bakerstreet | Not my enemy

Not my enemy

YOU ARE NOT MY ENEMY
A slave/reluctant master romance(?) meme

The seed of the idea has existed for ages, perhaps as long as there has been the concept of enemies among humanity - so, a long time. It goes as follows:

You are in an unfamiliar and dangerous territory, most likely the home of your enemy. Whether there is a war raging in the background or just barely-bandaged hostility is irrelevant. Your safety does not depend on that. Instead, you are an example. Your freedom is forfeit. A prisoner is what you are...no, you're a slave. And you're given to someone for service or for entertainment.

You're prepared to hate your new "master." Who wouldn't? Slowly, however, you realize that things aren't as they seem. Your master is no cruel owner; in fact, they don't even want to own you. But they are as much of a pawn in this scheme as you are. Still, they show you kindness and their subtle rebellion fans the flames of your own. Over time, your feelings towards them begin to change. It may be some sort of Stockholm Syndrome or it may be a true emotion, yet either way, something fragile and perhaps even beautiful is growing between the the two of you. Could this be love? If it is or if it isn't, there's one certainty: if you are found out, it will be the end, most likely, of you both.

This is the situation your character finds themselves in. Are they master? Slave? How do they accept their fate? Their new feelings towards their "master"/"slave"? All of this is up to you, as well as how this all ends for the pair.

Of course, there's a precedent for it ending badly and bloody, for obvious reasons.

HOW TO PLAY

Comment with your character, preferences, and other information like any character info, what position your character is likely to fill, or smut/lack thereof preferences.
Reply to others.
Feel free to use the below prompts and ideas.

POSITIONS

Slave
Reluctant Master

ATTITUDE

Willing: You'll take the past of least resistance and try to keep your head down.
Unwilling: Well, "unwilling" is sort of implied in general, but you are especially rebellious and refuse to be tamed. You throw any kindness you receive back in the giver's face. When you begin to feel something for your "master," you reject that as much as you possibly can.

ENDING

Good: The idealized, happy ending. You both get away from the system that keeps you chained and live freely together.
Bad: The realistic ending. Your little affair is unearthed and your heads end up on the chopping block.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Belonging. On his knees with the blood clotting on his skin, the wound basically closed, and he finds the firm sense of belonging in how the words come, in how it's an order to respond. Too long he'd been without that. The Asset had been master-less, and now it's been bound again. Taken in. Owned. Directed and ordered about, and his mind slides down into it. There was a space that had been hollowed out, burned away when Hydra fell into the river, and his mind welcomes the vampire to fill it back up. It's not so strange to have a master again.

"Russian. Two men. Broken English, didn't speak well."

And it's easy to give the responses, even if he knows he can't give all that's been asked of him. Names weren't there, not even of who might have pointed them to the Asset. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be him at all. New Assets were made all the time, and he didn't choose. No more than he could choose who's orders to follow. The Russians had said something that switched the part of his brain that was the Asset back on again, and his shoulders drop down without tension or worry.

Any other man would be worried. Any other man would look up at the blood on the vampire's teeth and feel fear for his own life. This is a dangerous position to be in. This is something so many consider unacceptable. And for him, for the Asset, it's nothing to be on his knees, waiting for an order. To be dismissed or to be taken in, it's all the same. Orders always come.

There had been a word, spoken in passing, spoken in quiet Russian that undoubtedly meant nothing to the man who said it.

And to the Asset, the right word can change everything.

"Said you were new master."

Too bad he can't provide him with names. The problem is just knowing the men speak Russian doesn't help narrow it down - broken English could mean they're new but that's about the only thing he can get from that. It'd be easier if he could find one of them himself and interrogate the guy, listen to the terrified staccato of his heart.

"Me?" Matt's eyebrows jerk up in surprise under his mask. He makes a startled, low laugh that isn't really a laugh at all. "And you believe them?"

The thought suddenly seems a lot less funny when he takes into account the weird way he's been acting, the almost non-reactions he gets from his victim. It occurs to Matt that this isn't like all the other times he's had dinner laid out. What he does know is this man should be scared (he isn't) and that when he said he was his master, his heart hadn't jittered (he believed every word of it). Matt's been around too many liars not to be able to tell the difference.

"What makes you think I'd be your master?" Matt's quiet now, dead serious, and quite frankly a little spooked despite himself. He's stronger than most men, trained, and that isn't even going into what he gets like if he's starving. There's something about how this man's reacting - isn't reacting - that has him fishing around like a...well, like a blind man. "What does that even mean?"

Right now he wants to hear it in the Asset's own words, suspecting he might have an idea but hoping he could be wrong.

"Perimeters are acceptable to Asset."

No mission conflicts, no denials from his programming. Everything slotted into place, and the key had been twisted when the vampire had bitten down into his neck, and now it all was locked in. The Asset's programming was not designed for rejecting the position of handler or master. Things were kept, and locked down, and held onto until the chair came to rip them out of the programming.

No chair around. No technicians to lock him down, no handlers with their guns to give him new missions, new outstanding orders. Just the simple roof. And that's it, that's what there is, and he remembers destroying the chair. He ripped it apart. There's no secondary one. No way to take back the orders, the new accepted master.

"Waiting for additional orders. Assumed you will continue to feed from Asset, and require the Asset to accompany you to your home."

Matt actually mouths oh Christ to himself, his lips barely moving.

"Feed again," Damn straight he wants to feed again. Matt wars with his better judgment and he knows - he isn't proud to admit - it's a losing battle from the second he sank his fangs into the man's neck. He could have someone who's willing to feed, who seems like he's bouncing back superhumanly fast. That instinctive greed he got when he was turned as a kid kicks into high gear and makes it hard to focus, the temptation rationalizing itself into some kind of twisted guilt. "You're right about one thing: I can't leave you here."

He doesn't want to, either, and that scares him.

Matt has no idea what was in that guy's blood. They've tried poisoning him before through the baitings before, sure, and yeah, that did mostly just piss him off. This doesn't feel the same. It's heady and he finds himself making every excuse under the sun to convince himself this is a good idea. Matt steps forward, in one smooth motion pulling off his glove and leaving his hand so he can see what this man looks aside from his blood-halo.

Unlike the Russians' touch, Matt's is gentle despite his reputation. His fingers glide across the Asset's forehead to explore faint impressions of stress lines, his eyebrows. Eyes sunken in like he hasn't had much sleep recently. He finds the man has a strong, proud nose, the beard that's as tangled as his hair. There's a few splatters of his own blood in the strands. If it wasn't for the fresh blood, he'd point him to the nearest shower.

He's been homeless since the helicarrers fell. Travelled from Washington to New York like there's something pulling him closer and closer to the city, until his feet finally go there and then he could go no further. It's not so bad, no worse than Hydra, to sleep rough and steal his meals and fight other those dumb enough to challenge him. Something inside him makes him looking over the river, at the lines of Brooklynn, his heart twisting up. He wants to go there. He can't go there. Every time he looks at the bridge to cross over, he can't make his feet move onto it.

So he stays on Manhattan island, and then he ends up hating the twist so much that he wanders over to the other side of the island, making a territory in Hell's Kitchen, where the river banks don't offer up a view of something that hurts so much.

The amount of time living wild, the number of back alleys he's slept in, have left him with rough skin and chapped lips and a beard that's more tangled monstrosity than anything to help his features. That doesn't seem to change the wandering fingers over his face, and though he doesn't turn his face into them, it's a close thing. He wants to.

All he has to look at it is the masked face, no eyes to meet, only the gentle curve of a nose obscured by the black cloth and the lips. Even for the Asset it isn't much to go on.

"Then I go with you."

This is really happening, isn't it?

It doesn't take much pushing for Matt to decide that he's right and he can't just drop him off at the nearest hospital and let them - and the cops - sort it out. Worked all the other times; then again, all the other times didn't involve a man who didn't feel or taste like your run-of-the-mill human, his blood the best he's ever tasted.

"Stair's this way," Matt grunts.

He reaches out to grip the Asset's arm, half to prevent him from taking a swing at him - waiting for the flex of tendon and muscle a split second behind a spiking heart beat - and half to make sure he's steady, that he won't collapse from all the blood he lost. It's more out of habit, really, because so far this man is taking it well. Easily better than he should. With the amount Matt gorged himself almost stupid on, he should be barely conscious on the ground, not holding a conversation.

He'll have blindfold him before he gets him close to the apartment. That or think about another place to stash him and yeah, right, that isn't happening. Not with New York's rent. It's either that or he does the right thing and turns him over and he realizes he doesn't want to do that. Not until he gets to feed again, his stomach churning at the thought.

He leads the Asset to the fire escape and that's an adventure in itself: he's still a little weak from the blood loss but it seems like he's determined to get down the thing in one shot, his heart steady for a man who's been beaten and chained to a roof.

Once they're at the bottom, Matt turns toward the Asset. This time he reaches up and scrubs hard against his mouth, trying to remove as much blood as possible. "Once we're closer to the..." he pauses, unwilling to say my apartment, "the safe house I sometimes use, you'll need to have a blindfold."

At least until he figures out what to do with his food source. Matt isn't a vampire of the same caliber as Stick, who would probably take one (figurative) look at this man and stick him in a shipping container with the barest necessities to keep him alive and pumping blood.

He should be weak; he knows that. Enough experience with vampires feeding on him to know that the amount they take from him would end the life of a normal person. He can track the feeling of the blood pumping out of his body, estimate the amount he's lost, and knows it should leave him passed out on the floor, dying, his heart struggling to beat. Instead, he's following the vampire without a trace of that supposed weakness in his limbs or in how he moves.

The streets are dark, so late that even the city that never sleeps has gone home and closed the blinds. Little company on the sidewalk to bother them as they walk, few cars that pass with blinding white lights. A couple of drunkards, staggering home. A group of giggling young girls who take a swipe at slapping the Asset's ass, and then hail the next taxi to come along. A homeless man that looks up when they pass, then goes back to bearily shaking his coffee cup.

After several blocks of walking, they pause, and the Asset tears off the bottom hem of his shirt to wrap around his head in a makeshift blindfold. Then, he continues following his master.

You know they're very drunk when they take one look at Matt, masked, with blood smeared across his mouth, and then at the half-drained man and the first thing they think is I'd like to slap that ass.

If the Asset's bothered by it, he keeps it to himself. Matt's both relieved and worried that he's being such a good sport about this: he can't shake the gut feeling that this is downright spooky, even to a vampire.

Once he's satisfied that he's blindfolded, he leads him the rest of the way. It's a little sketchy going up the fire escape, Matt concerned that either he'll come out of his obedient daze and decide to fight back or that he'll fall, break his neck, and he bets there's no coming back from that despite the Asset being...whatever he is. Wrestling with a grown man several stories up off the ground isn't his idea of a good time.

Once they're on the roof, Matt opens the roof access door to his apartment. First thing he does is deadbolt the front door. After that he doesn't take chances: he squirrels away all the knives, just in case. Once he's satisfied that the Asset isn't walking into a room full of weapons, he brings him down the loft stairs, his voice disembodied through the blindfold.

"There's a couch straight ahead. You can sit if you want," Matt pauses, uncomfortably aware of the Asset's strong pulse. "Are you thirsty?"

Waiting, in the cool breeze on the roof, as obedient as he was waiting there as he had been to follow. No protesting, even when he's left alone in the empty darkness of the roof. Just the wind in his hair, the gentle thrum of the cars on the road far below him, the ever constant noise of the city that doesn't sleep, never sleeps. He hears the gentle laughter of another group of drunkards on the street below, and the thud of footsteps on the stairs coming back up to him, and he tilts his head in towards the door. As used to the silence and darkness the Asset might be, there is the ever present question of what is happening, of where the vampire has gone, of when he will return.

The door opens, and the walk down the stairs is just as simple and easy as the climb up outside the building. He waits, and the prompt for the couch is a little odd because it's phrased as a want, and the Asset can't have those, but he follows it any ways, and the bump into the couch side is settled too quickly for it to be a stumble, and then he's sliding into place, down onto the cushions.

"Yes," he admits, because it's not a weakness, and his throat is dry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not my enemy

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Could you timeskip us?

sorry this is short and late in coming back to you

it's cool, I'm pretty much all about the backtagging

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