The morning of the benefit, Foggy woke up in Matt’s bed with his shoulders and hips aching. Matt was warm next to him, and he rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, seeing the cuffs still hanging from the beam above him.
Matt was nervous about the benefit; he, Foggy, and Elektra had to work the crowd and try to suss out who was personally loyal to Fisk, and who could be bought or convinced into supporting them. He’d taken it out on Foggy’s body last night, cuffing Foggy’s hands above his head and splaying Foggy’s legs with a spreader bar. He’d slid ice over Foggy’s skin, whispering that after the benefit, they’d go back with Frank and Elektra to her penthouse. Then he’d slid a chilled steel toy up inside Foggy, and made Foggy choose the order in which they were going to fuck him. Matt’s cock had felt hot and huge inside him when Matt finally fucked him with hard, fast thrusts, murmuring about how good Foggy was.
Foggy stretched, rolling his shoulders, trying to erase the strain, and Matt threw an arm over him, kissing his chest.
“Not getting up yet,” Matt mumbled. He breathed deep, probably smelling his own scent on Foggy’s skin. There were times that Foggy wondered if he’d been indelibly marked by Matt.
“We’ve got time,” Foggy said, and, unsurprisingly, Matt’s response was to slide his hand down between Foggy’s legs and start stroking him, his eyes still closed.
“So good…my Foggy…” Matt wasn’t up to complete sentences yet, apparently. But he turned Foggy onto his stomach, and Foggy let him finger him lazily before pushing inside. It was what Matt wanted.
Foggy left after breakfast (more like lunch), since he needed to pick up his tux, and Matt was spending the afternoon with Elektra. They couldn’t show up to the benefit together, in any case. When Foggy put on his rented tux, he stared at himself in the mirror for a long time.
He’d lost weight over the past several months; he’d known that, since his clothes were hanging loose off him, but his tux measurements were significantly smaller than his suits had been when he’d started at Landman & Zack. There were lines around his mouth, now, pulling the corners down in a frown, and the shadows under his eyes that he’d noticed before were still there. The gaze that met his in the mirror was hard, daring anyone to do their worst.
He couldn’t hold his own gaze for long.
The benefit was at the Van Lunt building. Foggy slipped in without fanfare, lost in a crowd of tuxedo-clad men and women in evening gowns. He remembered his job, and tried to make small talk, but the early crowd didn’t seem like the important players, and he wound up being trapped in a conversation about skiing in Vermont for ten minutes before he could pry himself away. He snagged a glass of champagne off a passing tray, and felt a hand on the small of his back.
“You look great,” Matt said, his hand dropping away.
“How would you know?” Foggy shot back.
“I told him,” Elektra said, appearing on his other side, resplendent in red. She was nibbling on a canape. “You do clean up well.”
“So do you,” Foggy said. “I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
There was a pause, and Foggy thought he’d gone too far, that he’d ruined everything, but then she laughed, and Matt laughed, and he relaxed.
“Elektra, what a pleasure to see you again,” came Wesley’s voice. He appeared out of the crowd and kissed Elektra’s cheek. Matt took a tiny step away from Foggy.
“You know I never pass up a chance to have my arse kissed, James,” Elektra said.
“Matthew, don’t you look wonderful.” That was another woman, sliding up beside Matt, who smiled and bent to let her kiss his cheek.
“I’m sure anyone would say the same to you,” he said.
The woman’s eyes glanced over Foggy and Elektra. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” she said.
“Oh, uh, Franklin Nelson,” Matt said, and Foggy offered his hand to shake, “he works with me in legal, and this is Elektra Natchios, one of my oldest friends. Vanessa Marianna,” he finished, by way of explanation, and Foggy recognized the name. Fisk’s girlfriend.
“Charmed,” Vanessa said.
“And I’ll leave you to charm Elektra out of a contribution, but I do need to borrow Franklin,” Wesley interrupted smoothly, taking Foggy by the elbow. Foggy glanced back to see Matt frowning.
“What’s going on?” Foggy said, fear gnawing at the pit of his stomach. He remembered Elektra saying that he was Matt’s weak spot.
“Just putting you to work,” Wesley said in a pleasant tone that was at odds with the cold look he gave Foggy. “Many of the high-level contributors require some…special attention.”
Foggy almost rolled his eyes. He should have expected this.
“Of course,” he said tightly. Just a few more days. He could do this.
Wesley took him through the crowd and up the stairs to a small office on the second floor. It was bare except for the furniture: no personal touches, nothing on the desk. Unused, it appeared. Wesley pushed him in and closed the door, nothing more to be said.
The first man to come in was Senator Cherryh, who smiled smugly as he sat in the desk chair and had Foggy kneel in front of him. Then Van Lunt, who still called him “sugar.” Then a few men Foggy didn’t recognize, who didn’t bother giving their names, and Foggy tried to shut his brain down, letting the blur of tuxedos and cocks pass him by. He thought instead of Matt’s plan, how Matt would never do this to him. His jaw was sore and his lips felt raw, and he told himself “only a few more days.”
Then Wesley appeared in the doorway.
“Mr Fisk is about to give his speech,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
He turned and left, leaving the door open.
Foggy stumbled downstairs and grabbed a glass of champagne to wash away the taste in his mouth. Fisk’s speech was brief, but Wesley didn’t appear to send him back upstairs, so he glanced around instead. He saw Frank hovering discreetly by Fisk and Vanessa. He saw Matt, smiling at an older woman who clearly found him charming.
“You look like you could use another one of these,” he heard Elektra say. He turned, and saw her holding two glasses of champagne. He took one of them.
“Thanks.” He gulped at it, and looked up to see Elektra regarding him coolly, as if she could see inside his head. “What?”
She shrugged elegantly as she took a sip. “You’re shaking,” she said.
He looked down, and his hands were trembling.
“Just nerves,” he said.
“Yes. Of course.”
He didn’t have time to respond, because that was when the screaming started. There was a sound of a chair scraping the floor, and Foggy saw a man, one of the ones he’d just blown, collapse to the floor. Looking around, he saw several people falling, including Vanessa Marianna. Elektra stepped in front of him, putting her arm across his front, and Matt ran up to them.
“Foggy! Are you OK?” Matt demanded as he snatched the glass out of Foggy’s hand.
“Fine.” Foggy looked from Matt to Elektra, then back to Matt, who was sniffing at the glass. Elektra looked down at the glass in her hand.
“Poison?” she said quietly, and Matt nodded. He took the glass from Elektra and sniffed it as well.
“You’re both fine. Get him out of here,” he said before disappearing back into the crowd. Foggy saw him pass Wesley, who was looking at them with narrowed eyes.
Elektra grabbed Foggy’s elbow and they made a hasty exit. There was a panicked crowd by the valet parking stand, but Elektra just pulled Foggy down the sidewalk until they reached the parking lot. She calmly walked into the booth and kicked the attendant in the head, grabbing a set of keys off the wall, then striding through the lot to a silver BMW convertible.
“Is this your car?” he said.
“For now,” she said, climbing into the driver’s seat and turning the key still in the ignition.
“We can’t just -“
“It probably belongs to one of those arseholes Wesley just made you suck off, so do you really care that much?”
Foggy got in the car, and she peeled out of the lot.
“What happens if we get caught?” he said as they drove uptown.
“We won’t. I’m better than that.” She smiled, all teeth. “And you forget that these are my people. They’d never dream of doing something so uncouth as pressing charges against one of their own.”
“Privileges of the one percent?”
She didn’t say anything, just smiled. “I’ll drop you off. Where do you live?”
Foggy gave her directions, and she pulled up outside his apartment. She looked up at the building as he climbed out of the car.
“Not bad,” she said.
“We can’t all live in penthouses,” Foggy said.
She smiled again. “Be careful, Franklin. Whatever happened tonight, it’s changed the game for us.”
“I know.” He looked around, breathing in the night air. “Someone made a move before we could.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell Matthew where you are.”
She drove off, leaving Foggy on the sidewalk, and he suddenly felt exhausted. He dragged himself up the stairs to his apartment, and stood under the shower for a long time. Then he pulled on a t-shirt and some pyjama pants and fell into bed.
He was awakened by his phone ringing. Wesley.
“Wha -“ he started.
“There’s a car outside your building. Get in.”
“What time is it?”
“Now, Mr Nelson,” Wesley snapped. “Or do I have to remind you what will happen if you do not comply?”
Wesley hung up without waiting for an answer, and Foggy felt claws of dread in his stomach. This wasn’t right. He called Matt as he pulled on the nearest pair of pants. It went to voicemail.
“Matt, Wesley’s here, he’s telling me to get in a car downstairs. I don’t - I don’t know if he knows anything. But in case he does - I need your help.”
There wasn’t really anything more he could say, and Wesley was waiting.
The car was exactly where Elektra had pulled up, a big black SUV, just like all of Fisk’s cars. Foggy opened the back door and saw Wesley inside. Then he heard someone behind him, and a cloth was pulled over his eyes, and he was prodded in the back when he tried to struggle.
“Get in,” said a voice with a Russian accent, and Foggy’s heart started pounding. A hand shoved him between his shoulder blades, and he crawled into the SUV by feel. The Russian climbed in after him, and he was trapped between him and Wesley, something hard and blunt pressing into his side. A gun, most likely.
“What -“ Foggy started, and he was hit across the face, hard, and he tasted blood.
“Shut up,” growled the Russian.
There was a quick rapping on glass, and the SUV started to move, and Foggy prayed Matt would get his message in time.
Re: Fill - No Choice At All [10/11]
Matt was nervous about the benefit; he, Foggy, and Elektra had to work the crowd and try to suss out who was personally loyal to Fisk, and who could be bought or convinced into supporting them. He’d taken it out on Foggy’s body last night, cuffing Foggy’s hands above his head and splaying Foggy’s legs with a spreader bar. He’d slid ice over Foggy’s skin, whispering that after the benefit, they’d go back with Frank and Elektra to her penthouse. Then he’d slid a chilled steel toy up inside Foggy, and made Foggy choose the order in which they were going to fuck him. Matt’s cock had felt hot and huge inside him when Matt finally fucked him with hard, fast thrusts, murmuring about how good Foggy was.
Foggy stretched, rolling his shoulders, trying to erase the strain, and Matt threw an arm over him, kissing his chest.
“Not getting up yet,” Matt mumbled. He breathed deep, probably smelling his own scent on Foggy’s skin. There were times that Foggy wondered if he’d been indelibly marked by Matt.
“We’ve got time,” Foggy said, and, unsurprisingly, Matt’s response was to slide his hand down between Foggy’s legs and start stroking him, his eyes still closed.
“So good…my Foggy…” Matt wasn’t up to complete sentences yet, apparently. But he turned Foggy onto his stomach, and Foggy let him finger him lazily before pushing inside. It was what Matt wanted.
Foggy left after breakfast (more like lunch), since he needed to pick up his tux, and Matt was spending the afternoon with Elektra. They couldn’t show up to the benefit together, in any case. When Foggy put on his rented tux, he stared at himself in the mirror for a long time.
He’d lost weight over the past several months; he’d known that, since his clothes were hanging loose off him, but his tux measurements were significantly smaller than his suits had been when he’d started at Landman & Zack. There were lines around his mouth, now, pulling the corners down in a frown, and the shadows under his eyes that he’d noticed before were still there. The gaze that met his in the mirror was hard, daring anyone to do their worst.
He couldn’t hold his own gaze for long.
The benefit was at the Van Lunt building. Foggy slipped in without fanfare, lost in a crowd of tuxedo-clad men and women in evening gowns. He remembered his job, and tried to make small talk, but the early crowd didn’t seem like the important players, and he wound up being trapped in a conversation about skiing in Vermont for ten minutes before he could pry himself away. He snagged a glass of champagne off a passing tray, and felt a hand on the small of his back.
“You look great,” Matt said, his hand dropping away.
“How would you know?” Foggy shot back.
“I told him,” Elektra said, appearing on his other side, resplendent in red. She was nibbling on a canape. “You do clean up well.”
“So do you,” Foggy said. “I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”
There was a pause, and Foggy thought he’d gone too far, that he’d ruined everything, but then she laughed, and Matt laughed, and he relaxed.
“Elektra, what a pleasure to see you again,” came Wesley’s voice. He appeared out of the crowd and kissed Elektra’s cheek. Matt took a tiny step away from Foggy.
“You know I never pass up a chance to have my arse kissed, James,” Elektra said.
“Matthew, don’t you look wonderful.” That was another woman, sliding up beside Matt, who smiled and bent to let her kiss his cheek.
“I’m sure anyone would say the same to you,” he said.
The woman’s eyes glanced over Foggy and Elektra. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” she said.
“Oh, uh, Franklin Nelson,” Matt said, and Foggy offered his hand to shake, “he works with me in legal, and this is Elektra Natchios, one of my oldest friends. Vanessa Marianna,” he finished, by way of explanation, and Foggy recognized the name. Fisk’s girlfriend.
“Charmed,” Vanessa said.
“And I’ll leave you to charm Elektra out of a contribution, but I do need to borrow Franklin,” Wesley interrupted smoothly, taking Foggy by the elbow. Foggy glanced back to see Matt frowning.
“What’s going on?” Foggy said, fear gnawing at the pit of his stomach. He remembered Elektra saying that he was Matt’s weak spot.
“Just putting you to work,” Wesley said in a pleasant tone that was at odds with the cold look he gave Foggy. “Many of the high-level contributors require some…special attention.”
Foggy almost rolled his eyes. He should have expected this.
“Of course,” he said tightly. Just a few more days. He could do this.
Wesley took him through the crowd and up the stairs to a small office on the second floor. It was bare except for the furniture: no personal touches, nothing on the desk. Unused, it appeared. Wesley pushed him in and closed the door, nothing more to be said.
The first man to come in was Senator Cherryh, who smiled smugly as he sat in the desk chair and had Foggy kneel in front of him. Then Van Lunt, who still called him “sugar.” Then a few men Foggy didn’t recognize, who didn’t bother giving their names, and Foggy tried to shut his brain down, letting the blur of tuxedos and cocks pass him by. He thought instead of Matt’s plan, how Matt would never do this to him. His jaw was sore and his lips felt raw, and he told himself “only a few more days.”
Then Wesley appeared in the doorway.
“Mr Fisk is about to give his speech,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
He turned and left, leaving the door open.
Foggy stumbled downstairs and grabbed a glass of champagne to wash away the taste in his mouth. Fisk’s speech was brief, but Wesley didn’t appear to send him back upstairs, so he glanced around instead. He saw Frank hovering discreetly by Fisk and Vanessa. He saw Matt, smiling at an older woman who clearly found him charming.
“You look like you could use another one of these,” he heard Elektra say. He turned, and saw her holding two glasses of champagne. He took one of them.
“Thanks.” He gulped at it, and looked up to see Elektra regarding him coolly, as if she could see inside his head. “What?”
She shrugged elegantly as she took a sip. “You’re shaking,” she said.
He looked down, and his hands were trembling.
“Just nerves,” he said.
“Yes. Of course.”
He didn’t have time to respond, because that was when the screaming started. There was a sound of a chair scraping the floor, and Foggy saw a man, one of the ones he’d just blown, collapse to the floor. Looking around, he saw several people falling, including Vanessa Marianna. Elektra stepped in front of him, putting her arm across his front, and Matt ran up to them.
“Foggy! Are you OK?” Matt demanded as he snatched the glass out of Foggy’s hand.
“Fine.” Foggy looked from Matt to Elektra, then back to Matt, who was sniffing at the glass. Elektra looked down at the glass in her hand.
“Poison?” she said quietly, and Matt nodded. He took the glass from Elektra and sniffed it as well.
“You’re both fine. Get him out of here,” he said before disappearing back into the crowd. Foggy saw him pass Wesley, who was looking at them with narrowed eyes.
Elektra grabbed Foggy’s elbow and they made a hasty exit. There was a panicked crowd by the valet parking stand, but Elektra just pulled Foggy down the sidewalk until they reached the parking lot. She calmly walked into the booth and kicked the attendant in the head, grabbing a set of keys off the wall, then striding through the lot to a silver BMW convertible.
“Is this your car?” he said.
“For now,” she said, climbing into the driver’s seat and turning the key still in the ignition.
“We can’t just -“
“It probably belongs to one of those arseholes Wesley just made you suck off, so do you really care that much?”
Foggy got in the car, and she peeled out of the lot.
“What happens if we get caught?” he said as they drove uptown.
“We won’t. I’m better than that.” She smiled, all teeth. “And you forget that these are my people. They’d never dream of doing something so uncouth as pressing charges against one of their own.”
“Privileges of the one percent?”
She didn’t say anything, just smiled. “I’ll drop you off. Where do you live?”
Foggy gave her directions, and she pulled up outside his apartment. She looked up at the building as he climbed out of the car.
“Not bad,” she said.
“We can’t all live in penthouses,” Foggy said.
She smiled again. “Be careful, Franklin. Whatever happened tonight, it’s changed the game for us.”
“I know.” He looked around, breathing in the night air. “Someone made a move before we could.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell Matthew where you are.”
She drove off, leaving Foggy on the sidewalk, and he suddenly felt exhausted. He dragged himself up the stairs to his apartment, and stood under the shower for a long time. Then he pulled on a t-shirt and some pyjama pants and fell into bed.
He was awakened by his phone ringing. Wesley.
“Wha -“ he started.
“There’s a car outside your building. Get in.”
“What time is it?”
“Now, Mr Nelson,” Wesley snapped. “Or do I have to remind you what will happen if you do not comply?”
Wesley hung up without waiting for an answer, and Foggy felt claws of dread in his stomach. This wasn’t right. He called Matt as he pulled on the nearest pair of pants. It went to voicemail.
“Matt, Wesley’s here, he’s telling me to get in a car downstairs. I don’t - I don’t know if he knows anything. But in case he does - I need your help.”
There wasn’t really anything more he could say, and Wesley was waiting.
The car was exactly where Elektra had pulled up, a big black SUV, just like all of Fisk’s cars. Foggy opened the back door and saw Wesley inside. Then he heard someone behind him, and a cloth was pulled over his eyes, and he was prodded in the back when he tried to struggle.
“Get in,” said a voice with a Russian accent, and Foggy’s heart started pounding. A hand shoved him between his shoulder blades, and he crawled into the SUV by feel. The Russian climbed in after him, and he was trapped between him and Wesley, something hard and blunt pressing into his side. A gun, most likely.
“What -“ Foggy started, and he was hit across the face, hard, and he tasted blood.
“Shut up,” growled the Russian.
There was a quick rapping on glass, and the SUV started to move, and Foggy prayed Matt would get his message in time.