InsaneJournal

Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	games, keptverse

The Games - Part Four
This story is fanfic written in poisontaster's Keptverse. Further explanation and links here, as well as Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. There is the beginnings of a cast list here.

By the way, poisontaster has now definitely communicated that if it's not RPS, it's not really part of the Keptverse, so, well. I suggested to the author of the other FPS story (who tried to post a link on the Keptverse community on Livejournal) that she and I could start an AU Keptverse community for FPS which are fanficcing on the Keptverse (kind of meta on meta) but haven't heard back. Will let you know. Let me know if you're interested, if I am speaking to anyone: it's kind of pointless starting a community for a fandom of one.

Part Four

Sam let Kimble use the bathroom on his own, though he wouldn’t let Kimble close the door. When Kimble had showered, there were three sets of clothing on the bed: shirts, pants, underwear, socks. “You can use these. Get dressed, sit down, got that?”

Kimble nodded. Sam didn’t close the door to the bathroom on himself, either.

The clock by the bed said it was a few minutes after shift change. In the long white room the survivors of yesterday’s Games were being examined to find if they were fit enough to walk into the arena and be killed.

He wasn’t there. There was a whole day ahead of him with no white room and no dorm. Just Sam. His owner.

I didn’t kill my wife. It had been stupid to say that to his owner. Say as little as possible, don’t die.

The shower stopped. Kimble was sitting on the edge of the bed, the two sets of clothing he wasn’t wearing on his knees. He was doing what he had been told, where he was supposed to be.

Sam didn’t even seem to look at him when he came out of the bathroom: he dressed himself rapidly and efficiently – has he ever had a body slave? Kimble had thought not last night, and then stopped thinking at all.

Make yourself useful. That had been an instruction from last night, too. He watched Sam dress – casual, today, jeans and a cotton shirt: yesterday he had been dressed more formally, suit and waistcoat and tie. Yesterday he had been working. Tomorrow he would be working. Watch him tomorrow, learn what kind of clothes he chose. Become a body slave. Be useful. Live.

It had been years since he had stopped thinking more than eight to sixteen hours ahead.

“Okay.” Sam turned round and looked at Kimble directly for the first time. “On your feet.” He reached out and caught hold of Kimble’s wrist. “Let’s go.”

“What do you want me to do with these?”

“We’ll put them in your room.”

The door with the lightswitch outside, the one that led to the cell Sam had called “his room” last night, was just down the hall. The room was exactly as bleak as it had looked last night: a mattress on the floor, a commode, a water tap with a drain below. There was nothing else. Kimble put the clothes in neat folded piles on the mattress.

“I’ll get you somewhere to store your clothes,” Sam said. He nodded, and took hold of Kimble’s wrist again, tugging him towards the door. Kimble went with him, glancing back only once. That was a holding cell. What was a holding cell like this doing in a private house? They’d had separate staff quarters with a lockdown in their town house, but that had been for privacy – theirs – and the staff had proper rooms, separate bathroom, locked away from the outside and the main house, not from each other –

It was a holding cell. The door locked from the outside. The rest didn’t matter.

Sam let go of Kimble in the kitchen, and pointed to the chair he’d sat in last night. Kimble sat down and watched, this time with intent to learn, as his owner took coffee out of the freezer and filled a coffee maker. He liked a strong filter brew.

“You drink coffee?”

“Yes, sir.” Kimble used the word deliberately.

“Call me Sam,” Sam said, almost absently. “I told you last night.” He poured two large mugs of coffee, sat down, pushing one across the table and lifting the other to his mouth. He sat looking at Kimble, and drank the coffee, and said nothing.

“You pulled a stupid stunt this morning,” Sam said at last. “I’m going to show you how stupid it was when we go round the house today. You cannot get out of here. If you could, you’re still wearing a convict collar – you always will – and no one would do anything but turn you in, if they didn’t kill you on sight.”

He waited, as if for Kimble to answer.

“Yes, Sam. It was stupid.” Not stupid but unanswerable: Kimble had no intention of telling his owner he’d meant to kill himself.

“Don’t bullshit me, Richard. I don’t need that.” Sam drank his coffee. “I didn’t buy you for that. I bought you for one reason only. I need to set some ground rules for you, and I mean to show you exactly how secure this place is, how you don’t stand a chance of getting out. This may look like less of a prison than where you were, and it is, but you’re still here for keeps. The only place you’re going from here is back there, got it?”

“I understand,” Kimble said.

“Yeah, you will. Okay. Ground rules.” Sam sat back, holding his coffee mug. “I don’t own any other slaves. But if you’ve got any ideas about how you’re going to valet me or bathe me, forget it.” His voice had a contemptuous roll on the words valet and bath: Kimble picked up the accent. Texan. “I don’t want that and you are just going to get me mad at you if you try. The housecleaning gets done once a week, and you will be locked in your room while the cleaning crew are here. They do laundry, but remember you won’t see anything you let them have for a week. The only people you get to talk to are myself and my kids – and you better not bug either them or me when we’re working. I’ll show you round when we’re done having breakfast, tell you where you can go in the house, and I expect you to remember. You can help yourself to anything much in the kitchen, there’s a board on the wall there to write down anything you use the last of. I get groceries delivered once a week. When we’re working here, someone usually brings pastries for breakfast. If you can cook, you can make yourself useful when the kids want something to eat, or brew coffee. I like to make my own meals and I didn’t buy you to cook for me.”

Why did you buy me? Kimble swallowed coffee, not tasting it: he was beginning to have a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“When I go out, unless one of my kids is in the house and willing to take that responsibility, you’re going to be locked in your room. I will give you a pager, if you’re locked in your room and you have some kind of emergency, you can use it. I think you’re bright enough to know what’s going to happen if you use it when there’s no kind of emergency.”

Sam turned his coffee mug in his hands. “This all sounds pretty regimented, but in point of fact, I don’t much care what you do during the day so long as you don’t give me any shit or pull any stunts on my kids.”

Why did you buy me? Kimble had finished the coffee in his mug. He still held it in his hands, looking across the table at his owner.

“I bought you because I want to have sex with you,” Sam said. He grinned, but without humour. “I didn’t know how this was going to work, and I still don’t, so don’t get the idea I have it all planned out for you. You say no, I’ll pay attention. You want to sleep in your room, you can – the door locks, you’ll be in there till I let you out the next morning, but I want to know that when you’re in my bed you had a choice to be somewhere else.” He paused. “Yeah, I know it’s not much of a choice, but it’s all you’ve got. Any questions?”

“Why did you buy me?”

Sam laughed. He said, sounding jovial, fake as hell, “Why, I saw you in a catalogue, Richard.” He tilted his head to one side, considering. “You haven’t asked what I do during the day – did you recognise this place?”

Kimble shook his head.

“Got no curiosity at all?”

“What do you do?” Kimble asked.

“I am a Deputy United States Marshal for Northern Illinois,” Sam said. He put his coffee mug down on the table. “If you were a runaway, it would be my kids who would find you, and we would deal with you here. You are not allowed in the workrooms or in the office. Not unless one of us takes you there, and you better pray that never happens.” He wasn’t smiling.

“Oh, Jesus,” Kimble said. He had that cold clench in his stomach, biting down. “You – interrogate them – ”

“My kids bring them in, and we find out how they got away, who helped them, who encouraged them, who spoke to them, who smiled at them.” Sam still wasn’t smiling. “We always find them, and there are always people who were dumb enough to try and help them. If you could get out of here, Richard, my kids would track you and they would find you. If it’s my say-so, you will be killed or you will be handed back to the arena, depending how vindictive you made me feel about you. If it’s not my say-so because you killed me, my kids… will do whatever they like with you.” He leaned forward, and his sudden smile was a gargoyle grin. “Don’t worry, Richard. I’m never going to let that happen.”

Kimble sat still. He knew better than to flinch back. Say as little as possible, don’t die, don’t fight, don’t flinch. Live. He nodded.

After a moment, Sam stood up. Kimble’s insides were one cold knot, but Sam turned away, towards the counter and the cookstove, and after a few minutes, Kimble realised: his owner was making breakfast. He sat still. His hands were shaking: he hid them under the table, clenched together, and looked down into the empty cup in front of him. He didn’t want to go to bed with Sam. He knew he didn’t have a choice.

“Richard.”

Kimble looked up. He hadn’t moved. Or done anything else. Two pans were on the stove, both sending off heady smells. Sam was slicing a couple of tomatoes.

“Make yourself useful. I want toast. There’s bread in that bin.”

Kimble stood up. Sam pointed. He was holding a knife: a short vegetable knife. On the counter beside where he was working, there was a breadboard and a breadknife.

“Yes, Sam,” Kimble said out loud, because he knew he should. He hadn’t seen where Sam had got either knife from.

“Three slices for me. Cut enough for yourself, too,” Sam said. He was frying potatoes and onions in one pan, bacon in the other.

Standing elbow to elbow with his owner, Kimble thought about using the breadknife: to stab Sam, hard, angle up under his ribs. To stab himself, in the throat, across the carotid arteries – not as quite as quick as bleeding to death from the femoral arteries, but just as likely to ensure no one could revive his owner’s property.

He glanced sideways at Sam: his owner seemed to be entirely focussed on the bacon he was frying. But after a moment, Sam looked back at him. He didn’t say anything, but Kimble was aware of Sam’s stance: light and poised on his feet, ready to move. Are you going to fight me, Richard?

Kimble shook his head. He went on cutting slices off the loaf. His insides still felt cold. If he had taken a swing at his owner – with the breadknife in his hand or without it –

Sam might not get a sexual kick out of it, but it looked very like he wanted to hurt Kimble – to know he’d beaten him.

If he stabbed his own throat, would Sam be able to stop him in time?

Surely there would be better chances. The one thing no owner would tolerate was a serious suicide attempt.

Kimble finished slicing the bread. He set the breadknife down, glancing at his owner, watching the dark head turn slightly to track the movement of hand and knife. He couldn’t convince himself that he could ever manage to use it on someone else – he wasn’t sure he could believe he would ever be able to use it on himself.

Sam reached to switch on the grill. Kimble jumped him, locking an arm round his neck and jerking him backwards, getting him offbalance for a triumphal moment when Kimble actually thought it might work, might not be just handing his owner an excuse –

They landed on the kitchen floor, Sam on top of him and not off balance: he turned like a cat and struck out at Kimble, one hard blow against his jaw that knocked him sideways. Sam was on top of him, his hands pinning Kimble’s arms and his weight holding Kimble down, a manoevre so like last night that Kimble nearly screamed.

“Jesus Christ, Richard! You couldn’t wait till we’d had breakfast?”

“You wanted me to do it,” Kimble said, too shaken to be anything but honest. “I saw you – you had it planned – ”

Sam laughed. It was sudden and genuine. He was still pinning Kimble down. He stopped himself almost as suddenly as he’d started. “Sure,” he said, “I want you to know you can try to fight me and you’ll always lose. I want you to know it, Richard, and quit fighting, because fighting me is not going to do you a bit of good.” The grin that twisted his face this time was jovially false. “But you could have waited till we’d had breakfast.” He stood up, letting go of Kimble and getting to his feet in one quick move.

Kimble lay still. His jaw hurt. Sam lifted his hand and flexed it, wincing. “So what’s it going to be, Richard? Breakfast or a fight?”

to Part Five