two blind mice

[maculategiraffe]

OK, I offered thexpuzzler birthday fic, and she requested Quen/Jesse, pre-freedom. It, um, turned out as not exactly a happy birthday fic, but happy belated birthday to the lovely Cel anyway, and y'all should check out her excellent original slavefic series Dolls and Seesaws.










It took a while to find the right way to hold Quen so that he didn't go taut all over with the pain. He was bruised, cut, and other things that he wouldn't lift his tunic to show Jesse, but that showed in the whiteness of his lips when he put any weight on his ass, even on the softness of the bed. The master had shaved his head again, and messily, so that his leprously pale scalp was blotched and clotted with livid cuts and scabs. Jesse held him close, Quen's weight on one hip, and kissed his forehead, and stroked his relatively pristine neck.

"Hey, baby," he whispered, and Quen's raw mouth loosened and sweetened with a smile.

"Hey," he croaked, his voice hoarse from the screams Jesse had heard through the walls. Jesse's own knuckles and knees were bruised and bloody from battering at the door, and his nails were cracked and torn and raw from clawing; he thought he might have broken a toe, but that didn't matter right now, not with Quen back in his arms.

"Mice," Quen whispered, and Jesse nodded; the metaphor was tired and obvious enough by now that all it needed was the shorthand of that one word, for the way their master played with them, torturing Quen in one room while Jesse tried to break down the door of another one, or vice versa, then tossing the battered body of one of them at the other and leaving them alone to breathe, to recapture each other, for just long enough to sharpen the anguish for next time. The master was the sleek, well-fed cat; they were the trembling, bleeding mice.

"Let's kill him," Jesse said softly, and Quen's mouth spasmed again, more sharply and painfully than before.

"No," he said. "They'd kill us."

"He will too, eventually." Jesse thought. "We could run. After we killed him. We could time it right. We could get out."

"We're not killing anyone," said Quen, and closed his eyes, his naked head heavy on Jesse's arm. "We're not like that."

Jesse wasn't sure he agreed, but if that was Quen's opinion, he wasn't going to budge from it, so... "Then let's just run."

"I can't run, Jess."

"I don't mean now," said Jesse. "We'll wait. He won't do anything like this for a while, now. You know. We'll time it, for when--"

"When?"

"When neither of us is a bloody pulp," said Jesse. "When he's distracted."

"Sweetheart," rusted Quen, his eyes still closed, the word as startling as a sudden kiss from his bloodless, bitten lips, "we are his distraction. He is only distracted in our direction."

"I'll think of something," said Jesse, and kissed Quen again, softly, on the eyelid. "We're going to make it, okay baby?"

"I know," said Quen, just a breath, as if he were falling asleep.

"I don't just mean we're going to die with honor, dammit," said Jesse. "Or not-- stop-- We're going to live through this, we're going to make it."

"I know," said Quen again. "Jess... I hurt so fucking much..."

"Shhhh," said Jesse, running his fingers lightly over Quen's painfully mottled scalp. "Rest."

"I am," Quen mumbled. "Don't run away."

"Not without you," Jesse answered, as if it needed saying. "You need to sleep?"

Quen nodded, and Jesse laid him down carefully on the wide, soft, silk-spreaded bed, adjusting a plump, soft pillow under his shaved head. They'd eventually figured out that this was one of their master's many refinements of agony: whenever one of them disappeared for a while, the other one found himself housed like a prince in a room full of soft textures and rich colors, offered rich and ordinarily forbidden foods, stroked and kissed and made love to, and if he-- if Jesse-- fought back or broke anything or asked a fucking question, the master left, and the screaming started coming from other parts of the house. And if Jesse destroyed everything in the room that teeth and fists and feet and shit and piss could possibly destroy, the master remarked mildly, on his return, that Jesse was getting very expensive, and maybe he should be sold, so his master could give Quen more consistent attention.

So Quen lay, white and red and purple around the pale blue of his tunic, on the peach silk spread that still smelled like the gentle, tender sex Jesse's master had had with him that morning. Jesse sat beside him and watched him breathe, slowly, in and out. He didn't move to touch him; he couldn't stand to see the involuntary shiver of fear and agony, not right now. After a while, he could tell Quen was asleep.

There was no clock in this room, and certainly no windows, so Jesse didn't know how much time had passed when the door opened. He did know that if the master intended to hurt Quen any more right now, or even wake him, he would kill him, and if that meant Quen was bitterly disappointed in Jesse for being like that, so fucking be it. He'd rip up the bedspread and tie Quen up, gag him, sling him over his shoulder and run with him; he'd kill anyone, cop or not, who tried to get in their way. Quen could dump Jesse's blood-covered psycho ass at his leisure, once they got to freedom.

The master came over to where Jesse sat on the edge of the bed and ran a gentle, caressing hand over Jesse's hair. Jesse held still; this was fine; the master wasn't touching Quen.

"My beautiful boy," the master murmured. "Both my beautiful boys... he was a good purchase, wasn't he, Jesse?"

"Yes, master," said Jesse, who would have cheerfully dived headfirst into a vat of acid if it meant he could go back in time and undo his master's purchase of Quen.

The master stood there for a while, absently stroking Jesse's hair, which was fine, it was fine, it wasn't grounds for killing him, it definitely wasn't, because Quen was still asleep, he didn't even know Jesse's hair was being stroked. And it was okay; maybe Quen was dreaming about something pleasant; maybe he didn't even feel any pain right now, not in his sleep. Everything was okay as long as Quen was asleep; as long as the master was only touching Jesse.

Maybe he thought this hard enough that the thought seeped from his head into his master's hand, and got absorbed, because the master just stood there, stroking Jesse's hair and not touching Quen, until finally he went away, closing the door softly behind him. There was no click, no lock. No point, of course; the master knew Jesse wasn't going anywhere, not now. Not right now.