CW: BBU general warning, male whumpee, pet whump, multiple pets, female whumper,
“Barnaby? Barnaby, where are you?”
There’s a tinge of irritation in Mistress Caroline’s voice, and Barnaby winces. He’s taking too long setting up the dining room, and he knows it, but there’s nothing he can do to fix it. He’s moving much slower today, his body aching when he tries to turn too quickly. His breathing is quick, raspy. His entire body feels too warm, skin on too tight.
Mistress Caroline rounds the corner, and Barnaby snaps as straight as he can. His posture isn’t perfect, but Mistress Grace doesn’t notice. Behind her, though, Pierce’s gray eyes narrow. The older servant evaluates Barnaby’s rigid body with a critical gaze, and Barnaby knows he’ll be hearing about this later. He returns his eyes to Mistress Grace’s face a moment too late, and he hears the disappointment in Pierce’s exhale.
“Barnaby, we have a very, very busy day today. I do not understand why such a simple task is taking you so long!”
Bowing his head, Barnaby takes the criticism. “I’m so sorry, Mistress,” he tells her, voice appropriately grave.
Tapping one high-heeled foot, Mistress Caroline lets out a sigh that ruffles Barnaby’s hair, even from a few feet away. “Don’t just apologize, Barnaby. Do better.”
“I will do better,” Barnaby promises her, and he knows his voice sounds a little too eager. Not professional enough for Pierce’s tastes. He tries to moderate it with his next words. “Mistress Caroline, I will do better.”
“Hmph. Start now. When you’re finished, we’ll want lunch. Something simple, I think. Dinner tonight will be fancy enough for me, I don’t need anything big.”
Barnaby nods, head still feeling much too heavy on his neck. “Of course, ma’am. A salad?”
The way Mistress Caroline’s voice lifts means she’s smiling, and Barnaby’s done well. “A salad would be perfect. Get to it, Barnaby. I’ll eat in an hour, in the sitting room. I have calls to make.”
With that, she clicks out of the room. Lingering for just a moment, Pierce hangs in the doorway. Then he takes a few steps forward, takes Barnaby’s head in his hands. With clinical detachment, he presses cool fingers to the space below Barnaby’s chin, then his forehead.
“A fever, Barnaby?”
As soon as he hears the words, Barnaby recognizes the truth of them. It slots into space so neatly that Barnaby feels stupid for not knowing earlier. “Y-yes, Pierce, I’m sorry-”
“Not your fault, son.” Pierce’s disapproval has subsided into something softer. Still gruff, but more forgiving now, and some of the tension bleeds from Barnaby’s shoulders. “Normally, I’d talk to Mistress and give you time off. With the dinner party…” Pierce shakes his head. “Not possible. Do your best. I’ll see if we have anything to reduce the fever.”
“Pierce?”
Mistress Caroline’s voice drifts down the hallway, and both men stiffen. With one apologetic look, Pierce is gone, and Barnaby is alone.
Barnaby does his best. He really does. WRU may have taught him how to work, but Pierce showed him how to take pride in it. So, Barnaby makes Pierce proud. He cleans the room, sets the table with painstaking care. The process lasts two, almost three times as long as it usually does, because Barnaby has to check and recheck his work. His hands are shaky and sweaty, and his vision keeps going hazy, out of focus.
But he sets the table. When that’s done, he turns to the kitchen, ignoring the way his body aches for rest. It’s salad. It’s putting a few things in a bowl. It’s just putting a few things in a bowl, that’s all –
There’s a high, unhappy voice calling Barnaby’s name, but it sounds very, very far away. “Barnaby! Barnaby, where are you?”
Then, much closer, a gruff, older voice. Known, but the emotion in it is unfamiliar. If Barnaby didn’t know better, he’d say that Pierce sounds sad. It’s his last, wondering thought before he passes out cold in the older servant’s arms.
CW: threats of noncon, implied future noncon, knife to throat, threats
“M-master.”
Her eyes are wide, wide and blue enough to drown in. Stick watches her bite her lip and he swallow, feeling her tremble echo in his own body. How badly he wants to take the pain from her stiff stance, the fear from her rigid expression.
“M-master, I c-cuh…”
She can’t say the words, is too well-trained to let them out. Stick hears them anyway, feels them throb through his own taut body. She can’t! She can’t, don’t make her!
The man stands before them both, smiling proudly. “Aw, darling. Don’t look so frightened.” He rubs her cheek fondly with one knuckle, and her pleading, adoring gaze fixes on him. How could anyway resist those eyes, that look?
Master Richard can. He tugs at a perfect blonde curl. “You’ll do just fine,” he tells her, and once more, her gaze drifts to the center of the room, where the bench waits.
It’s not the bench she minds. Stick knows that because he knows her as well as he knows her own body. In ways too deep to explain, he sometimes feels that her body is his body, and his belongs to her just as much. On the best of days, they’re so close it’s impossible for him to tell where she begins and he ends.
Days like this, though, they feel miles apart.
Set to one side, ignored, Stick wrings his hands as Master Richard crosses the room, to the part of the display that she does mind. The tray of tools is gleaming silver, ominous in any light. The tools aren’t all steel, but enough of them are to make her flinch when they roll beneath Master Richard’s toying fingers. She lifts one foot nervously, like a bird trying to find rest, and rubs her foot against the opposite calf. The gesture is so young, so unguarded, that it nearly brings her Stick to tears.
“Come here, girl.” Master Richard slaps his thigh like he’s summoning a dog, and Stick hates him then, with a bright white helpless intensity. The hate fades under the worry as he watches her rock to and fro on the balls of her feet, revolting against herself as her deepest ingrained impulses pull her both forward and back.
A loud, dramatic sigh has both of them balking. “Are you really going to be difficult? Come on now, Lily.”
The name has a magnetic effect. She takes one tiny step toward him, then another. “That’s it, Lily.” His voice is coaxing, soft. “Good girl.”
A small smile curves up her face, and it’s so genuine that Stick has to look away. He turns his gaze to Master Richard, watches the man scoop a serrated blade off the mirrored tray, still grinning at her as she approaches.
Seeing the flash in his hand, she freezes, and Stick wants to sing his relief. “Ah.” Master Richard makes a sad face, but Stick knows he isn’t sad. “So, it will be like that, after all.”
She doesn’t reply. Stick doesn’t either. Times like this, no one expects him to speak.
The knife dances in Master Richard’s fingers. He makes it play, makes it flash, makes it seem deceptively pretty in the warm glow of lamplight. Stick knows better than to be hypnotized by tricks like these, but she seems almost drawn in by it, eyes wide and fascinated.
She still won’t take a step forward.
Rolling his eyes, Master Richard closes the distance himself. She is too well-trained to flee from his approach, but then, she isn’t the one in danger, this time. No, it’s Stick who feels the cold press of a blade against his throat.
Across the room, she catches her breath, like she feels the kiss of steel along with him.
“Go on now, Lily.” The smile in Master Richard’s voice is self-evident. It doesn’t matter that he stands behind stick, his face out of sight. Stick knows he’s smiling, and what’s more, Stick knows which smile it is – the smug one, the one Master Richard wears when he knows he’ll get his way. As Stick watches, helpless to do anything but hold his breath, Master Richard does get his way.
Movements jerky as a marionette dancing for their master, she moves across the room toward the bench. She isn’t trained for pain. Not like Stick is. She isn’t trained for pain, and she isn’t meant for pain; she’s meant for sweetness and softness and only the best. If he could take the pain for her – if Master Richard would let him take the pain for her – if she herself would let Stick take the pain.
The unfairness of it makes Stick want to scream, but he doesn’t. He stands, still as a rock.
“On your back,” Master Richard calls, and Stick lets his eyes shut. The hatred he feels is generous, spreading. Now it can hold both Master Richard, and himself.
Madigan smiles down at the controller in their hands. If they don’t think about it too hard, the motions come more easily, the tapping of fingers, the swivel of a joystick. They’re nowhere near as good at this as Michael, but they’re improving, and they can tell it makes their owner happy. They turn to him, fully expecting the proud and beaming grin spread across his face.
What they don’t expect is his hand, raised high in the air.
For a second, Madigan freezes, an overwhelming torrent of thought flowing through their brain. Then, a fraction of a second too late, they’re cringing hard against the couch cushions.
Stunned by the open fear on their face, Michael doesn’t notice the delay. “M-Mad?”
“S-sorry, sir.” Madigan knows their voice sounds strained. They can’t fix it, can’t make themselves sound right. The stricken look on Michael’s face isn’t going away, and Madigan is so tense they’re almost vibrating, unsure what to do.
Then, Michael is throwing his arms around them.
It takes too long for Madigan to relax their muscles. Mistake after mistake piles up – flinching and the voice and now holding their muscles tense against their owner. Real fear raises its head, drums its beating feet against Madigan’s chest.
“Someone really did a number on you.”
Michael’s voice isn’t muffled; it’s actually too loud, right against Madigan’s ear. Still shaken from their series of failures, Madigan buys themselves time anyway. “S-sorry?”
Pulling back, Michael looks Madigan in the eye, so earnest it almost hurts. Automatically, Madigan drops their gaze, but Michael tilts their chin right back up. Naked fear plays on their face, and naked pity on his. Madigan’s stomach twists.
After a pause that’s much too long for Madigan’s liking, Michael shakes his head. “Someone really hurt you, huh?”
“Y-yeah.” Once again, Madigan finds they can’t look Michael in the eye. They turn their face from him, only to be gently brought back by the touch of fingers. From the look in his eyes, they can tell he wants more, so reluctantly, they give it to him. “My…my first owner.”
Just saying the words tastes like defeat. It feels like admitting fault, a fault that’s not temporary, but lasting and unforgivable. It makes Madigan want to squirm, but Michael has one arm around their shoulders and one hand on their face, so they hold still. It takes just about all the self-control they have, but they hold still.
An unfamiliar look takes over Michael’s features. Brows crash down, eyes narrow, mouth pulls into a fearsome scowl. He’s angry. For the first time, after a month in Michael’s home, their owner is angry. “Fuck them,” he growls, and for a moment, fear thrills through Madigan as they forget who he’s talking about. When he sees their eyes widen, Michael shakes his head.
“Your old owner, I mean. Whoever they are, fuck them.”
“O-oh.” Trapped, Madigan’s eyes dart from their knees to Michael’s face to the wall behind his head. They can’t agree, can they? To agree would be the highest form of disrespect. But then, they can hardly disagree with their owner.
Before Madigan can spiral even worse about this new dilemma, Michael rescues them. He squeezes them tight against his chest once more, then releases them. “Listen. We won’t do high fives for a while. I get it, it’s scary.”
Somehow, Madigan doubts that Michael has any idea what it is to be scared at the hands of another. Still, they nod, eyes fixed on their owner’s face.
“I know you had…I mean, you must’ve had just, an awful experience before. But I won’t be like that, okay? You can trust me.”
Trust him. Madigan would laugh if they knew how. Instead, they nod, numb as they’ve ever been.
“I know that’s hard to believe, but really, Mad. You can trust me. You’ll see. This is going to be different.”
For the first time, Madigan nods in true agreement. Whatever this thing is with Michael, it is definitely going to be different from anything they’ve ever known.
