On my word and not before
So sometime early in the week, I decided that I was feeling well enough to start working out again. Fuck you, pneumonia! I got this! I've waited! How about just a mile run? Not even three! I've so got this! Except for how I totally don't and I'm definitely sick again. Whoops. So I guess I'll shuffle back to the doctor soon and be like, "Hi, I'm a moron, please fix."
I've basically withdrawn from the internet to quietly hack myself to pieces while focusing on going to work early and obsessing over Hannibal Lecter (read Hannibal; almost done with Hannibal Rising and then I'll have read the whole series). Seriously, I've only been logging on to google healthy dessert recipes and write raving half mad e mails to etirabys. How does she put up with me even. I STILL LOVE YOU GUYS THOUGH. I will comment and things soon. Yes.
In the meantime, um.
I, gosh, um, what. I have this certain fixation right now with this trope, something about a captor/captive situation, and I couldn't decide if I want it Kane/Luca or Charles/Erik, and who should be the captor and who the captive, and is it consensual or not... so I plotted out all four combinations I liked (Charles and Luca as victims, non/dub con; Erik and Kane as consensual submissives) and wanted to write them all as some sexy moderate psychological torture polyptych, but, uh, that's probably far too ambitious. Anyway.
HAVE SOME KIDNAPPING+STOCKHOLM SYNDROME FIC WITH D/S OVERTONES?
Kane/Luca. 2092 words. Rated M for...some torture? IDK; no blood, just fuckery.
[Kane is a very patient villain; in the variant with Erik as kidnapper, Charles is bleeding all over the floor in short order.]
On the third day, when Kane goes to yank the black hood off the hostage's head, he pauses. Even through the burlap sack, he feels the warmth of the hostage's skin, as the hooded man presses his face into Kane's hand. His breathing is shallow, and slow with the glassiness of prolonged terror. In the pitch black of the cramped room, Kane shatters his perfect stillness and yanks the hood off, rough and sudden. The hostage cringes, not altogether noiselessly. Kane watches him through his night-vision goggles.
Eyes wide open and staring at nothing, pupils blown wide open, still breathing like a dying rabbit, the hostage strains again towards Kane's hand, pressing into it when he finds it.
His pulse is wing flutter fast.
Again, Kane pauses.
This could change things.
This time, he does not replace the hood.
++
To discourage exploration, certain areas of the cell deliver electric shocks periodically. For disrupting morale, the shocks are distributed randomly as well as being triggered by pressure against key areas, such as the door. In the pitch black of the cell, the hostage cannot explore productively, in the dark, with his hands cuffed behind his back. Kane monitors him periodically with the livefeed infrared cameras, and when he is very still--asleep, perhaps, from trauma and exhaustion--Kane flips a switch and turns the lights on. It's so bright it burns the eyes; so searing that sleep is impossible.
Now, on the rare occasions the hostage manages to struggle to his feet while the lights are on and his hood is off, he stumbles and falls in less than five steps.
++
The human body, starting from a presumed state of general good health, can go approximately three days without water.
Kane has limits to push, but a dead hostage would be of little use. After a day and a half, he had come in, plunged a needle into his prisoner's shoulder, and sedated him. Then he'd wheeled in an IV drip, carefully uncuffed his hostage, and put the IV in. Kane waited patiently, taser at the ready, for the couple of hours it took for the bag of fluids to be absorbed. He then disconnected the IV, administered another, smaller dose of sedative, replaced the cuffs, and left.
++
The hostage thinks he hasn't had any fluids in three days.
Or he would if he knew days were passing (instead of hours minutes weeks?--he can no longer tell).
++
All the hostage knows is that he's thirsty.
++
The hostage is sleeping or unconscious again: Kane takes the opportunity to slip into the cell silently.
This is going to be--new. Kane uses the lull of the moment to take inventory:
Luca Lebeau--six foot two, 185 pounds, 27 years old, blond hair, brown eyes.
Taller than Kane. Athletic build. Vanity muscles--his chest and biceps said he spent a lot of time at the gym. Functional core and thighs. He could, Kane reflected, punch like a motherfucker, not that it had helped him at all.
++
Luca comes to with a screaming headache, and he tries to clamp his eyes shut against the light so he can sleep. It doesn't work--it never works--and he makes the mistake he always does, and tries to open his eyes against the light.
This time there's something there--
Luca shoves himself backwards, but he's already against the wall.
"Here," someone says, "Drink."
Luca can't see--who--what? Eyes slitted against the light, he still can't see anything, or make out the blurring, back-lit figure. He keeps on squinting, trying to see something, anything, and he raises up his arms to hold above his eyes just as whoever it is steps forward.
"Drink," someone says again.
Luca can't believe what he's hearing.
His throat feels like it's on fire.
"Don't try anything stupid," but the tone is even and not how people use threats, "Just do as I say. And drink. You're thirsty, aren't you?"
Luca suppresses the urge to cough. Right now he knows from experience that it will hurt tremendously.
"Put your arms down," someone says calmly, "and drink."
Luca winces at that, because it's going to hurt--but he lowers his arm.
"Look at me," someone murmurs.
Eyes streaming with tears from the strain, Luca does.
The speaking someone steps forward.
"Drink," he says, holding out a glass. Another step, and he holds it to Luca's lips.
Luca breathes unsteadily--
And drinks.
++
Kane had only let Luca have a small glass of water before he stepped back, and then again, and again, disappearing into the light and leaving the room. Now he watches Luca, panting from the exertion of drinking, sprawled out in the dark.
With a hum, he pushes some buttons, and sets an alarm to remind him to start the next phase of the new plan.
++
Alone in the dark, Luca sleeps, or something like it.
++
For the first time in days, he is allowed enough sleep that he wakes up not from blinding light, but nightmares.
The cramped cell could be as cavernous as the empty Sistine Chapel, for how painfully alone he feels. Luca sweats in the dark, feeling lost on a sea of shadow, lonesome as a signpost to nowhere, as the only living thing in a ghost town. He breathes carefully, trying to avoid hysteria. All his life, Luca has prepared for the possibility of violence, but for the past three days he has felt nothing but his own thirst, the wild rebellion of his body, and crippling loneliness.
He tries to not think.
All he wants to do is breathe and not feel pain.
Maybe if he could manage that, he could try for something else, afterwards.
The loneliness is oppressive and it no longer makes him feel small. Now his solitude is suffocating: he can feel emptiness and non-existence pressing down on him. Alienation and the threat of death straddle his chest and burrow into his lungs.
Countless minuteshoursdaysweeksyears might pass before a thin sliver of light pierces the nothingness--
"Stay still," Kane says, "I brought food."
The sound of another human voice, any human voice, is what breaks Luca and makes him weep.
++
For many years, Kane has been busy planning, building, strategizing. He has lived alone, in ramshackle shelters or state of the art bunkers. He is exquisitely aware of his own needs: how much food, how much sleep, how much space he needs. His notes have calculations about the minimum amount of space he needs to store the most calorie dense food to meet his essential nutritional needs, down to the cubic inch. But the broken sound drifting towards his place in the door confirms what he's learned over the past few days:
What Luca needs more than food or sleep or space is people.
++
"Turn towards the wall," Kane says, when Luca's breath has stopped hitching, "And close your eyes."
He expects resistance and there's a moment of it--he's about to make a mostly empty threat with the cattle prod again--but then Luca takes a big but silent breath and turns towards the wall.
"I'm going to blindfold you," Kane says into the quiet of the room.
Luca's breathing comes a shade faster.
"I won't hurt you," Kane says, "Unless you make me." He takes a few steps into the room, sets down a covered container. And then he's at Luca's back, tying something soft and black firmly over his eyes. Luca tenses, but doesn't flinch.
Kane stands back.
"Sit up," he suggests.
Luca rolls off one shoulder and onto his back, then sits up. The movement is surprisingly smooth, if slow--Kane wonders if he should adjust the handcuffs somehow, to make them more of a handicap.
"On the floor," Kane says, "On your knees."
Hesitation again.
"Do it," Kane says evenly. "Don't you want to eat?"
Wavering.
Luca slides off the floor and now his grace is gone; his knees hit the floor hard. When he straightens, Kane takes a moment to just look at him.
Still looking athletic; three days without food has trimmed him down more in his face than his body. He looks gaunt, and the black of the blindfold cuts across his soft skin and his cheeks, always high boned, are looking hollow. His biceps are slightly smaller, and his arms hang down from broad shoulders. His cuffed wrists rest on the inside of his thighs. Most of the electrical burns are hidden under his thin undershirt, although Kane can see the burns on his fingers from the initial taser hit, skin shiny where his rings used to be; his wrist that used to wear his watch burned under the cuts from his struggles against the cuffs.
"Don't bite," Kane says, "And stay very still."
He picks up the container, filled with shreds of roast chicken (which Kane picked up from the grocery store instead of preparing himself) and white grapes (which Kane had been eating). When he opens it, Luca's nostrils flare, taking the scent, but he doesn't move.
"Don't bite," Kane says again, and he holds a piece of chicken against Luca's lips, the roast skin smearing grease against them.
Completely against his will, Luca shudders.
And very carefully, he takes the chicken from Kane's fingers.
"Good," Kane says. He holds a grape out next, and Luca's tongue has to slide against his fingers to get at it, because Kane won't put his fingers past Luca's teeth.
The grape explodes in sweetness and blessed moisture in Luca's parched mouth.
There's a great tension held in Luca's shoulders, down through his thighs. It builds steadily and Kane can tell.
After a few more pieces of chicken, he stops.
"Do you want more food?" he asks. It's the first question he's given Luca in all their days together, and the confusion this causes is written plainly in the lines of Luca's mouth.
He nods.
"Speak," Kane says.
Luca doesn't hesitate:
"Please," he says.
Kane's brows quirk up in surprise, and he gives a quick one shouldered shrug, but he gives Luca another piece of chicken, glad for the blindfold.
"Good," he settles on saying, and he picks up a grape. He holds it close--
"Ah, ah, ah," he warns, as Luca's lips seek it. At the tone, Luca freezes, and Kane goes on, "Wait. On my word. And not before."
Luca waits, and Kane holds the grape against his lips.
"Now," he says, and Luca's lips grasp the grape immediately.
"Again," Kane says, and he brushes another bit of meat against Luca's lips. "Now."
"Wait," he says, the next time, pressing meat to Luca's lip, seeing his quiet desperation as he tries to take in the scent, "...wait...now."
They do this a few more times, Kane stretching the interval of waiting as he sees fit and then slashing it wildly, so that Luca never knows how long food will be maddeningly close and still forbidden.
By the time they get near the end of the food, Luca is trembling all over. During each interval, he seems like he's going to shake apart. Kane puts a hand in his hair, petting softly.
"Shhh," he says, as Luca shudders, and his other hand holds up another bit of food, "Now."
He keeps a hand in Luca's hair for the next few times, losing his fingers in his hair, stroking slowly. It makes Luca shake harder, but he never falters--no hesitation, no bites. Soon he's panting when he's not swallowing, but Kane makes quiet soothing noises in his direction.
"All done," he whispers, finally.
Luca half collapses against him, knees splaying out, knuckles on the floor, the top half of his body weighing against Kane.
"Shhh," Kane says again, and he allows the touch for a moment before gently, firmly holding Luca in place and taking a step back.
Luca drops to knees and his cuffed hands.
"I'm going to do you a favor," Kane says, "And leave the lights off."
Luca pants more heavily.
"No," he whispers, ragged, "No, no, nonononono."
The dark. Alone. Even if he gets the blindfold off he won't be able to see. Alone. Again. Alone in the dark so silent that he could just die without anything changing, anyone noticing. So lonesome he isn't sure he exists.
Kane doesn't speak, but Luca hears his retreating footsteps.
"Don't leave," Luca says, in a thinned, strained, voice, "Don't leave again. Please."
"If you don't stop," Kane says evenly, "I'll take off the blindfold and turn on the lights. And I'll leave you alone in here like that for days."
He closes the door, and turns off the light.
ETA: guuuyyyys, there is some amazing Charles/Erik action going on in the comments. Oh, etirabys. <3 <3 hearteyes forever.
I've basically withdrawn from the internet to quietly hack myself to pieces while focusing on going to work early and obsessing over Hannibal Lecter (read Hannibal; almost done with Hannibal Rising and then I'll have read the whole series). Seriously, I've only been logging on to google healthy dessert recipes and write raving half mad e mails to etirabys. How does she put up with me even. I STILL LOVE YOU GUYS THOUGH. I will comment and things soon. Yes.
In the meantime, um.
I, gosh, um, what. I have this certain fixation right now with this trope, something about a captor/captive situation, and I couldn't decide if I want it Kane/Luca or Charles/Erik, and who should be the captor and who the captive, and is it consensual or not... so I plotted out all four combinations I liked (Charles and Luca as victims, non/dub con; Erik and Kane as consensual submissives) and wanted to write them all as some sexy moderate psychological torture polyptych, but, uh, that's probably far too ambitious. Anyway.
HAVE SOME KIDNAPPING+STOCKHOLM SYNDROME FIC WITH D/S OVERTONES?
Kane/Luca. 2092 words. Rated M for...some torture? IDK; no blood, just fuckery.
[Kane is a very patient villain; in the variant with Erik as kidnapper, Charles is bleeding all over the floor in short order.]
On the third day, when Kane goes to yank the black hood off the hostage's head, he pauses. Even through the burlap sack, he feels the warmth of the hostage's skin, as the hooded man presses his face into Kane's hand. His breathing is shallow, and slow with the glassiness of prolonged terror. In the pitch black of the cramped room, Kane shatters his perfect stillness and yanks the hood off, rough and sudden. The hostage cringes, not altogether noiselessly. Kane watches him through his night-vision goggles.
Eyes wide open and staring at nothing, pupils blown wide open, still breathing like a dying rabbit, the hostage strains again towards Kane's hand, pressing into it when he finds it.
His pulse is wing flutter fast.
Again, Kane pauses.
This could change things.
This time, he does not replace the hood.
++
To discourage exploration, certain areas of the cell deliver electric shocks periodically. For disrupting morale, the shocks are distributed randomly as well as being triggered by pressure against key areas, such as the door. In the pitch black of the cell, the hostage cannot explore productively, in the dark, with his hands cuffed behind his back. Kane monitors him periodically with the livefeed infrared cameras, and when he is very still--asleep, perhaps, from trauma and exhaustion--Kane flips a switch and turns the lights on. It's so bright it burns the eyes; so searing that sleep is impossible.
Now, on the rare occasions the hostage manages to struggle to his feet while the lights are on and his hood is off, he stumbles and falls in less than five steps.
++
The human body, starting from a presumed state of general good health, can go approximately three days without water.
Kane has limits to push, but a dead hostage would be of little use. After a day and a half, he had come in, plunged a needle into his prisoner's shoulder, and sedated him. Then he'd wheeled in an IV drip, carefully uncuffed his hostage, and put the IV in. Kane waited patiently, taser at the ready, for the couple of hours it took for the bag of fluids to be absorbed. He then disconnected the IV, administered another, smaller dose of sedative, replaced the cuffs, and left.
++
The hostage thinks he hasn't had any fluids in three days.
Or he would if he knew days were passing (instead of hours minutes weeks?--he can no longer tell).
++
All the hostage knows is that he's thirsty.
++
The hostage is sleeping or unconscious again: Kane takes the opportunity to slip into the cell silently.
This is going to be--new. Kane uses the lull of the moment to take inventory:
Luca Lebeau--six foot two, 185 pounds, 27 years old, blond hair, brown eyes.
Taller than Kane. Athletic build. Vanity muscles--his chest and biceps said he spent a lot of time at the gym. Functional core and thighs. He could, Kane reflected, punch like a motherfucker, not that it had helped him at all.
++
Luca comes to with a screaming headache, and he tries to clamp his eyes shut against the light so he can sleep. It doesn't work--it never works--and he makes the mistake he always does, and tries to open his eyes against the light.
This time there's something there--
Luca shoves himself backwards, but he's already against the wall.
"Here," someone says, "Drink."
Luca can't see--who--what? Eyes slitted against the light, he still can't see anything, or make out the blurring, back-lit figure. He keeps on squinting, trying to see something, anything, and he raises up his arms to hold above his eyes just as whoever it is steps forward.
"Drink," someone says again.
Luca can't believe what he's hearing.
His throat feels like it's on fire.
"Don't try anything stupid," but the tone is even and not how people use threats, "Just do as I say. And drink. You're thirsty, aren't you?"
Luca suppresses the urge to cough. Right now he knows from experience that it will hurt tremendously.
"Put your arms down," someone says calmly, "and drink."
Luca winces at that, because it's going to hurt--but he lowers his arm.
"Look at me," someone murmurs.
Eyes streaming with tears from the strain, Luca does.
The speaking someone steps forward.
"Drink," he says, holding out a glass. Another step, and he holds it to Luca's lips.
Luca breathes unsteadily--
And drinks.
++
Kane had only let Luca have a small glass of water before he stepped back, and then again, and again, disappearing into the light and leaving the room. Now he watches Luca, panting from the exertion of drinking, sprawled out in the dark.
With a hum, he pushes some buttons, and sets an alarm to remind him to start the next phase of the new plan.
++
Alone in the dark, Luca sleeps, or something like it.
++
For the first time in days, he is allowed enough sleep that he wakes up not from blinding light, but nightmares.
The cramped cell could be as cavernous as the empty Sistine Chapel, for how painfully alone he feels. Luca sweats in the dark, feeling lost on a sea of shadow, lonesome as a signpost to nowhere, as the only living thing in a ghost town. He breathes carefully, trying to avoid hysteria. All his life, Luca has prepared for the possibility of violence, but for the past three days he has felt nothing but his own thirst, the wild rebellion of his body, and crippling loneliness.
He tries to not think.
All he wants to do is breathe and not feel pain.
Maybe if he could manage that, he could try for something else, afterwards.
The loneliness is oppressive and it no longer makes him feel small. Now his solitude is suffocating: he can feel emptiness and non-existence pressing down on him. Alienation and the threat of death straddle his chest and burrow into his lungs.
Countless minuteshoursdaysweeksyears might pass before a thin sliver of light pierces the nothingness--
"Stay still," Kane says, "I brought food."
The sound of another human voice, any human voice, is what breaks Luca and makes him weep.
++
For many years, Kane has been busy planning, building, strategizing. He has lived alone, in ramshackle shelters or state of the art bunkers. He is exquisitely aware of his own needs: how much food, how much sleep, how much space he needs. His notes have calculations about the minimum amount of space he needs to store the most calorie dense food to meet his essential nutritional needs, down to the cubic inch. But the broken sound drifting towards his place in the door confirms what he's learned over the past few days:
What Luca needs more than food or sleep or space is people.
++
"Turn towards the wall," Kane says, when Luca's breath has stopped hitching, "And close your eyes."
He expects resistance and there's a moment of it--he's about to make a mostly empty threat with the cattle prod again--but then Luca takes a big but silent breath and turns towards the wall.
"I'm going to blindfold you," Kane says into the quiet of the room.
Luca's breathing comes a shade faster.
"I won't hurt you," Kane says, "Unless you make me." He takes a few steps into the room, sets down a covered container. And then he's at Luca's back, tying something soft and black firmly over his eyes. Luca tenses, but doesn't flinch.
Kane stands back.
"Sit up," he suggests.
Luca rolls off one shoulder and onto his back, then sits up. The movement is surprisingly smooth, if slow--Kane wonders if he should adjust the handcuffs somehow, to make them more of a handicap.
"On the floor," Kane says, "On your knees."
Hesitation again.
"Do it," Kane says evenly. "Don't you want to eat?"
Wavering.
Luca slides off the floor and now his grace is gone; his knees hit the floor hard. When he straightens, Kane takes a moment to just look at him.
Still looking athletic; three days without food has trimmed him down more in his face than his body. He looks gaunt, and the black of the blindfold cuts across his soft skin and his cheeks, always high boned, are looking hollow. His biceps are slightly smaller, and his arms hang down from broad shoulders. His cuffed wrists rest on the inside of his thighs. Most of the electrical burns are hidden under his thin undershirt, although Kane can see the burns on his fingers from the initial taser hit, skin shiny where his rings used to be; his wrist that used to wear his watch burned under the cuts from his struggles against the cuffs.
"Don't bite," Kane says, "And stay very still."
He picks up the container, filled with shreds of roast chicken (which Kane picked up from the grocery store instead of preparing himself) and white grapes (which Kane had been eating). When he opens it, Luca's nostrils flare, taking the scent, but he doesn't move.
"Don't bite," Kane says again, and he holds a piece of chicken against Luca's lips, the roast skin smearing grease against them.
Completely against his will, Luca shudders.
And very carefully, he takes the chicken from Kane's fingers.
"Good," Kane says. He holds a grape out next, and Luca's tongue has to slide against his fingers to get at it, because Kane won't put his fingers past Luca's teeth.
The grape explodes in sweetness and blessed moisture in Luca's parched mouth.
There's a great tension held in Luca's shoulders, down through his thighs. It builds steadily and Kane can tell.
After a few more pieces of chicken, he stops.
"Do you want more food?" he asks. It's the first question he's given Luca in all their days together, and the confusion this causes is written plainly in the lines of Luca's mouth.
He nods.
"Speak," Kane says.
Luca doesn't hesitate:
"Please," he says.
Kane's brows quirk up in surprise, and he gives a quick one shouldered shrug, but he gives Luca another piece of chicken, glad for the blindfold.
"Good," he settles on saying, and he picks up a grape. He holds it close--
"Ah, ah, ah," he warns, as Luca's lips seek it. At the tone, Luca freezes, and Kane goes on, "Wait. On my word. And not before."
Luca waits, and Kane holds the grape against his lips.
"Now," he says, and Luca's lips grasp the grape immediately.
"Again," Kane says, and he brushes another bit of meat against Luca's lips. "Now."
"Wait," he says, the next time, pressing meat to Luca's lip, seeing his quiet desperation as he tries to take in the scent, "...wait...now."
They do this a few more times, Kane stretching the interval of waiting as he sees fit and then slashing it wildly, so that Luca never knows how long food will be maddeningly close and still forbidden.
By the time they get near the end of the food, Luca is trembling all over. During each interval, he seems like he's going to shake apart. Kane puts a hand in his hair, petting softly.
"Shhh," he says, as Luca shudders, and his other hand holds up another bit of food, "Now."
He keeps a hand in Luca's hair for the next few times, losing his fingers in his hair, stroking slowly. It makes Luca shake harder, but he never falters--no hesitation, no bites. Soon he's panting when he's not swallowing, but Kane makes quiet soothing noises in his direction.
"All done," he whispers, finally.
Luca half collapses against him, knees splaying out, knuckles on the floor, the top half of his body weighing against Kane.
"Shhh," Kane says again, and he allows the touch for a moment before gently, firmly holding Luca in place and taking a step back.
Luca drops to knees and his cuffed hands.
"I'm going to do you a favor," Kane says, "And leave the lights off."
Luca pants more heavily.
"No," he whispers, ragged, "No, no, nonononono."
The dark. Alone. Even if he gets the blindfold off he won't be able to see. Alone. Again. Alone in the dark so silent that he could just die without anything changing, anyone noticing. So lonesome he isn't sure he exists.
Kane doesn't speak, but Luca hears his retreating footsteps.
"Don't leave," Luca says, in a thinned, strained, voice, "Don't leave again. Please."
"If you don't stop," Kane says evenly, "I'll take off the blindfold and turn on the lights. And I'll leave you alone in here like that for days."
He closes the door, and turns off the light.
ETA: guuuyyyys, there is some amazing Charles/Erik action going on in the comments. Oh, etirabys. <3 <3 hearteyes forever.