(mostly) whump

I don't have WIPs, I have options.

Like a cellar full of fine wines, waiting until I'm in the mood.

even as other people are helping them, all they can do is beg for caretaker.

CW: alcohol because they’re at a bar, violence, fistfight, blood. A lot of cw’s are references from the past, keith and max discussing carlo, references to past trafficking, slavery, abuse, past minor whump, alluded sexual abuse, forced starvation, sleep deprivation, burning with cigarettes, multiple whumpers, mock execution, guns, black eye, comfort

****

Just an impulse. That was it.

Max brings Carlo along when he flies out for a conference for his job. Carlo struggles remembering past trips -trips with Erik Holstrom. It gives him a bit of social anxiety. This is a self-indulgent one, guys, I won’t lie. Also long, hoping the readmore cut works :) Content warnings: pet whump, Carlo’s past includes human trafficking and abuse at a time when he was a minor, blood, nosebleeds, alcohol mention, rough-housing, platonic kiss (hand).

***

At the airport, they check their bags and head for security. Carlo is never more than a single step behind Max. Burning a hole in his pocket is his 100% real, legitimate drivers license, but it’s bearing his fake last name, his fake date of birth. The TSA agent’s eyes flick from the ID to his face, and Carlo tries not to let his hand twitch— the spot over his heartline that buzzes with damaged nerves like a persistent mosquito. The agent passes back his ticket and the driver’s license, nodding him through. 

Carlo mimics Max’s easy posture, the way he takes off his shoes and lays them meticulously in a plastic tub next to his cellphone, his watch. He can really fly on a passenger plane in a first class section. It works. Ticket name matches ID name, ID looks good. Done. A million lies contingent on each other, stacked like cards all the way to the base— the lie that the rest of his life could be built on. That he’s not a Pet.

CW: past abuse, touch aversion, touch starved, past human pet and trafficking, weight/physical appearance/fitness mention, past animal death mention. Elle.

*****

“Salem,” Max says, shaking a bottle of hot sauce over his eggwhites.

Elle doesn’t glance up from her laptop. “Thackery Binx.” 

Carlo raises his eyebrows at that one, shakes his head. “What?”

Max and Elle share a glance. When she smiles, her cheek pulls her scar back like someone drawing a bow. She types, nails clicking softly over the keys. “Before your time,” she explains by way of not explaining. Her favorite.

“It’s your cat, baby,” Max says. “You name it.” 

Carlo’s always afraid Elle is going to take up issue with how Max calls him honey, sweetheart, and his favorite— baby. Rather catlike herself, she doesn’t bat an eye. Maybe Max is calling him those things in the way one might call a child. And it is like that, he thinks, despite his grown-ness. Still, he thinks, if Max stopped, a little part of him deep inside the cavity of his chest would wither up, as if from a late frost.

He’s never had a pet before. He’d been around Holstrom’s dogs more than he’d liked. But they treated him as if he were just another dog, one very low on the pecking order which they needed to nip at and corral, or maybe a deer that wandered into the garden and was eating all Master’s lettuce.

His kitten is twelve weeks old to the day. He knows its birthday because Stella Abend told him, as they had been born on Jenny’s bed that day (Jenny had rolled her eyes and said yes, they sure had been). 

How their cat managed to become pregnant was a bit of a mystery, but it was suspected to have something to do with a tomcat that may have found a way to reliably get into their entryway, if not the main apartment for what Jenny called a rendezvous. Then she said something about sending the guilty party to a convent. 

“Wrong religion, Jen,” Stella reminded her. 

Carlo smiled politely, more interested in the box of kittens at his feet than how they happened, their helpless closed eyes, their piteous mews, their pinched faces like tiny goblins.

“You don’t have to pick yours now,“ Stella told him. “You can wait if you want. They’ll look like drowned mice for a while yet.”

“They’re sweet,” he’d said, bending down to scratch mama cat’s head, who laid dutifully on her swollen side and let them clamber over her for her milk. There were tabbys of several shades, a smokey gray, and one all black, like a wobbling fruit bat instead of a kitten.

“Will you text me before you give that one away?” 

Stella had cat hair on her black sweater, her own hair back in a french twist with wavy strands coming loose like tendrils of fire. He can never look at her without remembering the candy bar she’d slipped him those years ago, how she’d nodded down the hall to urge him to run along with it, not to get caught. “Of course.” She promised. “You get first pick.”

****

Stella told him about the kittens first, before mentioning it to Carlo. She asked if he wanted one (or hell, she’d laughed hopefully, two)? Maybe he wanted to get one for Carlo. “That great big house. All the bird hunting it could ever want up there in the woods. Carlo would love a pet, I bet.”

At first he’d wanted to turn her down. He hadn’t had an animal since his last dog died of old age some four years ago, and it was nice not to worry about something being all alone at the house while he worked. But Carlo was there a lot now, and often he and Elle kept different hours, too, one would be home for a few hours while the other was not. It wasn’t just him anymore, in his parent’s big old house. Maybe a cat would be a nice touch. He asked Carlo and Carlo’s eyes lit up at the idea. It was an enthusiastic yes.

He offered to drive him to Stella and Jenny’s when it came time. Carlo, it turns out, had already bought a cat carrier and lined it with a soft flannel blanket. He’d picked up other things, too, toys and litter and food and dishes, and made an appointment with a vet for its second round of shots next week. He said he’d go himself, he needed to put gas in his car anyway on the way.

Ever since, he’d been nothing but perfect with that little batlike void, fur so midnight black he seemed to shine. He coaxed it out of the back of the carrier with soft clicks of his tongue, a trail of kitten treats like breadcrumbs. 

Even Elle smiled fondly at that. “He could just reach in there and pull it out.”

“It’s his cat,” Max replied, just as fond. “Let him do it.”

Carlo called him Lou, which he always said in the bottom register of his voice, already imbued with affection. Max noticed how Carlo had been filling out a little lately, no longer swimming in certain shirts, no longer feeling so sharp when he hugged him. 

He asked him about it casually, always careful when it came to anything about physical appearance, as he was afraid of coming off some way he hadn’t meant to. Either critical, or too flattering- in a way that could make him uncomfortable. Though Carlo had never acted uncomfortable, he’d always been careful not to take the things he allowed him for granted. 

He could tell by watching him around his friends, even Eddie whom he seems to adore, even Elle, even a stranger in a store fitting him for a jacket. Touch is not taken lightly, nor is it particularly welcome. 

Unless you’re him. Max. Max is allowed. And Elle, sometimes, but they have a strange way of coexisting, of orbiting one another. Carlo does not approach Elle and lay his head on her the way he does Max, lock his arms around him sideways and lean until Max reciprocates. Maybe it’s because Elle is a woman. Maybe Carlo, like Max with him, doesn’t want to be presumptive or rude. And maybe, in addition, it was because Elle was Max’s and he didn’t want to overstep. 

Lately, he seemed broader-backed, more solid through the chest and shoulders, though still narrow-waisted and with his boyish wrists (never without the rubber band) and his soft smile. 

So Max had squeezed his shoulder to call attention to it. It didn’t feel so fragile as before under his hand, especially not like when he’d first met him, when Keith had thrown Carlo to the pavement and picked him up off it one handed, all legs and elbows like a colt. 

He asked if there was some overzealous army recruiter at the college he should go beat up. He’d tried to say it in an almost rhetorical way, like it would be natural if Carlo didn’t reply. 

But he had beamed, shaken a stray curl of hair from his eye “No. I just do pushups first thing in the morning, and at night. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Rain or shine.” He smiles back, ruffles Carlo’s hair gently. “You look great, kid.”

***

Carlo and Lou were inseparable. Max often saw them together about the house, the cat in Carlo’s lap or trailing about at his feet, a bobbleheaded shadow.

He couldn’t help but eavesdrop when he walked by the den one day and heard Carlo talking to Lou. He was laying sideways across a chair, legs dangling over the end, reading. Max stopped in the doorway but Carlo couldn’t see, with his back mostly to the door. The kitten was sleeping on his chest, tucked right under his chin, finally tired out from a day of chasing and batting and clawing and biting. 

Carlo had a paperback bent to hold in one hand so the other was free to scratch Lou’s tiny head, between those spiky ears like black spires. He had to work his fingers dexterously to turn the page with one hand, bracing the book on his knee and repositioning once he’d gotten to the next page. 

"Love you, Lou,” he said, only doing a slight babying with his voice, the strange cadence with which people speak to their pets. “I’ll always love you. And I’ll always take good care of you.” He seemed to start reading again, eyes back on the page. Yet he kept speaking in a half-croon, half-mumble, absent like he wasn’t paying attention, like it was for the benefit of the sleeping kitten’s ears only. “Forever. Even if you never get eaten by coyotes and live to be sixteen. And you don’t have any teeth left so you drool on me. I’ll still take care of you. You’ll see.” 

He didn’t know what had done it, if it was Simon griping on about the loss of their twenties or thinking about how his own habits were often a shadow of his father’s, and how without meaning to he had handed that off to Carlo now. He hasn’t even called his father lately, not in months. 

When he picks up the phone, it isnt his father he dials, but his lawyer. 

The idea just won’t let go of him, now that he’s had it. So what if the kid’s twenty? The papers are good enough. He could legally adopt an adult if they wanted, for inheritance purposes. For the sentiment.

This way, he thinks as the phone rings. Everything that’s mine will legally belong to you. If something happens to me, it will all belong to you, not my parents, not anyone else. 

And maybe you’ll forgive me for the other thing. The other thing I couldn’t give you, that I couldn’t be for you. Maybe you’ll like this better in the long run.

pet whump, past whump of a minor implied

timeline info: (Jude knows in this, but he doesn't know a ton of details, which places this drabble in the future, after elle tells jude carlo was a pet)

***

Carlo was holding the study abroad pamphlet Jude had left carelessly on his kitchen table, next to an unopened pile of mail. 

"You should do it," he said. Not in the skeptical, shrugging way most people say that sort of thing. Carlo meant it. 

Jude made a face. “Nah, I just picked that up to look. I can’t.”

Carlo opened the pamphlet, traced a finger over a color photocopy of a city in Spain. “You could get a scholarship," he mused, tilting his pretty head. 

Stop pushing me away to see if I’ll go. 

“I can’t leave Mandy with the entire rent,” he said instead. “I got car payments. Shit, I don’t even have a passport.”

“Me either.”

“Didn’t you go to like, Sweden a lot or something?”

Carlo’s eyes flashed at him. “Didn’t need one.”

“Didn’t need a passport? How so?”

Carlo grew quiet. He began sorting the unopened mail. A pile for Mandy, a pile for Jude, a miscellaneous junk pile. “You don’t need one for pets,” he said, so soft Jude almost didn’t hear it. “He didn’t need to get me one.”  

“...Oh,” Jude said lamely. 

Carlo was protective of his past. Jude could not corner him, could not overreact. He would volunteer information only when he felt comfortable doing so. He did not allow sit-downs, formal I-need-to-tell-you-somethings. In their world, that did not happen. Carlo would sooner make something up, pretend to get a text and say he needed to leave.

He began bending a waxy page of coupons along the dotted lines. They never used any, they just got thrown out, cluttering the table in the meantime.

“I went with him overseas, sometimes. He would take me with him to dinner, and these.... parties… to show me off, I guess.”

“As what?” he asked, before he could think it through.  

"As his pet," Carlo replied simply. “In those circles that’s… that’s what you do.”

That’s disgusting, he almost said. He stopped himself. Disgusting of the man who did it, of his friends who did it too, he meant. Still, it was too close to revulsion, to somehow looping Carlo into that blame. He only nodded instead, trying to keep his face neutral, wishing he wasn’t so bad at this, that he knew what to say.

“We could go someday,” he said finally. “You and me. Take a week off and just go somewhere.”

Carlo looked at him for the first time since he brought this up, glancing up from the now well-creased coupons. "I guess," his cheek dimpled, that sideways smile that turned Jude’s insides to jelly. 

“Hell yeah you guess,” Jude continued, encouraged. “Anywhere you want. I’ve never been anywhere, so. You pick, I’ll pay.”

Carlo actually laughed a little, a soft sound. “You will not. We’ll split it.”

Jude pouted. “You never let me pay for you.”

You don’t have any money, Carlo could have easily pointed out. But he was too gracious for that. He peeled one of the coupons off the page, presented it to him. "Buy one get one iced coffee," he said. “You buy one, I get one.”

Max had been different all week. He’s more standoffish than usual, yet bought the upgrade for Carlo’s phone, brought him a smoothie home after work, for no reason at all.

 They watched quietly on Cecelia’s mini kitchen flatscreen as Erik Holstrom’s partner and then Erik himself was aquitted of arms dealing and bribery, of aiding a foreign government. 

Only the misdemeanor and class E felonies stuck. Maybe they stuck just to soothe the jury’s own conscience. So at least he wouldn’t walk out of there and share a bourbon and a cigar with his lawyers that evening. He and his business partner would both do less than 18 months in Cumberland. 

Carlo spins the words in his mind…Wanted for treason, international arms dealing, crimes against humanity…and two unpaid parking tickets.

He thinks that’s right on brand for Max’s sense of humor, something he might say. He almost tries it to see if he can get a smile. Max’s approval, a fire to warm himself by. He sucks on his smoothie instead. Strawberry kiwi.

The other shoe drops after Erik Holstrom and partner fade from the news. Max calls him into his bedroom. The safe in his closet is open. Carlo imagines the entire old Victorian going up like a tinderbox one day, a beacon that could be seen from the other old Victorians and Greek Revivals that dot the Maryland hillsides. Even if the house burnt to ash that safe would be standing in the rubble, scored black but unhurt. It looks like it belongs in a ship.

Max is sitting on the side of his bed. He got a haircut yesterday, looks somehow younger and older at the same time. He better matches the clothes he wears to work, maybe. Super Professional Max, not the Max Carlo knows who puts socks on Carlo’s feet for him and makes questionable jokes at the news, makes him pancakes on Sunday mornings and buys him real maple syrup from Vermont in a glass bottle.

Max pats the bed beside him. “C'mere. Sit.”

He doesnt mean it like a command. Carlo’s ears perk up at it anyway. He pads over the hardwood and climbs onto Max’s bed, tucking his cold toes underneath him, into the warm crease made by his calf folded against his thigh.

Max smiles at him too gently, almost apologetically. It makes him nervous.

“I want to give you something.”

He waits, so Carlo nods. “Okay.”

He drags a blue folder from behind him, flips it around so it’s facing Carlo. He thinks it looks familiar, but his heart is thudding and he doesn’t remember where he’d have possibly seen it before.

“Promise me you won’t go all quiet on me? You’ll talk to me?”

Max doesn’t usually preface anything, not a fan of preamble. He’s usually blunt. Carlo frowns, even more nervous now. “Please, just show me.”

Max isn’t smiling anymore. “Okay. Okay.”

If he’s so afraid I’m going to react badly he ought to muzzle me. That would do the trick. Slap a ziptie on my wrists, it takes two seconds. He knows he’s thinking of Erik, or Keith. He knows that isn’t his master’s style.

Max takes his hand off the folder and Carlo opens it. A bordered, thick paper is the first thing he sees tucked inside it’s pouch, bearing his name next to…Max’s last name. Salinas, California. December 2, 2000. He tugs it out gingerly like it’s coated in anthrax. An official looking seal shines from the corner at him.

Behind the document is a smaller piece of paper, like a business card. It looks old, somehow, like someone gave it a crease or two on purpose. His name with a 9 digit number underneath. A social. And a birth certificate. 

There’s more papers underneath, all repeating the same details, even fake homeschooling documents with dates in the early to mid 2000’s, certifications of completion from curriculums he’s never heard of. He slides them back in, topped with the icing on the cake, the birth certificate. Salinas. December 2, 2000. 

He really is from Salinas. That much he knows. He can remember the golden west coast sunlight and his mother’s hands. A turquoise bracelet. The rest is like refracted light, spinning off in all directions.

He glances up at Max. “Is that my birthday?”

Max watches him carefully. Trying to read every inflection in his voice. “It is now.”

Carlo nods. He feels a losing battle with a thousand questions pushing up into his throat. He’s got butterflies. They feel like stomach acid.

“What…does this mean?” He asks carefully.

“It means…” Max looks from Carlo to the papers, upside down to him. “Means you can do whatever you like. You can go where you like.”

Ah. A gift. It’s meant as a gift. Whether it is truly for him or more from Max to himself is unclear.

Carlo closes the file gently. “So I don’t have to belong to you.”

“No,” Max says. “So you can have a life. Any kind you want. This… House arrest isn’t going to be what you want forever.”

Try me.

“You never wanted a pet.”

Max doesn’t let that one land. “Of course I didn’t. I still don’t.”

Carlo grits his teeth. His vision swims with tears.

“You’d rather break the law than have me.” He gestures at the paperwork. “This is a crime. It’s….forgery or whatever but you know what is legal?”

Max is looking at him regretfully but not stopping him.

“This.” He gestures between them. “Perfectly legal. But it makes you feel bad so… Guess….guess fraud will fix it.”

“Hush,” Max tells him firmly. Carlo whines unhappily, trying to keep from crying like a child, from big hiccupy tears and hitching breath.

“This is a lot. I know that. But it doesnt change anything. It’s just paper. It means you can do whatever you want but you don’t have to …. To be anything other than who you are.”

“What I am,” Carlo corrects sulkily.

“No, who. C'mon, baby, listen to me. Really listen,” he tsks. “I don’t like to see you cry.“ 

Professional Max with his credit reporting agency haircut tilts his head, gives Carlo concerned eyebrows and familiar eyes. Carlo only cries harder, trying to stop and failing.

Max moves the folder carefully out of the way, scooting just an inch closer. Carlo closes the gap, practically climbing into Max’s lap sideways and throwing his arms around him.

“I thought you said school sounded good,” Max says softly, rocking them a little. “You could take a class or two just to see. Anything you like.”

How to articulate the feeling of…I want you to tell me. Tell me what to take and I will go to every lecture and study and get As if it makes you happy. Don’t ask me to do things for myself, to decide and choose. It does nothing for me. I feel nothing.

He thinks of the time he broke his finger out in the warehouse. How badly it hurt, how it kept getting bumped and jostled and how when he’d been returned to his Master in the house that night Erik had noticed Carlo favoring it, protecting it. How he’d called him over and clicked his tongue soothingly, pulled Carlo’s other hand away so he could see the bruising, the awkward angle his finger was listing at. 

Erik set it himself, counting down from 3 but doing it before he got to 1, a dirty trick Carlo never forgot. But he’d put it in a splint and pet Carlo’s hair afterward, told him to be more careful. 

Men will go out of their way to secure their own interests. Carlo’s broken finger had no interest for Erik other than it was making Carlo less cute and cuddly and more nervous, so he fixed it. 

Max had found a way to have his cake and eat it too and nothing would stop him, not even Carlo’s tears, not even his complete willingness to be a beloved pet. Because Max has money. He has connections. It isn’t hard for men like Erik Holstrom, Carlo knows. For men like Max. They make a phone call or two and like snapping their fingers, the world has reshaped itself to their will.

This is how it’s always been. No one knows this better than a pet. And as a pet, it was more than he’d ever dared hope for here. A decent home, someone whose feet he doesn’t mind laying at, whose thumb he didn’t mind being under. 

CW: slavery, torture, burning, cigarette burns, dehumanization, ganging up on whumpee, suggestive conversation, alcohol

****

They’re in Keith’s trailer, which he stays in most of the year for simplicity’s sake. Master’s away for a week in Stockholm so Keith decides to let him stay with him as a sort of mercy. Only it isnt, and Carlo wishes he could just stay alone in the house, sleep at the foot of Master’s fourposter bed. 

Three men sit across a coffee table from them, lounging on Keith’s beat up old sofa. The trailer’s got old shag carpet and tan appliances, fake wood paneling that makes it feel like the cabin of a ship. Keith called Carlo in with a holler and a whistle and now they’re watching with growing interest, wondering what Keith will do with him. 

“Your boss lets you mark up his boy?” One of them asks. Carlo recognizes him from the crate-loading crew the other day. 

“Ohh,” Keith drawls, tugging Carlo closer by the waist. He only ever touches him when there’s others around, for show. He gives him a peck on the cheek and Carlo flinches from his scratchy beard, his dry lips.

 “I don’t mark him up too bad. And the Boss never says anything. Besides, I leave his face alone.”

Carlo feels the familiar void in his belly, the vacuum of panic as it tightens his throat and makes his skin prick with sweat. Keith sets him on his knee with one arm still tight around his waist. Don’t even try it, it says. He pulls a pack of Marlboro Reds from his flannel shirt pocket, drags one out between his teeth. Carlo flinches from the metal click of the lighter. 

“Sometimes guys ask to uh… have a roll in the hay with him.” Keith says around his cigarette. Carlo drops his eyes but he can still feel the three others looking him over like a piece of meat.

 “Now that I can’t allow.” Keith likes to be the one in charge, the one that gets to say what does and doesn’t happen to him. The illusion of power makes him feel more important than he is. Even Carlo can see right through it. “Boss man eventually notices that and I got some explaining to do.”

Laughter. Carlo’s face is hot.

“But here,” he says, and tugs Carlo’s pants so a skinny hip is exposed. He whines. The men lean forward, craning to see the exposed skin. Old burns, silver and ashy. 

“Sometimes your ashtray gets full, you know? And where am I supposed to put out my smoke? This fine upholstery?” He rubs his hand along his old corduroy armchair. “Nossir.”

He takes a heavy drag from his cigarette, turns and presses it snugly onto Carlo’s naked hip. He yelps in pain, drowned out by a chorus of noise from the other men, souds of approval and amusement. 

Keith chuckles, tosses the butt onto the coffeetable. Carlo’s breath stutters with the shock of it, can’t believe how badly one little spot of skin can hurt. Keith takes him forecefully by the hair, dragging his head up so they can all see his face. He blows the smoke from his lungs at him, watches him scrunch his eyes shut. 

“Ever tried it?” He asks them. 

One shakes his head, grinning, and another reaches for his own pack of smokes. “Let me enjoy my cigarette first. These shits aint cheap.”

“Is that the only spot?” Another nods to Carlo’s hip. “Nowhere else?”

Keith shrugs. “I aint trying to mark up his face, I told you.”

“I’m not talking about his face.” He nods lower. “See how he likes one on the bottom of his foot. It’s the most sensitive spot there is. Well, except…”

Keith cuts him off. “Alright. Yeah.” He laughs. “Ya’ll are some sick fuckin’ puppies.”

Carlo whimpers as Keith shifts him on his knee, centering him more so he can hold him around the waist. “Todd, get his legs.”

The boy in the middle gets up, the youngest of the bunch. He tries to meet Carlo’s eyes, smiling.  “Well hi, sweetie.”

 Carlo tries to tuck his knees away from him but Keith’s got him tightly about the waist and the boy is quick, wrangling Carlo’s legs so his heels are on the coffee table. He takes off his belt with his free hand, wrapping it three times around Carlo’s ankles for good measure. Carlo watches helplessly as the boy hooks a dirty finger under his socks, pulls them off his feet one at a time. 

“How’s that go? This little piggie went to the market…” He takes hold of Carlo’s toe and pinches hard, making him jump and gasp.

The other has smoked his cigarette three quarters gone and leans forward, holding it an inch from the sole of the boy’s bare foot. Carlo goes very still, holding his breath.

“Oh, don’t tease us.” The one who’d suggested this says from the sofa. 

“What’s the capital of Maryland?” The one holding the cigarette asks. 

Keith laughs. “Oh, he don’t know.”

“A…Annapolis.”  Carlo breathes, wide-eyed. 

Todd laughs. “Heyyy, he’s smarter’n you, Keith.”

The cigarette is pulled back an inch. 

“What’s uh… what’s 9 times 9?”

Even in Ketih’s grip, Carlo manages to dip his ring finger, nine, feel eight fingers on the left side and one on the right.

“Eighty...one.”

Another burst of “ooooh.” The cigarette moves away another blessed inch. 

“What’s uhhh… what color is Todd’s underwear?”

Todd rolls his eyes. “Fuck off.”

Carlo feels his lip trembling. His ankles hurt from being pressed tight against each other in the belt. He doesn’t answer, knows it’s a trap. They’re bored of their little game already. The cigarette moves closer. The man furthest from him hums theme to Jeapordy. 

“Please.” He whispers, looking to each of them. “Please… don’t.” 

Someone makes a buzzer noise. The glowing cigarette grinds into the soft, pale skin on the arch of his right foot and he screams, bucking his hips away from Todd and Keith as best he can, which turns out only to be an inch.  They’re too strong.

His ears buzz, fear threatens his vision with dark wings on the edges. How many will they do? Would they go through a whole pack until he can’t walk? Where else would Keith let them hurt him?

Todd takes a turn, only taking one drag to get it burning before making the cigarette wheel and swoop closer like someone playing airplane with a baby’s spoon. 

Carlo sobs and turns his head away, muttering a littany of pleaseplease nonono, please stop that goes ignored, and Todd chooses the ball of his left foot, right beneath his toes. He holds it there for what seems like an eternity, watching Carlo’s face with hungry glee.

Tears wet Carlo’s face now, his throat is scratchy from crying out so hard. He can’t stop sobbing and shaking in Keith’s arms. The pain from each burn keeps coming on, seeming to get worse as the minutes go by. 

“Alright.” Keith says reluctantly after the fifth, when Carlo nearly chokes on his own spit from crying so hard. He nods at his ankles and Todd takes back his belt.

“Just a little fun, Slugger. Oh, don’t cry so hard. You’re such a little bitch, you know that? That’s why nobody can help themselves, you’re just too damn tempting.” He shoves him to the carpet the color of ditchwater. 

“Go on. Get that bottle out of the freezer for us.” 

So this combines elements from several anon asks. Asks about Carlo’s self-harm tendencies, asking Max for punishment, the food stash Carlo kept a secret, and the collar conversation, finally. lol I hope there’s something in this you enjoy!

CW human pet, self harm, food issues 

***

“You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

***

Max is focused on his task, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Carlo watches, curling his wool-socked toes into the Persian carpet. The radiator is warm against his back, the tall french windows still frosted from the morning chill.

Last night, Max moved a dresser and a clothes hamper in the guest bedroom— Carlo’s room. He has trouble thinking of it as his. When he curls up in the blankets at night and waits for his body heat to warm them he thinks of them as Max’s, something Max has given him. It helps him fall asleep.

Max wanted to get some things from under the eaves his parents had used as storage. In the process, he’d found Carlo’s hidden stash; a pillowcase filled with cans of tuna and string beans, saltine crackers in unopened sleeves on top as not to be crushed. 

Carlo had stood in the doorway, swaying from foot to foot, hands opening and closing at his side. He’d bitten his cheek so hard he tasted copper. But he’d just given Carlo a strange look over his shoulder, made some undecipherable Max-ish comment asking if he was worried about the stock market. Then the most unbelievable part— he’d put the pillowcase back in the hiding spot.

I love it! This has Carlo and Cissy on a Monday and also a touch of the collar stuff. :P 

****

Cecelia comes to the house at noon, cheeks pink from the wind and arms full of grocery bags. Carlo hurries to help her, goes out barefoot into the cold to get the rest of the bags from the back of her car. He helps her put the week’s food away in the fridge, the pantry. 

“You know…” Cissy presses the button for a cup of coffee with a french-tipped finger. The machine whirs. “I wish you could come to the store with me. I could send you off for things. My lil’ gopher. Go for this, go for that.”

Carlo shakes his head. “No way. There’s too many of everything and I never know which one to pick. What if I needed to ask you?” He claps his hand over his mouth to mimic the muzzle, makes muffled noise behind it. 

Cissy snorts. “God. You and your gallows humor.”

By two, they’ve done the laundry and gotten a roast seasoned and in the oven, waxed the foyer tiles. Cissy plops into the red loveseat in the livingroom, toeing off her flats so they fall on the floor. Carlo curls up beside her, wanting to make himself fit snug against her side, though he’s easily half a foot taller.

Cissy tucks him under her arm anyway. She smells like violets, like nice shampoo.

“Okay. Help me pick my date for Saturday.” She pulls out her phone, opens Tinder. A shirtless man in a bathroom mirror selfie pops up, flash on. “O-ho, look at this one.”

Carlo makes a face. “No.”

Cissy swipes and a new photo appears. “No.” They say in unison. She swipes again. “How about this one? And bear in mind not everyone can be as handsome as you are.”

“Serial killer.” Carlo says. “Or like, schoolgirl outfits.”

Cissy giggles, swipes again. “How about this one then?”

Carlo shrugs. “Yeah. He has…. kind eyes.”

Cissy pauses. Sidelong, she gives him a thoughtful look, a tender sort of sadness crossing her features. She tucks a loose curl of hair behind Carlo’s ear. “We’ll put him on the maybe list, then.” Taking a quick breath, she changes the subject. “So, what did Max say about your collar?”

Carlo groans, tucking his forehead against her shoulder. “I can’t ask him. It’s not… it’s not what you do. It’s…impolite. And it’s so weeeird.”

Cissy’s mouth turns up in a sly smile. A dimple dots her smooth cheek. “It’s not that weird. But he’s a man, honey, he’s got zero idea. You gotta just tell him. I don’t think he’d say no. Not to you. He’s head over heels with you.”

Carlo pulls back, searching Cissy’s eyes for sarcasm, for a lie. “Really?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you kidding me? He absolutely adores you. You could probably get one with Swarovski crystals. That’s what I’d do, if I were you.”

Cissy runs into Carlo trying to wash his sheets after wetting the bed.

**** 

Cissy works eight to ten hours a week for Max Kelly. He’s an easy client— a bachelor who inherited a big house from his parents and works a lot. 

Normally she maintains a professional distance with all her clients. It’s too easy to get pulled into something weird with some crazy middle aged couple or to be accused of fucking so and so’s husband or of stealing prescriptions out of a medicine cabinet— and this was a new one— finding out the nanny cam used to watch the dogs was actually being used by her client’s grown unemployed son to watch her on his phone while she cleaned. Yeah. 

She has more in common with Max than the rest of her clients. He’s by far the youngest and easy to talk to. He’s often gone— and no nanny cams, she’s pretty sure. They’d had a few drinks together here and there, and she’d ended up staying for his work Christmas party thing a year back and gotten way too bombed with all of his friends and maybe, just maybe made out with Eddie a little bit on the stairwell… So, slightly more comfortable with Max Kelly than other clients. 

When he tells her about this whole Pet situation, she can tell he’s embarrassed in the way wealthy people get embarrassed when they have to fire you because of their own dysfunctional marriage or apologize for their son spying on you scrubbing the floor in a skirt. 

The weird thing is… of all her clients she can’t think of someone she’d rather get a human Pet than Max. She doesn’t get a weird feeling about it. She actually sort of believes his story, the whole Stella Abend thing, and the name Erik Holstrom rings a bell. And he didn’t say, for instance, ‘don’t talk to him’, or ‘tell me everything he’s up to’, or anything else along those lines. In fact, she got the impression he wanted some help. Like he was in over his head.

She’s headed to the laundry room that first morning after he told her with an armful of linens when she hears the water running in the bathroom. She pauses, leans her head to the cracked-open door. This Pet person is certainly running the tub, and vigorously drowning something by the sound of it. She pushes the door open a few inches to peek her head inside. 

The boy sitting on the edge of the tub stops and looks up at her. He’s got a bottom sheet and a top sheet in the bath, a bar of dial soap in his hand. He’s in Max’s clothes, a t-shirt she recognizes. It’s wet on the front, too big for his frame and slipping over one shoulder. He looks at the hallway behind her like he’s wondering if he could make a run for it. A dark curl of hair falls in front of one eye and she sees the shadow of a bruise on his cheek.

“Oh.” Cissy breathes. She sets her own armful of laundry on the bathroom sink, resists the urge to go kneel beside him and fuss over that bruise. “You need some help with those?”

His eyes are nearly black, and wide as owl’s. He shakes his head slowly. He looks young, probably still a teenager. Whether that’s sixteen or nineteen there’s just no telling.

 “I’m Cecelia. Cissy.” She turns to the mirror and fixes her bobbed hair with her fingers. Maybe if she isn’t staring at him she won’t frighten him so much. 

She hears Max’s warning in her head. I think he beats him. Holstrom. Actually, I know he does. So does the guy who met me there, Keith. It’s not good, Cissy. He’s terrified of me.

She almost drops Max’s first name but thinks it would be better if she distances herself from him, if this boy is in fact so afraid of him. 

“I’m Mr Kelly’s maid service. I come here three days a week to do the cleaning, the washing. I shop and cook some, too.” She turns to him, smiling. “It’s a pretty nice gig, actually. But I could use some help sometimes… it’s an awful big house, isn’t it?”

The boy is still frozen in the exact same spot, watching her every move as the water continues to roar into the tub. It’s going to overflow in a minute, along with the burgundy sheets he’s got floating in there.

“I’m doin’ laundry right now. The washer and dryer is right at the end of this hall. You think you could help me?”

The boy thinks that over a moment, then gives one jerky motion of his chin to his chest. A nod, she thinks. 

She points at the tap. “Why don’t you turn that off before we’re swimmin’, hun?” 

He pushes in the knob and the silence is broken only by the residual drips of water falling into the tub. 

“That’s better. Can I help you wring those out?”

“No!” he blurts. Then his face gets a rosy shade of pink  “…I’ll…I’ll do it.”

She hadn’t expected him to speak, for some reason. His voice is soft, but the words were clear and enunciated. 

“Okay, baby. You do that and come on out. We’ll do all the sheets together today. You got your pillowcases?”

He hadn’t thought of the pillowcases. He looks at the bar of soap in his hand like he doesn’t know how it got there.

“That’s alright, we’ll grab ‘em in a second. It’s just a left out of here at the end of the hall, alright?”

She picks up her linens, swings the bathroom door wide with her foot. As soon as she’s in the hallway the smile drops from her face and she takes a deep, steadying breath. Oh boy. Oh, boy, Max. What kind of mess have you gotten into?

She’s not even paying attention to what she’s doing, loading the detergent and linens into the washer on auto-pilot. Max said Stella Abend called him in the middle of the night totally freaked out, begging that he intervene in this Holstrom thing. Cissy’s met Stella before. She found her a little intimidating with her six degrees or whatever, her Burberry jacket and the way she seems to exist in another dimension where things are much more sophisticated. Her very existence makes Cissy feel young and irresponsible, a little messy. The boy comes up behind her with his arms full of wet sheets. She moves to one side so he can load them in the machine. He’s taller than he’d looked hunched over the tub, easily five nine or ten.

“There you go,” she praises. “We’ll have everything fresh and made up by lunch.”

He gives her a funny look. 

“You hungry?”

The look gets stranger, like he’s unsure of a trap or trick. She knows this whole Pet business is typically pretty nasty, and decides to take a few liberties. Max won’t care. 

“Mr Kelly has made it very clear you’re to eat lunch with me. C’mon. I’ll make you a sandwich. Maybe some hot soup or something."

Blanket warning on this series for past torture/abuse, often referencing a time when character in question was a minor, and institutionalized slavery/human trafficking.

Masterlist

first chapter

If you were inclined, before u read the last chapter, you could revisit ch 1: muzzle if it’s been a while or if you’ve never read it. It’s short and I think will provide a fun contrast to read before you read ch 10. :) chapter ten is also short. but it’s all I feel was truly needed.

Panacea- the goddess of universal remedy. “So loss is made endurable by love. And it is is love that will echo through eternity.”

***

Carlo yelps in surprise. The kitchen knife clatters to the counter. 

“You alright?” Max asks the boy’s turned back. 

A twitch in a shoulder blade, a little shake of cinnamon curls. “Cut myself.”  He says softly, but Max can hear the tears in his voice. He tsks and sets down his phone. 

He still reaches out to touch Carlo’s shoulder before he gets too close— a vestige of the early days when he was jumpy and skittish as a wild colt. Carlo doesn’t flinch, doesn’t seem to even notice. The slice that’d cut him was the last in an effort to quarter a pink apple, a tub of hummus set out beside it on the counter. Blood runs bright out of Carlo’s thumb, dripping onto marble. 

“Oh, baby—” Max pulls a hand towel from the drawer near his hip.  Carlo lets him hold his wrist, gingerly wrapping the thumb so he can hold it tight. 

“Sorry.” He mutters. “M’sorry.”

Max ignores the reflex apology. “Hold it up.” He holds up his own hand to mime the action. Carlo gets it as high as his temple and his lip quivers, eyes filling. He starts to cry, hitching breaths that dissolve into sobs. 

“Hey. Hey there. Easy, sweetheart.” 

You’ve had worse. 

 He’s glad that sentiment stayed on the tip of his tongue, unspoken. The wounds Holstrom put on Carlo’s palms with a belt have only recently closed and turned pink with new skin. 

He puts his hands on Carlo’s shoulders, an invite for the boy to stay where he is or walk into his chest. He does the latter, running into Max hard, pressing his cheek against his shoulder. Max folds him in and squeezes, making little shushing noises to the back of his neck. 

Carlo’s wearing Max’s old college hoodie, heather grey with fraying strings Carlo’s chewed absently for months now. The boy feels so small inside of it still, like he’s holding it up with collarbones and ribs. Max rocks them slightly, the smallest side to side movement.

“What is it?” He asks quietly as Carlo slowly quiets. “Does it hurt?”

Carlo shakes his head, lifting the kitchen towel in a shrug. “It’s just a cut. Just a stupid fucking cut.”

Max flinches inwardly as Carlo’s cursing, not out of any sense of propriety but simply from being so unused to it, the anguish behind it. Yes. He thinks. It’s just a cut. 

“…Is it Cissy?”

Carlo chokes on a sob, tucking his forehead tight against Max and nodding. Cecelia only left for California three days ago, but the finality of the move feels like a void, an emptiness that pervades the house and aches. Max will miss her, sure. But watching she and Carlo say their goodbyes had been by far more difficult than anything he felt for himself. 

“We’ll fly her out for Thanksgiving break.” Max promises. “We’ll stay up late and eat too much and drink too much. She can stay in the spare room. Right next to yours. The whole week.”

Carlo pulls back hopefully. “Yeah?”

“If she’ll have us.” He says, swiping a thumb over Carlo’s cheek. Cooling tears, more familiar to him now than his own.

 The day Cissy came to say goodbye, he watched Carlo hold all five feet three inches of her against his body like he wanted to beg her to stay but wouldn’t— like a bigger part of him knew she wanted to go to California and it wouldn’t be fair. When they finally separated, Cissy whispered something in Carlo’s ear. He’d nodded and she’d taken his face in her hands, smiling tearfully. 

For a moment, Max couldn’t have spoken if he tried.

“Everybody just goes away from each other. And it’s so easy.” Carlo’s voice is almost a whisper, his dark eyes bright. “I’ll still be here then? At Thanksgiving time?”

Max showed him his new papers last week— the birth certificate and social—  and it’s been walking on eggshells ever since. Carlo doesn’t know whether to be terrified or angry or excited at the prospect of a normal life. Well. As normal as anyone can give him, considering. 

“Where else would you be?”

“I… I don’t know. I feel like… like I want things to be rock, and they’re sand. This is the first time I’ve ever felt…good. I don’t want it to go away.”

Max pets Carlo’s soft curls. “It was never gonna be a good time to tell you. I wanted to just…. Rip the band-aid off, you know? But I think it had the opposite effect. More like ripped the rug from under you instead.”

Carlo sniffs unhappily. “How am I gonna go to college? I’ve never been to school. I never even went to like, kindergarten.”

“It’s called a GED. I’ll get you some math help, you’ll be fine in everything else. Takes a little work but it’ll serve in place of a highschool diploma and then you can apply to go right here in the city. There’s a couple colleges closeby. When you want. If you want. I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just answering your question.”

“I know.” Carlo lays his head back down on Max’s  shoulder. 

“You gonna let me take a look at that or you just gonna bleed into a kitchen towel all night? Let me take care of it. Hm?”

Reluctantly, Carlo takes a step back, separating them. He holds up the wad of towel, already soaked through in a spot. Max winces in sympathy when he unwraps it. It’s still bleeding. He can barely see where the cut begins and ends because of the mess. He wraps it back up. 

“Can you hold it a little tighter? Let’s go clean you up. C’mon.”

He leads him upstairs and sits him on the ledge of the bathtub. It seems simultaneously like yesterday and like a lifetime ago he sat Carlo in the same spot, cleaning the wound on his chest from the chip they cut out. The boy was more distant then, disconnected in a way that he rarely gets now. Max hadn’t known quite what to say to put him at ease, so he’d stuck with the generic. You’re okay. Just a little sting. I’m sorry. I know.

He really hadn’t known him at all yet.

The towel sticks a little as he peels it away this time— which he takes as a sign the blood is drying. The cut is in the fleshy pad of Carlo’s thumb, deep but not terribly long. 

Max sighs through his nose. “Your poor hands.”

Carlo snorts mirthlessly at that. “Ah!” he hisses as Max pours hydrogen peroxide over the fresh cut, watching as it fizzes and settles. He groans as Max cleans the blood from the surrounding skin, gentle as he can but inevitably unpleasant. 

Max glances up, then back to his task. “Looking a little green around the gills there, kid.”

Carlo watches Max’s hands cleaning his cut, paler with every passing moment. 

“Don’t look at it.” Max says. “Look at the wall.”

Carlo turns his head, staring at the white expanse of tile. 

“Deep breaths.”

He takes a slow, deliberate inhale through his nose. 

“That’s it.” Max soothes, calling it good for now on the cleaning. A little ointment and a band-aid will do the trick, wrapped in gauze. He pulls the bandage open with his teeth.

“I think you’ve earned the right to be a little squeamish.” He tries to hurry while also not hurting Carlo any more than is necessary. He always tried to use the utmost care. “I think you deserve a break from getting hurt. No more kitchen accidents for the rest of the year, alright?”

“Yard accidents…” Carlo whispers. “Acts of God…”

Max smiles. “None of those either. I’m just gonna wrap this up in gauze. It’s all covered up, no more gross factor. You shaky? Want to get UberEats? How about some Pho?”

Carlo looks away from the tile, back to Max. Some of the color has returned to his cheeks. “Whenever I’m hurt, you always try to feed me.” 

 He thinks he hears a hint of playfulness. “Do I? Well. We could always fast.”

Carlo’s cheek dimples as his mouth turns up. “Can we go pick it up instead? And I drive?”

Max laughs out loud. “I’m afraid you need a little something called a license for that. And five minutes ago you looked like you were going to pass out, so.”

“How do I get a license?”

“You pass a test.”

“A driving test?”

“Yes.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Yes. In the driveway at first. I like my truck in one piece.”

Carlo beams. “I wanna drive your truck.”

Max sighs longsufferingly. “Remember when we would just muzzle you? Simpler times.”

Carlo bites his bottom lip, suppressing an impish grin. With his uninjured hand, he taps the tip of his nose three times. 

***

End.

taglist:

@this-zombie-will-eat-you, @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight, @whumpity–whump–whump, @yanniyans, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @maqcyloup, @maybeawhumpblog , @burtlederp, @kestrelsparverius, @whump-my-dude, @acewhumper, @smolnarwhal, @httyd-chocolate, @whumptywhumpdump, @theycomeinthrees @nervous-writer @usernames-suck-but-i-like-whump, @writinglynx, @angelsuperwholock, @toomuchponytail, @ffaerie-dustt, @feralkidd, @quirkykayleetam @whumptopia, @theladyoffangorn, @haro-whumps, @quoththeraven-what, @whump-account-cause-yk, @whumpity–whump–whump, @sleepingcatsareasian, @fucctt, @fairybean101, @adventuresofacreesty, @ravenwhitley, @whimperwoods, @raigash, @robinshouseofwhump, @jackspacepirate, @maybeawhumpblog, @bruised-like-the-galaxy, @im-not-rare-im-rarr, @miss-kitty-whumptastic, @osmundpriestt, @that-one-lonely-girl, 

Blanket warning on this series for past torture/abuse, often referencing a time when character in question was a minor, and institutionalized slavery. 

Masterlist

first chapter

***

The woman at the front doesn’t even look up as they step to the counter, Max half-carrying Carlo against his side. 

“Insurance?”  

“On mine.” Max fishes for his wallet and hands over his card, annoyed at the formalities when Carlo is standing there with hands like pulp in front of him. 

“Oh.” She says, looking over her glasses at them for the first time. She can see Max is clearly not old enough to be the boy’s father, and puts it together. “I see.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, no.” She raises her eyebrows and taps on her keyboard. “Not as long as you’ve sorted it with your insurance provider.”

“I have. What’s the wait looking like, Ma’am? Please, he’s in a lot of pain.”

She gives him a dumbfounded look, like he’s clearly the perpetrator of this and now he has the audacity to ask how long before a doctor sees them.

Blanket warning on this series for past torture/abuse, often referencing a time when character in question was a minor, and institutionalized slavery. 

CW: This chapter (8) has some real-time whump, with a violent beating, a creepy/intimate whumper, conditioning and allusion to all sorts of abuse and corruption, gore, hand whump, blood, guns, allusions to past abuse of a minor, past dubcon 

previous chapter 

first chapter

***

Every instinct is telling Max to turn his truck around. Carlo is silent in the passenger seat, muzzled. That was the worst, worse than that first time when he’d told Carlo to tap his nose three times and they’d take it off. 

He thinks of the exchange, the real one, the birth certificate and social security card Holstrom had dangled like a carrot in front of him. He would never agree to something this reckless without a payoff like that. He doesn’t know anyone else who could pull forgeries that elaborate off. Those documents are probably the only shot Carlo will ever get at a better life. He hasn’t told him, doesn’t want to get his hopes up. 

***

“You’re really not gonna leave me there? You’re not…not giving me back?”

“Never.”

Carlo had searched his master’s eyes, pushed his face forward into the muzzle Max was holding for him. Willing. Trusting. Max fastened the straps around the boy’s head, a familiar task now, asked him gently if it was too tight. 

***

The roads are slippery, salt and gravel in twin tire marks, patches of ice. Carlo knows how to get there, the house he lived in for eight years. He sees it loom, massive and sprawling at the end of a cul-de-sac and closes his eyes. 

“It’s okay.” Max’s voice is tight. “In and out. I need to sign something with his lawyers, and so do you. Then you don’t ever have to get up on a stand.”

Keith waves them through the iron gate like an aircraft marshall. Max gets out first, walks around to Carlo’s door. He keeps an arm around the boy’s shoulder as they approach the house. The gate closes behind them with a metal clang. 

“Hey, Slugger.” Keith winks at Carlo. A toothpick hangs from the corner of his mouth. “Fancy seeing you again.”

Carlo drops his eyes.

 They’re led into a foyer where Keith stomps the snow from his boots and gestures they do the same. 

“I’m gonna have to pat y'all down real quick.”

Max watches him pat Carlo down first. Carlo flinches from Keith’s hands— shoulders hunched up around his ears. Keith pats the spot on his hip with the cigarette burns sharply, watching Carlo’s face. The boy winces and he grins broadly. 

“You too, Max.” 

Of course, he finds the pistol, whistles low as he tugs it from Max’s waistband. “No can-do, buddy. Gonna have to hold onto this. Boss’s orders.”

Max sucks his teeth, feeling much worse about all this than ten seconds ago. They’re led through a massive dining room with a fireplace big enough to roast an elk, into a study not unlike Max’s. Holstrom sits behind a large mahogany desk. Max recognizes the back of his two lawyers heads before  they even swivel in their chairs to look at him. They both stand. Keith waits by the door like a guard. 

Holstrom eyes the unfamiliar gun in Keith’s hand. “You always do your errands armed?”

Max shrugs. “Military brat.”

His gaze shifts to Carlo. “Hello, little Pet.” 

The boy looks up slowly, his eyes bright and wary over the muzzle. 

“You look…well fed. Rested.“

Keith snorts derisively.

“You have the paperwork?” 

“Please.” Holstrolm gestures to the desk. Max steps forward and Carlo follows, trying to stay close to his side. 

One of the lawyers rounds the desk, opening two folders. “This is for him.” He says, pulling a pen out of his breast pocket and handing it to Carlo. Max pulls the file toward him and reads it over, turning the paper over as if looking for a trick. He nods to Carlo. His signature is shaky, uneven.

 The lawyer takes back the pen, hands it to Max. He reads the bit they drew up saying Carlo had never divulged anything unsavory about his old master and Max had no reason to believe Carlo hadn’t lied to that state caseworker years ago.

Hatefully, Max signs it. He is handed a blue folder, opens it to peek. A birth certificate, social security card. A holographic seal flashes at him, official and binding. Holstrom had the documents forged in Max’s last name. Carlo could go to school with this. He could make his own money, open a bank account, drive a car, travel alone. He tucks it under his arm. He’s afraid to look this gift horse in the mouth. He wants to take Carlo and run. 

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Holstrom shrugs. “He doesn’t testify. His freedom for mine. Mine is much more valuable to me than his.”

“If you have any questions…” The lawyer hands Max his business card, “you can contact me directly.” 

Max pockets it. “Will do.”

Holstrom is looking at Carlo, the creases around his eyes deepening with something that looks like fondness. His hair has gone even more silver-gray since Max saw him on the TV a few months back. 

Max clears his throat. “Are we done here?”

“If you believe that, Max, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Excuse us a moment, gentlemen, will you?” 

The lawyers gather the folders, head for the door. 

“I’m glad we’re working together on this, Max. Really, I am. As for you, Pet, it’s good to see you again. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. I think you remember our last conversation, don’t you?”

Carlo whimpers in the back of his throat, muffled behind the muzzle. 

“Max? Would you mind?”

Max grits his teeth, gently undoes the fastenings so the muzzle falls from the boy’s face. 

“Do you remember what it was about?”

Carlo nods. Holstrom raises his eyebrows. 

“Yes. Yes, Mas- Sir.” He glances at Max to see if he’s heard the slip-up. 

Holstrom smiles. “Better. You made a mess of those pretty sheets I gave you to stay warm, didn’t you?” His mouth turns in disappointment. “And I was just trying to treat my little Pet to a good night’s rest. What was it we agreed? Fifteen lashes?”

“Twenty, Sir.”

Holstrom laughs, sitting back in his chair. “It was twenty. Good catch. What’ll it be, sweet boy? Hands? Feet?”

Carlo looks to Max. He’s breathing faster, face pale.

 “Alright,” Max says. Is this the price of the documents he’s holding under his arm? “I think we’re done here. C’mon.”

“Who, exactly, do you think you are?” Holstrom asks quietly. “You think I give a fuck about eighteen grand? Some paperwork sitting down at the courthouse? You’re standing in my office, I’ll dismiss you. Unless you want to be escorted off my property. Sans pet. Sans his new papers.”

“You’re out on bail. I’ll call the cops.”

Holstrom’s mouth twitches in a smile. “The cops? I tell that department to jump and they ask ‘how high?’. He owes me twenty lashes. Don’t make it worse. We agreed when he was still mine. Once that’s over, we are contractually finished. And he’s free to go.”

“He’s free to go now. He isn’t yours, Erik.”

“I hate to be a bully, but you’re not being reasonable. Keith?”

Keith takes a step forward. 

“Gun on Max here, will you? I’m not sure I can turn my back to him.”

Keith pulls his own gun from the back of his pants, raises it toward Max. Max’s heart beats faster, throbbing in his ears. He doesn’t look at the barrel.

“You want that birth certificate? Social security card? Those are tricky to get. Do this for him. Small price to pay.”

Carlo perks up at that, confused. 

“Alright.” Holstrom says. “This is tedious. Hands.”

Carlo drops his eyes, holds his hands out flat in front of him. 

Holstrom pushes his chair away from the desk, comes around to stand in front of it. He pulls Carlo away from Max, positions him where he wants him. 

“If you were still mine I’d make you strip, and we’d do this to your backside…just like you like.”  He unfastens his belt, feeds it through one hand until the leather strap is looped. “Oh, I’ve missed this, little one. Ready?”

Carlo’s small voice saying “yes, Sir,” breaks Max’s heart. 

Holstrom pulls back his arm in a practiced arc. The belt snaps down across Carlo’s palms like a whip, fast as a striking snake. Carlo’s hands dip with the impact and his eyes go wide for a moment, fill with tears. He doesn’t make a sound, purses his lips tight.

Again. Again. The fourth time Carlo gives a horrible little cry. Keith is grinning like a jackal. 

Max makes a false start to go to him. The gun in his peripheral vision rises a few inches, and he stops. Holstrom pauses to roll the sleeve on his belt arm up another inch.

“Five.” 

It cracks down in the same spot, growing bright red before their eyes. Holstrom’s warmed up now, truly enjoying himself. Crack. Another pained cry. He seems to drink up the sound. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Max hisses despite himself. Don’t make this worse for Carlo. 

 “Don’t knock it till you try it. There’s nothing better, not even a girl.” Holstrom raises the belt as if to hand it off to Max. “You could take a turn.”

Max only stares at him, imagining how it would feel to wrap his hands around his throat. He has no doubt he could handle him in a fight, remembers successfully tackling bigger guys than Holstrom in his highschool football years. The fact that the man is at least ten years past his prime doesn’t hurt, either.  But Holstrom never has to worry about that. He uses wealth and threats armed lackeys to maintain his position of power.

By twelve Carlo is crying out more desperately, turning his head away and sobbing as the belt hits his welting skin. Max can’t believe Carlo hasn’t balled his hands into fists, pulled them away, tried to run. He just stands there shaking, hands still held out for the belt. 

Number fifteen breaks the skin again, a trickle of blood that makes Max nearly mad with how badly he wants to go to him, to stop this.

“The trouble is how fast it goes.” Holstrom moves up close to Carlo, in his space.

He reaches out for the boy, touching those soft curls as Max so often does. His stomach turns to watch it, disgust and a strange possessive rage curdling in his gut. Carlo whimpers, looks up with big, teary eyes at his former master. Holstrom takes him under the chin, holds his face there. His expression is tender. 

“Only five more, little one. I know you can do five more for me. Hmm?” He strokes the boy’s cheek with the back of one finger. “Can you do that for Papa? One last time?”

Max grimaces. “Enough.”

“Yes, Master.” Carlo trembles, his shaking hands like ground  meat. “Yes, Papa.”

Holstrom nods in gentle, mock-fatherly approval. “Good Pet. Don’t you love that about him, Max? Never gives you dead eyes. Always so responsive.”

Crack. Carlo keens. Max closes his eyes, teeth clenched and jaw working. 

The next three snap down over broken skin. Carlo sobs openly, tears wetting his cheeks, his shoulders hunched up.

“Twenty.” 

Holstrom lays a hand on Carlo’s shoulder. The boy jumps and sobs, turning his head away. He hasn’t lowered his hands yet. 

"I remember the night I brought you home all those years ago. You put your little head on my knee, looked at me with those big eyes.” Holstrom sighs. “I’d sobered up a little by then, of course, realized I’d been a fool to pay what I did for you. But you always tried so hard, I’ll give you that. Be good like I taught you.” He pats Carlo’s shoulder almost sadly. “Keith.” 

The gun drops out of Max’s peripheral vision. Immediately, he goes to Carlo.

“Let’s let these two have some privacy. Open the gate for them when they’re ready.”

Max is shaking himself from the gun that was pointed at his chest, desperate to reassure his pet. “Carlo…honey, it’s okay now. I’m right here.“

He puts a hand on his shoulder and Carlo flinches, opens his eyes. 

“Max?”

Max has never heard Carlo say his name, doesn’t even know if Carlo heard himself speak it just now. His heart lifts. "Yes, sweetheart.”

 Carlo’s lip trembles, hitching breaths dissolving here and there into sobs. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands but hold them out, shaking. They’re red, striped in places. A few spots are open and oozing, raw meat.  Carlo pulls away a fraction like he doesn’t want Max to touch his hands but knows there’s nothing he can do to stop him. 

“Don’t… please…nnnh.”

“I’m not gonna touch them, Carlo. I promise.”

Max puts a hand around Carlo’s skinny shoulders, steering him where he wants him to go. Carlo is staring unseeingly at his own hands. 

They make it halfway to the truck when Keith calls Max’s name. Max turns, holding the blue folder tightly under his arm.

Keith jogs to close the distance between them, holding out Max’s gun by the grip. “Your gun, man.”

Incredulously, Max takes his arm off Carlo’s shoulders to take it. Keith nods, starts walking backwards back toward the house. These people are fucking nuts. 

He helps Carlo into the passenger seat, careful not to touch his poor hands. “Hang in there. Hold on for me, honey. Gonna get you some good medicine, okay? Gonna get you out of pain, I promise. It’s about to go away.”

***

part 9

@this-zombie-will-eat-you, @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight, @whumpity–whump–whump, @yanniyans, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @maqcyloup, @maybeawhumpblog , @burtlederp, @kestrelsparverius, @whump-my-dude, @acewhumper, @smolnarwhal, @httyd-chocolate, @whumptywhumpdump, @theycomeinthrees @nervous-writer @usernames-suck-but-i-like-whump, @writinglynx, @angelsuperwholock, @toomuchponytail, @ffaerie-dustt, @feralkidd, @quirkykayleetam @whumptopia, @theladyoffangorn, @haro-whumps, @quoththeraven-what, @whump-account-cause-yk, @whumpity–whump–whump,

6: burn

previous chapter 

first chapter

blanket warning on this series for past torture/abuse, often referencing a time when character in question was a minor, and institutionalized slavery. 

***

“He looks better.” Stella says once they’re out of earshot.

“I’d hope so.”

“He’s got some color. And he’s not quite so…”

“So skinny it makes you wince?”

“Yeah. Is he… you know… Okay?”

Max glances over his shoulder at the house, shuttered french windows glowing warmly from the inside. He takes a drag, blows smoke at the orange night sky. 

“Define okay.”

Stella shrugs, flicks her cigarette with her thumb. He remembers smoking like this with her outside the university library, nights they stayed up late working on term papers. 

“Does he wake up screaming? Light shit on fire? I don’t know. Can you talk to him? Does he let you?”

(Takes place the evening after what dreams may come, where Carlo senses an ancient vampire’s presence nearby and is deeply unsettled by it. Based on an ask by @distinctlywhumpthing!)

CW: vampire & bloodbag pet, past abuse mention

Maxim woke as he had every nightfall in the recent memory of the world. The house was entirely still. As if uninhabited, it had slipped silently into the blue shadows of evening. If a mortal held their breath (and tried to hear over their own thoughts and rabbit-quick heartbeat) they might be able to hear the bullfrogs starling to croak down by the creek-fed pond, but they wouldn’t hear the hum of traffic down the hill on the highway as he did, that endless snake of red taillights was too far for human ears to pick up. They wouldn’t be able to scan the nearby woods and acres of old farmland for vampires either, which he did as a habit every evening. This night, all was quiet on Vampire Radio.

Maxim’s pet (pet was a demeaning word for a mortal, even meant as a term of endearment. It was Erik’s word, not his, though better than the more modern and unappetizing moniker of bloodbag) was not somewhere on his own in the house as he usually was at this time of evening, playing a record or watching tv or cooking. In fact Maxim couldn’t sense any of the usual signs of life in the old house, not even the dim hum electric lights emit.

Where was Carlo, then? He opened his eyes. The answer was right in front of him, sleeping. Well, not right in front of him. A far enough distance to be respectful of the deep sleep of a vampire, and a short enough distance to be endearing.

Maxim hadn’t slept in a coffin since before the Baltimore Railroad Company was formed, instead choosing a bed with a canopy and curtains that could be drawn as an extra layer of precaution against unwanted sunlight. Even without them drawn, no daylight could reach the second floor bedroom he slept in, because the windows were permanently boarded up, plastered over, and painted to match the wall. Still, drawing them provided him some measure of ease, like sleeping with a blanket, though that was wholly unnecessary too. In fact he’d slept this summer day without one, unlike his mortal friend, who was curled up on the floor three feet from the bed with a pillow he’d brought from another room and his favorite soft throw draped over him.

Maxim regarded the familiar shape of the top of his head sticking out from it, the way his hair spilled on the pillow. He pushed out of bed and knelt silently beside the boy, touching soft curls with the backs of his fingers.

“Of all the places to be, why are you on my bare floor?” he murmured so that it might wake Carlo gently. He was answered with a whimper and a quick drawing of breath that mortals do when they wake— that moment of confusion passing over their eyes and giving way to recognition. He pushed himself up on one elbow.

“I thought I felt it again,” Carlo said sleepily, a troubled look soon replacing the relief and trust that had flooded his features upon opening his eyes. “Him. The vampire from last night.”

“In the day?” Maxim asked gently, but it came out as doubtful as he felt. Carlo looked away sheepishly. He knew it to be unlikely, too. But he’d never come in this room before, and must have been quite frightened in order to do so.

“Maybe you did,” Maxim said, brushing a strand of hair from the boy’s eyes. “Or maybe it was just an echo.”

“An echo? Is that a thing?”

“It can be. Especially in one of the more ancient of us. Like embers left from a fire.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I tried not to wake you with the door. It was unlocked.”

Maxim nodded an acknowledgement. The boy was waiting for him to tell him he needn’t sleep on the floor, that he could have crawled up on the bed, but the truth was it was unwise to approach a sleeping vampire unexpectedly. They did not wake well in the day. He might reflexively lash out at anything disturbing his sleep. One half-awake swipe of the arm could result in a broken bone. One accidental, primal bite could sever an artery. Carlo knew that— both from an unfortunate wealth of experience with vampires and his own instinct.

All of this considered, he was flattered Carlo still thought the safest place to be in the entire house was his sleeping room. Rather than embarrass anyone by saying so, Maxim reached out and touched the mortal’s warm cheek. Only inches away was his neck, tender and quickly healing from a recent puncture— two barely-pink bite marks that would soon fade to nothing, no more of the rapacious double-dipping that had left him with silver scars on his wrists and hands.

Knowing he was forgiven, or better yet that there was nothing to forgive, Carlo smiled and leaned into his cold palm. He thumbed over the boy’s skin to feel the pliable warmth, the blood just beneath. He was so mutable, delicate. A changing and temporary organism that could walk in the sun, age, and die… and yet of the two of them, more alive. Hunger pawed at Maxim’s mind, dilating his pupils and setting his teeth on edge. He would like a substantial drink, and soon. But this one was not for a real Feeding. Never. This one was for lovebites.