In an alternative universe where @untilthepainstarts‘s Lev married (and murdered) Martin, his captor, only to prove a thoughtful, fascinating criminal mastermind... in a timeline where @whumpiary‘s Cass becomes Cassius Bergen, who takes over the Estate after Christopher Bergen goes mysteriously missing... so there is also a Kauri.
Friendly, charming, engaging, flirtatious, this Kauri is a live-in stray at the Bergen Estate, known to come and go as he pleases. He spends an awful lot of time in Cassius Bergen’s office, and rumor has it he’s not in there to perform administrative duties.
Dot, Nell, and I have had fun along with our group of friends talking out the idea of the Dark AU, and honestly, I couldn’t resist seeing where Kauri might fit into it. I even wrote a thing, which I have been given permission to share here!
So, without further mucking about trying to explain it... here is Dark Kauri. Just sit back and enjoy the pretty.
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CW: Referenced past noncon and pet whump, hints of fucky headspace regarding spice, some low-level spiciness (like PG-13), conditioned behavior
“Take it off.”
“Mmn… no.” Cass kept his head tilted to the side, watching Kauri stand frozen in the doorway, one hand resting lightly on the frame. Lithe and willowy, the Bergen Estate’s fascinating, gorgeous semi-permanent ward looked every inch the gangster’s moll today. Impeccably dressed, like Cass himself.
Cass wore a black suit over a deep purple pinstriped button up loosely unbuttoned just enough to show off the wide-banded black satin choker he wore around his neck.
The choker was what Kauri’s eyes were locked on, slightly widened.
“Take it off, Cass.” Kauri’s voice caught this time, just slightly, and Cass felt like a shark smelling blood in the water. He could feel the way Kauri’s wants poured out of him, a waterfall of nerves and fear and dark places he was desperate to keep hiding from. “I mean it.”
“Lev’s coming over later, you know,” Cass said, voice light and airy. The blade he cut with, in moments like this, was nearly invisibly thin.
Kauri bled, just the same, whenever and however Cass wanted him to, and somehow he never ran away, no matter how hard Cass tried to push him.
Mostly, he didn’t. Mostly he liked being a safe place for Kauri in a world that had very few of them. But some days Cass felt restless, angry, hungry to prove to Kauri and everyone else that he was exactly the monster he should be.
One day he’d find the thing that chased Kauri away.
Today, he was trying this.
“Do you think he’ll like it?” Cass gave Kauri a half-cocked grin, beautiful poison, crooked two fingers to ask him to come closer even as he wanted to say, Run away this time and stay gone, it’s only what I deserve.
Some of the fear settled, and Cass felt the pulse of his desires begin to shift, to change. Kauri didn’t have what Cass had, but he could read some things, too, in his own way. Instead of turning to leave, Kauri braced himself and stepped forward, moving across the room with each step placed with careless grace. “What? You want me to ask if Lev Viklund-Reid will like your collar, Cass? After he had to wear one?”
“Yeah.” Kauri stopped next to his chair and Cass swung it around to face him, legs apart, sitting back and looking up at Kauri, head tilted. “I want to know if he’ll like my collar. Saw it in a shop two days ago and it made me think of you. And him.”
Kauri’s face didn’t change, but Cass could feel the way his desires twisted, shifted, became darker and started to turn on themselves. Anger, justifiable and justified on every level, was there. But stronger than the anger…
“You want to put one on me, Cass?” Kauri asked, and his voice was low, too deep for how pretty he was, as he moved forward to stand briefly framed on either side by Cass’s suit pant-clad legs. Then he climbed up into the chair, straddling him, the pressure where their hips met entirely too pleasant.
This… wasn’t quite what Cass had expected him to do. “... no, Kauri,” He admitted, and some of the easy confidence was lost, in that moment. The power balance shifted as Kauri rocked his hips forward, rolling them, as his hands laid flat on Cass’s stomach over his shirt and then slid slowly up.
Kauri took over, somehow, in the way his body could light Cass up without even touching bare skin.
Cass cleared his throat. “This isn’t-... Wasn’t my plan.”
Kauri laughed, low and husky, and the spikes of disgust generously ladled over the darker wants that curled around the two of them were heady, making Cass feel half-drunk and outmatched. “What was your plan, then?”
Hands traveled slowly upward, skimming to the sides under his suit jacket to press against his ribs through the silky-smooth fabric of his shirt. They paused over his chest, pressed against his collarbone and then around behind his neck. He felt his curly hair, soft against Kauri’s hands, shift over his neck as he met the warm, wide blue eyes of a runaway pet, someone else’s escaped whore.
Cass knows the feeling, although he didn’t escape - he became the whoremaster instead. Sort of. Sometimes it felt like being whoremaster, trying to hold the Bergen Estate together.
Sometimes, though, Kauri looked at him like this and Cass felt less like he had control and more like Kauri could have shredded him and he might have thanked him for the touch.
“...I wanted to hurt you,” He admitted, not sure why he spoke the words out loud when he didn’t mean to speak them at all. “And Lev. Wanted to see if I could.”
Kauri rolled his hips forward, and the pressure coiled heat low in Cass’s belly, setting the constant low pulse of arousal he felt nearly every time Kauri entered a room into a flame. He hadn’t even felt the pet undo the choker’s little buckle at the back of his neck, blinking in surprise at the feel of the satin sliding away, leaving his neck bare.
“You’d only hurt me if you put it on me,” Kauri said, voice low, husky, warm with need. He held up the strip of silky cloth right in front of Cass’s eyes and tore the buckle off the end in a sudden burst of violence, dropping it with a clatter onto Cassius’s desk.
His smile widened even as Cass felt his smile returning. “I wouldn’t, you know, Kauri.”
“Wouldn’t what?” Kauri knew the answer, but still wanted to hear it out loud. Cass could respect that.
“Collar you. I would never collar you, you know that.”
“Do I know that?”
“Yes.” Cass’s voice cracked, caught, and he repeated, insistent, “Yes, you do.”
“You might, one day, if you wanted someone to see you do it. I’d let you, too.” Kauri shrugged, seemingly unmoved, even as Cass felt the stir of fear that ran through him and around him, half-buried by want for other things but still there, a thread he could pull, unravel, undo if he wanted.
He wanted. And Kauri knew it.
Cass stared with a mouth suddenly too dry for speech as Kauri simply bent himself over backwards, his knees still on either side of Cass’s thighs, and arched his back until he was looking upside down at the industrial-strength shredder Cass kept next to his desk, reaching one arm out while the other went palm-flat to the floor.
Cass’s hands moved fast to grip onto Kauri’s hips and hold him steady as the other man fed the band of shining black satin, torn at one end where the buckle had been, into the shredder. It kicked on automatically, a high roaring whine as it fought to destroy threads instead of paper.
Kauri’s position was nearly obscene, his own growing hardness pressing against Cass’s, shirt riding up to show a flash of pale skin. Cass wanted suddenly to lick his way up or down and he wasn’t sure which or if he would ever stop once he started.
He could see the faintest outline of a bruise along one hip showing above the waistband of Kauri’s pants, his own teeth indented there in a deeper purple surrounded by red and yellow. Biting down had made Kauri scream for more.
If his mouth had been dry before, it became the fucking Sahara when the shredder finished its work and Kauri’s stomach muscles tightened, simply rolling himself back up, curving back to sitting in Cass’s lap again.
He leaned forward, sliding his arms around Cass’s neck, mouth moving against his ear. His teeth nipped lightly at Cass’s earlobe as he whispered, “I’ll wear anything and nothing you want me to wear, Cass, but I won’t let you collar yourself. Now fuck me before Lev gets here or don’t fuck me at all today.”
When Lev arrived, Cass was seated right behind his desk, his shirt wrinkled and suit jacket misbuttoned, half-cocked grin right back on his face, a red mark blossoming along the right side of his neck.
Kauri answered the door for Viklund-Reid with a flush in his face and a swollen look to his lips as he held out his hand. His sweater was on backwards and inside-out. It might have looked accidental, if you didn’t know Kauri.
Which Viklund-Reid didn’t, although he didn’t look surprised, either.
Lev looked to Cass first, eyebrow raised, and he only shrugged in return, giving him a rakish, devil-may-care grin. “Have you met Kauri, yet, Viklund-Reid?”
“I haven’t,” Lev responded, voice warm and slightly lilting, shaking Kauri’s hand without the faint curl of his lip in disgust that some of the others did, either unbothered or just incredibly polite. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
Kauri shot him a smile, sunny and winning, and leaned up to kiss Lev on the cheek, fingertips sliding down the lapel of his suit. “You will,” He murmured against the faintest hint of stubble on Lev’s skin, and then moved past him out the door.
Lev and Cass both stared, for a second, in silence at the slight sway of his hips before the ex-pet disappeared around a bend in the hall. Cass let himself soak up the hint of Lev’s desires in the air - they weren’t too far off from his own, although Lev’s were far subtler, buried.
Lev turned back, pressing invisible wrinkles out of his suit. “Are we going to have a problem?”
“Nope,” Cass responded, sunny and bright. He felt a low throb at the spot where shoulder and neck met, a growing hickey that would be a dark bruise by night. He was surprised they hadn’t heard him react to that out in the hall. “What possible problem could there be?”
Lev gave Cass a flat stare and said dryly, “I think I see why you couldn’t wait until after my visit.”
“Wait for what?” Cass asked, innocently.
“Bergen-“
The shredder kicked on, surprising them both as it spat out the last few black satin threads into the trash bin below it. Cass slid the collar’s broken buckle, with its bit of tattered fabric clinging to it, carefully into one pocket.
Dark!Timeline AU written in collaboration @untilthepainstarts. Lev is theirs and my favourite in every timeline. Cassius Bergen... meet Lev Viklund-Ried.
Cassius doesn’t move from the leather lounge chair as his guest steps into the room. He doesn’t even straighten where he sits, one leg slung over the arm. He glances up once, catching the dull shape of the other man in the doorway, and then sets his attention back on the skin of the apple he’s fixated on peeling off in one long spiral. The blade of the knife in his hand just barely catches the light.
“I don’t remember setting up this meeting,” he says, just loud enough to be heard from across the room “And I don’t like surprises”
The apple peel breaks off, just over halfway and he sighs in vague irritation, pausing to lift the peel to his mouth on the back of the blade and taking a bite.
“So whatever you want, Lev Viklund-Reid… it better be good”
His guest smiles at the brusque greeting, as though he’d expected nothing less. He stands casually, but still to attention. Eyes dark and soft.
“I should have known that a man like Cassius Bergen would want to get straight down to business,” he says, gentle humour lacing his voice. Cassius watches as his guest casts a careful eye over him, taking in the way he’s sprawled across the chair.
Viklund-Reid doesn’t move to sit—smart man; hasn’t been invited to. So he stands, just inside the doorway, hands clasped behind his back. He clears his throat, shuffling his feet as though embarrassed on Cassius’ behalf.
“So let’s do that, then—I heard about St. Clair. Heard about the... fallout, from your lunch.” Viklund-Reid cocks his head, offering a little smile. “You’re a very persuasive man, but I know that it’s hard to talk your way around other people when they stop inviting you to places. I’m here in the hopes of being the talk to your walk.”
Cassius feels a prideful sort of anger run through him, albeit muted by a curious respect. He runs his eyes over his guest. Kind looking eyes in a warm, brown face. It took a bold man to walk onto another man’s property, into another man’s house and start laying out the dirty laundry. But… down to business, he supposes.
Cassius laughs under his breath and starts carving into the apple again, angling the knife so he can get a perfectly even slice.
“Do you usually start your propositions by reminding the other person of their personal shit shows?” he asks, voice light like it’s some joke and not the foreplay to a threat. He places the slice of apple flat on his tongue and speaks around a mouthful of fruit. “Or should I be flattered that you feel like I need to be brought down a peg?”
"Apologies," Lev says, raising his hands slowly, sheepishly. Again… smart. No good to get a knife in the throat two minutes into the meeting. "My point was: there are those who wish to see you taken down far more than a single peg. And me and mine… don't want that to happen. I'm here to offer help, should you want it."
The man pauses, like he’s half waiting for Cassius’ blade to come spinning through the air. Cassius tilts his head. Not yet. There’d be time enough for that. When no blade comes for him, Viklund-Reid continues.
"A man such as yourself has no time for deference. For ingratiation." He laughs almost self-deprecatingly, looking up at Cassius through his lashes. "To say the right flowery words to fill the egos and the dicks of those higher on the food chain. And why should you? Lord knows you likely haven't needed to in a very long while, if ever.
"But more often than not… men like Jacob St. Clair feel incredibly threatened by anyone with the hint of a backbone, much less an entire spine," he says, gesturing in Cassius' direction. "It seems to me like you could benefit from a meek, mild, nonthreatening go-between retrieving you all the information that you need, while you no longer need to rub shoulders with… well, people that you hate." Offering a grin, he steps further into the room, stopping to stand a few respectful metres away.
Cassius rakes his eyes over the man with care. Lev Viklund-Reid looks every bit the mild-mannered mouse he describes. But Cassius would bet his fortune and then half that again that the glint in his eye suggests otherwise.
"Just because I hate the people doesn't mean I hate rubbing shoulders," he shrugs. He sets the tip of the knife on his knee and spins it idly. "The way I see it, it hardly matters if St. Clair is threatened by me if I still get what I want. And I don't know if you've heard, but I'm good at getting what I want"
He holds his guest's eye and takes a bite of the apple, chewing carefully. The other man wasn't wrong. Cassius did have a tendency to rub egos the wrong way. But he couldn't exactly palm all his meetings off to someone else, could he? He had to see people, speak to them. Otherwise how else would he get inside their heads?
"Lev's a pretty name by the way," Cassius says brightly, swinging his feet to the floor, "Is it short for something?"
Cassius knew better than to trust a mobster with their name. They were one of the few kinds of people left that cared the respect the power a name actually held.
“Thank you,” Lev says, the compliment bringing out his smile once more. “It’s not.”
Good. Cassius swallows, before lifting his hand with the knife and gesturing to the far wall of the sitting room. “Then, Lᴇᴠ, sᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ.”
“Of course.” His guest moves unhurriedly but without delay, like Cassius knew that he would, his slender frame casting a small shadow in the firelight. When he reaches the wall he turns back to face Cassius, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
“Is this okay?”
Flipping the knife over in the palm of his hand, Cassius stands. “Perfect. By all means, keep talking”
“Can’t remember what I was… oh, yes, right—you say you’re not bothered whether Jacob St. Clair is threatened by you or not, and that’s fair enough. And I do know that you’re very good at getting what you want.” Lev’s eyes follow Cassius as the latter paces slowly, tapping the knife on his bottom lip as if in deep concentration. “But surely the Bergen Estate knows that making enemies is rarely as profitable as making friends, and often comes with unwanted… side effects. Hiccups.” The warm little smile remains, even as Cassius starts to take aim.
“Like unwanted houseguests?”
Lev chuckles. “Like that, yes. But I’m here to—hopefully—see that these sorts of things don’t inconvenience you again.”
This fucker was so gracious. Cassius wanted to roll his eyes several times in rapid succession. “And how exactly do you, meek little house-mouse that you are, intend on doing that?”
The knife whips through the air and embeds itself in the taupe wall of the sitting room with a thunk. Lev’s eyebrows shoot up and his eyes flicker to the side, where the blade has found a brand new home only inches away from his face.
For the first time that night, Cassius gives a genuine smile. That had been a good throw.
“Well for one, I’ve got one of St. Clair’s men in the boot of my car. Caught him snooping.”
Cassius pauses for a beat, spine straightening just barely. Now that was interesting.
“Is that a Benchmade?” Lev moves to touch the blade where it’s sticking out of the wall. “It’s very nice.”
“You know, I don’t remember,” Cassius says “Bʀɪɴɢ ɪᴛ ᴛᴏ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴍᴇ, and I’ll have a look.”
Lev moves fluidly, hand wrapping around the handle and he pulls the knife from the wall. Cassius tilts his head to the side, watching as the other man makes his way back across the room, turning the blade slowly in his hand.
“Benchmade,” Lev confirms with a smile as he passes it back, handle forward. Cassius flicks his gaze down to where the other man’s index finger taps at the engraved logo.
Cassius smiles with a little hum as he takes the knife back, feeling the balance of it in his hand as he holds Lev’s gaze. He gestures to the far wall again with the tip of the blade, giving him a little smile, “Back you go.”
Lev barely hesitates before turning on his heel and resuming his place at the wall, gentle smile still fixed infuriatingly in place. “Do you usually throw knives at your houseguests? Or am I just special?”
“When they’re wanted, or unwanted?”
“Touché.”
Cassius tosses the knife in the air and catches it again, tongue flicking to wet his lips.
“So. St Clair's man in the boot of your car,” he says, closing one eye as he aims the knife once more. “And that's meant to make him less threatened of me… how exactly?”
The second throw isn’t nearly as neat, the knife wedging itself in the wall noncommittally down beside Lev’s hip. Cassius tuts his tongue in disappointment. Always when you wanted to show off, wasn’t it?
He makes eye contact with his guest and juts his chin towards the blade.
“Well, fair shake, it probably won’t,” Lev says, plucking the knife out again and crossing the room with all the ease of a casual Sunday afternoon. “But it was only because he was snooping in your business that I caught him looking into mine, so when I found his guy poking around your property I figured it was the only decent thing to do”
Cassius watches as the man tosses the knife once, twice in the air, then balances it by the tip in the centre of his palm for just a beat before catching it smoothly, handing it back.
Cassius runs his eyes over the man again, just a little more thoroughly this time. If this was a mouse, he’d eat his fucking hat.
He smiles, cocking his head to the side, “Do you usually make your choices based on what’s decent?”
“When it suits me.”
“Good to know,” Cassius flashes a grin, stepping back a few paces as he waits for Lev to back up once more.
He knows that Lev is waiting on a response, or a go-ahead, so of course Cassius does the opposite: he takes his time. Deliberates. Plays with the knife some more, while he thinks.
Viklund-Reid isn’t doing this out of the kindness of his own heart—not exactly a done thing, in their circles—but for the life of him he can’t quite figure out what this man is getting out of all of this. Sure, there’s a steady thrum of want for power beating underneath that house-mouse exterior, but that doesn’t quite explain what’s happening here either. He could have turned the other cheek, let St. Clair’s man make a grab at whatever, watched the Bergen Estate burn. Just as much gain for him in that. It’s a sideways move.
So, Cassius does what he does best. He pries.
"I've got to say, ‘I have your nemesis’ merc tied up pretty in my backseat for all your vengeance needs' is all very Viklund-Reid of you. The other one, I mean,” Cassius looks carefully at the other man’s face, looking for a crack, however hairline. “Haven't heard much of him lately, though. Dead?"
The gentle smile doesn't shift, doesn't wilt like Cassius was hoping it might. If anything, it widens a little. Not a card shown.
"Disappeared," the man says easily. "No one's heard from him in months. Tragic, really."
Cass snorts a laugh, "Yeah it's funny how grown men can just… vanish."
This time the blade all but whistles as it flies through the air, lodging into the wall with a satisfying thunk, just a couple of inches from Lev's temple. The man doesn’t flinch. Barely blinks. And that's… well, that's almost more impressive than any knife trick could be.
"So the name change, then," Cassius says, walking forward to retrieve the knife himself for the first time "Did you actually marry, or was it just out of respect for the…" he catches himself before he says the word, over-enunciates to consonants in the replacement, "Missing."
Lev holds his gaze as Cassius reaches out to pull the knife from the wall. He doesn't move an inch.
"What about you?" he says gently, warmly, in lieu of actually answering. "Married or adopted? The rumours weren’t exactly conclusive."
There is a frozen, halting moment where neither man moves. Inches apart. Blade poised between them.
It's a curious thing, holding a knife this close to someone else, both knowing that one had the power to end the others life in a second but knowing just as well that they wouldn't. That probably they wouldn't. Hopefully.
And then Cassius grins and steps backwards.
“I guess I’m just confused,” he says, arms wide. He turns the knife lazily in his hand as he perches himself on the arm of his chair. “Not exactly conventional for the mob boss’ moll to take charge after he steps down. Did you have to suck all of their dicks to make that happen, or just the really important ones?”
The other man’s smile hardens just a little on his face, a pulse of something darker flickering over it. Like shadows reflected on ice.
Cassius holds the man’s gaze and tilts his head to the side, holding back a smile. What a silly little card to let show. Time to see if the little mouse could roar.
“Because I must say Lev, your reputation really does precede you,” he says. He gestures up and down the man’s body with the tip of his knife. “Martin was quite the film-maker, wasn’t he?”
Lev draws a hand up to rub at his neck, as though along the line of a collar, as though struggling with the vacuum in his lungs where the breath should be. He looks up, holding Cassius’ gaze for one moment… two. Then presses his head back against the wall behind him, shoulders loosening with a gentle shrug. “I refuse to apologise for the things that were done to me.”
There’s such a gentle sincerity to the words that it almost feels like a violence and Cass feels his smiling mask flicker and fall before he has a chance to catch it. Cassius Bergen was not a man who was easy to catch off guard. It wasn’t often he felt his stomach lurch; his heart miss a beat. He couldn’t remember the last time a person had said something that set him reeling. He doesn’t fancy it.
“Why are you here, Viklund-Reid?”
Lev shrugs again, and the ghost of a smile on his face is a little too close to sympathy for Cassius’ liking. “Thought you could use a friend.”
“That’s very funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Cassius inhales sharply and sits back a little on the arm of the chair. He looks Viklund-Reid over for what feels like the millionth time since the man had walked in, trying to get a read on him that seems increasingly impossible to grasp. Cass turns the blade over in his hand once more. Then he flicks it to the ground between them. A truce.
Lev smiles graciously, looking down, and steps away from the wall.
“You have power, Bergen. Nobody’s arguing that. Frankly, I don’t think anyone would dare,” Lev says and there’s that smile again. The little self deprecating shrug. Cassius feels his anger burn hotter for a moment – Liar. – but then the man’s eyes glint, expression caught somewhere between soft and calculating. “But let’s not pretend your reputation isn’t painted in the exact same colours as mine.”
Cassius snorts a laugh. Sardonic and dry. “Two whores is better than one, is that what you’re saying? I can’t decide if St Clair would disagree with you or agree a little too enthusiastically.”
Lev's eyes drop to the ground, and the Benchmade wedged in the fine wooden boards. He frowns. Walks forward to pluck it from the ground, of his own volition, and cleans the steel with thumb and forefinger around the hem of his shirt.
"I didn't realise he called you a… that. St. Clair. That… changes a lot, actually."
“Yeah, well,” Cassius shrugs. He keeps his eyes trained on the other man's face. “Can’t say I’m particularly fond of apologising, either.”
When Lev presents him his knife back once more, the gesture is clear: a reflection of his own truce.
"So I guess what I'm saying now... is that there's more than one way to skin a large, egotistical, loud-mouthed cat."
And at that, Cassius can't help but grin. "Now you're talking."
@untilthepainstarts so my finger slipped after i saw the term 'goblin man' to describe martin (btw sorry i couldnt be bothered to look up what your fc for martin was, i just drew him as i picture him in my head)
OC Moodboard: The F’d- Up Support Group (Lev & Daniel)
Based off this completely lovely crossover from @untilthepainstarts and @ashintheairlikesnow. It’s no secret that Danny is one of my favorites — I would knit sweaters for him if it were possible — and that he’s routinely inspired boards from me. But I’m slowly falling in love with Lev and Graham again, and now with Lev and Danny’s Effed-Up Support Group. The story where they meet up and feed the kangaroos had me all kinds of soft this morning, and now we’ve got a moodboard to show for it!
If youre taking them, 'If they could change something about their appearance, what would it be?' For Ezra and josiah?
Oooo thank you, Dotty!
Josiah wishes he wasn’t so pale because he burns so easily working outside. A freckly farmer’s tan is not a good look. Dude is white as hell.
Ezra doesn’t smile with teeth very often because Anita once told him it was too crooked. She used to leave brochures around the house for veneers as a hint.
