#the misery vampire thing is canon now I've decided

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Daniel Michaelson: Embrace

(final prompt for @whumptober2019: Embrace! Since yesterday’s was such a sweet, genuine bit of brotherly loyalty and love and comfort, today is... well, it’s the exact opposite of that. TW: there’s some pretty much outright torture here. Blood, knives, stress positions, dehumanization, it’s all here, folks. Abraham Denner is very, very good at what he does - and what he does is terrible)

“Did you think you were my first?” 

Abraham sits back in the folding chair, looking down at the slim, sharp knife he holds in one hand, chosen expressly for today's purpose. The end of it is still red, and he tilts the knife down, watching a single drop coalesce at the tip, swell and grow fat, shimmer in the dim light, and finally drop to the ground.

There is a tiny spot that briefly darkens where it lands and then is indistinguishable from all the other blood soaked into the earth here - insignificant, like the puppy’s life.

A life he has broken and remade in his own image.

Red is kneeling, in the dim light and cured-meat smell of the smokehouse. Kneeling and bent totally at the waist, folded in half with his arms out in front of him, forced straight until they pull, a little, at his shoulders by the ropes cutting hair into his wrists that tie him to the hooks in the wall near the ground.

Bram reaches down to pull his fingers against one of those ropes, then lets it go, and smiles at the twang and the groan from the back of Red's throat, forced unwillingly from behind the muzzle.

"Oh, right, your shoulder isn't quite healed yet, is it? Silly me. Well, I suppose we should keep talking, hm? Or I should. You can't really hold up your end of the conversation today, can you?"

Red doesn't even try to look up, and Bram smiles at the sheen of sweat on those muscled shoulders, along the line of his arms, the trickles of sweat that run over the clear shadows along his ribcage.

It's hot in here, today.

Abraham feels it as a gentle, comforting warmth, but the sweat on Red is a giveaway that he feels the heat very intensely. 

Funny. Bram never feels warm unless he’s in direct sunlight.

Red’s hair is a riot of mess everywhere that it isn't plastered to his forehead and neck with the sweat or the leather isn't pushing it in. Abraham’s are caught, for a moment, by the metallic glint of the little padlock laying against the back of his head.

He smiles at the curve of the grid he can see along Red's cheek and jaw, the way it's red there, too, smeared around from Bram's thumbs. 

But that doesn't hold a candle to his back. 

His back is a beautiful mess. Abraham's been working on it for the better part of two hours now, carving into the skin with a steady hand and a practiced eye for anatomy. Never too deep, never even grazing anything he can’t live without. 

You can't see the design through all the blood, but you will, soon enough - and when it scars Bram will get to feel the twisting patterns he’s made himself, run his fingertips over them and watch Red hold himself so carefully, perfectly, obediently still. 

For now, kneeling and prostrated and bloody, he looks like a flagellant. As though he’s a pilgrim out of time, a penitent being bloodied in purification, bleeding out the weight of his sins before God. 

Bram Denner is not God, of course.

The puppy that used to be Daniel Michaelson prays to him now at night, though, and that's close enough.

“Did you think I was born with this knife in my hand? That I sprang fully formed from my father's forehead like some slightly less muscular and significantly prettier Athena?"

Red doesn't answer - but then he can't, with his voice locked away. The only sound from him is the harsh breathing through his nose and low, ragged sounds coming from the back of his throat as the position he's in stretches his shoulders just a little too much and aggravates the still-aching too-recently dislocated joint.

Bram only left it like that for a few hours, but these things take time to heal, and Bram has never been a fan of letting old wounds heal before creating new. 

The sweat runs into the cuts all over his back and makes them sting, no doubt. Maybe Red can't even feel it any longer, though. 

Doesn't matter.

"No, this is the kind of thing you discover in yourself and then cultivate, puppy. You understand, right? You sure showed me some hidden talents that we got to cultivate together, hm?" 

He kicks out his legs, landing a glancing blow into the puppy's shoulder, and Red coughs behind his teeth, whining a little at the ache and the pain as he inadvertently tries to force his jaw open and fails.

"You paying attention, puppy?" 

Red doesn't even try to look up, nodding with jerky, dazed movements. Honestly, he's probably lost enough blood by now to be feeling pretty out of it - and he has that trick where he leaves his head when the muzzle is on, too. Abraham hates that trick. But the only thing that seems to prevent it is the headphones, and he wants little Red to really hear his voice today, in whatever part of him can still hear.

“Good boy. I know what you’re thinking. Why is this happening? What possible mistake did you make to earn this punishment, what lesson must you learn? What rule did you break?” Bram laughed, the deep, low little rumble of sound that he used to charm the bodies out there in the world, all of them collections of organ and bone waiting to be made better, to be fixed.

 But Bram was only one man, and even his prodigious skills could only be utilized on so many people at once. Besides… he’d hate to be distracted away from the puppy. 

Bram was very devoted to the puppy.

“Let me reassure you, little Red, you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong this time.”

Red made a sound like a sob that came from somewhere deep within his chest, giving a single full-body shake, and fuck, he was so beautiful like this. Bram leaned over and tilted his head, looking carefully for a clean spot of skin. It was hard to find but eventually he located what he was looking for and smiled. 

“This isn’t about punishment, little Red. This is about honing a craft. I had to learn these skills that make good boys like you over… years… You know, we all have something we’re good at, but you have to really practice to turn a basic talent into a real skill. You’ve been so good lately, but I can’t just… waste these talents just because you’re getting so good at keeping me all kinds of happy, you know?” 

Bram leans down, thoughtfully, and slides his hand along the metal muzzle that locks Red's voice up, smiling at the pinpricks (not pain, not really - Bram never feels much pain at all) as his thumb finds the spots he turned into little jagged edges that pop up from the wires to cut and poke and tear. When he lifts Red's chin, he finds empty blue eyes staring up at him from above the muzzle, hair hanging over them that goes unnoticed. 

Bram hums appreciatively at the sight. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he breathes, just taking it in. 

Wide, nearly sightless blue eyes under sweat-soaked red hair. The slight unconscious nearly inaudible whines, vibrations Bram can feel against his fingers when he presses them to Red's throat. The red smears where his skin is retorn every time the muzzle goes on or off.

Nate never appreciates it - he’ll be angry once Bram finally lets the puppy back in the house, he’s usually angry these days anyway. He’s been pulling away from Bram’s kisses, acting differently. It takes longer - and takes more incentive - to make Nate be his black-haired prince, his true love, like he used to be. It’s confusing and troubling to Bram, but he tries not to think about it, too much. It had taken him months to hunt Nate down when he ran - and he can’t run, not here in the middle of the woods with his bad leg. There’s nowhere to go.

He’ll come around, Bram is sure of it - it just might take a while. But as long as Red is here, Nate will never, ever try to leave… that, at least, he’s sure of. 

Nate just doesn’t understand, is all, because he’s not really a Denner yet. Those things take time, but he’ll get there, he has to. He doesn’t grasp how all of this builds, layer on layer, into a perfect portrait of exactly what something like Red was born to be.

The dim light that comes through the cracks in the wood slats makes Red’s blood too vibrant, nearly surreal. It looks like paint, like his puppy is a Renaissance painting with those bright blue eyes and that wavy red hair. He’s pure unadulterated beauty in every line, scar, and bruise. 

Red had cried when they started in here, but he was far past tears now. Now he was blank, and empty, locked inside his head just a little further than Abraham Denner could follow. He would be back, later, and the pain would still be there for him, to shape him.

He didn’t need to be here to learn his lessons.

All Bram needed for those was his body.

“I have made you,” Bram murmured. “I have made you from the dust of your life and you are my creation, little Red, and I call you good.”

Maybe he was a little bit of a god, after all.

He slid his hand over Red’s hair, feeling the damp softness of it in between his fingers, before forcing his head back down until Red’s chin was pushing into his collarbone, baring the back of his neck to Abraham’s eyes.

A bit of clear, unbloodied skin. A blank canvas, ready to be painted. A piece of creation, like the dark and formless sea before it split to make the heavens.

“You belong to me,” He says softly, marveling at it, at the miracle of coincidences it took to bring little Red into his orbit at just the right time, the right place, when he needed something to help him hold onto Nate, when he had gone too long without someone to remake. “All of you, forever, belongs to me. You’re all mine.”

He moves his chair closer, watching Red shift around, trying in vain to find a way to take some of the pressure of the position he was trapped in off his knees and thighs. 

“Poor thing, your feet went numb ages ago, am I right? And your legs must ache. Don’t worry, I’m almost done. Just one more thing, puppy, and then we’ll go inside and get you all washed up and bandaged, okay?”

If Red even hears him now, he doesn’t react, only continues breathing harshly and quietly towards the floor. If he could talk, Bram thinks cheerfully, he would probably tell Bram he was busy being someone else.

It’s a neat little trick, but it never lasts long after the muzzle comes off - and when Red comes back, he feels all that pain he worked so hard to escape. 

Bram moves the knife, with its thin, razor-sharp blade, to the back of his puppy’s neck. The clear skin splits apart like darkness and light - like the land and the sea - opening and welling up with the same brilliant red blood. Bram carves two careful straight lines at diagonal angles that meet at the top, connects them with a shorter line through the center. 

Red groans again, but it’s fainter, now - more distant and hazy. He’s begun to shake helplessly, and Bram frees his hand from Red’s hair to rub soothingly at his shoulder while he lowers the knife to carve again. “Good, you’re doing so very well, my sweet boy. Just a little more.” 

Another straight line, vertical this time. Then a half-circle curved to meet the line at either end. He continues to soothe Red with one hand while cutting him with the other, and feels the man’s shaking grow more and more noticeable under his hand. 

He’s pushed him nearly too far, right up to the line of what his body will take before it simply drops him into unconsciousness in a desperate attempt to escape. That’s all right; Bram knows how to walk the line very carefully. He learned that skill a very, very long time ago.

Finally, below the first two letters, he carves the final one. One straight line up, one diagonal line to the side and down, then another straight line up. The blood is smeared and running down the sides of his neck now. Bram leans down to lick it up, feeling Red shudder but try to hold himself still.

He doesn’t try to pull away, even like this.

“Good. Very good, sweet boy. We’re all done now.”

Bram looks over his handiwork with a satisfied eye, then moves to the ropes that hold Red’s arms out, taking his sharp little knife and slicing right through them until the wrists are freed, wrapped in deep red welts that will bruise, in time.

Red bruises so very, very easily. Something about pale redheads, Bram thinks. Makes him irresistible when you can see all those pretty marks.

Red falls forward without the tension to hold him, collapsing onto the ground with little choked-off cries of pain as he tries to pull his arms back and his shoulders - stretched for hours - protest any attempt to bring them back to his sides. He can’t unfold his legs, and just rolls onto his side to take the pressure off, trying to sob without opening his mouth even as his eyes are still glazed, fogged-over, and empty.

Bram lets the knife drop to the side and kneels down himself, bundling the bloodied redhead into his arms, heedless of the blood he smears, enjoying the little hisses of further pain as he presses his palms against the new cuts along his back. 

Red doesn’t fight him, and that’s perfect - just curls up against him, head under his chin, clutching weakly at Bram’s shirt with shaking fingers, whining and pleading behind his teeth. Bram knows the different sounds so well by now, has beautiful dreams about them. 

“Don’t worry, you’ve been so good,” He soothes. “No more for today. No more. I’ll take you inside and get you all clean. We’ll bandage you right up, you can take a little nap on your mat, then you’ll get some dinner made for Nate and I tonight, hm? You were so good, helping me keep my skills up. So very, very good, little puppy. Do you know you’re my very good boy?”

There’s a movement of the soft sweaty red hair as Red nods against him, fingers finally able to get a good grip in his shirt, twisting into the fabric the way a child might hold onto their mother. Red’s eyes are closed and he breathes, in and out, in stutters and stops.

He's very nearly unconscious, and it makes him weak and pliable in a way that sends sparks of joy through Bram's mind.

Bram smiles, sitting back into the dirt, keeping the other man sitting right in his lap, letting himself be soaked in the blood. He lets his fingers run over the new letters carved on Red’s neck - A, D, N - and licks the blood off them enjoying the sparks of life on his tongue, the taste of pain and misery and I give up that has been forced into Red’s veins. 

"Oh, you sweet thing.” Bram presses a kiss into his hair, feels Red boneless against him, maybe even pushing himself a little more against the cool skin in the baking hot smokehouse, taking the comfort Bram chooses to give with gratitude, because this is better than the pain, and it’s all the choice he gets. 

He takes Red by the muzzle that runs along his jaw and tilts his head back, leaning in to kiss the sweat-soaked forehead, feels the flutter of Red’s eyelashes against his cheek when he nuzzles into the side of his face.

One of Red’s hands moves up to touch Bram’s neck, to curl around it, to pull him back to kiss his forehead again, wordlessly, whining low in his throat, desperate for any sense that the pain is really over, that Bram can be kind if only for a second.

He’s praying for mercy, Bram thinks with a laugh bubbling in his throat. I think you’ll find I can be a merciful god. The joke would be wasted now; he'll have to tell Red later, when he comes back to himself. 

Red won't laugh - but he'll give that tremulous, trembling little smile that never reaches his frightened eyes, and that's even better. 

Bram smiles, and kisses each closed eyelid. Red slowly starts to truly relax, to trust that for this moment, at least, it’s over. 

“You're not my first,” Bram breathes into his ear. “Not by a long shot.”

He tucks a little bit of red hair behind one ear, feels Red's pounding heart start to slow. Those empty blue eyes look right into his, and he wonders what little Red can even see. 

“You’re not my first, and you won’t be my last, little Red, but I think you might be my best."