Someone wrote in [community profile] daredevilkink 2015-09-24 03:05 am (UTC)

Re: Another bit of a something, Mini-fill...6, now?

Hiya! Welcome back!^^

Oh yeah, as for the level of cruelty and darkness tolerance I have in my AUs, it's mostly less a case of *how* bad it is, and more a question of 'how long is dwelled on it' and 'how well does the character deal with it'. As in, I may have written yet *another* scene below with...some very non-subtle...non-con implications, but I find I deal much better with that kind of content in a fic if a character does not have to go through massive amounts of angst and/or PTSD for it (as might be more realistic). In this fic, it might also even 'help' Matt that this treatment of slaves is pretty much an accepted fact of life he'd even come to expect. (His pain tolerance helps, too...) So, just like you wrote, it conditioned him into a pretty shitty outlook on life, but never truly broke him, he's still himself and Foggy's gonna help him get every last piece of his personality back and shining :3

That said, as for more past...(this scene takes place straight after Foggy went to fetch bandages):


xxx

Xxx


 


“Okay.” Foggy has been standing in front of the door to his own room for what feels like ten minutes now, clutching the first aid kit and several creams and ointments, and trying to work up the courage to go in there again. What finally pushes him is the thought that Matt is still in there, still waiting, still in pain, and that as his owner is his responsibility now and fuck.


Foggy goes in.


 


Matt is still lying on the bed, curiously not startled in the least from Foggy’s sudden entrance, and doesn’t seem to have moved at all. He has his cheek pillowed on his hands, head turned sideways so the metal collar isn’t digging into the skin of his neck. Foggy makes an absent-minded note to replace that thing at some point, but now there are more pressing concerns.


 


“I’m going to disinfect your wounds first,” he warns Matt as he sits down next to him. “That might sting.”


 


“I’ll be fine,” Matt replies, and, worryingly, he actually seems to be. He startles when Foggy’s hand gently settles on an uninjured patch of skin on his hip to steady him, but when the part that’s actually hurting him, i.e., the disinfection happens, he almost seems to relax into the pain.


 


Foggy tries not to think about what it implies when someone is startled by gentle touches, not painful ones.


 


There is silence in the room while Foggy wipes off the disinfectant around the wounds and then dresses them as best as he can. As he works, the pattern keeps repeating, Matt’s muscles  flinching and tensing under Foggy’s hands every time he touches him, and then relaxing into his ministrations, almost like soothing a spooked animal. Matt has taken off his glasses after he’s been ordered to lie down on the bed, and, even if for him it has to make little difference on whether his eyes are open or not, Foggy wonders whether him closing them might be the first, minute sign of trust.


 


“Okay,” Foggy says, breaking the silence after he’s done all he thinks he can. “Are there….” He forces himself to take another breath. “Are there more wounds beneath your pants?”


 


Matt has opened his eyes again after Foggy spoke, but still does not seem as ill-at-ease as he previously was. “Yes,” he says, cautiously. “Do you want to dress them, too?”


 


“Only….” Foggy swallows. “Only if you want me to. This is your body. You should decide what happens to it.”


 


Matt gives his left ear an incredulous stare.


 


“You own me,” he points out.


 


“And I don’t want anything happening to you that you don’t want happening to you,” Foggy replies calmly, because this is an easy turnabout by now. “So. Do you want me to have a look at the rest of you, or do you want the first aid kit and I’ll leave the room so you can try to sort yourself out…?”


 


Again, it takes a moment while Matt apparently computes the question. This time, though, it seems less like he has trouble believing what Foggy says and more like he’s fighting an internal battle, brow furrowed and shoulders tense. But then there is a noticeable slump to his body’s tension, as if he’s giving up a fight he has no chance of winning.


“Stay. Please,” he says, voice small. “I’ll…you can use me, if you want to, I don’t mind-“


 


“Yeah, not happening,” Foggy says, curtly. “But if you want me to take a look at those wounds, take off your pants and I’ll see what I can do.”


 


Xxx


 


Matt fully naked, as it turns out, looks more than twice as attractive than Matt half-naked (Foggy thinks the math is somehow not checking out here) but, again, any attraction he could have felt during the moment is dampened into non-existence by the damage that is obvious to see. On instinct, Foggy had even turned around while Matt was taking off the sweat pants, waiting until he could hear him lying down on the bed again. (He had felt stupid, of course, it wasn’t like Matt could actually see the gesture, but it had still felt right – slaves were hardly ever allowed to keep any modesty, and Foggy would have felt dirty if he had treated Matt like this from the start).


Now, though, the back of Matt’s lower body is on full display and it’s just as bad as the upper half. Worse, even.


Foggy sees blood trickling from a place it really shouldn’t be coming from.


“Fuck,” he whispers under his breath, and maybe Matt’s hearing is sharper than other people’s, because he flinches as if Foggy had yelled it.


“It’s – it’s okay, I’ll heal –“


No, no, nothing about this is okay, the voice in Foggy’s head keeps yelling, and of course he knows what slaves are used for, everyone is aware of what’s going on in a lot of slave owners’ houses, it’s legal, but – but suddenly coming face to face with it is something different entirely.


“No,” Foggy chokes out, suddenly having difficulty to get air. “No, this isn’t okay, Matt.”


At his words, Matt goes rigid again, even the last fragments of relaxation gone. When he speaks, his voice is clipped and controlled.


“I am sorry this slave isn’t up to your standards, sir,” he says. “I will do my best to appeal to the desired aesthetic more in the future.”


Foggy stares. He now knows that a) whatever undergrad degree his last owner made Matt get apparently either had something to do with English or with interpreting everything anyone ever said in the worst way possible and b) for next Christmas, he is getting his mother something horrible.


For the moment, though, he forces himself to remain calm. “No, Matt, this – this isn’t what I meant. I meant it’s not okay anyone did that to you. Did anything that you didn’t want them to.”


Matt blinks at this. It occurs to Foggy that he isn’t actually doing much to escape a stereotype of a typical slave owner here – it’s Matt’s first night with him, and he has him lying naked and collared next to him on the bed while he himself is fully clothed, and inspecting him like damaged goods – but dammit, he’s trying here! It’s not his fault the universe seems to hate him.


“That is…a kind notion,” Matt says, and he sounds just as polite and distant as when he first spoke to him in the living room. “But it’s fine. Pity is not required.”


And oh, thinks Foggy, oh.


“It’s not pity, Matt,” he says quietly. “It’s anger. I’m angry. Because even if doing this to you is legal, it certainly isn’t justice.”


 


Beneath his hands, he swears he can feel Matt’s heart beat skip a beat.


“You…think so?” Matt manages, for the first time his voice actually sounding unsteady.


 


“Mh-hmm. I’m actually planning to become a lawyer for stuff like this. Maybe even specialize in slavery law.” He pauses when he sees Matt’s expression. “What, didn’t mom tell you she wants you to be my study aid?”


 


“…no. She didn’t,” Matt says, but he still sounds a bit bowled over. “That’s…actually…” he seems to want to say something more, but then blinks again, and whatever he meant to say is apparently swallowed back down. “Alright. I can do that.”


 


“Great,” Foggy says, and is actually surprised at how the enthusiasm in his voice somehow doesn’t seem to be entirely faked. “So. Are you okay with me taking care of the rest of your cuts?”


 


“Yes.” Matt nods, then swallows and adds quietly, “Please.”


 


“Okay,” Foggy says, and there is a repeat performance of him sterilizing and patching up cut skin, only he imagines that this time, it might take Matt not quite as long to relax into his touches. Foggy thinks he still tenses when he gets close to any sensitive areas, but he carefully avoids those and then, later, when Matt is awkwardly shuffling back into the oversized sweatpants and shirt Foggy has extracted from the chaos in his drawers, he takes his hand to press two of the salves into it. “And here, uh. This is a disinfectant, and this one is supposed to numb and, er, heal. If you want to. Apply. Some of it yourself, in the bathroom.” He stumbles through his offer. “If you want to, we can also go to the hospital tomorrow?“


 


Matt, now fully clothed and wearing his sunglasses again, tilts his head. “I…would rather not go to any hospitals, if you don’t mind.”


 


“Alright,” Foggy nods, because this is what he’s trying to do, right? Give Matt some autonomy over himself back. “Just tell me if it doesn’t heal or gets worse, right? Because, you know, I’m so not qualified to deal with any of this.”


 


Again, Matt seems to weigh his answer before he speaks (Foggy wonders whether, perhaps, impulsiveness seems what has him gotten those stripes on his back), but when he does reply, it almost looks like he’s smiling.


“It’s probably not my place to say,” he says, “but I think you’re a lot more qualified than anyone I ever met.” 


 



xxx

Soooo, yeah. I'm just not sure how to end that scene.^^° Anything you'd add? They'll probably still have to go back to sleep, I'm just not sure whether Foggy would break out the futon and sleep on there because the bed is more comfortable for Matt, or whether he'd think that for Matt an owner's bed has worse associations, or whether he half-heartedly wonders whether the owner's manual is right when it says 'for a pet, sleeping in their owner's bed is considered a privilege and often used as a reward', so maybe Matt is conditioned to WANT to sleep there and it's just all kinds of fucked up. But yes. These are the important questions. XD

and oh god! Matt meeting up later after he's freed not just with people who knew he was a slave and helped him to hide it but ALSO with those who either abused/humiliated him or others who never saw him as anything but a normal slave, outwardly broken and cowed? I'm so here for that. That other slave Lester had, he'd likely be completely *boggled* when he sees Matt as a free man, like, 180° turnabout much? Or if he runs into others, maybe even Lester himself, who might not even know Matt has been freed in the mean time, and then try to order him about when they see him? And Matt gets to go all Rohrschach and "No." on them :D Any ideas for scenes?

And oooh yes, you put everything that's going on inside Matt so beautifully! It's like if he were a Sim character, and all his usual options of 'obey', 'bear it', and/or 'violence time!' are all NOT WORKING with Foggy, so he's totally floundering on how he's supposed to act!

And so yes to Foggy doing research. Like, the two cursive lines in that other bit about the nuzzling were supposed to be a bit out of the owner's manual, which is SO not helpful and borderline creepy at times. Foggy keeps it still, feeling grateful that 'well, at least Matt can't read print and won't find it, right...?'

and unf, yeah about Matt always oscillating between needing some routines that resemble being kept as a slave when he feels overbalanced, and then feeling a bit embarrassed because he shouldn't *need* that, right? And Foggy trying to tell him, it's fine, lots of people need work to feel useful, you're not a *freak*, Matt, nor anything less' and Matt just not knowing how to deal with all of the kindness.

And yeah, I think the gym is a pretty special place for Matt, because it's the first thing he'd do completely on his own - like, he goes to classes, and out with Foggy, and to the library and sometimes for a stroll on campus, just because he enjoys having the liberty to do so so much - but this is the first thing where he goes away from where Foggy is and does something no one has prompted him to do, just for himself.

And yes to Matt's gradual ascent in the Nelson household - first to the table (after the mother asks 'aren't they supposed to kneel on the floor?' a bit surprised and Foggy being like, 'No, Mom, and seriously, I'm this close to taking Matt to eat out at some place, you're *embarrassing* him!' hissing under his breath, hoping that Matt outside won't hear (oh Foggy...) but yeah, no, unlike Claire (who met him as a 'free man' and maybe eventually Karen they likely wouldn't ever forget what he is. Especially if he is visibly wearing his collar in the Nelson household bc they don't want to have to explain their weird arrangement to the parents.

And no worries, your replies are totally worth the wait, they're always a joy to read!^^ Makes throwing ideas around in here so much more fun!




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