Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

White Tesla.

Red Tesla.

Another white.

God, but did the dealership in town pull a close-out sale or something recently? Maybe a whole tech bro fraternity took over the apartment complex across the street.

“Uh-huh,” Harry tells his earbuds. Hermione doesn’t need the encouragement, but he feels bad just sitting silent on the other end of the line for minutes on end while she talks.

“I really think staggering our applications will be our best bet. I’ve got it all figured out. Yours will go in with the very first wave, so you’ll look punctual and eager. Then mine will go through slightly later, but it’ll stand out thanks to my essay. They’re sure to accept us both, I just know it. And don’t worry, I’ve got all kinds of ideas to make your application shine, too.”

“All the pretty words in the world aren’t going to make mine shine like yours, but thanks.”

The mic crackles with her sharp sigh. “Oh, stop it. With all those volunteer hours you’re going to put in—you have signed up at the shelter, right?—we’ll both be guaranteed approval letters. I’m just glad that Ron…um.”

Harry gives her a minute to stew in her own guilt, then says, “Good thing he’s going to trade school, right?”

White Tesla.

Black Tesla.

Is that a fucking cybertruck? Either way, it’s got the same stupid reflective window treatments as the rest of those Teslas. That’s supposed to be illegal around here.

He glances around, then horks up a glob of gunk and spits it at the next hood he passes.

He lets his fingers trail along the posts of the tall fence surrounding his neighborhood. Why the hell they built a gated community in this area when the crime’s not even that bad is beyond him. As far as he’s aware, the gate’s only purpose is to delay pizza deliveries and annoy house guests with bad memories.

Hermione’s going on about their essays again. Despite how positive she is that they’re both getting into their Dream College, she’s probably got both draft copies of their admission applications open on her computer right now, one to each monitor, scrolling haphazardly and hunting for the misplaced comma that’ll kick one of them from the running.

Frankly, he would’ve been fine feeding his heartfelt qualifications to ChatGPT and submitting that slop to the cheapest community college around here. That’d be fine for crossing his generals off the list, but Hermione somehow convinced him to aim higher. Said if he didn’t shoot for what he could feasibly achieve, then it’s all a big waste.

She’s probably right. Just like she was right to turn her nose up at the ChatGPT idea, which was technically Ron’s idea. He loves that damned app.

Hermione’s voice cuts off mid-word. Harry gives it a sec, then shoves his earbuds in his pocket and switches his phone to speaker.

“Sorry,” he tells her, but she hasn’t even noticed the break in him listening.

He reaches the front gate. There’s the big one with the intake and outtake for cars, plus a billion signs talking about NO SOLICITORS and GATE OPENS OUTWARD and blah-blah. Harry shuffles to the pedestrian gate, already groping at his pocket for his keys.

The shiny new screen on the lock lights up when he’s close enough for the sensor to catch him. Oh, yeah. No keys needed, not anymore.

Harry sighs and crouches a little so the camera can see him smack-square in the middle of its stupid lens. He breathes on it and gives it a wipe with the tail of his shirt.

Nothing. No click of the lock. No shrill chime of success, no big smiley face on the screen right above a WELCOME HOME! animation.

He pushes his hair out of his face and gives it a smile, then a frown.

No luck, but the screen pops up with a message: Sorry! You must be a guest. Please call a resident to let you in.

For fuck’s sake, what was the point of feeding ten different pictures of his stupid face in different stupid lighting if it’s not going to remember him?

Guess how many times his metal key failed when he would stick it in the old lock? The right answer is never.

From the palm of his hand, Hermione’s gabbing on about electives and connections and whatever the hell.

Harry cuts through her chatter with a groan. “I gotta go. Sorry.”

“Is it the gate again?” his phone squawks.

All he gives her is a sigh, which sets her giggling.

“Alright, but call me when you make it past the robot overlord, because I really wanted to re-review this paragraph with you just one more time, because I think I found—”

“Okay, cool. Later.”

He hangs up. She’ll forgive him for that.

If he says the right words to the smart lock, it’ll give him a phone number to call for troubleshooting. Harry tried that route once, just to see what would happen. He spent a full twenty minutes navigating through some broken robo-menu, only to get sent to Hold Music Purgatory.

On his phone, he pulls up the app for the smart lock and hits the button labeled ‘Manual Access’.

That means he has to plug in a password, then a two-factor authentication code from another app, then try the face ID nonsense yet again, but his phone’s eyeball must be a little more advanced, because with a click, the gate unlocks. He lunges for it before the lock can change its mind.

If not for the HOA president living right next to the gate, he’d probably just try his best to scale the thing.

As he turns the corner, houses block out the lingering glow of the sunset. Ahead of him it’s nothing but deep blue night rolling in.

He should’ve planned something. Maybe invited Ron over. He’s got that pizza job, but they don’t normally have him working Thursday nights, or if they do, it’s usually slow enough that he can skip off early…

He shoots Ron a text to that effect, then sends an apology to Hermione. She must be kissing that essay on her computer screen, because normally she’d be text-yelling at him for the sudden hangup.

Just as his phone vibrates, a loud creak announces the gate opening. The main gate, the one cars use. Sure, there’s money for a smart lock, but nothing for a little grease at the hinges?

It’s okay, Hermione says. I’d be frustrated too. Why fix what isn’t broken? And frankly, what with how brand new the technology is, I’d hazard that switching to smart locks is more of a security risk than anything else. Pretty short-sighted in my opinion.

Harry’s ear tickles. It takes him a second to figure out that it’s because he never heard the creak of the gate closing.

Ugh. Speaking of security risks, it probably opened on its own and now it’s just sitting like that, confused by some bird that kind-of-sort-of-maybe looks like a person’s face if you’re ninety percent blind.

they just want to come off fancy, he types. it’s like my mom putting up those stupid smart bulbs in all of our outside lights bc all the neighbors did.

Well, they’re going to regret it someday when the niche manufacturer who made the thing cuts all support and drops the app. May as well be a broken piece of trash at that point.

Harry snorts. Still no creak, and he knows for a fact that he should still be able to hear it from here.

we might already be there lol. think it’s broken already. like broken broken.

He listens for a car’s motor, or maybe the stomping of another poor idiot like him who got stuck behind the pedestrian gate’s sensor and went for the car gate instead.

Nothing. It really must be broken. He considers turning around to check, but instead pushes himself faster. Maybe he’s come to appreciate the gate after all, even if its lock is crap. The thought of it sitting open like that gives him the willies for some reason.

Thankfully there’s no one around to watch his strides go longer until he’s about one hop-skip from an actual sprint. His phone buzzes in his hand but he ignores it until he’s jammed the code into his front door and locked himself inside.

Only now does he laugh at himself. He checks his phone.

Be careful, Hermione’s text says. The gate might be malfunctioning, but the motor is probably quite powerful. It could suddenly swing shut and leave you with a concussion or worse if you’re standing in the wrong spot.

He sighs and fumbles a couple scathing responses before settling on, lol I get it, thx mom.

It’s like Ron’s always saying: her anxiety rubs off, and suddenly he’s basically running home just because the front gate won’t close. Like she’s putting out pollen for everyone to suck up and then they freak out about anything just like she is. She probably gets off on it. Makes her feel justified in her own freaking out about nothing.

He sighs again, and he’s considering typing up another apology when outside, someone yells. Or maybe screams? Either a little kid or a woman.

The longer he chews the sound, the less he can really remember—until it happens again. Different voice. A man’s scream.

Men don’t scream like that for nothing.

Harry skirts through his house, yanking the curtains closed and checking all the window locks. He’s imagining some crackhead wandering through the open gate and chasing the neighborhood’s cutest family of four, complete with their signature golden, all the way back to their house.

He lingers in the kitchen, fiddling with the cord on the blinds in there, then goes for the knife drawer. Those big chopping knives tempt him, but he settles on a smaller one that he can awkwardly tuck in his pants pocket when he needs both hands. He’ll just have to remember not to crouch lest he jab a hole in his thigh.

Another scream out there, this one a woman’s. It sounds closer than the last.

Could be a family playing. Maybe someone’s going trashy and having a public fight with their cheating husband. His parents are always gabbing about how the neighborhood’s going downhill.

Knife in one hand and his phone in the other, Harry creeps up to the front door and presses his eye to the glass peephole.

He sees nothing, just his own front yard and the neighbor’s yard reflecting it like a mirror, because everyone in this damn place has to have the same color grass and plant the same stupid species of flowers. His neighbor’s lights are on, but only the upstairs.

He’s about to go for the doorknob when a car rolls by at about a half a mile per hour. It makes not a single sound.

He gets a closer look at the call-center-curve of its cab. It’s one of those fucking Teslas, a white one, the windows all tinted. Maybe he even passed it on his way up to the complex, except it’s got no license plate. Wouldn’t he have noticed that?

The car inches past. It’s almost out of view when it stops, then rolls right back and parks in front of his neighbor’s house. The man that climbs out wears a pale pink collared shirt with the sleeves cut high enough to show off the dark hair crawling up his arms.

He walks like he’s in his final year of college and he’s already got a job lined up. Middle management, probably at the company of a friend of his dad’s. That’s the wide-kneed swagger of a man with everything. A man who cracks a smirk straight out of bed and only drops it when his hot girlfriend sucks the life out of him every night.

But Harry can’t see that smirk, because the guy’s wearing a neck gaiter that covers him up to the bottom eyelids, then a white baseball cap to block out the rest.

He strolls around his car to the trunk, which he opens.

Harry thinks, not a gun. Please not a gun.

And it’s not. It’s a pair of hedge trimmers. He snaps the blades open and shut a couple times, making the thing talk, then strides towards the house. A fresh price tag dangles from one of the handles.

Just as he stops at the front door opposite, the guy turns. His hat lifts just enough for Harry to make out his eyes, the shadows of them, as the guy stares straight at Harry’s front door.

His lips and jaw and jutting chin warp the fat black number 17 painted on the front of his gaiter.

Harry stumbles backwards. He checks the locks on his front door again, then fumbles at his phone. The message thread with Hermione pops up, so he starts to type.

hey so I think somebody is actually trying to

But as he types, the app wigs out. It closes, and when he opens it up again, his keyboard keeps dropping so he can’t get the words out.

“Shit,” he whispers, then thinks, what the hell am I doing?!

He gives up on Hermione and does what he should’ve done to start, which is call the cops. Obviously. Maybe it’s some stupid spooky prank going on out there, but if a stranger wanders up to your neighbor’s house with a pair of garden shears, that’s sort of a better-safe-than-sorry situation.

But when he pulls up the call screen, the numbers aren’t registering. It’s the same thing, his keyboard popping up and down like it’s a damn wack-a-mole, his input blinking out of existence the second he manages to get that evil little 9 to enter.

Out of nowhere, his AI assistant pops up. Something from the recent update, but he hasn’t used it much.

How can I help? it asks.

Harry puts his lips up to the mic and says, “Call 9-1-1. It’s an emergency.”

A cacophony hits him from behind. Takes him a second to recognize it as canned laughter blasted so hard his ears ring.

On the entryway side table, that ugly little lamp with the grandma shade blinks awake to full brightness.

Harry nearly drops the phone in his haste to sprint to the next room, which is bathed in red. One of those fourth wall sitcoms plays on the TV, blasting the nasally lead actor’s whining through the whole house, loud enough that someone could probably hear it from the street if they stood still.

He shuts off the TV, then looks up. The ceiling lights spew hot red. His dad must’ve been screwing with the smart settings on those again. Who the hell knows where the remote is, so Harry just shuts off the switch, then runs back to the lamp in the entryway and yanks the plug from the wall.

On his phone: Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that! How can I help you?

“Call 9-1-1,” he says. “Can you make calls? Call the police.”

The little AI thinks and thinks, and then like a miracle, the call screen pops up with 9-1-1 already entered. Harry hits the green button and presses the phone to his ear, his heart beating into his tongue.

“What’s your emergency?”

The air whooshes out of Harry and he half-collapses against the front door. He spits out his address rapid fire.

“Sir, our connection is bad. Can you repeat that?”

He holds the phone closer to his mouth and says his address again. A flickering light catches the corner of his eye, and he goes bounding upstairs. It’s all those smart lights going berzerk.

“That’s my address,” he says, “but the emergency is across the street. I think someone just broke into my neighbors house with a weapon. They were wearing a mask.”

He’s unplugging lamps and flicking switches for the overheads. His computer monitor screams the bright orange of his wallpaper as he sprints by his bedroom. He backtracks to yank the cord from the wall.

“Would you mind if I ask you to—”

“He’s got a gun!” Harry hisses. It’s a lie, but honestly, that guy likely does have a gun somewhere. Even if he doesn’t, it’ll get the police to hurry the fuck up if they think a mass shooting is about to go down out here in the quaint suburbs.

He all but tumbles downstairs. The cascade of thumps has him rethinking all this running, so he slips off his shoes.

“A gun,” he repeats. “Hello? Are you sending someone?”

Just checking, but the garage door is closed. The back door is locked, as is the front. All the windows, too. Everything.

The phone crackles, and the guy on the other line goes mumbly behind all that static. From what Harry can catch of his voice, he’s asking another question, so Harry spits out his address with his voice raised as loud as he dares, which isn’t much. He also repeats the gun thing a few more times for good measure.

Outside, someone else screams.

Eyeball to the peephole going through his front door, Harry says, “I think there’s a bunch of them. This is an actual attack. Like a terrorist attack.”

The Tesla sits there with its windows reflecting Harry’s own house back at him. Nobody trawls the lawn dragging hedgeclippers, but both upstairs windows have gone dark.

“A terrorist attack,” he says again. “Can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me. I don’t have much for weapons so I can’t really—”

The voice returns, clear as a damn bell in his ear, so loud he cringes away from his phone.

“For security reasons, may I ask you to complete a verbal puzzle? Don’t be alarmed. I just need to ensure the validity of our call.”

“I—what?” Harry scampers to check the back door again. Still locked. “What? A puzzle? What are you talking about? Do you think I’m a bot or something? Wait—are you a bot?!”

“Please calm down sir. This will only take a moment of your time, and it’ll help me direct your call appropriately. Now, what is four plus three?”

Somewhere way, way too close, a gun rattles off. He counts thirteen shots, but after the first few he’s breathing too hard to be sure of the number.

“What is four plus three?” the phone asks again.

Harry rubs his face and says, “Seven.”

His leg feels wet. Ah—he’d forgotten that stupid knife in his pocket. He yanks the thing from his pants, which is a very bad call if the sudden rush of new warmth flooding his thigh is anything to go by.

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch that,” the phone says.

Harry fumbles his pants open and peels them down far enough to get a good luck at the cut. “Seven,” he repeats.

It’s about as wide as a quarter, the cut. Not too bad. The blood trickles instead of pours, so the sudden rush must’ve been from his adrenaline or something. Not great, but he’s not dying of blood loss anytime soon.

“I’m sorry,” the phone says. “It seems we have a poor connection.”

“Seven,” Harry tells it as he stuffs one of his mom’s good napkins against his thigh and yanks his pants back up.

“Seven,” he says, but it comes out a little skittery, because he’s busy rushing to the stove, where all four burners have just blazed to life. He jabs at the buttons until the whole thing shuts off.

“Seven!”

“Seven!”

The refrigerator spits out a deluge of water and ice, both crushed and cubed. Their smart dishwasher with the touchpad panel floods with water, adding to what the fridge had spit() out everywhere.

In the living room, the TV roars awake. A harried wife nags her husband.

“Seven! Seven! Fuck!”

He hangs up the phone and calls again. A different patient voice answers him—male this time—but it’s a bot just the same. AI or something.

More screaming outside, now with deep laughter trailing after it. Harry sweats his phone screen slippery and peers through the front peep hole.

Almost flat dark now. Darker than it should be, actually, because the street lamps stand dead, as do the neighbor’s outside lights, which by this time of night should beam their blue LEDs into Harry’s own bedroom window, making sideways jail bars through the slats in the blinds.

A shape—someone stumbles down the street. A woman, maybe. She’s limping bad.

Her glasses glint as she turns her head to look behind her. She screams.

Harry’s got his hand on the knob when the car hits her.

Chapter Text

A thump. A squeal as her body rolls over the hood and up the windshield.

The car skids to a stop, and the woman goes thumping right back to the middle of the road. Just a lumpy pile in the darkness. A speed bump.

Harry backs away from the door with measured steps that don’t make even the smallest sound. He picks up the knife, checks to make sure he’s still got the phone in his hand, then hustles upstairs on just his tip-toes.

That woman—she could still be alive, right? Just a pile of limbs, but people survive getting hit by a car all the time. Some broken bones, a shattered pelvis. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, the hospital bills might drive her into bankruptcy.

Harry’s only on sneaky step number five when another double-thump rattles him. He swears it shakes the house, but that’s probably just his pulse playing tricks.

He pauses to catch his breath. It doesn’t work, so he continues up the stairs, letting the breaths go in sharp through his mouth and slow through his nose. He doesn’t run back to check if the woman’s still there in the middle of the road, now flattened from the car driving straight over her.

Just a speed bump.

He doesn’t even make it to the top step before he’s dialing 9-1-1 again. He puts his lips right up against the mic and says, “I need to talk to a real person. A woman was just run over outside my house, on purpose, and it’s not just her. I hear screaming and guns.”

“I understand. Can I get your address? An approximate one is fine.”

He says his address clear as he can make it while he checks that every window upstairs is locked, just in case. His voice doesn’t shake, even if his legs do.

“Thank you. And what is the nature of your emergency?”

His hands feel numb, so after every room he squeezes the knife handle just to make sure it’s still there. “There’s a terrorist attack happening in my neighborhood. People are dying. Please send as many officers as you can.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Let me pass you to a specialist.”

He could almost smile, he’s so relieved. He’s finished with the windows and he’s checking all the lamps again, all the light switches, every smart screen or device or monitor to make sure nothing’s got the juice to scream his whereabouts.

“Can I get your address, please?”

Harry licks his lips and says it again, beat by beat.

“Got it. What about your name and age?”

He pulls the battery from the roomba. “Harry Potter. Seventeen.” He repeats his address again for good measure.

“And what’s the nature of your emergency?”

More gunfire outside, and a scream that cuts off so sudden it stays ring-a-linging in Harry’s ears long after.

The call goes dead. He looks at his phone to find his smart assistant popped up on the screen with a chipper little, how can I help you? message.

“Call the police,” he tells it, then runs to check under his parent’s bed, just in case his dad’s got a secret gun he never told anybody about. You know, for protection.

No gun.

The ringing of his phone blasts through the speaker. Harry hangs up, checks the volume, then redials.

The voice that comes out of the speaker is straight gibberish, like someone took a full sentence, chopped it up into all its distinct sounds, then rearranged it into a random order.

Harry says his address. He says, “Please help me.” He tells them about the guns and the woman dead in the street and the gate opening on its own. Everything.

The bot on the other end of the line says something that’s probably meant to be comforting, but instead it sounds more like an old tape recording of a cat attempting to talk.

He hangs up and tries to text Hermione again. Text his parents. He tries calling the pizza delivery guy.

One by one, his messaging apps all have their meltdowns. Instagram. Twitter. His Facebook post clears into the ether and the app refuses to open afterwards. Every call drops. Every message self-destructs.

His fingers smear sweat across the phone screen and his leg bleeds into his pants, and he can’t get a single message out. His phone won’t let him.

He cranks his arm back—but what if they can hear the smash of his phone screen shattering into shards from down at the road?

From the sidewalk?

From just outside his front door?

From standing below his bedroom window, his mom’s stupid bushes scratching up their posh khakis?

Harry ducks into his closet and slides the door shut. It smells like ketchup in here. That’ll be his soccer uniform, splattered from yesterday’s post-scuffle Wendy’s run. All down his shirt and pants and straight into his socks. Every time he wears those cleats for the next year, his feet’ll come out stinking of ketchup, and all because he had the nerve to win.

He should’ve done laundry yesterday like his mom said.

He breathes in the ketchup and dials 9-1-1 again. The phone rings and rings.

Past his closet door, past his grass-stained carpet and dusty computer, there’s a crash. His house shudders with the impact, but not enough that someone’s gone and run their shiny Tesla into it. More like his neighbor’s house.

The call picks up and someone speaks, but it’s more of that chopped up gibberish, so he hangs up and drags awake the camera app for the front doorbell.

There on his phone screen, a man with a neck gaiter pushes his face right up to the camera. He’s hunched and the fabric on his gaiter shivers, the number 29 all blurry from it. His spiked hair used to be brown based on the brows, but it’s a bleached blonde right now.

The spikes shiver, too, because the man’s laughing.

Harry shakes his head hard and forces himself to look closer. That corner of the welcome mat just at the corner of the frame—that’s not his mom’s kitschy Hope You Brought Wine! mat. Harry’s front walkway doesn’t have any flower pots dangling from the eaves, but this one does.

Not his house. It’s not his house he’s looking at.

The feed slips, smearing down the screen, and then the man’s standing back so he’s only visible from the nose downward. That number 29 churns as the man says something that doesn’t make it through the feed.

Behind him, the light on the front porch grows bright enough to pop the bulb, but it just keeps going until it could be daylight out there.

The man opens his mouth and the fabric pulls inward, forming a concave scoop with no sharp points of teeth to get in the way. He reaches up with both hands and shoves them inside his mouth. His jaw goes wider and wider as he reaches deep inside his own head.

A third arm curls over his shoulder and joins the other two. Then a fourth, except this one waggles its six fingers and two thumbs at Harry. Hello. Hello.

Harry’s heart pounds as he hits the power button on his phone, then yanks the back open and scrabbles at the battery.

That wasn’t real, or at least the last part wasn’t. The attack on his neighbors, the broken fence, all the smart devices in his home going haywire, and that AI-enhanced show that just played out for him—it’s all connected.

This isn’t some random invasion. It was planned.

He can’t get the battery out. It’s screwed or glued in there hard.

He’s considering whether it’d successfully flush down the toilet when there’s a thump downstairs.

Harry holds his breath. He grips the phone in one hand and the knife in the other. Did he imagine it? No, that was real.

But if someone’s walking around, they’re sneaking just like he was.

How many houses are in this neighborhood? Surely someone was able to get a message out. Emergency services are compromised, but out of all those neighbors, all those smart devices, someone was on a video call with a faraway loved one when gunshots rang out. Someone was livestreaming to their pitiful audience of a couple dozen when a woman and her strollered baby were chased down the sidewalk just outside.

Someone’s coming. The police, the marines, whoever handles terrorist attacks.

Harry positions the knife so it’s ready to stab outward and upward. He’s got his eyes pinned where the closet door meets the frame.

No parents, no working phone. He’s more alone than he’s ever been in his life.

Sounds from outside—laughter, screaming, the slap-slap-slap of running flip-flops against pavement—spackle the inside of his brain until they could be coming from inside his house. He listens for the creak of floorboards or the cocking of a weapon.

Maybe the thump came from next door after all. Next door, just outside, who’s to say. Or maybe—

The closet lights up. Harry automatically jabs his knife forward, but the blade hits the door, which is still shut tight.

The light’s from his phone coming to life in his hand, the screen beaming out at full brightness.

He fumbles for the power button. The phone slips from his grip. Just as it hits his foot, it screams its power-up welcome song. Maximum volume.

He can’t hear anything above that soothing jingle straight out of an ad. He holds down that power button until the thing goes dead again, then straightens to find the closet door sliding wide open.

He forgets which hand holds the knife, but his body doesn’t. The blade goes swinging out before he can even register the tall man standing there.

The knife clips the man’s chin—no, the hard shell of his mask. The tip of the blade catches at the lip of it with a squeal of plastic and jerks the whole thing skiwampus.

Harry’s bracing himself for another jab forward when the man catches him by the wrist. Too fast.

He careens out of the closet and his head bangs into the door frame as the man yanks him into the room. He slams face first into the wall.

“HELP!” he yells, still trying to wrestle away from the man’s grip. It gets him nothing but a sharp pain up his elbow as his arm twists the wrong way. His cry for help turns into a grunt.

The knife slips away. A second later, a thin cord winds around his wrists.

Zllp. Plastic cuts into his skin. He’s been zip-tied.

Hands grope Harry’s waist and hips. Then the voice—

“No gun. You weren’t kidding.”

Harry pushes his face against the wall in an attempt to spin around. Surprisingly it works, but the man only takes Harry by the throat and shoves him backwards again.

It’s hard to tell in the dark of the room, but his hair looks heavy black. That blackness leaks down his face in a cheap plastic mask, carving out flattened features. From forehead to chin, running straight down the nose and lips, a big white number 1 practically glows against all that darkness.

He holds up Harry’s knife and tilts his head. “Normally I’m all about the foreplay,” he says, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to skip straight to the good stuff today.”

“Don’t—” Harry starts, but then his throat goes tight as the man gives it a hard squeeze.

He stops his thrashing when he feels the blade of the knife against his clavicle. The man cuts his shirt straight down the middle. A couple slices through the sleeves and the whole thing falls in tatters to the floor.

Harry tries to swallow, but it gets stuck in his throat. He can only just breathe, like sucking air through one of those tiny coffee straws.

When the man goes for the button on his jeans, he kicks out. That earns him a knee to the groin. He’d keel over but for the hand at his throat still pinning him. By the time his vision returns, his pants and underwear are tangled around his ankles.

The man pushes him up the wall, cutting off his air completely. He must step on the bundle of Harry’s pants, because they yank free of his ankles, and both his socks with them. He’s naked.

All at once, the man releases. Harry goes sliding to the floor. His head knocks against the wall on his way down, sending his brain swimming through a sea of imagined red and blue flashing lights that he so desperately wants to be real. His lungs burn as he forces the air back into them.

Still, he tries to kick. His shoulders scream as he twists at the zip-tie binding his wrists.

A flash of light. That one’s real, but bright white, like the flash from a camera.

The man laughs. He prods at Harry’s dick with the toe of his shoe and takes another picture with the tip pinned between his sole and Harry’s thigh.

“You—d-don’t touch me, you piece of shit,” Harry chokes out.

The shoe disappears. “You can call me Tom.”

Tom’s shape all but disappears against the dark backdrop of the room. No khakis or polo for him. He’s wearing black up to his jaw and down to his wrists—or further, because when he takes Harry by the throat again and drags him to his feet, it’s cool leather against his neck instead of hot skin.

Harry forces himself still. “If you don’t get out of my house right now, I swear to god I’ll kill you.”

That number one stares him right in the face. “Oh, yeah. Threaten me some more. That’ll make me want to spare you for sure.”

Harry kicks out, and this time it connects with the guy’s shin. He grunts, but his grip only tightens.

He drags Harry away from the wall and across the room. With the sweep of an arm, Harry’s computer monitors go crashing to the ground.

The edges of Harry’s vision sparkle, more from the pressure at his throat than the new burn starting up in his chest. Those sparkles shatter over his blinking eyes as Tom slams him onto the desk, sending his glasses flying.

It takes him a good few seconds to figure out he can breathe again.

The light flicks on, and more zip-ties cinch closed, now just under each of his knees. He kicks again, only to find that his legs are secured to the desk legs.

Tom replaces Harry’s glasses, then shoves the computer chair aside and sighs, head turning as he looks down the length of Harry’s exposed body.

“You’d make a good ad,” he says. He stands between Harry’s spread knees and holds his hands up, gloved fingers making a picture-perfect box. “Right here. Low angle with all the goods front and center. Do you have any idea how many drooling-dicked nobodies you’d lure in? They’d click you so fast their router would stutter.”

Harry’s chest heaves hard. Between breaths, he asks, “Are you going to kill me?”

Tom pats a quick rhythm on his thighs, then slides up and thumbs Harry’s soft dick, pressing it against his lower belly. “That’s tricky. If I say no, you won’t believe me, and if I say yes, you’ll fight like hell.”

One gloved finger traces Harry’s balls. A sick chill runs straight through his gut.

“Does it help if I promise I’ll fight like hell either way?” Harry asks.

Tom pinches the loose skin of his scrotum and massages it, casual like he does this every single day. “What if I made you a deal?”

That sick chill ping-pongs around inside until his abdomen prickles from pubic bone to lungs. Harry turns his eyes to the ceiling. “...Not to be rude, but I don’t even fucking know you. I can’t trust any deal you make with me.”

“Sounds like you’re insistent that death could be my only possible end goal here. How boring. You know I could’ve already gutted you with that knife, right? Slit your throat. Stabbed through your eye and into your brain.”

The thumb at the base of his cock presses harder and wiggles, just a little. The other hand works and works at his balls, never going so rough to make him flinch, but enough that he can’t ignore it, not even for a second.

Harry opens his mouth, then closes it as the prickling gets stronger.

“At least if you make a deal, you’ve got a sliver of hope. There’s always the chance I’ll honor it after all. Isn’t a sliver better than nothing?”

This guy’s got the voice of those peckers who speed up to the front of the classroom come debate time. He’s going over on his essay’s required word count just so he’ll have more to read aloud, his smile all cocked and loaded on his face so he can bam, bam his point home, sources be damned.

Harry hates those guys.

He looks down at his own half-hard dick pointed straight at his face, pressed against his belly.

Above that, the guy watches. Number 1 of the group. Tom.

Harry says, “If you expect me not to fight—”

“Oh, I do. I’m counting on it. And if you uphold your end of the deal, I’ll let you live regardless of how bad you fought me.”

Already, his fingertips are going numb where they’re curled into fists under his lower back. Harry asks the big question. The lazy raised hand at the back of the class asking the leading question Tom’s been elbowing towards.

He asks, “What’s the deal, then?”

Tom lifts his chin, revealing the pale white underside of his jaw where his turtleneck doesn’t quite reach. “All you have to do is pinky promise me you won’t come, no matter what it is I do to you.”

Harry stares at him, then cranks his arms to one side until his tied wrists jut out from under his back. His shoulder burns from the stretch, but he holds the pose and lifts one pinky.

Tom pauses, then winds his own gloved pinky around Harry’s.

“Deal.”

Chapter Text

A guy Harry’s age remembers every hand who’s ever touched his cock. Every single one.

Every doctor. Every girl, over the jeans or over the boxers. He remembers his own hand best, adjusting or itching or cranking away like he’s trying to bring the thing back to life.

Tom wears gloves, but it’s not like having the doctor check out his junk. These gloves hold warmth. They feel like skin, because they kind of are, being made of leather and all that.

It’s worse when Tom flicks the light on and props up Harry’s head so he’s got nothing better to look at but his own dick pressed flat against his stomach. Tom holds it there with his thumb while he works away at Harry’s balls some more, then probes behind them, his blunt fingertip massaging that sensitive spot just in front of his asshole.

He gives that spot some steady pressure, squeezes his balls once more, and suddenly Harry’s hard.

Not suddenly, but that’s how it feels.

Tom runs that finger straight up from base to tip and says, “There we go. There he is.”

Without anything holding it down, his cock stands tall, the tip glistening just the tiniest bit.

Despite himself, Harry’s cheeks go hot. “It doesn’t mean—”

Tom shushes him. “Don’t ruin the moment, Harry.”

It’s like his body doesn’t know this is wrong. For all his dick cares, this is just another handsy session in the back of Ron’s hand-me-down sedan with the radio blasting all tinny to keep the sex sounds inside.

Harry says, “How do you know my name?”

Tom turns and taps the black earbud tucked into his ear, then takes Harry’s cock by the base and wobbles it around. “Did you enjoy the show? I won’t pretend I worked hard on it, but I also won’t say no to a little buttering up.”

“What show?”

“Don’t play stupid. I made your house sing. Well, everybody’s houses. Cute little neighborhood you’ve got here, if a tad whiny for my taste.”

He straightens and pulls the mask off his face. No fanfare, just drops it to the floor. He’s one of those sharp-jawed types, not in the movie star sort of way, but in the runway model sort of way where all their features run so extreme they border on ugly.

But when he smiles—that’s all movie star, complete with the autograph.

He grips Harry with his whole fist and starts jerking him, bottom to top. It’s a little more pressure than Harry would give himself, but that speed is something else.

He swallows back a groan and considers banging his head against the desk. Outside someone screams, and he could almost be grateful for it, because it brings to mind more screaming and yardwork tools with grass clippings in all the teeth. He thinks about those stupid fucking Teslas and dudebros in khakis and his own glob of spit on a windshield.

His dick stays hard. It throbs at the tip in time with his heart.

Harry forces a laugh and says, “Let m-me guess, you’re with one of those anon groups from 4chan or something. God, I can’t think of anything more cringe.”

Tom cranks him harder still. “I’m not with any group. Call me an enthusiastic amateur.” He leans in and smiles. “It was like stomping on an anthill. The second we started busting doors, my phone was ringing off the metaphorical hook with all the 9-1-1 calls rolling out of here. Can you believe I nearly had the little jailbirds in your phone block them from going through at all? I’m glad I didn’t. Those were fun to listen to.”

Harry huffs, out of breath like he’s running. “You infected everything…with a virus.”

“Oh, better. I just snuck in and gave those intelligent roommates of yours—your refrigerator, your TV, your cameras—some new orders. No big deal. They’re built to please, after all.” Still jerking, he prods at the nick on Harry’s thigh where the knife had poked straight through his pocket. “What happened there?”

Harry ignores him. He wants to stare at the ceiling—or better yet, the inside of his own eyelids—but every time he looks away from his cock going redder and harder, Tom gives his balls a sharp squeeze just past the point of comfort.

He thinks about his grandma. He thinks about Jordan peeling off his socks after practice and showing everyone the skin-cheese gunked up between his toes.

It doesn’t matter what he thinks about. He can’t outrun the pumping hand on his cock.

“Stop,” he says.

Tom only picks up the pace and digs beneath Harry’s balls to massage that tender spot again.

Don’t come.

Harry stares at the hot red tip of his own dick and remembers the smell of the boys’ restroom at the end of the day, before the janitors made it down there. He thinks about this guy with the number one mask killing him and his parents and every single one of his friends.

Still, he’s just about to blow it when Tom lets go all at once, his dick wobbling away, the tip smeared with precome.

Tom reaches down. One of the restraints snaps and Harry’s leg goes loose. He tries to kick it, but Tom’s got him by the ankle and pushes his leg up so his thigh meets his chest. With the other leg still bent down over the table, a sharp burn starts up at the awkward stretch.

He holds Harry’s leg there with one hand and looks down, straight at Harry’s asshole. He hums, that kind a doctor does when they’ve noticed something worth prodding at.

Harry says, “Don’t—” but Tom’s already pulling the skin around his hole taut like he isn’t already spread wide open for the guy.

He glances down at his wrist and flicks it. A watch lights up, the smart kind. It tells him something that has him humming again, and then he’s back to staring at Harry’s asshole.

He spits. It hits a little high, but rolls down to kiss Harry’s hole all the same.

Harry clenches his abs and presses his lips hard together. Clearly the guy’s looking for reactions, so that’s just about the last thing Harry wants to give him, but it’s difficult not to thrash around when he’s being spread open like this.

Tom spits again, and this time it hits dead center. “Nice,” he says. His thumb rolls over the bone of Harry’s ankle. “You ever been fucked in the ass before?”

Reaction or no reaction, Harry thrashes. The zip-ties hold, as does Tom’s grip on his ankle, but he fights anyway until it feels like those zip-ties are cutting into his wrists.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” He pinches Harry’s inner thigh. “I’m told it hurts, but that might just be my particular style. Promise me you’ll weigh in after it’s all said and done, alright?”

He leans down and releases Harry’s second leg, then quickly flips him so he’s bent over the desk.

The next kick backwards connects dead center with Tom’s shin. Pain lances through Harry’s heel, but he forces himself sideways, nearly crashing into the wall. His glasses only barely cling to his ears.

He steadies himself and aims towards the door, except there’s Tom.

Laughing.

Tom holds his hands out in front of him and makes a picture with them like he had before, first focusing on Harry’s face, then dragging them downward to frame his hard dick.

Harry’s about ready to charge the guy when he slowly reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a knife. The blade flips out, half-serrated and half smooth up to a sharp point, the whole thing a smooth matte black like it’s never been used before.

He didn’t know they made pocket knives that big.

Tom turns it for him to see all the angles, the showoff.

No matter how Harry works at that zip-tie holding his wrists, it doesn’t budge.

“You said you wouldn’t—”

“That’s the nice thing about knives,” Tom interrupts. “There’s a lot I can do with it before I actually kill you.”

He could run, but Tom will be faster, and with his hands available he’ll be stronger. He’ll have the knife, and there’s no doubt that a sicko like him knows the most x-rated torture methods out there. No doubt at all.

The cops will come. They have to. And until then, I need to live.

Harry takes a breath, then walks back to the desk, resisting every single split-second urge to flail and kick and sprint away from this goddamned house.

It goes against all his instincts, but when he reaches that desk, he bends. Cheek to the fake wood, he bends and holds himself there, obedient as a stupid lamb gone to stupid slaughter or however the saying goes.

At first, Tom doesn’t do or say anything. Maybe he’s just staring like a creep again.

“On your back,” he finally murmurs. “I changed my mind. I want to watch that face while I deflower you.”

“Fuck you,” Harry says through gritted teeth. He tries to make himself turn around, but can’t.

When Tom takes him by the shoulder and lays him back down on the desk, he manages to let it happen with nothing more than the dirtiest glare he can muster.

Any second, and the cops will come screaming in through that stuck gate. They’ll barge in and find Harry naked with…well, they’ll find him, and that’s the important part.

He’s a kid, technically. This isn’t just normal illegal. It’s super-duper illegal.

Harry imagines Tom and all his khaki-loving dudebros behind bars while he bunches up both Harry’s legs towards his chest and secures them that way using one of the longer computer cords. He shuffles through the desk drawers until he finds the bottle of lube, the mouth of it all gunked up from use.

“How convenient,” he says. “So you have done this before.”

The words fall out before Harry can stop them. “It was just—”

Tom lifts an eyebrow. “Just what?” He sets the bottle at the base of Harry’s cock and draws a thin line of lube straight up to the head, then squirts the rest between his spread cheeks.

If Tom thinks he’s done anal before, he might go even harder. Harry swallows his pride and says, “Just the normal stuff. Jerking off. It doesn’t burn like lotion.”

Tom smears that lube over Harry’s cock until the whole thing shines. Whatever softening had happened as Tom strapped him down, it’s all undone.

The excess lube pools beneath his ass. His thighs are strapped down so tight he can’t close them even an inch.

He’s seen women in this position before, in porn. Usually not tied down, but held down with the dude gripping their thighs, their feet bobbing with every thrust.

He imagines himself with inches of dick piling inside of him, his insides ballooning with all the pressure. Maybe the guy’s small, teeny-tiny, but Harry wouldn’t bet on it.

Tom gives the tip of Harry’s cock a quick flick, then chuckles at how he flinches.

“Don’t do it,” Harry hisses. “Don’t—don’t you dare, you piece of shit. You—”

“Ah-ah-ah.” Tom leans forward to grip his jaw, the glove slick with lube. “Be careful,” he says.

Down between Harry’s legs, his other hand goes for his zipper.

Harry doesn’t think about it, he just kicks. His thighs are strapped tight, but from the knee down his legs dangle loose in the air, bobbing with any movement.

So he kicks. And the kick connects.

Straight to the jaw.

Tom goes stumbling back, rubbing his face. His brows lift but his eyes fall, sinking down Harry’s body until they’re submerged in heavy darkness. He licks his lips and shakes his head.

“Oh, no,” he murmurs. “Oh, no.”

Chapter Text

It was a stupid thing. A really stupid thing. Why kick someone when you can’t even move to run afterwards?

Tom does up his zipper and rubs his jaw again, right where Harry had kicked it. He’s not saying anything else, just staring.

Harry can’t do a thing but stare right back through the gap between his own spread legs.

This was a really, really, really stupid thing to do.

Tom rounds the desk with slow steps, adjusting his turtleneck as he goes. Already, he’s pink at the jaw. It’ll bruise ugly.

The pile of Harry’s computer gear gives a long scrape as Tom nudges it with his shoe. Probably one of the monitors earning a nice fat scratch right across the screen.

“If I were to comb through this trash,” Tom says, face tilted downward in perfect profile, “would I find a webcam hooked up? Or maybe something built into one of these monitors?”

Harry shakes his head. It’s a lie, because he can’t see where Tom’s going with this.

He looks at Harry and traces one gloved finger down from his forehead to his lips, pulling away the second before Harry thinks to snap at him.

“You’re in trouble now,” Tom murmurs.

He circles back around to stand between Harry’s legs and squirts another pump of lube, this time onto a couple of his fingers. He takes Harry by the sole of his foot and turns it until Harry’s squirming. Then further, so he goes still, waiting for that deep pop of his own joint going out of whack. Harry knows the feeling.

Tom says, “Don’t kick me again.”

Harry nods and he nods, eyes on his own ankle.

He releases the ankle. His lubed up fingers scissor together a couple times, then prod at Harry’s asshole.

“Even if you haven’t got a webcam—which I highly doubt, by the way. You pompous little highschoolers always dream of making it big as the next streamer—”

The fingertips only spend a moment prodding, smearing more lube around, before forcing inward.

“—I bet I could still track down some clips from your phone. Can’t turn that camera off, and these days everyone jerks off with their phone pointed at their face. Everyone. Believe me, I’ve checked.”

Harry grunts. His body wants to clench up tight and force out the intruder, but those fingers aren’t going anywhere except inward, so he acts against his instincts and relaxes his lower half as much as he’s able. It helps the pain a little, but that unfamiliar stretch threatens to get him tightening up again if he loses focus for even a second.

Tom’s got long fingers, but they don’t last forever. Soon his knuckles bump against Harry’s ass. He swivels them around inside like he’s trying to make room, then starts into a steady pumping rhythm, in and out.

Harry hates to admit it, but the stretch isn’t terrible. Worse is the sensitive spot he keeps prodding with every stroke, like a little hunk of coal going red with heat. It almost hurts, but that ‘almost’ isn’t quite far enough.

“I wonder if this is the face you make at the porn running on your computer screen.” Tom’s voice is almost conversational. “Do you drool? You look like you’re about to now.”

That has Harry swallowing, his cheeks prickling with heat. Or maybe that’s from Tom picking up the pace.

The red-hot coal down there is turning white. He’s throbbing all over, shivers wracking his body.

Tom takes him by the base of the dick again and wobbles it back and forth. It’s so swollen that it hurts.

“Look.”

He peels his eyes open. There’s his dick, the head leaking precome all over the place.

Tom gives it another shake, then releases it. “Only been at it a few minutes and you’re already about ready to give it up. Where’s that fight I was promised?” Those fingers thrust at a steady rhythm that doesn’t give Harry even a second to breathe.

He thinks about his grandma again, what her wrinkled boobs must look like pointing towards her feet.

No—he pictures her in a port-a-potty with her sweat stinking up the place so the walls crawl with humidity. Her knees shaking and the wrinkles hanging off her thighs shivering as she squats over the hole.

It doesn’t matter how vividly he paints the picture in his mind. It doesn’t matter that he can practically taste the fumes coming off that toilet.

He’s still hard.

Tom grips his balls and works up the pace of his thrusting to a feverish level, then all at once stops. He lets go and just holds his fingers in there, deep up to the knuckle, but not moving at all.

Harry groans. It oozes out of him, and once it starts he can’t stop the sound from going on and on. Almost like a moan.

No. He’s not moaning. He’s not fucking moaning.

Fingertips trail up one side of his cock and down the other. The muscles in Harry’s abdomen spasm at the sensitivity.

“Oh, you’re close. You’re really close.” Tom gives the head one quick tap, and the fingers inside curl. “You were about to forfeit our little deal, and so quickly. Couldn’t quite latch onto that fantasy of your grandma taking a dump, huh?”

Harry wants to close his eyes, but he can’t tear them away from those gloved fingers, which now trail along his spread inner thighs. “How did you—”

“That’s always what it is. The grandma taking a dump, or doing a strip tease, or some bunnies getting murdered. Always the same shit.”

The fingers slip out and Harry groans again. He tells himself it’s the relief of it all. He braces for the next round, eyes on that zipper, but Tom turns heel and wanders out of the room, peeling his gloves off as he goes.

The instant he’s out of sight, Harry’s jerking around in his bounds. It only earns him a few new bruises, and then some stars across his vision as he accidentally bangs his head against the wall. Shit.

Shit shit shit. He’s not going anywhere. Still, he struggles and mentally begs his parents to come home. Sure, it’d be humiliating, but at least they could—they could—

They could do what? Jab their thumbs at their phones, dialing 9-1-1 just like he did, only to be thwarted by the same stupid robot?

Hell, they might get shot before they even make it to the front door.

No, not his parents. The cops. No, the goddamned military, with armored vehicles and guns you can’t buy at a store.

Harry listens for a helicopter, or for the sound of a tank crushing his neighbor’s mailbox. He almost laughs to himself, except the feeling of a slick tongue of lube rolls down from his asshole and that shuts down any faint humor he was able to find in the picture.

Tom comes strolling around the corner, some white lacy thing dangling from his fingertip. He spreads it wide in a smile. Underwear, the thong kind.

“Check that out.” He comes to stand next to the desk and holds those underwear right in Harry’s face. “Frankly, I’m not impressed by the cheap elastic. What do you think that says about your parents’ marriage, that your dad wasn’t willing to spring for the good lingerie?” He clicks his tongue and lets the underwear drop to Harry’s stomach. “Your mom must be a scrawny thing just like you, so at least we’ve got that.”

The blow comes before Harry knows to brace for it. His head knocks to one side, a sharp crack resounding through his spine.

He blinks and he sees nothing. Blackness. Or does he blink? Where’s his body again?

Snap. Release. His leg goes limp.

The ceiling fractures into pieces like his phone screen. Sound jitters through his head, all of it disconnected.

Harry breathes.

Snap. Release. His other leg loosens.

The world swings to one side, and he finds enough of his body to thrash around. There’s his bed, and there’s his dresser, and there’s his own feet planted on the ground.

“Don’t panic. I’ve got you.”

Tom’s pointed face swims into his vision. Harry stumbles back and back until he hits the wall, and there he leans, his brain rocking around inside his own skull.

A concussion, he tells himself. He’s never had one, but he’s seen teammates take a hard accidental knock to the head. It always means a trip to the hospital, and now he can see why. It feels like his head’s been filled with clam chowder.

Lace scratches up his legs. He thinks to kick, but by the time the action forms in his mind, pressure holds both his feet down. Tom’s stepping on them as he pulls those underwear up his thighs.

“Stop,” Harry says. It comes out dry, so he licks his lips and punches the word out. “Stop!”

With a strong jerk, he wrenches his feet free and goes stumbling to one side, only for Tom to drag him to the floor, belly-up.

He kicks, this time harder. That cloudy feeling is fading bit by bit.

Tom pulls the underwear until they sit high on Harry’s hips. The lace scratches against his cock, all the more uncomfortable for how sensitive he is.

“Cute,” Tom says. He traces the outline of Harry’s cock through the underwear, though he pauses at the hem where the head sticks out.

Harry could throw up. He’s wearing his mom’s underwear—hopefully clean, but who fucking knows?—and he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.

He thrashes, only for Tom to kneel on his thighs and keep on tracing him through the underwear. His fingers never reach the bare head, always finding a meandering route back down the length instead.

Harry lets out a long moan. No, a groan. That lace is too tight between his cheeks, and it hurts, damnit.

“I know, I know. Come on. Just let it all out.”

Harry screws up his face. “Fucker.”

Tom laughs and finally presses his thumb against the head of Harry’s cock. He massages the smallest circle there. Feels slick.

Fingers sift into Harry’s hair and grip hard enough to pull a few strands free. The weight holding his thighs down disappears, but it doesn’t matter, because any movement sends his scalp screaming.

Tom’s face hovers right above Harry’s. “Beg,” he says.

The circles stay small, but the pressure increases. It’s not enough. No—he doesn’t want it to be enough.

“Beg, and I’ll jerk you off.”

Harry pants. He squirms his legs, but not so hard that the thumb slips free.

He should fight harder. So why won’t his body do it?

“It’ll feel incredible. I’ll do it just like I did earlier, nice and hard.” Tom squeezes the tip of Harry’s cock, then goes back to that infernal tracing. “Just a pretty please. That’s all I need to hear.”

Harry shakes his head. It’s a death sentence if he comes. That’s the deal. It shouldn’t be this difficult to resist, it really shouldn’t.

He’s going to kill me anyway.

No. Can’t think like that.

Tom hums and gives his cock another thumb-and-forefinger squeeze, this time at the base. “You can do it. I know you’re ready. It hurts, doesn’t it? I can stop the pain.”

Though his balls ache and his cock throbs with the need for more, a sudden clarity blooms in Harry’s mind.

If Tom wanted him to come—therefore giving himself permission to kill Harry free and clear according to their stupid little deal—then he’d just do it. He’d peel down those underwear and jerk until Harry’s coming ropes, which wouldn’t take all that long.

But he’s not doing that. He’s teasing and attempting to lure Harry into giving in…

…which means he wants to give Harry a chance. That is, if this isn’t all another stupid game.

With a grunt, Harry shakes his head. “Fuck you.”

Tom adjusts the underwear higher on his hips, pressing it harder between his legs. Even without any touching, that pressure nearly sends him straight over the cliff.

“I like stubborn boys,” Tom says, the words pouring out of him like cream.

A low boom shakes the house so hard the window panes rattle. Harry perks up, imagining Teslas torn to bits by explosives raining down from military helicopters.

But the concerned curl he expects to find in Tom’s expression never appears. Instead, he only sighs and gives Harry a faint smile.

“What a shame. We’re out of time. May as well go watch the fireworks, shall we?”

Loud laughter leaks in from outside, plus a few short screams that cut off. Did they blow up someone’s house?

Tom drags him to his feet and forces him downstairs, fingers digging into the back of his neck the whole way. The lace scratches at his inner thighs, and every step seems to work it deeper inside his crack, the fabric going messy with the leftover lube.

With his hands zip-tied, there’s a limit to the amount of fight he can put up. Still, Harry hooks his feet around every passing door frame. He digs his heels into the carpet and leans backward, forcing Tom to put real work into hauling him downstairs.

Stall, stall, stall. It’s what Hermione would tell him to do. Stall until the cops get here, because no amount of AI hacking will cover up an explosion like that for long.

After a lot of bruising and some very loud cursing from Harry, they reach the front door. Tom yanks the cord for the blinds and smushes Harry’s face against the glass.

Outside, the streetlights burn hot enough for Harry to just make out the billowing smoke from one street over. Something’s glowing over there, more orange than the streetlights. Fire.

“Not the best view,” Tom says. “Let’s go get a closer look.”

Harry kicks out behind him, but that trick will only work so many times. The kick doesn’t land and Tom peels him away from the window.

A car pulls up. Not a Tesla, but a sedan with a ding on the side from where he’d fallen against it while roughhousing with Ron.

His parents’ car.

Harry hauls in a breath to scream his lungs out, but Tom slaps a hand over his mouth and shoves him against the front door.

Tires squeal as the car comes to a sudden stop outside.

“Harry! Harry!”

That’s his mom yelling.

Harry yells back, and then Tom’s in his ear, shushing him.

“You don’t want them meeting me, do you? Think about it.”

More yelling. That’s his dad. The door rattles as one of them slams into it from how fast they were running. There’s the beep beep beep of the door lock, and then the error tone of an incorrect code.

Tom’s lips brush his temple, nearly whispering now. “Imagine what I’d do to them to keep my fun going with you. I’ve got a lot more than one little knife, Harry.”

More beeping, more error tones. The door shakes as his dad probably slams his fist into it.

Footsteps clatter.

“They’re going for the garage now,” Tom murmurs, “but I’ve disabled the smart lock there, too. What’ll it be? We can stick around and wait for them to head for the back door, or you can come with me and save their lives.”

Harry doesn’t even think about it. “I’ll go. I’ll go. Just promise—”

“Sh, quiet. I won’t hurt them.” Tom rustles around behind him. “Now, let’s see. They’re probably getting frustrated with the garage door right about now…”

Sure enough, there’s a metallic bang as Harry’s dad probably punches the garage in frustration. Then the telltale creak of the yard gate.

Prongs press to Harry’s side, and a sudden wave of electricity rolls through his body, rocking every thought in his mind to a complete halt.

Chapter Text

Every muscle in Harry’s body goes rigid with the high keen of pain twisting him into one big fist. Even after the electricity leaks away, he can’t unlock his arms or legs. His teeth grit so tight an instant headache pulses in his jaw.

He’s vaguely aware of his head lolling onto Tom’s chest and his heels scraping against the sidewalk.

Screaming. Laughing. Fire crackling.

He blinks up at the ceiling—no, the sky. He tastes smoke.

His heels dip into a sidewalk crack, and they turn. Harry rolls his head down to look at his house, all the windows dark except for his bedroom.

As he watches, the living room light flicks on. His parents made it inside.

He gets his feet under him with some concentration and stumbles along backwards so his heels don’t drag.

“Quite the bite, huh?” Tom breathes in his ear.

He turns Harry around and hustles him forward faster than his feet want to go. His knees struggle to bend at every step, so it’s more of a hobble than a true run.

“Wrap it up,” Tom murmurs. It takes Harry a second to realize that he’s not talking to him, but to the little earbud that probably links him up with all the rest of these Tesla goons.

Speaking of, Tom steers him to a Tesla parked one house down, this one a sleek black.

That error code from his front door sounds through his brain. Never let them take you to a second location.

He gives a weak kick. It’s not enough to stop Tom from shoving him in the backseat. The door slams shut before he can try and roll out.

It smells like brand spanking new leather and some fruity vape in here. That, plus a little bit of gunpowder. Just a little.

His back arches away from the seat. “Fuck. No—no. No, no, no.”

Tom gave him the choice: save himself or save his parents. If he’d thought about it for even a second, he’d have realized that saving his parents obviously means he’s either dead or gone, and he’s definitely not dead. Not yet anyway.

He’s being kidnapped.

The opposite door opens, and Tom slides into the backseat. Harry only has a split second to wonder if he should be screaming his head off before the door slams shut again.

Tom stretches his arm across the back of the seat and smiles like he’s auditioning for the supervillain that everyone wants to bang. “You don’t get carsick, do you?”

Harry just breathes out his nose hard, again and again, trying to decide if his trembling leg can manage a kick at this awkward angle before Tom manages to smack it away. Probably not.

Tom reaches for his face, and he snaps at it without thinking.

A car passes. Not a cop car. Maybe one of the goons heading out. He’d check out the back window to see if his parents are running around looking for him yet, except he doesn’t want to take his eyes away from Tom’s face.

Besides, the windows are tinted. And anyway, he doesn’t want his parents coming out here. They might get run over or shot by some zealous idiot on his way out of the neighborhood.

Shaking his head, Tom retrieves a roll of duct tape from under the seat. He pulls off a strip and slaps it over Harry’s mouth. Then another. Then another. He tapes until Harry’s gagged from chin to just beneath his nose.

“Shame,” Tom says. “I would’ve enjoyed a chat on the car ride home. A good heart-to-heart always makes the trip go faster.”

Another Tesla passes. Harry’s heart pounds. If the cops could just fucking get here already—!

Tom tugs those lacy underwear down far enough to let Harry’s dick out. “Still half-mast,” he says, then grips it firm right at the tip and starts jerking.

Harry grunts. His abdomen aches from all the activity with no release, and this isn’t helping. He wills himself soft, now long past all those fantasies of his grandma and her saggy tits. It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work.

Tom goes until he’s fully hard, then roughly tucks him back into the underwear and straps the seatbelt on. He wraps up Harry’s ankles in a quick loop of duct tape, then leaves and slides into the driver’s seat.

The car starts with hardly a sound, the front dash lighting up with an array of menus.

“Just lay back and relax,” Tom says as low music begins to play. “It’s a bit of a drive.”

They coast out of the neighborhood, the front gate still wide open.

Tom puts him in a closet.

Two towns over, his house sits up on some cliffside with a killer view and roads that are assuredly impassable in the wintertime. It’s a whole five minutes of driving between when Harry counts the last neighbor and they reach Tom’s house, all glass and smooth cement.

Harry counts two other cars and some sort of bike before Tom hauls him inside the house and into the closet directly opposite the garage door. The door slams shut, and then it’s just Harry with the air whistling in and out of his nose.

A coat closet with one single coat hanging from the bar. No boots cluttering the floor, nothing. Just him and the coat and the smell of cologne.

It takes some wiggling, what with his hands and feet tied up, but Harry manages to stand and make the hop over to the coat. He turns and gropes at it with his sweaty hands, leaning against the wall when he has to pull his wrists high.

Nothing in the pockets. Nothing. Not a single pocketknife, a gas station receipt, an old hunk of gum.

He tries the doorknob next. He hadn’t heard a lock, but it’s sure not opening. Won’t even jiggle.

As time passes his vision adjusts to the low light. He checks everything again, hoping to find something he can make into a weapon—or at the very least a tool that’ll help him snap the zip-tie around his wrists.

Nothing.

He poses himself right next to the door, back to the wall, and waits.

He’s seen that headbutting thing in movies, but turns out it’s a whole lot more difficult than they make it look to aim your head at someone else’s. When Tom swings the door open an hour or more later, Harry only ends up lunging into his chest, his head bonking against the door frame.

Awesome. Just what he needs. The bonk leaves him woozy, and makes him docile enough for Tom to settle him down on the floor. He runs one of those cloth tape measures over Harry’s legs, around his hips and waist. He slips it between his thighs and measures the distance from his crotch to his knee, then gives him a pat-pat on the head and leaves again.

This time Harry doesn’t heave himself up. He slumps to the side and tries to remember whether that sleeping-after-a-concussion thing is a myth. He falls asleep still thinking about it, and wakes up to the sound of a drill going a couple rooms over.

How long has it been? His throat aches with thirst, and his shoulders burn in their sockets from sleeping at such an awkward angle. Could he have slept the whole night through? No way.

The drilling continues. Harry counts the seconds, then loses track and imagines snagging that knife from Tom’s pocket. Oh, he’d cut the guy up. All in the name of self-defense, of course.

He’s contemplating whether he’d rather murder his captor or send him half-mangled to prison when the door opens up. Tom crouches down and helps Harry into a seated position.

He’s changed out of that all black getup, now wearing a pair of jeans and some prefaded t-shirt. Like he’s just some guy instead of a terrorist.

“Did you get some rest in?” he asks.

When Harry doesn’t nod, he rips the tape off his face in one stinging go.

“You’ll have to excuse the not-so-comfortable accommodations.” Tom tilts his chin up, rubbing his thumb over the tender skin ripped hot by the tape. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t intend on bringing home any spoils from yesterday’s little adventure?”

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

Harry licks his sore lips. “Because you were ready with the duct tape under your seat.”

Tom pats his cheek. “Duct tape is handy for all sorts of things. Thankfully I’ve got better restraints laying around here, so we’ll save the tape for special occasions.”

His fingers drift down Harry’s chest to prod at those lacy underwear, which Harry had all but forgotten about.

His stomach twists. Will his mom notice the absence? Will she make the connection?

Tom toys with the lip of those underwear and the ticklish skin just above. “Thinking about your inevitable rescue, hm? I bet you’ve been fantasizing about it all night.”

“They’ll come for me.”

Tom’s pinky drifts beneath the underwear and finds the tip of his soft dick. “No. They’ll presume you’re one of many who ended up dead and burnt to a crisp. Maybe not right away, but they won’t search that hard…much to your poor parents’ chagrin.”

Harry tightens his jaw. A pinky’s not enough to get him going, not with this throbbing headache and all his limbs sore, but it serves as a reminder of what Tom is capable of.

No. He won’t let that happen again. He’s not into this teasing bullshit. Last night he was caught completely off-guard, that’s all.

“Even if they give up on looking for me, they won’t stop hunting until they find you.”

Tom laughs. “Don’t stress. I’ve got money in all the right pockets.”

Much to Harry’s relief, the pinky finger retreats. He stifles a sigh and tries not to look too relieved.

Tom folds his fingers together. “Now. Ask me very nicely—a ‘pretty please’ will work—and I’ll bring you some water.”

Just the word has Harry swallowing against his raw throat. If he’s going to get rescued, or pull some crazy escape plan, then he needs to stay alive first.

And to stay alive, he needs the basics. Like water.

“Pretty please, may I have some water?” he mumbles.

Tom pats his cheek again. “Good boy.” He leaves and returns with a tall bottle of water, the kind that costs a premium at the grocery store for no good reason.

Harry doesn’t complain. He puts his lips to the hole and sucks down that entire bottle, bit by bit, not stopping until it’s empty. If he lets it drift away from his mouth, who knows when he’ll see it again.

Tom helps him stand. The underwear have shifted all weird from the travel and laying in awkward positions, but he doesn’t fix it.

“Need the restroom?” he asks.

It’s humiliating, but he’ll just have to file this away under necessary shit to do to survive until the cops get here. “Yes.”

The grip around his upper arm tightens. Without warning, Tom bends and tosses Harry over his shoulder.

“Hold it a little longer,” he says.

It feels like a slap to the face, especially since this position puts all his weight on his bladder, but Harry holds back the curses he wants to spit and just focuses on not accidentally toppling forward. Despite the grip on his legs, it feels like he could slip forward and go face-first hurdling towards the floor at any second.

They wander through the house. He doesn’t see much besides the sleek floor, marble or something fancy like that, something for Tom’s shoes to click against.

He cranes his neck up just as they pass a long dining table, the kind you could seat at least twelve people at and still have room for the help to sidle up between chairs for topping up wine glasses. Just next to it there’s some kind of contraption set up atop a cabinet, this weird metal upside-down V—

But Harry doesn’t get a good look before they’ve turned away, into a spacious living room by the looks of it.

Tom plops him down on the couch—clean white and stiff like it’s never been sat on before.

Where you’d normally put a coffee table, he’s got a plain flat board that sits flush with the floor. Near each of the four corners, a metal bracket has been screwed into the wood. Metal cuffs lay open and waiting at those four corners.

Harry smells sawdust.

Tom brushes his hands off on his jeans. His outfit seemed plain before, but those rings look awfully pricey, and there’s no way whatever product he uses in his hair comes from the grocery store.

“Not too pretty, I know,” he says, gesturing at the board. “But I’ve already got a work order in with my personal pro. Mahogany, inset mirror, the works. You’ll love it.”

He heaves Harry off the couch and lays him stomach-down on the board. Harry tries to fight, but there’s not much he can do in this pose besides awkward mermaid kicks that hurt his toes.

There’s a distinct pop of plastic, and then his wrists go loose.

Immediately he’s thrashing, except his arms won’t move how he needs them to. It’s like the muscles have seized up into a rictus after a night of having them secured behind his back without a break.

Tom hums as he snags each of his wrists and clicks them into the cuffs at the front two corners. He cuts the duct tape away from his ankles and cuffs those, too.

“Elbows to the wood. That’s it. Now push yourself up on your knees. I want your back flat as the wood you’re kneeling on.”

Long fingers tickle Harry’s stomach, but he heaves himself up before Tom has the chance to force his help. His shoulders burn and a painful river of pins-and-needles rolls down the muscles of each arm, straight into his fingertips.

Forearms and shins to the wood, he kneels there like a dog. Back flat, or as flat as he can get it.

The realization hits him with a wave of hot fury. He’s the coffee table.

Harry grinds his teeth as Tom cuts the lacy thong off of him, leaving him once again entirely naked. Well, it’s not like the underwear made much of a difference.

Tom takes a seat on the couch and settles his feet on Harry’s lower back.

Harry jerks forward, sending those feet thumping to the wood. “Don’t you fucking—!”

“Oh, I’m not interested in hearing you talk right now.” He taps Harry back into position with the heel of his shoe, then rests his feet on Harry’s back again. “Tell you what: let’s count.”

“Count what?” he spits.

“How many times you speak before I say I’m ready to hear you.”

Harry shoots him a glare. “If you expect me to just—”

“That’s two, by the way.” Tom holds up a couple of fingers, his eyes on the phone in his hand. He doesn’t look up to appreciate the glare.

It nearly kills him, but Harry keeps his mouth shut and gives the room a good look. Not much to see, unless you count the pretentious art, the weird frosted windows, or the furniture that looks like someone poured it into place. The guy’s wealthy, and that’s about all he manages to glean from the surroundings.

Already his back aches from the weight of Tom’s legs. He arches his spine in an attempt to ease it, then straightens once he realizes how that pushes his butt out.

Tom doesn’t sit there for long. After a while he walks on out, phone in hand. By the sound of it he takes a call in the other room. Harry can’t make out the words, but he’s sure not talking to his boss.

He cranes his neck, but he can’t find one award on a shelf, not one fancy placard announcing Tom So-and-So’s recognition for employee of the month, not one certificate. No family pictures. The dude lives in the world’s most boring art museum.

Tom returns, whistling as he comes. He crouches behind Harry and gropes at his ass, mostly peeling the cheeks apart to get a good look at the hole, then spends a minute groping his soft dick. He bats his balls like he’s trying to see just how bad he can make them wobble.

He’s not being gentle, and Harry grunts at the next knock.

“‘Atta boy.” He gives Harry’s scrotum a pinch and rub.

Another grunt. Heat rolls over his face. “You’re sick.”

“Three,” is Tom’s quiet response. He gives Harry a smack to the ass, then wanders away, whistling again.

No clocks in here, but Harry’s alone for at least another fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. He shifts his legs in an attempt to get them as close together as possible and hunches his back.

As if any of it’s going to stop Tom from fondling Harry like he’s a damn show pony.

Sure enough, next time Tom strides back in, he steps on Harry’s back and forces him to arch until his spine aches from the awkward angle.

“Send them to my lawyer,” Tom says.

Harry doesn’t bother trying to crane his neck back. He pulls in a big lungful of air and screams.

Tom rounds to the front of the wood slab and gives him a knock to the chin with his shoe. Not a hard one, just one to cut off the screaming for a second.

“Four,” he murmurs. To his phone pressed against his ear, he says, “Not to me, not to Grant. Straight to my lawyer. And send out a healthy reminder to that effect. I’m not interested in any late night panic calls.”

Must be one of his goons on the other line, because he doesn’t seem especially bothered by Harry’s screaming. More like annoyed.

Harry bites his tongue as Tom comes to crouch behind him again and gropes at his soft cock.

“Oh, I don’t care about those straggler outlets.” He smooths a hand up Harry’s back as if trying to arch it further. “The big guys know what I expect. You just keep an eye on the trending tags.”

The call doesn’t last much longer. He sits on the couch and rests his feet into the crook of Harry’s spine.

“Your parents are alive, by the way.” He taps away at a sleek laptop. “One of the lucky few. Don’t worry—I’ll send them a little apology note for the underwear. Maybe I’ll have you pick out a replacement pair, just to go the extra mile.”

Harry musters up as much hatred as he can manage. “I’ll kill you.”

Tap-tap-tap. “Five.”

Harry looks down and resolves to say nothing else. He doesn’t know what they’re counting up to, but it can’t be anything too pleasant.

Tom types away at his laptop. Sometimes he takes another call, always with that leisurely voice pouring out of him. The people on the other end of the line never argue, their voices little more than a persistent chatter of yes, sir and understood and hell yeah I can. At least, that’s all Harry can make out from the tinny squawking.

Tom’s feet seem to grow heavier and heavier. Harry would swear he’s pressing down with his heels on purpose.

By the time he stands up, thick fingers of electricity roll up and down Harry’s spine, inching into his ribs and curling behind his pelvis. With a groan, he straightens his back out of that painful arch.

Tom leaves. In the other room, metal scrapes against metal and a stove flame ticks awake. A knife chops away at whatever. Soon the chopping turns to sizzling as he throws that whatever into a pan.

He emerges with the smell of onions and spice, but stalks straight past Harry and into the next room. He returns a minute later with what looks like a simple thin wooden stick, except one end’s all wrapped up in neat leather for a handle.

“Let’s get this done quick,” he says, tapping the stick on Harry’s ass.

Ah.

Harry closes his eyes and squeezes his hands into fists. He braces for that first hit—

—which lands across the sole of his left foot.

He grunts, mostly out of surprise. The pain hits a second later, this sharp cutting sting that has him rewinding his memory back. There hadn’t been a blade attached to that stick, had there? Because holy shit does it feel like he’s been sliced right open.

“I take it you’ve never been caned,” Tom says, “but it’s a favorite of mine. That’s one.”

Another strike, this time a little lower on the sole. Already Harry’s regretting those insults, the screaming, all of it. He should’ve shut up until he figured out what the counting was about.

“Two.”

Each hit lands in a new spot, never overlapping with the last. He must be working a ladder down Harry’s foot from heel to toe.

The pain mounts, burrowing deep into the bones of his foot. He’ll have welts for sure. Bruising. If he gets the chance to run, he’ll be hopping around to stop that foot from pounding against the ground.

But after that first grunt, he keeps the sounds inside.

“Five. Halfway there, and you’re not complaining nearly as much as I’d expected.”

Harry’s eyes snap open. He jerks his head around and stares, wide-eyed, at the stick—the cane—swishing as Tom traces figure eights through the air.

Tom’s lips curl. “That’ll be five per foot. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.”

His arm whips back, and Harry flinches, but the seconds tick by and no blow comes.

All down the inside of Harry’s throat, he’s dry as summer’s pavement. He says, “I’m sorry for talking.” It nearly kills him, just getting those words out without whining.

The cane snaps against his foot—the left foot with the five strikes already searing across his sole.

“Six. I don’t recall giving you permission to speak up yet.” Shoes click against the floor as Tom repositions himself.

This time when Harry braces, the impact comes. It might just be the anticipation of it all, but those first couple strikes on the opposite foot come harder. Hard enough to bring fresh tears to his eyes.

Had he been crying before? Shit.

“Two. Try not to beat yourself up. Even if you hadn’t said a word, I probably would’ve found an excuse to wail on you sooner rather than later.”

At three, those tears roll down Harry’s cheeks.

At four, he can’t stop noises from leaking out of him. His body won’t hold them in anymore.

At six, he’s tingling up to the pits behind his knees and wondering if that trickling feeling rolling down his toes is blood, or fluid from a popped welt.

Tom crouches down near his head and tilts his chin up. All those furious tears, and there’s nothing he can do to hide them.

“Hungry?” Tom asks.

He glares back as if that could offset the humiliation of crying.

“You can talk now.”

Harry still doesn’t say a word, but he manages to shake his head. Sweat tickles down his back and over his ribs.

“Not so much, huh?” Tom lets his chin drop and smears a finger through that trail of sweat. “Let’s work you up an appetite, then.”