Work Text
“Israel! Hurry up now. I don’t have all day!”
Izzy rolls his eyes. “I’m on my way!”
Honestly, he wants nothing less than to pry himself loose from his chat with Ed because it’s usually impossible to get him to reply to a text let alone engross him in an actual conversation. Still, his father sounds pissed, and Izzy isn’t in the mood for another tirade about how he’s wasting his life staring at his phone.
Dad wants something, brb,
he types, then drops the phone on the mattress and begrudgingly rolls off the bed.
“Where are you, Ben?”
“In the basement, as I told you.” Shit. Ben sounds proper fucking angry.
“Sorry,” Izzy calls down the stairs, half-serious and half-annoyed. “Coming down now.”
When he finally makes it to his father’s workshop at the far end of the spacious basement, Ben glares at him, brows furrowed and arms on his hips. “What took you so long?”
Izzy shrugs. There’s no answer that would protect him from his father’s rage, he knows, so he doesn’t try to come up with an acceptable excuse. “Was talking to Ed, but I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“At long last,” Ben says.
Izzy resists the urge to bite back. Instead, he lets his gaze roam across the room.
Strewn across the workbenches are myriads of tools that Izzy is never going to learn how to use because his father still thinks he’s too fucking fragile to even wield a hammer. Izzy isn’t down here much, but normally, the room is much tidier. Right now, heavy machinery is littered across the floor, reminding Izzy of the time they redid the pavement in the garage. Christ, what the hell does Ben want with all of that?
Izzy crosses his arms over his chest. “What am I here for?”
Ben points to a small metal door on the wall. The steering wheel-shaped handle reminds Izzy of an old-fashioned bank safe in a gangster movie. “Come here and open this for me.”
Izzy frowns. What the hell is this about? As if Ben called him down here just because he can’t be arsed to open a door. Still, he steps closer. “How do I even open it? Is there a combination, or—”
“Just turn the wheel.” Ben’s voice is frigid.
Izzy shudders as he reaches for the handle and tries to give it a spin. It barely budges. “It’s not working.”
“You’re turning it in the wrong direction.” Ben doesn’t outright call him an idiot, but with his voice so full of scorn he doesn’t need to for Izzy to hear it loud and clear. Izzy gulps down his anger and spins the wheel again.
This time, it moves smoothly, and the door swings open.
Darkness fills up the space behind, and Izzy has to blink a couple of times to assure himself that he’s not making shit up.
Behind the door lies a little room that Izzy has never seen before. It’s small and looks rough, almost like an abandoned mine. Traces of the tools that carved out the space are still clearly visible on the walls.
“What… what the hell is this?” And why the hell is his voice trembling like that? “A bunker?”
Ben doesn’t reply for a while.
With every second that passes in silence, Izzy’s heart beats faster. He can’t even tell
why
he’s so scared. Maybe it’s just the strangeness of discovering a whole new room in the house he’s lived in for all sixteen years of his life, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
A mechanical clicking noise cuts through the silence. It’s quiet, but Izzy flinches like it’s a fucking explosion. “Ben?” he asks, his voice pitching up into that high, nervous tone he despises so much.
“You’re going to turn around,” Ben says. “Slowly. Hands where I can see them. You’re not going to scream when you do. Is that clear?”
Izzy blinks in confusion, lifting his hands to hover near his shoulders. He’s used to that tone, of course, but something about the words terrifies him. Ben sounds like a third-rate cop in some made-for-TV movie.
Scream?
What the hell would he even scream about? “Uh. Yes, Sir.”
He turns—slowly, just like his father told him to, and with his knees trembling. He raises his eyes to look at Ben, and—
Izzy claps his hands over his mouth to trap the scream clawing its way up his throat.
A gun. Ben’s got a fucking gun pointed at him. What the fuck.
Izzy’s shoulders shake like a tree in a storm, and he whimpers into his hands. Where the hell did Ben even get a gun from? It’s the most inane thing to wonder about when he’s got said gun pointed at his head, but somehow, that’s what Izzy’s brain decides to rattle about. His heart beats so fast it hurts, and Izzy is pretty sure he’ll faint if it keeps up like that.
He moves his hands off his mouth and manages not to scream. “Ben, what… what is this about?”
“Quiet,” Ben hisses. “Get in there. Don’t even think about trying anything funny. I won’t hesitate to use this.” He gestures with the gun.
It gives Izzy pause. Ben’s his father, but the cold detachment in his voice and the gun’s safety being off tells Izzy that he’s not bluffing.
Izzy winces, and his body stiffens with fear. What the hell is happening? How did coming downstairs to help his father with some mundane task turn into
this?
How the fuck can he possibly get
out
of this?
It’s only staring down the barrel of the gun that finally allows him to break free from his frozen position. Slowly, he steps backwards, until his shoulder bumps into the unforgiving metal of the door.
“Come on, now. Don’t dawdle,” Ben says. He follows Izzy, directing him to get inside through a pointed gesture with the gun.
“S—sorry,” Izzy stutters, “I’m getting in. Sorry.”
The door is set into the wall at around knee height and reaches his shoulder, so he has to crouch and contort to climb inside. A musty smell fills his nostrils as he enters the small, dank room. The ceiling is low—not so low that Izzy has to crouch down, short as he is, but low enough for the walls to feel like they’re slowly closing in on him. He doesn’t dare move around too much—not with the gun still pointed at him. From the corner of his eye, he sees a bucket in one corner and one of Ben’s foldable camp beds in the other, but those seem to be the only furnishings of the room. Each breath of cold, damp air feels like drowning.
If he stays here for too long, Izzy might actually die.
Maybe that’s better than having to stay.
Ben clicks his tongue, commanding Izzy’s attention back to his face.
Izzy wants to beg for mercy, but he’s not sure he even knows what to beg for or why. Ben can’t just shoot him and close the door, can he?
“Right,” Ben says. He’s still aiming the gun directly at Izzy’s head, and the way he’s holding it sets Izzy’s nerves on edge—too fucking casually, like he’s gesturing with a screwdriver while working and not with a deadly fucking weapon. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I will close this door, and you’re going to stay and wait for me. Your mother’s about to come back from work, and I’ll tell her that you went out to meet your little friend. What’s his name again? Edmund?”
Edward,
Izzy wants to grind out,
and he’s not a friend, he’s my fucking boyfriend,
but he’s pretty sure Ben would put a bullet in his head if he reminded him of that fact.
“You’re not going to come home this evening, of course. She’ll worry about you, I think, but don’t fret. I’ll stay calm and reassure her. You’re probably just out on a wild night. Kids are like that—
you
are like that, always getting into trouble with those boys you’re hanging out with.”
“No,” Izzy says. “Please. No. I don’t—I can’t stay here all day. I’ll—” He swallows around the rapidly growing lump of fear in his throat. “I have homework. Please.”
Ben just laughs coldly. “Oh, don’t bother with that. You’re not going to school tomorrow. I didn’t dig you a whole new room to only use it for one night. Nobody is going to come looking for you.”
Izzy’s tears finally start to burst out of him, like a dam has been broken. How fucking long does Ben intend to keep him here?
Ben tuts. “Trying so hard to be a boy, yet here you are, crying like a little girl.”
He drops something into the room—a grenade, Izzy thinks for half a second, and he’s already jumped into the farthest corner of the room when he realises it’s a flashlight. Just a fucking flashlight.
Fucking ridiculous, the tricks his mind plays on him. His life isn’t some Hollywood movie.
“Better make yourself comfortable,” Ben says, and then the door closes with a resounding metallic
clang
.
Izzy folds into himself like his bones collapsed inwards, falls to his knees, and begins to bawl.
Violent sobs shake through him, so hard he can barely gulp down air in between. This can’t be happening. This can’t be
fucking happening—
he balls his hands into tight, angry little fists and slams them against the raw, hard floor until blood runs down his knuckles in hot, sticky rivulets.
What did he do to deserve this? What did he ever do for his father to deserve being locked in the basement—in a room that he apparently dug out for this express purpose? What—
Izzy can’t breathe. His throat constricts around the few particles of air he draws in, and he wheezes, quietly first, then louder, then so hard he crumbles and falls over to his side. His cheek slams against a sharp edge of rock, blood dripping down the side of his face until it pools under him, but Izzy doesn’t give a shit. He’s terrified. He’s going to die.
It’s the first time it really, properly hits him. He’s going to die here.
Stupidly, he slides a hand into the back pocket of his jeans, only to realise he left his phone upstairs, and even more stupidly, it makes him sob harder. He should say goodbye to Ed, at least.
There’s nothing to be fucking done. He’s stuck here until Ben decides he’s had enough of a laugh about scaring Izzy to near death and lets him out.
Slowly, Izzy’s tears subside.
When he opens his eyes again, he’s still alone in a cold, dark, musty room, and there’s no one coming to save him.
Shit. Sitting idle isn’t going to help him, is it?
He draws in a shaky breath, then pulls himself up to his hands and knees. He pats the floor methodically until the smooth metal of the flashlight appears under his hands. He turns it on, white-hot light pouring out of it and stinging in his eyes after God knows how much time he spent in the pitch black dark of the room. He blinks and squints until his eyes adapt to the new light.
For lack of anything better to do, Izzy examines the room. It’s small, maybe three by two metres, and the walls look like they’ve been carved out of the bare stone the house was built on. Izzy discovers a pillow and a folded threadbare blanket under the cot, but that and the bucket are the only pieces of furniture Ben has left for him here. The door doesn’t budge, no matter how many times Izzy slams into it with his full body weight, and he only stops trying when he smashes his left arm against it so hard it goes numb for a few seconds. There are two little metal slats near the bottom, though, letting in the smallest bit of air, so Izzy guesses he at least won’t suffocate in here.
Though maybe suffocation would have been the better choice. The quickest, at least. He has no food or water here, and unless Ben returns soon to bring him something… thirst or hunger might well kill him, and from everything Izzy has read about failed mountain explorations, those don’t sound like pleasant deaths.
He grinds his tongue between his teeth until he tastes blood. Ben would have hardly dug out this entire room if he just intended to kill Izzy, would he? A small crypt would have sufficed for that.
He sits down on the cot and pulls his knees to his chest. He turns the flashlight off again—he’s looked at every square inch of the room twice over, and he doesn’t need to be reminded of his suffering any more than necessary. Despair still rips him apart, but he doesn’t have any tears left to cry.
Maybe Ben is just trying to teach him a lesson. Izzy isn’t sure what exactly he did this time to warrant this sort of punishment, other than marring his parents’ picture perfect life with his erroneous existence, but… it would fit with his father’s usual modus operandi. It’s not the first time Izzy’s being punished harshly for no reason he can discern. Izzy lies down on the cot and curls up on his side. He’ll just have to make it until Ben comes back down. He’ll figure out a way to get out of here, either with the apologies and platitudes his father wants to hear, or… if shit hits the fan, with a targeted hit of the flashlight.
He’ll just have to survive until Ben comes back. Izzy clings to that thought, but as he tries to conjure up more ideas of how to get out, he realises that he has no way of tracking the passing of time, let alone to divine when Ben will return.
If
he will return at all, a pitiless little voice in the back of his brain reminds him. There’s no guarantee he won’t just leave Izzy to rot. Would be one way to get rid of a bothersome kid—just push a cabinet in front of the door and pretend neither the room nor Izzy ever existed.
Izzy sighs. He’s not going to surrender that easily. He’s just got to kill some time and come up with a plan.
Time, it turns out, passes slowly like dripping tar when you’re all alone in a room with nothing to do. Izzy alternates between staring into the emptiness and squeezing his eyes shut like it’ll keep the darkness out for some indeterminate amount of time until he gives up and sits up again with a frustrated grunt. There has to be something more interesting to focus on than the millions of weak excuses he’s trying to formulate.
He rifles through memories, hoping to find one to hold onto, and soon finds he’s always circling back around to memories of Ed. Of course he is—Ed’s been the centre of his entire life ever since they bumped into each other in a hallway after English class during year 7. Izzy spent the rest of the day unfocussed, memories of the other boy’s deep, dark eyes drowning out anything happening around him.
There’s a particular memory that wraps itself around Izzy, its presence almost physical in its intensity.
Ed kissed him. Last month, on their walk back home from school, instead of continuing on their separate ways at the usual corner, Ed wrapped a hand around Izzy’s wrist and, with a twinkle in his eyes, pulled Izzy under the willow tree in the park. “Wanna do something weird?” he whispered, and when Izzy nodded, uncertain but willing to go along with whatever Ed proposed, Ed took Izzy’s face in his hands and pressed their lips together.
They’ve been doing a whole lot of kissing ever since.
Izzy loses himself in the memories, every trace of Ed’s soft kisses or his fingers lacing into Izzy’s a thin layer of protection against the harsh reality of his situation. It’s easy to forget just how fucked he is as he drowns himself in memories of Ed laughing against his lips in the empty physics lab during recess.
Izzy has to survive this—if only so he can kiss Ed again.
Between Izzy’s fantasies and his dark, entirely uneventful prison, he soon drifts off. Sleep comes as a relief, and he welcomes even his strange dreams in which he wanders through an underground labyrinth, a caged canary in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, digging himself ever deeper on the search for—what, he does not know, but it feels urgent. He rushes through tunnels,
something
always out of sight yet certainly on his heels, driving him ever forward. When he lifts his hands, the canary lies dead on the floor of its cage, brittle yellow legs sticking up like crosses in a graveyard.
In his dream, Izzy screams.
When he wakes, the sound still bounces off the barren walls of his crypt.
His heart thumps hard enough to hurt.
A metallic creaking sound blends into the cacophony of horror inside Izzy’s head. He pats the cot, ice-cold panic shooting through his veins—the flashlight has got to be here
somewhere,
it must be, Izzy left it right here before he fell asleep—
The door opens, light pouring in like a tidal wave.
It’s too much at once, too bright, and Izzy has to pinch his eyes shut and turn away to flee from the rays threatening to bore burn holes into his retinas.
“Hello, Israel.” Ben ducks down to manoeuvre his broad body through the tiny hatch of the door. “Calmed down a little, have you?”
Izzy blinks through the tears clouding his eyes against the too-bright light framing Ben’s head like some sort of fucked up halo. He doesn’t want to say anything—he’s not fucking
calm,
not by any stretch of the imagination, but he knows he’ll have to get his shit together and choke out the apologies his father wants to hear. He clears his throat, intent on speaking before being told to do so—to show some fucking initiative, as his father often says.
Ben turns on a camping lamp and closes the door behind himself, and Izzy’s words die on his tongue. The fucking
gun
wasn’t a part of his fragmented plans, but here it is, tucked into the waistband of Ben’s jeans. He whimpers, familiar fear returning to paralyse his limbs.
“Well?” Ben prompts, a taunting glint in his eyes.
Right. Izzy still hasn’t said a fucking word. “I’m sorry,” he croaks. His eyes flit between Ben’s face and the gun like moths between two lightbulbs, undecided against the glass of which one they’re going to find their certain death. “I’m so sorry, Ben. I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll never—never do it again, I swear—”
“Oh, spare me your flimsy excuses,” Ben says, shutting Izzy up with a vague gesture.
Izzy’s voice dies down, and he just stares at Ben dumbly. If he doesn’t want an apology for whatever misdeed he imagined this time, then what did he bring Izzy down here for?
Instead of explaining himself, he hands Izzy a small plastic bag. “You must be hungry,” he says. Izzy doesn’t buy the sympathy in his voice for a fucking second.
Truthfully, he’s never been
less
hungry in his life, so he shoves the crackers into the pocket of his hoodie, but he finds a small bottle of water and chugs half of it under Ben’s watchful eyes. He didn’t even realise how thirsty he was, but as he drinks, he feels like one of Ed’s neglected houseplants finally getting a swig of water whenever he remembers they exist, their leaves unfurling from their sad, hanging crouch for a little while.
It’s no miracle he’s parched with how much he has been crying.
He closes the bottle and tucks it under the bunk—just in case Ben is going to leave him locked up for longer. Never a bad idea to have some reserves. Still, he can’t fucking stand sitting here in silence and being gawked at. “So,” he says, trying to sound casual despite the gigantic, painful lump in his throat, “what on earth is this about?”
Ben demonstratively places a hand on the gun.
Izzy stiffens, his eyes shooting wide open as he gawps at Ben despite the terror dazing him.
Ben cocks his head. “Well. Did you think I locked you up in here just for fun?”
“Of course not,” Izzy says, though it comes out as hardly more than a whisper. His heart beats so hard he can feel his pulse pounding in his throat. “I’m sure you have your reasons.”
Ben smirks sardonically. “I do have good reasons, indeed—and I was kind enough to bring you something to eat and drink.”
“You did,” Izzy says, tacking on the “Sir” Ben loves to hear so much whenever he thinks Izzy’s being disrespectful. He doesn’t even mention that those crackers have fucking milk in them, which means that Izzy’s stomach would give him hell for hours after eating them. Ben would probably put a bullet in his head if he brought it up.
“I did,” Ben nods. He runs his fingers along the shaft of the gun—it’s supposed to be a casual gesture, Izzy can tell, but it has the added effect of making sure Izzy doesn’t forget about its presence. He sucks in a shaky breath and sits up a little straighter. “So now you are going to be good and return the favour, aren’t you?”
Izzy blinks, tears rapidly rising to blur his vision once again. He’s shaking, he notices, and he doesn’t even know what precisely he’s scared of.
Ben wouldn’t shoot him, would he?
The fucking
favour
he’s talking about is probably just something in his workshop he needs help with. He’ll often make Izzy clean things for him, claiming his smaller hands are more apt to get into the nooks and crannies of disassembled power tools.
Instead of waiting for a reply, Ben pulls the gun from his waistband and aims it at Izzy’s face.
Panic floods Izzy’s chest, filling him up, and he can’t help but let out an embarrassing, girlish screech.
Ben tuts. “Scream all you want. Your mother isn’t home, and even if she was—we’re underground. Above your head is four feet of reinforced concrete. No one’s going to hear you.”
Izzy slams his hands over his mouth, trying to force his screams back in. He knows no one is coming to save him, and still, screaming seems the only natural reaction to his situation.
Ben slowly walks up to the cot, the gun held out in front of himself. “If you act out, though, I’m putting a bullet in you.” He’s just a few inches away now, trailing the muzzle of the gun down Izzy’s body. Izzy can’t stop shaking. “Not in your head, but somewhere it fucking hurts.”
“Okay.” Izzy holds his hands up—a peace offering and a desperate attempt to somehow pacify this monster his father has turned into. “I’m not going to try anything. Please, Ben, just—put the gun down so we can talk, alright?”
“I will do no such thing,” Ben says, impassive. Instead, he takes aim at Izzy’s left kneecap. “You, however, are going to take your clothes off now.”
Izzy’s heart sinks. “What?” It’s just one syllable, but his voice still manages to crack twice around the fear in his throat. “Why—”
“Stop fucking asking questions,” Ben bellows, spittle flying as his face reddens, “and do what I tell you to do, before I make sure you can never fucking walk again!”
“Okay,” Izzy presses out through tears. He hopes it sounds… if not convincing, then at the very least calming. He repeats the word, more to himself than to Ben, this time: “Okay.”
Ben moves half a step back—just enough to allow Izzy as much freedom of movement as he needs while still keeping the constant threat of the gun fresh and present in Izzy’s mind.
Izzy closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before shrugging his hoodie off his shoulders. He doesn’t understand what the hell is happening. He feels sick with it, disgusted by his father’s demands and even more so by how easily he goes along with them. Mercifully, his brain zones out as he sheds the rest of his clothes. It’s easier that way. Doesn’t force him to think about what’s happening or about what could happen next. Everything feels grey and blurry, but tears run down his cheeks like a cloudburst all the same.
A cruel chuckle from Ben pulls him out of his trance. Izzy’s eyes shoot up to his face. “What a pretty little girl you are,” he says, his eyes roaming up and down Izzy’s chest.
Izzy turns away, shielding himself with an arm across the breasts he wishes he could rip off his body. The words sting more than he would have expected. Coming out to his parents was maybe the hardest thing Izzy has ever done, and they certainly weren’t
great
about it, but at least since Izzy cut his hair and packed all his dresses into a suitcase that he dragged up into the attic, his father never misgendered him
this
outright. Privately, Izzy always suspected that Ben never really saw him as a boy, but… the confirmation of that inkling still hurts like a bitch.
“Come on. Don’t get shy now. Keep going. Show me those fat tits.”
Ben fiddles with the gun again, and as much as Izzy wants to fucking throw up at that choice of words, he reaches behind himself to unclasp his too-tight sports bra. Izzy doesn’t look down—doesn’t have to to know his breasts spill out like two fucking tumours, hanging shapeless and heavy where a flat chest should be.
“Lovely,” Ben says, reaching out to cup one of them in his hand. Izzy closes his eyes, unable to bear the sight. Ben’s thumb pokes and prods at him like he’s trying to feel a piece of fruit for bruises. “Really, it’s a shame you always hide your breasts when they’re your best asset.” He squeezes again before withdrawing his hand. “You didn’t get those from your mother, that much is certain.”
Izzy doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t even
move
, and he can’t fucking bring himself to, his brain still rattling as it tries to catch up to—his father—his father’s hands on him—on his—
“Don’t drag your feet, now” Ben says, slinking into his self-assured stance again, the gun still aimed at Izzy’s knee. “I didn’t tell you to stop, did I?”
Numb and silent, Izzy rises from the bed and unbuckles his belt. Ben’s still going on and on, something about what a pretty girl he’d make dressed in the right clothes, but Izzy is determined not to listen. As he slides his baggy jeans down his legs, his thoughts, once again, settle back on Edward.
Ed wouldn’t be this fucking cruel if he saw Izzy like this, Izzy tells himself. He’d be gentle and just keep his mouth shut about Izzy’s body—or maybe he wouldn’t. If there was ever a fucking time to indulge himself with unrealistic fantasies, it’s probably now. Fuck it. Maybe Ed
would
tell Izzy he looks handsome, run his fingers through Izzy’s leg hair and kiss his shoulders, or maybe—
“Lovely,” Ben coos as Izzy finally drops his boxers to the floor. He stares at Izzy like he’s something to eat, and Izzy tries to cover himself with his hands like some Greek statue of Aphrodite. “Oh, come on, none of that,” Ben says impatiently. “No use in hiding yourself.”
Izzy unfurls, shaking like a leaf in the tempest of his father’s wrath.
“That’s better.” Ben gestures with the gun to the heap of clothes on the floor. “Hand me those underpants, will you? That abomination of a brassiere, too.”
Izzy desperately wants to ask why, but he has a feeling the answer would be a bullet to the foot, so he dutifully bends over and plucks his underwear off the floor.
Bent down like this, he notices—Ben is fucking
hard
in his jeans. Izzy breaks down into pained sobs all over again. He’d rather Ben put a gun into his head than… He can’t even bring himself to
think
it, so unspeakable is the act.
As he hands his clothes over to Ben, he shakes so hard he almost drops them.
“Good girl,” Ben says, stuffing them into the plastic bag and setting them down near the door. “You won’t be needing those again, but do not fret; I shall bring you something to keep you warm.”
“Thank you,” Izzy says mechanically. His father beat that into him early enough.
Ben nods, a benevolent smile on his face. “Now then. Get back on the bed. On your back.”
There’s a scream lodged in Izzy’s throat, high up right behind his uvula. If he opened his mouth, it would come pouring out, loud enough to shake the foundations of the house, for the walls to collapse and for the ceiling to cave in. Izzy would be buried under the rubble, limbs twisted and an unbearable weight on his chest, pressing down until his ribs crack and he can finally stop breathing.
It’d be a mercy.
It’d hurt less than this—this wrong, twisted reality that he’s been thrown into, only to scramble uselessly as he attempts to grapple with it. He’s barely in his own body at all, hardly feels the cot dipping under his weight and the rough plastic texture of its surface scraping his skin as he sinks down.
Ben’s voice cuts through the haze like a blade through skin. “What a pretty little cunt,” he says, his voice dripping lust like poisoned honey.
Izzy can’t even open his mouth to say anything, so heavy is the knot of fear and disgust tightening around his throat. He wants to disappear, fucking dissolve into the ground, or have Ben finally put a bullet into his skull. It would be less humiliating than this.
Ben runs a finger over Izzy’s cunt, and Izzy whimpers. It’s the only sound he can force out of his body, and it feels too loud in the silence.
Ben ignores it. “Tell me, you little harlot,” he says, greedily pawing at Izzy’s body, “how many boys have already been inside you? Five? Ten? More?”
“No one,” Izzy snaps.
He swallows around his anger. Was this the answer Ben wants to hear? It’s the truth—he’s a short, chubby trans boy, which isn’t exactly a hit with the other kids in his year. If there was ever anyone, it would have been Ed, and it’s not like Izzy wouldn’t
want
to, it just… hasn’t happened yet.
Another rush of panic seizes him. It might never happen, if Ben keeps him here for a while. Ed would miss him for a while, or so Izzy hopes, but he’d surely move on to the next shiny thing that grabs his attention in no time.
Ben’s fleshy palm comes down over Izzy’s cunt with a resounding
slap.
“Don’t you dare lie to me,
Isabelle.”
Another violent sob shakes through Izzy’s body. He almost forgot how much he hates hearing that name. It clings to him, like tacky residue on his skin that won’t come off no matter how hard he scrapes at it. It’s fucking revolting. It’s not like he should expect better from his father—not with how he’s always been and certainly not while he’s got Izzy naked under him—but still, for some godforsaken reason, the humiliation of hearing his old name stings worse than everything else. “I’m not lying,” he chokes out, his only line of defence. “I promise. I’ve never—”
“No?” Ben cuts him off. “Never? Saved your little virgin cunny for the occasion?”
Izzy nods frantically, desperate to agree with his father on the distant hope that it might placate him enough to stop and reconsider what he’s doing to Izzy.
Ben just nods, a satisfied, sardonic grin playing around his lips. “Well, in that case, I’ve got to prepare you, don’t I?” He reaches between his legs and gives the prominent bulge there a pointed squeeze. “Wouldn’t want to overwhelm you if this is your first time.”
“Yeah,” Izzy whispers breathlessly. “Makes sense. Thank you, Ben, thank you—”
Ben reaches for the gun again.
“No!” Izzy screeches. He knows it’s futile, and it’s less of a conscious choice to scream than an instinctual reaction, the flood of feelings bottled up in his chest ever since he first walked down into the basement finally exploding out of their confinement. “No, Ben, stop, please—”
Ben wraps one of his large hands around Izzy’s thigh and presses it down into the mattress, precluding any chance Izzy might’ve had at clamping his legs shut or squirming away. Ben doesn’t look the part—he’s old, and he’s been sporting a beer gut for as long as Izzy remembers—but he’s strong. Izzy has no way of winding himself out of his iron-shackle grip. It doesn’t stop him from screaming and convulsing under Ben’s touch like a wounded animal, though, even though he knows it’s useless and he’s just wasting the little bit of energy he has left.
Ben shakes his head. “You are aware that there’s no point in fighting, yes?”
Izzy
is,
but that’s not the fucking point. The point
is
the fight. He can hardly just lay here and quietly take it, can he?
With Izzy’s legs pinned under his weight, Ben gets to work. He slides his hand over Izzy’s cunt once more, then spreads his lips apart—pins them open, like a horrid illustration from a Victorian medicine book. His fingers are large and red and rough against Izzy’s sensitive flesh, and Izzy buckles with fear.
“Stay still, now,” Ben commands. “I don’t want to… injure anything important.”
Izzy freezes.
Something slides against his entrance—not the fleshy pads of fingers, but something cold and hard and unrelenting.
The muzzle of the fucking gun.
Izzy can’t even scream. Ben’s shoving the fucking gun up his cunt.
Pain rips up his spine belatedly at the realisation, like he’s being ripped apart at the seams. It would likely have hurt less if Ben just—didn’t prepare him. The metal has no give, just a myriad of sharp edges that slice into the most delicate parts of Izzy’s body. He must be bleeding.
Something
eases the way, and it’s certainly not arousal. He tastes copper on his tongue, too, bitter and heavy, like a phantom of the pain between his legs.
It hurts. His entire body screams with how much it hurts.
Ben isn’t just going to rape him, Izzy realises.
He’s going to ruin him. Izzy is never going to enjoy any touch, no matter how soft and gentle, after this.
“Please,” he croaks out, one desperate, last-ditch attempt at stopping this madness. “Stop. Please. Ben—”
To his utter surprise, Ben
does
stop mid-motion. He pauses the terrible process of cramming the gun deeper into Izzy’s body, but he doesn’t remove it.
Would’ve been too much to fucking ask for, Izzy thinks.
Instead, a soft click cuts through the silence. Izzy can’t see what Ben’s doing, but he recognises the noise well enough. The fucking hammer of the gun.
Every fibre of Izzy’s body wants to thrash around the surge of panic that swells inside him. He can’t. He knows he can’t. It would just take one wrong move to startle a bullet out of that gun, right up into his guts.
As much as Izzy wishes Ben would just fucking end it, this seems like a disgusting, painful death.
So he stays, his tongue frozen with fear and his body paralysed with panic.
Ben shakes his head, that smooth, cutting expression of disappointment on his face that always makes an appearance when Izzy brings home a bad grade. “It’s such a shame that your generation has lost all respect for your elders.”
Izzy can’t help but stare at him in disbelief.
Respect?
He’s been nothing but obedient ever since Ben first pointed that gun at him. Is this why Ben forced him down here? Izzy can’t
think
of any occasion where he might have acted disrespectfully, but he suspects his father’s standards differ from most people’s. “Ben, I don’t—”
Ben tuts. “Who taught you this? Oh, I bet it was that Teach boy. Really, I’m your father, you don’t get to call me by my name. Show some fucking respect, whore.”
Fucking bringing Edward into it again when he has nothing to do with it—hell, Ed’s dad has been dead since before Izzy even met Ed. Izzy wants to claw his father’s face off for his clueless callousness, but instead, he just tries to plead with him again. “I’m sorry. Please, I promise, just—”
Ben’s hand strikes him across the face. The edge of his wedding ring rips the barely crusted-over scabs on his cheeks open again. The slap rings through the chamber and bounces off the walls in a brutal, maddening echo. Izzy weeps. Ben’s eyes are on him again, something both freezing and fiery in the depths of them. “Who are you talking to, bitch?”
“Dad,”
Izzy croaks out. It’s a miracle the words aren’t followed by a gush of bile. It feels wrong—disgustingly so, to call Ben
that
while he’s still got a gun crammed into Izzy’s hole. He wants it all to stop. He hates himself for it, but he opens his mouth again. “Dad. I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, but please don’t hurt me, please…”
“See?” Ben asks. “Wasn’t that hard, wasn’t it?” Izzy hears the safety clicking back on, and then the merciless intrusion of the gun retreats from his cunt. “Let that be a lesson, Isabelle. I won’t tolerate your disrespect any longer.”
Through the haze of fear, disgust and self-hatred, Izzy nods. He’d agree to anything by now just to make it all stop. Maybe this was it. Maybe Ben is finally fucking done, now that he’s taught him a lesson, and this nightmare can end.
Wouldn’t that be fucking great,
Izzy thinks, tears still streaming down his cheeks.
Wouldn’t that be too fucking easy
.
Ben’s weight moves off Izzy’s leg for a second. Izzy almost wants to sigh with relief, but then—the sound of a zipper.
No.
“No,”
Izzy whispers. Ben either can’t hear him or deliberately ignores his pathetic plea.
Izzy can’t stand the sight. He stares at the ceiling, away from Ben, like trying to blank it out is going to not make it happen. From the corner of his eye, he sees Ben pulling his cock out of his trousers. He’s big—intimidatingly so, big enough that Izzy would be scared even under normal circumstances.
Like this, he feels nothing but naked horror. He’s still crying, but without making any sound. He doesn’t have the strength to sob anymore. He would turn away, but his body feels like it’s being crushed by the tons and tons of rock above him.
“Why are you doing this to me, Dad?” he asks, his voice a tiny, fragile thing that Ben could easily squash between his hands.
Ben looks down at him with a tired expression. “Still haven’t figured it out, huh?”
He wraps a hand around his erection and begins to slide it up and down. Izzy tries very hard not to look, but it proves impossible. His father’s cock is large, flushed a deep, violent red, and leaking some clear, sticky liquid. Another surge of nausea hits Izzy, and he only manages to keep the bile down by slamming his hands over his mouth and squeezing his eyes shut.
Ben’s still stroking himself, the rhythmic
slap-slap-slap
of it following Izzy even behind his closed eyelids. “I’m getting old. I don’t want to die without a son to leave my legacy to.”
“You’ve got me.” Izzy knows it’s not what Ben means, but he can’t stop the words before they leave his mouth.
Ben laughs, cold and bitter. “Don’t be ridiculous, Isabelle. A
real
one.” He shifts again, the thin fabric of the camp bed dipping under his weight. “Your mother is too old to bear another child, and besides…” His fingers dig into Izzy’s flesh once more, right above the curve of his hip that he so loathes. “I shouldn’t speak ill of her, in front of you, but… her body simply isn’t what it used to be. Not like yours. Full of youth and vitality. A diamond in the rough. The crown jewel, of course, being your womb. Young and sweet and fertile. Begging to be bred. Because that is what you were made for.”
Izzy chokes out an ugly sob, his voice shattering around the sound.
Fertile. Begging to be bred.
He can’t fucking do this. He can’t bear a child. The thought of pregnancy is terrifying enough—his belly rounding out until he can’t fucking move without heaving under the exertion, and his breasts swelling even more than they already are, and having to push a fucking
child
out of his cunt and
mother it
—it’s the stuff his fucking nightmares are made of.
It being his
father’s
child only makes it worse.
Ben still casually fists his cock with one hand, like this is nothing out of the ordinary to him. His other hand slips over Izzy’s abdomen. “You’re going to carry my son. You’re going to make your old father very proud, Isabelle.”
Izzy can’t scrape up the strength to formulate a reply. Ben’s hand is on him, and he feels him crawling closer still—feels it in every dip of the cot beneath him, in the rough fabric of Ben’s jeans scraping over his thighs, and in the hot, wet tip of his cock that he rubs between the folds of Izzy’s cunt.
Any fight Izzy may have had left evaporates from his body. He doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t try to crawl away—doesn’t even scream, this time.
He just closes his eyes and lets it happen.
His father’s cock feels just as large as it looked, and he doesn’t hold back as he forces himself inside. It punches a weak grunt of pain from Izzy but nothing more. There’s nothing more he can say. There are no more noises trapped behind his teeth nor protests tangled around his tongue.
It hurts less than the gun, at least, Izzy thinks and nearly breaks out into desperate cynical laughter. What a fucking standard of comparison.
Ben’s body on top of his own is heavy and unwieldy. He moves like his joints creak with every thrust, and it’s impossible to tell if his grunts are of pleasure or of pain. He rocks back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea, not like a man chasing his pleasure.
It’d be pathetic if it wasn’t so painful.
Every time Ben thrusts into Izzy’s cunt, it kicks off an avalanche of white-hot pain, rolling up Izzy’s spine and threatening to bury him alive. His rhythm is uncoordinated, so Izzy can’t even lose himself in the predictability of it all.
“That’s it.” Ben groans. “Taking my cock like the good little whore you were made to be.”
Izzy stares at the ceiling and wishes himself far away.
Ed wouldn’t be this… brutal about it. If the way he kisses is any indication, Ed would be passionate but careful, stopping along the way to turn around and see if Izzy is still behind him, following in his footsteps. He’d be clumsy but caring and charming, grinning and giddy.
Izzy tries to throw himself into his memories once again—Ed’s arms around his waist as he deepens a gentle kiss—but then Ben’s paw brushes over his hip, and the memory slips out of Izzy’s weak grasp. He reaches for them, again and again, desperate for any fragment of
Edward
to hold on to lest he drown in the bitter reality of his situation, but every one of Ben’s violent thrusts is knocking them out of Izzy’s sweaty, shaking hands.
It’s all kind of fucking stupid, looking at it like this. Ben grunts like a fucking plowhorse, pumping into Izzy like a mindless animal. “Still so tight,” he moans, “as if you’ve really saved your little virgin cunny all for Daddy.” It’s just as meaningless as his groans. Izzy tries to let the words ricochet off his skin.
It doesn’t work. Of course, it doesn’t. Even when he tries to harden himself, the venom in the words seeps under his skin, and Izzy can already feel it festering there, foaming and bubbling into something fatal.
Ben’s fucking wrecking him.
Despite it all, Izzy lies there limply, determined to not prolong it any further. His cunt is a red-hot mess of agony, so fucking sore that every sharp thrust is just another little spike of pain in the flaring ache his body has become.
He floats on the pain, half in and half out of his body, until Ben’s hips snap forwards particularly hard.
“Don’t move, now, Isabelle,” he urges. “I’m going to—
God!
—fill you up. Breed you, until you’re all fat and swollen with my child.”
Izzy makes a vague noise, unsure of what he’s trying to express. He just wants Ben to finish and be fucking done.
“I’ll make sure it takes. Make sure you are—filled, and round, and finally worth something, when you’re carrying my son—my
son!”
He grunts again, a low, guttural sound, like something from the depths of Hell, and then Izzy
feels
him come. It’s revolting, hot and sticky added on top of the already hot and sticky mess Ben has made of his cunt. He pulses and spills deep inside Izzy’s hole, his thrusts stuttering but never stopping.
Izzy whines. It’s not like there was any doubt about Ben’s intentions before this, but to feel the evidence of his intentions like this still is a whole different calibre.
Before Izzy can wallow in his misery, Ben pulls out of him and retreats off the mattress, which is a small relief, at least.
“Don’t you dare move,” he says, then reaches up to grab something from above Izzy’s head. The pillow, Izzy realises as Ben lifts his hips up like he weighs nothing and wedges the pillow underneath. “Made quite a mess of you,” he says, regarding Izzy’s crotch with a self-satisfied expression. “Don’t want your sloppy little quim drooling it all back out.”
He runs a finger down Izzy’s folds and over his arse, scooping up a fugitive spurt of semen. He forces his fingers back into Izzy’s aching hole, like he’s trying to work his seed deeper in.
“We’ve got to make sure it takes, hm?” Ben says with an almost dreamy look on his face. “You’re going to stay like this for a while.”
Izzy is too tired to even nod. He stays, just as Ben ordered him to, because he doesn’t have enough strength left to lift a finger.
Time passes, and Izzy drifts off until he remembers something. He opens his eyes. Ben is still there, sitting on the edge of the bed with his gaze fixed between Izzy’s legs.
Izzy clears his throat. “Dad? What do we do if it’s not a boy?”
Ben smiles. “Oh, Isabelle, I’m so glad you ask.”
He runs his hand up Izzy’s thigh and rests it on his abdomen—right where a baby could be starting to grow right this instant.
“In that case, we’ll just have to try again.” Ben pats his belly. “Until then, you’re not going anywhere.”