Chapter Text
He wakes up to the mocking sharpness of a scalpel hovering over his jugular. Undeniably stainless steel — one inch away from being his death-sentence — slowly edging to lower down on the most vital vein. His body braces for the impact, an excitement he knew far too well filling his chest with the crawling of a thousand little legs. The hope, the promise of release. The same orgasmic pleasure he'd get in bed.
His brain had linked the two things long ago, and he's not exactly sure why.
Something along the lines of self-preservation and self-destruction. Treading it like a tightrope. The thrill of being close to death — of licking at its cold and lifeless lips, letting the poison fluid numb his mind — was a high he never could achieve with drugs alone.
It would be stupid to say the reasoning behind it was that it was one of the only things that actually made him feel alive. Alive in the way a frog corpse would twitch when a shock-wave would be applied to the muscle after death. Filling his body with an electric buzz, and most importantly leaving behind something visible. The evidence. Black on white proof of his existence, no room for controversy.
Deep down he knew that the reason was plain and boring — that it was nothing but a vastly unhealthy coping mechanism.
But he was only ever one to toy with denial, rather than acceptance.
It had always been the thing he chased by the tail, falling into the addictive surge of feeling. Or not feeling. His whole life had been nothing but a perpetual cat-and-mouse chase of finding the thing that shut his thoughts up the best. Distracted him from the life he was living, gave him an out, no matter how little.
And he never took the liberty to be picky in his escapism. He welcomed each kick to the face with a smile and kissed the sole of the boot from which it was delivered. A gesture of undue gratitude.
He didn't know who to thank for Harry dropping into his life. Or rather the other way round, by the way Harry was the textbook example, how he was exactly the type Jean fell helplessly for — a tight cluster of distractions; vast oceans of absolutely every indulgence he could think of. And all of that without needing to feel bad, or guilty about giving in. Because it was Harry's finger on the imaginary trigger of his life. Harry who talked him into snorting the fourth line that evening; Harry who stumbled into his apartment after midnight, so aroused he could barely keep his hands to himself whenever Jean opened the door, pawing and groping at him while under the influence of more things that Jean could name; Harry who grabbed him by the hair, kissed his mouth like he wanted to suck all the air out of his lungs, and it was Harry that fucked him like he could actually forget the weight on his soul for once.
Harry would laugh, and he would giggle like a child, paw at his face, his body as if trying to find a way to slip under his skin. Touch him from the inside.
Jean knew he’d let him, if he ever asked.
Harry never asked for anything, of course. He took by his own measures, and whenever the well was drained, he’d fill it back up with vacant promises.
Jean had little perception of how much Harry took; how much he had to offer in the first place, and how much was left of him. It didn’t matter anyway. Harry always found a way of taking, and Jean found himself tangled helplessly in the feeling of being desired, needed. It was all he ever needed, really.
Every indulgence came with a price, he knew it did. He sees it looming — a foreboding of the likes Harry would tell him about — and turns his head away, in the other direction. He saw little good in knowing the future. That had always been more Harry’s jurisdiction. Talking with the city, knowing things he couldn’t possibly know and the like.
Even if he somehow found a way to see what the far future might hold for him, for them, he's sure he wouldn't change a thing. It was too good. Too perfect. It was like finding a full pack of cigarettes on the sidewalk and a matching, working lighter right next to it. It would have reeked of a trap to any halfway sane person, but Jean chose to be blind. Be gullible. Taking the, more or less, calculated risk of if the cigarettes were spiked, and the lighter filled with explosives.
Neither of them were very good at self-restraint.
They were two selfish animals, playing a game of seeing how far they could bend the invisible string tying them together before it… snapped.
It was almost choreographic. First, came the punch. The dip of a knife. Sometimes, whenever Harry was feeling particularly charitable — or had gotten his hands on some pyrholidon, which Jean had learned were more or less always running parallel lines — he’d put his cigarette out on the already tender skin of Jean’s thighs. Sometimes, the chest. Always somewhere invisible. Press down on it over the fabric when nobody was looking and grinning at how it made him squirm. Jean is sure that Harry took as much sick pleasure in it as he did, knowing he had marked Jean in this particular way. Made him his. A scar of his own. But when they were alone, and it was late at night, and none of them were anything close to sober — both their heads fucked to mush from one too many sloppy orgasms — he’d admire him. A kill switch. The voltage turned down, his fingers turning soft as feathers and his voice low and soothing. He’d look at Jean like an artist would at his canvas, eyes full of adoration and pride, making little adjustments where he thought necessary. And he’d praise him, lulling him in with a soft You did so well, didn’t you? And Jean would fold every time. Crumble into useless pieces, Harry calling every one of them beautiful all the while.
It was a dangerous game. He knew it wasn’t healthy, that it was nothing but a sick barter of feeding off each other's hurt.
Always more symbiotic than parasitic.
Still, he found himself prodding at the visible marks Harry left all over him — pressing down on a bruise, running his fingers along the ragged edges of a cut. Sometimes, he’d get selfish. Ask for more. Beg, even. He took great advantage of knowing that Harry was a generous host, always more than willing to indulge him. Not that he didn’t get a certain kick out of it as well. Harry would never do something if there wasn't at least a little something in it for him. It simply wasn't the way he was wired. He was a selfish animal, and seeing Jean writhe and hiss, wiggling his body like a worm cut in half — always, always leaning into the touch; never away — apparently covered the deal for him.
The drugs helped. He’s not sure who they helped, but they helped. Helped him to accept the words he was unused to hearing. The odd kindness behind them, even if they were muttered in regard to the pain he inflicted. He never needed drugs to enjoy that. That came to him naturally. His body just waiting to mold around the kick of a heel. Filling the foot-sized hole in his soul.
But Harry wasn’t here now.
Wasn’t here to witness how the phantom touch of a knife slowly slanted him into a chemical imbalance. Tip the pleasure over into panic.
Maybe it wasn’t an equal split, after all. The thrill was always what made it exciting. It was only ever a matter of who was clutching the handle of the knife. The key factor of if he'd trust himself further down the blade, or not. And it seemed like whoever was standing veiled in front of him didn’t make the cut. His thoughts didn’t feel like his anymore, replaced by a desperate, hunched figure of skin and bone, begging, begging, and begging to make the pain stop. Make the fear go away.
Make it stop. Please. I'll do anything.
The words left his mouth with a familiar aftertaste. He wasn't above desperation when the situation demanded it. And his mind was screaming.
No reward came of them — the chaotic mess of alphabet soup just swamped out in the hollowness of his head, finding no hold in the stranger’s ear. Not that it would make a difference. He had begged tirelessly and violently for hours on end. Throwing curse after curse at the obscured figure in front of him. The only thing that that earned him was an improvised gag made out of his balled-up tie, secured tightly so he wouldn’t make a fuss while his captor left him alone, and a matching black-eye that was still pulsing uncomfortably. They removed the tie whenever they came in, made him hiss and scream with nothing in the way, and eventually Jean’s throat was too sore to keep up his insults, and the gag was dropped completely. He’s almost convinced that it had just been a controlling measure, not to keep him quiet, but to demonstrate that Jean was more or less exposed defenselessly to their power. Because they never shied away from making him scream, so the noise couldn’t have been their prime matter of concern.
He could come up with a few reasons why he had been abducted. The only thing that sounded solid enough was that he was being human-trafficked. To some degree. Kept as livestock.
It was a sensible conclusion — while they did hurt him, they never did it in a way that caused damage to his body in a lasting way. Bruises faded, and the knife pressed to his throat was nothing but a weak tactic to scare him into submission. Or so he thought in a foolish frenzy. The featureless figure clutching the handle of the scalpel-like blade had laughed in his face, asking him if he thinks he’s special, pushed the tip of the blade through the first layer of skin, drawing a trickle of blood. Jean hadn't flinched, had tried to keep his composure, his pride, breathing as shallow as possible. He felt layer after layer separating under the slice of the knife, his throat covering with hot, viscid liquid. Eventually he must have croaked out Stop because he’s still alive, and his throat stung like razor wire was generously wrapped around it.
They must be after his organs, he thinks at one point. Human parts made good money when sold in good condition, and he knew Revachol had an extensive blood market that was easier to find access to than you’d think.
Human trafficking rarely made its way to their desk, but that wasn’t due to there being none, but more because it didn’t get reported. Either people were too intimidated, too scared, or they got a small portion of the money as a means to keep quiet. And nobody said no to easy money like that. You have two kidneys for a reason, and that reason was not for backup when you’re living in the sort of poverty raging through the entirety of Revachol. Nobody could afford to care about backup for tomorrow when tomorrow wasn’t set in stone. And Jean couldn’t blame them. He had done some fucked up things in the means of getting by.
He’s sure that there had been some sort of mix-up. He hadn’t been going easy on neither the alcohol nor the speed — or whatever fucking powder Harry spread over his finger and pushed into his gums like they belonged to him — and he’s sure nothing valuable would come from his insides.
Besides, he only checked like half of the boxes of traits that would make him a susceptible target to human trafficking. Socially isolated, friendless, sure. But unemployed, homeless and no future? Come to think of it, he’s unsure of those points himself. Maybe he was exactly the sort of target they preferred.
He clings to the hope that at least someone had noticed his disappearance like a life jacket.
When he attempts to sway his captor, tells them about his drug-habit and fucked insides, they replied with a simple I know. Refusing to elaborate.
-
[It’s around three hours after midnight, it somehow always is in the last time, and the sadness weighing down on his chest feels no lighter than during the daytime. Harry had left long ago, he’s not even sure if he had been here with him in the first place. It was easy to get lost. Forget. Perhaps even find a stranger to help you forget. And that’s exactly what he had been planning on doing. Yet, as he looks at his drink clutched in his cold, excessively sweaty hand, he’s sure that something was wrong. Very wrong. Not the sort of wrong you could recover from, but an actual fuck-up.
He had done molly before, or at least that’s what Harry had said it was back then while they were still trying new things out and would do almost everything they’d get their hands on. It could have been a lie. Harry said a lot of things when he was on drugs, not all of them true.
He’s not completely sure why he felt like he was on the direct path to dying. Or not really dying, per se. Just plain suffering with no light in sight. His head was empty, and the world seemed to drown him in waves of nothing but numb bliss. It tipped and twisted and crushed him under the weight of everything happening all at the same time. Like the air was being sucked away and wasn’t being refilled.
He keeps staring at his drink as if it was at personal fault for his anguish. Which was reasonable to assume. It was his third one, he thinks. And his alcohol tolerance had always been low. Lower than for any other drug anyway.
But it wasn’t the alcohol.
This was neither the three glasses of neat whiskey nor the fucking molly. No, this was a whole lot fucking worse. The realization punches a deep hole into his stomach — he had been drugged. He had been roofied like a stupid teenager on their first night out without their parents.
He thinks he starts laughing. He doesn’t hear himself laugh. He only feels his lungs vibrate like a beehive in his chest.
Not that he found it funny — it was anything but funny, but it was dumb. So incredibly stupid. His eyes roll over the stranger next to him, the faintest trace of a smile on their face. Polite and absolutely terrifying, he suddenly thinks. They had given him the eye all night, never talked to him, but had slowly gotten closer throughout the time he was sitting here. Alone.
And now, it was too late. Everything was too late. His eyelids fail him, and he barely manages to keep his head up when he’s pulled out the bar, and into the backseat of a car he could make out neither the number plate nor the model from.
It was black, he notes. But then, everything was black in the night.
He doesn’t remember much after that. He remembers puking, and he remembers his head pulsing like it had been stuck through the tumble-dryer, and he remembers the bone-chilling feeling of a needle being stuck into his arm. A hand on his forehead, maybe a wet cloth. He felt feverish, and whenever he was awake enough to register his surroundings, a voice would talk to him. He never did make out their face. And while he knew they were talking to him, none of what they were saying made even the faintest bit of fucking sense. His body felt way too weak for any of that shit. It was like trying to watch one of those old black-and-white television series that would be aired in a foreign language and would make him question whether he was tripping on acid while he was in fact tripping on acid, which is to say, not a good experience.
The next thing he remembers is waking up here. Here in the sense of tied to this stupid chair. His hands hurt, and his face hurt. And his ass hurt. He hopes with everything inside him that it wasn’t for the reason he thought it was.
By how empty he felt, he’s sure he must have overdosed. Mixed too many substances — beginner mistake.
The antidepressants he was on and off with only worsened the whole thing. They lowered his tolerance significantly, and while most days he was grateful that he could get wasted with little financial harm, it also meant the hangovers were so much worse. Not to forget how much more careful he had to be.
He had been forced to learn the hard way that ‘careful’ was a word that didn’t exist in Harry’s everyday terminology and had accidentally overdosed more often than not. Harry was insistent, and apparently unfamiliar with the concept of doing too much. The only concept that existed in his narrow universe was that everything that didn’t make you puke your guts out the next morning was too little. But he at least had a tolerance to back that up. He could snort enough to kill an adult horse and somehow still have room for a few more. The build-up of more than fifteen years of committed substance abuse, Jean thinks. And Harry didn’t shy away from admitting it when Jean asked — Born with it, y’know? Runs in my veins.
Which was taxing, in the long run. At least up until the point he had built up a tolerance of his own. It came naturally, with Harry as his partner.
But it was fine. It was always fine. It had to be.
Harry would always help him come down from the overdose, heave him into his bathtub with the sort of strength Jean would later fantasize about.
And he’d place a wet, cold washcloth over his temple when he’d start shivering, just like the stranger from the bar was doing right now. It was gentle, too fucking gentle for the person that had most definitely roofied him and was now keeping him tied up in their — he thinks it must be — attic against his will.
But the gentleness didn’t last all that long, and when he finally started regaining consciousness, and he could actually hear what they were saying, it was everything but good.
At times he thought there were two voices talking to him. Or not exactly to him, but with each other. Bickering and jabbing at each other. It reminded him too much of him and Harry, and he’s sure he must have gone insane was now hallucinating. Or reliving his last moments.
He discards the thought immediately.
Besides, his head was preoccupied with sounding alarm as soon as the words ‘bone saw’ reached his perception.
He doesn’t remember the last time he had panicked this badly since his first overdose.
It was dark, and lonely, and while he’s everything but alone now, he feels exactly like he did back then. Helpless and stranded, and like the world was abandoning him. His head pulsed with the aftereffect of whatever fluid they had injected him in order to make sure the overdose wouldn’t kill him.
It was sort of odd how terrified he suddenly was. He had never been afraid of dying. But he was afraid now. And he wanted to go home. And he didn’t want to fucking have this stranger press a soft towel against his forehead as if they goddamn cared about him.
He could deal with pain. He could deal with all sorts of things, but this was sick. This was making him sick to his stomach.
He felt in that moment like cattle. A pig with its hoofs tied together, getting carried off to the slaughterhouse. Getting strung up, bled dry. And he had enough consciousness to realize he was going to be killed. He was going to be fucking axe murdered. And he was scared. Scared shitless. He wanted to die, and some stupid part of him still screamed that he didn’t.
But more importantly, he wanted the fucking pretence softness to stop. If they were going to kill him, they should get it over with. Shouldn’t make it into a sick game of pretending this wasn’t just preparation of the meat.
He was already reasonably supplied with that. Of someone being oddly sweet and switching up so immediately it made Jean’s heart shrivel up every time.
And every goddamn time he fell for it again.
He’s surprised there’s enough left to keep on supplying his body with the much-needed blood.
But it didn’t matter now. He had never been so sure he was going to die. And he had never in his life been so scared of dying. He was a fucking hypocrite, always whining and begging for something but as soon as it knocked at the door, he’d pull his tail in and cower in the corner of the room like a neglected shelter dog.
A goddamn fucking hypocrite.
He’s sure Harry would laugh in his face if he saw him now. He hopes he does. Rubs it in, pours salt in the wound. Calls him a stupid mother-fucking idiot before forcefully kissing him like it was supposed to be punishment for leaving him alone. Loaded with wordless passion. Giving him the air to keep on living for another day, and another, and another.]
— —
The hours stretched, and at one point he had given up on the hope that someone was coming to save him.
He cringes to himself, wonders what he had done wrong in his life to end up here. A few possible options came to mind immediately.
Harry was surprisingly not one of them.
His arms were numb, rubbed raw, the sharp edge of what must once have been a harmless rope made for gardening cutting like razor blades into the fragile skin of his wrists. For the first few hours he had twisted and shifted his arms behind his back, making the rough texture of the handcuffs rub friction burns into his skin. He regretted it now. Tried to keep his arms as still as possible to avoid irritating the already opened and, most likely to some degree, infected wound. By the weight pressing onto his thighs and ankles, he’s sure they had gotten the same treatment. He could shift his torso, wriggle around if he wanted, but his lower body was more or less fixed to place. He could open and close his legs, make his knees touch, sure, but it was just as pointless as any other movement he had been given the liberty to do.
Easing into the pain like he’d learned to do was proving to be more of a challenge with the rising panic burning furiously like an acid tank in his chest. He apparently had more fight left in him than he thought. The last shreds of his seemingly non-existent will to live finally making an appearance to make the near-death experience he craved most days as unpleasant as possible.
Going his whole life wishing he was dead, and when the opportunity finally arose, his brain decides that dying might not actually be that fun. Stupid if there ever was something.
It was foolish of him to ever think he’d have a satisfying death. It had always been obvious it would be something more or less insignificant — death by slipping down a flight of stairs; death by accidentally choking on a piece of bread while he was alone at home, something stupid and mundane. He knew he’d never get the heroic death he sometimes dreamed of — died in the line of duty.
And then, not to forget the newest addition to the imaginary ‘Stupid ways I’m going to die’- list:
Death by Harrier du Bois.
Which, to be fair, sounded like the most likely one of them all. Harry was a fucking rash, a whirlwind of absolute and utter destruction.
He grumbles, his mind remarking that if anyone would care enough to come to save him, it would be Harry.
No matter how much shit he gave him — how they ruined each other to the point of no return, picked at each other’s wounds till they turned a nasty rust-color and were bleeding pus — Harry was loyal to his little projects. And you had to give it to him, almost supernatural in his detective abilities. Which sort of seemed to be his last hope of rescue.
He’d get one of his shivers he said once, and the then whole world made sense for just the splinter of a second. Jean would pretend he wasn’t as impressed as he was, give him a pat on the bat and acknowledge him in the only way he knew how to. Nice work, dipshit. Next time just a little faster, yeah? And Harry would rib back at him with a grin, saying that they wouldn’t have solved half of their cases if it wasn’t for him, and Jean would shrug, say something along the lines of Harry giving himself too much credit. But it was the truth, of course. Harry was an excellent detective. When he wanted to be, at least. Jean could see that he was drowning just as much as he was. He just showed it differently — wasn’t all moody and sulky like Jean was, but instead loud and obnoxious and yelling his suffering from the top of his lungs.
But they were both always drowning. No drugs and sex or late-night talks on the roofs of fallout buildings could reshape that fact into something mild.
Which was still more solace than Jean could ever afford.
He continues to be selfish. It didn’t hurt anyone to imagine, and he lets his thoughts circle to what Harry would do when he’d finally show up — like a knight in shining armour — and once the mental image was there, he lets his thoughts deteriorate into a direction that would for sure gain him the clinically insane status once and for all, getting him sent into a mental institute where he’d eat shock-therapy for breakfast.
His dick stirs briefly, a sickish want pulsing in his lower abdomen.
But it did little more to help him relax, and a surge of panic quickly swallowed the last shreds before he actually had the chance to exploit it for his own sick enjoyment. He freezes, hears the drumming of heavy footsteps move behind the door. He had been sitting in nothing but pitch-black for the last however many goddamn hours, and hisses when the door to the attic opens and the blindingly blue from the light bulb in the hallway outside hits his face like a thousand hornets coming to eat him alive.
The door closes, and the footsteps ascend in his direction. Determined, with no rush.
He hears the grinding sound of fabric; a curtain being pulled open. Sudden light, daylight, floods his perception and he almost tips the chair over by how violently his body flinches back.
The trivial ceiling light he hadn’t had the chance to pay much attention to till now flickers to life, surgical and sterile, and before his eyes can adjust to the blinding overflow of light, he feels a sudden pressure to his jugular. A cold sheen of sweat washes over his body, and his vision obscures with shimmering, multicolored dots, sucking him into the pulsing void of nonexistence.
His unconscious body is tied loose and carried over to a small dissection table at the far end of the attic — out of immediate periphery. When the scalpel slices through the first layers of skin tissue, and blood starts oozing with thick viscidity, the last grains of sand start trickling down the bottleneck of the hourglass. A race against time.
—
The anesthesia lets off slowly, and he floats between lucidity and dreaming for a long, long time. Like pressing on reel-to-reel tape, making him relive the same loop over, and over again. None of the dreams he was forcefully plunged in and out of were good — most of them eerie mashups of TV-shows he knew he must have watched as a kid, just bloodier, and with way more guts than he remembered them to be — but they were there, nonetheless. Offering a small sliver of escapism.
There was a new, splitting pain shooting through his left side whenever he’d move, setting his body on fire and making him wish he’d have more of the dreaming, and less of reality. But generally speaking, the pain was still pretty mild, he thinks. Numbed, somehow. Hidden behind a strong veil of narcotics.
Morphine, his mind fills the blank. A high dose, as well. The good stuff. Hospital-grade. Someone had been feeling very generous about his wellbeing.
That same someone seems to be talking to him again — trying to, at least — and he does his best to focus on what they were saying. It might be important, he thinks. However much anything could be important tied helplessly to a chair.
Instead of making out any of the words, panic takes hold and a series of low, unintelligible pleas leaves his mouth, keeping his eyes clutched close as if that would make everything disappear and maybe he’d wake up like from a bad dream. Out of sight out of mind.
It, of course, had little effect beyond the placebo one he clung onto for dear life, and a rough hand yanks his head up by the hair, making him squint up at them. He couldn’t see their mouth moving, but something was vibrating in his ear canal. Words, surely.
He blindly mouths back at them without much care of what was actually leaving his lips, till a sharp sting blooms over his cheek, quickly shutting him up. He’s sure his ears are already ringing too badly for him to actually care, but then, the slap had no real juice behind it anyway. It was nothing compared to the punches he remembered — his head feeling like it might explode clean off from the impact, splitting white pain, the world around him spinning and warping together so fast that he assumes he must have been dropped from somewhere and was falling to his sure death. The world was black at the edges, and his eyelids felt ridiculously heavy, weighing down like lead.
The figure lets his head go and he slumps back into himself like a ragdoll.
It’s only when the footsteps circle around him, and the hint of an unmistakable sweat-cigarette-cologne concoction assaults his nose, that his neurons start firing.
He knits his brows together, managing to open his eyes enough to make out a flash of shoes passing him. Baby-crocodile skin. Nasty green.
“Harry? Is that fucking you?” He croaks, almost bursts into a fit of delirious laughter, but his throat feels too raw to bring out much beyond a groan. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to feel relieved, or more terrified.
Harry builds himself up in front of Jean, grunting, “Of course it’s fucking me. Who else did you expect to come and find you here in this shithole? We're in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Jean huffs, lets out all the remaining air in his lungs. “Mh, I’m sure. Any explanation on why I’m still tied up? Why the first thing you did was slap me?”
“Because you’re stupid. And reckless.”
“And..?”
“There’s no and, you did this to yourself.”
“Wait, you’re leaving me here to rot? Come on shitkid, we both know even you’re not that heartless.” Jean follows Harry’s steps with his eyes, waits till they stop in front of him again. “Or maybe you want to be the one that kills me yourself. Is that what this is? You want to play psycho-killer?” He smiles to himself, his head still lowered. “Never knew you had it in you.”
Harry sucks in a breath through his teeth, “Shut up, you idiot. I was worried shitless about you.” After a second, he adds, quieter, “I thought you were dead. Finally got yourself killed. Somehow.”
The words evoke a gleam of odd satisfaction in him.
“Must have been torture,” he says indifferently. “Maybe next time you’ll think about it before you disappear traceless for a week and then show up with two black eyes and a broken rib.”
“This really isn’t about me, is it, Jean.” Harry grumbles.
“Oh but it is. It’s always about you." Familiar irritation rises in him and his heart rate spikes. “And you don’t even notice that you’re making it about yourself again. Keeping me tied up here, talking shit about me being reckless as if it wasn’t you that left me alone that night.”
A moment of tense silence clogs his lungs.
“It’s hardly my fault you chose a goddamn bar for-”, Harry doesn’t finish his sentence. “I panicked, yeah? It made me uncomfortable.”
Jean snorts, and his nose doesn’t seem too pleased with the enthusiasm he put into it.
“Sure. As if you don’t fucking love having your dick up my ass.” He let’s the sentence weigh for a second before he continues, “You’re the biggest faggot in the room, Harry.”
Harry doesn’t exactly flinch, but something pretty close overtakes his body. Jean is determined to push it.
“You would fuck me right now if you could,” he jabs with a little grin, and Harry immediately grabs a fistful of his hair; jerks him up by the scalp. Forceful, and in exactly the way Jean had imagined he would in his brief daydream. Predictable, the motherfucker, he thinks with a smirk.
He forces his eyes open; holds Harry’s gaze with the most lecherous look he can muster through his weakened and wrecked body.
“Now that I’m all helpless. Can’t even fight back. You fucking love that, don’t you?”
Harry’s face quivers and he exhales a huff of air. His eyes fill with that same darkened hunger he always had before he’d fuck his mind to a blank and Jean’s dick definitely stirs at that sight. The pain forgotten, or rather, waiting. A potential.
“Stop projecting, Vicky. You’re the only one that wants that.” His voice adapts that sugary sweet, debauched tone he used whenever Jean would nuzzle against his leg, begging to let him suck him off.
Jean keeps grinning; mumbles something along the lines of Yeah, I would like that actually.
Harry replies with a low God, do you ever shut up under his breath, yet his hand moves by its own agenda, finding Jean’s chin and starting to mindlessly thumb at his lip. Jean opens obediently, lets Harry’s finger slip in without any resistance on his part.
Harry’s expression breaks, soft and gentle, an underlying hunger shining through the cracks.
“How the hell do you do it,” he whispers, “you and that gorgeous face of yours. I almost forgot how pretty you are.” His other hand goes to comb a strand of grease-drenched hair from his face, and while Jean felt the furthest from pretty at the moment, his cheeks tint at the words. “No wonder they couldn’t resist a pretty face like that.”
Jean gags, trying to say something along the lines of Are you seriously trying to tell me I got human-fucking-trafficked because of my good looks? Harry grins widely in response, flashing his teeth, and Jean wishes he’d sink them into his throat.
“Fuck, I definitely would have kidnapped and tortured you if I knew you’d look this damn hot."
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re too feeble-minded. All bark no bite," he pushes the words through Harry's finger lodged inside his mouth, spits out a mouthful of bile and saliva as Harry retreats with a plop.
“You keep talking back and see what happens," Harry shoots back, his voice sharp.
“Is that a threat? Or a promise?”
Jean flashes a crooked grin, although he doesn’t get graced with a reply.
His stomach was nagging with hunger, and his perverted, twisting mind translates the lack of substance into pure, unfiltered lust. All the soaring fear he had felt just a moment ago turned into a mush of desire. His vision clouds with all the things Harry could do to him, make him take all of him even if he could barely think straight from the pain, going again, and again, again till he’d have to beg for-
Harry raises his knee suddenly, places it over Jean’s thigh, pushing down so his legs slowly part under the weight. Jean lets out a breathy whimper as Harry knees him in the crotch, pressing up against his evidently hard cock.
“I’m not going to fuck you. Not like this." Harry grins, takes his face between two fingers, crushing his bruised cheeks together with a force that makes Jean wince. "You’re like one step away from dying to hypothermia, it’s fucking freezing in here.”
Jean furrows his brows, was it cold? He didn’t feel cold. Just numb. Maybe the same, he thinks, he could hardly feel his limbs so maybe Harry was onto something.
"I don't feel anything," he says through crushed cheeks.
"Sure." Harry releases his face and Jean lets out a whine. "Still not happening.
“You’re such a fucking tease. You don’t have to work me up if you don’t have anything to back that up with,” he nags, trying to rut his restrained hip upwards as Harry removes his knee without any further action.
“You worked yourself up, Viquemare. Going on about your fucked up kidnapped-sex-fantasy. That was fully your idea. I never agreed to that.”
Jean huffs, irritated.
“What, like you suddenly care about me. You usually don’t give a shit about me being hurt.”
“Sure, I like seeing you in pain. I’m not saying it doesn’t get me hot," Harry shrugs.
“But?” Jean eyes him expectantly, his body pulsing. The things he’d do for an orgasm right now-
“But you’re being a huge fucking bitch about it. C’mon. Hold yourself together, Viquemare. Everyone is worried to fucking death about you,” Harry replies simply.
“Fucking.. to death,” Jean repeats with a small smile.
Harry immediately shoots him another stern look, although it was pretty obvious that he found Jean’s desperation alluring. He always did.
The knots tying Jean to place by his thighs, ankles and his wrists are quickly loosened, and Harry sucks in a little breath when he removes the last piece of rope. The strings were crusted with blood and pus, fusing and getting stuck inside the wound like a nasty band aid, reopening it when taken off.
“Jesus-”
“Looks worse than it feels.”
He was half expecting it to look way worse by how it felt, but his ego held him back from admitting that in front of Harry. It didn’t seem infected, he notes with faint relief, observing the wound almost curiously. Just irritated to the point the skin had worn out pretty much completely.
He flexes his fingers, hissing when the torn skin stretches out further, new blood covering the raw skin. It hurt almost pleasantly now that he had Harry back as his audience.
Harry takes the imaginary bait Jean was laying out for him; grabs for his wrist — the left, evidently redder one — pressing down with calculated pressure.
Jean eyes him, tries to find something telling behind his expression.
“Changed your mind, shitkid?”, he teases, moving his face close to Harry’s, breathing a phantom kiss over his lips. They never kissed sober, but then Jean isn't even fully sure Harry is sober right now. Morphine aside, he had been on a more or less forced detox from his usual vices. He’d do a crazy number of things for some speed just about now. Not to forget the org-
Harry pulls back without any follow-up and lets his arms drop back into his lap.
Jean notices with vague frustration that he gave him too little credit in his ability to control himself.
“No.”
Jean pouts, Harry patting him on the cheek twice as he gets up. His knees felt positively jelly after sitting for days on end, and Harry immediately goes to stabilize him around the waist. An electric jolt spreads from the touch, and Jean hopes Harry hadn’t heard him whimper.
Hopes he did.
Harry keeps sparing him side-ways glances as he transports Jean out of the building, into his motor-carriage. Jean doesn’t pay him any attention, collapsing limp on the passenger seat with his last shreds of energy. The furnace inside their MC wasn’t working, and it doesn’t take long that his body starts regaining its sense for temperature. Harry offers him his jacket to use as a blanket, but Jean refuses violently. That jacket is not fucking touching my body. Harry shrugs, sighing suit yourself.
Jean feels way too spent to care anyway. When was the last time he had eaten? Drank some water? He remembers being fed something, some water scarcely touching the desert-dry roof of his mouth, but that memory was at least a day old. It was only ever enough to keep his insides fresh. He feels nothing but relief of knowing he was in save hands, finally. He wasn’t going to audibly say so, of course, but he was grateful to be alive.
“What day is it anyway?” He asks, his voice breaking.
Harry turns in his direction, catching his eye.
“Monday.”
“Mon-day.”
Jean nods slowly, repeating the unfascinating word as if it was more. Harry returns his focus to the road.
“Where are you taking me? Your place? Aren’t you on duty?”, he talks with great strain to his vocal cords, still sore and aching.
“My duty is making sure my satellite doesn’t go out of orbit and get himself killed. You’re my duty.” Jean’s chest flimmers at the words. Fuzzy warmth buzzing inside his ribcage. “Besides, they never let me out on the field without a partner. They don’t fucking trust me enough.”
Jean snorts.
“I wonder why. I wonder why, shitkid.”
Harry grins at the road, shrugging his shoulders.
“I’m taking you to Gottlieb. Getting you checked. God knows what sort of internal bleeding or fractures you have going on.” His right hand lets go of the wheel; reaches out to touch the bridge of Jean’s nose. “That for sure looks broken, if you ask me. Fractured, at best.”
Jean joins his finger to the place, the skin ragged when he touches it. All things considered, he didn’t feel all that bad. Barely felt his face at all. Must be the adrenaline, he thinks. Additionally to that insane shot of morphine that he was most definitely still coming down from. He’d have to look that up later. Miracle drug in pain suppressing.
“I feel fine,” he concludes.
“I’m sure you do. They put you on some pretty decent drugs.” Harry replies in odd sync to his thoughts. “You’ll feel it in an hour, don’t worry. You’ll thank me for dragging you over to Gottlieb.” Harry retreats his gentle touching finger after tracing once down the length of his bridge.
“Sure. Whatever you say, shitkid,” Jean grumbles, turns his head to stare out of the window.
Harry lets his gaze linger for a while longer, his face visibly torn between concern and feral lust. He always had that strange sort of gentle look to him whenever he thought Jean wasn't looking. Like he actually cared. He fucked far from it.
Jean discards the thought, focuses on his surroundings. They’re in the woods, he notes. Nothing but sky-high trees towering over the road, skeletal and blank. The sight was almost depressing, yet he keeps looking till he felt the motion sickness come to knock him out. He leans back and closes his eyes to ground himself. Harry would maul him if he threw up in the car.
He feels Harry’s eyes staring into the side of his face, and Harry’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts no more than two minutes later.
“What, uh, happened that night? After I left, I mean.” His face is covered in something that almost resembled guilt. Jean frowns.
“I don’t fucking know. Got roofied, I guess. Woke up, couldn’t move, puked my guts out like four times and now I’m here. Alive. Somehow,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
Harry is quiet for a long moment.
“That’s… not good.”
“Oh, you figure?” Jean huffs, dripping his usual venom-laced sarcasm. “Well next time get over your stupid ego and talk to me before running off into the night like a coward. Might help.”
“And you’re sure it’s not because it was a-”
Jean rolls his eyes, cuts him off.
“The fact that I got drugged has nothing to do with it goddamn being a gay bar. Even you're not that damn dense to think that. I was just stupid.” He clenches his jaw, a sharp stab immediately shooting through his head. “I stopped.. caring when you left. Didn't pay much attention to my surroundings, drinking without pause and just fucking hoping you'd... feel it, somehow. That you'd come back and make me drag myself out of the bar." He snorts, "God knows it wasn't you that dragged me out."
Harry doesn't say anything. Jean continues.
"I think I sort of…”, he pauses to consider his words, “wanted something to happen. Teach you a lesson, or whatever. That you'd feel guilty, for once in your goddamn life.”
They hit a pothole; the car shaking as Harry curses and guides them back to the road.
“That's, uh.. You should maybe have that checked as well, you know”, Harry scratches his chin, "abandonment issues. Maybe you weren’t held enough as a bab-”, he starts and Jean cuts him off with a mean glare.
“Shut up. You don’t get to recommend fuckin’… therapy to me. I don’t need to pay someone to know there’s something hugely knocked out of place in my head. Therapy does not fucking work. And you’re the walking epitome of that.” He sighs, “We both are.”
They’re quiet after that. Harry stealing glances at Jean slouching, clearing his throat after a while.
“I’ll, uh, make it up to you, yeah?” He doesn’t turn to look at him.
“With sex?”
Jean stares, seeing Harry barely managing to suppress a smirk.
“You’re a sharp one, Vic.”
“Might want to have that checked, huh shitkid? Why you want to fuck me so bad. Maybe your fath-”
“Don’t.” Harry teeth crunch unnaturally, his face darkening and eyes sinking into dark holes as he furrows his brows. “Don’t talk to me about my fucking dad.”
Jean is about to jab a mean retort back at him, but quickly shut his mouth when he finds Harry’s expression breaking. His eyes dewy, jaw clenched violently.
He turns his head away without saying a word, sighing as he closes his eyes once more and lets himself sink into the suddenly heavenly velvet-soft seat pollster of their service vehicle. He tries to not think about the various bodily fluids he knew for a fact were infused in the stuffing — and starts drifting in and out of some sort of half-sleep where he kept having way too long sequences of dreams that left him feeling like an hour had passed while it had been no more than a good five minutes a quick glance at the clock confirmed.
But his body was way too exhausted for him to keep his eyes open for longer than a minute, and by the time they reached their lazareth he was barely grasping at the brink of reality.
Harry filled out all the paperwork for him, made up a stupid excuse that he knew Gottlieb didn’t even faintly believe, and drove him back to his apartment after he had gotten the green light on Jean’s health. It didn’t need spelling out that one of his kidneys was most definitely missing with the deep, stitched cut on Jean’s left side. A thick layer of bandaging covers the area now, and even if he didn’t comment on it, it obviously worried Gottlieb and he had given Harry some antibiotics to make sure the wound didn’t get infected. Both of his open wrists had been disinfected and thinly bandaged for a quick and dirt-free healing process. None of the other damage seemed to be fatal. Surface-level. Bruises that would fade to yellow in a week's notice.
When they arrive at his apartment, he carries Jean to his bed, slips into the bathroom to get a wet cloth and painkillers, for later. Jean doesn’t stir while he gently sponge-bathes his entire body, careful not to wake him, undressing and redressing him in a clean set of clothes. Clean going as far as his malfunctional wardrobe allowed.
He slips out to get some take-away — the cheapest and closest fast-food place available — and returns with one single kebab. The one Jean always picked whenever they had to get some emergency-food before one of them passed out from malnutrition and it was too late into the night for any other place to be open.
He hadn’t even eaten himself, hadn’t even railed his morning line yet. The only relief he had had today was the half a pack of cigarettes that he had chain-smoked during the frantic car ride to, and back from the godforsaken slump of a town where his head finally yelled was the place Jean must be. He hates himself for how long it took him, that he had almost given up. The drugs must have finally killed enough neurons for his brain capacity to lower significantly, and he despises himself for it. It would have been his fault if he had been any slower and found him dead.
But by the things he saw in that house, not much of him would have been left anyway.
It looked more like a slaughterhouse in there than a living space. A sick museum of preserved and displayed body parts. He could reasonably deny that it was human up to the point that he found a whole face looking back at him behind a display window. Horrifying and contorted, the skin stretched at an odd angle. It only got worse from there on. The house was built like a labyrinth, and every corner he took just led to another, even more horrible room.
There was a system to it, he’s sure. But he didn’t have the time to dissect that thought when he was almost certain he could hear Jean’s labored breathing — could hear his heart beating like it was the same one housed in his chest— coming from somewhere up.
The attic.
He rushed after the faint sound of hope and decided to come back once more tomorrow. When Jean was not on the direct path to a rendezvous with death themselves. When his own head felt less blurry and obscured than it did at the thought that he had almost lost his partner. Actually lost him. Why did it affect him as much as it did?
Now that he had succeeded — managed to save him — he looks at Jean sleeping safely in his bed for a self-indulgent amount of time. Wonders why his heart still felt like it was being crushed to pieces.
Why his lungs felt like they were trying to fly out of his chest.
The feeling dissipates, and he gently shakes Jean awake by the shoulders, forcing him to eat the food he got him while he goes to pour him a glass of water. Jean gulps down the whole glass in one, then asks for a second that Harry is glad to deliver. He eats half of the kebab and says that he’s one step away from vomiting when Harry protests that he should eat up.
Harry grumbles, gives in, keeps the kebab wrapped and in his refrigerator for when Jean wakes up later, starving.
When he’s all fixed up and blacked out again, Harry sits down next to him — scooches as close as the wideness of the bed allowed him to — and watches, silently. Strokes over his dampened hair, thumbs at the speck of sauce in the corner of his mouth and licks it off. Jean would call him a disgusting piece of shit, ask him what the hell his problem was if he was awake right now.
But he wasn’t.
So, Harry allows himself to overindulge. He traces patterns over his shoulder; commits the blemishes decorating his face to memory till he falls asleep with one hand tangled up in Jean’s hair, the other wrapped once around Jean's waist. Keeping him tucked safely into a hug and breathing calmly against the top of his head.
It was the closest they had ever been — more or less — sober speaking.