TITLE: Beginning to See the Light
AUTHOR: Fionnabair
FANDOM: Life on Mars
SUMMARY: What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see could bring me joy.
RATING: Red Cortina – Incest, non-con.
WORD COUNT: 1785
EMAIL: fiandyfic@livejournal.com
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Ruth/Sam. A sequel to Venus in Furs. Beta’d by![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
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.
Beginning to See the Light
It began with the door being left unlocked. Not all the time, and not every time she visited him, but often enough that he knew it was deliberate. He knew when she locked it, because the sound was very distinctive.
He was proud of remembering that. It was important that he could still notice things, even if it was more and more difficult.
The man hadn’t been down for a while. It was just him and the woman. When he needed to give her a name in his mind, he thought of her as Mrs Tyler. Ruth seemed too intimate, and deep down he knew that was a joke, how could he be too intimate, considering what they’d done together, and the other name was one that he never let himself think. It had been easier with Tyler. He couldn’t think of him as Vic and he certainly never thought of him as Dad. His memories were too old, too faint.
The chain had gone too. And his hands were only tied when she came down, at his own silent request.
He wondered if he was free. Or if it was a test.
The next day, all was silent. And the door was open.
He stayed put.
No-one came. No food, no water, no blows, no kicks, nothing.
The day after, the door was still open.
This time, he moved, climbing the stairs cautiously, stopping when he reached the door and looking out.
The small hallway was dark, almost as dark as his cellar, and only one other door was open.
She stood in it, the light behind catching her hair, turning it into a golden halo. Sam thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
Almost shyly, like she was approaching a scared dog, she put her hand out and took his. Led him into the kitchen, sat him down at the table. Made him a cup of tea and two bacon butties and sat and watched him eat. She stood only once, going to the window and lowering the blind when he squinted in the unaccustomed glare of the sunlight.
They sat there for hours, silently facing each other across the chipped formica of the kitchen table, until she rose and took his hand again.
Docilely, he followed her, expecting to be led back to the cellar. Instead, she took him upstairs, to her bedroom.
He hadn’t seen her naked since the first night. This time, she stripped in front of him and stripped him too, before taking him to lie down on the bed, pulling him into her arms.
He couldn’t perform. Even when he realised what she wanted and obliged, using his hands and mouth to roam over her body, kissing and stroking and licking and worshipping, his cock remained soft.
A flash of anger in her eyes made him cringe until her face changed.
“Poor boy,” she soothed. “I know what will make it better.”
A scrap of thin ribbon, tied tightly around his wrist. If he flexed it, he could feel it cutting against the tendons.
It gave him what he needed. It bound him and released him.
Two days later, she bound him more tightly.
The door burst open when he was sitting silently in the kitchen and an excited small boy came in, yelling “Mum!” He stopped and stared at Sam.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where’s Mum?”
She came in behind him. “Hello Sammy. Did you have a nice holiday with Auntie Heather?”
The stranger temporarily forgotten, Sammy turned to her, bubbling over with enthusiasm. Heather popped up behind him, smiling at her sister, looking curiously at Sam, saying goodbye, off to work.
Sammy and his mother went upstairs, carrying his bag. When the boy came down again, he only smiled politely at Sam, a normal child, shy and courteous to Mum’s friend.
That night, she talked to him. Vic dead, caught in a shootout with the police. DCI Hunt and DC Cartwright had told her. Nothing they could do. Vic had brought it on himself.
She couldn’t tell Sammy. Heather had taken him to Blackpool for a week, to give her time to sort herself out. All Sammy knew was that Daddy was never coming home.
They settled into a routine, mother and small son going about their daily business, Sam sitting silently at home, never stirring from where she’d left him.
Sam slept in her room, sometimes in her bed, sometimes curled up on the floor. She never marked him where it would show and he had learned how to keep her happy. The cellar door remained locked, still no safe place for small boys.
Inevitably the police found out. No-one talked, not on a street like theirs, but one evening there was a knock on the door.
Four of them. Hunt, Cartwright, Carling and Skelton. Sam couldn’t think of them any other way. He sat there, in the one armchair in the room, silent, with his head down, while they plied him with questions to which he gave no answer.
He flinched when Cartwright dropped to her knees beside him, pulling away when she touched his hand. He didn’t move or react when Hunt towered over him, yelling and blustering, and looking as if he wanted to throw Sam up against the wall and beat the living daylights out of him. He didn’t react when Carling made his usual snide remarks. Even the expression of betrayal on Skelton’s face, of a boyhood hero worship shattered, didn’t make him react.
It was like seeing a different world, these people. Part of him knew who they were, the Guv, Annie, Ray and Chris, but he was watching it on an old TV with a bad signal. He wasn’t there, and if they came out of the TV, then his world would end. He sat still, avoiding their eyes, gently fingering the ribbon around his wrist, its bite making him feel safe.
He could hear her explaining anxiously, some story about him showing up and refusing to go for help, and he didn’t react at all until Hunt took his arm, intending to take him with them. Then he moved, pulling away, screaming, until Cartwright grabbed Hunt and dragged him away. He could hear explanations, he could see the worry in Cartwright’s eyes as he jerked away from her, and the pain when he let the other woman touch him and calm him.
They didn’t come back.
The old routine reasserted itself. There was more money in the house now. She told him he had a pension and she took care of it. Sammy seemed quite accepting of “Uncle Sam” as he now called him. He knew, because Sam had heard him be told, that Uncle Sam had been very, very sick and needed to stay quiet.
San knew he needed to be good. And he was. If she went out, she would return and find him still sitting in the chair in which she had left him. He craved her approval and increasingly won it.
She started taking him for walks. Every Sunday, all three of them went to the park, or out of town on the moors, where Sammy ran around, burning off his excess energy.
At night, she would talk to him, his head cradled in her breast as she gently stroked his short hair. She made plans, plans involving him and her and their happy little family.
“I knew it would be better with Vic gone,” she murmured. “Just the three of us. My two Sams.”
Sam drifted into sleep in the gentle rhythm of her caress. On the edge of drowsiness, he heard her murmur, “Who would have thought it would be so easy?”
He wasn’t thinking quickly these days, hadn’t since she first took him. But her words remained, niggling in the back of his brain, in those few moments where he wasn’t concentrating on pleasing her.
Vic. Vic Tyler was dead. Killed by the police in a shootout. And she… Mrs Ty… Ruth was pleased.
She continued to be pleased. There was nothing else he wanted. His previous life was only a memory, as if a very vivid dream. He sat where she told him, slept where she told him, fucked her when she told him. The ribbon grew dirty and tattered, its knot loosening. When he held his wrist out silently, his head bowed, she would tighten it for him.
She bustled around, cooking and cleaning and taking care of “her boys”. She wouldn’t let Sam help, although he was allowed to make her a cup of tea in the afternoon. She would smile at him, and he would smile back, genuinely happy to see her pleased.
He was allowed to spend time with Sammy, encouraged to do so. The small boy was remarkably phlegmatic about his near-silent “Uncle Sam” who helped him build Meccano and Lego and was un-adultly clumsy about it.
He was getting quite fond of the small boy who, he realised, wasn’t him, could never be him now. That helped. There had been no man in his mother’s life after his father had gone, so maybe this was a different world, and she wasn’t his mother and the child wasn’t him, and maybe, just maybe, it was all okay.
He could fool himself during the day. At night, he would wake up sweating, remembering what had happened, what she had done, to him and to Vic. That she wasn’t Mum, that she wasn’t the sweet china doll she appeared to be, that the most dangerous thing he could do in the world was to let her know this. So he kept the pattern of their lives going, slipping idly into a groove that seemed safe. No-one else wanted him. He knew that. His former colleagues had not returned, and his entire world centred on one old terraced house in an anonymous street with one woman and one child. A safe world, where nothing troubled him and the biggest event was the weekly walk in an open space. It was too tempting to forget everything he knew about her, about what she was capable of. About what she might be capable of next.
One Sunday, watching Sam and Sammy out on the moors, she idly commented: “He’s very like you. I wonder if he’ll be as good-looking when he gets older?” A calculating look crossed her face as she reached out to take both their hands.
Sam smiled; the absent smile she had come to expect on his face, but inside his thoughts moved faster than they had for months. Glancing at Sammy, he already he knew what he had to do.
Set 3: I'm Set Free
AUTHOR: Fionnabair
FANDOM: Life on Mars
SUMMARY: What good were eyes to me? Nothing I could see could bring me joy.
RATING: Red Cortina – Incest, non-con.
WORD COUNT: 1785
EMAIL: fiandyfic@livejournal.com
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Ruth/Sam. A sequel to Venus in Furs. Beta’d by
m31andyDISCLAIMER: Life on Mars is copyright Kudos and the BBC. All Rights Reserved. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made.
Beginning to See the Light
It began with the door being left unlocked. Not all the time, and not every time she visited him, but often enough that he knew it was deliberate. He knew when she locked it, because the sound was very distinctive.
He was proud of remembering that. It was important that he could still notice things, even if it was more and more difficult.
The man hadn’t been down for a while. It was just him and the woman. When he needed to give her a name in his mind, he thought of her as Mrs Tyler. Ruth seemed too intimate, and deep down he knew that was a joke, how could he be too intimate, considering what they’d done together, and the other name was one that he never let himself think. It had been easier with Tyler. He couldn’t think of him as Vic and he certainly never thought of him as Dad. His memories were too old, too faint.
The chain had gone too. And his hands were only tied when she came down, at his own silent request.
He wondered if he was free. Or if it was a test.
The next day, all was silent. And the door was open.
He stayed put.
No-one came. No food, no water, no blows, no kicks, nothing.
The day after, the door was still open.
This time, he moved, climbing the stairs cautiously, stopping when he reached the door and looking out.
The small hallway was dark, almost as dark as his cellar, and only one other door was open.
She stood in it, the light behind catching her hair, turning it into a golden halo. Sam thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
Almost shyly, like she was approaching a scared dog, she put her hand out and took his. Led him into the kitchen, sat him down at the table. Made him a cup of tea and two bacon butties and sat and watched him eat. She stood only once, going to the window and lowering the blind when he squinted in the unaccustomed glare of the sunlight.
They sat there for hours, silently facing each other across the chipped formica of the kitchen table, until she rose and took his hand again.
Docilely, he followed her, expecting to be led back to the cellar. Instead, she took him upstairs, to her bedroom.
He hadn’t seen her naked since the first night. This time, she stripped in front of him and stripped him too, before taking him to lie down on the bed, pulling him into her arms.
He couldn’t perform. Even when he realised what she wanted and obliged, using his hands and mouth to roam over her body, kissing and stroking and licking and worshipping, his cock remained soft.
A flash of anger in her eyes made him cringe until her face changed.
“Poor boy,” she soothed. “I know what will make it better.”
A scrap of thin ribbon, tied tightly around his wrist. If he flexed it, he could feel it cutting against the tendons.
It gave him what he needed. It bound him and released him.
Two days later, she bound him more tightly.
The door burst open when he was sitting silently in the kitchen and an excited small boy came in, yelling “Mum!” He stopped and stared at Sam.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where’s Mum?”
She came in behind him. “Hello Sammy. Did you have a nice holiday with Auntie Heather?”
The stranger temporarily forgotten, Sammy turned to her, bubbling over with enthusiasm. Heather popped up behind him, smiling at her sister, looking curiously at Sam, saying goodbye, off to work.
Sammy and his mother went upstairs, carrying his bag. When the boy came down again, he only smiled politely at Sam, a normal child, shy and courteous to Mum’s friend.
That night, she talked to him. Vic dead, caught in a shootout with the police. DCI Hunt and DC Cartwright had told her. Nothing they could do. Vic had brought it on himself.
She couldn’t tell Sammy. Heather had taken him to Blackpool for a week, to give her time to sort herself out. All Sammy knew was that Daddy was never coming home.
They settled into a routine, mother and small son going about their daily business, Sam sitting silently at home, never stirring from where she’d left him.
Sam slept in her room, sometimes in her bed, sometimes curled up on the floor. She never marked him where it would show and he had learned how to keep her happy. The cellar door remained locked, still no safe place for small boys.
Inevitably the police found out. No-one talked, not on a street like theirs, but one evening there was a knock on the door.
Four of them. Hunt, Cartwright, Carling and Skelton. Sam couldn’t think of them any other way. He sat there, in the one armchair in the room, silent, with his head down, while they plied him with questions to which he gave no answer.
He flinched when Cartwright dropped to her knees beside him, pulling away when she touched his hand. He didn’t move or react when Hunt towered over him, yelling and blustering, and looking as if he wanted to throw Sam up against the wall and beat the living daylights out of him. He didn’t react when Carling made his usual snide remarks. Even the expression of betrayal on Skelton’s face, of a boyhood hero worship shattered, didn’t make him react.
It was like seeing a different world, these people. Part of him knew who they were, the Guv, Annie, Ray and Chris, but he was watching it on an old TV with a bad signal. He wasn’t there, and if they came out of the TV, then his world would end. He sat still, avoiding their eyes, gently fingering the ribbon around his wrist, its bite making him feel safe.
He could hear her explaining anxiously, some story about him showing up and refusing to go for help, and he didn’t react at all until Hunt took his arm, intending to take him with them. Then he moved, pulling away, screaming, until Cartwright grabbed Hunt and dragged him away. He could hear explanations, he could see the worry in Cartwright’s eyes as he jerked away from her, and the pain when he let the other woman touch him and calm him.
They didn’t come back.
The old routine reasserted itself. There was more money in the house now. She told him he had a pension and she took care of it. Sammy seemed quite accepting of “Uncle Sam” as he now called him. He knew, because Sam had heard him be told, that Uncle Sam had been very, very sick and needed to stay quiet.
San knew he needed to be good. And he was. If she went out, she would return and find him still sitting in the chair in which she had left him. He craved her approval and increasingly won it.
She started taking him for walks. Every Sunday, all three of them went to the park, or out of town on the moors, where Sammy ran around, burning off his excess energy.
At night, she would talk to him, his head cradled in her breast as she gently stroked his short hair. She made plans, plans involving him and her and their happy little family.
“I knew it would be better with Vic gone,” she murmured. “Just the three of us. My two Sams.”
Sam drifted into sleep in the gentle rhythm of her caress. On the edge of drowsiness, he heard her murmur, “Who would have thought it would be so easy?”
He wasn’t thinking quickly these days, hadn’t since she first took him. But her words remained, niggling in the back of his brain, in those few moments where he wasn’t concentrating on pleasing her.
Vic. Vic Tyler was dead. Killed by the police in a shootout. And she… Mrs Ty… Ruth was pleased.
She continued to be pleased. There was nothing else he wanted. His previous life was only a memory, as if a very vivid dream. He sat where she told him, slept where she told him, fucked her when she told him. The ribbon grew dirty and tattered, its knot loosening. When he held his wrist out silently, his head bowed, she would tighten it for him.
She bustled around, cooking and cleaning and taking care of “her boys”. She wouldn’t let Sam help, although he was allowed to make her a cup of tea in the afternoon. She would smile at him, and he would smile back, genuinely happy to see her pleased.
He was allowed to spend time with Sammy, encouraged to do so. The small boy was remarkably phlegmatic about his near-silent “Uncle Sam” who helped him build Meccano and Lego and was un-adultly clumsy about it.
He was getting quite fond of the small boy who, he realised, wasn’t him, could never be him now. That helped. There had been no man in his mother’s life after his father had gone, so maybe this was a different world, and she wasn’t his mother and the child wasn’t him, and maybe, just maybe, it was all okay.
He could fool himself during the day. At night, he would wake up sweating, remembering what had happened, what she had done, to him and to Vic. That she wasn’t Mum, that she wasn’t the sweet china doll she appeared to be, that the most dangerous thing he could do in the world was to let her know this. So he kept the pattern of their lives going, slipping idly into a groove that seemed safe. No-one else wanted him. He knew that. His former colleagues had not returned, and his entire world centred on one old terraced house in an anonymous street with one woman and one child. A safe world, where nothing troubled him and the biggest event was the weekly walk in an open space. It was too tempting to forget everything he knew about her, about what she was capable of. About what she might be capable of next.
One Sunday, watching Sam and Sammy out on the moors, she idly commented: “He’s very like you. I wonder if he’ll be as good-looking when he gets older?” A calculating look crossed her face as she reached out to take both their hands.
Sam smiled; the absent smile she had come to expect on his face, but inside his thoughts moved faster than they had for months. Glancing at Sammy, he already he knew what he had to do.
Set 3: I'm Set Free
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