On my word and not before
So, hahah, you know how I said all I had written since starting my new job was idfic? Did you think I was joking? No? Okay, good, because I wasn't.
So half the fun of this for me is that it's an AU (of--oh, look, I no longer even have an organized link to this; try, uh, this, maybe, but TRUST ME, you don't need it right now) and an inversion of the conventional power dynamic, but, uh.
LOOK, YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING. IT'S TWO PRETTY DUDES IN A STOCKHOLM FIC WITH KIDNAPPING AND WEIRD D/S OVERTONES.
Here is a one shot single dad AU called Lunch Break that's sweet and cute if you'd like something porny that doesn't make you feel like a total skeeze about your sadistic streak. For the rest of us--
On my word and not before
Part One
Part Two
Luca's chest is still rising and falling a little too quickly, betraying him--but he isn't fighting to escape.
"Good," Kane says, because, surely, not fighting back should be encouraged.
Luca lets a long, shuddering breath out of his nose. His tongue rests, lightly, against the skin of Kane's fingers.
"Good boy," Kane says, mind frighteningly blank of what to do. He isn't angry anymore. He isn't anything anymore.
When Luca continues to protest each time he's going to be left alone, Kane adds a gag to the blindfold and handcuffs.
It only comes off for mealtimes.
++
After about twenty nine hours of intermittent muffled cries, blessed silenced settles over the hostage quarters.
++
It's only a few days into the new regime when the blood starts showing up. At first, Kane ignores it--he's not there to keep his prisoner in mint condition, for fuck's sake. If Luca is going to chew on his lips until they're slick with blood under the gag, let him. If he's started trashing against the walls in his sleep, what does it matter? Who cares? Not Kane.
But when Luca manages to tear a gash in his forehead when he's left alone in the bath tub for five fucking minutes, Kane grits his teeth and concedes to himself that it's time for phase two of the plan, even though he dreads it.
There's no use putting it off, so Kane begins immediately. He goes and opens the cabinet under the sink, takes out disinfectant, stitches, bandages. He carries them next to the tub and makes a face down at Luca. Still blindfolded and gagged, Luca's shoved himself in the far corner of the bathtub, slumping against the tiled wall. The wound in his forehead is still bleeding, and red smears against the white tiles.
"I'm going to take off the gag," Kane says evenly.
Luca doesn't react at all, but when Kane reaches out and touches the side of his face to pull down the gag, Luca flinches violently and slams his head back against the tile.
Jesus Christ, Kane thinks, disgust on his face, but he reaches out again and, firmly, gently, tugs down the gag. He takes in Luca's ruined lips, and finishes untying the gag.
"There," he says. The silence stretches out so he adds, "is that better?"
Luca hesitates, then nods jerkily.
"I didn't ungag you so that you'd stay silent," Kane says mildly. "Speak."
Luca's brows furrow in conflict or confusion. His big chest rises with a breath, but no sound manifests. Very clearly, he does not know what to say.
And in an idle, distant way, Kane finds that odd. The man he spent months watching, plotting to kidnap, was a silver tongued seducer. Silence had not figured into his life much at all.
"Say something," Kane tells him, "Anything."
And Luca finally does try to, but whatever it is gets lost in his throat and he coughs, sputters--
"Fine," Kane says, "Then just stay still. I'm going to fix the slice in your head."
Luca twitches in apparent disagreement, but does not resist as Kane washes out his wound.
"This is going to sting some," Kane finds himself saying, "So..." He trails off because, really, what is there for Luca to do? Kane shrugs and dabs iodine onto a bandage before tilting Luca's head back.
Luca hisses as the disinfectant hits, but otherwise stays still. The butterfly sutures go on neatly and without incident.
"There," Kane says, when he's finished. "Done."
Clumsily, Luca brings up his cuffed hands and tries to brush his fingers against the sutures--without thinking, Kane's hand darts out to stop him. Their fingers brush together. Kane freezes for a split second--they both do--but then he forces himself out of it, and his fingers settle over Luca's hands.
"Gently," Kane says, "Don't break them." He guides Luca's fingers, skimming them lightly over his forehead, because he realizes Luca can't see, and has no other way of checking the work that's been done to him. Luca's hands drop back into the water.
"Is that better?" Kane says, gathering his supplies back up. He's startled by a low, rough
"Yes," coming from Luca.
It's been so long since he's heard the sound of Luca's voice that Kane almost drops the box of sutures he's holding.
"Yes what?" he prompts automatically, clutching the box to him now, suddenly tense.
"Yes, that's better," Luca says, "Thank you for tending to me."
Kane pauses and tries to drink all of that in.
"Good," he finally settles on saying. "Let's, uh. Rinse you off."
He isn't sure he's ready for full sentences, even if it is in his best interest to end up with a version of Luca that's still capable of speech and rational thought. That is, after all, the plan: light brainwashing and then release into the field to further his political agenda, more or less.
He lets the rest of the shower take up some time. When Luca's standing in front of him and slowly dripping, Kane clears his throat and starts toweling him off.
"I want you to feel comfortable here," he says, reading off from long ago written script in his head, "I won't hurt you unless you make me. And I hate it when you make me." The words stick to his throat. He doesn't really want to be saying them.
"I'm sorry," Luca murmurs. He sounds sincere and the psychology of it all suggests that he should be sincere, which somehow makes Kane want to scream for a second. What he really hates is that Luca is letting this happen to him. It shouldn't be so easy.
"So if you're good," Kane says thickly, "We can..." he falters. "We can work something out..."
He doesn't like how that sounds. This isn't that kind of kidnapping. He didn't choose Luca because it was personal.
"Get you a little more freedom, maybe," he finishes.
Luca bites his lips but asks, so quick and jumbled that Kane can hardly understand it--
"Will you take the blindfold off?"
Kane hesitates.
"The blindfold?" he asks. "Not the handcuffs?"
Luca shakes his head weakly. "No...I don't know...yes..." he tries, "Those, too, but..."
Kane would have chosen exactly backwards, but it doesn't matter. Carefully he says,
"Maybe someday," and leaves it at that.
For the moment, he removes neither.
Luca still presses into every single touch, as Kane dries him off.
++
But now Kane knows that he can't remove the handcuffs: he knows Luca will rip off the blindfold immediately.
And he'd been coming along so obediently, too.
In the privacy of his own room, with Luca locked up and away, Kane sighs. He works the discarded gag between his fingers, rubbing the frabic absently.
The last thing he wants is to pretend to be friends. Kane dreads Phase Two.
++
Alone again in the dark, Luca runs his tongue over his scabbed lips and contemplates his new power of speech. He has no idea how long his voice has been denied to him: minutes; ages. It almost doesn't matter.
He coughs into the darkness.
The responsibility of rebirth is almost too much.
These will be the first words he speaks, the first real words, it feels like, of his entire life.
He clears his throat again.
"I am alive," he says. He stops to let those words sink into his skin. They count this way--they have meaning, now, when before in the mere echoes of his thoughts they meant nothing. His throat feels so strange.
"I am alive," he repeats, breathless. And once more, now firmly, confirming, feeling the truth in the scratch in his throat: "I am alive."
Yes.
"My name is Luca Lebeau. I am twenty seven years old. I have been kidnapped. I am a prisoner."
It is a strange thing to say--it is a strange thing to be. Luca had been many things in his life--lover, fighter, poet, son, brother, part time DJ, full time student, lawyer, lobbyist, sinner, amen--but prisoner was not one of them, and it felt wrong to choose it as sole identifier so quickly. But this was a fact.
"I don't know why I was kidnapped," Luca added, uneasily, shifting his weight on the bed, "I don't..."
He lapsed into troubled silence. It was as far as he got that night.
++
When Kane comes into the cell for Luca's next meal, he finds his hostage face down in the mattress and muttering a poem to himself. Kane bites back his scoff and hauls Luca upright.
"Hello," he says bitterly, in full sarcasm.
Luca surprises him with,
"Hello." It is a sound full of sincerity.
It gives Kane pause.
"How are you," he says, feeling completely absurd.
"I'm okay," Luca says. "A little hungry. You?"
"I brought food," Kane says, ignoring the question--it's more farce than he can handle, and all the worse for how Luca seems to mean it.
That Luca immediately and obediently slides off the bed and onto his knees into the usual feeding stance only makes Kane feel stranger.
He looks at Luca so politely at attention--knees splayed, back straight, hands cuffed, head held high as if looking at Kane for further instruction--and feels something in his gut that makes him shudder. Kane shakes his head against the feeling of something clawing at his insides, of every atom of his being crying out in thirst or hunger.
He knows he's properly hydrated. He always makes sure these days to eat before he comes in to feed Luca. He needs to keep himself healthy, not distracted, so that he can run the underground base properly. Whatever this feeling of need is, he must be imagining it. Phantom pangs. Kane will pay no attention.
"Please," Luca says, and Kane twitches.
Maybe he should just throw all the food in the corner and make Luca eat it off the floor, unable to use his hands.
Instead, he presses a piece of chicken to Luca's lips. Irritated at how Luca doesn't immediately bite at it, Kane snaps his fingers as the release cue. Luca takes the chicken from his fingers immediately. Luca's lips brush against his fingers and Kane feels a quick swipe of tongue and realizes suddenly: he hates obedience. He feels nothing but disgust for how well Luca has taken to the conditioning. It is Luca's fault for letting himself be so readily manipulated.
He feeds Luca another piece of chicken, but shoves it into his mouth on the snap.
It is all his own fucking fault.
Kane's index and middle fingers are hooked in behind Luca's teeth. The chicken was swallowed whole and only Luca's tongue pushes against his fingers in protest; the rest of him stays still. After a sharp inhalation of breath, Luca stops that struggle, too, and his tongue presses against Kane's fingers without movement. Kane feels the wetness of his mouth, the plush push of his tongue, and, when he presses deep, the frantic flutter of his pulse.
Abruptly, Kane releases him and steps back. His fingers swipe against Luca's lips on the way out, and they come back wet.
"Feed yourself," Kane says harshly. "I'm going to uncuff you just to eat. If you reach up to undo the blindfold, I'll blow your brains out."
He says it automatically, voice turning flat and even halfway through. The gun tucked into the back of his waistband isn't even loaded. The tazer would do nicely in case of emergency, however.
Luca, pink lips wet, holds out his hands slowly. Kane undoes the cuffs, trying to not touch him any more than is practically necessary, and watches him eat with the intensity of a mad hawk.
The cuffs go back on afterwards without incident.
Kane goes to the small gym he has on base, and runs eight miles on the treadmill.
++
At the next feeding, Luca is more cautious and gentle than ever. Even blind, even without obvious punishment, he keenly felt Kane's anger before. Luca makes sure to pull his lips back from his teeth--just enough, careful to not accidentally snarl--as he takes the meat gingerly out of Kane's fingers. His tongue stays far from the front of his mouth, to avoid any contact that might disgust Kane.
All this care enrages Kane. It builds steadily: he is immediately irritated by the excessive care, then offended, then filled with flushed, hot resentment. His movements stay mechanical and even until Luca stretches his neck out slowly to take a piece of meat in his mouth--
"Prissy _bitch_," Kane spits out. Hearing his own voice surprises him, but before he can question his feelings, he's rushed into grabbing Luca by the back of the neck. "Is this too good for you? Afraid to get your mouth dirty?" Kane is sneering and it feels so hot in the room, like the space is too small, and everything about that makes him furious and then he's shoving two fingers into Luca's mouth.
Luca starts frantically shaking his head at the question, but lets out a muffled sound as he chokes on the fingers. His breathing goes desperate but before he fully panics, Luca starts forcing himself to count each exhale, each inhale.
Kane growls--
In the new stillness of the room, Luca relaxes his mouth and throat. His heart is hammering away in his chest and he anticipates a shock or a hit, but he keeps his tongue slack and gently closes his lips over Kane's fingers.
Kane blinks, realizes what he's doing, and relaxes his hand slightly. The one at the back of Luca's neck drops. It hangs by Kane's side.
Luca's chest is still rising and falling a little too quickly, betraying him--but he isn't fighting to escape.
"Good," Kane says, because, surely, not fighting back should be encouraged.
Luca lets a long, shuddering breath out of his nose. His tongue rests, lightly, against the skin of Kane's fingers.
"Good boy," Kane says, mind frighteningly blank of what to do. He isn't angry anymore. He isn't anything anymore.
All Luca can focus on are the fingers in his mouth, and how he needs to not bite, stay soft, do this right, be _good_--he wilts around the fingers, every shred of his being focused around them.
Unblinking, experimentally, Kane slides his fingers further into Luca's mouth. Then he slides them almost out. The second time the motion is smaller, just a little thing--slide in, slide out. Distantly, he observes that Luca's mouth is wet. It is also warm. It is exactly what Kane would have expected the inside of a mouth to feel like if he'd ever thought about it, which he has not.
Warm. Wet. A normal mouth in good working order. Nothing extraordinary or unusual.
Kane does the small sliding motion one more time to be sure.
Luca remains unresisting but present. There is no thought in his mind; all Luca strives for, all he believes in for this moment in time, is: _be good_. Don't bite, but don't be prissy.
Kane removes his fingers.
No one moves, until Kane glances down at his fingers. He slides them against this thumb. Yes. They are wet. That is saliva. Yes. This makes sense. Nothing unusual.
Nothing unexpected.
Yes.
"Dismissed," he whispers to Luca, as he bends to pick up the remaining food.
Kane turns off the lights, walks out, and feels nothing at all.
++
The next two meal times pass without incident. Kane eats a meal, takes a nap, and sprints a mile before he goes in each time.
The only change is that Luca no longer gingerly takes the chicken between his teeth as Kane lets it go. Now, he carefully slides his mouth over the piece of meat, over Kane's fingers, and then Kane lets go. Luca slides off delicately, lips gliding over Kane's slick fingers. Sometimes Kane holds the chicken a little longer before he lets go. Sometimes Kane wants to grab his tongue, pull on it, cut it out.
One day, after all the chicken is eaten, Kane slips his fingers into Luca's mouth with just the same motion he's been using. Luca accepts this just the same, even without food. Kane takes his fingers out. Through lowered lashes, he watches Luca, not blinking.
Kane slides his fingers into the plush wetness of Luca's mouth and meets with no resistance. He is not thinking about what he is doing. He uses the same two fingers as last time, and the time before that.
"Suck on them," he says quietly.
The obedience isn't immediate: Luca takes in a sudden breath before he can move at all, and then he's gingerly moving his tongue, shifting the weight of the fingers in his mouth, and then--
Then Luca is gently sucking on his fingers.
Kane, who has been twitching restlessly for days, feels his shoulders relax.
There's hardly any pressure at all on his fingers. Luca is being very tender, or very cautious.
"Good," Kane says evenly.
He removes his fingers, and leaves the room without looking back.
So half the fun of this for me is that it's an AU (of--oh, look, I no longer even have an organized link to this; try, uh, this, maybe, but TRUST ME, you don't need it right now) and an inversion of the conventional power dynamic, but, uh.
LOOK, YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING. IT'S TWO PRETTY DUDES IN A STOCKHOLM FIC WITH KIDNAPPING AND WEIRD D/S OVERTONES.
Here is a one shot single dad AU called Lunch Break that's sweet and cute if you'd like something porny that doesn't make you feel like a total skeeze about your sadistic streak. For the rest of us--
On my word and not before
Part One
Part Two
Luca's chest is still rising and falling a little too quickly, betraying him--but he isn't fighting to escape.
"Good," Kane says, because, surely, not fighting back should be encouraged.
Luca lets a long, shuddering breath out of his nose. His tongue rests, lightly, against the skin of Kane's fingers.
"Good boy," Kane says, mind frighteningly blank of what to do. He isn't angry anymore. He isn't anything anymore.
When Luca continues to protest each time he's going to be left alone, Kane adds a gag to the blindfold and handcuffs.
It only comes off for mealtimes.
++
After about twenty nine hours of intermittent muffled cries, blessed silenced settles over the hostage quarters.
++
It's only a few days into the new regime when the blood starts showing up. At first, Kane ignores it--he's not there to keep his prisoner in mint condition, for fuck's sake. If Luca is going to chew on his lips until they're slick with blood under the gag, let him. If he's started trashing against the walls in his sleep, what does it matter? Who cares? Not Kane.
But when Luca manages to tear a gash in his forehead when he's left alone in the bath tub for five fucking minutes, Kane grits his teeth and concedes to himself that it's time for phase two of the plan, even though he dreads it.
There's no use putting it off, so Kane begins immediately. He goes and opens the cabinet under the sink, takes out disinfectant, stitches, bandages. He carries them next to the tub and makes a face down at Luca. Still blindfolded and gagged, Luca's shoved himself in the far corner of the bathtub, slumping against the tiled wall. The wound in his forehead is still bleeding, and red smears against the white tiles.
"I'm going to take off the gag," Kane says evenly.
Luca doesn't react at all, but when Kane reaches out and touches the side of his face to pull down the gag, Luca flinches violently and slams his head back against the tile.
Jesus Christ, Kane thinks, disgust on his face, but he reaches out again and, firmly, gently, tugs down the gag. He takes in Luca's ruined lips, and finishes untying the gag.
"There," he says. The silence stretches out so he adds, "is that better?"
Luca hesitates, then nods jerkily.
"I didn't ungag you so that you'd stay silent," Kane says mildly. "Speak."
Luca's brows furrow in conflict or confusion. His big chest rises with a breath, but no sound manifests. Very clearly, he does not know what to say.
And in an idle, distant way, Kane finds that odd. The man he spent months watching, plotting to kidnap, was a silver tongued seducer. Silence had not figured into his life much at all.
"Say something," Kane tells him, "Anything."
And Luca finally does try to, but whatever it is gets lost in his throat and he coughs, sputters--
"Fine," Kane says, "Then just stay still. I'm going to fix the slice in your head."
Luca twitches in apparent disagreement, but does not resist as Kane washes out his wound.
"This is going to sting some," Kane finds himself saying, "So..." He trails off because, really, what is there for Luca to do? Kane shrugs and dabs iodine onto a bandage before tilting Luca's head back.
Luca hisses as the disinfectant hits, but otherwise stays still. The butterfly sutures go on neatly and without incident.
"There," Kane says, when he's finished. "Done."
Clumsily, Luca brings up his cuffed hands and tries to brush his fingers against the sutures--without thinking, Kane's hand darts out to stop him. Their fingers brush together. Kane freezes for a split second--they both do--but then he forces himself out of it, and his fingers settle over Luca's hands.
"Gently," Kane says, "Don't break them." He guides Luca's fingers, skimming them lightly over his forehead, because he realizes Luca can't see, and has no other way of checking the work that's been done to him. Luca's hands drop back into the water.
"Is that better?" Kane says, gathering his supplies back up. He's startled by a low, rough
"Yes," coming from Luca.
It's been so long since he's heard the sound of Luca's voice that Kane almost drops the box of sutures he's holding.
"Yes what?" he prompts automatically, clutching the box to him now, suddenly tense.
"Yes, that's better," Luca says, "Thank you for tending to me."
Kane pauses and tries to drink all of that in.
"Good," he finally settles on saying. "Let's, uh. Rinse you off."
He isn't sure he's ready for full sentences, even if it is in his best interest to end up with a version of Luca that's still capable of speech and rational thought. That is, after all, the plan: light brainwashing and then release into the field to further his political agenda, more or less.
He lets the rest of the shower take up some time. When Luca's standing in front of him and slowly dripping, Kane clears his throat and starts toweling him off.
"I want you to feel comfortable here," he says, reading off from long ago written script in his head, "I won't hurt you unless you make me. And I hate it when you make me." The words stick to his throat. He doesn't really want to be saying them.
"I'm sorry," Luca murmurs. He sounds sincere and the psychology of it all suggests that he should be sincere, which somehow makes Kane want to scream for a second. What he really hates is that Luca is letting this happen to him. It shouldn't be so easy.
"So if you're good," Kane says thickly, "We can..." he falters. "We can work something out..."
He doesn't like how that sounds. This isn't that kind of kidnapping. He didn't choose Luca because it was personal.
"Get you a little more freedom, maybe," he finishes.
Luca bites his lips but asks, so quick and jumbled that Kane can hardly understand it--
"Will you take the blindfold off?"
Kane hesitates.
"The blindfold?" he asks. "Not the handcuffs?"
Luca shakes his head weakly. "No...I don't know...yes..." he tries, "Those, too, but..."
Kane would have chosen exactly backwards, but it doesn't matter. Carefully he says,
"Maybe someday," and leaves it at that.
For the moment, he removes neither.
Luca still presses into every single touch, as Kane dries him off.
++
But now Kane knows that he can't remove the handcuffs: he knows Luca will rip off the blindfold immediately.
And he'd been coming along so obediently, too.
In the privacy of his own room, with Luca locked up and away, Kane sighs. He works the discarded gag between his fingers, rubbing the frabic absently.
The last thing he wants is to pretend to be friends. Kane dreads Phase Two.
++
Alone again in the dark, Luca runs his tongue over his scabbed lips and contemplates his new power of speech. He has no idea how long his voice has been denied to him: minutes; ages. It almost doesn't matter.
He coughs into the darkness.
The responsibility of rebirth is almost too much.
These will be the first words he speaks, the first real words, it feels like, of his entire life.
He clears his throat again.
"I am alive," he says. He stops to let those words sink into his skin. They count this way--they have meaning, now, when before in the mere echoes of his thoughts they meant nothing. His throat feels so strange.
"I am alive," he repeats, breathless. And once more, now firmly, confirming, feeling the truth in the scratch in his throat: "I am alive."
Yes.
"My name is Luca Lebeau. I am twenty seven years old. I have been kidnapped. I am a prisoner."
It is a strange thing to say--it is a strange thing to be. Luca had been many things in his life--lover, fighter, poet, son, brother, part time DJ, full time student, lawyer, lobbyist, sinner, amen--but prisoner was not one of them, and it felt wrong to choose it as sole identifier so quickly. But this was a fact.
"I don't know why I was kidnapped," Luca added, uneasily, shifting his weight on the bed, "I don't..."
He lapsed into troubled silence. It was as far as he got that night.
++
When Kane comes into the cell for Luca's next meal, he finds his hostage face down in the mattress and muttering a poem to himself. Kane bites back his scoff and hauls Luca upright.
"Hello," he says bitterly, in full sarcasm.
Luca surprises him with,
"Hello." It is a sound full of sincerity.
It gives Kane pause.
"How are you," he says, feeling completely absurd.
"I'm okay," Luca says. "A little hungry. You?"
"I brought food," Kane says, ignoring the question--it's more farce than he can handle, and all the worse for how Luca seems to mean it.
That Luca immediately and obediently slides off the bed and onto his knees into the usual feeding stance only makes Kane feel stranger.
He looks at Luca so politely at attention--knees splayed, back straight, hands cuffed, head held high as if looking at Kane for further instruction--and feels something in his gut that makes him shudder. Kane shakes his head against the feeling of something clawing at his insides, of every atom of his being crying out in thirst or hunger.
He knows he's properly hydrated. He always makes sure these days to eat before he comes in to feed Luca. He needs to keep himself healthy, not distracted, so that he can run the underground base properly. Whatever this feeling of need is, he must be imagining it. Phantom pangs. Kane will pay no attention.
"Please," Luca says, and Kane twitches.
Maybe he should just throw all the food in the corner and make Luca eat it off the floor, unable to use his hands.
Instead, he presses a piece of chicken to Luca's lips. Irritated at how Luca doesn't immediately bite at it, Kane snaps his fingers as the release cue. Luca takes the chicken from his fingers immediately. Luca's lips brush against his fingers and Kane feels a quick swipe of tongue and realizes suddenly: he hates obedience. He feels nothing but disgust for how well Luca has taken to the conditioning. It is Luca's fault for letting himself be so readily manipulated.
He feeds Luca another piece of chicken, but shoves it into his mouth on the snap.
It is all his own fucking fault.
Kane's index and middle fingers are hooked in behind Luca's teeth. The chicken was swallowed whole and only Luca's tongue pushes against his fingers in protest; the rest of him stays still. After a sharp inhalation of breath, Luca stops that struggle, too, and his tongue presses against Kane's fingers without movement. Kane feels the wetness of his mouth, the plush push of his tongue, and, when he presses deep, the frantic flutter of his pulse.
Abruptly, Kane releases him and steps back. His fingers swipe against Luca's lips on the way out, and they come back wet.
"Feed yourself," Kane says harshly. "I'm going to uncuff you just to eat. If you reach up to undo the blindfold, I'll blow your brains out."
He says it automatically, voice turning flat and even halfway through. The gun tucked into the back of his waistband isn't even loaded. The tazer would do nicely in case of emergency, however.
Luca, pink lips wet, holds out his hands slowly. Kane undoes the cuffs, trying to not touch him any more than is practically necessary, and watches him eat with the intensity of a mad hawk.
The cuffs go back on afterwards without incident.
Kane goes to the small gym he has on base, and runs eight miles on the treadmill.
++
At the next feeding, Luca is more cautious and gentle than ever. Even blind, even without obvious punishment, he keenly felt Kane's anger before. Luca makes sure to pull his lips back from his teeth--just enough, careful to not accidentally snarl--as he takes the meat gingerly out of Kane's fingers. His tongue stays far from the front of his mouth, to avoid any contact that might disgust Kane.
All this care enrages Kane. It builds steadily: he is immediately irritated by the excessive care, then offended, then filled with flushed, hot resentment. His movements stay mechanical and even until Luca stretches his neck out slowly to take a piece of meat in his mouth--
"Prissy _bitch_," Kane spits out. Hearing his own voice surprises him, but before he can question his feelings, he's rushed into grabbing Luca by the back of the neck. "Is this too good for you? Afraid to get your mouth dirty?" Kane is sneering and it feels so hot in the room, like the space is too small, and everything about that makes him furious and then he's shoving two fingers into Luca's mouth.
Luca starts frantically shaking his head at the question, but lets out a muffled sound as he chokes on the fingers. His breathing goes desperate but before he fully panics, Luca starts forcing himself to count each exhale, each inhale.
Kane growls--
In the new stillness of the room, Luca relaxes his mouth and throat. His heart is hammering away in his chest and he anticipates a shock or a hit, but he keeps his tongue slack and gently closes his lips over Kane's fingers.
Kane blinks, realizes what he's doing, and relaxes his hand slightly. The one at the back of Luca's neck drops. It hangs by Kane's side.
Luca's chest is still rising and falling a little too quickly, betraying him--but he isn't fighting to escape.
"Good," Kane says, because, surely, not fighting back should be encouraged.
Luca lets a long, shuddering breath out of his nose. His tongue rests, lightly, against the skin of Kane's fingers.
"Good boy," Kane says, mind frighteningly blank of what to do. He isn't angry anymore. He isn't anything anymore.
All Luca can focus on are the fingers in his mouth, and how he needs to not bite, stay soft, do this right, be _good_--he wilts around the fingers, every shred of his being focused around them.
Unblinking, experimentally, Kane slides his fingers further into Luca's mouth. Then he slides them almost out. The second time the motion is smaller, just a little thing--slide in, slide out. Distantly, he observes that Luca's mouth is wet. It is also warm. It is exactly what Kane would have expected the inside of a mouth to feel like if he'd ever thought about it, which he has not.
Warm. Wet. A normal mouth in good working order. Nothing extraordinary or unusual.
Kane does the small sliding motion one more time to be sure.
Luca remains unresisting but present. There is no thought in his mind; all Luca strives for, all he believes in for this moment in time, is: _be good_. Don't bite, but don't be prissy.
Kane removes his fingers.
No one moves, until Kane glances down at his fingers. He slides them against this thumb. Yes. They are wet. That is saliva. Yes. This makes sense. Nothing unusual.
Nothing unexpected.
Yes.
"Dismissed," he whispers to Luca, as he bends to pick up the remaining food.
Kane turns off the lights, walks out, and feels nothing at all.
++
The next two meal times pass without incident. Kane eats a meal, takes a nap, and sprints a mile before he goes in each time.
The only change is that Luca no longer gingerly takes the chicken between his teeth as Kane lets it go. Now, he carefully slides his mouth over the piece of meat, over Kane's fingers, and then Kane lets go. Luca slides off delicately, lips gliding over Kane's slick fingers. Sometimes Kane holds the chicken a little longer before he lets go. Sometimes Kane wants to grab his tongue, pull on it, cut it out.
One day, after all the chicken is eaten, Kane slips his fingers into Luca's mouth with just the same motion he's been using. Luca accepts this just the same, even without food. Kane takes his fingers out. Through lowered lashes, he watches Luca, not blinking.
Kane slides his fingers into the plush wetness of Luca's mouth and meets with no resistance. He is not thinking about what he is doing. He uses the same two fingers as last time, and the time before that.
"Suck on them," he says quietly.
The obedience isn't immediate: Luca takes in a sudden breath before he can move at all, and then he's gingerly moving his tongue, shifting the weight of the fingers in his mouth, and then--
Then Luca is gently sucking on his fingers.
Kane, who has been twitching restlessly for days, feels his shoulders relax.
There's hardly any pressure at all on his fingers. Luca is being very tender, or very cautious.
"Good," Kane says evenly.
He removes his fingers, and leaves the room without looking back.