(mostly) whump

"You're Mine."

Tagging: @flowersarefreetherapy @pigeonwhumps @gottawhump @justplainwhump @wildfaewhump @flailingfrog @cepheusgalaxy @oldspruceinn @amandagn394 @starliight-musings @suchprettypieces @styx-n-st0nes @starryybrained @scoundrelwithboba @lysthena @loopylunacy

“No.” Sita said it so quietly that, for half a second, the word barely seemed to disturb the room.

They didn’t shout. They didn’t step away. They didn’t throw anything, threaten him, or give Thane a single dramatic reaction he could later reshape into evidence that they’d been unreasonable. They simply stood near the far end of the long cream-colored sofa, shoulders squared beneath a dark shirt, hands hanging loose at their sides, and refused him.

Thane stared at them from the armchair across the room.

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."