WARNINGS: BBU, power dynamics, talk of corrupt prison system, past noncon
The mug of tea that Ezra made for Jaime sits, cooling and untouched, on the coffee table. Jaime has opted for a spot on the rug, curled in on himself with his knees hugged tight to his chest. Sebastian and Ezra follow suit, of course, sinking down across from him, but it doesn’t escape anyone’s notice—his instinct to place himself on the floor. At least he isn’t kneeling anymore.
Sebastian aches at the sight of his red-rimmed eyes, at the hollowness in his voice, at the memory of him shaking and terrified on the hardwood, forever seared into his temporal lobe. He aches to make this right, and he prays, helplessly, that he hasn’t just watched every brick they’ve laid together crumble before their eyes.
“Would you like to ask us anything, Jaime?” Ezra begins, and Sebastian is once again grateful to have him here, ever the voice of reason.
Jaime’s swallow is loud enough to sound painful. “You don’t have to explain yourselves to me.”
He’s so closed off like this, even harder to read than usual. Is it resentment in his voice, or defeat? Sebastian doesn’t know how to reach him.
“I rather think we do,” Ezra counters.
Jaime looks quickly to Sebastian, then down at his knees. “I don’t know what to ask.”
“Okay,” Ezra accepts easily, and Sebastian chimes in with an encouraging nod. “Would it be alright if I asked you a question? With the caveat that you do not have to answer.”
“Okay,” he agrees without looking up.
“Has Julian—has Handler Hernandez—ever hurt you?”
Jaime’s eyes snap to him then, surprised. Ezra must spot the impending panic that Sebastian sees as well, because he raises a palm to clarify. “I know the rules against speaking about your training. I hope that you can still trust that we will never betray your confidence, but as I said, you don’t have to answer.”
“You…” Jaime begins, then falters. “But he’s your friend. Why would you believe me?”
Sebastian feels like he’s been shot in the chest.
“You are my friend, too,” Ezra says easily.
“Your word means everything to me, Jaime,” Sebastian adds. Those brown eyes turn on him, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking that they aren’t quite as guarded this time. “I will always believe you.”
Jaime stares at him. His gaze has never felt so heavy, as if he’s trying to see past the layers of Sebastian’s skin in search of the truth in his promise. Then, slowly, his eyes go unfocused.
The silence goes on long enough to worry Sebastian. A hundred different possibilities come to mind, spiking his blood pressure. The idea that Jaime is bracing himself to tell them that Julian is, in fact, one of the monsters in his nightmares makes Sebastian want to peel out of the house after him and put his hands around his throat. It doesn’t matter that Julian could probably break Sebastian in half on a good day. If Jaime even implies that Julian has been hiding behind his history with the resistance as a means of abusing trainees under the radar, Sebastian will fucking—
“He didn’t,” Jaime says quietly, pulling Sebastian back to earth. “I… He… He isn’t my primary. We didn’t interact all that often, but when we did…” He shakes his head. “He wasn’t one of the handlers who crossed a line.”
Handlers, plural.
He doesn’t even think that Jaime is aware of the word choice that has sent Sebastian spiraling all over again. Multiple handlers. Multiple handlers have “crossed a line” with Jaime in that facility, a few hundred feet away from where Sebastian works. It’s not… He can’t call it a surprise. He remembers clearly the day in the clinic showers, seeing fresh bruises on Jaime’s skin, marked in places that left no room for questions. And the day in the facility bathrooms, when Sebastian walked in just as a handler was walking out, leaving Jaime alone in a stall.
And, of course, he has had suspicions about Smith from the day he met him. Watching the way he interacts with his trainees is telling of what might happen behind closed doors. But hearing it out loud sits heavy in his chest. More than ever, he wants to burn that building to the ground with every handler locked inside.
“That’s… good,” Sebastian manages, even though it’s a disgraceful choice of word.
Ezra nods in agreement, though. “I didn’t expect that he would have, but I wanted to hear it from you,” he says. “I have known Julian Hernandez for a long time, Jaime. I understand how it looks to you right now, but he is a good man.”
“He is one of them.” Jaime looks to Ezra when he says it, a fire in his eyes he has never shown Sebastian, wouldn’t dare turn on the person who holds his contract (or someone he also considers one of them—did he mean handlers or anyone who works there? That’s a spiral for later).
“Yes,” Ezra says evenly. “Officially, he is. And if he wasn’t, I never would have escaped.”
A stunned silence falls over them. Sebastian didn’t know that, either.
Ezra reaches up to run a finger over the raised scar behind his ear, then looks from Sebastian to Jaime. “He helped remove the tracker himself,” he says. “Without him, we couldn’t have kept the removal undetected. It’s designed to be a bulletproof plan—it can’t be done without someone on the inside taking a risk. He never hesitated to help me.”
Jaime, mirroring him, raises a hand to touch the spot behind his ear where his own tracker is embedded in his skull. Sebastian’s stomach turns at the reminder, and he watches something like terror and wonder pass over his expression.
“His story is a complicated one,” Ezra says. “I would like to tell you about it, if you’d like to hear it.”
Jaime nods, and Sebastian leans in, just as eager to hear.
“Julian was in prison before I knew him,” Ezra begins. “He grew up in less than ideal circumstances and got wrapped into the wrong crowd. They got him into a lot of trouble when he was young, but it was all he knew. He was in and out of juvenile detention, and when he turned eighteen, he got a charge that stuck. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison.”
Sebastian thinks about the playful way Aria nudges her shoulder against Julian’s when they’re together at the table, the way Julian moves so carefully around Ezra, as if he knows his very presence could be a trigger. Sebastian has been wary of him from the beginning, but even still, it’s hard to picture him as a hardened criminal.
“This all happened right around when WRU was at its most precarious,” Ezra continues. “After the uprisings and public outrage against the Romantic sectors and the stories of extreme abuse coming to light. They were struggling to recover their image enough to stay afloat until the tides turned back in their favor, and they were specifically struggling to employ handlers. Nobody wanted to risk their reputation like that. They tried offering generous sign-on bonuses and increased salaries, but it still wasn’t enough to get them back where they needed to be.
“Someone had the idea to create a pipeline from the prisons—a program that would train inmates who showed particular strengths and promise to become handlers as part of a contracted term, as an alternative to serving their time. Julian was one of them.”
Ezra looks from Jaime to Sebastian, clocking their looks of mirrored surprise.
“I know that doesn’t make him clean,” he says. “It was a difficult situation, but it was still a choice that he made. For what it’s worth, he didn’t know much about the system at the time. And more to the point, he regretted it from day one. But backing out of the contract would have added ten years to his sentence. So he stayed.
“Aria met him within his first year. Really, she tracked him down. Pursued him. She had been searching for me for years. She knew I had disappeared into the system—that’s a story for another day. And she knew she needed someone on the inside to get me out. Julian was her way in. The way Aria tells it, he jumped at the chance. By then, he was eager for any way to make a bigger impact for the people suffering in that place.” He turns to Sebastian. “Reminds me of someone else I know.”
“Is that…?” They both turn at the sound of Jaime’s voice. He shrinks back a little at the attention, then clears his throat. “Sorry. Never mind.”
“What is it?” Sebastian says gently.
He opens his mouth, lips moving as he tries to form the words. He can’t look directly at Sebastian when he says, “Is that why you started working there? Because you wanted to help?”
(Okay, so it’s a spiral for right now).
Sebastian blinks. Behind his eyelids, he sees a flash of memory—nearly a year ago, lying on the floor of his apartment with a bottle of wine and an open laptop, looking at the job listing that would change his life forever—and he feels so pathetic.
He has this sick feeling that if he told Jaime that his reasons for applying were entirely selfless, only for the purposes of helping from the inside, he would believe him.
Sure, it was always his intention to help as much as he could once he was there, but he knows it would be a magnanimous lie to say it was anything but fear that led him to the WRU website that night. His grace period for loans was up and he was stuck without a job, completely alone in the world. Desperate was the word he would have used for that night. That was before he met people like Jaime, who taught him what real desperation looked like. How could he look him in the eye and say that now?
“I was never trying to be a hero,” he says finally. “I wish I could tell you something different. I guess…” He swallows. “I guess, like Julian, I always intended to help, but it started with a self-serving motivation. I can’t pretend otherwise.”
As the words leave his mouth, he feels so small. Now it is he who has to look down. Somewhere in the course of the past few months, Jaime has become the most important person in his life. He finds it impossible to face his judgment
“Thank you,” Jaime says, surprising him. “For being honest.”
Sebastian shakes his head, feeling a little nauseous. “Please,” he says. “Don’t… don’t thank me.”
“I…” Jaime looks at him, hesitating, then seeming to draw strength from the silent approval on his face. “I never knew what to make of it. Of you being in that place. Sometimes I still…” He shakes his head, closing his eyes. “When you come home, I can smell it on you. That place. And it… It’s hard.”
Guilt eats through his stomach lining, threatening to dissolve him entirely where he sits. I’m going to quit, the thought comes to his head without hesitation. I will quit tomorrow. Right now. I will email in my resignation, no two weeks, no notice. I will never violate Jaime’s home, his safe space, with that nightmare again.
But it’s not that simple, is it? Without his connection to that place, will he jeopardize his chances of renewing Jaime’s contract? Without another job lined up right away, will he be able to pay for it? And what happens to the dozens of other patients he will leave to Greer’s cruel hands?
This isn’t the kind of decision he can make in a split second of emotion. Not anymore.
From now on, though, he will shower before he leaves work. He will bring an extra pair of clothes and only leave them in the car to change. He can do that much at least.
“I’m so sorry,” Sebastian says.
“But you did help me,” Jaime says. “You do, I mean, presently. Obviously. I’m… I’m here. But back then, I mean. In the facility. You helped me so much.”
“It never felt like enough.”
“It was everything to me.” The intensity in his words draws Sebastian’s eyes back to his. “You kept me alive in that place. I’m glad you were there.”
It’s hard to take the words at face value when some part of him fears that Jaime is saying them out of some sense of obligation. But the worst thing he can do now is take any more agency away from Jaime by discounting anything he has to say.
Before he can respond, though, Jaime asks, “You really would have believed me? If I told you that Handler—that your friend had hurt me?”
That requires no hesitation on Sebastian’s part. “I would have killed him myself.”
Jaime stares at him for a few seconds, nods, then finally wraps his hands around the cup of tea on the coffee table. Surely it’s cooled to room temperature by now, but he looks content as he takes a sip.
“I’d like to say one more thing,” Ezra adds, gracefully ushering himself back into the conversation. “Jaime, nobody brought you here, into this circle, with explicit intentions of doing anything except making you comfortable and happy. Nobody is here to pressure you in any direction, especially with something as risky as this.” Ezra leans forward, fixing him with an earnest stare. “But you need to know that if you said the word, we would move mountains to get you out.”
I didn't intend to make this 3 parts, but shit happens. The boys are going through it. (Sorry for the delay, hope you enjoy).
< PREVIOUS
WARNINGS: BBU, conditioning, major panic attack, references to past noncon, brief mentions of childhood in foster care
No one moves for a full three seconds.
It’s Julian, of all people, who breaks first. He takes a hesitant step forward, palms raised, and what the fuck does he think he’s doing.
Over Sebastian’s dead fucking body will he come any closer to Jaime, who, at the barest hint of movement flinches back, arms coming up to protect his head. A fiery rage blows through Sebastian. He moves in between them, blocking his line of sight.
“Step. Back.” The warning comes out in a voice he doesn’t recognize as his own.
Julian blinks, apparently processing a shock of his own, but stumbles back quickly enough that his shoulder hits the door. Only when he’s sure that Julian will stay put does Sebastian turn back to Jaime.
The shaking is visible from across the room. Sebastian knows this look. He’s seen it for himself more times than he’d like to remember. Terror. This is what it looks like when Jaime is terrified.
Suddenly they are free-falling back through time, blowing apart every inch of confidence and safety and trust Jaime has fought tooth and nail for over the course of a few months. Sebastian takes a careful step toward him. Under his breath, Jaime is whispering something on a loop, so quiet that all Sebastian can make out is a repetition of consonants. As he gets closer, the words click into place.
Jaime breaks his stillness to shake his head, quick and frantic, keeping his eyes on the floor. “No,” he says, “No, no, my… My name isn’t… My l-legal name is among the r-rights—”
“No,” Sebastian and Ezra say at the same time, hard enough to make Jaime flinch. “Sorry,” Sebastian whispers, but he doesn’t think it comes out audible.
Ezra drops to one knee beside, a force of preternatural calm in the midst of panic, and Sebastian follows suit, keeping his body positioned between Jaime and Julian. Behind them, he can hear Aria whispering something low and calm, but Sebastian’s sole focus is on the boy in front of him.
“No,” Ezra repeats, softer. “Your name is Jaime. I know you must be confused, but I promise, you are not in danger.”
Rigid as he is, Jaime somehow stiffens even further at the sound of his voice. His head snaps up, eyes locked on Ezra’s with a sudden, razor-sharp focus.
“You have to go,” he whispers, reaching up—seemingly without thought—to grab Ezra’s shirt. There is a panic that borders on mania in his voice, in the widened whites of his eyes. “Ezra, you… You have to run, you have to—”
“I am not going anywhere,” Ezra cuts him off. He softens the firmness in his voice by reaching up to cover the hand on his chest. “This is my home. He will not hurt me, just as he will not hurt you.” He turns his shoulder just enough to gesture behind him. “This is not the Handler Hernandez you know. He is my friend.”
Confusion and terror swim in Jaime’s eyes. “Your…?” He turns to Sebastian, brimming with tears. “Your friend?” His voice is so small. Sebastian understands that he is asking them both, now.
He swallows. “Yes.”
Something in Jaime visibly crumbles. The tears he has been holding at bay finally tip over, streaking his cheeks. “Please. What did I do?”
Sick understanding settles in. The sort of betrayal Jaime must think is happening right now.
“You didn’t do anything,” Sebastian tells him. His own trembling hands come up to reassure him in some way, to offer the kind of soft touch that they have spent so long working up to, but he thinks better of it and lets them drop to his sides. “He is not here for you, Jaime. He will not touch you.”
“I’m… I’m sorry, kid,” Julian says from behind him, his voice soft to the point of unrecognizable.
Sebastian shoots a glare over his shoulder when Jaime tenses at the sound of his voice, ducking his head once more.
“Jules, let’s step outside,” Aria says.
After a moment of hesitation and a final muttered apology, the front door opens and shuts behind them. Sam, clicking off the stove burners, excuses himself as well.
The silence left in their wake crushes down on the three of them for seconds that feel like minutes
“He is gone,” Sebastian whispers. “Jaime, it’s just us here. You, me, and Ezra. You’re safe.”
Jaime doesn’t raise his head. His shoulders rise and fall with the telltale breathing of a freefall into panic. He doesn’t seem to notice the steady stream of tears now joining the sweat gathered at the neckline of his shirt. “What is happening?” he whispers between pulls for air.
“Something that never should have been sprung on you like this,” Sebastian says. “And I’m so sorry.”
“He’s…” His eyes betray him by trailing over Sebastian’s shoulder, toward the front door. “He’s not taking me?”
God. “No, Jaime. Never.”
The sound of his breathing, hitched and labored and increasing with alarming speed, is the only sound in the house. Then, abruptly, Jaime lunges to his feet.
“I need… I’m—I’m sorry,” is all he gets out before bolting toward the hallway. They hear the bathroom door click shut, and the walls are not thick enough to mask the sound of his retching.
****
It’s hard to breathe. Jaime goes through all his usual tricks—the ones WRU taught him, and the ones he has come to learn on his own—but his chest still aches with the need for a full breath that he just can’t manage to pull.
No one has come for him yet. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. More than ten. Less than thirty? It’s a good thing, he thinks. Jaime doesn’t know if he’s ready to face them. He doesn’t know how to.
The feeling that finds him on the bathroom floor, as he comes down from the heaving nausea, is one that Jaime hasn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time. There are others, more familiar: confusion, pain, fear. But beneath that, perhaps because of it, something else simmers.
He keeps playing through the events on a loop, obsessing, trying to make sense of it, but his mind is a fractured mess of past and present, fragile trust and familiar betrayal. Because as Jaime knelt on Ezra’s living room floor, the world crashing around him, all he could think was: Is this how it ends? After months of fighting for every half-step of progress, of reaching for his last threads of fragile trust, of finding reasons to want to be a person again, had Sebastian given up on him?
No. He hasn’t. He wouldn’t. Sebastian isn’t like that.
But he doesn’t owe Jaime anything either.
Jaime has known betrayal before. Deeply, fundamentally. From foster parents he was meant to trust, teammates who were supposed to have his back, and men who pretended to be kind but who were all after the same thing. No one else had ever waited so long to show their true colors.
No. Sebastian is kind. He is not like the others.
And yet a crushing grief had fallen over him in that moment, because Jaime thought of Bella back at the house, and the last time he had scratched between her ears before they left, not knowing it would be the last time. He thought of the pineapple cheesecake in the refrigerator that they had made together three nights ago, half eaten, and wondered if Sebastian would throw it away or finish it when he’s gone. If he would feel bad about it. He thought of the clothes hanging in a closet that Jaime had finally come to think of as his own.
He thought of a hug shared in the kitchen to the backdrop of birthday candlelight and wondered if Sebastian had already made his decision, then.
He thought of all of this, and he wished he never had to know the taste of any of this happiness if it was only ever going to be taken from him. Because Handler Hernandez was here to take him back. And it was the end of Jaime’s world.
But then, it hadn’t been. Isn’t? He doesn’t…. Jaime doesn’t understand.
“You are not in danger,” Ezra told him. “You are safe,” Sebastian said. But Jaime doesn’t know what to believe. He found it hard to look at them in the moment (he couldn’t look at anyone, really, because a Handler entered the room, so it’s eyes down eyes down quiet quiet quiet).
Friend, they called him. Handler Hernandez is their friend.
He is Sebastian's friend.
And suddenly it’s hard to recall with any clarity the times he interacted with him inside the facility. Suddenly the months he spent there are a blur of faceless men in gray canvas and shock collar remotes and hands and hands and hands. Was Handler Hernandez one of them? Jaime can’t remember. Suddenly he can't tell any of them apart.
Friend. Friend. Friend.
Jaime doesn’t know how he is supposed to face them now—these people he has come to trust—with that word in their voices looping in his head.
But a knock on the door tells him his time is up.
***
They give him time. We could all use a moment to process, Ezra wisely suggested, and so Sebastian took a seat at the bar while Ezra sank into the couch. Both of them are silent for several long minutes. Outside, Aria, Sam, and Julian must have moved far enough from the house that their voices don’t carry.
“He was so afraid.” Sebastian is the first to speak, barely raising his voice from where his head is cradled in his hands.
“I know,” Ezra says.
They give him time, but Sebastian starts to worry that Jaime might be too scared to come out of his own volition, trapped in the bathroom by a self-imposed sense of shame or embarrassment or fear.
“I’ll go,” Sebastian says, rising from his stool, but Ezra stands alongside him.
“I’d like to speak to him as well,” he says. And although it doesn’t quite sound like he’s asking for permission, Sebastian nods anyway, silently grateful for the support. Ezra is always much better at hard conversations.
Sebastian starts to worry when the first knock is met with silence. They don’t try again right away, but he can’t help but listen for sounds of distress. Sebastian would rather die than force open a door that Jaime has closed between them, but he will at least feel better if hears signs of life on the other side.
“Jaime?” Sebastian tips his forehead against the door, feeling the cool, wooden grain against his skin. “You don’t have to come out if you’re not ready to. I—we—Ezra and I, we just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’d like the chance to explain some things to you,” Ezra adds, keeping a step behind Sebastian. “Whenever you are ready. There is no rush.”
They wait. Sebastian glances back at Ezra, who meets him with a steady gaze that says patience. Finally, the handle clicks and the door pulls inward to reveal a disheveled Jaime. The bags under his eyes are nearly the color of bruises, and his hair tufts messily at the sides, as if he has been pulling at it. A sheen of sweat glistens at his forehead, and Sebastian clocks the way he holds onto the door frame to try and disguise his shaking.
Guilt nearly bowls him over where he stands.
Sebastian is glad for the flash of foresight he had to fill a glass with water before he and Ezra came to see him. He holds it out now, the condensation sweating over his fingers.
“Here,” he says. Jaime lifts an arm robotically to take it from him, but he doesn’t take a sip, and he does not meet Sebastian’s eyes.
“Is there anything I can get you, Jaime?” Ezra says when it’s clear Sebastian is lost for words. “Anything you need?”
Jaime stares in the direction of the glass in his hand and shakes his head.
“Would you like to go somewhere and talk?” Ezra asks. “Sam has informed me that the others are gone now. We have the house to ourselves, just you, me, and Sebastian.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Sebastian starts to worry about the possibility that he is in genuine shock. But then he lifts his eyes to his and a lead anchor drops in the pit of his stomach.
There is a flatness like cold steel in Jaime’s eyes, a distance that lacks any familiarity or warmth; an expression Sebastian hasn’t seen since the first day he met Jaime, alone in the exam room at the clinic, when Sebastian was nothing more than another stranger in power over him. A direct threat to his safety.
“Wherever you’d like to go,” Jaime says to him. The implicit, resounding “sir” doesn’t need to be vocalized at the end for it to echo through the walls of the house.
Flashback: The Truly King and Matteo Osier, before Therrin’s takeover
CW: Torture, hand/finger whump with a knife, flaying, pleading, death wish (only under the present circumstances)
-
Matteo groaned, shivering from a clammy sweat that had broken out over his body. He was sitting on the stone floor of a Muirkeep cell, his hands bound above his head by the wrists. His legs were free, and he dragged his heels along the stones, lifting his knees close to his chest as if it could protect him. Henry always paid special attention to his existing wounds, and he’d begun to pray he would find a fresh spot to play with instead. Surely it would hurt less.
“You should be grateful I keep you safe in this cell,” said the newly crowned King. Matteo still thought him beautiful, though all that youthful vitality frightened him now instead of intriguing him. He’d misread what was in the Truly Prince’s eyes all this time, it seemed.
“Do you know what they’d do to you out there if I told them you poisoned my father? He was beloved. And a weak old man, too.” The King tsked. “Surely they’d execute you. Don’t you agree?”
“Y-yes,” Matteo sobbed. He did agree, and though most of the time he dreamed of rescue or escape, these long hours with King Henry and his slow, meticulous torture made him wish he had an execution date to look forward to. The knife slipped another quarter inch under his skin, along the bone, and he screamed through gritted teeth.
“Oh, come now,” Henry cooed. “I know that hurts you, Matteo. But you owe me more than a finger, I think. You took my father from me.”
“Please,” Matteo sobbed. Blood streamed down his shackled wrist. “Take it then. I accept. Take it and let me serve you.”
“How would you wish to serve me now?” Henry asked softly, pausing the progress of his knife and bringing his face close to Matteo’s. “Tell me.”
“In any way you wish,” Matteo answered, breathless and exhausted as if he’d run a mile at a full sprint. He’d said something similar all those months ago in the Truly tent as they traveled north, when Prince Henry’s attention had thrilled him to his core. What a lovesick puppy he had been.
“That was your mistake, wasn’t it? Your eagerness. Your ambition. What makes you think I want you?”
“My ambitions were yours! I served only you! Henry…”
“No, no. You will address me as Your Grace,” the King reminded him. “I will not hear my name in your mouth, Matteo Osier. You’re a disgrace to your house and your name. You’re not loyal to me, any more than you were my father. You’re a self serving, vain little creature who has quite overstepped your title. But you will learn humility.”
The King sawed like he was skinning a pelt from a rabbit, pulling the skin from bone. Matteo wailed with the last of his strength, sagging limply when the knife came away with another piece of him. Only a finger, he thought helplessly. One little digit, not even anything vital. Only a finger and it hurt like this…A wave of dizziness took him and he worried he would be sick.
“Peace, now,” said the King, wiping his face with a fine cloth. “You have nine more, after all.”
Matteo didn’t know if it was meant as consolation or a threat. He had never wished for anything in his life like he wished for his elder brother now. Even if it meant he was accompanied by their cocky, boorish ward.
But Saxon didn’t know where he was. Nor did his father, his mother, or any number of nobility north or south that might lift a finger to help him. No one did.
Whew. After months (almost a year?) of marinating this chapter, I've decided to cut it in two. Thought about titling this chapter: Shit Hits The Fan. Enjoy!
WARNINGS: BBU setting, struggles with bodily autonomy, recovering alcoholic, mentions of violence
Jaime hits the ground with more force than he expects. His back takes the brunt of the fall, and for a moment, he is rendered breathless. A few weeks ago, the impact might have triggered a memory of real violence. Now, he gulps in a few deep breaths, feeling the grass at his back, until Ezra’s face eclipses the sunlight overhead.
“That was better,” Ezra says, extending a hand. Jaime takes it and lets himself be pulled to his feet.
“I can’t seem to stay on my feet,” Jaime huffs, frustrated. He swipes an arm across his face, pushing aside the hair that clings to his forehead.
“You’re doing fine,” Ezra says. “Getting knocked down is half the process of learning.”
Jaime grimaces. “I must be learning a lot, then.”
Ezra grins. “You are,” he says, sounding like he might actually mean it. “You’ve already improved from where we began. For now, take five and drink some water.”
“I can go again,” Jaime insists, already rocking back into his sparring stance.
“We have all day.” Ezra grabs Jaime’s water bottle and pushes it gently against his chest. “You’ll burn out quickly if you don’t pace yourself.”
At the finality in his tone, Jaime relents and collapses back onto the grass. He downs half his bottle in one go.
It’s been over a month since Ezra offered to teach Jaime how to spar. At first, the idea unsettled him in a way he couldn’t pin down. He didn’t understand the point of it. Ezra knew more than most how little Jaime’s ability to fight mattered; it isn’t an imbalance in physical strength that keeps him in his position. It is the law, the society, and the institutions decades in the making that hold the end of Jaime’s leash. Something about learning the art of self defense and knowing he is never allowed to exercise it feels more cruel than not learning at all.
One session, Ezra had wagered. Train with me once and see how you feel.
The first time, Sebastian stayed to observe at Jaime’s request, perched on a piece of exercise equipment in Ezra’s basement gym. Jaime, who spent the week leading up antsy and nervous, watched with rapt interest as Ezra wrapped his hands.
They started slow.
The first time Jaime hit the ground, the room went silent. In the split second of shock and pain, a flare of violent memories flashed before him: a handler shoving him onto his back, his foster father slamming him up against the hallway wall. Distantly, he heard Sebastian’s voice break through the budding panic. “Maybe we should call it a day?”
Something about that—the grounding reminder of where he was, who he was with, and that the choice was his to walk away—snapped him back into his body. Ezra watched him from where he stood several feet back, not coming to his side and not saying anything in response to Sebastian’s concern. Instead, he watched Jaime, waiting to see what choice he would make.
The choice was his.
Jaime pushed himself onto shaking legs, nodding once to Sebastian before meeting Ezra’s unwavering gaze. “Let’s go again.”
Ever since that day, Jaime has taken to training with a level of enthusiasm he didn’t realize he was still capable of feeling. There is an itch for it under his skin when he wakes up some mornings. When he stretches, he relishes in the way his muscles burn from their previous session. On his morning runs, he thinks through new techniques Ezra showed him and commits to perfecting them next time they meet.
On the evening after their third sparring session—Jaime still sweat-damp and shaking from exhaustion in the passenger seat of Sebastian’s car—he realized that this feeling was familiar. It was a sense of liberation he hadn’t felt since he last sprinted across a soccer field under the stadium lights, since the night he tore off across the backyard of a party with Derek at his side, high on the revelation that he might want to kiss him. It was the realization that training with Ezra made Jaime feel in control of his body for the first time in a long time. And that is a gift he can never repay.
Ezra sinks down onto the grass beside him, uncapping his own water bottle. It’s almost embarrassing how he barely breaks a sweat against Jaime. Maybe one day he’ll give him a run for his money.
From the screened window above the kitchen sink, Jaime can hear laughter from inside the house. He titled his head and smelled… something? Sebastian and the others insisted they would take care of dinner tonight and leave Jaime and Ezra to their workout. Jaime doesn’t know much about Sam and Aria’s skills in the kitchen, but…
Ezra smiles at him, nodding his head toward the sound. “How do you think it’s going in there?”
Jaime shrugs and lets his head fall back, enjoying the sun on his face. Spring is starting to blossom, slowly but surely, and it’s the first warm day of the year. “Nothing is on fire,” he says. “So it can’t be that bad.”
****
“Cilantro can substitute oregano, right? They’re basically the same thing?”
“No,” Sebastian and Aria say at the same time. Sam’s expression falls. The frown paired with the 1950s-housewife-style apron creates quite the endearing image.
“It’s not too late to order Thai food,” Aria mutters, pouring herself another glass of wine. Sebastian chuckles around a swig of lemonade.
He didn’t make a big deal about staying sober these last few weeks, but he’s pretty sure Aria clocked it anyway, judging by the way she has kept the bottle out of arm’s reach of him all evening. He pretends not to notice. She pretends not to notice him not noticing.
It’s been a good day.
He can tell Jaime tried to hide his enthusiasm about a return visit all week. He never asks him about it outright, but his demeanor visibly perks up at any passing mention of Saturday dinner at Sam and Ezra’s. Sebastian offered to take him over there before work on any given weekday so that Jaime didn’t have to spend the day alone in the house, but that’s where his enthusiasm waned. Jaime isn’t quite comfortable enough to be alone with anyone except Sebastian, but Ezra comes close, he thinks.
It’s good. It’s so good to see Jaime like this—surrounded by people who care about his well-being, expressing more autonomy than he has ever been allowed in Sebastian’s presence. It’s moments like this that tempt Sebastian into believing that it was worth it, slogging all these months through the misery of WRU, just to bring him to Jaime. To bring Jaime here.
And maybe it was worth it so Sebastian could meet the others, too; his first friends in a very long time.
They are laughing when the front door opens, so none of them hear the unexpected entrance until Julian Hernandez is suddenly standing in the doorway.
The room goes silent. Sebastian nearly shatters the glass in his hand to keep it from slipping to the floor.
“You need to leave,” Sebastian says, the panic overriding any facade of politeness.
Julian, who is skeptical of Sebastian on his best day, says, “Excuse me?”
“Shit,” Aria says, stepping up beside him. “Jules, he’s right.”
Julian looks around, taking in the sight of all of his friends there without him, and Sebastian thinks he sees a quickly masked flash of hurt pass through his expression. “You asked me to take a look at your transmission last week,” he tells Sam. “I brought my tools.”
“I did say that,” Sam says. “But I didn’t mean tonight. I’m sorry. This… isn’t a good time.”
His mouth presses into a thin line. He glances over at Aria. “Yeah,” Julian says. “I can see you’re busy.”
“It’s not like that, Jules.” Aria insists. “Tate’s—” she starts to say. But it’s too late. It’s too fucking late.
Because then the back door slides open and Jaime steps through, trailed by Ezra. They’re mid conversation, murmuring quietly. Both of their shirts are soaked through with sweat, clumps of hair clinging to their foreheads. Jaime is smiling—honest-to-god smiling—and Ezra is laughing at something he said, until his eyes meet Julian’s from across the room and he goes still. He puts a hand on Jaime’s shoulder.
“Fuck.” It’s Julian who says it, a breathy whisper as he realizes the clusterfuck he has just set in motion.
It’s the last sound in the room before shit hits the fan.
Jaime is the last one to spot the new presence in the room, and when he does, his entire body locks up. The blood drains from his face, making his pale skin nearly translucent. His knees hit the ground before anyone can intervene.
whumptober, day fifteen:
lies | new scars | breathing through pain
part of the kennel. masterlist here.
content warnings for: dehumanization, pet whump, captivity, aftermath of whipping, forced nudity (non-sexual), restraints, light med whump, stockholm syndrome, negative self-talk, adult language
part nine, in pieces
Will doesn’t know how to process what he’s feeling.
Okay, so there’s the physical. And that’s bad. Like, really bad. He thought it was bad while it was happening–and Jesus, it was–but it’s worse now. It feels like someone beat him half-to-death with a tree branch and then dragged him naked over rough carpet. It’s–well, it’s not a great feeling. It’s maybe the worst pain he’s ever been in. Physically, anyway. He can’t move, can’t fucking breathe without feeling every stroke Doc laid on his back.
Not that he can really move at all. He keeps trying to–which is really fucking dumb–but the restraints Doc slapped on him won’t let him so much as raise his head. His sweaty cheek is pasted to the wax paper of the exam table, and all he can smell is the iron tang of his own blood.
There’s so much of it. Will didn’t know you could lose that much blood without, like, passing out or something. Which he guesses he did. If that’s what happened when he fell. He doesn’t know. He just–fell. And then it was black for a while.
That was kind of nice. He wishes it were black now, that there was any kind of darkness to escape into, but there isn't. The fluorescent lights beat down on his naked body; their buzzing makes his ears ache.
He’s alone. He’s so fucking alone.
Doc took Tommy God knows where, and he’s doing God knows what to him. And when Doc comes back, Will has no idea what will happen to him. Whatever it is, though, there’s no way it’s going to be good. He’s Tommy’s whipping boy now, isn’t he? Literally. And if Will were Tommy, he’d be fucking shit up right and left to make sure Will gets what he deserves.
Well, no, he wouldn’t. And he knows Tommy won’t, not if he can help it. But still, Will knows this is his own fault. Tommy’s supposed to be on his way to New York in a few days, and instead, he’s being tortured by some psychopath in the middle of fucking nowhere. And if it weren’t for Will, none of that would be happening.
God, Will can’t even offer himself in return. He knows Doc doesn’t want him; he’s just there as leverage, to get Tommy to do what Doc says. Because Tommy, for some reason, refuses to give up on Will. He always has.
It would serve Will right, if that stops now. If Tommy just lets him suffer. He’d deserve it.
Well, fuck. Now he’s crying again too. Naked. Bleeding. Weeping. The trifecta of indignities. This is awesome.
But still, it feels kind of good to be able to let some of it out. And no one’s actually around. So, he lets himself go. And maybe sobbing is not a guy’s best bet when he’s just been ripped open by a whip, maybe it makes everything hurt worse, but Will doesn’t fucking care.
He’s so scared, and he’s not going to pretend like he isn’t. Who would he be pretending for anyway?
He feels the softness in his middle press against the paper, and he cries harder. It just reminds him that there’s something else about himself to hate now. His back–who’s going to want to look at that? Like, he hasn’t even looked at it, but he’s sure it can’t be good. Jessie didn’t even want to see him naked the first time they had sex–okay, well, any of the times–and no one had stripped any flesh from his bones at that point. Well, flesh from his flesh. Because Doc is right about him. He’s not like Tommy. He’s heavy and slow and ugly and dumb and–
“Hey.”
Will freezes. Fuck, if it’s Doc–if Doc sees him like this–
A soft hand moves through his hair. “It’s me.”
Annie.
Will isn’t sure that her seeing him like this is any better. But then, of course, she was there when Doc hurt him. She’s already seen worse, right? Because watching someone get hurt is worse than seeing the aftermath, isn’t it? Not that Will has a lot of practical experience with that, but he’s pretty sure that’s about to change.
“Are you–how are you feeling?” Annie asks.
Will’s bitter laugh is wrapped in another sob, and his back throbs in pain. How does she think he’s feeling?
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Annie says.
She pets his hair again, and Will quiets. It does feel kind of nice. He–well, no one’s really touched him like that in a while.
“Thanks,” he whispers.
“I’m not sure you should be thanking me.”
That much is true, but Will will take comfort where he can get it. He always has.
Annie’s gentle fingers slip over Will’s cheeks, and she tucks them under his chin so that he has to raise his head to look at her.
She’s pretty. Like, really pretty. Prettier than she has any right to be, since she’s got a monster for a father. She doesn’t really look like Doc, though. Will thinks she looks kind of like a 70’s movie star–his dad always loved Katherine Ross and Ali McGraw. With her long, dark hair and those big brown eyes–
Jesus, is he really checking her out right now? While he’s naked and bleeding out on a table?
Way to go, Will. Bra-fucking-vo. Perfect timing.
And then she bites her lip, and he’s completely distracted again. Jesus, what’s wrong with him?
That’s definitely a complex question.
“I’m not supposed to–well, he sent me out,” Annie says. “But I couldn’t leave you like this.”
It has nothing to do with him, Will knows. She seems like the caretaker around here; it’s not like Doc is all that warm and fuzzy. She just feels sorry for Will.
He’ll take it.
“Is it–bad?” Will asks. It’s a dumb fucking question–like, anything that hurts so badly can’t possibly be good–but he still wants to know.
Annie stands, and Will smells the soft, clean scent of her soap as she goes. It’s a nice break from blood and piss.
Piss. He still needs his bath. Great.
Annie’s cold fingertips ghost over some of Will’s unbroken flesh. He squirms a little.
“You need some stitches. And antibiotic ointment,” she says. “But–”
Will braces himself. “But?”
“It’s going to scar.”
Which, of course it is. He knew that. It doesn’t take a genius to ascertain that being laid open by a whip is going to fundamentally alter the topography of a guy’s back. But there’s that feeling again, the “oh-like-I-needed-one-more-thing-to-make-me-worth-even-a-little-bit-less” kind of feeling.
And he’s probably literally worth less like this too. If Doc’s in the business of selling people, Will’s probably on his way to the bargain basement.
“I’m sorry,” Annie says again.
“You didn’t do it,” Will replies. Because, yeah, it’s definitely his job to reassure her in this situation. Idiot.
“I know,” she says. “But still.”
“Yeah.”
Brilliant response, Will. A-1. Jesus.
“Do you mind if I–” Annie hesitates. “Can I clean you up? I know your friend tried, but Doc didn’t exactly make it easy for him.”
Tommy.
“Where–” Will hisses as the pain in his back flares again, “--where is he?”
Annie’s touch withdraws. “He’s safe.”
Will almost laughs. No one is safe here. Not even Annie is safe, and she must know it.
“S’not–shit–s’not what I–what I asked.”
Annie goes to the counter, and Will watches the swivel of her narrow hips as she walks because he is a trash human being. And he is a human being, no matter what Doc says. Annie opens a cabinet and rifles for supplies.
“He’s in the doghouse,” Annie says. “It’s–it’s where Doc hosts the live feeds.”
The fucking doghouse. Doc isn’t exactly original. But it’s the live feeds that concern Will.
“What are–”
“It’s better if you don’t know the specifics,” Annie interrupts softly. She doesn’t even turn to look at him. “But he’ll be okay.”
No, he won’t be. Nothing about this is okay. Will closes his eyes again; he’s surprised he has any tears left, but they seep out from under his eyelids anyway.
He smells Annie’s soap again, and the air around him feels softer. Her fingers find an unbroken place on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I can’t undo the restraints, but Doc keeps most of the keys to himself. And we–well, we don’t have any local anesthetic, so this is going to hurt.”
“Not as bad as–”
“I know.” Annie hooks a nearby stool with her foot and rolls it to the exam table. She sighs as she sits down. “Your name is Will, right?”
Will hisses in pain as something cool and wet touches his back. She’s cleaning him up, he realizes. Disinfecting. It’s better than the peroxide bath Doc treated him to earlier, but it still doesn’t feel good.
“Yeah. Will–” he pounds his breath through his nose, “Fuck--Will Cartwright.”
“Annie Barker,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Will Cartwright.”
Yeah. Sure. This is nice. A regular meet-cute. Naked, bleeding boy meets girl with Stockholm syndrome at a human puppy mill run by a guy whose last name is fucking Barker. The stuff that dreams are made of.
“Where are we?” Will asks.
Annie’s touch stutters, and he flinches. “Sorry!” she says. “I just–well, I don’t really know.”
Oh, that is absolutely not good.
“What?”
“We’ve lived here since I was a baby. I’ve never–I’ve never been anywhere else. But I don’t know where here is.”
Annie looks like she’s about his age. Like she should be in college and getting ready to start her life. But instead, she’s here–and she has no idea where she is, or what the world outside might even be like.
Shit, and Will thought he was stunted.
“Your dad–”
“He wants to protect me,” she says softly. “So he doesn’t tell me everything.”
“Oh,” Will says, like what she’s just said makes any sense at all.
They don’t talk at all for a little while. Will shifts and winces as Annie works, and he tries not to think about what he must look like to her, especially as her fingers press into the soft flesh of his sides.
“I know it’s wrong,” Annie says suddenly. “I know he says he’s rescuing you, but I–everyone always seems so scared when they get here. Like you and your friend–”
“Tommy.”
“Tommy,” Annie repeats. “There was a girl Doc rescued when I was nine or ten. I think she was about my age. Kara. I’d never–well, I’d never seen another kid, right? He told me that her parents had abandoned her, and that he took her in so that she wouldn’t be alone, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a friend?”
Will’s stomach turns. He can’t imagine a child being treated this way. But he can’t imagine a child watching any of it happen either.
“Kara didn’t believe what he told her, about her parents. She didn’t want to be my friend.” Annie laughs hollowly. “Why would she? She’d been here a few months, and we were playing in the yard–or, I was playing, and she was there, and Doc didn’t realize. She saw her mother. Doc had chosen her mother to–well, she was a breeder. A pink collar. And she was carrying at the time.”
Will doesn’t say anything, because, really, what do you say to that? And Annie says it so casually. Like there just are “breeders,” and it’s normal. He tries to ignore the horrible curiosity about what Doc will choose him for–or what he’s already chosen for Tommy.
“Kara freaked out. Of course she did–and Doc took her away. I never saw her again. I don’t know–” Annie’s voice breaks. “I don’t know what happened to her. But if I didn’t understand before, I did then.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Will whispers. Jesus, this is all worse than he thought. Children. Entire families. People like Tommy–and him, he guesses.
“I’m not like him,” she says.
But Will can tell that she’s scared that it isn’t true.
“You’re not,” Will says. He’s almost sure he believes it.
“Thank you,” she says softly. Her touch finds his skin again, and Will feels a flutter in his belly. “I’m going to stitch now, okay? I’ll make it as neat as I can.”
“Thanks,” Will says, ashamed that he’s actually reassured. She’s going to take her time. She’s going to make it look better than it could. Not that it’ll really make any difference. Will has no illusions about what he has to offer–and it’s not like he’ll be offering anything to anyone anytime soon. Maybe ever again.
That’s up to Doc. And Tommy, he guesses–which is not a thought he feels like entertaining just now. Just now, things don’t hurt as much as they could, and Will already knows he’s going to have to take hold of that wherever he can.
The needle pierces his ruined skin, and Will inhales sharply. It’s not so bad, he reminds himself. She’s putting him back together, not taking him apart.
He just has this feeling it would be easier to take if Annie wasn’t in pieces too.
Kent Reyes pulled up out front of the little motel as the sun began to rise, throwing some pretty gorgeous oranges and pinks around as it made itself known. He’d been driving with the windows down, breathing in fresh air crisp with the night’s chill and scented like the forest around him.
It was an hour’s drive from his little town down the winding highway that led to the unassuming motel, but the salary didn’t suck. The salary ruled, actually. Plus two weeks of vacation each year, week of sick time, decent health insurance? Really, he had it made.
Plus, the owner of the motel got him free passes to basically anywhere he wanted to hike. The whole motel thing was some kind of vanity project, the owner was the grandson of the original guy who built the place, and he liked keeping it open and running for nostalgia.
It had to cost Reston a pretty damn penny, but a rich dude like that - Charles Reston ran some company his father had started with an old college buddy and somebody else they knew that had really exploded and made them all literal billionaires - could afford to throw money around like confetti.
And Kent wanted to be one of the people standing under the money-shower as it landed.
He sat in his parking spot for a while, just breathing in the day as he straightened his button-up shirt and clip-on tie, ran fingers back through his shaggy brown hair to get it back, more or less into place, scanned the little parking lot in front of the couple dozen motel rooms to check for guests.
About the same as when he’d left. Couple of Toyotas, a beat-up Camry and a somehow even worse-for-wear Corolla stubbornly refusing to be anything but useful, a couple of family minivans with carseats and window clings announcing to everyone that the people who owned them had reproduced, as if anyone particularly needed to know. Couple of smallish pickups, one he recognized as a regular who more or less lived permanently in the corner room at the end.
He did see a new truck, though, that hadn’t been there the night before. Kent frowned, making a note of it. Not that it was unusual for somebody to show up after he’d already gone for the day, but he tried to get a good look at everyone’s vehicles. He had a good memory for them, helped him with remembering their faces while they stayed, too.
The scent of bitter, cheap coffee smacked him in the face as soon as he entered, and he sighed happily as he stopped by the little table next to the door and poured himself a cup, dumped in too much milk from the little carton they kept in the minifridge behind the desk, and took a drink so hot it nearly burned his mouth.
Kent was a creature of routine, and his workday always started with bad coffee.
“Wake up, sleepyhead!” He said, voice painfully bright and cheerful, to the night manager.
Melinda Payne, a forty-something woman with three bad marriages in the rearview mirror, two grown sons, and no remaining patience for the bullshit of men simply gave him the middle finger by way of greeting and stood up to gather her things.
“You know what I love about working with you?” Kent took her seat once she was up, feeling the instinctive vague discomfort that always came from sitting down somewhere that had already been warmed by someone else’s ass. “How you’re just so full of sunshine every single morning. I love it.”
“That’s me,” Melinda drawled, voice dry. “Barrel of laughs, day in and day out. We had a fresh one last night.”
“Yeah, saw his truck. Name?”
Melinda leaned over his shoulder and pointed down at the small guestbook, still written out by hand. They had a computer, and Kent usually spent some time inputting all the handwriting into the spreadsheet that was the half-assed attempt at digital recordkeeping, but he and Melinda both felt better having that handwritten backup. “Jeremiah Lȕge. Two little dots, right there, he wrote it himself.”
“Lie,” Kent muttered, frowning and tipping his head to one side.
cw: captivity, wounds, open wounds, bruises, touch-starved, caretaker knows whumpers, and is working with the whumpers, dubious caretaker figure, sympathetic whumper could be another title for nick. Bo is sweet.
Bo was in a small space, not much bigger than most walk-in closets. His new captor put him there. He also gave him a small paper cup filled with peanut m&m’s and put a hand in his hair before he left. The latter made Bo’s heart pound in well-learned fear, but he found himself thinking of it for half an hour afterwards, a hollow ache in his chest.
The muzzle strapped to Victor’s face is tight, too tight, making it difficult to breathe. He sits perched on the edge of his cot, gripping the edge with white knuckles. They thought he was dangerous. They thought he might bite them with his unusually sharp teeth, so they muzzled him. But he’s not a monster. He’s just a boy.
The door unlocks and swings open, revealing the white-coated figure of the scientist himself. They’ve never dealt with a faerie before, even a half one, so the scientist makes it a point to deal with Victor personally. The eager smile stretching his mouth makes Victor suddenly feel sick.
“Come with me, Number Seven. We need to take some blood samples.” He motions for Victor to follow, already turning back into the hallway. The boy gets up slowly, afraid. What does the man mean, blood samples? Are they…is he going to take Victor’s blood somehow? His legs shake as he trails behind, all the way to the main laboratory. The same room where his skin burned for the first time at the touch of iron. The scars are still fresh on the boy’s arms and torso.
The scientist gestures at a gurney, studded on the sides with straps. “Lie down, boy, and hurry. We have a lot to do in the next hour.”
A lot to do. Victor shivers. This room is always cold, and his fear only makes it worse.
He climbs up obediently, hating himself even as he lies back on the cold metal. He doesn’t have to do it. He doesn’t have to do what they want. He doesn’t have to—
The scientist straps him down before he can react.
“You need to keep still now, Seven,” he says, securing the boy’s ankles. “No moving around when the needle’s in.”
Needle? What’s a needle got to do with—
Victor’s breath snags as a sharp pinch drives into the crook of his elbow. He shifts his head to the side. A thin tube extends from a small vial on a tray to the needle piercing his own flesh.
He’s never had blood drawn before. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like seeing his own blood leaving his body. And the muzzle just makes it worse. He can’t open his mouth, can’t get quite enough air, can’t speak.
“That’s it, very good.” The man switches the full vial out for an empty one and the boy's blood continues to flow. The minutes pass by in silence, and Victor lies still in his restraints, trembling just a little, listening to his own heartbeat. His head feels funny.
“Faerie blood,” the scientist mutters, sounding pleased. “So many possibilities…such a find…”
A find. Victor realizes with a start that the scientist is referring to him. But then the thought fizzles out in his head and he can’t think straight anymore. It’s too cold, and his body feels weak.
After what feels like hours, the scientist finally removes the needle and presses a piece of gauze over the bead of red that swells in its wake. The half-fae boy blinks back into consciousness and immediately squeezes his eyes shut again. Too bright. The lights are too bright, the air icy in his nostrils.
“All right, we’re done, Number Seven. Wait here while I take care of these vials.”
He’s distracted, focused on the faerie blood he holds in his gloved hands. Of course Victor will wait. He can’t move. He wouldn’t, even if the straps weren’t holding him down. His body feels too strange.
And then someone screams, and glass shatters outside the room.
Hello. I was completely blown away by the positive response I got on the first piece of Jaime’s story (title under construction). Thank you to everyone who had a kind word to say about it! You made me really happy I made the mildly frightening choice to post.
In the interest of acclimating to the no-rules, freedom-to-post-out-of-order structure of this community, I wanted to introduce a new piece of the puzzle this time, with a new character that will come into play later.
Also, this piece goes into a little bit of the details, but for frame of reference on the BBU-adjacent thing: this story takes place in a not-so-distant future of the BBU, where WRU has undergone some changes. I look forward to exploring this world building more as I go.
Anyway, I’m rambling again. Thanks for reading. Here it is:
WARNINGS: General BBU warnings, talk of institutionalized slavery, classism, and general terribleness of large corporations. Referenced past homophobia and rough parental relationships, briefly implied/referenced non-con.
When Sebastian reflects on the day he graduated from med school, a sort of emptiness is the memory that first bobs to the surface. Among the cheers and camera flashes in the crowd, white coats and proud smiles, what Sebastian recalls most vividly from that day is looking out into the sea of parents and families and people there to support their loved ones on one of the biggest days of their lives, and not seeing a single person that had come for him.
What should have been one of the happiest moments of his life had been quickly overshadowed by the sinking feeling that none of it mattered as much as it would have if he had someone to share it with. Like there was something so fundamentally wrong with his life, that even something as objectively good and right and decent as becoming a doctor could be dulled over into a feeling of nothingness.
Perhaps, he thinks in hindsight, that moment had been foreshadowing for the following months ahead of him.
Watching rejection after rejection pour in from his top residency programs had felt like nothing short of his own personalized nightmare. He had spent several nights in a row on the phone with Alex, his undergrad roommate and only friend, clamoring back from the edge of many a panic attack, spiraling into all-out existential dread about the future and the past and what all of it meant for him if he couldn’t land an internship, let alone a real job out of school. To his credit, Alex never gave up hope in his friend. Or at least, he did a decent job hiding it if he did. Which was probably exactly what Sebastian needed to get through that particularly dark time in his life, and a good reminder of what a solid friend he had. Even if it was a party of two.
Unfortunately, Sebastian did not have the same faith in himself.
He was able to keep up some facade of optimism as his top five were picked off one by one. Telling himself, despite his devastation, that they were a pretty far reach, anyway. Even with good academic standing, it was famously no walk in the park to land yourself at John Hopkins or Mayo as a first-year. He even maintained a brave face as his first few safety programs reached capacity and moved forward without his name on the roster.
It wasn’t until he received his final rejection letter from some internal medicine place in Bumfuck, Idaho that he felt himself slip into dangerous territory. Sebastian knew himself well enough to know his own depressive patterns by then, and he knew it was only exponential decay from there.
Rock bottom came, as it did, in the wee hours of the night, after a full bottle of wine. Alone in his small apartment, surrounded by half-packed boxes with no destination, Sebastian found himself sprawled out on the floor with his laptop hot against his thighs. He couldn’t have explained why he opted for a privacy browser, but something about it allowed him to justify the words that he typed into the search bar.
It was a new low, and one he had sworn to himself he would never stoop to. Yet there he was.
He gave himself a moment to reconsider, to back out of what was undoubtedly a morally-gray train wreck waiting to happen as his thumb hovered over the enter key. And then the alcohol decided to override his moral compass.
Facility Care is the open secret of the medical profession. It comes with its fair share of stigma, and rightfully so, but it is notoriously easy to break into and pays a decent wage.
There are two types of people who end up stooping to that kind of employment. More often than not, it consists of doctors and nurses who had their licenses revoked or suspended somewhere along the line and needed a way back in. As far as Sebastian understood, they aren’t terribly ridgid about the particulars of each circumstance. After all, in the eyes of the law, the patients they would be treating are a price tag away from being entirely expendable.
The other percentage of Facility Care workers, and the reason Sebastian found himself staring at his too-bright computer screen with a sinking feeling of dread that night, are young medical graduates who find themselves in a tough spot. It isn’t difficult to spell out the logic behind that one when you open the WRU CAREERS tab on the home page and see the bright white words printed across the top of the screen:
LOAN FORGIVENESS.
It is shamelessly predatory and aggressively capitalistic, but Sebastian supposes that particular exploitation is pretty far down on the list of transgressions for an institution of legalized slavery. A few broke and hopeless medical students were hardly going to keep the Powers That Be up at night when they were able to rest easy under the weight of hundreds of thousands of stolen lives.
The whole thing is part of the massive PR overhaul the company did a few years back. In a world that was slowly inching toward civil activism and with the accessibility of platforms like social media to hold them accountable, WRU had to adapt to survive. Adaptation, in this case, took the form of changing the barest of minimums in order to keep themselves above board — to the public eye, anyway. Anyone who dares to take a closer look at the policy changes can see that it’s bullshit.
Changing ownership conditions to a rent-by-contract basis isn’t the humanitarian move they try to paint it as. In the end, it probably just equals out to more money in the company’s pocket when they can get more return on their “investments,” and a larger chance of exploitation for the people being moved around.
Getting rid of the Romantic division is an entirely meaningless gesture when they are still loaning out human beings with no legal rights and the inability to say “no.”
And offering an open job market with good wages and healthcare options to lower class individuals is a pretty convenient way to mute the backlash.
Essentially, you can tie a system of slavery and abuse up in a bow and make it pretty on the outside, but at the end of the day, it’s still fucking slavery.
Not that he has any room to criticize now. Now that he’s one of them.
In the end, Seb tries to justify his decision a few different ways. He is, after all, more or less a young man alone in the world. The odds are stacked against him and have been for a while. With only his own two legs to stand on, the only force stronger than his internal ambition is his instinct for survival, and he’s been running on those fumes for longer than he can count.
He had lasted less than two months under his parents’ roof after he came out of the closet at eighteen. It wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone involved; Sebastian’s parents had known about (and subsequently bottled) his… urges… since he was in high school. Probably before that, if he is being honest with himself. And Sebastian, for his part, had spent the better part of his teenage years mentally preparing for the inevitable. He can recall long, late nights he had spent crying into his pillow and the perfectly-scripted ‘coming out’ speeches he recited to his mirror when he was one-hundred percent sure his parents were asleep.
Of course, none of the preparation had been anywhere near adequate when he actually found himself wilting beneath the heat of his father’s glare, the weight of his mother’s grief.
But. He had recovered. That is the point he tries to remember when the memories sting fresh beneath his skin, even all these years later. He has more-than proven himself to be a survivor. He has worked harder than anyone he knows for every scholarship, every grant, every dollar to put himself through school. Sacrificed nights out and real relationships for night shifts at shitty diners and long weekends cramming for exams. It hadn’t been easy, but he considers it the price he had to pay for his independence. For freedom, to live the life as the person he is meant to be, despite his unfortunate odds. He spent years telling himself it would be worth it. That one day, his hard work would pay off.
He can’t stop now.
Sebastian doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to reroute when his navigation has gone amiss. He is walking the precarious line of rapidly accruing interest and student loans and a dwindling savings account, and there is no safety net below him.
Beggars can’t be choosers, and as it turns out, beggars sometimes have to compromise their moral integrity in order to survive.
It’s only temporary.
That is the mantra that gets him through the (half-drunken) application process and the (disturbingly lax) interview process. It is a job. One job. In the medical field, though the details are up for debate, and it is real-life money for rent and food and a savings that will hopefully be sizable enough to get him where he really wanted to be. Which is… really, anywhere else.
He can do ‘temporary.’ And perhaps, some misguided part of him thinks he can do some genuine good from the inside, too. ‘Be the change you want to see’ and all that.
It is a far jump from the floor of his apartment, sloshed and exhausted and desperate, to the cold, sharp reality of walking into his place of employment on his first day of work. Ironically, it feels a lot like an echo of the emptiness from his graduation day.
‘Sterile’ doesn’t quite cover it. ‘Sterile’ is the expectation of any well-respected medical establishment, but the inside of the facility walls has been wiped clean of far more than bacteria and germs. It is completely devoid of humanity. The long corridors that connect the medical wing to the general ward are windowless and dimly lit by flickering fluorescent panels that had make his head pound for the entirety of his first week.
He is given an office, though it is a term he, himself, might use loosely, as it is more akin to what was probably a storage closet before the old prison had been converted into the state’s training headquarters. It leaves him just enough space for a small desk and two chairs. On his first day, he asks if it is okay to bring in some personal items to spruce the place up. The older, balding doctor who had been assigned to show him around merely shrugs, and Sebastian decides to take that as a yes.
The small, pink-framed photo of a six-year-old Sebastian Tate in his grandfather’s white coat and an old-school stethoscope around his neck is hardly enough to make the place cozy from the corner of his desk, but it’s a good enough reminder of why he has to make this work.
OH, another thing— I meant to add that if you are interested in being part of a tag list of some sort for this story, I am happy to make one! Just let me know :)
"I was scared awake with a yelp by (name) harshly forcing up my chin, causing my head to thump back into the concrete wall."
(big tws for this one: fade to black implied noncon, blatant misgendering of a nb person, noncon touching, unconsciousness)
Quinn was scared awake with a yelp by Hunter harshly forcing up their chin, causing their head to thump back into the concrete wall.
“Wake up, baby. I’m not done with you yet,” Hunter whispered into their ear.
Quinn whimpered and tried with everything in their power to push Hunter away. “Get off,” they groaned weakly. They knew they were too weak for Hunter, but all they could do is try.
Hunter chuckled at the attempt and pushed Quinn harder against the wall. “You haven’t apologized for mouthing off to Daniel yet.” He trailed a hand up to their throat. “You gonna say you’re sorry, or am I gonna have to force it out of you?”
Quinn narrowed their eyes and tried kicking at Hunter. “I’m not apologizing. I didn’t do anything. All I did was tell him I needed a break.”
Hunter caught Quinn’s leg with his hand, forcing it down on the floor to keep them stable. “Well that was enough to set him off, wasn’t it?” He smirked and pushed his body against Quinn’s.
“Luckily for me,” he murmured, lips brushing sickeningly against Quinn’s neck, “That gives me an excuse to play with you.” Hunter smiled against Quinn’s skin. “Isn’t that right, lover boy?”
Quinn’s eyes shot open and they pushed their discomfort aside to shove Hunter away with all their power, angered by his words and fed up with everything that led them to that moment. They yelled out as they swung their fist in Hunter’s direction.
Hunter caught the fist in time, grinning wildly down at Quinn. “Wow,” he panted. “You missed that by a long shot.”
Quinn barely had any time to react before Hunter whacked them in the side of the head, making their head impact with the concrete below. They felt the faint sensation of their clothes being ripped off as they drifted off into unconsciousness.
dededos
germansingergirl
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
romaincrisis
