Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning:Male/male sex, graphic, language, violence, NCS. See first chapter for
more warnings...
Mind's Eye
Lessons
Duo was warm and comfortable. There was softness under him and softness around him. A light, soapy scent was under his nose, as well as the skin of someone. His cheek rested against the rounded surface of a chest and an arm was draped across him possessively.
Duo burrowed into that person, relieved and comforted. A chuckle sounded and a hand caressed his hair. "Very good," the voice of his owner told him in pleased tones, "So easy to give in, isn't it? The need for touch, for company, and for a grounding point in confusion is stronger than any desire for rebellion."
Duo pressed closer. The time he had spent alone and adrift had been almost agony. This was better. This comfort. This person. It felt good. He didn't want the emptiness again.
"I am your master," the man continued firmly. "Do everything that I order and you won't be hurt, you won't be alone, and you will be cherished." Lips kissed Duo's forehead.
Hands smoothed over Duo's body. Duo made a sound of pleasure and tried to move to stay under that hand when it began to pull away.
"Not yet, greedy one. That's not how we play the game, " the master admonished. "You have to follow my orders to gain your reward."
A down blanket was thrown back and Duo shivered. The bed moved. The sound of clothing being put on was curious. When the tug came on the leash still attached between his legs, Duo was quick to scramble off the bed and onto the floor. A hand pushed him to his knees and then kept pushing until his forehead was against the cold floor.
"Stay, just like that," the master ordered.
Duo listened anxiously as footsteps walked around him. He almost forgot, almost lost the thread of the command as his mind drifted along thoughts of another abandonment, but then something was going around his waist. A hand pushed his head down again, making certain he didn't forget the command during his surprise, and then a leather strap was slipping between his legs and attaching to the thin waist band on the opposite side of his body. That strap was cinched tight and something cold and round pressed snug against his entrance between his ass cheeks.
"Good." The master caressed Duo's cheek and then the leather lead was tugged.
On hands and knees, Duo was led across cold floors. It seemed a long way, and his knees and hands began to hurt long before they reached their destination. A door opened and his hands and knees touched grass instead of cold stone as he was led out into warm sunshine.
"This is your area," the master told him. "Here, when you are not with me, you will sleep, play, eat, and take care of your bodily needs. There is a small house with a bed, some activities, and a tub where you may wash. You will not get off of your hands and knees for anything that you do. Your collar is set with a stun charge, attuned to an invisible fence above you. Raising up too high will set it off."
The lead was pulled. Duo followed to an area that felt full of coarse mulch.
"I suppose you can figure this area out on your own," the man snorted. "It's the compost pile."
Another tug and Duo wearily followed until his hands encountered a large bowl. He smelled food and his stomach growled. "You may use your hands," the master told him. "Next to it is water." He pushed Duo's face down until he felt it on his nose and lips. Duo hurriedly gulped a mouthful.
"This comes with a price, of course," the master told him. "Here you will live and be off your lead.... if you please me. My displeasure, however, will force me to send you back to spend time cold and alone."
Duo shivered, frightened.
"The drugs keep your memory short," the master explained, "But keeping you on a schedule, and reinforcing new memories, will keep you trained as I like." There was a long silence and then, "I had heard of this, and I longed to attempt it, but I never considered that it would give me so much pleasure to... dominate another man this way.... especially you, who I've wanted since the war."
A hand caressed and squeezed Duo's ass. Fingers played with the ring and then ghosted across his entrance as if tempted, but then they withdrew. The master sighed. "That's not part of the game, unfortunately. I am the master. I have to be in control."
There was a click of metal and then Duo was nudged with a booted foot.
"Go eat, play, whatever you like," the master told him. "I will sit here in the sun and ... watch you."
That was reassuring, that the master didn't intend to leave. He was close. Free of his lead, Duo decided to eat and drink first. That done, he felt a need to relieve himself. Creeping back to the compost area, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Memory didn't help him. He started to rise and a sharp shock lanced through his throat. He cried out, clutched at the collar, and bent over until the pain passed. That had been obviously wrong. In the end, he was forced to simply crouch, and he felt an embarrassment that was confusing in it's lack of source. There wasn't a memory to tell him how else he had done it in the past.
Finished, Duo moved quickly away. He heard something from the master, a groan. He stopped, poised, but he wasn't given any orders. It reassured him again, though, that the man was there, that he wasn't alone. The man was his anchor in the darkness.
Duo found a low tub of water. His questing hands felt a drain and a small flow that told him it was renewing itself. Further away, his hands found a small building. Five feet by five feet, it held a cushion and a small blanket. Outside, Duo felt a peeked roof and odd ring bolts at its front on both sides of the door.
There was another groan from the master and a hissed, "Duo!"
Duo scrambled on hands and knees to go the master. His searching hands found a stone bench and the man sitting on it. The master's cotton pants were pooled oddly and Duo felt skin, hot to the touch. He was shoved away.
"I did not give you the order to touch me!" The man growled. There was the sound of cloth moving, a zipper, and then Duo's forehead was shoved down against the grass. "Your punishment."
Duo's lead was snapped back on and he was led to the house. Straps slipped through his collar and rings jingled as they were pulled through them and tied there. Duo was held in the doorway, straps pulling tight on each side of his neck. He whimpered as his arms were pulled back and locked at the small of his back. The lead was pulled backward, and his sack along with it, until it was painfully stretched, and then there was a click and it was held there. Unable to move, Duo shuddered all over.
Everything grew quiet. Duo sobbed. The strap coming down on his ass was a startling, agonizing pain, almost a searing burn. The leather snapped as it hit, one, two, three, four times... and then it was over.
"A small transgression, so a small punishment," the master told him magnanimously. Duo was released. He was made to bow again. He kept crying, his ass burning red hot. A thumb wiped at a tear. "You must do only as I order, nothing more," the master told him.
Duo nodded shakily. He still heard anger in the master's voice and that frightened him. He needed reassurance. He needed to know that he wasn't about to be left alone again.
Something cold touched his entrance and a gel was rubbed over it. Duo held still, confused and unsure. When a small ball pushed into him, he whimpered. The ball was attached to a flexible rod. It was slightly painful as it burrowed deeper and deeper. When it finally came to rest, there was a snap and it was attached to the ring at Duo's entrance, holding it in and in place.
"Perfect," the master almost purred. "You will keep that in until I remove it."
Duo was led around in the grass and he was aware that a length of the rod was sticking out nearly two feet from his entrance. Light and flexible, it bobbed slightly as he walked. The master chuckled in enjoyment. Something smacked it, rocked the ball deep inside Duo, and made the outside length swing wildly.
"Every good little pet needs a tail," the master said under his breath and chuckled again. A hand smoothed over Duo's ass and squeezed. "Perfect," the master's voice purred again. "I can't wait until 'The club' sees you. I'm certain you will win every contest. I learned from the best before I acquired you, and made certain that I could train a pet properly. We'll show them, you and I, that no man is my better, not even in this."
Duo was given a routine to follow. Each morning, he was taken for a walk on
his hands and knees, taught simple commands, and then... it grew confusing.
He was supposed to stay relaxed, supposed to obey, and supposed to trust his
master, but the things that were done to him were strange and varied and he
couldn't help being startled. That displeased the master. He wasn't supposed
to react. His reward was being allowed time in his space. Duo hadn't been able
to achieve that freedom since the first day.
"No!" The master shouted at him and Duo flinched. Forehead pressed to cold marble, he shivered all over as the master paced around him, heels clicking loudly. "You are rebellious. You are disobedient! Why do you fight against me?"
"No," Duo managed through his mental haze. A hand caught his chin and twisted his head up. No, he had meant, he wasn't rebelling. He was simply afraid. The master didn't understand that.
The blow across the face was unexpected and very painful. Duo gasped and flinched away. He cowered, hands covering his head instinctively. Metal rings clashed and the leather leads that had been binding him to a post tangled. He panicked as the leads seemed to be hitting him. He blindly tried to escape them and felt something close so tightly about his neck that his air was cut off sharply. He thrashed, choking, hands frantically trying to pry the leather off.
"Stop!" a voice commanded, over and over again.
A voice said from some stray memory: "They're going to suffocate us like rats, Wu Fei. Don't you care? You can't want to meditate through your last minutes of life?"
An arrogant voice replied in that memory: "The more you fight, the more air you use, Maxwell."
In the present, Duo went limp. Hands grabbed at the leather around his neck and pried it loose. He gasped in air, panting rapidly, his head spinning.
"I'm taking over, Sheldon," a new voice said. "You've clearly demonstrated that you don't know what you're doing."
"No," the master retorted. "I found him. I paid for him! He's mine!"
"You've nearly ruined him," the new voice replied contemptuously. "The find of a century and I find you botching his training."
"I was merely trying to follow in your footsteps, cousin," the master sneered. "To be more like you. Isn't that what you wanted?"
"You can never be like me, Sheldon," the voice replied. "Go back to your two penny prostitutes and leave the finer arts to me."
"He's mine," the master complained petulantly.
"Not any longer. Go away, Sheldon, before I forget the small things that you are useful for."
Footsteps walked away. Duo huddled in on himself, not certain what was happening. He made a small, frightened sound when hands touch his head. Something tugged at the covering over his eyes and then a cold edge slipped between it and his skin. The covering was cut away and sunlight stabbed painfully into Duo's open eyes. A hand covered them, not enough to make it dark, but enough to tone down the light.
"Easy," the reassuring voice told him. "I'm sorry my cousin was using such a crude method. He doesn't understand men. He doesn't understand how to make them obey, willingly and without question. I do. I've been training men most of my adult life."
The bindings around Duo were loosened and then removed. The lead between his legs and the ring was taken off with a mutter of disgust. The harness around his hips was tossed away with a loud clatter of rings. Duo was soon naked except for the collar around his throat.
"Beautiful," the new voice murmured. "You don't need bindings and trappings to show your grace and your strength. You don't need to be broken. Your will is your own to give and you will give it willingly to me." The free hand smoothed along Duo's back, soothing the marks the leather had made in his skin.
"I've read the reports about you. You've been living off the government without purpose or direction; a classic example of a soldier taken from the slums and then set free after the war. Where would you go, but back to the slums again? They breed clones for this, you realize? Simple minded shells to be the slaves of bored aristocrats. It's unheard of to use regular men. I'm one of the few who break with convention to pursue it, though. Better this, a life of being taken care of and cherished, Duo Maxwell, than the cold pathetic death you had chosen for yourself in the gutter of a slum."
The hand caressed Duo's hair. "No more Sheldon's," the voice told him firmly and then the hand over Duo's eyes was cautiously removed.
Duo found himself looking into a very handsome face framed by pale, white hair. A soft smile and ice blue eyes greeted him. Duo felt confusion, uncertainty, and a rippling fear, but the hands on him were confident and reassuring. A lead was clicked to Duo's collar.
"Stand," the new man ordered.
Duo obeyed, feeling joints and muscles, grown used to being on all fours, protesting. He stood in a crouch, but the man tugged gently on his lead until he had straightened all the way.
"Good," the man told him and caressed his cheek again. "Let's go out into the sunlight."
Duo blinked against it as they went out of a door. He drew in a sharp breath. A rolling stretch of green; large, old trees, manicured lawns, and carefully clipped hedges, stretched out as far as he could see. A table and a few chairs were arranged for relaxing and a low wall divided the house from the landscape beyond. Several horses cropped the grass in the distance. It was an estate, a large one.
"This place is yours," the man told him as he unclipped the leash and turned Duo to face the small house. "There is a bed, a bath, and a servant to see to your needs. Sheldon will not be needing them any longer. When I come here, I will be your master. When I am gone, it awaits your pleasure."
Duo didn't understand. He was dazed. He had been taught a way to behave and a schedule to follow. He had been taught that he was nothing, only the pet of the master. He looked up at this new man, who was so very much larger than himself, at his smiling face, and then sank to all fours and placed his forehead against the grass, trembling.
The man's kind voice said, "That's all right, Duo. A few days without Sheldon and you will forget his poor training. You will be a clean slate and we will begin again."
A finger bone snapped. A man screamed. Another break. Another scream. The smell of fear, vomit, and urine was strong in the one room dive above a rundown store front for drug dealers. The man was whimpering and sobbing, upper body pressed down onto a filthy table top by the weight of the man hovering over him, and the twisted arm behind his back.
"Talk or die, You've had your warnings," Heero's cold voice told him.
"You'll fucking give me protection first!" The man screamed at him, slobber shooting from his mouth full of broken teeth. "I'll be a dead man if you don't."
"I don't care what you are after I leave here," Heero ground out as he cocked a gun and held the barrel at the man' temple. "You can be alive now... or dead now. Choose."
The man peered frantically at Heero in the gloom, picked out his hard, killer's eyes, in the low light of a yellow lamp, and knew that Heero wasn't bluffing.
"Okay, I know the guy!" the man told him, still sobbing between his words. "He does sell some flesh now and again, but he didn't sell to me! I been out of the trade for years! I don't have the credits!"
"I want to know where he sells," Heero demanded, putting pressure on the man's twisted arm. "I want to know where the market is."
"It moves!" the man howled. "There's no one place! You have contacts. They tell you when fresh meat is put on the block. You wanna sell, you have to go through lower thugs, not any of the big guys. Why'd you think they been around so long? Only the high muckety mucks get to go in."
"Who?" Heero demanded. "Who buys?"
"Fuck you, I'm not telling you-"
Heero fired his gun. The bullet tore into the table top so close to the man's face that bits of wood imbedded themselves into his flesh. He howled and struggled. Heero's grip was steel and immovable.
"I'm going to kill you now and find someone else to get my information from," Heero told him. "You have three seconds. One..."
"Shit! Fuck! Okay!" The man screamed. "Bob Simple! He runs girls. Prostitutes. Sometimes he gets a pretty one and sells her."
Heero releases the man, shoving him sideways so that he sprawled onto the floor. "Warn him I'm coming and I'll come back and kill you."
The man spat blood and chips of tooth. "He'll kill you, fuck!"
Heero's expression was one that the devil himself must have owned, the man thought and he went deathly cold as Heero promised, "If you bet on that, you'll lose."