Chapter Text
It was bitterly cold for an Autumn night and the heating had been set high. David’s nose and fingertips stung from the sharp contrast as he clicked the heavy wooden doors closed.
Despite his slight worry, the place didn’t look or smell dingy. When it wasn’t being used as a sex club, it was hired out to a wide variety of clientele, mostly for live music and underground art exhibitions. He’d feared for the worst and prepared himself for the rancid smell of old semen, but all he could really smell was the remnants of stale cigarette smoke and artificial orange scented floor cleaner.
It did have a sort of dungeonous look to it, the front door opening almost straight into a little stairwell leading down. He could hear the sounds of people already, drowned out only slightly by the thrums of something bassy. The music didn’t grow any clearer as he descended, garbled and low with no discernible lyrics.
Glow in the dark paint splattered up the stairs and railings, matching the stars on the ceiling above. Though it was difficult to see in the low lighting, there were posters on the walls for previous events. He could make out some pin-up sketches of girls in skimpy spacesuits with sci-fi laser pistols and hunky men in masquerade masks and not much more.
Upon reaching the landing, David was met with a coat rack, a row of lockers, a man sitting at a collapsible picnic table labelled “tickets”, and another door. The place was functionally airlocked, both from the storm threatening to drum up outside and from anyone trying to sneak in unannounced. Through the frosted glass in the door, he could see the vague shapes of a lounge bathed in deep purple mood lighting.
He’d used the name Pliskin again. He already had a fake ID in that name, so he found no use in making up a new one for something so trivial. Hal would have chewed his ear off for it if he’d known.
He deposited his heavy leather jacket by the door and was instructed to leave any cameras or camera phones in a locker for safekeeping. No personal photography was allowed; that was a very strict rule.
It was warmer inside the lounge. The walls were draped in carpets and curtains that soaked in the hazy light, likely both to insulate and soundproof the building. However, it meant that any light sank into the walls before it could hit the floor. It was gloomy and nearly suffocating, but he supposed that might have been the point.
The shelves behind the bar glowed a fluorescent blue, bathing one half of the room in an icy, cool haze. It caught on the glasses on the bar, in his eyelashes and on some more glowing paint smeared across the ground. Had it not been for the stairs and clean smell hidden under the regular scent of booze, David would have been worried it was organic matter under a black light.
Surprisingly, though the attendants were in various states of undress, the room was mostly made up of people eating finger food. Someone was perched on a leather armchair with a book light clipped to the novel they were reading, a couple was cuddled together using a third as a footrest.
He could hear the sounds of people fucking and desperate whines coming from somewhere, but it wasn’t here.
He drifted past a group's conversation on film and settled himself at the bar. He'd come in late, so most of the exciting stuff was either already underway or people had found their friends and were sticking together for the night.
He wasn't particularly in the mood for casual sex tonight; he was just curious about the place. Curious enough to pay the month's membership fee to get in.
He'd heard from someone on some forum that the music was always shit. For a place with the capacity for live music, it was odd that they never went with that. David was sure there were a lot of local bands full of horny college kids who would kill to get a gig at a party like this. Perhaps that was exactly why they weren’t invited. He'd overheard someone's pet theory that the owner was trying to break into DJ-ing and was testing his new music out here.
It wasn't very good.
The chalkboard menu was full of assorted cocktails with painfully on-the-nose names. Things like “red bottom” or “leather daddy” were mostly just new names for regular drinks. He didn’t feel like skimming through the whole thing, trying to figure out what was what. He just got a bottle of whatever beer they had in the fridge.
He nursed it as he made his way around the place, looking busy to avoid conversation. Not that he needed to. Most of the people there were far more engrossed in conversation or admiring each other's new purchases of genuine leather harnesses or untorn latex gloves.
The building wasn’t that big, laminated paper stuck to the frosted glass on the doors to the adjacent rooms labelled all that was on offer. He grimaced and made his way swiftly past the door reading “Medical” and came to a stop behind one with a staff member standing outside.
He was holding a tray of chocolate-flavoured condoms and looked a little bored. He didn’t need the label to tell him that someone inside was being hit; he could hear the yelps of pain from outside.
“Am I allowed to bring this in?” He asked with a subtle wave of his bottle.
The staff member shrugged, “So long as you don't bludgeon anyone.”
He grunted in response.
“It’s a free use event,” he added as David opened the door, “There’s a girl tied up in there, you’re free to join in with permission.”
He winced as he entered, the lighting a more direct orangy white. The room itself was rather bare, expensive equipment pushed against one wall and covered partially with another curtain. A woman wearing a lanyard stood by that wall, tucked in the corner, keeping an eye on everyone in the room.
There was more fabric strung up on the walls, shelves of tools and nondescript boxes jutting out between them. It was all a very heavy-handed shade of red, especially for what was going on inside.
There was a little group of people, no more than ten, seated in a semicircle on mismatched, heavy wooden armchairs. They were turned to face the centre, a makeshift spotlight shone on…
She was strung up in the middle of the room, hands tied above her head with a long coil of rope looped through a carabiner anchored into the ceiling. Naked down to a pair of ill-fitting camo-print cargo pants hanging low on the widest part of her hips, revealing lengths of pale skin marred with welts in between her tattoos and the beginnings of angry bruises.
She was shaking, sucking in a sharp breath through her teeth as strips of leather cracked over her back, the momentum sending the ends curling over the curve of her sides and up her torso, framing soft breasts as they heaved with a laboured gasp for air.
David was in exactly the wrong position. A moment passed for the pain to settle, and when her hair was yanked and her head was lifted, he found himself eye to eye with Raiden.
The domme’s cooed praise of “What a good girl you are” drew a strangled noise out of her. She flushed deep enough for splotchy red marks to bloom down to her chest.
David was up against the wall, no seats free for him to blend further into the crowd. He didn’t want to blow her cover, if there was any, or ruin whatever story she’d concocted to get herself here. He needed to find someone to explain exactly what was going on.
Her eyes followed him as he leaned over the back of the nearest chair, murmuring to the man in front of him. Christ, her mascara was running.
“Who is that?” He asked, low enough not to disturb anyone else.
The man startled for a moment, “Uh-I-uh-No one really knows.”
“Well then, what do you call her?” David pushed, trying to get something useful.
The man shrugged, “She responds to most things.”
He didn’t provide much else, despite some incessant needling. All David could draw out of him was that she had been coming here for a bit, didn’t seem to like giving people a name, didn’t do much aside from let people hurt her, then she got a drink and left.
In the time it took to dig all of that information out, someone new had taken over. Raiden’s gaze had slid away from David and was glued firmly to the wall behind him, nose pointed high in the air in an attempt to reclaim some dignity.
He’d had to sidle to the corner of the room to get a good view, out of the way of the heads in front of him and at a good angle to see everything that was happening behind Raiden’s back.
She had been ordered to stand on her toes. The baggy pants covered the elegant curve of her calf, but he could just see the arch of her foot. Her toenails were painted blue.
She was a little unsteady as she lifted one leg behind her, wrapping her fingers around the rope above her to keep herself from losing balance, the man behind her holding one foot delicately in his hand. With practised motions, he moved his fingers away in time to a thin cane snapping against the soft flesh. David watched her eyes scrunch closed and her knuckles whiten.
The only sound that came out of her was a huff of air out of her nose, but he could see her pulling against the rope above her, the muscles of her shoulder blades and upper arms straining. This seemed only to amuse the man behind her. His strikes grew quicker until he could draw a yelp out of her.
It was only when she relented and made a sound that he let her go. She stumbled with the sudden change in her centre of gravity, ending up with both feet flat on the floor as she exhaled deeply. This was met with a crack of the cane against her upper arm and the curt order of “Up.”
She followed obediently, looking a little overwhelmed. She was steadier now that she expected what was happening. He was on David’s side of the room this time, giving him a much clearer view of her toes curling and her foot pushing into his hand as she tried to shrink away.
To try and put the sensation somewhere, she began worrying at a scab on her bottom lip. The blood spread thin across her canine as she winced. Still, the only sound that escaped was an unsteady inhale, blood smearing across the rest of her teeth as it mixed with her saliva.
David swallowed a mouthful of beer, watching as the man finished up and gave her upper arms a few more solid taps with the cane. The bruises were forming already, and he could tell from Raiden’s knitted eyebrows that she was feeling it in her soles.
The man drifted away from her back and spread a warm hand against her collarbone.
“Breathe,” he said, calming the hasty rise and fall of her chest, before yanking firmly on her nipple.
She squirmed, tugging against the rope above her, pulling her chest away. The man didn’t move to follow her; it only stretched her nipple farther.
Blearily, the only thing David could think of as he watched her gasp and writhe was that she’d grown her hair out. It fell prettily over her shoulder as she slumped forward, arms straining against the rope. A new person had come to join her and was holding her hips firmly as she took a moment to come back to herself.
Raiden still didn’t look at him. She’d shut up as soon as he’d walked in, mortified by the obscene noises she’d been making earlier.
He watched between desperate sips of beer as the room took turns ravaging her. He watched a woman cradle her face delicately before slapping her in the cheek, he watched a man clip a thin chain to her nipples and tug, he watched someone else grab a fistful of her hair and sink their teeth into her neck. That move in particular got them a stern look from the safety coordinator in the corner of the room.
He’d finish his drink and leave, he decided. He didn’t need to stay; he’d likely seen everything that could happen tonight.
The whip and cane exchanged hands, as well as other tools David couldn’t quite put a name to. Someone ran a little spiked wheel down her ribs and sides, increasing in pressure and speed until she squealed and pulled away. Someone else just settled for slapping her breasts until they went red.
It felt like a communal effort to get her vocal again. She'd flush deeply whenever she let out a particularly embarrassing noise. After what felt like hours of meticulous abuse, she was keening like an animal in heat, hiding under David’s gaze with nowhere to go but into the pain.
Her head lulled backwards, hair brushing the ends of her shoulder blades. Her chest stuttered as she let out a breath, hitching again on the inhale.
She was perversely good at following orders. As tired as she was, she'd never ignore an instruction. He could see the twitch in the corner of her lip when she was presented with a title she thought was a little stupid, and there was a sort of glazed over look to her eyes whenever someone demanded to be called Daddy, but she was obedient.
People played with her body that way. Sometimes that was all a person did, ignoring the wall of tools and simply moving her around. She'd puff out her chest, thrusting her bruised chest to the audience or bend her knees until the rope pulled too much on her wrists and shoulders.
The sound she made upon receiving even a scrap of praise said that was the part she enjoyed most. Somewhere distant, a cold sense of realisation dripped into his brain.
David put his empty bottle down. He didn’t really know what compelled him, just that some unknown force dragged him from the back of the room to stand in front of Raiden.
He was handed the whip by the woman before him. He considered it, turning it over in his hand for a moment before setting it back on the nail in the wall.
He looked down at her, she peered back up through her eyelashes and the sweaty hair stuck to her forehead.
“Pliskin,” he introduced himself.
Raiden blanched, stumbling for a moment before laughing in a strange and manic sort of way, “You couldn’t have picked a day when I was blindfolded?”
He took in the enormity of the task in front of him, Raiden’s pale skin marked with thin red lines and darkening bruises. Streaks of smudgy black ran down her cheeks, and there were cracks of dried blood on her bottom lip. She was a mess.
Really, what he wanted was to see how far he could take her obedience.
“Up.”
She gave him a look. It said she didn’t believe he actually knew what he was saying. He was struck with the sudden knowledge that her hand would be on her cocked hip if she were able.
He returned with an expectant nod. “Up.”
It was barely there, but David caught the slightest eyeroll from her. She did as she was told, however.
There was enough slack on the rope that he could guide her, with a hand on her hip and little steps, to face the other wall. With her side-on to the audience, they had a nice view as he reached down to wrap a hand around her thigh.
Raiden let out a breath as he eased her leg back; she trembled a little as her weight shifted, and once again grabbed for the rope above her. Her back arched, though her shoulders could only move so far, her body caught her before she could tip too far forward. He admired it for a moment, the way the skin around her arms twisted and contorted. Her hair spilled over one side of her neck, leaving a perfect frame to watch the muscles pull.
He slid one hand to her calf, bending her knee to allow for a further stretch. The skin of her back wrinkled and folded in places, and she hissed as it agitated some of the fresher marks. With another hitched gasp from Raiden, David found a position that satisfied him. Restrained as she was and on her toes, he couldn’t bring her foot any closer to the back of her head. It worked, though, he traced his eyes down the long, elegant lines from her hands to her feet, her head to her hips. He could tell from her tight lip and closed eyes that she could feel the stretch down the back of the leg holding her up.
“Think I could get you into a full split?” He asked, moving a hand from her calf to her forearm to steady her.
Raiden turned her head just enough to glance at him. Through a strangled sigh, she said, “You’ll probably dislocate something if you try.”
He hummed, “Think you can hold it?”
“Obviously not,” she scoffed.
The room was small enough that he could keep one anchoring hand underneath her knee and reach for the wall of tools. She swayed, trapped between two barely fixed points and balancing on one shaking foot. He’d catch her in a moment, for now it was interesting to watch her struggle. It gave him time to test out his new find, too.
It was a dinky little thing, like a cattle prod running on a quarter of the power. He turned it over in his hand while Raiden made little noises as she rocked back and forth. A mean jolt ran through him, and he whistled to get her attention, waiting for her to look back at him through the corner of her eye so she could watch him try it out on himself, first.
It was hot and bright for a moment before fizzling out. The sharp snapping noise and spark of electricity made it look much scarier than it actually was, though. It was an unpleasant feeling, sure, but it was mostly a psychological thing.
It proved effective. Raiden jumped, just slightly, enough for David to notice.
He let go of her. The momentum of her leg coming down swung her back to her previous position, facing the audience. She yelped, off kilter and disoriented, dropped feet first into the unknown for a terrifying few seconds.
She wasn't able to find the floor. The brunt of her weight shifted to her wrists, yanking at her shoulders for a moment before David could steady her. There was a short commotion, a safety coordinator making a move to get the rope cut before Raiden could shoot her a look to confirm that she was still fine.
As a reward for being such a good sport, David pressed the prod to her hip and pulled the trigger.