Current mood:	pleased
Current music:	Peggy Lee - Sweet Happy Life
Entry tags:	2009_fic, fanfic, kept, rps

Fic: A Kept Boy 69/?
Fandom: CWRPS
Pairing: Jeff/Jensen, Jared/Jensen
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Slavefic AU. Sexual, mental and physical abuse of adults and minors. Dark themes, adult concepts and language.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.
Word Count: 2,601
AN: Master list of previous chapters found here. Cast of characters can be found here. Banner by the lovely and generous bloodquartz. Podfic version read by the amazing superstitiousme (found here, courtesy of the very kind general_jinjur). And don't forget the other really awesome stories to be found at whatwekeep.

---

"I would like…a conversation, brother. If you have time."

Jeff's been expecting this since Javier showed up, though he could wish—and usually does—that Javier's timing was better. "Sure," he agrees, gathering all his papers and tapping them together in a stack before he turns them facedown and plants his elbows on them. He wonders how much this is going to cost him this time. "What do you need?"

"Mother tells me that she's asked you to acquire a new body-slave for me," Javier says, tugging out one of the chairs across from Jeff and collapsing gracefully into it. It's an uncharacteristic cut to the point. As well, Javier doesn't seem nearly as peacock-flamboyant as normal. Though Jeff's pretty immune to Javier's charm at this point, it's never stopped his brother from trying.

"Yeah," Jeff admits slowly, unsure what game this is or what Javier is angling for. He wonders if this is progress or just another form of song-and-dance. "That's true."

Javier nods, the answer he expected. "I have…a counteroffer, of a kind."

"Oh?" Jeff raises his eyebrows and leans back, fingers stroking across the smoothed wood rounds of the chair's arms. Idly, he wishes Jensen were there and wonders again what Jensen's up to. Sam hadn't been very forthcoming when Jeff wandered down in search. "What's that?"

"I don't want a new body-slave. I…" Like a game of opposites, Javier leans forward, planting his forearm on the table and his head dips. "This is hard for me, you know?" Javier chuckles a little, softly, ruefully. "You wouldn't think so, all the times I have come to you, cap in hand, a beggar."

Jeff shifts in the chair. "Javier—"

"No." Javier shakes his head. "You're the older brother, the Morgan…you don't know what it is to have to beg for scraps, hanging at the family's coattails…"

"Because I left," Jeff answers tautly. "Because I refused to play that reindeer game."

"Easy to do when your abuela leaves you a house and money." Javier raises his eyebrows. "Not all of us were so lucky."

"Look, do you really want to rehash old family history?" Jeff demands. "Neither one of us asked to be who we are but we're stuck with it. I can't change it and neither can you."

Javier smiles and shakes a finger at him. "Always the big brother. Always…so mature." He settles back again, crossing his legs. "But you're right. I didn't come to chew over old bones with you. It was unwise of me to put your hackles up before I even ask my favor, no? And now it is too late."

It was too late for us a long time ago, Jeff thinks, with the same pinch-stab of nostalgia as always. Or…not really nostalgia, since what he longed for what a history that they'd never had. "What do you want, Javier?"

"I want Mary-Louise."

"I…I'm sorry, you want what?" Jeff blinks, quite sure that his hearing must have fritzed out. "You want…" God, he can't even say it—can't think it—with a straight face. "You want Mary-Louise?"

"I think—temperament aside—she has done an admirable job as your Agent, verdad?"

Jeff flicks his fingers in acknowledgment. "True."

Javier spreads his hands. There you go.

"I think I'm going to need a little more than that," Jeff says cautiously, brain wheels spinning furiously but without traction. "Mary-Louise…" Jeff hasn't the faintest idea how to conclude that sentence. "Mary-Louise?" he asks again.

Javier has the nerve to look affronted. "Why is this so surprising?"

"I… I don't even know how to answer that question," Jeff says, absurd, helpless giggles starting to bubble up in his throat. Say what you would about Javier, he never fails to surprise. "Let's start with why you think I would sell you one of my slaves?"

"I could make some charming song and dance about how I am your brother," Javier says, "but we both know that cuts no water with either of us. Right? So. I'll give you the truth: you will sell Mary-Louise to me because it's what she wants. And," Javier holds up a finger illustratively, "you're the type of man who cares about such things."

Jeff couldn't control the desperate slam of his heart against his ribs, but he did his damnedest to keep it off his face, groping for a safety line of sanity in what's become a whiteout of surreality. "There's a big difference between wanting my slaves to be content in their work versus trading Mary-Louise to a man who'll sell her for pocket change the first chance he gets."

"You wound me," Javier says, covering his heart with one well-kept hand. "I come to you honestly and sincerely, with respect. And, in return, you mock me and impugn my honor."

"You have to admit...I have good reason," Jeff says, scratching the back of his neck. "But you want to have a serious discussion about this? Fine. Let's have a serious discussion. I don't trust you, brother. I don't trust you with my money, I don't trust you with my slaves and if it were up to me, I would've cut you off from the family tit a long time ago. I sure as hell don't take your word for it when you tell me that Mary-Louise—Mary-Louise, for Chrissakes—wants to be sold to you. I just…that doesn't even make sense to me. Why would she want such a thing? Why would you?

"I know what kind of slaves you like, Javier. You like them young, pliant and with big tits…and Mary-Louise is none of those. She's also eight months pregnant, so unless you're a lot kinkier than I think you are, I'm at a complete loss as to why you'd want to take her on, let alone the expense of her child. And until this all makes sense to me, I'm not doing a goddamn thing."

"The child Mary-Louise is carrying…it's my child," Javier says, with that same sense of gravity. "My son."

"You're not serious."

"I am very serious." Javier leans his elbow on the arm of his chair and props his chin on his hand. "Or were you hoping the child was yours?"

"No." Jeff pushes away from the table and gets up, walking to the limit of the room and fighting with the urge to beat Javier's face to hamburger. The brain wheels are smoking now, screech of imaginary metal clouding his ears, stabbing deep into his brain.

How did this happen? When did this happen? Did he…?

The surface bubble of Jeff's calm dissolves and he charges across the room to wrap both fists in Javier's shirt and drag him out of the chair. "Did you rape her, Javier? Did you fucking rape her?"

"No," Mary-Louise chimes in, sounding out of breath. Jeff glances sideways and sees her leaning in the open doorway, one arm wrapped awkwardly around her belly to support its ungainly weight. "Javier didn't rape me. Jesus, Jeff, way to be melodramatic about this."

Javier tugs away, smoothing at his rumpled shirt with wounded dignity and a you see? lift to his eyebrows. Mary-Louise moves slowly across to them, straight-backed but ginger, as if she expects the floor to slip away from her at any moment. Jeff jerks with the momentary impulse to take her elbow and help her into the other chair in front of the desk—or better, the plusher armchair—but he quashes it as Mary-Louise's mouth and eyebrow tick upward in precise knowledge of and amusement at his impulses.

"Isn't that what this is?" Jeff asks instead, moving away from Javier—away from both of them—even as his fists ache for further violence. "The worst kind of soap-opera melodrama? Christ." He wants to spit, chase this bitter tin taste from his tongue. "The body-slave fucking the brother behind Master's back. And you know…" Jeff lets out a humorless bark of a laugh. "That's not even the part that bothers me." He turns around to face them, both of them so smug. "No. What bothers me is that neither one of you were smart enough to not get pregnant."

It slaps the smile right off their faces and he feels a thin, spiteful satisfaction for having done it as he looks at Mary-Louise. "Should I even ask what happened to the money I paid for your implant?"

"The implant malfunctioned," Mary-Louise snaps. Most pregnant women Jeff's known have gotten round and soft as their pregnancy advanced, especially in the face; Mary-Louise, on the other hand, looks incredibly tiny, whittled down to bone and steely wire and big, watchful eyes.

Jeff feels lumbering and over-large looming over her, even at a distance. Twitchy still, he plants his ass back in his chair; a moment later, Javier sits, as well. Jeff fans through the mixed bag of questions and reactions and settles on an admirably quiet, "Is this really what you want?"

Mary-Louise's habitual curling smirk reawakens as she opens her mouth to speak. Then she pauses, face schooling itself more seriously. "Yes," she says finally, distinctly. She glances at Javier, who is doing an intensive study of his knee. "It is."

"Fine," Jeff says shortly, unable and unwilling to give a name to the wildfire feeling scorching its way through the center of his chest. "You may go now."

Mary-Louise's eyes widen and her cheeks go red with speechless shock—and no small part anger—but she heaves herself up from the chair without help and waddles her way from the room without comment. It's a mercy Jeff suspects he'll pay for later.

"That was not like you," Javier comments, when Mary-Louise is gone.

Jeff raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his chair. "If she wants to be bought and sold like a slave, then I'll treat her like one. I could have done much worse than send her to her room like a bad child. She'll be yours soon enough; what do you care?" He can't keep the curiosity out of his voice with that final question; if Mary-Louise's motives are opaque, Javier's are positively lead-lined.

"I don't," Javier admits, with a negligent flick of his fingers. "It's merely interesting. Do you still want her for yourself, then, brother? I had thought the stars in your eyes were for your pretty boy, but now I think…perhaps not."

"Don't mistake anger for jealousy." Jeff taps his nails against the arm of his chair, biting back the and keep Jensen out of this, that would only give Javier more fodder.

Javier spreads his hands. "They look so much alike," he says. "My mistake. And yet, Mary-Louise tells me that you had an enchulado, a passion, a…crush for her, at one time. It is convenient for us both that it passed so quickly, si?"

Jeff ignores the bait and the surge of ire that goes with it. "And what are your feelings for Mary-Louise?" he counters. "It seems like we're both out of character here. It's not like you to be so sentimental over a slave. Even a slave having your baby…you are sure it is your baby, right?"

"I haven't repeated your feats of success," Javier says, gesturing at the room and the house beyond, "but you know me better than to think I would go forward with this if there were any doubt."

"So it is about the baby."

Javier's mouth crimps and he makes a very European mas o menos gesture with his head. "There is not much a man will not do for his son."

"What will you do for your son?" Jeff asks quietly. It occurs to him—even though he must have realized it at some point during this conversation—that Mary-Louise's baby is his nephew. The thought of leaving any child between Mary-Louise and Javier is fairly horrifying; Jeff feels incredibly selfish, but the thought of the child in question being family makes it even worse.

"Arrangements have been made," Javier replies in a very similar voice, "including a girl who will profess to be his mother and sign the necessary legal documentation to terminate her parental rights to me."

"You were that confident that I would sell Mary-Louise to you? Knowing my…sentimental nature?"

"Confident? No." Javier shakes his head, the thin crow's feet around his eyes puckering with something like amusement. "But the precautions had to be made, regardless. And, unlike you, I am an optimist, brother."

"I just…" Jeff's jaw flexes with his frustration. "You've never shown any interest in a spouse or children or settling down before this. Forgive me if I'm suspicious that there's more to this than you suddenly having a yen to be a daddy."

Javier makes a gesture of acknowledgment. "It is true, this is not what I planned, nor what I wished. We did not plan this, Mary-Louise and I. My plans…" He sighs, rolling his eyes before he meets Jeff's gaze strongly, squarely. "My plans were what they always are…to have what you have. To…count coup by taking the woman who was once yours. If you are waiting for me to profess my undying love for Mary-Louise, you will wait a long time, brother. And yet." Javier shrugs, a gesture that uses his whole arm. Here we are. "You—and Mother—do not account me for much." Politeness pushes Jeff to open his mouth to protest, but Javier waves the half-hearted and unspoken words away. "We are talking truthfully now, you and I. Don't fuck it up. It is what it is and I have spent much of my youthful time playing the dancing bear for you both. So. Fair enough.

"But Mary-Louise and I…" Javier spreads his fingers and shrugs again. "She is sharp as a fox's teeth and as conniving and a temper that would have gotten her beaten or pitted by a master less kind than you, but…she and I understand each other. These games of ours that you hold in such disdain…it's her pleasure as much as mine. And she is wasting away in a household as…kindly dull as this one."

Jeff resents being characterized as dull, but it's not an argument he feels like having with Javier, who tends to act as though the three years that separates them is more like twenty-three. Especially because it's a characterization Mary-Louise, no doubt, agrees with. "Fine," he says. "Whatever. These are my terms: you pay her full, Commerce-appraised price. You pay it, Javier. With your own money. I want a clause in the contract that if—" he barely keeps his tongue away from when "—you get tired of her, I get first buy-back rights. And I'm going to be your kid's godfather, and you're going to amend your will to name me as his legal guardian if anything happens to you."

Javier laughs, a rich, booming sound that fills up the office. "You are sentimental, brother-mine. But, in this case, it is a good thing. Of course I want you to be my boy's godfather. Who else would I ask?"

It's not enough. It's not nearly enough—and Jeff is going to have to run it past Kane and Brent, at the least, to make it as close to 'enough' as possible—but Jeff also doesn't have the faintest idea about how to make this less fucked up.

At least this means he should be getting rid of Javier, soon.

One down, one to go, Jeff thinks as he and Javier shake hands formally across the desk before Javier pulls Jeff up and around, into an awkward hug. One to go.