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[Stage two: Anger]
The worst thing is how gentle Todd is, even in this. The serene expression on his face and the calm, firm pressure of his hands on one side and Jesse on the other - it’s a very unfavorable juxtaposition, Jesse thinks; unfavorable for Jesse. Todd’s hands are steady on Jesse’s skin, and Jesse is trembling, shaking with fear and he doesn’t know what else, only that his body won’t stay still, no matter how hard he tries, or how often he tries, even. He should be used to this by now, he thinks, because this is not the first time Todd has touched him and it won’t be the last.
Todd is stroking his sides in slow, controlled movements, as if to quench Jesse’s quivering, grabbing hold of him with controlled movements when Jesse jerks away and makes another desperate bid for escape, even though there’s nowhere to go.
They call it a cell, but they’re keeping him in a damn hole in the ground, that’s all this is. In the beginning, there was nothing at all furnishing this place. By now, there’s a mattress and a bucket – but still no way out. Not for Jesse, not like this, because the only time the ladder is down, Todd’s down here, too. He can’t overpower Todd, and even if, by some miracle, he did manage to get the upper hand and made it to the ladder, there’s no way he could manage to climb up on his own, shackled and bruised as he is. He tried, once. All he gained were more bruises and the addition of a bolt in the ground, attached to the chain around his waist.
He tugs on that chain, now, and the calm way Todd takes hold of his wrists and holds them down makes Jesse’s trashing seem childish, unreasonable, makes him feel like one of those skittish horses he saw on TV once, a documentary about traumatized, spooked horses that needed “time and patience”, that needed a steady hand and soft-spoken words, which is exactly what Todd does to Jesse, shushing him and making weird cooing noises as Jesse tries to twist away, shouts at him to stop, pleads with him to let him go.
Todd’s gentle demeanor is a constant. Him keeping his composure and being what can be labeled “tender” whilst casually being violent is a fixed-point, and Jesse can’t understand it, can’t understand Todd; Todd’s actions are unpredictable and it makes Jesse’s skin crawl, the way Todd commits these unspeakable, horrifying crimes and behaves like there’s nothing wrong with his actions, like he doesn’t notice how wrong they are, like murdering a child without a second thought is no worse than squishing a mosquito or swatting a fly. Like pressing Jesse down and opening him up in slow, measured thrusts with his damn, steady fingers is exactly what’s supposed to happen, like there’s nothing wrong with taking a person prisoner and doing with them as he pleases, like this is the most natural and civilized thing in the world and Jesse is the savage who needs taming.
He make it seem like Jesse’s the unreasonable one here, like Jesse’s in the wrong, like getting away and preventing Todd from keeping him prisoner, from repeatedly raping him is not what any person is supposed to do under these circumstances. Almost effortlessly, Todd makes it seem as if Jesse is just being difficult and Todd is a good soul, is being exceedingly patient and kind.
And he is, that’s the worst part. He really is. He is exceedingly patient and kind and ever so gentle, even in this, especially in this, and Jesse hates it, hates him, and he’s furious and scared and his eyes are tearing up and every twist of his body makes those damn chains click and clang and he’s so, so very angry. In the back of his mind he remembers what they told him in rehab and the support group about the stages of grief, and he thinks he’s passed right through denial, now. Second stage: anger, and that sounds about right. If you grieve for loved ones you’ve lost, why not grieve for freedom? He was very fond of that, after all.
He tries to kick Todd, but it’s hard with his muscles screaming at him and Todd leaning over him as he is, and then Todd is shushing him and gently pressing down on his ribs, increasing the pressure when Jesse kicks again and looking down at him as if to say “no, hold still, you should have learned by now”.
And he should have. “Conditioning”, he thinks, and the skittish horses are in his head again.
The first time Todd had undressed Jesse (the time that started the near-nightly visits), Todd’s never changing demeanor had made it seem like the perfectly normal course of action, like a natural progression of events, and the conditioning had started right there, that night. Jesse remembers thinking the word “conditioning” then, too, when Todd’s hand pressed down on his freshly bruised ribcage every time he struggled, an obvious pattern, but no less effective for that, and it was so much worse back then, with his bruises so much worse and so many more in number.
- - - - - - - -
[Stage one: Denial]
Todd’s hands stroking along Jesse’s sides send a tremor through him, which Todd answers with another “Shhh” and several repetitions of the movement, as if to give Jesse time to become accustomed to the touch.
This time, Todd didn’t come down into his makeshift-cell to get him out, but instead he stayed down, and first Jesse was confused, but now he thinks he’s got the picture. He knows what this is going to be. There’s not many ways this can go, not with Jesse on the ground, pants down to his ankles and Todd leaning over him, holding him down, making cooing noises and trying to get him to be calm, too, but there’s no way Jesse can stay calm through this, not if it’s going to be what he suspects. He says “No” on repeat, asks “What are you doing?”, because maybe he’s wrong, maybe there’s an explanation for all this, says “No, wait, no!”.
Jesse tries to twist away, but Todd is holding him fast, one hand pressing down on Jesse’s bruised ribcage, and his entire front feels like it must be colored black, but he can’t see, because earlier he didn’t even think to check, everything hurt too much to move, and after the cook he was so tired he fell asleep despite the pain. Now, there’s still his shirt covering him. It wouldn’t be easy to get it off, what with the cuffs and all, Jesse thinks, hysterically.
The hand on his front is making it hard to breathe, because his ribs hurt, hurt, hurt, and he can’t seem to catch his breath, which makes it harder to struggle, but also makes his body panic and want to struggle even more, makes his body want to shake those hands off. But struggling against Todd like this is hard, he’s got no leverage and everything puts him at a disadvantage, with everything hurting like hell, with every movement reminding him of the beating and making the beaten parts flare alive. Todd’s hand pressing him down is like an immovable object, and Jesse can only move the rest of his body so much, pinned down as he is - and no, wait, Todd’s hand is not so immovable after all, because Todd’s easing off when Jesse holds still, which makes Jesse think “conditioning”, makes him think “fuck, fuck, fuck”.
Makes him stop moving.
He gasps, trying to catch his breath, and Todd eases up a bit more. Just light pressure now, still that one damn hand (“shhh, good, shh”), when Jesse feels the other one easing his legs apart, feels Todd shifting from above and on Jesse to move in, to kneeling between Jesse’s thighs, pressing them apart with his hips, and Jesse gives a full-body twitch and groans “no”, his fighting spirit renewed and coming back in another burst, adrenaline pumping. Jesse is getting lightheaded.
He tries to press his legs together, tries to get Todd out of there, because he’s naked from the waist down and Todd is opening his own Jeans, hand pressing down harder again, with more shushing, and no, Jesse was right in the first place, he knows where this is going, but still he stops moving again, uselessly pawing at Todd’s hand, because he can’t breathe like this; he digs his short nails into Todd’s hand, wants to ask him to let him breathe, please, but all that comes out is a strangled gasp, there’s no air for more than that. Todd seems to get the point, because it’s gentle pressure again, applied in slow strokes down his front to a soundtrack of “good, it’s all good, it’s okay”, but his entire front is a bruise and this light touch, too, hurts. He’s lying still again, though, opting for throwing his head back instead, so that at least he doesn’t have to look at Todd and can pretend he’s not being watched like a bug under a microscope by Todd and his creepy face, and he can never tell what Todd is thinking, couldn’t before and certainly can’t tell now, so maybe it’s better not to look, and maybe all of this isn’t even happening, maybe it’s all just a nightmare and he’ll wake up if he tries and tries and concentrates, like this.
He’s pressing his eyes closed, and then he hears Todd’s voice, which doesn’t quite sound as assured and confident as his hands feel. “I’ve never done this, but I looked it up”
– “Looked what up?”, Jesse croaks, bucking against his hold, a movement quickly aborted.
“How to – “, he starts, and then trails off. Jesse feels Todd shift between his legs, so he opens his eyes again, looks down, sees Todd reaching into his pocket and bringing out a travel-sized tube of lube, which he brandishes with a look that is, for once, not too hard to decipher. A look that says “don’t worry, I got this”, and he repeats “How to do this right”. Jesse says “FUCK, no!” and worries a whole lot, starts struggling again, even though he’s still out of breath, even though every twist of his body feels like he’s making an army of knives dance and jump through his insides, and he never knew moving took so many muscles.
Maybe, just maybe, he can distract Todd. Maybe he can convince him it’s too much trouble. Todd doesn’t seem convinced. He just leans over Jesse again, placing his hand at its previous position, tried and true, pressing down gently, cooing “Hey, hey, shhh, no. No, shh, wait, no. You were doing so well. Hold still, come on, shhh”, and when he presses in with his fingers, Jesse tries to stay quiet, tries to hold back all the noises that want to leave his mouth and to muffle the ones that still manage to find a way out by turning his head into his shoulder and he squeezes his eyes shut again.
This isn’t happening, he thinks, this isn’t happening, it isn’t, this isn’t me, this isn’t happening, like a mantra, but it most certainly is happening, and when Todd positions himself and sinks in, so very slowly, bit by bit, all the while shushing and telling Jesse “good, that’s good, come on, shhh”, all Jesse can think is “fuck” and that it hurts and that everything is wrong, feels wrong, feels foreign, and painful. When Todd is in all the way, he goes still for a moment, and Jesse tries not to feel grateful for that. This is just the beginning, he thinks, swallows the bitter taste in his mouth, and tries to brace himself for the next part.
(Afterwards, Jesse can’t stop shaking. He’s half-rolled over, on his side now, and his eyes are leaking, but it doesn’t feel like he’s crying. He feels numb, and he wonders, distantly, if he might be in shock. Todd puts a hand on his flank. “We’ll practice. It’ll get better.”, he says. Jesse’s breath hitches and he doesn’t answer.)
- - - - - - - -
[Stage five: Acceptance]
Later, when he’s stopped resisting, Todd is still as gentle as he was in the beginning. Even more so, now that he’s stopped having to punish Jesse for resisting. Jesse lies down without much complaint, spreads his legs when Todd strokes down his side (it’s like Todd’s signal, his way of saying he wants to get started now). Jesse doesn’t fight against his own body anymore, either; doesn’t fight Todd when he tries to get Jesse off, too.
Todd doesn’t have to force Jesse anymore, because Jesse has learned that there’s no way around this. All he can do is try to make it easier on himself. “I don’t want to hurt you”, Todd has told him again and again, mostly when he was actively hurting Jesse, but Jesse now knows it’s true. Todd may be different from other people Jesse has met in his life, he might be more ruthless and scary in a weird, creepy way, he might be a real criminal with family that makes what Jesse and Walt did seem like child’s play, but he was being an honest criminal when he said that.
When he takes Jesse to bed, he’s still as gentle as he’s always been. He’s not “fucking” Jesse, because that word doesn’t fit. If anything can be called “making love”, Jesse thinks, it would be this (and yet he knows what this really is starts with r and ends with ape. He knows, but what he doesn’t know is when it stopped feeling like rape, and that thought scares him more than anything).
There are still bruises on Jesse, but now they’re different. For one, now it’s only Todd who leaves them on Jesse’s skin. The gang isn’t allowed to touch Jesse anymore; when they have to move Jesse, it’s Todd who handles him, and in the rare instances when Todd isn’t available, uncle Jack moves him. Uncle Jack’s grip on Jesse’s arm is always secure, but it’s not intended to bruise, so it doesn’t.
Jesse thinks uncle Jack must really love his nephew – he doesn’t think uncle Jack would have kept Jesse alive otherwise. Todd knows the formula now, his product is as good as Jesse’s, there’s nothing more Jesse can tell them, all his secrets are gone. And if it weren’t for Todd, Jesse would be long gone, as well.
As it is, he’s still alive and halfway okay, if he says so himself. Sometimes the chains annoy him to no end, and he does have bad days where he gets angry again, but mostly he’s fine.
He wouldn’t say he necessarily likes how things are or what Todd does, keeping Jesse as his personal slave-slash-chewtoy, but perhaps one could say Jesse’s made his peace with it. After bargaining and depression comes acceptance, and maybe that’s where he’s at right now. It seems like he’s been bargaining since the beginning and he can’t quite remember the stage of depression, but if acceptance is where he’s at right now? It feels pretty good, he thinks. It feels much better than any of the stages before that, at least. More relaxed. At ease. Cooking meth is the only thing he’s ever been good at, anyway, and by now Todd and him are a good team. Their meth is good, their percentage is high, the customers are satisfied (or so Lydia tells them when she visits), Jesse has stopped resisting and, subsequently, Todd has stopped being unnecessarily cruel. Maybe he never was, maybe Jesse just needed to learn and now that he has learned, everything can be better. Everything can be fine. Everything almost feels fine.
He’s not on the run and nobody is beating him up or threatening to kill him, which is a nice change of pace. He’s mostly fit, because Todd doesn’t have to keep fresh bruises on Jesse to press on when he struggles, because Jesse hardly ever struggles anymore. The only bruises he now leaves are the ones he leaves accidentally, or the one he put on Jesse for keeps.
Most of the accidental bruises end up on Jesse’s hips, sometimes on his thighs or arms, or sometimes in an uneven ring around his wrists, from when Todd gets too excited and forgets to check his strength, from when he holds Jesse too tightly and doesn’t listen to Jesse’s objection (some of the time he does that, now. He listens to Jesse, lets him talk, tells him things about himself, too. It’s like they’re becoming friends, and Jesse doesn’t know what to think of that, so he doesn’t think about it.)
When Todd notices the bruises he left, he apologizes. He keeps apologizing every day, peppering kisses all over the discolored areas until they’ve faded away to nothing, only to forget himself again someday and begin the whole circle anew.
There is that one bruise that never fades, though. The one Todd has decided will stay, the one he languidly sucks into Jesse’s neck as he holds him tenderly. Reverently, almost. The one he refreshes with a frequency bordering on religiousness: he worries that one spot too long, too often, kisses it plenty, worries it with his teeth, licks it, brushes his fingers over it whenever he sees it peeking out under Jesse’s collar when they’re working. The one he stares at when Jesse’s eating while Todd sits next to him or in front of him or, sometimes, behind him. He buries his head in Jesse’s neck when he’s sitting behind him, his arms around Jesse, nose against the bruise.
It’s a permanent mark in the junction where Jesse’s neck meets the shoulder and Jesse thinks that if he gets out of this alive, he’ll always feel the phantom pain of that mark when he moves, when he probes the spot with his fingers. He thinks it’ll leave a scar that’s invisible, and the thought makes him shudder.
When he first noticed Todd’s preference for that spot, noticed the sore place that never got better, noticed Todd glancing his way and distractedly touching that spot, he’d been taken aback. He’d asked: “did you.. mark me? Like, like a brand on cattle mark me?”. Todd had seemed surprised, as if he hadn’t noticed; had wandered over, thumbed over the bruise, had said “I guess” with a smile playing on his lips.
So it’s a brand, a way of giving Jesse a collar without getting him a collar. As if the chain around his waist wasn’t collar enough for Todd – but maybe it lacked a more personal touch.
Lydia still comes around from time to time, and she’s the only person from his old life he gets to see. Judging by the way Todd tends to Lydia and looks at her, Jesse suspects he might have a crush on her. He’d never act on it, though, because Lydia is a businesswoman, Lydia is pristine and unattainable (and snobbish, Jesse thinks), and she’s like a Madonna or some figure like that, the ones who aren’t to be touched, so Todd channels that love into Jesse, because that’s the one person he can touch whenever he feels like it.
His attentions grow especially sweet whenever Lydia’s been there to visit.
He nuzzles Jesse, heaping praise on him, worshipping his body and taking him painfully slowly. Todd’s never been one for frantic, fast-paced sex, anyway (at least not in all this time with Jesse), but on those days he’s particularly careful, perceivably generous not only with his words of praise, but also in pleasuring Jesse, making him come multiple times until Jesse’s fucked out and stupid with bliss.
Incidentally, Todds loving days after Lydia’s visits perfectly coincide with Jesse’s bad days. Todd never says anything, but he and Jesse both know it’s because Lydia reminds Jesse of everything Todd has tried to make him forget and leave behind (not that Jesse has ever had much to leave behind). When she enters, all of Jesse’s past enters with her.
On bad days he’s angry at Todd, but mostly at himself for reacting the way he does and for simultaneously wishing things were different and hating himself for that thought. Because things are good, aren’t they? He’s safe, now. That’s what Todd tells him, again and again, because Jesse continues to forget that. But “acceptance” doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to have bad days where he’s missing his old life, his freedom, and on good days Jesse is grateful that Todd is ever so patient with Jesse when he’s having a bad day.
It’s possible that that’s why Todd is especially tender with Jesse after Lydia’s visits (if he were to bet, Jesse’s would put his money with the other guess, though. The one where Todd harbours a hopeless crush on Lydia, the one where he’s channeling his unrequited feelings into sweet-talking and loving Jesse, where he’s treating Jesse like he wants to treat Lydia.)
Especially tender and giving means tears for Jesse, and not tears of anger or fear, like in the beginning, but tears of a different sort. Todd keeps bringing him to the edge and then eases him back, keeps him on the brink and won’t let him come until Jesse is a sweaty mess of exhaustion, until he’s begging for Todd to please, please stop, until there are tears streaming down his face that have nothing to do with any kind of emotion other that frustration and need and complete, utter physical exertion.
“It’s okay”, Todd says then, “shh, it’s okay”. He’s just as sweaty and exhausted as Jesse, but he still has this calm, gentle air of controlled competence about him, as if he’s got some kind of advantage, as if endurance were something he had practiced in private, and for all Jesse knows, he might’ve. He leans down, takes Jesse’s face into his hands, and Jesse desperately takes that opportunity to try and rub himself against Todd, but it doesn’t quite work, and Todd is shushing him again, ignoring his gasping and whining and kisses his teartracks instead, kisses his cheeks, his nose, his mouth, and Jesse’s breath hitches and Todd swallows Jesse’s frustrated pleas until they’re kissing languidly, like they have all the time in the world, even though Jesse feels like he’s going to explode any second, and Todd (oh so gently) rocks his hips into Jesse, and then he finally, finally reaches down, hand firm around Jesse‘s cock, which hurts with the need to come, and he strokes rhythmically and says “Okay. Okay, now!” into Jesse’s mouth, and Jesse sobs and then cries out with relief and finally, finally comes.
Those times are the most exhausting, the ones after Lydia was there to visit, the ones that knock them both out of their usual paths, that drive Todd to love like he’s got something to prove, make him act like he’s playing to win, make his gaze intense, make him intent on torturing Jesse with pleasure. He’s pulling Jesse close afterwards, dropping butterfly-soft kisses all over Jesse’s shivering body, on his shoulder, his neck, his back, his face, anywhere he can reach while still holding Jesse so very gently.
Jesse’s head is filled with a low buzzing, like static, like the brizzling black-and-white on a broken TV-set, and it feels like all his thoughts have been wiped away. He closes his eyes and waits for his body to calm down, for his breathing to level out. He ignores the soft kisses on his over-sensitive skin and enjoys the blank state of his mind as long as he can. He hopes he’ll fall asleep like this and prays for a dreamless one. The nights without nightmares are increasing, and it’s always better with Todd sleeping down here with him, right next to him.
Jesse thinks he might be finally settling in.