switchblade
There’s very many ways to die.
One of them is in a locked, dark room.
Peter always wanted to die under the open sky.
“I’m Wade”, the man, the almost murdering man, the man who is holding the gun says. Like it matters. Like his name matters at all. There’s a pause, like the alpha is waiting for Peter to say his own name in return, but there is only silence. The clearing of a throat is terribly loud, “It’s nice to meet you”
Peter stays silent. He has a childish notion that if he cannot see the man that the man cannot see him either, that he cannot find him.
That’s not true, though. Peter’s breaths are still too laboured, still too loud to go unheard. He swallows, his throat grating, awfully dry. He thinks he should do something, say something, get on the other man’s good side.
He hopes that the man has a good side to get on.
“Oh, I should get my flashlight”, the man says, walks swiftly somewhere, acts like he knows exactly where he’s going, like he can fucking see in the dark. It’s unsettling, “Sorry”
There’s some shuffling, and then a flashlight comes to life, a bright stream of light. It illuminates the floor and then the wall as the alpha moves, showcases the tools nailed and resting against the rickety walls of the building.
The alpha walks back to where he was, and then steps forward. Too close. He points the flashlight up and onto his own face, the light casting terrible shadows on his features from below.
Peter almost wishes he was back outside, running away from that thief still. That was a simple, straightforwardly violent man. The kind Peter was used to, the kind he knew how to manipulate.
“I’m Wade”, the man tries again, actually reaches forward and offers his hand to Peter. Like he’s going to shake it, or something. The alpha smiles, and Peter thinks he’s never seen a more menacing expression. He wishes he could melt into the fucking wall, “Nice weather we got”
Peter looks at the hand hanging in the air between them like it’s going to bite him, like it’s going to reach out and slap him, and it could, because why wouldn’t it. It’s only normal.
The flashlight turns on him, and Peter squints against it as it goes over his face and body, from the top of his head to the points of his sneakers. It pauses there, and the other man humms. He drops his other hand.
“I was going to ask why you smell so much like blood, but I don’t have to”, the man says, a frown audible in his voice, “Did that guy do that to you?”
“....no”, Peter says, barely audible. He wonders why it matters.
“Well, do tell”, the words are almost cheery, the tone comical. Someone would think Peter and this man were friends. Would think this situation was in any way pleasant, “What happened?”
“Betty bit me”
“Betty?”
“A dog”, Peter says, squints as the flashlight hits him in the face again, stays there for a second before pointing away to a wall.
“Nasty”, the man sighs. There’s some sound that Peter can’t identify, “I’ve got some antibiotic ointment, if you want”
That’s weird. That’s terribly weird.
Peter would think he was being baited, if there was any reason for the baiting. If Peter were in any position to defend himself, to say no, the man’s behaviour would make sense. But he is not. Peter’s never been in the position to defend himself. His constitution doesn’t allow for it, the constitution of the world doesn’t allow for it.
“...I’ll get it”, the alpha says, walks away. The flashlight makes erratic patterns on the walls as he walks. He shuffles through his bag, and he’s got a backpack, big and filled to the brim. It makes Peter remember his own bag, remember the way it got left in the street, everything he owned just left in the dust for anyone to pick over. Left behind, never to be seen again.
The man comes back with something in his hands, sneezes on his way back. It’s loud sneeze, a man’s sneeze, the sneeze of someone who’s never had to be quiet lest he gets slapped for being loud.
“You smell like fear”, the man says, his voice strangled. He clears his throat again, stops in his steps and throws whatever it is that he’s holding at Peter. The omega flinches, but it still hits him blank in the chest.
Peter sure does smell like fear. Because he’s terrified.
He was supposed to be free and now he’s here.
He closes his fist around the tube laying in his lap. He’s not sure when he sat down, when his legs crumpled under him so he’s sitting on them. he’s not sure about many things. He can’t read the writing on the tube he is holding, but it sure feels like an ointment. There’s no need to lie about that. There are easier, more straightforward ways to hurt Peter.
“No need for it, omega”, the man says, walks back to his bag, “I’m gonna sleep. I’m fucking fried”
Peter sits there still, holding the ointment in his hand. Watches the movements of the flashlight as the man sits down, grabs something from out of his bag. It’s a cloth of some sort. He bunches it up, puts it on the ground. Then he looks down, looks at one of his hands, shakes his head. Turns and puts the flashlight on the ground, pushes it so it rolls in Peter’s direction.
“Here”, he says and lays down, props his head up on whatever cloth he put on the ground. Peter can barely see him, but he squints until the picture makes sense. Even though it doesn’t. Make sense, that is, “Don’t leave. That asshole could still be outside”
Then he mumbles something, Peter catching only the ‘should’ve’ and ‘offed’ before the man stops speaking.
And so he stays there, with the flashlight lying on the ground between the two of them, sitting on the dusty floor. He stays there until morning.
Peter wakes in the horror shack, to the man from last night crouching in front of him and looking at him intensely. Peter finds himself still sitting, all folded into himself, a crick in his neck from the position he slept in.
He must’ve nodded off at some point, he thinks. There’s light now, coming from the many cracks in the planks that make the structure he’s currently in, enough light to make the other man’s features actually make sense.
Peter would love to say that the alpha looks even more terrifying in the daylight, that he looks monstrous, but he cannot. He looks at the alpha, and a regular looking man looks back at him.
“Morning”, the man says, and his voice is deepened by sleep, gravelly. He’s entirely too close to Peter, “You’re very pretty”
Peter snaps out of the trance he was in, his brain letting go of the last vestiges of sleep which had kept him so complacent just upon waking.
He’s still in the shack with the strange man. He’s still in the shack and the man is looking at him and he says Peter is pretty. In Peter’s whole life, being called pretty has never been a good thing.
Peter feels his heart speeding up, feels his leg beginning to hurt once anew. Blessed by sleep, he’d forgotten he was hurt. He’d forgotten and now he remembers, and it’s a great grief. In these circumstances, it could easily mean his death.
He’d thought the man in front of him looked like a regular man, but he does not. He is hardened by something, his shoulders terribly broad and his hands terribly big, his face marred by a terrible scar. It’s obvious that it was a killing shot nearly avoided, that if the wound went any deeper the man would’ve been dead.
In the terrible parts of himself, Peter wishes whatever hurt the man had finished the job.
Because he’s done it now. He’s trapped here, is going to remain trapped here, because this man is not going to let him go, because he is an alpha and he thinks Peter is pretty and that means very, very bad things for Peter.
Peter wonders, briefly, if he should have stayed with Adrian. The man was old, so used to Peter that he was barely even cruel anymore, was content to let Peter be as long as the omega fulfilled his duties, as long as he made no mistakes.
Peter remembers thinking about cruel alphas the previous day, and feels like he has called this misfortune upon himself. A cruel man, indeed, is what he has found.
The alpha sneezes almost directly into Peter’s face, forceful and gross. He covers his face with one of his enormous hands, pinches his nose closed and stands with a jerk.
“Fuck”, he says, sneezes again. The sound is so loud Peter’s ears itch, and he just blinks up at the man from his place on the floor. There’s not much else to do, except wait for the inevitable, “Fuck, sorry”
Then the man dry heaves. He puts his hands on his knees and bends over and coughs, heaves down into the dust of the floor once and twice and then he wipes a hand over his mouth.
“Sorry”, the man says again, straightens up. he rubs his mouth again, and then his eyes, makes a face. Peter can’t decipher his expression, nor his smell. His own scent is so strong in the air he can smell himself, the rot of his fear and the red of his blood and the saltiness of his sweat, “Jesus”
Peter wishes he was back asleep. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with this. He wonders what is wrong with this alpha, wonders if wondering will do him any good. He’s softened a lot of situations in his life, smoothed over many prickled alpha feelings for his own safety and comfort, but somehow he doubts that’s going to be any good here.
Somehow he thinks this is just it, the lamb at the slaughter. Peter is here, and he’d not have any worse chances to win against this man physically if his hamstrings were cut. The alpha is all muscle, all sinew and survival and calloused skin and Peter knows, he knows, this is the end.
He watches the man’s figure as it straightens, watches the man’s eyes as they meet his own briefly, look away in a jerk, inexplicable but unimportant, because nothing matters except the fact that they are alone and Peter is pretty. Peter is pretty and feeble and this man can do, will do whatever he wants to him.
Peter’s been in these situations before, so he’s not so sure why it feels like the end of the world now. Time and time again he was given to an unfamiliar alpha to do with as he chooses, to be treated as the alpha wills. This is not new.
Peter thought he’d get away.
That’s the crux of it, in the end, Peter thinks as he sits on the floor and waits for his life to end. Or waits for it to go on in the exact same way as it always has. He’d thought he’d gotten away, thought he was done with this, one way or the other, that he was the one who got away, that he was no longer a clog in the system of oppression that has ruled over his entire life, but he was wrong.
Stupid omega. Foolish, miserable wrench. Thinking he got out. thinking he got away.
He never has and he never will.
The door wrenching open to his right makes him jerk and look up, and he watches the alpha’s heels as the man exits the shack. Peter sits there, listens to what is happening outside, tries to decipher what the alpha is doing outside, but in the end he cannot.
He can just sit there and try to breathe.
He rubs his face, rubs his eyes until he sees red behind his eyelids, feels grime on his face and on his hands but has nothing to wipe it off with.
He has nothing. Truly nothing but the clothes on his back. He’s lost his food and his clothes and his water and now he has lost his freedom too.
It’s just like he was taught, he thinks, he remembers. His freedom was never his own.
The alpha walks back into the shack, leaves the door open behind him. the sunlight streams in through the opening, bright and beautiful, unknowing of the chaos and unraveling that is going down on the ground. It does not care. It has never cared. It is simply there to be beautiful.
“Hello”, the alpha says. He looks at Peter for a moment, like he is surprised to see him there still. Like he thought Peter would make a run for it. Like he thinks Peter’s stupid enough to do that, stupid enough to run knowing that even if he had two good legs he’d be chased down in minutes. Peter looks up at him with exhausted eyes and remembers that the man’s name is Wade. He ought to remember that. It’s important to know his alpha’s name, “Sorry, had to take a piss, ya know. And to clear my nose”
Of Peter. He needed to clear his nose of Peter. Because he smells like fear and dejection and terror. Because he almost had a panic attack and flooded the small room with the scent of it. that’s why.
It’s still strange, though, Peter thinks as he watches the alpha go toward his bags. Peter’s own fear smells to his nose of rot, when it’s so strong even he can smell himself, but he is fairly certain that it did not smell that way to his alphas. They always seemed especially pleased with Peter, when he was silently terrified of them and what they might do. Fear makes for obedience, Peter knows, but he’d always thought it was about the scent too. Something calling to the beast in them, something reassuring them of their dominance, of their leadership, of having Peter utterly and completely under their thumb.
“Time for breakfast!”, the alpha, Wade says. He sounds terribly cheerful. It’s fake and shrill in Peter’s ears. The omega watches as the other man rummages through his bag and pulls out a few items, stands and then he’s in front of Peter again. The omega really hates it, the closeness, but knows it is something he has to get used to. He’s not even been touched yet and whenever the man comes near him he breaks out in goosebumps in trepidation. The alpha lowers two things to the ground in front of Peter. One of them is a protein bar, one of those humongous ones that gym people eat, and the other is a bottle of water, “It’s not much, but I don’t know when I’ll next get food so... The protein bars are very filling. The chocolate one is great”
Peter eyes the chocolate protein bar that’s been offered to him, reaches for the bottle of water first. He’s parched, has been for the whole night and most of yesterday. He remembers trying to conserve his water and food and then losing it all on the side of the road. It’s a shame. He wishes he’d drunk it all.
He drinks half of the bottle quickly, before remembering that it’s all he has and slowing down. His stomach churns, and he watches as Wade sits by his bags and digs out a pill bottle. He shakes some into his hand, and shallows them with water. Then he opens his own protein bar. From where he’s sitting he can see that it’s a strawberry flavoured one.
Peter eats the breakfast he was given, knowing that refusing to eat will get him nowhere. He doesn’t even consider it. going without food is a miserable punishment, one he has experienced before, and he has no desire to put that idea into the alpha’s head. He’s glad enough he’s being fed.
“How’s your leg doing?”, the alpha asks suddenly, crinkling the wrapper of his finished protein bar. Peter is still eating, his mouth full. He chews, reaches for his water, “Did the ointment help at all?”
Peter swallows and takes a sip of his water, considering the alpha carefully. He hasn’t used the ointment. He hasn’t even looked at his leg. All he knows is that it hurts every time he moves, and that he’s not looking forward to standing up.
He takes too long in answering, apparently, because the alpha talks over his silence. The man sure likes to talk, Peter thinks. He can’t scent if the alpha is irritated with him, if he is slowly losing his temper with Peter’s behaviour. All he can scent is a faint undertone of musk, a naturally manly smell that is quite unassuming for such a large alpha. Also, it seems to stay completely devoid of emotion.
Which is weird. And which also fucking sucks. Most alphas project their emotions loudly, shamelessly. They want things to be a certain way and they want you to know it. they want you to know when they’re pleased, and they want you to know when they’re displeased. It’s frustrating having to constantly be on guard for subtle changes in scent of a person, but Peter finds it more disconcerting that he can find no inflection in Wade’s scent. Peter’s silence drags on, rude, and still the man just talks and smiles. Just musk in his scent, a surprisingly pleasant scent, stable like a perfume note in the opening.
“You should take a look at it now”, is what Wade says, gesturing to Peter’s leg vaguely. He pauses to see if Peter is going to say anything, but just barrels on when he does not. Still no change in his scent, “I’ll make you some new bandages. And I won’t look! Promise!”
He says that like it’s Peter’s crotch that is injured, instead of his leg. He says that like Peter is in any position to demand any privacy, like he thinks an omega like Peter has been afforded privacy in the past.
To be completely honest, Peter would find it less weird if the alpha was to demand he completely undress on the spot.
Instead, the man reaches into his backpack, takes out a T-shirt. It’s huge and gray, obviously made of thick cotton. Then he takes a knife out, one of those hunting knives that open and close in on themselves, and nicks the shirt in several places.
Peter watches and feels like an idiot. He had a knife yesterday, and he had a shirt too. How come he didn’t think to cut the stitches.
The shirt rips easily under the alpha’s strong grip, and Peter watches as the man methodically makes strips of the fabric until the only thing left is the collar and the sleeves. He tosses those to the side and gets up again, offers the strips to Peter. This time, the omega reaches up and takes them. the cotton is obviously not sterile, but it’d be even less so if it was lowered onto dirty ground.
“I’ll wait outside”, the alpha says, leaves the shack. He leaves the door open, and Peter is grateful for that, because he needs the light to see what he is doing. The man is out of sight as he takes off his makeshift bandage from yesterday, but he can hear him whistling.
Fucking whistling.
Peter’s leg isn’t bleeding anymore, but it looks fucking terrible. The shin is bone pale or feverishly red in places, and Peter doesn’t have a medical degree but he knows when things aren’t good. And things aren’t fucking good.
He washes out the wound with the water he has left, wipes it carefully with one of the strips the alpha gave him, and hurries on with applying the ointment. He doesn’t want to look at his leg for longer than he has to, even though he knows that the behaviour is childish. He just wants to wrap it up and to see it be better the next time he looks.
The strips of the shirt Wade cut are wide and long, so it’s fairly easy to wrap and tie them around Peter’s leg. He uses two, and puts the rest of the strips into his pocket. He feels like he’s going to need them.
Then he gets up. he wants to see how bad off he is without the alpha watching. Every muscle hurts as he stands, from the gruelling day he had yesterday and from sleeping in a sitting position. He stands on one leg, the coward that he is, and then tries his injured one. He stumbles immediately, but rights himself. It hurts, but he can stand. He has to stand. There is no other choice, not really, so it does not really matter if his leg hurts.
Peter’s looking at the wall with tools on it when the alpha knocks on the doorway of the shack. Peter hurriedly puts back the hammer he was holding. It’d be nice to have something to defend himself with, but that is a fantasy, a fantasy that comes with very serious consequences. Very, very serious.
“....I-I I was just...”, Peter starts, his heart in his throat. He’s never acted this stupid in his fucking life. It’s like everything he knows has evaporated from his fucking head, and he’s just trying to make this terrifying alpha angry. It’s like he’s fucking asking for it.
“You know how to shoot a gun?”, the alpha asks, non-plussed. He stands in the doorway and looks at Peter and he doesn’t look angry but he should be. He should be angry.
Peter swallows, doesn’t say anything. It’s a trick question. An unaswerable question. The alpha probably means something like: ‘Behave or else I will shoot you’
“Guess not”, the man mumbles and goes further into the shack, crouches down and takes something from his bag. He takes a quick look at it, and then stands back up. he walks to Peter, and Peter takes a wobbly step back, “This is better for you”
Peter takes another step back as the alpha nears, and his knee buckles. His hand shoots out and he steadies himself onto the wall, looking at the alpha wearily.
“Are you o...?”, the man goes to ask, and then quickly brings a hand up and pinches his nose. He visibly swallows, opens the hand in which he’s carrying the item he retrieved from his bag. Peter looks at it, uncomprehending, just a small metal rectangle in the man’s palm. The alpha moves his fingers, and a blade flies out of it.
Peter thinks he’s going to pass out.
“No! No”, the alpha says, does something with his hand and the blade disappears. This is better for you. That’s what he’d said, “That’s not what I mean”
It makes more sense, Peter guesses, to cut him instead of shoot him. less noise, less mess. Unless the man wants to kill him, he’ll have an easier time teaching Peter a lesson this way.
Peter’s never heard of an alpha using knives for punishment.
He glances at the door, wonders how far he’ll get if he runs. Wonders if he can run, at all.
“It’s for you. Take it”, the alpha says, but Peter isn’t really listening, is trying to gauge the distance between himself and the door and himself and the alpha. the alpha is close, but he probably won’t expect Peter to run. He flinches when the man extends a hand in his direction, “Take it”
Peter stands there, dumbfounded. His heartbeat is deafening, his senses going haywire. He wants to run away. He wants to fucking run away and never look back. He wants to find a cave and hide in it and never leave it for the rest of his days, alone and undisturbed by an alpha. He’s terrified.
“Omega, it’s okay. The knife is yours”, Wade says, and his voice is low and smooth, calming. He smells like musk, still, a calm ocean in a storm, unmoving in the face of Peter’s fear, “Put out your hand”
Peter doesn’t know why he does it, why he listens. He just reaches his hand out, so it’s hovering right below the alpha’s, and the man could grab him. It’d be very easy. It’d be all so very easy, has been easy all along, to hurt Peter. To grab him and pull him in or push him out, to yank at his hair or pull at his collar or shove him to the ground. It’s all so very easy. It’s all the things that Peter expects.
Instead, the alpha opens his hand, and the pop-out knife falls from his hand into Peter’s.