Lee chapter six

[maculategiraffe]

Things have been a bit crazy around here, and now I'm heading out of town (severely limited computer access) for Thanksgiving, but I wanted to go ahead and get chapter six up before I left. I'll try to reply to comments and catch up on my flist (and all those lovely NaNos in progress) after the weekend. Hope US denizens have a wonderful Thanksgiving and everyone else has a wonderful Thursday, Friday, and subsequent weekend. :)



Afterwards, sticky with sweat and oil and semen, Holden allowed Yves to drag him and Jer through the training room and into the bath, where they splashed and shoved like children and Yves nearly drowned between Holden's legs before he admitted defeat at another bet.

"If you're trying to give yourself brain damage," said Holden, hauling him back above water by a handful of dripping curls, "you can quit. I got over the fact that you're smarter than me twenty years ago."

"Yeah," said Yves, tickling Holden to make him let go, "but I've got to watch it now that there's another pretty teenager in the offing, right, Jer?"

Jer grabbed Yves' hair and shoved him underwater, and Holden dragged him back up again, spluttering and laughing, then had to dodge as Yves lunged at Jer and tried to pin him under the water. Jer shoved Yves back against Holden, who promptly pushed him back at Jer.

"Master!" Yves yelped indignantly, as Jer pinned him against his chest with one arm and the other hand disappeared under the water. "So this is what happens when-- fuck!-- when Bran's away--"

"Yeah, you're our substitute brat," said Jer as Yves arched and groaned. "Come on, do the voice."

Yves laughed breathlessly, still struggling. "His voice? It's inimitable-- Master, come on, if I was Bran you'd rescue me--"

Holden grinned, enjoying the friendly horseplay between Jer and Yves. He'd worried at first; they didn't have much in common aside from him, after all. But Bran had helped-- his undisguised adoration of all three of them, his obvious delight over being their plaything in the bed and in the bath, laughing uncontrollably as they tickled him and grabbed at him with soap-slippery hands, retreating when he grew dizzy into Holden's embrace, arms around his neck, his slick wet body pressed hot and confiding against Holden's nakedness. It was almost funny now to remember his first day, his terror at the sight of the water, and once he was in it, the desperate naked lunge not so much towards any conceivable freedom as away from Holden.

Almost funny. But not quite.

Yves leaned back and stage whispered in Jer's ear, "He's brooding again."

"No brooding in the bath," said Jer firmly, and the two of them attacked.




"I'm writing to Valor," said Holden to Greta over dinner. "About this Dunaev thing. Don't you think she'll be able to think of something to do about it?"

"Has there ever been anything Valor couldn't think of something to do about, master?" Greta asked, smiling. "Mind you, it may not always be the best thing, but it'll be something."

"Well, something's more than I can think of. The worst part is that there are kids almost as bad off as Lee– easily as bad off as Bran was– we never even know about. And even if we did know about them we couldn't get them, not unless their owners offered. It's not like we have legal grounds for search and seizure."

"Right. So what are you writing?"

"About Lee," said Holden. "If she and her friends want a test case, this kid is a guaranteed heartstring-tugger. Horribly damaged, pretty and helpless as all get-out. And Dunaev's even a repeat offender– you know Val said that might be a good first step."

"Do you think Bran would be up for testifying, if they called him?" Yves asked, and Holden nodded.

"Once he got used to the idea," he said. "He's really taken this whole thing on. You should have heard him last night, interrogating the nurses about everything they were doing. He's not shy when there's something that matters to him."

"The business would probably get a lot of publicity," Greta said thoughtfully, "which could be a good thing or a bad thing."

"Yeah," said Holden, "but we've been pussyfooting around for twenty years, staying shrouded in mystery– and I won't say we haven't done some good work, but the kids still keep coming. I'd like to see some real change– at the level of the system, you know?"

"Valor's your girl, then," said Greta, not without pride.

"Don't I know it. I'll finish the letter tonight and it can go out in the morning. Then we'll wait for the hurricane to descend."




In the lounge after supper, he finished the letter fairly quickly-- there wasn't much more to say, after all, and he doubted Valor would still be quietly reading after that first paragraph-- and offered it to Greta before sealing it, but Greta, knitting something leafy and complicated out of silk, shook her head placidly.

"Give her my love," she said, "and tell her not to kill anyone."

"I already did, but I'll add that you second the request." Holden scribbled a postscript, addressed and sealed the letter, and set it on the edge of the desk. "Jer, what are you reading?"

"This," said Jer laconically, holding up his novel.

"Can I read over your shoulder?"

When Jer nodded, Holden sat down next to him, and Jer draped an arm casually around him. Holden put his head down on Jer's shoulder, and Yves closed his own book on his pencil, set down his pad of graph paper and came to curl up with his head in Holden's lap. Holden stroked his hair absently, soothed by the story– a detective mystery of the kind Jer loved, so formulaic that despite starting in the middle Holden had picked up on the plot after five pages and guessed the killer's identity by ten.

He woke with a start when Jer shifted under him; the book was closed. Yves was asleep in his lap.

"You ready for bed?" he asked Jer softly. "We might have to carry Yves."

Jer reached over and poked Yves in the ribs, and he startled awake, blinking with vague amusement up at Jer and Holden. "No we don't."

"Guess not. Greta? Want to come? Sleep with us?"

"Thank you, master, but I wouldn't dare," said Greta, eyes still on her knitting. "One of you at a time I can take, but all three, and without my mistress to protect me or Bran to use as a human shield..."

Holden chuckled. "It'd just be sleeping."

"Don't bet on it," said Yves drowsily, as Greta shook her head.

But Yves was asleep again, flopped over on his stomach on Holden's bed, before Holden had finished undressing, and Jer lay down a moment after Holden, put a hand on his master's arm, closed his eyes and was still, leaving Holden perversely wide awake.

It wasn't until Jer stirred in his sleep and turned over with his back to Holden that Holden slipped carefully out from between the two of them, out of the bedroom, and across the landing to the small room where they kept the filing cabinets. He opened Andrei Taganov's file, then Lydia Brokova's, then thumbed idly through a few other possibilities for Lee before opening the drawer labeled "current," and pulling out the folder with Bran's name on it from its place beside Yves'.

The list of extant offers to buy him was still there, along with Holden's notes from those first few weeks. Formulaic as Jer's detective novels, these files, even Bran's: likes, dislikes, needs, can't tolerate. Sexually responsive: Highly. Sexually aggressive: Not at all (nb. occasional tendency to offer sex as appeasement tactic). Does not respond well to threats (freezes, is obviously unable to think clearly when frightened). Gets very nervous when asked to make decisions. Intensely craves physical affection, calms immediately and visibly when caressed or held; responds to any kind of affectionate physical contact, eg sex, oral sex, foreplay, kissing, cuddling, co-sleeping, fingers in his hair.

Holden fumbled a little as he replaced the folder and then sank down on the floor with his back against the cabinets, thinking of the first time his fingers had been in Bran's hair, in the back seat of the car as they drove away from Dunaev's. Gods, what a sweet boy, he'd said to Alix, and Bran was sweet, the sweet of wild honey, sharp, stinging, overpowering. And addictive as hell.

The trouble was, Holden had worked with a lot of kids, and Bran was far from the first to have claimed to love him, though he'd certainly hung on the longest. Holden didn't have to read ahead to know how the "reflexive pulling away, followed by desperate overcompensating attention" plot usually ended. Especially in light of the other clues. The inadvertent past tense Bran had used in the cafeteria that morning: You've loved me so much. The mumbling and stuttering: I, uh. You know. Love you. Bran had never been able to lie worth a damn.

Of course, he couldn't be sure, and there was nothing to be done anyway, if Bran's innocent pleasure at being owned and doted on by the object of his youthful infatuation (I was a kid, he'd said wonderingly. I never really realized how-- young I was) had finally slipped away, and he'd fallen out of love, or whatever he'd been young and romantic enough to believe was love. Stupid to be this thrown by it. It wasn't like Holden hadn't been expecting it since day one. Hadn't told the kid himself. You'll realize someday, you know, that you don't need me any more. Something will click, and you'll move on. Well, something had clicked. Bran didn't need Holden's word for it any more that Dunaev wasn't fit to lick his feet, and maybe that really was all he'd ever needed Holden for. Or was it Lee's adoration for Bran working like a retroactive mirror, showing Bran how easy it was for a drowning boy to attach himself to any strong-looking person who offered hope and comfort, and how easy it might be to believe the attachment was love?

Either way, it should have been easier for Holden, having seen it coming. But it wasn't easy at all, felt damn near impossible to bear, and it hadn't even really happened yet.

"Thought you were tired," said Jer from the doorway.

Holden looked up at him rather sheepishly. "Hey. Just-- planning ahead. Looking at some potential buyers, for Lee."

"Never made up one of those for me, did you?" Jer said, nodding at the "current" drawer, which Holden hadn't closed all the way, as he sat down on the floor beside Holden.

Holden smiled. "Should I have?"

"Nah," said Jer, smiling back. "Not like I'm going anywhere."

"No," said Holden. "Sorry about that."

Jer punched him in the arm. "Don't be a fucking idiot. Master," he added, grinning, as he deflected Holden's punch back.

"At least you pretend to respect me in front of the kids," said Holden dryly, rubbing his arm.

Jer sobered then, meeting Holden's eyes. His own eyes were the cool, steady gray of stone, utterly unlike Bran's shifting light-and-shadow luminescence, or-- for that matter-- Yves' sunny blue, or Alix's clear, gentle hazel. Love was such an inadequate word.

"Holden-- you know how I've always felt about you, yeah? I mean--" He grinned again, the boyish grin that made his graying hair and the crow's feet around his eyes seem so utterly incongruous-- "ever since you first yelled at me to take my filthy peasant hands off your royal person--"

"I didn't say that," said Holden, laughing a little. "I just said get your hands off me."

"Well, that's what it sounded like. You didn't act like any damn nineteen-year-old slave, you acted like-- a kidnapped nobleman, or something. Lucky for you I was ranking high that week. Not that I got so much as a thank you for all the interference I ran so you wouldn't get eaten alive during the transition."

"Thank you," said Holden sincerely. "I just didn't have a clue, Jer. Nobody'd ever-- taken me against my will. And Pavel never raised a hand to me. It was like I was fifteen, but nobody knew it, so nobody cut me any slack, or explained-- how to be a slave."

"You would never have been any good at it anyway," said Jer bluntly. "You're too damn arrogant. But I thought-- I always sort of thought you'd be a good master."

"Yeah?" Holden asked, amused.

Jer nodded seriously. "After you were free, when you actually came back and made your offer for me, I--" His eyes were suddenly unnaturally bright. "I thought maybe-- but, you know," he continued, and blinked so quickly that Holden couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined the tears, "that didn't-- happen."

"No," said Holden, examining Jer curiously; they'd never discussed Argounov's refusal to sell Jer to Holden. Holden couldn't exactly vent his fury and frustration to Jer when most of their conversations took place under Argounov's eye, and Jer had always been decorously impossible to read in Argounov's presence; Holden hadn't caught more than a flicker of disappointment.

"And then you got Yves." Jer blinked quickly again. "That first time I met him, I kind of-- didn't think I'd ever see you again. Don't look at me like that, it's just-- he was so smart, like you, and those eyes, and he obviously worshipped you, and you-- gods, I was so fucking jealous of him. I got myself whipped for being so spaced out that week-- and I was too spaced out to feel it." He laughed, as if it were funny, and said again, "Don't look at me like that. How long ago is that, twenty years? Twenty-two?"

"I didn't know--" Holden swallowed. "When he did-- give you to me-- you seemed so depressed. I didn't think you wanted to-- you know. Belong to me."

Jer shook his head almost pityingly. "Sometimes I think you're conceited as hell, and then sometimes-- Holden, you saved my fucking life."

"Saved your life? Argounov wouldn't have–"

"No," said Jer matter-of-factly. "I would have."

A chill ran through Holden as he stared at Jer. "You would have what?"

The smile that curved Jer's lips then wasn't boyish, and it didn't reach his eyes. "I had it all planned out. For when I got too old. It would have been easy. It's not like there wasn't plenty of rope around-- and a nice big hook in the ceiling of Argounov's playroom. I used to– look at it. Especially after I turned forty."

"Jer." Holden's stomach twisted violently.

"Well, I wasn't going to sit around waiting to die, or-- whatever Argounov-- You know? I figured I'd just--" Jer made a quick impatient motion with his hands, like snapping a stick in half. "And when Alix came to get me, that night-- she looked so sorry for me. I was thinking, you'd been nice enough to keep visiting me all those years, so you were probably nice enough to try to pretend-- you still wanted me. And I didn't plan on putting either of us through that bullshit for long. I just figured-- there was a hook in your training room ceiling, too."

"Stop it," said Holden, shaken. "Don't-- Jer, I--"

Jer reached out and touched Holden's cheek for a moment. "Hey. I said that's what I thought, that first night. But you were very-- convincing." His real smile was back, his eyes crinkled with it. "And the morning after, I ran into Bran. Remember, you were calling in buyers for him in a hurry so you could tend to me, and was he ever pissed about it. If looks could kill, he'd have saved me the trouble. And I thought, shit, he's eighteen years old and he looks like Baldr fell off the rainbow and wound up as a sex slave, and he's jealous of me. It made me think-- how lucky I was."

"Yeah," said Holden bitterly. "Lucky. Jer, if I'd known-- I guess it's better I didn't, when I was letting Argounov help us with the business and with Valor. Seventeen years the bastard held out on me, while you stared at the hooks in the ceiling."

"Well, in fairness to him," said Jer gravely, "I am a damn good lay. I might have held on to me, myself."

Holden shook his head. "He should have--" Let go stuck in his throat as he suddenly thought of Bran again, and he said, to cover the break, "Though I guess it was nice of him not to make me pay full market price for you."

Jer snorted. "Market price for a slave with gray hair? I think you did pay that. Nothing, right?"

"Idiot," said Holden affectionately. "I'd have paid anything. Everything I had. And he knew it, even if you didn't. The gods know I've never been any good at pretending not to love people."

Jer leaned forward suddenly and pressed his lips to Holden's, and they kissed, lingeringly, sipping each other with the open-eyed, half-furtive thirst that was a habit between them too long-standing to break.

"Come back to bed," Jer said softly, when the kiss ended.

"In a minute. You go on. I'm just going to–"

"Please, master," Jer deadpanned. "Don't make me drag you."

Smiling despite himself, Holden let Jer pull him to his feet and push him gently towards the door.

"Jer?" he said, as they crossed the threshold.

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you ever tell me all this before? How you were-- thinking about rope and hooks and--"

Jer shrugged. "You didn't need to know."

Holden considered arguing the point, but he was tired enough to settle for, "Then why did you tell me tonight?"

Jer glanced up at him thoughtfully as they entered the bedroom, where Yves still lay peacefully asleep.

"Thought maybe you did need to know," he said quietly. "Tonight."