One. I officially get paid to write erotica.
Two. I have a new perverse fascination: Thor/Steve
Three. Every single effing one of you needs to read Grace for Cheap under my favs. Even Pitch likes that story. He squeals like a fangirl. Not as loud as me though.
Jack is an empty husk when Pitch smokes them out of the black chasm and into a house.
Pitch's dark lair is located directly beneath his suburban estate. Without the guise of magic, the house is a surface extension, a marker, of the wicked underworld. This place is suspended in a world between the worlds – a dimension without time, connected to past, present, and future by a spidering series of silken threads of fate.
Jack is only half aware of what Pitch is doing as the man shows him through the corridor and up the stairs. He guides him into a bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, awash in the cold moon and starlight. Here, he can freshen up and rest. Pitch mentions that there is a change of clothing on the dresser. All too suddenly, and after an eternity of waiting, Pitch vanishes.
The silence is palpable. Jack can hear only the shallow beat of his heart: a crooked organ floating just outside of the cage that is his chest.
He can make no sense of his current state. His sense of self is a distant dream. The haunting question of whether he did indeed want it offers no respite in its maddening persistence. After all, according to Pitch, the bindings answered to Jack's command. Jack must have told them to release Pierre.
He must have.
Jack cannot bring himself to look in the mirror as he enters the bathroom and disrobes. He makes a point to ignore the cum stains on his clothing. Jack stops up the sink, fills it with hot water, and leaves the garments to soak. The deluge of shower water is a shock to his system. He does not wait for it to warm up. His anger and shame root him in place. The temperature rises. Jack puts his body on autopilot, moving in a fugue through the shower routine.
Bruises are budding on his wrists. During the rare times that Jack moves his jaw, he can feel the same violent kisses around his mouth.
His world is shrinking, pressing in on him from all sides. The weight of living is nearly heavier than his legs can withstand. He locks his knees and rinses his hair out.
Jack's thighs are spotted with bruises. His soul is checkered with shame.
Adam's promise. Adam's bed. Adam's lips. Adam's tongue. Adam's fingers. Adam's hands.
None of them are real. Because they're actually Pierre's hands. Because there was no after Worlds. It's just teenage hormones and too many drinks. It's proof and thievery and betrayal. It's just empty words and a sore throat. It's blood and pain. It's publicity and scandal. Adam's job. Pierre's duty.
Jack is a tool. He's an instrument. He's an item – a possession – a dispensable doll – an expendable asset.
Once. Once is all that is required. A series of "once". Once a winner. Once a virgin. Once valuable. Once in love. Once upon a time. And once that is gone, it can never be again.
Jack shuts the faucet lever. He towels off. He goes to the bureau where a neatly folded stack of clothing waits for him. Jack opens the top garment. He stares numbly at his favorite hoodie, colored in blue and silver. He dresses. Under the sweatshirt, there is a pair of silky athletic pants. He recognizes those too. But under the pants, he discovers an unfamiliar ring. It camouflages so well with the dresser that he almost does not notice it.
Jack picks up the barely distinguishable trinket and turns it over in his fingers. It is light and glossy – a charcoal grey mired with black cracks. Jack figures it was left here by mistake.
Though it makes no logical sense, Jack starts trying the ring on each of his fingers. As fate would have it, the only finger it fits on is his ring finger of his left hand. He admires it blankly. There is nothing especially remarkable about the ring, but he decides to leave it on none the less. The idea that it might be Pitch's makes wearing it comforting: an almost victorious feeling. It is the only shred of power that he can cling to.
Jack crosses to the bed. He lays down on top of the linens, finding the chill of the open air a welcome alternative to the cocoon of covers.
Sleep comes easy, but it is anything but peaceful. After an hour of darkness…
The pond outside their house has frozen over again.
Jack, seven at the time, teeters on the strange new contraptions like a newborn horse not yet found its feet. His knees are knocking as he tries to balance on the skates. He is losing his balance. His arms pinwheel. When he falls, two broad hands catch him just under the arms. A younger Pierre chuckles. Jack tilts his head back to look up into his face. Pierre's big blue eyes are smiling. Pierre stands Jack back up. He gives him a gentle push. Little Jack, hands out and fingers splayed, glides out onto the ice with his knees locked and his eyes wide. He waits for a fall that never happens.
Jack's brow creases sadly. He shifts, swallowing to alleviate the tightness in his throat.
Little Jack slides to a stop in the heart of the rink. Jack chances a timid smile back at Pierre, who claps. Pierre cups his hands around his mouth. He is saying something, but it is muffled by the crunching sound of cracking ice. Jack looks down just in time to see the frozen surface give way. He plunges into the water.
Jack fists a handful of sheets. He turns his face just slightly, enough to press his nose against the coverlet as his emotion fights the sleeping memory.
A hand fishes for him. It seizes his hoodie and yanks him out. When Jack emerges, he is grown. He stares, shivering, into Adam's face. They aren't on the rink anymore. They're in a hotel room. Jack stands dripping wet in the kitchen and there is a glass bottle in Adam's hand. Adam is saying something, but all Jack can hear is the hammering of his heart.
Jack's expression becomes tense and apprehensive. His lip quivers.
And the black fissures in the wooden ring begin to glow an electric blue.
The man advances. Jack retreats. Adam backs him into the bedroom, directly into the broad wall of an older Pierre's body. Jack looks up at him warily. Pierre wears a sinister expression. Jack tears his attention to Adam. There is evil in their eyes.
Jack sets his jaw, gritting his teeth. He knows, somewhere in the bleak watches of his mind, what is in store for him.
Pierre drags Jack against his chest and clamps a hand around his mouth. Jack starts screaming. Adam swigs from the bottle. Another hand is roughly unfastening his pants, ripping him out of his sopping wet clothing. Adam swigs from the bottle.
The sheets absorb the tears the roll down the bridge of his nose. Jack shifts onto his stomach, whimpering as he buries his face in the pillow. Jack puts his hand flat against the headboard, pushing against an invisible enemy, or perhaps reaching for help. Presently in unimaginable pain, his heart splinters and shatters into thousands of needle pointed shards.
Jack is on the floor. Pierre is embedded to the knot. Adam swigs from the bottle. And they're both laughing.
Jack is weeping unreservedly at this point, voice and body wracked with unintelligible screams and sobs. His anger and hurt transcend his shame. He cannot block it out, not in sleep. He sees it. The reel loops relentlessly, distorted by the nightmare and more violent with each echo.
Meanwhile, the ring glows radiantly. His veins, like the fissures in the wood, begin to glow just under the skin. The blue light swarms towards the ring, as though it is syphoning life from Jack himself. The more it takes, the brighter it becomes.
How could they? How could they? Why? Why! ?
There is a burst of vibrant, luminous, cold light.
Ice crystals quickly bloom out from Jack's hand, mapping the headboard in flowering swirls. It climbs the headboard. It combs over the walls. It blossoms on the window pane. Soon, it garnishes the entire room. Wisps of heat snake up from Jack's body in an otherwise glacial cold.
Pitch enters Pierre's cell, disbanding the gag with a flutter of his hand. "Where's Jack?" Pierre demands. He would leap to his feet if he could.
Pitch diamonds his fingers. "I couldn't very well have him witness your execution, now could I?"
"What?" Pierre whispers hoarsely.
Pitch all but clucks at him. "You apparently did something brutally unforgivable. What could that be, I wonder?" A malevolent smile flanks the words.
"It wasn't me!"
"Wasn't it? Was it not your body ravishing him? Stifling his screams? Stealing his virtue?" he baits.
"I didn't – I never…"
"You're right of course."
"What did you say?"
"You're right. You'd never have the nerve. Which is why I provided a little help." As delightful as it would be to have Pierre die thinking he is to blame, it is more delicious to assume part of the mantle of blame. Besides, should Pierre die under such accusations, he would feel a sense of justice and rightful penance about the whole thing.
Pierre assumes a furious expression. "You did this! You—!"
"Correct. That is not to say, however, that you had absolutely no desire to do what you did. My sands merely amplify what exists, be it fear or fancy. It enhances that still, small voice in the back of your head."
"I would never do that to him!"
"No? You've never fantasized about it? Pictured him writhing beneath you? Envisioned his naked body defenseless and ripe for the taking? Imagined his lips on your-"
Pierre averts his eyes. "Stop."
"I've seen your mind, Claus. I know every nasty little fantasy."
"Stop it." Pierre shakes his head.
"Shall I call him back down to slake your lust? Perhaps it would be more pleasant if he was willing. I can grant you that. I can make him puddy in your hands, a slave to your will, if you so desire."
"Stop!"
"I've done it before."
Pierre chances a glance up at his captor. "… What?"
"You know of Adam and Jack's tryst. Shall I tell you how that came to be? How I would visit him in the night and molest him in all the right ways until his body became obsessed? How he went to Adam's doorstep and begged the man to bed him? Repeatedly? How Adam, so noble and profession-conscious, denied him the full experience, but was more than willing to let Jack's mouth do the work? How, when you called him that following morning, Adam's ache was buried to the hilt in Jack's throat?"
"Stop it!" Pierre hollers, squeezing his eyes shut.
"The jealousy radiates from you. Delicious. Does it bother you that much? Knowing Jack was so servile to another younger man, and fought you to the bitter end?"
"It was not me!" he insists brokenly.
"No. But you've envisioned scenarios far worse. Haven't you?"
Pierre shrinks shamefully inward. "Please… stop."
"The ropes. The gag. The chains in your basement? Your hands around his throat. The gun in the second drawer of your nightstand? Just think what that barrel could do to—"
"STOP IT," he roars.
"Temper temper. I seem to have struck a nerve."
"Just kill me."
"Oh no. I can't do that. You see, I still have plans for you. But I will let Jack believe whatever he wants. Jack does not know that I know, let alone had any part in it. Your betrayal is not yet complete. I know Jack's heart. And he will come to you again… to ask why. He will want to make amends with the only connection he has to his former life. His teacher. His mentor. His oldest friend. And if I don't let him do so, and fail, he will not break. Not entirely. Once you have crushed his spirit, then you will die. But it will not be by my hand. Oh no. Not at all."
"You sick demon. You sadistic bastard!" His curses are lost to the telling in the darkness of the chasm as Pitch takes his leave.