A:N- WARNING BDSM, violence, dark themes. I have warned you, don't bitch at me I'm not in the mood. This thing has plagued me all day, then everything with tonights Raw…I feel dead while still living. Roddy made me mark out, then it was all down hill after Sheamus who btw is now the biggest kayfabe douche on the face of the earth. Anyway, I'm sorry about his story, I really am. It goes against how I feel about my OTP Matticho, and the fact that they are love. Chris could never do this to Matt in my world, never.

Also, not like he's going to see it but Thank You Shawn. This isn't the best place to say it, but at the moment I feel like saying it. Now, I'm going to shut up…remember my warning that I so nicely put up for you. You have the choice to read, I didn't have the choice to write…I had to so it would quit tormenting my mind. Now it's out here on paper, none the less brutal and horrible. I also hate the fact that Big Show is cuddling all over Miz instead of Jericho. Also, this is probably the stupidest authors note I've ever written. I don't care either. I'll come back and delete it later probably. I can't stop crying for HBK, wow, just wow. It was an honor to be graced with his presence, even if only on a tv screen. Thank you Shawn, always. Now I really will stop.

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Silence Is Crimson

Matt would never say that word, never.

Chris sat on the side of the bed, shadowed softly by the waning light of evening as it gently spilled through the white slats of the blinds. The curtains were still open and tied back, and for some reason he felt the need to get up, cross the room, and close them. It felt wrong for the dim light to be watching as his fingers rubbed slow circles over the leather in his hands. It felt even more wrong that just touching his fingertips to the familiar material stirred his libido up. The small straps of leather conjured so many scenes that flashed and crashed through his mind—erotic images, sounds, the slapping of skin, begging, pleading, strings of curses that spilled from his mouth and over powered the sweet keening ones from his submissive. He shook his head, attempting but failing to dislodge the memories that flared like embers that redden brightly with a sudden puff of oxygen.

Once these scenes had been something completely different than what they had become. In the very beginning, they were innocent and even awkward attempts on Chris's part to sate a need of his partner that he didn't completely understand. All he knew, was that he loved Matt Hardy more than anything on the Earth, and that he would go to the very ends and depths of said planet to give him everything he desired.

As their playing progressed, and Chris doused himself in research, the bedroom scenes became more than occasional handcuffs, hair pulling, and biting. The toys and methods became more in tune with a serious BDSM relationship. Eventually, a contract was made, and a collar was painstakingly chosen and then even more so painstakingly earned by Master's good boy. His Matty, he was such a good boy. Chris thought about the many times he had held Matt after a session, and stroked his sweat-clumped raven hair, and whispered that praise against his tanned skin. Only now, those tender moments seemed so foreign. He couldn't remember the last time in fact that his lips had been full of such sweet words. The dynamics of the relationship had changed.

In his mind, Chris had fully understood the emotional aspects of such relationships. He knew that it went beyond restraints and commands. He knew about all the aspects of mutual trust and respect, he knew where the boundaries were drawn, and how deep the currents of their unconventional form of affections ran. The problem was that knowing a thing, and practicing a thing is not the same color, not even the same shade.

Things got deeper and deeper. The relationship that for so long remained closeted to their bedroom eventually spilled out into their vanilla lives, painting every day routines with a different brush. It was all the time, Chris's name replaced indefinitely with "Master" and Matt's eyes seemingly forever down cast, his head bowed in what seemed like a permanent display of obedience. Every time Chris looked upon his pet in such a submissive posture, his dazzling cobalt eyes grew darker, and a side of him that was beginning to overpower an off switch, jumped to life—a literal power surge.

He had never meant for things to become what they had, not at all. It had never started out of a lust for power or dominance. It had started out of love, but that seed had grown into something terrifying and monstrous. The caring and love behind it were usurped until Chris was not even sure if they existed anymore, maybe as small specks drowning in the darkness that had consumed him, that had consumed them both.

He couldn't tell anymore at what point he had crossed the line and abandoned his proper role as a dom, for one as a power-starved abuser. It made his breath hitch for his mind to think of applying that harsh, cold word to him, but he knew that it was true. He was not a cruel man, he told himself that he was just a man who had been overtaken by an addiction; the drug of finally being important to someone. He thought he could be strong enough to give Matt what he craved, but instead, he got swept away in it. He told himself now that he should have known better, he was always weak.

The picture of superiority he had once painted with narrowed eyes and an upturned nose was just a façade. Underneath the carefully blended brush strokes was a man who often felt painfully inferior, achingly self conscious, and pitifully needful of the approval and attention of others. In every relationship he had ever been in he had always been the subordinate portion. His partners had always seemed to manipulate him, use him, and then toss him aside confused as to why, and sinking to a lower opinion of self-worth than before. He had always wanted for once to be the one to lead the relationship, to call the shots, to get the respect that he never seemed worthy of, but he had never gotten the nerve to do so. If life was a wrestling ring, and if love could be scripted, then maybe things would have been different, but kayfabe is kayfabe, and real is real, and it never happened until it happened the wrong way.

He had been aware of how unsuited he seemed to be the dominant, but he wanted to be able to fulfill Matt's need, and the thought of being respected in such a way was such a drawing flame, and like the proverbial moth he flew headlong towards it until he was—both of them were—burning in the epicenter of the white-hot flame. Now there seemed to be no stopping this thing for either of them.

The problem had not been just with Chris, but also with his partner. It didn't seem to matter how downwards things had spiraled. It didn't seem to matter how broken Chris left him, or how violently their once compassionate lifestyle turned, Matt would not stop it. Matt would take it all, and what terrified Chris the most, was that Matt seemed to want it all. Even through his heaviest sobbing Matt would never utter the safe word they'd picked so long ago. Even when Chris scared himself with the things he was doing to the dark haired object, that word did not tumble from Matt's quivering, busted lips. So many times, Chris had pushed him to a frightening brink, screaming in his mind for Matt to shout-to even whisper-that word, that one word that would end it all. Chris just told himself, shrieked to his breaking mind, that if Matt would say it just once, the spell would be broken. If he just could say that safe word, then both of them would be free from this warped bondage they had mistakenly caught themselves in. But Matt never ended it, he never seemed to want to no matter what happened, and Chris couldn't do it either. It was the greatest irony that at the peak of his power over someone else, he was more powerless than he had ever been before.

At that thought, he growled and fisted his hand around the leather cuffs he was holding. That alone told him that despite being given complete authority over another human being, he was still unfulfilled and still needed a confirmation that he had never understood.

On legs that seemed to move on their own, he quickly left the bedroom and found Matt curled up on the couch. He was wearing just a pair of jeans and of course the collar around his neck, a once sacred symbol that Chris had since bastardized into nothing more than another means of control. It was now a form of suffocating ownership, no longer a cherished reward for a good boy.

His hands twined in Matt's hair, thinner than it used to be from repetitive, merciless tearing. He tugged his property to the floor and yanked him to his knees by the collar that he twisted in his hand, abruptly cutting off the gasp that has ghosted past Matt's suddenly opened lips when he was jerked away from his nap. The cuffs were still fisted in Chris's hand, and the fist crashed into Matt's already distorted face, placing bruises upon bruises, and drawing double gushes of blood from his tender, swollen nose. Chris cried inside for Matt to look up at him from the puffy, purpled, slits that had become his eyes. Matt did not, and instead obediently kept his gaze downwards to the triangle of floor between his splayed knees. They both watched equally transfixed as the crimson dollops of blood splattered onto the worn jean material and stained Matt's thighs—scarred beneath the denim—to a sick ruby.

Again and again, the relentless fists pummeled until Chris's arm began to ache, and he landed the last one weakly. His other hand released the vice like wrench it had on the strap of leather around Matt's neck, and a desperate cough-choke filled the room as the dark-haired man struggled to fill his depleted lungs.

"Say it! For fucking Christ's sake—say it!" Chris screamed, landing an ill sounding kick to Matt's side. The collared man tumbled over in a fetal position and a tormented sob clawed its way up his throat which was still heaving in attempts to give his chest air. He coughed and gagged on the pain, bringing up the blood that had seeped down his throat from his busted nose and further complicated his attempts to breathe. Even still, a single word came twisted from his lips as though the syllables were ground out from a damned soul writhing in the ever tortured underbelly of hell.

"Master!"

The next kick planted into Matt's stomach, and more were followed as everything crashed into the worst kind of wreck, one which leaves nothing but two totaled shells of bent metal at the shoulder of a deserted highway. The major difference was only that people are made of flesh and bone, not welded parts, and the liquid leaked from busted parts is not oil, or gas, but tears and blood, and the dying juice of souls that would never flash through window-like eyes again.

"Not that, not that! Say our word, say it you groveling little bitch! End it, do you hear me? End it you fucking twisted piece of worthless, miserable shit—END IT!" Chris's frantic, demanding, cries rang through the house. The walls were witness to the words that became no more than meaningless, raw, screams. Before it was over, he no longer knew who he was screaming at or for; himself, or the shell shaking uncontrollably on the floor.

Chris stumbled back, panting, and wiping the unchecked spit from the grimace marring his face. The cuffs still trapped in his hand finally fell to the wood flooring as his fingers let them go. He never heard them hit the stained grains. There was nothing, no sound, just the sight of Matt's bloody fingertips as they gave a few sporadic twitches, and then stilled.

On watery legs, Chris moved towards what was laid out on the floor. He fell hard to his knees, his hand cupping the busted face in a gesture that was finally tender, but not soon enough. A whimper came from deep inside him, as realization numbly set in, followed quickly by a denial that would never be enough to be a full truth.

"M-m-ma-att…" The name he had not used for far too long came staggered from his trembling mouth. "Ju-ust say our word, ju-just say the wo-word and it'll be over. I-it'll all be over, it'll all be over just say the word, just say the word it'll be done, I promise! I promise Matty, it'll be over…over…p-please…" Chris repeated. His words tripped over themselves and at last faded to an obsessive whisper that was heard only by one person.

Why did he have to be so weak? Why did he have to be so weak that he couldn't break away from his bonds? Chris couldn't answer that question. He could only look down into wide brown eyes that would haunt him forever asking him those questions, and rightly so.

The price for whatever they'd been trying to find had been paid with the highest form of currency, and one that was non-refundable. Thank you, have a nice day, and don't forget the receipt of blood that will never be scrubbed away.

But if Matt could have just said, just said that word—the safe word, if he could have just--

The only reply was silence, the same as always, but now so much colder.

Matt would never say that word.

Never.