#peter: courage

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I just discovered Peter and I’m crying. Does he have a masterlist?

He doesn't! He was always kind of a side character who I never intended to stand on his own but sometimes he gets away from me. He does have his own tag on my blog though!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BBU Community Days

@bbu-on-the-side {Day 13} Safety

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CW: Pet whump, BBU, referenced violence, scars, memory loss

Safety is as easy and as simple as the collar around his neck. Every night, Peter Renford goes to sleep with a soft cloth one that he can't even really feel, and pulls the blankets up to nearly cover his own head until he is bathed in the dark.

It never takes long for him to fall asleep. When he dreams, he doesn't remember most of them beyond the memory of a soccer ball, pounding cleats, sitting at a kitchen table with a box of fried chicken from the KFC down the road and fighting with his brother over who gets the last of the mashed potatoes and gravy. The chemical-salt taste lingers somewhere under the headache already pounding behind his temples when he comes awake, groaning and shifting along the air mattress he sleeps on, on the floor of a tiny room that was a half-bath before his Madam made it his bedroom.

He stretches, and the scars layered over his back from neck to ass protest. They don't move like regular skin, and he winces. New welts throb, waking up right with him.

For a second, behind the headache and the pain in his back and knees, Peter knows that something is terribly, horribly wrong about this.

He knows, even though he doesn't want to know, that his name isn't Peter Renford.

But he can't remember what it was.

Then he fumbles clumsy sleep-slowed fingers to his neck, slipping the cloth collar away from skin that doesn't remember how to be bared. His heart beats too quickly - to have a collar removed is to be in danger, at risk. It is what happens when Madam really hurts him. Keeping it on is a promise between pet and owner that each will keep the other safe.

Outside, just beyond the door, he hears footsteps. A muttered grumble tells him it's Sebastian, heading downstairs to make breakfast and coffee. Dex, silent as a grave, must be right behind him, but you never hear Dex.

Seen and not heard, perfectly made, Madam always says. I do not make mistakes.

Except for Peter.

But Madam didn't train him. She just got the failure that no one else wanted to buy.

Peter swallows, nervous at the way he can feel air on skin, and scrambles to the box of collars laid out by collar next to the bed. He finds a good one, simple navy leather with a silver buckle, and pulls it on.

As soon as he feels it, the welcome familiar constriction and cool leather warming to his skin, his fear falls away.

Safe.

He's safe.

It's quick work to pull on a sweater and pants, run fingers through his hair, and try a few more stretches. Madam isn't home this week, she's at a conference, and so the house can stay soft and he and Seb can laugh about anything they want while Dex watches with little crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Just him and his brothers, for a few more days.

The last dregs of his dream whisper, They aren't your brothers. You aren't supposed to be here.

But those thoughts aren't safe.

So he locks them away, and by the time he gets downstairs, Peter Renford has forgotten the dream entirely.

Except for the feeling, still lingering, that something is terribly wrong here.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

"It was perfect domesticity; a domesticity that was twisted and a little fucked up, but it was theirs."

If I am allowed to submit for 5 sentence fics 🫶

For my usual suspects 🥹

CW: Pet whump, BBU, deeply conditioned/brainwashed whumpee POV, sickfic... kinda...

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"Every time she leaves, he gets sick." Sebastian leans against the door frame, frowning into the darkness of the bedroom. It's Micheal's room, but sometime during his first year in the house Peter had started sleeping in there, and Madam never stopped it.

Micheal looks up from where he sits on the bed, and shrugs. "Safer," He whispers, after a pause to think.

The collar he wears is heavy and thick, with a small box on the back and electrodes that press into his skin. He can only speak for so long in a day, and each word uses up precious seconds he doesn't want to lose. So you have to hear what he doesn't say as much as you hear what he does.

Safer to be sick now than to be sick when Madam is here.

And it's true.

For all of them, it's true, but especially for Peter. His back and thighs and arms all show the scars of the beatings he's taken at Madam's hands, beatings the rest of them no longer have to face.

Micheal leans over, gently brushing dark curls away from Peter's forehead, stuck there with sweat. Peter only mumbles something, curling up a little more tightly under the blankets, coughing a harsh, raspy cough that makes Seb worry he'll have to call the WRU clinic later on.

"Right. Well... Dex is at the library, he'll be back in a couple hours. I'll make Peter some soup, you try and get him sitting up, okay?"

Micheal looks over at him and smiles, hand under his chin in an easy sign for thank you. It saves words, saves time. And he's getting the hang of the sign the others dip into and out of regularly in their own speech.

"Yeah, no problem. Soup, bath, we'll NyQuil him back up and then back to sleep. We have a week before she gets back."

Seb turns to walk back down the stairs, sighing. The house is more relaxed when she isn't here - the pets all careful and more or less content, without the nervousness and tension. He doesn't mind this, days like this, at all. Honestly, it's probably a better life. All he has to do is cook and keep the kitchen clean.

It's a perfect Domestic life - a little twisted and fucked up, sure, but it's the life he wanted, the life he signed up for. It's his life.

He cooks, he cleans... and he hides from Madam's anger, or hope it turns in Peter like it usually does, and tries not to feel guilty for every scar Peter wears and Seb doesn't.

Well.

He can't change anything about this.

But he can, at least, make some soup.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Any Questions?

For @whumptober2021 day 10, I chose alternate prompt 14: Battlefield

CW: BBU, Whumper POV, referenced torture, referenced pet whump, recorded past torture & some ableism

Follow-up to I Did Not Sign Up For This and part 2 of the opening salvo of Speak Out. 

Michael belongs to @card-games-and-pain

Her phone rings, and Karen frowns at the number. The CEO never calls her at home, at least not on her days off. 

She glances up at the clock - middle of the afternoon on a Saturday, no special time really - and then picks up the slim black rectangle, swiping her thumb up, placing the screen against her ear.

“This is Karen Renford-” His first sentence has her back straighten and her heart skips a beat.“Sir? What do you mean-”

He cuts her off again. Karen is up and out of her seat by the time he’s spoken two full sentences, heading for her home office door, past the broken cane she’s hung on the wall.

By his third sentence, she’s halfway down the stairs, running even, her breath caught in her throat. There’s an unfamiliar feeling setting her pulse to thrumming, a hummingbird’s wingbeat trapped in her wrists, her throat, behind her ribs.

She hears Peter’s bedroom door open. “Madam?”

She ignores him. His footsteps - and Michael’s - are soft behind her on the stairs as she makes it to the landing, glancing to the side. Sebastian is in the kitchen working on a complicated marinade for tomorrow’s dinner, and he doesn’t look up from his focus on his work.

She catches sight of the top of Dex’s head. He’s lying on the couch, taking a break. He needs them more and more, as his body shows the effects of his two decades with her. For some reason, lately, she’s been allowing it.

Maybe she’s getting soft in her old age.

“Dex, turn on the news,” She says quickly, and he shifts into immediate motion, sitting up and nodding, picking up the remote. None of his motions are fast enough and the CEO is still shouting in her ear.

“Dex, channel five! Now!”

His hands shake at the tone in her voice, but he manages to obey. The screen flickers on.

“-proof that WRU lies,” A youngish man in his thirties is saying, staring directly into the screen. He smiles, wide blue eyes in a pretty face, black curls in a sort of artful disarray around his head. Karen vaguely recognizes him, but can’t quite remember why. 

He stands next to a redhead who also seems familiar somehow, and there are athletes sitting at a long table on either side of him, still wearing their nation’s colors, holding photographs. Karen’s eyes scan the photos in their hands and the strange, unpleasant feeling within her intensifies. 

She can’t identify it. It’s like disgust, or repulsion, but somehow entirely different than either of those feelings. 

Her heart feels like it’s racing within her, her normally calm pulse a hummingbird’s vibration. Karen finds her breath catching, hitching, and when she looks down her hands are shaking.

What is this?

The black-haired man pauses, and his identity clicks into place - Owen Grant’s missing pet, the Vincent Shield clone who has been gone for… what, nearly ten years now? Has it been so long?

The young man pauses, tilting his head to the side. “My name was Liam Harker,” He says, taking a deep breath. He is holding tightly to the hand of the redhead next to him. “My name was Liam Harker, and I did not sign up for this.”

There is a sudden roar from the journalists at the press conference, shouting questions rapid-fire, gasps of shock, indignation. 

Dex, sitting next to her, claps his hands together three times, so loudly Karen jumps.

She never jumps.

Peter, Michael, and Sebastian run into the room, standing just behind Karen’s pristine white couch, staring wide-eyed at the screen as the chyron along the bottom of the press conference reads ‘WRU LIES’... PET LIBERATION INTERRUPTS 20XX SUMMER OLYMPICS… AKIO NAKAMURA CALLS SURPRISE PRESS CONFERENCE TO REVEAL UNTOLD SECRETS OF CORPORATE GIANT WRU… 

“What the fuck is going on, Karen?!” Timothy Rahm is shouting but his voice seems oddly tinny and far away, as if her phone isn’t against her ear but maybe all the way across the room. Karen’s mouth opens, but she can’t think of an answer. “I thought we sponsored the goddamn Olympics teams!”

“We… we do, Tim,” Karen says, her mind racing. She sees a total lack of reaction on Dex’s face, and Sebastian’s - and terror on Peter’s. Poor sweet dim Peter, who knows only that something has happened that is terribly wrong, and is likely too stupid to understand what.

Karen ignores that she herself doesn’t quite understand yet either.

She also ignores that Michael’s expression has nothing to do with fear and is instead one of barely contained glee.

The redhead steps back up to the podium, his long fingers closing on either side to hold himself up. He looks scared in a way the other man didn’t. He waits while the uproar begins, slowly, to die down. Reporters start to go quiet, one by one. The gymnast beside him - Akio Nakamura, it must be, he was favored to win the gold and sure enough, he’s wearing his gold medal right now - leans against him and gives him a nudge.

Karen can tell he’s mouthing, or saying, you can do this.

The redhead’s voice shakes much harder when he speaks than the other’s did. “I, I, I didn’t sign up, either. I’m, um. I was… I was, was, was just… I was s-sixteen when my, when, when my aunt told them to to to to-to take me.”

Karen’s eyes close, slowly, but then she forces them open again. She can’t not watch this.

On the screen behind him, the image shifts to a photo of the redhead much younger, smiling, in a professional gymnastics uniform. Next to him is a woman, clearly his mother, with an arm around his waist, smiling brilliantly. On the other, what must be his father - they’re nearly identical - arm around his shoulders. The father’s eyes are focused somewhere off to the right and he’s not smiling, but there’s a warmth in him nonetheless.

“My parents were-...” The redhead’s voice catches and he looks down, his fingers working at the podium. He looks up again. “Murdered. When, when, when I was, um, fifteen. I went to live with my, my, um, my aunt who w-w-worked-... Aki, I can’t, I I I I can’t, I can’t do th-this-”

Akio Nakamura slides an arm around him and holds tightly, whispering into his ear. There’s a rush of whispering among the reporters, so loud it’s audible through the television screen. A girl holding a photo of a young man looks over, her face gentling, and then she stands, walking around behind the two to the other side of the redhead, laying her hand over his. Next to her, a young man wearing a Canadian uniform takes her hand and stands as well. 

Karen’s stomach sinks as, one by one, every single person at the table stands up and holds onto one another. The countries they represent are incredibly varied, and WRU’s activities are not legal in all of them, but they have one thing in common that Karen recognizes immediately:

They are countries where WRU’s Acquisitions teams operate. 

The redhead looks up. 

“Fucking high-definition television,” Karen whispers. She can see the tear tracks on the redhead’s face. Which means so can anyone else watching, nationwide. “Tim, call in the PR people.”

“I’ve already done that-”

“We’re going to need incredible reputation management, Tim.”

“I realize that, Karen.”

“Someone’s going to need to go to prison. At least ten someones.”

He goes quiet, then. “Couple of handlers?”

“Maybe, let me think, just give me a moment, please, Tim-”

“My aunt,” The redhead says, suddenly, more strongly than he’s been speaking. “My, my aunt sold me. To WRU. I was, um. I was seventeen. She sold me on my birthday.”

The image behind him shifts again. Same boy, a little later, in a WRU intake video, sitting at a table. There’s no sound, but she can read what’s happening well enough. In fact… she’s in the video.

Karen stares at herself - she’d never liked that haircut - and exhales. The source of her pounding heart, the shakiness in her limbs, becomes suddenly clear to her. She’s so rarely felt it that she didn’t recognize the emotion at first.

She’s afraid.

The boy on the screen is asking a question. The handler behind him grabs him by the scruff of the neck like a dog and shakes him violently. Says something. The boy cringes away, his hands moving up onto the table in the room. His fingers move, some kind of rhythm. The handler takes out a black stick and smacks hard into them. 

Even though she can’t hear the sound, Karen knows exactly what that cry of pain showing on the boy’s face must sound like.

There’s another ripple of sound through the reporters. A sudden burst of clicks.

The redhead swallows so heavily Karen can see his Adam's apple move. “I was seventeen. I, I, I’m, um, my, my aunt had custody of me. It was my-... she, um. She drugged… me. On my birthday. And sold me to, um, to to WRU. I was seventeen. I was scared. They, they, they locked me up alone for, for… I don’t… I can’t, um, remember exactly how long, but no one-... talked to me, no one would, I asked for her, for my aunt, for… anyone. And, and, and then… then Governor Oliver Branch came to-... to see me.”

The image changes again. It’s security camera footage from one of the training rooms, and shows the same boy being restrained, his arms locked into cuffs above his head, thrashing and screaming on his back on a padded table. 

A door opens, and the late Governor of their state steps inside, caught clearly on camera. Clear, recognizable, undeniable. And there’s Karen alongside him, letting him in. Gesturing to the sobbing, screaming boy with a smile.

Yes, Karen thinks as she watches. This feeling is definitely fear.

“I think we’re going to have to go further than a couple of handlers,” She murmurs. 

“I should fucking say so,” Timothy snaps. “How the hell did anyone get a hold of this footage, Karen?! I thought our networks were totally encrypted!”

“They-... they are. We need to speak to IT-”

“We need to speak to everyone!”

Another photo of the younger version of the redhead, wearing a soft blue collar and matching sweater, sitting on an enormous bed with dark covers and sheets. He gives a faint, trembling smile to whoever is holding the camera. 

Then another photo, later, the boy curled up against a woman with a brown braid that Karen also knows, only this one she doesn’t have to stretch to remember.

“Who is that? I know that woman,” Timothy says in her ear. “Who is in that photo-”

“Natalie Yoder,” Karen says, quietly. 

“... why do I know that name?”

“She came up with our slogan. Then she quit and joined the pet lib movement.”

“Is she behind this, Karen? Can we take care of-”

“Not if it’s on live television, we can’t. We can’t pretend it was an accident or a coincidence if we move right now. And I don’t think she’s doing this, I’ve been following that woman for twenty years, this isn’t her style. No…”

Her eyes go to the gymnast, Nakamura, who is smiling encouragingly at the redhead. Karen’s always had good instincts and she trusts them now, as she sees the Nakamura boy look at the others standing behind the table. 

“I think we’re looking at outside involvement entirely,” She murmurs, making a note of the Nakamura boy’s face.

“My, my, my name is Christopher Stanton,” The redhead says, leaning forward into the microphone. “But it wasn’t before. My aunt told everyone I, I killed myself, she told my my my friends, my-... she told them I killed myself. But… but I was never dead. I was, was, was always here. I’m… I’m still here.” His jaw works, and he breaks into a hitched sob, swaying back and forth, back and forth.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t start crying enough to stop this little production from going on.

“My name is Christopher Stanton,” He says, loudly, his hands moving to tap on the podium as he stops rocking. “And, and, and it’s Tristan Higgs. I was Tristan Higgs. I’m still here, and I, I, I got my name back, and we can, we, we all can get our names back. They say they take everything away, and… and, and, and they… they lie. WRU lies.”

He steps back, and the girl who has been standing next to him, wearing Iran’s Olympic uniform, steps up to the microphone. The image projected behind them changes to a young man with a serious face and dark, dark eyes, a bit of stubble around his jaw. In the photo, slightly grainy, he sits in front of a fountain, wearing a button-up shirt and loose pants. 

The girl speaks with a clipped, controlled ferocity that can’t quite hide the sheer depth of fury in her eyes. “This... is Bijan Ahmari. He went to study at university in Tehran to be a doctor. He has three sisters and a brother, he is studious and creative. He was last seen getting into a taxi outside a restaurant after dinner with friends three years ago.”

The image shifts to what is clearly the same young man, slightly later, in the trainee outfit, sitting on an exam table in the WRU clinic, smiling with an expression of charming warmth that doesn’t reach his eyes. He wears a black leather collar that even in photos looks as soft as rabbit fur.

He must be asked something, because his look changes slightly, glancing to the side as if checking for what he’s meant to say, before his mouth moves in the direction of the camera. 

“This,” The girl says, her voice going slightly lower but no less strong, “is what Bijan Ahmari looks like now.”

There’s a pause.

“Shit,” Timothy says, voice suddenly flat. “That’s Marcus Dolan’s Romantic.”

“Who?”

“The tech guy. Built that Get Together dating app, sold it for a billion dollars or something.”

“I thought he was married.”

“He is. Officially. That’s still his Romantic. Fuck, how did they-... They’re onto something, Karen.”

“Can we claim we didn’t know?” Karen asks the question in the same flat tone. Her pets are restless, except for Dex’s perfect stillness and fascinated stare at the screen. Peter and Sebastian have moved close to one another. Michael stands behind Peter with his arms around him, resting his chin on the top of Peter’s head. When Sebastian leans against them, they put arms around him in turn. 

“We can, but I don’t know how well it’ll play.”

The Canadian steps up next. A girl appears behind him, smiling over her shoulder, with a cascade of blond hair. “This is Jennifer Kelly,” He says, his own voice catching slightly. “She ran away from home when she was sixteen. WRU claims she signed up two years later, but we know better.”

The image changes to the same girl, walking down the street, several years older. Small children hold her hands on either side of her, dressed in private school uniforms, their faces carefully blurred to keep them unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the collar around her neck, she’d look like a nanny.

Then a young woman wearing a South Korean uniform speaks, leaning forward into the microphone. “Park Si-Yoo,” She says, and there’s a photo of a Korean girl at a restaurant with friends, making a peace sign into the camera, all of them smiling brightly and leaning their heads together, steam from the grill set into the table in front of them rising around them. “She was having a very hard time with depression, anxiety. She disappeared at age twenty-one. At first, when the police say they found her body, we believe them.”

The photo changes to a shot of the same girl in training, dull-eyed staring directly into the camera, her hair chopped into a blunt bob. She has the shock collar on.

Her shoulders are hunched, defensively, and she is slightly turned away, as if she had been trying to move back and was forced back into place.

“Now we think the body was a false one.”

One by one, they speak. There are photos of young people, and then photos in training, or shots taken in secret on the street. One by one, and Karen’s sense of fear seems only to grow. There has been resistance, of course, from the very beginning. But this is… this is entirely new. 

This is organized, global, this is…

“This could ruin us,” Karen whispers.

Now Akio Nakamura steps up to the podium. On one side, the redhead - on the other, Owen Grant’s pretty runaway. 

“A few years ago,” Akio Nakamura says, his voice clear and strong, “my best friend’s parents were murdered. The murderers were never caught or charged. We only know who they were because they were later killed themselves, and the DNA matched. After what happened, my family offered to take Tristan in, but his aunt was given custody and refused to allow us contact.” Akio swallows. He swallows again. “We tried-... maybe we didn’t try hard enough.”

The redhead leans over, leaning his head against Akio’s. Nakamura swallows, hard, steeling himself for the rest.

“She took him out of therapy, she stopped giving him his ADHD medication, she pulled him out of school. When she found out he was complaining to us about it, she took away his phone. And then... then one day, she told us that he ran away. Then, later, that he had killed himself. When Joanne Botham told my mother that Tristan was dead by suicide, he was… he was still alive. Not only was he still alive, he was in her apartment, probably on the other side of a wall, needing just-... just someone to know he was there.”

The Nakamura boy looks over the crowd of reporters, inhaling deeply, exhaling again. He’s trying to stay calm, and Karen wishes he would break down, the little wretch. Lose his ability to do this, to poison a nation against her. “Can you call someone and have them cut the broadcast-”

“I could, but it’s the goddamn Olympics, Karen, if we cut nobody else will. If it bleeds it leads, right?”

And here is WRU’s jugular being slit, on live television, with a silent enraptured audience. 

“The ratings,” Karen says heavily, “are going to be spectacular.”

Timothy gives a bitter laugh in response.

“I mourned my best friend for years. And when I was mourning him - when I dropped out of gymnastics, when I dropped out of school for a while, when I… when I dropped everything… he was still alive. But he was living in terror, and pain, and fear. Joanne Botham sold him to WRU for a nice finder’s fee, a good little bonus-”

Behind him, the image projected is now a very familiar bit of paperwork. Karen swallows against the sight of the finder’s fee and bonus paid to employee Joanne Botham, Joanne’s signature… and Karen’s. 

“And once they had tortured, and traumatized, and terrorized him into obedience, WRU sold him to Governor Oliver Branch, who kept him tied to his bed or locked in a room or-or under his d-d-desk-” Akio’s voice nearly breaks on the surge of anger. “And WRU knew. They knew and they lied, over and over. And that’s not an exception. It’s the rule. They lie.”

“They tell us we wanted a better life,” Kauri Grant says, leaning over so the mic picks his voice up. “They tell us we asked for it.”

“They tell us,” The Iranian girl says, leaning forward herself, “that our family members did not want their lives any longer, that they handed them over happily. That Bijan had simply decided it was to difficult to be a doctor and chose to be this instead.”

“They tell us it’s a fresh start,” The Canadian says. “That they helped Jennifer get off drugs, and who are we to stop her from living a better life?”

“They tell us that our family, our friends, the people we lose… that they are happier this way,” A German athlete says. “That my friend’s cousin would rather live this way than any other.”

“They, they, they told me…” Tristan leans forward now. “They, they told me I wanted to disappear. But I didn’t. My, my, my aunt wanted me gone. I wanted my, my life. I wanted my life. She took it away from me.”

“I need to make some calls,” Karen says, her mouth barely moving. “We need to call Joanne Botham and get her in.”

“Start with her?”

“Start with her. WRU cooperates every step of the way to get her imprisoned. Then we start working our way through the edges.”

She has to hope Timothy doesn’t decide she needs to go to prison to fix this, too.

Timothy’s voice is low, emotionless now, strategizing. “I need to speak to Marcus and tell him to hide his Romantic and to do it now. I’ll call you back. We’re in the deep shit now, Renford.”

“I can see that.” She hangs up. However, she doesn’t dial any numbers right away. She just stares at the screen. Somehow, she can’t look away.

“WRU will now pretend,” Akio Nakamura says, “that they don’t know about this. It’s an aberration, it’s not normal, it’s not part of their business model. Their executives will say it’s a problem lower-down, not their idea, not something they signed off on. But their own executives know damn well what happens, and when they say they don’t, they’re not just lying to us. They’re lying to all of you. They tell you your children ran away, that they didn’t want to live at home anymore. Sometimes, they tell you that your child is dead.”

A photo pops up on the screen behind him now that has Karen’s eyes widening, her cell phone dropping to thump on the rug beneath her feet. 

Dex’s lips move, mouthing a name, and he leans forward. Sebastian gasps.

The photo is of a young teenager with curly brown hair, running down a soccer field in a high school uniform colored dark blue and sky blue, a number across the chest and stomach. A small article from a local newspaper about a Tennessee boy gone missing while walking home from practice. A smiling school photo printed in blurry black and white.

PRESUMED DEAD, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.

A photo beneath it of the boy’s family, a woman and man and siblings, holding each other while they weep. 

Then... a photo of the same boy in training, covered in bruises, with a black eye and busted lip, shock collar locked around his neck. He stands next to a handler who has a hand laid heavy on the back of his neck. He’s... short.

God, he was always so short.

“That’s me,” Peter whispers, and yet it feels like a scream. “Michael, that’s-... that’s me-”

“I know,” He whispers, just loud enough for Karen to hear. “I know, Petey, I know.” His whisper goes vicious and triumphant. “And now everyone else knows, too.”

“Fuck,” Karen says, and drops to sit on the couch herself. 

Her legs won’t hold her up any longer. 

“We don’t know what happened to all of the people we’ve gotten this info on,” Akio says, voice flat but strong. “But we’re still working. And we’re going to find them all, and show WRU that they can’t just steal people any longer. They can’t play this game. They can’t keep taking the ones we love away from us, and taking us away from the people we love.”

Akio Nakamura steps fully aside, and now the two runaways stand side by side before the podium again, equally framed. Behind them, the photo shifts to a shot of the two of them as they must be now, in regular clothes, sitting on a ratty old plaid couch and laughing.

“We took our lives back,” Kauri Grant says, voice firm. “We lost so much, and we can’t reclaim all of it, but we took back so much you told us we’d never have again. I learned how to say no.”

“I, I, I learned how to read,” Tristan Higgs says, a little hesitantly. “I went to, um, to college.”

“I learned how to write,” Kauri Grant says. “I write again, like I used to-... I write.”

“I learned how to, to love someone.” Tristan Higgs smiles, shyly. 

Kauri looks right at the camera, and Karen gets the feeling he speaks directly to someone. “I learned that I am worth being loved.”

Tristan looks over at Akio Nakamura, and then back. “I got my, my, my best friend back.”

“I make the decisions about my life now.” Kauri smiles, but it’s grim. “And I'm never letting someone else decide who I am, ever again. I know who I am.”

“I, I know who I am, too.” Tristan takes a deep breath. “We learned, um, we learned how to say… how to… how to tell you that we don’t want this. We don’t want them, the, the people who buy us.” His shy smile widens. Karen hates him. “We don’t want you.”

“We don’t want to show you any respect.” Grant’s smile is pure poison now, and Karen wonders if he’s always been so dangerous, and she had been too fooled by the feeling that that pretty head was empty. “And you’re going to discover that this isn’t it. We’re not done.”

“We’re still here,” Tristan Higgs says, so loudly now that there’s a burst of low feedback from the microphone. “We’re not dead. We’re still here and we, we want our lives back. We want all of us to have their lives back. To stop having to hide. To stop, to, to stop running. And we’re not stopping until we, we, we’ve freed us all. We’re still here. You c-can’t… you, you can’t erase us.”

Kauri Grant - Liam Harker - takes Tristan Higgs’s hand, and raises it high. 

“This is a war,” Kauri says loudly. “And the pets are finally ready to take WRU down to the foundations.” 

Once more, he gives that winning, winsome smile.

“Any questions?”

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @thefancydoughnut @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @what-a-whump @grizzlie70 @mylifeisonthebookshelf

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I am thinking about Peter working out what @card-games-and-pain’s Micheal used to get as a tradition for Christmas dinner and asking Sebastian to make that for their supper one night as a surprise, and then being startled and worried and guilty over it making Micheal emotional because Peter can’t remember any other family or home and didn’t expect it to make Micheal homesick and sad...

[ashintheairlikesnow]

get back here and make Peter feel better immediately

@card-games-and-pain I am whumping you now

CW: Pet whump, collars, Karen Renford, referenced caning

Only when his back burns, every welt like fire through nerve-ending, only when he hurts to his fingertips does she stop.

Peter doesn't move, still bent over her desk with his back bared to her, his hands palm-down on the cool mahogany wood. He breathes in gasps, shallow pants with his mouth open, eyes closed and tears leaking out from the corners to drip down and create blotches on a bit of notepaper lying there.

"You could have succumbed to the elements," Karen said, voice cold. He shivered in relief as he heard her settle her cane back in its hooks on the wall. "You may still become ill. Your behavior causes my other two pets to neglect their own duties and cause themselves unacceptable injury. You were reckless and emotional, Peter."

"I... I know, Madam." His voice is thin with pain, and trembles with the sobs he can't let out. "I'm sorry-"

"I did not request an apology and I do not care to hear one. You will not cause such disruption again."

"Yes, Madam," Peter whispers.

"You will not show such emotion again. You of all people know that a full memory wipe is part of the usual process, and it is nothing to weep over."

"Will you... A-are you going to? Wipe him?"

She pauses. Then her voice is closer, and he flinches in surprise. He hadn't heard her move. "Would you like me to? He believes it will be easier for you. Is that what you want, pet?"

No.

"I w-want whatever you want," He says, barely audible. "Madam."

She lays a gloved hand, fingers splayed, over Peter's scarred and welt-covered back. She presses down, slowly, until he whimpers for her, until he whines like an animal at the agony.

"No, you don't," She says softly. "Not anymore. Which is the worst sin he has committed against me, what he's done to you."

Peter is silent.

Karen sighs, pressing fingers in here and there, watching the reddened skin give way, whiten at the pressure, redden again. Listening to his soft hitches of breath, the tears he can't keep back.

"If he ever submits to the Drip, darling, it will be because you have made his life that truly unbearable."

"M-me?" Peter looks at her over his shoulder, limpid brown eyes and his messy curls.

Karen has to hold back a smile. "Yes, darling. A man who once gave everything for you now wants to give me everything to escape having to be the one beside you. Get out. You're dismissed. Unwanted, unloved, and dismissed."

Peter stands when she lets him and stumbles, feet scraping, out the door.

She listens to his bare feet on the stairs, and watches through the window as he finds his way to his favorite tree outside and collapses there.

Marco and Micheal are assigned to clean bathrooms today. It could be an hour or two before they realize he isn't in the house at all. An hour or two for her words to sink deep and settle in.

Karen Renford allows herself a small, satisfied smile.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

For your comfort items asks :)) 🛏 and 🌸!

Someone by their bedside when they wake up & Something that calms them

Peter shifts, eyebrows furrowing a little in his sleep, before the tickle in his throat wakes him enough for him to roll onto his side and cough, deep hacking coughs that leave him breathless and wheezing, struggling to pull in enough oxygen to breathe.

A warm hand rubs circles into his scarred back, Micheal's smell and his breath on his back of his neck, as he whispers, "It's okay, Petey. Just try to breathe, it's okay."

Peter nods, his cough slowly tapering off. Micheal's arm slides over his side, pulling him close, and he feels lips press to his neck, Micheal kissing slowly down his shoulder over the scars there, whispering into his ear-

"Petey?"

Peter jolts awake with a gasp, aware of Micheal's hand on his shoulder and a weight and heat between his legs. His eyes fly open and he shifts, turning to look back to see Micheal already dressed, sitting at the edge of the bed.

Micheal smiles down at him. "It's time to wake up, Petey. She'll want breakfast in an hour or so."

"Oh... right. I-... right, yeah. I'll be out in a second." Peter smiles, hoping that the blush on his face isn't noticeable.

"Great." Micheal's eyes drop, and his smile shifts a little. Fades. Turns to revulsion. "Peter, are you hard because you were thinking about me?"

Peter swallows. There were blankets. They're gone, and there's no pajama pants, and Micheal can see-

"That's disgusting," Micheal snaps. "I can't believe you'd think of me that way."

Peter wakes, slowly, with his eyes already filled with tears. He puts his hands up over his face. It's dark, still the middle of the night. His heart races, and he feels like he's covered in grime.

Then a hand rubs in a circle at his back.

"Mmmmn... Petey? Y'okay?" Micheal's voice is blurred and soft, barely awake himself.

Peter rolls over and snuggles into Micheal's side, feels his arm go around his shoulders, lips press into his hair to kiss the top of his head. "I'm okay," he whispers, to hide the tremble in his voice.

"Okay. Good. G'sleep, yeah?"

"Yeah," Peter whispers, and lays awake with Micheal's heartbeat against his ear, listening to him breathe.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

“A colossal fuck-up, that’s what this was.” -For Peter and/or Karen please! (Avie)

CW: Pet whump, Karen Renford, sadistic whumper, poor Peter, blood, bruises, recaptured whumpee

(Micheal - briefly mentioned - belongs to @card-games-and-pain)

“In the end,” Karen says, sitting back on her brand new pristine white couch, legs crossed at the knee, wearing a soft off-the-shoulder sweater and loose slacks that in no way made her look any less severe, “it was a colossal fuck-up on everyone’s part. Everyone’s.”

Peter, kneeling on the floor before her in an easy, unconscious Position Two, nods without taking his eyes off her face. He’s aged a bit - five years, right at the time of his life when his early twenties became his later twenties, when the lines of his face begin to settle and harden - but those big brown eyes, liquid and worried, are just the same.

He buckled his own collar back around his neck. Her Peter - he’d been waiting for her to come for him, had never doubted she could and would. In the end, the failed pet had become the only one who didn’t try to run from her when her net closed on him.

In the end, her least-favorite pet had become the best one.

“The company should have been able to handle the heat - and they couldn’t. I should have had better plans in place for the potential of someone like the mongrel making himself an even larger thorn in my side. Luke should have had immunity that meant he didn’t lose his job... I shouldn’t have lost track of any of you, not even for a second.” 

She sighs and holds out the crop, using the end of it - still with a bit of Peter’s blood smeared across it - to lift his chin up even higher. One of her own designs, available for an added fee for WRU’s clientele, it has a slim blade tucked between the layers of leather, one that cuts only when angled just so. 

She gave classes to the handlers on how to train with it. 

Peter had started fighting tears the second he’d seen it in her hand.

She watches his chest move with his breath, the welts across it deep and dark, some still weeping drops of red that run slowly down his stomach, tributaries of the river she creates. 

He’ll scrub the blood from the floor, later. For now, she enjoys the sight of it, puddling slowly as she continues to remind herself that no matter what she has lost - nearly everything, all of it, her entire life - she hasn’t lost him.

She hasn’t lost this.

“It took me four years to find you, and it shouldn’t have taken even one,” She murmurs.

Peter swallows, his chin marked now with the blood she’s already torn from his chest, trembling faintly as his eyes are forced up towards the ceiling by the simple bit of wrapped leather she holds in her hands. “M-Madam?”

“Yes? Position Nine, Peter.”

He arches his back, forcing his arms back behind himself and folding them at the elbows. Her pretty canvas of welts, growing bruises, of wounds on display for her. 

“Good boy. What’s your question?”

“I was-... it was five years, Madam.” His voice goes breathless, he whimpers as her crop drops to slowly run over the existing marks. Oh, how she loves that sound. How she loves her control of him. “I was f-free for five years-”

“You were away from home for five years, darling,” She says in her deep dry voice. “But I found you in four.”

He swallows. She watches his throat move under his collar, fascinated at the sight. “Wh-what?”

“You’re so delightfully dense, Peter. Did you think I came as soon as I knew where you were? No, no.” She pulls the crop away and watches him hold position, her very good pet. When she pulls her arm back and brings it down, the cry her makes settles her jangling nerves, soothes her deep within. She watches fresh blood burst free from torn skin as he flinches, then moves back into position again. “Good. Hold, darling.”

She hits him again, and again, and again.

With each strike of the crop, his cries are a little louder, project a little more of his pain. Upstairs, she’s locked Micheal in the room he and Peter share, and part of her sings knowing he’ll be pacing the floor listening, marinating in his own helplessness, in the weight of his own collar returned to his neck. 

Perhaps he’ll keep a more civil tongue in his head, after he sees what Peter looks like thanks to his defiance. 

“Peter, I brought you home after five years. I found you in four.”

She draws the crop down and paints a nonsense symbol over his stomach with his own blood, smiling. 

Control lost, regained anew.

How she missed him.

She strikes him across the face just to watch him fall to the side, to see blood run down his cheek to his jaw, to listen to his cry, the hitched sob that follows, to watch the tears and blood mix. 

“Why-... why did you-... wait-”

“Because I wanted you to feel safe, my sweet boy, before I came back to show you that you will always belong to me. Position Nine.”

He shifts back automatically, back arched, arms folded, and she watches those brown eyes welling with tears as he obeys her.

Really, he was always the best of them all, and she just never saw it before.

Now, she sees.

She brings the crop down again.