Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2012-03-19 08:57 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2012-03-19 08:57 pm
Fake News/30 Rock - Stone By Stone (Castleverse)
Title: Stone By Stone
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen"/Bill O'Reilly, "Stephen"/OMC, Liz/Jack, "Stephen"/Liz, various FOX cameos
Warnings: Slavefic, associated abuse (sexual and otherwise), (skip) non-con, non-main character death
Disclaimer: #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. Characters belong to the Report and the creators of 30 Rock. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only. With apologies to everyone involved, especially Tina Fey.
A prequel one-shot for the Castle Down 'verse, which for some reason turned into a 30 Rock crossover. Scenes from Stephen's life in Vulpis before the war, and his doomed friendship with one of the other "pets" he got to know there.
Refers to the Wørd "Bite The Hand That Feeds You", which unwittingly provided this universe a bit of backstory. Other references: the O'Reilly tartan; the Megyn Kelly meme. Title is another lyric from the Emilie Autumn song.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
Stephen swept down the streets of the crowded Eveningside market, eyes roving the banners and crests on either side of him. It was his first time running errands for the new owner, and he had to make a good impression, which meant getting the job done fast.
He rounded a corner and slammed face-first into someone coming the opposite direction. The basket over his arm swayed wildly; apples bounced and bruised on the cobbles. A half-formed apology died in his throat when he spotted the collar: pea-sized links forming a silver-white chain, thinner and lower on her throat than his own black one, but doubtless just as sturdy.
Arching his eyebrows, Stephen squared his shoulders and barked, "Watch where you're going! I'm on a very important mission for General Bill O'Reilly, and you are infringing on his right to have me walk here!"
The other pet goggled at him, then drew herself up to her own full height. She was too thin to be really imposing, and the fact that there was lettuce stuck in her hair was less than awe-inducing, so it didn't do much good until she opened her mouth: "Oh yeah? Well, I'm on a mission for Duke Jack Donaghy, so bite me!"
Did dukes outrank generals? Stephen wasn't sure. "At least Papa Bear doesn't let his pets walk around with food in their hair."
"Again?" exclaimed the woman. "Nerds!" She balanced the package she was holding on one hip and fumbled in her thick brown locks until, with help from Stephen's pointing finger, she retrieved the leaf of lettuce and tossed it away.
"I bet you don't even know where the dry cleaner's is," continued Stephen haughtily.
"Do so! It's right across from—" The woman broke off, face furrowing until she looked like an inquisitive ferret. "He-ey, wait a second. You're new here, aren't you?"
Stephen bristled. "What's that supposed to mean? Just because Papa Bear bought me last week, you think I can't possibly be expected to know the city yet? Ooh, look at Stephen, he's so incompetent he'll be thrown in the discount bin within a month! That's what you're saying. Your words!"
"Okay, look," said the other pet, with a barely-contained roll of the eyes. "The most expensive dry cleaner's in Eveningside is three blocks west. Across from the dressmaker with the giant mannequins in the window, so you can't miss it. Also, word on the street is the General likes to feel flattered. Anyone can stroke his...man-parts...but his favorite pets are the ones who stroke his ego. Now beat it. They're expecting me at the printer's."
As she brushed past him, she muttered something he didn't understand, until he realized it was in Gi Foarese: "Jerk."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
Sometimes the General holed up in his study and worked on a treatise long into the night. Stephen was handy with lamps and inkwells, reliable with dictation even when it was shouted, and always ready to provide relief when his owner's overburdened mind needed a break. All that said, he was pretty sure he had become the de facto attendant on these nights mostly because he was always ready to confirm that every idea the General had was brilliant.
"It's just common sense," Papa Bear said out of the blue one evening, paging through his notes for what was to be the next chapter. "The problem with those pie-in-the-sky reformists is they can't look reality square in the face!"
"What reality, sir?" asked Stephen.
"That some folks just don't want to work."
Stephen finished sharpening the fresh quill. "Not everyone can work as hard as you, sir."
"Well, sure. I wouldn't expect them to! Doesn't mean they can slack off and expect to live off handouts from ordinary hard-working folks like me."
"No, sir."
"Deep down, even the loony reformists understand that. If these pinheads really believed their own nonsense, they'd be trying to abolish the pet system by convincing lazy people to work harder, thus eliminating the need to sell children in the first place. But they don't. Why not?"
"Because if those people really cared about keeping their children, they wouldn've worked harder to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in the first place," recited Stephen.
The General looked shocked, then pleased. "Didn't know you were paying that much attention. You're a quick study, pet."
Stephen beamed.
"Sit down, sit down," added Papa Bear, waving for Stephen to take the free seat on the far side of the desk. It was carved wood, polished to a deep gloss and quite at home with the elegant furniture around it, even if the General's own claw-footed armchair was the jewel of the room by far. "I'm beginning a new section, so leave space for the header. Ready?"
Without waiting for Stephen to finish scrambling for a fresh sheet of paper, he began to recite: "The true pinheads of the world can be found in—"
"Sir?" blurted Stephen.
It was a measure of the General's favor that he didn't order Stephen away on the spot. "What?"
"If you would, p-please," said Stephen, keeping his head down, "I don't understand. My parents were both pets, sir. It says so on my papers. What should the pinhead reformists do if they want to keep someone like me out of the system? Sir."
"Get over here," snapped the General.
Stephen left the papers and quill in a messy pile on the corner of the desk and stood at attention beside the armchair, furious with himself. Of course Papa Bear would have an answer; he always did. That didn't mean his pets had the right or the need to understand it.
He didn't flinch before the slap, though it snapped his head to the side. He left it there as Papa Bear's hand moved to his stomach, pinching him through the thin tunic. "Clearly you're getting enough food. Any complaints about the quality? You want truffles coated with shaved gold, perhaps?"
"No, sir," said Stephen quickly.
The pinch retreated from his flesh, tugging at the crisscrossing blue and black lines of the O'Reilly tartan. "And you're not lacking for clothes. I don't let my pets run around in hand-me-downs and patches. This is new. It even fits."
"Yes, sir."
"You have a roof over your head. A nice soft bed. You've been in my bed enough, so tell me, is there some kind of amazing exotic mattress that the job creators are keeping from you?" This time he didn't wait for Stephen's no-sir before continuing. "Do I have you punished for no reason? When you get sick, do I make you push through it without paying to have it taken care of?"
"You're very good to me, sir," whispered Stephen.
The General let him go and sat back. "You're damn right, I am. Everything you have is better than what you'd get if you'd grown up as a lazy gutter-dwelling freeloader from three or four generations of lazy gutter-dwelling freeloaders. Anyone who really has your best interests in mind is going to do everything they can to ensure that you stay exactly where you are."
Stephen kept his mouth shut, and tried not to breathe too obtrusively.
"Well, get back to work!" exclaimed the General. "This treatise isn't going to write itself!"
In a flash Stephen was back in his seat, quill poised and ready, willing himself not to shake in spite of the sting on his cheek and the hammering of his heart.
Mercifully, his hand moved true, scratching Papa Bear's next words neatly across the paper: "The true pinheads of the world can be found in the precincts of betrayal, abuse of power, apathy toward the suffering of others, greed, envy, and exploitation of the powerless...."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
Stephen had passed this shop a hundred times by now, but the sign was so cramped that he couldn't read it at a distance. It was only when he spotted the pet cloaked in the Donaghy colors waiting at the door that he got close enough to identify it: an "authentic" Gi Foarese bakery.
No wonder he'd never been there. Papa Bear never ate food that wasn't authentically Vulpin.
The other pet looked so forlorn, and Stephen was so far ahead on his errands in spite of the light coating of snow on even the cleared streets, that he joined her. "What are you doing?"
"I am coming to here to do for Honorable Jack Donaghy," the woman began in broken Gi Foarese. She cut it short and pouted on seeing Stephen's face. "Nerds, it's just you."
"I was going to offer to help you," huffed Stephen. "But maybe now I won't."
"No, it's okay! I'm all set." She nodded to the shuttered window, where a posted sign advertised the hours. "These people were supposed to open forty minutes ago, so I'm sure they'll be here any second now."
The lettering on the sign was large and gaudy. Stephen went up close and squinted anyway, just in case. Sure enough: "This doesn't say they open at five. It says they're open until five."
"Are you serious?" Shoulder to shoulder with him, the woman pointed at one of the serif-laden characters. "You're sure that's not 'at'?"
"Why is your owner sending you to deal with Gi Foarese merchants if you can't tell 'at' from 'until'?"
A flicker of panic crossed the other pet's face. "The dealership he bought me from may have overemphasized my language skills. What was I supposed to do, call them out and get punished for losing them another sale? Blerg! How am I going to fill the sandwich order now?"
"There are plenty of places you can get sandwiches," pointed out Stephen.
"Not these sandwiches!"
They stood in anxious silence. Behind their reflections in the window, a heap of snow came loose from the overhang and fell to the ground with a sloppy thud.
"I'm Liz, by the way," said the woman.
"I'm Stephen," said Stephen. "You know where the Gi Foarese quarter is, Liz? They've got to have a bakery or two still open."
Liz made a face. "I'm even worse with the spoken language than the written one."
Stephen made a quick calculation. The walk wasn't long; he was still running ahead of schedule; and his cloak today, instead of the distinctive O'Reilly tartan, was plain black.
"Whoa, hold on!" exclaimed Liz when Stephen grabbed her wrist and tried to drag her forward. "What are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious?" huffed Stephen. "Being the pet the Duke rented to translate for you. But I'm not going to stay out so late that I get whipped for helping you, so hurry it up."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
A hard strike to the gut ended the match. Stephen allowed himself three deep breaths before peeling himself off the mat and turning to the trainer for the requisite berating of a so-called guard pet who couldn't hold his own in a simple spar.
It never came. Though it looked like there was plenty she wanted to say, the trainer gritted her teeth, held it in, and pointed him to the showers. "O'Reilly wants you in his room in fifteen minutes. Get going."
Stephen washed as quickly as he could, thankful he had done a full-body shave that morning and didn't yet need a touch-up. He worked a couple of soap-slick fingers inside himself, in case the General's demands were too urgent to bother with the formality, then went straight from the stall to the industrial gemdryer, so that his skin was still damp by the time he stopped before the mirror to style his warmed and dried hair.
They didn't keep enhancers or hair gel in the gym bathroom. Stephen was just going to have to go without. At least Papa Bear liked his pets a little tousled. Not only that, he hadn't seemed especially angry lately, which meant Stephen wasn't going to have to carve out recovery time afterward for not getting the look exactly right. And Stephen was lucky enough to find in the waiting rack of clothing a pair of short-shorts that left nothing to the imagination and a loose shirt just begging to be torn off.
It would eat up precious minutes to follow approved paths around the fringes of the complex, so Stephen took a chance and cut across the gardens, biting his lips into plumpness as he went.
Paths too narrow for more than one person to walk side by side curled between banks of tulips and marigolds, their colors and half-tones planted to form unbroken gradients from pink to red to gold to pink again, before yielding to violet-throated hibiscus blooms each wider than a man's hand. Wide trees with heart-shaped leaves stood sentry on either side of the places where paths flowed together, shielding the fountain with its leaping fox statues from view until a visitor was practically standing in it. A bush dotted with tiny yellow flowers shuddered as Stephen passed, and he wished his vision were sharp enough to identify the bird within.
At last the white wooden trellis that limned the garden's far edge came into view. Stephen could smell the pink and white morning glories before he got close enough to see that they were curled against the afternoon sun; the velvety red climbing roses were fewer, restricted to the archways, but fuller and brighter by comparison.
"You! Stay!"
A few leaps from the end of the path, Stephen froze.
"Heel," ordered the guard, coming down a second path that branched into Stephen's a few steps behind. It curved behind a tiered stand of bushes that had kept it from Stephen's view; the guard stopped at a point blocked from the near building by a meticulously trimmed hedge.
Head down, Stephen went to him.
"What are you doing here, pet?" demanded the guard. "Where's your collar?"
Stephen stared at one of the man's brass buttons. "I'm not going out, sir. The General ordered me to his rooms, and this was the fastest way."
"Is that so?" The guard began pacing in a circle around him. "Well, my orders are to keep unauthorized persons out of this here garden. That includes impertinent pets who think they're too good for the rules."
"Please, sir. The General will be mad if I'm late."
A gloved hand squeezed the back of his short-shorts. "Then you'd better convince me quick."
Stephen let himself relax, flowing bonelessly to his knees, head tipping toward the man's crotch as he breathed out a sigh. By the time the guard had hiked up his tunic and untied his trousers, Stephen's jaw and his gag reflex had both dropped. If anything was to slow this down, it wouldn't be him.
And hey, now he wouldn't have to bother with the lip-biting.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
"We'll be out with General O'Reilly's order in just a few minutes. Sit over there and wait quietly."
Stephen followed the printmaking apprentice's orders, and wasn't surprised to see a familiar face already there. The Duke was well-known as a patron of the local arts; once Stephen had started looking, he had seen the Donaghy crest on any number of advertisements around the city. "Hi, Liz. Scripts or fliers today?"
"Posters. The big kind," said Liz proudly. "Brought the cart around back and everything. The Duke tried to design them himself, but the actors convinced him to hire a professional at the last minute."
"Oh, good! Does that mean you're ready for the new vaudeville show? The last one was amazing."
"You saw it?"
"I was with Papa Bear when he took a lady friend to watch it." Judging by the General's reaction, it was the last time he would associate with either the vaudeville or the lady friend, but Stephen himself had been entranced. "My favorite sketch was Bears Versus Killer Automatons. It was pants-wettingly terrifying! But in a hilarious way."
Liz leaned in close. "If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to give it away?"
"I'll have to if Papa Bear asks," admitted Stephen, slumping.
"He won't. It's not something he cares about."
"Then...okay."
Cupping her hands around his good ear, Liz whispered, "I'm the Duke's liaison to the writers he sponsors, and sometimes the comedy writers let me sit with them. They took the credit in public so it wouldn't be a scandal...but..." It was too much even for the softest Vulpin, so she switched to Gi Foarese. "I wrote that sketch!"
Stephen jerked away, collar clinking with the motion. She shouldn't have told him. She shouldn't be telling anyone. If it got out — she was right that the General wouldn't care, but if it came up anyhow — the Duke's social standing would plummet, along with that of everyone he'd sponsored. Liz herself would be permanently unsellable, and likely as not would never be allowed in any respectable businesses again.
"Blerg, did I mess up?" stammered Liz. "I was, uh, kidding! That's right. Totally kidding."
"Well, it wasn't very funny," sulked Stephen.
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
The flashy-but-cheap protection rubies that decorated the halls around Papa Bear's personal rooms always made Stephen's teeth itch. They were really only there as a distraction from the higher-quality jewels, secreted away behind panelwork or under hollowed-out statues; these knew how to tell devoted pets from sinister assassins, and never gave him any trouble.
At last he reached the bedchamber, itself a set of connected spaces each large enough to hold several market stalls, empty of people but full of decorations. He had to pass a fireplace, a ring of lavish curved couches, a trophy cabinet, and a matching liquor cabinet, all just to get to the dark wood and tartan curtains of the bed.
Stephen had had ample time to prepare today. A touch of enhancer brought out the length of his eyelashes, a sweet gloss the shape of his lips; the naturally-tousled look of his hair was kept in place by a generous helping of spray. His nails were neatly manicured, his hands baby-soft from recent lotion. The short-shorts-and-loose-shirt look had gone over well, so he'd reprised it, this time with the addition of a collar: not the functional, trackable one he wore out of the complex, but a wide gold band that was purely decorative, with a loop of fine gold chain hanging down his back and two more twining down his arms to matching bands on his wrists.
The aftertaste of the powder he'd swallowed at the last possible minute burned in the back of his throat as he knelt on the tasseled rug. Even that small twist of the hips provided an almost unbearable friction. He'd have no trouble being eager, assuming his owner showed up soon.
A familiar voice outside had him perking up: "...most secure room in the house, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you, we will not be...."
And in that perked position he froze, shocked and awed, as four other generals accompanied Papa Bear into the room. Stephen knew the names: everyone did. Hannity. Doocy. Palin. The brown-haired one who wasn't Doocy. They were joined by the mad wizard Glenn and two of his fellow practitioners, Megyn and Gretchen, all in clothes styled to be inconspicuous, but made of fabrics so fine that no trained eye could help but appreciate them.
Either Stephen was in for the weirdest orgy he'd ever had, or he had made a terrible mistake.
"Stephen!" barked Papa Bear, confirming the "terrible mistake" interpretation. "Get up and pour some drinks for our guests!"
"Eager little beaver, isn't he?" said Palin appreciatively. Stephen could feel her eyes on his backside as he hightailed it for the liquor cabinet, erection aching and chains jingling.
Glenn cleared his throat. A series of daisies popped into existence on one of the bookshelves, turned fuchsia, and vanished again. "Are you sure it's safe to keep him here?"
"He's half deaf, completely devoted, and obviously distracted right now," Papa Bear assured them. "Besides, he'll support the war no matter what reason we decide on, and the magical theory parts will go over his head anyway."
"I don't know," said Megyn, as the rest of the group jockeyed for the lushest positions on the couches. "The vessel transference principle is simple in theory, right? It's putting your leftovers in a different box so they don't leak, essentially."
Too preoccupied with breathing normally to take drink orders, Stephen finally approached the group with a tray of randomly-chosen bottles and eight empty tumblers. Hannity grabbed one of the glasses, rolling the stem between his fingers. "We're all going to pretend she didn't say that, right? Good. Now, where did we leave off...?"
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
In the midst of preparing for the battlefield, the General took some time to relax at the playing field. The pennant game was already in full swing below when Stephen followed him into the row of wide seats above.
Another man of high rank was waiting to greet them; Stephen got an impression of broad shoulders and thick grey hair before noticing the pet sitting at his feet. She offered him a grin and a tiny wave while Duke Jack Donaghy was busy greeting the General, and he responded in kind.
Liz's outfit, like Stephen's, was in the black and red of the team favored to win...although Stephen's didn't hug his hips like that, or cup and mold his chest. Her hair was done up in soft curls, no lettuce in sight, and the Duke frequently ran his hands through it as the inning rolled on. Unable to talk to her, Stephen contented himself with stealing glances now and then from his own position at the General's feet, head resting comfortably against the General's knee.
"Lemon!" said the Duke gruffly, some time during the fifth inning. "I require coffee. The good kind, none of those inferior imports that are thin enough to spill when you turn the cup over."
The General snorted. "You call her 'Lemon'? What, did she cost too much and turn out not to work right?"
"She tastes sour and goes well with margaritas," said the Duke without batting an eye.
Stephen kept himself limp and unresponsive. There was no strict rule against pets getting to know each other, but it was hardly encouraged thanks to its correlation with unregulated sex, and the risks that placed on their owners. Even if sex wasn't on Liz's mind any more than on Stephen's, best not to draw attention to their friendship in the first place.
He was so busy being nonreactive that he almost didn't react to the candyfloss vendor.
At the last second he caught the glint of cold steel and sprang into action. A sweep of the leg against her burly ankles threw her off-balance; a well-placed strike near her elbow loosed her grip on the knife so that it swerved wide of Papa Bear's heart. Spun candy went flying in all directions. Stephen leaped to his feet.
"For the reformers!" shouted the fake vendor, grabbing Stephen's tunic for support and dragging him down to better knee him in the gut. For lack of any better strategy, he launched himself bodily against her; they careened out of the aisle, wide steps rushing up to greet them.
Stephen landed on his outflung right arm, heard a distant snap, and landed in a haze of pain.
(Weird, he thought, when he remembered it later. There was nothing pinlike about the way the reformist's skull crunched against the stone floor.)
Stadium guards swarmed over the scene a minute or so too late, surrounding the Duke and the General and chattering furiously over the body of the attacker that had foiled all their wards. None of them had a minute to spare for Stephen. Once they saw his collar, it didn't matter that his vision was swimming and his wrist felt like someone had injected liquid fire where the bone was supposed to be.
It was Liz who finally hauled him up and helped him stumble after his owner. He was so grateful that he didn't even tease her for getting candyfloss in her curls.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
"Good teeth," allowed the Duke, closing Stephen's mouth and moving to caress his bare waist. "Womanly hips, though. That'll bring the price down if he sires boys. Six hundred."
"Oh, now you're just nitpicking," said the General. His derision echoed around the warm and well-lit salon. Spires of light poured down from the rows of high windows, illuminating the trays of fruit and bread provided for the owners, the wheeled racks over which the pets' clothes hung during the examination. "You're the one with a pet whose feet are so hideous she won't take her socks off."
"Lemon's feet are fine," said the Duke without missing a beat. "She has a harmless insecurity which I indulge for the purpose of bringing out her competence in other areas. And make no mistake, she is very competent."
"She's not the one who saved your life last week! I ought to charge a renter's fee for that alone. Eleven hundred."
The Duke went on to squeeze Stephen's balls. "Bodyguard skills can be learned. The ability to grow chest hair, on the other had, is inborn. Seven fifty."
Stephen closed his eyes, stood still as a sculpture, and tried not to think about the matching examination Papa Bear had given Liz earlier. The woman herself was waiting a few paces behind the Duke, still naked except for her socks and collar. Both pets had been careful about not looking at each other, even though it would be meaningless if their owners reached a bargain.
"He's very diligent in keeping it off," the General replied. "Good, cooperative temperament. Might be just what you need in a sire to take the edge off your lemon's little anxiety problem. Besides, look at the size of those things. You're practically guaranteed a pup or two, and that's more that can be said of most rentals. A thousand, and that's a steal."
"It's certainly not ethical, not when you're that sure of getting your cut of a kid's sale price on top of it," said the Duke, lifting Stephen's arm and rotating his stiffened wrist. It still didn't turn as far as the uninjured one without soreness, but he knew better than to let on during a rental. "Eight fifty, and not a penny more."
"Nine fifty."
"Nine hundred."
"Deal." The General slapped Stephen's rump. "Lucky for you, eh, pet? She's a lot cuter than the other one."
"Get dressed," added the Duke. "Don't worry about presentability; it's only for a short carriage ride."
Papa Bear started. "What's wrong with here?"
"The offer was nine hundred, not nine hundred and a show," said the Duke darkly. "Get dressed, Lemon."
Stephen looked to his owner for guidance before doing the same. Of course he was trustworthy, of course he would carry out his orders either way, but he would understand if the General wanted to watch. And as far as Stephen was concerned, that decision was his owner's, not his renter's.
"What are you waiting for?" snapped Papa Bear. "Hurry after them before you get marked down for being a slacker."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
It wasn't a short carriage ride at all. Maybe it felt short for the Duke: he spent it in conversation with Liz while she sat at his feet, laconic but full of the unspoken significances of a long and experienced ownership. For Stephen, who wasn't attuned enough to either of them to follow the hidden meanings, it was tedious. And bumpy.
At last the sleek black unicorns arrived at a complex with even more buildings than the General's. The architecture was sleeker, with a modern feel; its crown jewel was a tower that must have been thirty stories high, its smooth lines unbroken by banners or sculptures except for a flag with the Duke's crest on top, distant enough that it was hidden by the building itself when you got too close.
They stepped out of the carriage just past the iron gates. Before even choosing a direction to walk in, the Duke turned to Liz and unfastened her collar.
Something in the gesture made Stephen shiver. It was tender, almost caring. And did his hands linger a second too long on the back of her neck? Did her lashes flutter with surprise alone, or...?
...No. He was like any other owner: kind to his pets, particularly fond of the ones he took to bed, but not forgetting what they were. And she kept to her place just fine, that ill-planned joke about writing (which was most certainly a joke) aside. Anything else would be catastrophic for Stephen to know. Therefore, he didn't know it.
The Duke guided Liz to the center-right building with a hand on the small of her back. Stephen tottered after them.
A room on the second floor had been prepared for them, more exquisitely than Stephen had seen in anything less than a guest room, or at least the quarters of some treasured head valet. Translucent veils over the windows made the evening light soft and dreamlike; crystal vases held bouquets of sweet-scented tea roses, and he spotted a tray of molded chocolates and a bottle of what looked like real wine rather than cheap grain gin. Until the door locked behind them, he couldn't believe it was the right place.
"Are those really for us?" breathed Stephen in wonder.
"The chocolate's mostly for you," said Liz. She wouldn't look him in the eye. "You're the one who needs to be able to get it up."
The Duke's little whims impressed Stephen all over again. He'd never heard of an aphrodisiac designed with the taste in mind. "Oh, good! Not that I...I mean, you're a beautiful lady, it's just...."
"I know."
She poured a glass of wine, but refused the chocolates. Stephen ate one, savoring it, waiting for the dose to kick in while they stripped. It would probably be enough, but he snuck another when the other pet's back was turned, just in case.
Liz naked (except for her socks) was as awkwardly attractive as Liz clothed. Her skin would have been flawless with some choice application of lotion; her breasts were small and bouncy and charmingly lopsided whenever they went still. Stephen wouldn't have been surprised if her feet were cute too, but didn't press the issue. Many was the time he had wished for such a simple way to diguise his hips, though he knew full well just how much Papa Bear appreciated them.
"Can I do...something?" he asked, kneeling on the mattress between her spread legs. What did ladies like during sex? According to the vaudeville sketches, they didn't like it at all, but Stephen had known that for a lie since the days when his job was to serve breakfast for Miss Jane and her various paramours. "To please you? Play with something, or...or lick...something?"
Head turned aside on the pillow, Liz crossed her arms over her chest. "Just skip to the important part, okay?"
"I don't want to," blurted Stephen. Not the sex part — the drugs were pumping through his system, leaving him flushed and hard and aching for some kind of friction — but the no-pleasing part, the on-command part, the Liz part, all that came together to make his gut twist. She was so pretty, and he wasn't worthy, and he craved some way to follow orders that wouldn't make his funny, charming, determined friend keep not-looking at him with those cold eyes.
"Well, we have to," said Liz flatly. "So we may as well get it over with."
It was a small blessing that Stephen had done this before, enough that he didn't have to make her explain the basics. He pushed inside her without fanfare, then braced his hands on the mattress to hold himself up while thrusting. The less he touched her, the less he risked staining her with the grimy feeling he couldn't shake.
Neither said another word. Stephen came quickly, though the sunset was quicker. Liz rolled herself up in one of the blankets almost as soon as he pulled out, so he tugged the other out from under her, felt his way across the dim room, and found a thick shag rug on which to huddle up and sleep.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
Two hands met over the same slice of pizza at the market, and sprang away as if shocked by lightning.
"All yours," said Stephen, stepping aside and averting his eyes.
Liz added the slice to the Duke's tray without so much as a thank-you.
"The General goes to the field tomorrow," blurted Stephen as Liz moved past him down the line. "He's taking me along."
For a moment Liz seemed to be wholly absorbed in the choice of fried side dishes. When she spoke, it was in badly accented Gi Foarese, and Stephen had to strain his ear to catch it. "Please to be not dying."
"I'll try," replied Stephen in kind. "Thanks."
She picked up a carton of crab patties and walked on.
Stephen followed Liz's back with his eyes as she headed into the crowd. Though it was going to get him smacked for dawdling, he stayed rooted to the spot until he could no longer tell which figure was hers.
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen"/Bill O'Reilly, "Stephen"/OMC, Liz/Jack, "Stephen"/Liz, various FOX cameos
Warnings: Slavefic, associated abuse (sexual and otherwise), (skip) non-con, non-main character death
Disclaimer: #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. Characters belong to the Report and the creators of 30 Rock. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only. With apologies to everyone involved, especially Tina Fey.
A prequel one-shot for the Castle Down 'verse, which for some reason turned into a 30 Rock crossover. Scenes from Stephen's life in Vulpis before the war, and his doomed friendship with one of the other "pets" he got to know there.
Refers to the Wørd "Bite The Hand That Feeds You", which unwittingly provided this universe a bit of backstory. Other references: the O'Reilly tartan; the Megyn Kelly meme. Title is another lyric from the Emilie Autumn song.
Stephen swept down the streets of the crowded Eveningside market, eyes roving the banners and crests on either side of him. It was his first time running errands for the new owner, and he had to make a good impression, which meant getting the job done fast.
He rounded a corner and slammed face-first into someone coming the opposite direction. The basket over his arm swayed wildly; apples bounced and bruised on the cobbles. A half-formed apology died in his throat when he spotted the collar: pea-sized links forming a silver-white chain, thinner and lower on her throat than his own black one, but doubtless just as sturdy.
Arching his eyebrows, Stephen squared his shoulders and barked, "Watch where you're going! I'm on a very important mission for General Bill O'Reilly, and you are infringing on his right to have me walk here!"
The other pet goggled at him, then drew herself up to her own full height. She was too thin to be really imposing, and the fact that there was lettuce stuck in her hair was less than awe-inducing, so it didn't do much good until she opened her mouth: "Oh yeah? Well, I'm on a mission for Duke Jack Donaghy, so bite me!"
Did dukes outrank generals? Stephen wasn't sure. "At least Papa Bear doesn't let his pets walk around with food in their hair."
"Again?" exclaimed the woman. "Nerds!" She balanced the package she was holding on one hip and fumbled in her thick brown locks until, with help from Stephen's pointing finger, she retrieved the leaf of lettuce and tossed it away.
"I bet you don't even know where the dry cleaner's is," continued Stephen haughtily.
"Do so! It's right across from—" The woman broke off, face furrowing until she looked like an inquisitive ferret. "He-ey, wait a second. You're new here, aren't you?"
Stephen bristled. "What's that supposed to mean? Just because Papa Bear bought me last week, you think I can't possibly be expected to know the city yet? Ooh, look at Stephen, he's so incompetent he'll be thrown in the discount bin within a month! That's what you're saying. Your words!"
"Okay, look," said the other pet, with a barely-contained roll of the eyes. "The most expensive dry cleaner's in Eveningside is three blocks west. Across from the dressmaker with the giant mannequins in the window, so you can't miss it. Also, word on the street is the General likes to feel flattered. Anyone can stroke his...man-parts...but his favorite pets are the ones who stroke his ego. Now beat it. They're expecting me at the printer's."
As she brushed past him, she muttered something he didn't understand, until he realized it was in Gi Foarese: "Jerk."
Sometimes the General holed up in his study and worked on a treatise long into the night. Stephen was handy with lamps and inkwells, reliable with dictation even when it was shouted, and always ready to provide relief when his owner's overburdened mind needed a break. All that said, he was pretty sure he had become the de facto attendant on these nights mostly because he was always ready to confirm that every idea the General had was brilliant.
"It's just common sense," Papa Bear said out of the blue one evening, paging through his notes for what was to be the next chapter. "The problem with those pie-in-the-sky reformists is they can't look reality square in the face!"
"What reality, sir?" asked Stephen.
"That some folks just don't want to work."
Stephen finished sharpening the fresh quill. "Not everyone can work as hard as you, sir."
"Well, sure. I wouldn't expect them to! Doesn't mean they can slack off and expect to live off handouts from ordinary hard-working folks like me."
"No, sir."
"Deep down, even the loony reformists understand that. If these pinheads really believed their own nonsense, they'd be trying to abolish the pet system by convincing lazy people to work harder, thus eliminating the need to sell children in the first place. But they don't. Why not?"
"Because if those people really cared about keeping their children, they wouldn've worked harder to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in the first place," recited Stephen.
The General looked shocked, then pleased. "Didn't know you were paying that much attention. You're a quick study, pet."
Stephen beamed.
"Sit down, sit down," added Papa Bear, waving for Stephen to take the free seat on the far side of the desk. It was carved wood, polished to a deep gloss and quite at home with the elegant furniture around it, even if the General's own claw-footed armchair was the jewel of the room by far. "I'm beginning a new section, so leave space for the header. Ready?"
Without waiting for Stephen to finish scrambling for a fresh sheet of paper, he began to recite: "The true pinheads of the world can be found in—"
"Sir?" blurted Stephen.
It was a measure of the General's favor that he didn't order Stephen away on the spot. "What?"
"If you would, p-please," said Stephen, keeping his head down, "I don't understand. My parents were both pets, sir. It says so on my papers. What should the pinhead reformists do if they want to keep someone like me out of the system? Sir."
"Get over here," snapped the General.
Stephen left the papers and quill in a messy pile on the corner of the desk and stood at attention beside the armchair, furious with himself. Of course Papa Bear would have an answer; he always did. That didn't mean his pets had the right or the need to understand it.
He didn't flinch before the slap, though it snapped his head to the side. He left it there as Papa Bear's hand moved to his stomach, pinching him through the thin tunic. "Clearly you're getting enough food. Any complaints about the quality? You want truffles coated with shaved gold, perhaps?"
"No, sir," said Stephen quickly.
The pinch retreated from his flesh, tugging at the crisscrossing blue and black lines of the O'Reilly tartan. "And you're not lacking for clothes. I don't let my pets run around in hand-me-downs and patches. This is new. It even fits."
"Yes, sir."
"You have a roof over your head. A nice soft bed. You've been in my bed enough, so tell me, is there some kind of amazing exotic mattress that the job creators are keeping from you?" This time he didn't wait for Stephen's no-sir before continuing. "Do I have you punished for no reason? When you get sick, do I make you push through it without paying to have it taken care of?"
"You're very good to me, sir," whispered Stephen.
The General let him go and sat back. "You're damn right, I am. Everything you have is better than what you'd get if you'd grown up as a lazy gutter-dwelling freeloader from three or four generations of lazy gutter-dwelling freeloaders. Anyone who really has your best interests in mind is going to do everything they can to ensure that you stay exactly where you are."
Stephen kept his mouth shut, and tried not to breathe too obtrusively.
"Well, get back to work!" exclaimed the General. "This treatise isn't going to write itself!"
In a flash Stephen was back in his seat, quill poised and ready, willing himself not to shake in spite of the sting on his cheek and the hammering of his heart.
Mercifully, his hand moved true, scratching Papa Bear's next words neatly across the paper: "The true pinheads of the world can be found in the precincts of betrayal, abuse of power, apathy toward the suffering of others, greed, envy, and exploitation of the powerless...."
Stephen had passed this shop a hundred times by now, but the sign was so cramped that he couldn't read it at a distance. It was only when he spotted the pet cloaked in the Donaghy colors waiting at the door that he got close enough to identify it: an "authentic" Gi Foarese bakery.
No wonder he'd never been there. Papa Bear never ate food that wasn't authentically Vulpin.
The other pet looked so forlorn, and Stephen was so far ahead on his errands in spite of the light coating of snow on even the cleared streets, that he joined her. "What are you doing?"
"I am coming to here to do for Honorable Jack Donaghy," the woman began in broken Gi Foarese. She cut it short and pouted on seeing Stephen's face. "Nerds, it's just you."
"I was going to offer to help you," huffed Stephen. "But maybe now I won't."
"No, it's okay! I'm all set." She nodded to the shuttered window, where a posted sign advertised the hours. "These people were supposed to open forty minutes ago, so I'm sure they'll be here any second now."
The lettering on the sign was large and gaudy. Stephen went up close and squinted anyway, just in case. Sure enough: "This doesn't say they open at five. It says they're open until five."
"Are you serious?" Shoulder to shoulder with him, the woman pointed at one of the serif-laden characters. "You're sure that's not 'at'?"
"Why is your owner sending you to deal with Gi Foarese merchants if you can't tell 'at' from 'until'?"
A flicker of panic crossed the other pet's face. "The dealership he bought me from may have overemphasized my language skills. What was I supposed to do, call them out and get punished for losing them another sale? Blerg! How am I going to fill the sandwich order now?"
"There are plenty of places you can get sandwiches," pointed out Stephen.
"Not these sandwiches!"
They stood in anxious silence. Behind their reflections in the window, a heap of snow came loose from the overhang and fell to the ground with a sloppy thud.
"I'm Liz, by the way," said the woman.
"I'm Stephen," said Stephen. "You know where the Gi Foarese quarter is, Liz? They've got to have a bakery or two still open."
Liz made a face. "I'm even worse with the spoken language than the written one."
Stephen made a quick calculation. The walk wasn't long; he was still running ahead of schedule; and his cloak today, instead of the distinctive O'Reilly tartan, was plain black.
"Whoa, hold on!" exclaimed Liz when Stephen grabbed her wrist and tried to drag her forward. "What are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious?" huffed Stephen. "Being the pet the Duke rented to translate for you. But I'm not going to stay out so late that I get whipped for helping you, so hurry it up."
A hard strike to the gut ended the match. Stephen allowed himself three deep breaths before peeling himself off the mat and turning to the trainer for the requisite berating of a so-called guard pet who couldn't hold his own in a simple spar.
It never came. Though it looked like there was plenty she wanted to say, the trainer gritted her teeth, held it in, and pointed him to the showers. "O'Reilly wants you in his room in fifteen minutes. Get going."
Stephen washed as quickly as he could, thankful he had done a full-body shave that morning and didn't yet need a touch-up. He worked a couple of soap-slick fingers inside himself, in case the General's demands were too urgent to bother with the formality, then went straight from the stall to the industrial gemdryer, so that his skin was still damp by the time he stopped before the mirror to style his warmed and dried hair.
They didn't keep enhancers or hair gel in the gym bathroom. Stephen was just going to have to go without. At least Papa Bear liked his pets a little tousled. Not only that, he hadn't seemed especially angry lately, which meant Stephen wasn't going to have to carve out recovery time afterward for not getting the look exactly right. And Stephen was lucky enough to find in the waiting rack of clothing a pair of short-shorts that left nothing to the imagination and a loose shirt just begging to be torn off.
It would eat up precious minutes to follow approved paths around the fringes of the complex, so Stephen took a chance and cut across the gardens, biting his lips into plumpness as he went.
Paths too narrow for more than one person to walk side by side curled between banks of tulips and marigolds, their colors and half-tones planted to form unbroken gradients from pink to red to gold to pink again, before yielding to violet-throated hibiscus blooms each wider than a man's hand. Wide trees with heart-shaped leaves stood sentry on either side of the places where paths flowed together, shielding the fountain with its leaping fox statues from view until a visitor was practically standing in it. A bush dotted with tiny yellow flowers shuddered as Stephen passed, and he wished his vision were sharp enough to identify the bird within.
At last the white wooden trellis that limned the garden's far edge came into view. Stephen could smell the pink and white morning glories before he got close enough to see that they were curled against the afternoon sun; the velvety red climbing roses were fewer, restricted to the archways, but fuller and brighter by comparison.
"You! Stay!"
A few leaps from the end of the path, Stephen froze.
"Heel," ordered the guard, coming down a second path that branched into Stephen's a few steps behind. It curved behind a tiered stand of bushes that had kept it from Stephen's view; the guard stopped at a point blocked from the near building by a meticulously trimmed hedge.
Head down, Stephen went to him.
"What are you doing here, pet?" demanded the guard. "Where's your collar?"
Stephen stared at one of the man's brass buttons. "I'm not going out, sir. The General ordered me to his rooms, and this was the fastest way."
"Is that so?" The guard began pacing in a circle around him. "Well, my orders are to keep unauthorized persons out of this here garden. That includes impertinent pets who think they're too good for the rules."
"Please, sir. The General will be mad if I'm late."
A gloved hand squeezed the back of his short-shorts. "Then you'd better convince me quick."
Stephen let himself relax, flowing bonelessly to his knees, head tipping toward the man's crotch as he breathed out a sigh. By the time the guard had hiked up his tunic and untied his trousers, Stephen's jaw and his gag reflex had both dropped. If anything was to slow this down, it wouldn't be him.
And hey, now he wouldn't have to bother with the lip-biting.
"We'll be out with General O'Reilly's order in just a few minutes. Sit over there and wait quietly."
Stephen followed the printmaking apprentice's orders, and wasn't surprised to see a familiar face already there. The Duke was well-known as a patron of the local arts; once Stephen had started looking, he had seen the Donaghy crest on any number of advertisements around the city. "Hi, Liz. Scripts or fliers today?"
"Posters. The big kind," said Liz proudly. "Brought the cart around back and everything. The Duke tried to design them himself, but the actors convinced him to hire a professional at the last minute."
"Oh, good! Does that mean you're ready for the new vaudeville show? The last one was amazing."
"You saw it?"
"I was with Papa Bear when he took a lady friend to watch it." Judging by the General's reaction, it was the last time he would associate with either the vaudeville or the lady friend, but Stephen himself had been entranced. "My favorite sketch was Bears Versus Killer Automatons. It was pants-wettingly terrifying! But in a hilarious way."
Liz leaned in close. "If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to give it away?"
"I'll have to if Papa Bear asks," admitted Stephen, slumping.
"He won't. It's not something he cares about."
"Then...okay."
Cupping her hands around his good ear, Liz whispered, "I'm the Duke's liaison to the writers he sponsors, and sometimes the comedy writers let me sit with them. They took the credit in public so it wouldn't be a scandal...but..." It was too much even for the softest Vulpin, so she switched to Gi Foarese. "I wrote that sketch!"
Stephen jerked away, collar clinking with the motion. She shouldn't have told him. She shouldn't be telling anyone. If it got out — she was right that the General wouldn't care, but if it came up anyhow — the Duke's social standing would plummet, along with that of everyone he'd sponsored. Liz herself would be permanently unsellable, and likely as not would never be allowed in any respectable businesses again.
"Blerg, did I mess up?" stammered Liz. "I was, uh, kidding! That's right. Totally kidding."
"Well, it wasn't very funny," sulked Stephen.
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
The flashy-but-cheap protection rubies that decorated the halls around Papa Bear's personal rooms always made Stephen's teeth itch. They were really only there as a distraction from the higher-quality jewels, secreted away behind panelwork or under hollowed-out statues; these knew how to tell devoted pets from sinister assassins, and never gave him any trouble.
At last he reached the bedchamber, itself a set of connected spaces each large enough to hold several market stalls, empty of people but full of decorations. He had to pass a fireplace, a ring of lavish curved couches, a trophy cabinet, and a matching liquor cabinet, all just to get to the dark wood and tartan curtains of the bed.
Stephen had had ample time to prepare today. A touch of enhancer brought out the length of his eyelashes, a sweet gloss the shape of his lips; the naturally-tousled look of his hair was kept in place by a generous helping of spray. His nails were neatly manicured, his hands baby-soft from recent lotion. The short-shorts-and-loose-shirt look had gone over well, so he'd reprised it, this time with the addition of a collar: not the functional, trackable one he wore out of the complex, but a wide gold band that was purely decorative, with a loop of fine gold chain hanging down his back and two more twining down his arms to matching bands on his wrists.
The aftertaste of the powder he'd swallowed at the last possible minute burned in the back of his throat as he knelt on the tasseled rug. Even that small twist of the hips provided an almost unbearable friction. He'd have no trouble being eager, assuming his owner showed up soon.
A familiar voice outside had him perking up: "...most secure room in the house, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you, we will not be...."
And in that perked position he froze, shocked and awed, as four other generals accompanied Papa Bear into the room. Stephen knew the names: everyone did. Hannity. Doocy. Palin. The brown-haired one who wasn't Doocy. They were joined by the mad wizard Glenn and two of his fellow practitioners, Megyn and Gretchen, all in clothes styled to be inconspicuous, but made of fabrics so fine that no trained eye could help but appreciate them.
Either Stephen was in for the weirdest orgy he'd ever had, or he had made a terrible mistake.
"Stephen!" barked Papa Bear, confirming the "terrible mistake" interpretation. "Get up and pour some drinks for our guests!"
"Eager little beaver, isn't he?" said Palin appreciatively. Stephen could feel her eyes on his backside as he hightailed it for the liquor cabinet, erection aching and chains jingling.
Glenn cleared his throat. A series of daisies popped into existence on one of the bookshelves, turned fuchsia, and vanished again. "Are you sure it's safe to keep him here?"
"He's half deaf, completely devoted, and obviously distracted right now," Papa Bear assured them. "Besides, he'll support the war no matter what reason we decide on, and the magical theory parts will go over his head anyway."
"I don't know," said Megyn, as the rest of the group jockeyed for the lushest positions on the couches. "The vessel transference principle is simple in theory, right? It's putting your leftovers in a different box so they don't leak, essentially."
Too preoccupied with breathing normally to take drink orders, Stephen finally approached the group with a tray of randomly-chosen bottles and eight empty tumblers. Hannity grabbed one of the glasses, rolling the stem between his fingers. "We're all going to pretend she didn't say that, right? Good. Now, where did we leave off...?"
In the midst of preparing for the battlefield, the General took some time to relax at the playing field. The pennant game was already in full swing below when Stephen followed him into the row of wide seats above.
Another man of high rank was waiting to greet them; Stephen got an impression of broad shoulders and thick grey hair before noticing the pet sitting at his feet. She offered him a grin and a tiny wave while Duke Jack Donaghy was busy greeting the General, and he responded in kind.
Liz's outfit, like Stephen's, was in the black and red of the team favored to win...although Stephen's didn't hug his hips like that, or cup and mold his chest. Her hair was done up in soft curls, no lettuce in sight, and the Duke frequently ran his hands through it as the inning rolled on. Unable to talk to her, Stephen contented himself with stealing glances now and then from his own position at the General's feet, head resting comfortably against the General's knee.
"Lemon!" said the Duke gruffly, some time during the fifth inning. "I require coffee. The good kind, none of those inferior imports that are thin enough to spill when you turn the cup over."
The General snorted. "You call her 'Lemon'? What, did she cost too much and turn out not to work right?"
"She tastes sour and goes well with margaritas," said the Duke without batting an eye.
Stephen kept himself limp and unresponsive. There was no strict rule against pets getting to know each other, but it was hardly encouraged thanks to its correlation with unregulated sex, and the risks that placed on their owners. Even if sex wasn't on Liz's mind any more than on Stephen's, best not to draw attention to their friendship in the first place.
He was so busy being nonreactive that he almost didn't react to the candyfloss vendor.
At the last second he caught the glint of cold steel and sprang into action. A sweep of the leg against her burly ankles threw her off-balance; a well-placed strike near her elbow loosed her grip on the knife so that it swerved wide of Papa Bear's heart. Spun candy went flying in all directions. Stephen leaped to his feet.
"For the reformers!" shouted the fake vendor, grabbing Stephen's tunic for support and dragging him down to better knee him in the gut. For lack of any better strategy, he launched himself bodily against her; they careened out of the aisle, wide steps rushing up to greet them.
Stephen landed on his outflung right arm, heard a distant snap, and landed in a haze of pain.
(Weird, he thought, when he remembered it later. There was nothing pinlike about the way the reformist's skull crunched against the stone floor.)
Stadium guards swarmed over the scene a minute or so too late, surrounding the Duke and the General and chattering furiously over the body of the attacker that had foiled all their wards. None of them had a minute to spare for Stephen. Once they saw his collar, it didn't matter that his vision was swimming and his wrist felt like someone had injected liquid fire where the bone was supposed to be.
It was Liz who finally hauled him up and helped him stumble after his owner. He was so grateful that he didn't even tease her for getting candyfloss in her curls.
"Good teeth," allowed the Duke, closing Stephen's mouth and moving to caress his bare waist. "Womanly hips, though. That'll bring the price down if he sires boys. Six hundred."
"Oh, now you're just nitpicking," said the General. His derision echoed around the warm and well-lit salon. Spires of light poured down from the rows of high windows, illuminating the trays of fruit and bread provided for the owners, the wheeled racks over which the pets' clothes hung during the examination. "You're the one with a pet whose feet are so hideous she won't take her socks off."
"Lemon's feet are fine," said the Duke without missing a beat. "She has a harmless insecurity which I indulge for the purpose of bringing out her competence in other areas. And make no mistake, she is very competent."
"She's not the one who saved your life last week! I ought to charge a renter's fee for that alone. Eleven hundred."
The Duke went on to squeeze Stephen's balls. "Bodyguard skills can be learned. The ability to grow chest hair, on the other had, is inborn. Seven fifty."
Stephen closed his eyes, stood still as a sculpture, and tried not to think about the matching examination Papa Bear had given Liz earlier. The woman herself was waiting a few paces behind the Duke, still naked except for her socks and collar. Both pets had been careful about not looking at each other, even though it would be meaningless if their owners reached a bargain.
"He's very diligent in keeping it off," the General replied. "Good, cooperative temperament. Might be just what you need in a sire to take the edge off your lemon's little anxiety problem. Besides, look at the size of those things. You're practically guaranteed a pup or two, and that's more that can be said of most rentals. A thousand, and that's a steal."
"It's certainly not ethical, not when you're that sure of getting your cut of a kid's sale price on top of it," said the Duke, lifting Stephen's arm and rotating his stiffened wrist. It still didn't turn as far as the uninjured one without soreness, but he knew better than to let on during a rental. "Eight fifty, and not a penny more."
"Nine fifty."
"Nine hundred."
"Deal." The General slapped Stephen's rump. "Lucky for you, eh, pet? She's a lot cuter than the other one."
"Get dressed," added the Duke. "Don't worry about presentability; it's only for a short carriage ride."
Papa Bear started. "What's wrong with here?"
"The offer was nine hundred, not nine hundred and a show," said the Duke darkly. "Get dressed, Lemon."
Stephen looked to his owner for guidance before doing the same. Of course he was trustworthy, of course he would carry out his orders either way, but he would understand if the General wanted to watch. And as far as Stephen was concerned, that decision was his owner's, not his renter's.
"What are you waiting for?" snapped Papa Bear. "Hurry after them before you get marked down for being a slacker."
It wasn't a short carriage ride at all. Maybe it felt short for the Duke: he spent it in conversation with Liz while she sat at his feet, laconic but full of the unspoken significances of a long and experienced ownership. For Stephen, who wasn't attuned enough to either of them to follow the hidden meanings, it was tedious. And bumpy.
At last the sleek black unicorns arrived at a complex with even more buildings than the General's. The architecture was sleeker, with a modern feel; its crown jewel was a tower that must have been thirty stories high, its smooth lines unbroken by banners or sculptures except for a flag with the Duke's crest on top, distant enough that it was hidden by the building itself when you got too close.
They stepped out of the carriage just past the iron gates. Before even choosing a direction to walk in, the Duke turned to Liz and unfastened her collar.
Something in the gesture made Stephen shiver. It was tender, almost caring. And did his hands linger a second too long on the back of her neck? Did her lashes flutter with surprise alone, or...?
...No. He was like any other owner: kind to his pets, particularly fond of the ones he took to bed, but not forgetting what they were. And she kept to her place just fine, that ill-planned joke about writing (which was most certainly a joke) aside. Anything else would be catastrophic for Stephen to know. Therefore, he didn't know it.
The Duke guided Liz to the center-right building with a hand on the small of her back. Stephen tottered after them.
A room on the second floor had been prepared for them, more exquisitely than Stephen had seen in anything less than a guest room, or at least the quarters of some treasured head valet. Translucent veils over the windows made the evening light soft and dreamlike; crystal vases held bouquets of sweet-scented tea roses, and he spotted a tray of molded chocolates and a bottle of what looked like real wine rather than cheap grain gin. Until the door locked behind them, he couldn't believe it was the right place.
"Are those really for us?" breathed Stephen in wonder.
"The chocolate's mostly for you," said Liz. She wouldn't look him in the eye. "You're the one who needs to be able to get it up."
The Duke's little whims impressed Stephen all over again. He'd never heard of an aphrodisiac designed with the taste in mind. "Oh, good! Not that I...I mean, you're a beautiful lady, it's just...."
"I know."
She poured a glass of wine, but refused the chocolates. Stephen ate one, savoring it, waiting for the dose to kick in while they stripped. It would probably be enough, but he snuck another when the other pet's back was turned, just in case.
Liz naked (except for her socks) was as awkwardly attractive as Liz clothed. Her skin would have been flawless with some choice application of lotion; her breasts were small and bouncy and charmingly lopsided whenever they went still. Stephen wouldn't have been surprised if her feet were cute too, but didn't press the issue. Many was the time he had wished for such a simple way to diguise his hips, though he knew full well just how much Papa Bear appreciated them.
"Can I do...something?" he asked, kneeling on the mattress between her spread legs. What did ladies like during sex? According to the vaudeville sketches, they didn't like it at all, but Stephen had known that for a lie since the days when his job was to serve breakfast for Miss Jane and her various paramours. "To please you? Play with something, or...or lick...something?"
Head turned aside on the pillow, Liz crossed her arms over her chest. "Just skip to the important part, okay?"
"I don't want to," blurted Stephen. Not the sex part — the drugs were pumping through his system, leaving him flushed and hard and aching for some kind of friction — but the no-pleasing part, the on-command part, the Liz part, all that came together to make his gut twist. She was so pretty, and he wasn't worthy, and he craved some way to follow orders that wouldn't make his funny, charming, determined friend keep not-looking at him with those cold eyes.
"Well, we have to," said Liz flatly. "So we may as well get it over with."
It was a small blessing that Stephen had done this before, enough that he didn't have to make her explain the basics. He pushed inside her without fanfare, then braced his hands on the mattress to hold himself up while thrusting. The less he touched her, the less he risked staining her with the grimy feeling he couldn't shake.
Neither said another word. Stephen came quickly, though the sunset was quicker. Liz rolled herself up in one of the blankets almost as soon as he pulled out, so he tugged the other out from under her, felt his way across the dim room, and found a thick shag rug on which to huddle up and sleep.
Two hands met over the same slice of pizza at the market, and sprang away as if shocked by lightning.
"All yours," said Stephen, stepping aside and averting his eyes.
Liz added the slice to the Duke's tray without so much as a thank-you.
"The General goes to the field tomorrow," blurted Stephen as Liz moved past him down the line. "He's taking me along."
For a moment Liz seemed to be wholly absorbed in the choice of fried side dishes. When she spoke, it was in badly accented Gi Foarese, and Stephen had to strain his ear to catch it. "Please to be not dying."
"I'll try," replied Stephen in kind. "Thanks."
She picked up a carton of crab patties and walked on.
Stephen followed Liz's back with his eyes as she headed into the crowd. Though it was going to get him smacked for dawdling, he stayed rooted to the spot until he could no longer tell which figure was hers.
no subject
...
>_>
*scurries off eagerly to read*
no subject
*is crushed*
no subject
no subject
I felt a need to reconnect with the series' slavefic roots.
And possibly set up another appearance by Liz in its future...no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-03-20 09:33 am (UTC)(link)I truly loved this story, made me feel so bad for Stephen, and his possible child. His life with General O'Reilly was a horrible one.
-WhySven
no subject
Glad you like ^_^ With Stephen, at least, you know his rescue is coming up soon.
no subject
I absolutely adored their little power play with each other at first and how Stephen wanted to help her was very sweet. Gah, I forgot how utterly in love I was with Stephen in this AU before he learned to be independent (not that I'm not happy for him, mind you). He hits all kinds of kinks with his total submission to O'Reilly but I'm so glad to know that Jon is in his future here. Of course, as soon as I say that I'm sad to think of their present state, doh! It broke my heart the way that he wanted to please Liz and how she responded to it. Now I will be craving more of this fic so badly!! You, madame, are the best kind of tease:)
I apparently am incapable of coherent thought right now. Thank you so much for more from this universe!
no subject
Glad you like it!