“Jesus,” one of the men say. Kyle, Leo thinks. He’s outspoken, he’s handsy. He’s drunk and he’s dangerous and if he wins this game, Leo goes home with– 

Liquid is poured along the new cut and Leo wails in spite of his training, curling up as tight as he can on the chair they’ve tied him to, willing the meager contents of his stomach to stay put.

He’s gasping in short, ragged breaths when he feels cool hands come around his neck, pulling his head up. 

Her lips are cool against his jaw and he hears himself struggling over each breath as her tongue grazes his neck. Distantly, he knows his arm is being wrapped up, and that they’ll soon start another round. He doesn’t know if he should be grateful for the moment unattended, or dread what follows it.

The blindfold that collects his tears is soaked by now. He’s body is covered in bruises and sweat and blood and he just… he just wants to go home. He just wants–

“He’s okay,” Mrs. Smith says, her teeth grazing his skin as she backs away from him.

“He doesn’t exactly look it,” says another woman.

It earns a laugh from all around him, and then a sort of silence grows, and Leo knows their attention has returned to their game.

✥ ✥ ✥ 

“Are you going to be a good boy?”

Covered in sweat, still trying to catch his breath, Leo can only nod and hope it’s enough. Mrs. Smith runs her fingers through his hair, letting her nails lightly graze his neck and she pulls him into a hug. His head drops against her shoulder. It’s what she wants, and he thinks if he can delay this next part, for as long as possible, if he can save himself a single moment of misery, it’s worth it.

“See? He’s sweet,” she says to someone that he can’t see. He closes his eyes, pulling in long breaths through his nose. Leo doesn’t think he can stop this from happening, but if he can earn Mrs. Smith’s favor back, maybe she’ll… make him take it easy. 

She abruptly breaks the hug, her grip tight on his shoulders as she pushes him back, meeting his eyes.

“Have fun tonight,” she says, and Leo nods, swallowing. 

The man, the one who so gleefully tormented him for the past three hours, inclines his head toward the door with a smile.

“Nothing permanent,” she reminds him.

“Nothing permanent.” His voice is thick with desire, Leo thinks. And in an instant, there’s a palm on the small of his back, guiding him out the door and toward the last remaining car in the driveway.

✥ ✥ ✥ 

The first sign that the night isn’t going to go as expected is when they get to the car. The man, Kyle Montgomery, clears his throat and utters a muffled, “Sit wherever you’re comfortable.” 

Leo tenses.

“Sir?” he asks, hand hovering over the rear door handle. He half expected to be folded into the trunk, and he doesn’t want to misstep this early in the evening.

Kyle nods his approval. “That’s fine. I don’t care where you sit.” Kyle’s eyes move to the window, where Mrs. Smith watches them with a smile. “Just get in the fucking car,” he says tersely.

Leo does, stiff, unsure of whether he actually did what he was supposed to do. He would find out soon enough. The next ten minutes are spent in silence, and when Kyle pulls into a drive-up take-out window, Leo finds himself once again taken aback.

“What do you want?” the man asks, meeting his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

“I–” shouldn’t eat, is what Leo wants to say. But, as if the response has been coded into him, he finds himself saying, “I’d like whatever you’re having.” He hates himself for it. He hates every piece of himself that been broken down by the training. And still, once the words have left his mouth, he can breathe a little easier. It hasn’t stopped freaking him out. That his brain was rewired to do this. That his body seems to act on its own accord.

Kyle orders, and they sit in silence as his card is scanned, as the woman hands him the bag, as he drives away. The bag is placed on the passenger seat, the smell hitting Leo in waves, and he wonders idly if it was bought for him as a reward for later. Or to build motivation. It doesn’t matter. He’ll do whatever he’s supposed to do.

The silence lingers, save for the soft humming along to the radio. It makes the hairs on Leo’s arms stick up.

They pull into a gated driveway and make their way toward a looming brick townhome, and Leo is suddenly grateful the food hasn’t been offered to him yet. He doesn’t love the way his stomach is knotting up, or the way his throat is running dry. 

He’s led in through the back, but Kyle doesn’t touch him. The moment they enter the main room, the lights turn themselves on, and Leo’s… He’s there, in this man’s house, to do… whatever this man wants him to do. Will he ever get used to the unease?  

“Have a seat,” Kyle says, gesturing to the sofa. Leo does, carefully, keeping his eyes down. He wants to see. To see if there are things in this room that will hurt him. To see what kind of man he’s got for company tonight. His heart pounds against his ribcage and he swallows as the weight of the other person falls next to him. “Don’t do that,” Kyle says. 

Leo nods. “I’m sorry.”  

The man hands him a burger from the bag and Leo regards it carefully. “Are you hurt badly?” he asks.

The confusion must be evident on Leo’s face, because Kyle clarifies, “Your… Your head. And your… arm. Your stomach. Everything, I guess.” 

“I’m okay.” Leo takes a deep breath and tries a bite of the sandwich, the smallest bit, just to distract himself. He’s rewarded with a smile, and he smiles back, a little bit. He’s proud of himself, for making this man smile. 

“I don’t know if I believe that,” Kyle says quietly, but he smiles again.

After every bite, Leo looks up at the man who watches him, thumb gliding across the rim of his glass, to make sure he’s doing okay.

He chews slowly, and he counts his breaths, and he waits for the other shoe to drop. He’s heard stories of men like this. Of men who pretend to be your friend, who let workers get their guard down. Of men who feed off of their hope, and once they have it, they strike. Of how much worse that feels. But every time Kyle smiles, Leo can’t stop the wave of fucking pride that surges through him. 

As midnight rolls around, and Leo is still unscathed, he decides to try to push things along. Kyle sits quietly on the opposite side of the couch, his eyes burning into Leo’s body through every second.

“I’m terribly sorry that I’m such poor company,” he says abruptly. It’s his seventh pass at making conversation, and Leo has done his best to enthusiastically participate, but it keeps faltering. “Truth be told, I– I’m not really interested in this type of thing.” 

Leo wants to ask why he fought so hard for it, if he’s not interested in it. He wants to ask why he was so aggressive at Mrs. Smith’s house, if he’s not interested in it. But he doesn’t. Instead, he closes a little bit of the distance between him.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I– Whatever you want, is fine.” When Kyle doesn’t back away, Leo inches closer still.

Kyle’s eyes pinch shut in an instant and he stands, just as Leo sinks into the sofa next to him. “I don’t want this,” he says. 

The sudden change in the atmosphere rattles Leo, but he stands, too. His jaw locks, but he doesn’t bite back. He’s practiced this. All of this, so many times. He can do this.

“What do you want?” he says, keeping his tone very carefully neutral. 

Kyle glances around his room. “What can you do? That isn’t–” he gestures vaguely toward Leo’s middle “–aggressively nonconsensual.”

And for a moment, Leo feels something close to anger bubbling inside of him. He thought that had been beaten out of him by now, but it’s there, just under the surface. Nothing. The answer, he thinks, is nothing. The word he says though, the picture perfect textbook word, is, “Anything.” 

He can almost feel the whisper of a hand on the back of his neck, of a bottle of water being tipped up against his dry lips, a Good, Leo, spoken from just outside of his line of sight. He swallows, and the dopamine surging through him at the absolute rightness of his answer relaxes him. He glances around the room, trying to get an idea of how this temporary pseudo-buyer might like to spend the evening, or at least the warm up. 

“I can… draw,” he says softly. “I can… I can play the piano, I can read to you? If you’d like, we can… um, we can just talk, or watch a movie, I’m a good–”

“The piano sounds nice,” Kyle interrupts tersely. He sits back down, gesturing toward the Grand Piano in the corner. “If you’re okay with it, the piano sounds nice.” His voice is less aggressive on the second pass, and Leo nods. 

“Of course,” he says. 

And that’s how he spends the evening with Kyle Montgomery. Playing the piano, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

✥ ✥ ✥ 

The first thing Mrs. Smith asked him to do when he arrived back at her apartment as the sun rose was to strip. 

He did, without a word, folding his clothing and setting it on the entry table. She examines every inch of him, checking for damage. She pushes into the bruises and cuts, all reminders of an evening spent suffering before leaving with Kyle, just to watch him tense. He doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction, but when she digs her nail into his arm, he hisses in a breath.

“There you are,” she whispers. She gets a towel from the kitchen and holds if over the newly bleeding wound, then covers it with his free hand. He hates her. He hates this. Every second of it. He longs for the moment that it gets easier, but isn’t sure it ever will.

“Did he hurt you?” Mrs. Smith asks, using the tip of her forefinger to tilt Leo’s chin upward. 

“Yes,” Leo whispers. 

“Did he fuck you?” 

Leo nods. The lie slides easily off of his tongue, with her fingers now lingering on the back of his neck.

“Yes.”

She nods and stands, smiling as she does. “I hope you were good for him, my angel.”

She leans down and plants a kiss against his forehead. And then she leaves, and he leans back on his heels. Leo has been here for just two weeks. If he’s learned anything at all, it’s not to move unless he’s asked to. And so, as the minutes bleed into hours, Leo sits there, waiting for whatever comes next.

Kauri feels an absurd, half-hysterical, wild urge to slide onto his knees on the floor, where he’s supposed to be when the handlers come into the room. Something about the plain white walls that had been reassuring last night suddenly feels too tight, closing in on him. 

Kauri’s shoulders hunch, self-protective, and he presses himself back against the wall, as far from Tucker as he can get, but there’s nowhere else to go. 

“He-... he, um, he-...” Kauri swallows, hard. Fix it, make nice, be good, 645898, be good. “I told him my name was Daniel,” He lies fast, and he’s still good at it, it sounds sincere. “He’s not lying, I l-lied to him… I-” His voice catches, and he clears his throat, nervously. “I lied to him, sir. He didn’t lie to you.”

Be good. Be good, you have to be good for them.

“My n-name is Kauri, sir.”

Cass can’t help himself from crumbling as Kauri starts speaking, he folds forward, hands rubbing over his face. Shut up, shut up, just shut the fuck up, you’re gonna make this so much worse.

“Oh, he’s a loyal little puppy isn’t he? Lying for you like that,” Tucker says. Already it’s worse. Cass stares at the bed sheets, shaking his head like that’ll make it go away. He can feel Kauri’s need to placate rolling off of him in waves. Be good. Make nice. It’s only gonna get worse, worse, worse.  “How long did it take you to train that? Or did you just… you know…"

Tucker taps his temple twice, smiling like the devil. Cass glares. He should say something. He should move. He should stand and get dressed and throw Kauri his clothes and haul him the fuck out of here. But he doesn’t. He never fucking does with Tucker. He doesn’t know how.

“Kauri. I like that name,” Tucker says with the shark grin, looking back at his new toy. "I like the ‘sir’, too. You should be taking notes, Ace."

Tucker tilts his head, examining both men thoroughly. Cass glowering, Kauri cowering. Two little kicked dogs. What a fun fucking morning this was turning out to be.

“Tell me, Kauri, did Ace tell you what he does here? What he does to people? Or did you just...” his eyes trail down the young man’s half exposed body, practically sneering with judgement, disgust. “Get straight to business?”

Kauri tries - he does - but he wilts under the sneer, one hand moving to rub at the wicked scar across his collarbone, reflexively pressing against the metal plate still hidden under his skin, the part that couldn't be removed. 

He's tucked into the corner, as far from Tucker as he can get, but it's not far enough. Wide blue eyes skip to his and then away again, unable to focus on any one thing. 

Tucker talks just like a handler. Looks at him the same way, like he's not a person at all. Is he one? Kauri can't help the creeping doubt. 

"No, sir," He says, softly. Voice not quite trembling. "Yes, sir. We didn't t-talk about that."

“Well then you're in for a treat,” Tucker tuts. The longer he speaks to Kauri, the closer his manner and tone draws to that of someone talking to a frightened child. Cass hates him for it, and still he doesn’t do a single thing. 

“What do you think, Ace?” Tucker says, voice lilting playfully as he stands up from the bed. Cass is shaking his head before Tucker even suggests what is to come next, staring furiously at the bed sheets, jaw locked tight. “Shall we play puppets?”

Cass slams his eyes shut. No. No, no, no, fucking no. Kauri is good. Kauri is good and he doesn’t deserve this. Letting him stay was meant to be a good deed for Christ’s sake. Meant to be a way to get him off a goddamn park bench and Cass should have known. He should have known this would happen. 

“Why don’t you ask him to stand up for me?”

“Ask him yourself,” Cass grinds out. He'll do whatever you ask. You don't need me to do shit because he'll do whatever you want. 

“Is that really what you want?"

Cass looks up, gaze sharp and biting. He looks like he wants to say a great number of things but knows he won't be the one punished for whatever he spits out. He deflates, just barely, eyes dropping again. “At least give him his fucking clothes, Tuck.”

“Play nice and I’ll think about it,” Tucker shrugs. “But either you make him stand up right now, or I will.”

Kauri hasn’t moved. He’s still pushed up against the wall, tucked into the corner as though there’s any protection to be had there, his eyes flickering from Cass to Tucker and back again as though watching a strange and terrifying game being played in front of him. 

Every time he tries to open his mouth to offer to just do what Tucker says, one of them speaks again, and his mouth snaps back shut. He can’t keep up with them, they’re moving too fast. They both know the game, and Kauri has no idea what it is, and he doesn’t know how to be good unless you tell him how. 

He doesn’t want to move from the wall. It’s the only bit of free will he has left, his absolute certainty that he wants to stay as far away from Tucker as he can. “I, I don’t want to stand up-”

Cass finally, finally looks at Kauri. He wants to communicate everything he possibly can in the half a second he can bear to hold his gaze but all he can think is I’m sorry. This is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, "Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴜᴘ."

Cass speaks and Kauri’s moving immediately, it’s nearly instantaneous, even as he’s hyper-aware of his own nakedness he slides off the bed and is standing, hugging himself tightly to hide the barcode inside his left wrist, keeping it pressed against his right side along his ribcage. 

“Wh-what-... wait-”

"Make him sit."

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sɪᴛ.”

Kauri’s eyes are as wide as saucers, staring at Cass as he sits down, abruptly, without even a hint of conscious thought before he does so.

"Make him stand."

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, sᴛᴀɴᴅ."

And Kauri’s back up again, still staring at Cass. All at once Kauri realizes that he’s not going anywhere unless Tucker, whoever he was - some kind of handler, definitely, although not exactly the same kind - wants him to leave.

Tucker laughs, leaning against the wall like he was watching a dog perform a particularly impressive trick. He makes eye contact with Cass, turns his finger slowly. Cass resists the urge to roll his eyes before giving the direction. 

"Kᴀᴜʀɪ, ᴛᴜʀɴ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴄɪʀᴄʟᴇ," Cass’ eyes flit to Tucker, who tilts his head, mouthing something, and adds. “Sʟᴏᴡʟʏ.”

Tucker watches Kauri move, smiling like he’s watching a show dog perform a perfectly well practiced trick.

Kauri turns, hunched over still hugging himself. There are scars, here and there - small ones, moments Owen lost control and didn’t hold himself back enough. They’re tiny things, easy to miss in dim semi-darkness, but obvious in the light. And the deep twist of scarring along his collarbone. The dark brown leather bracelet is the only thing on his body, and Kauri - who is trained out of shame, who had been carefully and violently nurtured into feeling no shame for things like this at all - is bright red by the time he’s facing Tucker again. 

He doesn’t usually care - but in front of Tucker, he suddenly wants nothing more than to put his clothes back on. More clothes, even, to pull something of Cass’s on so he can be even more covered, even less laid bare. 

"It's okay Kauri, I know this is probably a little confusing," he says, mock sympathy painting his voice as he comes forward to hold the man’s jaw, long fingers squishing his cheeks together. "See this is what Cassius does. He reaches into people's heads and he makes them do the things I want them to do. Like magic.”

He grabs Kauri by the arms, grip bruising, and turns him to face where Cassius sits on the bed, hands locked around his knees, eyes hollow and refusing to look anywhere but the sheets. Kauri goes perfectly tense, every muscle rigid, but the idea of disobeying - of trying to free himself - is a distant, foggy thought he can’t slip his fingers around. 

“To be honest, that's probably how he got you here in the first place. Just crept into your head and made you feel like you wanted it,” Tucker murmurs in Kauri’s ear, just barely loud enough for Cass to hear it too. His voice is flat, devoid of the mocking lightness in it before. Full instead of utter disdain. “He doesn’t need fancy drugs, he doesn’t need threats. Just his voice. Isn’t that clever of him?”

“You’re lying,” Kauri says, voice shaking but there’s a sudden flat certainty there. Every… every time Cass makes him do something, he says his name first. Kauri picks up on that fast. His name, and then the command, and then he does it. He hadn’t understood why he grabbed the asshole in the bar’s arm, but he does now – Cass had said his name first, then the command. 

But Cass hadn’t been commanding him hardly at all after that. And he hadn’t said his name that way, not up against the wall in the alley. 

Cass closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He can't stop shaking his head. This was meant to be a good thing. One good thing. Of course Tucker has to twist that away too. His stomach is turning just from the implication of what’s being said.

It hadn’t been like that. He doesn’t do that. But it doesn’t matter whether he did or it didn’t, did it? He could have. He might have. That was all it took to lose trust.

 "You do have good taste, Ace, I'll give you that. He looks kind of like that guy from Dimmer Switch, don't you think?”  Tucker says, holding Kauri at arms length as he circles him slowly, the perfect picture of power and vulnerability. Predator and prey. His hand skims across the glossy pink scar on Kauri’s clavicle with morbid curiosity as he speaks, Tucker’s eyes light up with all the glee of a fucking kid on Christmas as an idea suddenly hits him. “Ooh, I know. We should make him punch the wall like in the breakdown scene. You know, the one where he breaks his hand?”

“No,” Kauri says, weakly. He hasn’t seen the movie, though he knows everything that happens in it. Owen has told him the plot over and over again, piece by piece, breaking it down. But he can’t watch the movie, because he might see Vince’s face. 

“St-stop it.” He tries to find real strength for his voice, even as being so close to a handler - any handler, it never mattered if it was his handler, they were all always hurting him - makes him feel like a trainee all over again. “You’re just trying to ruin him having something nice. Stop it.”

“You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” Tucker says with a smile. “And look, I think it’s working, don’t you?”

Cass looks up at that, glaring at Tucker with full venom. He can feel adrenaline crackling through his veins. When it came to fight or flight, Cassius had barely ever chosen anything but the former in his life, but he knows better by now than to try and act on it. He wants to launch himself at Tucker’s smug fucking face and bash it into the floor until even the thought of smiling like that makes him flinch.

Instead he re-adjusts the iron-grip on his own wrist, focusses so hard on Tucker that he doesn’t risk glancing at the person he’s hauled into all of this.

“You’ve made your fucking point, Tuck, just let him go,” he grinds out, voice flat and empty despite the rage in his eyes.

“Oh, I will. But first, I want to watch him hit the wall until his pretty hand breaks,” he says. He grabs Kauri’s wrist, hand wrapping around the leather bracelet. He brings Kauri’s arm up to eye level, quirking an eyebrow with mocking apathy. “What? He get you into bed so fast you couldn’t even take off your accessories?”

Kauri has a snarl on his face, growing anger on Cass’s behalf - Kauri knows what it means to sink into yourself, he knows the feeling written all over Cass’s face. Kauri has been that person too many times, it’s nearly all he knows, all he remembers except for the people he’d met after he ran away.

But when Tucker grabs his wrist, Kauri freezes, and the anger fades under a low-level, growing panic. He jerks his wrist, trying to free it from Tucker’s grip.

“What if he d-did?” Kauri asks, breathless, trying to cover up the panic by lacing his voice with as much anger as he can pull back into himself. “Are y-...” He has to gasp in a breath to make the words more than a whisper, fighting the drumbeat in his mind of stop it stop being bad stop being defiant make nice make nice be good be a good boy stop it. “Are you fucking jealous or something? You want in on me, too?”

Tucker scoffs, almost impressed by the little outburst. He takes a moment to rake his eyes over Kauri's naked body, "What would you do if I did, hm?"

Cass feels his blood freeze.

His hands twitch, trying to pre-empt whatever's about to happen. He doesn't dare move yet, he doesn't dare look away. He wishes for once, just for once, that he could feel what Tucker wanted, that he could know what he was thinking.

You're not my type. That's what Tucker says. That's what he's always fucking said with every dick joke, every innuendo, every half-intoxicated pass Cass might've made at him he'd smirk and shut him down with a simple you're not my type.

But Cass was an acquired taste, really, wasn't he? Loud mouthed and defiant. A penchant for violence. Rough around the edges in every sense of the word. But that wasn't Kauri.

Kauri, who blushed easily and stumbled over his words like a school boy with a crush. Kauri, who'd fucking melted at being called good. Kauri, who even right now, even attempting to dig for something aggressive was shaking with waves of make nice, make nice, make nice. Was that what Tucker wanted? Was that his goddamn type?

"You look like you're about to faint, little puppet," Tucker continues, hand just as tight around Kauri's wrist. "What would you even do if I decided I wanted you?"

Kauri feels the weight of eyes on his body, he always has. A sense of feeling complete if someone wants him, is thinking about him, will touch him like this. Even people he hates. Even the handlers pressing him up against cold white walls was better than nothing. 

And there had been so much nothing.

“I’m not about to faint,” Kauri says, his voice still too soft, too airy, but his eyes lock on Tucker’s and hold. Barely. “Y-you’re still just trying to hurt him. You don’t like that he… that he got to be happy for a second. Besides… you don’t need to be jealous.” 

He steps forward, calling Tucker’s bluff, pushing into his personal space now, cocking his head to the side in the practiced little head-tilt, trained into him until he can do it without even knowing it, looking up at Tucker with wide blue eyes focused only on him. 

Handlers who want you to fight don’t like it when you don’t. Kauri wants to see which kind of handler Tucker is.

“What makes you think I’d say no?”

I can’t. But you don’t need to know that.

Tucker laughs.

"Oh I like this one, Ace," he says. "He's good at playing slut, isn't he? Is that how you bonded?"

Tucker sweeps a foot out, a quick kick to the side of Kauri's legs to have his knees buckling, crumbling to the floor. Kauri goes down hard with a soft cry, his knees cracking into the hard floor with a sickening lick of pain up his thighs that’s entirely too familiar. 

Cassius starts forward, ready to get to his feet before he stops himself just as suddenly. He has no way of knowing what will happen here if he makes the wrong move. He has no way of knowing who else in the Facility is up yet, who else might be called in. It wouldn't be the first time someone caught trespassing was signed up for clinical testing the next day.  

"Tucker, that's enough," he croaks. It's so weak.

Tucker shifts his gaze lazily to Cassius' face, giving him a bored sort of appraisal. "Or what?"

He laces his fingers through dark curls and yanks Kauri's head back hard and fast, his other hand trailing a line down his throat.

"See I don't think he would say no," he muses "I think he'd say please."

Kauri swallows, hard, his heart threatening to pound its way right out of his chest, feeling oddly distant and foggy now. Being scared won’t fix it. Being good won’t fix it. He’s trapped with Owen who can’t be pleased, who will only get upset, whose hands will go around his neck-

He flinches back from the hand on his throat like Tucker might burn him with it - or choke him - and lets out a broken cry, before he clenches his hands into fists and tries to, to think. But being trapped with Owen means being trapped with what Owen did. Which makes him angry.

“You might not b-be able to understand me,” He says, his voice still mostly air but it’s pissed-off air and that has to count for something, “Since I’d b-bite your dick off if you tried, I’ve d-done it before.”

He moves with Tucker’s hand, tilting his head far back, and spits at his face.

Tucker slams Kauri's head into the metal bed-frame without a pause for thought, the crack so loud it's like a gunshot ringing out in the tiny room.

Kauri cries out as his head connects, a bright flash of white behind his eyes with the pain on its heels, and slumps against the bed, the world a dizzying spin around him, throbbing pain and a trickle of something he can feel run down the side of his temple.

Tucker reels back, pulling his leg back to kick Kauri in the stomach. And Cass moves. He's on his feet and shoving Tucker backwards before he can think better of it.

"Tucker, don't," he says, terse and frantic. "Don't. I'll do whatever you want, alright?"

He doesn't look at Kauri. Kauri doesn't exist.

"I'll do whatever the fuck you want. I won't complain, I won't make a fuss. I'll stay on grounds, I'll go to the fucking meetings, whatever the fuck you want. Just... Just don't."

He feels cut loose, terrified and more vulnerable than he's been in forever but he refuses to show it, face curled into a snarl, voice harsh and biting. Tucker laughs, pulling off his tie with one hand, eyes wild.

"That little bargain might've tempted me earlier, Ace, but your friend here fucked up. He fucked up bad. And I plan on rectifying that little misstep."

“Wh-why is it…” Kauri’s voice trails off, slurred oddly, and he looks up at Tucker without standing up, bright red blood trickling down from a slice across his temple  into his right eye. He blinks it away, or tries, reaching up to wipe at it with his hand. “... that err’... ev’rybody can call me a slut but I’m n-never ‘lowed t’be mad about it?”

His ears were ringing, sort of, a weird muffled sound that existed inside his skull and not outside it. Kauri shifted back, wiping at his head again. 

Something jarred loose, with the blow to his head. Somewhere under Kauri’s panic is a darker, cynical, harder-edged anger, a pulsing want to defy, fight back, kick and scratch and bite until they remember he’s a person, not a pet, they can’t take his name away from him only they can and they did and Kauri’s weakness ended up stronger than the boy he had once been.

“Why are you… all… th’ same?”

“Act like a slut, people will call you a slut,” Tucker says, eyes still on Cassius. “Isn’t that right, Ace?”

Cass shrugs, crossing his arms, “Been begging for you to call me a slut for years and you still won’t.”

Tucker smiles, taking a few steps backwards so he can survey them both. Cass doesn’t miss the way Tucker is carefully winding his tie around his knuckles. Can’t risk bruising the hand he shakes with, can he now?

“Either way,” he says “I think all three of us know that the only way this one isn’t headed straight to jail for trespassing is if you both sit down, shut up, and play nice.”

Cass does his very best not to flinch. He’s schooled by now, at keeping his face blank and passive even as his heart starts racing. Something must flicker behind his eyes, though, or maybe Kauri’s face shifts behind him, because Tucker relaxes back on his heels, the satisfaction of finding a new chink in the armour painting his face with that insufferable smugness.

“Oh, we don’t like that, do we?” he says. “Sit down. Now. Or I get out my phone, and I’ll escort your friend downstairs to wait for the cops myself.”

Part of Kauri is astute enough to think, small men like hurting smaller ones to feel big, but the words never make it out of his mouth, because the part of him that knows things isn’t the part that keeps him alive sometimes, and the good boy deeper down steps up to the plate to force the words back down his throat.

His eyes are caught on the tie wrapped around the man’s knuckles - Owen does that sometimes, when he has a meeting the next day.

“So that’s… th’ trade?” Kauri manages, still slurred but getting better. He doesn’t move off the floor for now, but sits back on his heels, sliding easily into Position Two, hands on his thighs, kneeling on the floor. Muscle memory. He doesn’t have to think.

“Y-you… get off on th’ blood… and I get to leave?”

Damn it. Kauri winces as soon as the words are out of his mouth. He feels like his brain is going to split into two, and he knows better than to talk back to handlers, but he can’t stop himself. It feels like before all over again, like training. 

“If blood g-gets you hard-”

Stop it stop it stop it why am I still talking jesus Kauri stop

“-then you’ve got bigger problems than the slut you’re making bleed.”

Tucker laughs lightly, walking forward to stand directly in front of Kauri and tangle his fingers through his curls. Kauri shudders, trying to pull back, but Tucker’s grip is too strong. 

“He’s funny, this one, isn’t he?” he says. A hard tug to pull the man’s head back, wide blue eyes locked on his, Kauri’s mouth slightly open as he pulls in quick, shallow breaths. “Or at least, he thinks he is.”

“I don’t think I’m-”

The first backhand hits with the low thud of knuckles hitting cheekbone. One. Kauri’s head snaps to the side, moving with the slap rather than trying to brace himself against it, making it hurt less than it would otherwise. Cassius locks his gaze carefully on a patch on the floor, sets his jaw, and folds into himself. Two. Kauri grunts, this time, the barest hint of sound. Cass hears the hits beside him, counts as they land, despite himself. But he can’t bring himself to give a shit. Three.

Another grunt, higher-pitched, closer to a cry.

What the fuck did it matter? Cass thought. People got hurt all the time. Kauri had been hurt before. He’d get over it. 

Four.

It wasn’t Cass’ fucking fault. He’d warned Kauri back at the bar, back at the burger joint. He’d said it again and again. I’m not nice. And Kauri had come back with him anyway. wasn’t his fucking fault.

“You know what, I think, Ace?” Tucker says after five, panting just barely. Cass registers dimly that Kauri’s probably hurt by now. But five hits wasn’t many. They hadn’t all been to the head. He’d survive. “I think Kauri, needs some help calming down.”

Kauri, one side of his face bright red from Tucker’s hand, makes a soft, distressed sound. He knows three ways they’ll calm him down, the handlers, when he’s bad. They fuck him or drug him or hurt him until he’s too injured to speak. Fucking is the only thing that doesn’t make him feel worse, the only thing that feels better.

He doesn’t want the man, but it never matters what he wants, in the end.

Cass blinks slowly, eyes blank and bored as he turns to look at the blonde man standing beside him. He snorts a laugh. Looks to his left. There are a couple bottles of different pills on the bedside table. A few sleeves in the drawer, too. 

“What ones do you want?” 

“You’re the expert, Ace, just something to smooth the rough edges” 

He grabs a bottle on the edge. It’s only Valium. But Kauri’s slim enough. He pops off the lid and passes it over.

“Don’t have many left so don’t waste ‘em,” he says. His voice is flat, apathetic. “One’ll fuck him up plenty.”

“Two it is, then,” Tucker says, finally releasing Kauri’s hair to fish out the pills before grabbing at his jaw. “Here we go. Open nice and wide for me.”

Kauri doesn’t expect Cass to help. It’s clear what they are to each other, he and the man. Cass is the trainee. The man, Tucker, is the handler.

Kauri knows how that works. He’s watched a lot of trainees get hurt right in front of him and never helped, either. Not after they hurt him so badly he knew not to try again.

Kauri jerks back from the grip as best he can, gritting his teeth together and turning his head away. He doesn’t try to spit any words now, because that would mean opening his mouth. And that means pills. He can’t read the words on the pill bottle, has no idea what the man is going to give him - what they’re both going to give him.

"Kauri, just take the pills," Cass says, halfway numb. The quicker he took them, the quicker he'd be out of here. The quicker he was out of here, the quicker they would both be able to forget the fact they ever met.

Kauri freezes, for a breath, but the words don't have the weight of a real command. But…

He stares at the pills and opens his mouth anyway, like he had been commanded, letting Tucker force them into his mouth before he snaps it shut.

"Good boy," Tucker says, patting Kauri on the cheek with a smile. 

His mouth fills with bitterness and his stomach twists, saliva flooding his mouth, as he shifts the pills carefully around to slide them under his tongue and keep them there. If Tucker turns away - even just for a second - he can spit them into his palm and throw them under Cass's bed with no one the wiser. 

He even has one more skill.

He speaks, and he's so good at this you can't tell between the slur of the pills he's hiding and how he slurred before.