
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7971661.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Lawton/Marc
  Character:
      Lawton, Marc, Original_Male_Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Original_Character(s), POV_Original_Character, BDSM, Extremely_Dubious
      Consent, Hurt_Marc, Asexual_Character, Asexual_Marc, Sex_Club,
      Exhibitionism, Blackmail, Emotional_Manipulation, Whipping, bastinado,
      S&M, Past_Child_Abuse, Pansexual_Character, Pansexual_Lawton
  Series:
      Part 3 of Outtakes_&_Extras_for_ZoyciteM's_"Sammy's_Time_at_Stanford"
  Collections:
      Sammy's_Time_at_Stanford_-_Related_Works
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-09-06 Words: 2489
****** Contrasts ******
by cr0wgrrl
Summary
     Marc wakes the way he's woken up for almost a year: Lawton's soft
     hands, petting his hair. Lawton's soft voice, telling him he's safe.
     Lawton's soft kiss to his forehead, telling him he's okay. The
     difference is, now it's not a lie.
     [Read this after Chapter 24 of Sammy's_Time_at_Stanford.]
Notes
     For fans of Sammy's Time at Stanford, a brief background study on the
     two little subs we met at a certain BDSM club in Chicago...
     Part of the inspiration behind this fic was giving ZoyciteM the
     inspiration to finish Chapter_35:_Praise of Sammy's Time at Stanford,
     wherein Marc and Lawton return!
See the end of the work for more notes
  This work was inspired by
      Sammy's_Time_at_Stanford by ZoyciteM
                                   ~ Marc ~
Marc wakes the way he's woken up for almost a year: Lawton's soft hands,
petting his hair. Lawton's soft voice, telling him he's safe. Lawton's soft
kiss to his forehead, telling him he's okay.
The difference is, now it's not a lie.
It's one of the bad nightmares this time, the one where he's chained up at the
club and the Marquis is whipping him and no one in the room is stopping him.
And he's crying out for his mom and for help and for mercy, knowing that all
three are beyond his reach, as one by one the audience turns into all the kids
and teachers he knew that last year. He can hear the murmur of their
conversations over the dripping of his blood, and then everything quiets at the
slithery clap of the whip hitting the ground. There's the unmistakable sound of
a zipper lowering as the Marquis removes his hood, and then the clear,
unmuffled voice of his stepfather tells him to stop whining and take it like a
man. And the room breaks into applause.
                                      ~*~
Marc runs away from home at 15, the night his stepfather backhands him into the
dining room table so hard he cracks a rib. He hits his head on the way down and
wakes up three minutes later, his father already off to the bar. The blow
knocks the sense into him, he likes to say; he packs up his laptop and his
phone and the sturdiest clothes he can find, plus a box of granola bars and
fifty dollars of the money his stepfather keeps tucked away in an envelope at
the back of his nightstand.
One year later, Marc's hawked or pawned almost everything except the clothes on
his back, and is seriously considering taking Sunny Joey's offer of joining his
stable. (He's traded blowjobs for food now and again, but joining a stable is a
career choice. A commitment.) And then Miss Eris comes along.
Marc signs Miss Eris's contract because he is young, and stupid, and desperate.
He thinks that BDSM means being able to take a beating, and if there is one
skill he's developed over the years, it's that one. It's going to be his choice
this time, and that's going to make it all okay.
He doesn't know about the sex part. And by the time he finds out about it, it's
too late.
 
                                  ~ Lawton ~
Lawton holds Marc until he falls back into a more restful sleep. He pets his
hair, and brushes soft kisses across his eyes and cheeks, keeping the touches
gentle and kind and above the waist. (Not that he would ever do anything to
Marc that he doesn't want, but sometimes even accidental touches are enough to
trigger his friend's worse memories.) He's glad that Marc does not mind sharing
a bed with him – he likes to think his presence makes the nightmares easier to
handle.
Not that Lawton doesn't have his share of nightmares, too. He feels a little
bad even calling them that, though – they aren't bad, the way Marc's are. Not
really. Usually, it's just him, back at the club, and Miss Eris is there, and
his fellow subs. But no matter what he does, no one talks to him, or touches
him; no one even punishes him. It's like he doesn't even exist. And just when
he thinks he's going to die of loneliness, Miss Eris looks right through him
and asks, "Has anyone seen pretty lately?" And even though he should be
profoundly hurt that he's right there in front of her and she can't see him,
all he can think about in the dream is that at least on some level, someone
cares enough to notice that he's missing.
It doesn't take a degree in psychology to know what those dreams are about.
                                     ~ * ~
All Lawton has ever wanted was to be wanted. He doesn't know why his mother
gave him up for adoption; as a child, he likes to imagine something dramatic,
like maybe she had been dying of an incredibly swiftly progressing cancer, and
her last act before dying was to struggle up to St. Ignatius's doors with him
in her arms. She would have kissed his forehead, and told him to be good for
the nice people, and reminded him that she loved him very, very much and always
would, before stealing away into the darkness.
Now, though, he understands much better that she probably just didn't want him.
No one ever wants Lawton, and he doesn't know why. Not his mother. Not any of
the people who come by the Catholic-run group home for the first eight years of
his life and pick every kid but him, or the four different foster homes who
grudgingly take him in once he gets too old for the home. None of them keep him
- too needy, too standoffish, too pretty not to be queer, too Lawton.
The last one is the worst. Two months after Lawton gets there, his foster
father invites him to come with him on his business trip to Chicago. When they
arrive, he takes him out to dinner at a Tad's Steak House, then hands him two
twenties and tells him good luck. He says he's sorry, but with three kids of
his own, his family really needs the extra income from the state's monthly
check for Lawton's expenses, but he doesn't have the room for a fourth kid.
Besides, he says, he's doing him a favor, really – all foster kids are just
marking time until they get out of the system, anyway. This way, Lawton gets
two whole years' head start on that.
Lawton is so locked up in panic that he doesn't know what to say. So he just
stands there, clutching his suitcase in shock as the man pats him on the head
and walks out of his life.
Miss Eris finds him just two days later, and for the first time in his life,
Lawton feels wanted. He has his own bedroom, and responsibilities, and someone
who cares about him. In her own way, anyway.
 
                                   ~ Marc ~
Sometimes Marc feels bad for lying to Lawton, or if not exactly lying, then not
exactly telling the entire truth. It's not like Lawton doesn't know most of the
story, though. He knows that Marc was homeless like him, and about Marc's
stepfather. He knows that Marc has never really liked any of what they do – not
the sex, not the bondage, not any of the stuff that Lawton craves.
But Lawton doesn't know that Miss Eris also knows that.
He doesn't know what she whispers into Marc's ear one night as blood oozes from
the cane marks she's left across his thighs, that that is why she picked him:
for the sheer joy of being able to do whatever she wants to someone who doesn't
want it. Her study in contrasts, she calls them. Lawton – pretty – who
withstands whatever is done to him because he craves for the attention to
continue. And Marc – pet – who withstands whatever is done to him because he is
praying for the time when it will end.
And he doesn't know about the three times Marc decides his contract can go fuck
itself and tries to leave, or what she does to him afterwards.
 
                                  ~ Lawton ~
Miss Eris teaches Lawton so much. He doesn't know anything about what she
expects from him, but she arranges for the other subs to teach him. He tries to
be as quick a study as he can, and happily submits to anything that anyone asks
of him (which makes him very popular with the club's other subs, who make
frequent use of his mouth and ass during the club's off-hours). It doesn't hurt
that he loves all of it; the pain, the pleasure, the sheer connection he feels
to every person he is asked to serve, and the joy he takes at following their
every command to the best of his ability.
It's just a shame he isn't better at it.
He tries, he really does. But as Miss Eris consoles him one night after he
breaks down under her biting correction of him, it really isn't his fault that
he isn't good enough. Some people are made perfect, like Marc, who has never
required study or practice – masters take one look at him and beg her for
permission to play with him. Lawton, on the other hand, isn't a natural;
nothing he ever does is good enough. His form is poor, his ability to withstand
pain is subpar, and despite his quickly growing experience, his skill with oral
and anal sex remains amateurish at best. But everyone can see how hard he
tries, so they make allowances for his ineptitude in hopes that he will
improve.
Miss Eris names him pretty because, as she often says, it's a good thing he is,
since it's the only thing he has going for him.
 
                                   ~ Marc ~
The first time Marc tries to leave, Miss Eris tells him he can't, it's not in
his contract.
He tries anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, her bouncers march him firmly back into her office,
where she smiles at him as she wraps a red band around his wrist. Red means a
sub who is available for public use at the club, rough trade preferred, lube
and prep optional; only the hardcore subs wear them, and it is always a party
when one appears. Then she watches as he is carried, ring-gagged and
blindfolded and struggling, over to one of the bondage slings, where her
bouncers lock him in. When she unlocks him three hours later, Marc collapses on
the ground, shaking legs unable to hold his weight, and begs for her
forgiveness with a whispery rasp.
A month later, after an exceptionally bad session on the cross, Marc tries
again. This time, he waits until an hour before the club opens, when Miss Eris
and her staff will be busy getting everything ready for the evening. Since his
clothes are now in a padlocked locker "for safekeeping," he slips out the back
door wearing one of the club's "Roman fantasy" togas... only to find her
bouncers waiting for him. This time, she locks him in the sling for six hours,
and when his shift is over, gives him 25 stripes with the cane. Between the
rough endless parade of face-fucking and the screaming afterwards, his throat
is too sore to talk above a whisper, and it takes three days before he can sit
down comfortably.
This is when Marc decides he has nothing else to lose by trying, believing she
can't do anything worse than she already has.
He's wrong.
When her bouncers catch him - which of course they do - the third time finds
him again back in the sling, which is okay; by necessity, he's learned how to
disassociate himself from what happens to his body. But at the end of the
night, after the club is closed, she straps him down to a table, legs raised
and chained, and introduces him to a new form of punishment called bastinado.
He can't walk for weeks, crawling even from his bed to the bathroom and taking
his meals from dog bowls on the floor.
And when the doctor pronounces his feet fully healed, she does it again.
Afterwards, she sends the new boy, Lawton, to comfort him. Beautiful, kind,
smart, naïve Lawton, who is so full of love and desperate for someone to give
it to. And Marc is hurt and selfish enough to take the comfort.
Miss Eris lets their friendship blossom, even encourages it. Which seems
strange… until the night when it all becomes too much once again and Marc
thinks once again of running, and she whispers in her ear that if he runs,
Lawton will take his place. He thinks of Lawton slung up and fucked raw and
bleeding by an endless parade of strangers. Of Lawton, red welts scabbing his
thighs like tiger stripes. Of Lawton, his feet purple and bruised, crawling on
the floor and eating from a dog bowl.
Marc stays.
 
                                  ~ Lawton ~
Sometimes being prettyis a bitter pill for Lawton to swallow. He tries not to
be jealous of Marc, who is called to play at least four nights a week, while
Miss Eris keeps Lawton primarily bound, leashed and on display "so he won't
embarrass the club." He watches the subs around him, the way their owners
shower them with affection, and tries to memorize how they act. It's easy to
see that their masters and mistresses love them; if Lawton's own is less than
loving, the fault must lie with him. So he listens as Miss Eris provides a
constant tight-lipped stream of his many failings, accompanied by seemingly
endless corrections and criticism, and tells himself it's proof that she cares,
and tries to improve.
If he's good enough, she'll love him. He just has to be better.
And when the club is closed, or on the nights when neither is called to serve,
he has Marc. Marc, whose bed he crawls into on Miss Eris's orders after a
particularly intense scene that leaves the other boy shaking and crying. He
rubs the ointment she gives him into each of his welts and stripes, and then
holds him until he falls asleep.
More often than not after that, the two sleep together, arms and legs wrapped
around each other as they cling to the comfort of sheer physical connection.
They never do more than sleep, though – Lawton offers to pleasure Marc that
first night, knowing that Master Dashwood never lets Marc come during his
sessions, and Marc awkwardly explains that he doesn't want that, and doesn't
really actually like sex all that much, period. But he loves cuddling, and
kissing, and Lawton is more than happy to do that for hours whenever they are
allowed.
He's not stupid. He knows there's more going on with Marc than Marc tells him.
He knows Miss Eris took them both in when they were too young to be legal, and
that despite their contracts, they are both probably being exploited. But
Lawton won't leave without Marc, and Marc doesn't want to leave. It's better
here than on the streets, especially since neither of them have any clothes or
money, so where could they go anyway? They'd need something out of a fairytale
to escape – a fairy godmother, or a dashing prince or two, or a daring hero to
fight for them.
But this is the real world, where life isn't fair, and princes and heroes don't
exist, and the best that forgotten and unwanted boys like Marc and Lawton can
hope for is a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and a soft bed to
curl up on together.
Marc stays, so Lawton stays.
                                      ~*~
Until, one night, they_don't. And everything changes.
End Notes
     In case you missed them, ZoyciteM published TWO new timestamps of
     sexytimes between our favorite boys this week! Check out Peppermint
     and Handle_With_Care. Do it now!
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
