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whatwekeep2010-06-20 11:23 am
khemlab.livejournal.com) wrote in whatwekeep2010-06-20 11:23 am
Fic: Controlled Violence, Ch. 19/30
Characters: (for this chapter) Liev Schreiber, Hunter Parrish, Christian Kane, Damien Lewis, mentions of Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri
Rating: R
Warnings: Slavery, Profanity
Word Count: 1,772
Previous Parts: Ch. 1: Liev's Provenance, Ch. 2: Liev v. Madsen, Ch. 3: Lord Bale's Gym, Ch. 4: The Charity Ward, Ch. 5: On Tour, Ch. 6: An Unwelcome Interruption, Ch. 7: Hunter's Provenance, Ch. 8: Home Sweet Home, Ch. 9: Training Begins, Ch. 10: A Fighter's Life, Ch. 11: Growing Up, Ch. 12: Music, Tattoos, and Women, Ch. 13: Liev Fights, Ch. 14: Done Talking, Ch. 15: A Born Boxer, Ch. 16: The Indigo Blues, Ch. 17: The Final Countdown, Ch. 18: The Lucky Ones
Summary: Fight! Fight! For purposes of at least this and the next chapter, it will be useful to read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
devilc's AKB stories for some background (and they are well worth reading, even if you skip my story entirely). Chris Kane is one of Jeff Morgan's Agents, and has been talked into fighting Liev's newest trainee, Hunter. Chris, though he's scrappy, was trained as a body slave and as such, doesn't have much of a formal background in fighting techniques. He's therefore being trained by two Commerce agents from the Bureau of Industry and Security, and with one of those agents, Chris's relationship is more than merely casual.
Author's Notes: Character photos for Lord Bale's household can be found here. Thanks topoisontaster for opening up this sandbox, to devilc for introducing me to it, and to fleurlb for some choice casting suggestions.
Midvale Arena, Present Day
"Kid's damn good," Chris manages to spit out in between Damien spritzing water in his mouth and wiping him down with a towel. Two rounds in, and Kane was mentally upping his fee. "Thinks he can buy me off with a guitar...gettin' a new amp out of this one. And cables." He swishes the water around in his mouth and spits it into the bucket Damien offers. The water is red. "Good cables," he growls. "Fucking Liev. Favor, he says. Inexperienced kid, he says." Gingerly, he presses his tongue against his front teeth. "Little bastard knocked my tooth loose. Jeff's gonna freak." He hopes the blood he's tasting is just from the tooth.
"Hey." It wasn't a shout, but Damien, Josh's BIS partner, manages to make himself heard above the din of the crowd. Dropping into a crouch in front of Chris, the tall redhead obscured his view of Hunter, who had somehow transformed from the lackadaisical (and gorgeous, Kane's traitorous mind interjects) kid at the Indigo Blue into this shaven-headed little demon sitting across the ring glaring death-rays at him (through bright blue eyes). "Hey," Damien said again, grabbing Chris by the chin, like a child, for god's sake, forcing him to break eye contact with Hunter. "Look at me. Yeah, he's good. And yeah, he's a hell of a lot younger than you. But you've been around the block more than once. Keep your eyes open, baby." He thumps Kane on the shoulder and winks. "You find your opportunity, stop dancing around, and take him the hell out before he actually hurts you."
Lord Bale's Gym, One Week Ago
"That's it." Hunter's fists hit the pads in a punishing rhythm, hard enough that Liev really felt it, his foot braced behind him to take the impact. He threw one pad up high and took a low swipe at Hunter with the other. Arm snapping down in a quick arc, Hunter deflected the lower blow at the same time as his free hand crashed into the high pad. "Good," Liev grunted, smacking the pads together to signal a stopping point.
Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Hunter didn't still for a second. "Come on, old man," he teased with a sparkle in his eyes. "Thought you were supposed to be getting me ready for a fight." Nick, working the speedbag in the corner, barked out a laugh, and Liev rolled his eyes.
"Can you believe this kid? One day he's whining, 'oh, no, let's take a break,' and the next it's all business all the time." Hunter's energy made Liev feel good, though, and he grinned as he took a swipe, easily deflected, at Hunter's head. It had been a risk, taking Hunter out to the backroom fights, but it looked like Hunter had taken the lesson to heart. "Enough for one day, kid. Even tough guys like you need to rest sometime."
Warehouse, L.A., One Week Ago
It was different, fighting back. Lent a whole new dynamic to the thing. Josh had blinked in surprise the first time one of Chris's punches had really landed, then grinned in the twisted way that meant Chris was in for a whole world of hurt. Chris grinned right back and landed another solid body shot, earning him a surprised grunt. Josh had done an awful lot of dominating up to this point without much discontent on Chris's part, but this whole hitting thing definitely had merit. He wasn't sure, in hindsight, what had kept him from at least attempting to kick Josh's ass for so damn long. Well, besides eternal damnation in Commerce hell.
"Shit, Josh, they let you out of Basic with those blocking skills? The point is to prevent him from hitting you. Unless this is some kind of S&M shit I've stumbled on here..."
Damien was a good coach. He didn't try to train Chris up from scratch, just let him do what came naturally, offering pointers here and there, and they were definitely making progress. Well, making progress at least since Chris had started actually listening to the man. Which had really only taken one solid ass-kicking, after Damien shoved Josh aside and took Chris down with a quick swipe to his legs, then sat on top of him twisting his arm just so. After he learned to tap out, training started to go much more smoothly.
Lord Bale's Gym, Five Days Ago
Hunter tried. He tried so hard to keep the fight, and only the fight, in the center of his mind, to keep bearing down on it and block everything else out. But his blood was running high and he was so fucking keyed up with the whole thing, it was enough to make him want to tear his hair out. He paced in his room for hours at night, his mind racing with anxiety, with possibilities, with what-if scenarios. He was unable to rest for more than a couple of hours on any given night before it was time to get up and start it all over again. Liev found him pacing one evening and made him run laps in the gym until he was covered in sweat. Then he showered and laid obediently in bed - "Fucking get some sleep, kid" - but all he could do was stare at the ceiling, mind no more quiet than before.
Then the thumping started from across the hall in Nick's room. Hunter slammed his head back against his pillow, frustrated at yet another distraction. Nick had been eyeballing the newest house-slave, a pretty young brunette, lately, and the giggles and accompanying noises suggested that he'd successfully made his move. The mere thought, much less the vivid soundscape, sent blood flowing southward, and soon Hunter's erection was straining against the bedsheets. Hunter turned on his side to relieve the pressure and clamped his pillow over his head, but Nick seemed to be on a roll and the pillow did little to muffle the thump-thump-thump reverberating through the walls.
Evidently he wasn't the only one Nick was keeping awake. Liev's soft footsteps entered the hallway, and Hunter heard him bang on Nick's door, shouting "Keep it down, loverboy!" Hunter's relief was replaced by horror when Liev's footsteps continued right on down the hallway toward his room.
Please, oh please, oplease, don't let him come in here, please, he'll just pass by, just please... The knob on Hunter's door turned quietly, and Liev poked his head in.
"That idiot keeping you awake? I'm sorry, kid, I - oh." Hunter had sat up abruptly when Liev opened the door, but evidently not quite quickly enough to disguise his current state of arousal. Liev averted his eyes and shifted his weight. "So, yeah, um. You just get some rest, okay? I mean...ah, take care of that and everything and, well, we'll train tomorrow and then it'll be time for you to have a few days off and so I'll see you in the morning, all right?"
Hunter suppressed a bitter grin. Take care of that? Even if it wasn't a physical impossibility for him to 'take care of it,' Liev's evident discomfort and resulting diarrhea of the mouth was pretty amusing. "I can't," he said before he thought better of it.
Liev paused, the door half closed, and looked at Hunter, confusion evident on his face. "Can't what, kid?"
Well, there it was. And really, so what? It's not like it was his fault the assholes at Commerce had screwed him up. But even so, he couldn't help but feel like it made him some kind of freak. "Can't 'take care of that,'" he said, more softly, the amusement draining away and leaving a defiant shame in the pit of his stomach.
First Liev looked up toward the ceiling, then he moved his lips soundlessly, as if he were trying to form a thought but it wasn't quite coming together. "You...I mean everybody...like, well...oh." Understanding slowly crossed his face, and he met Hunter's eyes. "Like Sean? Because you're...because you were a body slave?"
Hunter felt his face flush, images of Liev and Sean entwined on the hallway floor playing out in his mind's eye. He drew his knees up and laid his arms across them. "I don't know about Sean. But my second time at Commerce..." If there was one good thing about memories of Commerce, it was that they were pretty much guaranteed to take care of even the most raging hard-on. He sighed. "Before I was ever put on display, and you found me. I...it didn't go so well with my last master, and there was a lot of retraining. I mean, it wasn't all..." Hunter trailed off, hesitating. It was gross, and he didn't really want to talk about it. But he was so tired and he couldn't think of a good reason to stop.
"It's just, they tortured me." With a cattle prod. Stimulation from the most beautiful female and male slaves he'd ever seen, taunting from the guards, then white lights and blinding pain. "I wasn't allowed to...I couldn't touch myself without permission." And when the stimulation wasn't doing it anymore, they'd switched to drugs. And when he refused to swallow the pills, they'd switched to needles. "Then it got to the point that I would throw up if I even tried." They'd moved his hands, forced his hands, because he'd already learned what he couldn't do. But they didn't stop. Not until they made him sick. He did his best to be matter-of-fact about it, to just state the bare minimum. If nothing else, Liev had a right to know the special ways his fighters were fucked in the head.
"Have you tried to..." Liev moved his hands in a generically expressive gesture, "since you left? Since you came here?"
"No." Hunter flopped down on the bed and turned over, his back to Liev. "There's no point. And I don't like cleaning up puke."
"Well...maybe you could find someone?"
"Yeah." Hunter stared at the white wall and really, really wished Liev would just go away.
But he heard footsteps as Liev crossed the room toward him, leaving the door ajar, and laid a warm hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, kid. They fuck us all up, one way or another. Take things away they've got no right to." He squeezed Hunter's arm, leaving his hand there for a moment in silence. "Try and get some rest." Then the door clicked behind him and his soft footsteps faded away, leaving Hunter in the semi-darkness of the most private room he'd had since his mother sold him.
Shall We Dance? Part 2
Rating: R
Warnings: Slavery, Profanity
Word Count: 1,772
Previous Parts: Ch. 1: Liev's Provenance, Ch. 2: Liev v. Madsen, Ch. 3: Lord Bale's Gym, Ch. 4: The Charity Ward, Ch. 5: On Tour, Ch. 6: An Unwelcome Interruption, Ch. 7: Hunter's Provenance, Ch. 8: Home Sweet Home, Ch. 9: Training Begins, Ch. 10: A Fighter's Life, Ch. 11: Growing Up, Ch. 12: Music, Tattoos, and Women, Ch. 13: Liev Fights, Ch. 14: Done Talking, Ch. 15: A Born Boxer, Ch. 16: The Indigo Blues, Ch. 17: The Final Countdown, Ch. 18: The Lucky Ones
Summary: Fight! Fight! For purposes of at least this and the next chapter, it will be useful to read
devilc's AKB stories for some background (and they are well worth reading, even if you skip my story entirely). Chris Kane is one of Jeff Morgan's Agents, and has been talked into fighting Liev's newest trainee, Hunter. Chris, though he's scrappy, was trained as a body slave and as such, doesn't have much of a formal background in fighting techniques. He's therefore being trained by two Commerce agents from the Bureau of Industry and Security, and with one of those agents, Chris's relationship is more than merely casual.Author's Notes: Character photos for Lord Bale's household can be found here. Thanks to
poisontaster for opening up this sandbox, to devilc for introducing me to it, and to fleurlb for some choice casting suggestions."Kid's damn good," Chris manages to spit out in between Damien spritzing water in his mouth and wiping him down with a towel. Two rounds in, and Kane was mentally upping his fee. "Thinks he can buy me off with a guitar...gettin' a new amp out of this one. And cables." He swishes the water around in his mouth and spits it into the bucket Damien offers. The water is red. "Good cables," he growls. "Fucking Liev. Favor, he says. Inexperienced kid, he says." Gingerly, he presses his tongue against his front teeth. "Little bastard knocked my tooth loose. Jeff's gonna freak." He hopes the blood he's tasting is just from the tooth.
"Hey." It wasn't a shout, but Damien, Josh's BIS partner, manages to make himself heard above the din of the crowd. Dropping into a crouch in front of Chris, the tall redhead obscured his view of Hunter, who had somehow transformed from the lackadaisical (and gorgeous, Kane's traitorous mind interjects) kid at the Indigo Blue into this shaven-headed little demon sitting across the ring glaring death-rays at him (through bright blue eyes). "Hey," Damien said again, grabbing Chris by the chin, like a child, for god's sake, forcing him to break eye contact with Hunter. "Look at me. Yeah, he's good. And yeah, he's a hell of a lot younger than you. But you've been around the block more than once. Keep your eyes open, baby." He thumps Kane on the shoulder and winks. "You find your opportunity, stop dancing around, and take him the hell out before he actually hurts you."
"That's it." Hunter's fists hit the pads in a punishing rhythm, hard enough that Liev really felt it, his foot braced behind him to take the impact. He threw one pad up high and took a low swipe at Hunter with the other. Arm snapping down in a quick arc, Hunter deflected the lower blow at the same time as his free hand crashed into the high pad. "Good," Liev grunted, smacking the pads together to signal a stopping point.
Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Hunter didn't still for a second. "Come on, old man," he teased with a sparkle in his eyes. "Thought you were supposed to be getting me ready for a fight." Nick, working the speedbag in the corner, barked out a laugh, and Liev rolled his eyes.
"Can you believe this kid? One day he's whining, 'oh, no, let's take a break,' and the next it's all business all the time." Hunter's energy made Liev feel good, though, and he grinned as he took a swipe, easily deflected, at Hunter's head. It had been a risk, taking Hunter out to the backroom fights, but it looked like Hunter had taken the lesson to heart. "Enough for one day, kid. Even tough guys like you need to rest sometime."
It was different, fighting back. Lent a whole new dynamic to the thing. Josh had blinked in surprise the first time one of Chris's punches had really landed, then grinned in the twisted way that meant Chris was in for a whole world of hurt. Chris grinned right back and landed another solid body shot, earning him a surprised grunt. Josh had done an awful lot of dominating up to this point without much discontent on Chris's part, but this whole hitting thing definitely had merit. He wasn't sure, in hindsight, what had kept him from at least attempting to kick Josh's ass for so damn long. Well, besides eternal damnation in Commerce hell.
"Shit, Josh, they let you out of Basic with those blocking skills? The point is to prevent him from hitting you. Unless this is some kind of S&M shit I've stumbled on here..."
Damien was a good coach. He didn't try to train Chris up from scratch, just let him do what came naturally, offering pointers here and there, and they were definitely making progress. Well, making progress at least since Chris had started actually listening to the man. Which had really only taken one solid ass-kicking, after Damien shoved Josh aside and took Chris down with a quick swipe to his legs, then sat on top of him twisting his arm just so. After he learned to tap out, training started to go much more smoothly.
Hunter tried. He tried so hard to keep the fight, and only the fight, in the center of his mind, to keep bearing down on it and block everything else out. But his blood was running high and he was so fucking keyed up with the whole thing, it was enough to make him want to tear his hair out. He paced in his room for hours at night, his mind racing with anxiety, with possibilities, with what-if scenarios. He was unable to rest for more than a couple of hours on any given night before it was time to get up and start it all over again. Liev found him pacing one evening and made him run laps in the gym until he was covered in sweat. Then he showered and laid obediently in bed - "Fucking get some sleep, kid" - but all he could do was stare at the ceiling, mind no more quiet than before.
Then the thumping started from across the hall in Nick's room. Hunter slammed his head back against his pillow, frustrated at yet another distraction. Nick had been eyeballing the newest house-slave, a pretty young brunette, lately, and the giggles and accompanying noises suggested that he'd successfully made his move. The mere thought, much less the vivid soundscape, sent blood flowing southward, and soon Hunter's erection was straining against the bedsheets. Hunter turned on his side to relieve the pressure and clamped his pillow over his head, but Nick seemed to be on a roll and the pillow did little to muffle the thump-thump-thump reverberating through the walls.
Evidently he wasn't the only one Nick was keeping awake. Liev's soft footsteps entered the hallway, and Hunter heard him bang on Nick's door, shouting "Keep it down, loverboy!" Hunter's relief was replaced by horror when Liev's footsteps continued right on down the hallway toward his room.
Please, oh please, oplease, don't let him come in here, please, he'll just pass by, just please... The knob on Hunter's door turned quietly, and Liev poked his head in.
"That idiot keeping you awake? I'm sorry, kid, I - oh." Hunter had sat up abruptly when Liev opened the door, but evidently not quite quickly enough to disguise his current state of arousal. Liev averted his eyes and shifted his weight. "So, yeah, um. You just get some rest, okay? I mean...ah, take care of that and everything and, well, we'll train tomorrow and then it'll be time for you to have a few days off and so I'll see you in the morning, all right?"
Hunter suppressed a bitter grin. Take care of that? Even if it wasn't a physical impossibility for him to 'take care of it,' Liev's evident discomfort and resulting diarrhea of the mouth was pretty amusing. "I can't," he said before he thought better of it.
Liev paused, the door half closed, and looked at Hunter, confusion evident on his face. "Can't what, kid?"
Well, there it was. And really, so what? It's not like it was his fault the assholes at Commerce had screwed him up. But even so, he couldn't help but feel like it made him some kind of freak. "Can't 'take care of that,'" he said, more softly, the amusement draining away and leaving a defiant shame in the pit of his stomach.
First Liev looked up toward the ceiling, then he moved his lips soundlessly, as if he were trying to form a thought but it wasn't quite coming together. "You...I mean everybody...like, well...oh." Understanding slowly crossed his face, and he met Hunter's eyes. "Like Sean? Because you're...because you were a body slave?"
Hunter felt his face flush, images of Liev and Sean entwined on the hallway floor playing out in his mind's eye. He drew his knees up and laid his arms across them. "I don't know about Sean. But my second time at Commerce..." If there was one good thing about memories of Commerce, it was that they were pretty much guaranteed to take care of even the most raging hard-on. He sighed. "Before I was ever put on display, and you found me. I...it didn't go so well with my last master, and there was a lot of retraining. I mean, it wasn't all..." Hunter trailed off, hesitating. It was gross, and he didn't really want to talk about it. But he was so tired and he couldn't think of a good reason to stop.
"It's just, they tortured me." With a cattle prod. Stimulation from the most beautiful female and male slaves he'd ever seen, taunting from the guards, then white lights and blinding pain. "I wasn't allowed to...I couldn't touch myself without permission." And when the stimulation wasn't doing it anymore, they'd switched to drugs. And when he refused to swallow the pills, they'd switched to needles. "Then it got to the point that I would throw up if I even tried." They'd moved his hands, forced his hands, because he'd already learned what he couldn't do. But they didn't stop. Not until they made him sick. He did his best to be matter-of-fact about it, to just state the bare minimum. If nothing else, Liev had a right to know the special ways his fighters were fucked in the head.
"Have you tried to..." Liev moved his hands in a generically expressive gesture, "since you left? Since you came here?"
"No." Hunter flopped down on the bed and turned over, his back to Liev. "There's no point. And I don't like cleaning up puke."
"Well...maybe you could find someone?"
"Yeah." Hunter stared at the white wall and really, really wished Liev would just go away.
But he heard footsteps as Liev crossed the room toward him, leaving the door ajar, and laid a warm hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, kid. They fuck us all up, one way or another. Take things away they've got no right to." He squeezed Hunter's arm, leaving his hand there for a moment in silence. "Try and get some rest." Then the door clicked behind him and his soft footsteps faded away, leaving Hunter in the semi-darkness of the most private room he'd had since his mother sold him.
no subject
That whole little snippit of Chris's training have me giggle snorting.
And the thing with Hunter, well, that had me feeling so bad for the kid. You'd think Liev would've been on that quicker, but nope.
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no subject
And seeing Damian bust both Josh's and Chris' chops? Awesome.
no subject
And Damien Lewis is one of my newest fascinations. Himself and I have been watching 'Life' and really enjoying it. Have you watched it?
no subject