maculategiraffe

So. Something is happening that I still can't quite get my mind around: People are writing fanfic of "The Slave Breakers." And it's awesome.

The secret belief that this is actually all some sort of ridiculous egotistical hallucination on my part has kept me from pimping it here before now, but its awesomeness has now officially overpowered that. So.

me_ya_ri has written "Finding Home", a one-shot with original characters and cameos from Holden and Bran, and is writing "Losing Yourself To Find Yourself" (parts one and two), a multi-chapter WIP with different original characters.

morgan_cian is writing "Welcome to Tenarus", a multi-chapter WIP where a (slave-owning) family of original characters moves to Holden and Alix's hometown.

cgravenstone, as part of the undefined semi-collaborative work that is me putting his original fictional LJ persona into an ongoing Slave Breakers-'verse side story, has written a one-shot with original but semi-canonical characters, "Anniversary". (By the way, Crimson, baby, I love you, and I would never discriminate against you for being fictional, but oy vey, the semantics of it all!)

anne_squires has written a one-shot with Holden and Bran, "Encounters".

And now

wickhouse2005, whose teeming imagination has given me more plot bunnies than I can possibly ever do justice, has finally caved (despite her protested and entirely chimerical "lack of writing talent") and written a perfectly lovely Jer/Holden vignette. (Check the comments of that post for a nice little follow-up ficlet by

morgan_cian.)

But

wickhouse2005 agreed to post her bit of fic to LJ only when I bribed her with the promise of canonizing one of her throwaway references. So here's the story I promised her, which takes place in the fourth week of Bran's initial training process. (Hope those of you who've been wanting more scenes of Bran's training enjoy, too.)

"I'm glad you're not afraid of the bathtub any more," said Holden, grinning, as Bran's soap-slick fingers rippled over the muscles of his master's naked back. "You like this?"

"Yes, master," said Bran absently, for once less interested in what his master had to say than in the freedom to touch that soaping him up implied. In the past four weeks, since he'd been bought, he'd done a lot of touching and being touched by his new master, but this was new: the way his hands slid over Holden's skin, almost possessively, gripping, sudsing, taking him in--

"Feels like you do," said Holden, in something like a purr, and Bran smiled. "Did you ever attend your former masters in the bath?"

Bran didn't really want to think about that right now.

"Yes, master," he answered anyway, obediently. "Sometimes."

"Is that where you got your ideas about being pushed underwater?" Holden asked, and Bran's hands paused on his back, then started rubbing again, mechanically, as he answered, "Partly, master."

Holden turned around, with a sloshing of water that swirled around Bran's chest and tickled his nipples, and cupped Bran's chin with one wet hand; Bran tensed, then made himself relax.

"I know Dunaev told you we'd torture you by pushing you underwater," Holden said, with a certain care, as if he didn't want to frighten Bran by speaking too abruptly. "Did he tell you that because he knew it was something you were particularly afraid of?"

"Probably, master," said Bran quietly, meeting Holden's dark, keen gaze. "When I attended him in the bath, I used to be required to-- serve him, with my mouth. Underwater. And he'd-- hold me under. Until he was satisfied." He swallowed. "And sometimes-- after. Just-- I don't know. Because he wanted to."

Holden described Dunaev in colorfully figurative terms for a couple of sentences. Bran couldn't help grinning.

"It's a miracle he didn't turn you off cock for life," Holden concluded, and leaned in to touch his lips softly to Bran's before he added, "Or water, for that matter."

Bran slid closer, reaching to rub over the damp curls of hair on his master's chest with one tentative, still-slippery hand.

"Feels good, master," he murmured as one of Holden's arms came up to pull him in closer.

"What does?" Holden asked, close to Bran's ear. "Cock or water?"

Bran laughed a little breathlessly as his master's hand slid down his back and cupped one globe of his ass, lifting him, in the relative weightlessness of the water, off the smooth marble floor of the sunken tub.

"Whatever my master wishes--" he managed, "to put me in-- or put in me--"

Holden cackled at that, and yanked Bran in close, his back against his master's chest, his master's erection poking against his ass. Strong, slender hands ran themselves across Bran's torso, playing with his nipples and his navel, making him gasp and writhe helplessly in their grip. Holden's mouth attached itself to Bran's neck, and Bran whimpered.

"Sweet boy," Holden whispered in his ear. "Sweet, beautiful..."

Bran melted against him, moaning softly as Holden's soapy hand wrapped around his swelling cock.

"Master," he whispered, "do you-- do you want-- my mouth?"

Holden's hands went still, and for a few moments Bran regretted his rashness. His master's hands turned him carefully around, and Holden's eyes met his again, looking grave.

"Do you want to try that?" he asked. "It's a good skill to have, if you'd like to practice. And it'll be a good thing to train you out of your fear-- like we've been doing with pain."

Bran shivered with a rush of not-entirely-identifiable emotion at the thought of the "pain tolerance" training he'd been undergoing for the past week; he still had a few faint marks on his back from yesterday's strap, and he was proud of the fact that Holden hadn't had to restrain him at all for that session, and he hadn't had to ask to stop before Holden stopped on his own and stroked and praised him for his fortitude. It was strange, being beaten when it wasn't for a punishment, but Bran was starting to understand what Yves meant, about physical pain serving as a "catalyst" for-- other things. Tomorrow they were graduating to a cane, an implement Bran didn't have much experience with; Bran was apprehensive, but not, he thought, frightened.

"But I don't want to set off another panic attack," Holden continued. "One runaway attempt from the bathtub was silly enough."

Bran smiled a little. "I don't think I'll panic, master. You won't-- hold me under."

"Of course not," said Holden gently. "If you want to try this again, you take it at your own speed, and you stop when you need to. If you get scared at any point, you do whatever you need to do to calm yourself down. I won't be angry, unless you try to run away again. If you do that, I will be extremely irritated. Clear?"

"Clear, master," said Bran, and swallowed past a slight apprehensive tightness in his throat; his master hadn't spoken harshly, and Bran certainly had no intention of trying to run away again, so there was nothing to be scared about. "Thank you."

"So you want to try?"

Holden's head was on one side, his eyes intent on Bran's face. Bran tried to look convincingly courageous.

"I want to please you, master," he said, marveling inwardly-- and not for the first time-- how many of the glib and placating phrases he'd used with his previous masters came out in perfect sincerity when he spoke to Holden.

"I know you do, sweetheart," said Holden, smiling. After a moment, he added, more briskly, "Okay, pay attention. I'm going to show you how it's done."

Bran must have looked startled, because his master added, raising an eyebrow, "What? I like to do a demo, kid. It's what makes me the best damn trainer in the country. Lean back a little-- against the edge, there. And spread your legs. Good boy."

He slid closer to Bran, one hand back on Bran's cock, the other grasping his shoulder, leaning in and nuzzling at Bran's neck.

"The trick is to make this part look seductive, instead of looking like you're bracing yourself, which kind of kills the mood," he said softly. "What I'm doing is taking a few really long, deep breaths, to get myself ready. Which, with me being so close, up against you, and stroking your cock, feels sexy, right? Like I'm... breathing you in."

Bran wasn't actually breathing at all, himself, as Holden continued, in a low, husky, seductive voice, "You can talk pretty on the exhale, like this, if you feel so inclined. Just make sure you time it so you don't sound awkward interrupting yourself with your own deep breathing. And stroking him while you do this gives you a bit more of a sense of how hot he is already and how long it's going to take. Concerning which," he added, pulling hard at Bran's cock and wrenching a quiet whimper from Bran, "I think I'm in luck, here. Now. When you've taken a few deep breaths and you feel ready, take one more deep one, hold it, and---"

He slid down Bran's body, lithe as an extremely warm and well-muscled eel, and his face disappeared beneath the surface of the water, the heat and pressure and suction of his mouth engulfing Bran's already throbbing cock. Bran cried out as his master's head moved up and down along his shaft, sucking with all his usual skill and enthusiasm, the drifting tendrils of his dark hair brushing up against the insides of Bran's thighs with maddening softness; when one of Holden's hands wrapped around Bran's testicles underwater and kneaded, Bran came, hard, his body jerking backwards in the warm water. Holden sucked, hard, one last time, swallowed, and surfaced, shaking the wet hair out of his face and dashing water from his eyes.

"Oh, to be eighteen," he said, grinning at Bran, who smiled back a little hazily. "Unfortunately for you, your master probably won't come that quickly, which means you'll probably have to interrupt yourself to take a breath more than once. Of course, the longer you can learn to hold your breath for, the better you can time the breaks so they don't throw your master off his stride. That will be a matter of practice-- and if this is something your master wants from you, you'll have plenty of opportunity to practice. But there are a few basics I can teach you right now. Try it on me now."

Distracted, and not pleasantly, by the thought of the hypothetical master for whom Holden was training him to do all this, Bran ducked his head hurriedly under the water, immediately realized he'd forgotten about the whole preparation part Holden had just shown him, and resurfaced, crimson-faced. Holden was laughing, but not unkindly.

"Your eagerness is flattering," he told Bran, and reached out to draw him in closer; Bran relaxed gratefully into his master's embrace. "Breathe, sweetheart. Get yourself ready."

Bran obeyed, and when he had taken several reasonably even deep breaths, breathed in again and ducked his face under water.

Shutting his eyes, of course-- and he hadn't anticipated the difficulty, when you weren't being grabbed by the hair and shoved directly at your destination, in finding the thing. He did something probably best described as groping with his mouth, found the penis, got it into his mouth along with a lot of water, choked, and surfaced again, coughing and humiliated. Holden didn't laugh this time, though Bran suspected he would have liked to.

"Another great reason to put your hand on my cock while you're getting ready," he said gently, and moved Bran's hand to his still-robust erection, wrapping Bran's fingers about it. "Much easier to target. And you can use your hand to slide it straight into your mouth, so you don't inhale a lot of water trying to grab at it with your lips. You okay to try again, or you want to put this on hold for now?"

"I can try again, master," said Bran, still embarrassed-- he was an experienced pleasure slave, not a fifteen-year-old justified in being baffled by the basic mechanics of a blowjob-- but trying to breathe deeply again. This time he stroked his master's cock as he prepared himself, then followed his master's advice and used his hand to guide it into his mouth as he submerged himself. His lips sealed quickly around the hard shaft-- this at least he was used to, including the slightly bitter taste that came from the presence of soap in the water-- and it wasn't too hard to remember not to breathe through his nose as he sucked diligently. His saliva still made a decent lubricant, even with the water working to wash it away anywhere his mouth wasn't actually touching at the moment.

He moved his hands-- one to wrap around his master's testicles as his master's hand had just wrapped around his, one to grip his master's thigh and give Bran better leverage, though the water was annoying in that it was neither slick enough to serve as lubricant nor grippable enough to allow him a good hand-hold, especially with soapsuds already in it. They'd get in Bran's eyes if he tried to open them to see what he was doing-- that had happened before, and the stinging hadn't helped at all with not panicking and inhaling water. If it happened now, though, he could just surface.

With that thought, he suddenly wanted to surface, just to make sure it was true that he could, but he wasn't at all sure he'd been sucking long enough to impress his master, and he really wanted to do that, too. Besides, a blowjob had its own imperatives, especially when it was something you usually did well. A hard cock in the mouth was, in and of itself, a strong incentive to keep sucking until it got harder and you could feel the veins pop out against the tight circle of your lips, and then the balls tighten in your hand, draw up slightly-- feel how close you were-- how close he was--

Bran's lungs were burning; he tried reflexively to breathe, sucked water through his nose, and hit the surface, gasping and choking, furious with himself, tears popping from his eyes to mingle with the water that streamed down his face. Holden was saying, "That's okay, that was good, that was excellent, just breathe, now, take your time..."

Bran was trying to breathe as he coughed and choked, the soapy water stinging his sinuses, and he managed to gasp, "Please, master-- may I-- get out--"

"You may," said Holden, and his gentle, firm hands helped and steadied Bran's clumsy scramble out of the sunken tub and onto the cold marble floor of the bathtub. Holden followed him out, sat down on the floor beside him and stroked Bran's back as he sat there, trying to catch his breath and settle himself down.

"That was excellent," Holden said again, softly, when Bran had subsided a little. "You came damn close to getting me off without coming up at all-- but now you see why you've got to pace yourself. Almost drowning kills the mood, too."

Bran managed a smile, and said, after coughing again, "Not everyone's mood."

"Not Dunaev's, you mean." Holden reached out and brushed back the wet hair plastered in Bran's face. "It might if he were the one getting his head shoved underwater till he stopped kicking. Which, if there were any justice in the world, he would be."

Bran tried not to smile too broadly at that image; it probably wasn't the best move to look thrilled at the idea of drowning his previous master, even if it was his current master's privilege to joke about it.

"I'm sorry, master," he said, looking up at Holden, who looked so sympathetic Bran was a little startled. It hadn't been that bad. "Do you want me to-- finish?"

Holden examined him carefully for a moment, then pulled him in closer and kissed him on the side of his wet head.

"You're a brave kid, Bran," he said, pulling back again to meet Bran's eyes. "It takes a lot of courage, when somebody's been hurt as badly as you have, to-- offer yourself again. And to trust a new master, to keep his word. I didn't think--" He paused, as if to choose his words carefully. "I've been-- pleasantly surprised, at how well you've recovered. I thought it would take longer, after everything you'd been through. And you aren't just obedient-- it's better than that. You're downright eager to please."

"I want to please you," said Bran, with a delicate emphasis on the last word. "Master."

Holden gave him a sharp look before he said, "Let's get back in the water."

"And try again?" Bran asked, as he obeyed.

Holden smiled at him, sliding down over the edge into the water and making the water's edge lap and tease at Bran's chest again. "No hurry."

"I'm ready, master," said Bran, and moved in closer, his hand slipping under the water, to the half-erect shaft that grew harder at his touch, and breathing in, deeply, close to his master's neck.

"Getting there," said Holden quietly, just before Bran slid back under the water.