.

By the time they finish, by the time the doctor drapes the blanket over his hips, letting his hand rest on Leo’s head briefly before retreating, Leo’s body is wracked with sobs. They leave him to calm himself down, and he finds himself, for a moment, grateful for the simple mercy.

But he cannot stop crying, as he stares into the mirror and thinks of all he’s lost. Of what, in spite of what he tried to convince himself he could have, he will never have. Of Parker, laughing with his friends as he picks out a new worker. Of the handler, and all those that came before him, smiling as they hurt him. The door opens with no warning and a familiar voice, a voice warm enough to burn Leo’s entire world down, issues a commanding, clear, “Stop this, Leo.”

And almost instantly, Leo stops.

FIGHTER TAG LIST:

@whump-cravings

@afabulousmrtake

@crystalquartzwhump

@maracujatangerine

@pumpkin-spice-whump

@distinctlywhumpthing

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@highwaywhump

@batfacedliar-yetagain

@finder-of-rings

@dont-touch-my-soup

@skyhawkwolf

@suspicious-whumping-egg

@also-finder-of-rings

@whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump

@peachy-panic

@melancholy-in-the-morning

@urban-dark

@nicolepascaline

@quietly-by-myself

@pigeonwhumps

@whump-blog

@seasaltandcopper

@angstyaches

@i-msonotcreative

@mylifeisonthebookshelf

@anonintrovert

@whump-world

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@darkthingshappen

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@whumps-and-bumps

#Med Whump #Gratuitous Med Whump #Medical Restraints #Chemical Restraints #Noncon Touch #Referenced Noncon #Parker Destin #Institutionalized Slavery #Noncon Drugging #Conditioning #Referenced Food/Water Restriction #Referenced/Described STI testing #Referenced/Described Shock Collar #Whumper POV #literally over 4k words wtf #get leo a pet fish and warm hug when?

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ro-sham-no · 7 months ago

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Sam’s wall breaks, and he won’t stop screaming.

it's his birthday so you KNOW i had to whump my boy

It’s been two days and fifteen hours and Sam won’t stop screaming.

Blood droplets fly out of his mouth with wracking coughs as he chokes on hurried inhales, mucosal spit gumming up his trachea.

It’s been two days and sixteen hours and Sam won’t stop screaming.

The only times he’s been silent in the last two days and seventeen hours is when he’s unconscious. The first bout - four hours and twenty-three minutes of silence - Dean’d just clocked him in the jaw when it was clear Sam was going to scream himself into involuntary suffocation - diaphragm and abdominal muscles locking up from the abuse. Dean knocked him unconscious for those four hours and twenty-three minutes, after six hours of his weeping and gnashing of teeth.

By the time he had woken up, Dean had shots of sedative and they were two hours into a twenty-eight-hour drive to Bobby’s - if nothing else, Dean’s efficient. Sam didn’t take notice.

And if the sounds he won’t stop making can be described as screaming, then the sounds he makes when Dean has to touch him while he’s awake can only be described as a death wail. Wailing and scrambling to get away from Dean with a fervor that earns them both violent shades of bruises.

It’s been two days and twenty hours and Sam won’t stop screaming.

During the drive, whenever Sam’s anguish would escalate back into hair-tearing, along with beating his fists against his arms and thighs and threatening to bash his head into the windows of the Impala, Dean would pull over to force another dose of sedative into him.

The sounds he makes while Dean tries to subdue him… Well, even in the most remote location on their route, Dean was afraid the farmer whose house they could just barely see in the distance would be able to hear. It had to have been at least three miles away, with how flat the land was, and Dean was still worried that someone would hear.

Sam won’t stop screaming, and his screams are deafening- except when he’s unconscious, from the shots Dean gives him, the screaming is just in Dean’s mind. A haunting kind of tinnitus that rings in Dean’s ears, just as nauseating as the real deal, but a touch less heartbreaking.

He only allows himself to sleep for the first few hours of Sam being down for the count, despite the catatonic state that seemed to have taken over him. Dean wasn’t about to risk Sam waking up without him. They sleep together in the car, in the weeds and the bramble off of back roads, hidden from view. Baby’s paint has never been so scratched up.

It’s been two days and twenty-three hours and Sam won’t stop screaming.

They’ve been at Bobby’s for the last twenty-four of those, trying to hold back on the sedative, because god knows they can’t keep it up forever or Sam’s heart is liable to just straight up quit, so they’ve been rationing it. Walking the nerve-wracking line between acceptable amounts of incomprehensible human suffering and causing an overdose that could just kill Sam, for good this time.

On the 72nd hour - that’s two days and twenty-four hours, or three days and zero hours, or 4,230 minutes and zero seconds, or 259,200 seconds and -

It’s been three days and zero hours, and Sam is awake, but he stops screaming.

And on the third day he will be raised…

Dean rushes over to check on him, but Sam is still breathing, heart still beating, body still holding itself upright, and he’s stopped screaming.

Now, though, two lines of salty tears trail down his face. For all his hysteric shrieking over the last three days, through all the rocking and swaying and the occasional distinct syllable of “no” over and over again, he hadn’t actually shed a tear, until now.

It’s been three days and zero hours and Sam’s tears are silent.

He’s staring far off into the distance - into the wall that’s four feet in front of him - and he is silent. Even his gasps are inaudible. No sniffling, not a single huff or quiver of breath. Just tears.

It’s been three days and zero hours and two minutes and both Dean and Bobby are in the room now, staring at Sam with undisguised fear-horror-confusion.

They stare at him and he begins to shake. Lightly, at first, but it grows. It always grows. Sam is silent, and he’s shaking, and his eyes stream tears with the consistency of a downpour, and Dean moves back in front of him. He’d stepped away to yell for Bobby out the door when it looked like Sam would live after his abrupt descent into silence. Dean steps back in front of him and reaches out to touch Sammy, and now Sam’s not silent. A three-minute silence and now it’s broken by Sam scrambling backward with a gasp that’s really more of an inhaled moan of fear, hastening back so far that he pushes off of the bed he’d been sitting on.

He crashes to the floor, out of Dean’s reach even as the man leaps forward with a cry of, “Sam!”

But Sam’s flight had been too fast, so he crashed to the ground and has now fallen silent again, but Dean can’t tell if there are still tears because Sam has wedged himself into a ball in the crease between the floor and the wall, form-fitting his back and ass over the baseboards hard enough to bruise. He’s hiding his face in his knees, still trembling, but still silent, so Dean can’t tell if the tears have stopped. He isn’t sure if that would be better or worse.

Because now it’s been three days and five minutes, and Sam’s curled up in sublimation.

He’s crammed against the wall, his knees are up in front of him, spread only far enough to shove his head between them - but down quite far, uncomfortably so, contorted - but his hands aren’t curled up like the rest of him. Instead, his hands are held out around his legs, stretched around them and then upward, palms out like he’s receiving something sacred. Or like he’s giving it away.

It’s been three days and six minutes and Sam is trembling in sublimation.

The room is silent, Dean and Bobby don’t know what to do, but he isn’t hurting himself and he isn’t screaming so they wait him out.

It’s been three days and thirty minutes, by the time anything happens.

At first, Bobby thinks it’s the creaks of his house. At first, Dean thinks it’s the creaks of his soul. They’re both wrong, they realize, as the sound is actually coming from Sam, but it reverberates in such a way that it’s equally loud from every corner of the room. Dean wonders, faintly and somewhat hysterically, when Sam learned ventriloquy.

It’s a low but resounding utterance, indistinguishable at first, but becoming more distinct with every syllable, losing its eerie ambience and beginning to actually come from Sam as its focal point. Whatever Sam is saying, deep into his chest in a tone that aches, becomes clearer, but neither of the other two men can understand it.

Sam’s palms are still held up in front of his shins. His head is still shoved between his knees, and he’s still trembling. He finishes his recitation but doesn’t fall silent. Instead, he switches to a language that Dean realizes with a jolt that he can understand the words, seconds before Bobby realizes it, too.

“Pater noster, qui es in שְׁאוֹל, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in שְׁאוֹל et in terra.”

A sickening aura falls over the room as both lucid men hear the exceptions to the otherwise familiar prayer. “On earth, as it is in שְׁאוֹל,” Sam had said. Sheol, the subterranean final resting place. The pit. “The place of no return, the land of utter darkness and deep shadow.”

Hell.

Our Father who art in the pit of utter death and darkness…

It’s been three days and one hour by the time Sam finishes his contritions.

By then, he’d recited that first chant in the same unknown language twice more, alternating it with the Latin rendition of the Lord’s prayer.

Hallowed be thy name…

Dean has a gnawing, sinking feeling in his gut that he knows exactly what that other language is.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in שְׁאוֹל, the deep shadow.

The cadence, the tone; they’re the same. Distorted by the foreign, guttural tones of the other language, but they cut through Dean with the same taste. Sam is repeating the same thing over and over again, just in alternating tongues. The familiar Latin combined with the unfamiliar, grating timbre of the other.

The repugnant language of the wretched Divine.

Those accursed, winged beasts, just like the one his brother, his Sammy has been locked up with for an earth-year. And who knows what that timeline looked like, in the depths? Nothing sears in your mind quite like the crushing realization that virtually no real time has passed when you return from it, Dean remembers. The rock constantly lodged in the base of Dean's chest, taking up space where his lungs are supposed to go, which screams out, your pain was never real.

Did time distort further the further down you went in hell? Was Dean’s 40-year stint a mere blink in the face of the time Sam had been locked up with that thing that did this to him?

The only reason Dean’s stomach isn’t on the floor in front of him is because his stomach is empty, the pervasive ache of the last few days locking it up tight. Sam has been screaming and Dean hasn't been eating, but he's never been less hungry in his life.

It’s been three days and one hour and Dean’s been crying for every single second of them.

The wailing and screaming had gouged at him, in that way little baby's cries gouge at unsuspecting figures passing by, striking that deep, maternal cord within them. The same way little toddler-Sam’s cries had always gouged at Dean. The same way, too, that not-so-little teenaged Sam’s sniffles into his pillow that he thought were muffled had always gouged at Dean.

If the screams had been gouging at him, this reverent recitation was gutting him. Viscerally, like a fish being pulled sharply off of a too-big hook that it had somehow managed to swallow down too far. Catch and release turned into a pitiful horror.

But it’s been three days and one hour, now, and Sam’s finished his latest round of the Lord’s prayer - Latin this time - and he’s fallen silent again.

His hands are still held out, despite how bad it must make his shoulders and wrists ache with the tension of his stillness. Before Dean can think to do anything, though, Sam continues, but he breaks the pattern. Instead, his voice is much shakier now, and he starts to plead, the only term applicable to the tone of voice Sam has taken on: wretched, and full of supplication. Pleading, in Latin still,

“Elohim, Messiah - Please take this temptation from me. Please, as you have so graciously promised, benevolent Savior, tempt me not with this Sin of the Flesh. I am too weak, Father. This temptation is too great and I cannot bear it.

Temptation? Father?

The formal tone rankles. The self-deprecation vexes. The use of Father to refer to the most foul being to ever walk above and below the earth seethes and horrifies. Dean is rankled. Dean is vexed. Dean seethes, and he is horrified.

“Take Him from my sight, יהוה, keep me away from His fraternal presence, please, Lord. Balm though He is to my soul, grateful though I am for this offering, I am too weak to refrain from Sin.”

Fraternal? Sin?

“I would naught but bastardize this precious gift, and thine hand wilt be forced against me, as thou shalt flay me apart; dissect me to make penance for my transgressions. I do not wish this, Father, so please: Take Him from me, do not allow my wretched Sin to pervade in thine realm.”

Just because Dean’s stomach is empty doesn’t mean it isn’t trying valiantly to make an appearance. At the word “fraternal,” Bobby had started pushing him out the door. Stunned, Dean hadn’t fought back. There’s bile on Bobby’s hardwood floor outside the bedroom Sam and Bobby were still in.

Sam spoke as if Dean’s presence was the temptation, one too great to bear. And he spoke as if to God, but Dean knew better, he knew where Sam had been. Where Dean let him go. No gods to be seen, not there. What Sin had Lucifer contrived between them, to make Sam pay penance for? What occurred between them for Sam to be… Flayed alive. Dissected.

Dean’s not stupid enough to believe that's anything but literal.

Bobby swings the door mostly-closed just in time for Sam to finish his pleas and lower his arms.

It’s been three days and one hour and ten minutes, and Sam raises his head.

Dean watches through the crack in the door, concealed in the darkness of the hallway. He’s holding his breath and he’s not sure he’ll ever forgive himself for not rushing right back to Sam's side. But something is holding him back, and he doesn’t want to name it.

(Fraternal… Sin?)

Sam raises his head but keeps his eyes scrunched shut - tears and snot are dripping down his face, which is a blotchy red but somehow still pallid with fear. He’s shaking worse than before as he straightened his back out, sitting up and letting his legs fold down so he’s cross-legged. Not relaxed, but no longer contorted. Finally, he releases a shaky breath and opens his eyes, pointing down at the floor.

Bobby shifts his weight purposefully and Sam’s eyes fly to him with a wild flinch of fear. It hangs in the air uncomfortably long before he recognizes the man in the room with him, and he lets out a sob of what Dean hopes is relief.

He quickly bows his head and shifts up onto his knees in a simple prayer position, hands pressed together in a booklet of gratitude as he sobs out, “Thank you, Messiah, Morningstar. Thank you.”

Then, with a big sigh, he allows himself to look back at Bobby, but his gaze is clinical, observing. He whispers, through his hitching, wet breaths, “He did it. I can't believe he did it. He’s gone. I don’t have to do it again, not yet.”

Sam’s face crumples as he’s hysterical with relief, and Dean’s clawing his own arms raw and bloody outside the door, desperate to get to the crying baby and soothe it, desperate to kiss toddler-Sam’s scraped knees, desperate to tell teenage-Sam that nothing will ever change the way Dean feels about him, despite whatever darkness he seems to think is inside of him. But still, he’s held back by that unspeakable Sin between them. Lucifer didn’t contrive it, Dean knows that. He holds himself back.

Bobby speaks up then, gruff and wary, “Don’t have to do what, yet?”

Sam startles before finally, really looking at Bobby like he’s a human on the same plane of existence as him, not like he’s a mildly interesting fixture on a non-existent wall.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it, Bobby. It’s good to see you,” Sam cracks a smile, and it encapsulates one thousand shades of grief.

Sam continues quieter, once again to himself, “I wish it wasn’t like this. I’m sorry. So, so sorry. But you’re not Him, so it’s fine, it’s fine…”

Bobby squints at him long and hard, eyeing his more relaxed posture and at least somewhat lucid speech - odd though it may be - before he glances at the crack in the door and gives a tiny eyebrow raise that says, get your ass in here.

Dean slowly cracks the door open and calls out to his baby brother, just as he comes into view, “Sammy?”

His reaction is violent. If Sam was pallid before, he’s now a putrid shade of green, face twisting up in horror as he shakes his head, wringing his hands and mumbling out at first, devolving quickly into yells into the aether, into the corners of the room, “No! No, no- please, you promised, no-”

He collapses into himself on the floor, half hidden behind the bed, putting it between him and Dean. The trembling returns with moans and cries incessantly pouring out of Sam’s mouth as he buries his head in his hands, gripping at his face and whatever hair is in reach with too much force, wailing out a constant stream of no, no, no!

Dean takes an involuntary step forward into the room, drawn in by that maternal wretchedness. Desperate, always desperate, to comfort his baby brother.

When his boot sounds on the carpet - muted but oh-so-loud to Sam’s ears - the cries lose their shape, hiccupping wails of no quickly becoming unintelligible and increasingly frantic, building and building until it can only be described as a howling scream.

It’s been three days and one hour and fifteen minutes, and Sam won’t stop screaming.

#2.5k+ words #lucifer wants to be jesus #religious imagery #aftermath of torture #mentally anyway #this doesn't rlly follow canon LOL whoops #(#spn #wincest #< implied/referenced #sam winchester #sam whump #happy sam winchester's birthday #to those who celebrate #ro writing tag #)

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lashlamb13 · 1 year ago

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Whumpees that are happy drunks

• lightly joking about trauma they could never even talk about before

• giggling about how fucked up they are

• sharing details of their torment through laughter, Caretaker is horrified

• Whumpee’s friends/family seeing them happier than they’ve been in years while intoxicated

• Caretaker(‘s) having to just smile and laugh along because they don’t want to upset Whumpee

#tw alcohol #whump ideas #whump tropes #whump #implied/referenced torture #low-key my own OC but whatever #it counts

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hurtfortea · 2 months ago

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Blinded

Whumper blinds Whumpee, and Whumpee becomes very intune with their sense of smell. They learn to associate Whumper with a certain scent, so they always know when they're coming- so they can't be caught by surprise.

But this can be used against them. Maybe Whumper uses a strong smelling colone or perfume, and Whumpee thinks for a moment they might be saved, until Whumper speaks, and all of that hope gives way to fear. (Maybe Whumper was testing them, and Whumpee failed.)

Then, when Whumpee is recovering, if they ever smell Whumper's scent? Their fear is just that much more heightened, because they don't know- for sure- Whumper's not there.

#implied eye whump #is that implied #referenced eye whump #there we go #whump #whumpblr #whump community #whump writing #whump prompt #whump scenario #whump stuff #whumpee

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benevolenterrancy · 12 days ago

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Dunno what happened with that request for a sickfic someone posted a few months ago, but I for one would enjoy seeing Jin Guangyao taking care of someone else: Xue Yang, Nie Mingjue, Lan Xichen, Nie Huaisang... whoever floats your boat. If it's ok with you, of course.

Currently, Meng Yao’s office was intolerably full, which was to say there was more than just himself in it. One of those occupants happened to be Nie Huaisang, and it could be safely said that it was impossible to mistake a room that held Nie Huaisang for one that didn't. The other occupant was Nie Mingjue which might not normally be a problem except that, right now, his sect leader was inarguably ill. Well, not inarguably, he supposed, because Nie Mingjue was certainly arguing it. Loudly. With Nie Huaisang. While Meng Yao was trying to work. Fortunately Meng Yao was used to resolving problems on his own.

*cracks knuckles* there we go anon, something quick and light-hearted!

#mdzs #nieyao #nie mingjue #meng yao #jin guangyao #nmj #jgy #fanfiction #i remember the request you're referencing but it just kinda fizzled out... i didn't really have any particular inspiration to work off of #but jin guangyao - or meng yao in this case - needing to be the one to take care of someone? that i can work with #though if i'm being honest i'm not sure this entirely meets the brief xD but it was fun to write and it includes ill nmj so close enough #makes for something quick and chill which is perfect since i've been struggling to write lately #and i very nobly resisted the urge to include whump because i know the original prompter hadn't wanted any xD #though it did get me to start writing a completely different whumpy nieyao sickfic on the side so that might appear at some point #if i'm lucky... praying to the gods of free time and inspiration

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whumpitisthen · 11 months ago

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"Shhh... Don't be scared. Be good and just let it happen — and don't hold out on me. I want nothing more than to hear you cry, so feel free to show me just how much it hurts."

#whump #creepy whumper #my writing #whump writing #intimate whumper #whump prompt #fear #sadistic whumper #whump dialogue #dialogue prompt #referenced torture

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straight-to-the-pain · 4 months ago

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I had such a sexy dream the other night and it would genuinely make such a fun whumpy scenario so I'm going to share it with you. Nothing too explicit but implied sex and violence ahead:

So like consider it being understood that if you get captured (by either side) you are likely going to be tortured and or sexually abused like everyone going into this situation knows that there are some terrible outcomes for them if they fall into the enemy's hands and this is to be avoided at all costs.

But, hear me out: what if you had a couple on opposing sides, say a rebel and a soldier, who have been in a secret relationship and are just having a great time playing out a cnc fantasy where they take turns trying to capture and fuck each other in the field and then have to be like 'yeah it was so scary but I managed to get away' to their respective sides.

Maybe one of them is actually giving information to the other so their side is aware of what's going on are just rooting for them from the sidelines but the other has to always come up with some plausible cause for having been taken captive and then getting away or like, going missing for a time during a mission.

I just think that they would be able to have so much fun with this and I wish I was them

#whump #nsfwhump #sorta it's like a bit spicy but I'm not giving details #my stuff #s talks #in my head this is set in the vmd #military whump #implied/referenced noncon

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serickswrites · 11 days ago

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You're Awake III

Part 1 Part 2

Warnings: referenced captivity, referenced torture, referenced blood loss, hospital, hurt/aftermath, hurt/comfort, hurt/recovery, caretaker and whumpee

Consciousness returned to Whumpee slowly. They were surprised they woke at all. "Oh good, you're awake," Caretaker's voice was soft and somewhere to Whumpee's right.

Whumpee blinked heavily. They turned their head toward Caretaker's voice. "Ca'er," they finally managed to croak out. Their mouth was dry.

"I'm here, love. I'm here." Caretaker said.

Something squeezed Whumpee's fingers. Caretaker. Caretaker's big, warm hand squeezed their fingers. They weakly squeezed Caretaker's fingers back. "Mmmmm," they hummed.

"It's ok, it's ok, love. You're safe. You're in the hospital. You're going to be here a while. But that's ok. You're going to be ok."

Whumpee was glad that Caretaker was here with them. They were glad Caretaker had found them. And they were glad that Caretaker wasn't worried. Caretaker had been so worried the last time Whumpee heard their voice. But now Caretaker sounded relieved.

"Sleep, Whumpee. You need rest, love. Let yourself rest. Then you can heal. And the sooner you heal, the sooner you can come home with me."

Home sounded nice to Whumpee. They weren't sure they would ever see home again. But the promise in Caretaker's words was relieving. They were ok. Caretaker had found them. Caretaker had saved them. It was going to be ok.

"Love......you," Whumpee muttered as their eyelids closed once more.

"I love you, too, Whumpee. I'll be here when you wake up again. I promise."

Tags: @skiny406 @pain-love-it @ash-shadow815 @abbyreader23 @guachipongo

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@edutainer2022 @novawhumps @larkishere @whumpbump @writing-woes1

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@pepeniascat

#serickswrites #whump #queue #whumpblr #whump community #whump writing #tw referenced captivity #tw referenced torture #tw referenced blood loss #tw hospital #hurt/aftermath #hurt/comfort #hurt/recovery #caretaker and whumpee

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 months ago

Text

Fly by Moonlight

CW: Vaguely fantasy, hunting, possessive whumper referenced, bullet wound, guns, blood, makeshift surgery, implied dehumanization, scarring

Chapter One

The sky above them was an explosion of stars. With her head tilted back until it tipped against the sleeping bag, providing her the barest protection from simple dirt, she could see the Milky Way itself, winding its ghostly way from one horizon to the other. It was funny, to think that she was a part of that winding, sinuous length of endless light.

The people who think they came from stars, she thought, must have been people who thought highly of themselves. There was nothing more incredible than this, and it seemed impossible to understand how something as amazing as stardust could coalesce into the reality of wind rushing through leaves around their campsite, the simple beauty of her own heartbeat and blood.

Alongside the universes she could imagine above her, the moon hung heavy and full. Supermoon time, it was so much larger than usual, blocking some of the stars when Anaya tried to find them.

The moon, she thought, felt like what it was - a piece of earth thrown into space by asteroid impact. Like a mother who loses the grip of her child’s hand, and all of history had been the story of their slow reconciliation. Or maybe of the child running, always staying just ahead of her mother’s reach.

Anaya Cross laced her fingers together behind her head, her heavy, dark hair providing as much softness as any pillow. Beside her, in another sleeping bag, her boyfriend Eden had long since fallen asleep. His heavy, soft breathing and the sight of his ash-blond hair falling over his forehead was another kind of peace. Eden only slept well in the wilderness, and Anaya never slept well at all.

Even if she didn’t sleep much, here, she could rest by watching the stars. Her eyes traced a constellation, catching on the edge of the corona borealis and following its C-shaped swing from one end to the other.

Then, she heard a sound.

It was a faded sort of boom, as if someone in the park had set off a huge firework, one of those big mortar kinds Anaya had been terrified of as a child and still avoided today. She frowned, shifting uneasily and pushing herself up a little onto her elbows.

At first all she heard was the wind, the soft whispering of the leaves.

Then it happened again.

Boom.

Anaya took in a quick breath and sat up fully, head tipped to one side. This time, the sound was followed by a high-pitched squeal, almost a scream, but totally inhuman. Anaya’s breath caught, and she scrambled to push herself out of the sleeping bag, leaning on her knees over to shake Eden’s shoulder. “Eden-... Eden! Wake up!”

Eden groaned, slapping ineffectually at her hand, before his eyes finally blinked slowly open. They looked fogged over, still half-asleep, but he moved to sit as Anaya popped up to standing. “Wh-... what’sit?” It was all one run-on sound, hardly language. “Naya? What’ss… what time’sit?”

“I don’t know,” She answered, shifting forward slowly. Between the stars and the moon, the night around them was nearly as bright as daylight, only with a cool, almost blue tint to everything around them. “I heard something. Like a-... like a gunshot. I think. From a really fucking big gun.”

“You heard-...” Eden’s brain was still struggling to come online. He raked a hand back through his hair, leaving it standing up in wild chunks all over his head, before he started wiggling his way out of his sleeping bag, too. He stood, scratching at his stomach underneath his ratty old t-shirt, gray sweatpants hanging low on narrow hips. “A gunshot? Here? But-”

“Protected reserve, I know. But I definitely heard it. Do you think…” She trailed off. All she heard now was the wind, rushing through the trees. Only-... was it only the wind? Or was there a discordant note, crashing of something desperate running for its life?

Boom.

This time she could see Eden heard it too, his eyes widening. The sound was closer, louder, more immediate. Anaya and Eden’s gazes met, and then without a word spoken the two of them half-ran, half-walked as one to the edge of the clearing and away from the obviousness of their campsite. Eden’s car was parked at the camp lot a three-hour hike away, and they were deep within a part of the reserve no one was supposed to go to. It had seemed romantic, when they came here and chose this space, carefully marking their trail to ensure they could make it back. It had seemed like a way to get away from it all and really find peace, let Eden get some real sleep.

Now, though, it seemed to hit Anaya all at once that coming out here - alone, with only her boyfriend, with no one really aware of where they’d gone other than ‘camping’ - had been monumentally, impossibly stupid.

Anaya crouched down behind a tree, keeping the campsite in view. Woods like these could get you lost within a few feet of where you’d been, the trees so close together that they hid you from your own trail unless it was well-marked. Eden moved to be just slightly in front of her, shielding her a little.

Not that it would matter against a gun that could make a sound like that.

“Poacher?” She whispered.

“Probably,” He whispered back. Now the crashing seemed close, and Eden’s body was warm against hers even as both of them were shivering. “But what is there even to hunt here? You can find deer anywhere in this stupid state, you don’t need-”

The answer to his question came flying out of the woods in front of them.

A huge wolf that somehow still looked half-grown and spindly, with too-long legs and giant paws, flashed through their campsite in a reddish-gray gleam lit by moonlight. Until it tripped over Anaya’s cooler full of beer and went tumbling, high-pitched whimpers and whines filling the air. Anaya jerked forward when she realized the cooler now had a red smear along the white lid, but Eden grabbed her arm to pull her back out of sight.

“It’s bleeding!” Anaya hissed. “That poacher shot it! We should go help!”

Eden’s grip only tightened. “It’s not a dog,” He hissed back. “It’ll just attack you. Not to mention the poacher will shoot you, too. Just stay here, Naya!”

The wolf stood on shaking legs, a low soft whine in its throat. The light of the moon seemed to turn the tips of its red fur to silver, reflected in its strangely human-looking eyes. Anaya blinked at the sight of scarring around its snout, like something had been wrapped there at some point until it dug in. It limped to the edge of the clearing, tumbling hard to one side before righting itself. Blood streamed from one back leg, clumping the fur and leaving a dark stain.

The wolf’s tongue hung from its mouth and it panted heavily even as it tried to lick at the blood and the wound beneath it, ears pricked and moving constantly. Its tail was tucked between its legs. Its nose went to the ground, picking up the scents of Anaya and Eden probably, and Anaya shivered when it growled.

The low rumble was more frightening than the sound of the gun.

At least the gunshots hadn’t been about her.

After a long pause, the wolf’s growl ended. It did what Anaya could only call taking a deep breath to steady itself, and then limped heavily away, out of the clearing in the general direction of the main hiking trails where Anaya and Eden had started their hike out here. Its nose stayed low, and Anaya heard Eden let out a breath in a rush once it was out of sight.

“Uh… what do we do now-”

Anaya clapped her hand over Eden’s mouth, shushing him and yanking him further back around the tree trunk.

The man with the gun - and holy shit, Anaya didn’t even know they made guns that big - stepped into the clearing, taking in the sight of the destroyed campsite smeared with wolf blood with a baffled, incredulous expression. He wasn’t too much older than them, maybe in his thirties, but he had a hardness to his jaw that said whatever his age, the years had definitely sucked the life out of him.

“Well… shit.” The man huffed, moving forward and using the muzzle of his gun to nudge the blood-stained cooler, lifting up the sleeping bag Eden had been in only a few moments ago. He ran a hand back over his crew cut, looking around. “Hey! Is anyone here? Anyone hurt?” The sound of concern in his voice seemed real.

But Anaya and Eden were alone, in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. And this guy had an enormous fucking gun. They stayed silent, in the dark.

“God damn it.” The poacher sighed, looking down at the sleeping bags. “Shit shit shit. If he killed somebody… that little shit. Fucking campers on our land. Bet he chased them off. I’ll have to call Bill and report it. He’s gonna kill me when he sees Rusty got out, let alone that he made a mess out of campers… if they find bodies on our land again, we are going to have the government up our fucking ass…”

He pulled out a compass and looked at it, then looked ahead, eyes scanning the ground. He must have seen some of the wolf’s blood on a leaf in some underbrush, because he moved forward confidently then. He went through the clearing, from one side to the other, and then was gone.

Anaya and Eden waited until the sound of the man moving through the forest had faded into the distance, and then looked at each other.

“... Did we go too far and end up on private land?” Anaya asked.

At the same time, Eden said, “Did he say ‘if they find bodies on our land again?’”

Both of them stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. Then, as if they’d come to some agreement that didn’t need words, they moved out to the wreckage of the campsite. Anaya rolled up the sleeping bags while Eden checked on the small cooler, wiped the rest of the blood off of it with a shudder, and then shifted it back into the heavy pack he’d carried out here. Anaya felt the tension rising between them, until it was tight enough it might snap. Her heart pounded so hard it found its way up her throat, making her occasionally stop to catch her breath. The two of them pulled their socks on and then laced up their hiking boots after. Neither even bothered to dress in daytime clothing. Their sweatpants and t-shirts seemed like enough, for now.

The hike back was silent and slow.

They put one foot carefully in front of the other, following the markings Anaya had left wrapped around trees in non-obvious places. She undid each and every colorful ribbon, packing them back away. Taking back everything they’d brought with them. No sign they’d ever been here at all, ideally.

She found herself wondering where the park ended and private land began. There’d been no signs, no warnings. Not any that they saw, anyway. Then again, it’s not like you could mark every square inch of a wild forest like this one.

Above them, the moon hung heavy. When its light cut through the canopy overhead, it made everything otherworldly and beautiful.

If only Anaya could appreciate it, and not take every quiet step sure she’d see the end of a gun between her eyes the moment she looked up.

At some point, they got close enough to the trail for cell phone signal to come back, and her phone buzzed with a handful of missed messages. Nothing that suggested anything big had happened while they were out of reach. She didn’t dare check it - not yet. Not until she felt sure that the light from her screen wouldn’t draw in either an injured, probably hostile wolf and a healthy, definitely hostile guy with a gun.

She kept cycling her thoughts back to the sight of the thing. Something had been off about it, but she didn’t know enough about guns to even begin to know what. Hell, she didn’t know enough about guns to even know if anything was actually off, or if she was just thinking of movie-guns and not understanding that the real thing was different.

Exhaustion dragged at the edges of her mind, even as adrenaline kept her so wired that she knew she couldn’t possibly have fallen asleep even if they simply laid down right here. Hours passed, Eden and Anaya saying little to each other. They heard the boom just once more, far enough away that they felt themselves finally able to relax.

Wherever the guy had tracked the injured wolf, it wasn’t in the direction they were going.

Finally, they stumbled back out onto the trail.

Anaya checked her phone, as surreptitiously as she could.

It was almost three in the morning, and they had another good two hours of hiking on the trail before they got to the parking lot.

“I say we sleep in the car,” Eden said, voice heavy and husky. When Anaya glanced over at him, his half-lidded eyes reminded her of a sleepy kitten, and she found herself smiling, briefly overwhelmed with love for him. He frowned back at her. “What?”

“You’re cute,” She said. He shook his head and started walking again, but she caught the edge of his smile before he turned to hide it from her.

“Pretty sure the T was supposed to make me handsome, not cute,” He said over his shoulder as he started walking again.

Anaya had to stifle a laugh - talking might be okay, might be safe, but laughter carried further. Especially Anaya’s laughter, which had a tendency to be too loud, according to her mother. Too loud, attention-taking. Just like all her emotions. “Well, you’re definitely handsome,” Anaya said brightly, falling in behind him. “You’re just also cute. You were handsome before the T, too, by the way.”

He didn’t say anything, but his shoulders straightened a little, and she caught the edge of a flush to his cheeks.

Her feet ached by the time they had Eden’s car in view, the ancient Subaru with its huge trunk thanks to the removed backseat a white gleam in the pinkish light of early dawn. The moon was still visible, just now beginning to fade as sunlight overtook it, wiped it out. Each throb was in time with her pulse, and Anaya’s brain seemed to have become mush at some point.

They could sleep in the back of Eden’s car, if they made it to a safe parking lot or something in town. Maybe the diner where they had parked before they came up here, those people had seemed pretty cool about it.

Eden came to a sudden stop, and Anaya walked into him so hard the two of them both stumbled, Eden with a huffed breath, an oof that any other day would have been funny. But now Anaya just groaned. It better not be the poacher having found them. She was too damn tired to deal with that, or even be scared of it anymore.

At least if he shoots me I can get some damn rest, she thought.

Out loud, she only mumbled, “What?”

Eden swallowed. Anaya could hear it. Something about that woke her back up all at once, sent brand new adrenaline flooding through her. Her head began to pound in time with her feet and her heart. Would anything not hurt by the end of today?

“There’s something under our car,” Eden said, voice hushed.

Anaya stiffened. “The wolf?”

Eden took one step forward, and then another. He squinted. “... No. I think it’s… a person.”

“A what?”

Who would be out here? Thanks to flooding on the more well-known trails, this park had been more or less empty of tourists. It was one of the reasons Eden and Anaya had chosen this for their off-trail campsite. Eden moved slowly forward, and Anaya followed him. Once she got closer, though, she moved more quickly, dropping her bag next to the car and moving into a crouch.

The sound of her pack hitting the pavement made the boy curled up under the car flinch, his arms jerking to cover his head with his hands, knees nearly to his chin. Anaya caught a glimpse of reddish-brown hair through his fingers, a swath of pale skin marked with brown freckles at the shoulders, the tip of his nose.

“Hello?” Anaya whispered, reaching slowly out. Her fingertips just touched the boy when his eyes snapped open and he looked at her with wild, animal terror.

His eyes were the same color as the wolf’s.

His hair was the same color as the wolf’s fur had been, reddish brown, maybe tipped with some gray.

His left leg had a wound blown right through it - bullet wound, Anaya thought a little wildly, I’m looking at the entrance and the exit’s at the back, he’s lucky it didn’t hit the artery there - and the blood was… everywhere.

The boy’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a useless snarl. His teeth were flat, human, except for maybe his incisors being a little too long, a little too sharp. He had scars marked across his face, around his neck, all over his arms. Some old, simply silk-soft skin marked in risen lines, some fresher, still bright red. A couple even looked like they’d been bleeding recently, too. He made a sound that Anaya only realized after a beat was an attempt to growl.

“... This is the wolf,” Anaya said, voice low. “Eden… Eden, this is the wolf.”

“What? No. That’s clearly a dude. The poacher must have seen him and shot him.”

“No, this is-... his eyes Eden-”

“That’s not a wolf, Naya. End of story. That is a dumbass teenager who did dumbass things. Somebody’s probably looking for him.”

Anaya thought of the poacher’s confusion, his angry concern. “... Yeah, somebody probably is.”

Eden dropped into a crouch beside her, casually pulling out the knife he always had on him, flicking it so the blade showed. “Naya, something’s wrong with this kid.”

The boy’s eyes went to the gleam of sharp metal and he whined, curling up tighter. Anaya frowned, looking at his leg. The blood. The wound. The way the boy’s skin was ash-pale under his freckles. The scars, half of them rough but the other half precise.

Knife-blade scars. She had some old ones herself, although hers had been self-inflicted.

She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, felt it trembling under her touch. She could barely reach him, he was so far under the car. “Hey.” She gentled her voice as much as she could, rubbing lightly. Goosebumps rose where her fingertips went, but the trembling seemed to settle a little. “Hey, kid. You’re… you’re really hurt. We’re gonna call someone-”

The boy scrambled backwards away. “No!” His voice came out hoarse, as if he wasn’t used to speaking - or speaking with a human mouth, anyway. “No! Don’t! Don’t call!” He made it to the other side of the car, scrambling to his feet. Anaya went to chase him, but in the end she didn’t have to - as soon as he tried to put weight on his leg, he went down hard, scraping the palms of his hands on the pavement and letting out a pained cry.

Anaya swallowed. “Eden-”

“I’ll call 911-”

“No,” she whispered. “He’s scared of that. Let’s just… let’s just put him in the back of the car, yeah?”

Eden paused. “Naya, are you fucking out of your mind? Where are we gonna take him? He needs a hospital.”

“Or a vet clinic,” She muttered, ignoring the look Eden gave her at the dark joke. “No, let’s just. Okay, let’s just… we have our first aid kit. You know how to do stitches-”

“Stitches, sure, but I’m not exactly qualified to treat wounds like that.”

“Try. Let’s get him into the car. Hey, kid? Kid, hey.” Anaya went to the crumpled heap of teenager, grasping onto his arm. He shivered and tried weakly to pull away, but between the pain and the blood loss, he wasn’t exactly able to put up much of a fight. Eden opened the trunk of the car and threw in their packs while Anaya helped the boy to stand. She could hear Eden laying down the towels and sleeping bags, opening up the first aid kit.

That’s why she loved him. He might think she’d lost her mind on this, but he’d still follow her lead.

The injured boy gripped onto her once he was upright, his eyes dancing in terror from Eden to Anaya and back again.

“Don’t,” He whispered. “Don’t.”

“We’re just going to get you bandaged up and something to eat,” Anaya said, voice soothing, easing him into the trunk until he could lay down in there. “Then we can talk, okay? First off, we need to stop the bleeding.”

Those odd eyes stared at her, but he laid down on his side slowly. Anaya had been vaguely aware the boy was naked, but only now did it hit her that the boy didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

“I’m Anaya,” She said, softly, taking his hand and holding it while Eden took a wet cloth and began to wipe away the blood to try and get a better look at the wound. “I’m Anaya Cross, and this is my boyfriend Eden Yarrow. We’re going to help you.”

“There’s no exit wound,” Eden muttered, looking at the backside of the boy’s thigh. “He needs a surgeon, Naya-”

“Well, good thing you trained to be one, huh?"

"Yeah, before I quit residency-"

"Eden, just... can you get the bullet out?”

Eden exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “Probably. It's a pretty clean wound. I definitely shouldn’t, but…”

“Well, try.” She turned back to the boy, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles, back and forth, back and forth. The kid stared at her like she’d grown a second head, but he didn’t pull his hand back. He just… watched her, with those strange canine eyes. “Hey. We’re gonna get the bullet out of you, and then we’ll help you get somewhere with people.”

“No,” He said again. His eyes moved from one to the other. “No… people.”

Eden’s eyes closed. He muttered something under his breath that Anaya didn’t quite hear. Then he moved to dig around in the first aid kit again.

“Okay. Well, we’ll figure that bit out as we go, then. Can you tell us your name?”

She thought of the poacher mentioning Rusty.

The boy was quiet for a long, drawn-out silence broken only by a hiss when Eden used a sanitizing wipe on the wound, cleaning it out again as best he could. Finally, almost under his breath, he whispered, “Misae.”

“Missy?” Eden said, nose wrinkling. “Your name is Missy?”

The boy’s odd eyes narrowed. “Misae,” He repeated, a little louder. Mih-say-eh. Some of the gravelly hoarseness was leaving his voice, the more he spoke. Anaya wondered if he didn’t speak often.

“That man with the gun called you Rusty, I think,” Anaya said, keeping her own voice gentle.

“... their name for me.” Misae hissed through his teeth, lips pulled back in a snarl again as Eden began to probe into the wound, eyes closing tightly. Tears leaked fro the corners of his eyes. Anaya gave him both her hands and he gripped on tight enough to hurt, making a sound that was clearly meant to be a canine whine. “Not… my name.”

“But Misae is your name.”

“Y… Yes.” His head lowered until the top of it, the shaggy reddish hair, pressed against her. He kept pushing against her, until she twisted one hand free and laid it there, scratching her fingers against his scalp. His whining softened, then. It was all so terribly… doglike.

No.

Wolf.

Anaya tried not to look as his leg twitched and oozed blood even as Eden carefully worked one of the tools he kept on hand into the wound, searching for the bullet. Misae didn’t answer at first. She leaned over, hoping her voice could carry through the pain. “It’s okay, honey. You’re going to be okay.”

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Misae groaned, finally laying his head directly in her lap. She could feel his tears soaking into her sweatpants, the hitching of his breath as he fought not to sob. His voice was a whisper she barely heard, twisted around his pained, frightened whimpers.

“Th-thank… thank you…”

“Found it!” Eden shouted, triumphant. He might have been reluctant to do this, but there was a reason he’d worked so hard to fill his first aid kit with anything you might need to stay alive in the wilderness when medical care was too far to get to in time. There was a reason he’d trained as a surgeon. He was good at this, he always had been. He wiggled the little tool, making Misae cry harder, but then something bloody and shimmering beneath the red came out, and Eden dropped it on a towel beside Misae. “Intact, even. Nice.”

Eden was focused on getting the wound closed up and stitches sewn. Anaya though, watched blood slide along the surface of the bullet, too big, a terrifying size. The gleam of the metal, though, along with the strange runes carved into it, made her eyebrows furrow. “... Eden.”

“Mmmn?” He dipped the needle, pulled it through skin. Anaya knew if she looked she’d faint dead away, so she kept her eyes on the bullet. On the shine.

“That’s… that hunter shot him with silver.”

Eden stilled and looked up, his eyes catching on the bullet, too. Then shifting over to Misae, who was shaking like a leaf, eyes open now, wide and almost sightless. In shock, Anaya thought, not that she knew for sure or even really understood what being in shock meant. But it reminded her of people going into shock in the movies, on television. Eden’s eyes moved to meet Anaya’s.

“Once I finish stitching him up,” He said, voice low and calm, “We drive this car as far away from here as we can get before we stop.”

“We’re taking him with us.”

“... Naya-”

Anaya’s jaw set and she raised her chin. “We’re taking Misae.”

Eden looked down at the boy, who didn’t seem to hear or even see the two of them any longer. Then he huffed and went back to what he was doing, sewing slow, careful, precise stitches even as he had to continually wipe away blood, too. “Fine. We go as far as we can with him, and then we… think about what we do next. Figure out how to call his family or something.”

“Fair.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

They paused, and smiled at each other.

Then Misae whimpered, and Anaya realized she’d stopped scratching his head. She started up again, and felt some of his shaking settle once more. “Do you have family?” Anaya asked, trying to distract him as Eden finished up. “Someone looking for you?”

Misae was silent for so long that she thought maybe he hadn’t heard her.

Then he answered, voice low, “No family. Not… anymore."

"Did you run away from them?"

"No.” Misae's body shuddered, and Anaya found herself rubbing her thumb in little circles just behind one ear. "No."

"Then-"

"Dead. Everyone... is dead. But me."

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paingoes · 3 days ago

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Crash Out - Sabina

hi. this one is pretty dark. heres some backstory on paris’s parents. it’s about forced marriage and offscreen/implied forced pregnancy and rape. nothing sexually explicit is depicted, just implied. heavy overtones of domestic violence as well.

(Content: abduction, lady whump, forced marriage, physical abuse, familial whump, royal whump, intimate whumper, defiant whumpee, domestic violence, starvation, referenced child endangerment, implied noncon, suicide, poisoning, death, unhappy ending)

“Oh shit,” Paris sat up in the passenger seat, pushing the sunglasses up off his eyes. “I’ve been here before.”

The city below glowed in the early morning light, pale and crystalline. The glass spires jutted out from the soft grass. It looked cold, somehow. Twinkling. Lorelai had never seen a town look so fragile. She’d have never thought to describe one that way if she had not seen it herself.

“What?” she asked. “On conquest?”

“No,” he answered huffily, as if this were an unreasonable assumption to make.

“With my mom,” he explained, looking off into the middle distance. “Her family’s from here.”

Lorelai slid out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her. He followed her out, down the smooth stones that made up the pathway into the city center.

It was a pleasantly cool day, but the architecture made the whole scene feel wintery. She imagined that she was entering into a kingdom of ice. She remembered Thales, how cold it had been on the night of the ball. As she slipped her hand into Paris’s own — the non-dominant, the less injured one — she felt the same chill. It wasn’t all unpleasant. There was a beauty to it.

All it had to be was a supply run. The imperial currency was standardized, good enough for all the planets in its territory. The further out they got, the more open the locals became to haggling. She leaned forward against the counter of the fruit stand. The vendors liked her. Everyone always liked her.

After a while of staring off into the hillside, Paris propped one arm against the barrel.

“You know where I can find a Selene Lucia?” he asked them.

They were nice enough to draw up a map, the pencil carving a path up into the hills. No exact address, but Paris swore he’d know it when he saw it. By her estimate, if he’d come with his mother, he hadn’t been here since he was seven years old.

The pale buildings petered out on the climb, the houses became sparser, more residential. In time, he really did abandon the map, working purely off the distant memory.

The trees shaded the sidewalk. She traced her fingers along the black fence that divided the path from the lawns, listening to the pleasant vibration it made in her fingers. The leaf canopy cleared for a split second as they passed another gate.

“This is it,” Paris said abruptly. He stared at it dumbfounded.

“You think she still lives here?” Lorelai asked, frowning.

“Don’t see why not.”

Neither of them moved.

“Are you coming?” he asked. It seemed like he already knew the answer.

“…If you want,” she offered. He shook his head. The one and only time she had met his father, it hadn’t gone well. She didn’t want much to do with his family.

“Call me if you need help,” he said as he pushed the gate open.

“You too.” She nodded, heading back down the hill. The sun was higher in the sky now. The city reflected it straight into her eyes, nearly blinding her.

“Oh, god,” Selene Lucia said as soon as she opened the door.

“Hi,” Paris said, pleasantly surprised to even be recognized.

She pulled him into the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Are you being followed?” she asked.

“Uh, no, ma’am. Don’t think so. Not now.” Paris ran one hand through his hair.

“What are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes. Her face had creased from years of that same, skeptical motion.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I was in the area. I just wanted to stop by.”

He needed to do laundry, too. He decided not to mention that now.

Selene sighed. There was some relief there, he could tell. Maybe she thought he’d come asking for more.

He looked around at the house. It was smaller than he remembered, but still nice. Light filtered in through the sheer curtains.

She led him into the violet-colored kitchen, the dark sharpness of him clashing against the scene. She’d been working when he knocked — and this she resumed. He leaned back against the counter, rocking gently against it, watching the knife cut thin lines through the stalks.

“Do you need me to do anything?” he offered. She shook her head. He shrugged, looking back down at the linoleum.

“You’re wanted in five hundred different territories,” she said.

Five hundred sixty one.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up. For some reason, he hadn’t thought that’d be her first reaction.

“It’s your father’s fault, you know. Leaving everything in the air like that. It wouldn’t have happened if he-“

“-if he believed he could die?” Paris finished. He’d had the same thought, a million times over.

She made a soft and exasperated sound — and said nothing else.

“You didn’t…call or anything. After he died,” he said tentatively.

“We had no contact,” Selene said.

“My phone number is public record,” Paris said, not hiding the hurt in his voice. He leaned forward, his arms crossed over his midsection. She didn’t turn to look at him.

“I don’t know why you’d expect that from me,” she said.

“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I just…I don’t know. It would’ve been nice.”

“Would it?” She asked, turning now.

He frowned. What was he supposed to say to that? He hadn’t even realized he wanted it until he entered the house. It hadn’t occurred to him at all.

“I don’t know why you didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t call me when she died, either. You didn’t reach out at all.”

She seemed to lose her resolve then. She signed, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen table. He sat down where indicated. The whorls of wood grain stared back up at him. Their shapes had mesmerized him when he was little.

“Is ginger tea fine?” She asked as she lit the last of the stove’s burners.

“Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, though he knew he wouldn’t drink it. He tried not to drink from any open containers — and he watched her hands carefully as she prepared it, wary of pills, wary of poison.

She placed two pale yellow teacups down on the table. Powder blue chinoiserie decorated the edges of the saucers. Steam floated delicately off the golden surface of the water.

“Do you know how your parents met, Paris?”

On a morning wet with dewdrops, Selene and Sabina tread happily through the underbrush. The sky was pale and overcast, but the sweaters their mother had knit for them kept them warm and comfortable. Sabina picked at the roses and the sweet briar that bloomed out of the damp earth. Twin blonde braids fell down her back. They were stained with mud at the edges when she’d bent down to touch the grass.

Selene watched the skies with a kind of dormant worry. There was something she was always waiting for, but never really expected. But it had come anyway. It had landed last month.

There was a place the land crested, the point at which the forest gave way to the clear valley. When they were little, they had dragged their sleds out to it on snowy days and laughed as they flew down the hill.

With the easy familiarity of someone who had walked this path since birth, Sabina moved to the top of the ridge. She was startled to find that in the valley below, a large ship was parked. It was more expensive than anything she’d ever laid her eyes on.

All dressed in scarlet against the verdant grass, a man stood tall and impervious. For a split second, his eyes fell on her. And that was all he needed.

The Emperor arrived in fine robes, in the middle of town, all his footmen swarming in droves about him. His color was pale, in a way that is supernatural. Not at all sickly. He was in good health.

In the market, Selene crowded closer to the exit, while all Sabina seemed to want to do was stand her ground. The Emperor fixed his eyes on her, matching her boldness. His hands didn’t shake the way hers did, but the length of her was all resistance.

He liked it.

“Briar Rose,” he said, sing-song, “Was that you in the canyon the other day?”

Unbelievably, his hand moved to trace her braids. She smacked it away, teeth bared, furious.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sabina hissed.

All she got in return was a chuckle. It was the sound birds made when the bullet missed their heart.

The knock came in the middle of the night, with only Selene up to answer it. She peeked through the curtain, and immediately drew far back, down onto the carpet.

“Daddy,” she cried, in a pitch she had not reached since childhood.

He came instantly and sent her back to her room, far from the thin door that separated their house from nightfall. But her room was right by the entrance. She pressed her ear to the ground to listen.

“Would you accept a dowry?” came the low drawl of the Emperor. “For the youngest. The blonde one.”

“She is my daughter,” Father’s voice came out wrathful in return. “You can take the rest of the world - god knows you already have - but you will not touch her.”

“I would take good care of all of you,” he promised. “I don’t mean to distress her. I think it’d be best if we were all on the same page about this.”

Milky, sick. Selene cried until she couldn’t breathe, then cried more. Sabina slept in the next room, fast asleep, unknowing.

Roses. There were thousands of them, clogging up the yard, on each surface of the porch. Roses, roses, roses. The scent was overpowering. It was like something out of a nightmare. When she moved to open the door that morning, Sabina met a stiff resistance. That was thick the petals were stacked.

They came with a note. Father snatched it away before Selene could read, but Sabina had seen it.

She heard her sister crying down the hall. She watched it through a crack in the door.

“I don’t wanna go,” Sabina sobbed, “Mama, I don’t wanna go, please.”

She hid her face in the fabric of their mother’s dress, bent over on the floor, inconsolable. Already flinching away from any touch.

“You will come quietly,” the Emperor said, “Or you will come in chains. It makes no difference to me.”

Sabina swung at him as if she could knock his head straight off. It took five men to drag her off in those glistening, golden chains. She was soaked with sweat and tears, an awful slickness, a thrashing.

Castle Thales was dark in wintertime — and to her starved body, each room was freezing. Each door had a lock — and she had no keys.

He left her in her own bedroom the first nights. Locked up there, hands bound, until she was ready to *calm down*. He’d thought it would take days. It ended up taking months. It was only when the food stopped that she became handleable.

Sabina glared daggers at him. Her hands shook too much to hold utensils. He thought it was from fear, but it was all just fury.

She dreamt of killing him nightly.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Constantine promised her as he lifted the veil. “It does not have to be this hard. You make it this way.”

She glared and glared and glared and flinched as his hand traced her bare arm. She was too pale now. She’d been locked away from the sun for too long. Now her skin was as white as the ripped wedding dress.

“You’re a queen now,” he said, like it comes as an assurance. She wanted nothing more than to beat him until he stopped breathing.

“You could have all you ever dreamed of,” he said. He doesn’t know her at all. Tears formed in her eyes before she could stop them. He moved to wipe them away for her. She bit into his hand as hard as she could and grinned when she drew blood. It was the first time she’d smiled in months.

She was slapped violently for that, which surprised her, because up to this point he had seemed so hesitant to hit her in the face. He threatened to yank all her teeth out, replace them with dentures, and take them out whenever he decided she’d lost the privilege.

This seemed unattractive, which gave her reason to doubt the threat. But she could not call his bluff, so she stopped biting.

One of his men whipped her back until it was bloody. She hated it. She reveled in it. She was making him so mad.

She cried as the maids worked to cover the bruises, the skin still tender even at the soft touch of the brushes. The crying wet her face. They had to keep restarting.

There was no need to cover up the whip marks. The corset did it all on its own — coarse, scratching, irritating the unhealed skin. The maids undid her long braids. Her hair reached all the way to her waist now.

She reached out for the scissors on the vanity and cut it all off.

He was mad he couldn’t pull her hair anymore. He could bunch it up by her scalp, but it wasn’t the same. His was a cold anger. He probably liked to think of it as controlled. He loved to think of himself as controlled.

“It looks good on you, darling,” Nezu said over dinner, just to piss them both off. Sabina made a gagging sound in the back of her throat. She reached for the unused knife by her right napkin and wields it menacingly. As menacingly as she could manage, which turned out to be a lot.

Nezu looked excited at the prospect of getting stabbed by her. In disgust, she put the knife back down.

“Picked a good one,” he said approvingly, just as soon as the Emperor rejoined them.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Sabina held the saber in both hands. It was decorative, plucked straight off the wall, but it still held an edge. It could still kill. She meant to. She really meant to.

“You are unwell,” Constantine said. “You don’t know what’s good for you. You don’t know when to quit.”

She lunged at him. He gasped and darted away. She’d only missed him by an inch. She howled in frustration.

If they’d trained her, she’d have been a brilliant fighter. But they hadn’t. And she wasn’t. She left all of herself exposed for the next lunge — and he downed her.

“I’ll kill you,” she swore, with his hands wrapped tight around her throat. “If it’s the last thing I do, I swear, I’ll kill you”

“Sabina,” he cooed sadly. “Rose. All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I want you to fucking die,” she sobbed.

It was a final hurrah, one last gift to herself. When the sobbing died down, there was nothing else left.

The baby came a year later. He’d stopped hitting her while she was pregnant. She did not know if this was temperance, or if it was merely because she’d stopped fighting. They’d both been reluctant to resume the old routine. The baby changed things. It was soft, pliant. So easy to break. Sabina cried when she held it for the first time, cried every day after that. It had kneaded at her chest, half-blind, sleepy. It didn’t know anything.

“Constantine?” She said softly as he swapped out the bandages. The Emperor up in surprise. She so rarely used his name.

But when he did look, she didn’t know what else to say. The terror must have shown through her. She felt all her body was wretched, torn apart, aching. She couldn’t take anymore.

He seemed to recognize this. He never hit her again.

Years passed before she saw her family again. When her son is five years old, she brought him back to that porcelain city, back to her parent’s old house. Both of them dead now, the million wars ravaging even when she cannot see them. She didn’t get to go to the funeral.

She’s stopped crying so much at this point. There’s a dignity to her, one she’s managed to scrape up off the floor of the palace. She was the tough one. She always had been.

She sat up in her sister’s kitchen, drinking ginger tea, manicured nails tapping softly at the porcelain cup. Selene sat across from her, pale, as if she’d seen a ghost.

They wrote letters after that. Constantine had agreed to it, perhaps sensing that his wife had no bone for conspiracy left within her. She was locked into it now, more than she ever had been before.

There’s a desperation to her script. God, she was so unhappy. Selene wrote back just as soon as the mail was delivered, sent it out the same day. It was all she could do. It never seemed to amount to much.

Sabina hinted at it. Selene swore she knew the end.

There’s a flower that grows in the garden of Castle Thales. It is indistinguishable from the heritage rose, but a single blossom could kill when ingested.

When they did the autopsy, they found fifteen of them in her stomach.

Paris stared back at her from across the table, totally frozen. The teacup sat in front of him cold and untouched.

“She died of sepsis,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word.

Selene looked at him with such pity that he thought he might be sick.

“She died of sepsis,” he repeated, “Slowly. In the hospital. She didn’t commit suicide.”

“Paris,” she said softly, “It took a week, didn’t it? Did you see her before the end?”

He propped one elbow up on the table and hid his face in his hand.

“I was at school,” he muttered. “She was already comatose when I got there. She died the next day.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

And of course she said it now, thirteen years later. She wasn’t there when it happened. Nobody was. There was absolutely nothing.

“You understand, surely,” Selene said, “why I was not so devastated to hear of your father’s death.”

There was still something so haunted in her look. He couldn’t bring himself to look up from the wood whorls. He didn’t even hear her standing up. He flinched at the sudden brush at his hand, gentle as it was. She tilted his face up as if to study him.

“God, you look just like her.”

The doorbell rang. Selene startled.

“I thought you said you were alone.”

“She’s my friend.” He stood up quickly. “She’s the only one.”

He opened the door. Lorelai stood cheerily on the step.

“Look what I got.” She grinned. She held up her hand at his eye level and let the necklace dangle from its chain. At its end, the rose charm shined in the dying light.

On an air mattress in the cleared out living room, they laid in a tangle of limbs. Lorelai’s breath was shallow, light, pleasantly exhausted. Paris traced the flesh of her breastbone, intent, almost like he was trying to find something. He had told her the whole story, in hushed tones, in the dark.

“I don’t want to get married,” he said quietly, at the end.

Lorelai laughed under her breath.

“Paris, we were never gonna get married.”

“Yeah, I know. I just…” he trailed off. “l don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Oh, what a question. He shrugged.

“…I took you away from your family,” he said it hushed, as if it was confessional.

“Is that how you remember it?” She laughed again. “That’s not what it was. I wanted to go. I asked you first.”

“I just don’t want to hurt you,” he said, finishing the thought. What either of them thought when they first started out hardly mattered anymore. It seemed so far away now.

“Then don’t,” she said.

They left before the sun rose, trudging the long way, past all the grave sites.

“I guess it’s weird for me to keep this now,” Lorelai said as she studied the pendant.

“It’s just a necklace,” Paris shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

But they both knew it would always hold that weight.

The grass was frosty as if it had snowed. There was so much mist in the air. It was cool and refreshing. It was the perfect morning for it.

They passed by another memorial site. Victims of the war that Empire was waged. An orator could list them all day and never run out of names. Paris paused to watch as Lorelai moved up the knoll and placed the pendant by the base of the stone. Not for Empire. Not for Rose. For Sabina.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @whump-queen

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friendlylocalwhumper · 3 months ago

Text

Cupcake hasn’t been sleeping well lately. With anyone else, Simon would assume it was the whole being a prisoner thing. But this one is tough. He doesn’t seem to think he deserves better, even if his pride gets in the way sometimes. There are no longing glances toward the windows, no getting lost in daydreams. Cupcake just wants a beer, some TV, a place to sprawl and relax.

Last night Cupcake dozed off on the couch for a few minutes. Simon watched as bushy brows twisted, as the scarred chest hitched under the wifebeater, as rugged fingers twitched at his sides. He woke too soon and reached instantly for his bullet-riddled right leg.

The pain is keeping him up. Simon almost feels bad about that, although they’ve gotten to have less sessions, this week, with the little thrills he’s getting seeing that pain all day long.

He’s asleep now, though. Cupcake is on his back, on the floor instead of his bed - which is strange, although he probably gave up on the blankets and tried the carpet, instead, in his pained tossing and turning. Leaning in the doorway, Simon feels his attention slide off the man that he’s watching, straying to thoughts of groans and muffled screams. Maybe if Cupcake eats well enough at breakfast, he can suggest they have a session. Could be fun. The itch is there under his skin.

Into the room he pads softly. His pajama pants brush softly against his ankles, long hair warm and comforting across his shoulders. It’s a peaceful night with the cool air after last night’s rain and the crickets chirping outside. As Simon draws near, he can make out the very faint freckles across Cupcake’s cheeks. His short brown curls that make him look so much younger than the previous bleached mess. Twenty-seven, his file says. But Cupcake cannot read, can barely add numbers in his head, struggles to come up with words that are more than two syllables long.

Violent, antisocial, sadistic, restless, said the file. Cupcake’s never shown his violent side, here. Head tipping to the side to ponder as he watches the man sleep, Simon wonders if Cupcake is really violent by nature, or if he lashes out when provoked, like a malnourished dog in the back corner of a shelter. Antisocial makes sense, with Cupcake barely bothering to talk about the outside world and taking so long to try to get out. Must not have family. Sadistic - Simon can’t speak to that. There’s rage in his eyes, sometimes, but that’s normal for his position. There is no one here for him to hurt but himself.

Restless is the most fitting of all his descriptors. Simon finds himself reaching out, despite wanting Cupcake to stay asleep. There are dark smears of exhaustion under those closed eyes. He’s been healing slowly, he needs this. But traitorous fingers creep forward through the air until they find a stray lock of that soft brown hair. Why does Cupcake hate it so much? Enough to fry it into straw, and change its color, and grow it out in a frizzy mane. It feels reminiscent of how Cupcake ignores mirrors like they aren’t reflective at all, they’re just a normal stretch of dull wall.

His rumination wandered, and his fingers laid too heavily against Cupcake’s scalp. The soft bed of hair disappears suddenly, and the body that was so still and relaxed a second ago is moving sharply. Simon barely has time to widen his eyes before Cupcake jolts and slams bodily into him, sending them both tumbling across the floor.

A flurry of brown hair, round eyes, fists. Animalistic grunts punch their way out of Cupcake as he tries to beat Simon away from him. He can punch, Simon finds, winded into silence by the second blow and then struggling to escape a single hit. It’s like a brick is being driven into his ribs, his head, his upper arms.

Above him, straddling him chaotically, Cupcake bares his teeth and looks like a child trying to beat back a demon. Simon finds himself trying to contain the violent swinging arms rather than truly fight back. The panicked growls and grunts get louder as Simon manages to roll over and get Major onto his back, locking him in a bear hug.

“Nngh, nnh, nnh,” Cupcake grunts, breaths hissing out through locked teeth. He is shaking, vibrating under Simon, who is focused on setting his knees against the floor and tightening his arms to effectively snuff out the fight. “No, no, nnh…”

As close as they are, Simon can hear the tears clogging up Cupcake’s throat and suffocating the pleas out of the air. As soon as his hold is secure enough, Simon lifts his head.

Mistake. A collision with his head, pain blooming hot in his nose. Violent, antisocial, sadistic, restless. One of Simon’s arms unwind from around Cupcake’s back and twist fingers in his hair to pull his head up and slam it back down.

It didn’t feel forceful enough to knock him out, but Cupcake goes still with a shudder. Simon pulls back farther to urgently look into his face, hand sliding down from the short curls to tug on Cupcake’s face and check his eyes. But Cupcake is still awake. He tries to squeeze his eyes shut, and turn his head away, and only croaks out a soft sound of defeat when his head is yanked back and his eyelids pulled open, one at a time.

Simon’s not even sure if a concussion would appear as oddly sized pupils so soon, but they look fine for now. So he pulls back, planting firm palms on Cupcake’s shoulders to help him remember to stay down.

It seems to be dawning on the pinned man that he just fought back. That he beat Simon into the ground, if only for a minute. As soon as he can, he closes his eyes again, breathing hard through flared nostrils.

“What was that?” Asks Simon, voice soft. The blood dripping from his nose and onto Major’s bare chest doesn’t register to either of them as a pressing issue. “What was that, Cupcake?”

Cupcake is afraid. He’s always quieter, when he is. His angry is loud and energetic, his excited is stunned and hesitant. His afraid is very still, breathing hard, trying to process things and largely failing to. The rusted cogs in his head only turn so fast. Cupcake doesn’t know what to do now that he lashed out, doesn’t know what comes next.

“I won’t punish you,” Offers Simon, leaning down harder to show that he can keep the man pinned. “If you talk.”

Cupcake sniffs, and grimaces at how snotty the sound is. He never looks more silently furious than when he sounds pathetic. “Talk?”

Simon runs a thumb back and forth near Cupcake’s collarbone. He either doesn’t notice it, or doesn’t want to be caught showing he hates it. The silence that comes in the stead of an explanation from Simon doesn’t help.

“‘bout the…” Cupcake clears his throat. Opens his eyes, which instantly skitter away from Simon’s kind, curious face. “...Freak out, when I wake up, and… and there’s someone on me. Okay?” He lashed out. He could be killed for this. He knows it, it’s got his chest still lurching with shallow gasps. “‘m sorry. Didn’t know it was you.”

With a sympathetic nod, Simon adjusts his weight to be more on Cupcake’s hips and less on his stomach, to make breathing easier for him. “Who did you think I was?”

Silence. The pain of his shot let has him twitching, trying to change his position without it looking like he’s trying to throw Simon off. No answer.

“We’ve been doing this for a while, Cupcake.” Simon lifts a hand from a pinned shoulder to take hold of his jaw and force eye contact. Cupcake looks angry, but maybe not at the man above him. Or not just at him. “I let you get away with things. Have things your way. It’s better for both of us, to not be too strict.”

The reminder of his place is working, already, without the threat being spoken. Simon can see it in how Cupcake’s breaths miss a beat, how he holds still and waits for the promise of things getting worse.

“Would it be easier for you if I held the gun to your head?”

“...Don’t.” It is quiet, almost a whisper. “Make me. Too fhh-... dumb as, too - stupid. To make something up. I just… don’t make me talk.”

There is something in the vulnerability, there. Something more than pain in his voice. Simon is curious, so curious. But should he really devote energy to punishing the guy having a nightmare, or a trauma response, or whatever that was? Should he tear Cupcake open and expose his fears to the air, just because he wants to know? Maybe Cupcake has earned some grace.

“Okay.” Hand sliding off of Cupcake’s jaw, he draws back and stands. Cupcake slowly, achingly drags himself toward the bed. Climbs up onto it, eyes on the floor the whole way. He needs space, needs to be left alone. “Sure thing, Cupcake. Try to sleep.”

Cupcake is silent until Simon is all the way out the door. In the dark of the room, he mutters, just barely audible, “...Thanks.”

taglist: @morning-star-whump , @lthrboy, @apokolyps, @paperprinxe , @vampiresprite, @wollemi-whump,

@watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees , @whumps-and-bumps , @defire, @notactuallyluska

#whump #drabble #mine #major #simon #nightmares #past trauma #captivity #dehumanization #referenced or implied noncon #very very vaguely implied but the theme is there #the cycle

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