Winning Him Over (Ryan, Swan) Blitz

He filled it almost to the brim. If he was going to have to eat off the floor anyway he might as well get a decent meal out of it. He had to walk carefully not to spill on the clean floor, setting the bowl on the floor next to Rose.
She winked at Swan playfully before saying coldly, “Put your hands behind your back and bark like a dog three times.”
Ryan blushed but barked softly
She patted his head just as one might a dog they didn’t like all that much, her hand patting hard enough that it was almost a smack. “Good boy. You can eat now, but dogs don’t have hands, so keep them well away.”
“They have front paws,” Ryan pointed out, “Can I put my hands on the ground to balance?”

(ooc: word count 133)

“Best to train it out of him then,” Swan agreed regretfully. “We do want to stop Flynn killing him, after all. What would you prefer he says when he has displeased you?”
She thought for a while, “I guess I don’t want him to disappoint me in the first place, but if he does...I guess he could say something like, ‘I will do as you wish and try harder from now on.’ That too long?”
Swan laughed, “It might be quite a challenge to get that out if you’re furious and beating him at the time. But he can try to say it if it pleases you.”
“Maybe he can say ‘I suck, you rock.’ Is that better?”
“Something tells me that Flynn won’t like that much better than ‘sorry’. What about just ‘I’ll try harder’?

(ooc word count 132)

He directed his voice to Ryan, “Are you grateful, Doll?”
Eating like this was making Ryan feel a little ill, but he lifted his head and mumbled, “Yeah, I’m grateful. S’good soup.” It was pretty good soup. Swan clearly had enough money to buy vegetables that weren’t already starting to rot. He tried to lick it off his chin, but his tongue didn’t reach far enough and he wasn’t willing to move his hands to wipe his face.
Swan leaned over and dropped a chunk of bread into Ryan’s soup, “There you go, Doll. Say thank you.”
“Thank you,” Ryan mumbled, watching the soup soaking into the bread and wondering how he was supposed to eat it now.
Rose squeezed Swan’s hand with amusement and said quietly, her voice full of meaning, “Thank you from me too.”

(ooc word count: 133)

She took him literally as well, but she didn’t seem bothered. “How do you manage the smell?”
He laughed, “I’m not actually going to hide bodies in my own house, Sweet.”
“But you said,” she frowned with confusion. “Where are the bodies then?” She grimaced as something occurred to her, “Flynn didn’t feed them to us kids, did he?” She was pretty up for most things, violence, mayhem, danger, but eating other people made her feel a little queasy.
“That would certainly save him money,” Swan mused, “He does like to save money.”
She went a little pale, “Oh. Fair enough.” She was very glad that the food in her stomach was all vegetarian, or she might be worried about losing it.
(ooc: word count 119)

“Well, I didn’t kill ALL of them, so perhaps there are some out there pining for me still.”
She nodded, deep in thought about what it must be like to be the surviving girls, no longer able to enjoy Swan’s magic, and desperately searching for some other meaning in their pitiful existence.
Ryan leaned down slowly, licking at the last of the soup in his bowl and wondering about Swan. If he’d really killed those girls, then he might kill Rose, or even Ryan. He wasn’t sure though. Would his father really have sent them with a murderer? Possibly. The thought was chilling and he concentrated on licking his bowl clean.

(ooc word count 110)

“Oh, no no. I want you to watch. You can join in if you like, if the mood takes you.” Swan assured her. He pushed himself to his feet and nudged Ryan with his boot, “Come with me. You can crawl.” He didn’t check to see if Ryan obeyed, just went to sit comfortably on the couch, leaving a space for Rose if she wanted to join him.
The movement was painful and humiliating, but it didn’t seem worth complaining about, not if it meant another beating like the one the night before, so Ryan kept his head down and crawled after Swan at as long a distance as he hoped he could get away with.
Rose scampered past Ryan, ruffling his hair like a dog as she passed, and launched herself into the spot next to Swan, her body angled so that she could watch both the subject and the master controlling him like a puppet.
Swan waited patiently, seeing how close Ryan would come. He tapped his foot when the boy seemed to have stopped out of reach, “Come on. At my feet.”
Ryan made a face, keeping his expression out of sight by focusing on the carpet but reluctantly came closer, almost touching the man’s boots.
Swan reached down to rest a hand on Ryan’s blonde hair, his fingers moving very slightly, rubbing the boy’s scalp almost pleasantly. He winked at Rose but said to Ryan, “Good Doll.”
At first the boy flinched away in fear, but the gentle affection was too appealing after all the pain and misery, and he found himself leaning into Swan’s hand slightly.
Rose winked back and watched as one transfixed, keen to see what happened next.
“Feeling sore?” Swan asked in a conversational tone.
Ryan nodded, almost imperceptibly, and silently wondering why he was being asked such an obvious question.
“Why are you here, do you know?” They all knew why he was here, but he liked to ask obvious questions. The boy should learn to answer immediately, whether he thought the answer was obvious or not.
Ryan grimaced. He didn’t really feel like talking right now, but knew it would not be worth the pain if he didn’t. “My father’s real mad at me, an’ he sent me with you.” His voice was croaky from screaming the night before, still. Or perhaps it was fear of what was to come that constricted his vocal chords now.
Swan twirled his fingers lazily through Ryan’s hair. It was longer than Flynn usually let the boys have, and it twisted around Swan’s fingers. “Why, Doll?”
“Because I yelled at him, an’ didn’t want to steal, an’ wanted a honest job, I think.” Ryan was no longer sure exactly what Flynn was mad about. He just seemed to be mad all the time. “An’ I said I loved him, an’ I sort of lied by not tellin’ him somethin’ he already knew,” Ryan added for good measure, not wanting to leave anything out in case it made Swan angry.
“You’re inconvenient,” Swan pointed out. “He never wanted you, and you’re an embarrassment to him now. But he can’t just drown you, for some reason, so here we are.”
Ryan blushed with indignation, “Don’t know why he’s embarrassed of me. I ain’t the criminal, an’ I don’t hit girls like him.”
(ooc: word count 548)