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haro-whumps · 17 days

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Hoarding Behavior #9

Masterpost

Warnings: dehumanization, objectification

“Wake up, my treasure,” said a soft voice in his ear. River blearily opened his eyes to see Master sitting next to him, a warm smile on his face.

It seemed early, and Noct had never woken him up before. River yawned and sat up.

“What is it, Master?”

“We are going to see my hatch-mates,” Master Noct explained, brushing part of River’s hair away from his face. “I can not leave you by yourself.”

“Why?” he asked. Master never seemed to mind his questions, instead indulging his curiosity.

“I seal my nest when I leave for more than a day. I do not know how that affects the air in here, and who will light the lanterns for you when I am gone?”

“Oh.”

Noct seemed to be in a hurry; two bags already sat packed by the exit, and he had already laid out River’s clothes for the day.

The clothes consisted of a simple pair of pants and a long sleeved shirt, unlike the usual… revealing… outfits Master had him wear.

“I do not want you to get cold,” Noct explained, sensing his confusion. “I will be flying, and the wind will chill you.”

Breakfast was over quickly, and they headed outside after the dishes were clean.

“Wait here,” Master ordered. He walked off, and River wondered what he was up to, until Master changed into his large dragon form. He started to roll a large boulder towards the cavern entrance, and River understood what he meant by “sealing the nest”.

“Now we may go,” said Noct after he was done. He scooped River up in one hand, and the bags in another, before raising his massive ruby wings to fly into the air.

___________________

The flight was long, and despite their early start, it was nearing midday before they landed.

River didn’t know how fast they had been going, but they were certainly hundreds of miles from home.

To his surprise, they landed in a massive sheep pasture. He couldn’t even see the opposite fence when he looked for it, and there were just so many animals.

Even more strange, the sheep didn’t seem a bit bothered that a dragon had landed among them.

“Come,” Noct called. “My brother has his nest not far from here.”

It was true, it wasn’t far at all. And unlike Noct’s nest, it was unhidden, buried in a hill with a simple tapestry door.

But Noct did not enter the hill, instead walking up and over it.

River followed him, and saw three dragons (purple, blue, green) in their small forms sitting on an innocuous picnic blanket. It was nearly comical; three huge predators lounging around casually.

“Noct,” greeted one of them, a man with purple scales and silver eyes. He was taller than Noct; they all were.

“Vixes,” grinned Master. He set the bags off to the side, and the two touched their foreheads together. Noct bumped into the other two, in an equally friendly gesture.

“Your sheep look well,” said Noct as he sat, and River awkwardly sat next to him. Master deemed this unacceptable, and tugged him into his lap instead.

“Thank you,” said Vixes. “The wool is coming in nicely.”

“Who is this?” interrupted the green dragon, a woman. She was a whole head taller than the rest, and River guessed she must be ten feet tall standing, not including her horns.

“A treasure of mine,” said Noct, proud. “I call him River.” Noct’s hand brushed over his stomach and River squirmed from the tickling sensation.

“How cute,” said the blue dragon. “May I?”

Noct pushed River off his lap, and the blue dragon pulled him forward by his hips.

“Be gentle, Anlis,�� warned Noct. “He is delicate.”

River nervously turned back to look at Master, but he was sitting mostly unbothered.

“Look at me,” cooed Anlis, his hands roaming over River. Anlis had bronze-y eyes that scrutinized him.

“I have seen prettier humans,” he commented, “but he looks sweet.”

“I do not understand why you would collect a human,” said the lady dragon, whose name River still hadn’t caught. “I understand Vixes has his odd interest in sheep-”

Vixes hissed-

“But a human? What do you see in him?”

Anlis passed River back over to his Master, and Noct seemed relieved to have him in his lap again. River felt the same way; curling into Noct’s warm chest.

“It does not concern you, Siat.”

“And I do not have an odd interest in sheep,” protested Vixes. “They are for wool. I hoard the finest cloth, and the best looms and spinning wheels, and-”

“Yes, yes, my apologies,” waved off Siat. “Still, my point stands.”

“It is not so strange,” Anlis said, “Humans are curious little creatures, and they make such fine things. Noct collects rare human items; why would he not want a human too?”

“Hm,” she hummed, neither disagreeing nor agreeing.

The mood lightened after lunch, and Vixes clearly was not interested in sheep for the sake of sheep, as their lunch was roasted mutton.

“Have you considered putting River in silk?” asked Vixes, “that cotton is a nice weave, but you could do better.”

“I do put him in silk. And gold, and other lovely things. I did not want him to get cold on the flight here. Humans have no inner fire, you know.”

Vixes hummed in agreement, and the conversation drifted to other things.

When evening broke, they moved into Vixes’s nest.

It was far different from Noct’s den. Instead of glittering cases of jewels and fine-hewn furniture, there were hanging tapestries with vivid colors. Glass containers of dyes lined a roughly-made shelf, and many, many bolts of fine fabrics were stacked neatly on a large rug.

Several looms sat in rows, with partially finished work, and a large sorting table held piles of wool.

The only consistency was perhaps the stone door that no doubt held food behind it, and the large bed dug into the floor.

“Did you make all this yourself?” asked River as they all sat in the nest.

“Of course,” beamed Vixes as he settled into his bed. “I even breed my sheep to perfection. Only the best wool will do for my looms.”

“What happens to the sheep that aren’t good?”

“Dinner,” joked Anlis, and Siat nodded.

“Very practical,” she said.

“I could not possibly eat so much mutton so quickly. No, the bad sheep fill my belly, then my shepherds have their pick.”

“Shepherds?”

Vixen yawned, his long teeth flashing. “Mhm. I cannot watch my thousands of sheep myself. At first, I sold my bad sheep, but my herd became too big, and so I pay shepherds in sheep. Their new herds share my fields, their families get fed, the shepherd wool goes to market, and my sheep are safe.” he explained.

“I never sell my wool, and even my worst sheep make good fabric for humans, so they are happy. They even built a settlement nearby.”

“You mean, an entire village lives here simply because you had too many sheep?” asked River, impressed.

Vixes shrugged, unconcerned. “I do not mind. My sheep are fed and watered. That is all I am concerned with.” He laid down, and seemed more interested in sleeping than elaborating.

Analis and Siat quietly chatted with each other, and Noct was already half asleep, purring. He tugged River down to lay with him, and River obliged.

He cuddled close into his chest, and despite the fact that he was in a nest with four whole dragons, River didn’t feel unsafe at all in Noct’s arms.

It was probably the safest place in the world.

taglist: @paintedpigeon1 @haro-whumps @mj-or-say10 @annablogsposts @pumpkin-spice-whump

#pretty little bauble boy #others #writing

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haro-whumps · 18 days

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Chapter two: Ivar.

CW: Slaves in a medieval society, abuse,

The only thing keeping Ivar alive in this hellhole was his desperate desire to kill Katherine Blackthorne.

It was a freezing November night and Ivar knew he was supposed to die here, trapped in this narrow kennel in the middle of the castle's courtyard.

During the day, he was on perfect display, stripped of his clothes and dignity for the English to gawk at. But now, the night engulfed him in darkness as thick as the northern sea during a night dive.

Pain pulsed through Ivar’s legs. They twitched, unable to straighten in the cramped space.

The kennel's icy bars warmed as they pressed into his shins and he leaned his clammy forehead against them. They felt almost good against the burn of his fever.

His back must have gotten infected after the last whipping. The soiled hay in his kennel stuck to the dried blood on his back, irritating the crisscross of partly crusted wounds. Every twitch pulled his skin painfully, and he trembled violently in the frigid air.

Somewhere to his right, a heavy metal door slammed shut. The servants’'s entrance? It was too loud for a wooden door and not loud enough for a castle gate. But this late at night?

A pair of heavy steps rushed towards the courtyard, joined by a couple lighter ones. Nervous whispers echoed through the cloister walk as they drew near.

“Does Lady Blackthorne know of this?” asked an older maid. Ivar strained to listen. Nothing ever happened in Blackthorn castle without the bitch’tes knowledge. And explicit permission.

“Not yet,” came the gruff reply.

“But- you can’t bring a stranger inside! Who even is this girl? Oh gods, what if she's a witch?”

“Doubtful. Found her out in the woods, totally out of it.”

“But- The woods? At this time? A girl shouldn’t be in the woods at night. And why- why is she naked?” The woman's voice pitched high within discomfort on the last question.

“Dunno. Should I have left her to freeze to death?”

“No! But- but I have nothing to do with this, you hear. Nothing.”

A lone lantern flame cast their long shadows onto the courtyard as they rounded a corner. Hissing, Ivar shifted onto his side to see them set foot on the wet cobblestones. They glittered in the light.

The head of housemaids hurried ahead, head turning hectic on her long neck to spot any possible witnesses lurking in the dark. Her bonnet sat askew on graying brown hair, thrown on in a rush no doubt, but her black servants dress fell straight down to her ankles, the dark linen pristine and bar any wrinkles. In stark contrast to the bulky, mud smeared appearance of the huntsman following her.

His boots and leather trousers were crusted in late autumn slush. A thick scarf and hat obscured half his face. Only his frostbitten red nose and grim eyes were visible, looking down at the person he carried bundled in his coat.

“By the gods, did you hear that?” Ivar could see the woman's face now, her sharp features drawn tight in displeasure. Her thin lips pursed as she spat out: “I think that Norse pig is awake.”

The huntsman didn’t answer. Instead he wrapped his brown leather coat tighter around the unconscious girl in his arms. Pale, dangling legs and a shock of blond hair stuck out of it.

“How can you be this calm?” The woman spat, black skirt swishing as she faced him. “What if he rats us out for some extra food?”

The huntsman's bushy brows furrowed. “The Norse are too proud to bargain for food scraps.”

Ivars dry lips cracked in a smile, when a sudden burst of wind whipped across the courtyard, its howl drowning out the servants' protests and extinguishing the lantern flame. When it hit him, his black salt-sweaty hair blew into his gray eyes, hay flying everywhere.

“A bad omen,” hissed the maid. Cloth rustled and a match scraped against a matchbox’s striking strip. Once. Twice. “I tell you all this is a bad omen.” It lit with a crackling sizzle.

The wind carried a smell that sent goosebumps down Ivar’s back.

The stench of angels.

The sweet decay of death hit him like a battering ram, catapulting his thoughts to abandoned battlefields full of angels sprouting from the ground, decomposing the corpses of his comrades.

Why would the huntsman haul an angel touched corpse from the woods? Ivar wondered, swallowing down bile.

After some fumbling the maid’s lantern flickered back to life and Ivar noticed the small puffs of warm breath escaping from the unconscious girl. So she wasn’t dead?

A draugr perhaps? No, Ivar doubted it. Never would the huntsman make such a mistake.

But angels only took the living. And never let go of the dead.

Whatever this girl was, a living corpse or a human, Ivar knew at least one thing for sure:

She was an unplanned disturbance in Katherine’s meticulously run machinery of a castle.

And during war, disturbances meant chances.

Ivar curled up in his frigid kennel, back burning at the stretch. For the first time since his capture, he smiled.

Taglist:

@ashintheairlikesnow @vickytokio @newbornwhumperfly @kira-the-whump-enthusiast @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @studyofwhump @dragyouthroughthewhump @studyofwhump @secretwhumplair @whump-queen @whump-captain

#ooo may i be added to this taglist please!#others #writing

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haro-whumps · 28 days

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I Know You Remember Me

John recognizes a wealthy client’s stolen pet immediately, even filthy, with two black eyes. He moves quickly to buy him back from the box truck driver in possession of him, and then must think what to do about this. Meanwhile, he looks after the abused pet in a motel room.

CW: lay it on thick hurt/comfort, pet whump universe (not bbu), caretaker has some ulterior motives but is largely sympathetic, offscreen noncon with multiple whumpers, sti mention, underweight whumpee mention, whumpee offering sex, bruises, burns & cigarette burns, nonsexual nudity and bathing, platonic bed-sharing, medically inaccurate care I’m sure, one shot probably

“I know you remember me. I’m sure I remember you.”

The unfortunate creature— for he looked more a creature than a boy in the low light, in the filthy west Texas motel room John had rented for the night with cash— dared to steal a glance up at him.

His eyes were dark, and bright with fear. Bruises ringed both of them like an unlucky fighter, purple as the Easter cloth draped on all the crosses they’d driven past. John knew from the taut look of the eyelids they’d been swollen shut a day or so earlier. The boy pet had dried blood caked in his nostrils and on one side of his downturned mouth. His hair was a matted and filthy mop that fell over his forehead and ears in greasy, wavy sections crusted together with more old blood.

The boy looked at him cautiously. There was too much fear in his posture, in his eyes. It was impossible to tell if he recognized John, too.

John squatted down to be eye level. As he thought it might, this made the frightened pet drop his eyes and flatten his spine as best he could against the nicotine stained paint of the motel wall.

“Hey, now,” John murmured, as if to one of his racehorses. They were spirited, flighty things, nothing like the quarter horses he’d grown up with. He talked to them all the same, though, from the spring colts to the swaybacked veterans.

“I’m not gonna hurt you. I know you’ve seen a lot of people lately, huh? You probably don’t remember me. That’s okay. I remember you. You were at Jack Kinsington’s place before all this.”

The boy did not look back up at him, and his dirty hair gave away his trembling, but he was listening.

“I came by with a couple of horses. Bays, both of them. Soaked in sweat and prancing all around, you remember them? They’re high strung, they don’t like to ride in the trailer. Anyway, I told Jack he ought to let you stretch your legs. He did, but you were so numb you couldn’t stand for a while. You looked right at me.”

The boy turned his head an inch, so he could glance up at John’s face again.

“You remember that day. Sure you do. I thought you were in rough shape then, but I have to say, you look worse now.”

That lost him the eye contact. That was okay. The boy remembered. If not his face, then the incident.

“I thought it was awfully cruel to keep you in a space that small,” he went on. “I don’t know how some people do to a person what they wouldn’t do to an animal. They justify it, I guess. They project things onto these pets they buy and then they punish them for it. Gives them their kicks. Even Jack Kinsington, who I have to admit I respected up until that day.”

He stopped that train of thought.

“Why don’t we get you up off the floor there and let me take care of you, huh? No offense, you look kind of like roadkill.”

The boy made no sound, no indication that he’d even heard except for the way his chest expanded a little faster with his quickening breath. The poor thing's heart must be pounding. John had a knack for fixing things up, be it a business his brother had fucked up or a lame horse, a broken water heater or a vehicle. He spent less time fixing things now and more time delegating what other people needed to fix, but this boy was downright hurting his innermost, rarely expressed tenderness of heart, and he wanted to fix something for him.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said again. His knees were getting tired in this deep squat, and his boots had no give in the toes for it. “I’m gonna clean you up and look after you. You don’t have to do anything, just don’t fight me too much. Can you do that?”

He reached out and laid a hand over the boy’s. The abused pet flinched but didn’t jerk away. John encircled the boy’s wrist in his hand and pulled it slowly away from his body, towards him. “Can you stand?” he asked, pushing himself to standing and bringing the boy with him.

He made it to his feet, and was nearly as tall as John, but stumbled when he tried to take a step.

“Please,” he whispered reflexively as John moved closer, flinching to protect his battered face.

“Please what, baby?” John muttered, lifting the boy’s arm over the back of his shoulders and wrapping his arm around his slim waist to help him walk. “You’re okay, you’re right here. I’ve got you. Let’s get you in the tub.”

Slowly, they staggered to the motel bathroom a d John flicked on the staggeringly white lights that buzzed and hummed to life. He sat the boy on the lip of the low bathtub as gently as he could.

“I’m going to give you a bath,” he said matter-of-factly, turning the taps so warm water began to fill the tub. “Where did all this blood come from?”

The boy was watching him warily, dark eyes following his every move.

“You hear me? Where’s all this dried blood coming from, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

John nodded, pleased the boy had spoken. Some didn’t, or wouldn’t, he knew, not once they looked like this one did.

“Did they beat you? Is that what all this is from?”

He gave a small nod, blinking in discomfort at John’s bluntness.

“Did they hurt you in any other ways?”

He nodded again.

John felt a tug of adrenaline in the pit of his stomach. “How?”

Jack’s pet looked evasively at the rising bath water.

“If you tell me how you’re hurt, I can help you better.”

Nothing.

“What’s your name?”

“Paulo.”

He put the emphasis on the au, and there was a way he said his L that positioned the tongue differently than he did when saying other words.

“Paulo,” John said, putting the emphasis on the vowels of the first syllable too, but with no attempt at altering his very American L. I’m John. I bought you from that man, the one with the box truck. I take it Jack Kinsington sold you? Or were you stolen?”

Tears shimmered in the boy’s dark eyes, swollen and purple still like a raccoon mask. He bit the inside of his cheek to steel himself and keep from letting them fall.

John gentled his voice. “Paulo. I only ask because it’s important. If you legally belong to Jack, I gotta bring you back to him.”

Paulo’s head snapped up. He lost control of the tears, which spilled down his bruised cheeks. He grabbed hold of John’s sleeves, pulling himself closer as if his whole body was not bruised and sore. “No,” he begged urgently. “Please. I’ll do anything. Please. I-I’ll do anything you want, I can’t… please don’t….”

An idea dawned on him and he let go of his latest captor’s sleeve in order to lift his trembling fingers to his own tattered shirt. He pulled it over his head with a barely-suppressed whimper of pain. His torso was bruised like his face and arms, dark black and purple impact points on his warm toned skin like fists or boots, some that looked like electric burns left from a cattle prod and others more reminiscent of the yellow, oozing wounds cigarettes tended to leave. He was ribby, in a dehydrated, sudden sort of way that looked like he hadn’t eaten much of anything in the last few days.

He started on the button of his pants and John reached out to stop him. “Hey. No. What’s this?”

“Do- do you prefer girls? I can be just as good for you.” His glittering eyes were simultaneously like a starving animal and horribly blank. “They all say so.”

Ah. There was an answer to one of his questions. He pulled Paulo’s wrists away from the opening of his pants, held them in his own on the cool edge of the tub between them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not interested.”

“I could take a bath,” he whispered hopefully.

“You will take a bath. But I’m still not interested. I need to know— were you given to someone by Jack Kinsington rightfully, or were you stolen?”

The fear was back. John didn’t know which was worse on this one, the dead eyes or the fear. “Don’t take me back to him.”

“He hurt you a lot, then? Jack?”

John already figured as much. Despite his admiration for the man’s business sense, he was a cruel and sadistic pet owner. Once he’d seen a boy shoved into a cage fit for a fox, he’d reconciled that much in his mind. It was like that often, when it came to human pets, and never quite who you’d expect.

The boy begged miserably. “Please, Sir. I’ll do anything.”

“You mentioned that. He didn’t sell you, did he?”

Paulo glanced down.

So he’d bought a stolen pet. That’s what he more or less suspected when he’d seen the boy at the rest stop, weeks after he’d seen him in the cage at Jack’s and much worse for wear.

Jack Kinsington would probably be even more open to buying more of John’s racehorses in the near future if he returned his favorite boy-pet to him. Don’t worry what it cost to get him back, Jack. Less than the yearling I’ve got for you to look at this spring, I can tell you that. Call it even.

John turned off the taps and tested the water with his fingers. He’d wondered if the boy would be willing to take those filthy clothes off in front of him, but seeing as he’d just offered himself, he thought it more likely now.

“Take those off,” he said of the boy’s remaining clothing. “You can borrow some of mine when you’re cleaned up.”

Despite his offer less than five minutes ago, Paulo was modest to the point of shyness once he was naked.

“It’s okay. I’m not even looking at you,” John assured him a little gruffly as he helped him into the water. “I just want to get you clean.”

Paulo flinched as he submerged, undoubtedly feeling every burn, cut, and bruise as he did. He was so dirty that tear tracks were now visible on his face from his crying. John wet a rough motel washcloth in the warm water and brought it to his face. He dabbed and nudged the dried blood from Paulo’s mouth and nose. The boy tried very hard not to flinch and shy away, and in return he tried to be very gentle. “Good,” he said quietly, wetting the cloth and returning it to the blood and swollen tissue. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

Paulo made brief eye contact with him at that, probably because it had become a foreign concept that someone would make an effort against hurting him. Just as quickly he slid his gaze away, back to an indeterminate point on the bathroom tile.

“You wanna do this next part?”

Paulo didn’t answer.

John moved as gently and quickly as was prudent over the rest of his body, knowing he was hurting him when he passed over the yellowed cigarette burns on his legs and hips.

“I know. You’re gonna be okay. Almost done. You’re doing really well.”

Paulo let John wash his hair, using some of the hotel shampoo that would likely sting some cuts but was desperately needed. He closed his eyes as John worked his fingers through the blood and dirt, the snarls coming apart slowly with gentle patience. As he rinsed the boy’s dark hair clean, John noticed he had stopped shaking.

He drained the now red-brown water and wrapped Paulo in a white hotel towel. He looked better clean, though there was nothing to do for the bruises but wait. He sat on the side of the motel bed as John went through his black duffel bag, pulling out sweatpants, a gray cotton T-shirt, and ibuprofen for him.

Paulo dressed in the bathroom and accepted two of the pills. He came out and sat on the end of the bed afterwards, staring at the pattern on the comforter.

“Does Jack know who had you?” John asked as he set up his phone charger. “The guy with the box truck out there?”

Paulo shook his head. “That man wasn’t the first.”

So he’d been bought and sold multiple times since being stolen—kidnapped— from Jack's property. It was possible Jack knew the original perpetrators, but had no idea where his pet was now. John sighed. His mind was working analytically, trying to understand every facet of the situation before he acted— trying to understand how he could manipulate it most in his favor. But that all felt shallow and cruel when he truly saw the boy in front of him, his damp hair and his bruised face, his narrow chest and the way he was nervously picking at a scab on the inside of his wrist.

“Don’t do that,” John said softly. “I don’t want you getting any infections.”

Paulo stopped immediately but looked intrigued by the care in that statement. Likely no one had said anything like it to him in a long while now.

“Are you hungry?”

Paulo shrugged. John raised his eyebrows and he went with a more committed shake of the head. “No, Sir.”

“…Are you scared?”

The boy swallowed, touched the scab on his wrist without picking it.

He’d said it before, but he knew he’d have to say it a hundred more times, and show it a thousand, before it sunk in. He likely would not end up doing that, but he’d say it as long as the pet was in his possession. “I promise I'm not gonna hurt you.”

“What, then?” Paulo asked, shrugging one shoulder to his ear in what felt like embarrassment at his own question.

“If I’m not going to hurt you? What then?”

He nodded.

“Nothing. I'm gonna take you back to Tennessee.”

“To Jack?”

“For the time being, to my place in Lewisburg. I have a farm.”

“What kind of farm?”

“Horses. You wanna come?”

He said he did. Not that he had much of a choice. John suspected they both knew that killing him on the side of a dirt road in west Texas would be better than what might happen if he took him back to Tennessee and failed to promptly return him to Jack. Jack would take it out on his lost little pet as much as he did John.

“I can’t believe you’re still even sitting up and talking. Come here.” John stood up and pulled the corner of the bedsheets down. “Lie down.”

Paulo did as he asked.

Before John would cover him up he asked, “Can you tell me if anyone kicked you in the back or abdomen, or if you feel any pain when you move or breathe?”

He thought about that. “I don’t know. I’m sore.”

“Any sharp pains, anything feel broken?”

“No?”

“Can I touch your stomach right here? It won’t be for long.”

A little apprehensive, Paulo agreed. John placed his hands on his abdomen and prodded his way along, trying to feel anything amiss or to get a sharp yell from Paulo. None came.

“Does this hurt anywhere more than soreness?”

“No,” his patient said in a small voice.

“Okay,” he said, and covered the boy to his chest with the blankets. “I’m done. Thank you. I was worried you might have internal bleeding, or broken ribs.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’ll need to get you checked for other things too, soon. Make sure you didn’t contract anything.”

It took a moment for this to register, but when it did, Paulo blushed scarlet.

“It’s okay,” John assured him. His next gesture surprised him. Tenderly, he brushed the back of his knuckles to an unbruised spot on Paulo’s cheek. He was quickly becoming endeared to this unfortunate little pet. “You’re probably alright. And even in the event you did, it’s not your fault.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to?” Paulo asked, leaning his cheek almost imperceptibly into John’s knuckles.

John retracted his hand. “No. I didn’t want to because I am not interested in hurting you.”

“I said you could.”

“You and I both know it would still be hurting.”

Paulo laid his head back on the pillow. “I don’t understand what you want.”

“For starters, I want you to tell me what you want to eat.”

He didn’t eat much, but he did make an effort. John got the impression he was suspicious of every simple kindness, every time there were footsteps outside their door in the breezeway.

When he turned out the light and put a partition of pillows between them to sleep, he felt Paulo start awake every time a car pulled into the parking lot, or the AC beneath the window kicked on with a rattle.

“You’re okay,” he said drowsily from across the pillow divide, which made it feel more like bunking together and less like sharing a bed. “Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody knows where you are at all. That door is deadbolted. And I’m here between the rest of the world and you. You can sleep tonight. Nothing can hurt you.”

He doubted words would actually help, since the boy's nerves were probably completely shot, and who knows when was the last time he’d had a good nights sleep, and felt safe enough to do so? Still, he thought it should be nice to hear. It was the least he could do. He didn’t make any undue promises. Just tonight.

Paulo was quiet for a minute, and then John heard a wet sniff that was the unmistakable sound of crying. He didn’t think he should say ‘don’t cry’ to someone in his position, so he didn’t. He just listened from across the pillows until the little pet fell asleep.

#nice!!! i choose to believe he keeps him as his own little secret #others #writing #peach don't look

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haro-whumps · 28 days

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putting my OCs in Situations

#you got mcdonalds money fjfihenfodhbr #others #art

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haro-whumps · 29 days

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Bluebeard's Pet - Part I

This is a whumpy retelling of the folk/fairytale figure of Bluebeard in three parts. It replaces Bluebeard's new wife with a male "pet" (slave/concubine). It takes place in an indeterminate year in a fictional medieval Europe.

cw: slavery, pet whump, slave auction, stocks, power imbalance, language barriers, gruesome elements like torture, execution, and draconian policies throughout, whipping, sexually explicit scenes, dubcon because of social status, light knifeplay, alcohol consumption, praise kink

Part One: The Hare Moon

Luca’s wrists and back ached stiffly from the stocks at the slave auction. The back of his neck was burned from the sun, and his throat hurt from the long day's thirst.

At least at night the air was cool and the stars were magnificent, a bowl of eternity tipped upside down over the Roman-built road they traveled endlessly south on, towards constellations that looked like a giant ladle, a crab, a many headed serpent. Under the silver light of a quarter-moon, Luca slept in patches, woken always by a shrill whinny of a horse or a bumpy patch of road washed out along a creek bed from the spring snowmelt. He had not slept soundly in many nights, not eaten a true meal, not stretched his arms over his head for the ropes that always bound his wrists. He had not combed his hair or dared say a single word for fear of being struck in the face again.

His newest captors, the people who raided the seaside village he’d belonged to since he could remember, spoke a language he could not even guess to name. It seemed full of consonants to him, with nowhere his mind could rest on a vowel or hear the distinction between words and sentences. For weeks he’d been going by a man’s tone with him, like a dog. He noticed he’d begun to behave like a dog, which made him feel embarrassed and sullen.

He was the only one in the wagon procession from his home country, the others all spoke in Nordic tongues to one another, eyeing him with appraising blue gazes but not trying to communicate. Luca knew his mother tongue should have been or may have once been Italian, but he knew only English now. He longed for even the gruff voice of the old guard at Thistledown, his grumbling would be like birdsong now. He had dark eyes that were sometimes soft, despite his rough voice and hands, and he had slipped Luca hot tea with honey on more than one cold night. What he wouldn’t give for a cup now, in the chipped old mug the man always gave him, with his hands free to hold it in front of him as he pleased.

At first he thought no one had wanted him at the auction. He stayed bent and aching in the stocks, unable to do anything but blink and twitch like a colt at the flies and gnats that buzzed around his face and hands. His gaze was on the ground, he could lift his neck only about an inch and even that sent a twinge of warning pain down his vertebrae. All morning as the sun rose from the April treetops towards its spring zenith he saw boots, boots of soldiers and of merchants, of paupers and some he deemed were likely the fine leather shoes of nobility. Once or twice someone stopped and spoke to the master, who would answer in an oily, flattering voice. Luca couldn’t understand his words, but noted the change in demeanor he had with his prospective customers compared with how he spoke to them— his captured slaves.

Once or twice the slaver pried his mouth open so someone could inspect his teeth, or pulled up and eyelid to see the color of his eyes— or tugged his matted, curly dark hair as if to test the thickness. He could taste their skin on his tongue for hours after they stuck their fingers in his mouth, but he was too thirsty to waste saliva spitting on the ground. He’d probably get a swift kick in the shin for it, anyway. Only the master slaver could spit without permission, which he did frequently— long brown squirts of chewing tobacco through his likewise brown teeth.

Then a large man— Luca could tell by the height of the very shadow on the packed earth in front of him, stood in front of him. He wore a pair of black leather boots, not in the style he’d seen the rest of the morning but flatter, with a tapered toe and filigree silver buckles at the ankles. Of his own volition, Luca dared lift his head that painful inch to raise his eyes to this new stranger. He was well over six feet, broad shouldered and black haired, with silver at the temples almost as if it had been brushed in at perfect intervals. He had dark eyes like Luca, which stood out to him after traveling with so many pale haired, blue eyed captives for so many weeks. Yet unlike Luca’s near black ones, this impassive man’s eyes were light brown, cognac flecked with citrine, like sunlight in a creekbed reflected through water. He wore no discernible expression, but his eyes met Luca and felt like a static shock from a wool blanket. He hurried to drop his gaze back to the dirt.

The slave in the next stock had just bitten someone, and was being beaten with a birch switch so ruthlessly she shrieked and fought her stocks so they rattled. Luca flushed in second hand embarrassment, not only for the slave girl who was being whipped like a donkey, but, strangely, for her bad behavior in front of this regal and composed man.

The man walked a circle around him. In the stocks, Luca could do nothing but stare ahead at the ground. From his peripheral he could see the man wore a curved and ornamented dagger on his hip. Over his wrists and forearms he wore leather bracers, wide and well worn, and on one finger was a gold ring with a flat black head, and in the black field was some jewel, green as deep forest moss, glinting in the sun as it passed his line of vision and was lost again before he could make it out.

The rest of the great man’s garb seemed to him something like the leather and cotton travel-wear his captors wore in these lands, yet over this practical clothing he wore a cloak that spoke to Luca of the unknown lands to the east, an outer kaftan of royal blue embroidered with canary yellow Ottoman tulips. It had fur like that of Timberwolves at the neck, making his great shoulders appear even larger.

The man exchanged words with his slaver in that slippery, impenetrable language, and Luca found his jaw being worked open for the half dozenth time. No finger was shoved inside his mouth, but the foreign man did look at both his top and bottom rows of teeth, the back of his throat. He asked a question and the slaver answered affirmatively, eagerly. Cool fingertips touched the sides of Luca’s throat, just beneath the jaw. He shivered as they worked down the side of his neck, looking for something under the skin he did not understand that none of the others had known to look for.

The slave beside them shrieked one last time and went limp, held up by her wrists and neck. The man glanced over at her, at her matted yellow hair and her bleeding legs and then back at Luca. He put his finger sidelong in front of his mouth.

“What about you?” he asked in English. His voice was measured and low, perfectly enunciated as if to make up for his slight accent. “Do you bite like these little northern barbarians?”

Such a relief it was to be spoken to in a familiar tongue, no matter the words or by whom, that Luca blinked tears away from his eyes, startled by them. He shook his head slowly, deliberately. No.

The man broke into a smile that went right to his eyes and crinkled the skin at the corners. Still it looked saddened, perhaps by the tears standing in Luca’s. “Neither will I, then,” he winked, as if they were sharing a private joke.

The slaver came close with the switch raised. Though Luca could not understand his words, he understood the question he spoke well enough. Shall I beat this one, too? Perhaps buyers liked to see how prospective slaves react to pain. Perhaps he thought Luca had displeased the man. The foreign man made eye contact with him again, and that was the first of many understandings they would share. “No,” he said to the slaver, giving a casual frown and shake of the head. He said something further in the tongue he and the slaver shared that Luca did not.

Luca heard an exchange of coins and felt numb with fear and relief both. But then the man left, without a word of reassurance or a claiming touch to his hair, his hand, anything.

He learned later that he was to be brought by wagon to his new Master’s castle, which sat like a great ancient dragon guarding the hills and woods of a remote countryside, as far south and east as Luca had ever been or imagined.

When he finally arrived he was sick from some travel-fever that had gone through the wagons like a curse, leaving them weak and dehydrated. A few died, and they stopped for just long enough to roll the corpses out and bury them along the roadside in shallow graves. Luca wondered if this was out of some universal respect for the dead, or if they simply didn’t want to be caught tossing corpses along the road and fined by local authorities that might take offense to such careless pollution. He had a feeling, watching the master spit tobacco at his feet impatiently as the slaves who were still well enough dug a hole for one of their own, that it was the latter.

The Baron did not greet him when he arrived, and for that he was grateful. He was filthy, repulsive, and sicker than he’d ever been. A pair of servant women helped him up flight after flight of stone steps, some broad and straight and others curving and narrow, past faded tapestries and beautiful chandeliers that reminded his half delirious mind of the stars he’d watched from the wagon, and finally into a huge beautiful room with a waiting warm bath. The women stripped him naked. He helped them as best he could, without a thought except that his clothes should be burned. They guided him into a wide wooden barrel lined with pounded copper that glowed amber in the hearth light.

He sunk into warm water and they scrubbed him with sure hands, as if they’d bathed a hundred new slaves in this very tub.

“Bad water,” one tsked to the other.

“You speak English?” he asked feverishly. He smiled at them in relief. They looked so different than the servants he was used to, dressed in white or gray with their hair covered for cleanliness and their faces plain. These girls wore dresses of brightly dyed linen, and something was reddening their lips like smeared blood. Their brown hair was long and loose about their shoulders, brushed out and shameless and clean. Maybe they weren’t servants, he wondered. But who else would wash a sick, filthy slave bought at auction?

He was sorry they had to deal with him, but grateful it wasn’t his new Master. The shame of his soiled clothes and wasted body would be too much. He might be disillusioned and disgusted. He might have a bout of buyers remorse and not even want him anymore. Perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps he was being cleaned and prepared for a slaughter. What did he know of these strange lands?

The women didn’t answer him, and spoke in another tongue to each other after that. They dressed him in silk pants and no shirt, led him barefoot to a great bed the size of one of the slavers’ wagons. There he dozed, looking into the dark, vaulted recesses of the ceiling, until light crept through thick burgundy curtains, and more servants brought him food on soft bare feet, and it was dark again.

One late evening, with a foreign, sweet-scented breeze floating in the open window, he felt the side of the bed depressing and opened his eyes. In buttery moonlight he saw the profile of his new master light a candle. His nose was long and straight, with a sharp bridge and eyebrows that made him look like a scowling heathen warlord in one of the illuminated manuscripts he had glimpsed in the church once, treasures passing through for his old master to selectively sift through and send the rest along to London.

His old master never sat on the side of the bed. Luca had only ever seen him a few times a month, and even that was more than he wanted to. He was a pale eyed, shrewd Lord, with skin that seemed translucent gray and a sour outlook on just about everything as far as Luca could tell. He did not inspire the curiosity tinged with fear that this man did, smelling of leather and woodsmoke and the outdoors at night.

“I was told you’ve been very sick,” said the Baron in his soft, perfect English.

“I am much better now, my lord,” Luca answered carefully, sitting up as best he could against thick downy pillows. He didn’t know if he looked better, but the women had washed his hair and fed him and given him clean water to drink, so he hoped he at least resembled whatever the man had liked in him at the auction. He didn’t know what sort of man he was, or why exactly he was here. “Those women were very kind. Especially to a slave.”

“Good,” his new master said, and touched only the very end of a lock of his hair so gently it tickled his scalp and gave him goosebumps up his left side. “You’re not a slave, though.”

Luca tilted his head.

“You’re a pet. My pet. If you’d like.”

Pet. He’d heard the word, but it was always in the context of antiquity. It was elevated from slave, though still a position of social bondage. It was a favored, exclusive position akin to a concubine. His heart thudded in his rib cage. Suddenly the size of the Baron was overwhelming instead of just alluring, and their proximity was alarming.

“Or you can remain a slave, if you prefer,” shrugged the Baron. His cloak tonight was embroidered crimson on a field of black. At first the red looked like fleur de lis, but when he looked closer he could see they were beautifully stitched Hydras, three watersnake heads on top of a dragon's body, with forked tongues lashing from their snoutish mouths.

“I… I don’t understand. I’m sorry.”

“Of course. You are not from here. I understand. As a slave you’ll work in the castle, or on the grounds, or in the village. Wherever you’re needed or you show some aptitude. You’ll answer to Sister Agathar. I don’t deal with slaves directly. Not unless one commits a capitol offense.”

“And as a pet?” he asked, his voice wavering.

“You’ll stay here, in the castle. These are my rooms, where you are welcome, but you’ll have your own. You’ll have access to the library, the baths, the gardens. The stables, if you like to ride.”

“What is a pets… purpose?”

“Only to be my companion. My wife died a few months ago giving birth to my son, Alec. May her soul be at peace. I will remarry, eventually, as I need more children to strengthen my house. But…my tastes can run toward dark-eyed boys I find in the stocks in Saxony, too. But only if you’ll have me. I have no interest in conquering.”

That was very well for him, Luca knew, because it would not be particularly difficult for this man if he did. “Tonight?”

His master laughed. He was so straightforward, so at ease that he made Luca’s fear feel childish and needless. “No. Absolutely, no. There is no rush. Though if I were to suggest a time constraint…” he nodded out the narrow window at the full moon rising over the dark and wild landscape, orange as a cantaloupe. “By the next full moon, I’d like to know your final decision. Remain a slave or become my pet. And ideally to consummate it, if you choose thusly.”

The foreign Lord’s eyes were dark in the candlelight, his beard thicker and fuller than it had been at the auction, streaked in a few places in silver. The rest of it was so black it appeared blue. Despite his height and Zeuslike stature, he had a gentle and civilized air about him, a manner Luca had observed from afar in nobility ever since coming as a young slave to the foggy island village he would come to think of as home.

All his earlier memories were of a white stucco house and sun faded carpets, a lemon tree, and a bright blue sea crystalized and solidified so they were more like paintings in his mind than memories he could visit. They were stuck behind a midnight raid, a blow to the side of his head, his brothers screaming, a dog barking and barking until it yelped and fell silent.

This strange clime, the opulent and beautiful room he’d been recovering in, and the seemingly boundless civility of his new master was intoxicating. He was being offered a position of wealth and comfort and favor. His only other option was a job in a kitchen or field, sleeping on countless generations of lice in a bed of straw, no doubt eating thin leftover soup and stale bread rinds from the castle.

“You seem fair and wise,” he said cautiously, hoping flattery was something this aristocrat liked as much as most of them did. “I… I think I’d be honored to stay as your pet. Though, I am not trained in the customs of that position, and I do not know where I am.”

The Baron smiled, and it felt to Luca like sympathy without pity, like he was apologizing for the whole thing. “Forgive me. I am Baron Constantin Illés, and this is castle Illés in the region of Corralachia, just east of the great mountains. You came through the only traversable pass for twenty leagues in that wagon. What is your name, my would-be pet?”

“Luca.”

“Luca,” the Baron echoed reverently, and ghosted his fingertips over Luca’s cheek so that his breath caught and he felt himself turning red. “‘Bringer of light’. You are certainly the bringer of moonlight. May is the hare moon, and I’ve never seen it so bright as it is tonight. The wolves hunt the hares by the light of it, but still by summer they have multiplied tenfold. They are the bringer of new beginnings.”

“And the wolves must also eat,” Luca said, meaning that they could not feel bad for one animal just because it had a soft twitchy nose. The Baron laughed good naturedly. “True. The wolves must also eat. Sleep on your decision, and tell me for true on the next moon.”

—

In the following days, Luca threw off the remaining vestiges of his traveling sickness. He felt strong and whole again, and ate voraciously of the creamy soups and soft breads he was brought by servants he seldom saw, piling soft cheese on sweet dates and drinking dry burgundy until the skin over his ribs smoothed back out and his hips were not so sharp.

He wore silk and linen clothes, loose fitting and often embroidered beautifully as was the local custom for finery. He was given a delicate anklet of gold, which he knew was a sensual piece often worn in harems or on dancers, male and female, though there was certainly a feminine look it gave to his ankle, like hinting at a secret. It also reminded him of the fetters he’d worn as a slave, rough ropes that cut his skin for weeks. He still had some scarring on his wrists from it, and the Baron had given him a lavender-scented ointment to rub on the skin. He seemed sympathetic to the way Luca had gotten the rope burn discoloration there, rather than critical of a blemish, but they still made him self conscious. He was a captured slave turned pet-prince here, and he ought to look the part.

He was given a beautiful ring, much like the one the Baron wore on his right forefinger, but silver instead of gold. On a flat field of black was the Hydra, the Greek serpent of many heads destroyed by Hercules. The Hydra on both this and the Barons rings were made of emerald. The silver ring had been his great grandmothers, said the Baron, a gift from Marie of Anjou. It fit his left ring finger, and was too small for any other, too big for his pinkies. He knew the left ring finger was for wedding rings and blushed when the Baron smiled knowingly at the placement.

The Hydra, he said, was his family crest for the last eight generations. His ancestor, also a Constantin, had decapitated the lead collaborator of a group of nobility trying to usurp the King, a group which the king called the Hydra on account of its many deceitful and venomous heads. Having cut the head from the serpent and displayed it on the castle parapets, the King bestowed the castle and the crest of the Hydra on the house Illés. That was the very castle he was in today, the very crest he too now wore on his finger.

The moon waned and began to wax again, this time reborn as the Rose moon. Early summer was full and lush in the woods and hills about the castle. The creeks and rivers rushed swollen down to the valleys below. The leaves were full and vivid virgin green as the emeralds of the snapping Hydra. The meadows were high, wildflowers of every hue swayed in gentle warm breezes. At night the warmth stayed in the air, keeping it moist and balmy until well after midnight, when the sky was often streaked with falling stars. Memories of the lean months of winters by the sea could not seem to touch him here. He forgot the face of his stern, cold master there, the watery-eyed and pious man who had once beat him with a leather belt for sleeping in a church pew.

Here he was unwatched, trusted, and lavished with the master’s chaste affection. He welcomed it, craved it, waited all day for it. Sometimes the Baron would only come to his chamber to sleep, late at night and exhausted from long hours of executive duties. Other times he was relaxed, engaged, asking questions. They seemed to have all the time in the world.

The Baron wanted him to see the grounds, the castle, to sit with him sometimes at the council table where he saw the foreign dignitaries and the farmers and the tax collectors that came with their tributes. Luca noticed the way people behaved around the Baron, straight-backed and alert, polite and gracious as they hung on his every occasional word.

Mostly they spoke in their own tongue at these meetings and exchanges, but Luca still began to understand that the Baron was somewhat the warlord he had first imagined when he first saw him. The soldiers and generals had the best rapport with him, and seemed the closest with him. His near constant advisor was a scarred and pockmarked old knight that never so much as made eye contact with Luca, like he was invisible.

One visiting dignitary only shared English with the Baron, making Luca privy to that exchange. Some King Luca did not know wanted tribute, money and young boys for his army. The Baron politely refused. The man stood on the flagstones wearing a look somewhere between anger and shock. Luca dared a glance to his left at the Baron, who wore no expression at all.

“You invite open war,” the visitor accused.

“I do no such thing. I refuse an absurd ransom from a madman. Is there anything else you’d like to demand while you’re here?”

When the man left, the Baron and the old knight exchanged words Luca could not understand. Then the Baron leaned to Luca and said in a confidential hush. “It’s always the ones that speak English that behave like this. Sometimes I regret learning English at all. Except,” his tone grew fond, “it lets me speak with you.”

Luca grinned, feeling all the eyes in the room except for the old knight’s momentarily on him, and drawing pleasure from the fact they knew not what the Baron said to him, they would only see it made him smile.

Part two

Note: This is one of those things I got in my head and just had to write so it would leave me be. Charles Perrault's version of the tale of Barbebleue (1697), names Bluebeard Bertrand de Montragaux. I have changed that name since this is not a French tale. This particular little story is modeled not from Perrault but from Angela Carter's short story, The Bloody Chamber. I have borrowed from that and from other things, and filled it with my favorite whumpy tropes. The other two parts are complete and will be posted over the next two weekends. Thanks for reading! :))

#this is very good and everyone should read it #others #writing

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