Current mood:	busy
Entry tags:	fanfic, kept, rps

Fic: A Kept Boy 28/?
Fandom: CWRPS
Pairing: Jeff/Jensen, Jared/Jensen
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Slavefic AU. Language. Dark themes.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.
Word Count: 1,778
AN: Previous parts found here. Banner by the lovely and generous bloodquartz. Community at whatwekeep.

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"Sleep with him."

Jeff almost drops his wine glass. "What?"

Cate sits back in her chair and turns slightly sideways, slinging one arm negligently across the back and propping her forehead on her fist. "You wanted my professional opinion. This is it. Sleep with him. Make love to him. Whatever."

"Cate. That's not funny." Jeff sets his glass down, pushes his plate away, the pleasant dinner turning sour in his belly.

"Do I sound like I'm laughing?" She has her therapist's face on, bland and remote with eyes like lasers. When Jeff's especially pissed at her, he calls it her Muppet face. But only in his head.

"I can't do that." The denial is automatic, despite the fact that it doesn't feel like he's thought about a whole lot else since Jensen entered his orbit. For one pornographic second, Jeff swears he can feel his hands dragging down Jensen's body to lodge and hold in the hollows of his hips, where the skin would be smooth and soft and molten hot.

"Jeff..." Cate sighs, rolling her head across her hand. "Honestly, I'm not entirely sanguine about making that kind of recommendation on such a short relationship. But you've been bugging me for days now about some kind of diagnosis. This is it. Jensen's entire self-worth is tied up in being a good slave to his master and part of that is servicing him. You." She flicks a hand in his direction.

It's true that he's been champing at the bit for this sit-down, desperate for some guidance about what to do for Jensen, how to help him. This just…isn't the advice he was expecting.

"Sexually servicing me," Jeff reminds her darkly. "You want me to help him get better by making him do the exact same behaviors that made him like this in the first place?"

"Jeff." Cate straightens in the chair and covers his hand with hers, mobile with all the restlessness she doesn't show in her face. "Look, I know how it sounds. But you can't just take someone as...damaged as Jensen and say, 'haha you're free now, have fun'." She waves her fingers in sarcastic jazz hands. "First of all, he's not free and he's smart enough to see the lie in what you're telling him."

Jeff scratches the back of his neck, glad that Jensen's not here to hear this conversation. "No, I can't manumit him, but I can give him as much freedom as possible until the law changes. I can…not treat him like chattel. I'm trying, Cate. You know..."

"Yes. I know." Cate spreads her hands placatingly. "And you know I support you on that. You don't have to tell me that the law is wrong. But that's not the point. The point is, do you think you're the first person to tell Jensen, 'I won't sell you' or 'I won't hurt you'?" She shrugs and raises her eyebrows, eyeballing him doubtfully. "And it's all been bullshit. They did hurt him. They did sell him. And Jensen's not going to trust you on your say-so just because you think he should be able to see how you're different from every other master he's had."

"But I'm not like those guys!"

"No," Cate agrees. "You're not." She settles back again, linking her fingers at the knuckles and flexing them contemplatively. "And yet… You're still a master, Jeff, an owner." Jeff opens his mouth and she gestures her knotted hands to stop him. "I'm not passing judgment. I may have dispensed with household staff, but I'm still an owner, too. I don't have a moral high ground here. But my point is that you still have the power to hurt him, whether you would or not. And Jensen knows it. Jensen is painfully aware of that, pun intended. Just because we all think you're wonderful, darling, doesn't mean that's apparently obvious to him." Her smile takes any possible sarcasm from the statement.

"And so I should fuck him to fix him? Cate."

"Okay, stop. Stop right there." She holds up her hand again, averting her face and closing her eyes to show exactly how much she's not listening to him. When he falls silent, she fixes him again with those razor-blue eyes. "Jensen can't be fixed, Jeff. He's not a…a thing that you can transplant into a different setting and make it go with your decidedly bohemian decor. He's a person. A deeply damaged person who needs his master's approval and care to maintain his integrity."

"I care!" Jeff jerks back in his chair, stung. "God, I care enough not to rape him just because he's the hottest piece of ass I've seen in decades. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Not to Jensen," Cate replies, with her same, infuriating aplomb. "For Jensen to be secure, for him to be happy, for him to feel safe—or safeer, at any rate—he needs to believe that he's pleasing you...and part of that—a big part—is sexual. You not taking him...Jensen only interprets that as he's unpleasing to you in some way. Not good enough. His value is tied up in being wanted, desired…fucked."

"Okay, but he's only like that because they made him like that—that fucking pedophile Cruise and the others. He wouldn't be like that if it wasn't for them."

"One, you don't know that for certain. None of us does. Two, even if that is true, even if that is why… Jeff, it doesn't matter. Jensen is wired this way. And he's a bloody goddamn person. Which means he can't just be unwired. You can—we can—only deal with him as he is.

"Now, you can spend your time whinging and wringing your hands about the whole thing or you can get off your arse and take responsibility for your slave. Take responsibility for the damage that's been done to that boy by giving him what he needs. Because it's not about you, Jeff. It's about Jensen. This is what he needs from you. And if you can't give it to him, if you won't, then you owe it to him to find someone else who will."

"Cate—" He doesn't want to think about the way his stomach clenches up at the thought of selling Jensen to someone else, so he glosses past it, still hung up in the argument.

"No, listen to me, Jeff. You asked me to consult with him. I did. And what I am telling you, in my professional expertise, is that if you don't give Jensen some unequivocal evidence that you give a damn and some direction, he is going to keep assuming that he needs to work harder to intuit your wishes better. Which leads to things like sleeping with Jared because it's 'what you want'. God, Jeff, you didn't even go to his Closing."

Jeff's face heats up. "I…had things to do. And I thought…"

"You thought he'd be just as glad to be spared your attentions," Cate finishes dryly. "Yeah, Jeff, got it. And…I'm not criticizing. Exactly. But you have to look at it from his point of view. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Jensen has absolutely no sense of self-identity outside his function as a slave. He doesn't need you to be his friend, Jeff, as much as you'd prefer that to be the case. He needs you to be his master. He needs a master."

Jeff hides his face in his hands though he can feel his blush burning its way down his neck like a short fuse. "I get it, Cate, okay? I…get it. I fucked up. I fucked up royally. Fine. I just… Fucking him?" Jeff's voice comes out a little squeaky on the last word and he takes a deep swallow of his wine, clearing his throat. "That's what every single one of them's done to him. I don't… And you want me to feed into that? God, Cate, I wanted your help to make him well."

"And I can do that," Cate answers, the steel in her tone flexible and sharp as an epee. "But it's not something that can be done overnight. It's going to take months, or years. If it ever happens. And it won't be like you want, Jeff. Jensen's never going to be Kane. And in the meantime, he needs to know that you give a damn. He needs to know that he's…good enough to be fucked, God help him."

Jeff is quiet, his teeth thoughtfully raking through the bit of beard just under his lip. Finally, in a voice whose quietness shocks even him, he says, "I don't want to be that guy."

"Tough." Cate's voice gives him no quarter and neither does her expression. "Because 'that guy' is exactly who Jensen needs you to be." She leans forward in the chair and takes his hand again, sandwiching it between both her own. "Jeff, when you don't give him any instruction or guidance, he doesn't know what to do in all that space. It frightens him. He doesn't feel grateful, he feels useless. No one wants to feel useless, but for him—for a slave—useless might as well be a death sentence. The only freedom he sees in that is the freedom to fuck up and end up sold again...or worse."

Jeff doesn't want to think about worse. There are laws that are supposed to protect the treatment of slaves, but any law is only as good as its enforcement and what slave is going to come forward to blow this whistle on his or her master? When judgment against the complainant means being sent back to that same master who now has an axe to grind? Even what Crudup had done to Jensen—starving him to fit some twisted aesthetic, beating him—isn't even the worst thing Jeff's ever heard of. Possibly, it isn't the worst that's even ever been done to Jensen. Certainly he seemed shocked when Jeff had referred to Crudup as 'an abusive asshole'.

"Master Crudup was always very generous to me," Jensen had said, eyelashes lowered to hide what went on in his eyes. Jensen is very good at that.

"Are you hearing me, Jeff?"

"Yeah," he says slowly, unwillingly. "I hear you."

"You know, being told to make love to a beautiful young man that you already care a great deal for is hardly a death sentence, Jeff. Don't look so morose."

Jeff made a face but he couldn't help the small chuckle. "I'm really fucked up, aren't I?"

Cate laughs. He loves her laugh, full-throated and not at all girlish. "Yeah, but Jensen is too, so it's a good match."