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whumpsical · 3 years

Text

Saying Yes

contents: trafficking, captivity, discussion of noncon, fucky relationship dynamics & manipulation, victim blaming, dissociation, a referenced su!c!de attempt, that thing where whumper gives whumpee an ultimatum between two equally shitty options

Jian's still not gonna fuck you, man.

October 2019

taglist!!! @yet-another-heathen @much-ado-about-whumping

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Jian woke up late the next morning in an empty bed. He jerked into full consciousness with a cry, clutching the cold sheets, terrified that it had all been a dream or that he was finally starting to hallucinate entire scenes, not just shadow figures in the corners of his vision. But the blanket he held between his fingers was the soft red quilt of the main bedroom, not the thin blue sheets of his little personal prison. Jian slowly released the quilt, panting and blinking away bright golden sparkles in his eyes.

Dickass Lee’s head appeared in the doorway, and Jian gasped. Try again tomorrow.

“You awake? Hungry?” Dickass Lee said as he entered the room. He was wearing shoes.

“Mmn--” Jian started, but choked when he realized he wasn’t using words at all. Whatever he was trying to say, it evaporated from his mind when Dickass Lee approached the bed, and Jian shrank up against the headboard.

“Hey, hey,” Dickass Lee soothed, his hands in the air. “I know we agreed to try again, but how about we take the morning to just think and talk about it? Come on downstairs.”

Jian was about seventy percent sure he’d never agreed to any of this shit. The low number sent him trembling again, and Dickass Lee was already gone.

------

“I gave you a decision to make, and I’m understanding now that it’s an especially hard one for you, but that’s all the more reason to keep it as it is. It wouldn’t be fair to change up the terms now, after you’ve already put in so much thought.”

They were in the bright kitchen, Jian sitting at the little table and Dickass Lee plating scrambled eggs at the counter. Jian curled his right hand around the mug of hot coffee that Dickass Lee had placed in front of him, staring into the steaming liquid without any plans to drink it. He occasionally let his gaze wander over the white bandage around his arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to look out through the glass door for more than a second at a time. The fucking leaves had begun to change in the time he’d spent spinning out in that room.

“I don’t lie to you, Jian. And I don’t want you to lie to me, either. Tell me what you want to do, and we’ll do it. I promise,” Dickass Lee said.

And no third option. Nothing that involved Jian running off into the woods and never seeing the man again. Or seeing anything, since he’d probably just get mauled by a fucking bear. Jian rubbed his eyes with his free hand and kept his mouth shut as Dickass Lee set a plate of eggs between Jian’s elbows and sat opposite him with his own dish.

The warm mug pulsed along with the rhythm of Jian’s heart and he pressed his thumb over the rim, waiting for an answer to come. He switched out his hands, leaning his cheek against his right palm, hot from the coffee. He took a bite of eggs, but it crumbled to ash in his mouth.

What he wanted to do. It was all bullshit. Dickass Lee could dress his games up as something civilized, even noble, but the man was just a sick fucking sadist. Jian had as much choice as a lion in a gladiatorial arena.

It would’ve been easier if Dickass Lee had gone ahead and forced him down, tied him to the fucking bed.

“Can you just, you know--?” Jian stuttered, absently studying the fork in his hand. God, he couldn’t believe he was actually about to ask the man to buck up and rape him. “I mean, if you’re already gonna make me--”

“Jian, don’t even finish that thought,” Dickass Lee interrupted, raising a quieting hand. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

“I don’t want to do this!” Jian moaned and threw his fork on the table. Itchy frustration shorted his breath, and he swallowed a wet choking feeling in the back of his throat, glad he hadn’t sipped any of the coffee to fuel his anxiety. He took a deep breath to halfway gather himself. “Richard, whatever I do, it won’t be like I actually-- Like I’m agreeing to anything. It’s still ra--” Jian bit his lip before he could finish the offending word. Dickass Lee raised his eyebrows at him, patiently prompting him to take another crack at his statement. Jian huffed and turned his eyes to the ceiling, racking his brain for a suitable replacement. “It’s still… under duress. Why should it matter, if I’m just pretending to give consent anyway?”

“Are you telling me you’re saying no?”

No, no, no, no, no, no fucking way, no. “That’s not fair,” Jian whispered hoarsely, the horrible blooming pain of dread splitting his sternum in two at the thought of returning to that room. The single bite of egg had gone heavy and was rolling around in his stomach like a marble, and he stared down at his plate with a laser focus. Plain and soft, only a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Just a step up from hospital food, and only because the eggs hadn’t been scooped out of one huge stainless steel trough for an entire ward.

“Jian, I’m not in control of your choices. You know the parameters. If you want to go back into the room, that’s your decision to make.”

Would it be like this every time? Every goddamn time? It was one thing to be held by physical force, another to be made to ask for it. Pale yellow, just like the rest of the kitchen. Flecks of ground black pepper, like an ant infestation. Jian massaged his forehead with both hands.

The two threats sized each other up in his mind, and Jian sat frozen in the center, the scales balancing perfectly. Gently crumbling curds, creamy but holding their shape. A horrible screeching pressure cinched the space behind his eyes in an angry fist, his brain tearing itself apart looking for any way out, finding absolutely nothing beyond total self destruction. Light and buttery and so sickeningly good after days of basically nothing.

“If you want to go back to--”

“No!” Jian interjected, shutting his eyes tight, only the smell of eggs lingering. If the man would just shut up for a second. “Just-- Just wait, I can’t--”

“Jian, I’m not going to force you.”

“Yes you are!” Jian shouted, muffled behind his hands. It was stupid to argue, he knew that, but the whole fucking deal was so infuriating that the words burst out of his throat in a volcanic blast. His lava only burned his own body, sizzling gaping holes through his palms and dribbling onto his chest and lap, and he drew his melting hands to his temples, staring up at Dickass Lee through an open shutter of fingers. “You’re forcing me! Giving me a choice between getting fucking raped and sitting in a fucking tomb isn’t a fucking choice!”

Jian flinched as Dickass Lee stood up, his chair scooting backwards across the linoleum floor.

“Have I ever raped you?” Dickass Lee asked, anger and frustration evident in his voice, though he kept unsettlingly quiet. Jian covered his eyes again, rubbing his face aggressively.

“No, but--”

“No. And I never will. Rape is not one of your options. I thought that would make it easier for you.”

Jian simmered behind his eyelids. Not one of his options? Not one of his fucking options? Another furious eruption spattered lava up into Jian’s throat, and he flinched trying to keep it all in. His whole body was so tense, he swore that if he had the guts to exhale, he would’ve just screamed from the pressure on his diaphragm alone. The guy needed to take a crash course on basic sex ed. Either that, or Dickass Lee really thought Jian was too stupid to know the difference between consent and coercion.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jian muttered.

“Alright,” Dickass Lee sighed, infuriatingly casual, and almost before Jian could blink his eyes open he felt the man’s hand reach with streamlined hostility in front of his face, quickly snatching Jian’s plate away and flinging it to the ground where it shattered against the tile, spilling wasted scrambled eggs and sharp china shards everywhere. Jian flinched backwards, and the shards bored with a horrible headache-inducing brightness into his mind, an unreal ringing pitch like furiously unbridled tinnitus echoing in his ears, and he had time for one unwitting glance at the bandage on his arm before Dickass Lee took hold of Jian’s hair and yanked him downwards, spilling him off of his chair and kicking him the rest of the way to the floor. Jian yelped helplessly and tried to catch himself, but the shoe on his back knocked his cry short and forced him flat to the ground.

A loose sharp edge of broken china teased at Jian’s sensitive inner forearm where he landed, and he was going to die again. The yellow kitchen was glittering gold and he was going to die, he was once again the hot young starlet in an old noir flick, he’d only needed a better set and better lighting, a more active co-star. A terrified moan that could’ve been taken as lascivious by the wrong set of ears escaped his lips, and he was going to fucking die again.

“Here’s the thing, Jian,” said a smooth voice, his co-star, his handsome leading man, climbing over Jian’s delicately trembling form and pinning him facedown into splatterings of eggs like brains on glistening, speckled marble. Hospital food, a sterling silver trough. “I can’t take you back to the room until I fix the shower door. I am not going to let you try to kill yourself again.” A twisting of calloused fingers around Jian’s wrist, those shards of sugar glass beneath him, ready to shatter at the barest touch of his perfect skin, but he was already bleeding. “So what are we going to do in the meantime?”

It was his line. He knew what to do, somehow. There was at least one tiny corner of his brain which was not a part of their production. His quiet panting stilled for a moment.

“I’m not gonna let you fucking--”

“Didn’t expect you to. I’m just debating where to put you while you rethink that conviction of yours.”

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overdressedcarp · 7 years

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21st-century kitchen appliances are intolerably complicated. Baking is plebian and old-fashioned to begin with. Shampoo bottle labels are deceptive. At any rate, none of this is Cavendish’s fault.

Full text below the cut.

Baker’s Dozens and Other Omens of Misfortune

“Oh—fiddlesticks.”

Cavendish dropped the baking sheet onto the counter, grumbling under his breath as he fanned his painfully-pink hand. Today would be the day for their towel-slash-potholder to be in the laundry.

He snatched a fork from the dish drainer with his uninjured hand and poked at one of the smoldering eyesores petrified to the baking sheet. It refused to budge.

“Scarred by your thwarted ambitions toward edibility,” he muttered. “I understand.”

This was what he got for trying to be considerate. A kind gesture, out of the goodness of his heart—yes, technically this was meant to make up for the shampoo incident, but guilt didn’t automatically invalidate kindness!—but of course his own personal life curse couldn’t even let him properly apologize for misreading the hair-care labels at the supermarket.

“You’ve gotta have some Murphy blood in you somewhere,” Dakota had said after last month’s situation involving the hotel sprinkler system. Cavendish was almost starting to believe him.

The door to the apartment rattled, then slammed. Dakota’s voice filtered into the kitchen: “Hey, Cav, did you set something on fire again? It smells like smoke in here.”

Cavendish pressed his palms against his forehead and fought down a scream.

“It wasn’t my fault! The timer didn’t set properly and I was filling out mission reports at the same time and I didn’t have my —”

“Cavendish.” Dakota placed his hands on Cavendish’s elbows. “Look at me. Is anything on fire?”

“Er. No.”

“Is anyone mortally injured?”

Cavendish tucked his still-pink hand behind his back. “Not, strictly speaking, mortally —”

“Did you manage to destabilize the time stream during the half-hour I was gone?”

“I have done nothing of the sort!”

“Then for the love of Tchaikovsky, would you cool it with the swan songs? I don’t need the Tragic and Guiltless Lament of Balthazar Cavendish in A Minor.” Dakota stepped around Cavendish, then reached across the stovetop and switched off the oven. “Why were you messing around in here, anyway? I thought we were gonna order takeout for dinner.”

“I had hoped that a gesture of friendship might finally encourage you to bury the metaphorical hacksaw.”

“It’s a hatchet. The expression is ‘bury the hatchet.’”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about! I am trying, for antiquity’s sake!”

“Fine, fine. Don’t have a fit. Which hacksaw are we talking about, specifically? Because I feel like we’ve got a whole tool shed at this point.”

Cavendish glared at the kitchen tiles. “I apologize for inconveniencing your personal hygiene regimen. I had no intentions of implying anything derogatory about your hair, dandruff-related or otherwise.”

Dakota raised his eyebrows, then burst out laughing. “And this—this is your idea of restitution? You bought the wrong shampoo and decided to try baking as an apology?”

“I know that you’re partial to food.”

“I’m partial to good food, Cav.”

Cavendish rolled his eyes. “You bruise my heart.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m flattered? That it’s the thought that counts?”

“Perhaps!”

“Okay, whatever. Consider yourself absolved.” Dakota leaned over the counter and squinted at the baking sheet. “Um. What were you trying to make?”

“Ah—I was... er...” Cavendish wrinkled his nose. “You know, biscuits—you don’t call them biscuits, though, it’s—those dratted snackish things; you practically never see them anymore outside of documentaries —”

“Cookies?”

“Yes! That! Those!”

“Oh.” Dakota studied the baking sheet. “They, uh. They look crispy.”

“They’re burnt. And fully inedible. I’m not seven; you needn’t sugarcoat things on my account.”

Dakota tipped his head to the side. “Yeah, I don’t think sugar would help these.”

Cavendish scowled at the failed culinary exercise. “This is such an antiquated method of food preparation. I don’t know how people avoided starvation in this century.”

“Desperation is the mother of learning how to cook your own meals, I guess.” Dakota unzipped his jacket and tugged it off. “Where’s your recipe?”

Cavendish gestured to the beat-up laptop on the table. “I attempted to interrogate the internet.”

Dakota tapped the space bar on the laptop, then peered over the top of his sunglasses at the dim screen. “Yeesh, everything’s in imperial. How’d you even measure the ingredients?”

“I tried to convert the measurements to metric, but we’ve only got the one measuring cup, so I mostly shook things into the mixing bowl until the consistency seemed... tolerable.”

“Yeah, see, that might work for a Pollock painting, but cooking’s a little more finicky.” Dakota crouched down and opened their tiny fridge. “You didn’t clear us out, did you?”

“I believe I may have exhausted our supply of margarine.”

“No big deal. We’ll do a modified recipe.”

“I thought you said cooking was—finicky.”

“There’s a difference between changing the recipe because you don’t know what you’re doing, and changing the recipe because you’re out of margarine and can’t be bothered to go to the store.” Dakota handed Cavendish the mixing bowl. “Here, rinse this out. I’m gonna try to scrape Dessert 1.0 off the baking sheet.”

“I appreciate the thought, but this really isn’t necessary.”

“Who said anything about necessary? I want cookies. Might as well give you a crash course in home economics while we’re at it.”

Cavendish folded his arms over his chest. “I have some concerns about your methodology.”

“Look, I am ninety-nine percent sure this is how my mom used to make them.”

“And I am ninety-nine percent sure that you were supposed to remove the shells before adding the eggs.”

“Oh. Whoops.”

Dessert 2.0 never made it into the oven. They decided not to speak of it again.

The grocery store cashier gawked at Cavendish. “Um, sir? Your —”

“Not relevant,” said Dakota, sliding the package of break-and-bake cookies down the scanner belt. “Just ring us out. Thanks.”

“But —” The cashier glanced back and forth between Dakota and Cavendish, then leaned in to address Dakota in a low whisper. “His moustache —”

“We’re aware of the moustache situation.” Dakota fished in his pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills. “It’s been a rough day. Ring us out.”

“Oh. Uh...” The cashier slid the package of cookies over the scanner, then tucked the bills into the cash register drawer and fished out the change. “Paper or... plastic...?”

“What do you think, Cav? Was last week’s nuclear reactor incident enough environmental damage for one month, or should we continue our pattern of gross neglect for this century’s health?”

Cavendish sniffed, then rubbed at the burnt left side of his moustache. “I told you; that wasn’t my fault.”

“Did I say it was your fault? I never said it was your fault.” Dakota turned to the cashier. “Did I say it was his fault?”

“Um—no —”

“See?” Dakota slid the change into his pocket, then snatched the package of cookies and tucked it under his elbow. “I never said it was your fault. I said the situation was a bad bucket of bears, and that Savannah and Brick would probably loathe you until eternity. But I didn’t say it was your fault.”

Cavendish cleared his throat. Adjusted his vest. “Good to know we’ve clarified your feelings about that particular episode.”

“These come with chocolate included, you know,” Cavendish said. “It says so on the package.”

Dakota ripped open the bag of chocolate chips—procured from their unspoken stash of junk food on the top shelf of the pantry—and poured them into a bowl. “You will thank me for this later. I promise.”

“You don’t find this a bit... excessive?”

“Oh, absolutely. It’s ridiculously excessive. That’s the point.”

“Ah.” Cavendish plucked one of the chocolate chips from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. “I think I might still have some of the candy-coated chocolate pieces in my desk drawer if you’re looking to be truly horrific.”

Dakota grinned. “Now we’re talking.”

“We can’t let down our guard. This is where Dessert 1.0 crashed and burned.” Dakota closed the oven door and brushed his palms on his track pants. “Heh. Burned. Get it? Because you nearly set the kitchen on —”

“I get it.”

“Anyway. We need to watch this one carefully. Even a slight miscalculation could doom us.”

“You’re taking this very seriously.”

“I’m hungry! Dessert 3.0 is our last shot; I’m not starting from scratch again.”

“This batch isn’t, technically speaking, from scratch —”

“Figure of speech, Cavendish!”

They crouched in front of the oven and stared through the grease-crusted glass pane on the door. The break-and-bake cookies, heaped with every scrap of chocolate they had in the apartment, sat on the other side of the door.

They waited.

“Are you sure you set the timer?”

“Yes, I set the timer.”

They waited.

“Are you sure —”

“You watched me set it!”

They waited.

The timer beeped.

“I got it!”

“I’ll get it!”

They both leapt to their feet, scrambling around the cramped kitchen and generally doing an excellent job of running into each other.

“Where’s the potholder towel?”

“It’s in the laundry!”

“What do you mean, it’s in the laundry? How did you get the first batch out?”

“I burned my hand on the baking sheet!”

“Oh, for crying out loud —” Dakota glanced around the room, then grabbed his jacket from the kitchen chair and yanked the oven door open. Using the jacket as an ersatz oven mitt, he seized the baking sheet and hefted it out of the oven.

The jacket now bore a set of prominent scorch marks. Dakota complained about this for almost ten minutes while they wiped down the kitchen counters and washed the dishes.

“Since you’ve suffered so much,” Cavendish said, “I suppose you ought to be the first to taste the products of our labor.” He didn’t mention that his burnt moustache was, objectively, a greater testament to culinary suffering than the besmirching of any article of clothing.

Dakota plucked a cookie from the sheet, wincing as he did so—“Hot, hot”—then took a bite. And another.

“Well? How is it?”

In response, Dakota chewed in silence for three full minutes, He worked his way through five of the cookies before finally licking his lips and confirming, verbally, that this batch had turned out okay.

“At this rate,” Cavendish said, “you’re not going to have room for dinner.”

“Cavendish. The number-one rule of baking is that when you have warm chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven, the time of day is irrelevant; you eat the cookies.”

Cavendish plucked one of the cookies from the cooling rack and nibbled the edge. “I’d hate to violate a sacramental kitchen maxim.”

“Exactly.”

Cavendish tried to ignore the further mess he was making of his charred moustache. The unholy amount of chocolate, he decided, was worth it. “These aren’t bad, actually.”

Dakota leaned against the counter and took another bite of cookie. “No. No they are not.”

#milo murphy's law #mml #balthazar cavendish #vinnie dakota #fanfiction #one shot #hamperdink #those two pistachio guys #writing #carp spins yarns

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