pkmnomegaverse:

There’s a lot of layers going on with the Human Trafficking plotline.  Something I wasn’t able to go into in this post relates to why Harrod ends up buying Laurel from Gret.

As established in Made A Slave, Darcel attends the kinds of shady parties people are bringing their “pets.” to.  He’s interested in Marcel, since they’ve known each other since childhood, but he’s equally interested in Laurel.  Remember, Laurel is Sage’s brother.  Sage is the girl Darcel has decided he’s going to marry one day.  Maybe one of the people he’s most fixated on for a time.  So while he doesn’t like Laurel as much as he likes Sage, he still pays attention to what’s going on with him.  Especially once he goes missing shortly after Marcel does.

Darcel keeps tabs on what ends up happening to Laurel, looks into who ends up buying him.  He sees the kind of person Gret is.  While he doesn’t care that this man abuses and breaks his toys, Darcel doesn’t want to see Laurel end up in a snuff film.  While there’s the tiniest part of him that’s interested in seeing how Laurel’s family would react to seeing that film, overall, it’s just not worth it to let Laurel die. The fun ends when a person is dead.

He doesn’t want to directly intervene, but like with Marcel, he’s fine doing things that get other people to intervene.  Related to Marcel, he has a connection with the Harrod trio.  Lorenzo (Marcel’s owner) and Harrod are business partners and sort of friends.  They get together sometimes and bring their pets along.  They let them all hand out in a side room while the two discuss whatever. 

These meetings are something Marcel treasures, since they’re some of the few times he’s allowed to talk with people other than Lorenzo and his house staff.  He grows closest with Bertie, who’s pregnant with Harrod’s children at the time.  Bertie is a couple months further in his pregnancy than Marcel is in his own, but they bond over their similar circumstances.  Someone else who can understand the horror of being pregnant with their captor’s child, but still trying to keep it together for their unborn child’s sake.

While Lorenzo doesn’t typically make Marcel preform at parties, he does have sort of a foursome with him, Bertie, and Harrod at one.  Mostly it’s just Harrod and Lorenzo fucking their boys side by side.  They’re both pregnant, so something something that’s the appeal in showing them off together.  Darcel sees this though.  This scene is actually what happens right after where I ended Made A Slave.  Seeing Marcel reaching for this other boy, holding hands with him for support while they’re being used, tips Darcel off that they must know each other.  Which gets him interested in Bertie and if it’s possible to use that link for anything.

Harrod hosts a lot of big parties. Darcel does what he can to get in good with that group.  Works his way into Harrod’s favor (even if it’s mostly Harrod being amused by this clearly out of place teen who thinks he’s hot shit, so he’s willing to see what he wants).  Fast forward a bit, and Darcel ends up getting Harrod’s permission to spend some quality alone time with Bertie, since Harrod will lend his pets out for sex to people he likes. 

It’s after his evening spent with Bertie that Darcel reveals his trump card, he knows Marcel and is willing to exchange messages between the two of them.  Marcel had escaped from Lorenzo a couple months before this point, but that was the most Bertie knew about what happened to him.  So hearing that his friend is okay and that he can possibly talk to him again, even if only through this guy, is tempting. Bertie figures he has nothing to lose and goes along with it.  Plus, he finds Darcel entertaining in that he’s at least a change from the type of guy he’s usually lent out to.  All Darcel wants in return from Bertie is any information he can gather on a pet named Laurel.  Any information he can get is fine, but the more, the better.  Especially related to what his master puts him through.

Bertie gets to work on uncovering what he can and gets his companions, Cyril and Poppy, to assist him.  Mostly they subtly talk with other pets at parties.  The more they learn, the worse things look for this pet they’re investigating. They start thinking of ways they can get Harrod to interact with Laurel’s owner, first for info, but then the idea of getting Laurel out of the situation takes hold.  Clearly things are looking dire for him, they need to get him out of there before it’s too late.  They drop hints to Harrod on how nice it would be to have another companion around.  Cyril is instrumental in this, since after Harrod meets up with Gret and they play “pet exchange” with Laurel and Cyril (as is mentioned in The Third Night) Cyril really lays on how good he thought Laurel seemed.  How he’d fit in so nicely with them and even add a nice blue/red color aesthetic with himself.  A perfect addition to the group.

Harrod is perhaps a little suspicious why they’re so interested him buying this boy, but doesn’t really care what the interest is about (and down the line as it becomes obvious Cyril is becoming romantically interested in Laurel, probably chalks part of the interest up to that).  On his part, he’s kind of interested in Laurel.  The boy was sweet and clearly is being wasted on Gret.  Harrod actually dislikes Gret a fair amount due to how he treats his pets. So this, combined with the fact he’s curious what having an omega boy might be like (since his own boys aren’t omegas, as while L&L has some omegaverse aspects, no one is alpha/beta/omega).  Thus he buys him from Gret and Darcel’s goal of getting Laurel away from Gret is complete.