#handler rayce

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Spider has been with her owner for some time

Shower, Redux [Prev | Next]

When Spider comes back for him, Rayce is huddled miserably against the back wall of the shower, body twisted to try and keep as much of himself out of the water as possible. She can hear the cuffs rattling against the pipes.

He looks at her with dull apprehension, and her stomach does a little flip. 

"Hi, Handler," she says, sweet innocence with just a hint of huskiness beneath. "I missed you. I told you I would, do you remember?"

He's silent. 

Despite her earlier failure, Spider feels fantastic. She feels like a caped villain about to take over the world. 

Up close, she can see him shaking. The water lands across his chest and runs down his stomach, trickling over the tense, trembling muscles. 

She's never seen anything sexier.

"W-w-where… a-am I?" he asks. He has to force the words past chattering teeth, and there's a hint of hoarseness in his voice that there never used to be. "Home," Spider answers. 

She reaches a hand into the water – it really is cold, running at the temperature of the pipes in the ground – and lets it run down her fingertips to fall on his neck where he’s pressed it back against the wall out of the cone of the shower. He flinches, and his face scrunches up with renewed discomfort. 

"D-don’t d-d-do that," he protests. Maybe she's just too keen to imagine it, but it sounds more like a plea than a demand. He’s frowning, though, as if he still gets to disapprove of what she does.

So she does it again, trailing freezing water out along one leg. Rayce shudders, a brief spike in the intensity of the shivering.

In his eyes, the look she’s been waiting for. Dawning distrust. The creeping revelation that she isn’t here to be nice to him.

“Do you want to get warm, Handler?” she asks, still sweet as sugar. She knows he does. Reading minds is easy when you control the inputs. The response isn’t immediate. He’s not quite sure anymore if what he wants will matter to her. “... ‘C-c-course I-I d-do,” he says sullenly.

It’s not a Pet’s respectful answer. 

She’s not sure what she’d have him say instead. Yes, Spider. The thought almost makes her laugh.

“D-d-did y-your o-owner s-s-send you?” “Our owner,” she corrects, almost without thinking. She tilts her head, an elegant parody of the way a doll expresses innocent confusion. “No,” she says. “It’s all me.” 

All of me. He’s never seen all that she is before.

“Then… c-c-could you … t-t-turn the, the w-water uh-h, ho-ot…?” She watches the muscles of his jaw and throat move as he tries to grit his teeth hard enough to stop the chattering, swallows, and gives up. “I could,” says Spider.

Expectation. Uncertainty. Annoyance, tempered by wary fear. 

Is he really so easy to read, or is she imagining what she wants to see?

"Do you even remember me?" she challenges. "'C-course I-I d-d-do." "What's my number?" A hoarse, wet sound, somewhere between a tch and coughing up phlegm.

He's never learned to suffer prettily. Spider's blood boils beneath her skin.

"I-I was n-n-never any g-g-good wi-ith the, the n-numbe-ers," he stalls, trying to force a casual, conversational tone despite his violent shivering. "You're, u-uh, t-t-two six, uh, fo-our? F-five?" "You don't remember," Spider hisses. Her attention drifts to the controls for the water, an idea starting to take shape in the back of her mind. 

It's falling from the rainfall shower head on the ceiling right now, a wide cone of gentle water that's hard for Rayce to avoid. The traditional showerhead rests on its supports, inactive.

"I d-do," Rayce insists. "Y-you're, you w-were p-p-pretty g-g-girl, you were m-my favour-rite, c-c-c'mon, you w-wanted me t-to buy yo-ou." "Favourite," Spiser repeats, tasting the word for poison. "Do you say that to all your trainees, Handler?" "Y-you're the, the sma-art-t-test train-nee I ev-v-ver had."

Perhaps he does remember. 

As she looks down at him, head slightly cocked to the side, he tries to press his body an inch further back against the tiles, away from the water. She’s not sure he realises he’s doing it.

"Y-you g-g-gotta have a, a n-n-name now," he suggests. "No-ot j-j-just a, a nu-umber." "I do," she says. "It's Azalea." "That's p-pret-tty," he tries lamely. "S-s-suits you." "I think so too," she agrees. "Did you know they're highly poisonous?"

He has nothing to say to that. 

Spider takes the regular shower head off the wall. She turns the control handle firmly away from her, and feels the kick as the water switches from above to the head in her hand.

She's definitely not imagining the apprehension in his eyes now. It feeds something cold and hard inside her. 

His skin is slick and cold under her thighs as she straddles his hips. He gasps a deep, tight-throated gasp as the jet of water hits his stomach. It's shockingly cold on Spider's skin too, soaking her dress in an instant.

He understands what she's about to do the instant before it happens, and his eyes go wide as saucers. 

Then she turns the water full force on his face. 

He fights harder than she'd have thought possible. His hips buck, throwing her forwards. Her head smacks against his thrashing arms, then against the tile between them. She drops the shower head to try and grab onto him. 

"No!" he is choking out, "No, no way, no, why!?"

The cold water slices across both of them as the showerhead spins wildly. Rayce is twisting under her and he's too strong to pin with her body weight so without thinking she grabs a fistful of his hair and slams his head back against the tiles. 

He's still for just a second, stunned, then he starts struggling again. But Spider has locked her legs around his waist, ankles hooked around each other, and now when he lifts his body from the floor she moves with him but she isn't thrown off.

She grabs behind her for the shower head, and, without letting go of her death grip on his hair, turns the jet full strength on his face again. 

Again he bucks wildly, almost inhumanly strong, as the water is forced up his nose and into his mouth. Spider feels the tiles scraping the skin from her feet where his thrashing crushes them against the wall, but who was it who taught her never to flinch or give up no matter how it hurts? 

This is not the sly thrill of playing villain, not the spine-tingling excitement of having him at her feet. This isn’t sexy, and it’s not a game.

This is violence. It’s knocked knees and elbows, raw and savage, pain lancing through her skull. This is skin burning against skin, ice cold fury, intimate hate and the world goes away, there's only now, only the two of them and the struggle and the knife-sharp satisfaction of winning.

He gets his air in brief, wet gasps in the moments he manages to jerk his head away from her, and in the moments when she hesitates and shows mercy because the motion of his body has turned too much like spasmodic seizure rather than like fighting.

One time she turns the water away from him and he brings up a torrent of water, more than she imagined could come out of a person's mouth. She's not sure if he's coughing it up or vomiting.

His eyes are screwed shut tight, his face scarred with deep creases. His mouth gapes obscenely, trying to suck in air while it lasts. Each breath whoops and gurgles wetly in his throat. 

She could kill him like this. The icy fury shaking in her core is okay with that idea. 

Avon would be unhappy if she broke her new toy so soon. She would be unhappy.

She clings to her Handler, legs still locked around his waist, hand still knotted in his hair so tightly that the strands cut into her fingers. She watches his chest heave as more water spills from his lips. 

She tries to remember the good times, the kindnesses. The things he’d do that made her wonder if she really did want him. The times she was glad to see him at the door to her cell.

All she can remember is – relief never lasted as long as she needed. His voice waking her when all she wanted was sleep. His voice commanding her to hold, hold, hold when every muscle in her burned. His cock bruising her insides, his hands bruising her arms. Him forcing her back under the cold water when she was so cold she couldn’t face it, just this one time...

She turns the jet back on his face, and he bucks underneath her again. Weaker this time.

She needs to stop.

She does stop.

He doesn’t deserve it, but she stops.

The showerhead spins again as it drops from her half-numb grip. Cold slices across their bodies. Spider lets go of Rayce and half-falls away from him to catch it. 

He heaves and wheezes and coughs messy, violent coughs and brings up more water.  He makes eye contact for a second, eyes wild and streaming with – either tears or shower water. His mouth moves like he's trying to speak, but another wave of hacking, puking convulsions overtake him. 

Spider turns the water off. The choking sounds instantly louder. It sounds like things are tearing wetly inside his chest or throat. Spider feels a pang of worry. Can you actually cough up chunks of lung?

Reluctantly, she unlocks the cuffs. He yanks his arms away from her, but then just flops forwards onto the tiles, trying to get his hands under his shuddering shoulders as he brings up yet more mouthfuls of water. 

Spider watches, insides churning with a hundred emotions she cannot name, until he finally starts to take real breaths again. 

"Why?" he croaks, struggling to get the words out between coughs. "-- wasn' – I – n-ngh – nice – t'you!?" Spider swallows, hard. “No, Handler,” she says flatly, “you weren’t.”

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #noncon mention #a girl called spider #654261: spider #handler rayce

[justplainwhump]

So I came up with the idea to talk about some BBU stories of the year 2023 for @bbu-on-the-side , and then was too sick to follow up on.

It's 2024 now, but anyway.

Here's my 2023 top favourites:

Single pieces (that work at standalones):

Safety (Bliss) by @caramelis (warning for nsfwhump though); perfectly executed built up, amazing pov choice, and f/f smut that left me speechless, my favourite piece of the entire year.

Routine (Xiu) by @pigeonwhumps ; hauntingly well written day in the life of a BBU pet, I'm not over it and never will be

"They don't care about you" (Matti) by @wildfaewhump ; grief and carelessly horrible people

Series

A Girl named Spider by @just-horrible-things got even more fun this year by her owner buying her former handler as a pet for her, and reading Cosmo Rayce getting whumped was just a pleasure in every second.

Old friends by @gottawhump added even another layer of complex, relatable characters to their rich world, and it hurt my heart but also felt very cathartic.

Overall

Of course there's also more amazing BBU writers that just keep on giving, whose writing I will always enjoy but am just too ill right now to find my 2023 fave by : @ashintheairlikesnow (I think there was a story of Kauri stuck in an elevator that haunted me for weeks but I didn't find it... *edit Ash did and it's here), @winedark-whump who sadly finished writing BBU stories last year, but many of them still live rent free in my head, @angst-after-dark who doesn't only write amazing BBU stuff but is also such an amazing enabler of everyone else, and @flowersarefreetherapy whose Cameron I fell in love with this year; and also the writers mentioned above have a lot more amazing series and stand alones and snippets, so yeah, check them all out, please!

My own BBU stuff

I started Pet Safety, and I am proud to think that Blanca is a beautiful piece that also works as a standalone.

I also got Tyler's story to the point all its readers had been waiting for (noncon, yes, that's what it is).

My favourite piece of myself in a very personal way, however, is No of Angel's recovery arc, because it has Angel and it has Tyler and I just love how far she has come.

#bbu #bbu community #whump community #fic recs

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: The day of Rayce's unboxing

Alone Time [Prev]

He wants to fight back, but he can barely stand. His legs and arms are jelly. Sharper pain grinds in his shoulders every time they move, and his lungs betray him every other breath. He wants to use words, put the Pet back in her place, or appeal to the softness in her, or, or something, but it's hard to string a coherent sentence together, and – again – he can't breathe well enough to try. 

It feels like he's still drowning, like there's still water burning in his lungs that won't come up no matter how he coughs and coughs. 

The last thing he wants is another shock to his throat when it's already aching and starting to wear raw from all the coughing.

So he doesn’t fight, or argue, or resist. He lets the psycho Pet pull him to his feet, and when his legs threaten to give out under him he leans on her, and he walks where she guides him.

Fuck, he's just as weak and helpless as he was drugged, and all from a bit of water.

He can't believe that this is his sweet, obedient trainee. Maybe  – maybe she's wrong, he's wrong, she's someone else. They never knew each other, she just looks a bit like one of his and he – he looks enough like her handler that she…. 

How could he have gone so wrong? He thought she was perfect. How did she turn out like this? What did he do wrong? What did her owner do?

Where is her owner anyway? Why is Rayce here? What is going on?

The cellar stairs are a trial. Rayce’s legs shake and threaten to buckle with every downwards step. The Pet isn’t really tall enough to hold him up, and every time he shakes he thinks he's going to miss the step and fall, and he hurts too much already and the flinching only makes it worse. 

There are more steps than seem possible and when he finally reaches flat ground he surrenders all dignity and collapses to the floor, coughing in another gut-burning throat-sanding bout that leaves his vision spotty before he can manage to stop.

The Pet tries to take his cuffs and drag him, but he coughs on her hands and she recoils.

Eventually it passes and he lets her haul him up and steer him to the side of the cellar. She takes him to one of the floor-to-ceiling shelving units, then pushes him back down.  Every time he drops, pain lances through his knees, the bruises throb – but it's nothing, really, beside everything else. 

Like when she grabs his cuffs and tries to lift his arms over his head. His shoulders lock up in agony and he yells hoarsely and pushes up off the ground to relieve the pressure. The Pet drops him in surprise and he tips sideways, choking on another grunt as his shoulder hits the floor.

Panting, fighting back the need to cough, he squints up at her and finds no sympathy, only a cold and stony gaze utterly at odds with her otherwise calmly pleasant expression.

Another shudder runs across his skin.

They're supposed to be sweet and empty underneath the training. Even Guard Dogs are cracked wide open, everything on display, all their aggression easy to see and understand and manipulate and direct. 

Azalea crouches and takes his wrists again. "I – can't –" Rayce grits out as she tries, a little more cautiously, to lift him by the arms again. "Pets don't get to decide that," she tells him testily. "Please?" he forces out, swallowing the expletive he wants to add.

She sighs, but she takes pity on him this time. The chain gets locked to his collar instead, and looped around the leg of the shelving with enough slack that he can stay sprawled on the floor.

A properly trained Pet would say thank you, but Rayce can’t bring himself to. Not for her.

"Sleep," she tells him. "I'll be back in a few hours. Remember, Handler – you're just as much a Pet as I am, now."

Watching her climb the stairs, Rayce reflects that he hasn’t the faintest idea of the time. He was upstairs just a minute ago, he should know if it’s light outside at least but… he can’t remember.

He hasn't had a real day night cycle in… probably weeks. It has to have been weeks. 

The Pet turns the light off when she leaves. And honestly – it's just a relief to be left alone.

Gingerly, groaning, Rayce rolls onto his back. The concrete is cold and hard and the pressure itches and stings across his back but it still feels fucking good to just lie flat. Some of the burning tension in his core is able to release. He can breathe deeper.

It’d feel a whole lot better, of course, if he could lower his hands to his sides. He has to rest them on his belly with the cuffs still tugging at his wrists and his shoulders still aching.

But at least he can lie mostly flat.

The darkness is absolute. He doesn’t have the energy to wave a hand in front of his face, but he doubts he’d see a thing. After weeks in a training cell staring up at the glare of the lights day in day out, his eyes aren’t used to darkness. Colours swim, aggressively bright, in psychedelic swirls across his vision. 

A treacherous little thought wonders if he’s really, absolutely sure he’s alone.

Of course he is. There was no one else down here, he’d have seen them. Wouldn’t he? But then again, he didn’t really look around, did he? His entire focus was on the crazed Pet. He can’t picture much of the room, even minutes after seeing it.

But no, he has to be alone. It’s pitch black and very, very quiet. The chain rattles when he coughs. He’d hear if there was anyone else down here. At least, he’d hear them if they moved.

Stop it, there’s no one down here and there’s no reason for his heart to still be racing.

And despite the adrenaline, despite everything that just happened, despite spending god knows  how many hours asleep in that Box – despite it all, gritty exhaustion still scratches at his eyes and drags at his mind.

It’s the same feeling as when he’d watch horror films late at night and scare himself stupid as a young teen. He’d lie awake, wanting nothing more than to sleep, but too afraid. The light would hurt his eyes but he wouldn’t be able to turn it off.

There’s no pretending this time that it isn’t real.

He doesn’t understand anything. He’d just started to wrap his head around the reality that he was going to be wiped and made into a Pet and there was nothing he could do. And now he’s  here instead?

He tries to sleep, he does. But his mind keeps running in circles and he can’t shake the childish fear that something is going to reach out from the pitch dark and touch his face, and he especially can’t let go of the intense awareness of his body and everything that’s wrong. Hunger gnaws in his belly. Every bruise and muscle and strained joint pulsates in time with his heart. His throat hurts every time he swallows.

And every time he thinks he’s starting to doze, he coughs and wakes himself right back up again.

It’s the cold that tips the scales. It seeps steadily up from the concrete floor, and the shivering gets worse, and eventually he has to concede that sleep is not an option no matter how badly he wants it. 

Hesitantly, fumbling in the dark, he finds the metal leg of the shelving and hauls himself back up to sitting. It inevitably sets off waves of muscle cramps. His head throbs violently, and he tips it gently forwards against the metal as if that could possibly help.

When he eventually releases his death grip on the leg of the shelf, his knuckles brush something cool and solid. He jumps a little, even though it shouldn’t be news that there are things on the shelves. Questing fingertips find the curve of paper-over-metal, slightly ridged – a food tin. Beside it and above it, others. A glass jar or bottle. A stack of cardboard packets.

It’s nerve-wracking, rummaging around in the dark. The backs of his fingers itch with phantom sensation, imagining the touch of webs or insects or god knows what. The link between the cuffs clinks semi-continuously against things as his hands explore.

He picks up a can and weighs it in his hand, imagining using it as a weapon. The heft is laughably inadequate. The mental image is absurd, a naked collared pet brandishing a tin of beans. Maybe not that.

The chain leash is a better bet. He’s seen Pets try to use their leashes as garottes. The metal links are light but sturdy in his hands.

He’s never seen a Pet succeed at more than annoying their handlers. Not with debilitating electric agony only a button-press away. 

He shudders, and tips his head against the shelves again – and knocks glass against glass and jumps again. Hands up – always both moving together – and he feels out where the edge of the shelf is, and then he turns around and tries to lean back. The hard edges bite painfully into his back.

He fingers his collar in the dark, hating the prickle of fresh nervousness that already – already – comes with the disobedience. No one’s here to see. The leather is still damp, trapping clammy cold against chafed skin – wait, leather?

It’s not the heavy duty webbing of the trainee collars.

Heart suddenly racing for reasons beyond fear, Rayce feels all the way around the collar, rotating it against his neck despite the discomfort of it tugging on the skin. He finds no power box. No electrode prongs when he slides his fingers between the leather and the skin. No hefty plastic fastener, just a locking buckle with a tiny padlock.

His hands shake. 

No shocks.

All of a sudden the world is infinitely less claustrophobic. Like a door just opened – even though the door remains resolutely shut. Even though he’s still chained by the neck to a fucking shelving unit, even though his hands are cuffed and he’s naked in the cellar of some stranger’s house with no idea where he is…

He can’t be shocked just for opening his mouth, just for looking at them the wrong way or twitching or touching the fucking collar.

He can’t be disabled with just the twitch of a thumb. He has options.

Not, admittedly, a lot of options… but infinitely more than none.

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #654261: spider #handler rayce

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A ways into Rayce’s training

Animal [Prev | Next]

"Christ, Divya, how long has he been like that?" "I just got here." Irritation makes her a little defensive. "How should I know?" "He's going to break his neck thrashing. Help me move him."

The snitch struggles against every touch as if it burns. This would be easier with another pair of hands – but everyone else is still chatting in the locker rooms, stuck in traffic, or reading up on what their trainees got wrong overnight. 

Freeing one limb at a time where possible, the pair of them drag the Pet down the table until his head is fully supported, refastening straps to the new position as they go. 

Rory doesn't treat Divya like she's breakable just because one hand is in bandages. And whether she sneaks in a little use of that hand where she isn't supposed to – holding the snitch down one-handed isn't exactly easy – or whether she follows the doctor's orders and leaves Rory the lion's share of the work, he doesn't comment or complain. 

"Much better," he declares. "How would you like to begin? I can't be in here all day, so I thought we'd work him over for an hour or two, give him something to really cry about, then leave him to stew while the green works its way out of his system. Come back when he’s lucid." "I want to see him whipped like this," Divya answers, with a little more vehemence than she intends. "Remind me, is he no-scarring?" "Unfortunately." "Guess I'll take a leaf out of your book then. Won't be a minute."

While Rory's out of the room, Divya takes the snitch's filthy, sticky face between her hands – he can't bite like this, not with the ring gag still jamming his mouth obscenely wide – and forces him to look at her.  

"Are you listening to me, trainee?" He's panting with terror. Who knows what he thinks he's seeing. It's not good enough. "Listen to me. Are you listening." There -- he nods, just barely, against her hands. "Do you know what's about to happen? Do you?" A tiny head-shake.

“You’re about to get the beating of your life. Do you understand me?” She speaks slowly. “We’re going to whip you.” A flick to his ribs to make the point. He twitches. “It’s going to hurt like it never has before, trainee. Can you imagine being caned right now?” Another flick. He whines, long and pitiful, and tries to beg again. Divya thinks she hears no, no please – which is wrong, but – no doesn’t matter right now.

He’s about to suffer for it regardless.

Rory's Guard Dogs get the horse whip, because most owners like to see a few scars on them to prove they’re used to pain. While it’d serve the snitch right to be slashed open all over, it isn’t what the specification says, it isn't what the prospective wants. So Rory comes back with a thin cane of the same kind Divya favours.

Divya holds her hand out for it. Rory looks a little quizzical, but he hands it over. She waves it in front of the snitch’s face to catch his attention then swishes it through the air a couple of times to let him hear it. The begging – if possible – turns even more hysterical. 

A flick of the wood against his taut stomach – not even hard – elicits a sharp yelp of pain. 

Oh, he’s going to lose his mind. He’s going to find that rock bottom is so much further down than he knew. And then he will want, truly want, to do whatever it takes to get hauled back up from it.

She gives the switch back to Rory. He smiles.

The Pet screams at the very first stroke – delivered across the top of his pecs, about as high as safe without risking hitting the throat. Rory waits for the noise to die before delivering the next, just below the first. Another scream. More frantic, wordless begging. 

Another.

Rory increases the pace slowly. Divya perches on the edge of the table – beside the Pet’s head where she’s out of Rory’s way – and watches her snitch thrash – or try to – against the tight straps. His screams get louder as the snaps land quicker on each other’s heels – loud enough to be nearly painful in her ears.

The cane works steadily down his body, painting the skin a mottled red. Rory hits hard enough that beads of blood form just beneath the skin along each stripe.

“Go see if Hannah’s in yet,” he tells Divya quietly. “I can’t keep up this pace up forever.”

By the time she returns with Hannah, Rory’s only too happy to pass the switch over to a fresh hand. Hannah finishes working down the wailing trainee’s torso, and moves onto his thighs. By the time she gets tired, Rory’s arm is rested and he’s ready to go again. The Pet’s voice is failing, transforming into comically reedy squeaks and hoarse, hacking stutters.

“Help me roll him over.”

He tries to fight any way he can think of. Fingers clawed with tension grab uselessly at the handlers' coveralls. Head and limbs jerk uselessly back and forth trying to escape sure hands. They flip him, and his screech cuts out halfway into a mere whistle of air.

Rory begins again just below the trainee’s collar. Hannah takes over at the base of his shoulder blades, then hands the cane back when she reaches the base of the spine. Rory covers the ass and the backs of the thighs. 

The mewling, twitching Pet doesn’t sound human anymore. 

Underneath every person there’s an animal – a creature that understands nothing and cares only about escaping pain and sating need. 

Not every trainee needs to be broken down to that animal in order to learn their new place in the world. Some simply adapt. The snitch caught onto his options quickly enough that Divya thought he’d be one of them. He’s seen firsthand after all the consequence of failing to learn.

But if he will bite like an animal, she’ll see him reduced to one.

Rory stops at the bottom edge of the curve of the calf, avoiding striking directly over the Achilles tendon. He lays the cane down, flexes his arm ruefully, rubs the forearm and spreads then curls his fingers.

Divya runs a hand down the newly hot, red back of a thigh, and the Pet moaning gets fractionally louder. “Jealous?” Hannah asks, watching. “Shame about your hand.” “I should have known better,” Divya answers curtly. “Want a go with your left?” Reluctantly, Divya shakes her head. “My aim is embarrassing with my left,” she confesses.

“I’ve an idea for you,” says Rory. “Go get one of those floor scrubbing brushes from the supplies...” Divya grins. “You, sir, are a genius.” He smiles back, one of the lazy, catlike smiles that make her wonder occasionally if she’d like to be more than friends.

From the supply closet, she picks a new brush fresh from the packs of twelve that supply the Domestics. There’s no need to scrub potential infection into the trainee’s skin. The brush is fully the size of her hand, but the sculpted grip fits comfortably in her grip. The white plastic is so on-brand that she wonders if WRU orders them specially. 

Testing the stiff, white bristles against her arm, the sensation is harsh but not sharp, and leaves faint white trails on the surface of the skin. It wouldn’t take long to become painful, and that’s starting from unbroken skin. She’ll have to take some care to avoid real damage.

When she returns to the training room, Hannah’s already moved on. Rory is wiping the muck away from the Pet’s eyes with a damp cloth.

“I’ve still got my primaries to take care of,” he says, “so I thought I’d leave you to it, will that be okay?” Divya hears the implicit question. Can I trust you? “Sounds good,” she agrees. Of course you can. “Don’t leave him unmonitored. I’ll come back, say, ten o’ clock – trainees willing – and we can get him all set up to ride the drugs out.”

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce #handler sharan

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Not long before Spider's birthday gift

Turnabout [Next]

He’s had this nightmare before. The one where he wakes up on white tiles, in one of the so-familiar white rooms, with a collar round his neck.

He swallows. His throat is dry and sticky. His eyes itch.

His head swims when he tries to get up, so he crawls. He knows, before he reaches the door, that it won’t open. He tries anyway.

It’s just a dream, he tells himself, as he sinks back to the floor. It’s just a bad dream, just gotta wake up. 

The room fades in and out, mixing and blurring with other dreams, until he forgets the fear.

He’s woken by a sharp impact to the ribs. He groans, rolls over, and blinks blearily up the length of a handler’s uniform at the stranger looking down at him.

“Mmbuh?” he queries eloquently.

She kicks him again.

“Owwhh! -- Whawasatfr?” “Move,” she commands with a sharp gesture.

Rayce sits up on his elbows to look around, and abruptly realises he is naked. His mouth opens in surprise.

“How’d I…?” “I said, move.”

She grabs him by the – by the collar – and he chokes, legs scrabbling to take his weight, as she hauls him further into the room and drops him back onto the tiles.

He gawks up at her.

“Hold on,” he says, “hold on, now, this isn’t funny. This – this is some sick joke, you’ve got some nerve –” “I don’t joke,” the woman says.

And the world whites out with pain.

Something white-hot is stabbed through his throat and he chokes, eyes bulging, scrabbling at his neck but there’s nothing there but the collar – the fucking collar – he tries to pull it away from his skin and he can’t breathe and –

– it stops.

The searing pain vanishes, leaving only an itching sting and the tightness of cramped muscles. The scream dies in his throat and he gasps deeply for air.

“One,” the woman says, “you don’t talk back to your handlers. Two,” ticking it off on her fingers, “you don’t touch your collar.”

He sees the remote this time, in a brief flash of clarity. He sees her thumb on the button.

Then the pain steals his vision, his thoughts, his mind and he can only howl and panic and thrash on the floor.

There are tears in his eyes when it stops.

He stares up at the unfamiliar handler, panting raggedly. His throat burns.

“No,” he says, “hold on, there’s been some mistake, I’m not –” “Three,” she says over him, not loudly but firmly, “you don’t say no to me.”

He screams again. The shock knifes through his throat, a blade of pure pain lodged through his windpipe. And this time it goes on, and on, and on. He doesn’t feel his fingernails digging gouges in his neck.

Only when the world dims and starts to go dark does the agony finally let up.

Light and wits filter back in slowly. He’s aware of the rasping breath in his burning throat before he’s aware of his limbs, sprawled out at inelegant angles.

Right above his face is the woman with the remote, crouched over him with impassive disinterest.

He opens his mouth, but she lays a single finger across his lips. “Shhh.”

With a painful swallow, Rayce is quiet.

“For someone who already knows all the rules, I’d have thought you’d be better at this.” “I’m not –” he tries to croak. This time she only has to move the remote into his line of sight, and his teeth click shut again.

The electrode is still burning against his throat, a hot coal lodged underneath the collar.

“Better. Do you know why I kept shocking you that last time?” Fractionally, he shakes his head. “You kept touching the collar.”

He doesn’t remember touching the collar. But he doesn’t argue, not with her thumb still resting on the button.

“What was it you were going to tell me?” she asks. “Shh, let me guess. You’re not supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be in my shoes. Your name is Cosmo Rayce, you work for WRU like me, there’s been some kind of mix-up and you want me to take that collar off you and give you some clothes. Does that about cover it?”

Rayce stares up at her, mouth open. She takes a tri-folded piece of paper from her pocket, opens it out, and holds it in front of his face.

It’s a contract, the final page of a Pet contract, signing over life and rights and identity in perpetuity to the company. 

And at the bottom, the unmistakable scrawl of his own signature.

“N… no…”

The handler sighs, and Rayce screams again as another shock rips through his throat.

“I didn’t sign that,” he protests, as soon as he can catch his breath. “I didn’t –” “Look me in the eyes,” says the handler tiredly, “and tell me you really believe every Pet signs their own contract.” He can’t. He knows damn well they don’t. “Now tell me if you really think it matters whether you signed or not.” When he doesn’t respond, the crease between her eyebrows deepens. “I asked you a question. Do you think it makes any difference, whether this signature is real or fake?”

He shakes his head, just a millimeter’s motion in either direction.

“Speak up. Does it matter?” She has the contract in one hand, the remote still in the other. Her thumb hasn’t left the button. “... no,” he whispers. “You know better than that. No, what?” He swallows – it hurts. He knows the answer. He only hesitates for a second, because it’s hard to force the words out – but it’s too long.

His back arches with the shock, and drops helplessly back to the tiles when it stops.

“What do you say?” she prompts, “No, what?” “.... no, Handler.” His face burns. She smiles, a thin and lifeless smile. “Good.”

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A little further along in Rayce's training

Biting, pt1 [Prev | Next]

The first time he bites, it’s an accident.

Handler Sharan pushes and pushes and every time he gives in she immediately wants more. 

It’s not enough to get on his knees, it’s not enough to get into Respect with nausea in the back of his throat. She wants perfect posture even when every muscle in him is still twitching from the shocks and he can’t hold still. 

You know your positions, trainee, I expect better. 

It’s not enough to hold still under her hands, even involuntary flinching is punished. It’s not enough to say please, Handler. She wants him to beg, she wants him to recite the set phrases that feel like a death sentence in his mouth. If his voice shakes, that’s not good enough.

Is it standard protocol to demand so much so fast, before they’re even wiped? He’s never worked with the pre-Pets. He thought the wipe was supposed to be nearly the first thing that happens.

Sharan has him cleaning toilets and scrubbing blood from floors. She has him do pushups at her feet until he can’t get his hips off the floor. She has him bent double and trying to hold shaking limbs still while her hands explore every fucking inch of skin, grabbing and pinching and groping and slapping and taking spoken notes into her goddamn phone until he could die of humiliation, until he wishes for the wipe because at least he’d forget how fucking ashamed he should be.

Her favourite tool, aside from the collar, is an old-fashioned switch – a length of bendy wood just a little thicker than a pencil. It cuts the air with a distinctive swish and leaves red welts wherever it kisses the skin. It’s not as bad as a shock, but soon enough his whole body itches and stings with the stripes. Sharan uses it to correct his many slips and stumbles, saving the collar and the baton for when he balks or hesitates or breaks the rules. 

And when he breaks down, when it’s too much and he collapses crying or struggles uselessly against whoever or whatever is holding him… it’s worse. 

We can always make it worse. They need to get that through their heads.

Time slips out of his grasp faster than he thought was possible. He has no idea what’s an hour, what’s a day, let alone how long he’s been here. The pattern of her shifts ought to tell him something, but he can’t make sense of it.

There’s no respite, no rest period, even when she isn’t there. If he’s alone he’s collared to the wall so that if he starts to sleep he chokes. And mostly he isn’t alone, some handler or another is with him. Most of them don’t even tell him their names.

He sits up on his knees until the pain radiates out from the bones all through his legs, reciting set phrases to the prompt tape while the handler of the hour sits comfortably playing some candy-coloured match game on his phone, just close enough to prod Rayce with the shock stick every time he stumbles.

That tape is twenty-seven minutes long and it repeats five, six times? More than he can count.

He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat except for occasional sips of shake as rewards. He used to think that crap didn’t taste of anything, but with hunger gnawing at his stomach, he’s appalled to find it’s kinda good. Savoury, with a distinct flavour that he can’t name but doesn’t hate.

Sharan has him hold pennies against the wall with his fingertips, arms as far above his head as they’ll go, standing on his toes with his legs wide and his nose and knees practically brushing the wall. Every time he twitches, the switch snaps down across the offending limb. Every time he drops a coin, it’s five strokes across the back and ass.

If he can hold it for an hour, she says he can have something to eat. If he can’t, she’s going to shock him until he blacks out.

He doesn’t get to see the time.

It could be hours or mere minutes that he holds position, limbs burning, skin crawling with the anticipation of the next swish-snap of the switch. 

His arms shake, and she hits the tender skin on the inside of each arm, right then left, and he renews his efforts to suppress the tremor. His leg twitches, and the switch lands across the back of his knee – and then again across the back of the thigh when he flinches from the first. He drops a coin, and she layers stripes across stripes.

And the shaking gets worse, and worse, until there’s no pause at all between strokes, it’s just a beating. And that’s when he gives up. He’s not going to win. It’s only how many times he gets hit before he fails. He lets his knees give way, collapses bonelessly against the wall, and slides down it to the floor.

She grabs his collar and yanks him backwards. He lands flat on his stinging back, choking.

The punishment is delivered with a shock stick. You can only use the collar so many times a day without risking permanent damage. Sharan holds the end to his stomach and pins his throat with a boot to stop him trying to roll away as he convulses and caterwauls on the floor. 

He loses all place and time, loses track of even where his eyes are pointed, whether they are open or closed – but every time he gets a glimpse of her, her face is blank and emotionless and she’s looking straight down into his eyes.

He comes round with the stink of his own piss in his nostrils. Handler Sharan is right there above him with the baton in her hand and he moans in involuntary terror. Her hand cups his cheek and it’s everything he can do not to flinch away.

“You gave up,” she tells him sternly. “I saw you. You stopped trying. That was wrong.” You were going to do this anyway, he thinks. I was going to fail anyway. He says nothing, because talking back gets him shocked without fail. The gentle hand turns to a bruising grip on his chin. “What do you say, Pet?” “I’m sorry, Handler,” he recites. He barely recognises his own voice.

“If you had really tried, if you had kept at it until you couldn’t keep those coins up anymore, I wouldn’t have shocked you,” she says. “It was a test. I know you couldn’t do it for an hour. But if you’d given it your all, I wouldn’t have shocked you. All you have to do is do as you’re told.” Tears leak from his eyes and seep down the wet tracks already coating his face. She’s lying. He knows she is. 

But he can feel the little seed of doubt worming its way inside his chest. Next time he’s on the verge of giving up, it’ll be right there, and he’ll hope for mercy if he’s just good.

“Now look at you.” Her voice is cold and smooth, like the curve of glass. But her hands are feverishly warm on his skin. “What a mess you are.” She strokes his cheeks, smearing the tears. The touch is suffocating. He sobs, then bites down on his tongue in terror as she tsks disapproval. Blood fills his mouth.

“Is this what you want, trainee?” Her hands don’t stop moving.  One cups the underside of his jaw like she’s going to choke him. The other slides up the side of his head into his sweat-drenched hair. “Is this how you want to be? Sobbing in a puddle of your own piss?” “I – s-signed up for – this,” he offers desperately. Trainees don’t get to want. Sharan chuckles drily. “Not quite what I asked,” she says. 

But her hands stay gentle. Her fingers trace the shell of his ear. It itches wildly, nettle stings in the wake of the skin contact. He wants to crawl out of his skin. 

“I’m asking you.” Her palm rests over his Adam’s apple. There’s no pressure but he can’t breathe anyway. “Do you want the rest of your existence to look like this?” This is a test. Everything’s a test. “I –” he forces out breathlessly “-- want what – you want, Handler.”

She pinches his earlobe. It shouldn't feel like anything, not beside the cramps still tearing through his abdomen. But her fingertips are hot coals and he makes a hollow, helpless squirm of a sound. 

"You know your lines," she says, "but you don't do as you're told." I do, he wants to protest. Nearly, nearly all the time he does. He's trying. She picks up the baton again. When he flinches, her hand tightens on his throat. "Do you want to hurt?" "I want what you want!" he insists through tears. 

The tip of the baton touches his twitching stomach and his whole body jolts with anticipation – but the power isn't on. He sobs.

"I don't think you want this," she teases, digging the hard metal-and-plastic in just a little. "I want what you want," he recites desperately. His hands are fisted at his sides. He can feel the slightly oily slick of urine on his skin. 

"Do you want to be good, trainee?" "Yes," he cries, "Yes, Handler." Her hand moves to his face, squeezing his cheeks together like he's a little child. "Say it," she commands. "I want to be good," he sobs, "I want to be good, I want to be good!" The tip of the baton slides lower, even as her gaze holds his with stifling intensity. Her fingers are needles through his cheeks. “I want to be good,” he repeats, “I want to be good!” The tip of the baton nudges against his naked cock.

After, he won't be sure exactly what happened. Maybe he thought he heard the click of the power switch. Maybe the little snap was just inside his head. 

It happens faster than thought. Some deep, animal instinct takes hold, and before he knows what is happening his teeth are buried in her hand. 

She doesn't shock him, she just hits him. The baton cracks hard against the bone of his hip.

He screeches. She reels back at the same time as he does. 

He scrabbles backwards with strength he didn't know he still had. 

His mouth hangs open but all the words are logjammed in his throat, a mad hysterical mash of no fuck no and please and I'm sorry I didn't mean it and don’t please don’t and fuck you fuck you fuck you go to hell.

She doesn't hesitate. She lays into him with the baton. The power is on and every bone-cracking impact carries a shock and he howls and howls and curls up and tries to shield his face.

[Next]

#my writing #noncon adjacent #nsfwhump #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce #making my soggy man miserable #having a great time

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Spider has been with her owner for some time

Towels [Prev | Next ]

She puts the cuffs back on his wrists before she leaves him. He doesn't want her to, and they wrestle briefly. "Whe-ere – m'gonna – g-go?" he croaks. But now, like this, she is finally stronger than him. She can drag his shaking wrists together despite his resistance. 

She turns the hot water on before she goes, too. She's feeling the cold now, and she sees the way he shivers and shudders as he coughs and coughs and coughs. He flinches away from it at first, with a strangled screech. The heat must scald against his cold-numbed skin. 

"Don't be ungrateful, Handler," Spider hisses. 

And after a few panicked seconds, he adjusts, and slides reluctantly back under the water.

He doesn't thank her for the act of mercy. 

Spider slinks off, shivering herself, to Avon's bathroom upstairs where she can rinse in warm water, then raid the medicine cabinet for sticky plasters to put over the scrapes on her arms and legs and especially feet so that she doesn't bleed into the towels. The plasters aren't big enough really, but she makes do. 

Then, finally, she can dry off with a fluffy towel – no, two fluffy towels, it is her birthday – while she warms up on the heated floor.

She aches. Her legs and arms and especially core ache from exertion. It'll be better in an hour or two, then worse tomorrow. 

Good, she thinks fiercely. It's making her stronger.

Worse is the ache inside her chest, the knotted up feeling that used to mean tears before she learned only to cry on command. It’s very familiar. But she doesn’t understand why it’s happening now.

She’s supposed to be happy. She’s supposed to be thrilled.

She got what she wanted, what she really wanted more than anything and didn’t think she’d ever really get.

Why does she feel like crying?

Once she’s warm, she dresses in clean clothes. She swaps the towels for fresh ones and hangs the damp ones up in front of the radiator to dry. She takes her soaked clothes down to the laundry, and leaves them in the sink so they don’t drip everywhere. She could just put them on to wash… but she should find the rest of a load to put in with them, and that’s too much effort. She’ll leave it for tomorrow like Avon said she could.

Maybe she’ll try being nice to Rayce again. She didn’t feel bad when she was being nice to him earlier. She picks up another clean towel.

He’s still coughing. She can hear him from halfway across the house. Not quite continuous anymore, but long bouts with only brief gaps between. 

She finds him curled miserably on his side under the hot water. He looks up at her with a sullen, hostile glare, but he flinches just a little as she approaches.

“Don’t give me that look,” she scolds. “Do you want to get dry?” He doesn’t answer her. He just coughs, and coughs, not even bothering to lift his head from the tiles.Spider turns off the water. “You’re a Pet now,” she tells him. “Pets don’t get nice things unless they behave.” Still no answer. 

Taking the towel with her, she sits in the chair by the door, on the far side of the room from Rayce. The seat is damp right now and a little chilly, but her body heat warms it quickly enough. 

Rayce watches her from the floor, clearly not understanding. Not yet. He will. The warmth from the shower won't linger for long. 

"That… was torture," he croaks. Spider thinks about it for a second. "Yes," she agrees. "So are shock collars, and batons, and not letting someone sleep for days and days, and making them hold Position for hours."

Rayce tries to laugh – a hollow, hoarse sound – and sets himself off coughing again, bad enough that he rolls onto his stomach and gets his elbows under his shoulders to try and ease it. 

"So, what?" he queries hoarsely when he finally. "This is –" cough "-- revenge? That's rich. It's not –" cough,wheeze, cough "-- not my fault, I didn't ma-ake you a –" gasp, small cough, deeper cough "-- a Pet. I was – the nicest person in there, I was – as nice as they'd let me be. I – tried to help you." "I can be nice too," says Spider. She lifts the towel invitingly. Rayce glares daggers at her – until another bout of hacking and gagging interrupts.

"Talking is making it worse," she observes. "Don't –" he snarls "-- You did this. Don't try to baby me."

You starved me, she thinks, and made me perform for scraps. 

She sees him look up at the controls for the water, thinking about whether he can turn it back on, probably. He decides against it. Spider sits neatly, one leg folded over the other, and waits.

"Does –your owner know what you're doing?" "To his new property? Yes. He won't help you. I can do what I like to you." She doesn't think he fully believes her, but it doesn't matter. He'll learn. "Some – sadist, huh?" Rayce mutters. Spider can hear the next bout before it starts, in the tightness of his voice. 

Eventually he tries to get up. Even getting up onto his knees looks difficult. His arms shake like plucked strings. It takes him a few tries to get his feet under him, and when he does he leans heavily against the wall – and spends a while doubled up with renewed coughing from the effort of standing. 

Spider expects him to turn the hot water back on and collapse under it. She's more than ready to play that game with him. It costs him just to stand up, and it costs her nothing to turn the water back to cold. 

But instead he staggers, clinging to the wall, around the back edge of the room to the towel rail. Spider watches, one eyebrow arched, as he laboriously pulls one free from the rest, and tries one-handed to shake it out enough to wrap it round himself. 

When he realises that it’s sodden and freezing cold, his open-mouthed dismay is frankly comical. Spider laughs the soft, honey-sweet laugh that she worked so hard on.

He drops the towel – messy Pet – and grabs at the next one, then the next, groping all four in a frantic search for one that isn’t soaked. Spider supposes he doesn’t remember the way the shower head spun on the floor, spraying the entire room down, while Spider was drowning him.

When he gives up, he turns his head reluctantly to look at Spider, where she sits neatly with the single dry towel – huge and fluffy – loosely bunched in her lap. She knows he wants it. She smiles pleasantly. 

And then he takes an unsteady step towards her, and a sudden flood of adrenaline has her on her feet in an instant.

It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous to be scared, he’s still leaning heavily on the wall, still coughing every few breaths. 

She doesn’t want to ever be afraid of him again.

“You have to ask nicely,” she tells him frostily. “You should know that, Handler.” Something in that makes him flinch a little, but she doesn’t like the look in his eyes. “I could put you back under the water, you know,” she hisses. “It’s not dangerous, you’re still shivering.” Did he say that to her, or was it Handler Mitchell? It doesn’t matter.

His gaze slides left to right, then back to Spider.

Grudgingly, reluctantly, he says, “Please can – I have the towel?”

She was planning to help him get dry, but she doesn’t feel like it anymore. Her heart is still racing as she holds the towel out.

But he takes it almost gingerly, and there’s a little bit of satisfaction in that. And a little bit more in his obvious desperation to get it wrapped round himself and bury his face in the fabric. He needed this. She made him need.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #654261: spider #handler rayce #a quieter moment

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A ways into Rayce’s training

Crate [Prev | Next]

It doesn't take the full hour to satisfy Divya's anger, even though her injured hand continues to throb as an insistent reminder. Her trainee is a sweat-drenched, squirming mess. He's lost his voice from screaming. 

He's paying for his decision, and it soothes the bitter blaze of anger back to calm. 

She doesn't feel bad about venting. It's best to get the anger out now, in the first phase of punishment while it's appropriate. This is meant to be the Pet’s rock bottom, the nightmare he'll look back on and do anything to avoid in future. 

The next step is teaching him the lessons she foolishly let him convince her he'd already learned. And for that she needs to be calm, and he needs to be back on planet earth. 

But right now, after a less than optimal night, what she needs is more coffee. She catches the newest junior in the hall, and hands off responsibility to him for the time being.

Not that he's really a junior, he has four years of experience in… Romantics, if she recalls correctly? But he's new to S Wing, and that means reduced responsibility while they find out if he's a good fit for the somewhat less by-the-books environment. 

With his help she flips the trainee onto his front so that he's less likely to choke if he throws up again. They change the ring gag for a rubber bit – keeping a stick between his teeth to prevent biting during the changeover – so that he can drink. The ring comes away with blood on the stainless steel.

The Pet manages a few sips of water, sucked from a cloth. Only a little of it is dribbled onto the table. Divya helps the new guy double check all the straps. Then she takes her coffee break, confident that her trainee will be monitored while she’s gone.

She meets up with Rory just after ten as promised. Rory's brought a wire dog crate – and not a large one. You could probably get the animal confiscated for keeping anything bigger than a terrier in there. 

"I love these," Rory says. "Set them off the ground and any mess they make falls through, keeps them from breathing it or lying in it. And if you get the size right they don't have enough room to struggle and hurt themselves."

It takes a small team to fold the sobbing Pet into the crate. Sure enough, when he’s curled tightly over his knees his back very nearly touches the mesh at the top, and the sides keep his elbows close to his ribs.

Rory uses the straps round the top of the trainee’s calves to pull his knees wide, making plenty of room for his forehead to rest against the mesh between them. The straps fasten off to the sides of the crate. Wrists and elbows get secured to the front and top so that his arms pin his head in place. Ankles are secured on a short strap to the back edge. Once fully trussed up, there really aren’t a lot of ways for him to hurt himself. 

Then they heft the cage onto a pair of tables, one under each edge, and secure it firmly to both. 

"With a sober Dog I'd call this safe," Rory says, "but with this many pharms in the mix, I still want him checked every fifteen minutes. And give him fifty to a hundred mils of water each time, he's sweating like crazy. We can move to half-hourly as he starts to come down."

Divya takes responsibility for most of the check-ups. She is his primary, after all. And it's not a complex task. Check pulse, check that no part of him is going blue. Mostly just lay eyes on him and make sure he's not choking or seizing or dead. 

The Pet they pull from the crate at the end of the day is a boneless mannequin. He mewls a little as his knees drag across the mesh, as his compressed joints uncurl. Then he's quiet again, limp in Rory's arms.

"Isn't that an improvement." Rory's voice is soft, but he's not really talking to the dazed, empty-eyed Pet. "I think you're ready to be good now, don't you?" No response. The snitch’s mouth is slack around the rubber bit. "Divya, come sit with him. Remind him that he can be good."

"He's filthy," Hannah interjects, disgusted on Divya's behalf. "That's what the coveralls are for," Divya points out. "It's good for him to be disgusting right now. He'll beg me for a shower tomorrow."

It takes two to carry the trainee, despite the weight he's lost. The Guard Dog handlers are used to that. They sling him between them like a sack of potatoes, and Divya follows them to the lounge room.

It’s a white-walled training room much like the rest, but made up as a sparse stage set imitation of a lounge. There's a plush rug on the floor, where good Pets get to kneel instead of on the cold, hard tiles. There's a couch for the handlers – and for Romantics when they're invited, a coffee table, and little else – besides the screen set into the wall where a TV might be, protected by a plate of toughened glass. 

Divya sits on the couch, and her trainee is dumped into her lap. Rory grins at her, clearly pleased with himself. "I hope you're up for some overtime," he says, "I think your trainee needs some attention while he's nice and well-behaved." "I agree."

"I've asked Hertz to take over for the night shift – hand over to him when you're done here. I don't want the trainee sleeping tonight, but if it's gentle we should be able to get him back to the land of the living tomorrow. Then we can work on comprehension. Sound good?" "Sounds good." He tosses a bottle of water to her, and she only barely remembers not to try and catch. "I'll give you two some privacy then. Have a good night." “And you.”

Divya looks down at the Pet in her lap. He’s awake. If she waves her hand above him, his eyes track the motion. But other than that, he might as well be unconscious. He doesn't look at her, only through her. 

"You're going to be good now," she tells him, with the warmth of total confidence. He has no other option. "All you have to do is take what you're given. All you have to do is not fight me. It's as easy as that."

She runs her fingers through the greasy mess of his hair. No reaction. He's elsewhere, gone out of his head. That's fine, it suits their purposes right now. It makes him good.

"Good boy," she murmurs, cupping the side of his face. "Drink." He can't help but obey. "Good boy. You can be good, can't you now. Just lie still for me."

Slowly, gently, minimising the inevitable pain of touching his inflamed skin, she pets his neck. Then his chest, his arms, his stomach. It’s the same touch exercise he normally struggles so much with, just this time in slow motion and with him sprawled bonelessly across her lap.

He's still as a doll, and silent. The closest he comes to flinching is shivering lightly under Divya’s palms. Even when she fondles his crotch, he doesn't react in the slightest.

"Good," she tells him, over and over. "That's good. It's so easy, isn't it? So much easier than fighting. All you have to do is take what you're given."

Despite the touch, despite all the pain he’s still feeling, the Pet begins to fall asleep.

Divya is delighted. They agreed on no sleep, but this is entirely different. This is ideal, relief and reward paired with submission to his handler’s control and surrender of his boundaries. This is more important than the deprivation.

Besides, she won't let him have long. 

She keeps the touch continuous while he sleeps, roaming methodically up and down across his body. As boredom – and tiredness – start to set in, she moves one hand from the Pet to her phone and finds something to read while her other hand continues to move over his skin.

Every so often he twitches a little, dreaming.

Perhaps she loses track of time, because when Hertz eventually sticks a head round the door to check if everything’s okay, it’s almost ten o’ clock at night.

"Very much so," Divya replies. "But it is about time he woke up.” A yawn overtakes her, and she stifles it behind her phone. “... and I should really get home. Thanks for taking him," she adds, pushing the trainee off her lap. He falls limply in a pile of limbs. The hoarse, muffled sound of his startle comes two seconds after the impact with the floor. "I know sleep watch is tedious work." "Are you kidding?” Hertz returns. “It's a chance to put my feet up! I barely have to do a thing all shift. Favourite job, especially at night. " Divya laughs. "Each to their own. Have a good night, then."

She knows she will. She’ll sleep soundly tonight.

[Next]

#my writing #a girl called spider #bbu #noncon tw #handler rayce #handler sharan #I promised to put him in a box and so I have

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A little way through Rayce’s training

Milestone [Prev | Next]

By the time the gag comes off, Rayce's jaw muscles are knots of pain from constantly chewing on it and never fully closing his mouth. He has no idea how long it’s been, none at all. Days? Weeks?

He holds very still, mouth slackly open as demanded, and lets Handler Sharan massage the tight muscles with her fingertips. It's supposed to be a reward, he can tell, but it hurts more than it helps. 

What he wants, with the gag off, is food. 

He got his tiny rations of shake anyway. It would coat the bit and escape from the corners of his mouth, and he’d spend what felt like hours trying to work every last particle out of the grooves in the rubber with his tongue, and Sharan would mock him for being messy. 

He'll do anything for more than a few mouthfuls to eat, just like he'll do anything to be allowed to sleep. 

God he needs to sleep. At least they let him sometimes now. He knows it’s never more than a couple of hours at a time, but he's good as gold just for the promise of it. 

The second thing he wants is to use his voice. 

It's very possible to beg through a gag. You don't need to be able to form clear syllables to make the cadence of please, please, Handler understood.

But you can't communicate anything they aren't already expecting to hear. 

He doesn’t know how to ask without getting punished, but he’s desperate to find a way.

It's been way, way too long, and still no hint of when they're going to take his memories. He should be glad, he knows he should, but all he can feel is sick dread.

What's all this training even good for if they're going to make him forget it? Is it just for the sake of cruelty? Or are they not going to wipe him? He's scared to hope – but even more scared of what it might mean. 

What is this? Is he part of some new experimental protocol? What's going to happen to him when they're done? 

Reluctantly, he swallows all his questions. He uses the privilege of talking only to recite "yes, Handler" and "no, Handler" and "please, Handler" and "I'm sorry, Handler".

He needs to be good enough to get fed, that's the only goal he can hold onto. 

They won't starve him to death – unless they will. How is he supposed to know what they'll do, when this isn't a standard training protocol?

"Well done, trainee," Handler Sharan opens as she walks into the training room.

Cosmo is on his knees, balancing a tray on his outstretched arms, shaking from exertion. There isn't a single thought in his head – there isn't room, the struggle to hold still through the pain is everything. 

He almost – almost – makes a pitiful questioning sound in response to the praise. But she doesn't like when he just makes noises. Some of the others don't mind. 

She walks over and lays a hand on the tray. "Hold," she instructs, before pushing slowly down. 

Wide-eyed, he does his best. His posture suffers as he tries to engage his back to resist the relentless downwards force. 

He holds for a few seconds, but she increases the pressure until she forces his trembling arms down. 

"I'm sorry, Handler," he whimpers wretchedly through clenched teeth.

When she lets up, he almost loses the tray as his arms spring back up. 

She tousles his hair – which is as good as praise, which means no switch – and sick relief floods his body. 

"I'll let it slide," she says. "You've done very well, trainee." "Thank you, Handler." "Do you know what you've done?" He hesitates, because he probably should know, but only for a fraction of a second. He isn't allowed to think about his answers. "No, Handler," he admits fearfully.

She smiles, and it's another heady rush of relief.

"You've gone a whole day without doing anything wrong," she says. "This is a milestone. You deserve a reward."

A whole day. Probably he should feel something about that – about how none of his previous days have been judged good enough. 

But all he can care about is the word reward. Please, please let it be sleep or food or mercy and not just another sick humiliation he has to pretend to be grateful for. 

She takes the tray from him, and tells him "position two". Moving almost hurts more than holding still, but it's worth it to take some of the weight off his knees.

"How would you like a full meal, trainee?" "Yes, please, Handler." He knows better than to expect anything but shake or maybe loaf, but his mouth still waters instantaneously at the thought. Another smile. "I thought so."

She leaves him there, and even being left in just position two is reprieve enough that the temptation of sleep immediately tries to smother his thoughts. He can't let his head nod, not now.

He's so out of it that it takes him a minute to realise that the door is open.

Instead of excitement, he feels his blood run cold. 

It's a test, a trap, it has to be. It can't be anything else. 

He wants out of here so bad but there's no freedom on the other side of one open door, he knows that. 

It's a test, and maybe that means the promise of food was a lie, and he can't take it if it's a lie, he's going to have another crying breakdown and he'll be punished for that too. 

The open door means nothing except a threat of more pain. He has to believe that. 

He's broken. 

They haven't even wiped him and he's sitting on his knees looking at a rare opportunity and feeling nothing but dread. 

When Sharan returns with a half-full bottle of beige nutrient shake in her hand, the gleam in her eyes confirms it – she knew full well she'd left that door open. It was a test. 

Cosmo has eyes only for the food. 

He's far away, a million miles from the tiny image of her, and his ears are full of a rushing, hissing warmth that usually means he's passing out. 

She hand feeds him. One hand cups the back of his head while the other carefully tips the bottle for him to drink.

It's everything he wanted, enough to fill his stomach, and he doesn't even taste it. 

He's a million miles away, and none of it matters.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce #handler sharan #how am I putting these out so fast you ask #the secret is I wrote them in the wrong order #that's all of the prewritten ones so the next one will be slower

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: BBU Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Spider has been with her owner for some time

Birthday Gift [Next]

“Azalea,” Avon calls. “Come downstairs.” She answers promptly, appearing at the top of the stairs so fast that she must have sprinted, skirt swirling around her thighs. 

Avon rolls his eyes as she perches on the top of the banister and slides down. She lands neatly on her feet, eyes sparkling and teeth dazzling white as she smiles.

It entertains her, which he supposes is worth something.

“Your birthday present is here,” he tells her. “Oh, Sir, you’re too kind.” Her effusive gratitude is as fake as everything else about her. He can’t believe it ever looked real, when he knew perfectly well from the start that it was manufactured. “I think you’ll like it,” he says, a hint of dry sarcasm creeping into his tone. She won’t believe him ‘til she sees it. “Come through, they brought it to the east door.”

Light on her feet as ever, she follows at his heels. She’s trying to get close to his side, maybe catch his hand, but he doesn’t feel like playing along today. Not when he has something real to offer her, for once. He strides ahead, leading her to her gift.

She falters when she sees the box, and Avon feels a stab of satisfaction at getting even a hint of a real reaction. The mask is back in place within moments. If he hadn’t been watching, he wouldn’t have seen the brief flicker of dismay.

Does she think he got her a brainless playmate like he threatened? Or is she afraid that the box might be for her?

“You got me a Pet, Sir?” she inquires, eyes wide and liquid with false wonder. “Go on, open it up.”

He’s already cut the sleek black tape that sealed the lid. He isn’t sure he’d trust Azalea with a box cutter. He watches her delicate fingers explore and find the cut edges, then figure out how to lift the lid. The outer layer is cardboard with a matte black finish, but the structure is metal, heavier than she expects.

At every new motion she makes tiny expressions, performing excitement for Avon’s benefit – but he thinks not all of her intense focus is feigned. She’s curious. She always is. They couldn’t quite beat the curiosity out of her.

She pulls foam out of the top of the box and discards it. The box’s occupant whimpers hoarsely at the touch of the light. Azalea peers in, then glances back at Avon for guidance.

“Go ahead,” he urges, “lift his head and take a look.”

Her usual sure grace is absent as she reaches tentatively down, figuring out how to touch the man in the box. Avon takes a step closer for a better look. Azalea lifts carefully, one hand on top of the guy’s head and the other under his chin. The curls of his hair come into view as she tips his head back, but Avon doesn’t get a clear look at his face.

Not that he’s looking at the unfortunate bastard anyway. He’s looking at his Azalea. And he gets an excellent view of her unfeigned, raw and honest shock as she recognises her gift.

“Surprise,” Avon drawls dryly.

She turns those wide, stunned eyes on him, and victory is warm in the pit of his stomach.

“You got him,” she says. “You actually got him for me.” “Happy Birthday.”

Now she’s eager, leaning over the edge of the box to try and thread her arms under her gift’s shoulders. Her skirt rides up, showing off the tops of her sculpted celebrity thighs. The man is too heavy for her, really. He moans weaky as she tries to haul him up, and his head lolls against her arm.

Avon takes pity on her. “The front of the box folds down.” 

Within seconds, she has it open, and her prize draped across her lap. He’s massive compared to her – broad-shouldered and still well-muscled despite his brief stint in captivity. But the drugs are clearly still in full effect, rendering him floppy and docile in Azalea’s slender arms.

The white t-shirt hugs his biceps and clings to the lines of his abdomen, semi-transparent with his sweat. The signature little black shorts look ridiculous enough on the lithe young things like Azalea and her male counterparts – they’re nothing short of absurdly boyish on a muscular thirty-something. Like someone crammed a gym bro into a child’s school uniform.

The only other things he’s wearing are a collar, and a gag. A simple bit of black plastic keeps his teeth apart and pulls the corners of his mouth back. The strap splits in two at the back of his head to keep the gag snugly secure.

“Hello, Handler,” Azalea breathes, staring down into half-lidded eyes. Her face is so close to his that he’d probably feel her breath if he weren’t insensate.

Avon watches her delicate fingers explore the rapt fascination. She runs a finger along his lower lip, wipes a thumb through the sticky saliva residue on his chin, and slips a finger between the strap and his cheek to test the tightness of the fit. 

When she pulls back his lip to inspect his teeth as if he’s a horse, Avon laughs out loud. His pet startles, as if only just remembering that he’s there at all.

“Is he really mine?” she asks, half-breathless with excitement. “Well, legally he belongs to me…” Azalea’s pout is sharply reproachful. “... but yes. He’s all yours.” “Can I hurt him?” “Try not to do too much damage,” Avon warns. “I don’t want you cutting anything off, ripping anything out, you understand me?” At least not until he’s had a long hard think about this guy’s ultimate fate. “I don’t want to have to take him to a doctor.” Azalea is nodding with frankly unsettling eagerness. “I’ll be careful, Sir,” she promises. “There should be some toys included in the box to get you started.”

The pet dumps her prize unceremoniously out of her lap onto the carpet and returns to the box. It only takes her a moment to find the compartment in the bottom, but she freezes partway through opening it up. There’s sudden fear in her eyes, and a kind of dawning horror. 

Another real reaction. Avon doesn’t bother to hide his smirk.

“... Will he even remember me?” she asks, hushed. “Don’t worry, kitten,” Avon smiles, magnanimous in victory. “I thought of that. They haven’t touched his memory, by my special request.”

Box forgotten, Azalea leaps up and dashes to Avon to throw herself against his chest. “Thank you,” she breathes, pressing her body against his. “Thank you, Sir, you’re the best.” Avon hums warmly, wrapping his arms around her. “I don’t want to hear any more whining about how I never get you anything nice,” he teases. “No, Sir,” she agrees.

Avon spins her like a child, and she squeals like one, and staggers, laughing, when he puts her down.

“Go on,” he urges, “unpack your toys. We have a booking for brunch at eleven. You’ll need to secure your new friend before we go. He should be a little more conscious by the time we’re done.”

She’s childlike again in her enthusiasm. The compartment slides out of the shipping box, and she takes the items out one by one, turning each one over in her hands for inspection before setting it carefully back in its place amongst the others.

Handcuffs, in supple leather. Two pairs.

Handcuffs, in unforgiving steel. Two pairs.

A riding crop, sleek black leather.  She swishes it through the air, eyes alight with interest.

Some sturdy bits of chain with locking clips on the ends.

A braided whip. Not the kind that you can kill someone with if you aren’t careful. WRU sell those, but Avon picked one that describes itself as completely safe for light punishment or play. 

With it pulled taut between her hands, his Azalea looks downright vicious. And more alive than he’s ever seen her. Despite the substantial hole in his wallet, Avon’s heart warms. Maybe this wasn’t a mistake.

More gags. A ball gag, for more thoroughly stifling speech. And a muzzle, of the kind they ship with Guard Dogs. The bit on the inside does the real work, the bars across the front are largely for show.

And a blindfold. Premium silk, not that the bastard deserves it.

Avon intended to get her some manner of cattle prod type device as well, to forestall complaints  of insufficient ways to inflict pain. But on close inspection of the voltages and amperages, all of the WRU offerings were too potent. He has no intention of giving her anything she could use to disable him.

“I love you, Sir,” Azalea breathes. She seems happy enough

Maybe he’ll get her something third-party later.

He checks his watch – one of his favourites, sleek and elegant rather than flashy. Forty minutes. Azalea is already dressed. They have time, but not an enormous amount.

“It’s time to go, Azalea. Secure him – I won’t have him blundering around breaking things when he wakes up.” “Secure him where, Sir?” “I don’t care.”

He can see the wheels turn as she considers her new responsibility – currently a slumped heap on the carpet. She considers the box itself briefly, before turning her attention to the handcuffs.

She picks the steel set.

There’s an unexpected efficiency, almost professionalism, to her movements as she flips her gift onto his front. She clips a cuff round one ankle – it bites the flesh, but it goes – and uses it to pull his leg up behind his back.

He cries out, weak and incoherent, as his hip bends back after hours spent curled in the box. Azalea ignores him, leaning her weight against his knee to hold him while she grabs his opposite wrist. She has to strain to get it close enough to his ankle to lock the cuff closed.

Even in pain, he can’t quite get his eyes open, but his face creases. He twitches, free fingers scratching feebly at the carpet.

Azalea grabs his other ankle, and repeats.

Then she hops daintily to her feet, leaving her hogtied victim twitching and whimpering on the floor behind her.

“Well,” says Avon, somewhat perturbed, “yes. I suppose that will do.” Azalea smiles brightly at him, and leans in for a kiss. He lets her peck his cheek. “Where are we going for brunch, Sir?”

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #654261: spider #avon #handler rayce #whumper turned whumpee #whumpee turned whumper #skipping around on the timeline again #as is my wont #spider's relationship with her owner gets /weird/

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A ways into Rayce’s training

Obedience [Prev]

The pain is too big, too far beyond what he could hope to handle, too much to comprehend. It doesn’t fit in his body. His mind shies away from one sensation only to be met with another.

Cramps run ceaselessly up and down his back, his legs, even his arms. The ache of one won’t have faded before the next sharp stab kicks in. His knees are worse. His knees hurt so much – the burning skin, the electric sharpness through the joints, the ache-turned-cramp-turned-tearing-agony in every connected muscle – so much he thinks they must be broken, torn, dislocated, something.

If he doesn’t stay on his knees, he gets the shock, and everything gets worse.

At least he has his hands on the floor. He tries to take as much of his weight as he can through his hands and his toes, but he is weak. If he shakes too much, the handler on the couch prods him with the baton and the threat of shock is a rush of terror.

He tries to focus on the weight of her feet on his back, because that is only a mild pain, only a dull throb in the skin and the muscles beneath.

Better to focus on that than on his knees.

He doesn’t hear the door, but he sure hears the Handler’s voice. “You are way too early,” she says, “for how late you went home last night.” He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand what she wants from him. “What can I say,” – Handler Sharan, his hated Primary – “I love my job. I see you got him following instructions.” “Sure did.”

The words wash over him as he struggles to decipher whether they’re talking to him, or to each other. Whether he needs to listen, or can tune out.

Handler Sharan is in front of him. He feels her presence, her frigid aura, without knowing which sense he is using. Not sight. He can’t lift his head, it’s too heavy.

The weight on his back lifts, and he gasps as his own weight shifts and sets off yet more cramps. Her voice sounds from very far away. “Guess this means it’s home time. God I hate nights.” He hates nights too. But – that’s a thought from another life.

His Handler touches his shoulder. He startles – another wave of cramps.

“Enough,” she says. “You may stop.” It’s not a conscious choice when his body collapses. Maybe it was only coincidence that he finally got permission at the moment his muscles gave out. He pitches forwards and crumples and ends with a shoulder on the toes of her boots, his head against her ankles.

“Good boy,” she says, adjusting his head with one foot. “You’re going to be so good for me now, aren’t you?”

Then she’s nearer, her hands nearer, danger, touch, fear. His head pinned between her hands, tugged upwards so he has to squirm to stop his neck turning through an angle it cannot. 

He can’t read her face. He can barely make his eyes focus. The room is pulsating around her.

“Do you remember what you did?” she asks. He can’t. He panics. He can’t say no, he can’t say yes – then he sees the bandages wrapped around her hand and he remembers. His teeth bite so hard into the rubber between them that his jaw cramps. “Do you remember what you did wrong?” Hesitantly, fearfully, he nods. Her hand moves against his cheek and it’s so warm it almost burns. “You’re not going to do it again.” He shakes his head urgently, heedless of the pain behind his eyes, and she smiles.

He won’t, he promises he won’t, he’ll promise anything, just make it stop.

“You’re going to be good now.” Her voice is low and sure and sinks into his skin with every word. “You’re going to prove to me that you can be good. Or else we’ll start your punishment over, and over until you learn.”

Please no. He can’t, he can’t do it, he’ll be good.

The whimper in his throat comes out as nothing but a whistle of air.

And she’s gone, like the jolt of missing a step, like waking to find you aren’t falling. Her voice is above him.

“Follow, trainee.”

He can’t imagine standing up. He also can’t imagine disobeying, not with the consequences made so clear. He drags himself, with difficulty, back to his screaming knees. And he crawls. 

One limb at a time, one more shuffling motion, just this hand, just this knee, just one more as many times over as he has to before he’s allowed to stop. The white tiles are all the same.

“Position Two.” 

Another Handler, another voice he can’t put a name to. It doesn’t matter. They’re all Handler. They all give commands. They all have the power to shock him or worse. 

He obeys – but he’s too slow getting to Position Two, too shaky on limbs that don’t want to hold him up for a second longer. He’s grabbed by the back of the collar, yanked up, and sat back on his heels. His eyes water as he chokes.

“Eyes up.” He looks up. “Mouth open.” He opens his mouth. It’s hard to unlock his jaw from the bit. “Wider.” The gag digs into the corners of his mouth, stretching his lips, cracking open splits that had nearly healed. “Better.”

Better means he hasn’t earned more pain, not yet.

He smells the nutrient shake when the bottle is cracked open. He didn’t know before that it even had a smell. His mouth waters.

The handler spoon feeds him, sliding the spoon in through the narrow gap between the bit and his front teeth. He can’t talk to say thank you Handler so all he has to think about is swallowing. His throat hurts when he does.

Three spoonfuls, then a mouthful of water. Another spoonful, but it pauses just in front of his mouth. He knows better than to try and take it.

“Mouth open until I tell you to close it. Don’t swallow.”

The spoon slips between his teeth and the rubber. The liquid is deposited onto his tongue. 

It’s hard not to swallow. He’s fighting every starving instinct in him. Only the constant threat of the handler right there keeps him obedient.

“Good boy. Swallow.”

Two more spoonfuls. Each time he sits open-mouthed and waits for permission to swallow. Then another mouthful of water, poured slowly into his mouth until his eyes widen and still more until it spills out over his cheeks and trickles down his neck to pool under his collar. 

Frozen, he doesn’t move. Thankfully, it’s the right response.

“Good boy. Swallow.”

All he cares about is not messing this up. Getting as much food and water as they’re willing to give him. Not getting hurt any sooner than he has to. 

Maybe, maybe, being allowed to lie down when they’re done.

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce #handler sharan #gratuitous use of fun tropes

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A ways into Rayce’s training

The Spaceway Express To Hell [Prev | Next]

Hell is real and it's here – has always been here – just beneath the skin waiting for the right injection to unlock it –

– the pain tears across his back – the grater in her hands – ripping the skin to ribbons –

– they spool away like spaghetti – impossibly long – curling and twining – limp pallid ropes of skin –

– he screams – but there's something in his throat – a sticks-and-spikes thing – like dry brush – a bird's nest –

– devils are real and she is one – her touch molten – her claws slipping under his skin – under his ribs – clawing at his lungs –

– the grater never stops – shredding him inch by spaghetti inch –

– he pulls and pulls against the barbed irons that hold him –

– he can't tell if he's screaming or choking on the sticks in his throat – the sound won't leave him alone –

– it rips and tears – circles and lines and – where the skin is gone he feels it vibrate across the strings of his muscles – a deranged violin screech –

– the sound is inside his ears – grating his eardrums to pieces –

–like her claws are tearing him to pieces –

– he sees inside his own back – red muscle and – white bone – and – thick black grease – charcoal muck like a barbecue – 

– is he burning? 

– he must – he must be burning – nothing else could hurt so much as –

– scraping tearing ripping through skin –

– so many devils – their coveralls smoking – pinning his wrists and knees and hips and elbows with clawed burning hands –

– his face is in the pile of coiled tangled spaghetti skin – soft and moist and threatening to get in his – mouth – his nose –

– still tearing – still burning –

– he can't breathe – he can't breathe –

– the unholy screeching won't stop –

– she smiles down at him and her mouth is – a slash in the world – a white line stretching to – to –

– agony – tearing – 

– her hands – the grater – on his stomach now – worse – somehow worse than back it keeps getting worse how can it still get worse –

– blood between her fingers as the thing in her hand bites deeper –

– deeper –

– falling and the world tastes of ash but – he can't fall away from her she's – always – always there –

– ripping the skin away in writhing spaghetti worms – exposing his ribcage – stark white with black ooze between –

– he's screaming – screaming despite the barbed wire in his throat –

– she's laughing –

– her throat is a black hole and he's falling –

– falling but never escaping – swallowed but still here – still screaming –

– still chewed to threads – body unravelling – agonised strings of muscle and sinew and skin –

– stretching to the infinite corners of the room –

– and still the pain –

– there's nothing left of him but string and still it doesn't end –

– it doesn't end –

– it doesn't end –

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler sharan #handler rayce #brief cosmo perspective #he is having a real bad trip

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: BBU Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Spider has been with her owner for some time

Rayce, pt2 [Prev | Next]

Brunch is excellent. The restaurant is open and spacious, warm wooden furnishings contrasted against the enormous glass front that lets in the light. Spider eats avocado toast with a knife and fork, cutting it into carefully geometric squares while smiling and nodding and giggling as Avon talks about his clients. 

He's very witty really, when he cares to make her laugh. 

The food is wonderful. The atmosphere is pleasant. The staff are polite, even to the Pet.

And all the while, excitement fizzes in her stomach. The arguments are forgotten, as is the leash looped securely round the table leg. She can't wait to get home. And for once Avon seems charmed by her impatience.

The driver takes them right to the front door. Avon unclips Spider's leash, but pauses with his hand on the door as he lets her out of the car. 

"Don't make a mess," he says. "If you think you're going to draw blood, do it on a tiled floor. Remember to take him to a bathroom sooner rather than later. Oh, and mind your fingers. I'm told he bites." "Yes, Sir." "Go on then," he allows with a smile. "Have fun."

He lets her out, and she practically skips up the steps to get back to her new prize.

Handler Rayce is exactly where she left him, except that he's managed to tip onto his side by squirming. He's crying, and the sight sends a full-body thrill across her skin.

Her domineering, powerful, unmovable Handler, who always had her in the palm of his hand, who made her heart race with fear, who withheld food and sleep and hygiene and relief from pain at a whim – her Handler reduced to messy, snotty crying around the bit between his teeth. 

It's no surprise. She would be quite unhappy after a couple of hours in that position, and she is much more flexible than Rayce.

He sees her in the door, and his eyes widen. Spider feels weak in the knees, almost queasy with thrill and desire and dread.

The collar, so normal on other Pets or her own reflection, looks so perverse around his neck. 

She crosses the carpet to fold to her knees in front of him. Respect, his voice whispers in her thoughts. His chest rises and falls with tiny, rapid breaths, trying not to put any more strain on his shoulders.

Spider cups his cheek with a hand. It's sticky – nearly slick – with tears and drool. "Hello, Handler," she breathes. "I missed you." He makes an inarticulate noise in his throat, garbled by the plastic bar across his tongue. 

On a whim, Spider leans down and kisses him, her lips soft against his stretched taut by the gag.

If she unchains him, will he be weak enough that she is safe from him? Or will he flip her, pin her to the floor, and twist her joints until she cries and promises to behave?

Remembering the warning, she's careful to keep her fingers away from his teeth as she unbuckles the gag at the back of his head. 

The bit falls from his mouth and he works his jaw weakly, trying to ease the pain from the muscles. There are deep, bleeding sores at the corners of his mouth. He must have spent a lot of time gagged – Spider supposes that's what happens if you bite your handlers.

"H-hhelp - me -?" he rasps pitifully.

Power thrills through Spider's stomach, a tingle in her core so intense it's uncomfortable. 

He thinks she's a potential ally.

She can't wait to strip him of that delusion.

But… Avon told her to take him to the bathroom first. And that will be much easier if he cooperates. In her daydreams, she didn't think about how much heavier he is than her. 

"I will, Handler," she promises softly, cupping his snotty cheek again. "I'm here."

She has the key to the cuffs tucked under her clothes. It's warm from resting against her skin. His hands and feet are purple and a little swollen, and the metal bites deeply into the flesh.

He twitches and makes hoarse sounds of protest at her touch. He isn't well trained. She isn't sure if she's excited or disappointed. She wanted to tell him what to do and be obeyed. But at the same time… would he still be her Handler if they'd trained him better?

It's difficult to pry the cuff off his ankle, more difficult than it was to get it on. "Shhh," she soothes, "I'm helping, I'm sorry it hurts."

When she gets it loose, all the tension of his bowed body abruptly loads onto the remaining cuff. Rayce groans loudly, sounding on the verge of panic. His freed limbs flail weakly, trying to find purchase on the floor. His eyes are wild and unfocused.

"Handler?" Spider wavers, voice sweet as sugar, as she sits back on her heels to watch him squirm. He’s too drugged to see the avaricious intent in her gaze. "What should I do, sir?"

He's gasping too much to answer promptly. Spider did this. She made him hurt. She made him afraid.

"Help me," he manages to force out again. "Hhelp – get me – get me out of –"

Another moan interrupts his words as Spider takes hold of the remaining pair of cuffs. She can't resist tugging a little more than she has to as she sets him free. 

This, this is power.

Handler Rayce groans through the painful return of his limbs to neutral positions, then finally goes limp, face down on the floor. Spider leans over him to unlock the trailing cuffs from his wrists. His purpled fingers don't even twitch.

On an impulse, she takes one of his hands in hers. Rayce makes small sounds as his shoulder and elbow move, but he's very passive with the drugs still in his system. His eyes are all pupil. 

At first, still numb, he doesn't react to Spider's fingers rubbing circles on the palm of his hand. Then, as sensation starts to return, he tries to twitch away. 

Spider is intimately familiar with the pins and needles that follow restricted circulation. After a couple of hours like this, it won't be just a tingle or a prickle. It will truly feel like needles and pins stabbing into the skin over and over, accompanied by a deep and fiery ache. 

And every touch and movement makes it sharper. 

"A-ah - nnh - hurts -" Rayce protests. "Don't worry," Spider promises, "I'll make it better, sir." And she is. The pain will be more intense in the moment, but it will also be over sooner. "Nno," slurs her Handler, "Llleave't alone…" Bad Pet, Spider thinks. 'No' isn't a part of your vocabulary. "I'm sorry, sir," she lies with a smile, "I can't understand you."

Massage was a part of her training – for any part of the body. Ordinarily she would focus on the muscles – the meat of the thumb and the narrow, difficult muscles between the long bones of the palm. 

For this little spiteful massage she focuses her attention mostly on the sensitive pads of the fingers and the ball of the hand. 

Rayce twitches and whines and protests until finally the sensation flips from painful to pleasant and he relaxes with a soft, drawn-out moan. So Spider takes his other hand -- still burning – and is rewarded with more helpless complaints.

But the fun can't last forever. Spider checks Rayce’s feet to make sure they too have returned to a more normal colour, then tries to help him to the bathroom.

He can barely stand, and she can't really take his weight when he falls against her. They stumble their way clumsily through the house leaning on walls and pausing often, until eventually she gets him into the downstairs bathroom and can let him collapse onto the tiles. 

He needs telling several times before he understands to use the toilet, and Spider has to help him up onto it. She turns her back, and hopes he manages without making a mess – or falling and cracking his skull.

She’ll have to help him wash. That might be fun, actually. Suddenly, achingly, with a flutter in her chest, she misses the feel of his skin on hers.

And she wants to know if his body will still respond to the sight of her.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #implied noncon #nsfwhump #a girl called spider #654261: spider #avon #handler rayce #whumpee turned whumper #whumper turned whumpee

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: Spider has been with her owner a while

Rayce, pt3 - Shower Scene [Prev | Next]

The hot water stings, then feels good on his skin. He tips his face up, and it goes in his eyes before he remembers to close them, and he doesn’t care. The water soaks into his hair and runs rivulets across his skin.

God it feels good. When did he last get a hot shower?

The Pet moves, and he remembers her existence. She’s as naked as he is, and he doesn’t remember when that happened.

The heat starts to soak into aching muscles and burning joints and it’s hard to pay attention to anything else. 

But he definitely notices her joining him under the water. She moves with sinuous grace, just like she’s meant to.

He knows her. He can’t place her. Is she one of his? Is he meant to be teaching her something?

No, because he’s – oh, god, they put a collar on him, they put him in a training room, they –

Her hands slide lightly over his chest. Her face is very close to his, her lips parted – textbook perfect.

“Pretty girl,” he mumbles. “You do remember me,” she smiles. “I was worried.”

Her hand cups the side of his face lightly, fingers sliding up into his hair.

She could be a pleasant dream, except that every inch of him hurts, except that he can still feel the collar tight around his throat.

“Relax, Handler. I’m here to help you feel good.”

He thinks of Mitchell’s dry voice saying “after long enough, they’ll do anything to feel good.”

“Help me?” he whimpers. “I will,” she promises. “First you need to get clean.”

The warm water, gentle on his skin, helps keep back thoughts of cold water and the violence that comes with it.

She stands up, and he looks up the impossibly long lines of her body trying to follow what her hands are doing. His gaze catches on the underside of her breasts. Her nipples stand out firmly despite the heat of the water.

His gut clenches nauseously.

She crouches back down with her hands full of blue gel that he only parses as shower gel when she tips it into his hair and starts working it in.

It feels good, like she promised. It feels so good, but his skin crawls. He lifts his hands to try and do it himself, but his arms are leaden and his hands are clumsy and she easily threads hers between his to keep working her fingertips across his scalp.

Her breasts are very close to his face, All else he can see is tiles and the lines crawl and he doesn’t like to look.

Her hands move down his neck, sliding under his chin. He feels the absence of touch where they cross the collar. Her face is in view again and she purses her lips. 

Her fingers find the buckle. It tugs tighter. Panic rises in his chest. He gasps in air – the sores at the edges of his mouth pull, he tastes soap across his tongue as droplets of water get into his mouth –

And then the collar loosens, not just one notch but several. Enough that it slips down his neck away from the place it's supposed to sit. The relief is overwhelming, it’s everything. Tears slip from his eyes to mix with the shower water.

Then her fingers find the electrode burns, and he squirms to try and get away from the touch. It’s relentless. He whines, and tries again to lift his hands to stop her.

And then it’s over, her fingers move on, round the rest of the ring of reddened skin that itches but doesn't hurt to touch. It feels bad, but it feels good too.

“Why?” he protests weakly. “I’m washing you,” she says. “It won’t heal right if it doesn’t stay clean. Don’t worry, I’m done, I won’t touch it anymore.”

Instead she’s touching his collarbones, his shoulders, his chest. Her fingers are sharp as knives but it feels good even as it hurts. He moans, bewildered, overwhelmed, as her hands swim over him.

“Shhh,” she soothes. “Relax. Doesn’t it feel good?”

Yes. No. He hates it. He doesn’t want it to stop. He wants it to stop. It doesn’t. He squirms.

Her hands are on his arms, swimming dizzying circles around each limb. She pulls him away from the wall and he gasps at the pain of moving. She slides in behind him and her thighs press either side of his ass as her hands slide over his back.

Everything hurts. Everything hurts and he’s been hurting for – days, weeks, he doesn’t know – and maybe it’ll never stop and he can’t think because her hands catch his thoughts like flypaper, dragging him back to the here and now, to her touch, to the heat of the water.

Why is she here?

Why is he here?

Lower, and lower, and her body presses against his back as her hands slide round his hips and up to his stomach. The shape of her is intensely, intimately familiar and wholly alien all at once. His head tips back against her shoulder. It’s better than tiles and hard walls and the cold ground.

“Comfort,” he hears Mitchell say, “is contingent on touch. Trust me, they’ll start to want it.”

Her hands are everywhere. Caressing his chest. Circling his throat. Teasing the line between his hips. Her lips are at his ear, kissing the shell. Her tongue is too warm to bear. 

Lower, to the crease between thigh and crotch. She cups his junk. He gasps and shudders and jerks back against her and her giggle is just the same as he taught her. 

She palms him, tries to stroke him. It’s too much. It doesn’t feel good. It’s just – sensitive, oversensitive, uncomfortable. He can feel his dick and balls trying to shrink up into his body. Her mouth is still on his ear – lips and tongue and teeth all burn.

“Ssstop,” he whines.

Her hands, her mouth go still.

“Pets don’t say “stop”,” she says.

His breath catches, his heart skips a painful beat. Is – is she one of the handlers who – is this – no, it’s not the facility, he was in someone’s house –

Her hands move again, circling, tugging, making him squirm. She’s trying to get him hard but nothing feels good. He wants to crawl out of his skin.

Stop, he almost says again, but she’s right, he’ll get hurt, it’s not worth another shock, it’s not.

She lets go with a sound of exasperation, and he realises he’s pushing her off him, his clumsy hands on her narrow wrists. 

He still feels her touch, even when she slides out from behind him and the world tilts nauseously and he slumps against the tiles. The imprints of her hands linger. He feels them creeping like the water across his skin. 

She’s frowning, and she looks like – the woman they assigned to hurt him, the handler, he's supposed to know her name –

He doesn't know where he is. He's not in the training facility. There's – slate grey tiles, and the warm water, and the naked Pet in front of him.

"Fine," she pouts. "Be like that."

She gets up, and he inches laboriously backwards, pressing back against the tiles. The cold feels good against bruised, too-warm skin. But when he tries to brace his hands against it, the texture is too rough. He can feel the edges of the tiles, the grains of the mortar itching against his skin. 

His hands hurt. Everything hurts. 

There she is again, the Pet. He recognises the cuffs in her hands as the instrument of pain that they are.

"No," he says. Shaking his head is a mistake. It throbs, the world spins.

He tries to push her away. Her naked skin is slippery. Her hands are everywhere at once. He tries to lurch away from her. His hands and elbows and head knock against the hard walls, pain lances through every point of contact. 

She gets the cuffs on him. He pants dizzily, unsure how he lost the struggle.

She pulls his arms up over his head. His shoulders grind and he howls. His hands throb. 

"Please-!" he protests, finally remembering what he is supposed to say instead of no. 

There's no mercy to be found. 

He doesn't understand. She's – why is she hurting –

All thoughts go out of his head as the water abruptly turns cold, hitting him like a bucket dumped across his naked body. He squeaks an undignified sound of surprise, and finds himself gasping.

Cold water shouldn't be a shock by now but somehow it is, every time it is. 

"I was trying to be nice to you," the Pet says. "But see if I care."

The door closes behind her with a click.

Metal rattles against metal. His hands are trapped above his head. When he tries to slump sideways, he can't. He cranes his head up, squinting against the falling water, and sees the cuffs locked to the pipes.

The light sparkles sharply off the gleaming metal.

The first shock of the cold is fading, but it won't be long before it soaks into his bones and the shivering starts. 

He never used to know that you can shiver so hard and so long that it hurts. 

And he already hurts so much. 

His thoughts are still so heavy and foggy and sticky and the water can't wash the drugs away but he wishes it could. 

Maybe if he lets it run into all the crevices of his head, his eyes and ears and nose and mouth.

It feels good in his mouth. He's so thirsty. He lets his mouth fill up and he drinks.

He can't comprehend how he got here. He remembers but – how did this happen?

They chained him, they put a fucking collar on him, they made him one of the products, they put him in a box and now – where is he now? What else is going to happen to him? 

They wouldn't even tell him what he did wrong. He thought he was doing so well. 

…

At least the gag is gone. 

He sobs. Sprawled out against tiled wall and floor, unable to even curl up because his hips hurt so bad, he tips his head against his suspended arm and he sobs his heart out.

Even that hurts, every spasm a deep ache in his abdomen.

He can't stop. He cries messy, noisy, painful tears like a snotty kid in the playground. 

And the cold works its way slowly deeper and deeper into bruised skin and trembling muscles, unrelenting.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #noncon tw #nsfwhump #a girl called spider #654261: spider #handler rayce #rayce is having a bad time

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A ways into Rayce’s training

Biting, pt2 [Prev | Next]

He turns the questions round in his head for a long, long time before he dares to ask. It has to be as respectful as possible, if he wants any chance at an answer.

When am I going to be wiped, please, Handler Sharan? What’s my designation, please? Do I have a number, Handler, please? What’s going to happen to me?

He waits until she’s in a good mood, as much as he can read her moods. He waits for a time when there’s more praise than punishment.

He also waits until he’s just been fed, so he doesn’t ruin a shot at getting food.

She has him cleaning floors. He can’t see a spot of dirt anywhere, the maintenance Pets probably did it all already, but he knows it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he does as he’s told.

She’s barely correcting him, it’s probably only to keep him busy, only to make sure he can’t rest.

“Handler Sharan, ma’am?” he asks. He doesn’t take his eyes off the floor, or let the sponge pause in its circles. “What is it?” “May I speak, please, Handler?” “No,” she says. “You may not.”

And that’s the end of it. 

It’s a punch to the gut, but he’s had a lot of those now.

There’s no use trying to ask anyway. She might easily have shocked him just for trying the first time. If he pushes his luck, she’ll definitely use the collar.

Swish-snap – another bright flare of pain across his ass. The shorts don’t dull the sting as much as he hoped they would.

What did he do? Oh – he’s been scrubbing the same circle for – too long. He shuffles on his knees to the next patch. Not that it matters.

He should have just asked rather than asking permission first. He should have known it was a long shot. She hasn’t told him anything because she has no intention of telling him.

The bitterness still curdles in his empty gut all through the exercise, and the next one, and it fades a little but it stays with him. It even niggles like a loose tooth when he’s alone in his cell trying to get some desperately needed sleep before they wake him again. 

If he was a tougher guy, maybe anger would have outpaced fear from the start. If he was smarter, maybe he’d know how to stifle it before it burns him. 

But he can feel it growing day on day, a rising tide that says no to everything they ask of him, no more, fuck this, fuck that, fuck all of it.

The second time he bites is not an accident.

He knows full well how bad the consequences will be. He knows that if he does this he’ll probably never get another chance. He knows it won’t achieve anything.

He’s just so, so sick of the endless, painful, invasive, relentless touch. 

He’s up against the wall again, knees shoulder width apart, palms flat against the wall. Handler Sharan isn’t giving orders, she’s just touching him. Stroking his skin all over, prodding and squeezing until it’s a struggle not to hiss and flinch from the sharp points of her fingers.

He knows it’s about eroding boundaries. He doesn’t know how she knows that he hasn’t let go of this one yet. He tries so hard not to recoil or complain.

He’s just not any good at it, he supposes.

Especially when her hand dips down the front of his shorts to grab at his junk. He knows it’s no different from everything else she can do to him, there’s no use in fighting it – but he can’t stop his body going rigid against her, can’t stop his breath catching and his skin crawling.

She tweaks the end of his cock and gets a gasp, then her hand moves on, fondling the lines of his stomach, nails scratching lightly at the skin and making him squirm with how badly it itches.

Helpless anger wells up. 

It’s not even anything new. It’s not exhaustion to the limit of what his body can handle. It’s barely painful. 

All he has to do is hold still and tolerate it.

That’s all.

“Alright, break time’s over.” She slaps his ass – sharp over the welts – and he yelps. “You’re losing condition, can’t have that. Up on your feet and give me squats.”

Of course he’s fucking losing condition, she’s starving him. He doesn’t know if he can do one squat. 

He’s going to find out.

It turns out he can do twenty-three, although the last thirteen are pathetic and get him switched across the shoulders. After that, he falls on his smarting, aching ass.

She hasn’t told him to stop, so he knows he should get up, he knows the shock’s coming when he refuses, he just – he hates this. He hates her. 

He chokes through the shock. He still doesn't get back up. 

"What happened there, trainee?" Sharan asks. "You were doing so well." He knows an opening when he sees one. "I'm sorry, Handler," he snivels, "I - I can't, I'm sorry." "Try," she tells him testily.

He does, because he isn't brave enough to keep refusing. But maybe he doesn't try very hard, maybe he gives in to cramps that he probably could have pushed through if he weren't so fucking done with all of this. 

The switch snaps across his ribs, and the back of his thighs, and he makes another show of straining his shaking limbs trying to push up from the floor.

There are tears in his eyes, and that's not faked.

She crouches, and pulls his head back by the hair to get a good look at his face, and he's so scared that she's going to see the hate and anger written all over him that he must end up looking sufficiently wretched after all because she merely wrinkles her nose and sighs.

Then she drags him up by the hair, and that makes him really try to get his feet under him. He’s clumsy from exhaustion and he falls against her and she staggers. Her arms wrap round his chest to catch him and they dig in sharply to all the bruises over his ribs.

He squirms, and she pushes him off her. He sprawls across the tiles.

“Bad Pet,” she hisses. He gets another shock from the collar. 

He doesn’t know what she expects from him next but staying where he fell is not it. Another shock.

For the first time in – god knows how long – his hands go instinctively to the collar to try and prise it away from his throat. More shocks, a higher setting, held for longer. He screeches and spasms on the floor.

He doesn’t quite black out, but he loses track of the Handler, right up until her hands on his shoulders signal him to roll onto his back. He pants raggedly for air, voice catching in the back of his throat, and looks up at her.

“Shhh,” she soothes, petting his face. As if she didn’t do this. As if he’s supposed to be grateful for the burning, itching hand on his skin.

When he bites her, it’s not an accident. It’s a moment of pure, unadulterated spite.

For just a few seconds, the fear of consequences doesn’t get a look in. He just wants – all he wants – is to make her hurt.

He waits until her hand is steady on his cheek, and then he turns his head as if to nuzzle into the touch like one of his girls would – and then he sinks his teeth in as hard as he can, and he shakes his head like a dog, and he doesn’t let go.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #noncon tw #nsfwhump #a girl called spider #handler rayce #handler sharan #cosmo being very slightly less soggy

[just-horrible-things]

‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A little way through Rayce’s training

Aftermath [Prev | Next]

Harsh punishment hits every Pet differently. You never know exactly how they'll take it until you try. And even the same Pet doesn't always respond the same way twice. 

Some of them turn wild, even self-destructive with fury. They fight until their bodies give out, and after it's over they're more resistant than before. 

Depending on the training parameters, that can be a failure state, or an important step towards breaking them of that resistance.

Some of them get numb. Some of them acquire undesirable habits.

And some of them are easy. They take it like the newbies expect every Pet to take it – with terror and renewed fervor to obey.

Honestly Divya expects her latest Special-designation to fall into that category. The snitch doesn't have a number because he's thoroughly off the books, so she thinks of him as exactly that – her snitch.

His first response to correction is usually to try and appease her, so she expects the punishment to leave him even more desperate to please. 

Instead, when she rouses him from the sleep that he slips into every time he has even a minute to rest, she finds him blank-eyed and limply passive. Maybe the aftereffects of the drug cocktail haven't quite cleared his system yet, or maybe he's just tipped over the threshold of what his brain can handle.

She'll have to wait to find out what he took from the lesson, but at least it makes it nice and easy to get him back into his cell. 

She'll let him sleep, she decides. It's good for consolidating learning. His body could use a chance to repair some of the damage, too.

To that end, she also feeds him while he's out. The high-protein shake they give the Guard Dogs, with extra sugar. A quarter portion –  enough to make a difference, but not so much he's likely to bring it back up. He almost certainly won't remember, since she has to hold his mouth closed and rub his throat to even get him to swallow.

The gag goes back in when she's done. 

The snitch is on a very accelerated program, so he’s her only primary right now. She doesn’t have the slightest idea why they want him half-trained for mid-April, and she knows better than to ask. Her job is to deliver results, not to question the specifications.

Regardless, it’s nice to have a quiet morning. She catches up on some paperwork, takes a long break, then picks up some small requests – mostly Domestics needing feeding or supervision in the showers.

When she gets back to her snitch, he’s still out of course. He whimpers when she rouses him, and looks up at her with the terror that has become his normal.

It’s nice, in some ways, to work with that raw honesty instead of working to erase it. Nowhere on his training plan is demeanour specified, so his reactions remain untrained and unfiltered.

He can't get up on command. Divya isn’t surprised, after the night he's had. She punishes it anyway, just a few quick strokes of the switch.

He tries, and that's all she really needs to know. He's not about to have a fit of defiance over this. 

She's not even angry, really. His teeth broke the skin and the doctor made an enormous fuss about antibiotics, but her hand is fine. She knew he was close to the edge of his tolerance, she should have known better than to have her hand on his face. 

If anything she's annoyed at herself. 

"You must be thirsty," she observes. He nods. The silence is gratifying. He knows his lines because he was a handler, the recitation doesn't prove anything. "Show me you can be good."

Frozen uncertainty is the response she expected. He wants a clearer instruction, but she wants to know what he'll come up with on his own. 

The silence stretches to almost a minute. There's not a lot going on behind those eyes. She could almost believe he'd had his skull emptied out like the others. (Another thing she doesn't question.)

"I'm waiting," she prompts.

Laboriously he draws his knees up to his stomach, and rolls over onto them. Respect, more or less. 

She watches as he adjusts each part of his posture in sequence. It looks like he can't hold more than one thought in his head at a time. Heels up, toes together. Knees under shoulders. Head centred. Hands in front, palms up. 

He forgets to tuck his elbows in until she nudges them with the tip of the switch.

It's a solid, basic answer to the problem posed, and it doesn't demonstrate much beyond the fact that he knows his protocol.

"Sit up," she instructs levelly. He still can't. Instead of punishing him this time, she lifts him by the shoulders until his back is straight. He puts his hands in his lap without prompting.

She takes his face to inspect the fit of the gag. To her surprise he leans forwards into the touch.  When she lets him, he nuzzles at her palm.

His department was Romantic, she'd put money on it. 

Not that there’s any trained sweetness or eagerness in his eyes. No manufactured comfort at the skin contact. Just terror. Just desperation to prove willing.

That's what Divya is looking for. She pets his hair – eugh, he badly needs a wash – and watches the fear ease fractionally.

Good. He's on track for… whatever awaits him in April.

"The punishment is over," she tells him softly. "I forgive you. Now we go back to training. Doesn’t that sound better?”

He nods tearfully against her hands.

[Next]

#my writing #bbu #a girl called spider #handler rayce #handler sharan #oops new character #sorry to those who wanted to see the punishment #I did plan to leave it a mystery #but maybe I'll come back to it #who knows #the typing fingers decide what gets created today