Little Midnight

A/N: This chappie\'s gonna seem a little bizarre, but it *is* going somewhere! Some of us have skeletons in our closets! ^-^

I\'m thinkin\' now\'s a good time to warn you that this is a post-apocalyptic sort of setting, and it\'s a whole new ball game! It\'ll seem strange at first, but all shall be revealed in later chapters. Trust me on this one. If I gave it to you all at once, then there\'d be such a piss-poor story!
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It was still dark outside when Benji woke from his fitful sleep, but a faint sliver of light was just forming on the horizon outside. Alden slept beside him, and just down the hall in Benji’s old room slept the new kid.

Benji curled into a tighter ball and shivered slightly, the events of the night before replaying in his mind. Alden hadn’t been so harsh with a slave before. At least, not with such a young one. Then again, how many slaves had Alden encountered? And how many of them had he actually taken in, even for one night? He only took experienced subs that had at least a year or two of scene play under their belts. How did this slave get past?

“You.” The word was a soft purr, offering comfort to the unsettled brunette. Benji uncurled only enough to look back to Alden, who smiled to him sleepily and kissed his lips. He parted them to speak, but Alden pressed them shut tenderly. “You have one Hell of a punishment coming to you for going to that auction, my Benjamin Heidekraut.”

“I’m sorry I disobeyed you,” Benji murmured, spooning against Alden though he knew he didn’t deserve a cuddle. “But I’m not sorry I was there. That boy could have gotten seriously hurt.”

Alden slung an arm around his lover and sighed in content. “He *would* have been hurt without you there to intervene. But on the same token, *you* weren’t exactly invincible. The game has gotten out of hand since the war, love. I pulled us out of the scene after the fire at the Slippery Vixen. You remember what caused it.”

“That Dominatrix was a pyro.”

“A very *possessive* pyro,” Alden added, unconsciously pulling Benji closer. “She didn’t have any problem at all with setting that club on fire when her sub accepted a drink from the club owner. And he only offered it after she’d been brutalized in the bathrooms. I first saw you in the Slippery Vixen, remember?”

“Boy, do I remember! Master Klemens told me all about you that night, and I was so excited that you claimed me a week later.” Benji unconsciously brushed his fingers over his throat, grasping for something that was no longer there.

Alden beat him to it, cupping his own hand about Benji’s to draw it back. “No, love. I removed that for a reason.”

Benji’s throat constricted slightly, but he fought it and hid his face in his pillow. “I wasn’t ready…”

“Yes you were. I would not lie to you, my little one.” Alden purred and pressed his lips to Benji’s cheek, licking up the stray tear that had begun its descent. This talk always seemed to work its way in when they were in bed, and always it brought poor Benji great sorrow. So little of it was said, yet both men felt overwhelming understanding of the unspoken. “Ah, my little…what the Hell was that noise?!”

Benji would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so overwhelmingly depressed. How quickly Alden could go from a seductive purr to a vicious snarl. “The boy,” he answered, then threw himself out of bed as well. “Good Lord, he’s going to get hurt if he’s in that kitchen!”

Dom and sub alike threw on at least a pair of boxers apiece and skittered from their room. They ran the long way down the red carpeted hall and to the great spiral stairs, the sounds of crashing and a distinct yelp rising from the downstairs. Alden had no time to take the stairs; he slid down the banister on his backside and broke into a flat-out run the instant his bare feet hit the marble floor. Benji was only a breath behind, his face white with fear.

The scene that met them would have been comical if Alden hadn’t been so furious. The great house’s kitchen was covered in a layer of flour, along with a young naked mass cradling a scorched hand. The palm of the boy’s left hand was bright pink from the burn, and the faintest blistering was beginning to show on the pad of his thumb. On the floor lay the iron skillet, around and in it a puddle of half-cooked scrambled eggs. A few pots had fallen from the rack over the stove, one of which had fallen on top of the carton of eggs. The plastic jug of milk was cleaved in twain, though thankfully the spoilt milk inside had been a very insignificant amount.

“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!” Alden took care to avoid grabbing the boy’s hand, grabbing his wrist instead and heaving him to his feet. “WHO ORDERED YOU TO GET OUT OF THAT BED?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY KITCHEN?!”

The boy cowered before the wrath of the Dom, struggling not to cry as he formed an explanation. “I was not instructed to remain in bed, Sir! I was instructed to devise a way to thank you and Benji-san for rescuing me last night, Sir! Breakfast in bed was the best place to start, Sir!”

Benji folded his arms over his chest and looked around the kitchen, obviously unimpressed. “Do you even know how to cook?”

The boy gulped and bit down on his lips, his betraying tears leaking from his black-blue eyes. He began to shake his head, but a sound slap to his face sent him sprawling. “YOU’LL ANSWER WHEN YOU ARE QUESTIONED, BOY! AND WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO CRY?!”

“ALDEN!” The shout startled much of the anger out of the Dom, but it wasn’t yet enough to clear his mind and vision of the heinous red. Benji knelt on the floor beside the boy and scooped him up, holding him tenderly and stroking his flour-dusted black hair. The boy sobbed wretchedly and shivered the entire time, hugging himself tight and forgetting completely about his burn.

Seeing his sub offering comfort to the slave brought Alden back around, though it was a second or so before his actions finally registered in his brain. In a heartbeat he was kneeling beside the two, drawing the boy’s wounded hand into the light to view. The boy obeyed his instincts before his brain, though, and snapped the wounded appendage out of Alden’s grasp with a cry. Anger and frustration prickled in Alden’s blood, but he couldn’t possibly blame the kid. “I won’t hurt you,” he managed to say in his softest voice. “Your hand needs medical treatment. The burn is bad, and will only get worse if you leave it that way.”

Benji glared coldly at his Dom, his usually-tranquil blue eyes now icy and promising harm if one false move was made. “I’ll see to it,” he said, his tone dangerous. “You ought not to be troubled by this, *Sir*.”

The hostility Alden was met with should have made him angry; but alas, Alden only felt guilty and remorseful like a scolded child. “I’ll clean up this mess and make some real breakfast. Benji, please take him upstairs for a bath. The wound will heal better if it’s clean, and the bath will relax him some for our talk.”

Uncertainty was obvious in Benji’s expression, but he at least recognized Alden’s attempt at an apology and nodded. “As you like it,” he answered, lifting the boy from the floor and to his chest. “We’ll be upstairs, then.”

The blonde set to work fishing out a bucket and scrub brushes, glancing about his kitchen and wondering where first to begin. “The best place to start,” he thought aloud as he mixed hot water and soap in his bucket, “is with ‘Hello’, you damn fool.”