(Warning for long-term sexual abuse in an institutional setting and pervasive ableism.)
---
Meg's the one who handles the logistics of their little side-operation, but Andras is the one with the eye for talent. He knows from the moment he lays eyes on Caleb Widogast that the newest patient is going to make them a good amount of money. The boy's pretty, for one thing, and quiet, for another. He won't meet anyone's gaze for very long, but that's no problem, really. It makes him seem demure. Shy. The kind of clientele Meg finds will like that. They might be able to pass him off as a virgin, maybe even more than once. (And maybe he is a virgin. They have no way of knowing.)
There's no family on record, either. That kind of information is kept mainly in case of death, so they know who to contact about the body. Caleb is bound for a pauper's grave when the time comes. What that means in the interim, though, is that he's unlikely to have any visitors. He’s unlikely to have anyone coming to check in on him. He doesn't have to be kept in pristine condition; if he's a little bruised up, all they have to do is tell the other workers he was getting unruly and had to be subdued.
Caleb doesn't seem quite aware enough to cause them any actual trouble. He mostly stares into the middle distance. He can dress himself and eat and attend to his personal business, which is more than a lot of the other inmates, but those things are done by rote. He's like an automaton.
They learn something else about Caleb just before they bring him his first nighttime visitor. He doesn't resist when they strip him. But when Meg gets him ready (as she usually does, in case the clients are feeling impatient), Caleb covers his mouth with his hands.
“That’s interesting,” she says. “I think someone's trained him to be quiet.” Caleb's breathing quickens as she opens him up, but he makes no other sound.
“So much for saying he's a virgin,” Andras says. “That’ll be a hard sell now.”
“Not necessarily,” Meg says. “All of our little projects have had their quirks. We'll just say this is his. And maybe that's really all it is -- he's not about to tell us, is he?” She pinches Caleb's cheek. He turns his head a little away, but keeps silent. Doesn't fight back. “Oh, you're a treasure, sweetheart.”
The first person who has him on their watch is a nobleman’s son -- a lordling who could have his pick of the village youths but prefers the security of fucking people who don't have the option of refusal or the ability to blackmail him. He's not especially gentle. Caleb endures the man’s attentions without a sound and only a little resistance. He doesn't like being turned face-down and having an arm twisted behind his back, but then, who would? The position is too awkward for Caleb to cover his mouth with his free hand, so he bites down on the pillow instead.
“Take it,” the man snarls. “You little whore.” Caleb is. Caleb does. He doesn't quite cry, but his eyelashes are damp by the end of it, and that's enough to convince his suitor for the night that Caleb had been innocent. Untouched. They get the extra coin for it and Andras wonders in a vague way if it was true, and whether the boy will act different now, if it was. If he’ll give the scheme away somehow.
“Shh, love, I’m just going to tidy you up a bit,” Meg says. Caleb doesn't want to be touched. “Get you nice and clean, and here's a salve that will make it all better.” She used to work as a nursemaid when she was younger, so she's said. Andras can't imagine what those children grew up to be like. But the cadence of her voice soothes Caleb a bit -- at least enough to uncurl from where he's clutching his knees to his chest, white-knuckled. Meg wipes him down and applies some salve and he settles under her hands. By the time she's done, he's calm enough to let Andras stroke his hair when he tucks him in. A good boy. A good find.
The first real problem arises when Caleb refuses to eat the next day. Andras mostly has the evening and night shifts, as does Meg, but he hears one of the other workers talking about it when he comes in.
“It won't kill him to miss a day's meals,” Trudy says. “It’s never hurt any of us, has it? And we all have, with wages like ours.”
“It’ll kill him if he keeps on like that, and if we let our charges die off, then some of us are likely to be turned out,” Meg says. A little too sharply, maybe, for someone with a reputation for kindness. “And then it’s no wages, isn't it? So we’d better look after them.” Andras doesn't say anything. He doesn't have any kind of reputation. But he thinks about the fact that they might be told to force-feed the boy if he keeps refusing to eat, and it’s easy to damage something important that way even when you're trying to be careful. So it’d be in everyone's best interests if Caleb starts eating again. Especially Caleb's.
Meg talks to Caleb that night.
“You’ve got to eat, sweetheart,” she says. He looks at her without comprehension. But Andras he sees something searching there, too, like he knows he should understand what she’s telling him. The kitchen is closed up for the night, the pantry locked to prevent workers from skimming off the stores, so they can't get anything to see if he’ll eat now.
“I think maybe he doesn't speak Common,” Andras says. “His name’s Zemnian, isn't it? Maybe we should ask Moritz to try to talk to him.”
“No, he’d have tried speaking his own language by now, if that were true,” Meg says. And she’s smarter than him, older than him, but Andras doesn't think she's right.
“Maybe he doesn't speak at all -- we’ve seen that -- and only understands Zemnian,” Andras says, reframing it. Meg frowns, but not in disapproval. Considering the idea.
“That may as be true,” she says. “My only concern is that he might manage to get something across, if a language barrier is part of the problem.”
“Moritz is on the morning crew,” Andras says. “If we stay a little late today, we can be there when he talks to Caleb.” Caleb isn’t looking at Meg anymore, now that she’s not talking to him. He’s looking at the small window. At the night sky.
Moritz is probably the best worker the institution employs. (A lot of people would say that’s Meg, but those people don’t actually know her well.) He’s a big man, over six feet, and with enough muscle to restrain most patients without aid. But he speaks softly, slowly, and unless there’s a sign of violence, he treats patients with the gentleness that he might a kitten.
“Hallo, Caleb,” Moritz says. He’s a little early for his shift. Dawn’s still a ways off. But when Meg asked a favor of him, he was happy to help. “Verstehst du mich?” At the sound of his name, Caleb looks up. He doesn’t quite meet Moritz’s eyes, but he watches Moritz’s mouth as he speaks. “Kannst du nicht sprechen?” No response. Not a nod, or a shake of the head: just continued attention.
Andras lets his own attention wander. He doesn’t speak Zemnian, and it doesn’t seem like Caleb’s on the verge of a breakthrough. Or on the verge of denouncing him and Meg, however indirectly. At the end of a few more minutes of one-sided conversation, Moritz looks up at them and shakes his head.
“I think he knows the sound, but he doesn’t seem to get any meaning from it,” Moritz says. “I’m sorry.” He reaches out and pats Caleb’s hand. Caleb allows it. He’s retreating back to the barely-present state where he spends most of his time. There’s nothing more to be learned.
When Andras comes in for his next shift, he gets the good news that Caleb is eating again. Moritz is credited with cheering the boy by speaking Zemnian around him. It was Andras who came up with trying Zemnian, but no one knows that, and no one ought to. The less people connect him particularly with Caleb, the better.
Meg has two more visitors lined up in quick succession. They almost never do more than one night in a row -- it’d be stupid to establish a pattern that might be noticed. But Meg likes the idea of selling off Caleb’s virginity more than once, and the longer they wait, the more likely word is to get around that there’s someone new on offer.
The second visitor is a middle-aged clerk with a particular fondness for plucking tender buds from the vine. He’ll pay more than double for virgins between fifteen and twenty-five, regardless of gender and attractiveness. It’s just luck of the draw that Caleb’s pretty, too.
The clerk has Caleb on his back. Caleb tries pushing at his shoulders to get him off, but doesn't put up a real fight, and quickly lapses into his usual inattentiveness. The clerk doesn't seem bothered by it. He keeps up his steady, methodical thrusting and murmurs something to him. Caleb doesn't respond -- of course he doesn't. Until he makes a little sound, which seems to startle him, and Caleb presses a hand over his mouth. The clerk pries his hand away and murmurs something else. Caleb bites his lip instead and stays silent.
The next night is Nina, who keeps her clothes on. She even keeps her gloves on. The game, for her, is one of pushing past limits. She wrings several orgasms out of Caleb with her hands, in him and on him, until he's long since run dry. Her refusal to let up reduces Caleb to weeping where the young nobleman’s roughness couldn't. He tries to cover his face with his hands and she doesn’t let him; she takes hold of one wrist and twists until he yields. She presses that hand into the sheets beside his head so she can see half of Caleb’s tear-streaked face and his mouth opened in a series of wet, helpless gasps.
“I like him,” she says to Andras afterward in the hall. She slips off her gloves (fine, soft leather) and gives them to him to burn, as she always does. (Andras imagines she must be very rich, to own so many pairs of gloves she doesn't mind throwing away.) “I’m not sure he was a virgin, but I’ll let that pass.”
“It’s hard for us to know,” Andras says. “Just our best guess.” Nina smiles thinly, but she pays what she promised.
It takes a long time for Caleb to settle enough to sleep after that. Later, Andras hears that Caleb didn’t eat the day after Nina’s visit, either. He thinks maybe it’s to do with rough handling. With being hurt. Sure, Caleb hadn’t liked the clerk’s attentions, but he hadn’t really been there for all of them. He drifted off. It’s something to keep in mind for the future. Meg will want to know so that she doesn’t schedule anyone whose tastes will be too taxing too close together. Caleb will be examined more closely if his eating habits change drastically.
Once or twice a week. That’s how they usually do it, and Caleb gets more than a few repeat visitors. Andras was right. People like him. It’s not any single thing that keeps them coming back: not the wide blue eyes, the trim body, the coppery hair, the sweet bow of his mouth. Not even the way he’s quiet and biddable. It’s the way those pieces fit together.
Caleb recognizes Meg and Andras now. He recognizes them, but it’s not clear whether he has any real association between the two of them and the other people who come to see him at night. He tries to stay quiet and usually succeeds. He’s more fragile now, though, than he was at first. More prone to crying when it’s over.
“Who do you think he was?” Andras says. He and Meg aren’t friends, exactly, but Andras isn’t exactly friends with anyone. And they have shared interests.
“Oh, I bet you have some ideas, or you wouldn’t have brought it up,” Meg says.
“My first guess would’ve been some noble’s bastard,” Andras says, “but they wouldn’t have waited this long to send him away, if he was always simple-minded. I wonder if he took a blow to the head.”
“See, I thought at first that he’d been someone’s plaything,” Meg says. “What with the way he keeps quiet. Tossed aside when a new toy caught their eye, as it were. But now I’m not so sure.” The road back to town is quiet this time of morning. The horizon is only just beginning to glow with the coming dawn. There’s no fear of being overheard.
“I don’t know that he was taught to keep quiet for sex,” Andras says. Meg hums her agreement.
“I think you’re right about that. I think you’re right about his mind, too, though I’m not sure it was an injury.” Winter is on its way. The mud of the road has stiffened to ice overnight, though it’s still warm enough to thaw out during the day. Andras needs a new pair of boots before the bitter cold sets in. Caleb will be paying for them. “I heard from Trudy that he arrived in a closed carriage, with a cloak on,” Meg goes on. “He must be important to somebody with funds.”
“A closed carriage,” Andras repeats. “Any crest on it?”
“Not that she noticed, but she’s a nitwit,” Meg says. “Something to think about, anyway. He’s got no family on record, no visitors, but someone willing to pay his fees.” Someone who wants him alive and away from the world, but doesn’t want to have to look at him. Caleb is being kept like a secret. Out of sight.
He fades slowly but noticeably. He gets thinner, paler, like a painting left in the sun -- except Caleb is suffering from almost the opposite circumstance. The window in his room is small, and barred, and too high up for him to open himself. (Not that Andras really thinks he’d try.) This does not diminish the considerable interest in him. Why would anyone who didn’t want to fuck an invalid pay for the pleasure of a nighttime visit in the first place? And in candlelight, under moonlight, a certain pallor can seem alluring rather than sickly.
The young nobleman is a repeat visitor. Perhaps he imagines Caleb as his own kept boy instead of a whore whose company can be bought by anyone who knows where to ask. It’s not long before he wants to indulge tastes slightly stranger than the cruelty that comes naturally along with his station in life. Nothing too wild; nothing that would leave very clear evidence. But when he asks that Caleb be bound for his pleasure, there’s no reason to refuse. It’s something that’s been routine or even necessary with other patients in the past, in their little side-line.
It’s the first time Caleb gives them any real trouble.
fill: "to be still," Caleb/others, E, forced prostitution, cw: noncon, 1/3
---
Meg's the one who handles the logistics of their little side-operation, but Andras is the one with the eye for talent. He knows from the moment he lays eyes on Caleb Widogast that the newest patient is going to make them a good amount of money. The boy's pretty, for one thing, and quiet, for another. He won't meet anyone's gaze for very long, but that's no problem, really. It makes him seem demure. Shy. The kind of clientele Meg finds will like that. They might be able to pass him off as a virgin, maybe even more than once. (And maybe he is a virgin. They have no way of knowing.)
There's no family on record, either. That kind of information is kept mainly in case of death, so they know who to contact about the body. Caleb is bound for a pauper's grave when the time comes. What that means in the interim, though, is that he's unlikely to have any visitors. He’s unlikely to have anyone coming to check in on him. He doesn't have to be kept in pristine condition; if he's a little bruised up, all they have to do is tell the other workers he was getting unruly and had to be subdued.
Caleb doesn't seem quite aware enough to cause them any actual trouble. He mostly stares into the middle distance. He can dress himself and eat and attend to his personal business, which is more than a lot of the other inmates, but those things are done by rote. He's like an automaton.
They learn something else about Caleb just before they bring him his first nighttime visitor. He doesn't resist when they strip him. But when Meg gets him ready (as she usually does, in case the clients are feeling impatient), Caleb covers his mouth with his hands.
“That’s interesting,” she says. “I think someone's trained him to be quiet.” Caleb's breathing quickens as she opens him up, but he makes no other sound.
“So much for saying he's a virgin,” Andras says. “That’ll be a hard sell now.”
“Not necessarily,” Meg says. “All of our little projects have had their quirks. We'll just say this is his. And maybe that's really all it is -- he's not about to tell us, is he?” She pinches Caleb's cheek. He turns his head a little away, but keeps silent. Doesn't fight back. “Oh, you're a treasure, sweetheart.”
The first person who has him on their watch is a nobleman’s son -- a lordling who could have his pick of the village youths but prefers the security of fucking people who don't have the option of refusal or the ability to blackmail him. He's not especially gentle. Caleb endures the man’s attentions without a sound and only a little resistance. He doesn't like being turned face-down and having an arm twisted behind his back, but then, who would? The position is too awkward for Caleb to cover his mouth with his free hand, so he bites down on the pillow instead.
“Take it,” the man snarls. “You little whore.” Caleb is. Caleb does. He doesn't quite cry, but his eyelashes are damp by the end of it, and that's enough to convince his suitor for the night that Caleb had been innocent. Untouched. They get the extra coin for it and Andras wonders in a vague way if it was true, and whether the boy will act different now, if it was. If he’ll give the scheme away somehow.
“Shh, love, I’m just going to tidy you up a bit,” Meg says. Caleb doesn't want to be touched. “Get you nice and clean, and here's a salve that will make it all better.” She used to work as a nursemaid when she was younger, so she's said. Andras can't imagine what those children grew up to be like. But the cadence of her voice soothes Caleb a bit -- at least enough to uncurl from where he's clutching his knees to his chest, white-knuckled. Meg wipes him down and applies some salve and he settles under her hands. By the time she's done, he's calm enough to let Andras stroke his hair when he tucks him in. A good boy. A good find.
The first real problem arises when Caleb refuses to eat the next day. Andras mostly has the evening and night shifts, as does Meg, but he hears one of the other workers talking about it when he comes in.
“It won't kill him to miss a day's meals,” Trudy says. “It’s never hurt any of us, has it? And we all have, with wages like ours.”
“It’ll kill him if he keeps on like that, and if we let our charges die off, then some of us are likely to be turned out,” Meg says. A little too sharply, maybe, for someone with a reputation for kindness. “And then it’s no wages, isn't it? So we’d better look after them.” Andras doesn't say anything. He doesn't have any kind of reputation. But he thinks about the fact that they might be told to force-feed the boy if he keeps refusing to eat, and it’s easy to damage something important that way even when you're trying to be careful. So it’d be in everyone's best interests if Caleb starts eating again. Especially Caleb's.
Meg talks to Caleb that night.
“You’ve got to eat, sweetheart,” she says. He looks at her without comprehension. But Andras he sees something searching there, too, like he knows he should understand what she’s telling him. The kitchen is closed up for the night, the pantry locked to prevent workers from skimming off the stores, so they can't get anything to see if he’ll eat now.
“I think maybe he doesn't speak Common,” Andras says. “His name’s Zemnian, isn't it? Maybe we should ask Moritz to try to talk to him.”
“No, he’d have tried speaking his own language by now, if that were true,” Meg says. And she’s smarter than him, older than him, but Andras doesn't think she's right.
“Maybe he doesn't speak at all -- we’ve seen that -- and only understands Zemnian,” Andras says, reframing it. Meg frowns, but not in disapproval. Considering the idea.
“That may as be true,” she says. “My only concern is that he might manage to get something across, if a language barrier is part of the problem.”
“Moritz is on the morning crew,” Andras says. “If we stay a little late today, we can be there when he talks to Caleb.” Caleb isn’t looking at Meg anymore, now that she’s not talking to him. He’s looking at the small window. At the night sky.
Moritz is probably the best worker the institution employs. (A lot of people would say that’s Meg, but those people don’t actually know her well.) He’s a big man, over six feet, and with enough muscle to restrain most patients without aid. But he speaks softly, slowly, and unless there’s a sign of violence, he treats patients with the gentleness that he might a kitten.
“Hallo, Caleb,” Moritz says. He’s a little early for his shift. Dawn’s still a ways off. But when Meg asked a favor of him, he was happy to help. “Verstehst du mich?” At the sound of his name, Caleb looks up. He doesn’t quite meet Moritz’s eyes, but he watches Moritz’s mouth as he speaks. “Kannst du nicht sprechen?” No response. Not a nod, or a shake of the head: just continued attention.
Andras lets his own attention wander. He doesn’t speak Zemnian, and it doesn’t seem like Caleb’s on the verge of a breakthrough. Or on the verge of denouncing him and Meg, however indirectly. At the end of a few more minutes of one-sided conversation, Moritz looks up at them and shakes his head.
“I think he knows the sound, but he doesn’t seem to get any meaning from it,” Moritz says. “I’m sorry.” He reaches out and pats Caleb’s hand. Caleb allows it. He’s retreating back to the barely-present state where he spends most of his time. There’s nothing more to be learned.
When Andras comes in for his next shift, he gets the good news that Caleb is eating again. Moritz is credited with cheering the boy by speaking Zemnian around him. It was Andras who came up with trying Zemnian, but no one knows that, and no one ought to. The less people connect him particularly with Caleb, the better.
Meg has two more visitors lined up in quick succession. They almost never do more than one night in a row -- it’d be stupid to establish a pattern that might be noticed. But Meg likes the idea of selling off Caleb’s virginity more than once, and the longer they wait, the more likely word is to get around that there’s someone new on offer.
The second visitor is a middle-aged clerk with a particular fondness for plucking tender buds from the vine. He’ll pay more than double for virgins between fifteen and twenty-five, regardless of gender and attractiveness. It’s just luck of the draw that Caleb’s pretty, too.
The clerk has Caleb on his back. Caleb tries pushing at his shoulders to get him off, but doesn't put up a real fight, and quickly lapses into his usual inattentiveness. The clerk doesn't seem bothered by it. He keeps up his steady, methodical thrusting and murmurs something to him. Caleb doesn't respond -- of course he doesn't. Until he makes a little sound, which seems to startle him, and Caleb presses a hand over his mouth. The clerk pries his hand away and murmurs something else. Caleb bites his lip instead and stays silent.
The next night is Nina, who keeps her clothes on. She even keeps her gloves on. The game, for her, is one of pushing past limits. She wrings several orgasms out of Caleb with her hands, in him and on him, until he's long since run dry. Her refusal to let up reduces Caleb to weeping where the young nobleman’s roughness couldn't. He tries to cover his face with his hands and she doesn’t let him; she takes hold of one wrist and twists until he yields. She presses that hand into the sheets beside his head so she can see half of Caleb’s tear-streaked face and his mouth opened in a series of wet, helpless gasps.
“I like him,” she says to Andras afterward in the hall. She slips off her gloves (fine, soft leather) and gives them to him to burn, as she always does. (Andras imagines she must be very rich, to own so many pairs of gloves she doesn't mind throwing away.) “I’m not sure he was a virgin, but I’ll let that pass.”
“It’s hard for us to know,” Andras says. “Just our best guess.” Nina smiles thinly, but she pays what she promised.
It takes a long time for Caleb to settle enough to sleep after that. Later, Andras hears that Caleb didn’t eat the day after Nina’s visit, either. He thinks maybe it’s to do with rough handling. With being hurt. Sure, Caleb hadn’t liked the clerk’s attentions, but he hadn’t really been there for all of them. He drifted off. It’s something to keep in mind for the future. Meg will want to know so that she doesn’t schedule anyone whose tastes will be too taxing too close together. Caleb will be examined more closely if his eating habits change drastically.
Once or twice a week. That’s how they usually do it, and Caleb gets more than a few repeat visitors. Andras was right. People like him. It’s not any single thing that keeps them coming back: not the wide blue eyes, the trim body, the coppery hair, the sweet bow of his mouth. Not even the way he’s quiet and biddable. It’s the way those pieces fit together.
Caleb recognizes Meg and Andras now. He recognizes them, but it’s not clear whether he has any real association between the two of them and the other people who come to see him at night. He tries to stay quiet and usually succeeds. He’s more fragile now, though, than he was at first. More prone to crying when it’s over.
“Who do you think he was?” Andras says. He and Meg aren’t friends, exactly, but Andras isn’t exactly friends with anyone. And they have shared interests.
“Oh, I bet you have some ideas, or you wouldn’t have brought it up,” Meg says.
“My first guess would’ve been some noble’s bastard,” Andras says, “but they wouldn’t have waited this long to send him away, if he was always simple-minded. I wonder if he took a blow to the head.”
“See, I thought at first that he’d been someone’s plaything,” Meg says. “What with the way he keeps quiet. Tossed aside when a new toy caught their eye, as it were. But now I’m not so sure.” The road back to town is quiet this time of morning. The horizon is only just beginning to glow with the coming dawn. There’s no fear of being overheard.
“I don’t know that he was taught to keep quiet for sex,” Andras says. Meg hums her agreement.
“I think you’re right about that. I think you’re right about his mind, too, though I’m not sure it was an injury.” Winter is on its way. The mud of the road has stiffened to ice overnight, though it’s still warm enough to thaw out during the day. Andras needs a new pair of boots before the bitter cold sets in. Caleb will be paying for them. “I heard from Trudy that he arrived in a closed carriage, with a cloak on,” Meg goes on. “He must be important to somebody with funds.”
“A closed carriage,” Andras repeats. “Any crest on it?”
“Not that she noticed, but she’s a nitwit,” Meg says. “Something to think about, anyway. He’s got no family on record, no visitors, but someone willing to pay his fees.” Someone who wants him alive and away from the world, but doesn’t want to have to look at him. Caleb is being kept like a secret. Out of sight.
He fades slowly but noticeably. He gets thinner, paler, like a painting left in the sun -- except Caleb is suffering from almost the opposite circumstance. The window in his room is small, and barred, and too high up for him to open himself. (Not that Andras really thinks he’d try.) This does not diminish the considerable interest in him. Why would anyone who didn’t want to fuck an invalid pay for the pleasure of a nighttime visit in the first place? And in candlelight, under moonlight, a certain pallor can seem alluring rather than sickly.
The young nobleman is a repeat visitor. Perhaps he imagines Caleb as his own kept boy instead of a whore whose company can be bought by anyone who knows where to ask. It’s not long before he wants to indulge tastes slightly stranger than the cruelty that comes naturally along with his station in life. Nothing too wild; nothing that would leave very clear evidence. But when he asks that Caleb be bound for his pleasure, there’s no reason to refuse. It’s something that’s been routine or even necessary with other patients in the past, in their little side-line.
It’s the first time Caleb gives them any real trouble.