TITLE: Venus in Furs
AUTHOR: Fionnabair
FANDOM: Life on Mars
SUMMARY: Woman's power lies in man's passion.
RATING: Red Cortina – Incest, non-con.
WORD COUNT: 1308
EMAIL: fiandyfic@livejournal.com
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Ruth/Sam, Vic/Ruth/Sam. A sequel to Andromeda’s Sunday Morning. Beta’d by m31andy
DISCLAIMER: Life on Mars is copyright Kudos and the BBC. All Rights Reserved. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made.

Venus in Furs

It’s quiet and cool down here in the middle of yet another baking summer and Ruth always likes descending the stairs to the cellar. Sammy has gone to the football with a friend and his father and she has the house to herself.

Dirty light streams in through the area window, and he’s sitting in the small pool of weakened sunshine that comes in through. He doesn’t turn as she shuts the door and comes down the stairs, but she knows he’s listening to her steps.

She stops outside the pool of light and he continues looking upwards at the thick, semi-opaque glass that is part of the pavement. She already knows he knows it’s her. He flinches, almost imperceptibly, when he hears Vic’s feet approaching him. He knows better than to do so when it’s her.

She wonders if he knows how long he’s been down here. Ruth has almost lost track of the time herself, of the days that turned into weeks, of the initial panic after that first night where he fought and shouted and finally surrendered, his voice hoarse from resistance that turned into begging and pleading, finally silenced by sleep, sandwiched between them, his wrists turning livid, still tied to the bed head, and Vic had turned to her, fear in his eyes.

“We can’t let him go.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

And now there’s the cellar, where Sammy never goes because it’s not safe for little boys, with the heavy door that is always locked, and the thick walls from which no sound escapes. There’s a mattress in one corner, and a small table and chair in the other and the one light source from the pavement. At night, it’s pitch dark in here, unless she brings a light with her.

And, of course, there’s the man.

She always thinks of him as the man. It seems to be part of the way it works, for her, and for Vic and for the man himself. Sometimes, when they’re on their own, and he looks tired and lost, she calls him Sam.

He doesn’t look very different from the Detective Inspector Bolan she met so long ago. He’s clean and shaved and his clothes seem to be the same. A bit thinner, perhaps, but it’s only his eyes that show he’s not the same man.

Ruth doesn’t look into his eyes very often and when she does, it’s to see what she wants to see.

“It’s nice out.” His words are conversational, quiet and expressed almost without emotion, as if he was free to go out when he chose. He turns to look at her and she crouches down beside him.

She has no fear of what she’s done, but the man frightens her sometimes. Not when he was fighting, nor when he withdrew into silence, but now, the way he has accepted it.

He sits in here, as he has done for months. The first night, he was bundled, bound hand and foot, and gagged in a corner and when they returned in the morning, he was still struggling for freedom, thrashing around in the rubbish that had accumulated in the cellar. But over time, the room has changed. It looks like someone’s home now.

First, he fought, fighting and kicking and swearing. It didn’t work. They left him in the cellar for three days without food or water, by which time he was too weak to resist.

Then, he tried to kill himself. It didn’t work. They kept him tied up for weeks, his muscles twisted and aching. Ruth spent hours stretching and rubbing, while he sobbed with the pain of cramps that wouldn’t go away.

He refused to eat. It didn’t work. Ruth sat in front of him and fed him, spoon by spoon, as if he were her small son, coaxing and pleading and encouraging until he took another spoonful.

He got dirty. Ruth washed him, watching him strip naked in front of her, watching him get hard and ashamed as her hands and the cloth moved over his body.

His beard grew. She shaved him, both of them cautious. She wouldn’t let him have a blade, and both held their breath when the razor ran over his throat, Ruth wondering if he would lean forward and end it all or if he was waiting for her to cut deeper and end it. Instead, he waited until she had wiped the last scrap of foam from his face and then lent forward and kissed her.

It’s why he’s here. Years ago, when Ruth was a child, she had a doll’s house. It’s like being queen of the world, empress of the universe. She ruled everything.

And then she grew up and learned she didn’t rule her husband. Not immediately anyway.

But this man...

She remembers the door-to-door queries. The tired and anxious woman detective, with the big blonde man behind her, hiding worry in agressiveness. The questions they asked. Looking for their colleague. When the man left, the woman had leaned forward and asked some more personal questions.

DI Tyler hadn’t been all there. He’d had a strange fixation. In fact, he’d been convinced that he was her little Sammy and she was his mother and Vic his father.

The police had believed her when she said she hadn’t seen him. They’d believed her when she said that she hadn’t seen Vic since the night he threatened the policewoman. Sometimes it helped being blonde and small and slim with wide open eyes. Everyone believed you, especially when you said you were stupid.

He had heard them. She didn’t know how, because sound didn’t come down from the living room to the kitchen, but when she returned to the cellar, he’d been curled up against the wall, crying, calling both their names.

Those had been the bad times. Like the times when Vic had lost his temper and beaten and kicked him, swearing at him. The man had just lain there, huddled in a ball, taking the punishment, not saying a word when Vic thrust into him brutally, making him bleed. The only time she’d seen him react was the one time she’d intervened and Vic had turned on her.

It had taken three weeks for Vic’s bruises to fade.

Now, the man was still chained, although the length of the chain gave him access around the room. A curtained corner hid the necessary facilities and the cellar was clean. The only comment he had ever made was that it was better than where he used to live.

She wondered about the chain. He didn’t need it. She knew, absolutely, that if he were left free, he wouldn’t stray from the room at all. He had his own world now, and the stairs were its limit.

She stayed down here sometimes, on the nights when it had been too long since Vic visited and Heather had taken Sammy over to hers to stay. Once, and once only, she had untied him, and had seen the result. Instead of the mad dash for freedom she’d half expected, he had huddled in a corner, terror in his eyes like a puppy dumped on the side of the road. When she approached him, he held his arms out, wrists together. It took her a while to realise what he meant.

Whatever he was now, he was hers. Her creation, her child. As surely as her Sammy, and like her Sammy, Sam needed to be taken care of.

And now, as she pulled her skirt up, and he pulled her knickers down, and she straddled him and rode him in the early evening sunshine, Ruth Tyler tried not to think about the word he said every time he came, his bound hands embracing her body, his lean body thrusting upwards.

“Mum.”



Set 2: Beginning to See The Light
Set 3: I'm Set Free