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the-bloody-sadist · 2 years

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Dancing With Death Chapter 6: The Golden One

Notes: FINALLY 😩✌️Yes, sorry that it took me so long to get this one out. It's 1) because it's such a fucking long chapter that needed a lot of world building and proof-reading, 2) because I'm writing like four different fan-fictions, a big story of my own besides this one, and also writing for my actual JOB, 3) because I have a second job, and 4) because I also do art both on Patreon and in general so like-- help me, I am a workaholic. Anyways BUHUHUH have fun 😉

The harem was located behind Taushin’s great tent, a marble-walled, elaborate building full of rooms, chambers for pleasures and chambers for punishments, halls for display and baths for recovery. It was a place Pets could only hate and love in the same breath. There was no in-between. The harem carried their nightmares and their comforts as one and could be anything their masters desired it to be. It was their home and their prison, a place they could never leave—perhaps a place they never wanted to leave, because they knew no other home and felt worthy of nothing outside those walls.

The filigreed wooden doors were ordered open in the dead of the night, giving way to a pair of bulky, looming figures with a slender one between them. Their shoes clacked and rattled on polished marble floors, echoing in the empty atrium that had been abandoned of their scurrying little Pets upon the noise at the gates. Guards often heralded the presence of Regals, after all.

But this night, it was only the boy—the limp, trembling boy, whose hair of fine white-gold shone in the moonlight from the windows. His feet made a skidding, papery sound as they dragged behind him, and the ragged panting of his breath filled the silence otherwise.

“Come into the light, you flighty creatures,” one of the guards called gruffly, his face inked by shadows under the scarf on his brow. He turned his head about in slow, sweeping gestures, the gems of his eyes glittering like onyx as he searched for their figures. “We’ve brought you your Golden One.”

The atrium was not as empty as it would seem. The Pets were not absent, only hiding behind silks and tapestries and pillars, keeping out of the light of the candelabras on the wall. Like the crawling, wary materialization of tiny forest nymphs, they emerged from these places now with craned necks and wide eyes.

“Angel,” passed the whisper about the group, behind painted hands and the jingle of jewelries. “It’s Angel!”

Among them was Minx, coming forward with a start, his usual meekness gone under the wake of concern for his friend. The guards regarded him neutrally enough, handing over their burden as soon as the boy opened his arms.

“My poor Angel, my poor Angel,” he said in hushed distress, taking the Golden One in both arms and using all of his strength to support him as he slumped forward, groaning. “He has turned you away tonight? He has sent you to me?”

Angel was hardly more than coherent, clinging to Minx and dazed with weakness. He could not bring words to answer his friend, and only pressed closer into his bare, warm shoulder, to hide his face inside of his neck. His arms were bruised from where the guards had gripped him, and now they throbbed with release of that pressure, aching to the bone and tender when Minx touched them.

“Thank you,” Minx meekly greeted the guards, bowing with Angel’s body clasped to his chest, the fine chains of his outfit tinkling.

The barefooted figures of the other Pets shifted about, every eye on the guards for tricks or deception. But there was none, only the grunt and retreat as they turned for the exit.

Angel did not lift his face, only heard the clack of their boots as they left. He made a soft noise, half to communicate with Minx, half to hear his own relief. Now, he was safe, he was truly, truly safe.

“I’m sorry, Angel,” Minx murmured, and there was an urgency and desperation to his tone that made him tingle. “I tried to hold my tongue. Please, believe me. I promise I did.”

Minx thought he was responsible for this? He should know by now that Angel would never blame him. Angel knew Taushin’s ways. He knew the things the man did to Minx.

No, he would never, never blame him.

Angel grasped his hand with some difficulty and rubbed his thumb over Minx’s knuckles, nodding his head against the boy’s soft skin.

He felt Minx’s tightened muscles relax a bit, but he was struggling with Angel’s weight, and Angel tried with all his might to stand. But everything in him was too exhausted. He only collapsed again, causing his friend to lose balance and stagger back.

“Can’t…m-move…sorry…” he whispered.

“No, no!” Minx reassured him, struggling to keep them upright. “It’ll be alright. Someone—Jaguar—help me with him?”

Angel heard a scuff of feet. The strong shape of the Pet named Jaguar was there in seconds, tilting his head at Angel and not smiling, as usual. His hair was black, falling straight and carelessly across metal-colored eyes. His muscles were toned and firm—not overly bulging, as Taushin did not prefer bulky Pets—but a lean, fit athleticism that gave him a fighting chance at winning Ring games. His skin was a rich amber, marking him as an imported Pet from Isles further south. There were tattoos engraving his shoulders, a curling, flowery pattern of lines that had been cut into him and filled with ink.

Angel went gratefully as Minx transferred him over to Jaguar’s care, falling back. The strong arms picked him up with support under his knees and middle-back, which brought both a shuddering cry from Angel at the smart of his wounds and a replying distress from Minx.

“Gods, Jaguar, careful where you touch! He’s injured!”

Angel’s dropped his head back, eyes screwed in pain. His breath rasped in quick pants, but Jaguar only pulled him a little closer, murmuring, “I don’t want him to fall. It’s hard carrying dead weight.”

“Please be gentle,” Minx implored him, and Angel felt his soft hands along his body, tickling his side and thigh. “I’m sorry, Angel. I’m so sorry.”

Angel couldn’t speak for the pain, blinking at the bleary, upside-down shapes of other the Pets watching him. His limbs felt leaden and dead.

“We should take him to the baths,” Jaguar said lowly, “we can tend to him best there.”

“We’ll take care of him,” Minx told all the others, “there’s no need to worry.”

Murmurs of disdain and concern alike filled the atrium as Angel was carried from it, Minx coaching Jaguar with every step, making him go slow and carefully through the halls. Angel could hear it all as if underwater, feeling the sensations on his skin only from a great distance.

“It’s not going to help anything,” Jaguar was arguing, “he’s bleeding out all over the place and we need to hurry.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, he’s not bleeding out! You’re making it worse. Slow down, slow down.”

“Minx, he’s heavy. The blood makes him slippery—I’m going to drop him if I don’t hurry.”

A cry of distress from Minx, and then his little hands leaving Angel’s body. “Go, then, go!”

Angel wasn’t sure if he lost consciousness at that point or simply pulled away from the throbbing agony, but he only roused again when he felt the cloying moisture of the bath chambers, humid with steam and fragrant with rose petals.

His body was lowered until there was liquid lapping around his feet and ankles, hot enough to make him inhale. “Mmh—” He tried to lift his head. He saw the blurry picture of veils and white pillars about him, the rectangular pools of water reflecting stars.

Minx’s soft, cold-fingered hands were on his ribs again, guiding him as Jaguar lowered his form into the water up to his waist, resting his seat against a marble step.

It hurt, but there was so much pain to be had already that it didn’t quite matter that it did, and Angel could only whimper and sink towards Minx’s waiting arms, resting against his friend’s chest. Being in the water was relieving. It made his arms light, and sitting wasn’t as difficult with the weightlessness that supported him. With breaths rasping in his throat, he tried to relax as much as he could, undoing the knots of tension from his muscles one by one while Minx stroked his face and fingered his hair with wet, tender hands.

“You’re safe,” he whispered, again and again—the same mantra that Angel repeated to himself when Minx wasn’t around to say it. But only when he was truly safe. The moments were rare, they were not to be missed, and it was the portions of time like this that Angel had to work to give his mind a rest, so that it would not break under the pressure of his life. “You’re safe…”

He heard Jaguar behind him, preparing dressings and salves—he heard the jars clink against the floor and the swish of cloth bandages. He saw the water, poisoned crimson with his blood where Minx’s slender body disappeared in refracted images of the night sky. The agony caused by the dark Pet’s touch was nearly unbearable, when it inevitably came—not because it was a worser pain than what he’d suffered within the recent days, but because he knew that this pain did not serve to please anyone. And what was the use in pain that did not make others smile? What was the use in suffering for himself? He was fashioned ever so carefully to suffer for others, to live for others, to be miserable so that others might be joyful.

His pain only made Minx sniffle and Jaguar curse under his breath. So Angel tried—he tried as hard as he could—to hold it back. He clenched his fists in the water until they shook; he gritted his teeth and focused on the fingers that danced along his face. Safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.

He was not worthy of crying out when his Master was not here to indulge in it.

Water was scooped over his wounds, his hair—Minx even cupped it against his face, kissing Angel’s brow and cheeks and washing away the sweat of torment with empathetic, pink eyes. All the while, the mantra was repeated, safety, security, the false sense of comfort in the arms of his friend.

Soon enough, they had finished with him, and Angel was exhausted enough to begin to weep.

“Angel, Angel,” Minx soothed, wrapping him with lithe arms around the golden collar, “my Angel, how he must have wounded you tonight…” There were kisses at his ear, beneath his curls, too soft to be given to Angel, and more painful than the wounds Minx spoke of.

He shook his head into Minx’s neck, whispering, “No matter…”

“I wish that he would choose some other soul to torment.”

Angel did not wish to think about such things. He did not wish for anyone to have the burden that he could handle well enough.

Touching Minx’s slick thighs beneath the water, he murmured, “Burns…?”

He felt Minx’s hands tremble a bit against his whipped shoulder blades, and the tremulous sound that left his friends lips fell against his ears. “Not as many as I should have taken to protect you,” he mourned, and Angel’s chest tightened as more tears came.

“Please,” he begged the boy, doing his best to pull back so that he could look into Minx’s eyes and communicate his insistency.

Minx was hesitant to meet his gaze, white lashes flicking about over the pink orbs. Angel could see the memory of fire inside of them, burning and tormenting his friend even now. “I know, Angel,” he said softly. “I knew that you would want me to tell him quickly.”

Angel weakened again, sinking back to embrace Minx, head tucked below the boy’s chin. “Good-d…”

Minx absently rested careful hands over Angel’s bandages in return, speaking to Jaguar—who sat on the edge of the bath, hands in his lap as he dangled his legs in the water.

“Jaguar could handle it so much better, if Taushin would have him. Jaguar has a heart of stone.”

Angel’s eyes slid to find the metal-colored ones, shimmering with the reflected starlight. The pools of water sent wavering ripples of it along his features. He scoffed a little and shook his head, making the piercings in his ear jingle. “Taushin prefers the sensitive ones, the ones who make plenty of noise.”

Angel dropped his gaze. He was right. Jaguar had been imported and trained here, but he’d been designated for the market, and had the high prospect to be the Pet of another Regal who was a close partner of Taushin’s. He was not particularly of Taushin’s taste. He hardly made a sound when he was beaten.

Minx stroked his hair, shifting them and murmuring, “You are sleeping with me tonight, Angel? Yes?”

He nodded sluggishly. It had been some time since he’d been back to the harem, though, and there was someone he desperately wanted to see. “Khoi…” he croaked.

There was a hesitant silence, and Minx helped Angel rise out of the water with Jaguar standing to assist before he answered. “He’s alright.”

Angel’s legs burned; his back was tight with medicine and wrappings, his lower half still exposed due to the nature of the injuries being unable to be bandaged. “I want to see him,” he said shakily.

Jaguar and Minx traded a glance, each one taking an arm to keep Angel steady. Their height difference—Jaguar being at least a head taller than both of them—made it lopsided. Angel’s fingers began to tingle as they seemed to debate telling him something awful. Was Khoi alright? Had someone injured him further? Had someone mistreated him? Had he died?

“I want to see him,” Angel said with blurry desperation, looking between them with widened eyes. He felt a little breathless.

“I think that you should rest now, Angel,” Minx said gently, “and see him in the morning.”

“No,” Angel begged. What was wrong? Taushin had bade him to return in the morning. He had to see him now.

Jaguar wrapped an arm around Angel’s back, making him turn to the darker boy, frantic. “Nothing is wrong,” he intoned. “But you look only half-coherent right now, and it would be best for you to lie down. Neither of us know what Taushin will demand of you, come morning.”

“No!” The words scraped at his throat. Angel was insistent on this matter, his throat tight and aching. All he asked was that they let him see Khoi. He did not want to sleep—he would not sleep—without seeing him.

Jaguar’s eyes fluttered, and he sent Minx a helpless glance, sighing.

“Angel—” Minx tried.

“No, no, no,” Angel whined softly, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “Please. Khoi. I want to see Khoi.”

“It’s alright, Minx,” Jaguar said. “We’ll take you, Angel. Hold on.”

“It’s not good for him,” Minx argued.

“He’ll be fine.”

A sigh of frustration. “You’re not the one who holds him when he weeps through the night afterwards, and soothes him when he wakes up screaming!”

The words echoed in the bath chamber, bouncing off the water. Angel winced just hearing it aloud, shrinking in their grips and hiding his face in shame. “Sorry,” he whimpered, shoulders around his ears, “I’m sorry.”

“Minx, you ass,” Jaguar hissed.

Minx caught Angel up against him, crying out, “No, no, I don’t mean it like that! Oh, Angel, no…I just don’t want you to put yourself through such things.”

With his face hugged against Minx’s shoulder, Angel made a soft noise, unable to shake the guilt that it caused.

“We’re going, Angel. You have my word,” Jaguar said kindly.

“Mmh…”

<<••>>

Khoi was lying on the same padded, embroidered cot that he was always lying on, amongst the draperies of silks that veiled his sickly white body like crimson and gold fog. They had given him his own private chambers out of reverence and care. They all treasured Khoi, but Angel more than any of them.

He softly asked Jaguar and Minx to let him go in alone, and—used to the ritual that Angel never failed to adhere to—they respectfully bowed their heads and steadied Angel on his feet, before unlatching the heavy drapery that served as the chamber’s door.

Angel kept a hand on the wall to steady himself, squinting in the low, filtered orange candlelight. There were heady fragrances burning in jars on mounted shelves, white lilies sprinkled about the floor, and the gentle, plucking hum of a melancholy lyre, strummed by a young Pet who sat in a shadowed corner.

It was arranged nearly as a grave or a shrine to the dead, and it fit the figure who lied amongst it, asleep—or so it would seem to the unobservant eye. But Khoi was not asleep, as his dark lashes moved here and there with sluggish, heavy blinks, and the tiniest shimmer of his milk-white eyes could be seen beneath them.

His skin was a translucent white, ocean-green veins showing along the wrists and forearms that draped against his frail, bare torso. There was a sheet pulled up to his hips, covering the rest of him in white like a burial shroud. His hair was dark, streaked with greys and whites that did not belong to a boy of his age—yes, only a boy, still, of twenty-three years, and dying. His lips were fine and parted to take in rasping breaths, but when he heard the swish of Angel’s unsteady feet on the stone, the white irises turned to him, and the faintest shadow of a smile fell over his drawn, hollowed features. “Angel,” he said, sweetly, though his voice was hardly a voice at all anymore, rubbed raw to the very chords from years of screaming.

“Hello,” Angel greeted him quietly, brows skewing with concern as he leaned against the bedside, taking a seat on the plush cot. It felt much better to sit down, and he found he had a bit more strength to last him a cursory drift of fingers through Khoi’s hair, soft and well-groomed by the Pets who took care of him. The dark pupils of his eyes were full as they fixed on Angel. Many had considered Khoi blind on first glance, seeing the milky glisten of his irises. But it was only a rare strain of genetics that made them that color, and if Khoi struggled with anything, it certainly wasn’t his eyesight.

A cold, bony set of fingers slid over Angel’s hand as it rested on the bed, and he turned it palm-up to accept Khoi’s, closing it inside of both his warmer ones.

“Thank you,” Khoi croaked, “for coming to see me.”

Angel looked down at his fragile hand, tracing the pronounced tendons and knuckles with a practiced, soothing motion that he knew Khoi found relaxing. “I’m sorry that it’s been a while.”

“No matter,” Khoi dismissed him, shaking his head slightly. A cough, gurgling with what must be blood, wracked the Pet’s fragile body, then, sending Angel’s heart into a panicking flutter. “The days…ngh, are all the same…to me.” It seemed he tried to smile again, after this, but then his eyes flickered quite suddenly over the expanse of Angel’s body, taking in the bandaging and the washed cuts and widening with alarm.

Empathy, Angel knew.

“What has he done to you this time, my sweet?” Khoi whispered, touching Angel’s thigh so very gently that it made Angel wince.

He kept his face lowered, fidgeting with Khoi’s fingers and keeping his shoulders arched near his ears. “Nothing compared to what he’s done to you.”

“No,” Khoi murmured, “tell me, Angel. Tell me what he has done with my darling sapphire. You look so sad, today.”

That Khoi would ask so earnestly about Angel when he was like this—it tore through his heart like the claws of scrabbling foxes. More than any words of Taushin’s, worse than the Regals he’d been given to for sport, Khoi’s words always struck him the deepest pain. Because Khoi cared for him. Khoi knew more than anyone else. Khoi heard all of Angel’s deepest, most terrifying thoughts, all his sins, all his fears. Khoi knew enough to destroy Angel with the flick of a finger, and yet he kept all these things hidden in his heart, away from any Master that would twist it into torment.

Angel spoke to no one like he did to Khoi. Only Khoi heard all the little words he expressed through his body language in public.

“He was angry with me. There is a visitor here from the North, a 2nd Emissary.”

“Oh? How far North? As far as Minx’s home?”

“Not so far,” Angel said, “Dorne.”

“Dorne…” A wistful, nostalgic aura took Khoi’s eyes into the past for a moment. Yes, even he had dreamt of Dorne, just as much as the other Pets. It was near enough to heaven, compared to Gailda. “There are such kind people up there.”

“He is very kind,” Angel said, softer now, and turning his gaze more intently to their hands.

“But not kinder than you deserve,” Khoi whispered in a rattle, his eyes darkening as Angel shied away from it. It was a common practice of his to dole out opposites of Taushin’s derogatory statements, something that Angel could not bear to hear—something that Khoi refused to stop doing.

“I do not think it will last,” Angel told him.

“But why was he angry with you, my sweet?” he pressed, with some trepidation.

“Minx was given to him the first night. And when he came back, he was not bruised or bleeding. He was smiling. Smiling, Khoi…s-so…so I asked him—I asked him if the Emissary had been kind. If he’d been…gentle.”

Khoi’s dark lashes drooped. He shifted his head to look past Angel, at the far wall where the incense burned on the protruding shelves. “That is all, then? The only reason he would punish you so harshly? Perhaps he has gotten worse, after all.”

“No, Khoi,” Angel whispered, beginning to feel the familiar burn of shame in his cheeks and throat. “No, he is the same. He is only—he was still angry. I…I ran away again, a fortnight ago.”

Khoi turned back to him sharply, quick enough to trigger another bout of gurgling, sickening coughs. When it was done, he was wheezing, and Angel’s chest was tight with phantom pain. “Oh, darling sapphire…” He feebly squeezed Angel’s fingers, and Angel felt cold stretching through the pit of his stomach. “Why must you do that to yourself? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said tremulously, shifting on the bed and looking elsewhere. “He likes th-the game. It…it keeps him focused on me, so he won’t hurt…” Angel fought to keep his voice steady, to keep speaking. “…so he won’t hurt the others.”

He could feel Khoi gazing at him with those milky eyes, he could see in his head how the dark brows skewed with anguish over Angel’s awful decisions.

“You are already his Golden One,” Khoi said, “he hurts you enough. You must stop. You must, Angel. Please.”

“I can’t,” Angel nearly spat out, and then touched his mouth with his hand, as if to punish the act himself, for daring to utter something not honeyed and sweet. “There is something about it that I like, too. He wants me back. He wants me so badly that he sends all of his men after me, and he gets so…so angry, Khoi, the look in his eyes—” Angel went silent momentarily, his mouth parted still with the words sticking to his tongue, seeing the murderous flash of golden eyes in his head, as sharp as the end of the blade he dragged across Angel’s skin. “—there is nothing like it,” he whispered. “And when I go, I feel so empty without him. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is nothing, nothing for me but to wait for the guards to find me. And then he hurts me, and I remember what it is like to love him when I am my weakest, and I feel…” He blinked rapidly. “…I feel right again.”

Khoi’s eyes were fixed on their hands when Angel finally found the courage to look at him. There were tears clinging to his eyes and lashes.

“Khoi,” Angel mourned, starting forward with pain in his lungs, “What is it, what have I said to upset you?” He took the Pet’s face in both of his hands, bending to press his lips against the hollowed-out cheeks again and again in frantic apology.

Khoi raised his hand to cover Angel’s, pushing against his chin so that he could look him in the eyes. “I know, Angel,” he said. The skin beneath his eyes tightened. “I know.”

I know what it feels like.

Khoi remembered. He remembered the feeling of being Taushin’s Pet. It made the tension leak out of Angel’s muscles when he heard it, dragging down his limbs and pulling him towards the bed, where he lay quietly for a long time against Khoi’s thin shoulder, gazing at the silks that hung about them while Khoi absently stroked the fine lines of his tummy.

“Sometimes, he forgives me, Khoi,” he breathed, watching his words float away among the incense in the air. “He has mercy. He breaks down, sometimes. He holds me very close to him, sometimes, and says things that Masters should not say. And the more that I run, the more chances I have that he’ll do it again. I think that it makes him just a little desperate.”

Khoi continued to move his fingers soothingly, humming under his breath in sorrowful understanding.

The lyre strummed on, the only other sound for a long, long while. They dozed beneath the blanketed warmth of the music, mingling inside of one another’s thoughts, their shared experiences, their similar torments.

“It will never be enough, my darling sapphire,” Khoi rasped eventually, and his voice was more frail than it had been before. “It will never last.”

Angel’s lip trembled and he screwed his eyes shut. Just let me pretend that it will. Let me dream that it can.

It was the one thing that Angel clung to for dear life.

<<••>>

Minx was there to hold Angel when he came from Khoi’s room, the drapery swinging behind him, every limb in his body melting like butter from his spine.

With Minx’s soft embrace and the tender voice in his ear, Angel should have felt better. But he did not.

“Come, my Angel,” he cooed, “let us go, now. Let us sleep and forget.”

Angel did not speak or lift his head. He did not nod or move. He hardly even opened his eyes. He just let his friend pull him along down the long, sparkling halls, past the whispering, colored silks, the jingling, nimble footsteps of other Pets.

Sleeping quarters were spacious, but the darkness there Angel feared would swallow him up, devouring his soul before morning. Coming back to the harem always put his mind in the past, among the draconic silhouettes of blackened Trainers who no longer had faces in his mind, among the restricting chains and the debilitating agony, among the continuous screams and the unending fight just to remember who he was. To remember why he was fighting, why he was alive, why they would not let him die.

And now, being Taushin’s Golden One, it only garnered him pockets of opened space around the hanging cot Minx would share with him, Pets scurrying away either in reverence or disdain—neither of which mattered to him. It was only that they did make space, as if he were different from them. Some of them looked on in guarded pity, others in abject suspicion. He knew most feared that he was only sent here to relay their actions to the 1st Regal, a spy and a tattletongue who would not hesitate to give them up.

It made him droop even more in their presence, sinking towards Minx’s protective guidance. He could hear the whispers passing about like the hiss of slithering snakes, silenced only at the sharp behest of a few of the older boys. Angel did not blame them. He blamed only their Trainers and their Regals. He blamed only Taushin, for he was certain it was a deliberate isolation, to assure that Angel would not gain some kind of following, of boys who would turn on their Masters and cause an uprising. Thus, it was necessary that Angel remain a sort of fugitive among them.

Minx was gentle and careful in helping Angel into the hanging blue cocoon that served as his cot. There was a small bedding made up inside it to flatten out the base so it would not cling so tightly to their bodies.

Angel held his breath while trying to pull himself into it, stifling any sounds that the others would hear. He settled into the cool pillow with a shuddering sigh of relief, wrapping his arms around his naked, bandaged body.

Minx quietly undid the bits of drying tulle from his own waist and arms, undressing in utter silence.

The other boys in the murky, humming chamber began to settle down themselves, eyes glittering out of the dark towards Angel and Minx in wary, narrowed glances. They would haunt him all the night, Angel knew. He dreaded it.

He had more that kept him from shutting his eyes when Minx crawled into bed behind him, shushing Angel’s mewling sounds with gentle kisses and wrapping his body inside of warmer, kinder arms. It stung his back to have it pressed against Minx’s chest, but he was used to such discomforts, and it was nothing in the wake of his friend’s soothing coo, the words spoken mutedly against the shell of his ear to distract Angel from his own thoughts.

“Shall I tell you about him again?” Minx pulled up a soft blanket until it was covering their waists. The touch of their skin—Minx’s heated against his cold—served as a good sensation to focus on while Angel tried to loosen his stiff muscles. While he tried to think of something other than the fragile skin of his forearms and wrists. How they might tear. How they might release him.

“Shall I tell you what it was like?”

Angel felt dull as he stared into the glittering eyes of the boys in the darkness, seeing only what Minx’s smile must look like. He let out a faint, weary keen of affirmation.

“He was gentle and strong, and didn’t use a thing that Taushin sent him in the box.” Fingers found their way up Angel’s arm, his shoulder, his neck, until they stroked the line of his jaw and his cheekbone, tickling over the rim of his ear. “He spoke only sweetly, and when he took me, he didn’t force me into the sheets, or suffocate me, or grip me by the neck.” Minx played with his earrings, tugging ever so slightly at times. It made pleasant blooms of sensation down Angel’s spine.

Minx went on with his tale like a mother might sing a lullaby, sweetly and hushed for Angel’s ears alone. “His voice only encouraged me, his kisses only warmed me, and he was so sorry, so sorry, he said, when it was over…and I feared that I had not been enough…”

Angel felt his mouth begin to twist and tremble. He inhaled a soft, shuddering breath. He thought of Khoi, broken and dying on that bed among the incense, never knowing a kind noble, never hearing such sickening, wonderful words. That must be his end, too, he knew, as Emery could say all that he liked from a distance, but would never be near him like he’d been with Minx.

Taushin would never let him, as much as he teased and flaunted Angel before him. Taushin would never let Angel grow attached.

Minx’s voice purred on in the stillness. “…but it was not that I had not pleased him, and so strange, Angel, so strange…it was only that he wanted me to like it too. He wanted me to be pleased more than he wanted pleasure for himself. He wanted me to be safe, and go unharmed…. And his eyes, Angel, how you should have seen his dark eyes fill with concern for me. For me, can you imagine it? Ah, what a thing…”

All that Angel saw were the golden eyes of his Master, flashing and furious, the way that he’d described it all to Khoi. They were his cage, as visible to him as the collar that was locked about his neck. The most he could do was gaze between the bars, reaching out for the watery hallucination of Emery of Dorne, smiling down at him as if he were truly a human being, something to be valued, something to be protected.

He looked at Angel as if there were some chance in all the hells that a Pet could yearn for something his Master could not give him, a hope that he could perhaps touch, if not accept, a mercy from someone else, someone who would not award that mercy only after so much pain—but freely, right away, demanding nothing in return.

Angel began to weep, unbidden, and Minx—used to it by now, after so many revisits to the harem that ended in the same way—buried his mouth against Angel’s shoulder and held him very close, murmuring comforts against his skin. This pain in his lungs went on for some time, his thoughts plagued by the anxieties of what the morning would bring him.

Master was displeased. Master was disappointed. Master was irritated.

He could not—he could never—take respite in the nights without him. And it distressed him so greatly that this was so. Being away from Taushin only made him nauseous with anticipation, counting down the moments until he was back in those gloved hands, screaming for mercy that would not come. Pain could not be had without him to oversee it, and pleasure could not be felt if he wasn’t giving it.

And so, all that Angel could do was drown in his own misery, trying to claw into the skin of his arms and refrained from even that release by his friend’s restrictive grasp.

He wasn’t sure when his waking mind blurred with the realm of sleep, but it did not last more than an infinite stretch of darkness before it was eaten up with the terror of nightmares. His Trainers became the monstrous shadows on the wall, pulling him every direction and stretching his limbs apart, forcing things through and inside and across and around him until he could only thrash and scream awful, soundless screams. And Taushin, with his eyes of gold burning in the darkness, stood before them all and watched like a malignant cobra, deadened to his Pet’s anguish and too far to cling to.

When he burst from it shrieking in inconsolable terror, it was Minx, only Minx, with his arms around Angel, but he felt there was nothing else but to shriek and sob his voice away, so that he’d no longer have to hear the voices in his dreams, and the suffocating silence of his Master.

(Next) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yey. :) Hope you liked. Nice to meet you, Khoi. You'll get to learn specifics about him soon, so I hope you're looking forward to it! <3 For now, mystery boi Khoi. (and originally his name was spelled Koi but then I saw the way the English VA for Albedo in Genshin spelled it and I just...really liked it.) Tags! Did you miss me?: @hackles-up (I believe this is who was previously @what-a-whump ?) @boxboysandotherwhump @seasaltandcopper @abitefullofwhump @whump-cravings @thats-my-type-writer @darklyria @ashintheairlikesnow @luna-rein @whumptywhumpdump @whatgoeswhumpinthenight @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @dragonninjavampire @whumpy-writings @shameless-whumper @also-finder-of-rings @ohwhumpydays @whump-world @outofangband @whump-cravings @10000ducks-whump @whumpiary @sadomasochistic-whump @insaneinthepaingame @straight-to-the-pain @whumpwillow @gatheringofsuffering @sideblogformindtrash @newbornwhumperfly @sadistgalore @yet-another-heathen @peterrose @cupcakes-and-pain @writingbackwards @i-gently-open-the-door @bloodandbandages @ocean-blue-whump @wingedwhump @meetmeinhellcroutons @jcwriting @kiretto-laorentze @thatonekidnamedrin @whumpawink @nicolepascaline @zoewhumps @mylifeisonthebookshelf @wolfeyedwitch @whumpfessional @batfacedliar @whump-tr0pes

@meetmeinhellcroutons and @whumpkinpie I think you’re the two whose names have changed. Let me know :)

If you’d like to be added/removed, just ask! :D

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