Who: Wren and Jack What: An appointment that doesn't go so well Where: Turnberry Place When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Violence with a leather crop?
Wren knew she shouldn't be working. She knew she shouldn't be anywhere near a man with a weapon in her hand, even someone she trusted as much as she trusted Jack. She was self-aware enough to know that it was all a pretense, all a facade, her being okay. She knew she was as far from okay as she had ever been in her life, but she'd promised to do this, and she really did think it might help her get back something lost, that sense of control that had slipped through her fingers as things with Alexander escalated. Something had snapped within her in those last few weeks, somewhere around the time she'd taken anxiety pills to even get out the door for Simon's party, somewhere during the sheer terror she'd felt at the prospect of going to that hotel, something that only escalated with every text and phone call from Alexander while MK was missing.
She knew all that, but she didn't cancel the session with Jack.
She'd been seeing clients at Turnberry, letting them used the service elevator to avoid the disapproving looks of the doormen. It wasn't a good idea, bringing clients home, but she didn't think she had it in her to go into strange homes and hotel rooms just then. Turnberry was empty - no MK, no Gus - and there was no one for her to bother with her clients, so she'd allowed herself the security of working from home until MK and Adam settled in. It was there that she was waiting for Jack, dressed rather conservatively in slim leather pants and a snug black tank that bared a generous expanse of belly and hip. She wasn't the little girl Jack had known in Seattle, and the outfit made it more than obvious, as did the tousled blonde hair and the blood red that stained her lips.
She had a row of crops and paddles set out in the guest room she'd been using for work, the bed replaced with a black leather, padded affair that was nearly the size of a queen mattress. Cuffs were attached to elegant metal hooks at the four corners, and something French and sensual played from the room's speakers. She went to the bar, poured herself a significant whiskey, and she waited for Jack to arrive.
Jack was more than a little unsure about going through with his appointment with Wren. It had been a decision borne of feeling some of the worst of himself at the party, and knowing well enough that if he didn’t at least try to find out what was the matter with him these days, he might never find out. It had been a very long time since he’d seen anyone, or sought anyone out - the party had been a break, if one could call it that, in a dry spell of years. But perhaps the violence of it all had simply been the circumstances, not him. He would have liked to think so.
Still, he had agreed to come, though Wren’s potentially bad state had made him even more reluctant. When he arrived at the apartment, it was with the intention to leave if she seemed unwell. He let himself in with the key still in his possession, knocking on the door so she knew he was there. “Wren?” He followed the sound of music down to the guest room he’d never stepped foot in while he was still living in the place, and stopped in the doorway. Ah. There was a reason that door had always been shut, then.
Wren looked beautiful, and certainly dangerous, and Jack felt a touch guilty for noticing the former. It was impossible not to notice the swathe of bare skin at her hips - as much as he liked to think he was dead to the world, certain things didn’t go away. She’d changed quite a bit from the girl in Seattle, that was for certain.
Jack collected his thoughts after a moment’s pause. She looked a little...off, and he didn’t move any further into the room. He hadn’t dressed any differently than his usual long sleeves and dark jeans, erring on the side of having no idea how this sort of thing was supposed to go. “You’re sure you’re up for this?” he asked. The last thing he wanted was to push her into something when she was in such a strange place, after everything that had happened in the past few weeks.
"No," she said honestly, truthfully, "but we'll see how it goes?" Jack wasn't a paying client, and he hadn't just handed her eight thousand dollars for her time. If it went very badly, they would just stop, and that would be that. No harm, and she was sure there was some ice cream and wine in the refrigerator they could both recover over. But she wasn't going to just give up and, luckily for both of them, she wasn't actually afraid of him. No, she would need to do this eventually, especially if she wanted to keep paying for the apartment, now that MK and Adam would be coming there to stay. She'd been hoping, maybe, to give the place up, to move in with Luke, to have a different kind of life, but it seemed that wasn't in the cards; she was a little down about it, and it showed in her strangely sad, expressive eyes.
"You're sure about this?" she asked him, wondering if she should give him paperwork and disclaimers, if she should explain how it worked. "If you are, I'll need a safeword first, and then you'll need to strip down. Normally, clients are entirely naked, but I'll let you keep your undergarments, if you like," she offered, even though it gave the submissive a sense of control she normally didn't allow for. Her voice, when she spoke, was husky and confident. In this, at least, she was certain, and it showed as she moved to the leather bed and lifted one of the cuffs with elegant, pale fingers. "We'll use these," she explained, "and I'll stop at any time, so long as you use the safeword."
Jack was grateful that she chose to be honest with him about it rather than simply power through and pretend everything was alright. It made him feel better about the whole thing. If she knew where her threshold was, it should be fine. And if the whole thing fell apart, that was alright too. It wasn't as if he would hold something like that against her. He wanted to ask about how she was, to talk to her a bit more once he saw that weight of disappointment in her gaze, but now wasn't really the time.
"No," Jack said, with the same honesty, and smiled a little. "But I want to try." He listened to her talk about safe words and gesture to restraints. She seemed sure, and that was enough. The idea of stripping naked was the strangest part, but mostly because it made him think of Luke. He didn't want to seem as if he was trying anything with Wren, but, then again, cuffed down it would be difficult to follow through on that sort of thing even if he'd wanted to. He’d keep his underwear on, though, just for his own peace of mind on that front. "What sort of word does one usually use?" he asked. Well, if he didn't try he'd never find out.
She smiled, and it was a much warmer smile than her paying customers ever received. "Something you aren't going to mistakenly call out if it feels good," she suggested, because she'd had that happen before. "Something you'll remember," she added. "Stop is a bad choice. A lot of people say that without thinking, but they don't actually want that, not in this setting." she had no idea that he was concerned about getting naked, and that was just a symptom of the fact that she saw naked men and women every single night of her life. "Do you want me to talk, or just to use the crop?" she asked him, mainly in hopes of hearing him talk about what he wanted, needed out of this.
"Rest?" Jack offered, because that seemed like an unusual enough word that he wasn't likely to blurt it out without reason, and it had much the same connotation as stop, of course. When she asked whether she should speak, he was a bit taken aback - he hadn't even thought that was something one wanted or didn't want. This process involved questions he hadn't even thought over himself, let alone considered enough to have a ready answer, but after a moment, he said, "It doesn't matter, really. I'm not seeking humiliation." He assumed many people came to her for that, to be subjugated and feel as if they were being abused. "I don't think so, anyway." If what had happened in the hotel was any indication, he didn't know himself quite as well as he'd assumed. "It's more about...pain. Taking it, or inflicting it." That was a fairly naked admission, but that was what he'd felt, and if he wasn't honest, he wasn't going to figure anything out. His brow ticked up, and he shrugged, with a small smile - he knew how it sounded. He paused, then, gestured generally to himself. "So, should I...?" Get undressed, of course, unless there were more interesting questions he hadn't considered.
It was a strange choice, and Wren pondered what it said about him for a moment. "Okay. Rest," she said, testing the word on her tongue. She could tell he was surprised by her question, and she smiled at how much time he took to construct an answer. "It's okay. Some people want to be humiliated, some people want to be hurt. Most people want to give up control, which isn't very easy to do in the real world, where everyone is expected to be competent and powerful. And real loss of control, it's something most people have never experienced," she explained, making it sound therapeutic, which it sometimes was. For her, the therapeutic sessions were the ones where the only thing the client wanted was pain, because she could deal with her own demons while wielding the crop, but this really was about helping Jack, and she was going to do her best to keep her demons at bay. "But taking pain. Okay, we can do that. You won't be doing much inflicting, but you can try, if it helps. You won't actually be able to get to me, and it might help you if you can attempt it, safely, knowing you can't hurt me." That confession made her look toward the bed and the cuffs, reevaluating.
"Go ahead and change," she told him, already undoing the cuffs from the foot of the bed and pulling a set of chains from the drawer of the sleek, metal table that was beside the bed. A few seconds later, and she was securing the chains from the O-Ring built into the center of the ceiling, tugging it down with the end of the crop and securing both chains to it.
Jack had a difficult time believing he could want to hurt Wren badly enough to require the cuffs, but they would provide a measure of safety, a stopgap. He could think about what he wanted, if hurting her was, in fact, what he wanted, but not actually do her any harm, minor as it might be. Losing control, he wasn't so sure how he felt about. He had lost control before, in a very real way, but that had been the loss of ability to act for someone else, not for himself. "Alright," he said, after thinking it through. This should be more about figuring out what precisely was going on in his head than anything sexual, anyway. It ought not to be, of course, considering who he was doing it with.
Jack glanced up, watching her secure the chains, before peeling his clothes off and setting them aside. He bared heavily corded muscle under skin. He only did the sort of work he'd done in Seattle occasionally now, but he'd stayed as fit as he'd been then, always prepared to step into a violent situation should someone need him. His chest was scattered with scars, some from knives alongside a bullet hole or two, but the undersides of his arms were worse, marked with parallel lines that criss crossed and marched up past the inside of his elbows, all faded pink scar tissue. He left his underwear on, as expected. He waited until she was finished securing the chains, then sat down on the bed. It was surreal, looking around and seeing chains and leather and Wren with her mouth a dash of red lipstick, as warm and casual as if this was all totally normal.
The cuffs had nothing to do with him hurting her, and everything to do with the feeling of being hemmed in, but she knew he would feel safer making the attempt to get at her with the understanding that he wouldn't be able to. And, really, given what he'd asked for, it was her job to make him try to strain against the cuffs, to make him want to. She had a feeling it would be harder with him, because he knew her, because he was so concerned about how he behaved around women, but it was worth a try. It couldn't hurt anything, after all.
His scars didn't surprise her. In Seattle, where Luke's bruises and scars were less severe, where she could count them on her fingers and give them names, she might have been surprised. Now, after seeing what Luke looked like after all those reckless years alone, well, it would take more than scars to shock her. Even the parallel lines along his arms, pointing to self-harm rather than injury, didn't shock her; she'd spent too long with hookers and street girls not to know what kind of scar a razor left behind to dull the pain.
When he sat, she shook her head, and she tugged the cuffs. He'd have to stretch his arms over his head to get his wrists in the circlets of metal, but there was enough give in the chain that he could be able to turn, to make an attempt at a lunge with his body, if not his hands. Her smile disappeared entirely, replaced by an expression that was all coolness and ice, her voice husky when she spoke. "Put your hands in the cuffs." There was no please, and it was intentional.
Jack watched her a moment, marking that cool expression, before sliding his hands into the bands of the cuffs. At the very least, Wren seemed comfortable and sure about this. She knew what she was doing, after all. There was enough swing and slack in the chain that he could easily shut the first himself, but the second was just out of his reach, so he simply left his wrist in the metal band. He hadn't expected to have enough leeway to be able to move at all, but it was a vulnerable, restrained position all the same. That was the point, obviously. He watched her, waiting. He didn't know what followed next. He'd seen Wren look at a few people the way she was looking at him now, and it was little surprise that her clients found it so intimidating. In the past, the man on the other end of it hadn't walked away happy, that was to be sure.
She clicked the second cuff shut on autopilot, a distractingly soft hip lulling as the leather there pressed into bare skin. She walked around him next, and she said nothing, as they'd agreed. Instead, there was only footfalls, the black heels she'd slipped on to be able to reach the cuff above his head. Back and forth, the stilettos against the cold tile, and he would have to turn to see her. But she had the advantage, and she moved when he did, staying behind him and just out of his view. The effect was, simply, that he had no warning before the crop kissed the skin of his back, up and down, and completely out of his control, and he had no warning when the kiss of leather became a sharp sting as it landed against his shoulder. It wasn't as stinging as the cane, but the crop she was using was the kind that had an exquisite burst of pain for just a moment. She brought it down against the back of his thighs, against the small of his back, and her arm held a deceptive amount of strength, and even someone skilled in pain would feel the sting, which increased as she repeated the strikes, all while staying out of his range of vision, rendering him blind and powerless.
Jack listened as Wren walked around behind him, arms suspended above him, sitting up on his knees. He clenched a fist in the restraint and found it tight and solid as could be. He was strong, to be sure, but odds were slim he'd make it out of them on his own, even if he wanted to. Then Wren began striking with the crop - once, twice, and then again. The stinging was minimal at first, but began to build bit by bit as she continued. She said nothing, so the room was quiet aside from the soft clink of chain and the sound of the crop as it met skin.
It took a few rounds of strikes before the pain started to bite a little deeper. Jack was experienced with pain, with a variety of different kinds of injury, with inflicting that pain on himself when he'd been at his worst. This was different. Coming from a silent source that he couldn't see, move to stop, or predict, the stinging slowly maddened more than it hurt. It surprised him - knowing as he did that he could put a stop to this any time he wanted, that it frustrated him so that he couldn't simply turn and take the crop from her hands. The pain was something of a relief, an old, familiar feeling, but each strike built that frustration with the situation being out of his control. And there it was, emerging from that - that black feeling he'd felt at the hotel, liberating and wrong, but very much there. The pain sunk deeper, and it made him want to reciprocate it, to turn it back on her. Not much scared him, but that was frightening. Strong, penetrating, and insistent. He took a deep, careful breath and tried to push it back down instinctively, even as Wren kept hitting him, each stroke like a provocation, biting at his self-control.
She didn't let up. Even watching his body for signs of response, for signs that she was reaching just the right point of pain and loss of control. She didn't let up. She didn't find that spot and stay there; instead, she let the crop fall heavier, and she came into his periphery just enough to let the crop land across his stomach, then lower against his groin, then lower to his thighs. Back up again, and harder, and maybe she was losing a little control, because she was swinging her arm too quickly for there to be any real measure in it. Even as she ducked behind him again, her rapid breathing was evident, and she thought he might be able to hear the blood pounding in her ears, but she wasn't thinking. It was just leather against skin, over and over, and the room faded away to nothing but the pain she was inflicting and the control she was dragging back to herself.
Jack twisted against the chains as she continued, harder and faster. He didn't know that she'd lost control, but it didn't much matter, because he was hurtling quickly toward that dark horizon himself. The crop, coming down hard on already smarting skin over and over, drew him down to a hard, sharp focus, without distraction. He pulled hard on the manacles, the cuffs tight to aching on his wrists, and tried to turn to see her, but there wasn't enough give in the chain. He could hear her quick breath, and it might have been a sign something was wrong, but he couldn't tell without seeing her, and the fact that he couldn't see her just maddened him more. And there was the crop again, relentless and fast. He clenched his fists, huffing shortly in frustration. If he could just see her, surely, he wouldn't want so badly to tear the crop from her hands and use it on her.
Finally, he tensed his entire body against the chains, like he could simply rip them loose. He let go, stopped fighting it, and threw himself into actually trying to get to her. Nothing happened, of course - the chains were sturdy, and all he managed was a brief swing of his upper body in her direction, not even enough to get a look at her. He cursed under his breath, thoughts running in wild directions, wondering why he'd let her chain him up in the first place, how grateful he was they were there, what she might look like with a ring of bruises around her neck. That was the thought that brought him up short, and his struggles slowed a little. It was alright - after all, he couldn't hurt her, even if he wanted to. He could think that, at least right now, when he couldn't follow through on it. Then the crop came down against raw skin again, and his head dropped, briefly. Everything he was feeling was wrong, and it shouldn't be there, but it was, there was no denying that. He couldn't simply pretend it had all been someone else's fault, coerced behavior brought on by supernatural intervention. Who knew how long this had been there? All behind a wall as high as could be, unacknowledged because he simply couldn't.
She had no idea what he was thinking, and therefore she had no concern about the dark direction his thoughts had gone. She was lost in her own catharsis, and it made the crop land quicker and heavier, stinging more with each blow, and he would have bruises to show for this experiment, but she wasn't thinking clearly enough for that just then. He wasn't even himself, not anymore; he was the personification of a million things, all brought raw and to the surface thanks to Alexander, and she went even quieter with the increase in the force of the blows. She moved around in front of him then, her cool icy gaze distant and hard, not at all forgiving or understanding, and she let the crop fall and fall, while staying just out of reach if he attempted to lunge. She was sloppy and unthinking, but not enough to get herself caught by him. After all, those were the demons she was exorcising, the ones that hurt and harmed and made her a victim throughout the years. No, there was no getting free, and she was not present enough to pull back on the blows.
It was ugly and raw, the way Jack felt then, that feeling, those urges. It felt a little like being possessed by one of Wren’s demons. When she moved around in front of him and he could see her, really, at last, he swung his body forward again, lunging for her and swinging back, immediately regretting it, immediately wanting to try again. The tension was unbelievable. If he could have torn the chains loose from the ceiling, he would have, but it was right that they were there, good, a relief, releasing him to submit entirely to the urge to hurt her.
Tomorrow, Jack was going to be a criss-crossed map of black and blue, but that wasn't what made him want to stop. It was the look in Wren's eyes, far away and not so much an act anymore, and even then, he didn't end it right away. He let it go on, let her keep striking him. Penance for thinking things he shouldn't, for still thinking them every time she connected. Finally, as he felt that black feeling welling up again, he bit back the urge to shout, to curse her, and said, hoarsely, "Wren, rest." It was funny, how silly it had seemed a little while before, the idea of picking a safeword, how cliche and strange. Now it didn't seem so light, and he wasn't entirely sure it would pull her up short. He knew it hadn't with him. Still chained and hanging across from her, those thoughts were all still there, hovering, waiting, muscles still tensed against the restraint as he watched her. And there, despite the rest of those dark thoughts, was something different and more important - concern. He needed to be sure that she was alright.
She had been doing this for too long not to respond to the safeword, regardless of how lost she was in it. She lowered the crop mid-swing, but it took a few very, very long blinks of her grey eyes for her gaze to clear and focus. Very professionally, she stepped away and put the crop with the other items, and then she returned to him and released the cuffs. The distance that had slipped into place remained, polite and icy, despite the fact that her pulse was a hummingbird's wings at her throat, and her breathing was shallow and quick. "I'll leave you alone to dress," she said, her tone still that polite nothing reserved for clients, but she was a maelstrom inside. She felt just like she had when Alexander had come for his last appointment, where Luke had needed to calm her afterward, and when they'd both fallen asleep covered in marks from her switch. "Feel free to use the bath," she added, motioning to it, as if Jack didn't live in the apartment half the time.
"I'll be in the living room," she added already turning to walk to the door, intending to change her clothing and find a very strong drink in order to shake the adrenaline that was still making her feel like her skin was crawling. She stopped in the doorway, and she looked over her shoulder at him. "Are you going to tell Luke?" she asked. Are you going to tell Luke that I'm not okay? was the full, unvoiced question.
When the cuffs were released, Jack sat down gratefully on the bed and took a breath. He felt wrong right out to his fingertips, and he was starting to wonder if he hadn't been better off not knowing about any of this. He ran a hand through his hair to clear it out of his face, and he nodded to her, watching that distance. No, Wren wasn't alright either. He shouldn't have agreed to do this.
When she asked if he'd tell, he glanced up, met her eyes, and shook his head. The question surprised him, though it shouldn't have. "If you're not going to tell him, it's not my business to," he said. It was obvious that it didn't exactly connect with his better judgement, but Wren had a right to her privacy. He only hoped he wouldn't have to break that promise, if she showed any signs of getting worse rather than better.
Jack let her leave, then took advantage of the bath to take a quick shower, just long enough to try to get his head in order, before getting dressed again and walking out into the living room. He didn't intend to linger. He felt like a fool. He should have known better to agree to still do something when she didn't seem like she'd really recovered yet, and that was without even beginning to consider how he’d behaved. "Thank you," he said.
She was halfway through a drink once he returned to the living room, the amber liquid in the glass and the tink of ice along the crystal marking it for something alcoholic. It was bourbon, actually, and the burn had gone a long way to settling her after she'd changed into a simple, sheathed summer dress, soft and white and a contrast to the black from earlier.
She gave him a tentative smile, but it was still warm around the edges of her ample lips. "I guess maybe I'm not ready to go back to work yet," she said, moving to sit against the arm of the couch after he thanked her. "You don't need to thank me. You're the one who's going to be sore in the morning, and I'm just grateful that didn't happen with a paying client." Not that the level of injury was more than she'd been paid to inflict in the past, no, it was the loss of control on her part that was a problem. "Alexander just brought a lot of things back, that's all. Seeing MK in the hospital did too." She took another sip after the admission, and then she pressed the side of the cool glass to her bare lips. "But having feelings like the ones you have, urges, they're normal, Jack." And maybe not for everyone, but she didn't think any of them were normal. "Just find yourself a woman who can handle it, but don't think it's wrong, or that you need to hide it." She was pretty sure he wouldn't listen, but she felt the need to say it anyway. Like Luke, Jack was someone who had coped with loss by killing people; she wasn't at all to find he still yearned for that coping mechanism, even if he didn't realize it. "You wouldn't actually take it too far," she added with complete confidence and certainty.
"I've been sore before," he assured her. Some bruising was hardly the worst bodily suffering he'd ever endured, and he wanted to be sure she didn't guilt herself over it. "My advice - don't start again until you are ready." He met her eyes. "And I don't mean for your clients."
Jack understood why she said what she did, but it wouldn't be so easy to find someone he could let himself hurt. Too much guilt, too much shame, too much worry about anything that drew a similarity between him and the people he despised. When she insisted he wouldn't take it too far, he smiled faintly. "I hope so," he said.There was no outlet, anymore, no coping, no way to vent the raw rage that crawled under his skin, but no one ought to be made to succumb to his worst desires, even if they could handle them. It was a small comfort, though, that she handled it so casually. Maybe it was terrible, and maybe not. In the end, it didn't matter, since he wasn't looking for anyone anymore. At least he knew for sure where his limits were, and where he ought to stop. "You'll let me know if you need anything?" he said. It wasn’t an empty offer. If there was something he could do to help her get emotionally back to her feet, he wanted to help.
She nodded at his suggestion that she not start working again until she was ready, though she wasn't sure how long she could afford to do that for. Unlike most of the Turnberry Place residents, Wren wasn't actually wealthy. She had no savings to keep her living like she did, and she had responsibilities now, but she would try. "I'll let you know. Just- Just keep an eye on Brielle, like we talked about?" She smiled then, swirling the liquid in the glass. "And find yourself a nice girl," she ordered, sadly-fond. In all the time she'd known Jack, he'd only had feelings for one woman, and that hadn't worked out very well for him. She couldn't help but think that someone who understood him, who could see past all the bad things, would help in so many ways. "Goodnight, Jack," she said, and she waited until he was gone to pour herself another drink.