Bought

As a pregnant Guide, Blair was incredibly valuable, and his health was of utmost concern. The Vet insisted on coming to the loft every week. Blair had endured another exam from the man with the invasive hands, wanting to scream at each touch. Jim had been there, and had not left his side, standing and then sitting closer than he had before, his expression telling Blair he was being monitored by the Sentinel. Oddly, Blair found it comforting, it made the exam easier, he felt not so alone, he felt acknowledged as a feeling being. And Rafe had been nearby, too, watching him, and the Vet, his lips rippling back from very sharp teeth at every flinch Blair couldn't suppress. Surprisingly, the unblinking gaze didn't make Blair feel exposed.

He saw instead how Rafe's eyes watched the Vet, measuring every action the man took, evaluating it. As hateful as the touch was, Blair knew it wasn't inappropriate, it only felt that way because he had absolutely no power to say no. No power to say he wanted another doctor to take care of him and his baby.

Blair gritted his teeth and put up with the visits. He needed them. He would get through them. For his child's sake. He was pushed and prodded like rising bread dough.

With each exam, he was reassured that his baby, the Vet used the word "pup", was fine, healthy and growing as he should be. Before leaving the last time the Vet asked Jim to consider allowing an ultrasound. Sentinels hated the tests, and Jim wouldn't be able to stay with Blair when it happened without becoming ill. Blair would be alone in the room with the technologist.

At least the Vet, also a Sentinel, wouldn't be there. A small victory that prompted a large grin under Blair's veil when he realized it.

The test would give more information on the "pup". The doctor then pulled Jim to the side and spoke to him very quietly. Blair's hands closed involuntarily over his belly as he watched the men talk through his muffling veils. His ~baby~. It was wrong that the fate of his child was not his own to decide. That he wasn't even actively involved in the discussion about the baby.

His pregnancy didn't really show much yet, maybe it would have if he'd seen himself naked. Blair felt it, the rounding swell of his abdomen, it was possible to reach down and hold the growing life cupped between his hands. When he closed his eyes, meditated, he imagined he could feel the little life flourishing deep inside his womb.

He knew without debate that he was indeed a good breeder. His body was singing, he had never felt so healthy. This might be his first and only pregnancy so far, but his body thrived on being pregnant. If he hadn't been pregnant he was sure depression and despair would have overcome him. He would have tried to end his life. But every time he thought of the babe inside of his body, he felt a surge of secret joy. And a fierce determination to live, to bring up his child in a better world.

Blair knew he didn't fit into the usual mold of a House trained but uneducated Guide. He'd been found out very late in life, comparatively, after attaining his advanced degrees, something usually forbidden to a Guide.

Naomi had not believed in the way the system treated Guides. She had prevented his testing as a child, aggressively thwarting all the mandatory school screenings, seeking out only sympathetic physicians, men and women who held the same beliefs as she did. She had also taught him to love the way his body was, not letting him feel he was deformed or less of a person because he wasn't like the other people around him. That had been a hard task to manage, since he kept his condition secret, but his mom had been determined he should feel only pride in himself.. He never doubted that she loved him with all her capacity, and would do anything to protect him. It hurt terribly that he was not able to contact her, had not been since his diagnosis and imprisonment in the Guide House. She might think him dead.

It had been such a common and accepted part of his childhood, having physicians who supported his right to stay free even if he was clearly, indisputably a hermaphrodite and thus, of course, a Guide, that he hadn't thought twice when one of the doctors at the student health center drew his blood during the last contagious bacterial meningitis scare at the university. He'd had no idea at all that the doctor, noticing with shock the extra-mammary nipples through Blair's T-shirt, had sent the blood sample out for more than the agreed on testing, and caused it to be forwarded it to a national lab that specialized in Guide screening.

That fast, that easily, Blair's secret was out. He was a Guide, and had no rights, no brains, no self-determination. He was stripped of all of his degrees, hustled into a House with no titles, no name but Blair, his surname being taken from him along with his tendency to talk his way in and out of every situation.

He lost his beloved title of "Doctor of Anthropology" which he had worked so hard to earn. It nearly destroyed him, being indoctrinated into the life he'd now have to expect as his permanent lot in life. A life that constituted nothing but brain numbing activities and waiting on the whim of a Sentinel.

Don't talk back, obey instructions. Serve your Sentinels. Do what you are told. Obey. Obey, obey. And of course, don't talk back. Resistance...was not only futile, it was punished. He was whipped. He'd experienced overwhelming shock at that horrible event. It was so obviously a situation of abuse he was unable to accept it was standard practice and not a crime.

He'd learned. Whatever else Blair was he wasn't stupid. He learned fast.

Then he'd been kidnapped out of the House and held out a fantastical hope for all of an hour during the rapid flight from the Guide House. After an hour though, his hopes were killed off very thoroughly. Absolutely squashed, as he was forced onto his back, his legs jerked apart and the assaults began. Virginity wasn't prized in a Guide. Fertility was. So if a Guide could be brought to breeding, his price went up astronomically. That meant every Guide stolen was subject to repeated matings by as many males as was feasible, in the effort to impregnate him. A nightmare for Blair, for all of them.

For obvious reasons he'd never engaged in sex using his female parts. He'd never, in fact taken the chance of having a partner who might be interested in penetrating any part of him at all. He'd never despite his constant, pressing urge, taken a man to his bed. There were times Blair wondered if the drive to take a man to his bed was a symptom of his being a fertile Guide capable of bearing children. He suspected it was, his scientific brain collected the data and analyzed it, coming to the preliminary conclusion he had no intention of every exploring. There was no safe way to explore it. He'd been a virgin to all but women. It was horrible, his introduction to men. Brutal and inhuman. He did his best not to remember it in detail.

Now he'd been "rescued" again. Was the possession of two Sentinels. He was not any freer for the rescue. The one thing he'd gained was relief from sex. And from beatings. Neither Sentinel raised a hand to him. They were firm but not physically abusive. The two Sentinels who now owned him had not hurt or harmed him in any manner. He was gently handled. He was not molested. The also didn't speak to him often. Blair felt like he wasn't even there much of the time, like a table that was washed, and cared for, but you'd never think to converse with it. He didn't doubt he was constantly under watch.

He was never alone. He accompanied the detectives to the police precinct, and spent his days and afternoons in the Guide Care Center. Where there was nothing to do but placidly watch specialized television programs, or read the simple, excruciatingly boring books left around for the use of himself or the other Guides in the center, only a few of whom were actually able to read..

He was five months pregnant now. The pregnancy would have been apparent to everyone if he wasn't always so heavily draped. He ate the nutritious if bland food they'd provided for him. "Breeding Blend", the box read, with the picture of a massively pregnant and vapidly content Guide depicted on the front of the box. It was like a giant, green and brown, grainy cookie compressed into a slightly moist square. He munched on the cookies with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Regardless of the claim it had all the nutrients a pregnant Guide needed, the taste was nothing to write home about, the texture wasn't
so bad.

There was no variety of activity or of food. All interactions between the Guides in the Center were observed. If voices were raised, or any degree of excitement seemed about to erupt, the Guides were separated and kept apart until they calmed down into total un-reactivity. Then, docile, they were let back into the general room to mingle. Many lounged in heaps together, cuddling wordlessly. Absently stroking or petting each other. Blair couldn't bring himself to do that with total strangers. He'd never seen one of their faces.

From time to time a Sentinel would appear and take his or her Guide off to one of the surrounding rooms. Blair knew what happened in those rooms. The Guides returned a short time later, the Sentinels leaving with a spring in their steps.

Blair thought he would scream. What he wouldn't give for an hour on a computer. Or for paper to write on, not paper to draw on with crayons. A text book...anything that was a challenge to his mind. At this rate he feared they would make him insane before very long. His brain clamored to be used. Stimulated. He needed to do more than walk placidly through life, biding his time until a Sentinel wished to make use of him. He needed intellectual pursuits, goals, fun. He feared for his own child. The one presently safe in his womb, but due to be delivered in the not distant future. He couldn't tolerate having his child raised like this, to be a House Guide. Never to have a thought that was uniquely his own.

He had to do something to change this life. This boredom. He had to find a way. It wasn't a hard conclusion to reach. But what he should do to change his lot was harder. Much, much harder. He had only one tool to use. He couldn't talk to his Sentinels and reason with them. It was too automatic to the Sentinels not to listen to a Guide's words. They would tune him out, he wouldn't have a chance to change their views within the time frame he was working with.

The only tool he had that had any hope of succeeding to influence them quickly was his body. He had to make them care for him, care what happened to him and to the child he was carrying. Make them see him as a person. He had to take his veils off, at least in the privacy of their home. He wasn't sure what he'd do if they tried to take his baby from him after it was born. He had no idea if that was common practice or not.

The thought of sex was enough to make him ill. No man had touched him gently when it came to sexual intercourse. His enjoyment of the act had been unimportant. He'd hated it, dreaded it, each and every time. Especially when he'd figured out he was pregnant. He'd feared the rough, uncaring use of his body would result in a miscarriage. But his body was tough and his body's preferred state, it became apparent, was pregnancy. Nothing disturbed the child inside. Blair felt intense relief.

Now he was forced, for his own sanity, and his baby's, to contemplate luring his current Sentinels into sex. For his sake and for the sake of his child. He had to start now, as soon as possible, before his size increased to the point his Sentinels feared it would harm him to have sex. Because these two men actually cared if he was hurt. Blair was shocked, but also utterly confident of the fact.

They didn't see him as completely human, they weren't that enlightened, but they'd never hurt him. Never let anyone frighten him. The one time when a whip was raised to him in the Guide Care Center, Rafe had appeared as if by magic and ripped the offending implement out of the caretaker's fist, shouting at him, radiating his fury.

The conversation that had followed once the yelling stopped, was low and intense and all from Rafe's side, the caretaker listening with huge eyes, mouth gaping in shock, backed up against a wall, Rafe's clawed hands digging into the plaster to either side of the man's head. But the man was a caretaker, and used to dealing with unreasonable Sentinels, so he took it in stride. Blair was very careful to keep his own head down, and not to give the chastised man any focus for his affronted pride. He sat all the rest of the day unmoving, giving no excuse to the man for milder forms of discipline, let alone raising the whip again.

Now, back at the loft, Blair knew he had to begin. He had to go to one of the men and convince them to lay with him. He shuddered. And he had to make himself want it. Which, while difficult, wasn't entirely impossible. His body was betraying him. He wanted to be near the Sentinels. He craved their proximity. Insane. He shook his head. How unbelievable was that? He'd only known rape at the hands of men, yet here he was not only planning to coerce them into sex, but actually wanting it at some distant molecular level. It was so very wrong.

But physiology was physiology. His body was tuned to them, to Sentinels. And if he didn't plan on being sold to a Farm, having his male genitalia removed so his body would concentrate on the very female role of conceiving and bearing children pregnancy after
pregnancy, then he'd better get on with it. He'd better ingratiate himself to them.

Deciding which man to approach first was hard. The younger Sentinel responded to him with arousal not even Blair could miss. His breathing increased, his pupils dilated, his skin flushed, and from time to time Blair couldn't help but note the erection tenting his pants. Rafe desired him, but never touched him in anyway that wasn't soothing or comforting; when the younger of his Sentinels was aroused he kept his distance from Blair. It didn't take much to see why. The older Sentinel, the dominant one, would beat the holy crap out of him if he didn't. Blair, while not seeing any violence between the two men, was sure of it.

So that left him with the older Sentinel, Ellison. The Senior. The only one he'd seen taking a sexually active role, mounting his Companion, Rafe. Which happened with regularity, Neither Sentinel seemed overly concerned with privacy from Blair when they had sex. Blair never saw Rafe in any position that hinted at dominance. Rafe was only allowed to be beneath the dominant Jim. Not to ride him from up top, even as the partner being penetrated. In fact, the only position they used was Rafe on his belly and Jim behind him, on top.

And Jim was an aggressive top. Blair was afraid, watching him, of that degree of aggression. What if it hurt the baby? He felt he was caught between a rock and a hard place, not sure if what he came up with as a plan was the right thing to do, but afraid of doing nothing and losing everything.

He was less afraid of Rafe as a sexual partner, but that wasn't an option, unless he was reading the situation wrong. He was left with Jim.