#ashley denner

[whumpingwithclara-alt]

cool tumblrs oc collages ~ part 1

So I made character collages for some of@ashintheairlikesnow 's oc characters :)

Ashley

Bram

Nate

and sweet Danny

[orchidscript]

OC Moodboard: Ashley Denner 3/3

The Shoe-Board is here!!

(Special thanks to @pinkcupboardwitch and @muffinworry for stellar inspo, and @ashintheairlikesnow for a kick-ass character.)

[muffinworry]

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

For @ashintheairlikesnow

[ashintheairlikesnow]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are so many rules.

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

Take each bruise, each bleeding wound, with gratitude.

Be our pet.

Fall in love.

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

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

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

Only Bram wants his love. 

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

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

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

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

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

Especially when it hurts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never reject a touch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He has to remember who he used to be.

He has to remember that he is a person.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nate takes a deep breath.

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

“Identical twins are always the same biological sex.”

“Unless they’re gods,” She counters.

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

“We’re identical.”

“No. You’re similar.”

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

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

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

He doesn’t love her.

She doesn’t want him to.

And she’s wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He always tries to hold it back.

He always screams in the end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Daniel Michaelson: Nate Vandrum’s Nightmare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hitch in a breath; not quite enough air.

Exhale.

Again.

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

Breath in - never enough, not enough.

Exhale.

Again.

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

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

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

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

Should’ve held onto that air.

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

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

She smells like soil, and blood, and death.

And ice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inhale - just enough air this time.

Exhale - as carefully and slowly as he can.

Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It doesn’t matter.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s all so very, very cold.

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

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

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

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

He can’t move his mouth.

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

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

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

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

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

Because over seven years, maybe they infected him.

Maybe it’s only a matter of time.

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

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

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

“N-Name… is… D-D-Dan-ny.”

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

I could kill you again.

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

His fingers close around thin air.

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

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

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

Nate slowly turns back to stare around the dark room.

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

Just a dream.

Just seeing things.

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

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

Or you will be.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Nate Vandrum Before Danny: Request Answered

(for @blackstar-1391 who requested Nate and the twins pre-Danny... Ashley decided to show up late, sorry about that, but I’ve got an Ashley-focused drabble knocking around in my head for the future! Tagging @bleeding-demon-teeth who mentioned liking being tagged for Bram!)

TW: Non con touching, knives, mentions of sex (implied/referenced), some reaaaaaal lowkey emotional manipulation and like the bittiest bit of torture

“Don’t be mad, baby,” Bram croons, sliding the edge of the knife down the side of Nate’s neck, not enough to cut, just enough to be a shiver of cold metal he can’t quite deny. “Look, we talked about this, didn’t we?”

“Did we?” Nate asks, keeping his eyes closed and turning his head to the side. His voice comes out calm, and steady, and he’s proud of himself for that.

“We did. I’ve been really opening up to you, Nate, and I just feel like you’re not listening to me.”

Looking away like this bares his neck to Bram, which has its own risks, but it keeps the edge of the blade off his cheek, and in his best attempts at calculation, that seems the safer bet. “I’m sorry, it’s hard to hear you when you’re cutting my fucking shirt off.”

His voice doesn’t shake, but his heart is knocking against his chest hard enough that he’s a little afraid it’s going to burst right out of him like a horror movie nightmare moment.

“Look, I get that you’re pretty upset right now,” Bram says reasonably enough, nudging the slivers of cloth puddled at his feet to the side. “Although I’d like to point out that you currently have enough bandages on you that you might as well be wearing a second shirt, anyway.”

Nate shifts and hears the slight crackle of them, feels the pull of the adhesive, the soft brush of the gauze. “Because you cut me.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t give you any excuse to be rude, does it?”

Nate nearly opens his eyes at that, nearly turns to look back at him, to argue, but he catches himself just in time. 

If Abraham notices, his voice doesn’t give it away. “I’ve been really explaining my motivations to you, my feelings, and I expect you to reciprocate. It’s perfectly normal for couples to have a fight, occasionally, but the secret is to a healthy fight, Nate, is when you actually communicate. So far this has been pretty one-sided, I think.”

Nate snorts derisively, but stiffens as the blade of the knife moves, the point beginning to press at a spot just under the side of his jaw, where the bone angles up towards his ear.

It’s reassuring, to have the knife at his neck and not up on his face. Bram doesn’t like to cut anything you could actually bleed to death from, so the odds of getting his throat slit are pretty slim to none.

He’s less confident in whether or not he’ll get to keep his eyes, especially since Bram’s even more psychopathic sister keeps talking about how pretty they are, and Nate’s a little afraid Bram’s going to leave him alone with her one day and come back to a blind captive and Ashley Denner bragging about her totally unrelated brand new set of eyes in a jar. 

“This is not what I would consider healthy communication,” Nate replies, and as long as his eyes are closed, he can hold on to the anger, to himself. If he never looks right at Abraham Denner, if he doesn’t let himself fall into the ice, break through to the darkness under the surface, he still has control of this, if nothing else.

The only control he has left is his occasional ability to hold onto his own mind, and even that has begun to slip.

“Why not?” The point of the knife presses in, just a little, and Nate hisses air through his teeth. 

“Because I can’t fucking move my hands, Bram!” His back’s against the wall, but with his hands tied behind his back with thick ropes that dig in and rub his skin raw, Nate has to arch his back not to press hard enough on them to hurt. 

Bram moves closer to him, and Nate can feel the cold of him before he feels the nudge of a hip against the side of his, the brush of his skin, the whisper of frozen breath along his ear. “What’s wrong with this, hm? You need your hands tied or you don’t focus very well, do you? So really, I’m helping you here. This is the best way to get you to be honest with me, Nate.”

“Or to get me to tell you anything you want to hear out of sheer fear for my life,” Nate mutters, and the knife digs in just a little. He stiffens, waiting with his eyes closed, and sure enough - he feels the pinprick of pain as it breaks the skin, the moment of anticipation, and then Bram’s cold tongue laps the drop of blood that wells up from his neck.

He shudders, half in disgust - but after a year with them the disgust isn’t the strongest reaction any longer, and Nate hates himself for that. 

He’s pushing his luck as it is, but Bram came home in a good mood, and Nate is in a terrible one, and he couldn’t stop himself from trying, even if just for a little while, to remember who he is when he’s not looking into Abraham Denner’s eyes.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Bram points out, pulling back. Warm air rushes to fill the space where his frigid chill was, and Nate shivers at the sudden change, goosebumps rising along his arms. “I would know if you did that, and I would cut deeper until you were honest with me.”

“You cut me up anyway.”

“But not deeply.”

He can’t really argue that. The slices all across his torso and shoulders are always shallow, enough to burn and itch while they heal and drive him insane, but not enough to cause any severe permanent damage. Most of them don’t even scar, unless Ashley’s the one doing the cutting.

He’s special, according to Bram. He’s different than the others (and Nate wants to ask, wants so badly to ask about these mysterious others but he also very much doesn’t, never will), he’s important.

He’s fucking trapped, is what he is.

Kidnapped by psychopaths, held here, drugged with whatever they put in his water and by the things that move behind Bram’s eyes, the spell that weaves around his voice. Nate’s anger builds when he’s left alone in the house, or when he’s with Ashley. He constructs elaborate ideas for ways he could get out of this.

Then Bram walks in the door, looks him in the eyes, and Nate feels himself go weak in the goddamn knees.

There’s a pause, and then Bram slides a hand up his face, cold palm and fingertips against his cheek, his cheekbone, up to his temple. The knife stays right where it is, slowly pushing in, and Nate wonders if another bead of blood is welling up.

He has his answer when Bram licks again.

“I love you,” Bram breathes into his skin, and where he touches Nate he feels frozen, pushing himself away as best he can, ignoring the pain in his wrists and hands as the pressure of his back forces them to hit the wall at an angle that pushes all the small bones awkwardly together. 

The knife trails down the side of his neck again, pricks at his collarbone just a little, cuts through a bandage and over an earlier wound, making Nate groan, low in his throat, at the resurrected pain there. 

“Won’t you tell me you love me, baby?” Bram asks, nuzzling into his face as his knife cuts a little deeper in a straight line down his ribs.

“No,” Nate grinds out between gritted teeth. “Because I fucking don’t.”

Nate wants to scream and to cry all at once because it was one thing to be targeted by a psycho for torture but to be forced to say you loved him, too, it was just all too fucking much.

And when they put enough of that shit in his water, sometimes he didn’t have to be coerced with a knife.

“You will,” Bram says softly, cold breath against his face. “Don’t worry, baby. One day you’ll love me so fucking much, if I want you to…”

“What are you two bastards doing?” Ashley’s voice, sharp as the crack of a whip, is enough of a surprise that Nate’s eyes fly open.

Bram pulled the knife back, his nose still just brushing Nate’s cheekbone, leaning his other arm on the wall. The two of them turned to look at her in the same moment, heads turning, Nate’s black hair mingling with Bram’s white-blonde.

He and Bram, he thinks, look like two teenagers caught making out in the hallway by a parent, and he feels himself flush, unwillingly, as much from having the thought at all as from the image. He doesn’t have to fake the scowl on his face.

He tries to arch away from his hands, to take some of the pressure off, but Bram presses closer to him at the same moment and his stomach flips and his heart skips a beat and how the fuck does Bram do this to him?

“We had a fight,” Bram says casually. “We’re making up. What were you doing?”

“Hunting. What does it look like I was doing?” Ashley’s at the other end of the hallway, dressed in an unzipped black hoodie over a black tank top and jeans, and she is coated in blood. Spatters have dried brownish on her face, soaked into her hair until it hangs in strangely-colored clumps, the blood on her hands is still more red, obscenely wet, and looks like it might drip on the floor.

A few months ago, Nate might have found this surprising.

Now, he was mostly just pissed that he would be the one scrubbing the blood drips out of the floor later on.

“Was it a good hunt?” Bram asks, as though it’s an everyday occurrence for his twin sister to walk in up to her elbows in blood while he’s slowly cutting stripes into the captive he is absolutely convinced is his boyfriend.

Well.

It is an everyday occurrence here. 

“Good enough,” Ashley said, looking down at her left hand, spreading the fingers out and contemplating the drying blood there. “Bought us some time. Couple of good bodies.” She looks slowly up, tilting her head, and Nate finds himself pushing back against the wall and away from those cold eyes, nearly leaning to the side into the span of Abraham’s arm. 

Between the two of them, he’d pick Bram every time - at least Bram seemed interested in letting him survive this.

Ashley rolls her eyes. “Can you two stop fucking in the hallway long enough for me to get to the shower?”

“Ashley.” Bram raises an eyebrow. The knife jabs into Nate’s ribs again, catching him by surprise, and he cries out in pain before he catches himself and his mouth slams back shut, but he hears Bram’s soft delighted exhalation in response. “You would have heard it if we were-”

“Ugh, fuck off,” Ashley groans, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be gross, Brammie.”

Nate feels a deep, instinctive urge to ask her where the fuck she got off judging them when she was coated in someone’s blood, and just barely fights it back. 

Bram snorts in laughter. “Fine, fine.” He turns to look at Nate, who looks back at him before he remembers not to, and in Bram’s eyes Nate feels himself fade. The anger that roils in him sloughs off and away, piece by piece, and Nate will trade whatever of himself he has to in order to survive the dark things that swim in the depths of the ice he is staring into. “Should we go back to our room and talk this thing out, Nate?”

“There’s nothing to goddamn talk about, Bram,” Nate says, but all the fight has gone out of his voice, and he knows Bram can hear it, because the smile already on his face spreads a little wider. 

Ashley wanders towards them, clumping gracelessly in her heavy boots, stopping to raise one bloody hand to cup Nate’s face. “Is he being a shit today, Brammie? I can fix that. You know I’m good at fixing him when he’s bad.”

“He’s mine,” Bram says, turning to look at his sister without any real jealousy or irritation. “I can fix him just fine on my own.”

“But I like the little cuts…” Ashley smiles, and there is blood on her teeth, too. “I like the big ones. I like the hitting and the skinning and the… if he’s not being a good relationship partner, Brammie, if he’s hurting my baby brother-”

“Hardly,” Bram snorts.

“Enough to count,” Ashley sniffs. “If he’s hurting you, let me fix him.”

Nate, trapped between the bloodsoaked ice queen and the glacial monster that thinks it loves him, has his choice of one kind of dying or the other.

Nate takes a deep breath, considers what options he even has, and turns to look right into Bram’s eyes. “I’ll talk to you,” He says, trying to pitch his voice lower, softer, sweeter. “Let’s, um, let’s talk, you and I.” It’s surprisingly easy, easier every day, and when he looks right at him and into his eyes he can feel  part of him whisper, he loves me, and when something like Abraham Denner loves you, you don’t get to choose.

“Good. Then you can get the fuck out of my hallway,” Ashley says, a flicker of disappointment in her eyes as she pulls back and away. “I need a shower. Nate’s gonna make me a drink when I’m done, yeah?”

“I think we’ll be busy,” Bram says, grabbing Nate by the rope that bound up his arms, turning him to walk in the direction of the big bedroom at the end of the hall. His heart pounded, but it was better than being alone with her.

Even if it meant being pulled under by the things in Bram’s eyes.

Even if it meant the knowledge that one day the real Nate Vandrum might be totally subsumed by the version of him he wore alone with Bram.

“Tell me you understand, baby,” Bram says, and there’s a hand guiding him by the ropes that tie his arms behind his back until they’s covered in welts and bruises, there’s a knife in his side that will soon be cutting him open to bleed for Bram’s endless appetite. “Tell me you love me.”

“I understand. I love you,” Nate says, eyes on the floor, and he doesn’t mean it.

Except that sometimes, when he looks right into Bram’s eyes and listens to his low, deep voice, he does.

“See?” Bram says brightly, shoving Nate ahead of him into the bedroom, watching Nate lose his balance and crack hard onto his knees on the floor, listening to his hissed curse at the pain. “All it takes is some open and honest communication. And maybe you’re thinking it’s not honest, because you don’t love me, but trust me, baby, you will. Everyone loves me, eventually. You know what, Nate?”

“What?” Nate grunts, trying to stand back up, but Bram’s hand slams down on his shoulder and holds him. The knife is a bloom of pain at his shoulder, and he hisses, grinding his teeth together as hard as he can. He can feel the blood this time, the warm droplets that run down his cold skin, and he shivers when Bram licks that up, too. 

The pain is always a promise, here - it’s never just a threat.

He’s going to die with these people, and they’re going to make him absolutely fucking crazy first.

“You’re so goddamn miserable,” Bram breathes out in pure ecstasy. “We’re going to be so happy together. Now… let’s see what I can do with your shoulder blades today.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Ashley: 2 or 16

(oh, Ashley, you terrifying monster woman. Don’t worry @blackstar-1391 - this doesn’t count as your request, I am 100% doing a longer piece to fulfill your Denners + Nate request!)

“How are you feeling today?”

Her twin brother’s boyfriend stares her down as he asks the required question, setting the plate in front of her, and she stares right back. 

Her favorite, of course - toast with Irish butter (their time in Ireland had been so good - how long ago was that? There were a lot of miserable people back then, skinny and starving) and two eggs, over hard, a dash of the hot sauce she gets at the store down the block.

Nate is so good, these days - and the bandages under his long-sleeved shirt give away just how long it took him to learn.

Upstairs, Brammie’s still in the shower - honestly he’s probably still singing, a sound she loves to hear - Brammie has such a good singing voice, and he just doesn’t know it.

More people should get to hear Brammie sing - not just Nate in bed, when Brammie sings him to sleep (or the drugs do, and honestly, who gives a fuck which it is but Brammie himself?) or Ashley when she overhears him and he doesn’t know she’s listening.

Nate isn’t looking as good these days as he did when they first followed him home. No, these days, trapped in the house with them, Nate has grown pale, gotten thinner, and she can see the marks all across his neck from where Brammie got a little aggressive with him last night. 

Brammie likes his sweethearts skinny and showing every inch of the life they’ve had taken from them. Ashley never really likes to let them live this long, but she has to admit it’s kind of nice to have the eye candy around every day.

“I’m feeling lovely, Nate, thanks so much for asking.” Her voice is a sultry, pleased purr, and she watches his jaw tighten as he glares down at her, his green eyes full, absolutely full, of abject hatred, blurred and foggy from whatever Brammie put in his water when he woke up this morning. 

“Glad to hear it,” He nearly snarls, and sits down at the table himself, staring down at his own plate - just toast with the butter for him, the drugs make his stomach upset in the mornings a lot. Ashley likes to joke that maybe he’s pregnant.

Nate doesn’t like that joke. 

He doesn't like that joke at all

She doesn’t care.

Ashley picks up her toast to eat, and says pleasantly to him, “How are you feeling today, darling?”

“Like I’ve been kidnapped by a couple of goddamn psychopaths,” Nate replies, his voice a snarl of anger.

“Then do something about it,” She says softly, so softly, and he stares at her for one more moment before his eyes drop back to his plate.

“I can’t,” He whispers, just as Brammie enters the room.

Ashley grins as her brother slides an arm around Nate’s shoulders, leans down to kiss the top of his black hair.

“Good morning, baby,” Brammie says lovingly. “How are you feeling today?”

Nate straightens a little under the touch, then looks up at him, and Ashley watches the hate melt a little into something closer to fear, maybe even love. As close to love as you can feel for someone who cuts you up each night, she supposes.

Ashley wouldn’t know.

“I’m, I feel fine, Bram, thanks,” Nate answers him. Bram kisses him, white-blonde hair still soaking wet and dripping just a little onto Nate’s shirt, and when he pulls back to sit down, Nate gets back to his feet, and Ashley watches him serve Brammie his favorite breakfast, too.

Two eggs over easy, plain white toast with nothing on it (for dipping in the egg yolks), two pieces of sausage, all of it kept perfectly warm until he was ready. 

Brammie grins up at Nate as he sets the plate down, and written all over his face is his pure, unadulterated love.

Ashley smiles and takes another bite of toast.

Another perfect day, and she feels fucking great about it.

[orchidscript]

OC Moodboards: Ashley Denner, feat. Oracle Collins (2/3)

“I, I just… P-Penny’s dead, and you…” Ora’s head drops, and they pull their knees up tighter to their chest. “You made me w-watch…”

“Oh. Did that bother you? Well, I guess you’re not going like the next couple of hours very much, either. Get up and come downstairs, I brought a friend for us to kill.”

( @ashintheairlikesnow​‘s super fun knife lady. Special thanks to @muffinworry​ and @pinkcupboardwitch​ for inspiration.)