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It was dark.
Lucas couldn’t acknowledge anything other than that. Just the blackness that was sweeping in front of his vision, blocking everything out.
He was tired, too. Lucas could feel that—the dreariness coating his limbs, the feelings of pulsing and thudding within his head, his eyes slipping shut though it triggered no change to his vision.
Just black.
Faint sounds of breathing were trickling through whatever room they’d been thrown in, and then something cut into the air, slicing the heaviness.
“Lucas?”
Lucas breathed out slowly, trying to calm down all that was attacking him.
Again; that harsh whisper, reverberating in his skull.
“Lucas.”
Lucas finally unplugged the tightness that was coiling his throat angrily. “What?” he murmured out, scratchy and aching.
A beat of silence pulsed, and the silence was draining. Lucas’ chin dipped forward, head hanging, the blanket of impenetrable dimness shutting down his desire to stare mournfully at the floor.
Lucas’ arms were stretched beside him, and he could recognise the feeling of cold metal enveloping the skin of his wrists. Okay, he was chained. Great.
Lucas wanted to tug, fight the strength of the chains—professional in their containment—but everything hurt.
He was hearing that same muttering beside him.
God, Nathan’s voice was annoying in all circumstances. And Nathan also wasn’t stopping.
“Oh my—shit, what the hell’s going on, why am I here, why are you here, man this sucks, holy shit—”
“Can you shut up?”
Lucas could see the outline of Nathan (sort of). Specifically, he could make out Nathan’s blue eyes.
The blue eyes he disliked solely because he could find them both in the mirror and on Nathan and on Dan.
The eyes had snapped to him.
“You shut up,” Nathan shot back. “Don’t even talk to me.” Nathan then paused for a second, that silence reclaiming its territory. “…Do you know where we are?”
Lucas’ head lolled backwards, pressing against the wall. His voice came out slightly soft, edges carrying a fixed layer of exhaustion.
“No.”
“Well this is great,” Nathan stated sarcastically. “I’m stuck with these kinky bastards and you, another bastard. Fricking great.”
Lucas found his body draining itself of any tiredness quite fast. His head snapped back up, anger drumming into existence and sheathing against him.
“Could you pull your head out your ass for once?” The echoing caused his voice to appear louder than it was, cracking slightly. “Take a look around, Nathan! These aren’t just punks picking us up from the street. We’re in some deep crap, and if we don’t get out—”
“Okay, man. I know. I get it.”
Nathan stood up, Lucas’ eyes able to latch onto the tall figure despite the dark.
Nathan's hands were chained, too, and Lucas could see his gaze travelling over to each direction of the room, no doubt mapping it out.
Lucas’ head fell backwards, a weight greeting his shoulders. Something was prickling at his chest, uncomfortable and shooting sparks of a chill through his body. His fingers were twitching as best they could, curling into a fist before loosening again.
Lucas could feel his steady heartbeat almost in his mouth, thudding within the back of his throat.
At the same time, Nathan’s tongue poked out to drag across its lips, body locking into a realisation.
“Lucas, I don’t—”
The heavy sound of the door opening echoed, and Nathan jumped, a gasp betraying the fear that was clinging into him.
Had this been any other—any other—circumstance, Lucas would have found it amusing.
The squint of his eyes could catch four men entering the room, two of which walked past Nathan.
Lucas’ eyes didn’t aid him enough to warn himself of the feeling of hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him upwards while a sharp pain attacked the nerves of his brain.
“Hey!” Nathan yelled, moving before the racing alarm bells of his brain could shriek at him to stop. He didn’t get anywhere near Lucas before hands were on him too, keeping him in place.
In the darkness, he could discern the two men who had gone for Lucas dragging him away. Nathan tried to move again, to scramble away from the hold before Lucas was taken out the room, but the grips were firm.
Nathan found himself left alone with the two men.
The grip vanished, letting him go, and Nathan stumbled for a second before regaining his balance. He quickly swivelled round to stare at them, trying to display the stare that always left Tim shaking in his ugly boots.
“Where’d you take Lucas?” No, scratch that, better question: “Who even are you people? What the hell do you want?”
Nathan thought maybe he was seeing the line of a smirk pulling at the taller of the two’s lips.
“Your daddy,” said the deep voice. “Shouldn’t really be keeping secrets from his boys—or boy, depending how you look at it.”
Nathan’s lungs were suddenly beginning to squeeze at his insides, a hitched breath floating into the air. He levelled his gaze on the two men, staring at them, eyelids moving in slow blinks.
“Yeah, when is anything not my dad’s fault?” Nathan said slowly, shifting as he tried to plaster a lazily relaxed smirk to the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t think it worked very well.
The taller dude shook his head, reaching for something under the darkness.
Nathan immediately startled at the sound of a chair scraping gratingly against the floorboards, a flash of long looking legs wrapping round it as the guy straddled it. Nathan couldn’t make out any faces, but the piercing gaze upon him was unmistakable.
Nathan swallowed soundlessly, trying to get his throat to stop feeling so constricted.
“Hey,” the man said in a way that was almost… soft. Nathan prickled. “We’re not gonna hurt you. Don’t worry.”
Nathan’s eyes strayed over to where the other guy was still standing, and then over to where he guessed the end of the room was. Where Lucas had disappeared.
“Okay, cool.” The words stumbled themselves out of Nathan’s mouth, not sure what their journey let alone destination was. “Could you then let us… y’know, go?”
His reply was calm, which served to irritate Nathan slightly. “That’s up to your daddy.”
A sound echoed through the room, a clap of hands together and a clasped, double-fingered point in Nathan’s direction.
“Dan Scott tells his sons nothing.” The man hazingly declared. “Whether you're his golden boy or his little bastard, it’s the same.”
A small noise left Nathan’s tongue. He stared at the layer of black assaulting his vision, a sharp pound of aggravation drilling into skin, and a phantom pain greeted his chest, stomach and back, all the same places that were often reached.
The restraints pulling back his wrists felt heavy.
“Don’t worry, golden boy,” the man soothed, causing Nathan to prickle again. “We’ll fill you in. Dan Scott, you see, is in one very ugly debt, one he’s about sixteen years too late in paying. The consequences are very long overdue.”
“You’re leverage,” the other one who was standing up flatly supplied. “You and your brother.”
Nathan opened his mouth, and then promptly shut it at what he found greeting his ears.
His head snapped round, jaw slackening as his lips parted, eyes wide at the—oh God, the screams shoving their ways into the particles of air around Nathan. They were bouncing through Nathan’s ears, ringing endlessly in his mind, the loud, oppressive thud of his pulse trying to block out all the sounds.
“That’s…”
The sounds of Lucas screaming.
Nathan could recognise it: as kids, he’d shove Lucas to the ground, relishing the rewarding yelp. And even now, when Lucas pissed Nathan off (Lucas always pissed Nathan off) Nathan would throw a ball at the boy, letting it connect with any part of Lucas’ body. Sometimes, they’d exchange hits, though it was usually Whitey who’d scream at them rather than Lucas.
But, God, this was—
Nathan turned back with a jerk of his head so violent brief pain sparked its way through it.
“You said you weren’t going to hurt us!” His voice came out as a strangled shout, fracturing slightly as another scream split itself through the air.
“No,” the man said, not having moved at all from his position in the chair. “I said I wasn’t going to hurt you, Nathan Scott. Your brother, on the other hand—”
“He’s not my brother.”
“And that’s exactly it!” The man sounded gleeful. “Dan Scott cares for you. Tree Hill cares for you. When we come down to negotiations, Dan wants his son, Nathan, to be unharmed, as perfect as he always is. Lucas’ pretty face means nothing; we can ruin it as we like.”
Something lurched inside Nathan’s chest, a tight squeeze of a fist grabbing wildly at his insides. He didn’t think he could breathe. What the fuck? What the fuck. Kinky bastards—Nathan was right.
Another achingly familiar scream clambered into existence, repeating and echoing and playing on repeat in Nathan’s mind more times than necessary.
Nathan was also suddenly very angry that his hands were restrained.
He both wanted to hold his hands to ears, pace the room and think of nothing but basketball and the prideful twist of Dan’s lips, and to pulverise both men, to leave them writhing on the floor underneath his fists, a burning sense of hatred crushing his sense of refraining.
Nathan’s face twisted, trying to catch a burst of clarity.
The picture of Lucas on the ground slithered into his brain, clear enough that Nathan could feel a brimming of nausea trickling inside him.
Lucas, with these men on top of him. Lucas with fists in face—fists that weren’t Nathan's, fists with different intentions than Nathan’s.
Fists more destructive, more painful than Nathan could ever bring himself to be.
“Fuck,” Nathan whispered, voice barely flowing out before he strengthened it. “Fuck you.”
Lucas’ screams weren’t stopping. They were so loud. But they also weren’t loud. Nathan’s head shook. His feet collided with each other as he took a step back.
He still had gazes upon him.
Nathan didn’t like the smallness of his voice as he spoke out his next words. It made him close his eyes briefly, breath crackling, opening his eyes with a strange intensity.
“…what are they doing to him?”
He thought maybe the kidnappers were shrugging.
Shrugging.
Nathan’s wrists shook with their need to just get free. To get free, punch these men to hell, find Lucas, punch him for allowing himself to get punched or whatever the heck was happening to him, and then maybe punch him a couple more times for fun,
He was disgusted to notice the thought didn’t make him feel better.
Nathan hated this, he didn’t want to be here, where his ears were still ringing, still passing sounds between themselves that made a sensation of stinging be forced into Nathan’s eyes. Where his ears were being ripped apart and left discarded and pitiful on the floor just like Lucas, probably.
What could they be doing for Lucas to scream like that?
Because it was Lucas, the self-righteous, calm loser who was always a bitch and yet last made any cry in front of Nathan when they were seven.
So how did it make sense? How were such revolting sounds leaving that mouth, sending spikes through Nathan.
The thoughts were hurting Nathan’s chest, his body, his mind, his goddamn soul.
It all hurt.
“It’ll be done soon.”
Nathan had to refamiliarise himself with the man in the chair and the other man whose eyes had laid claim on him.
They’d both left Nathan’s mind, his body seizing in shock before the realisation swept back in.
The one who’d spoken was the shorter one. His back was pressed against the wall, body merely leaning there. Darkness obscured his face, but his voice held nothing but apathy,
Nathan tried to school himself to mirror it, tried to remind himself of that significant fact that Lucas meant nothing to him.
And that caused Nathan to feel himself feeling sick all over again.
—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-
The light was on, ripping back the darkness for the single purpose of penetrating the path to Nathan’s skull.
It was so bright, and it bounded perfectly on Lucas’ skin.
Perfect enough that it caught the blood spilling down Lucas’ lip. Perfect enough that yellow circles, deep in their appearance, could imprint themselves upon Nathan's eyes from where they were sticking so horrifically to the boy’s body, disgustingly flaky in the texture.
Nathan couldn’t look away.
A flash of dull blue caught his eye. Lucas had glanced over at him from where he was sitting against the wall, head tipped back with his neck bare, and then away. Nathan noted the faint pink dusting his face.
Nathan’s eyebrow ticked high.
Well, with all that screaming he must—should—be embarrassed.
Horrible images kept sleazing their way into Nathan’s brain, and as Lucas (a small noise ladened in pain escaping him) moved unsteadily, the light illuminated another awful slab of yellow, purple making its way there too. And the blood was potent enough that it dripped aimlessly onto Lucas’ hoodie, the fabric shifting into a sticky mess.
Nathan winced and ducked his gaze away too. Then it pulled itself back, raking over again as a hiss slid through Lucas’ teeth.
He was in pain. That much was evident—no, yeah, Nathan was a genius.
“How much does it hurt?” Nathan questioned.
Lucas’ small flinch and weak glare in his direction caused Nathan’s pulse to jump, a heavy pressure within his neck.
“A lot,” Lucas replied, and what was almost a laugh edged into it.
Lucas immediately scrunched his face up, as if that short burst of displaced mirth actively caused pain, which Nathan supposed it probably did.
One look from Nathan, dipping down to meet the edges of that hoodie—Dan would always look at the particular clothing piece with a strange look on his face, less contempt and more of a subtle frown—told Nathan that the undershirt Lucas wore had been removed.
Something slammed against Nathan, the weight the semblance of a truck. His mouth suddenly felt very dry, and he was unsure whether what he was feeling was saliva or trickles of bile.
“Lucas—”
His voice toppled out way too loud.
Lucas’ head moved wearily in his direction, the barest string of acknowledgment, his brain struggling to adapt to the sound of Nathan’s voice which was tricking with something… strange.
From the beginning, Nathan had been scared. Lucas had recognised it, but didn’t exactly acknowledge it. It felt hard to internalise that Nathan Scott was someone other than ass.
Someone like—technically—his little brother.
But it wasn’t Lucas’ fault that the roles weren’t claimed. Anything but.
Nathan was staying quiet, as if waiting for the string of Lucas’ strained reply to be the cue to continue whatever he thought was important to say right now.
Conveniently, it had to happen when Lucas’s ears were half listening, half exploding with a ringing of hell. The lump in his throat that couldn’t quell, the sharpness engulfing his body and treating it to a blazing heat of burning pain.
He couldn’t speak, and therefore silence gifted itself in the room.
Well, apart from the pained gasps Lucas let slip—wanting to bash his head against the wall for doing so, which ironically was some of what he’d just been subjected to—and the rattled breaths of Nathan taking up space.
If he had the brain power to think, he’d probably wonder what Nathan was thinking, seeing his illegitimate half-brother pathetically hunched against the wall, bleeding and chained.
But it’s not like Lucas cared—he’s long exceeded the days where he dared to care what Nathan and Dan thought about him (and they’d made those thoughts very clear).
Still, his tongue let go of the words, made sure they were projected into the air for the world to see.
“Stop staring.”
The feeling of Nathan’s eyes left his body, to which Lucas was mildly grateful—oh, never mind, they were back again.
The gazing was even stronger, as if each time Nathan was attempting to beat some record.
And knowing him, he probably was. He always was.
In the gym, on the rivercourt, Nathan was always trying to beat him. And Lucas remembered that feeling of vindication when Nathan had failed, when Lucas’s ball went through the hoop and Nathan’s face had flashed with shock and humiliation. He’d met Nathan’s eyes head-strong, let the smugness pool inside of him.
But now his body merely found itself curling inwards, attempting to reject the eyes, like everything within him was being thwarted just by that gaze. It hurt more than the ripped skin.
“Hey—” the tone of Nathan’s voice was too unrecognisable for Lucas to even hear it.
There was a shuffle of chains, ringingly loud which was Nathan’s fault. “What’d they even do to you?”
“Won against me in ball,” Lucas shot back.
He didn’t like that his voice lacked its firmness. He sounded winded and nothing more, and it really really sucked that he had to be whipped and slapped and all those other jolly things (for the purpose of… well, because there was no purpose) when his father's little bootlicker was right beside him.
He could sense Nathan looking at him with something hostile.
Good: that was better than the alternative that was prying eyes.
“Why are we here?” Lucas bit out, shifting himself into a position where his ribs didn’t jab themselves against his literal intestines. “Do you even know?”
“Guess,” was Nathan’s replying sneer, seemingly reasserting that drawl of arrogance.
“I hope your ass gets beaten next,” Lucas spat, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall, a wild drum in his ears.
Nathan went silent. Lucas didn’t care.
Eventually, the eyes were gone, and Nathan was looking away. The immediate result was a mocking sense of cutting over him, despite the less than desirable situation.
His rattled breaths eventually evened out, and Lucas slept.
His mum, Keith, Haley, even Peyton—they all featured in the lids of his eyes.
—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-
“Wake up.”
Hands were on Lucas’ shoulder, pressing firm.
The dream-like images were drawing themselves out of his mind, like some sort of cat being shooed away through a flap.
Lucas’ eyelashes were sticking so uncomfortably together, and through the crack of his hazy gaze he spotted Nathan lying on his side, back in Lucas’ face with his arms in an awkward position to accommodate the restraints.
How Nathan was able to sprawl himself so carelessly, Lucas was unsure, as he was still glued to the wall, but he supposed Nathan was rather used to being this irritating.
Multiple figures were in the presence of his blurry vision, the same as the ones from yesterday—yesterday? Hours ago?
Lucas’ body locked up in a flinch. He sighted the two who— fuck.
It caught the attention of the four men in the now lit up room.
The lit up room that was humiliating, in a way, as if to ensure the coverage of darkness would be stripped away for bruises and blood to present themselves to Nathan Scott.
“How ya doing, Scott?” the captor said, one who Lucas recognised, one of the couple who’d stayed with Nathan while two others dragged him to that cold ass room. “Hungry?”
Lucas’ reply was one slow blink in their general direction. His peripheral stayed fixed to Nathan’s mundane figure.
Nathan was a tall kid, and Lucas… well, he wasn’t terrible, however somehow the unrecognisable man had the height of the two of them combined, and the thinness of a skeleton. Lucas recoiled as he crouched down to meet him at eye-level.
His eyes were dark in a way that was piercing and Lucas could vaguely identify due to Dan Scott.
“Luke, right?” Slender man (well, he lacked white skin, but the nickname was fine) said. Lucas’ eyebrow ticked, the presence of a frown catching his captor’s eye.
“Don’t call me that,” but his voice came out slightly raspy, the way Brooke’s was sometimes, except feebly pathetic in a way she wasn’t.
Slender man’s mouth stretched into a smile. His slightly large hands clapped themselves together right in front of Lucas, whose reaction to the sudden noise was a little more than a simple jolt.
“You don’t need to worry,” the man soothed, hands up in Lucas’ face, while the other people were all staring at them in a manner which Lucas found creepy.
His eyes strayed over to Nathan and then away, jaw tightly locked. He doubted the action went unnoticed..
“How ‘bout we get you and your brother some food and water, huh? Then we can talk about your reasons for being here.”
Lucas straightened up against the wall, removing himself from that pained curl to lift his bloodied chin up and stare at the black ice that was Slendy’s eyes.
“…How do I know you’re not gonna put something in it?”
Lucas’ ears tuned into the vague sounds of sniggering around him. Slender man’s eyebrows—which were thicker than he was—rose and his smile turned into a grin, white teeth presented at the edges.
“Why would we do that?” At the lack of response, the man turned around to face his other colleagues(?) with a sharply raised eyebrow. “No one told the kid what was happening?”
A beat passed, and then he shrugged, facing Lucas again. “Though I guess they have no reason to. You’re not very… essential. To the plan.”
Lucas swallowed. “Then why are we—”
“Your brother’s essential. Just not you.” A hand came to rest upon Lucas’ tangle of hair, running almost tenderly through the blonde strands. Lucas’ flinch was violent.
Slender man did not remove his hand. Instead he only continued his speech. “A bastard son doesn’t pay very well, even a pretty one, so I suppose you’re here for fun. And also so Nathan isn’t too lonely.”
The man nodded, as if in tribute, towards Nathan.
Nathan was still sleeping like an asshole. Except Lucas would rather Nathan slept: him being petted like a dog wasn’t exactly the scene he wanted Nathan of all people to witness.
The only person worse than Nathan to see this, actually, was Dan—and, perhaps, Keith: he’d been the single person to gift Lucas with love, and Lucas had repaid him by allowing… this.
“Pay well?” Lucas repeated.
He was only smiled at, a thumb ripping a particular tangle in the spikes of his hair, before the hand fell away, Lucas’ reward being his own small hitched breath and the littlest decrease of tension in his shoulders.
"After this, you're gonna want to eat something," the man said, kindness falling away, and the glint of something caught Lucas’ eye.
Oh.
He felt as if something had crashed itself into his brain, an unknown lorry with no control that Lucas couldn’t evade. His chest was stumbling as it rose up and down, and Lucas was sure it would reach the ceiling and then the floor with the horrific range.
His eyes made out the images of people moving, of Nathan being shoved away, snorting obnoxiously but sleep still latched heavily onto him.
Lucas was unaware of when he was beginning to have been held, only that his shoulders were being held tightly, chains clattering as he was pushed away from the wall and closer to Slender man and his dumb knife.
It was drawn closer. Lucas’ mouth had parted, a noise on his tongue, a pathetic, loud cry, which only sharpened as he felt the ooze of warmth as well as a biting pain claw upon his cheek.
A palm reached round from behind him and was on his mouth. It was welcomed by a tongue; Lucas’ reflex attempt to get it off.
Nails bit into the skin of his face. But God knew it was better than what was in his face before.
But then a sharp look from Slender man had the hand falling away, and a whimper stuck into Lucas’ throat as the flat, cold metal was being rested under his chin, his blue gaze forcefully flickering up to meet the frost of black.
“It would be more helpful to not make noise,” was the advice they chose to give to Lucas. “We want Nathan to stay asleep, don’t we?.”
Nathan would have probably let out rebelling curses, fought against the hands on his shoulders and gone for a punch (somehow) even with the prospect of chained wrists.
(Or Nathan would have unleashed his daddy onto them. Lucas felt more content with the second, strangely.)
But Lucas wasn’t Nathan—far from it. He wasn’t Nathan, and didn’t want to be Nathan, which was what the other boy seemed to have it in his head as being Lucas’ intentions.
Lucas was tackled from behind, lips bitten as his forearm was wrenched forward, setting his limb at a horrific angle which abused the socket and his bones. The restraints protested, trying to keep his wrists locked behind him but the hands not allowing them.
He flinched at the pressure of sharp metal pricking against the bruised skin, though his teeth stayed harshly against his bottom lip, avoiding the risk of noise.
He saw Nathan twitch. Lucas in turn was shaking, and no deep inhale and exhale was causing the stuttering of his heart rate to lessen.
It felt like something was sliding against his arm’s skin, some sort of fucked up surf board that left a trail of red.
Lucas couldn’t look away from it. Had there not been a ringing burn stinging the insides of his veins, Lucas wouldn’t have been able to perceive the arm as his. It looked like someone was simply scribing in red ink, his arm a blank canvas with chains as a christmas wrapping
Lucas found himself writhing, trying to escape, and his captor tutted loudly, Lucas jumping at the sound, realising his own which were blundering outside his mouth.
He clamped it shut immediately, beat too loud and thundering in his ears to make anything out. His eyes were blurry, a fog of white edging the vision and making Slender man glow abnormally.
For just a second, Lucas’ mind slipped to his mother.
And then it tripped into the path of Dan.
Lucas’ body was suddenly very cold—teetering at the edge of agony—and was completely stiff. Pain exploded, though as well as a consequence of the knife, it also carried startling realisation.
They were scribing.
Lucas’ breaths were turning hysterical, ins and outs that were too sharp and caused flares in his ribs. He thought he may have forgotten how to breathe, as the air seemed to stick into his throat, blocking anything but the outcry that bounced all over the room just as before.
Oh his arm, messily engraved, blood drowning his skin, word unfinished but on its way there; B, A, S, T,
The line for the second ‘A’ was being formed, and Lucas sobbed.
“You really might want to shut up,” Slender man said casually, as if he wasn’t chiselling into Lucas’ arm with a mundane, only slightly amused expression.
Lucas jerked, body seizing as it tried to recoil away, but he was only grabbed harsher, arm twisted. He could feel the disgusting breaths of the other captors on his ear.
The knife dug in deeper, reaching into Lucas’ bones, And Lucas’ hair was flopping over his forehead, style all messed up, as he violently shook his head.
“Please—”
He heard a sound of disgust coming from behind him, then some laughter.
Lucas coughed, ribs thrusting into his intestines. “Please,” he repeated.
The knife stopped over the curve of the R. It was then when Lucas realised he was crying.
A thumb pressed under his eye, wiping the liquid away. Lucas didn’t have the energy to move his head.
“Don’t worry, kid,” the man said gently, thumb bending forward so his nail was pricking Lucas’ under-lid, right beneath his bottom lashes, the blonde clumped with tears. “Last one.”
And it was at the final ‘D’ when Lucas’ babbling finally stopped. The knife was pressed into him, still going, a second round, refining the draft, and Lucas could do nothing but gape at the floor, senses engulfed by an awful ringing.
And then a voice.
“Lucas—?”
His head snapped itself upwards.
“Oh,” one of the captors said, words coming through his nose.
“Whoops,” Slender man concurred.
Even with the light beating down onto him, Nathan’s eyes were still the only thing that were really visible to Lucas. The blue was directed precisely to him, wide, blinking repeatedly before it was flickering away to Lucas’ position, to his arm, to the knife.
God—Lucas had really not wanted this.
Lucas choked on a scream that was let out after a particular dig into the drowning wound.
Nathan’s eyes blew further wide, mouth hung open, convulsing against words that were tight on his tongue.
“Wha—what the—?”
Shut up, Lucas wanted to hiss out. Shut up, shut up—
Slender man gave a hearty laugh, knife dropping away from Lucas’ skin, leaving some letters clean and other jagged.
Lucas wanted to sigh out his relief, but the pain was too much of a bullet; lodged and trapped inside of him.
The other captors let go, too, and the chains dragged Lucas’ arm back behind him, clicking back into a position of further pain. Lucas couldn’t see the word engraved onto him, but the vision at the front of his mind was potent enough.
Nathan hadn’t seen it. He was grateful for that, at least.
But there was still a ‘yet’. Nathan hadn’t seen it yet.
Any gratitude was diminished, though, as he felt a large hand grab at his hair, tugging him forward. He couldn’t recognise the captor doing it, just that they were freakishly tall.
Lucas was dumped on his knees in front of Nathan with the hand still clutching his hair and Nathan’s eyes dropped down to meet his.
Nathan had been struggling against his restraints, angling his body towards Lucas, but he froze once faced with the other boy. His mind was working very slowly, each beat of blood in his ears a drum.
Nathan didn’t know what was wrong with him, couldn’t name the feeling that was granting him suffocation. His gaze landed upon Lucas’ state, a disgusting hand—belonging to the tall man from before—carding through hair along with bruises and cuts and wounds and so many breath-stealing injuries from before, as well as fresh blood drilling out of his arm that Nathan could only scarcely see.
And an expression that Nathan never wanted to see on Lucas’ face.
An expression that surprised Nathan because of how much he didn’t want to see it.
An overwhelming sense of anger was suddenly racking destructively throughout Nathan’s body.
Nathan’s chains were wreaking noise throughout the room, a sharp tinkling that overlapped with the rush of ringing in his ears. Nathan was trying to force his way forward, lunge himself at the captors, only for a sharp tug to pull him back.
Nathan was unaware of a time his heart had beaten faster—not when he made a winning shot, not when his father was shouting at him, not when he lost a game and had to suffer the consequences of Dan’s contempt. Nathan also didn’t think he’d ever felt so angry.
It was blanketing all of his other senses, Nathan lacking the acknowledgement of Lucas’ flinch away from him.
Nathan was both doing it on purpose and also wasn’t. Directing his attention onto Lucas was too scary for him to do, evoked too much strangling emotions inside of him, so instead he spat at the captors.
“I’ll kill you! You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you—”
One of the men—he recognised them to be one of the two who had dragged Lucas away at first—rolled his eyes.
“Can we shut him up?” he asked the man who’d held the knife.
Nathan saw Lucas’ chin tip forward and his eyes close, mouth in a grimace that he could read as humiliated, even though it was Nathan who was being threatened. Nathan didn’t have any extra emotions to feel any resentment towards Lucas for it.
In fact Nathan was sure he would have felt like the world’s worst person if he did, which was too annoying for him to actually accept.
“No,” the guy from before with the knife’s drawl was pissing Nathan off immensely. “We need this one in the condition that Dan Scott prefers.”
He tilted his head down at Nathan. “You see, Nate, if we break you then your daddy won’t want you anymore. Luke, on the other hand, is already not wanted by daddy, so…”
Lucas was suddenly shoved to the floor, right in front of where Nathan was kneeling with a foot pressed against the small of his back, underneath his chained wrists.
Nathan found his movement freezing again, immediately snapping his gaze down, the person he’d always hated more than anyone suddenly had his face in the floor and eyes only able to see Nathan’s knees.
Nathan felt his own nausea. He wrenched his gaze away, but as they travelled up a sickening sight greeted him.
Nathan hated Lucas. His half-brother’s name would always be thrown around when he was a kid, Dan holding it with venom as he’d fight with his mother about him. As Nathan gradually grew older, Lucas became a phantom, a subject never really touched on. Nathan could pretend he didn’t exist, but it wouldn’t have worked. It was like he was some sort of shadow, tainting the family name.
Because Lucas wasn’t family. Never was, and never would be. Nathan had convinced himself of that. And it has always been confirmed by Dan too, so what was just another confirmation?
Lucas was a bastard. Everybody knew that: Nathan did, Deb did, the entirety of Tree Hill did. If not from gossip, then from Nathan himself with his public humiliations that Tim always egged on.
This was just another confirmation. A well known fact being confirmed for the hundredth time.
It was just another confirmation.
So Nathan ignored the choked sound he let out. Ignored the sudden beginnings of tears prickling in his eyes.
Ignored the fact that he could drop on the floor right there and vomit his guts out and it wouldn’t represent the onslaught of what he felt right now.
Messily scribed onto Lucas’ skin was that damning word that Nathan had never had an issue with before now:
BASTARD.
“What d’ya think, golden boy?” asked the other man from earlier, when Lucas had been screaming under the dark, as if trying to be inclusive.
Nathan’s response to those screams was more or less nothing to what he felt right now. Felt like joy compared to his current, shocking anguish.
He heard a sigh, some unknown voice. “I wonder if Dan Scott would like it better.”
Nathan wanted to shout at them, scream, shockingly cry his voice raw.
He’d ask them what sort of psychotic pleasure they got out of this, ask who the fuck they thought they were, doing this.
But then he remembered that Peyton would do the same for him: berate Nathan for enjoying Lucas’… struggles (half of which Nathan himself caused. He’d kidnapped Lucas too, once. If you count tying your brother-not-brother up and throwing him in a van with the rest of the team helping as kidnapping)
And so did Haley. And Whitey, and his own mother, Deb, who was now best buddies with Lucas’ mother, Karen, to both their father, Dan’s, slightly comical disgust.
Dan. Dan and Karen and Lucas.
Bastard.
Nathan heard a small dejected sound coming from the other boy.
Nathan couldn’t look down, couldn’t let any flicker of concern show, knowing taunts would only come. But he didn’t want to keep looking at the pale arm with red carved inside. He also didn’t want to let his eyes fall upon the captors, scared they’d notice everything whirling inside his mind, if they hadn’t already.
Nathan wished he could feel indifferent the way Dan probably would. He could almost see his dad’s expression, nothing towards Lucas and only a lip-curl of disdain towards Nathan for reacting so much.
A block of spit escaped Nathan’s mouth, thrown right onto the face of a captor whose identity he couldn’t care less about.
“Huh,” the guy with the knife muttered, dark skin glowing as he wiped the spit away. And then, suddenly, with a loud crack that exploded throughout the room, his hand was meeting Nathan’s skin which snapped to the side.
So much for untouched
“Seems Luke isn’t all that uncared for.”
The man’s expression hadn’t changed, which caused Nathan’s blood pressure to rise, a throbbing in his cheek, but Lucas had lifted his head, weary eyes flickering in alarm and horror back towards the man before they settled on Nathan.
Nathan might have felt irritation. It wasn’t fair for Lucas to look so shocked on his behalf when this was practically nothing.
Don’t flatter yourself, kid, Dan could have said in his ear.
The slapper’s bony shoulders moved in a shrug as he continued speaking.
“A call to your father will tell us whether he shares the sentiment. But you two should get some rest first. As I said: eat.”
The tone of his voice held a similar one to before; somehow carrying softness. Nathan felt sparks of a weaker irritation. Lucas, on the other hand, perked up with realisation.
“Call?”
Slender man’s smile caused Lucas to shiver, hating that Nathan was now awake to catch it.
“In due time.”
HIs announcement was theatrical. Lucas’ eyes still widened, body still erupting into pathetic little goosebumps.
“Whatever your plan is, it sucks,” Nathan flatly stated.
He would have laughed it out if there wasn’t another boy on the floor with a word carved into his skin. A word that hit Nathan too harshly, the truck turning into a train, crashing against its rails and plummeting.
None of the captors laughed, which he’d have expected given their dumb performances. They didn’t reply to him.
The foot was removed from Lucas’ back, and the sound of the door closing was like heaven itself (Nathan’s heaven had always consisted of Lucas’ downfall; God knew he needed to stop rounding himself back to that.)
Lucas didn’t get up immediately. After some time, a tray of food was delivered, the stench disgusting in Nathan’s nostrils. It was nothing in particular, plain stew or something. Nathan wasn’t hungry.
Lucas exhaled in a manner that was long, filling the space of the room like his lungs weren’t obviously rattled.
By placing a knee under himself and reclining upon it, Lucas was able to slowly push his body upwards until he was dejectedly eye-level in front of Nathan, who was carefully watching him.
Nathan could see that Lucas was shaking, which was fine. Yes, it was to be expected. It would be stupid to think something else would happen, stupid for Nathan to still feel a vague amount of shock at how Lucas looked disgustingly broken.
He wasn’t stupid enough to ask Lucas if it hurt. Nathan’s cheek was stinging a little, but, well, compared to Lucas…
Instead only silence could fill the space, along with both of their heavy, shaky breathing. Nathan felt guilty to notice that his own were trembling as much as Lucas’.
Out of nowhere, Nathan’s stomach growled, the sound drumming itself into existence. Something dropped inside of him, and Nathan’s face had turned warm, despite the biting cold around him.
Lucas glanced up, directly opposite of his supposed brother, with a small distance between them. His eyebrow arched, and he coughed out a rough, mocking laugh.
“What? Rich boy not used to crap instead of special food? Available after every damn thought!”
“No,” Nathan replied sharply. “We’re not doing this, Lucas.”
Lucas’ squint at him would have probably been more effective had he not been in such clear pain. Nathan desperately wanted to duck his head away.
Whitey of all people began rebounding inside of Nathan’s head, disappointment etching his features, calling him a coward with just a small hint of disgust but also some sort of pity, a softness as if he cared, which was a sentiment Nathan could sometimes find comforting and sometimes find enraging.
Before, Nathan had to force himself to even think about looking away: Lucas only had bruises streaming over his face, then. But tears were now greeting it, and Nathan’s insides kept churning in a way that wasn’t mere hunger, limbs stiff despite the earlier struggling. He felt he was going to choke.
“Can you stand?” Nathan found himself asking, more to force the silence to leave than anything else. “You’re gonna have to be able to stand if we want to get out of here.”
Lucas shot him a look.
Directly facing and looking at him, underneath the light, the tears were suddenly so visible, glistening in his blood shot sclera.
Nathan’s lungs flattened.
Lucas seemed to sense it, his face twitching, as if he wanted to wipe the tears away. His jaw was tight the way Nathan expected his fists to be.
Nathan could almost imagine the way his fists would be curling behind his back. The younger boy bit his lip, meeting the blue gaze with difficulty.
He stared into the face with features that showed Dan. Features that showed himself. And they were now cut up, blood smeared over his cheeks and jaw and neck and—the most potent—his arm.
The cut slicing across Lucas’ cheek was new, but, well, the one on his arm was new, too.
Though perhaps, in some way, it was ancient, with the amount of times Nathan’s words would have bitten into it.
“Probably,” Lucas replied, eyes darting away again.
The floor was calling to Nathan, but he refused to let himself dip his own eyes down there.
“Then do it,” Nathan stated, more firm than he’d thought he could manage. “Show me.”
Lucas didn’t speak. He’d sounded winded before; rattled. Which… yeah. Instead he bent his knees again, strain passing over his expression, and stood himself up.
Nathan did the same, tall compared to Lucas, still trying to initiate eye contact while Lucas was rejecting it.
But Nathan still felt like his legs would soon come tumbling down. His nose felt strangely stuffy, a burn at the back of his throat. The vague heat on his face had nothing to do with the slap.
Lucas had shown his back to him, wrists and restraints now in Nathan’s direction.
Which meant the word was now in Nathan’s direction.
Nathan blinked and tried to shoo the prickling of his eyes away. He finally dropped his gaze, and swallowed at the sight of splattered red carpeting the quite disgusting floor.
Now Nathan could see them, he could confirm that Lucas’ fists were firmly clenched
“Nathan,” Lucas said, voice quiet—almost meek. “Why are we here?”
“Dan,” Nathan replied clippedly, as if it was obvious. And it was, given what was on Lucas’ arm.
Lucas’ hands unclenched. The blood in his skin seemed wetter. “Then why am I here?” Nathan couldn’t see his expression, but he heard the small inhale. “Actually it’s fine—don’t answer that.”
There was a tone in his voice Nathan didn’t like—well, Nathan didn’t like Lucas and his words no matter what the tone, but this type caused a tiny crawl in Nathan’s body, worming upwards and sticking relentlessly to him.
The words of that man were rehaunting Nathan, grabbing at him and squeezing out the few things left of him that wasn’t something revolting. Suddenly that same question was resurfacing, and he felt like he should strangle himself for it—for even considering it.
“Lucas, what did they do to you?”
Lucas turned his head over his shoulder with disgust. He thrust his shackled arms backwards towards Nathan. “Fucking read it.”
Nathan winced and closed his eyes before he could think of something else. Lucas stared at him in disbelief.
“No,” Nathan said, licking his lips and panickingly wondering how the hell he was supposed to word this. He felt he was behaving too calmly in the situation, feelings bubbled too low in the face of it, but the simple idea was too large for his mind, the weight of it, the implications.
(“Pretty”).
“I mean before. I could hear you screaming.”
Lucas looked surprised for a moment, eyes widening, before they narrowed again, pink that betrayed humiliation returned to his features as well as grit teeth. His jaw set itself into a harsh lock. Lucas looked away again.
Nathan took a step forward, standing behind the other boy. He was close enough that he could trail his gaze down under Lucas’ hoodie and feel sick all over again. Prayers were the source of the hope he was wrong.
“What happened to your shirt?” he asked.
A tension slid itself over Lucas’ shoulders. Nathan didn’t need to be his closest companion to be able to read that as not good.
An edge was now accumulating in Nathan’s voice. “Did you get blood on it or something? What happened?” His voice raised, like a secret being revealed. “Why did they strip you, Lucas?”
Lucas brows furrowed for a second, and then he was suddenly swivelling around, staring at his brother who knew nothing about him and will never know anything about him with a dropped jaw.
“Where the hell is your mind?!”
Nathan’s heart had been beating erratically, but suddenly it seemed to just simply stop.
“It’s not unheard of,” he said quietly. Except it was, mostly, and Nathan had no idea why the conclusion had thudded against him and left him shivering. “Lucas—they said stuff about you.”
“What kind?” Lucas sounded hysterical. It looked as if he was trying to wildly gesture with his hands but the restraints’ existence sucked. “How I’m Dan Scott’s unwanted son? No need for those men to say it, though, you can do that all by your fucking self. It’s perfect—all you dreamed of. Sitting back while I— God, Nathan.”
Lucas looked slightly green. He seemed shocked, too. Genuinely so.
…That was a safe no, right?
Lucas shook his head once, shoulders drooping down from the violent curling.
All the relief in the whole world was currently clinging upon Nathan. And he felt like an idiot. Lucas wasn’t a girl, wasn’t Nathan’s sister, so it didn’t make sense for Nathan to think that at all.
“Then what did they do to you?” he decided.
Lucas flinched and then, whether as a surrender or instead the inability itself to just keep standing up, planted himself back on the floor. Nathan followed him, the pair sitting opposite again.
“They didn’t touch me,” Lucas stated. “In no way at all. No hands. They used—,” The glazing of his eyes and soft shake in his syllables fed Nathan’s need to spit at the captors again. “…they used a belt.”
Oh.
Nathan came to the familiar sentiment that Lucas Scott was pathetic.
Leather struck Nathan more times than he could count, that harsh material, hot as it ripped through skin and left blistering marks. Sometimes the buckle would plunge itself into him when he disappointed his father too much.
But Nathan had never once allowed himself to scream. That was the simple standard. And Lucas, who’d always wanted his life (while knowing shit about it) couldn’t even reach that standard.
Oblivious, weak and pathetic with the reminder of his luxury engraved over his arm. Anything remotely soft in Nathan disappeared, and the pits of envy now had a potently jealous snake.
Lucas seemed to sense the shift. He took the coldness without comment, acceptance natural, or was maybe too busy drowning in the engulfing pain to truly care.
The yellow of his skin caught Nathan’s eye away, but he swallowed any erupting feelings down. He ignored the questioning of whether Lucas had been whipped in the face—Dan had never done that. Never.
But if they did, the injuries would have been… severer.
So Lucas was overreacting. Nice of Nathan to know.
The red on Lucas’ arm hit the light and glowed.
Nathan ignored that, too.
—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-
“Your stomach is loud,” Lucas pointed out unhelpfully. He was sitting with his side at the wall (his favourite place) head aimlessly leaning against it, his arm away from Nathan’s view. “Eat.”
Nathan was turned away from him, near the door. “They drugged it,” he replied snappingly. “Probably.”
“They wouldn’t risk drugging you,”
Lucas’ voice was bitter, and Nathan felt angry at himself: he understood why his so-called brother was bitter.
—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-
Cold water splattered Lucas awake.
He found he preferred the strategy he’d been through previously over this particular one.
He thrashed and writhed out of the water’s way, which was futile. It was physically encasing Lucas, thick and crushing, and neither his mouth nor his nose was working and he could only… do nothing. Nothing was working: his limbs had stopped responding to what he was tearing his throat by screeching at them to do, and everything hurt so fucking bad—
Nathan shouted out for them to stop and then quickly shut the hell up. He was standing again, quicker than his panicked brain could have possibly provided. Something akin to a sob fell out his mouth once the water finally halted its movement.
Lucas was blinking up and he looked mad, blonde hair now dark as it practically swam in the remaining stream, dripping down all over his face. The water slid down his nape and sleeves to slide over the words, some sort of resemblance of a polishing technique, and then getting trapped underneath the chains to create a sticky feeling.
“It’s raining outside,” said a captor Nathan vaguely recognised—maybe the owner of the belt, maybe not, but he’d certainly been one of the two (or more) who struck Lucas with it.
He looked nothing like Dan, nor did he necessarily remind Nathan of Dan.
Yet Nathan’s heart still thudded, the banging of window shutters during a storm.
Lucas was violently coughing, doubled over as he heaved the ‘rain’ out of his lungs. Nathan could see his veins straining, neck a pale, concerning white underneath all the yellow and purple, streaked with vines of bulging blue-green.
Nathan never looked so sick after Dan’s belt—but then again, Dan had never sliced into his skin, either. Nor had he ever really tried to drown him.
The captor was the only one in the room. He looked meaner than some of the others, short but big and perhaps toned. Would have to be to make Lucas scream with only a belt.
It made Nathan feel better to just think of Lucas as weak and unmindful.
Before Nathan could register it, a sweaty, disgusting meat that scarcely passed off as a palm was wrapping around his bicep, pulling him up. The second hand was doing the same to Lucas, both being effortlessly held, and digging his heels into the ground did nothing to prevent Nathan from being dragged out of the door with Lucas bumping into him as they were squeezed together.
“Where are you taking us?” Nathan was saying quickly, along with various other demands.
Questions needed to be rebounded—it was the first time he had been let out of the room. He had to figure out where he was in general, how best to escape, and how to return to Tree Hill if they were outside it.
The air of a sigh brushed the top of Nathan’s head even though Nathan had about an inch on the guy. It was embarrassing that his struggles were resulting in nothing.
Beside Nathan, Lucas was pliant, only movement being small shivers from his wet state.
They were led into a spacious room, less cold and less disgusting than where they'd been trapped in. Inside were the same men who’d ganged up on Lucas while Nathan had been blissfully sleeping, and words were being exchanged, directed at somebody on the screen.
The sudden recognition of the sharp angry voice was what ripped Nathan’s insides into pieces, his torn soul flying everywhere and leaving nothing but the beating, almost slow pulse in his ears.
This was the first time Nathan was ready to admit he feared that voice. But also some part of him felt relieved.
Because if they were speaking to Dan, then that meant Nathan was getting out soon.
“Dad!” Nathan shouted out, and his own voice had taken a high role, splitting at the end as he almost fell to the floor with the invisible thing that hit him.
Dan immediately stopped talking. His head lifted from where he was seated in a room Nathan didn’t recognise—tactically away from their house and Deb, no doubt—and blue eyes that weren’t as cold as Nathan’s memories served widened as they fell upon his son.
Sons.
“Nathan!” Dan said, something lacing his words that was more… affected than Nathan had expected. He seemed to rise out of the chair he’d been probably tensing on. “Lucas. Are you two okay? Are you hurt? Do you know where you are?”
Nathan opened his mouth, but he was interrupted by the guy who’d cut open Lucas’ skin with that knife.
“They don’t know, Scott. It’s you who’s getting them out of this.”
Both Nathan and Lucas were released from the meaty grip. Some more men came, hiding them from Dan’s view, whose gaze shifted towards them before it seemed to force themselves back to focus.
Nathan was startled at the sudden ability for his wrists to breathe, chains having been unlocked. But then his arms were grabbed, and they were linked back in front, different chains this time coiling tightly round.
The placement meant that the harsh lines of blood on Lucas’ skin was completely visible.
For both himself and others.
Nathan would have grinded his teeth together in sheer anger had it not been from the sound of sudden slapping of something over somebody else’s mouth, sealing it. A quick glance at Lucas told him it was duct tape, the wideness of Lucas’ eyes becoming more pronounced than Nathan had noticed before.
“Sit,” ordered the other ugly guy from before who was actually shorter than both knife-man and the sweaty palm dude—so short that even Lucas built him in height.
Neither of the pair sat. Lucas was still dripping water everywhere, a pool forming underneath him, which would no doubt be uncomfortable for you to sit your ass down in.
Nathan was focusing himself on the sounds of Dan floating through the room. Familiar words—his father purposefully gave himself a distinct way of speaking—familiar tones, familiar lengths.
But the drawl was gone, which had always been Dan Scott’s most defining trait.
Nathan didn’t know whether that was because of his sons and their situation or the own blow of his ego.
16 years of debt, they’d said. But Dan Scott was rich—why would he be in debt? …And why was Nathan also not surprised?
“How much?” Dan asked, like he was actually considering it for their sake. Maybe Nathan’s sake.
“Inflation,” was the replying snigger.
“That’s not an answer. Give me a figure.”
He indulged. “Originally, $25,000. But you’re a rich man, Mr. Scott. $33,000 wouldn’t hurt you, would it?”
Nathan’s heart plummeted. He saw Dan’s brow twitch, was again more of a reaction than Nathan would have bet on him for.
“Be reasonable, Daunte.”
The guy with the knife—Daunte—only smiled. “Is that a ‘no’, Mr. Scott?”
Nathan and Lucas were placed so that they were hidden away from Dan’s view, though his eyes were evidently searching for them.
“Not a no,” Dan replied immediately, and perhaps his screen was lagging, because his voice had a strange breaking-up quality to it. “I’m asking you to give me a figure I can work with.”
Daunte chuckled. “I don’t think you’re in the position to ‘ask’ stuff, but if you need me to enforce it, I’m perfectly happy to.”
He turned round and his dark eyes immediately landed on Lucas. “Bear,” he called, and the big guy was then grabbing Lucas and dragging him to the middle of the room in front of the screen to kneel.
Nathan’s mouth was dry. He remained pliant as Lucas had been before as he, too, was moved forward. He still got to stand, and nor was he in front of his father, but he had a clear view of everything.
Why was it Lucas? Nathan wondered. Dan didn’t care for Lucas, if they wanted to make a point, they’d use him. So why Lucas?
Also—why did it have to be Lucas?
Lucas stared at his father. Dan almost recoiled backwards. Lucas looked mostly like Karen, a bit of Keith ironically sprinkled in there, too, which made it so much easier than it could have been for Dan, had his first-born son looked the way Nathan did.
But his eyes were evidently Dan’s. Squinty, but otherwise the same shape, same shade, same colour.
And those eyes were brimming with so much anger and hatred that it was burning through the screen.
Lucas was hurt. Dan was unsure why the realisation slapped him so hard in the face.
Dan could see Nathan standing behind him, and it was clear to anyone that Nathan was unharmed, while Lucas was… very harmed.
His cheek had blood messily spilling from the jagged cut thrown on it. Bruises splattered his face, deforming some of the features in a way that had Dan’s rage rise. His eyes darted all over Lucas’ face (across the higher parts of the face that was visible) the smudges of tears mixing with the wetness slickening him—had he been fucking waterboarded?
Dan took everything in, something new adding continuously to the pile of heaviness in his chest.
Lucas merely glared at him.
He tried to imagine how Karen would feel seeing this. He found any emotion he could come up with was being shared inside of him,
“Lucas,” he said, because that was the only thing he could possibly say. ‘I’m sorry’ could never leave his lips, especially not to Lucas.
Dan was thoroughly impartial to the kid, not hating him (that was a lie) and not loving him (that was a lie) either. It didn’t make sense for him to feel apologetic. Maybe to Nathan, yes: he’d let his boy fall into this mess. But then again, Nathan should have been able to protect himself.
The corner of Lucas’ lips curled behind the duct tape in what was likely disbelief.
And then he watched as his father’s gaze dropped down, and he watched as eyes blew themselves wide, so vast that Lucas (and the rest of the captors) found it funny (but Nathan certainly didn’t).
Lucas watched as his father’s face slackened, jaw dropping the same way Nathan’s had done—oh he really hated that—the way something swam in the eyes which had always regarded Lucas impassively.
Was it guilt? Concern? Horror on Lucas’ behalf?
It couldn’t be. Those emotions required for Dan Scott to be human. Lucas was being paraded around like this purely for the fun of it.
Nathan wouldn’t have been fun.
Disgust seemed to be Dan’s primary feeling as he read the word on Lucas’ skin. Lucas expected that. It was a tie to his relationship with Dan, explicitly stating what the man had done to him. Dan probably felt uncomfortable seeing it, resented it, forced to face what he’d caused and able to do nothing but stare.
Lucas felt like he was going insane because of how good he thought that was.
Nathan stayed quiet for once, a brief skim of Dan’s face telling him everything he needed to know.
He liked to think he knew his father, but everything playing on Dan’s face were things he hadn’t foreseen.
Nathan’s back was mentally aching in the way he knew it physically did for Lucas.
Dan tore his eyes away from his son and looked at Daunte. His face was specifically blank, with only the small part of his mouth betraying his unraveling thoughts.
“What did you do?”
Daunte cocked his head to the side. “Would you like a show? We wouldn’t want you to say no without truly being aware of the stakes, would we?”
Nathan closed his eyes and looked away. A part of him felt slightly grateful that it wasn’t him whose Dan’s eyes would be stuck on as he went through something undeniably humiliating. Well, more than what he normally went through, anyway.
But obviously the other part of him—the weak side, the one Dan always blamed Deb for, and to an extent, the uncle that was more or less a stranger—was mad this was happening to Lucas and not him, when it made more sense for it to be himself.
Nathan passed it off as his own knowledge that he had more experience with being hurt by/in front of Dan. While Lucas was going through this for maybe nothing.
“That’s enough,” Dan said with emphasis. “You’ve made your point. I’ll… I’ll give you the money.”
Daunte hummed noncommittally. His knife was back, and it rested on the side of Lucas’ neck. A small bead of blood oozed outwards.
It was Nathan who hissed. Dan looked at him quickly before back at Lucas, who had scrunched up his face and shut his eyes.
“Mr. Scott, you know very well that I don’t like liars. Either you actually pull some money together, or your son’s pretty face will be messed up a little more.”
The knife slid upwards from Lucas’ neck, running over his jawline and then stopping under his eye.
A trail of blood was left, smeared from the left overs of his arm that had still been hanging on from earlier to the knife and also new spillings.
Lucas’ breath hitched, a sense of panic beating out of every pulse. Dan’s gaze kept moving between the words on his skin and the knife attacking his lashes.
He swallowed hard.
“Bring the number down,” Dan pleaded—pleaded.
Nathan stood in shock. A rise of his own hysteria was rising due to the knife being so fucking close to Lucas’ eyes, and Dan really was not helping.
“But you’re rich,” Daunte said, mockingly like a child full of wonder.
In doing so, the knife pressed further into Lucas’ skin, catching his underlid, and the link of teeth and lip couldn’t stop the sound of choked crying out, nor could the gag.
Daunte looked down, and in the same, condescending manner as when Nathan had woken up: "Oh. Whoops.”
He flashed a dazzling smile up at the screen. “I think it’s common sense that blinding someone ruins their basketball career. But then again, you never really cared for this one, did you?”
He turned round to look at his other captors thoughtfully, expression sealed away from Dan, who wasn’t even looking, attention remaining upon his son panting, trembling, clearly afraid with metal hovering evilly over him.
Nathan caught the look that was sent his way, and was given no time to question it as, without any words passing between them, he was being pushed forward (stumbling a little, too) beside Daunte, right behind the kneeling Lucas.
Daunte kept the knife close to Lucas’ eye, a single flick of his free hand beckoning Nathan to come even closer.
Nathan complied, the weight of his dad’s gaze beating upon him, the terrible presence of Daunte close enough to touch his bones.
“Take over,” Daunte said.
It took a moment for Nathan to actually internalise the statement.
He could hear his father yelling—Nathan inwardly made himself smaller: it usually worked.
The small chuckle from Daunte in his ear, Lucas’ spine shooting up, and Dan’s hand slamming the table from wherever he was, were all background things to Nathan.
Nathan darted his head round, but the other captors were closing in on him, perhaps to prevent him from escaping—as if he would do that anyway. He wouldn’t try to leave without Lucas.
Lucas’ head had spun round, discarding the risk of the knife, consequence being a slice across the bridge of his nose.
Lucas barely acknowledged it. His eyes met Nathan’s, and Nathan couldn’t help thinking how wide they looked, more prominent due to the bloody duct tape over his mouth and the bruises and cuts sinking the rest of him.
HIs hoodie was also reeking with stains of blood and dirt. The name of their uncle and his car shop stood out, and Nathan didn’t have to be intimate with Lucas to know he wore that hoodie everywhere.
If it was Nathan, he’d throw it out. He never wanted to be reminded of this day—this hour, this week, this month, whatever it was—again.
He’d throw it out the moment he got out of this place. Throw it to the ground, trample over it, and reveal his scarless back to everyone (Dan never left marks).
But Nathan’s dad was going to make sure that they did leave this place. Because if he didn’t, then Nathan would have to cut the skin of his own brother, knife clasped in his trembling hand, two palms over the hilt, staring into his own blue eyes— no, those were his brother’s eyes.
“I’m not—” Nathan could barely speak. His tongue was too large for his own mouth. “Please. I can’t.”
“Stop it!” Dan was yelling. “Stop it now!”
Lucas was shaking the same way Nathan was. His eyes drooped, a small noise making its way into the room, before he turned away, squeezing them closed tightly.
Daunte’s hand was on Nathan’s shoulder.
“Stand in front,” he said softly. “Use his hair to tilt his head back for more access. Make sure your father can see.”
Nathan’s feet shuffled to obey, colliding with each other the same way it had done when Lucas had been taken to get his ass whipped.
Would Nathan have to whip him?
Like father like son, he almost spat out.
Lucas looked back up when Nathan stood himself in front. Something escaped the gag, maybe Nathan’s name, and Nathan tried not to heave vomit all over the boy.
Nathan’s fingers reached out, catching the top of his head and then pulling at the still wet strands to lift his chin. Lucas followed the movement, eyes not straying from his brother in front of him, allowing himself to be angled for— what was Nathan even supposed to do?
“Whatever you want, kid,” Daunte replied, as if he’d plunged himself into Nathan’s thoughts and had perfectly read them. “You hate him, right?”
Nathan didn’t nod, even though his neck was cramping in a scream to tell him to do so. He could only stare.
But maybe he did nod, though, because Daunte answered him.
“So show us.”
And Nathan, with the shake of somebody plummeting down a plane, parachuting with broken flaps and doing it until their death, pressed the knife to the bared throat of his brother and dragged it downwards.
Blood shot out, skin ripping off, like tape being unraveled, or maybe like those scratch games. It caught the metal as blood wrapped itself onto Nathan’s fingers, white, dirty, bloody skin that flopped over Nathan’s hand and left a square of gaping and oozing dark red.
A loud and muffed scream ricocheted through the walls.
That was all Nathan needed before he was jumping backwards.
Hands grabbed at him, the other captors moving like this reaction was imminent, pushing him back. Lucas was making unintelligible noises, and Dan’s sharp intake of breath was what echoed in Nathan’s ears.
The knife had cluttered to the floor without Nathan realising, and he tripped over the hilt, unable to regain balance had Daunte’s hand not caught his bicep, tugging him back to his brother’s hunched weight.
Suddenly he could feel something grabbing at his shirt, and he looked down, thinking he’d be sick forever, at the fists grabbing the fabric, chains binding upon thin wrists and the word BASTARD bold and bright.
Lucas couldn’t swallow. It physically hurt for his adam’s apple to move down his throat, the windpipe whose protection had been bypassed by someone of the flesh he shared.
Lucas’s fingers were moving with no direction, clawing upwards at Nathan’s shirt, and he felt the urge to just get his brother to look at him.
To look at him the way even Dan was looking at him—like he felt some sort of self-soothing, arrogant and maybe selfish regret.
“Fine!” Dan yelled, and his voice was strangled. He’d stood up from where he was sitting, and it looked as if tears might fall for him, too (and wouldn’t that be a sight to see, for both his sons) “The money is yours! Let them go, and the money is all yours!”
Lucas had started crying. Nathan hadn’t, but his voice gave the impression he’d sobbed his throat raw, screamed his misery out until his vocals were vibrating with pure despair.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Lucas had been five when Nathan first was violent to him, even before they’d known their true relations to each other. It’d been before the little-league basketball team, when Nathan Scott was a bully and Lucas and Haley sniggered about him behind his back. When Nathan’s biggest contempt when it came to Lucas Scott was his dumb squint.
Lucas had been sixteen the last time his brother ever laid a fist on him again.