Tag Archive | prompter: Cal

War Prize

Written sort of adjacent to Inspector Caracal’s prompt. 

This is set in a earlier era of Reiassan than Rin/Girey and definitely earlier than Edally, although really we see almost no markings of era in the story.  

🐐

They had been walking for four days.

At first, Gianci had preferred the walking.  It had to be better than sitting in a prison tent waiting to die.  It had to be better than being dirty and sweaty, fighting on the front lines because he’d pissed off the wrong person in High Command.  It had to be better than dying with a Callenni spear through his gut, the way he’d watched Tierri die, the way he’d thought he was going down when that tiny dark soldier had hit him with something in the gut. Continue reading

Lightning in Autumn

My Giraffe (Zebra) Call is open!

Written to Inspector Caracalprompt.

Set after Addergoole Year 10 but before the 2011 apocalypse. 

🦌

There were tourists in the bar again, the sort of people that made what was normally a pleasant place feel like the back of the locker room.   Nathan felt his shoulders tensing, felt his grip on his drink getting tighter.  “Another?” he asked Patti.  

The bartender shook her head. “Not yet, son.  Nurse that ice a little longer, and then I’ll pour you another.”  Then she was gone, tending to the New People at the other end and the other regulars in between.

“Shit.”  How Patti did that and kept in business, he never knew.  He turned slowly on his stool, taking in the tourists at the pool table, the regulars at tables further and further away from the tourists, Liza the bouncer at the front door…

He turned back around in time to see Leo strutting up to the tourists and getting in the tallest one’s face.  Nathan’s heart did a little twist.  Leo.  That blonde hair, that arrogant, playful smirk, that – that body.  It wasn’t just Nathan’s heart that was twisting.

The tourist took a step back.  His friends were jeering.  Leo didn’t seem to notice, stepping back in to the tourist’s personal space, running a hand over the man’s cheek.  Nathan felt a stab of jealousy.  My cheek is right here!

“There’s a reason they call him Lightning, you know.”  

He hasn’t heard anyone sit down next to him, but now there was someone there, sipping a drink and watching the same scene Nathan was.  “I’ve never heard anyone call him that.”

“Yeah?”  The guy was, unfortunately, undeterred.  “They call him Lightning because he never strikes the same place – or the same person – twice.”

“I’m not the same person.”  Nathan chewed on his ice and watched Leo work.  He was louder than he normally was, and he seemed to be – from the words that wafted over the music and the conversation – suggesting that the tourist ought to come back to his place and show him exactly what his sort was worth.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve changed,” the peanut gallery continued.  “He doesn’t care.  He just hits once and he’s gone.”

Nathan glanced over. His helpful new friend looked, in a  general sense, kind of similar to Nathan: dark hair, dark eyes, not all that tall.  “Not what I meant – ooooh!”  Leo had somehow ducked a punch the now-beset tourist had thrown and instead tossed the tourist on to the floor.  “You saw it, Patti, you saw it!  The asshole threw the first punch!”

“That’s not gonna save my furniture, now is it?  Liza!”

The fight was in full swing, as it were, when Liza waded in and hauled the tourist out of it, and then hauled his friends out.  “Parking lot!  All of you! You, too!”  She glared at Leo.  It might have been Nathan’s imagination, but he thought Leo looked a little sheepish for a moment.

They allowed themselves to be herded – tourists, Leo, two other regulars who had gotten involved – out past the pile of broken furniture they’d left in their wake and through the side door, but the swinging door showed the tourist spinning around with a punch the minute his feet hit the asphalt.

“Looks like he’s going to hit someone more than once,” Nathan muttered, not particularly generously.

“Ha.  Good one.  Yeah, he’s plenty violent, isn’t he?  But he don’t come back, kid.  Like I said.  Never the same person twice.”

“But I’m not the -”  Nathan gave up.  He didn’t want to explain to this stranger.  Hell, he didn’t even want to explain to Leo, who would probably scoff and walk away, no matter how different this could be, Nathan could be.

The front door swung again and a redheaded woman walked in.  Another tourist, Nathan thought, noting the dyed-crimson of her hair and the clothes that wouldn’t have fit in here even if she were male.  Then she kissed Liza with an intensity that suggested comfortable familiarity and an intimacy that said maybe she wasn’t all that out of place in a gay bar after all and plopped herself down at the bar next to Nathan’s new buddy.

“Telling the same old lies, Trev?” she teased.  “Don’t listen to him, kid, whatever he says.  Patti, my love.  The usual and one of whatever these nice boys are having for them, too.”

Maybe that was supposed to cover exactly HOW big the wad of money she was passing over the counter was, or how two of those top bills would probably cover the furniture damages.  

“They’re not lies, and anyway, how would you know?  You’re not exactly his type!”  Trev – if that was New Friend’s name – looked put out.  The woman just laughed.

“I know because I know Leo.  And I know you.  Like I know I’m not your type but I might… sometimes… be this guy’s type.”  She sipped her whisky – neat – and grinned at them, a grin that looked more hungry than cheerful and, Nathan had a feeling, was covering over a seething kettle of pain.  

She saw through him, he knew that much.  “Doesn’t matter.  Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”  He finished the drink Patti passed him in one gulp and laid his money on the counter.  “I gotta go.”

The redhead’s voice followed him out the door. “Don’t believe that old lie, kid.  Lightning strikes wherever he damn well pleases.”

🦌

See stories about Leofric/Leo (that have been migrated) here.

See stories about Cya(the redheaded woman) here.

🦌


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Catboys in Cages

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Written because I just wanted to write something fun.

Carlie hadn’t meant to end up at a slave market.

She’d been aiming for – well, to be honest, she wasn’t aiming for anywhere, more away from. She wasn’t exactly in a hurry but she was trying to keep moving. She might not have anyone on her tail, but it wasn’t the sort of thing one really wanted to find out.

But her horse was getting tired, she as getting tired, and there was a roof, which seemed like a really good idea. Portable-shade was a decent Working, but it was still a Working, and that meant it took energy. Energy took fuel. She’d had to leave half of her supplies behind in the last place, and the next Group safe-house she knew about was at least two days away, if she wanted to lean on the Group. Again.

So here she was, under a roof, thinking it was a market and she could trade something in her remaining stores for some fuel. And the first thing she came upon was a cage.

No, a row of cages. They came to hip-high, they were about as long as they were tall, and they were made of a mesh like a dog kennel only thicker. Every single one of them was padlocked shut. very single one had a man or woman in it, more than half of them in thick wooden collars and the other half in equally-thick steel collars.

She needed to get out of here before she ended up on the other side of those padlocks. She needed to get far gone before her horse ended up either in a stable for sale or in a pot for meat. She needed to leave, leave, leave as casually as possibly.

She locked eyes with a man in a cage and started mentally inventorying her stocks. If she was here to buy, she thought, well, they didn’t enslve their customers. That would be bad business.

He had green eyes, notched black cat ears, and a scowl that showed off a lot of teeth. He’d been beaten, he’d been in a couple bad fights, and all four of his limbs were shackled to the edges of the cage.

He was naked, too, and there was something in the set of his back and the way his snarl twisted that suggested maybe it wasn’t so much the chains as the person who’d put them on him who was the problem.

She knelt in front of the cage and looked at him. “Can you ride?”

He started to answer and stopped, nodded, gritted his teeth.

“Do you bite?”

He grinned, showing her all his teeth – except two that had been broken.

“Well then. Think you’re worth your purchase price?”

He looked startled by the question. After a moment, much more uncertainly, he nodded.

“I guess I’m buying you today, then.” A pity she couldn’t buy the whole market. “Try not to let me regret it, okay?”

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Chimera-Con

It was Dan’s idea to call it Chimera-Con, a fact which he would never after be allowed to live down.

Their little city wasn’t really big enough for real conventions, so the comic convention, the anime convention, and the furry convention had joined together into one, as Dan put it, three-headed fire-breathing monster of a convention.

Cute. Clever. And it drew enough attention that they actually got some decent guests of honor.

Hadley Storm was a well-known urban fantasy author, the sort of thing that everyone read for a couple years early in college. Nobody had expected her to show up.

Them, maybe. It turned out there was a reason Hadley didn’t do too many cons, and the main reason was that Hadley had a chimera-split personality: that is, there were three people in Hadley, and they didn’t always get along.

On the other hand, one of them liked Dan a lot.

So that was interesting enough, but add onto it the stack of chimera fursuits (both the sort with three heads and, in two creepy cases, the fish) and Chimera cosplays (including the Yu-Gi-Oh! chimera, the My Little Pony Chimera, and a were-hyena, for some reason), and it was beginning to look like they’d been a little too Chimera-leaning in their advertising.

By that point Dan had a headache and Adele was laughing at him, Sean, who was running the thing, was trying to figure out if they needed new panels, and Hadley Storm’s angriest personality had taken over their panel and was happily discussing chimer-ism.

Which is when things got even more interesting.

It turned out they’d missed the first few, because in humans it was almost never visible, but there was a small but growing minority – large enough that they’d scribbled three new panels into the program, saving Sean the work while giving him a headache – of people with chimerism.

At this point Dan curled up in a corner with a plastic bottle of vodka and refused to come out.
Which meant that he missed the group of botanists – one of whom was in a very nice Chimera (Clash of the Titans) cosplay – who set up their own panels down in the unused basement.

Unfortunately, it didn’t mean that he missed perhaps the most interesting guest to the con, because the spirit of the Dreaming that had decided this was a joyful place of chaos and imagination had found the same table to hide under after attempting to prank the Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplayer. This powerful chimerical spirit joined Dan in drinking magically-infused vodka, both of them pretending they couldn’t see the other.

By the time the lion-goat-snake creature breathing fire actually came through the door, nobody even pretended to be surprised.

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Changing Faces

Over on Mastodon, I did a little prompt call on the theme of moons.
🌒
She slipped out into the night and let the moonlight brush over her.

It was a clear night; good. She could use the change tonight. There was an angry man in the party, and when he figured out she’d left, he was going to be angrier.

He had reason to be angry with her, yes. On the other hand, he was an asshole. The two didn’t exactly balance out, but they did make her feel not at all bad about sneaking out when he was looking for her – probably hollering about her – very likely quite irked.

She closed her eyes and felt the moonlight on her skin. It was a chilly night, and the moon was full, swollen.

She didn’t like the full-moon faces as much, but this one would do. The Mother came out with the gibbous moon, the Crone with the darkness of the new moon… every moon had its moods.

And tonight- she breathed in and felt her bones shift under her skin, felt her skin shift. She was going to be tall today, whee. Tall and lanky and small-chested with really big hands.

She felt the point between her eyes where the sanity was already slipping away, and made it to a bus stop before she could forget she needed to get some distance.

She was going to be a wild one for a little while, it seemed. She could already sense the memories slipping into protective custody, tucked away with her more stable forms. She was whistling a tune, she was almost singing, and she handed a hobo a $10 bill.

She still had enough for bus fare.

She hid most of the rest of her money in a pocket in her bag before the moon-touched face took completely over. Then she let go and slipped away, and the new face shone forth in full.

“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-a’ight,” she sang to the nighttime street. “My oh my, what a wonderful night. Plenty of moonlight, coming my way, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay.”

The bus driver let her on with a shake of his head. “Try to keep it down, child,” he warned. “Got some cranky ones on tonight.”

She gave him a kiss on the forehead and hummed to herself while the wheels on the bus

went round and round

round and round

and the moon over head hung round, so round…

It was a clear night, and she had no place in particular to go, which was her favorite place of all.

missus crow’s here on my shoulder

It’s the truth, it’s factual

Everything is satisfactual.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-night

Wonderful Feeling, wonderful night.

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Assumptions (Cya, Carrew, Lady/Sword Timeline)

In the Sword and Lady timeline, after
Cya Yells at a Kept which itself followed (but was posted before) Faking it.

“Leo and his Kept are coming over tonight — for dinner and to sleep over.”

Cya said it like she expected it to be nothing, just another day, but her eyes were on Carew and he had no doubt she was gauging his reaction.

She did that, said things without any tone and waited to see what he made of them. Carew still wasn’t sure what he made of that.

“So…” He tried for casual. He almost made it. Leo was still angry at him for the face-punching thing, at least as far as he knew, and, truth be told, he couldn’t blame the guy. It had seemed like a good idea at the time… “Extra lasagna for dinner, then? And I’ll sleep in the guest room — or do you want me to go hang out with Dev?”

Dev was Magnolia’s — not Kept, but might-as-well-be, he called himself her pleasant-revenge lover — and he was just about Carew’s age. They weren’t exactly friends, but they’d been in Addergoole together, the women they lived with were sometimes perplexing, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes wonderful, and they liked the same beers.

“I didn’t say I was kicking you out. It’s a big bed, hon.”

It was. Four of them would probably fill it comfortably. He’d always wondered why she had such a big bed — now, he supposed, he knew. He worked around a lump in his throat and tried to show nothing. “All right, sure. So lasagna?”

“Lasagna’s a good idea. I’ll start on the filling if you start on the noodles.”

He let the companionable working-peace fill the room for a few minutes before coughing. “So, uh, why’s Leo coming over? Over night, I mean. Is that why he’s bringing his Kept?”

“He’s… having a bad week, and I don’t want him left alone.”

“…Oh.”

Lots of stupid things went through Carew’s mind, like Isn’t that what HE has a Kept for? and Is that where you were last night? and If you’re just going to sleep with him — with THEM — what do you need me for? He focused on the noodles and said none of them. It wasn’t his first rodeo.

“What is it?” she asked. Carew swore internally. He didn’t think he’d been showing anything at all.

He cleared his throat and looked away.

Her hand on his shoulder almost made him jump. “It’s okay, Carew. I’d rather know than not know, all right?”

“It’s just… your whole world seems to revolve around him,” he muttered.

“Well… To some degree, yeah. It’s like this, here.”

Here wasn’t an order, but he looked anyway. Her left hand was held out flat at chest-height, marking a level.

“So,” she brought her right hand up, marking a line a little above the left. “There’s my kids. Then crew.” Her right fingers touched her left. “Then Kept—” a little lower on the right, and Carew’s heart did something weird up in his throat “-and then my project, which right now is school,” her hand moved down, “and city,” her hand moved down a bit more. “Except right now, I don’t have any kids in the nest, so,” her left hand moved up a notch, “and Leo’s the only crew in the city with me… So, yeah, my life kind of revolves around him. What?” she asked gently, although Carew had no idea at all what his face was doing. “Haven’t you ever had someone you loved? Or a crew you’d kill for?”

“Yeah…” He worked his throat, fighting with emotions he really, really didn’t want to deal with right now. “Both. But, uh. They were older, and they didn’t come back for me.”

“Well.” She patted his shoulder. “Did you tell them you wanted them to?”

“No, but…” He frowned. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“See, that’s the thing about assumptions. Maybe they assumed you’d come find them. Maybe they got there a few days late.”

“Wouldn’t the school have told them where I was?” He turned back to the lasagne just to have something to do with his hands.

“Well, depends on who they asked, and what mood they were in.” She turned to the food, too, but her eyes were still on him. He could feel them, feel their pressure. “Luke knows, because he’s still not entirely convinced I’m not locking Kept up in a dungeon… non-consensually. But if he told them would depend on if they asked, and if he approves of them, and any number of other factors.”

“Wait.” He put his hands on the counter to steady himself. “You lock Kept up in a dungeon consensually?

“Well, some of my Kept have been pretty kinky, and so am I and—”

“You never said anything!” He slapped his hands over his mouth, but he’d already said it, and he’d already interrupted her.

Her eyebrows went up. “Now, remember what I was saying about assumptions? And then I went and assumed you weren’t the type. Well.” She patted his ass affectionately. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow night, mm? And this coming weekend, maybe we can talk about Finding your friends and crew.”

Carew swallowed. “Yes, ma’am… thank you, ma’am.” Both of his hands went to his collar. “Thank you, ma’am.”

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Beauty-Beast 7: Sal’s Questions

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🔒

Ctirad tensed. That… was a bad sign.

Sir stroked the top of his back gently, such that the touch might be missed from the rear-view mirror, if Ctirad had his positioning right.

“What’s your name mean?” Sal sounded completely serious. Ctirad gave the question consideration.

His name wasn’t all that common in America, he knew that. And among fae, the name your father chose to give you was heavy with meaning (sometimes). Of course, he had no idea if Sal was fae or not. He cleared his throat. “Joy and honor, or joy from honor.” It wasn’t a name that brought him any joy anymore, but it was all he had left that was his.

“And what about your Name?”

He knew he went still. He knew his fists clenched. He didn’t try to hide any of it. He was not going to punch the driver in the back of the head, not with his eyes closed, not when Sal was driving. “I don’t have one of those.”

“But you did. You were Named before you were Collared, or someone needs to pay pretty badly.”

“I don’t have one now.” He knew he sounded like murder. He just wondered if he could do it before he was stopped.

“Sal. That’s enough. Allow him his secrets, if he wants them.”

Even though he couldn’t see, Ctirad turned towards Sir’s voice. “Sir?”

“Yes, sir.” Sal sounded, Ctirad thought, irritated. “But you said to ask questions.”

“It was a fine question, and it’s fine that he didn’t want to answer it.” And now Sir sounded irritated. Ctirad tensed.

“Sorry, Ctirad.” Sal didn’t exactly mutter the apology, but it sounded a little abashed and a little embarrassed. Ctirad, on the other part, was entirely surprised.

“Wha-” He shook his head. “It’s fine, Sal. I just don’t want to go back there, ‘cause, well, I can’t go back there, you follow?”

“Pardon me for saying so, but you probably won’t be Kept forever, will you?”

Ctirad swallowed. It didn’t hit with the same pain it would when he’d been under Sir’s collar for any length of time, but there was still an edgy panic to the thought. “If,” he said, carefully and slowly, every word its own individual thought, “I’m ever… ever not Kept… I’ll… make a new Name. Have to. The old one’s burned.”

“Woah.” Sal drew the word out. “I retract the question.”

“Thanks.” He leaned back against the seat, suddenly exhausted. “What next, sir?”

“Well, hrrm. What’s the most important thing you think I should know about you that I don’t already? And what about Sal? What’s the most important thing Sal should know about you?”

Ctirad considered the question for a moment. There were too many ways to answer.

“I’m not tame.”

🔒

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So, Tell Me About Your Day… (Cya’s Date Continues)

After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up and Getting to (re-)Know him
and Also Needs a Title
and More Cya Date
.
🍽️
They ordered dinner. There was a moment where it looked like Manus expected Cya to order for him; then he coughed and ordered his own food. Something different than she’d have picked; she wondered if he did it out of some residual defiance.

She hoped not. She didn’t want defiant, because defiant meant he was still thinking of her as an authority figure. Domme, maybe. She could definitely get behind (ha) that. But not authority figure in the rest of his life.

“So,” she asked, over delicious white bread that tasted all the better for remembering years where white flour was hard to come by, with a dipping sauce of Cloverleaf-grown olives (one of her proudest accomplishments was that tiny greenhouse orchard). “Tell me more about being a judge-and-diplomat?”

“Well, like I said,” he smiled at her over his wine, “it’s something of just getting people to talk, nothing fancy.”

“Well, give me an example?” she coaxed. It was all in the tone of voice. She didn’t want him thinking anything like orders.

“Okay, so. Couple months ago, Neihart Mountain, it lost two trade caravans headed up to MinuteTown. You know, up in the mountains, that place nobody thought would survive.”

“I remember.” She’d pulled three kids from there the year they thought it would collapse, the three that were the right age to take to Doomsday. The city had stayed standing. The kids had chosen not to go back.

“So, every once in a while, they get it in their head that they need something some other city near them has. And when they do, well, they go attacking. They’re not much better than bandits with a decent home base at this point, and seems like they’re suffering some brain drain. The ones that can get out, the smart ones, tend to leave.”

Cya looked guiltily down at her plate. “We encourage that, on occasion.”

“Good. People that are smart enough to get out of there ought to. Something I figured out a long time ago, Cya. People aren’t required to go down with a ship just because it carried them for a while.” He tapped her nose lightly, then pulled his hand back. When she peeked up at him, he looked mildly worried.

She stuck her tongue out at him so he’d know she wasn’t offended. “So they were raiding Neihart?”

“Trying, at least. But let’s be honest, even if Neihart can take them down with one hand tied behind their collective back – and they can – it’s a drain on resources and it’s demoralizing. So I got myself together a collection of some very terrifying people, a couple former cy’Dougs and ah, couple people you might recognize their names, and had them arm and armor themselves to the teeth, and then they followed me… and I talked.

“I wasn’t just going to bully them, I knew that wouldn’t work. So I brought a wagon of flour and bread and sausage and some of that really good goat cheese, and three baskets of vegetables, and seeds. And Dory Antelevron, she’s a genius with anything planting and she can teach an idiot how to be a genius. She volunteered,” he added. “And I explained to them that what was going to happen was that Dory was going to visit them under guard, and teach them how to not be stupid with their own food stores. And they were, in payment for listening to Dory, going to get a wagon full of food and not get wiped off the map.

“The thing about a cy’Doug with a sword,” he added, with a bright and cheerful smile, “is that you don’t even think can she kill me? You’re mostly thinking how long ‘till my breathing irritates her? They agreed. They were in a damn hurry to agree. And Dory thinks some of what she taught them might even stick.”

“Brilliant.” Cya grinned at him. “Sounds like a fun job.”

🍷

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Beauty-Beast 5: Drive Home

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“Down three stairs here, right – now. There you go. You’re quite good at this.” Sir guided Ctirad down the stairs, his arm very warm and his grip pleasantly firm.

“Would you believe practice?”

“At the moment, from you, I’d believe any number of things, my handsome dear. Did Ermenrich know what you are? How good you are?”

“He…” Ctirad considered his answers. “Didn’t really care, sir. He was interested in what he wanted, and that was about as far as it went.”

“A short-sighted man in many ways. Ah, well. Door here, hold on.” The sound of a door being opened was followed by faint traffic noises. Not on the road they were on, then. Ctirad wondered where, exactly, they were. One of Sir’s buildings? One of Ermenrich’s? He didn’t think even his former master would have left him in an abandoned building helpless to wait for his new owner.

Not, at least, if it would cause the deal to fall through.

“All right, we’re going to get into the car. Here we go, mind your head.” Sir’s hand was very firm on the back of Ctirad’s head as he steered him down and into a car. It smelled like leather and cleaner, like it had very recently been detailed.

He scooted over and felt Sir’s leg next to his, and then the door closed firmly. “We’re going home, please.”

“Yes, sir.” The voice was a warm alto. Ctirad could tell almost nothing from it about the speaker, except that they were in front of him, in the driver’s seat, and that there wasn’t glass.

“Now.” He could feel Sir shifting, his knee leaving contact only to brush against Ctirad’s leg again. “We’re not in private, but we’re not in public, either, so what happens for the next half hour is, at least in part, up to you.”

That was new. Ctirad wanted badly to open his eyes, if only to see what sort of body language went with that. “Sir?” had to suffice instead.

🔒

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Beauty-Beast 4

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There was a moment where Ctirad thought that he’d given the wrong answer, that Sir was going to be irritated with him or, worse, dismissive. Then the arms around him shifted until a hand was patting his shoulder. “You know, Ermenrich sold you far too cheaply. You’re a treasure.”

The praise filled him with warmth, the way it always did. Ctirad let himself stay as he was, leaned against Sir’s chest. It was nice, while it lasted. And it was a drug, but it wasn’t a drug he had any control over, so there was no point in worrying about it. “I’m glad you approve, sir.”

“All right. Keep your eyes closed, and I’m going to lead you out to my car. It’s not that far from here. Tell – no. Can you tell me something about yourself, while we walk?”

Sir moved until his arm was around Ctirad’s waist, and, feeling daring, Ctirad moved his own arm lightly around Sir’s waist. “Well.” He coughed, a little amused despite the situation. “I’m not straight. And I knew that before I got collared. But there’s uh. Something different about it when you’re not pretending for anyone but your Owner, you know?”

“I have some idea. All right, it’s level for a bit here, so we’re just walking forward. Easy, there you go.”

Ctirad’s legs had woken up, but he let himself lean on Sir anyway. It felt warm and easy, and he was going to take it while it lasted.

“So, pretending for your Owner?” Sir’s voice was quiet, kinda thoughtful. “You do a lot of that?”

“…Fuck, don’t order me not to. Please. Sir.” He knew he didn’t sound submissive. He couldn’t make himself sound submissive about that. He cleared his throat and tried for explanation instead. “Orders like that, they fuck with your head.”

Sir’s chuckle was low and warm. “I won’t. But I might ask you, a few times over the first months, if you’re pretending.”

“…In private? Sir.” Ctirad swallowed. The public humiliations had been the worst. The part where he knew he couldn’t go back to being who he was, that was a ship long sailed. But the part where he had to work with those people and he was made to grovel…

“In private.” Sir squeezed Ctirad’s hip lightly. “In public, I’m not going to give you orders. I’m going to treat you as something between a bodyguard, an assistant, and a boyfriend. We’ll worry about the orders for that later. In private – well, in private, you’re mine.”

His voice was warm and throaty. Ctirad thought that Sir was very pleased with the idea. “I’m yours, sir.” At the moment, he thought he was pretty pleased with the notion, too.

🔒

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