The mighty 4!
My honourable friends,
our fourth prompt post!
That's right, number FOUR.
Like the nucleobases, the fundamental forces of physics and the horsemen of the apocalypse.
Like the number of seasons, the number of letters in most swear words and the number of boxes each tetris shape is made of.
In this spirit, here are four things to keep in mind:
1) The ( Read more... )
our fourth prompt post!
That's right, number FOUR.
Like the nucleobases, the fundamental forces of physics and the horsemen of the apocalypse.
Like the number of seasons, the number of letters in most swear words and the number of boxes each tetris shape is made of.
In this spirit, here are four things to keep in mind:
1) The ( Read more... )
“- George!”
Dave’s sharp voice sliced across Osborne’s just too late to prevent his audience realising what he was intending to say. The Liberals immediately exploded into furious denunciations of Osborne’s ‘bigotry and ignorance’, as Laws described it. Well, Laws should know, reflected Dave as he tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. Everyone knew that the new Secretary to the Treasury had been born slave and manumitted in his teens.
But even Laws hadn’t been trained as a bed slave!
“I suggest we take a quick break,” Dave said authoritatively. “Let’s have a five minute time-out, shall we? And George, could you ask Gabby to bring in Ni - the Slavers’ Gift,” he corrected hastily.
Osborne went to obey, frowning a little, and Dave sighed - silently. There were times… George was one of his closest friends and a brilliant political strategist, but he could be very high maintenance. Some of his attitudes were straight out of the 1922 Committee’s handbook even though most of the time he was even more reformist than Cameron. His views on slavery and the slave trade were a case in point.
A heavy, strained silence fell as the three men still in the large, elegantly-appointed office wandered around, stared vaguely out of the window or studied the bookshelves and paintings, Cameron tactfully ignoring the two Liberals while Laws worked on helping Kennedy wrestle his temper back under control.
It seemed longer, but Dave knew from his watch that it was less than five minutes later when the door opened and Andy Coulson ushered Nick through it. Moving with that fluid, easy deportment which was the mark of a trained bed slave, Nick looked around, hesitating briefly at the sight of two strangers, but then he saw Cameron and made his way over to his master.
There he dropped to his knees and bowed his head.
“Thank you for permitting me food, master.”
Dave shifted, very conscious of two derisive Liberal stares from the other side of the room and suddenly uncomfortable with having a slave kneeling at his feet… Ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he’d never been in this situation before! What was wrong with him!
“Oh, for - stand up immediately!” he snapped. “I don’t wish you to kneel to me in future - clear?”
Nick had scrambled to his feet at Dave’s words, losing some of that trained grace and smoothness in his haste to obey, and now he flinched away, bobbing his head in hurried, frightened acquiescence.
“Y-yes, master. I’m sorry, master.”
“Cameron.”
It was Laws’ voice. Even across the room Dave could sense his anger. “Do you always vent your bad temper on those who can’t retaliate?”
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“Nick,” he said quietly, “Look at me.”
Nick was standing with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. Cameron saw the knuckles, briefly, whiten as Nick’s hands tightened, the thin-fleshed shoulders stiffening and teeth sinking into the bottom lip in an agony of tension - then the deferentially-bowed head lifted and for the first time those changeable, scared eyes met his.
Several things happened at once.
Somewhere deep within Dave he felt something click into place. Something... fit.
At the same time there was a change behind the blue-grey of Nick’s eyes. At the precise moment that Dave registered that odd sensation, that spark of warmth - life - something filling that emptiness that had ached within him for so long, he saw - a difference. A… deepening, or softening…
And simultaneously with both those events - or were they one linked event, happening to two people? - he heard David Laws suddenly shout,
“No, Cameron, don’t - ah, shit!”
Sheer incredulity at hearing the very quiet, very proper David Laws using such improper language broke through Cameron’s sudden, odd fascination with his new slave, and he looked round. Laws was dropping his hand to his side, his expression an odd mixture of annoyance and resignation, and he shook his head as Cameron looked at him.
“Well, that’s that then,” the small man said, and shrugged at his colleague, who seemed to be as bewildered as Dave.
“What was all that about?” demanded Kennedy. Laws’ mouth quirked into his characteristic one-sided, oddly charming grin.
“The Slavers Guild have managed to get one over on all of us, Charlie. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
He looked at Nick, his eyes sympathetic. “Nick, is that your name?”
The slave nodded warily, and Laws smiled reassuringly. “It’s all right, Nick, I know - we all know,” he gestured at the rest of the occupants of the PM’s office, “That you’re not to blame for what the Guild’s done.
“They Keyed you, didn’t they?”
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And your Liberals. Three of my favourite. *waits for more*
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