Chapter Text
Hot water beat down from overhead, a soothing assault on sweaty skin stretched over sore muscles. After a long, hard workout spent listening to loud, hard music, the white noise and stillness of the gym’s empty shower room was almost invigorating, in its own way. So late at night, in the middle of the week, there wasn’t a soul in sight or hearing. It was peaceful in a way that so few things could be; like the air was easier to breathe, even laden with steam, and normally chaotic thoughts were quiet and still. Everything was quiet and still. Feeling as though he was being cleansed inside and out, Kyo let out a content sigh and tipped his face up into the spray with closed eyes and the barest hint of a smile. Optimism surfaced here as well, every step he took toward improving his appearance bolstering his hope that one day his affections might be noticed and – gods willing – maybe even reciprocated. This was, in his opinion, the best way to start the day.
A leather-clad hand clamped over his mouth and nose and he cried out against it, eyes snapping open wide with shock. Panic ran through him like lightning coursing down his spine. He jerked back out of the water, slamming into a large body, reaching up to grab at the hand cutting off his airways, but its twin was already clamping around his upper arms, pinning them against his sides. Kyo bucked, twisted, shrieked against the restriction, lungs burning as confusion and terror burned through what oxygen he had left, but his assailant’s grip on him never budged. Another man stepped into view – big, alarmingly big, alarmingly apathetic – and pressed something sharp against Kyo’s shoulder, then yanked the elastic band holding his locker key off of his wrist and moved swiftly into the locker room. Kyo knew the kiss of a needle well enough that that little sting in his flesh sent frantic warning signs flashing in his mind, and he wailed his desperation against the leather smothering him, even as his vision swam and dimmed.
The instinct to survive was an animalistic force that replenished some of the strength that drugs and suffocation were stealing. Kyo was not weak. He was not a victim. He would not go down like this, naked and wet in a goddamned shower room! He thrashed and kicked back until he managed to slam the heel of his foot up under his attacker’s kneecap, sending the man reeling off of him with a furious shout, and he took a choking gasp of air. The only thing at his disposal even approaching a weapon was his shampoo, but he grabbed the bottle, wrenching the top off and flinging gobs of it in the man’s face. His assailant snarled against the chemicals burning his eyes, temporarily blinded, and Kyo took his chance to run, slipping and scrambling on the wet tiles.
He made it as far as the thin-carpeted floor of the locker room before his legs gave out, limp and water-filled beneath him. He tried to crawl, tried to cry for help, but the men were on him again, grabbing him with bruising force, covering his mouth again as blackness spread from the back of his mind, threatening to swallow him whole, disconnecting him from his body. The last thing he registered with any sort of coherency was the taste of leather and the crunch of finger bones between his back teeth.
***
Purgatory began with waking up supine and naked on a dirty wood floor, arms bound together in full forearm cuffs, thin trails of blood and rusty smears of iodine on his inner elbow and low on his stomach. A towel from the gym had been torn in half, twisted up, and tied around his head to gag him, but once that was off, all Kyo could do was scream with every last molecule of air in his lungs. Panic and horror demanded nothing less. Over and over, for hours, he shrieked and howled and swore and banged his heavy manacles against the unyielding door to his tiny prison. He screamed until a terrifyingly cold-eyed man flung open his door, roaring at him to shut the fuck up, and he screamed at that man until a taser was jammed into his neck, and then he couldn’t scream because his bones were trying to vibrate their way out of his body and his muscles were locked in rigid spasms.
This happened twice more before he learned to keep quiet. The third and final time, he caught sight of a hypodermic gun coming at him, but a second man stopped the first, telling him not to risk it. Telling him that Kyo would be worth too much when the off-season came around. The man with the gun looked pissed, but he just tased the blonde again – long enough that he could smell his own skin cooking – and left him twitching on the floor. His neck burned insistently for ages afterward.
Every day was the same after that. Just enough tasteless food to keep him alive, regularly scheduled bathroom breaks under his handlers’ watchful eyes, and hours spent curled up on a dirty mattress wallowing in dread. Through the door, he caught snippets of ominous conversations, the words ‘buyers’ and ‘heat’ and ‘merchandise’ and ‘auction’ hitting his heart like shards of ice as he started to put together an unbelievable picture of what was going on. At the end of the first week, he got a shower – manacles removed, standing in a cracked tub under freezing cold water with a bar of cheap soap and a beta guard standing watch – and a roommate. The new arrival was a smaller omega, like Kyo, and when he woke up, he was all big, watery eyes and horrified quivering. Kyo thought of him as a frightened rabbit, and part of him was a bit guilty about how happy he was at first to have a warm body to cuddle up to and keep him from being quite so alone. He soon found, though, that the boy hadn’t the mind to do anything but cry, and wound up being little comfort.
“I’m going to be raped, aren’t I?” was the only thing the other ever said to him, hours into the first day, after Kyo told him all that he knew about their situation.
Kyo didn’t say anything to that. He thought the same, of course. The fear of sexual assault was always present in the back of an omega’s mind, the first worst-case scenario to surface when in a less-than-safe situation or when a heat threatened to set in early. That boy was gone within three days, just when he started to take on the first faint hints of the warm, exciting smell of an impending heat, and Kyo watched him go with a heavy heart. That night he thought of the tall, sweetly-awkward beta with a heartbreaker smile that he’d so giddily entertained hopes of giving his own virginity to, and wept for his fate. Another boy was brought in a few days later, and after the first time they tased him for screaming demands for freedom, he crammed himself into a corner and sobbed hysterically. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t let Kyo anywhere near him; just grabbed fistfuls of his own hair and lost his damn mind. When he was taken out some days after, still sobbing and pleading, Kyo was bitterly relieved to watch him go.
Another week passed, he got a new roommate, and this one was by far the worst. He grabbed at Kyo, shook him, demanded answers as if the blonde were somehow responsible for what was happening. Kyo gave him all the information he had, and for a while, the other omega was caught in a stunned silence. Then he started screaming. No words, just screaming and scrabbling frantically at the door with a feral sort of desperation. After a couple hours, the betas came in and tased him. When he recovered, he went back to screaming, and was tased again, and when he started up a third time, they came in with a taser and a hypodermic gun, using each in turn. And for a while, he was quiet and complacent on the floor.
Then his breathing started to go shallow. Then it started to slow into strained, wheezing puffs, and his lips took on a terrifying blue-purple tinge. His body went tense and shuddery, the skin over his stomach seemed to quiver unnaturally, and he stared up at the ceiling with wide, unseeing eyes, pupils all-but gone. Bile foam bubbled up out of his mouth, spattering out with a couple of sharp coughs, and all Kyo could do was huddle in a ball on the mattress and watch on in horror. By the time one of their keepers came to deliver dinner, his eyes were clouded over and he had been dead for hours, and Kyo was just staring at his body in shock. The beta only swore – irritated, like one might be if a pet made a mess on the carpet – and dragged the corpse out by the manacles binding its arms. A few minutes later, Kyo moved automatically to collect both meals, and ate them numbly.
After that, he found that he couldn’t stand the touch of his captors, and would freak out every time one of them reached for him. Most of them started just following close behind him to get him to and from the bathroom once they realized he would go there on his own, only handling him when his cuffs needed to be removed for his infrequent showers, and an uneasy truce was established. One was a little slower to accept the change; the one who had a splint on two of his fingers for a while, and who had almost drugged Kyo early on. He was particularly disdainful of the blonde, and not in the least hesitant about tasing or manhandling him, but even he stopped pressing the issue after a while when Kyo proved otherwise compliant.
His fourth roommate was his favorite. He came in kicking and screaming and swearing, but after Kyo explained the situation to him, he calmed down right away. Well… maybe it was more shutting down than calming down, but either way, he was quiet, and he let the blonde cuddle up to him like his first roommate had. He tried so much harder to be strong than the others had, and Kyo fed voraciously from that strength, wrapped it around himself and wove it into his own shield of bitterness and anger. The few times he did break down and cry, Kyo couldn’t stand to be near him, and moved as far away from him as he could without leaving the mattress, staring resolutely at the floor until the sniffles, sobs, and hiccups quieted. Kyo got to keep him for over a week, until he started to smell warm and was taken away.
Days, weeks, and months began to blur together from there. Other omegas came and went one after another, all of them wearing heavily at his soul as he watched their dreams for the future die when he told them what was happening. He did his level best not to get attached to any of them, not to get to know them and to just take as much comfort as he could from their physical presences while they were around. That way it wouldn’t hurt quite so badly when they were taken to their inevitable doom. Some of them screamed, some of them fought, some of them sank into empty despondency. All of them cried. A small handful were drugged into silence, and kept drugged for the duration of their stays; one more overdosed and died. Kyo didn’t remember his name, but he remembered that he got two dinners that day, and went to sleep with a full stomach. The deeper it got into the spring breeding season, the faster he went through roommates, and the further he sank into despair.
Never before in his life had he resented the fact that he’d been born omega. He loved himself and his body, even found a certain thrill in the pleasure-pain desperation that came with his heats, and he could quietly admit to himself that when he saw people walking around with babies, part of him looked eagerly toward the day when he could create a tiny life of his own. But he had always taken exception to being taken advantage of. When a bully at school had grabbed at the scruff of his neck, trying to catch the cluster of nerves there that would immobilize him, Kyo had felt utterly violated, even after he broke the kid’s nose. When his boss told him that they hired young omegas to do their night stocking because the residual smell made alpha shoppers just that tiniest bit more likely to buy their product, Kyo had been physically sick with anger. He was fine with being an omega, but he hated that it was so often all that people saw in him.
And now… now, it was literally all that he was.
Every day, he thought to himself, ‘I am going to be sold to some rich alpha – probably an old, fat one who can’t get a mate any other way – and held down and raped and impregnated and used. Because I am an omega. “Kyo” doesn’t matter. I am just a body. I am a novelty. I am merchandise.’ It ate away at him, because it was all he could think about for nearly five straight months in captivity, all the while being treated like he was somehow so much less than human. He was constantly lonely, constantly hungry, constantly filthy, and as summer settled in and new roommates stopped coming, he became consumed by his own bitter hopelessness.
***
It was early July when Kyo was finally taken out of his room for something other than a bathroom break. He’d been alone for weeks – hadn’t spoken or been spoken to since his last roommate – and when the beta handlers came to lead him outside to the waiting van, he was the only one loaded into the cargo area. It was stuffy and overheated and he hadn’t been on his feet for more than a minute or two in so long that he could hardly stay standing, only kept upright for the duration of the long trip by virtue of the hook on the wall that his manacles had been attached to. He had no concept of how long he dangled there, sweaty and light-headed from the muggy heat, struggling to keep the dizziness from turning into nausea with the constant motion swinging him around. By the time they came to a fully stop and someone came to let him out, he was so grateful for the fresh air that he didn’t put up a fuss at the betas touching him to keep him standing steady. Not right away, anyways.
He let things pass him by unnoticed – hallways, lights, people; all clean and unnervingly austere – until he could recollect his scattered wits and remember that something very bad was about to happen. It was earlier than he’d expected, and he didn’t feel ready. Even with very little grasp of what day or even which month it was, he knew that he was more than the week or so away from his heat that all of his roommates had been given. He started to twist and pull at the hands gripping and guiding him, but was sharply cuffed upside the head for his troubles, at which point he realized that the betas handling him now were not his usual keepers. New place, new people, his routine and his mattress and his room all gone and he didn’t like any of it. He was tossed carelessly into a large steel cage and immediately disregarded by his escorts. Legs tired, struggling to breathe properly through his rising panic, Kyo fell to his knees and clutched the bars in front of him, never having felt more like an animal than he did in that moment.
There was something unbearably claustrophobic about being in the cage and being able to look out at the people holding him captive, something so much worse than his secluded little room had been.
The betas milled about, quick and purposeful but perfectly, surreally self-assured in their illicit business. A group of them argued in a hush – some of them Kyo recognized, others unfamiliar – and it seemed like it must be about him, because they kept gesturing towards the cage. Two more omegas joined him shortly after, and he tried to go to them, to take comfort from them because he’d been so lonely for so long, but they were too upset. They must have been captured only recently; still relatively healthy looking, still frantic and frenzied, still convinced that their begging and threats and bargaining would get them anywhere. Part of him resented them for it. He was scared too – terrified, really, had been dreading this moment for months – but he was constantly aware of the tasers at their keepers’ sides, and he knew that they didn’t consider him human enough to give his words any consideration. There was no point in fussing now, so he wanted them to stop and just let him press against them, just a little. He ached for the comfort of simple, undemanding touch.
His relative compliance proved to be his undoing. When some unseen, unheard cue rippled through the room and their keepers came back to the cage, he was the first to be pulled out. He tried to keep them from touching him, feeling his stomach quiver at the unwanted contact, but they dragged him along all the same. There was a brief moment of relief when his arm cuffs were removed, and even the chain loosely wrapped around his neck to keep him from running off wasn’t too uncomfortable, but when a whole group of strange betas descended on him, he couldn’t hold back his panic. They were touching him – scrubbing him, manipulating him, grooming him – everywhere, from every direction, and he thrashed against them wildly, overwhelmed. He wanted to scream, but before the sound was even halfway up his throat, death-clouded eyes and bile foam oozing past purple lips flashed in his mind, and all he could produce was a strangled wail. By the time he was clean and dry, with a soft white cloth wrapped around his hips to shield his privates from easy view, his bathers were soaked and fully fed up with him. New manacles were slapped onto his forearms – much finer than his old ones; soft on the inside, lightweight, and better fitted to his wrists – and he was hustled out in front of a single guard.
So single-minded was his focus on not being touched, so desperate was he to get the beta’s hand off of his arm, Kyo almost considered it a victory when his escort released him to stumble forwards. Then he looked away from the man and saw his surroundings – saw the massive mirrored walls circling him, realized that they made no sense at all unless they were one-way windows – and understood that he was on the auction block. His reflection was horrifying all on its own, having not had access to one for so many months. His skin was deathly pale and his hair had grown out to the point that it was more black than blonde, yellow tips just clinging stubbornly to the ends now nearly brushing his shoulders. Much worse, though, he’d been given just enough food to keep from becoming skeletal, but his sparse diet combined with his lack of activity left him a soft, slender ghost of what he’d once been. He looked like a frail, frightened teenager and the thought that anyone would buy him looking like that was somehow so much worse than if he’d looked like his usual self.
“-eighteen years of age, can be quite feisty at first, but with firm guidance and consistent handling, has proven to be perfectly trainable. He would do well in a collection, physically affectionate with other omegas and quick to adapt to change, and for those looking for a more decorative addition, his pain tolerance is proven by the body modifications he’s already undergone. He is in perfect condition and don’t let his compact frame fool you; this little omega’s summer-winter heats promise to pack a big punch! As always, we’ll let you sample the merchandise and determine if he is to your tastes before bidding begins.”
Kyo’s eyes went wide at the word “sample,” and when he heard the sharp snap of metal moving, his stare shot up to the vents above the mirrors. The vents that were now open. He caught the faintest, barest hint of alpha scent on the new breeze, heard fans start to power up, and did the first thing he could think of to protect himself. He tucked his head down, took a deep breath of yet-untainted air, and clamped his hands over his nose and mouth. His body had always been overreactive around alphas, and he did not want to be undone, not here, not like that. The beta that escorted him grabbed his wrists almost immediately and he whimpered, shaking his head frantically, trying to keep his face covered, but the man was so much larger, so much stronger than he was. His arms were yanked up over his head, a harsh pinch to his side shocking a cry out of him, and with his airways reopened, he was bombarded with mating pheromones.
It was like the cargo hold of the transfer van all over again; stifling heat flooding his body and dizzy static fuzzing up his mind with every gasping breath. The men on the other side of the glass – the men considering buying him, he tried to remember, tried to focus on his anger – were numerous and freshly, openly aroused and the smell of their want for him made his blood race hot and heady. It kept coming, a steady assault on his sanity and self-control, and some instinct he couldn’t name or control drove him to his knees. He was allowed to fall, allowed to whine and press his flushed cheek to the cool tile floor, arms braced at the elbow in front of him. Presenting, he knew, but he couldn’t make himself move when the pheromones flared and he could see in his mind’s eye the fight for dominance that this moment represented; the fight over who was stronger, who was better, who got to claim him. He clenched his hands into fists, hating the alphas wanting him, hating the betas peddling him, hating his treacherous body playing into their schemes, hating that he had no control or hope left.
“Though he is an off-season breeder, this omega has unfortunately been classed as gold-level merchandise as he is healthy and virginal, but we have been unable to definitively verify his fertility. As such, we are starting the bidding at a much-discounted one hundred and seventy-five thousand credits.”
That registered through the chemical buzz in Kyo’s head like lightning flashing through rain, and his mouth fell open in silent shock. He was being sold – his innocence, his freedom, his entire life – at a discount? Because he… gods help him, because he might be… infertile…?! The prospect of being barren hurt him in places he didn’t know existed in his heart, and he felt like utter garbage, subjugating himself on the floor as if he were begging these faceless, heartless men to forgive his imperfection. He felt a tear trickle down his nose and curled in on himself, hiding his face against his arm with no small amount of effort. At least his grief quashed a good part of the excitement the pheromone hot-boxing had stirred up. Words flew over him, too fast to follow and unable to touch the depths he sank to in his mind, and when they finally closed out the bidding with a sickening tone of congratulations, a full-body shudder was his only response to being physically dragged out of the room.
He was dimly aware of being lead down another hall, into a small, over-bright room with a table and folding chairs in it. The chairs were not for him, though; he was hooked again to the wall by the short chain between his forearm cuffs, and this time it was mounted high enough up that he had to press down the balls of his feet to keep a harsh strain out of his shoulders. His escort left him, and for a long time, he hung there silently. Half an hour into his brooding, another beta came in holding a thick file folder, tossing it carelessly onto the table and leaving without a word or a glance. Kyo hadn’t wanted attention from the man – had dreaded it even – but somehow, the disregard snapped his final thread, and he allowed himself to cry, fully and deeply the way he hadn’t since this whole ordeal had begun. He cried for what felt like hours, what very well could have been hours, and when he finally stopped, it was only because he’d fallen asleep, utterly exhausted. Three times, he stirred – once to the murmur of voices and the sight of two men bent over paperwork, once when someone was jostling him into what felt like the backseat of a car, once when his body was enveloped in something warm that smelled faintly of alpha and lifted – but he was simply too drained to do anything other than close his eyes and sink back into unconsciousness.
***
Kyo’s sleep was unfailingly fraught with nightmares anymore. In waking hours, his mind was clearly and specifically flooded with his fears for the future, his resentment for the present, and his mourning for the past, but in sleep, it was a barrage of horrific, nonsensical images. Once, a man in a blood-spattered labcoat dangling a pocket watch turned into himself, trapped at the bottom of a dilapidated well, standing in a pool of eerie blue water. Another time, he saw his own face, decomposing until his teeth and muscles and tendons were visible where skin had sloughed off, then it flashed to pools of green vomit filled with writhing maggots. He never knew what any of them meant, and they left him shaking and anxious more often than not, but he understood them to be as much a part of his life now as the weight of steel cuffs on his arms and the apathetic disregard with which he was handled. This time he was standing next to a child-sized cockroach playing on a wooden rocking horse, cagily watching a stream of fire run along a line of gasoline on the floor to fill the room, when discomfort tickled along the back of his consciousness, drawing him out of his slumber.
It took a moment to figure out what was waking him up, to separate what he was “feeling” in his dream from what was happening to his real body, but the instant Kyo realized it was someone touching him, his eyes snapped open and he jerked upright, looking about himself in alarm. He was in a bed – good, yes, the mattress was his safe place – but it was clean, piled with brand new sheets and blankets and pillows, unfamiliar and overwhelmingly not his. Maybe not so good? Movement drew his attention to someone he didn’t know, kneeling next to the bed, hands still outstretched from where they’d been touching him, and he scrambled backwards away from the stranger until his back smacked into the wall, and even then he kept trying to press back. His gaze skittered wildly from side to side, trying to make sense of what was going on, to find something familiar. The room beyond the man was too big, too cluttered with furniture, too bright with sunlight flooding the space from windows on two walls. Not his. Not safe. Not good.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” the man said, looking surprised.
Kyo’s eyes snapped back to the man and stayed there this time. He could only see him from the chest up, but he tried to take as much from that as possible. Long arms, slender enough but not overtly toned. Pale, unblemished skin. Shoulder-length black hair, in a trendy cut that partially obscured one umber eye. The face didn’t make sense to him, seemed off somehow – almost childish, round and soft with a doll mouth – and he glared at it apprehensively. It was faint because the man was calm, but at this distance, Kyo couldn’t mistake his scent for anything but alpha.
“Umm… hi! I’m Ruka, and I’m-… umm… I’m your-… I mean… I, you know… bought… you?”
Kyo growled a bit at the announcement – sheepish and inelegant as it had been, as if the bastard actually had the sense to be ashamed of buying another human being on the black market – but didn’t move otherwise. He wasn’t really sure what was happening here, or how to react to it. Apparently he’d been moved to his new owner’s property while he’d been sleeping, but “Ruka” was not at all what he had been expecting when he’d learned he was being auctioned off; too young, too skinny, way too awkward, not domineering or sadistic-looking in the least. Where was the fat, old alpha who bought omegas because he couldn’t get one any other way? Because he wanted something to abuse and defile? But maybe Kyo was wrong. Maybe Ruka was trying to trick him, to get him to lower his guard. Or maybe some rich bastards had bought him for their spoiled, gawky son. Or maybe Ruka was fucking insane and this was just the calm before the shit-storm.
Ruka shifted side to side, looking around, then smiled (that was what was wrong with his face, Kyo realized; it wanted to smile) and gestured to the room. “This is my house! Or, our house now, I guess? This is your room, I got it all set up with everything you might need, except I guess I still need to go get you some clothes now that you’re here so I can get your size! And that door over there is your bathroom, and my room is upstairs, and the kitchen is down the hall, and the living room is right across from here, and there’s a backyard but I haven’t really been taking very good care of it so it’s kind of crazy right now but it’s still pretty nice if, you know, you like that kind of thing?”
Kyo was leaning towards the latter explanation. Slightly-breathless rambling was not a trait he’d ever really associated with alphas, but it could definitely come from crazy. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and didn’t look away. Just maintained his steady glare.
Ruka’s face fell a little at the complete lack of response, and he scratched the back of his head uncomfortably. “Ah… so your name’s Tooru, right?”
Indignation flared white-hot in Kyo’s chest and he snarled abruptly. Technically – legally – Tooru was his given name, but the only people who called him that were his family and childhood friends. Which is to say, no one ever called him that. His voice came out rough with anger and disuse. “Don’t ever call me by that name, you fucking rapist pedophile.”
Ruka jerked back a bit, alarmed. “I-… what?! No! I’m not… I don’t… I’m not either of those things!”
Kyo scoffed. “Did you see me before you bought me?”
“Well… yeah, but-”
“Did you buy me with the intention of fucking me?”
A faint, nervous blush. “I-… umm… well, yes, but-”
“Then you are a pedophile and a rapist, because I look like a fucking twelve-year-old right now.” Kyo’s laugh then was purely derisive, dark and ungainly as if he’d forgotten what a laugh was supposed to sound like. “Unless you thought I would ever have sex with you willingly? If so, you’re an idiot as well.”
“I’m not!” Ruka protested, flustered. “You’re eighteen! …Right?! They said you were eighteen, and there was a picture of you that looked older! And I never even touched you! I mean… I did, but it was only your wrists, because they were hurt and I didn’t want them to get infected, and I’m not an idiot, I’m a doctor! Or at least, I will be soon!”
Oh, that’s right. Kyo’d woken up because this bastard was touching him. He blinked and looked down at his wrists, bare now of the manacles he’d been wearing for so many months. They felt bizarrely light and naked now that he was thinking about them and he realized that he’d been keeping them together in front of him purely out of habit. He couldn’t remember how he used to hold his arms when he wasn’t using them. Marring the pale flesh were several sores along his forearms from friction, unsanitary conditions, and lack of air on his skin, but far more concerning were the rings around his wrists where the sharp edges of the cuffs had worn through his flesh. He’d kept them as clean as he could with his limited showers, but every movement of his hands and arms had opened and reopened the wounds over and over. Now, in decent lighting, they definitely didn’t look good.
“I still need to put the antiseptic cream on them,” the alpha added softly.
Kyo scowled and folded his arms against his chest, tucking himself further against the wall. “No.”
“They’ll get infected! They might already be!”
“I don’t care. Don’t touch me.”
“They’ll scar!”
“I don’t care, I don’t want you or anyone else touching me, ever!”
Ruka bit his lip, looking worriedly between his tube of wound dressing ointment and the omega staring him down. “Well… well, could you put it on them, and then let me wrap it?”
Kyo hissed, “I don’t fucking want you or anyone else fucking touching me, ever!”
Ruka held up his hands. “I won’t! I’ll just wrap the bandage and tape it down. That’s all, I promise.”
Kyo only scowled, so Ruka set the ointment on the blanket and nudged it over to him with all of the care one might push a peace offering toward a snarling dog. The omega hesitated, waiting until the other man’s hands retreated before picking up the tube. He kept a wary eye on Ruka as he scrutinized the label on the ointment, then turned to his side and tucked into the wall to carefully rub the cream into his sores and the raw rings around his wrists, wincing at the heated ache of the latter. Ruka was keeping a careful distance, but had risen up on his knees, craning his neck to try to watch what Kyo was doing, fidgeting worriedly with a roll of clean bandages. He looked honestly concerned, and Kyo wondered if he was just upset at the prospect of his new pet already being permanently damaged.
“Can I wrap it?” Ruka asked. Kyo glared at him, and he gave his most earnest, hopeful smile. “I promise I won’t touch you. I’ll only touch the bandage, and I’ll do my very best not to hurt you at all.”
Kyo looked back down at his wrists. He didn’t want to be touched, that much he knew for certain. But his wounds definitely needed to be kept clean, and he sure as hell couldn’t wrap them properly himself. But he really didn’t want to be touched. Flexing his fingers a bit, he wondered absently why Ruka was negotiating with him at all. Certainly in his condition, and with the alpha being larger than he was – by how much, he couldn’t say, since the other man was still kneeling, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his buyer was quite tall – anything Ruka wanted to happen, he could make happen, and Kyo would have no choice but to suffer through it. As things stood now, he still clung to some small illusion of control over himself and the situation he was in. If he put up too much of a fuss, that illusion might be taken away from him, and nothing – absolutely nothing, not even the memory of death-clouded eyes and bile foam on purple lips – terrified him more than the thought of being physically pinned down under another man.
Slowly, Kyo stretched out one arm, eyes narrowed warily and fixed hard on Ruka’s hands. The alpha held his breath, like he’d just been entrusted with something incredibly fragile and irreplaceable, and set to wrapping the bloodied ring. He was slow and focused and careful, and true to his word, he never once let his fingers touch any part of Kyo’s skin, even when the effort of holding his arm fully extended made the omega’s hand shake badly. He smiled when he was finished with both wrists, but Kyo just folded his arms against his belly again and stayed where he was against the wall, and Ruka deflated a bit. He fidgeted with what was left of the bandage roll for a minute, then leaned down and picked something up off the floor by his side; a tray with a single, large bowl, a spoon, and a glass of what looked like cold tea.
“I, um… I made you some rice porridge. I’m kind of worried about upsetting your stomach with anything too complicated after whatever diet you were on before now, so it’s only got a little bit of chicken and green onions in it,” he explained, sounding a little uncertain.
Kyo wasn’t listening. Not even a little bit. All he could focus on was the food and the fact that he was so hungry and there was so much of it and the meat pieces in the porridge actually looked like real meat and he was so fucking hungry. He stared at the tray as it was set on the bed and nudged over towards him, but he didn’t pick it up, not yet. He wasn’t far enough gone to stoop to eating for this alpha’s amusement like a damned zoo animal. Close, it was oh-so-very close, but not yet. Whatever it was Ruka wanted from him – and honestly, the fact that he still wasn’t sure what that was was probably the worst part of the situation at the moment – he didn’t want to give up easily.
Ruka hovered for a minute, then stood (and Kyo noted with no satisfaction that he’d been right; the man was damn tall). “I guess I’ll let you get settled in… Umm… if you need anything, I’ll probably be in the living room. It’s just right across the hall, so… you know…” When he got no answer, he breathed a quiet sigh and moved toward the door. He opened it, then hesitated and looked back. “What… what can I call you?”
Kyo only stared at him, eyes still narrowed. Ruka waited for a minute, then left, shutting the door quietly behind himself. Kyo wanted to wait a minute or so to make sure the man was truly gone, but he’d honestly met up with the end of his resolve on the issue, and dove into the bowl of porridge the second the latch clicked. It was slightly cold and way too thick after having sat for so long, and once upon a time he may have found it horribly bland, but now, after months of what may as well have been reconstituted cardboard, he thought it was the best damn thing he’d ever tasted. He took his time eating it, savored every bite and fished out every last grain of rice out of the bowl. And it did upset his stomach – it was significantly more food that he was used to eating all at once at this point, and even the tiny trace of broth and green onion was rich for him – but not enough that he couldn’t keep it down.
Slightly too full, nestled in warm blankets on a soft bed, arms free and clean, Kyo curled himself into the corner and settled in to wait for the other shoe to drop. He didn’t know what would possess anyone to spend hundreds of thousands of credits on a scrawny, malnourished, underage-looking omega who, as he recalled, was possibly infertile. Dysfunctional, he thought. Broken. He was sure that it was nothing good, no matter how much better his situation seemed at first glance. He’d spent the past five months imagining a very specific outcome to his kidnapping and subsequent imprisonment, and so far, the reality was absolutely nothing like what he’d expected, so now he had to reexamine the facts. Just because Ruka looked at him and negotiated with him and spoke to him like a human being, it didn’t invalidate the fact that Kyo was only here because the alpha had purchased him like livestock. Nothing could.
Closing his eyes and going very still, he focused on gathering up everything he knew, turning each piece of information over and over in his mind to look at it from every possible angle.
At midday, Ruka came back, interrupting his musing. He cracked open the door and peeked in first, entering only when he saw that Kyo was still awake and alert. Another food tray was balanced on one arm, and he seemed oddly happy to find the one from the previous meal empty. “Oh, you did eat! Did you like it?”
Kyo didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. All he offered was a grumbled, “Better than nothing. I guess.”
Again, Ruka’s face fell a bit, but this time he seemed determined to catch and keep his smile as long as possible. “Well… well, if you want something different, let me know, okay?”
Kyo watched the new tray sink slowly into the bedspread, then looked back up to maintain his vigilant glare at the alpha. It was much, much easier to resist the food in favor of obstinacy this time. And a vindictive side of him that he felt not so much as a shred of guilt over was starting to register just the tiniest little thrill of victory every time something he did disappointed Ruka.
“After lunch, do you want me to show you the rest of the house?” the alpha tried, looking somewhat hopeful. “Or we could watch a movie or something in the living room?”
The thought of being out in the open in an unfamiliar place with the alpha made Kyo shiver involuntarily and he scowled in response, tucking himself tighter against the wall again. “No.”
Ruka’s eyes widened just a little at the reaction. “Oh, no, don’t-… I’m not going to hurt you, you know, I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to stay in here!”
Kyo huffed and risked a minor gambit. “…Go away.”
“…What?” Utterly lost.
“I want you to go away. You said this is my room. You said.”
“It is! It’s just-… I thought we could-…” Ruka floundered for a moment.
“No. Go away.”
The alpha looked sad, but eventually complied, and Kyo went absolutely lightheaded at the tiny victory. He couldn’t believe it had actually worked… maybe – he just barely dared to hope – maybe he really did have some control over this space, over his room? He liked the thought of that. It made him feel safer than he had since this nightmare began, returned to him just the barest shred of power, and with that giddy feeling running through him, he felt bold enough to move away from the wall to eat his lunch. It was rice porridge again, this time flavored with small bits of fruit and a faint hint of honey. He liked it even more than the last; couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted something sweet. When the dishes were picked clean and he was full again, he set the tray on the floor, then hesitated there, staring over the edge of the bed. The floor of his room was a grey carpet that looked soft and clean. Slowly, carefully – with a wary eye trained on the door – he slid his legs around to tentatively touch his toes to the carpet. He stayed that way for quite some time before shifting his weight forward and standing.
Centimeter by centimeter, Kyo examined his room. Curious fingers trailed over every new surface, tugged open every drawer to peer inside, learning and memorizing and claiming every furnishing in turn. When he reached the window, he pressed his palms against the glass and looked out into an enclosed yard, wild with untrimmed bushes and rampant vines. It was pretty, but the light hurt his eyes, so he turned away. Next, he crept through the open door to the attached bathroom that Ruka had said was also his. He felt stressed in here – too far away from the safety of his bed, unable to keep watch over the door – but he still took the time to familiarize himself with the space. For the first time in months, he used the toilet of his own volition, without someone standing over his shoulder, and he almost laughed out loud at the thrill of it. The sound of running water seemed too loud, spooking him into rushing back to his bed as soon as he was cleaned up, but nothing ever came of it, and he savored the feeling of having a sanctuary.