(no subject)
How about some semi-shota, un-beta'd tiger-taur slash?
Title: Panflute
Author: Me, The_Ameneko, obviously.
Length: 2k (5.7k total)
Warnings: Furry, shota (13-year-old catamite), heartbreak
Summary: All his life, his only possessions have been a ragged umbrella and a panflute. Loneliness is all he has ever known. He is starved for love, and when it is offered him on a silver platter, he will take it without question, and ignore the tenuous grip of the offering hand.
I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X
Panflute
.I.
In rains like this, there are places that people just don't go. Not because of gangs, or the darkness, or even lone criminals, but because the bridges are being eaten from the inside by termites and rot, and if the boards break, the ground is hundreds of feet below. The police don't go here, and people with money don't go here, but the destitute and criminal have nowhere else. Every few weeks, somebody goes missing, and a dangling bridge marks their grave.
At the edge of this area, a little boy with milky blue eyes plays a shaky panflute. A sign hung on the handle of his upturned umbrella reads, “Blind and abandoned. Please help.” He has heard no splash of coin into his umbrella since he began shivering. With a deep sigh, he tucks his panflute into his empty coin belt and fishes out the mean brass disks from the bottom of the umbrella, feels the edges and the shapes of the center holes, and threads the disks to his belt. They are not enough to purchase one measly loaf of bread, and he is too tired to fight the scrounging hoards. His concave belly rumbles.
The umbrella drips softly onto his head. It is ripped in several places, and the handle is splintered, but the rain is not so sharp dripping off of it as it is direct from the clouds, so he leans it against his shoulder and tries to sleep. A policewoman walks by twice. The sharp brass covers on her claws scrape the planks and make him cower back, but she is interested in groups, not in single ragged children. He stays quiet and she passes a third time.
When another person approaches he at first thinks it is her, bored and come back early to tease him, but its paws pad softly on the planks and coin, not a riot stick, jangles around its waist.
It stops. He moves the umbrella a bit, hiding. Strangers approaching while his flute is silent come for things he does not sell.
“Let me see your face, little one.” The stranger's voice is warm and deep, wraps around him like a wool blanket, the kind of voice that would make him comfortably sleepy if he listened for too long. He does not trust the stranger. The comfort is a farce. Still, he does not resist when his umbrella is pushed aside; resistance amuses those who like to beat him, and if he is dull, perhaps he will be left alone. He turns blank eyes up to the stranger and hears the hitch in breath. Gentle fingers on his face. He flinches.
The stranger contemplates him, or so he assumes; he could as well be staring at the sky. The rain cuts through the wet air, which tastes like rotting leaves and sea. The stranger's hand is cold on his collarbone.
“Are you blind, little one?” He nods, and his stomach rumbles. He has been hungry so long that it doesn't even hurt.
“Come with me. I'll give you anything you want.”
“For what?” he says, voice like his panflute, airy and shaking. He fears what the stranger wants.
“For your company, and nothing else.”
The stranger has indeed mistaken his occupation. Proud anger hardens in him momentarily, but it has been raining for days, he can hardly remember what being dry feels like, and he hasn't eaten in as long. Pride doesn't matter anymore.
They walk together. He is less cold with his side pressed against the tall man, their arms linked like courtiers at a party, though now his shoulder aches because the man is so much taller than he is. The bridges are slippery and he stumbles often, until the man takes his hand and they walk like father and son.
They are not detained. He wondered whether this is because the police cannot tell what he is doing or because they do not care.
“There are three steps just here,” the man warns, slowing with him as he feels the ground ahead. They ascend together with only the smallest of stumbles and enter a warm building, with smooth floors and no drafts. The door clicks heavily shut behind him. The man takes his umbrella, makes a great flapping noise shaking the rain from it, and sets it with a click on the solid wood planking of the floor. He likes this floor; it is steady, and does not creak as the floors of the poor houses do. He feels no danger of the planks snapping, sending him a hundred feet to his death on the jungle floor. It is new, to be free of this worry. He shifts his weight, enjoying it. The man takes this as impatience.
A muffled bell rings somewhere far away and far below them. Moments later, soft paws rush towards them, the paws of a well-fed being. But the gait is strange as it halts abruptly. A soft male voice asks “Sir?” uncertainly as it approaches, and he decides that it is strange because there are only three beats. The servant has only three legs, not four. He frowns and wants to know why.
“Bring the boy a dove and a dish of cream, and myself a dish of wine.”
A moment, and the paws hasten away. The man leads him somewhere warm and carpeted, where the air smells of orange and clove, and when he sniffs inquisitively towards the scent, a rough round object is placed in his hands.
“It is a pomander,” he is told. “An orange with cloves stuck in it.”
He sniffs it; it is strong and pleasant. He holds it out and it is taken from him, set down on something wooden. A table, he presumes. The servant with three paws returns.
“Lovely. Set it on the table before the fire.”
The boy is rapid and nearly silent as he obeys, and remains, boards creaking under his shifting weight, until the man commands him to leave.
His heart rises as he smells spices and cooked meat.
“Eat, little one,” says the man, guiding him to the table, and immediately he proceeds, empty stomach shutting down the warnings his brain tries to send. It doesn't matter if the food is poisoned or drugged. He has never tasted anything so good and is sure he is eating like a barbarian, but he doesn't care; he doesn't know how to eat politely, only fast enough to keep his food from being snatched from him.
The man laughs when the boy licks the bones clean, and sips loudly at his drink, barely heard over the racket of eating.
“Slow down, little one; you will make yourself sick.”
He ignores the man and drinks the cream. He has drunk nothing but rainwater and beer since his mother's breasts dried up. The thick, rich cream slides as cool ecstasy down his throat and he feels he would moan if he could do so simultaneous with swallowing. In all his poor life he has had nothing he could compare it to, and sets down the empty dish with greatest regret.
“How did you like it?” the man asks with amusement in his voice.
He knows no words to express his answer, yet tries, wincing at his own meager vocabulary. It does not do justice to his feelings. In the process he finds, to his dismay, that he does not know what to call this stranger, and asks.
“'Sir' is alright for now. Shall I have Telani bring you more cream?”
“Yessir! If it please you,” he says, such delight in him that the man laughs. “To see such happiness in so sweet a face; it does please me. More cream,” he adds, when Telani arrives.
This dish he drinks more slowly, wanting it to last. Again he is reluctant to set it down. The man does not offer more. Instead he says, “Come here. I have something else for you.”
Slightly more trusting now his belly is full, he dismisses his misgivings and navigates the table, taking the man's guiding hand when he feels it and following where it leads. It is hot on this side of the table, on the fire's side; he is careful to not be burned.
The man is very close. He can smell his breath, faintly, and it smells of cloves and wine. It is coming, what he was brought here for, but he must ignore his distaste, for he has already accepted payment.
“Open your mouth.”
Hesitantly, he does as he is told. Nothing good has ever come of that request and he almost bites the fingers that lay something on his tongue. Only the caress they give his lips stops him, and that only because of surprise.
The substance begins to melt, and it is strange, bitter-sweet, and he can't decide whether or not he likes it.
“It's called chocolate,” the man say.
He chews it, and the flavor of raspberries breaks upon his tongue. A bright smile breaks upon his face. This he knows he likes.
When he is finished the man feeds him a sip of wine and says, “Will you play me your flute?”
He drinks more wine, to clean his mouth, and slides the hardy reeds from his belt. The flute sings a perfect scale as he draws it across his lower lip.
“What d'you wanna hear?” he asks, language sounding especially rough in so rich-smelling a room, on so plush a carpet. He blows a backwards scale to hide his embarrassment.
“Do you know The Tragedy of the Sparrow and the Reed?”
Instead of answering, he begins to play the airy, gentle song, the man joining at the first refrain. His voice is deep and resonating, like the gongs that boom when emperors die. He almost loses rhythm trying to listen. His muscles tense with adrenalin. The voice makes him want to trust the man, but there have been many men he has wished to trust, and it is always a trick.
As he finishes, the man's hand gently pushes the panflute from his mouth to replace it with his own. The man tastes of chocolate and raspberries. More interested in the treat than in being afraid, he extends his tongue, laving chocolate from the man's. It tastes even better with an underflavor of cloves.
Both of the man's hands clasp him around his waist, pulling him close, while the boy, in the remainder of his apprehension, presses his palms against the man's chest. It feels too good to be held. With a great force of will he relaxes, does what has become his job, and as with every other time he gave in to the promise of a warm bed and full belly, he wishes he had not.
“You taste like cloves,” he whispers against the man's mouth when the chocolate is gone. Silently, the man licks chocolate off the boy's lips.
“What is your name?” The man asks.
“I don't know.” If his mother had given him one, she had abandoned him before he learned it, and all after had called him some variant of 'brat.'
The man leans back for a moment, and his rough palm cups the boy's face gently, thumb stroking his starvation-sharpened cheekbone. “I'll give you one. You'll answer to it when I call, won't you?”
What that implies makes his heart race and his face heat. The prospect of more food, more cream, more chocolate, more embraces and more kisses... more risk, more fear, more potential pain and guilt and regret... He leans up into the man's embrace and kisses him, and hopes the city has enough bridges for him to hide among. And yet, when the man finally does lead him upstairs to another rug and another fire and the bed he has been dreading all this time, his love-starved little body drinks it up, so hungry for affection that it forgets that this kind of love is not meant for children, that he is still scared and mistrusting and ashamed of his weakness. He wants it so desperately that he clings to the man, dismisses any pain as inconsequential, allows himself a few moments of pretending this is real. He holds tight even when the man calls in Telani to bank the fire. There is scorn in Telani's breaths and anger in Telani's stride.
Telani is nothing to him. He buries his face in fur and breathes the scent of cloves until he sleeps.
Title: Panflute
Author: Me, The_Ameneko, obviously.
Length: 2k (5.7k total)
Warnings: Furry, shota (13-year-old catamite), heartbreak
Summary: All his life, his only possessions have been a ragged umbrella and a panflute. Loneliness is all he has ever known. He is starved for love, and when it is offered him on a silver platter, he will take it without question, and ignore the tenuous grip of the offering hand.
I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X
Panflute
.I.
In rains like this, there are places that people just don't go. Not because of gangs, or the darkness, or even lone criminals, but because the bridges are being eaten from the inside by termites and rot, and if the boards break, the ground is hundreds of feet below. The police don't go here, and people with money don't go here, but the destitute and criminal have nowhere else. Every few weeks, somebody goes missing, and a dangling bridge marks their grave.
At the edge of this area, a little boy with milky blue eyes plays a shaky panflute. A sign hung on the handle of his upturned umbrella reads, “Blind and abandoned. Please help.” He has heard no splash of coin into his umbrella since he began shivering. With a deep sigh, he tucks his panflute into his empty coin belt and fishes out the mean brass disks from the bottom of the umbrella, feels the edges and the shapes of the center holes, and threads the disks to his belt. They are not enough to purchase one measly loaf of bread, and he is too tired to fight the scrounging hoards. His concave belly rumbles.
The umbrella drips softly onto his head. It is ripped in several places, and the handle is splintered, but the rain is not so sharp dripping off of it as it is direct from the clouds, so he leans it against his shoulder and tries to sleep. A policewoman walks by twice. The sharp brass covers on her claws scrape the planks and make him cower back, but she is interested in groups, not in single ragged children. He stays quiet and she passes a third time.
When another person approaches he at first thinks it is her, bored and come back early to tease him, but its paws pad softly on the planks and coin, not a riot stick, jangles around its waist.
It stops. He moves the umbrella a bit, hiding. Strangers approaching while his flute is silent come for things he does not sell.
“Let me see your face, little one.” The stranger's voice is warm and deep, wraps around him like a wool blanket, the kind of voice that would make him comfortably sleepy if he listened for too long. He does not trust the stranger. The comfort is a farce. Still, he does not resist when his umbrella is pushed aside; resistance amuses those who like to beat him, and if he is dull, perhaps he will be left alone. He turns blank eyes up to the stranger and hears the hitch in breath. Gentle fingers on his face. He flinches.
The stranger contemplates him, or so he assumes; he could as well be staring at the sky. The rain cuts through the wet air, which tastes like rotting leaves and sea. The stranger's hand is cold on his collarbone.
“Are you blind, little one?” He nods, and his stomach rumbles. He has been hungry so long that it doesn't even hurt.
“Come with me. I'll give you anything you want.”
“For what?” he says, voice like his panflute, airy and shaking. He fears what the stranger wants.
“For your company, and nothing else.”
The stranger has indeed mistaken his occupation. Proud anger hardens in him momentarily, but it has been raining for days, he can hardly remember what being dry feels like, and he hasn't eaten in as long. Pride doesn't matter anymore.
They walk together. He is less cold with his side pressed against the tall man, their arms linked like courtiers at a party, though now his shoulder aches because the man is so much taller than he is. The bridges are slippery and he stumbles often, until the man takes his hand and they walk like father and son.
They are not detained. He wondered whether this is because the police cannot tell what he is doing or because they do not care.
“There are three steps just here,” the man warns, slowing with him as he feels the ground ahead. They ascend together with only the smallest of stumbles and enter a warm building, with smooth floors and no drafts. The door clicks heavily shut behind him. The man takes his umbrella, makes a great flapping noise shaking the rain from it, and sets it with a click on the solid wood planking of the floor. He likes this floor; it is steady, and does not creak as the floors of the poor houses do. He feels no danger of the planks snapping, sending him a hundred feet to his death on the jungle floor. It is new, to be free of this worry. He shifts his weight, enjoying it. The man takes this as impatience.
A muffled bell rings somewhere far away and far below them. Moments later, soft paws rush towards them, the paws of a well-fed being. But the gait is strange as it halts abruptly. A soft male voice asks “Sir?” uncertainly as it approaches, and he decides that it is strange because there are only three beats. The servant has only three legs, not four. He frowns and wants to know why.
“Bring the boy a dove and a dish of cream, and myself a dish of wine.”
A moment, and the paws hasten away. The man leads him somewhere warm and carpeted, where the air smells of orange and clove, and when he sniffs inquisitively towards the scent, a rough round object is placed in his hands.
“It is a pomander,” he is told. “An orange with cloves stuck in it.”
He sniffs it; it is strong and pleasant. He holds it out and it is taken from him, set down on something wooden. A table, he presumes. The servant with three paws returns.
“Lovely. Set it on the table before the fire.”
The boy is rapid and nearly silent as he obeys, and remains, boards creaking under his shifting weight, until the man commands him to leave.
His heart rises as he smells spices and cooked meat.
“Eat, little one,” says the man, guiding him to the table, and immediately he proceeds, empty stomach shutting down the warnings his brain tries to send. It doesn't matter if the food is poisoned or drugged. He has never tasted anything so good and is sure he is eating like a barbarian, but he doesn't care; he doesn't know how to eat politely, only fast enough to keep his food from being snatched from him.
The man laughs when the boy licks the bones clean, and sips loudly at his drink, barely heard over the racket of eating.
“Slow down, little one; you will make yourself sick.”
He ignores the man and drinks the cream. He has drunk nothing but rainwater and beer since his mother's breasts dried up. The thick, rich cream slides as cool ecstasy down his throat and he feels he would moan if he could do so simultaneous with swallowing. In all his poor life he has had nothing he could compare it to, and sets down the empty dish with greatest regret.
“How did you like it?” the man asks with amusement in his voice.
He knows no words to express his answer, yet tries, wincing at his own meager vocabulary. It does not do justice to his feelings. In the process he finds, to his dismay, that he does not know what to call this stranger, and asks.
“'Sir' is alright for now. Shall I have Telani bring you more cream?”
“Yessir! If it please you,” he says, such delight in him that the man laughs. “To see such happiness in so sweet a face; it does please me. More cream,” he adds, when Telani arrives.
This dish he drinks more slowly, wanting it to last. Again he is reluctant to set it down. The man does not offer more. Instead he says, “Come here. I have something else for you.”
Slightly more trusting now his belly is full, he dismisses his misgivings and navigates the table, taking the man's guiding hand when he feels it and following where it leads. It is hot on this side of the table, on the fire's side; he is careful to not be burned.
The man is very close. He can smell his breath, faintly, and it smells of cloves and wine. It is coming, what he was brought here for, but he must ignore his distaste, for he has already accepted payment.
“Open your mouth.”
Hesitantly, he does as he is told. Nothing good has ever come of that request and he almost bites the fingers that lay something on his tongue. Only the caress they give his lips stops him, and that only because of surprise.
The substance begins to melt, and it is strange, bitter-sweet, and he can't decide whether or not he likes it.
“It's called chocolate,” the man say.
He chews it, and the flavor of raspberries breaks upon his tongue. A bright smile breaks upon his face. This he knows he likes.
When he is finished the man feeds him a sip of wine and says, “Will you play me your flute?”
He drinks more wine, to clean his mouth, and slides the hardy reeds from his belt. The flute sings a perfect scale as he draws it across his lower lip.
“What d'you wanna hear?” he asks, language sounding especially rough in so rich-smelling a room, on so plush a carpet. He blows a backwards scale to hide his embarrassment.
“Do you know The Tragedy of the Sparrow and the Reed?”
Instead of answering, he begins to play the airy, gentle song, the man joining at the first refrain. His voice is deep and resonating, like the gongs that boom when emperors die. He almost loses rhythm trying to listen. His muscles tense with adrenalin. The voice makes him want to trust the man, but there have been many men he has wished to trust, and it is always a trick.
As he finishes, the man's hand gently pushes the panflute from his mouth to replace it with his own. The man tastes of chocolate and raspberries. More interested in the treat than in being afraid, he extends his tongue, laving chocolate from the man's. It tastes even better with an underflavor of cloves.
Both of the man's hands clasp him around his waist, pulling him close, while the boy, in the remainder of his apprehension, presses his palms against the man's chest. It feels too good to be held. With a great force of will he relaxes, does what has become his job, and as with every other time he gave in to the promise of a warm bed and full belly, he wishes he had not.
“You taste like cloves,” he whispers against the man's mouth when the chocolate is gone. Silently, the man licks chocolate off the boy's lips.
“What is your name?” The man asks.
“I don't know.” If his mother had given him one, she had abandoned him before he learned it, and all after had called him some variant of 'brat.'
The man leans back for a moment, and his rough palm cups the boy's face gently, thumb stroking his starvation-sharpened cheekbone. “I'll give you one. You'll answer to it when I call, won't you?”
What that implies makes his heart race and his face heat. The prospect of more food, more cream, more chocolate, more embraces and more kisses... more risk, more fear, more potential pain and guilt and regret... He leans up into the man's embrace and kisses him, and hopes the city has enough bridges for him to hide among. And yet, when the man finally does lead him upstairs to another rug and another fire and the bed he has been dreading all this time, his love-starved little body drinks it up, so hungry for affection that it forgets that this kind of love is not meant for children, that he is still scared and mistrusting and ashamed of his weakness. He wants it so desperately that he clings to the man, dismisses any pain as inconsequential, allows himself a few moments of pretending this is real. He holds tight even when the man calls in Telani to bank the fire. There is scorn in Telani's breaths and anger in Telani's stride.
Telani is nothing to him. He buries his face in fur and breathes the scent of cloves until he sleeps.