Amie, she/her, 23, occasionally adult content. Please heed content warnings. Lover of whump, drinker of tea, overuser of commas. Inbox always open if you wanna talk.
Masterlist for Ryan/843/Pet/Love/Runt/Joey/a sweet boy who just wanted to find his friend
Ryan, a bright and alert young journalist with his whole life and a promising career ahead of him, gets in way over his head when his friend disappears and all signs point to the totally legal and 100% legit multi-million dollar company WRU.
A general note: this story contains heavy pet whump and conditioning within the frames of the BoxBoy universe. Please read and respect any and all content warnings.
Before the Box
Aaron’s rainbow arc - 1
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Boxboy Ryan: Actual Boxboy
Intake paperwork
When it all started
Eating
Signing
Ornaments: Part 1 & part 2
I want this
Rest now
Birthday gift: Part 1 & part 2
Breakfast whump
A first time for almost everything
Guests
It's a dog's world
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Boxboy Ryan: Things take a turn
Last hurrah: Part 1 & part 2
Roadkill
Just a temporary foster, right?
Long way home
First night, first meal
First night, first bath
First night, first sleep
What’s in a name?
Salted caramel cookies (this is not a recipe)
Home alone
Nightmare (+ aftermath)
Sickfic bc I’m weak
Surgery: Part 1 & part 2 (part 3 to come?)
Nosebleed
New Year’s Eve
(way in the future)
Joey takes a ride
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Wordlbuilding? I guess? Lore?
Send an ask about anything you want me to elaborate on
Pet death
Pet death: drabble (not very graphic - character doesn’t die)
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Vampire AU
Part 1
Part 2
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Beware if you want to read this from the start: English isn’t my first language, so the grammar and syntax is, um, lacking at some many points so maybe don’t look too closely. Also I use way too many commas. It’s all subject to be rewritten and properly edited but like... I’m too good at procrastinating
This story started out as a random happenstance I decided to build upon. Plot isn’t entirely worked out yet - honestly, who needs it?
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Declan, my bloodbag whumpee from my series 'Shattered'! 🩸⛓️
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Commissioned from the AMAZING AND BEYOND SUPER TALENTED @elgrajaz ! thank you so so much for drawing my boy!!! 🥹😭 It's beautiful, I can't stop looking at him!!! AAAAAA!
six months early or six months late, here is joey's first new year's eve at aaron's.
tw/cw: descriptions of scars, being shot at, fear of death/being killed, mutilation of wound with knife, general dehumanisation. slow and exposition-heavy writing. plot details at the end that may or may not be expanded upon further if i can make them fit later, don't think too much about them i'm posting this at 1am
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Instead of going up to his family’s place in Rochester like he used to, Aaron had asked Marla to join their Christmas celebration at home.
Aaron couldn’t bring Joey back home until they had had some clear communication and had come up with a believeable story as to why he had an injured, traumatized man with separation anxiety living in his house. It didn't matter much to Aaron whether the story they eventully would tell was true or not. He was more invested in not giving his mother a heart attack, as well as wanting to preserve Joey's dignity and respect his wishes for the narrative.
Maybe next year's holidays would present a better opportunity for Joey's introduction, Aaron thought, and pointedly did not think about how long Joey would stay with him. Sending him back to Mike, or some other equally seedy, exploitative organisation, was out of the question.
Similarly unthinkable was the prospect of leaving Joey home alone in a big, dark, cold house while he went up to his family himself. The possibility had lingered in his mind, if only for a brief minute. He could make a day trip out of it on Christmas Eve or Day, fly out in the morning and come back late at night and have time to ingest at least one of his mother's homecooked meals in the meantime. Then, he thought about Joey, who undoubtedly would sit at the door and wait for him all day, and probably into the night because of holiday lines and delays, and he thought better of it.
Thus, the week leading up to Christmas had been a quiet affair with a few movies, napping on the couch, hot drinks and a Joey who gradually took shorter and shorter time to slink into Aaron’s side in the evenings. Physical touch really was the way to his heart.
Marla had a few days off and joined them when she could. For the first time in years Aaron pulled the few boxes of decorations he had down from the attic, and they spent an afternoon hanging wreaths and stockings. In the evening, they untangled the Christmas lights and Joey, bundled up in Aaron's old parka and seated on a deck chair placed on the snow-dusted lawn for the occation, watched with poorly concealed awe and fear as Aaron balanced on a ladder leaning on the porch roof and Marla pointed to where the lights should hang. Aaron bought a Christmas tree on a whim as he passed a vendor in a parking lot, and they spent the evening decorating it with paper chains and ornaments so old they had almost no glitter left on them. As Aaron joined Marla in the kitchen to prepare spiced cider and something to eat, Joey stayed in the living room, seated in an old leather recliner with Dolly on his lap, watching the tree. He still sat there when they came back out thirty minutes later, the many bulbs of the Christmas tree lights reflecting in his big, dark eyes like stars in the sky.
Christmas was, as a whole, a relaxing, comfortable event. Much more so than if he had spent it with his own immediate and partially extended family, Aaron thought, without mentioning that particular fact to his mother when she called on Christmas Morning to wish him happy holidays.
New year’s would be an equally quiet and calm affair.
At least, that was Aaron’s intention.
It had started well. Marla had left the day before to fly down to her parents in Houston and spend the holiday there, so he and Joey would be on their own. Before she left, she had hugged them both in turn and combed her fingers through Joey's unruly mop of dark hair.
"Handsome," she said and pulled him in for another hug as he bowed his head and hid his bashful smile in the collar of his hoodie.
Something had happened with him over the last week or two, Aaron had noticed. His shoulders didn't carry the same high-strung tension anymore. His eyes, which had always scanned every room he entered and never quite lost their worried, hunted look, weren't quite as round and wide-open as they had used to be. He didn't ask for permission for the littlest things anymore. He went to fridge to fetch a soda on his own. He didn't wait around with that wretched expression on his face, waiting to be gently told to go put on to go put on wool socks anymore. When his feet were cold, he simply went to the set of drawers in the hall, where the thickest socks were, and selected a pair to wear on his own.
Food was still an issue, but something had happened there, too. He had helped himself to seconds at dinner once without asking - yes, it had only happened the one time, but it had happened, and that in itself was progress in Aaron's mind. Marla had made sure to keep a platter of salted caramel cookies on the kitchen island while she stayed, and she had needed to top it up more than once. Aaron had never seen Joey take the cookies, but neither he nor Marla ate them and Dolly didn't care for caramel, so Joey had to be the one.
It made his stomach turn that Joey was so insecure about food that he potentially felt he had to steal it to get enough to eat. Food was not a scarcity in Aaron's house, and he wanted Joey to know that. He could eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and Aaron would be happy about it. Midnight cookies in the kitchen didn't bother him.
"Be nice to him," Marla said to Aaron with put-on sternness. It was Aaron's turn to smile as Marla hugged him as well. Joey watched and politely cast his gaze down when they shared a quick kiss - ever the appeaser.
Aaron carried her bags to her car despite her protests that she could it herself and joined Joey on the porch after to wave as she drove off. He put an arm around Joey's shoulders - he hadn't put on a coat, and Aaron was terminally worried about keeping him warm enough - as her neat, black coupe disappeared.
"It's cold out here. Let's get inside?" he suggested, always making sure to never give direct orders. Something about nurturing self-determination in the rehabilitation of former pets that Marla had talked about.
Joey nodded and carefully hobbled inside as Aaron held the door open for him. It had only been a few weeks since the cast had been taken off his ankle, but the area was still sore and the joint vulnerable, so they had been told to take it easy and not push it.
When Aaron had been looking for the Christmas decorations in the attic, he had found his grandfather's old hickory cane with the carved handle, which he had brought down. Joey's eyes had widened when he first saw it. It probably looked like an instrument of punishment to him, but Aaron had quickly told him it was a walking cane and that maybe he could use it to help with balance while his ankle was still healing. Joey had carefully tried it out, limping back and forth on the living room floor, and since then the cane had always been by his side.
They spent a few hours half-watching sitcom reruns on the sofa, Joey dozing with his head on a pillow leaned against Aaron's thigh and Aaron with his work laptop open on the arm of the sofa. He sometimes cast glances down at Joey's face, and when he noticed his eyes lingering on the door to the kitchen, he gently suggested dinner.
Joey was in charge of the vegetables while Aaron cut the turkey breast they had prepared the day before. He watched them with great reverance - the glazed carrots in the oven and the broccoli currently steaming on the stovetop. As they worked, Aaron was idly thinking about where it would be best to watch the fireworks from later tonight. A couple miles up the road there was a clearing in the forest, high enough up to get a good view of the surrounding exurbs. Or, they could go downtown. There was supposed to be a public firework display over the river, probably visible even if they only stayed in the car for the entire spectacle. Joey would probably prefer that, not having to navigate large crowds on his mangled foot.
"Do you think you would like to-" Aaron began, intending to ask about his preferred viewing location, when a clear, moving light suddenly lit up outside. He leaned forwards to look out the window and watched the red ball of light burn in the dark. It climbed the sky like a tiny airplane, coming from the woods east of the property. It was likely teenagers firing from the backwoods road running up there.
"Looks like someone jumped the gun on their celebration," he muttered right as the ball of light exploded. He flinched, only because he had forgotten how loud fireworks could be up close.
When he turned to face Joey, wanting to say something half-witty about teens literally setting fire to their money, he wasn't there.
It was if he had phased out of existence, leaving no trace other than his cane still leaning on the edge of the counter and a fork piercing a broccoli floret laying next to it.
"Joey?" Aaron said, stupidly, because he was clearly alone in the room. He even walked around the kitchen island and poked his head into the living room, still seeing no trace.
Outside, more fireworks lit up as he turned the heat of the oven and stovetop down, and looked into the dining room as well, even though they almost never used it. Joey wasn't in there either.
He headed upstairs, serenaded by more wheezes and pops from the fireworks outside. The bathroom was empty, as was Joey's own room. The office and the library-turned-temporary-storage-room was as well.
That only left one room.
"Joey?" Aaron said gently as he entered his own bedroom. He should have come here first, he realized, as the door was wide open. Most doors in this house were usually only ajar, to let Dolly come and go as she pleased.
He scanned the dark room, not spotting anything out of the ordinary-
-except for the corner of the worn rug on the floor, upturned as if someone had gotten their toes caught under it as they moved past and did not have time to stop and fix it.
He stepped around the empty bed, not finding anyone in it nor under it, and turned towards the last possible location.
He carefully pulled the closet doors open. There, sticking out from under the long wintercoat he had inherited from his grandfather, was a wool sock-clad foot.
"Oh, little one," he mumbled as he crouched down and pushed the coat aside. The hanger screeched as it was dragged along the rack.
Joey was the smallest he had ever seen him. He was curled up so tight that he looked like a child, somehow having managed to gather all his long, bony limbs until his body was a tight little ball in the corner of the closet. He was on his side, turned halfway towards the wall. Aaron couldn't see his face, only his dark, tousled hair and hunched shoulders, rising and falling in time with his hyperventilation.
The fireworks outside died out, the teens probably not able to afford more than a couple of batteries. The silence that fell over them allowed a wheezing, sniveling sound to reach Aaron's ears. It took a few seconds before he realized it was Joey's sound.
It wasn't even crying. It was a kind of howling. A weak, desperate howl that could only be born from terror.
Aaron hesitated, but only for a moment. Something about the last couple of weeks had made him slightly more certain in his handling of the boy.
"It's okay, Joey," he said mildly and reached out and placed his hand on his upper arm.
He had expected the violent flinch, but not the terrified wailing that followed, nor the Joey's hands shot up to protect his face, as if Aaron had lifted his hand to hit him.
"Hey, hey hey, easy. It's okay, it's just me," Aaron said, and didn't remove his hand from Joey's arm.
"P-please -" Joey's voice hitched between the sobs. As so many times before, Aaron was not quite sure what he was begging for, or if Joey even knew it himself. They were the words of a man desperate for relief.
"It's over, baby. No more fireworks, right?" Aaron kept his hand where it was, and placed his other on Joey's other arm, holding both.
"Come here," he mumbled and carefully pulled Joey's trembling body towards his chest. Joey, obedient to his core, followed immediately, despite the way he still shook with fear.
"Little one, you're okay. Nobody's here to get you."
It was as if something gave way and released in the tightly strung body of his house guest once he was fully enveloped in Aaron's arms. Joey turned his head to burrow it in the collar of Aaron's shirt, releasing a hopeless whine as he did so.
"I won't let anything happen to you," Aaron mumbled and pressed his lips to the back of his neck. "Nothing bad will happen to you here."
Minutes passed as they sat together, Joey shaking and whimpering and Aaron holding him, stroking his back and muttering soothing, reassuring words to him. It was a familiar pattern - yet another situatuion which left Joey entirely wrung out of his skin, tears streaming, shoulders hitching. Yet another piece in the puzzle of his trauma.
Outside, the night was quiet and the sky was dark.
"I'm sorry," Joey rasped eventually, voice low.
"You have nothing to be sorry about," Aaron muttered to him. "You were afraid."
"Yes," he wheezed. "B-but I know they're just fireworks. I know they can't hurt me, and still..." His grip on Aaron's shirt tightened.
You have been traumatized, Aaron wanted to say. You probably have PTSD, on top of general anxiety. But he didn't say that.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked instead, with no clear idea of what it was. He hoped the open-ended question could help Joey open up about whatever it was that was bothering him, in his own way. Let him talk about what was most pressing. They had to start somewhere.
Joey was silent for a moment. Aaron couldn't see his face, but he knew this silence well enough to know that Joey's big, round eyes were unfocused and staring out into the ether as he rifled through his mind, looking for what to say.
"I think..." He took a deep breath. "It was when we w-went to the desert..." His voice was shaking. Aaron didn't push for which desert or who we included, only continued stroking his hair.
"It was at a range, I think? They were trying out different guns," Joey continued. His hand, which had been clutching his probably throbbing ankle up until now, moved up and he gripped his shin over the wool sock. "I don't know why they brought me there. There was no reason to. There was no one there who were... interested in me."
Aaron felt something twinge in his chest at the way Joey's brittle voice seemed to harden and develop an edge.
"It was so hot," he continued. "Even in the shade. I was barefoot and it was so hot. My master," it was Aaron's turn to tighten his jaw, "had a cooler with water and beer and-and... and I asked for something to drink. It was so hot," he repeated. It seemed as if he felt the need to emphasize the temperature, as if to justify what might come next.
"One of the other men had brought his dog. My master told me we would have to share the dog bowl."
Aaron imagined a metal bowl, halfway filled with lukewarm water, sand and dog slobber. He cringed and unconsciously tightened his hold around Joey. His poor boy. His sweet, mild-mannered, skittish boy. Made to share a bowl of water with a dog.
"And I would have!" Joey suddenly exclaimed, his voice taking on a desperate quality. "I would have drank the dog water. But the dog was growling at me, and the cooler was right there, and it was so hot..." He moaned and rubbed his eyes, as if unable to continue.
"You're doing good." Aaron broke through his own ire and grounded himself around Joey. He could be angry later. He had to log and store every little bit of information Joey was giving him now. Every implication or trace of a place, a description, a name. Anything that could lead him in the direction of the people who had done this to his Joey. He had rarely been this forthcoming abut his past.
And most importantly, he had to be there for him. He continued stroking slow circles into Joey's back, reassuring him through what must be a taxing recollection of events. "You're good, baby," he said and rested his cheek on the top of Joey's head.
"I stole a bottle of water," Joey eventually whispered, voice shaking as if he was confessing to a mortal sin. It probably felt like it. Aaron pressed his eyes shut.
"I waited until they started shooting again, and I stole a water bottle, and I drank only a little, and then one of the men saw me, and I dropped the bottle and spilled the rest, and-and-" The rest of his words broke away into sobs again. "-and as punishment they made me stand in front of the targets w-when they tried the next gun."
Aaron stiffened. He didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know how to react at all.
"They shot so much. I thought I would get hit, but they never shot at me. Only around me." He paused and one of his hands came up to cover his mouth. His eyes were wide open, staring off into nothing.
"But Master said it wasn't enough punishment," he breathed. "He told me to run."
"Oh, Joey..." Aaron managed to whisper and placed his hand on Joey's head, holding him even closer. He could only imagine it. Joey, barefoot and frail, dehydrated, definitely malnourished and probably sunburnt, being pointed to the desert and given what he probably thought was his final order from his owner.
Run.
"They didn't hit me at first. But the gun was automatic, so I think they stopped trying to aim, and just shot." His voice had grown oddly steady now, like the trauma had reached a plateau within him.
"They hit my leg," he said. Aaron cast his glance down to where he was gripping his shin. The leg of his pajama pant had ridden up, revealing a long, thin scar stretching over the outside of his leg, where a bullet must have flown by, ripping the skin open instead of piercing it. It looked like comet in the night sky.
"And my thigh. And somewhere..." his other hand ghosted over the side of his head. Aaron wondered if he would find a similar scar there if he parted his dark hair. The bullet must only have grazed him, for him to still be alive now, but still.
Shot at.
Hit.
In the head.
"I think I wet myself. I was so afraid. I've never run so fast in my life."
"How did you..." Aaron started, but he wasn't sure about how to finish the question. How did you survive?
"I fell. I think I stumbled, or it was when they hit my thigh. I don't know. I passed out, I think, and when I woke up, they were all there. One of them had a spring blade. I think he tried to remove the bullet from my thigh." He let out a sardonic snort of laughter. "Maybe he just wanted to dig around inside of me. I don't know. I blacked out again."
Of course he was afraid of fireworks, Aaron thought to himself as he, astonished by the horror of the story Joey was telling, let his head fall back. He closed his eyes and recollected the gnarly scar on Joey's right thigh, the origins of which had been a mystery to him until now. It looked like a violent paint splatter of scar tissue. The first time he had seen it, on the first night when Joey was in the bath, knees drawn up under his chin, Aaron had thought it a wonder that he hadn't bled to death when he had recieved the wound. Now, knowing it came from a gun shot and subsequent gouging with a blade, his boy's survival was even more astonishing.
"I don't like loud sounds now," Joey offered weakly, after a long while. "I don't like fireworks."
"Of course you don't, baby," Aaron muttered, shaking the mental images of mangled skin. He leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of Joey's head, now accutely aware of the fact that there probably was a scar hiding somewhere behind the sea of dark waves, too.
---
Getting Joey out of the closet and downstairs again was out of the question. That much was clear in the way his entire body stiffened as Aaron got up and gently suggested it. With his fingers, still holding Joey's hand, he could feel the way his pulse sped up at the mere suggestion of it. He was still in a such a frail state of mind after reliving the desert nightmare that Aaron wouldn't put it past him to have another panic attack if he went back downstairs, regardless of the presence of fireworks.
"Stay here," he said, needlessly, over his shoulder as he entered the hallway. A plan had formed in him when he observed the way Joey's face had ashened and how his eyes had grown large and round when Aaron had exited the closet.
He retrieved his old laptop from his office down the hall and Joey's pillow, weighted blanket and stuffed panda teddy from his room. He stopped by the library-turned-storage where his old record player stood next to its newer, more modern sibling.
It wasn't something he would ever ask for on his own, but Joey had recieved a pair of noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones for Christmas, along with the new record player. Aaron had picked up that he liked music, especially the soul-shaking bass and guitar riffs of Aaron's old rock and punk rock records. Since Joey was deathly afraid of being percieved as even the littlest of bits of impeding on Aaron's space, he would listen to the records on the lowest volume, laying on the floor with his ear pressed up against the mesh of the old speakers.
Aaron, instead of spending hours trying to convince Joey that he never, ever could think of him as 'in the way' and that he could play music as loud as he wanted, had gone the other route and instead gifted him a new record player and bluetooth headphones.
It gave Joey what he wanted - loud, high quality music - while also making him feel like he wasn't in the way. And truly, it had worked. Several times throughout the holidays Aaron had walked by the storage room and spotted Joey in there, swaying by the windows, laying flat on the rug or leaning on the armrest of the old couch. Always with his eyes closed and wearing the headphones, and every time with a different record spinning on the player.
Aaron retrieved the headphones and, with some fiddling with the settings on his laptop, managed to pair them. He then returned to his closet.
Joey let himself be covered in the weighted blanket and took the teddy bear and the pillow when Aaron handed them to him. He sat very still as Aaron slid the headphones over his ears, only looking at him silently from under his heavy lashes, Rocky the panda clutched in his arms.
Aaron figured sleeping was out of the question, so instead he found a documentary on forest elephants and handed the laptop to Joey. Joey, always so gravely serious when Aaron entrusted him with something, accepted it and placed it carefully in his lap. Aaron then went downstairs and made up a plate of the food they had almost finished preparing when the fireworks had been shot up. Joey accepted that, too, with great reverence.
"I'll stay here with you," Aaron said and sat down on the bed with his plate of food and his work laptop. Joey didn't answer. He probably didn't even hear what he had said. He was almost finished with his plate, head at an angle as diligently watched the documentary. Dolly had joined him, too, and sat perched on a chair right outside the closet door, squinting her eyes in pleasure at having her two people in the same space as her.
While the clock ticked down, while the fireworks started raging outside, and while Joey studied amber-eyed forest elephants engineering paths through the thick jungle, Aaron double clicked the folder labeled PAST_CLIENT_ARRANGEMENTS and rifled through the files and documents. He opened one called TIMELINE_CLIENT_X and scrolled down.
Joey hadn't mentioned any signifiers of time and place. All Aaron knew was desert, multiple people, guns, dog. He added a new line to the table in the column called EVENT and wrote exactly that. In the next column, labeled PROOF, he wrote: "Bullet graze scar on left shin. Large scar on right thigh, previously unlabeled, likely in connection with event - gun shot and likely consecutive attempt at removal of bullet with blade. Bullet graze on left side of head."
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six months early or six months late, here is joey's first new year's eve at aaron's.
tw/cw: descriptions of scars, being shot at, fear of death/being killed, mutilation of wound with knife, general dehumanisation. slow and exposition-heavy writing. plot details at the end that may or may not be expanded upon further if i can make them fit later, don't think too much about them i'm posting this at 1am
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Instead of going up to his family’s place in Rochester like he used to, Aaron had asked Marla to join their Christmas celebration at home.
Aaron couldn’t bring Joey back home until they had had some clear communication and had come up with a believeable story as to why he had an injured, traumatized man with separation anxiety living in his house. It didn't matter much to Aaron whether the story they eventully would tell was true or not. He was more invested in not giving his mother a heart attack, as well as wanting to preserve Joey's dignity and respect his wishes for the narrative.
Maybe next year's holidays would present a better opportunity for Joey's introduction, Aaron thought, and pointedly did not think about how long Joey would stay with him. Sending him back to Mike, or some other equally seedy, exploitative organisation, was out of the question.
Similarly unthinkable was the prospect of leaving Joey home alone in a big, dark, cold house while he went up to his family himself. The possibility had lingered in his mind, if only for a brief minute. He could make a day trip out of it on Christmas Eve or Day, fly out in the morning and come back late at night and have time to ingest at least one of his mother's homecooked meals in the meantime. Then, he thought about Joey, who undoubtedly would sit at the door and wait for him all day, and probably into the night because of holiday lines and delays, and he thought better of it.
Thus, the week leading up to Christmas had been a quiet affair with a few movies, napping on the couch, hot drinks and a Joey who gradually took shorter and shorter time to slink into Aaron’s side in the evenings. Physical touch really was the way to his heart.
Marla had a few days off and joined them when she could. For the first time in years Aaron pulled the few boxes of decorations he had down from the attic, and they spent an afternoon hanging wreaths and stockings. In the evening, they untangled the Christmas lights and Joey, bundled up in Aaron's old parka and seated on a deck chair placed on the snow-dusted lawn for the occation, watched with poorly concealed awe and fear as Aaron balanced on a ladder leaning on the porch roof and Marla pointed to where the lights should hang. Aaron bought a Christmas tree on a whim as he passed a vendor in a parking lot, and they spent the evening decorating it with paper chains and ornaments so old they had almost no glitter left on them. As Aaron joined Marla in the kitchen to prepare spiced cider and something to eat, Joey stayed in the living room, seated in an old leather recliner with Dolly on his lap, watching the tree. He still sat there when they came back out thirty minutes later, the many bulbs of the Christmas tree lights reflecting in his big, dark eyes like stars in the sky.
Christmas was, as a whole, a relaxing, comfortable event. Much more so than if he had spent it with his own immediate and partially extended family, Aaron thought, without mentioning that particular fact to his mother when she called on Christmas Morning to wish him happy holidays.
New year’s would be an equally quiet and calm affair.
At least, that was Aaron’s intention.
It had started well. Marla had left the day before to fly down to her parents in Houston and spend the holiday there, so he and Joey would be on their own. Before she left, she had hugged them both in turn and combed her fingers through Joey's unruly mop of dark hair.
"Handsome," she said and pulled him in for another hug as he bowed his head and hid his bashful smile in the collar of his hoodie.
Something had happened with him over the last week or two, Aaron had noticed. His shoulders didn't carry the same high-strung tension anymore. His eyes, which had always scanned every room he entered and never quite lost their worried, hunted look, weren't quite as round and wide-open as they had used to be. He didn't ask for permission for the littlest things anymore. He went to fridge to fetch a soda on his own. He didn't wait around with that wretched expression on his face, waiting to be gently told to go put on to go put on wool socks anymore. When his feet were cold, he simply went to the set of drawers in the hall, where the thickest socks were, and selected a pair to wear on his own.
Food was still an issue, but something had happened there, too. He had helped himself to seconds at dinner once without asking - yes, it had only happened the one time, but it had happened, and that in itself was progress in Aaron's mind. Marla had made sure to keep a platter of salted caramel cookies on the kitchen island while she stayed, and she had needed to top it up more than once. Aaron had never seen Joey take the cookies, but neither he nor Marla ate them and Dolly didn't care for caramel, so Joey had to be the one.
It made his stomach turn that Joey was so insecure about food that he potentially felt he had to steal it to get enough to eat. Food was not a scarcity in Aaron's house, and he wanted Joey to know that. He could eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and Aaron would be happy about it. Midnight cookies in the kitchen didn't bother him.
"Be nice to him," Marla said to Aaron with put-on sternness. It was Aaron's turn to smile as Marla hugged him as well. Joey watched and politely cast his gaze down when they shared a quick kiss - ever the appeaser.
Aaron carried her bags to her car despite her protests that she could it herself and joined Joey on the porch after to wave as she drove off. He put an arm around Joey's shoulders - he hadn't put on a coat, and Aaron was terminally worried about keeping him warm enough - as her neat, black coupe disappeared.
"It's cold out here. Let's get inside?" he suggested, always making sure to never give direct orders. Something about nurturing self-determination in the rehabilitation of former pets that Marla had talked about.
Joey nodded and carefully hobbled inside as Aaron held the door open for him. It had only been a few weeks since the cast had been taken off his ankle, but the area was still sore and the joint vulnerable, so they had been told to take it easy and not push it.
When Aaron had been looking for the Christmas decorations in the attic, he had found his grandfather's old hickory cane with the carved handle, which he had brought down. Joey's eyes had widened when he first saw it. It probably looked like an instrument of punishment to him, but Aaron had quickly told him it was a walking cane and that maybe he could use it to help with balance while his ankle was still healing. Joey had carefully tried it out, limping back and forth on the living room floor, and since then the cane had always been by his side.
They spent a few hours half-watching sitcom reruns on the sofa, Joey dozing with his head on a pillow leaned against Aaron's thigh and Aaron with his work laptop open on the arm of the sofa. He sometimes cast glances down at Joey's face, and when he noticed his eyes lingering on the door to the kitchen, he gently suggested dinner.
Joey was in charge of the vegetables while Aaron cut the turkey breast they had prepared the day before. He watched them with great reverance - the glazed carrots in the oven and the broccoli currently steaming on the stovetop. As they worked, Aaron was idly thinking about where it would be best to watch the fireworks from later tonight. A couple miles up the road there was a clearing in the forest, high enough up to get a good view of the surrounding exurbs. Or, they could go downtown. There was supposed to be a public firework display over the river, probably visible even if they only stayed in the car for the entire spectacle. Joey would probably prefer that, not having to navigate large crowds on his mangled foot.
"Do you think you would like to-" Aaron began, intending to ask about his preferred viewing location, when a clear, moving light suddenly lit up outside. He leaned forwards to look out the window and watched the red ball of light burn in the dark. It climbed the sky like a tiny airplane, coming from the woods east of the property. It was likely teenagers firing from the backwoods road running up there.
"Looks like someone jumped the gun on their celebration," he muttered right as the ball of light exploded. He flinched, only because he had forgotten how loud fireworks could be up close.
When he turned to face Joey, wanting to say something half-witty about teens literally setting fire to their money, he wasn't there.
It was if he had phased out of existence, leaving no trace other than his cane still leaning on the edge of the counter and a fork piercing a broccoli floret laying next to it.
"Joey?" Aaron said, stupidly, because he was clearly alone in the room. He even walked around the kitchen island and poked his head into the living room, still seeing no trace.
Outside, more fireworks lit up as he turned the heat of the oven and stovetop down, and looked into the dining room as well, even though they almost never used it. Joey wasn't in there either.
He headed upstairs, serenaded by more wheezes and pops from the fireworks outside. The bathroom was empty, as was Joey's own room. The office and the library-turned-temporary-storage-room was as well.
That only left one room.
"Joey?" Aaron said gently as he entered his own bedroom. He should have come here first, he realized, as the door was wide open. Most doors in this house were usually only ajar, to let Dolly come and go as she pleased.
He scanned the dark room, not spotting anything out of the ordinary-
-except for the corner of the worn rug on the floor, upturned as if someone had gotten their toes caught under it as they moved past and did not have time to stop and fix it.
He stepped around the empty bed, not finding anyone in it nor under it, and turned towards the last possible location.
He carefully pulled the closet doors open. There, sticking out from under the long wintercoat he had inherited from his grandfather, was a wool sock-clad foot.
"Oh, little one," he mumbled as he crouched down and pushed the coat aside. The hanger screeched as it was dragged along the rack.
Joey was the smallest he had ever seen him. He was curled up so tight that he looked like a child, somehow having managed to gather all his long, bony limbs until his body was a tight little ball in the corner of the closet. He was on his side, turned halfway towards the wall. Aaron couldn't see his face, only his dark, tousled hair and hunched shoulders, rising and falling in time with his hyperventilation.
The fireworks outside died out, the teens probably not able to afford more than a couple of batteries. The silence that fell over them allowed a wheezing, sniveling sound to reach Aaron's ears. It took a few seconds before he realized it was Joey's sound.
It wasn't even crying. It was a kind of howling. A weak, desperate howl that could only be born from terror.
Aaron hesitated, but only for a moment. Something about the last couple of weeks had made him slightly more certain in his handling of the boy.
"It's okay, Joey," he said mildly and reached out and placed his hand on his upper arm.
He had expected the violent flinch, but not the terrified wailing that followed, nor the Joey's hands shot up to protect his face, as if Aaron had lifted his hand to hit him.
"Hey, hey hey, easy. It's okay, it's just me," Aaron said, and didn't remove his hand from Joey's arm.
"P-please -" Joey's voice hitched between the sobs. As so many times before, Aaron was not quite sure what he was begging for, or if Joey even knew it himself. They were the words of a man desperate for relief.
"It's over, baby. No more fireworks, right?" Aaron kept his hand where it was, and placed his other on Joey's other arm, holding both.
"Come here," he mumbled and carefully pulled Joey's trembling body towards his chest. Joey, obedient to his core, followed immediately, despite the way he still shook with fear.
"Little one, you're okay. Nobody's here to get you."
It was as if something gave way and released in the tightly strung body of his house guest once he was fully enveloped in Aaron's arms. Joey turned his head to burrow it in the collar of Aaron's shirt, releasing a hopeless whine as he did so.
"I won't let anything happen to you," Aaron mumbled and pressed his lips to the back of his neck. "Nothing bad will happen to you here."
Minutes passed as they sat together, Joey shaking and whimpering and Aaron holding him, stroking his back and muttering soothing, reassuring words to him. It was a familiar pattern - yet another situatuion which left Joey entirely wrung out of his skin, tears streaming, shoulders hitching. Yet another piece in the puzzle of his trauma.
Outside, the night was quiet and the sky was dark.
"I'm sorry," Joey rasped eventually, voice low.
"You have nothing to be sorry about," Aaron muttered to him. "You were afraid."
"Yes," he wheezed. "B-but I know they're just fireworks. I know they can't hurt me, and still..." His grip on Aaron's shirt tightened.
You have been traumatized, Aaron wanted to say. You probably have PTSD, on top of general anxiety. But he didn't say that.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked instead, with no clear idea of what it was. He hoped the open-ended question could help Joey open up about whatever it was that was bothering him, in his own way. Let him talk about what was most pressing. They had to start somewhere.
Joey was silent for a moment. Aaron couldn't see his face, but he knew this silence well enough to know that Joey's big, round eyes were unfocused and staring out into the ether as he rifled through his mind, looking for what to say.
"I think..." He took a deep breath. "It was when we w-went to the desert..." His voice was shaking. Aaron didn't push for which desert or who we included, only continued stroking his hair.
"It was at a range, I think? They were trying out different guns," Joey continued. His hand, which had been clutching his probably throbbing ankle up until now, moved up and he gripped his shin over the wool sock. "I don't know why they brought me there. There was no reason to. There was no one there who were... interested in me."
Aaron felt something twinge in his chest at the way Joey's brittle voice seemed to harden and develop an edge.
"It was so hot," he continued. "Even in the shade. I was barefoot and it was so hot. My master," it was Aaron's turn to tighten his jaw, "had a cooler with water and beer and-and... and I asked for something to drink. It was so hot," he repeated. It seemed as if he felt the need to emphasize the temperature, as if to justify what might come next.
"One of the other men had brought his dog. My master told me we would have to share the dog bowl."
Aaron imagined a metal bowl, halfway filled with lukewarm water, sand and dog slobber. He cringed and unconsciously tightened his hold around Joey. His poor boy. His sweet, mild-mannered, skittish boy. Made to share a bowl of water with a dog.
"And I would have!" Joey suddenly exclaimed, his voice taking on a desperate quality. "I would have drank the dog water. But the dog was growling at me, and the cooler was right there, and it was so hot..." He moaned and rubbed his eyes, as if unable to continue.
"You're doing good." Aaron broke through his own ire and grounded himself around Joey. He could be angry later. He had to log and store every little bit of information Joey was giving him now. Every implication or trace of a place, a description, a name. Anything that could lead him in the direction of the people who had done this to his Joey. He had rarely been this forthcoming abut his past.
And most importantly, he had to be there for him. He continued stroking slow circles into Joey's back, reassuring him through what must be a taxing recollection of events. "You're good, baby," he said and rested his cheek on the top of Joey's head.
"I stole a bottle of water," Joey eventually whispered, voice shaking as if he was confessing to a mortal sin. It probably felt like it. Aaron pressed his eyes shut.
"I waited until they started shooting again, and I stole a water bottle, and I drank only a little, and then one of the men saw me, and I dropped the bottle and spilled the rest, and-and-" The rest of his words broke away into sobs again. "-and as punishment they made me stand in front of the targets w-when they tried the next gun."
Aaron stiffened. He didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know how to react at all.
"They shot so much. I thought I would get hit, but they never shot at me. Only around me." He paused and one of his hands came up to cover his mouth. His eyes were wide open, staring off into nothing.
"But Master said it wasn't enough punishment," he breathed. "He told me to run."
"Oh, Joey..." Aaron managed to whisper and placed his hand on Joey's head, holding him even closer. He could only imagine it. Joey, barefoot and frail, dehydrated, definitely malnourished and probably sunburnt, being pointed to the desert and given what he probably thought was his final order from his owner.
Run.
"They didn't hit me at first. But the gun was automatic, so I think they stopped trying to aim, and just shot." His voice had grown oddly steady now, like the trauma had reached a plateau within him.
"They hit my leg," he said. Aaron cast his glance down to where he was gripping his shin. The leg of his pajama pant had ridden up, revealing a long, thin scar stretching over the outside of his leg, where a bullet must have flown by, ripping the skin open instead of piercing it. It looked like comet in the night sky.
"And my thigh. And somewhere..." his other hand ghosted over the side of his head. Aaron wondered if he would find a similar scar there if he parted his dark hair. The bullet must only have grazed him, for him to still be alive now, but still.
Shot at.
Hit.
In the head.
"I think I wet myself. I was so afraid. I've never run so fast in my life."
"How did you..." Aaron started, but he wasn't sure about how to finish the question. How did you survive?
"I fell. I think I stumbled, or it was when they hit my thigh. I don't know. I passed out, I think, and when I woke up, they were all there. One of them had a spring blade. I think he tried to remove the bullet from my thigh." He let out a sardonic snort of laughter. "Maybe he just wanted to dig around inside of me. I don't know. I blacked out again."
Of course he was afraid of fireworks, Aaron thought to himself as he, astonished by the horror of the story Joey was telling, let his head fall back. He closed his eyes and recollected the gnarly scar on Joey's right thigh, the origins of which had been a mystery to him until now. It looked like a violent paint splatter of scar tissue. The first time he had seen it, on the first night when Joey was in the bath, knees drawn up under his chin, Aaron had thought it a wonder that he hadn't bled to death when he had recieved the wound. Now, knowing it came from a gun shot and subsequent gouging with a blade, his boy's survival was even more astonishing.
"I don't like loud sounds now," Joey offered weakly, after a long while. "I don't like fireworks."
"Of course you don't, baby," Aaron muttered, shaking the mental images of mangled skin. He leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of Joey's head, now accutely aware of the fact that there probably was a scar hiding somewhere behind the sea of dark waves, too.
---
Getting Joey out of the closet and downstairs again was out of the question. That much was clear in the way his entire body stiffened as Aaron got up and gently suggested it. With his fingers, still holding Joey's hand, he could feel the way his pulse sped up at the mere suggestion of it. He was still in a such a frail state of mind after reliving the desert nightmare that Aaron wouldn't put it past him to have another panic attack if he went back downstairs, regardless of the presence of fireworks.
"Stay here," he said, needlessly, over his shoulder as he entered the hallway. A plan had formed in him when he observed the way Joey's face had ashened and how his eyes had grown large and round when Aaron had exited the closet.
He retrieved his old laptop from his office down the hall and Joey's pillow, weighted blanket and stuffed panda teddy from his room. He stopped by the library-turned-storage where his old record player stood next to its newer, more modern sibling.
It wasn't something he would ever ask for on his own, but Joey had recieved a pair of noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones for Christmas, along with the new record player. Aaron had picked up that he liked music, especially the soul-shaking bass and guitar riffs of Aaron's old rock and punk rock records. Since Joey was deathly afraid of being percieved as even the littlest of bits of impeding on Aaron's space, he would listen to the records on the lowest volume, laying on the floor with his ear pressed up against the mesh of the old speakers.
Aaron, instead of spending hours trying to convince Joey that he never, ever could think of him as 'in the way' and that he could play music as loud as he wanted, had gone the other route and instead gifted him a new record player and bluetooth headphones.
It gave Joey what he wanted - loud, high quality music - while also making him feel like he wasn't in the way. And truly, it had worked. Several times throughout the holidays Aaron had walked by the storage room and spotted Joey in there, swaying by the windows, laying flat on the rug or leaning on the armrest of the old couch. Always with his eyes closed and wearing the headphones, and every time with a different record spinning on the player.
Aaron retrieved the headphones and, with some fiddling with the settings on his laptop, managed to pair them. He then returned to his closet.
Joey let himself be covered in the weighted blanket and took the teddy bear and the pillow when Aaron handed them to him. He sat very still as Aaron slid the headphones over his ears, only looking at him silently from under his heavy lashes, Rocky the panda clutched in his arms.
Aaron figured sleeping was out of the question, so instead he found a documentary on forest elephants and handed the laptop to Joey. Joey, always so gravely serious when Aaron entrusted him with something, accepted it and placed it carefully in his lap. Aaron then went downstairs and made up a plate of the food they had almost finished preparing when the fireworks had been shot up. Joey accepted that, too, with great reverence.
"I'll stay here with you," Aaron said and sat down on the bed with his plate of food and his work laptop. Joey didn't answer. He probably didn't even hear what he had said. He was almost finished with his plate, head at an angle as diligently watched the documentary. Dolly had joined him, too, and sat perched on a chair right outside the closet door, squinting her eyes in pleasure at having her two people in the same space as her.
While the clock ticked down, while the fireworks started raging outside, and while Joey studied amber-eyed forest elephants engineering paths through the thick jungle, Aaron double clicked the folder labeled PAST_CLIENT_ARRANGEMENTS and rifled through the files and documents. He opened one called TIMELINE_CLIENT_X and scrolled down.
Joey hadn't mentioned any signifiers of time and place. All Aaron knew was desert, multiple people, guns, dog. He added a new line to the table in the column called EVENT and wrote exactly that. In the next column, labeled PROOF, he wrote: "Bullet graze scar on left shin. Large scar on right thigh, previously unlabeled, likely in connection with event - gun shot and likely consecutive attempt at removal of bullet with blade. Bullet graze on left side of head."
Stand-alone backstory. For wij day6, and for @highwaywhump , a little something from Pet Safety, some weeks before Adrian saves Blanca. Fair warning, Blanca doesn't have any agency in this.
Pet Safety Masterlist
Content/warnings: Blood (obviously), sadistic whumper, manipulation, implied drugging, living weapon whumpee (whumper), conditioned whumpees, gendered violence towards a woman, dehumanisation, humiliation, highly implied NONCON (m/f), forced to participate, forced to hurt, bbu setting, Jack Donnell's perverted (noncon) understanding of roleplaying. Hurt, no comfort. Dead dove. This is dark.
"What a freaking bloodbath."
With the heavy weight of two of his comrades kneeling on his back and limbs, Mac can't see the men speaking.
But he can see the blood. It's everywhere. It's on his hands, his arms, mixed with sweat, drying into a sticky film, coating his body hair and making it stick up. It's pooled on the patio tiles under him, in his clothes, soaking through the layers of his gear. It's in his face, a thrilling, nauseating taste on his teeth and lips. It's in his eyelashes, forming little dark lumps in front of his eyes that tint the world even redder.
When he blinks the lumps away, fights back the dizzyness of a knee pressing down on the side his neck, Mac can focus on the shape of the pathetic man whose blood it is that he's bathed in. Two paramedics are kneeling beside him.
He's not dead. He's not maimed. Mac bares his bloody teeth, flashes his enhanced canines at him. He would've done it. He'd have torn the man apart. Every fibre in his being had screamed for it. But there's rules that run even deeper than his hatred. That such a call is only for his owner to make.
All Mac is left to do is growl, a low rumble from deep inside his chest. Even separated by the entire width of the pool, the injured man flinches.
The paramedics flinch, too. They are working with nervous, hasty hands, gloves covered in blood, obviously sweating. Not because of the heat.
Because of Glen, carefully towering over the scene, making sure their patient won't leave.
That call, too, is for Mac's owner to make.
Finally, the whirring of helicopter blades swallows the echo of the man's labored breathing.
Before
Mac knows he's not supposed to take breaks his training regimen, he's meant to focus on his fitness and on getting ever stronger. But he's won his last training fight with ultimate ease, his comrades look up to Mac's impressive physique, and Jack actually does allow his Fighters some narrow lenience, when they perform well and aren't currently on protection duty.
Mac has been undefeated for weeks. And he's not on duty.
So he allows himself to step back from the weight bench and glance out of the window facing the deck around Jack's huge pool.
The auburn-haired Romantic is laying on a sunbed there, the pet that has been called Blanca once, but is Bacardi now. The pet who was kind to him once, and fears him now.
Refurb. She's done something bad, and now she's forgotten who she was and has been made good again.
Mac has seen her naked body before, and he's seen the new scars it features now. He knows what the refurb training entailed. Good, to Jack's taste, means scared.
And she is. Even though she doesn't act the part now, even though she buries all of it under a brave, sweet face. She plays the role Mac heard Jack order her in the morning, for one of his sickening games of play pretend. She's supposed to be a rich socialite, lounging by the pool, a little drunk and a little bored, so that Jack can watch her on his security camera feed and 'built up the tension' until he comes home.
Jack likes his scenes to start out domestic. They never stay that way.
But it will be a while before Jack comes home, and even though it fills Mac's heart with aberrant feelings that make him want to claw at his own skin, he stays at the window. Blanca - that's what he still calls her, that's who he met before - pretends to read a fashion magazine, carefully considering each page, even though everyone knows Romantics can't make sense of letters. She's wearing sunglasses, a big hat, pearls around her neck and a pristine white sundress. Jack chooses the dresses himself, as carefully as he picks the outfits for his Guards. The Guards' gear is meant to be both visually impressive and functional. The Romantic's dresses are meant to tear easily at the right places.
Mac clenches his teeth and because he knows she can't do it herself, he'll just do it for her - he daydreams that, right now, without Jack, without anyone there, she can be at peace.
That's when he notices the man.
Now
Jack embarks from the helicopter, striding towards the scene with large steps and a bellowing laugh. "Oh, Maccy-Mac, big boy, what have you *done*?"
Before as much as looking at the injured man, he bows down to Mac, slowly runs a finger across Mac's blood stained lip, down the titanium canine. Light red blood coats his fingertips, sparkling like rubies.
"That thing is a monster," the bloody mess of a man croaks, his words punctured by pained groans. It's a wonder he's still strong enough to speak. "It's not contained. I'll report you. That. I'll have it killed."
"No, Marty." Cowboy heels slowly click on the tiles, when Mac's owner gets up and strolls over to the stretcher. He's leaving bloody footprints in his wake. "You will not. I could get your ass for trespassing, you know that."
Before
Mac has seen the man before. He's a neighbour, an acquaintance of Jack. Marty. Tall, handsome, otherwise unassuming. Weak. Not a threat.
The fact that he's here, that far into Jack's grounds, means he's been vetted and checked. Probably here to borrow the big lawn mower. Glen is on perimeter duty; and even though they're all meant to act the same, they all know that Glen is the most thorough of them all.
Still. There's someone wrong. About the way the man pauses on his way to the shed. About the way he looks at Blanca.
Mac's lips pull back on instinct, teeth bared. He scans the area around the pool. None of his comrades are there. Nobody is on alert.
Well. One is. He can see Blanca's shoulders tense. Her fingers curl up in the magazine. She barely keeps up the appearance.
To any predator, Blanca is designed to look like prey.
Mac is a predator.
And it seems that the neighbor is as well. He kicks aside a pebble as he stalks towards Blanca.
Inside, Mac carefully picks one of the dumbbells.
The neighbor sits down on the sunbed next to Blanca. He says something that Mac can't hear. It doesn't matter. He knows what's coming, frame for frame.
Blanca replies, inching back from the stranger. His arm shoots forward, grabs her, wrestles her down. He swings a leg over her.
Teeth bared, Mac is over him, before Blanca even begins to scream.
It's the neighbor, who screams instead.
Now
Marty's voice falters. His face has turned an unnatural white. "No, Jack, you... you said I could-"
"Shhh," says Jack. "200k should cover for your trouble." Is not a suggestion. Whatever Jack says is either an order, or a threat.
The young man shivers, silent. Stays silent, when Jack's fingers roam his neck. Lets out a garbled scream, when they prod at the deep gash torn into his shoulder. Then again nothing. He's fainted from blood loss.
"Sir," one of the paramedics urges.
"Yeah. That's a good boy." Jack ignores her. He is talking to the unconscious man, tracing the dressing of another wound. "Beautiful."
With a contented smile, he nods at the paramedic and gives two quick raps on the side of the stretcher.
Glen folds his hands and steps back.
Everyone seems to hold their breath, as the paramedics hurry off.
"Now," says Jack and jovially claps his hands. "Get off of Mac, guys. And where's the seductive little thing that's incined this spectacle?"
The weight on Mac's back shifts, air streaming back into his lungs, as his comrades retreat. Instinctively he pushes himself into respect position. His forehead presses into slick wetness.
"Sir." It's Jim Beam's voice, and next to it Mac can hear Blanca's shivering gasp, her feet scurrying on the floor. "She's here."
"Good. Sit up, Mac. Look at her. Look at the perfect little thing you've clawed from the hands of that intruder."
He does, automatically stretching his neck muscles as he sits on his heels.
Blanca's usually light grey eyes are almost black, pupils blown with panic. Her hair is messy. There's a bruise on her arm, where Mac has pulled her away from the man. She's horrified.
She's just how Jack wants her.
"Sir," she whispers. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-"
Settling himself on a sunchair, Jack leans back, one hand already fiddling with the buckle of his belt. Blanca follows, falls to her knees in front of him, desperately, silently begging for him to not follow through with whatever he's planning.
Jack clicks his tongue. "Of course you wanted to, manipulative little whore. I watched the feed. You got these horny guys to fight over you. And I guess we all know, who won." The wide grin on his face is sickening. Mac wants his owner to be pleased. He also wants him to be gone.
"Ah. Not now, pet." Jack lazily kicks out at Blanca, before he reaches into his pants and starts stroking himself. "I think, this once, I'll enjoy to just watch." He snaps the fingers of his free hand. "Mac."
"Sir," replies Mac, and the word is supposed to mean so much - a refusal, a plea, a demand, a cry of despair - but everyone else hears it for what it truly is.
Acknowledgement.
It tastes like blood.
Between the two men, Blanca scrambles backwards.
Nobody bothers. She won't get far. All of them know.
"Go on with the scene, Mac." Jack's white teeth shine bright in the sunlight. "Take her right there. Right where you defeated your opponent." He points at the scarlet puddle. "You look stunning, covered in blood. She will, too."
Mac steps forward to reach out for Blanca's arm and drag her up. His hand leaves bloody marks on her white dress.
"Please," Blanca whispers tonelessly.
He avoids her gaze.
Jack wants her to fight. Not for show. For fear of her life.
Mac knows she will.
And they all know her resistance won't matter at all.
i'm soo late to the party but omg. omg!!! sara!!! you know exactly what you're doing when you as much as mention mac in passing. i love that he knows exactly what he is and that he's still powerless to fight his (externally imposed) nature. i love that even when they do everything right (jack would have surely killed someone if blanca had come to harm by any other hand than his own or indirectly through his guard dogs wouldn't he), his pets still suffer under him. i love jack's corny whiskey theme, i love mac's insistence of using blanca's name, i love the little modicum of trust that almost sorta kinda maybe exists for a just a second between mac and blanca - he saved her after all - and how he is forced to tear it apart right after... and i love restrained mac ;)
Pet whumpees in dog kennels. Leaning up against the wire where they’re lined up in ‘shelters,’ longingly watching people pass by. Or curled in the back corners, snapping at anyone that so much as looks at them. Defiant whumpees being labeled reactionary, sensitive, to be handled delicately, like a traumatized dog rather than a person that didn’t want this. Spoken about right in front of them like they wouldn’t understand the words. Idk. Pet whumpees
Aaron went downstairs when the video meeting ended, marking the end of his work day. The house was comfortably quiet, the fire in the fire place having died down to embers. The March sun was about to set, and the cold in this old house had already started growing. As he went over to the firewood rack to put a couple more logs on the fire, a movement at the corner of his eye made him startle and turn.
Joey was there, laying very still on the couch with his head resting the arm of the couch and a crumpled blanket covering his legs. Neatly perched on the couch cushion next to him was Dolly, her closed and upturned, looking supremely content. Joey had his hands carefully folded over his midsection.
Aaron smiled at the pair. "Why don’t you pet her?"
Joey pinched his lips together in lieu of shrugging his shoulders, obviously not wanting to bother the cat.
"I don’t want to disturb her."
"Why do you think she came over to you?"
"I don’t- I don’t know. She just did. She does that sometimes."
Aaron hummed and moved closer, standing behind the arm of the couch and looking directly down at Joey. His face looked different upside down. More open, somehow. Less reserved.
"She’s a lot like you," he said and immediately regretted his words. Did he just compare this brainwashed, abused ex-pet to an actual pet? Great going.
It didn't seem like Joey took it to heart. And if he did, he didn't let it show. He looked at him without turning his head, just rolled his big eyes up in his skull and gazed at Aaron through his hair.
"How?"
Aaron held his breath for a moment, picking his next words very carefully. He had just broached a touchy subject. Joey had been in a good place the last few weeks, mindset-wise, and he'd loathe to set him back by a poorly thought out remark.
"She likes being petted, but doesn’t ask for it," he eventually said, and couldn't decide whether it was a wise comment or not. It was the best way he could come up with to put it, the little comparison between the two of them he had noticed a long time ago but not voiced to Joey until now.
To his surprise, Joey's eyebrows knitted in what looked almost like offense.
"I ask-"
"You come very close and say nothing, and hope I touch you," Aaron said and reached a hand out to brush his unruly, dark waves away from his forehead. On reflex, Joey closed his eyes, enjoying the touch. The fire in the fireplace had picked back up and now it cast a warm glow over his features. As always, whenever Aaron was close enough to do so, he surveyed Joey's face. The firelight flickered in the smooth, shiny scar tissue the bisected one of his eyebrows.
"See?" he asked, innocently.
"Fine," Joey conceeded, his eyelids parting slightly to look up at Aaron again. He looked wonderfully warm and sleepy. Still, he raised his hand, and despite the awkward angle, gently scratched the side of Dolly's face with his fingertips. Her little engine started up immediately.
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Aaron didn't know what had woken him up. The room was as dark and silent now as it was when he had went to sleep. Yet, here he was, awake.
He turned his head and looked towards the bedroom door, as had become habit on the nights he didn't sleep fully through. And sure enough, halfway concealed by the door and the darkness, there was Joey.
He was looking at him with those big deer eyes. One sudden movement and he'd spook, Aaron knew. He had that look on his face. He wanted something, but he was too scared to ask for it outright. That left somewhat of a guessing game for Aaron. It was a familiar pattern at this point.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, voice raspy. He cleared his throat as gently as possible.
Joey swallowed audibly and nodded his head.
"Too cold."
Aaron closed his eyes and took a second to process the information and compute a possible solution.
"I'll get you another blanket," he suggested eventually, opening his eyes again to regard his house guest. Joey had one hand clamped around the edge of the door, grounding himself.
"I think there should be a hot water bottle somewhere in the closet in the hallway, too," Aaron continued, mostly to himself, as he began to muster the courage to leave his warm bed and brave the cold hallway and retrieve the items. Joey made a non-committal sound at that. His grip on the door tightened.
"Yeah," he said, so low Aaron almost couldn't hear it. "Or..."
He peetered off into silence. His wide gaze had traveled from Aaron and was now somewhere off to the left. He was worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth, the unsaid words probably churning around in his mind.
There it was. Aaron relaxed his core again and slumped back into the bed.
"Or, you could sleep here. If you'd like."
The relief was instantaneous in Joey's body language. His hiked up shoulders relaxed back down and his previously tight lips relaxed into what was almost a smile. As he opened the door wider and stepped into the room, the weak light from downstairs illuminated his face just so, revealing a slight dimple in his left cheek. Aaron hadn't noticed it until now.
"C'mere," he said, voice still raspy, and pushed the comforter aside. Joey climbed up and put himself at a respectable distance, still rarely wanting to initiate contact but always melting into it when Aaron did. Now was not an exception.
"There you are," Aaron muttered and pulled the duvet all the way up to his chin. "Do you want me hold you?"
"Yes, please," Joey almost whispered, and Aaron obliged. He wrapped an arm around Joey over the covers and pulled him close, slightly frowning when he noticed that he really was cold to the touch. How long had he been curled up in his bed, agonizing between whether he should relent and ask Aaron for help, or stick it out in what the still twisted part of his brain told him was him 'being good'?
"Comfortable?" he asked, and Joey nodded.
Sleep came easy to them both. Joey first, as his breathing evened out and the rest of the tension he seemed to always store in his body when he was awake, dwindle. Before Aaron let himself succumb to sleep, he selfishly brought his hand up and lightly stroked Joey's cheek with the backs of his fingers, feeling for the slight uneveness in the skin that was the newfound dimple.
After confronting Jack, Adrian has to report to his superior.
Pet Safety Masterpost
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Content / warnings: None, other than for genre-typical institutional whump setting and general disregard of humans (BBU setting). Referenced and implied threats, including one of vague noncon.
Adrian was called up to his boss’ office first thing in the morning. As expected, he figured. He’d almost punched one of their most prestigious clients; and almost been beaten up by that same man’s high profile Guards, right in front of another handler and dozens of safety cameras.
As expected, Kelly wasn’t amused.
As - well, not as expected per se, but still as 'probable enough' - she let this one slip anyway, because it was obvious enough from the visual evidence, that the client had been the aggressor.
What came completely unexpected though was Kelly raising an eyebrow and proceeding to a next topic. "Funnily enough, this isn't even the only video of last night that shows you getting into a fight."
She put two manicured fingernails on the corner of her screen to turn it towards Adrian.
A shaky video, taken by hand, on a phone he assumed, of the brightly lit clinic entrance. Ray and him facing each other, obviously agitated, obviously fighting. Ray's fist punching into his stomach. Adrian going down.
His chest felt like his breath was punched out of him again.
"Care to explain?" Kelly asked.
"He hates me."
"Seems so. You went to see him on your own terms, though. Why?"
"He's a good doctor. It's a good clinic. And they do treat pets. My pet needed a doctor, after what our preferred customer Jack Donnell did to her."
Kelly raised an eyebrow. "Careful, PSI Delgado. In case this isn't obvious, I'm interrogating you here. You've been in contact with a known pet lib activist, who also just happens to be married to your sister."
"Separated," Adrian clarified. "They don't live together. And that contact, as you can see, was not particularly..." He waved his hand at the screen. "Amicable."
"When was the last time you were in contact with Raymond Louissaint before last night?"
Adrian shrugged. "Christmas at my parents'. The year before last. He broke my nose. We both departed early, then." He grimaced. "He doesn't think highly of my choice of employer."
"And your sister?"
"Her neither. But she never tried to break any of my bones. So we make it work." Adrian frowned. "What about your family, Kelly? Do they appreciate your job?"
The thin smirk on her lips was answer enough. "This is not about me, Adrian. This is about you. Admittedly, your performance here is great, but I feel like you're slipping in your private life."
"And how much of your business is that, Kelly?"
"Enough to keep an eye out on you."
She tapped a long fingernail on the clinic doors on the screen. "And on them. We'll schedule an appointment for your pet after her release. She'll report to us about anything suspicious going on in this clinic."
"One spy in there not enough?" Adrian leaned back in his chair. "This was filmed from inside the clinic. Patient? Or an employee?"
Kelly snapped the laptop shut. "As her owner, you can be present for that interrogation or not. Your choice. But it will happen. And you best avoid *any* further contact with your brother-in-law." She pursed her lips. "Not only for your precious bones' sake."
Adrian grimaced. "Fine with me. I don't particularly enjoy these encounters. But just to give you a heads up, my sister is going to pick up the pet for me. Please don't accidentally get her mixed up into this affair." He caught her gaze. "I am *very* protective of her."
"Are you threatening me?"
"No." Adrian flashed her a brief smile. "Were you?"
She looked him down with her lips pursed. "I think this conversation is over."
"One thing," Adrian leaned back in the chair. He’d promised something to Bea.
Kelly's brow shot up. "Really, Delgado?"
"The Guards. Donnell's. I recommend you order them in for a complimentary refresher on their training."
"Oh? And why do you think I should do that?"
"Because Donnell is pissed. He's going to punish them for doing exactly what WRU programmed them to do - never turn against one of us. And he'll keep being dissatisfied with our products. I assume you don't want him to buy his replacement Guards from our competitors."
Kelly huffed. "Our competitors don't play in our league."
"You don't need to convince me. Convince him. By making a great service offer. I've drafted a mail for you."
She frowned and bit her lip, thinking. For a second, Adrian wondered if that was a learned mannerism, too. "Fine," she said then. "Send me that draft. And prepare another one, to Facility 14. Let them start looking for potential replacements among the trainees. Maybe we can set up another sale. We do know the man's taste."
A cold shiver ran down his spine. You'll make a fine addition to my Guard team, Delgado. I hear they can make Guards, who just love to suck their masters' cocks.
"Will do." He forced himself to smile.
If they weren't dead yet - and he doubted that, somehow; Jack seemed like someone to plan his punishments out meticulously - this might have saved their lives.
It should've felt good.
Somehow, it didn't.
"After that, take the rest of the day off, Delgado. Pull yourself together. I expect you back in better shape. Stop provoking fights. You're not casting the best light on our company these days."
He had to bite back a hard chuckle. Yeah. Everyone around him could agree on that, it seemed.
"Yes, madam."
Kelly clicked her tongue. "Don't madam me. Leave that to the actual pets, will you, Delgado? You're still far from that." She waved both hands dismissively. "And now, just get out."
He did.
--
At home, in his impersonal apartment that felt emptier then ever, he didn't even bother to open to curtains. There was nothing worth to see anyway. Instead, he pulled out his burner phone.
Ray's mobile was turned off. He didn't have a mailbox, at least not on that phone, to which only a select few people had the number.
*Call me back*, he texted. *Important.*
His next call was to Marta. This one, he did from his main phone. She was his sister, after all. And they always made sure their calls were encrypted.
"Adri," she said. She sounded exhausted.
"Bea is back," he said. "They hurt her. I brought her to Ray's."
"I know." She sighed. "I've been with her today. She's a tough woman."
"You've talked to Ray, then?"
"He told me he had to beat you up for show."
Adrian grimaced, as he fingered for the bruise under his shirt. "Felt like it wasn't only for show, to be honest."
"I'm with him on everything."
"Ray said the same thing." He sighed. "Listen. He was right. Someone watched us. There's a video of our fight that made it to my boss at WRU within mere hours. Taken from within the clinic, phone camera. First or second floor, a dozen or so meters to the left of the entrance. Aluminum window frame. Curtain at the side, dark blue, I think, or gray."
He heard Marta scribbling something down.
"Got it. Did they believe you?"
"I think so, yeah. That punch of his was pretty convincing."
Marta let out a tired chuckle, but he heard the relieved smile in her voice. "You're a sissy, baby brother. He held back."
"Your husband is a fucking machine."
She scoffed quietly. "You say it like that, yet you've never experienced how he is in bed."
"He scares me. But you do you, I guess." He smiled to himself, before he cut back to the point. "My boss asked about you, too, Matti. I kept to the story. You're separated, you and I keep my work out of our relationship, yadda yadda."
"Good. We'll look into that person filming. Thanks for the heads up. Ray's already moved a lot of the underground stuff to another site. Still, sucks to know it wasn't just paranoia." She sighed. "They really did pull a number on your girl. Who broke her fingers? That doesn't look like WRU handiwork."
"She didn't tell you?"
"Nope. She's very careful. Wise of her. Especially now that we know there is in fact someone snitching on us."
"Jack Donnell. Stepped on her hand. Just crushed them under his fucking cowboy boots."
He heard Marta whistle through her front teeth. She'd always been able to that, to his utter envy. "Wow. Shit. How did that fucker come back into play?"
"He's gone for now. Let's talk about this later, okay? You just take good care of Bea. How long until she can come home?"
"Two, three days? But she'll need bed rest after. Can you manage that?"
"Sure." He ran a hand over his face. He'd find a way. "Can you tell her that I-" He broke off.
"You tell her that yourself. I've been done with delivering your love confessions like, twenty years ago. Not starting that again."
"She asked about Eric."
Marta fell silent.
"Well," she whispered eventually. "She deserves to know, doesn't she? He's the reason for all of this."
Adrian felt his fingers close around the old scar in his palm. "He'd probably like that," he said, his voice heavy with a held back sob. "He was always into drama."
"Especially when it was about him." Marta mumbled wistfully. "I love you, Adri. Take care, okay?"
"I will."
He hoped that he could.
--
Pet Safety Tag list (let me know if you want to be added or removed):
"Come to me, darling," whumper says, unable to rise from their bed.
Whumpee kneels down next the bed, eyes bleary. "Please--please don't die--"
"Shhh, shhh, I just need rest." Whumper caresses whumpee's cheek before their hand falls limp.
Whumpee catches the weak hand, pressing it to their tear-stained face, "I'll make you something, I can--I can get you soup--just tell me what to do. I can do it!"
"Shh, lie down with me," Whumper smiles as their eyes close.
Scrabbling under the covers, whumpee buries themselves against whumper's feverish body. Sobs wrack their shoulders as they feel whumper slip away into a broken sleep.
"Tell me what to do," they whisper, "I don't know what to do..."
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cw/tw: it as a pronoun, mention of animal's blood, mention of sunburns, brief description of removed teeth, exploitation. quite light, mostly angst but not much of that either. not proofread.
-
Aaron startles awake.
He is not alone.
It is as if his very base instincts wakes him up. Cave dweller-instincts.
Prey instincts.
He'd spent a few hours googling vampire nature and care and intermittenly trying to get a hold of Mike. But Mike didn't answer and very few people seemed to post actual, reliable care guides on the Internet, so he'd eventually resolved to read the endless wiki on vampires and had fallen asleep on the couch. His head had tipped back at an awkard angle which had given him a painful twinge on one side, and he tries to massage it away with one hand while the other fumbles for the light on the sidetable, eventually finding the switch.
It's dark outside, and once the lone bulb starts glowing, it seems even darker where the light doesn't reach. Aaron scans the room, trying to establish whether the hairs standing up at the back of his neck were justified. The little thing had not attacked him in his sleep at least, and immediately he took back the thought. Vampires aren't a realistic threat to a humans. Especially not one like the one he so easily had picked up and carried downstairs.
The species had grown to fear humans, claimed most of the literature he had come across.
Lone individuals typically strayed far away from human settlements in prehistory. Like cats, they have keen smell and hearing, and sensitive eyes which can pick up even the faintest traces of light.
And there it is. He can see it now, the almost supernatural shine of light reflecting in the creature's eyes, where it is peeking out from the darkness of the stairwell down to the basement, halfway hidden behind the door which Aaron had left ajar. It is so low to the floor it must be crouching, or is perched on one of the steps near the top.
When it understands that Aaron has spotted it, the shadow startles back. For a second Aaron thinks it has retreated back down again, but soon the eyes are back.
Like coyotes, they scitter away before any human can even realize they are nearby.
Hm. This one, not quite.
"Hi there," Aaron tries, slightly unsure of how to apprach.
"You said I could come upstairs."
It's the first time he's heard its voice. It sounds sore, like it's screamed itself hoarse. Dragging its words like an old man. Shaking, like a little boy.
"Yes. Come up here, please? I would like to see who I'm talking to."
For a few long seconds the creature doesn't move, and then the shadows around it change. It looks like it is one with the absence of light surrounding it, morphing from one abstract shape of darkness to another. It doesn't go in a straight line from the basement door and towards Aaron; it migrates from patch to patch of shadow, coming closer and closer.
Like wolves, they are only brave enough to be a legitimate threat to humans when they are part of a pack.
Aaron hopes so, as he watches the creature move. It certainly doesn't look threatening once it comes close enough to step into the light of the side table lamp. It stands there, head bowed and shoulders hunched, looking more like a repentant child waiting to be scolded than a predator of the night.
It is wearing somebody else's clothes. It must be, with the way the shoulder seams of its t-shirt hang down its upper arms and and its shorts end well below its knees, halfway covering blue and brown bruises. Those are the only garments its wearing. Aaron can see the bumps of its ankle joints and the sharp lines of the clavicles sticking out, lik his skin has been threaded over a wire armature. It's skinny. Some part of his brain wonders about the metabolic rate of vampires. Has this one been stared or do they all look like this? How much blood do they actually need, and how often? Which quality? Should it ideally be human?
Its hair is long enough to brush its shoulders and Aaron has to duck his head down a little to get a better look of its face. The sunburn is still present across his cheeks and nose, a violent red compared to its otherwise pale skin. Its not just pale - the skin is completely colourless. Almost like a black-and-white movie. It makes few drops of blood on his lips stand out even more. So half-thawed cow's blood in a dish works.
"I have tried to get into contact with Mike, who took you here," Aaron begins, as he sits back on the couch again, tilting his head a little to one side. "He's not picking up, or answering any of my texts. So I'm hoping you can tell me where you're from, since he won't."
The vampire doesn't move its downturned head, but its gaze flits up to Aarons from where it's been burrowing into the floor. The pupils have receeded some from the vast blackness they were when the creature came from the basement door, when they were so expanded they took up the entire iris. Now they're sort of elongated circles, floating in greenish-grayish pools.
Not quite cat.
But decidedly not human, either.
"Springfield," it says blankly, and Aaron blinks.
He doesn't know what he expected, but Springfield wasn't it.
"From a private collector, or a drug farm? A lab?" he tries, because he's not entirely sure what sorts of places keep vampires. Some roam like wild animals, following highways until they find something to eat and then move on. Most exist in some sort of captivity. Legislators have still not agreed on exactly what vampires are, only that they are not humans. Some claim them to be no more tame than orcas in a pool; mostly willing to do obey for food, but inclined to pull their trainer under if given the chance. Some call for eradication, arguing that there is no place for a species which has been known to prey on humans when the conditions are right. Others believe that the humane solution is containment until a consensus is met. But almost nobody thinks they are fit to be part of society alongside humans.
Aaron doesn't quite know where he stands, but he supposes he has to make up his mind if this one is to be stay with him for the unforeseeable future.
He's not prepared for such a clear answer. These are google-able terms, he realises, and repeats the name in his head so he can remember to look it up after. He had imagined… well, he doesn't know what place of origin he imagined. The skinny thing in front of him with bruises on its shins and blood in the corners of its mouth is the first vampire he's ever met.
"What did they do to you there?" is what he asks next, because he cannot imagine that it was voluntary, whatever it was.
It avoid eye contact again, and bites its bottom lip with a set of front teeth that are remarkably straight and human-like. Not a fang. Aren't they supposed to have sharp, fox-like incisors, to pierce flesh with?
"They take our venom," it whispers eventually, so low Aaron almost doesn't hear, even though the living room is completely silent and the house is situated far enough away from any road to not be distrubed by the sounds of traffic.
"Your… venom?"
It nods, quickly, like it rather not talk about. A tear travels along its waterline, eventually rolling down from the corner of its eye and over its sunburned skin. It winces and draws a hand up to sooth the skin, and in the process pushes its lip up enough for Aaron to see that there indeed is no sharp canine there. Not because he's been tricked all these years into believing that vampires have sharp teeth, but because there simply is no tooth there at all.
There is only a red orifice where he can only assume such a tooth once was.
"What happened to your teeth?" he asks before he can stop himself, and immediately regrets it. It's appearantly a touchy subject, because the vampire lets out a sob and brings both hands up to cover his eyes, which only serves to irritate the sunburn further.
Aaron isn't sure what to do. Should you soothe a vampire? It feels slightly degrading to put his hands on it like it's an animal. Even though, it strictly is.
"They take them too," it suddenly lets out, heaving like it's ran a mile. It's trying to hold back its tears. It is still holding its hands to its face, further aggravating its sunburn. On a whim Aaron rises from the couch and retrieves a pack of frozen peas, which he wraps in a kitchen towel and brings back to the living room. The vampire isn't making much sound, but its shoulders are shaking. Aaron holds out the makeshift icepack, anticipating the flinch when the vampire spots him out from between his fingers.
"This will help," he says, gently nudging the icepack inbetween its face and hand. The relief seems immediate and palpable. Its red-rimmed eyes close as it grasps the icepack in both hands and presses it gently to its skin. First one cheek, then the other, then it brings it to its mouth and rests its sore gums on the cool fabric. It repeats the triangular pattern while Aaron sits back down on the couch.
He doesn't push the teeth-issue anymore. He has some information to work with now, and some pointed questions to ask Mike when he decides to pick up his phone. For now, he's got to take care of the little vampire in front of him.
"Do you have a name?" he gently asks when the worst of the crying seems to have subsided. The vampire looks at him from over the icepack, which he's now placed across his cheekbones and nosebridge like a cold compress.
"One of them called me Joey."
It's low and muffled through the towel, but Aaron still manages to pick it up. He smiles.
