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Chapter Text

Dustin Merrill’s view of the inside of the black bag over his head was that of a night sky shot with the occasional flickering stars where the weave didn’t quite meet. He stumbled behind a corrections officer that he couldn’t see through hallways that he couldn’t see, and he wondered why the bag over his head was necessary. His hands were still cuffed together and clipped to the chain around his wrists, and his ankles were still cuffed and hobbled by the chain between them that rattled unevenly over the hard floors. He was in prison orange. He didn’t even know where the courthouse was, much less how to escape it, even if escape had been on his mind.

It wasn’t. He had just pleaded no-contest to embezzling money that he’d never taken in exchange for an indentured servitude he didn’t deserve, because he thought that it would get him back to his little girls faster and to escape a violent prison rapist. If he tried to flee now… well, he didn’t know what would happen if he tried to flee now. But it would probably either land him back in jail with the rapist or add time to a servitude of uncertain duration.

It would be stupid to flee now. Dustin was a coward, but he wasn’t stupid.

Maybe the black bag’s symbolic?

If so, that wasn’t promising. The sensation in the pit of Dustin’s stomach was like a sinkhole swallowing an earth mover, and it was trying to tell him that he’d made a terrible mistake. But as his lawyer had warned him, there were no appeals. No takesie-backsies. He was, technically speaking, property, even if he retained a few basic human rights.

Then he thought about Logan waiting back in the jail for the return of his bitch, waiting to shove him against the wall behind the toilet and fuck him hard until the ache that lived inside him flared into a new pain, and he knew that taking the plea hadn’t been a mistake. Whatever was waiting for him on the other side of the black bag wouldn’t be as bad as that. It couldn’t be.

When the bag was taken off, Dustin found himself in an empty waiting area in front of a nondescript door. Against the left-hand wall, there were cheap plastic chairs that were empty. The whole room was empty except for the officer at Dustin’s back, who Dustin still hadn’t seen, and the man standing at the door in front of him.

The man at the door was a rather slim young man with glossy black hair and Asian features. His huge, thick, black eyebrows would have given David Levy a run for his money. He was not particularly threatening, and his khaki outfit was very similar to those on the officers Dustin had seen in the prison, but there were a few differences. For one, instead of a taser on one side of his belt, he had what appeared to be a cattle prod hanging from a hook by a thin loop of material.

And second, the crest on the man’s shirt wasn’t the grey badge of the Department of Corrections that Dustin had grown used to seeing. Instead, it was Republic blue and had the crest of the Bureau of Indentured Servant Affairs. Two stylized human figures stood, arms extended toward each other, one standing against an agricultural background and the other in front of the rising towers of a city. BISA was clearly printed at the top of the badge on his chest, and the name tag under his picture said Tanaka.

“I’ll take him, Rog,” Tanaka said. “We have any others coming?”

“Just this one, as far as I know. Maybe one or two after lunch.”

Tanaka nodded. His hand closed around the chain between Dustin’s wrists. “Sandy’s on standby, so just radio if we have another one.”

“Will do.”

Tanaka opened the door, gave Dustin’s wrist chain a tug, and pulled him into a room that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a locker room. The floor was of white tile, the walls a subtler shade of blue than the BISA man’s badge. The fluorescent lights might as well have been taken from the jail, harsh white and casting sharp shadows. Lockers lined the walls to Dustin’s left, a line of benches marched down the middle of the room, and there were toilet-stalls across from the lockers. The stalls lacked front doors. The sight of them made Dustin’s bladder give a protesting pulse. He’d had to pee since stepping into the police van, what, hours ago?

Dustin cleared his throat. “Sir? I’m sorry, but I really have to pee.”

“Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to,” Tanaka said firmly. Then he added, “We’ll get there. Sit.”

Dustin sat on the bench, the space between the metal ridges pressing uncomfortably against his butt. Tanaka had him scoot a little to the right, then he locked Dustin’s wrist chain to a convenient metal loop along the front of the bench. The man dug a tape measurer from one of his belt pouches and wrapped it around Dustin’s throat. “Shrug your shoulders up, put your chin down, and flex your neck.”

Dustin did. The tape measurer slid away. He relaxed from the strange pose as Tanaka walked to one of the lockers, opened it, and rattled around inside. He came back with a grey band about as wide as Dustin’s thumbs pressed together. It waggled with the flexibility of a watch band from either end of a solid-looking grey curve that was shaped like a long blister. Tanaka crouched in front of Dustin and pressed the smooth side of the blister to the center of Dustin’s throat. He flinched back automatically.

“Still,” Tanaka said. Dustin made himself sit still while Tanaka put the band around his neck. It was cool but warmed up to the temperature of Dustin’s skin almost before he heard the snick of the clasp settling into itself at the back of his neck. There was a brief press there, the thing against Dustin’s throat beeped, then Tanaka stepped away.

Dustin’s mind finally put the shape together. It was like the shock collar that Mr. Blevins had used to keep his dog in his yard without a physical fence. Dustin swallowed hard on a mouthful of thick saliva, and the flexible band didn’t allow the solid blister to obstruct his throat, though it felt strange.

Tanaka came back around to the front of the bench. In his hand was something that looked like a grey key fob. As if watching a movie in slow motion, Dustin saw the man’s thumb go to the buttons on the edge. Anxious tension shot upward from the base of Dustin’s balls into his stomach. “You don’t have t—”

The tick of pain against Dustin’s throat was more startling than anything. He had touched doorknobs with staticky hands many times in his life, always with that sense of ‘ouch’ that made him jerk his hand back. It was sort of like that, but more like someone had snapped a rubber band against his skin.

Worse than the pain was that, after his startled yelp, he couldn’t breathe back in. His throat tightened down, and for a horrified moment, his diaphragm heaved without success. He tried to jerk his hands up to tear off whatever was choking him, but they slammed into the handcuffs with a rattle of chains. Then Dustin’s throat opened and he was gasping for breath like someone who had taken a hard blow to the chest.

Tanaka lowered the fob from his thumb and let it rest in the curl of his palm. He spoke in the mild tone of someone who had just written out a mathematical proof on a whiteboard in class. “That’s a level-one correction. Now, try to touch the collar.”

Dustin’s mouth was full of saliva again. He swallowed it thickly. “Please, sir, I understand.”

Very slowly, Tanaka turned the fob in his hand and lowered his thumb to the side.

Dustin yanked his hands up with the quick reaction of any animal trying to avoid a painful stimulus, but again the rattle of chains ended in a hard jerk to his wrists. He couldn’t reach his own throat, not with his hands shackled to the bench.

Not, he realized, unless he folded down. An anxious glance to Tanaka showed the man making an impatient ‘hurry up’ circling of his finger. The fob was in his hand, though back in his palm. Dustin bent double. He flinched preemptively, then pressed his index finger against the collar’s smooth surface.

White lightning tore across the sensitive skin of Dustin’s neck. That was the only way to describe the pain, white like someone had rubbed a coal across it and left ash behind. His body jackknifed, the animal part of his brain screaming at him to sit up, to get back, to move away from that terrible pain. He might have screamed, or that might only have been in his mind. Because, again, his throat was a solid knot like someone had wrapped their hands around it and squeezed in their thumbs.

Dustin’s stomach heaved as he tried to breathe, but he couldn’t, his throat was closed, he was gagging. The panicked animal that always reared up in his mind when he couldn’t breathe grabbed on and told him that if he didn’t do something, he’d never be able to breathe again. His diaphragm heaved, but other than pushing out a few strangled noises through the blockage, there was nothing at all.

After an eternity, Dustin was able to gasp a breath in past the knot. He coughed and gagged, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. It was only when the panic receded that he realize that his arms and wrists were also screaming in pain, but worse than that, a small nuclear bomb was exploding slowly up into his stomach. His jerk had taken him forward off the bench, but only partially. The chain between the cuffs fastening his wrists to the bench were taut because his entire body weight was jammed against them, and the wave of nauseating pain was from the way he’d crushed his balls against the cuffs.

His wrists were wet and warm, and the same damp warmth was spreading on the insides of his thighs. Dustin realized that he’d peed himself. His feet had slid to where he couldn’t get them under him, to push him back, and the mushroom cloud in his stomach had turned into the delayed, excruciating pain of getting kicked in the balls.

Then Tanaka was there, his arms forcing themselves through Dustin’s armpits and into a rescue-hold, and he jerked Dustin back onto the bench. Dustin’s entire body shuddered. His breath was uneven and he gagged, not just from the pain in his balls but because his throat kept fluttering in unpredictable ways. Without the pain, he didn’t think that the collar was shocking him. It had to be some kind of aftershock.

The explosion that had roiled up his body didn’t stop all of a sudden, it was more like the slow receding of a wave from a run up onto the shore. Then there was only the nauseating throbbing of his crushed balls and, as an afterthought, the cramped pain of his ass. Tanaka seemed to decide that Dustin was able to sit on his own, because the man withdrew his arms from the rescue hold.

“You might think that you can get the buzzer away from me,” Tanaka said as he went around the bench. “But you don’t want to try it. Other folks have buzzers set to your frequency.”

Dustin had been thinking no such thing. He shook his head, his cheeks wet with involuntary tears of pain, and he tried to not hunch forward. His hands cupped his throbbing balls in the protective gesture that even children knew from instinct. The damp of his own urine against his palms was disgusting, but it couldn’t make himself draw his hands away.

“Yes, sir.” Dustin’s voice was still choked and thick.

Tanaka turned back to the lockers, and Dustin’s watching him was no longer curiosity, but instead, a horrified fascination. When he faced the bench again, he had something that looked like a hot-glue gun and another that looked like a hole puncher. The items made small metallic clicks when Tanaka put them on the bench. He pulled his hands into blue medical gloves then he lifted something white toward the side of Dustin’s neck. Dustin flinched his head away like a child who had touched a hot stove feeling heat on his fingertips again.

“Still,” Tanaka said firmly. “I’m not going to touch the collar.”

Dustin made himself stay put. The warmth between his thighs was quickly turning cool. He closed his eyes against whatever might be coming. There was nothing he could do about it, and if he flinched too many times, Tanaka might decide that he needed to push that fob button again.

The strong smell of alcohol shoved itself up Dustin’s nose as something cold touched the side of his face. Tanaka scrubbed his right ear and the right side of his neck with an alcohol pad. Even though Dustin had held still, Tanaka took a grip around Dustin’s head like a nutcracker curling around a walnut before he touched the cold tip of something behind Dustin’s left ear. There was a loud hiss or click, and the pain that came on the heels of the noise radiated down the side of his neck. It was nothing compared to the continued sickening throb of Dustin’s balls.

Dustin felt a small trickle of blood before Tanaka’s finger pressed hard. After a few moments, the finger lifted, and there was the sensation of Tanaka pressing a band-aid to his skin. It pulled a little in Dustin’s hair, which had grown slightly shaggy while he’d been in prison.

An item clicked onto the bench, then Tanaka pulled Dustin’s ear forward, and there was a beep like the sound of a register scanning an item at a grocery store.

“Confirm this for me, please.”

When Dustin opened his eyes, there was a screen held there in hands wrapped in blue medical gloves. The monitor showed Dustin’s prison photo. Under it were his name, birthday, Republic identity number, and then a line that said “INDENTURE TERM” with the field after it left blank. Dustin would have no idea how long his term would be until after he’d been auctioned and the money applied to his debt.

“That’s me.” Dustin’s voice sounded odd in his ears, though from the collar or his general sense of shock, he couldn’t have said. “All correct.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dustin saw Tanaka nod. The monitor moved away, revealing the lockers beyond. “Hold still for me again.”

Dustin closed his eyes and tensed. His guts stabbed a familiar ache, and his stomach echoed the sick throb of his balls. Tanaka grabbed his ear not ungently, but an ache radiated down the side of his neck from where his ear attached to his skull. Something cold touched Dustin’s earlobe and there was a loud click, followed by a pain as tiny as a pinprick compared to everything else. Then Tanaka pulled away.

From the sounds, the BISA man gathered up his equipment. Dustin’s ears tracked his steps to the lockers and back. He didn’t pull away from the tugging at his wrists and ankles.

Dustin only opened his eyes when the subtle pressure of the cuffs around his wrists released. Tanaka’s blue-gloved hands were gathering up the metal circlets and chains into a rough canvas bag. Dustin flexed his wrists. It felt strange to be out of restraints without being locked into a room in the jail.

But then, what exactly was he going to do? Whatever level the collar had been on when he’d touched it himself, a zap like that would bring him to his knees faster than even pepper spray would.

As Tanaka pulled the bag shut, he spoke without looking up from the bag, but his head ticked toward the stalls and shower poles. “Strip. You can leave your jail clothes on the bench, here. Then use the bathroom if you need to and take a shower. There are towels, combs, toothbrushes, and razors on the shelf above the sinks. Shave yourself clean, to the extent you can. Be careful not to touch the collar.”

As if Dustin needed to be reminded. He nodded emphatically. “Yes, sir.”

Chapter Text

After Dustin finished his shower, the only towels he could find were smaller than the prison towels. They were little more than hand towels, nothing he could wrap around his head, much less around his body. Feeling very self-conscious, he had to use one towel to dry his body and another to dry his hair, which was too long for his liking. He ran a comb through the dark waves, brushed his teeth and flossed – they had floss, not like in jail – then shaved as best he could while keeping his hands away from the collar.

The person in the mirror was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Dustin normally wore closely groomed facial hair, for one. But even more than that, he was thinner than he remembered being. There was a haunted look in his eyes that he’d never seen before, and a greyish cast under his light brown skin. And then there was the grey band of the collar and the grey earring with its diamond-shaped tag. The number 107 had been embossed into the surface.

Tagged like a calf going to auction, Dustin thought, and he couldn’t find anything inaccurate in it.

For all of his mother’s abolitionist literature and meetings, he hadn’t known all that much about the actual process of indenture. He was rapidly coming to realize that the fact sheet that his lawyer had given him when she had explained the plea had been very short on the details.

Whatever it is, I can make it seven years, Dustin told himself.

But even the amount of time was uncertain, yet to be calculated. The yearly rate would be derived from his auction price and applied to an amount of debt that Dustin didn’t know for sure. It had to be at least the $163,000 his ex-husband had accused him of embezzling, and his estimation of seven years had been based only on average two-year prices for men between 25 and 29 years old with at least a college education.

He should have asked more questions. He would have, if he hadn’t been so desperate to escape Logan.

“Come on.” Tanaka’s tone was mildly impatient, and Dustin realized that he’d been dawdling at the sink.

He stepped away from the it, almost as bare as when he’d been born. Nervously, he asked, “Will I get clothing?”

The shock at his throat was unexpected that time, and as he yelped, he barely stopped himself from grabbing his throat to try to pull away what was choking him. It was startling and it hurt, but now that Dustin had something to compare ‘level one’ to, it was more like a slap to the face than a punch to the stomach. A zap and momentary tightening of the throat was nothing like what touching the collar had done to him.

Tanaka slipped the fob back into a pouch on his belt. “Follow orders, 107. Come.”

Dustin’s legs shook slightly as he stepped away from the sink to follow Tanaka to the far door. He dropped one of his hands down to shield himself and felt no less embarrassed for it. Tanaka drew a black square of material from one of his pouches and shook it out into a larger square. Dustin felt profoundly helpless as the man slipped the black bag over his head. He didn’t even try to flinch away.

Again, where would he go? There was a collar around his neck that he absolutely believed could drop him to his knees if he tried to run. He also absolutely believed that Tanaka would shock him if he didn’t cooperate, and then maybe he’d find out where the terrible jolt he’d taken fell along the ‘correction’ spectrum. Maybe touching the collar wasn’t even the worst that the thing could deliver.

A door clicked. Dustin flinched when Tanaka’s hand pressed on the back of his left shoulder and nudged him ahead. Tanaka didn’t tell him to stop using his right hand as a fig leaf, so at least there was that.

The scent in the bag was of his own toothpaste, and though the air inside it rapidly became warm and humid, he didn’t start running out. The linoleum underfoot felt gritty and slightly sticky against the bare bottoms of Dustin’s feet, and the air was cool on his naked skin. In what he could only presume was a hallway, Dustin heard the muffled sounds of work being done. Low conversation. The sounds of keyboards being tapped at. Soft pop music playing from somewhere distant.

Dustin moved forward when Tanaka pressed on the back of his shoulder, stopped when the man pulled, and turned based on whichever direction Tanaka rotated him. He became thoroughly lost and again wondered what the point of the black bag was. It couldn’t be to spare him the embarrassment of being steered naked through what sounded like an office building. If anyone even noticed him, there was no indication. No laughs, no comments.

But then, it was probably a daily affair for a naked person to be walked through the BISA area of the courthouse in a black bag. He wondered about the possible rate of influx of indentured servants from the jails and courts of a city the size of Chicago to keep himself from going completely limp-kneed with embarrassment. Had Tanaka sounded surprised that there was just Dustin? Hadn’t the locker room he’d been in been large enough for four or five people, and with a waiting room outside?

Even in the confines of the bag, the lighting changed, becoming brighter. A door closed behind Dustin, cutting off the office noise.

“Just one today, Mr. Tanaka?” The voice was pleasant and feminine. If Dustin could have sold his toes to make the hand covering his genitals larger, he would have.

“I’m not sure.”

“Wednesdays are always so slow.”

“They can be.” Tanaka’s tone was the equivalent of a shrug. “Here’s his buzzer. He’s been cooperative so far, but call me if he gives you any trouble.”

“Sure.” The young woman sounded amused, like perhaps it was a joke between them.

The sounds of the hallway turned on and off like a faucet, and the door latch clicked. The new hand that touched Dustin’s left elbow was smaller, softer, more delicate. “Hold still, please.”

Dustin held still, trying to not hold his breath, but there was only a gentle press on the bag by his right ear and a mechanical chirp, like the chirp Tanaka’s scanner had made.

“107? Dustin Merrill?”

Dustin nodded. Then he realized that she might not be looking at him, and he cleared his throat. His voice was tight from stress and embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Great. This way, please. There’s a little step up onto the scale, here. Perfect. Stand still please. Thank you. Now, this way.”

He remembered that there was a little step down and didn’t stumble too badly. She turned him and gently guided him until paper crinkled against the backs of his thighs, then she told him to sit. An exam table, he surmised, and got up onto it. The paper crunched loudly under his bare bottom, and beneath it, he felt the squish of an exam-table cushion.

“I’m going to need your right arm,” the woman said pleasantly. “Don’t worry, 107. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

Dustin was almost glad for the black bag over his head. The woman couldn’t see the blood rush to his face as he stopped hiding his junk with his hand. She clipped a heart monitor onto his finger and took his blood pressure. She told him that she would be taking some of his blood and ran him through the familiar process of a blood draw. Then she started asking him all sorts of questions about his medical history. Medications, injuries, surgeries. Family history of medical issues was easy. He simply said, “I’m adopted.”

It would have been exactly like the lead-up to any of his annual physical exams, except that he was naked and had a bag over his head. Eventually, the peppy young woman told him that the doctor would be in to join them momentarily. There was a small squeal of wheels and the tapping of fingertips on a screen. She hummed softly.

It was amazing what Dustin could hear, when he didn’t have his eyes to rely on.

Time passed uncounted, though Dustin didn’t think it was too much longer than the typical wait for a doctor’s visit. The sound of the hallway washed in and then cut off with a click. A sink started running.

“What do we have, Gina?” The new voice was older, more authoritative, and also feminine.

“A new indenture. He scanned in as 107.”

“Medical history?”

“Consistent with his public health record.”

A pause stretched into a silence. Dustin imagined an older woman sliding her finger down a tablet or scrolling down a laptop, reviewing his medical information, like his primary-care doctor would have done. Eventually, and approached the table. It was a routine heart, lungs, and reflexes job until the doctor said, “Lie back, 107. No, don’t scoot up, just lie back where you are.”

Trepidation stirred in the pit of Dustin’s stomach, welling up through the calm that had been temporarily created by the routine of a medical exam. He made himself lie back. His knees folded off the end of the exam table. When a hand gripped his ankle, he flinched his leg away.

The younger woman’s voice somehow managed to be both soothing and warning. “Easy, 107.”

Dustin let the Gina take his foot and lift his leg. She socketed it into a cup that went up to his ankle, tightened a strap around if, then did the same with his other leg. Dustin heard the sound of something wrapped in plastic being peeled open over by where the sink had run. He could feel the sweat pop out on his body, sticking the paper to his back.

Gina said, “Scoot your bottom all the way to the end of the bed. All the way. Nope, keep going, right up until it feels like you’re just about hanging off. Thank you. Relax your legs, please.”

Dustin made himself stop trying to close his legs. The stirrups were on flexible arms, and the nurse moved his legs impossibly far apart before locking them in place. He started to cover his genitals, but Gina said, “Hands away, 107.”

Dustin wasn’t sure where else to put his hands. He settled for lacing them over his stomach, clenching his fingers tight to try to hide their fine trembling. It was a horribly vulnerable position, and they could do anything to him. Absolutely anything.

And then Dustin was back in the prison bathroom, surrounded by the smells of bleach and urine, and Logan was pounding into him, the thin man’s cock moving fast and hard and deep, making Dustin cramp, rasping his asshole despite the spit that passed for lube.

He couldn’t hide his frightened shivering anymore. Flashbacks weren’t what he had thought they would be. He wasn’t remembering what had happened, he was experiencing it again. A taste like bitter lemon crawled up his the back of his throat as nausea twisted his stomach into a knot.

“Please don’t,” he said, not sure what he was asking them to not do but absolutely certain that he didn’t want them to do it.

“Easy, 107.” That was the doctor’s voice, firm and authoritative. “I’m just going to numb your scrotum and use an ultrasound-guided needle to inject a contraceptive gel into your vas deferens. Safe, entirely reversible after your indenture, and the only side effect will be a bit of pain and some scrotal swelling for a day or two.”

It was like trying to listen to someone speak with a heavy dialect, the familiar words peppered with unfamiliar phrases in a, way that made the whole thing almost as meaningless as birdsong. Still nauseated, Dustin said, “Okay.”

The sound of a fluid being rubbed against a gloved hand nauseated him further. It was hard to keep his mind from jerking him back to Logan lubing up with spit before slamming into Dustin in the bathroom stall. He flinched when his balls were lifted and gently rubbed with something cool. They were still very sore and sensitive from getting crushed after the hard shock to his collar. The harshly astringent smell of rubbing alcohol hit his nose a moment later.

Then her fingers stilled, and she lifted his balls. “I’m seeing a little anal trauma, Gina. His chart said not sexually active?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the younger woman answered promptly. “He said no sexual activity for almost a year.”

The doctor’s voice grew stern. “Receiving anal sex counts as sexual activity, 107, and this is clearly more recent than last year. In the future, you’ll be perfectly forthcoming with your doctors, no matter how embarrassed you might be.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The black bag brushed Dustin’s lips as he spoke, but he barely felt it. To be honest, he hadn’t even thought of what had happened to him as sexual activity.

“We’ll need an anal swab, Gina. And mark down that the blood tests should include the full sweep of sexually transmitted infections.” After a pause, the doctor said, “You’re going to feel a small pinch, and then things should start to go numb.”

The ‘small pinch’ was the same as any other injection, just in a place that made Dustin flinch more than usual. True to the doctor’s word, the area began to numb. When she asked him if he could feel ‘that,’ he had no idea what she was talking about, so he shook his head.

The doctor’s wrist rested against the inside of Dustin’s thigh. Something that felt like a cord brushed the front of Dustin’s calf, and he successfully managed to make himself keep breathing. The doctor said, “A little more anterior, Gina. Hold it there, please.”

The doctor’s wrist shifted against the inside of Dustin’s thigh. He tried not to focus on the her instructions to the nurse, tried not to think about needles going into his scrotum. Inside it, actually. Cozying up to his balls with whatever they were injecting into him. And he could only take the doctor’s word for it that it would be reversible, that there would be no side effects.

At first, Dustin didn’t recognize the sensation in his throat. Then he realized it for what it was. Resentment at being given contraception without asking for it, without a real explanation and informed consent. He had intellectually known that, legally speaking, he was going to lose the right to make choices about his own life. He’d thought that he had known what that meant.

But he hadn’t. Not like he did now.

Dustin didn’t regret not going back to jail, to where Logan waited. But what kind of Hobson’s choice had that been?

His resentment twisted, turning dark and bitter, changing direction. An image of his ex-husband flashed into his mind. The cruel twist that Jake’s lips had started to take on at the end of their relationship, his cheeks round and rosy from drink, the way he had looked on the prison’s laptop when he’d told Dustin that he wouldn’t let him talk to their girls. Fuck you, Jacob. When I get out of here, I’m going to kill you.

Chapter Text

Time had blurred again after the contraceptive procedure. Though Dustin didn’t think he’d been drugged, the details became foggy. He remembered that Tanaka had come back and taken him to a blank white room, where his hood had been removed and he had been photographed. Not simply his face, though they had updated the photograph that appeared on the scanner. He had been made to stretch his arms straight out to his sides, and then he’d been photographed front, back, and sideways.

After, he had been dressed in grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt with 107 on the front and back, then he had been taken to a room. The last thing he had expected was to be given a bunch of standardized tests, and yet there he had been, in a room with school-style desks and a proctor sitting in front. Stripped of human freedoms, crotch numb from a contraceptive he hadn’t wanted, he had tapped answers into a laptop about his general life as a free man and then taken hour after hour of standardized tests. Math tests. Reading tests. Personality tests. Some tests that he hadn’t even understood the purpose of.

He’d grown hungrier and thirstier and but thankfully hadn’t had to pee again. A woman had been brought in and told to sit two desks away. When Dustin had attempted to glance at her, the proctor had told him very firmly to keep his eyes forward. Eventually, he had tapped the button for the next page of the test and the screen had said the testing was complete.

Dustin looked at the woman on his way out. She was younger woman with a surprisingly care-lined face. Her sweater said 108. He never saw her again.

After the tests, Tanaka had come back, and the black bag had been put back over Dustin’s head. He had been walked barefoot down a hallway, down a flight of stairs, and into a cool room. When Tanaka had pulled off the hood, Dustin saw a room that looked like a cross between a warehouse and a particularly terrible animal shelter from hell. Light fixtures with long fluorescent bars hung from tall ceilings, the walls and floor were naked cement, there were no windows, and squares of wire fence lined the walls on either side of a broad aisle.

It smelled like the sweat of too many men confined too closely. It smelled like urine. It smelled like prison.

Tanaka had taken a brown bag from a table and put it i Dustin’s hands, then he had led him down the aisle between the fences. Faces had watched him pass with dull curiosity. At the second pen on the left, Tanaka had opened the wire door by just pulling up a standard fence-fastening hinge, gestured Dustin through, closed the door, and simply left.

He hadn’t locked the door. Though, Dustin supposed he hadn’t needed to. The collars.

There were seven people packed into the space, all men, though that was where the commonality ended. A single toilet was fixed into the concrete back wall with a sink inset into the wall above it. It looked like everything, even the toilet-paper dispenser, was sensor-operated. Again, Dustin was reminded of prison. It was like his solitary-confinement cell, but significantly less solitary.

On the wall above the sink, in black block letters, was one painted word:

“Behave,” Dustin mumbled to himself. “What does that even mean.”

A low voice responded, “It means if they don’t like what you’re doing, you’ll regret it.”

Dustin looked at the two rows of men resting or sleeping against the side fences. They all wore numbered grey sweats and each had an earring that Dustin knew would, if he looked closely enough, have the same number on it. None of them met his eyes. There only open floor space was in the back, near the toilet.

The concrete was rough on Dustin’s feet as he went to the empty space. The toilet area smelled more of urine than of bleach. Still, for a moment, he was tumbled into a dark tunnel of pain, and a voice whispered, Maybe next time I’ll let you jerk it while I fuck you.

Nausea twisted the bottom of Dustin’s stomach, and a bitter lemony flavor climbed the back of his throat, but there was nothing for him to throw up. He went to the back, carefully felt for his balls, and held them while he sat as far away from the toilet as he could get without touching the man next to him. At his back, the wire fence shifted as someone moved. Nobody spoke, and Dustin couldn’t bring himself to look at any of them.

Instead, he looked at the brown bag in his free hand. It was wide at the bottom and folded over at the top. When he opened it, there was a paper-wrapped jelly sandwich on dark-grained bread and a wax-paper packet that, when opened, contained sliced carrots and celery.

The bread of the sandwich was thick and slightly chewy, the whole grains providing occasional texture. The jelly was grape-flavored and tasted like a childhood summer. Dustin had mostly finished it before his hunger had abated enough for a sense of self-awareness to come back to him.

No one around him was eating. When he glanced up, a few of the other men glanced away, as if they had been caught staring.

Dustin had a visceral but brief memory of falling to share a cookie in prison. His tongue wet his lips. He took out the wax-paper packet of carrots and celery and let his eyes flick from face to face in the cell. Seven men. He made eight. Following the example of the earlier low voice, Dustin asked, “Does anyone want carrots or celery?”

“You go ahead, son.” The man in one of the corners by the fence gate was easily the oldest there, in his late sixties or earlier seventies, but built like a man who had been fit before age had robbed him of his muscles. His wrinkle-cornered eyes were kind. The number 52 was printed on his sweater. “We already had ours.”

“Just don’t you dare try and flush that paper.” The mutterer was the man who had told him the meaning of the word ‘behave,’ and now Dustin saw he was a youngish man near the front of the pen who had shoulder-length black curls that were tangled and greasy.

Why would the man think he’d try to flush waxed paper? It didn’t matter.

“I won’t,” Dustin said.

“Good.”

Dustin finished his supper, folded the papers together, and put them in the pocket of his sweatpants. He rested the back of his head against the chain link and closed his eyes. The low mumble of conversation through the warehouse space was not entirely unlike the sound of the traffic that had passed on the freeway near Dustin’s home. He wondered for a moment what his girls were doing, but an exhausted sleep crept up on him before he could bring himself too much grief.

“My given name’s William, but my friends call me Bill,” the old man said to Dustin in a low voice. His dialect had a comedic folksiness that didn’t seem to belong on a man being warehoused somewhere in or near Chicago. His place was in the front corner that Dustin had arbitrarily dubbed south, since it was away from the warehouse entrance, and they stood there together. Dustin was stiff from sleeping on the concrete floor, and as the doctor had promised, his scrotum was an angry hive of bees.

“Dustin Merrill.” Dustin offered out his hand.

Bill kept his hands in his pockets and nodded to the word painted on the wall. “Best not to touch.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Dustin had been woken that morning by the shouts of angry men in the pen across the aisle, and then screams and choking, gagging noises. A few seconds later, two men in BISA blue had pounded down the center aisle with cattle prods in their hands. Three men in grey sweatsuits had gone back up the aisle, herded by the snaps of the prods and the barked commands of the BISA guards.

He wanted to avoid that. He very much wanted to avoid that. The scent of pepper spray still tickled his nostrils, and the plight of the men whose pen-mates hadn’t behaved was hard to ignore. Hours later, some were still moaning.

“Well, you make eight,” Bill said, as if they were continuing a conversation. “So I figure we’ll get two more, then they’ll start filling in that next pen there. Unless they fill in for them guys they took out.”

“You think so?”

“Ayup. Ten to a pen was how it was done last time.”

Dustin’s brows lifted. “You've been here before?”

Bill smiled ruefully. “I’ve been here, why, two cycles now. If I don’t go this next go-round, it’ll be the state minimum for me. Now, the first time I did indenture, I was scooped right up. About your age, I think. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

Bill waffled his hand. “Well, I was a younger than that. Scooped right up and set to welding. Sky scrapers, can you believe it?”

Dustin nodded slowly. It seemed as probable as anything else.

The fence rattled as Bill shifted position. “So after I paid my debt, why, I had myself a good skill set. Kept me out’ve trouble quite a while.”

“So…” Dustin started to ask, then thought the better of it.

But Bill had caught the drift of Dustin’s thoughts. He chuckled. “This time? Medical larceny. Been out’ve work a while, and when the hospital came calling, my wallet turned up crickets.”

Dustin tried to gently steer the man toward what he was most interested in. “So, after we get more men in here, then what?”

“Well, you’re mid-cycle, so you’ll be here for, I reckon out a week and a few. No one’s here less than a week, all the ones who got picked up get processed out on Saturday. Only Saturday, mind. So today’s Wednesday—”

“Thursday,” Dustin corrected mildly.

“So today’s Thursday. So, ayup, that’s not so bad.”

“If I’m picked up.”

“You will be.”

“I thought,” Dustin spoke slowly, “that there would be an auction?”

Bill’s chuckle was low and warm. “You thought, what, they were going to take us all up and put us on a stage or something? Bid with those lifted card things? Some sort’ve slave block thing?”

Dustin felt mildly defensive. He put his own hands in the pockets of his sweats, winced when the shifting fabric rubbed the front of his tight white underwear, then used his fists to hold the fabric way from himself. “Well. That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

“Nah. It’s indenture, son. Just paying off a debt, is all.” Bill peered at Dustin. “You an abolitionist? Don’t see many of those in here.”

“No, sir.”

“Ayup. Well. It’s all done online. Modern, you know.”

Dustin cleared his throat. “And. Your, uh, first time. Did you know how much you sold for? Or how long you’d be indentured?”

Bill shrugged. “I’m not good at numbers, son. My worker came by and I asked him, I said, hey there, what’s on that scan, and he told me so-and-so-many years and days, and that was good enough for me. Some folks count up, some folks count down. Me? I said to myself, Billy, just let it ride.”

“How long was your first indenture?”

“Five years, and give a few more months or so. Now, I wasn’t down at state minimum, then, but I wasn’t real high, either. I was a good-for-nothing kid. No training or discipline neither.”

Dustin didn’t ask what he’d been in for. “So. How long do you think it’ll be this time?”

Bill gave a rueful shrug. “What I owe, plus all them fines and court fees and that lawyer fee for the shithead they gave me, plus jail costs, all at state minimum? As long as it is long, I expect.”

Fines, court fees, attorney fees, and jail costs? Dustin swallowed hard. He hadn’t figured any of that into his calculations. He hadn’t even thought to ask how much they might be.

But that Bill knew that he was likely to die before he covered his debt was profoundly depressing. Dustin said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you worry about me, son. I can think of worse ways to go than in the open air instead of doing time. And, hey. You know the good part?” Bill paused long enough for Dustin’s eyebrows to raise and ask the question. Then, the old man’s grin broadened. “This way, my healthcare’s covered.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, breakfast was a container of yogurt and an apple. Dustin hunched protectively over his apple, even though he logically knew that no prison ‘daddy’ was going to try to take it from him. All of the men just sat in the place in the pen where they had slept, not looking at each other. They put their apple cores in their yogurt containers after they finished dishing it out with their fingers or tongues. When a wheeled trashcan went down the aisle, they all handed their debris forward to be thrown out. Dustin passed his trash from the day before up with his breakfast remnants. Then he eased back down into the place he had claimed as his own, careful of his balls. The doctor hadn’t been lying when she’d said they would ache.

Shortly after the trashcan had finished its circuit, a khaki-clad man appeared at the door to their pen. He was a fit-looking white man with a round face and widely spaced eyes. He wore the BISA crest on his uniform, and one of his hands was on the cattle prod at his waist.

He flipped up the door latch and pulled it open. “107.”

Dustin got to his feet. He gave Bill a nervous look on his way past and the old man shrugged and looked away. It was not reassuring. Dustin thought about asking the BISA agent where he was being taken, but it was the fleeting flight of fantasy of a man who would have asked those kinds of questions in a previous life. A life before prison. A life before indenture.

The fence rattled again as the BISA agent closed the door. Then the man took a black square of cloth out of a pouch on his belt, shook it out, and dropped it over Dustin’s head. He turned Dustin and gave the back of his shoulder a nudge. Dustin stumbled forward, stubbing his big toe on the concrete and almost falling.

After a while, the BISA agent turned Dustin again. They walked a short distance, and then the man pushed Dustin slightly ahead. “Stairs. There’s a handrail on the side.”

Dustin felt his way slowly up the stairs. The material underfoot changed to linoleum, and although he tried to keep track of the turns, his heart pounded too wildly in his chest for him to be able to focus. The agent eventually stopped him. “There’s a chair on your left. Sit.”

“Yes, sir,” Dustin said. He turned and felt around, encountered the sleeve of someone who jerked away, and then found the back of the empty chair. He faced forward again and gingerly sat.

“Stay there until someone comes to get you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The agent’s combat boots echoed as he walked away. Then the only sounds were the breathing of the person next to Dustin and his own blood rushing in his ears. They were likely alone, but the collar on his throat sat heavily, and even if there was no agent around, he figured that the room was almost certainly monitored on a closed-circuit camera.

And again. Where would he go?

Dustin was profoundly unsure of what to do with his hands. He carefully folded them together in his lap. When he found himself squeezing his knuckles in the slow rhythm of someone trying to wring water out of a sponge, he made himself stop. In the darkness of the bag, and without any sound cues, he slipped and started falling through time like it was a dark current that was washing him away.

Eventually, the sound of boots returned. A door latch clicked a short way to the left, and then the door scraped slightly on well-oiled hinges. Dustin heard the unsteady slap of bare feet, then someone with an authoritative voice said, “Come on.”

Dustin wasn’t sure whether it was the voice of the round-faced agent or not. The bootsteps started away, crisp on the linoleum, accompanied by the uneven slap of bare feet. From the door, a young male voice, said, “106, stand up.” Clothing rustled next to Dustin. The young voice said, “This way.”

The door scraped slightly on its hinges and clicked closed. Dustin was left sitting alone, and time went strange again. Untethered from it, he floated in the star-studded blackness inside of the bag. The boots and slap of bare feet started to approach again. The cadence of the new bare feet sounded uncertain, not unsteady.

The person was made to sit in the recently vacated chair on Dustin’s left. The entire process repeated itself, but this time, after the person who was presumably 106 was led unsteadily away, the young voice said, “107, stand up. This way.”

Dustin swallowed hard and stood. He was led through a new series of hallways, past doors behind which he could occasionally catch the sound of murmurs. Somewhere in the distance, a phone rang. The person attached to the male voice opened a door and steered Dustin through it into a room that had an astringent smell.

“Strip, except for the hood,” the young man said. “There’s a counter right in front of you that you can put your clothes on.”

Dustin began to strip. At some unnoticed point, he had started to move beyond shame. He almost touched his collar as he tried to hold the bag down while pulling the sweatshirt over his head. Almost. Then the young man tugged his elbow and said that there would be a slight step up, and things clicked together in his mind.

It was an exam room. The nurse put him through almost the same process as the day before. Weight, temperature, medical history, and then sitting on the paper-covered exam table. This time, the doctor’s name was Caldwell, and there was no blood draw. Dr. Caldwell asked the nurse to leave the room, and Dustin heard the snicking sound of a door locking.

The nature of the exam changed after that. At first, it was close to a normal physical, but then it went strange. The doctor’s gloved hands started running over Dustin’s body, feeling under his armpits, touching and manipulating his joints. The doctor, who had a slightly raspy voice, asked him about each of his scars. Where and when he’d received it. Had there been any broken bones. How long had he had this mole. What had caused this bruise on his arm.

That last question made Dustin’s skin tighten and try to crawl off his body. His tongue suddenly felt coated in a thick layer of slime. “Someone grabbed me hard.”

“In prison?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Lie back on the table. All the way back. There you go.” The gloved hands pressed Dustin’s abdomen, asking him whether anything hurt.

“Scoot your butt to the end, here. Almost all the way off. Just like that. I’m taking your ankle.” Dustin’s ankle was taken and put into a stirrup, then fastened down. “And the other.”

Dustin began to feel lightheaded. The black bag clung to his face, and he wanted to tear it off to get a breath, even though he knew that he’d been breathing through the bag for quite some time.

Fingers manipulated his dick, then his sore balls. Dustin flinched. The doctor chuckled. “Tender after yesterday?”

Dustin swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Mhm. Tell me about this anal trauma.”

Dustin’s mind froze. In terms of fight, flight, or freeze, he was a man who fell solidly into the ‘freeze’ category, and words flew from his mind like ice crystals whipped away by a high wind.

“I’m about to zap it out of you, 107.” There was no displeasure at the prospect in the raspy voice.

Dustin tried to clear the blockage out of his throat and claw the words out of the white void in his mind. “I. Well. There was a man. In prison.”

“Go on.”

The sour flavor on the back of Dustin’s tongue was too terribly familiar. His voice sounded distant. “He raped me.”

“Mhm.” The tone was strange. When a slick finger touched Dustin’s asshole, he flinched, and the doctor said sharply, “Keep still.”

It was not the standard prostate exam. The finger wiggled and pressed. The soreness had started to fade, but it wasn’t gone entirely, and Dustin struggled to hold in the pained noises that wanted to escape. At one point, the pressing sent a tingling zap along Dustin’s nerve endings, and his abs spasmed. He wasn’t sure whether he was more mortified or horrified to feel the familiar warmth start in his groin.

The finger was still inside him when the doctor’s raspy voice said, “Masturbate.”

“What?”

“Masturbate, 107.” The finger withdrew. “I need a sperm sample. We need to make sure your little swimmers aren’t still swimming before we pass you on.”

In one way, the explanation made sense. In another way, the tone was all wrong. Anticipation? Humor? In any event, the request was mortifying. It seemed that Dusin was not past shame after all. His mouth filled with a thick layer of sour spit, and when he swallowed, the solid curve of the collar pressed against the front of his throat.

A twist of familiar nausea started low in Dustin’s stomach, but then a strange, dreamy sensation of unreality started at the crown of his head and washed slowly toward his feet. Almost as if he was watching himself from the outside, Dustin’s hand went to his dick. He was by no means ready to go, and he started the tugging, massaging process of warming himself up. Or trying to.

Even though he felt like he barely fit inside his own skin, his mind kept touching the context of his situation before shying away again. He didn’t normally do this with his legs so far spread, his junk on display for a stranger.

Dustin barely noticed the crinkle of foil. His mind didn’t put any significance on that right away, he was too focused on trying to get hard in such a ridiculously embarrassing situation while his mind floated like a kite whose strings had been cut. It wasn’t until he felt the cloth brush against the insides of his thighs and something larger than a finger press against his asshole that he asked himself, Was that a condom wrapper?

Dustin dropped the hardon he’d been able to massage to life and started to try to sit up. “What—”

A hand pressed hard into Dustin’s ribs. “You lie back, 107,” the raspy-voiced doctor said. “I said jerk off. Do you want me to zap you?”

The pressure at his asshole increased. His lube-slick hole didn’t put up much resistance against the similarly lube-slick condom, not as hard as the doctor was pressing.

Dustin’s head swam. “No, I just—”

The rest cut off when the doctor thrust through the last bit of Dustin’s resistance and into him. The cramp came, and the jolt of the man’s pelvis pushing home made Dustin’s sore balls ache.

“Or don’t. I can have you back tomorrow. No one’s going to notice a little more anal trauma. It’s not as if I’m damaging the property.” The doctor sounded maliciously delighted, like a cartoon villain explaining his evil plans to the cartoon hero. But Dustin was no hero.

The doctor pulled out and started back in, but the sickening feeling that lurched through Dustin wasn’t just the cramp of being fucked too deeply when his body wasn’t ready for it. It was also the way the doctor had said ‘the property.’

No one was going to save him. As if in a dream, Dustin’s hand went to his dick.

“Not going to beg? Threaten?” The doctor’s voice purred. “Shame.”

Dustin did not threaten or beg. He stroked his thickening dick with the feeling of surreality that often accompanied nightmares. The doctor picked up his pace.

Every time that Dustin found what he thought was the most horrifying thing in a litany of horrifying things, he discovered something new. As he got hard and as his body got used to the size and depth of the object moving inside him, as the cramping subsided, as the angry sensation of his jolted balls retreated somehow, it actually started to feel good. There was a sick physical pleasure to both the slight friction at his asshole and the slide of something hard against a place inside him that occasionally sent a sparking sensation radiating out under his skin and made his cock throb with unexpected sensation.

He hated it. It was obscene, it was disgusting, and the rational part of his brain was screaming. But it was screaming from a different room. When he built toward his orgasm, the intensity of the rhythmic pulses became almost overwhelming. And as he tipped over the edge, the familiar punch of pleasure was accompanied by a delicious spreading warmth under his skin that he’d never felt before and never wanted to feel again.

Dustin was still gasping from it when the doctor’s ungloved hands gripped the tops of Dustin’s legs for leverage. The unseen man shuddered, and Dustin didn’t think he imagined the subtle pulse against his too-taut hole.

The doctor pulled out. There was the smacking sound of latex. Conversationally, the doctor said, “It’s always harder to get off through a condom, but until the STI results come back, well.”

The hand that stroked through the spatter of cum on Dustin’s stomach was completely unexpected and made him yelp. Dr. Caldwell chuckled. “Shame. I won’t be seeing you again after all, unless your swimmers are still swimming. A man who enjoys being raped enough to get off the first time is rare. I can see why your prison boyfriend liked you.”

Am I actually dreaming? It was just too impossibly, cartoonishly evil. But the post-coital relaxation that was spreading through his muscles suggested otherwise.

And the ungloved hand that stroked the inside of Dustin’s thigh was too real. Dustin flinched from it and shuddered.

“Whichever servant supervisor gets you is going to be lucky to have you, 107. Hope to see you again soon.”

A fine shuddering continued to run through Dustin’s body even after the doctor left and the nurse came back in, unstrapped him, and told him he could get dressed. It had nothing to do with a post-coital reaction. He had never expected to wish that he had been properly sterilized. He had never expected to so fervently wish that he hadn’t been born with a cock to begin with.

When he was led out of the doctors’ area and traded into the hands of the BISA agent, he was almost stumbling. And now he understood why the previous person’s footsteps had been so uneven.

Chapter Text

The pen was purgatory. Time passed even more slowly than it had in jail, especially for the first two days, when Dustin lived in fear of a BISA agent coming to the fence and calling his number. It didn’t happen, though. It seemed that his swimmers were no longer swimming.

As Bill had speculated, two more men were put into the pen before the BISA agents started filling the next. Each was called out the day after he arrived and came back pale. One of them was called out went twice. Dustin was careful to not make eye contact after they returned.

With ten men living in an amount of space only comfortable enough for them to lie down without being on top of each other, there was only space in the middle to work out when people were standing. Who got to use the central space was decided by jostling. Maybe that was what the fight in other pen had been about, or maybe it had been something different. Ten men caged like dogs waiting to be put down was not a stable situation, and Dustin kept his eyes on the current, as if by doing so, he could control the flow.

For Dustin, there was nothing to do but talk, and meals provided the only routine. Although Dustin came to know the stories of each of the other men, he made pains to not get attached. He didn’t think that he would see any of them again.

At first, the publicity and closeness of bodily functions was embarrassing, but people simply turned their eyes away from anyone using the toilet or masturbating. Dustin touched the collar once in his sleep, but only once. After that, he slept with his fists firmly fixed in the pockets of his sweats, even though that left his head on bare concrete.

On the first Saturday, five people were called out of the pen in no particular. Bill was not one of them. Dustin’s sleeping place moved toward the gate, and one by one, the men were replaced. Nothing else changed.

When the next Saturday came around, Bill was again proved knowledgeable. The guards started calling numbers after breakfast, and 107 was called.

The only person to say anything to Dustin as he stepped through the open door of the pen was Bill. “Good luck, son.”

“You too, old man.”

“No talking,” the BISA agent warned.

The process of being removed from the warehouse was very much like the process of being put into it, though it was more of an assembly line through the locker room’s benches, sinks, and stalls. For the first time in a week and a half, Dustin was allowed to shave and brush his teeth and floss. Removing the gritty film from his teeth was exquisite. He was dressed in fresh grey sweats with no number, and he was also given socks and soft, baglike shoes before the black bag was put over his head.

Dustin hadn’t missed the bag, but it didn’t panic him the way it had the first time. His time in purgatory had emptied him of emotion. Without much to do but think, he’d wept more than once about his girls, his mother, how their lives were passing without him. How his life and dreams had been taken from him. He’d raged more than once at what Jacob had done to him just to win a custody battle. After a certain point, the grief shifted from the bright agony of a fresh burn to a dull ache that only flared up when he prodded it.

The nontime of the pen also had created a certain inertia in him, one of sitting quietly and letting time pass without chasing it anywhere. Like a dog chasing a car, chasing time only made it more likely for Dustin to get hit and flattened. He simply sat and waited.

“Stand up, 107.” It might have been Tanaka’s voice.

After Dustin stood, there was a brief press against his right ear and a beep.

“There you go, sir. Number 107, Dustin Merrill. Do you want him shacked for transport?”

The voice that responded was tenor, and Dustin could hear the shrug in it. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary. He scored high on obedience and docility.”

I did? But was he really surprised?

A hand firmly gripped Dustin’s left elbow, and the tenor voice said, “Come on, then.”

Dustin went, taking the first steps of what became a very long journey. After a walk through the office building and through a cold-whipped area that had to be a garage, the tenor-voiced man opened a car door and put Dustin in it, putting a hand on top of Dustin’s head to keep him from smashing it on the doorframe. The interior smelled strongly of air freshener, and Dustin would have bet money on its being a rental, if he had been allowed to have money.

The tenor-voiced man wrapped Dustin’s hand around a cool bottle. It took him a moment to figure out that it had a straw, and Dustin took slow sips of cool water that was subtly flavored with cucumber. It was a treat, but it didn’t mean anything. It was a car that Dustin’s mind didn’t chase.

They were dropped off outside of what Dustin shortly came to realize was an airport terminal. It was full of scuffing feet, conversations, and announced flights. A pang struck the base of Dustin’s throat, under the hard curve of the blister on the front of the collar, but it had nothing to do with being shocked. He wondered less about where he was going than when he would be coming back. The seven years he had figured? Fewer? More?

The tenor-voiced man took him to the bathroom at the airport terminal. His bag wasn’t taken off, but it wasn’t too hard to aim at a urinal, and his sense of embarrassment at someone being nearby when he did it had faded after the close confines of the pen.

After, they settled into a seating area, where they sat until a flight was called for Los Angeles. The tenor-voiced man tugged Dustin’s elbow.

Los Angeles? Dustin had never been farther west than a tax-prep conference in St. Louis.

The idea shook him out of the entropy that had developed while he was in the pen. All of a sudden, he felt like a human being again, and he wanted to ask the man gripping his elbow who he was, where they were going, and what he’d be doing when they got there. It was only the weight against his throat that stopped him. He didn’t know whether the admonition against only speaking when spoken to applied with the tenor-voiced man, and he didn’t want to find out in the middle of an airport. Safer to stay quiet for now.

Docile. Obedient. The words scratched at Dustin’s mind in a way he didn’t like, but if it was the same as calling him a coward, it wasn’t anything that Dustin didn’t already know about himself.

As they were seated in the plane, Dustin vaguely wondered how many indentured servants he’d seen on his flight to St. Louis. Was he remembering correctly that the flight attendants had worn collars? Blue collars? If he hadn’t been in grey sweats with a bag on his head, would anyone have known that he was indentured? How many times had he seen people with bags on their heads? At least a few. Collars? He’d never kept track.

Dustin fell asleep on the plane and woke up to the tenor-voiced man pulling on his elbow again. “Come on.”

Dustin went. Outside the airport terminal, the air felt impossibly warm, and the sun was amazing on the visible parts of his winter-starved skin. It was warm enough that, if he stayed in his sweats, he was going to overheat.

Fortunately, there was only a brief wait for a car, and the interior was air-conditioned. The tenor-voiced man again put a hand on top of Dustin’s hood to keep him from bumping it on the doorframe, then nudged him to scoot over. Dustin scooted, felt around for a seatbelt, and fastened it. This car had more of a smell that Dustin could only describe as lived-in.

“Hey, René,” the tenor-voiced man said after a round of doors opening and closing.

“Mr. Henderson.” There was a subtle accent to the voice, and though René’s name had been pronounced as if it were French, that wasn’t quite it. “Where to?”

“The house.”

The car shifted gently into motion. “Should I call ahead?”

“I’ll do it. I have other calls to make.”

“Sounds good.”

Unexpected pressure came down on Dustin’s head and he flinched away.

“Hold still or I’ll zap you.” Henderson's flat-voiced warning told Dustin that he wouldn’t hesitate.

Heart pounding with sudden adrenaline, Dustin said, “Yes, sir.”

The thing that came down over Dustin’s head pressed tight against the sides. Henderson wiggled it until Dustin’s ears were cupped, and Dustin realized that the man had put headphones over his bag. The sound of Henderson saying something to René was muted, and then low hip-hop started playing in the headset. The lyrics seemed to be a mix of English and French that Dustin had trouble following. The energy of the music did nothing to tamp down the anxiety that had been slowly building in his chest since the plane had been called for Los Angeles.

Time yet again became a thing that happened around Dustin instead of something that he traveled through. It was a breeze, and he was a leaf, carried on it without any real sense of direction. He didn’t think that he was in the car too long, or at least he couldn’t recall listening to that much music, and he didn’t develop an urgent thirst or need to pee. He was hungry, but that wasn’t surprising. The last thing he’d eaten had been breakfast in the pen.

The car stopped, the headphones came off, and the door on Dustin’s side of the car opened. A hand grabbed his elbow, and Henderson said, “Come on.”

The heat and sun were gone. From the smell of oil and exhaust, Dustin thought that they must be in a garage or loading area. Henderson only helped him out of the car, then let him go.

“Is this the secretary or the gardener?” The new voice was in the middle ranges for a man, but there was a gruff yet resonant quality to it that rang almost familiar off of Dustin’s ears.

“The secretary,” Henderson replied. “We didn’t win the gardener.”

The relief that flowed through Dustin’s limbs almost took him off his feet. There were a wide variety of possible jobs that he’d imagined. Secretary hadn’t been one of them, but it had been far from the worst thing.

Whichever servant supervisor gets you is going to be lucky to have you. Despite the warmth, Dustin’s skin broke out in goosebumps.

Something pressed against the right side of Dustin’s bag, there was a scanner’s beep, and then Henderson said, “I’ve got stuff to do, Oman. You have him?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The man called Oman sounded distracted. A door closed somewhere behind Dustin. After a while of increasingly anxious waiting on Dustin’s part, Oman said, “Right. Let’s see how much they glowed you up for the photos.”

The hood was pulled off of Dustin’s head, and as much as he wanted to know about his surroundings, his eyes squinted closed. After the darkness of the bag, the LED lights inside the garage were blinding. Unfamiliar, strong fingers gripped Dustin by the jaw, turned his head one way, and then turned it the other. “Hmn. Not bad, actually. You don’t look as old as you are.”

“Thanks?” Dustin ventured the word without thinking, then tensed for a shock that didn’t come.

The fingers let go of Dustin’s jaw. “It’s useful.”

Dustin cautiously squinted his eyes open. He was indeed in a garage, but his attention immediately focused on Oman. The man was Dustin’s height, built like a truck that had been dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans. His hair was shaved tight on the sides with a low mohawk of tight coils on top. It was a signature look.

“Holy shit,” Dustin blurted. He recognized the man even though he hadn’t been on the pro wrestling circuit since Dustin had been a teenager. “Are you Mad-Heart Oman?”

The broad-shouldered man didn’t look up from the tablet. Dustin noticed that even his hands had muscles. “Mr. Hart, to you.”

Dustin felt more than a little star struck. It felt like the background of the room faded in gradually, not that there was much to see. It was a single-car garage, and the black car occupying was a nondescript but very clean SUV. Nothing hung on the walls, and the poured concrete flour was immaculate. A wide, arcing window patterned with square muntins looked out onto a greenspace, and there was a door in the corner nearby.

Fortunately, Hart didn’t spend enough time on the tablet for the view to become monotonous. He slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans and crooked a finger at Dustin. “Come on, izzy, we’ve got some shit to do.”

Dustin’s brain tried out ‘sissy,’ ‘pussy,’ and ‘ese’ before realizing that he was being called a derogatory name for indentured servant. It only took him that long to arrive at because he’d never been called it before.

As he followed the burly ex wrestler to the human-sized door at the back of the garage, Dustin almost immediately began overheating. It was much warmer than a Chicago winter. A sunlit stone walkway ran from the garage to a secondary building whose front was faced in grey-and-white fieldstones. Under a slight overhang of the brown, terra-cotta-style roof, a double-door of deep-brown wood around two large, slender panes of glass sat under an archway topped with a decorative, dark keystone.

Hart opened the door and gestured, and Dustin went through into a foyer. The air was blessedly cool and smelled pleasantly of wood soap. The room was wood-floored and cream-walled, and it was completely empty but for a sand-covered rug and a circular, glass-faced chandelier. A hall led straight ahead, but Hart turned to the right, where a dark-framed door was set into the wall. The door across the foyer appeared identical.

Dustin licked his lips and finally worked himself up to the possibility of being shocked. “Mr. Hart, I have experience in accounting, but I’ve never done secretarial. Will there be an orientation?”

Hart chuckled, opened the door, and gestured for Dustin to go through. “ ‘Secretary’ means fuck-bunny around these parts, but sure, there’ll be an orientation.”

Dustin, the ‘freeze’ master of fight, flight, or freeze, stopped waking as if the wood floor had swallowed his feet. He’d heard of men having the blood drain from their faces, but he’d always thought that it was just a phrase. Now, it felt as if someone had turned on a faucet under his chin and all of the blood flowed out, leaving him woozy and fuzzy-headed.

“I’m sorry, I think there’s been some sort of mistake,” someone said in Dustin’s voice.

“Nope,” Hart said. “Move, izzy. We don’t have all day.”

Dustin’s feet were as heavy as blocks of lead. He moved first one, then the other. But he was not walking toward the door. He was walking backward. “There’s been a mistake.”

The pain that arced across Dustin’s neck was exquisite, certainly not a ‘level one’ correction. He immediately started to choke, coughed out a breath, and couldn’t drag one back in. Automatically, he reached up to pull away whatever was cutting off his air. His fingertips hooked onto smooth, grey plastic, and a bolt of white lightning took his feet out from under him.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t clear to Dustin how much of his choking and gagging was because he’d made the dire mistake of touching the collar and how much was because Hart had wrapped a hand through the back of his sweater and was dragging him along the floor, but it was pretty academic. It felt like someone had seared his throat as if it was a fine fish dish on a restaurant’s special menu, and stupidly, he reached for his throat again.

He stopped himself in time and just held onto the front of his sweater. Eventually, his throat opened and he was able to gasp in a breath, only to start coughing. Hart gave Dustin’s sweater one last hard jerk and Dustin slid across a tiled floor, coming to a stop against a toilet stall in what looked like a small locker room.

My life is all warehouses and locker rooms, Dustin thought, dizzy.

Hart towered over Dustin only because he was standing and Dustin was not. His hand was wrapped around something. His dark eyes held no pity. “Look, Merrill. I don’t know what sort’ve work you thought you’d be doing. But you’ve been hired for sex work. And you’re going to do sex work, one way or another.”

Dustin’s head was spinning, and he chose to believe that it was from lack of oxygen. “One way, or…”

“Yeah, one way or another. Right now, we’ve got you down as secretary for the boss’s kid.” Catching Dustin’s look of horror, Hart corrected himself. “He’s not a kid, he’s turning twenty-one in a few months. I’m going to guess you’re a present. But if that doesn’t work out, I’ll put you on the house list. That doesn’t work? Cut our losses and sell you to some house in Vegas.” Hart paused. “You don’t want that.”

“I don’t,” Dustin whispered. He didn’t know what the ‘house list’ was, but in the context of sex work, he didn’t like the sound of it. Much less the sound of ‘some house in Vegas.’

Hart crouched down. His knees popped like cap guns. “That’s right. You don’t. There’s one more thing you have to understand. I’m the boss.” After another pause, Hart said, “I need to hear you say that.”

“You’re the boss,” Dustin confirmed. Now, he was just hoarse instead of breathless, but no less dizzy.

Hart reached out a hand and Dustin flinched back, but Hart just left his hand there expectantly. When Dustin took it, the man stood and pulled Dustin to his feet. “I am. When I tell you to move, you move. Right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now. You’re going to get out of those clothes. We’re going to transfer you to the house system. Then we’re going to get you dressed up and ready to go.”

After Hart unclasped Dustin’s hand, he swayed on his feet. He realized with a shame that just barely rippled underneath his pervasive horror that the baggy sweatpants clung to the insides of his thighs. He had wet himself again. He staggered on weak legs over to the space Hart had gestured at, and he found a bench sitting against one wall across from a bank of lockers on the other.

Dustin started to peel off the sweats and tight white underwear. He still felt breathless and dizzy.

Sex work. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around the concept. One of the records from his mom’s abolitionist meetings flashed into his mind, a young woman sobbing about the rapes she’d been forced to endure.

It’s not as if I’m damaging the property, a raspy voice said in Dustin’s head. A fine trembling began in his hands. He’d known that it was a possibility. But it was the sort of thing that was vastly overblown, and in any case, happened to other people.

Like prison rape.

Laughter echoed off the hard walls, shaky and shrill, and Dustin was surprised to realize that it was his.

“Don’t have hysterics, Merrill,” Hart warned.

Dustin choked down on the rest of the laughter, turning it into painful hiccups, and Hart pointed across the locker room to the toilet stall he’d been forcefully introduced to and a few frosty-plastic curtains that presumably held a shower or two. “Go wash up and come back.”

Dustin did as he was told. What else was he going to do? At least the stall had a door and the shower had a cheap ring of curtain, unlike the BISA processing area. Dustin dawdled in the privacy of the shower until Hart’s voice rolled like thunder under the hissing rain of the shower. “We don’t have all day.”

Dustin shut off the shower and opened the curtain. Hart thrust a towel at him, an object of impossible size and lushness. After Dustin finished rubbing it over his skin and hair, he dropped it into a hamper. He was seated back on the locker-room bench in no time.

Hart had a cattle prod in one hand, and Dustin looked at it with sick fascination. The musclebound man said, “Don’t act like a fool.”

“I won’t.”

Hart first unfastened Dustin’s earring, muttering something about piercings and infections, and then he touched something to the back of Dustin’s collar. Dustin flinched before realizing that if he was going to be shocked, it already would have happened. The collar went tumbling into his lap, bounced off his thigh, and clattered to the floor.

Now he understood why Hart had told him not to act like a fool. Dustin wondered what other people had tried. Himself, he couldn’t think of anything that would serve to get him out of his predicament. There was a physically competent, if retired, professional wrestler standing over him. The only thing that he knew was that he was somewhere within a comfortable driving distance of LAX.

Maybe that was why Dustin’s personality tests or whatever they had been had classified him as docile. He lacked an ability to think around corners.

And don’t forget that you’re a coward.

Gold flashed in Hart’s hand and cold, flexible ring was pulled around Dustin’s neck. The new band fit in precisely the same place as the old one, the heavy blister in front against his throat. There was a touch to the back of Dustin’s neck after the clasp clicked home.

“Glad you’re not being stupid,” Hart said.

“What could I have done,” Dustin said bleakly. It wasn’t a question.

“Exactly.” Hart put the cattle prod back in a locker. “Do you know how to put on eyeliner?”

“No.”

“We’re short on time. I’ll put it on you this once. The kid likes the look. It’s one of those things you’ll have to learn in ‘orientation.’ ” There was a sardonic twist to the man’s voice as he threw Dustin’s own word back at him.

At the idea that they needed to hurry, Dustin started to feel lightheaded. His stomach roiled with a nausea in a place that it hadn’t since he’d escaped being Logan’s bitch. “Okay.”

He sat with his eyes closed while a buff man with a steady hand used a tiny brush around his eyelids. When Hart was done, he sat back on his haunches, looked at Dustin critically, and said, “It’ll have to do for now. Later, we’ll find a shape that suits your eyes better.”

“Okay.” When Dustin opened his eyes, the slight feeling of dislocation, of dizziness, didn’t fade.

Hart went to the locker, came back with two pieces of fabric, held them out, and said, “Put these on.”

Dustin stared at what Hart was dangling from his fingertips. The scraps of ribbon couldn’t possibly be clothing, and the larger square of fabric was embroidered in golden letters that read ‘Unwrap Me.’

“You can’t be serious,” Dustin said.

“I’m always serious. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Dustin swallowed hard, the lump of thick saliva feeling like it barely slid past the press of the collar against his throat. “Yes, Mr. Hart.”

Over Dustin’s head went a gold-colored ribbon with a ridiculous bow that landed right between his nipples, like an Olympic gold medal for sexual presents. The other thing, Dustin turned over in his hands. It was clearly a thong of some kind, also golden in color, but there didn’t seem to be enough to it. There were no leg holes.

He cleared his throat past the wad of concrete trying to block it. “I’m not trying to be difficult, Mr. Hart. But. I have no idea how to put this on.”

Hart sighed. “Stand up and spread your legs.” His subsequent grumble didn’t sound directed at Dustin. “Accountant. Pfah. I wanted a prostitute. But what do I know.”

The blood rushed to Dustin’s face, but he did as he was told. Hart used a finger to pin end of the widest piece of fabric against Dustin’s lower back then drew the fabric rectangle between Dustin’s legs. He made sure that Dustin’s junk was tucked into it, then pulled it up in front. “Hold this.”

Trying to ignore that he’d started to get a little thick from another man handling him, Dustin held the piece of fabric against his skin. It barely came up to his pelvic bone, and the laces that dangled from it tickled down the fronts of his thighs. Hart took the strings, laced them through a couple of small eyelets in the back part, then pulled them back to the front and tied them into a bow. When Dustin stopped pinning the fabric in place with his fingers, it shifted a little, but the double-line of lacing was tight enough that it didn’t slip off. The dangling ends of the bow emphasized Dustin’s bulge.

“If he pulls on this,” Hart said in a tone that told Dustin he thought it was likely to happen, “make sure you have your legs far enough apart that it falls cleanly.”

“Legs apart,” Dustin mumbled.

“Right. Now, stop slouching. Stand up straight.” Hart adjusted Dustin’s posture with touches of his hands. “Head here. Shoulders here. Hips here. Spread your legs more. Stand on your full feet. Shoulders down and back. Chin up a bit more. There you go. You’re going to stand just like that.”

It was a confident pose that matched Dustin’s feelings exactly zero percent. “Yes, sir.”

Hart threw a calf-length, light-colored poncho over him and pulled up the hood. He also dropped flip-flops on the floor and beckoned for Dustin to step into them.

Dustin must have looked as surprised as he felt. Hart frowned at him. “I’m not going to spoil the surprise. Do you need to piss?”

“No.”

“Good. Come.”

Hart left the locker room, and Dustin followed him out and back through the foyer. The poncho’s lightweight fabric brushed against his calves and his almost-naked body underneath. Branching from the utilitarian, straight walkway between the garage and the outbuilding was the curving sweep of a different walkway. As Dustin followed Hart along the long, winding pathway around a massive, Tuscan-style mansion set on pristinely landscaped grounds, the sense of surreality started to come back hard. It had to be a nightmare. What had happened in jail, the indenture, the idea of being bought for sex work. It couldn’t really be happening. Dustin was an accountant. He was a father. He couldn’t fit the pieces of everything together.

But he didn’t need to. He just needed to follow Hart and do as he was told, and. And what? Things wouldn’t be alright. But they wouldn’t be as bad as they could be. Dustin did believe that.

Chapter Text

Like the smaller building Dustin had been brought from, the house was faced with white and grey and light-brown fieldstone, or something that looked like it, with a roof of brown adobe tiles. After rounding the last corner of the mansion, the white fieldstone walkway curved around a bean-shaped outdoor pool that glistened under the afternoon sun, the water inside so blue that it seemed like someone had turned the color saturation all the way up. In the background, the distant drone of a small engine buzzed, a lawnmower or perhaps a hedge trimmer. The yard was lined with a lot of hedges.

The path led to an outdoor seating area that was covered by an extension of the roof. Hart detoured Dustin around furniture that didn’t look meant for the outdoors, clustered around a fire pit that had no soot on it. Ahead was an entire window wall with a set of double doors. Hart pulled one open and gestured Dustin through.

He stepped into what appeared to be a living room, with a high, vaulted ceiling set with dark wooden beams. Except for the fieldstone accent walls, the walls were white over a pale, polished wooden floor set occasionally with sand-colored rugs. To Dustin’s left, a cluster of dark furniture surrounded a television that appeared unwisely mounted over a fireplace. To his right, the open floorplan allowed him to look past a counter island into a kitchen, where the appliances were as spotless as if they were never used.

But mostly what caught Dustin’s attention was the frame of white poles that held up a novelty-huge, chocolate-colored box. It was suspended about two feet off the floor from a complex-looking contraption that involved a pulley, and it was wrapped in a golden bow not entirely unlike the one that rested against Dustin’s chest.

Dustin stopped gawking when Hart tapped him on the shoulder. “Take off the wrap and sandals and get under the box, Merrill. Stand how I told you.”

Dustin gazed at the box with trepidation. “Am I, well. Going to be able to breathe in there?”

Hart’s voice went flat. “Don't question me when I give an order. Get under the fucking box.”

Dustin swallowed a mouthful of saliva that suddenly tasted like copper and stepped out of his sandals, pulled off the wrap, and got under the fucking box by crawling on his hands and knees on a surprisingly soft rug. No sooner had his toes cleared the edge than there was a soft sound and the box came down around him.

Dustin’s heart thumped harder. At first, he thought he was in total darkness, but then he saw circles of light at the bottom of the box and near the top. It was extremely dim, but Dustin could make out the general shape of the four close walls. From the inside, the box clearly wasn’t a box at all. It was just panels of cloth or paper held up from the top and given shape by the framework that the panels were connected to.

He stood up. Back straight, body lined up. Weight on both feet. Legs slightly apart. Shoulders down and back. Chin up. Like he’d been told. The pounding of his heart in his ears didn’t slow, though the nausea in his stomach ebbed down a bit in favor of hunger.

Time slid by like a river around a log that happened to have very good posture. The sound of distant chatter came first, then the click of a woman’s shoes on a hard surface.

A man’s deep voice came to Dustin through the muffling fabric, echoing oddly off the mix of hard and soft surfaces in the living area. It sounded as rich and smooth as old leather. “… see your face when you see what we got you.”

A voice, also in the deeper ranges but with a younger inflection, came to Dustin through the muffling box walls. “What you got me for what? Spring break?”

“Cut the ribbon and see.” The deeper voice had a hint of smug indulgence.

Dustin had no more than that moment’s warning before there was the snick of scissors. The walls of what had looked like a box fluttered down around him. It was a good thing that Dustin had been waiting in the pose that Hart had showed him, because he froze solid.

Three people stood in the living area between Dustin and the glass door wall that Hart had brought him in through. There were a man and woman in the background, arm in arm, but they weren’t the ones who immediately captured Dustin’s attention.

Directly in front of him, holding a pair of silver scissors, was a young man with a startled expression. His skin was a few shades darker than Dustin’s, and where Dustin’s hair had a natural wave, the young man had a mop of curls that brushed his forehead and the tops of his ears. He was attempting to cultivate a mustache and goatee, but it wasn’t going well for him. His very dark eyes were wide with surprise.

“Happy early birthday, son.” Dustin’s eyes flicked to the man in the background. He was heavyset, wearing a light grey linen suit with a white undershirt opened at the collar. The family resemblance was obvious, though the man’s nose was broader, his lips thinner, and he’d managed a full beard that was more salt than pepper. The pleasure in his son’s surprise was obvious on his face.

The father’s arm was entwined at the elbow with that of the woman at his side. She was tall and light-skinned, with a mass of wheat-colored box braids piled on her head. The sunshine-colored dress she wore was simple and elegant. She was where the rest of the young man’s face came from. The narrower jaw, the prominence of his chin, the fullness of his lips. The mother's lips were pressed together, not nearly as pleased as the father's. Dustin had the sudden and vivid impression that she would have been happier to get her son a car.

The younger man’s face broke into a grin full of very straight, artificially white teeth. Dustin's eyes darted back to him. “Holy shit, you didn’t.”

He put the scissors on a side table and stepped closer to Dustin. With him came the subtle odors of marijuana and clove. Dustin noticed in an offhand way that he was wearing jeans and a shirt with some sort of logo Dustin couldn’t read, maybe a concert shirt. He was underdressed compared to his parents. His dark eyes drank in Dustin’s features, slid down his body, then came back up. Dustin could feel his cheeks warming at the young man’s frank appraisal. “You’re really mine?”

“We can’t transfer him until you’re 21.” The father’s deep voice changed to one of warning. “And you can’t smoke until then, either, not legally. So if you’re going to do it, don’t do it where we can see you.”

“Or don’t do it at all.” The woman’s voice was flowing and lyrical, a singer’s voice, and it rang with disapproval.

Dustin stopped paying attention to their conversation. The young man had stepped even closer. His hand went to Dustin’s chest, as if to confirm that he was real. His fingers rubbed over the fine hair there, and the skin all over Dustin’s body tightened. The touch was fascinated, not tender, but he couldn’t think of the last time someone had touched his skin in a way his body could interpret as pleasant.

A familiar warmth and heaviness began to creep into Dustin’s groin. Oh, shit, fuck, please not now.

It was like willing himself to not get an erection in front of class while giving a presentation. Nerves had always affected him the opposite way, if anything. Something about the heightened heartbeat, maybe. But he really didn’t want to get an erection in front of these strangers, particularly not in this situation.

Knew you liked it, bitch, Logan’s voice whispered into Dustin’s ear from the not-too-distant past. He shivered.

The young man’s hand drew away, but his eyes moved down Dustin’s body. The gaze had no weight to it, but Dustin’s skin tightened another notch in its wake. The solid thud of his heart in his chest was starting to travel up into his throat.

The young man asked, “Aren’t most secretaries in good shape?”

“Hart’ll fix that,” the father said.

Simple as it was, Dustin had trouble following the conversation. He was profoundly aware of the silky texture of the cloth against his dick and the pressure it was providing. He dropped his chin a little, watching even though he didn’t want to. He could see the tops of the gold embroidery, the words that read ‘Unwrap Me.’ The young man’s fingers hesitated by Dustin’s stiffy, sending an unwanted thrill up Dustin’s stomach, but he didn’t touch him there. Instead, his fingers pinched one of the strings holding the thong together.

It fell away exactly like Hart had said it would. The only consolation was that the young man’s body was between the other two people in the room and Dustin’s lifting cock. The young man looked from it back up to Dustin’s face. He was no longer grinning. His expression was absolutely fascinated. He half-turned toward his parents, and his tone was hopeful. “Is he supposed to sleep in my room, or… ?”

“No.” The mother’s voice was sharp, and she got the word in before the father could answer. “He’s not trained yet, Trey, and neither are you. You could hurt him.”

Trey’s breath drew in, but before he could say what was on his mind, the father chuckled. His deep, smoothly leathery voice reverberated in the open space. “Good thing the other half of your present’s training classes. They start Monday. Too bad you’ll need to take classes on spring break, hmn?”

“I think I’ll live.” Trey grinned. Dustin thought that he might have found the grin handsome, under other circumstances. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “What’s his name?”

The question hadn’t been asked to Dustin, it had been asked to the father, as if Dustin wasn’t there. Or wasn’t capable of answering. It was like someone asking if the new puppy had a name. The humiliation at the bottom of Dustin’s stomach wasn’t new, but there was a new twist to it, like someone tightening the ratchet the other way.

“You know. I don’t actually know.”

It was only then that Trey turned back to Dustin. His eyes were still full of pleasure and fascination. “What’s your name?”

Dustin’s mouth felt as dry as if it had been coated in a fine layer of powder. Maybe it had been the leftovers from the cement that had set into his throat. He cleared it out and managed to force air through his vocal chords. “Dustin. Dustin Merrill.”

“Dustin.” The man tried Dustin’s name like it was a new flavor of ice cream, letting it linger on his tongue. “Dusty. I like that.”

That the stranger looked at Dustin like an object was calling him by his mother’s pet name set a little heat in the base of his throat. He recognized the resentment faster this time. He tried to push it aside, but stubbornly, it stayed.

Now ask me how long my indenture is, so I can say that I don’t know yet, and someone will give you an answer, Dustin mentally urged the young man.

But he didn’t. Instead, his eyes went back to Dustin’s skin, fixated on the erection that Dustin didn’t dare cover with his hands. He thought about the look on Hart’s face, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

“Trey.” The mother’s voice broke in. “We have dinner, and you’re not dressed. And I’m sure Dusty would like to put his clothes back on.”

Trey’s eyes lifted from Dustin’s dick to his face. His smile was equal parts pleasure and eagerness. “See you later, Dusty.”

Dustin didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The concrete had plugged his throat again, and the only reason he hadn’t stepped back and run was that his feet had frozen in place.

Well, not the only reason. The thought of Hart standing somewhere he couldn’t see, with a buzzer in his hands, was also a big part of why Dustin hadn’t just shoved past the guy and bolted for the door, naked or not.

Trey stepped away. He headed out of Dustin’s line of sight, toward some hallway behind him and to the right. The parents stood together for a moment, talking too low to hear, though Dustin could hear the father’s pleasure and the mother’s disapproval. Not displeasure, exactly, but she didn’t seem as happy as the father did. Their arms separated and they, too, peeled off, heading in the opposite direction from Trey.

Dustin gave a strangled little yelp as a hand touched his elbow.

“Not bad.” It was Hart. He gave a small pull on Dustin’s elbow, guiding him toward the doors in the glass wall even though Dustin felt like he was dragging heavy boots through mud. “The erection was a nice touch.”

Hart dropped the sandals by the door and tossed Dustin the poncho. Dustin hadn’t scrambled into clothes so fast since he’d been running late in high school. Without underwear, the fabric brushed against Dustin enticingly, undoing in an instant what the walking had helped with. Hart opened the door and gestured for him to go through.

Dustin squinted against the bright sun as they passed the threshold. The sunbaked rocks of the path were uncomfortably hot, even through the sandals. He forced words past his numb lips. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

Hart’s low chuckle was as gravelly as dry land sliding downhill. “I know. What matters is the kid thinks you’re into it.”

“But—”

Hart squeezed Dustin’s elbow hard enough that he thought that he could hear the bones grind together at the joint. They stopped on the path, Hart swinging Dustin to face him. The man who squinted at Dustin was Mad-Heart Oman without the costume or makeup. “Look. He’s young. He’s horny. This is going to keep him out of trouble. He thinks you’re into it, so he’s not going to think about the izzy thing too much. And you aren’t going to change that. Is that clear?”

Dustin didn’t try to pull away, but he did flinch, and Hart squeezed his elbow tighter. Pain radiated up and down his arm. “Yes, Mr. Hart, I understand.”

“Good.” The grip loosened. Hart’s expression smoothed. They began to walk again, away from the Tuscan-style mansion and toward what appeared to be a large, Tuscan-style garage. Or a Tuscan-style dollhouse for life-sized dolls. “Now. You’re going to dress and eat. Then, a house izzy will give you the orientation.”

The dream-like sensation was starting to drape back over Dustin like misty cloth made of trauma and hunger and exhaustion. Perhaps that was why he was docile as a cow. Or maybe it was just, as the tests had indicated, a part of his personality.

Chapter Text

When they were back in the locker room, Hart told Dustin to kick off his sandals and sit on the bench. Dustin obeyed. He still felt like a passenger in his own life. What else was there to do?

He watched Hart with an attachment so distant that it might have been on the moon as the broad-bodied man went to the lockers and rummaged around. He came back with one of his hands full of glinting steel and the other toting a pump-bottle of hand sanitizer and a blue rectangle.

Dustin wondered why it was always something metal that was kept in the lockers. That curiosity was also on the moon.

Hart set the equipment on the floor and knelt in front of the bench. “Look at me, Merrill.”

Dustin blinked his eyes into focus. The bright white overhead lights drew out the pattern of lighter and darker browns in Hart’s eyes.

“I’m going to do something. It’s not going to be pleasant. But before you try to struggle or whatever the fuck else? I want you to think about how much more ‘unpleasant’ unpleasant can get.”

Dustin’s skin tightened and a fine shiver ran through his body. He wasn’t already choking, but he could imagine it, and he knew how strong Hart had been when he’d dragged him across the floor and flung him into the locker room. “Okay.”

“Good.”

Hart grabbed Dustin’s knees, and Dustin instinctively resisted having them pried apart. Hart’s growl was a warning. “Merrill.”

Dustin breathed out and made his legs relax. Hart pushed them so far apart that Dustin could feel the stretch in his groin, and for a moment, the visceral sensation of paper crackling against his back was with him. Then it was gone. Only the sour taste in his mouth and the faint nausea were left behind.

Hart wedged his body between Dustin’s legs and squeezed the blue rectangle in a meaty fist. It made a popping, crunching noise, Hart gave it a brisk shake, and then he pressed the object directly against Dustin’s dick.

A startled yawp of surprise tore Its way out of Dustin’s throat. Instinct made him try to jerk his legs closed, to yank his body back along the bench, but Hart’s shoulders had set between Dustin’s legs as firmly as seasoned cement. He barked, “Merrill!”

Dustin, master of ‘freeze,’ stopped trying to struggle free. His body seized up, and then he really started to freeze, icy pain shooting up into his stomach. Goosebumps broke out on his skin and he started to shiver. He clenched his hands into fists and could feel the ragged edges of his bitten-off fingernails against his palms. One more glance down showed that Hart had moved the ice pack to the other side of Dustin’s junk.

Dustin just closed his eyes. A sick, impotent feeling dragged at him. Whatever Hart was doing to him was going to happen, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. His body still tracked the sensations, though, and his ears tracked the sounds.

Metal clattered and shifted, Hart muttered obscenities under his breath. Then he said, “This one.”

A bottle pumped squishily, and Dustin waited for the sharp tickle of rubbing alcohol to hit his nostrils, but it didn’t. Hands brushed together with the wet sound that Dustin associated with Logan’s spitting into his hand before crudely lubing up and raping him. But it was Dustin’s frozen dick and balls that were being lubed up by the hand, fondled thoroughly. His mind lurched sideways to Dr. Caldwell, lubing him up before—

Dustin shuddered. Hart growled, and he stilled.

Unfamiliar hands manipulated his dick his balls, then something cool and metal-hard joined the hands. The nauseating sensation of getting tapped in the groin hit the base of Dustin’s stomach without any of the sense of impact that usually came before. Something settled behind his balls. Then, it felt like a hand teased up his dick, or like he had been taken into a loose and teasing mouth. Something clicked.

Hart said, “Done. Probably. We’ll need to see if it’s too tight.”

Dustin dared to crack his eyes and look down, half expecting to see that he’d been circumcised or castrated or something. Instead, lube-slick metal shined in the bright lights, and a different sort of horror tickled under his diaphragm.

He knew what a cock cage was. He’d seen plenty of them in sex stores. A base ring that circled his dick and balls, fastened to a sheath around his penis. With the sheath on, he couldn’t manipulate his junk back out through the ring, and the unyielding sheath would keep him from getting hard.

Dustin had seen only plastic ones, but this one was metal, a rigid line with a downward curve tracking the top of his dick and circular ribs welded on that wrapped around like the bars of a literal prison. A small, heart-shaped padlock held the two pieces together. Dustin watched his own body with a sort of sick fascination as his balls, which had drawn up from the cold, slowly relaxed back to their usual position. Sort of.

Hart watched, too, from where he still knelt between Dustin’s legs. “Any squeezing? Pinching?”

“No.” Dustin’s voice sounded wan in his ears, almost sick.

Hart’s beefy hand reached in and gave the device a tug. It pulled Dustin’s balls forward, a sensation he usually found erotic but absolutely did not under the circumstances. Two more gentle tugs were followed by a slightly harder pull.

“Not shifting.” Hart sounded pleased. Then his tone switched to a warning. “But don’t try to get yourself out of it. Nothing hurts like pulling just one ball through.”

Sympathetic pain stabbed up into Dustin’s stomach. “I won’t, sir.”

Hart’s hand went to the inside of Dustin’s thigh. The man’s stubby nails began to track up and down, and Dustin’s gasp hissed in through his teeth. It had always been one of his more erogenous areas, and it wasn’t one of the places that had been numbed.

When the blood rushed into Dustin’s dick, it felt almost like a frost-nipped hand held under warm water. Unpleasant. He started to curl forward protectively, but a growl from Hart made him sit back up. His face flushed hot. He didn’t want to look down, but he couldn’t help himself.

Dustin’s cock thickened as the stroking fingertips dialed up his arousal like someone turning the knob on a stereo. He filled the cage until it felt like it was gripping him in a hand, not unpleasantly tight, but not loosely. Then it started to feel uncomfortable, like getting a stiffy in tight jeans without the ability to adjust himself. The pull at the back of his balls became even more maddening as his body tried to get erect.

The curve of the device held him insistently down. The pressure went from uncomfortable to painful. Dustin sucked in a pained breath, but still Hart’s fingers tickled. Dustin's dick strained against the metal prison as it tried to get hard but couldn’t. The insides of his thighs tightened, and he had to work to relax them. His breath came fast. His heart pulsed in his cock, each thudding beat making him want to tear the damned cage off.

Hart’s fingers stopped stroking. Sounding mildly critical, he said, “The ring’s right. The sheath’s a little long.”

If Dustin’s face hadn’t already been flushed, the blood would have rushed back into it. There was nothing wrong with the size of his cock.

Please let this just be a fitting.

Hart sat back on his heels and started to gather up the scattered metal pieces, the pump bottle of what had turned out to be lube, the ice pack. His movements had a dreadful finality.

“How long will I be in this thing, Mr. Hart?” Dustin hoped that the polite appellation would take any impertinence out of the question, but he ached. He needed to know.

Hart chuckled. “Until the kid unlocks it. It’s his cock now, Merrill. Even if it’s attached to your body.”

Dustin stared.

The man’s lubed hand gave the outside of Dustin’s knee a pat. “Consider yourself lucky. I bet he’ll let you out plenty. There are guys in kink-houses in Vegas who’ve been locked up for years. They only get off when they’re being milked.”

Vegas. Years. Being milked. Dustin had no idea what ‘being milked’ meant, but he had the distinct impression that he didn’t want to know.

Hart nodded at Dustin as if to confirm something, then he stood. “Shower the lube off and get dressed.”

“Yes, sir.” Dustin’s voice sounded wan in his own ears. Things had gone from fascinatingly distant to extremely and distressingly real.

In the shower, the water trickling down his body and through the cage made him start to get hard again. The cruel curve of metal didn’t let him get past ‘start.’ He had to lean against the wall, gasping in the humid soap-scented air, his hips held at a careful angle to avoid making the ache worse.

Was this how people broke their dicks? Was having a broken dick an urban legend? Would he want to break his dick to get it out of the cage?

The last question was clear hyperbole, and Dustin hoped that if his dick did any breaking, it would be breaking the cage apart. Which, well. Seemed unlikely.

After Dustin had scrubbed the lube off his body and the cage, the brushes of his fingers against his hot skin though the metal bars an extremely specific torture, he carefully toweled himself off. Hart came over and showed him how to use a blow-dryer set on cool to dry the area around the collar without risking a touch on it.

Surely, he couldn’t wear the collar at all times, in all showers. February in Los Angeles so far felt like June in Chicago. After two days in the sun, his neck would start to reek like unwashed feet. He probably already smelled.

Hart took Dustin back to the bench and, after laying out clothing like a particularly abusive father in the apology part of his cycle, he gave Dustin a thin belt with straps. That Dustin was supposed to put on his belt without his underwear short-circuited his brain, and after grumbling, Hart did it for him. The straps hooked to the cage, easing some of the weight of the metal contraption off his pelvis.

As if he’d decided that Dustin might be too much of an idiot to dress himself, Hart gave Dustin the other pieces of clothing one by one. A pair of tight grey boxer briefs. White socks. Jeans. A faded blue t-shirt. Dustin put on the perfectly normal clothing with something between confusion and relief. From his time in the gift box and the cock cage, he’d expected to be kept in kink gear full-time, or just kept around naked.

Dry-toned, Hart said, “You won’t have clothes of your own until the kid gives you some. There’s basics in the laundry room. Move some up to your dresser. But don’t be a dick about it. You’re not the only guy in your size.”

“Okay.” The collar of the t-shirt was low enough that Dustin’s gold-colored collar was visible above it, and it reminded him of the most important question that he didn’t yet have an answer for. “Mr. Hart. Can I ask. How long is my term of indenture?”

Hart gave Dustin an even look. “Ask your social worker. I don’t do the ‘how many days left’ bullshit.”

Dustin’s eyes shifted away and he nodded. Hart dug an iPhone out of his back pocket and dialed a number. “Hey. We’ve got a new one. The kid’s gift. He’s going to need dinner, then the tour. Yeah.”

Hart hung up, then frowned. “Shit, I need to get you a phone. Stay here.”

Bemused, Dustin turned to watch the burly man amble to a narrow door past the stalls and into another room. A few moments later, he lumbered back out and underhanded something black and compact to Dustin. It was a Motorola flip phone so retro that Dustin wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d need to pull out an antenna to get a signal. A piece of white electrical tape was on the back, and the name ‘Merrill’ printed on it was so fresh that it still smelled of Sharpie.

“That stays with you whenever you have a pocket for it. The numbers are preprogrammed.” Hart lifted a thick finger at Dustin. “No outside calls. None. Do you get me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait on the bench until Luka gets here. Be back at 7 am sharp.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re doing good so far, Merrill. Don’t disappoint me.”

“I’ll… try not to,” Dustin mumbled to Hart’s retreating back. If the man heard him on his way back to the narrow-doored room, he didn’t respond.

When he was alone, Dustin eased down to the bench, turning the phone over in his hands. He shifted uncomfortably. The unfamiliar weight of the cock cage didn’t play well with the tight briefs and jeans. The way it was sitting pressed it against his pelvic bone painfully hard, and he couldn’t jiggle it loose or shift it from the outside.

After a nervous glance toward the locker-room door, Dustin unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans and stuck a hand down the front of his briefs to see if he could get the cage somewhere more comfortable.

Of course, that was when the door opened and someone new breezed into the room.

Chapter Text

Dustin was wrist-deep in the front of his boxers when the door to the locker room opened. He jerked his hand out and started to zip the fly, but he was too slow to not get caught.

“Jerking off to me already?” The person who had come through the door was tall and skinny, pale-skinned, hawk-nosed, and with long, straight brown hair and a very well-defined beard. An eclectic combination of jewelry complemented the geometric-patterned shirt that flowed to thigh-length over pants of undyed linen.

Was it possible to be embarrassed so many times in one day that your cheeks simply became the place that your blood went when it was at rest? Dustin found himself hoping that Luka was not the sort of person who had an easy time telling when a man with skin darker than beach sand was blushing.

Luka lifted a spidery finger at Dustin and used it while speaking like a conductor might use a baton. The bracelets even clattered like a distant percussion section. “You might be looking at me and thinking that I am the most handsome man you’ve seen in your life. But I assure you, you would be quite wrong. I am no man. I’m exceptionally ungendered, I use they/them pronouns, and if you fuck that up, I will piss in your shoes.”

“I wasn’t, it’s just that the thing they put on me is uncomfortable.” Dustin trailed off, his brain catching up with the rest of what had been said. Luka was not what Dustin thought of when he thought about nonbinary people. It was the beard, Dustin decided. Then he hoped that the pause hadn’t been too awkward. “And I won’t mess it up.”

Not that Dustin even had shoes to piss in.

Luka crooked their finger at Dustin. “Fantastic. Come, padawan, we have much to discuss.”

It wasn’t until Dustin stood that he realized that the gold circlet around Luka’s neck wasn’t simply another accessory but a collar like Dustin’s own. Had Hart mentioned something about that? Time had gone foggy so often lately that it was hard to remember. Dustin wasn’t sure whether he had to follow the orders of other indentured servants, or even how much he had to follow the orders of anyone but Hart and presumably Trey, but it didn’t seem like a polite thing to ask the person who was going to lead him around.

A fountain of words spilled from Luka’s mouth as Dustin crossed to them. “Now, we’re in the izzy building, as they say when they mean to be insulting. Otherwise, they refer to it as the ‘servants’ quarters,’ even though we residents of said quarters are all aware of what we are. Here you have the locker room. Hart lives here. Now, if you’ll follow me this way…”

Dustin trailed Luka through the building like the overwhelmed tail of a particularly stylish Irish setter while the foyer, kitchen, dining area, gym, living room, laundry, and supply room were all pointed out. Everything was neat and clean. The floors were of light-colored wood with sand-colored rugs, and Dustin decided that that was where the pervasive aroma of wood soap came from. The absolute bounty of windows were hung with white curtains barely thicker than sea spray, drenching the rooms in sunlight. The only thing that seemed strange was that the place was almost empty.

He slipped the question in during one of the rare moments that Luka had paused in the narration. As they stood on the edge of a large and unoccupied living room, Dustin wondered out loud, “Is it usually so empty?”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon, our adorable new izzy. What did you expect?”

It felt so much later. “I’m sorry. I flew in from Chicago this morning, after spending more than a week in, uh, I think it was a basement.”

Luka’s lips pursed. “The early birthday present everyone has been aflutter over, purchased directly from a BISA warehouse? How lucky you are. In any case, this is the stairway to the dormitory.”

Hadn’t Hart mentioned food? Dustin cleared his throat a little. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hart said something about eating?”

Luka went up the stairs anyway, barely pausing at the landing. “Yes, I know, and I heard Mr. Hart.” They put subtle, sarcastic emphasis on the honorific. “But you aren’t going to tattle on me, are you? I’m behind on the main house’s bathrooms, much less those here, and watching you eat isn’t going to help anyone. Come on.”

“Okay.” Dustin didn’t see much option but to follow Luka up the stairs to a long hallway lined with doors.

“Izzy quarters,” Luka announced cheerfully. Their repeated use of the derogatory term was staring to jangle on Dustin’s nerves. “Each door with its own fantastically gilded name plate, which should make yours easy to find even before you’ve learned who else sleeps where. That, and you’re by the bathrooms, with a delightful view of the back of a garage. The most desirable rooms in the house, and so lucky that nobody fought you for them.”

As he followed Luka’s long stride toward what presumably would be his room, Dustin looked at the other doors. All of the other doors. “I didn't expect there would be so many rooms.”

Luka shrugged their narrow shoulders and gave an expressive flip of a hand. “Housekeeping, groundskeeping. A cook. A mechanic. They all have their own drivers, though Trey’s doesn’t see much action, since he prefers to drive himself. Mr. Brook’s legal assistant. His secretary.” At that, Luka slid a sidelong sly smile to Dustin, then resumed going full-speed-ahead. “Mrs. Brook’s assistant. A sommelier, though what she does all day, I have no idea. The house’s general assistant. Security is pretty much the only non-izzy staff, and of them, Hart is the only one living on the grounds.”

“Is there a, uh, house secretary?”

“No. Which is good for the nonexistent person who is not in such a demanding position, or shall we say ‘positions,’ because security is horny as fuck. And here we are! Your room.” Luka pointed to a door on the left with an empty nameplate. “Have I mentioned the convenient location relative to the bathrooms?” Their hand waved at the next door down. “They, too, are dorm-style, so it’s fun. We do try to not wave at each other with our hands behind our backs, if you take my meaning.” Dustin did not. “Be considerate.”

Dustin hesitated and started to reach for the wing-handle door to the empty room, but Luka shifted on their feet. “Can I show you to your meal? You’ll have plenty of room time, I’m sure, even with all that they have to explore. And I really need to get back to my cleaning. No one has had my name in their mouth in months, and I prefer to keep it that way.”

Hand dropping, Dustin said, “No, of course. I’m starving, actually.”

“I’m sure you are, sweetheart. Let’s go back down to the kitchen, shall we?”

Dustin followed Luka back the way they had come. “What does it mean, if someone has your name in their mouth?”

“Nothing pleasant,” Luka said with a smile as bright as it was insincere.

The kitchen was home to two very large refrigerators and a good deal of spotless kitchen equipment. The smell of baking chicken lingered tantalizingly on the air, though the stove was off. Luka gestured to the fridge. “All food is meal-prepped and labeled by Chef Grewitz every couple of days, except on Fridays. If you eat someone else’s food, they’ll probably start spitting in yours, so be considerate.”

Dustin was noticing that the theme among the indentured was to be considerate. He was surprised that it wasn’t in block letters on the wall, like BEHAVE.

Luka’s bracelets continued to jangle as they waved their hand in broad gestures, like someone trying to paint the walls from a distance. “Microwave, toaster oven, air fryer, stove. There we have the pantries that only the cook uses. Seriously, darling, don’t sneak food, no matter how tempted you get. Larceny gets added to your term, and you will get caught.”

“What.” Dustin cleared his throat. “What’s your term? Or your cr—”

“It’s extremely impolite to ask an izzy either of those things.” Not only did Luka cut Dustin off, but for the first time, their expression lost all of its patina of joviality. “We’re all long-term. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have toilets that require my utmost and immediate attention.”

“Thank you,” Dustin called after their retreating back. Anxiety tightened his throat. He didn’t want to antagonize the people he was going to be living with. But how could he have known?

Then something twisted in the base of Dustin’s stomach, and it was the most benign thing that had twisted there lately. It was just hunger. After opening the first fridge, Dustin saw numerous neatly stacked glass bowls with snap-tight lids. He sifted through the contents of the fridges until he found a container that had ‘Merrill 2/8 PM’ on the tape label.

The glass was still a little warm under his fingertips. When he opened it, a chicken breast and a giant pile of broccoli looked up at him. So, that had been the source of the baking-chicken smell. And it looked like he was going to be on a low-carb diet until Hart got him in the kind of shape that he wanted him to be in.

It didn’t matter. It was food, freshly prepared just for him, and he hadn’t had something that wasn’t mass-produced in more than a month. Dustin devoured the chicken and broccoli lukewarm out of the glass dish without even looking for cutlery. The outside of the chicken breast was crispy and well-seasoned with pepper and rosemary, and the interior was juicy and flavorful. Dustin wasn’t about to complain that it could have used some salt, not after what he’d been eating – or not eating – over the past weeks. Broccoli had never been Dustin’s favorite vegetable, but he was so hungry and grateful that he would have eaten it raw.

Only after the food was gone did Dustin go looking through the cabinets. The plates, bowls, and cutlery were in logical places. He found glasses and refilled his glass three times from the cold-water dispenser on one of the fridges until he was satisfied.

There was a sign posted over the sink that asked that people to please rinse their dishes and put them in the dishwasher, followed by an extremely passive-aggressive smiley face. The chrome-colored dishwasher had a little flippable sign on it that was turned to display ‘dirty,’ and Dustin complied, adding his bowl and glass to the half-full racks.

It was all normal. Surprisingly normal. If it hadn’t been for the unfamiliar shifting of the cock cage in his jeans, he could have forgotten that he was going to be serving his time as a sex slave.

Dustin tested the thought, mentally turning it this way and that to consider it. But he was so tired. As it often did, his full belly had provoked a wave of extreme sleepiness, helped along by more than a week of sleeping on a concrete floor followed by jet lag. He shambled through the back of the rec room, where the TV had been turned on, without really looking around. He didn’t want any conversation at the moment. He made it up the stairs and to the room that he’d been told was his.

It was a neat, if small, room with a white-sheeted bed across from a dresser. A generous window stood at the far end of the aisle formed by the two. A light quilt had been folded at the foot of the bed, and the impossibly large and soft-looking pillow had a case with a complementary pattern. The entire room smelled like fabric-softener.

There was probably more to the room, but that was all of it that Dustin saw before falling fully clothed onto the impossibly luxurious-looking bed. It was soft and there was a pillow. Dustin was asleep almost before he even touched down.

Chapter Text

Despite having gone to sleep with the sun still up, Dustin slept long and deeply. He hadn’t thought about trying to figure out how to set an alarm on his new phone before he passed out. It ended up being a wash since the bad dream woke Dustin before the sun came back around.

In the dream, he was with Jacob again. It was one of Dustin’s classic sex dreams, all porn, no plot. He and his ex-husband were making out like they had when they had been young and in love, and then it was more than making out. But every time Dustin had tried to turn their grinding into something more, Jake refused to stroke Dustin’s cock or put his mouth on it.

Then Dream Jake rolled on top. “Your cock isn’t the one I want anymore,” he said. And then he grabbed Dustin’s dick and began to squeeze. His grin was all teeth, and the squeeze became painful. “Instead of jerking you off, maybe I should jerk it off you.”

Dustin managed to tear himself out of the dream. He found himself humping the bed like he’d done as a kid. But his dick was under him wrong, and the ache was driving him insane. He flipped onto his back on his narrow bed and wormed his hand down the front of his jeans and into his boxer briefs. His sleep-fogged mind wasn’t sure about whether he would just adjust himself or start to beat off.

Instead, his fingers banged into hot metal. Dustin woke up another notch, not yet fully coherent, but awake enough to remember that the maddening discomfort was from the way the curve of the cock cage held him down. The room was dark and he didn’t want to get up, yet, so he tried to drift in that in-between state.

Every time he breathed his way through until his body stopped trying to get it up, the lack of pain brought him back up again. He had somehow managed to worm out of his jeans and boxers without fully waking up. Sleepily, he wrapped his fingers around the sheath of the cage, the hot metal digging into his fingers and the flesh of his cock barely felt underneath it, and he started to pull. The base ring pulled against the back of his balls, but he couldn’t move the sheath itself.

And then Dustin heard Hart telling him not to pull on the cage or he might end up with one ball in, one out, likely screaming. He jerked his hand away and sat bolt upright in bed. He tried to even out his panting, tried to not think about how badly he wanted to jerk off.

Trying to not think about it was like trying not to think about a pink elephant after someone had asked you not to. He was fed and rested and waking up from a sex dream and he wanted to jerk off so badly. But eventually, the persistent throbbing of his cock was replaced by a dull ache from his balls. He wasn’t sure whether it had been caused by the pressure from the base ring or the mild blue-balling he’d given himself, but at least he was past the most intense throes of it.

With the torture over, Dustin realized that he had to piss, and he had to piss badly. Maybe the three glasses of water hadn’t been a great idea.

It was very dark in the room, though a steady yellow light came in through the window. There had to be a light switch somewhere, and he would go looking for it, but first, he didn’t want to step on the phone and break it. Dustin draped his legs off the side of the bed and fished around with his be-socked toes until he snagged the jeans. With them located, it felt safe to sit up and put his feet on the floor.

Dustin patted around until he found the right pocket, then pulled the phone out and flipped the cover up. It was about ten minutes to 5 am, according to the phone’s greyish display. Dustin stood and walked to the window.

The yellow was the light of a city at night. The closer lights were probably indirect lights pointed at a mansion, but it was impossible to tell. He’d lost himself somewhere in the twists and turns of his current residence, even though far as he’d been able to tell, it was no more than a long rectangle. He wasn't sure whether he pointed at a neighboring garage or the garage that had been his first introduction to his new ‘home.’

Dustin turned and put the window at his back. It had been a mistake to look at the brightest of the lights, because it had robbed him of his night vision. He felt the dresser on his right, first. He put his hand on the smooth wood, stretched out his other hand, and felt his way along. Eventually, his fingertips ran into the door.

After patting around with his hand, he found the switch, and he closed his eyes in anticipation of the usual flood of fluorescent or bright-white LED light that he’d become accustomed to. Instead, the light had a pleasant warm glow that was indirectly reflected from fixtures pointed at the ceiling. A glance at the room showed him that it was what he thought it was. A dresser along one side with a mirror above it, almost exactly as long as the bed in the alcove on the opposite wall. It looked like drawers could be pulled out from under the bed, too. On the side with the light switch, a closet had a folding lattice door. The inside was empty. On the opposite side, the wall bumped out as far as the dresser, and there were registers at the floor and ceiling.

That was it. There wasn’t even a rug on the wood floor. Between the furniture and the upward-pointed shell sconces and the room’s utter lack of personality, it felt like a hotel room.

Dustin pushed the door’s wing-handle down went out into the hallway in his boxer-briefs and stocking feet. The hallway was completely empty, the lights dimmed to be barely brighter than the yellow light that came in the outside window at the very end of the hall. Even so, Dustin was able to see that a name plaque had been installed next to his door. He couldn’t make out the dark smudge of letters, but he presumed that it said ‘Merrill.’

The bathroom lights were set on a motion sensor, and when they popped on, his eyes finally got the jolt that he'd been expecting. The room was neat and clean. The tiles were broad, smooth, and white on the floor, and a soothing shade of sage on the walls. A line of sinks ran along the right-hand wall with medicine cabinets above them, ending in an industrial sink under the frosted-glass windows. Along the left were four bathroom stalls and two wider, plastic-curtained areas.

Dustin went into the nearest stall, pulled up the seat, reached through the fly of his boxers, and then encountered the second problem posed by the cock cage. Peeing standing up. He thought he could get the rigid sheath out through the fly, but then what? It was going to be hard to aim without holding onto his actual dick. And the toilet seemed strangely elongated. He doubted his ability to get close enough to piss without dribbling down the front of his jeans.

He ended up just pulling his boxers down and sitting like a boy who hadn’t yet learned how to pee standing up. It was a profoundly fancy toilet, backless, long, and sleek, with a heated seat. In lieu of shaking off, he tried to dab up with a scrap of toilet paper. The medicine cabinets only really came into focus as he washed his hands. His wavy hair was longish and sleep-tussled, the beard he’d shaved off after coming out of the pen was starting to grow back in as stubble. And as well as a comb and possibly a razor, he desperately needed a toothbrush.

The medicine cabinets held the solutions to his problems. Neatly labeled shelves contained bathroom supplies, including two shelves that were labeled ‘Merrill.’ His eyes glanced down the other shelves, but the names didn’t mean anything, and the primary difference in supplies seemed to be whether there was medication or makeup on the shelf and the color of the razor.

Dustin felt better after he had cleaned up. Not good, but better. He thought about taking a shower, then he thought about how he was meeting Hart in the locker room that morning, and he decided that a post-workout shower would be for the best. There were other things that he could see to, in the meanwhile. Including stocking his dresser with clothing in his size. And maybe finding some shoes.

He didn’t run into anyone while he went up and down the stairs. It was easy to find clothing in his size. He hesitated before grabbing a few of everything, with the exception of jeans. It depleted the supply, but he was careful to not cut it more than half. Considerateness demanded it. There was only one pair of sneakers in his size, though.

After he got it all upstairs, Dustin’s phone said that it was barely past 5:00 am. He played around with the ancient apps and figured out how to set an alarm. Then, feeling like a guest in someone else's house, he went back downstairs.

The wooden floors were cool under Dustin’s bare feet, but the tile in the kitchen was almost cold. He went over to the refrigerator and opened the one in which he’d found his meal the night before, and sure enough, the next stack back was also labeled with his name. The one on top said, ‘Merrill, 2/9, AM.’

Curiously, Dustin opened it. Several hard-boiled eggs and a perfectly ripe banana peered up at him. The sight of the banana made his mouth burst into water like a freshly undammed spring. The thought of eating a fruit that wasn't an apple was so pleasurable that a person might think that he hadn’t eaten for weeks, but it wasn’t that. It was the variety that his body craved.

After Dustin lifted the banana out, he saw that, in one corner of the box, there was also a packet of protein powder. The label said that it should be well-mixed with 20 ounces of water. Hadn’t he seen water bottles the night before, somewhere?

Dustin put his box of eggs on the counter, peeled his banana, took one ambrosial bite, and went on a scavenger hunt. As he was opening the third cupboard, a feminine voice spoke from near the door. “There’s sort of an unwritten rule about eating in the kitchen. Or straight out of the box.”

Dustin pivoted so hard that his almost lost his footing. His heart leaped into his throat and his balls drew up as far as the cock cage allowed. He had instinctively thrust out the banana, though he wasn’t sure whether he meant it to be a threat or whether he was preparing to hand it over.

A pale-skinned woman with a shock of blonde hair held off her face with a black scarf lifted her hands in a no-harm gesture and took a step back. She had a round face and eyes of a lighter brown. She barely came up to Dustin's shoulders. The chef’s coat that she wore looked strange, the collar cut low to show off the golden band around her neck.

“Sorry,” the woman said. “I didn't mean to startle you. Are you going to shoot me with that fruit?”

Dustin lowered his banana sheepishly. “No. I'm the one who's sorry. I'm new and a little jumpy.”

The woman's upraised hands dropped. “I can see that. The bowls are above you to the left. The water bottles are in the cupboard next to the dishwasher.”

Dustin never would have found them down there. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Abby Grewitz, chef.”

“Dustin Merrill, uh. Secretary.”

Her smile was kindly. “There are worse places to be in secretarial.” Her subtle emphasis called out the euphemism. “I was just going to eat my own breakfast. The kitchen starts early. Let's eat together in the dining room?”

“Oh. Sure.”

Dustin put his eggs in a bowl and shook up his protein mix, then joined Abby across the hall in a bright and cheery room that smelled sweetly of the fresh yellow flowers centered on the dark wood table. He tried to mentally prepare himself for her to ask who he was, what he'd done, and how long he was going to be indentured for, but she never did. She talked about the house and it's routines, the likely weather, and the recent hockey scores. Dustin learned that she was a fan of the Dallas team, but he couldn’t remember its name two seconds after she said it. As focused as Dustin was on what he might say about himself, most of it went in one ear and out the other.

It was exhausting. By the time she said she needed to get to the kitchen in ‘the real house,’ Dustin was feeling wrung out. Socializing had never been his forte, he'd always left it to Jacob. Just thinking the name caused anger to surge though Dustin's chest, and he fought it down. He checked his phone.

He was still almost an hour early to meet with Hart, but he could hear people starting to move around upstairs. Doors closing, toilets flushing. He decided that he'd rather arrive in the locker room early than try to talk to anyone else.

Hart was already there when Dustin walked in. He threw a pair of basketball shorts and a sleeveless Dri-Fit shirt at him. “Prepare for hell. But first, strip down. Then have a seat.”

Dustin sat on the bench after he peeled off everything but his underwear. Hart went to the lockers and came back with a syringe in his hands. When he lowered it toward Dustin’s leg, he flinched away.

“Cut it out, Merrill. I will start zapping you.”

Heart pounding, Dustin sat still. But he did ask, “What’s that? That’s not steroids, is it?”

“No. Just a performance enhancer. Low dose. But you need the help.”

Hart had not lightly invited Dustin to prepare for hell. He took Dustin to the adjacent gym and worked him like an ox, shifting from cardio to weight training until Dustin threw up, and then back to more cardio. Even with the support belt, his pelvis ached from the constant pull of the cock cage. His only breaks were to refill his water bottle and choke down the yogurt that Hart insisted he eat every hour on the hour. He was allowed to shower in the locker room, and then he was released for lunch with the instruction to come back to the gym afterward. He staggered to get a bowl, nuked his brown rice and lentil soup, and didn’t pay any attention to people using the dining room with him. He didn’t have the energy.

Then he staggered back to the gym. The afternoon was gentler, if not kinder. They primarily worked with resistance bands and ended with yoga, another shower, and a lesson about how to put on eyeliner.

At the end, Hart slapped Dustin on the back. There was approval in his voice. “Not bad, Merrill. Hit the shower. Take the night off. Stretch often. See you at 8.”

Dustin was still breathing heavily and thought that his heart would never stop pounding. His body was trying to get its post-workout erection, the fucking cock cage was holding it down. He pressed his elbows against his knees like he wanted to drive his heels into the ground. Mostly, he was trying to ignore the insistent, aching throbbing. Trying being the operative word.

Still, he gasped out his question. “Is it a later start from now on?”

Hart shrugged. “Nope. Just getting you ready for class.”

Dustin’s stomach dropped like a stone into an emotionally turbulent lake. If a record scratch could be a mental sensation, Dustin felt it right before lightheadedness blew in like a storm.

Class. Somehow, in the immediacy of adjusting to a new routine, he’d forgotten about Trey’s dad telling Trey he’d start training classes on Monday. Whatever that meant. But he suspected that rape early, rape often would probably be the slogan.

Instead of thinking about it, preparing for it, he’d sunk into the same thing he’d done when entering jail, or the pen. Simply going along with the routine. Docile. Obedient. And it was going to put him in exactly the same places that he'd already been.

After Dustin got control of his trembling, he shuffled to the kitchen, grabbed a box of food, and took it up to his room without unboxing or heating it. There were people around, but he was careful to keep his eyes down and to not invite anyone to try to strike up a conversation. He didn’t want to see people. He didn’t want to be around people.

He ate his cold chicken-topped salad from the box with his fingers, not tasting any of the fruit and nuts that made the dressingless salad bearable, then he sat for a long time looking at his hands. He laced his fingers, stared at his bitten-off nails, and tried to not think about what Logan had done to him in prison. When he finally succeeded at turning his mind to a different topic than Logan’s regularly schedule afternoon rapes, the topic was equally depressing.

Eva and Isabella. How were his girls doing? What were they doing? Did they miss him, yet? What had Jacob told them? Did they feel abandoned? How was his mom? Did she feel abandoned? The thoughts chased each other in circles like a merry-go-round of internal demons until the increasing stiffness of Dustin’s body demanded action. He stretched, went to the bathroom, and took the longest and hottest shower he could manage. He dried off with another soft and fluffy towel, then completed his other nighttime bathroom rituals. On his shelf in the medicine cabinet, there was now a tube of eyeliner.

Someone opened the bathroom door, and before they could engage in conversation, Dustin hustled out.

Back in his room, he stretched again, then tumbled into bed. The grueling workout gave him one thing to appreciate – he didn’t spend long staring at the ceiling before sleep rolled over him like a landslide.

Chapter Text

Dustin was surprised that the vehicle in the garage that Hart took him to was the same large black SUV that he’d seen the last time he’d been in there. If a speck of dust had dared to settle on it since Dustin had last seen it, it had been painstakingly removed. Hart opened the passenger door and gestured for Dustin to get into the car, and as Dustin settled into the seat, the big man said, “The kid’s parents don’t want him alone with Merrill, yet. He’ll drive separate.”

“If he hears that you’re still calling him ‘the kid,’ you’re going to get in trouble.” The driver’s voice with its subtle not-quite-French accent was familiar.

René was a slim man whose features were so closely set in around his nose that he looked almost baby-faced. The golden collar around his throat complemented his darker skin tone. He was wearing the closest thing to livery that Dustin had ever seen, including a flat black hat and a black tie. Apparently, whoever had decided to make him a chauffeur had decided that he needed to dress the part.

Hart shrugged at René and closed the door, then turned away. Dustin didn't know why he should have been surprised that Hart wasn’t coming with them, he didn't know why he had expected it. The existence of a ‘house system’ had implied that Hart didn’t need to be close to him in order to shock him. He actually flinched when René tapped at a smartphone that was attached to the dashboard, but the only result was that hip-hop began flowing from the car’s speakers. The bars were mostly in French, with occasional English, but Dustin wasn’t sure whether it was the same music that he had listened to on his first ride in the car.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was dressed in the same faded blue t-shirt and jeans outfit that he’d been wearing since the first time Hart had dressed him, but the thong under the jeans was an entirely new sensation, particularly where it went up the crack of his ass. It was strange to be able to feel the fabric of jeans directly against the skin of his ass. And the seatbelt didn't feel right across his lap. The cup of the thong was thicker than what Dustin would have thought a thong would be, and spongy, and he wondered whether that was to cradle his cock cage or to make his package look larger.

What Hart had said to him while he’d been getting Dustin dressed and his eyes properly lined echoed in Dustin’s mind. Nobody will zap you unless you try to run. But the teacher reports to me. I better like what I hear.

The ‘or you’ll regret it’ had been so strongly implied that Dustin had heard it in Hart’s voice, even though the man hadn’t said it. It was funny, in a dark sort of way. He already had so many regrets.

What Hart wouldn’t like to hear from the teacher had also been implied. Hart wanted Trey to think he was into it, and Dustin had been ordered to not change his mind. On pain of... not death, because they couldn’t legally kill him, but on pain of a lot more pain. Secretary for the house, and security was horny. Or Vegas, where he could be left in the uncomfortable cock cage perpetually.

With so many dark thoughts weighing heavily on Dustin’s mind, he had trouble paying attention to his surroundings. He had the vague impression of winding roads between large mansions, followed by heavy traffic, followed by busy streets that became the curving, mostly empty streets of a college campus during a break. René pulled up to a curb, flicked off the music, and turned on his caution flashers in one smooth motion, then he got out of the car.

Dustin was mildly confused. Was he supposed to stay in? Get out? Would he get in trouble for making the wrong choice? He watched as René went around the front of the car. The situation clarified when René opened the passenger-side door.

Fumbling like an idiot, Dustin undid his seatbelt and slid out. The scoot of his ass on the seat sent the thong-strap chafing so high into his business that he thought he’d have to send a moving crew into his jeans to haul it back into place.

The first words that René said directly to Dustin were murmured with a hint of empathy. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Dustin mumbled back.

Trey waited for him on the sidewalk outside of a classroom-looking building. Dustin had deliberately put the young man out of his mind, like putting something that he didn’t want to think about into a locked box and shoving that box into the farthest corner of the dustiest closet in a basement of his mind. So he was mildly surprised by how normal the young man looked.

In his mind, Dustin had turned Trey into a sinister, shadowy monster. But in the sunlight, the young man’s skin glowed with health. His mop of dark curls shined in the way that only well-taken-care-of curls can. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, but in light of the grin on his face, even the man’s unfortunate attempt to cultivate facial hair could be forgiven. He looked like a college student excited for the first day of class, meeting a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Behind Trey was a very modern-looking college building with a lot of glass and sleek columns implying sweeping upward lines. Areas of almost orange-red accent bricks and latticed façades broke up what otherwise would have been a monotone exterior. Small decorative trees lined the wide, curving walkway leading up to a door alcove that went up at least two stories.

It was a pretty picture, even if it was wrong in every way.

René subtly cleared his throat, and Dustin made himself take a step away from the SUV. The door bumped closed behind him.

“Hey, Dusty.” Trey’s voice wasn’t a true bass, but it was deep and had a pleasant smoothness to it that made Dustin think of running fingertips over well-polished wood.

“Hey.” Dustin’s heart had started thudding in his chest and his throat was tight. The best that his voice could do was not cracking. He could hear the strain in it, but hoped that if Trey could, too, he’d just attribute it to nerves.

Instead of turning toward the building, Trey stepped closer to Dustin. He wore tight-fitting jeans, sneakers, and a loose black shirt that some words in lettering so ornately Gothic that Dustin couldn’t read it. “I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Man, I was shocked to see you. I never thought I’d get my own pet.”

Dustin’s brain marked out the term. Not secretary, not servant, not izzy. Pet.

Trey continued grinning and shaking his head as he went on. “Mom’s sort of opposed to the whole thing. I hope I didn’t come on too strong, in the house. She really gave it to me after about, you know. How you’re a person doing a job, not a, shit, what did she say. Not a toy.”

Dustin forced words out past the concrete that was starting to brick up his throat. “It was fine.”

“I never thought I’d go for an older guy, but damn, you’re good-looking.”

Resentment prickled in the base of Dustin’s stomach. He wasn’t an older guy. He wasn’t even thirty. But then, when he’d been twenty-one, he supposed that thirty had seemed pretty far off.

The silence hung with the subtle awkwardness of a crooked picture until Dustin said, “Thanks.”

Trey had been at a normal conversational distance, but now he stepped even closer. He rode in on a waft of body spray that made Dustin think of his own college days, but this time, at least, Dustin didn't smell any marijuana. Trey was close enough for the conversation to start to feel intimate. “Were you into sex work before?”

“No. I was an accountant.”

“Oh.” Trey’s grin flickered.

What matters is the kid thinks you’re into it. And you aren’t going to change that.

Dustin cleared his throat a little. “But I don’t think it’ll be bad. Not, you know. With you. And…” Dustin’s mind groped around like someone feeling for their phone in the dark. “And with this orientation thing.”

Trey’s smile returned, softer than a grin. “Well, if you don’t like it, man, I’m sure dad can find something else for you to do.”

Like house izzy, Dustin thought with a little nausea churning in his stomach. Or like Vegas.

“I’ll let you know,” Dustin lied.

“An accountant. Shit. Whose taxes did you fuck up?”

Apparently the social nicety of not asking an indentured servant what their crime had been didn’t apply to owners, or maybe it wasn’t the sort of nicety that Trey observed. Dustin stood frozen while his mind groped around for an answer, some lie that he really should have thought of before that moment.

He was saved by a beep from Trey’s smartwatch. “Damn.” He tapped the screen and sighed. “We’ve got to go in. Don’t want to be late to class, right?”

Dustin nodded.

Trey turned and walked toward the building. He didn’t grab Dustin’s elbow to steer him. He didn’t even have a buzzer in his hands. There was technically nothing stopping Dustin from turning and walking away.

Nothing but the collar. He was sure there was a tracker in it, and one behind his ear, too. He wouldn’t get far. And it would certainly change Trey’s mind about how ‘into it’ Dustin actually was.

So Dustin just followed the other man to the building while he rambled on about how he’d been lucky that there was space in the class, how he was glad it was pass-fail, and a bunch of other inanities that might have mattered a lot more had Dustin actually been attending the school. Trey scanned a key card at the door, then gallantly held it open for Dustin.

The inside of the building was spacious, high-ceilinged, and cool. A young person sat behind a desk across from the doors, but Trey looked at his smart watch and headed directly for a bank of elevators tucked off to the side. Beyond the elevators was a large, brightly lit room full of tables and chairs arranged in a visually pleasing pattern.

Trey tapped the up arrow on the elevator panel. “It’s floor three, room five east. Hey, do you know what direction’s east?”

“I don’t.”

“We’ll find it,” Trey said confidently. “We’re not running late or anything.”

How normal everything was kept slapping Dustin in the face. It was a normal building, a normal atrium, a normal elevator. The normal elevator opened onto a normal antechamber, attached to a normal hallway with a mottled-brown linoleum that reminded Dustin vividly of labs in college. A sign directly across from the elevator alcove had arrows indicating east and west, the sign bright on a wall whose color was a muted version of the red-orange accents outside. There were no windows, not even ones that would allow a person to look through the doors that opened off the main hallway at intervals, but the lighting was comfortable.

When they reached a room marked 5E, Trey reached for the handle and again opened it for Dustin, like Jacob had done back when they’d first been dating. Dustin held his breath and went through.

The room was a medium-sized classroom, neither the size of a lecture hall nor the size of an office, though unlike most classrooms Dustin had been in, the room lacked carpet. Across from the door were the dry-erase boards that Dustin remembered from his time in school. There was no podium, only a chair with its back to the dry-erase wall that faced a semicircle of chairs, maybe ten in all. There were only a few tables, and they and the rest of the chairs had been pushed to the edges of the room. Given the size of the classroom, the arc of well-separated chairs look like black islands in a pale sea of linoleum.

A few people were already seated, some in the chairs, some on cushions on the floor between the chairs. The ones on the cushions all had collars, though not all of them were golden. Their wardrobes ran the gamut of everything from just a pair of shorts to a button-up shirt with a tie. Every person seated on a cushion was a man, but two of the people in chairs were women. Dustin hadn’t expected to see women in the room.

It was a day full of surprises. It felt overwhelming to simply try to take things in, much less think too heavily about them with the little voice in the back of his head chiming in that everything was so fucked up every few moments. The guy in just shorts so tight that they looked painted on? Fucked up. The guy hooked to a woman’s belt by a short length of chain? Fucked up. It was all so fucked up.

Trey joined Dustin in the classroom, did a quick survey, then headed for an empty space at the end of the arc’s left arm. Dustin trailed behind him like a slowly deflating party balloon, not quite keeping up, not really wanting to. After Trey sat and stretched out his long legs, he pulled a phone out of his pocket. Dustin looked around for a second, then awkwardly lowered himself to the cushion next to Trey’s chair.

It wasn’t comfortable. Not sitting on the floor in jeans, not sitting on the barely adequate cushion, and especially not with the awkwardness of the cock cage shifting against his pelvis. He hadn’t realized how much the support he’d had the day before from belt and boxer-briefs until wearing the thong, which provided exactly zero support. The base ring held his nuts slightly forward, and the occasional brush of the jeans against them through the silky thong had him in a perpetual ebb-and-flow state of mild thickness.

The anticipatory silence in the room was almost a weight. Dustin’s natural impulse was to keep his eyes on the floor, but he was curious, and Trey’s decision to sit at the end of the arc gave Dustin a good view of their fellow students.

Of the ten chairs, six – no, seven – were occupied by five men and two women. The people in the chairs were universally young and gave off a rich-kid vibe like the subtle hum of a tuning fork. All of them were on their phones, and their anticipation radiated like a bright and hungry aura. The people seated on cushions were all men, or at least appeared to be men, and were also young, though he guessed that the average wasn’t as young as the people seated. None of the seated folks had phones and, like Dustin, most were glancing around with various levels of obvious nervousness, though the one next to a chiseled-jaw model-type was hunched forward and looking at his hands. Their anticipatory silence ranged from unease to dread, judging by their facial expressions.

After another pair of men occupied a chair and cushion, respectively, someone walked through the circle of chairs and sat in the one facing the arc. He was, Dustin thought, giving off stereotypical ‘cool professor’ vibes. He was maybe a little older than Dustin, with bronze-tanned skin and sun-streaked brown hair that he’d perched sunglasses up in. He wore long shorts and a loose, ivory-colored button-up that was not buttoned to the collar. The man smiled around the circle, and his voice had a reedy quality to it that Dustin immediately found grating.

“I’m Professor Ternicki, but you can call me Riley. If you’re here for the Intro to Training special elective, you’re in the right place. There’s supposed to be two more of you. We’re going to give them five minutes, then I’ll lock the doors. You’re on time or you’re not here, no exceptions. And, for the sake of student privacy, I’m going to ask that you put your phones and any other devices capable of recording audio or video over there.” The man spoke solely to the people in the chairs, and his final gesture was toward a table tucked into the corner.

A Hispanic student at the other end of the arc asked, “Really?”

Riley nodded. “Regardless of whether you’d want to be recorded having intimate experiences, your classmates might not.” His voice dropped a notch, and he winked. “And your experiences are likely to get pretty intimate.”

Trey eagerly stripped off his watch and handed both it and his phone to Dustin without any sort of forethought. Trey might have been told to think of Dustin as a person, but if he was, it was as a lower-ranked person. Dustin simply took the items without comment, got to his feet, and went with the rest of the people in collars to deposit them on the table. Another couple entered while he was on his way back to his cushion, and Riley ran through the same spiel.

Without a phone, Trey fidgeted. A few minutes later, Riley got up and locked the door. When he came back, he sat down and leaned his back against the chair, throwing one arm over the back and lifting one of his ankles to prop on the opposite knee. Like an actor overplaying the role he’d chosen for himself.

Riley smiled, and Dustin liked the smile even less than the grating tone of his voice. “Let’s get started.”

At the words, a strange sense of calm fell over Dustin. It was as if someone had let a single drop of yellow dye fall into his turbulent mind from so high above that he couldn’t see who had done it. It delivered a thought that Dustin had never had before. No matter what they did to him, or made him do, they couldn’t turn him into something he was not. They could not make him a pet.

Couldn’t? No, that was wrong. They probably could, if he let them. But Dustin was not going to let this Professor Riley asshole succeed. Period.

Chapter Text

Professor Riley was a man who talked with his hands. He gestured with fluidity as exaggerated as his supposedly casual sitting pose as he addressed the eighteen people in the room. Or perhaps the nine people and the nine pieces of property, depending on how he thought of it. “How many of you want your pets to enjoy having sex with you?”

All of the hands of the young people sitting in the chairs went up. Trey’s was one of the first, which was a relief. Dustin saw a blonde-haired young man in the middle of the arc hesitate, and for a moment, he was glad that he wasn't that man’s ‘secretary.’ But only for a moment. Enjoyment was an illusion for the benefits of the young people in the chairs, at least as far as Dustin saw it.

“Good,” Riley approved. “Some of your pets didn’t choose this work, but that doesn't mean that they can't come to enjoy it, or that they don't deserve to enjoy it.”

Does anyone actually believe that any of us chose this work? Dustin wondered how many of the cushion-seated people were sharing the same thought. Dustin didn't think that all of the people in the chairs were as naïve as Trey, but Riley seemed to be playing to the owners like him. His grating, reedy voice was as obnoxious as a mosquito’s buzz at dusk. “A lot of that will come down to you, as their masters. If you want them to enjoy it, it needs to be enjoyable, and that can be more work than you think.”

The blonde man leaned forward. “Why go to the work? I mean, they’re ours to do what we want with anyway.”

At Dustin’s side, Trey shifted. Uncomfortably? Dustin hoped uncomfortably.

“That’s a question you’re going to have to answer yourself,” Riley answered smoothly. “But this is Intro to Training, not Intro to Fucking. I’m sure most of you already know how to do the second.”

There was a general chuckle. The blonde guy huffed and sat back. The wan-faced pet at his side went on staring at his hands, and Dustin really felt for him.

Riley let the chuckle settle before he went on. “My goal is to bond you and your pets. It isn’t just about the sex, though that’s certainly a part of it. I like to say that this is a class about desire. Your desire. Your pets’ desire. Blending those together so perfectly that they want what you want, and their rewards are your rewards.”

It looked to Dustin like the people in the chairs were eating it up.

“So let’s get started.” Riley’s words made Dustin’s stomach turn a slow cartwheel beneath his sternum. “Did anyone forget to put their pet in chastity before coming in? No? Good.” The so-called professor clapped his hands once. “Pets, get up and undress.”

Riley’s tone when he addressed the people in collars was entirely different from the ‘let’s have a good time together’ tone he'd been using when talking to the folks in the chairs. Now, he wasn’t making a suggestion.

For a moment, Dustin froze. His mind tore between the competing thoughts of I can’t and I have to. The second won out, and he hauled himself to his feet through air that felt like it had solidified to jello. He toed out of his shoes, then pulled his shirt over his head. The muscles that had been overworked the day before protested after the period of sitting on the floor. He hesitated with his shirt in his hands.

He wasn't the only one hesitating. Riley ordered, “Put your clothes on the floor."

Dustin killed a little more time folding his shirt neatly, tugging off his socks, and rolling them up. But then he was out of options. His fingers were slightly numb as he unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and took them down.

That all eyes in the room were on Dustin was a figment of his imagination, he knew that, but there was one pair of dark eyes that was drinking in his every motion, and that was bad enough. Dustin rolled up his jeans and stashed them behind Trey's chair, then he stood in nothing more than the padded, lingerie-red thong Hart had made him put on, struggling to not ball his hands into fists. It surprised him that that urge didn’t arise solely from fear or anxiety. Yes, those were there, but there was also the small ember of his promise to himself that manifested as an urge to make fists, shout, fight back.

I can’t, Dustin thought. But he pushed against the despair. Not physically.

He didn’t know how to fight nonphysically, but if there was a way, he was going to find it.

Professor Riley looked directly at Dustin. “Everything comes off.”

Everything.

Dustin took a deep, shaky breath, then hooked his thumbs through the thin straps of the thong. It caught for a moment on his cock cage, and he had to tug it free before he could slide it down. He didn’t make a big show of folding it, he simply tossed it on the pile of clothes and tried to breathe evenly.

The air was cool on Dustin’s skin, but that wasn’t why the flesh all over his body went tight. He could feel the heat of Trey’s eyes studying him. The young man had even turned in his chair to get a better look. Dustin had to fight to not move his hand to shield the bit of hanging metal that provided less than zero modesty. He stared straight ahead at the whiteboard, trying not to feel the heat of Trey’s eyes.

“Haven’t your pets done good work?” Riley asked. Staring at the whiteboard meant that the self-satisfied asshole was in Dustin’s peripheral vision.

Trey's voice was part of the general murmur. “He sure did.”

“It wasn’t just a rhetorical question. Praise is an important part of bonding. Praise and rewards. Praise should be immediate, consistent, and specific.”

In the bottom of Dustin’s field of view, he saw Trey’s fingers move toward him, then hesitate. “You did good at taking off your clothes, Dusty.”

“Devonte, isn’t it?”

At Riley’s question, Trey pulled his hand away. “Yes, sir. Trey.”

“I saw you reach out toward… what is your pet’s name?”

“Dusty.”

“I saw you reach out toward Dusty.” Riley’s voice was pure encouragement. “Can you tell me why?”

“I don’t know.” Riley’s silence didn’t let Trey off the hook so easily, and eventually, he shrugged. “It just felt right.”

Riley’s grin showed the straight white teeth that seemed to be endemic in this part of the world. “It’s a good instinct. Primates communicate a lot through social touch, and we are just big-brained monkeys. Touch is part of how we bond.” His tone shifted subtly again to one of command. “Along those lines. Pets, stand in front of your masters.”

Dustin’s feet had sunk solidly into his cushion. Picking them up was like dragging them out of a deep, sucking mud that encouraged him to just stay there, as if by staying still, things would be fine, he would be looked over. But the logical part of Dustin knew that, if he stayed there, things would not be fine. So one step at a time, he turned and stood in front of Trey’s chair.

There was no more looking down at his feet he could do. Looking down meant looking into Trey’s face. The man eyes were bright and his lips were slightly parted. Dustin hadn’t seen such a look of blatant anticipation and desire in a long time, and it made his heart thud oddly in his throat.

“Touch them.” Riley’s voice was encouragement, not command, so Dustin knew it wasn’t meant for him. “See what they like. Note what turns them on. Every body is different, and you should want to learn your pet’s, to come to know it like they do. Stand up if you’d like. They aren’t going to move unless you tell them to.”

With the eagerness that he had been holding back, Trey’s fingers reached out and stroked Dustin’s stomach. Dustin’s breath sucked in, and Trey’s fingers jerked back. He glanced up at Dustin’s face.

Dustin frantically searched for something to say that wouldn’t give Trey the impression that he didn’t want to be there. He mumbled, “It’s just. There’s so many people. And, well, I’m naked.”

Trey did have a great smile despite the very ill-advised attempt at a mustache. Dustin wished that they’d met under different circumstances. The man’s low voice was smooth and soothing as velvet. “It’s not like they’re paying attention to us, man.”

From the little gasps and one soft moan that Dustin could hear around the room, Trey was right. Dustin dipped his chin a little, and Trey stroked his stomach again, moving from Dustin’s hip inward with the soft pads of his fingers.

He shuddered and his stomach sucked in. Trey’s chuckle was low and musical and full of pleasure. His eyes weren’t on Dustin’s face anymore. His curious hands stroked up Dustin’s chest and down his sides, over his hips and down the outsides of his thighs. When his hands came up the insides, Dustin gasped harshly, and he felt the answering throb from his increasingly uncomfortable cock.

“Liked that one.” Trey stroked his fingers up and down the insides of Dustin’s thighs. Each upward stroke tried to make Dustin’s balls jump, but there was nowhere for them to go. In its struggle to contain what so badly wanted to be an erection, the base ring of the cock cage was pulling his balls forward. Normally, it was a sensation he found pleasurable. Just then, it was more than half torture.

From far away, Riley encouraged, “Don’t hesitate to stand up. Touch them everywhere.”

Trey slid his seat back and stood. Dustin wasn't short, but Trey was a little taller, and Dustin had to lift his chin if he wanted to watch his face. It was better than watching his hands. Those hands ran up Dustin’s chest, down his arms. When Trey dragged his fingernails down Dustin’s neck, careful to avoid the collar, Dustin’s head automatically tilted away to give Trey more room to play. Trey grinned and stroked there until Dustin was shuddering and breathing hard, until the ache from the cock cage had grown painful and then somehow looped back around itself and started to feel good. Not comfortable, but not pain. Not exactly. Then Trey went around behind Dustin.

His touches came as more of a surprise when Dustin couldn’t see them coming. The fingers that ran down his shoulders trailed heat, and when he stroked up the underside of Dustin’s arm, he drew another gasp out of him. That wasn’t a place that Dustin had known that he liked to be touched until that moment.

Trey’s fingers slid down Dustin’s back and paused. Then they cupped Dustin’s ass and gripped.

Up to that point, Dustin had forgotten about everything but Trey’s hands and the terrible pressure of his aching dick. But the tight grip on his ass threw him back into Logan grabbing him, spreading him, forcing him open. Dustin’s eyes slammed shut and he stumbled a step forward on shaking legs, gasping out, “Please don’t.”

In Dustin’s mind, Hart said, Nobody will zap you unless you try to run, and I better like what I hear.

Dustin froze, his chest heaving. His stomach had twisted into a complex knot and the lemony taste of fear had crawled up the back of his throat. He knew he should step back and let Trey keep touching him, he knew he should endure it, but he just couldn’t make himself. His arms had crossed tightly over his chest and he hadn't noticed himself do it.

“Trey, is everything alright over here?” Riley’s voice was only mildly concerned. It was also very close, and as Dustin slammed back to reality, he was slapped with an aggressively cedar-and-clove cologne.

Anxiety lifted the pitch of Trey’s voice. “I touched his butt and he just…”

“It’s okay. It happens. They get nervous.” Dustin heard the soft scrape of Riley’s shoe, and then the man spoke from in front of him, his voice buzzing kind in a way that Dustin didn’t trust. “Dusty, isn’t it? Is everything okay?”

The teacher reports to me. I better like what I hear.

Dustin forced himself to open his eyes. Riley’s eyes were so green that they had to be colored contacts, and the concern in them appeared sincere. He either was that good, or Dustin was that bad at reading people. It didn’t matter. No matter how it looked, the concern was as false as the color.

“I’m okay,” Dustin dropped his eyes to the chair he’d almost tripped over and mumbled, “I’m okay, I just…”

He didn’t even sound okay enough to fool himself.

Riley’s voice was pitched to be as soothing as aloe on a burn, but the reedy buzz still scratched on Dustin’s ears. “You are okay, Dusty. He’s not going to hurt you.”

“I’m really not,” Trey said. From him, at least, the concern sounded genuine.

I better like what I hear.

Dustin took a deep, shuddering breath and made himself uncross his arms. “I know. I know. It’s not him, it’s me.”

“It was just a little too fast for him,” Riley said. “You couldn’t have known, Trey. That’s part of what the touching exercise is about.” In his brief pause, there was a moan from elsewhere in the room. “There were things he liked, though?”

“I think so,” Trey said.

“Yes,” Dustin said. His voice was still shaky, but he hoped that he sounded like he was telling the truth. He made himself stop hunching forward and take a step backward. “Yes.”

“Well, there you go.” The man was smiling again, his voice encouraging. “Have you tried his nipples yet, Trey? People don’t often think of a man’s nipples as sensitive, but they can be.”

“Not yet,” Trey said.

“Maybe continue there, instead,” Riley encouraged. Then a yelp rang out in the room and he turned away.

Dustin felt Trey step closer to him. He tensed a little, but no hands touched him.

“Are you really okay, man?”

No.

Dustin took in a deep, slow breath. He tried to murmur rather than mumble. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was enjoying myself, I just. There was something that, well. Can we talk about it later? After class.”

Dustin wanted to talk about it never. But more than that, he didn’t want word to get back to Hart that Trey was having doubts.

“Yeah. Can I touch? Or do you want to…”

“Go ahead. I was...” Dustin hesitated, but not from his usual lack of certainty. He had enjoyed being touched, and he resented having something that he liked being turned to such an evil end. “I was enjoying myself.”

The smile came back into Trey’s voice. “I thought so, man. Those little moans.”

When Trey’s hands went around Dustin, he hoped that Trey took his trembling for desire. When the young man’s thumbs brushed back and forth over his nipples, Dustin let himself moan, but it wasn’t real. Not in any of the ways that mattered.

Chapter Text

Dustin didn’t realize how much precum he was leaking until Riley ordered the pets to turn to their masters. When he turned to face Trey, a streamer of it broke loose and landed on the top of his foot. He glanced down and was immediately mortified to see the small lake that his locked cock had been producing in lieu of an erection.

Trey followed Dustin’s glance down, then grinned. “Damn, man.”

Before Dustin had to come up with a response, Riley said, “Now we’re going to change it up a bit. Students, I’m not going to tell you to take off your clothes. That’s your choice. And if you’d like to ask your pet to touch you, that’s your choice too. But I’d highly encourage at least the second part.”

Trey’s shirt was over his head and off almost before Riley had finished speaking. His body had the lean athleticism of a wide-receiver, practical muscles instead of show muscle. He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans before he paused and glanced from side to side. Like others were doing, he pushed down his pants and stepped out of his sneakers, but he kept his dark boxers on.

“Do you want to?” Trey asked. That he wanted Dustin to touch him was written in his eyes in neon.

“Yes.”

Dustin started with a place he himself liked, stroking his fingers on the sides of Trey’s neck. The young man shuddered and leaned into Dustin’s soft touches. Dustin teased there a while, then traced the man’s collarbones with light fingertips. Trey had closed his eyes and was already starting to breathe heavily.

It was different touching Trey then it had been being touched by him. He was clearly into it, and Dustin had always found something satisfying in making another man purr.

Then he peeked down and almost choked. Trey wore loose boxers, and he was tenting them. He wasn’t inhumanly monstrous, but he was well-proportioned for his height. Dustin knew where this class was going, he knew where Riley – and Hart, and Trey for that matter – were going to want that cock to go, and the thought of it made a phantom cramp tear into his stomach.

He didn’t think that Trey noticed his glance, his brief hesitation. The man seemed completely absorbed in standing still, his body tensing and relaxing like a predator trying to decide whether to spring. There hadn’t been anything requiring that, and some of the other students were more hands-on with their pets, but he seemed to be trying to mimic the way Dustin had frozen simply by instinct. Dustin swallowed hard on a mouthful of thick sour saliva and made his fingers continued their explorations.

Trey wasn’t as sensitive on the backs of his arms as Dustin was, but he arched when Dustin traced the hard muscles that ran along his spine from his ribs to his ass. And he clearly enjoyed having his ass touched, even through the boxers, groaning and grabbing Dustin’s shoulders for balance when the unintended rock of his hips upset his balance.

Dustin had shifted to rubbing Trey’s pecs when Riley passed behind the young man. Trey had thrown his head back while Dustin was playing with his nipples and didn't seem to hear the man approach.

The professor caught Dustin’s eyes. “There’s nothing stopping you from exploring with your lips or tongue.”

It was in the tone he’d reserved for pet-oriented commands, and when Dustin’s brows bumped upward, the man nodded. It was not a suggestion.

Trey had started and his head had come down when Riley had begun to speak, and the lids of his deep-set eyes had cracked open. Dustin leaned in and kissed the place where Trey’s neck and shoulder met. Then he nudged Trey’s chin up and began kissing across his throat. The tickle of young man’s attempted goatee was unusual and pleasant, though even this early in the day, the areas he’d shaved were starting to bristle. His skin smelled of a popular brand of body spray that college men tended to overindulge in.

“Oh, fuck,” Trey breathed out.

Dustin continued kissing Trey’s neck and throat while he slid his one hand down Trey’s abs and stomach. He stopped when his fingertips encountered the waistband of Trey’s boxers. He teased them back and forth along the edge and spoke against Trey’s neck. “Do you want me to?”

“God, yes.”

Dustin’s hand wormed under the elastic band, stroked through Trey’s coarse hair, and found his cock. He wasn’t quite as large as he’d looked from above when he’d been tenting his boxers. He was definitely more than a handful, though, longer than Dustin in a way that gave him a brief stab of envy, but not as long as he’d feared. He was thick, though. That would be. Well. Best to not think about.

When Dustin stroked Trey’s cock, the man rocked into his hand, groaning low in his throat. He put a steadying hand on Dustin’s shoulder. He didn’t push, but Dustin started to kiss his way down anyway. He paused at Trey’s chest to gently suck one of his pebble-hard nipples, making him shudder. He kissed down Trey’s stomach and circled his belly button with his tongue, provoking another groan. By then, the backs of Dustin’s legs were screaming about how they’d been asked to hold a static pose for so long after the previous day’s hard workout.

Dustin pulled his hand out of Trey’s boxers. The damned things were getting in the way. Before he could ask, Trey had hooked his thumbs in them and lowered them half-way down his thighs. His cock pointed at Dustin like a particularly large and insistent finger.

A quick glance to the sides told Dustin that he wasn’t the only pet on his knees. There were only two other pets who weren’t, yet, and one of them was knuckle-deep in one of the women.

Intro to Training. Had they all been marked as obedient? Docile? Would any of them be there if they weren’t?

I’m not as obedient and docile as they think I am. I just have to figure out how. But now isn’t the time.

The tip of Trey’s cock had beaded with precum. Dustin flicked his tongue to lap it up, and the flavor was familiar but a little different. He smelled like a man who had showered in the morning and been horny since, but it wasn’t a bad smell. Normally, it would have been a turn-on. Trey groaned, and his hands sank into Dustin’s hair, tugging lightly while he bumped his hips forward.

Dustin circled his tongue around the end of Trey’s cock, teasing to give himself time to position his hands. One to stroke while he licked and sucked, and one to play with Trey’s balls. From a distance, Dustin’s balls throbbed angrily at being left out of the action, but he ignored them. His used his stroking hand as a backstop to keep Trey’s little thrusts from going too deep and choking him.
It wasn’t long before Trey’s balls drew up from Dustin’s toying fingers. The man’s own fingers tightened in Dustin’s hair as he started gently fucking into Dustin’s face. Dustin opened his throat, and the cock pulsed in his hand as Trey’s little thrusts lost their rhythm and grew ragged. Dustin swallowed, and he didn’t stop until Trey, breathing out little expletives between his panting breaths, tugged backward on Dustin’s hair.

Dustin sat back. Trey looked down at him, his face flushed and almost glowing in the classroom lights. He seemed to realize all at once that he wasn’t alone in the room, scrambling to tuck himself into his boxers, but his bulge was still prominent. He’d barely started deflating. Then he rapidly gathered up and started pulling on the rest of his clothes.

Dustin wiped his chin on the back of his wrist, shifted to the cushion, and sat trying to not dig his hands into the flesh of his thighs above his knees. His dribbling cock throbbed, the head exquisitely sensitive where it pressed against the metal bars of the cage. His balls ached. His body desperately wanted to masturbate, to be sucked off, something, any of the things that usually happened after he’d finished off another man. He hated it.

He swallowed, and the taste of Trey’s cum lingered on the back of his tongue. He tried to decide how he felt, and he couldn’t. It had been less cruel than what Logan had done to him, and Trey had been more of a gentleman than the first time Jacob had drunk-fucked his mouth in an alley behind a bar. Trey seemed naïve, but there had to be a deliberate level of ignorance, didn’t there?

On the other hand, all of the pressure was invisible, the guy was young, and everything Dustin had said had been attempts to deliberately mislead him to believe that Dustin could do something else if he didn’t want to. But on the third hand, the class was titled Intro to Training. Dustin was wearing a fucking collar. Who did Trey think needed to be trained, and why? It was all there if he wanted to look.

While Dustin’s anger at the situation tried to figure out the proper direction to point in, Trey flopped down in his chair and dragged one of his hands back through his messy black curls. Dustin sat naked at his side. Leaking. Aching. A directionless resentment tightening the base of his throat. And every time he swallowed to try to clear the taste of Trey’s cum from his mouth, his Adam’s apple pressed the collar.

The smell of cedar and clove was the only thing that told Dustin that Riley had come up behind him. The room was too full of pleasured noises to hear him coming. He spoke to Trey in a low voice, “Did you remember to praise Dusty?”

“I thanked him,” Trey said. Dustin could hear the blush in his voice.

“Gratitude is nice, but it isn’t quite the same thing. When you praise him, it should be immediate and specific, and ideally reinforced with touch.”

As Riley slid off through the room like a shark, Trey reached his hand down and ran his hand through Dustin’s hair. “Jesus Christ, Dusty. That was the best blowjob I’ve ever had. Not even…”

Whatever comparison Trey had been going to make trailed off. Dustin made himself smile. “Thanks.”

Trey’s fingers continued ruffling through Dustin’s hair working backward from his temple like, well, like someone stroking the fur of an animal. Dustin wanted to pull away, but he endured it.

“That thing with my nuts, man. That was amazing.”

“You’re welcome.”

Trey went quiet, but he kept stroking Dustin’s hair, and despite himself, Dustin found it soothing. He resented that he found it soothing, but that didn’t change the basic fact.

Dustin and Trey hadn’t been the first ones to finish, but they weren’t the last, either. When the rest of the class had resumed their places, Riley flashed his too-white teeth around the arc. “Anyone have any questions?”

Dustin fully expected there to be none. The students were probably supposed to be too well-fucked to think, and the pets were supposed to know better than to ask. But the hand of one of the male students lifted. “Yeah. Do they have to stay in chastity? I think mine might like to jerk it, after that.”

Trey chuckled with the rest of the class.

Riley’s smile remained. “They do. That’s their homework. Your homework is to not see your pet until class tomorrow.”

A feminine voice protested. “Are you serious?”

Riley lifted his hands and patted the air. “You need to think about your lesson. And, frankly, you need to not go too far, too fast. You want this to be enjoyable for your pet, remember? That isn’t going to happen if they come in tomorrow with swollen lips.” Riley’s smile turned into a knowing smirk. “And every time they get hard in chastity, they’re going to think of you.”

If Dustin wouldn’t have before, he would now. Though probably not in the way that Riley was implying.

Only the blonde man didn’t laugh or voice agreement. After the pets’ clothes were back on and the students’ phones were returned, Riley unlocked the doors and released the class.

In the atrium, the sun cast brilliant white squares on the floor and furniture where it came in through high skylights. It felt so much later than noon, like they had spent an eternity in the classroom instead of a couple hours. It was even brighter and warmer in the sun outside, though a light breeze took some of the heat off. Several cars had lined up at the curb, and René stood outside the passenger door of one in a chauffeur's outfit that had to make him feel like he was baking in an oven.

Before Dustin could go more than a step, Trey grabbed his wrist. “Hey, Dusty?”

Dustin turned to him. “Yeah?”

Trey’s brows furrowed at Dustin. “What happened?”

What happ— oh. He meant Dustin’s reaction to having his ass grabbed. Even without a full flashback, the question took Dustin to the memory of Logan slamming into him, and shame and humiliation washed through him. He cleared his throat. “I had a. Well. Bad experience, in the past. I just, ah, just freaked out.” Lamely, he said, “It had nothing to do with you.”

Trey studied Dustin’s face and nodded slowly. “Okay, man. You’d let me know if it was me?”

“I would,” Dustin lied.

“And uh, one more thing?”

“Yeah?”

Trey wet his lips, glanced to René, then glanced back to Dustin. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”

It wasn’t like Dustin could say ‘no.’ He turned more fully to Trey and lifted his chin a little. Trey’s lips were soft, much softer than Jake’s had ever been. The kiss lingered but stayed chaste. If it hadn’t, Trey almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to taste his cum in Dustin’s mouth. That Dustin could still taste it was probably just an illusion created by his mind.

Then Trey pulled back, grinning. “Can’t wait ‘til tomorrow.”

“Me either. Have a good one.”

Trey lifted his hand, then turned, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked away. Dustin watched him go for a few steps before he turned to René and the car. René opened the door, and Dustin got in and fastened his seatbelt. He ached horribly, and when he glanced down, he expected to see a wet spot on the front of his jeans. Instead, it seemed like the padded thong was doing an admirable job as a sponge. So. That was one question answered.

A moment later, René slid into the driver’s seat. His not-French accent added a strange weight to his words. “Trey’s a good boy.”

Dustin looked out the window. “He’s trying to be.”

René put hip-hop on the speakers, and they didn’t talk the rest of the ride back to the mansion.

Chapter Text

It was after noon when René dropped Dustin off at the servant’s quarters. He went into the locker room first, but Hart wasn't there. Dustin stood, indecisive, then he opened his antique flip phone and found Hart’s number. Tapping a text message in by using the number keys was slow and painful, but after telling Hart that he was back, Dustin left and went farther into the house.

There was the sound of an appliance running in the kitchen and some conversation in the dining room. Dustin’s stomach continued to be slowly wrung in between iron fists. The resentment that he’d cultivated had slipped through his fingers on the drive back to the mansion, and he was left with only a deep emptiness that seemed to center under his sternum, like there was a whirlpool there sucking in everything that came close.

In his sparsely furnished room, he stripped off his clothes and thong, wrapped the previous day’s towel around himself, gathered up his dirty laundry, and went to the bathroom. The clothes went into the hamper. Dustin went into the shower, taking his toothbrush with him.

Sometime later, Hart shouted over the hissing spray. “I told you to keep your phone on you!”

Dustin turned off the water. His fingers had pruned and he could barely see through all the steam. “Sorry, Mr. Hart. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to bring it in here. The humidity.”

“You’re not.” Hart sounded annoyed. “Dry off. Dress. And get your ass down to the locker room.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Next time, you shower down there.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Dustin got to the locker room, Hart tossed him gym shorts and a sleeveless workout shirt, jabbed a syringe into his leg, and led him into the gym. It was about half-way through opening cardio that Dustin started to get light-headed. He sat down abruptly, grey ghosts dancing around the edges of his vision as if he was floating in worm-infested clouds.

Hart had leaned over him and was frowning down at where Dustin lay on his back with his legs propped up. “You pass out?”

“Just a little dizzy.” He blinked hard and tried to sit up, but Hart easily pushed him back down with a hand.

“Did you eat lunch?”

“I’m sorry?”

Hart’s normally resonant voice was gruff and flat. “When you got back from the sex class. Did you eat lunch?”

“I. No. I looked for you, and then texted, and went upstairs.”

Hart’s eyes were dark as wet stone. “Uh huh.”

A rubber band snapped hard against Dustin's throat. He yelped and then found that he couldn't breathe back in. His chest heaved as he choked, and he tried to reach a hand to his throat.

Hart grabbed it and slammed it to the gym mat. “Nope.”

Dustin was eventually able to gasp a breath back in. Tears of pain and shock had gathered in the corners of his eyes.

“Nod if you're listening, Merrill.”

Dustin nodded. It knocked some of the water loose from the corner of his eye and sent it tickling it's way toward his temple.

“You aren't going to pull this shit. This not eating, showering in the middle of the afternoon, sitting alone all night in your room shit. This sleeping twelve hours shit. You're going to eat what you're supposed to eat, when you're supposed to eat it. You're going to shower in the morning, after working out, and after you fuck, for no more than fifteen minutes.” Dustin couldn’t meet the man’s eyes. Hart lifted his wrist and slammed it to the gym floor again. “And I am talking fucking, Merrill. Not a handjob. Not sucking him off. Fucking.”

Dustin flinched. Hart went on. “You're going to socialize in the evening. You're going to sleep no more than eight hours. This zombie depression shit? It’s done. You are not going to fuck this up for the kid. Do you understand?”

The dam of Dustin's cowardice broke, and the thoughts that had been buzzing in the back of his head burst out, his voice rising in volume and pitch as they escaped. “It’s rape. It's not fucking, either, damn it. And it’s sure not sex work! It's straight-up rape!”

He didn't know what he was expecting. Maybe that Hart would shock him again or argue, or even slap him. He didn't expect Hart to just look at him and say, “Get over it.”

After letting Dustin stew a minute in stunned silence, the big man lifted his wrist and thumped it down again. It was punctuation, not painful. “Tell me if you understand.”

The other tear trickled back toward Dustin's temple. “Yes, Mr. Hart. I understand.”

“I’m starting to lose my patience with you, Merrill. If you don’t start behaving? I’m going to cane you. If I cane you, he’s going to find out. And if he finds out?”

“I’m going to ruin it for him,” Dustin mumbled. And then there would be other consequences. Hart must have seen in Dustin’s eyes that he knew it, because he didn’t make him repeat those consequences.

Hart stood up and hauled Dustin to his feet so fast that he was upright before he registered the pull in his arms. “Go eat your lunch. Then get back here. Do not fucking dawdle.”

“Yes, sir,” Dustin mumbled before he fled.

The way that Hart exercised Dustin into the ground was brutal, but if there was any anger or malice in it, Dustin couldn’t tell. It didn’t seem any more intense than the day before. If anything, the session was abbreviated. Another person came in to use the gym while Hart was running Dustin through cool-down stretches, and Dustin looked over briefly.

She was a young and fit woman, Caucasian or possibly Hispanic, and that was all Dustin gave himself time to see. He didn’t want to have to return the smile that had started to distort her facial features.

After Hart excused him, Dustin staggered back into the locker room and changed into the faded blue t-shirt and jeans he’d worn only briefly after his first shower. Despite the food that Hart kept shoving into him on breaks, Dustin’s hunger pulled at him. He wanted to grab his glass bowl of whatever from the fridge and retreat upstairs with it. But it didn’t matter what he wanted.

He put his bowl on the counter, tossed the chicken breast from the top in the air fryer, then went looking for dishes for something to hold the salad and something else to reheat what looked like mashed sweet potatoes. Then he filled a glass full of water and chugged it while his food was heating. He stared out the window over the air fryer at the landscaping along the pathway that wound against the side of the Tuscan-style mansion without really seeing it.

If he was trying to not notice that there was a low hum of conversation from the dining room, he was doing a poor job of it. As Dustin stared out the window at the landscape, the tension slowly built inside him until the air fryer’s beep made him physically jump. Walking toward the dining room, he felt like a man deliberately walking into a patch of quicksand.

The dining room had archways on all three walls, leaving it feeling open and airy. It was as bright and cheery as most of the rest of the rooms in the servants’ house. The light-colored wood floor was highly polished, and the windows were large and had the same pleasant view as the kitchen. The dark wooden table had places set for eight but looked like it could be expanded to seat more. The runner down the middle had fresh yellow flowers on it that sweetly scented the air, and the green-upholstered chairs complemented the other accents in the room.

The TV was on in the living room, but that wasn’t the source of the conversational hum. Two men and a woman were at far end of the table, holding a conversation over their dinners. Dustin turned to the other end. At the last moment, he hesitated, thinking about Hart’s order for him to socialize. He didn’t sit in the final chair on his side. That left one chair between himself and the woman at the far end, an opportunity for her to realize that he wasn’t interested in talking.

Dustin had barely seated himself when one of the men looked over. He was a dark-skinned man of about fifty, and his voice had a rough quality to it, like he smoked heavily or had done a lot of yelling in his youth. “There’s trays in the cabinet right of the oven, next time you have a lot of dishes like that.”

Dustin cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

The man waved his hand in the air as if shooing a fly. “Just Leon. This is Will.” The young man next to him nodded and raised his hand. “And that’s Maria.” The woman across from him also raised her hand.

“Dustin,” he mumbled. “Pleased to meet you.”

The woman turned more fully toward him. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was striking, with dark brown hair pulled up into a bun on her head and dark eyes with laugh-lines in the corners. “I don’t suppose you’re a groundskeeper?”

Dustin looked down at his food. He poked at the chicken with his fork. The air fryer had turned the skin crispy again. “No. I’m, uh, Trey’s secretary.”

“I thought everyone knew that,” Will said.

“I was out late and missed the usual gossip, but thanks for noticing I was gone,” Maria responded.

If Dustin’s job phased the group, they didn’t let it show. Will sighed. “Damn. I’m getting tired of mowing grass.”

Leon chuckled. “As if you’re so busy.”

“Soccer practice? And mid-afternoon is the best time to snag a computer. Sure, the games are outdated, but Skyrim remains the best of all time.”

“You’re lucky you don’t drive for Mrs. Brook,” Maria half-teased. “I spend more time sitting outside buildings than…”

The trio began speaking with each other again, the conversation a mix of anecdotes and talk about ‘the cars.’ As he picked through his hearty helping of sweet potatoes and walnuts, he learned that Leon was the mechanic, that Will drove for the younger son, and that Maria drove for the mother. Dustin drew out his meal, trying not to imagine the running of the clock for an arbitrary amount of time ‘socializing.’

After Dustin took his empty dishes back to the kitchen and rinsed them, he checked his phone. Hart had worked him out late, and he’d dragged supper out later. It was just after 8. He teetered on the edge of deciding whether the conversation in the dining room had counted as enough socializing, considered that he’d established himself as an early riser, counted backward eight hours, and arrived at the conclusion that he’d rather not get caned. He probably could have arrived at that conclusion earlier if he hadn’t wanted to avoid the living room so badly.

‘Secretary’ means fuck-bunny around these parts, Hart’s faintly amused voice echoed in his head, followed by the exasperated voice of his former cellmate when the man had explained to him how he’d ended up Logan’s bitch. You should’ve fought him, man.

Dustin wasn’t putting up any more of an actual fight against Hart, or Trey for that matter, than he had against Logan. The shame dragged its claws through the tender underside of Dustin’s stomach, but the thought of being caned made him push his feet through the thick layer of mud in the hallway.

How could he fight, though? The systems were so large, the possible consequences so dire. Surely, it would make more sense to simply show his belly and take what was dished out. To endure it for the term of his indenture until things went back to normal.

Except that I can’t go back. I can go back to Chicago, yes, but if I just let this happen to me, it won’t be as the same man I was.

Maybe it was too late for that. Time traveled only in one direction, after all. Perhaps the better question was, if he just rolled over, who would he be to his girls when he went back? And who would he be to himself?

It might be better to think about it while he pretended to socialize. Time spent in company is canings avoided, as they had been known to say nowhere and never. Dustin slunk up the hallway instead of going back through the dining room, the better to have the stairs nearby in case he needed to beat a hasty retreat.

Whoever had decorated the servants’ quarters was a fan of shades of green, dark-wood accent furniture in light-colored rooms, and open space. The orientation and placement of the furniture subtly divided the living room into sections. Although Dustin had glanced at it while he was skirting through it for the stairs, he’d never really looked at it. Now, in his attempt to gauge where he might best ‘socialize’ without being disturbed, he gave it a long look.

Across the room, a television was wall-mounted in a corner. A few people watched the TV, seated on the couches that had been angled toward it. Between it and him, there was an octagonal table at which a few people were playing cards. There was also a pool table, though it was unoccupied. In the corner by the dining room wall, behind one of the TV-oriented couches, two occupied desktop computers sat. Closer to Dustin, in the elbow of the L-shape made by the stairs, was what looked like a reading area. Comfortable-looking chairs upholstered in dark green sat next to a couple of low bookshelves with tablets in chargers on top.

Overall, the living room honestly reminded Dustin of nothing as much as an upscaled version of the prison rec room, just with a designated reading area and more comfortable furniture.

Luka sat in one of the chairs in the reading area, earbud cords snaking to a tablet on top of the low table between the chairs. A black bag at their feet was connected by a thread to something bright in their hands. As Dustin made his feet take him closer, he saw that Luka was knitting.

Knitting. His version of reality started to take on that drifting quality that was so familiar to him from dreams and the particularly terrible times in prison. He didn’t know why the idea of someone knitting would hit him hard enough to knock him sideways through reality, but it did.

Sitting in the reading nook seemed safer than the alternatives. He didn’t know Luka, but he’d met them once, and since they had earbuds in, they were unlikely to try to strike up a conversation. Dustin drifted toward the other comfortable chair and lowered himself into it carefully. He was still getting used to the strange weight of the cock cage, and he was feeling particularly sensitive after the day’s… activities.

He turned his eyes on the nearby bookcase. They were just books, but it felt like a test he hadn’t studied for. He couldn’t tell whether they were just decorative or actually could be read. They had the look of a collection of classics, or an encyclopedia, but he couldn't really concentrate through the floating sensation that kept tugging his concentration away.

“Unless you have a penchant for Dickens, you might try the Kindle instead.”

Dustin flinched at Luka’s voice and turned so violently that he felt his hair stir. Luka had taken out of the earbuds, and one very well-kept brow arched at Dustin. “Just a suggestion. If you’re interested in audiobooks, there are earbuds in the drawer under the side table on your right, though it’s considered polite to take the pair you claim as your own up to your room and back instead of indiscriminately smearing your earwax on all of them.”

“I see.” Dustin’s heart was pounding so hard that it was all he could do to not stammer the two words. At least the solid thud of it started to center him in his body.

“There’s a fair selection on the house server, but there’s no internet access, of course. If you think of something in particular you want, however, you can just ask.”

Dustin swallowed hard, the nodded. “Mr. Hart?”

Luka’s laugh was all pleasure and no derision, but it still made Dustin’s face heat. “Oh, gods no. Ask Ben, the house assistant.” A gesture of a finger with a blue-painted fingernail made Dustin’s eyes track toward the group watching TV.

“Which one, I mean, who, is Ben?”

“The Asian fellow. The tall one.”

Dustin couldn’t pick out who Luka meant. He didn’t want to stare, so he just said, “Ah.”

A small silence stretched like a lengthening river. Dustin stepped awkwardly into it. “Do you knit?”

It was an inane question. Between the knitting needles and the yarn, it was pretty obvious that Luka knit.

But they looked down at the needles and made a sour face. “I would say that I aspire to knit. My heart yearns to belong to a knitter. However, I’m going to need a good deal more practice before I can take the title.”

“Oh. What are you knitting?”

Luka held up the art project, bracelets clattering gently. The yarn didn’t look like anything, really, just a yellow shape. “It was supposed to be a square, but I believe it’s decided to be a rhombus, and who am I to dissuade it.”

“I see.”

The silence stretched again. Eventually, Luka picked up the removed earbud and placed it back into their ear. The needles resumed their awkward motions between Luka’s multicolored fingernails, pausing during their frequent glances at the Kindle for reference.

Dustin turned his own Kindle on, tapped into the reading app, and pretended to look at the available titles. In truth, he figured that he’d socialized enough, and by keeping his head down, he hoped to avoid any other awkward conversations.

He was successful. Eventually, the time on the Kindle showed 9:30 pm, and Dustin put it back on the charger. He lifted his hand to Luka, who lifted the slightly larger yellow yarn rhombus to return the salute, and then he went upstairs.

Another day could be marked off the duration of a sentence whose length Dustin didn’t yet know. He could see why Bill had thought that it would be better to not bother counting.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Dustin was back in the locker room, with Hart watching him line his eyes and then take the lines back off using a makeup-removal pad when he couldn’t get the shapes even. Eventually, the man grunted in irritation. “It’ll have to do. Go outside. Wait for René if he isn’t there yet.”

“Yes, sir.” Dustin stepped away from the mirror. He wasn’t really sure what was wrong with the lines of makeup around his eyes, but he had the strong impression that Hart was a perfectionist. Dustin was a numbers guy, not an artist, and it wasn't like Hart had done any better when he’d tried to speed the process along by doing it himself.

Behind him, Hart said, “I expect another good report, Merrill.”

Another? Dustin had done his best not to think of the previous day, much less how it might have been reported to Hart. It seemed like his moment of pure animal terror hadn’t earned him a failing grade, even though remembering it made his mouth go as dry as a desert. But he said, “You’ll get one.”

René was already waiting when Dustin went into the garage. He tried not to feel awkward when René pulled the passenger door open for him, and then he tried not to pick the thong out of the crack of his ass after he sat down. It was already a morning of attempts. Dustin wasn’t sure that it boded well for the day.

After René slid into the driver’s seat, he said, “Good morning, Dustin.”

Dustin tried to match the man's polite formality. “Good morning, René.”

And that was the extent of the small talk. René selected one of his hip-hop playlists and started them for the school. The scenery that rolled by promised a beautiful day, even in morning traffic. It was sunny, with only high wisps of cloud, nothing at all like a Tri-Lakes February. It was almost too hot for jeans, much less the button-ups or light jackets that he saw on some of the pedestrians on the university’s streets.

Not that I'll be wearing the jeans long. The thought hit the center of Dustin’s chest in a way that twisted the bottom of his stomach but also flared resentment at the base of his throat.

When René pulled up on front of the classroom building, Trey was waiting for him on the sidewalk. The grin that took over his face when René let Dustin out of the car was wide and brilliantly white in the morning sunlight. Other than his slim-cut jeans being black and the shirt being white with the faces of two Black men on it that Dustin vaguely recognized as hip-hop artists, Trey looked exactly the same.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Dustin replied.

The young man stepped into Dustin’s space and kissed him. His fuzzy attempt at a mustache tickled above Dustin’s upper lip. He was too startled to respond, and he was fortunate that it was little more than a press of lips before Trey stepped back. The smell of body-spray lingered longer than the kiss had.

Trey was still grinning, and his dark eyes lit from within with pleasure and a bit of impishness. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, man, but damn it was hard.”

Dustin lagged about half a second behind what Trey was talking about. “The homework?”

“Yeah, man. You were all I could think about.” Trey turned toward the building with long, eager strides, and Dustin joined him. “It’s a good thing I don’t have other classes. I’d probably flunk every one. How about you?”

“The chastity?”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t too bad.” Except during his morning shower, when the trickling of the water had made him gasp and press both hands against the wall and wonder whether it was possible to sprain his dick in the damn cage. “Except this morning.”

“Well, you know what they said, man. It’s supposed to make it easier on you, as far as not jerking it goes.”

Was that something they said? Dustin couldn’t recall, but the previous day had grown distant and fuzzy already. He did remember Hart saying that his cock belonged to Trey. Which wasn’t at all the same as the way Trey was putting it.

Trey was still talking with oppressive cheerfulness. “And I know it's just a one-credit pass-fail, but man, I want to pass this class. And I know I don’t have to, but I’m being faithful to you too, man. I did jerk it last night, but not this morning, and I’m not even looking at porn of other guys. It was just, well. Yesterday. You know?”

“Yeah,” Dustin said, but his sense of disconnected confusion ramped up a notch. The way Trey was talking, it was as if they were in an actual relationship, not a man and his supposed sex-worker, or a master and his pet. And not masturbating as a class requirement? Dustin had a hard time imagining that in a syllabus. How would anyone know if Dustin was masturbating, anyway?

When they got to the third-floor classroom, it was set up different from the previous day. There were still chairs, though only eight of them, but the pet cushions had been replaced by thick foam mats. Dustin’s sense of detached bewilderment floated away like a puff of dandelion seeds on the wind, and the anxious twist in the bottom of his stomach came back as a full-force wringing motion that made him want to throw up on his toes.

Dustin reminded himself that, whatever happened, he was still himself. He wasn’t going to let ‘Professor’ Riley teach him to be anything that he wasn’t. Pretend, yes. Be, no. Even if that meant pretending to like whatever was going to happen on that mat.

I knew you liked it, bitch, Logan whispered in the back of Dustin’s mind while the cramp that tore up through his body made him groan and suck in a breath that smelled like urine and bleach and despair.

“You okay, man?”

Dustin snapped back like an overstretched rubber band, and for one horrified moment, he wondered whether he’d moaned out loud. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Trey didn’t sound convinced. “It’s just, you went sort of pale.”

Dustin swallowed hard on a mouthful of lemon-flavored spit. He cleared his throat. “Just, ah, nervous.”

“Don’t worry, man” Trey said with the earnestness of a puppy not realizing that his wagging tail was knocking decorative glass off a coffee table. “I’ve got you.”

If only he did. If only he would wake the fuck up, look around, and realize what the fuck was happening in the room. But how did that saying go? When looking through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags?

Trey gave Dustin his phone and watch before even sitting down. Dustin took them over to the table and stared at the mat. Clean pale grey foam, nothing special about it except for the terrible implications. It didn’t feel right for Dustin to wear his shoes on it, and he thought they were probably going to come off anyway, so he shucked them off and put them under the chair before easing down.

Riley promptly closed and locked the door after he came in. A young guy who looked about the same age as the students followed the so-called professor to the front of the class. Unlike Riley, his skin looked naturally bronze, and he had his straight black hair up in a ponytail. He wore long khaki shorts and a simple blue polo shirt, like he worked in a copy shop.

“It’s great to have you all back,” Riley said in the earnest and encouraging voice that grated against Dustin’s eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.

But they weren’t all back. There were only sixteen people in the room. When Dustin glanced along the arc, he saw that the blonde-haired man and his pet weren’t there. A thud hit low in Dustin’s stomach, but there was nothing he could do about it. The other man was on his own. Just like Dustin was, when it came right down to it.

Riley was still talking, his hands gesturing broadly at the black-haired young man. “This is Adam, my TA. We’re going to do it a little different this morning. The masters will stay with me for their lesson while we break the pets off for their own, then we’ll come back together for the practical. Sound good?”

There was a murmur of agreement, though Dustin was close enough to Trey to hear the disappointment in his. Riley said, “Clothes off, pets. Then follow Adam to that door over there.”

Dustin didn’t hesitate as much getting out of his outer clothes as he had the previous day. Everyone in the room had seen him naked, if they’d been paying attention to him at all, but it still took a mental effort to push the thong down and off. The weight of the cock cage pulled him down, and the warmth that came with it was sudden and tingling and followed by an uncomfortable squeeze, as if his body wanted to turn his statement that it hadn’t been so bad into a lie.

Dustin stepped back to not pass in front of the chairs. While he made his way with the other naked men toward the TA at the side of the room, he was reminded him of moving in lines in prison, the position in the line determined by the cell order. Or in this case, the chair order, with Dustin last in line since Trey sat on the farthest end of the arc. He was still in the main room when the lights dimmed, and he saw the flicker of a projector light up the white board.

“Now,” Riley’s voice buzzed through the room. “You’re all here with me instead of down the hall because your pets have prostates…”

Dustin swallowed hard on a thick mouthful saliva that tasted like sucking on a bitter penny, but he didn’t hear the rest of what Riley said. The door closed behind him.

He found himself in a tile-floored bathroom with the other naked men. Most of them shifted from foot to foot, awkwardly trying to give each other room without going farther than necessary into the ominous-feeling space. Dustin felt lucky to be at the end of the line. Adam the TA wasn’t shy about checking the men out, then he smiled. He was trying for a professional smile like Riley’s, but he didn’t come close. He was too excited by his role. “Raise your hand if you’ve used a bidet.”

Two hands lifted. Neither was Dustin’s.

“It’s a really simple process.” Adam beckoned them farther into the room. “Get closer so you can see into the stalls. Closer. I promise none of the other pets are going to try to touch you inappropriately.”

Dustin felt a little blood go to his face. It took him a moment to realize that it was anger, not embarrassment, though it didn’t seem to have a direction. He tried to put it aside, but there was something comforting about the not-fear that made him want to hold onto it. The second he tried, it slipped through his fingers like cold fog and left him feeling empty.

At Adam’s insistent beckoning, the group shuffled in a little closer. The light-colored tiles were cold against Dustin’s bare feet as he tried to put himself behind and between two men. Over their shoulders, he could see into the wide stall that Adam had backed into. The porcelain toilets looked exactly like any other toilet Dustin had ever seen, until the TA pulled a little flexible sprayer from a holder on the side. He crowded his body against the side of the stall to show off the little thumb-press knob.

“Any high-end house is going to have at least one toilet with a bidet, if not more. Some of them are pretty fancy, built into the toilet and, like, maybe heated, with dryers, pretty much anything you can imagine. This is your standard wand model.”

Dustin stared at the wand like a snake that might like to bite him on the taint.

“Any time you use the bathroom, you’ll want to spray, wash, spray, dry. You see these towels here?” Adam indicated a basket sitting on the back of the toilet. Presumably, it held towels. If there was nodding in response, Dustin didn’t do it or see it. “Clean towels.” Adam pointed to what looked like a little mailbox on the wall. “Used towels. Though they shouldn’t be dirty. If they are, you need to do it again, and do a better job. The goal is to not be dirty. You get it?” That time, Adam waited a moment. “Do you understand, pets?”

That time, he drew out a sullen, murmured assent.

“Okay!” His tone made it to what Dustin was coming to think of as the sex-school teacher standard model, bright and encouraging. “Use the toilet, if you can. Then you’ll all use the bidet. Wash well. Wash your hands well, too. I’ll come get you when we’re ready for you to come back.”

Adam, fully clothed in his blue shirt and khaki shorts, brushed past the mostly naked men as if they weren’t really there. After the door opened and closed, one of the other men spoke in a voice that was more tired than anything. “This is the most fucked-up class I’ve ever been to in my life.”

“Not exactly like studying for the GED,” someone responded.

The man next to and in front of Dustin looked around. He was a light-haired man whose pale skin was, as far as Dustin was willing to look, entirely covered in freckles. “Who’s going first?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Dustin was surprised to hear himself say. “I’ll go.”

“I’ll go,” someone else said, and the crowd shifted to let the ‘volunteers’ through before the rest began a not-it discussion about the last stall. As if going last was going to save them from anything.

At least the stalls had doors. As Dustin started to step into the first one, a wave of lightheadedness washed over him, and he was afraid that he might pass out. But the toilet was white porcelain, not metal, and he was alone in the stall. The height of the walls was comfortingly tall. And instead of urine, the stall smelled like the soap in its little bottle on the back of the toilet tank. The soap was probably called ‘spring morning’ or something inane like that.

Using the bidet wasn’t bad, as long as Dustin could keep his mind off of why he was doing it. The idea of some sort of horrifying inspection at the end made him do a good job. And then he was done and out of the stall and washing his hands, trying to keep his eyes down on the sink, trying not to look in the mirror at the assess of the men clustered by the stalls, but especially trying to avoid anyone’s eyes.

They had all finished and started to grow restless by the time Adam opened the door to the main room. “Okay, pets, we’re ready for you!”

Dustin was near the front of the line, and he did a little stutter-step on his way back into the room. The lights were still low, intimately so. The students, or masters, or whatever someone might call them, were mostly down to their underwear, though a few were outright naked. The chairs were gone. They sat on the mats with little trays nearby, metal trays that reminded Dustin of nothing as much as dissecting frogs in Biology for Nonmajors.

Trey was at the far end of the arc. He sat cross-legged in his boxers on the mat. His smile contained excitement, but also a hint of nervousness that Dustin hadn’t seen before. “Hey, Dusty. Come sit down?”

Trey was at the end of the mat on the side that faced Riley’s chair, by the metal tray that Dustin was carefully not looking at. A glance at the tray showed him that it held blue gloves that tried to jerk him back to the doctor’s offices in the BISA pens. A raspy voice whispered, It’s not as if I’m damaging the property.

For a moment, Dustin froze, his body mired in air as thick as gelatin. Then Hart warned him, I expect another good report.

Dustin wasn’t going to lose sight of what was important, but he was going to have to do things he didn’t want to do. He had to accept that. He didn’t have to like it, but he did have to accept it.

He forced his way through the thick air to sit with Trey on the cushion. They both sat sideways on the mat, their knees almost touching. He cleared a tightness out of his throat that had nothing to do with the shock collar. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

Dustin put a smile on his numb lips. “Nervous.”

Trey’s chuckle was as low as his voice. “Me too. It doesn’t sound hard, just. You know. I want you to like it, man.”

Like what? competed in Dustin’s mind with, It’s not fucking likely. The gloves made it seem like fucking was not on the menu, but even if he’d be able to make himself look at the tray, it was on the other side of Trey now.

“Okay, class,” Riley called from in front of the room, in his obnoxiously encouraging teacher’s voice. “You can get started.”

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the room, a student snapped one of the gloves’ wristbands, and Dustin’s breath drew in sharply and his eyes slammed shut. The skin tightened across his entire body. His balls would have crawled up for the shelter of his abdomen if they could have, and the old anxiety grabbed the base of his stomach and dug its claws in.

“Can I touch you?” Trey’s voice was still soft, private, and intimate, despite the fact that there were sixteen other people in the room. But underneath the words was a puppy-bright eagerness.

Dustin’s heart hammered in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to shout ‘no,’ grab his clothes, and sprint from the room. What did Trey think he could say in response to that question? Was he really so naïve?

Wake up, Dustin urged him. Look around you. But trauma hadn’t made him telepathic

Swallowing hard cleared some of the blockage from Dustin’s throat. He had no idea how his mouth could go from so full of spit to as dry as a desert in moments. His whisper hissed like sand blowing across dunes. “Yes.”

Trey’s hand caressed Dustin’s shoulder, skin on skin. He, at least, hadn’t put the blue gloves on yet. His fingertips slid down the back of Dustin’s arm along the area that shot sparks of sensation along his nerve endings. From there, they tracked across Dustin’s stomach, then down the insides of his thighs. As the young man’s hands played through the erogenous zones he had found the day before like someone would have played a piano, he slid closer and started kissing the back of Dustin’s shoulder, well below his collar. Trey scooted in closer, turning so that he could use both hands.

He didn't seem to notice that Dustin sat still as a statue, letting him do it rather than participating.

Frozen as Dustin was, his body still responded to the intimate touches of another man like it always had. He was hot and heavy and aching in his cage by the next time Trey tracked his fingertips up the inner thigh of one of Dustin’s crossed legs. He moaned through his nose, leaned back onto his hands, widening his legs to give Trey better access.

When Trey cupped his balls where the strain of him trying to get hard in the cage had pulled them forward, the full-throated version tore out of him without him wanting it to. Trey’s fingers rubbed gently back and forth over the taut skin and crinkly hair. His other hand stroked down the side of Dustin’s chest, which was hitching with his short, sharp breaths. He had never been so desperately horny and full of dread at the same time.

“It feels good?” he asked.

“Yes.” To Dustin’s shame, he wasn't lying. His body ached to be touched, no matter what his mind wanted.

“You’re doing so good. This is so fucking hot, man. I want to make you feel good.” A pause, then he asked, “Do you trust me?”

Trust you? I barely know you. But Dustin’s numb lips said, “Yes.”

Trey’s hands withdrew slowly and teasingly. “Get on your elbows and knees?”

It was a request, except in all the ways it wasn’t. Dustin glanced toward the front of the room, where Riley and Adam stood by the whiteboard, engaged in low conversation. Riley’s eyes regularly wandered over the activities on the mats.

I expect another good report.

Dustin’s heart pounded in the base of his throat as he started to change positions, and Trey moved to give him room. Dustin didn’t try to pretend that he didn’t know his ass was supposed to be toward the front of the room, the tray, and the watching instructor. Or that he didn’t know what Trey wanted next. After Dustin got on all fours, he forced his knees to move apart, feeling as vulnerable as he had felt the first time a doctor had strapped him to a table with his legs spread wide. Or the second.

He was so deep In his own head that he jumped when Trey spoke. “Dusty, you’re doing good, man. I’m going to touch your ass. Okay?”

Dustin let his head hang loose from his neck, his forehead resting on the curl of his clenched fists. The mat smelled subtly of disinfectant, almost enough to overcome the smell of his own fear-sweat. He mumbled, “Okay.”

Trey’s hand, hesitant at first, stroked over the curve of Dustin’s ass. Dustin felt the artificial smoothness of the gloves over the man’s fingers and tried not to picture how blue they would be. When Dustin didn’t leap away, Trey did it again, more confidently. The stroke of his fingers up the backs of Dustin’s thighs made him shudder. When he reached between Dustin’s legs and fondled him, hot and aching and soft but desperately wanting to be hard, Dustin didn’t try to bottle up his moan.

There was a small pause, long enough for Dustin’s nausea to start returning, before something touched his asshole. Dustin’s head shot up and he just barely stopped himself from crawl-stumbling toward the front of the mat and the distant door.

“It’s okay,” Trey reassured him in a low voice that tried to be soothing. “I’m not going to hurt you. And. And you’re doing so good, okay?”

He very much was hurting Dustin. He just didn’t know it. Still, Dustin made himself breathe out, put his head back down, and mumble, “Okay.”

It was a fingertip, slick and gentle, that touched Dustin’s asshole. The slow swirl of it sent a flush of warmth shooting from Dustin’s nerve endings all the way up his body, but especially forward into his painfully squeezed cock. After a few slow tracks around, the finger pressed in a little, then withdrew.

“You’ve got to relax, man.” Trey’s fingertip went back to its slow circles, and Dustin tried to relax.

He couldn’t. Not really. Trey’s fingertip pressed in, then withdrew when Dustin tightened up and went back to circling. Pressed in again, deeper, past the first knuckle.

“Have you found it?” Riley’s voice made Dustin jump, and Trey’s finger pulled out of him.

“No.” Trey sounded defensive. “We’re still working on getting in there.”

Riley’s voice carried approval. “Better to go slow than fast. We want your pet to enjoy it. Keep up the good work, Trey.”

Dustin’s breath came fast and his heart raced, and not from desire. Then Trey’s finger was back at his asshole, circling, and he tried to relax. By the time Trey was two knuckles in, Dustin had softened up again in his cage from the pure anxiety of everything. Trey’s finger stroked and pressed, and Dustin was willing to admit that it didn’t hurt or feel bad, physically speaking, but—

A sensation like electric fingernails stroked under his skin, hitting every place on his body all at once. He gasped harshly and his abs spasmed. Trey’s finger stroked there again, and Dustin’s entire body broke out in goosebumps. He couldn’t decide whether it felt good or strange, but after third stroke, he felt the squeeze of his cock cage. That discomfort was strange. The finger was strange. His body seemed bent on interpreting both types of strange as pleasure.

“Is that the right spot?” Trey asked in a low voice.

“Yes.” It came out with a breathless catch as Trey’s finger stroked and pressed again.

Trey’s finger withdrew from Dustin’s body. He was left shuddering and straining for that sensation, that feeling of fingers stroking under his skin while the cage squeezed his cock like a throbbing hand. When Dustin opened his eyes for just a moment, he saw that his dick was pressed hard against the bars of the cage, angry and dribbling precum. A small lake of it had formed on the mat.

Something new, smooth, but still slick, circled Dustin’s asshole.

“You’re going to like this too, man.” Trey sounded more hopeful than assured. Dustin tried to not hold his breath.

What Trey pressed with was larger than a finger, stretching Dustin, but not painfully. Not like Dustin had been stretched when Logan had slammed his cock into him all at once.

At that thought, nausea rolled forward from Dustin’s stomach to his throat and he choked. Trey pulled away. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dustin lied.

He was not going to think about Logan. But it was like trying not to think about a wasp buzzing around his ears and waiting to sting. The only way to not do that was to retreat out of his head and back into his body.

Dustin focused his mind on the sensations. The thing in Trey’s hand pulsed in and out, and aroused, Dustin found himself rocking with the pulses. Sometimes it withdrew entirely and came back slicker, went deeper. It brushed the spot more gently than Trey’s finger had, and the sensation that had been fingernails was more like a trickle of electricity. But it was still delicious.

The object went deeper until the stretch eased and Dustin felt himself close around something.

“Wow, that was easy.” Trey sounded surprised. “You did great, man.”

At least that time, Dustin smelled the warning waft of cedar and clove before Riley spoke, and he didn’t jump like a kicked-up grasshopper. “Done already, Trey?”

“Yeah, Prof. He really took to it.” The pride and pleasure in Trey’s voice could have been measured in gallons.

“Some men have more experience.” Riley’s words sent ice coursing through Dustin’s veins. He tensed, and became very aware of the sensation of having something up his butt.

You like it, bitch, Logan whispered maliciously.

Somewhere in the distance, Riley was still speaking. “Or more natural stretch. Give the second size a try?”

Trey said, “You still doing okay, man?”

“I… yeah. Let’s, uh. Do that. If you want.”

Having Trey remove the first plug was easy and natural. It was the complete opposite of the press and release of the new plug. Again, Dustin felt himself rock into it when it began stroking sensation out under his skin like the static charge in the air before a thunderstorm.

But it went deeper. And deeper. And opened him wider until he thought he couldn’t take it anymore. Every time, Trey pulled it back out and added more lube and whispered encouraging things to him in a voice thick with his own arousal. The deeper it went, the more nervous Dustin got. It didn’t hurt, but he felt so full, like he needed to use the restroom.

When he thought he couldn’t stretch anymore, Dustin whispered, “Trey.”

He hated the whine in his voice, the way his legs were trembling, but most of all, he hated the way he kept pressing back into the pressure after it made him spasm. His cage no longer hurt, the throb was almost like being stroked.

“We’re almost there, Dusty. Just a little more.”

Timeless minutes or hours or years later, the pressure at Dustin’s asshole eased. He wasn’t closed, but he wasn’t so breathlessly stretched. Dustin heard the snap of gloves coming off, and two gloves the blue of the doctor that had sterilized him dropped to the metal tray.

Trey’s hands stroked over Dustin’s ass. He was breathing hard, too. The smell of disinfectant had long since been replaced by the smells of sweat and arousal. “There. That was so good, Dusty. Damn, that was so fucking hot, man. You did so good. Could you…” Trey hesitated. “Could you wear that. All the time, except at night. Will you?”

Now that Dustin wasn’t so focused on simply enduring the press and stretch and waiting for those strange shocks of enjoyment, he knew what Trey was asking him to wear. And why.

Dustin’s shoulders shuddered as he took his breath in, but he didn’t sob. He hoped that it would be mistaken as one of the aftershocks of pleasure. “Yeah. Sure.”

Trey’s relief and pleasure were unmistakable. “Damn. That’s so fucking sexy. You’ll think of me? When you put it in?”

“How couldn’t I?”

“God damn,” Trey breathed out. It was probably for the best that he hadn’t heard the despair Dustin had felt when he’d responded.

Dustin’s swallowed spit traveled slowly along his upside-down throat. “Could I, uh, get up?”

”Oh! Yeah, man, of course. Sorry." Am impish note came into his low, warm voice. “I was just enjoying the view.”

Dustin slowly shifted his body up to a sit. Every time he moved, the plug rubbed him inside, sometimes sending that strange sensation shocking across his nerve endings. The cage was pleasurably uncomfortable, only a little sore where the head of his dick pressed, and even that was muted.

Trey’s face was flushed and the front of his boxers were tented and stained with his own precum. Dustin was so confusingly, terribly horny. Trey was so obviously horny. If it had been anywhere else, any other situation, he might truly have wanted to fuck Trey right then and there, total stranger or not, room full of people or not.

But it wasn’t any other situation, and even though what he wanted more than anything was to grab his things and run for the hills, he knew what he was expected to do. What he needed to do to get a good report. Like he had last time.

Dustin reached for Trey’s wrist and pulled him forward. The young man’s eyes, even darker than usual in the low light of the classroom, widened. A grin came onto his face, and he let Dustin pull him closer until their lips touched.

Chapter Text

After Dustin pulled Trey in, he kissed him hungrily, putting every ounce of his genuine horniness into it and trying to keep his horror out of it. The way their bodies moved as they kissed shifted the plug in Dustin’s body, and some of the shifts made his caged cock throb or his skin tingle, particularly the bottoms of his feet. They explored each other's mouths with their tongues. When Trey started to run his hands up Dustin’s back, though, he jerked away.

“Careful of the collar.” Dustin was breathless.

“Oh.” Trey was panting, too. “Yeah. They said not to touch it. Right.”

Dustin resumed pressing his body against Trey’s, skin to skin. His own cock continued to throb in its uncomfortable prison every time he moved, every time the plug shifted inside him. He slid his hand down Trey’s chest to the front of his boxers and rubbed. His cock was rock hard. Dustin gave it an experimental grip and stroke through the fabric, and Trey moaned into his mouth.

“That’s enough, you two.” Riley’s buzzing voice was firm rather than encouraging, and Dustin and Trey jerked apart like two boys caught by their parents.

“But,” Dustin panted, then he came up short. ‘But I thought you wanted me to’ wouldn't have been a good answer, not in front of Trey.

“This is a classroom, not a hotel room.”

Trey’s face flushed. Dustin edged backward from his press against the other man, not sure what he’d done wrong. After the day before, he thought that he was supposed to show desire after sexual encounters.

Trey also seemed confused. “But I thought you said I should touch him, after?”

“I said use your touch afterward to make sure that your pet knows that he’s done well.” Riley lifted one of his bronze-tanned fingers, not pointing at Trey with it, just waving it at the ceiling as if pontificating. “So that your pet feels your approval and knows you care for him. That isn't the same as more sex.

“Oh.”

Riley’s voice lost its disapproving edge, the annoying buzz in it ramping down to a mosquito whine. “Why don't you try spooning with him, Trey? Soothingly.”

“Sure, prof.”

Riley smiled, then he winked. “Watch out for the puddle. Pets in chastity leak when turned on, and this mat’s a mess. There are spares over there.”

Dustin glanced down. The mat was indeed streaked with his precum, and a slick spot of lube showed where his ass had come down. He felt his own face heat with embarrassment, though nothing about the situation had led him to feel like anyone else was judging him. After Riley walked away, Dustin didn’t wait for Trey to ask him to get up and get a new mat. The cart with Velcro-strapped rolls was by the door, where Dustin hadn’t seen it when he’d come in. All of his attention had been faced forward.

The entire walk over, he wanted to walk strangely, or better yet, to pull out the plug. He wasn't sure whether he really had to piss or shit, and the shifting kept reminding him that it was there. Sometimes, it brushed that delicious spot, and Dustin couldn’t help but flex his kegels, his body trying to get a sense of what was inside him. Other times, he found himself subtly bearing down on it to try to get it out. In short, he hated it.

When Dustin returned to Trey, he took the new mat, unrolled it, and together they spread it on top of the old one. It wasn’t what Dustin would have done, but he was too busy climbing into his thong. Hopefully the padding would keep from leaking all over the new mat, too. If Riley had a problem with that, he didn’t voice it.

Walking had been maddening, but between the way that the strap of the thong shifted against the base of the plug and the subtle tugging on his unsupported cage from the front, he wanted to squirm like he had ants in his pants. No, that wasn’t right. He wanted to tear the cage off and jerk it. He wanted that so badly that the mental image of it, of the relief, was so vivid that it made him suck in his breath.

A directionless frustration sparked up, but without a solid target, it winked back out, leaving him feeling empty.

Trey had stretched out on his side, and Dustin joined him, easing down uncomfortably. After he, too, had stretched out, Trey scooted in behind him. Dustin was used to being the small spoon, it was one of the penalties one paid for being an average-sized man dating a massive football player. Trey seemed hesitant at first to curl in close, and Dustin wasn’t inclined to make it easier. It was all he could do to not fidget away.

Trey’s hand came down, stroking the outside of Dustin’s arm like someone might stroke a cat. He murmured, “I’m supposed to tell you how good you did, but it feels kind of, I don’t know, demeaning, man.”

Trey had faced them toward the far wall. Dustin couldn’t hear Riley, but he also couldn’t smell the man's distinctive clove aftershave. Still, he kept his voice low. “Do what you have to for class.”

Trey’s hand stilled on Dustin’s bicep. “I’d rather give you, you know. What you need from me.”

Dustin mentally sighed. He made himself ease his body back against Trey’s chest and murmured, “I don’t know what I need from you.”

Other than to not be forced to have sex with you. To not do what we’re doing right now. And then, with a hint of guilt, To not lie to you about the whole thing.

If only it was that uncomplicated. Lying to the guy was another thing Dustin was being made to do that he was uncomfortable with. His mother had always told him that he wasn’t creative enough to lie, which was why he always got caught. But more than that, his father had always strongly voiced his opinion that good men were honest, and Dustin had always abided by that. Now, he promised himself that he’d never get comfortable with lying. Never. It was another thing that he wouldn’t allow them to change about him.

But he also didn’t want a bad report to get back to Hart. The breath sighed out of Dustin’s lungs. “Maybe that’s what the class is supposed to teach us.”

Trey curled in closer against Dustin’s body and rested his arm over him. Dustin could feel the younger man’s arousal pressing against his butt, though it wasn’t the urgent iron-hardness of a need to fuck. It was more the readiness that came with having someone you wanted stretched out against your skin. Trey’s hand hesitated, then he began rubbing the pads of his fingers in a massage that, if Dustin was being honest with himself, did feel nice.

He didn’t want to admit that Trey’s gentle touches were soothing. It was, he decided, the primate part of him that Riley had talked about. His body responding to Trey’s gentle touches like he’d always responded to Jake treating him gently after he’d been a complete asshole, calming down like a cat coaxed off a ledge. It was probably the same part of him that responded to Trey’s fingers sliding up the inside of his thigh, even when he didn’t want to be touched.

Dustin felt Trey’s mouth nuzzle into his hair, and he warned, “Careful of the collar.”

“Mhm. I guess you wouldn’t know what you need, either,” Trey said. He rested his lips against the back of Dustin’s head, in his hair, speaking even more softly, as if he didn’t want Riley to know that his murmured words weren’t just nonsense praise either. “I know it’s just a job to you, being my ‘secretary.’ ”

It isn’t, it’s completely different than that, Dustin thought but didn’t say.

Uninterrupted, Trey continued speaking into Dustin’s hair. “But I want to do right by you, man.”

Dustin took in a slow, deep breath, and he felt Trey’s arm lift with it. Then Dustin let it out slowly, so that it didn’t come out as a sigh. “Well. I want to be a good one. Maybe that’s supposed to be part of the class, too.”

“Yeah,” Trey mumbled thoughtfully into Dustin’s hair. “Yeah, I think you might be right.”

They lay together quietly after that, until Riley said, “Right, class, that’s time. Go ahead and get dressed. Pets, too. Don’t worry about the equipment, Adam’ll pick it up.”

How about that for a job? Cleaning used sex mats? Dustin couldn’t think of a nicer person to do it, except for Riley himself.

Trey rolled away and Dustin sat up. He was surprised how much it had felt like it was just the two of them, and not the two of them plus sixteen other people sharing the same space and the same experiences, or at least something close. Maybe it was being on the end of the arc, where they didn’t see the people around them when they were facing the far wall. Or maybe it was just the nature of intimate experiences.

He’d pulled his pants on but didn’t have his shirt on yet when Riley said, “Homework. Pets, you’re going to put those plugs in and take them out every few hours, at least three times. Give your body some rest in between. Lube will be your friend going in and coming out. Don’t wear them overnight, but do wear them to class tomorrow. Students, again, you’re to leave the pets alone and read your class materials.” There was a subtle groan, but not as much as there was at the next instruction. “And you aren’t to masturbate.”

“Man, you can’t be serious.” Trey’s protest was loud and immediate. It wasn’t the only one, but it was the one that Riley turned to.

The man’s teacher-smile was wide and encouraging and false as marble teeth. “It’ll be worth it. And if you want to, think about how your pets have been locked up, waiting for you. Consider it an exercise in knowing how good it’s going to feel for them when you unlock them.”

One of the women said, “Are there cameras installed in our bedroom or something? You’ll mark us down if we get off in the night?”

Riley shook his head. “Of course not. But you’ll know. And I’ll be able to tell. I’ve been teaching this class since you were in grade school.”

The class was dismissed. Trey and Dustin went downstairs together, the space between them crackling with a tense electricity that no words discharged, even though other master-pet pairs conversed quietly in the elevator. René waited at the curb, standing outside the car. The intense sun had to make his black uniform an oven.

Trey sighed heavily. “Maybe I’ll start having René drive me to class.”

“That would probably break the class rules.”

“Yeah.” Trey sighed again. A sack of teenage angst couldn’t have done it better. “And being in the same space with you, and not being able to touch you? Man, it’d be fucking torture.”

He didn’t know anything about torture. Torture was the heavy way Dustin’s balls ached, particularly when he shifted his hips and brushed his package against the inside of his jeans. And it was hard to not shift his hips with the plug up his butt.

They stood together for another moment. Then Trey started, “Hey…”

What Trey wanted was in his eyes, and Dustin turned in toward him and lifted his chin a little. Trey’s lips came down toward his, and they kissed, class rules or no class rules.

Trey’s arm shifted. Dustin had only enough time to register alarm and try to pull back. Maybe it was the pulling back that actually bridged the small gap between the back of his neck and the hand that Trey had lifted to pull him more firmly into the kiss.

Hot lightning flashed across Dustin’s throat and his breath exploded outward in a yelp. He couldn’t drag another in, Trey jumped back with a startled noise, and then Dustin was down on his knees on the hot sidewalk, gagging, trying to gasp, trying not to claw at his own throat. Moisture gathered in the corner of his eyes.

Dustin was desperately focused on the futile spasms of his diaphragm, but in the background, he heard Trey yelling. “Dusty? Fuck! René? René! What the fuck is wrong with him, man!”

When Dustin was able to get a breath, he started coughing in great whoops. The shaking of his shoulders knocked the dampness from his eyes. A sting was starting to register in his scraped palms and knees, but when he lifted his hand to wipe his eyes, his palms were surprisingly unbloodied.

René, closer now, asked, “Did he touch his collar, Mr. Brook?”

“He didn’t, man, I did! What the fuck happened, René?!”

Dustin was finally able to pull a breath into his lungs without it exploding right back out again. He pushed himself up to his knees and croaked, “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

But Trey wasn’t paying attention to him, he was facing René with his fists balled at his sides. René was looking away deferentially. “It is a thing for the new indentures, Mr. Brook. In their start period? So they don’t try to pull the collar off.”

“That’s so fucked up, man!”

Dustin staggered to his feet. His voice was rough voice, but he tried to sound calmer than he felt. “It’s fine. As long as you don’t touch it. I’m okay.”

Trey grabbed Dustin by the arm and turned him. His expression was shocked and angry and frightened, all wide dark eyes and flared nostrils. “Shit, man. I am so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Dustin said again. His voice still rasped from coughing so hard. The desperation to breathe was rapidly being replaced anxiety sinking its nauseating claws into the base of his stomach. What would Hart think? What would Hart do to him? Was it ruined for Trey, the illusion? Was he going to get shipped off to Vegas?

He pushed those thoughts aside and looked straight into Trey’s eyes, trying to look honest, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, trying to not shatter the illusion further. “It’s okay, Trey. Really.”

Trey’s head shook slowly and he backed up. “I’m so fucking sorry. Jesus Christ. It’s not even close to okay. I’m going to talk to my dad about it.” He took a step away, turned back, and shook his head. “Dusty, man, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Dustin said again, but Trey was leaving. The young man’s head was shaking, and he ran a hand back over his forehead and into his messy black curls.

Dustin turned to René, giving him a helpless look. “What’s going to happen?”

René also shook his head, then he gestured to the car. “I don’t know. We have to go back, now.”

Numb, Dustin followed René to the car and managed to buckle himself in with hands he could barely feel. His head swam, and not because he’d lost his breath when he had been shocked. His thoughts chased their tails in circles like an entire room full of barking dogs and he couldn’t pin down any one. There was only noise and stress and foreboding.

Chapter Text

Dustin sat in the cheerfully bright and green locker room, his fingers laced tightly together, staring down at the phone in his hands and trying to control the shaking. He kept picturing the phone as a solid rock. If he could get the phone to shop shaking, his hands would stop shaking. Certainly, that was how it worked.

He’d messaged Hart when he got back, just like he’d been told, but he hadn’t received anything in response. Only the dead silence of the tiny grey screen. He’d scarfed down lunch without tasting it. The phone was silent. He'd gone to the locker room.

The phone was silent.

Dustin understood why chihuahuas shook constantly, now. He felt completely furless and small in a universe of inscrutable giants that might step on him accidentally or on purpose. Anxiety hadn’t grabbed his guts this hard since he’d been waiting for one of Logan’s lackeys to knock on his cell door and invite him to his next brutal rape session.

When the door opened, Dustin’s head shot up. Hart ambled into the room. The expression on his broad face was grim. His scowl was fixed like a bayonet that was ready to run into Dustin’s guts. Dustin flinched away from that look. A thousand explanations and excuses crowded together on the tip of his tongue. He knew that begging wasn’t going to move Hart, but he still tried.

“It wasn’t my fault. He was kissing me and—”

“Get up, Merrill.” Hart’s voice was as hard and flat as a frozen lake.

Dustin was on his feet immediately. “—he touched my collar, and—”

“Shut up,” Hart said. Dustin’s mouth closed like someone slamming a trunk.

“I don't give a shit. Come on.”

Dustin swallowed down all of his explanations and excuses and questions. Where. Why. What are you going to do to me. What will happen now. Hart wouldn’t answer any of them.

He followed the physically imposing man as he walked outside, along the winding, sunbaked fieldstone sidewalk that wound around the mansion, through the aroma of freshly cut grass. Dustin barely noticed those things, and his body had forgotten all physical discomforts. His thirst. His horniness. The butt plug. The thong. His full attention was on survival, and it felt like Hart was the man drowning him but also his lifeline.

A lifeline who didn’t care if Dustin let go. A lifeline that might cut itself, even. Hart really did not care one way or the other about Dustin or what happened to him, and Dustin didn’t know why he kept holding onto the mistaken impression that he did.

The barrel-broad man led Dustin through the covered outdoor patio and into the house. Dustin had only been in once, and then not farther than the living room. It was airy and spacious, and Dustin had no ability to focus on it. Hart led him through the living room to a smaller room whose walls were lined with books. There was a large window, but the noon light wasn’t yet slanting through it. The room felt dim and close.

Trey sat on a comfortable-looking office chair by the desk under the window. He’d pulled the chair around past the open side of the L, the tracks of its wheels the only thing marring the vacuum lines in the soft, pale carpet. His legs were spread, his elbows were on his knees, and his hands were clasped together, the fingers woven more loosely than the way Dustin tended to hold his own hands. The smell of his body spray mingled pleasantly with the smell of old books.

It was extremely difficult for Dustin to read Trey’s expression when he looked up. He’d never seen the young man when he didn’t look excited, pleased, or impish. The furrow between his brows made him look older. “Thanks, Oman.”

“Any time.” Hart’s voice was gruffer than usual. “You want me to leave?”

Trey lifted a hand and ran it through his curls until his fingers stuck. His hair was messy, like he hadn’t stopped raking his hands through it since what had happened on the sidewalk. “Yes. No. No, stay here and be our chaperone.”

“Sure. You want me to stand?”

“No,” Trey said distractedly. His attention was already focused on Dustin. “Wherever, man. It’s just for the class. In case.”

In case they’d be going back to the class. Which for Dustin meant in case he’d be going somewhere worse. His guts turned to water, all except for that hard place inside him where the plug had taken up residence. In good news, no matter how it felt, he couldn’t shit himself.

Laughter bubbled up through the nausea in the base of Dustin’s stomach. A terrifying, wild sort of laughter.

I can't have hysterics now, he thought, and the dangerous sensation tapered down.

Meanwhile, Hart sat down in an armchair by the doors. That left the one angled across a low, round table toward Trey’s chair. Trey gestured to it. “You don’t have to keep standing, man.”

Dustin eased himself into the armchair, gingerly, both from the plug and his near-shaking legs. He clutched his fingers together in front of him and squeezed them like he could wring the anxiety out through the knuckles.

Wringing my hands like a little old lady. Dustin slammed the door shut on hysteria before it could even get started.

Trey just looked at him for a long, interminable moment. Then he rubbed one hand back through his hair. “Tell me about the collar.” His low voice was normally smooth as leather, but this leather had some cracks in it. Before Dustin could think of where to start, Trey said, “No, wait. Tell me why you took indenture.”

He couldn’t say ‘to not be a violent rapist’s bitch.’ If Trey sensed coercion, it was going to be the end. Game over. Or maybe it wouldn’t matter whether Trey sensed it, it could be bad enough for Hart to hear it.

But Dustin wasn’t a creative thinker. He liked numbers. Numbers didn’t lie, and you didn’t have to lie to them. He looked at his hands.

Why not start there? With the numbers? Dustin took in a deep breath, looked back up, and met Trey’s troubled eyes. “It’s a long story.”

“I canceled my other plans, man.”

So Dustin told it. Most of it, anyway. Like his mother’s memory, there were parts of what had happened to him in jail that his mind had simply erased, and there were other things he couldn’t say. But he talked about Jacob’s drunk driving and cheating, about how he’d filed for divorce, about the custody dispute over their two girls. About Jacob’s false accusations of embezzlement and spousal abuse, the way he’d broken his own fingers to make it more convincing. The way Dustin and the lawyer had looked through the evidence. That Dustin had realized he couldn’t win and that his best chance to have a relationship with his girls when he got out was to plead to the embezzlement so they’d drop the domestic violence charge. He skipped ahead to taking the plea, and he left it there.

By then, Dustin had hunched forward over his clasped hands again. His stomach churned over the worst parts that he’d left out. Logan. The BISA doctors. The bitter-lemon flavor of bile had crawled up the back of his throat, and he swallowed against the nausea. It went down hard past the blister of the shock collar against his throat.

“So.” Trey spoke slowly, his voice weighed down by confusion. “If you weren’t an illegal prostitute or something, how did you end up here? Being my secretary?”

Dustin slowly shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I do.” Hart’s gruff statement made Dustin jump and his head whip to the side.

Somewhere in telling his story, he’d forgotten that the security guard was there. Hart’s face was smooth and easy and open. Dustin barely recognized him as the man who had slammed his wrist against the locker-room floor and told him to get over being raped.

Trey’s head turned, too. “So why’s he here?”

“Well. Your dad started looking for a secretary after you landed in TMZ—”

“Man—” Trey said in the tone of a teenager tired of being lectured about something.

But Hart kept talking. “—Merrill was up for auction. He seemed like a good fit.”

Why me? Dustin wondered.

He wasn’t the only one. “But why Dusty?” Trey sounded perplexed. “An accountant? For real? It doesn’t make sense.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dustin saw Hart’s body shift, and he tried not to flinch. He had the impression that flinching away from Hart would give Trey the wrong impression. Or rather, the right impression when Dustin was trying to be dishonest.

Hart radiated knowledgeable competence. “We had a few considerations. First, safety. Merrill’s intelligent. Highly motivated to serve his term without problems. His personality tests came back solid. He obeys rules. Barely had a speeding ticket, before. Second, compatibility. He’s the right sexual orientation. He’s good-looking. And he told one of his doctors he likes sex.”

I did? Dustin didn’t recall any questions about sexuality on the tests. But then he remembered the doctor who had chucked about how not many men got off when they were being raped, and he felt the blood drain from his face. He had thought that was taunting, not that a doctor would actually make a note of that for some file.

Hart was still talking. “Third, experience. He’s your first secretary. Your dad wanted someone you could learn with. Merrill’s only been in two sexual relationships. One was long-term and stable.”

Dustin concentrated on not cringing into a ball at having his late-blooming sex life discussed in an office like any other dataset and hoped that his pallor was taken as embarrassment. The rapes either hadn’t gone into his file or Hart didn’t see fit to disclose them. Dustin’s knuckles were no longer ashy. At some point, he’d stopped trying to wring the blood out of his hands.

A stretch of silence made Dustin glance up again. Trey’s eyes shifted back and forth between Dustin and Hart. He sounded uncertain. “So. Did you fill out a preference sheet or something?”

Hart answered before Dustin had to come up with a lie. “That’s not how indentured auctions work. Bidders all get the same information. He’s was going to the highest bidder, period. Someone wanted him to clean sewers? He’s cleaning sewers. We snapped him up instead. And he wasn’t cheap.”

Trey had looked to Hart while he was speaking, but now he looked back to Dustin. He still sounded uncertain. “I need to know, man. Do you want to be here?”

How could Trey think that he would be there if he could be anywhere else? Except…

Whichever servant supervisor gets you is going to be lucky to have you.

Put you on the house list.

Security is horny as fuck.

Cut our losses and sell you to some house in Vegas.

Saliva flooded Dustin’s mouth again. He swallowed, and it went down hard. “There are a lot worse places I could be than here.”

Trey raked his hand back through his messy curls until his fingers caught, then he pulled them free. The furrow between his brows was back. “That’s not what I asked, man.”

Dustin groped around in his mind. It kept jumping back to what his mother had told him as a kid, that he wasn’t creative enough to be a good liar. And then his sense of self-preservation leaped forward. “Sex work is work, right? And. You said I could let you know if it bothered me. And. Mr. Hart said that he would find me another position. If this didn’t work out. I want to try this. Please.”

It was by far the wildest lie he’d attempted to sell, that he was somewhere by choice when he was under the forces of powerful coercion. To beg the person he didn’t want to have sex with to let him keep doing it. Was his life a tragedy, or a comedy? He couldn’t tell. Maybe both.

Trey leaned his weight back in his chair and breathed out, “Okay.” Then his mouth twisted into something that was not quite a smile. “We were having fun, weren’t we?”

Dustin nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“Okay,” Trey said thoughtfully. Then he repeated it a third time with more conviction, “Okay, man. As long as you’re into it.”

The watery sensation in Dustin’s guts as the tension released gave him a powerful need to do business. Or maybe that was just the plug up his ass.

Trey’s hand went back up to his curls, raking them off his forehead, tangling them further. His rueful smile wasn’t at all like his enthusiastic grins. “And I’m sorry for dragging up all your personal history, man. It’s just, you know. If we’ve been fooling around and someone was holding a gun to your head to make you do it…”

Dustin felt like his smile could shatter his face. “It’d ruin it for you?”

Trey gave him an odd look. “It wouldn’t be right, man. So, yeah. I guess you could say that.”

When Dustin nodded, he imagined a dove’s head bobbing in a courting dance, and laughter bubbled up in the swamp in the base of his stomach. Hysteria. He couldn’t have hysterics right now, either. He couldn’t contain the crooked grin, but he hoped that the insane humor in it made it look genuine.

Trey looked to Hart. “So, if Dusty wants to be here. Doesn’t want to, what did René say, tear off his collar and run. Why the shock collar, Oman? That’s fucked up, man.”

Hart shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders. “It’s the law. It’s got a GPS in it. If he takes it off? We get fined. He gets fined. And it gets added to his indenture.”

“It’s not the fact it’s a collar I’m worried about, man. I went to kiss him and I almost killed him. There’s got to be a way to make it so it doesn’t shock him like some kind of dog.”

Hart nodded slowly. “There’s a permit. Your dad would have to apply.”

“Fine,” Trey said, as if it was already settled. His dad would agree to apply for a permit, and it would be given, and Dustin wouldn’t tear off the collar and make a run for it. Had Dustin ever been that confident as a young man? He didn’t think so.

Then again, Dustin’s parents had been working class. His mom had been a teacher, his dad had worked at the post office. They wouldn’t have been able to afford an indentured servant even if his mother hadn’t been an abolitionist. They’d probably barely had the income to qualify for an adoption.

The small office was quiet enough for Dustin to hear the tick of the second-hand of a mechanical clock on the wall as time made its slow, circular way onward. The fact that Dustin could hear it meant that his heart was no longer pounding quite as hard. He thought he’d skated past the rotten ice, even if it had been a near thing.

Trey shook his head as if to clear it, then sighed. “I guess I should let you go. I know it’s against the rules of the class to meet like this, but, man. I had to know.”

“I get it,” Dustin said, and stood up. “See you tomorrow, Trey.”

Hart stood too. “Want me to email your professor? I was here the whole time. There was no fooling around.”

“Yeah, that’d help Oman. Thanks.”

“Any time.”

Trey’s smile was the tired smile of a man who had wrestled with some serious ethical quandaries and was perhaps not quite convinced that he was in the right. Or maybe that second part was just Dustin projecting. “See you tomorrow, Dusty.”

When Dustin and Hart were back out on the walkway, baking in the sun, Hart said, “Good job in there, Merrill.”

Dustin wasn’t sure whether he was imagining the approval in Hart’s gravelly voice. He cleared his throat. “I did what I had to.”

“Yup.”

“I can't believe I convinced him.”

“He wanted to be.”

“This is so fucked up.” Dustin hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but once he had, he flinched.

“Yup.”

When the cool air of the izzy house foyer closed around them, Hart turned to the locker room. “Do your homework. Get to the locker room.”

“Yes, Mr. Hart.”

Dustin held off the shakes and hysteria until he made it to his little bedroom. There, he grabbed the pillow off the bed and pressed it to his face, not sure whether he was laughing, screaming, or sobbing. When he finished, his face was hot and wet and his shoulders moved in breathless hitches.

Got away with it, he thought, a little deliriously. No Vegas for me. Not this time.

When he stepped into the hallway with his laundry, he almost ran into the hotel-style cart outside his door. A little confused, he detoured around it. There was a ‘wet floor’ sign in the bathroom. Luka was in the middle of mopping it, their flamboyantly floral shirt tied at the waist. They didn’t turn around as Dustin dropped his bundle into the hamper, slid to the sink, and splashed cold water on his face. He headed out again fast. If Luka asked later, Dustin would claim the urgency of Hart’s waiting for him in the gym.

Chapter Text

Hart didn’t take Dustin back to hell, at least not that afternoon. There was no increasingly intense cardio, no rowing machine, no weight machine. The work was all stretching and resistance training, and it finished up with work on foam rollers. The way Dustin’s body worked around the plug was strange and unfamiliar, and it occasionally pressed against his p-spot with startling sensation that his body wasn’t sure how to interpret. The gym wasn’t lonely, there were others using it, but Dustin didn’t have any attention to pay them. By the time Hart was finished with him, the rest had all cleared out, and the sun had long since set beyond the gym’s windows. Dustin’s body felt more like a liquid than a solid.

Well, mostly like a liquid. He hadn’t seriously worked out since before he was married, but it seemed that his body had kept the tradition of the post-workout hard-on, without the hard-on. Being in the cock cage started as just being uncomfortable, but now it was approaching maddeningly painful. Dustin bit the side of his tongue as he imagined crawling out of his own skin so that he could jerk off. The two ideas didn’t exactly connect in the middle, but that was the least of Dustin’s worries.

“See you at 8.” Hart turned for the locker room as if Dustin wasn’t going to follow directly behind him to use the showers. Then again, there were the showers upstairs. There was clothing he could change into in both locations.

Dustin watched the door to the locker room close behind Hart and weighed his options. On the one hand, walking would help. On the other, the shower was going to be a deep, slow torture. Best to get it over with.

The shower was, indeed, a deep slow torture. There was the physical aspect of the water trickling down his body, dialing his horniness up again and making his balls ache, but there was also little to do in the white-noise and rote physical motions but to think. And his thoughts were all troubled.

Had he really worked so desperately hard to convince Trey that he wanted to stay? He had never lied so hard or so earnestly in his life. Hadn’t Dustin sworn that he wouldn’t let the situation turn him into something he wasn’t? He wasn’t a liar. Or did he just mean that he wasn’t going to become an obedient little pet? But how was he going to be disobedient? He was a coward. He wasn’t going to stand up for some unspecific right and get himself sent on to be tortured somewhere else. With that being the threat hanging over his head, how was he going to find any way to fight back?

There was a way. There had to be a way. He just had to find it.

Patience, he counseled himself. It’s only been a few days. If you go rushing off half-cocked, it’s not going to do you any good.

Dustin was pretty sure that it was wisdom rather than cowardice speaking.

One of the lockers was now labeled ‘Merrill’ in legibly printed sharpie on white tape, and after Dustin finished toweling off and put on his clothes, he dug the cell phone out of his pants. It was after 8 pm. If dragged out eating, he wouldn’t have to focus too much on other forms of socialization.

At the end of the dining room table nearest the rec room, Leon, Maria, and Will played dominoes. They exchanged polite greetings with him, then returned to their game.

When Dustin sat down, the plug jolted inside him. A memory slammed into him like a car that hadn’t bothered to stop for a pedestrian. He was supposed to have practiced three times with the butt plug, with breaks in between, but in the stress of the day, it had slipped his mind. Hart had even told him to do his homework.

Dustin’s flattened mind start to develop a buzz like the thrum of a kicked nest of bees. What was he going to keep it in overnight? Riley had said to use plenty of lube while taking it out, but where was the lube stored? How was he going to clean it? Was he going to have to try to track down Hart to ask all these questions? How would he react on knowing that Dustin had decided to have a fit of hysteria instead of doing his homework when he’d been told?

At least the group of dominoes-players were too absorbed in their game to want to make conversation. The angry thrum in his mind was starting to take on a pulsing beat that wasn’t entirely unlike a headache.

After Dustin rinsed his dishes and put them in the washer, he had the vague notion of checking the supply closet off the laundry room, and if he couldn’t find things there, well. He would think of something else.

The door to the laundry room was at the bottom of the stairs. As Dustin stepped into the living room, he scanned it with the rote anxiety of someone scanning a prison rec room for the lackeys of one’s rapist. People were mostly gathered around the television, but in the nearby reading nook, Luka was knitting. The mental image of Luka upstairs with the cleaning cart came as vividly into his mind as if someone had taken a picture of it and was flashing it in front of his face.

Dustin went to the reading nook, trying to put his thoughts into words, and Luka looked up from the somewhat longer yellow rhombus and lifted it in a salute to him. Dustin nodded politely, then rubbed the back of his neck, not really sure how to start.

Luka unhooked one of the earbuds and set it aside. One very well-defined brow lifted. “Why, Dustin, you’re the very picture of consternation.”

“I was wondering if I could, well. Ask you a question.” The humiliation was already building in the base of his stomach.

“You have my permission. Though whether you can or not is entirely not up to me. If your volume keeps decreasing and you continue speaking to the floor, well.” Dustin glanced up, and Luka’s hand was tipping in a see-saw gesture, as if to say that the outcome was uncertain. “I’m not well-versed in mumble.”

Dustin cleared his throat and lifted his chin. He felt the heat starting to come into his face before he even started talking. “I have a homework assignment. I need, well, lube. And a tray of some sort. Since I saw you cleaning, I thought. That is, do you know where...”

He realized that he was starting to speak to the floor again, looked up, and made the mistake of looking directly at Luka. Their eyes were as dark as a Labrador retriever’s and regarding him with the same level of curious attentiveness.

“I’m sorry,” Dustin mumbled. “I’m sure I can—”

“Not to worry,” Luka cut him off breezily. “I know precisely what you need and where it is. Let me just set aside this very well-behaved piece of yarn art.”

Dustin was tempted to try a joke to break the tension, maybe to ask if that’s what the rhombus had decided to be, but the pressing embarrassment of the rest of the situation stopped the joke before it could do more than coalesce in his head.

After setting the knitting aside on the table and removing the other earbud, Luka stood and beckoned at Dustin with their spidery fingers. They were painted in a rainbow of color. “Come, let’s get you prepared to study.”

Dustin followed Luka into the laundry room. The smell of detergent viscerally reminded him of the soap behind the toilets in the classroom stalls. He then realized that he hadn’t noticed a single toilet with a wand behind it in his entire time in the servants’ quarters. It was something else profoundly intimate and embarrassing to ask yet another near-total stranger about.

The supply room was as neatly kept and regimented as everything in the servants’ quarters. It was perhaps the only windowless room in the house, lined on both sides with white counters and cabinets. Luka breezed in with the sort of familiarity that could only be born of a great deal of time spent there and went to one of the cabinets toward the back. They opened it and slid plastic tubs out on rollers. “Here we have the, hmn, I won’t call it the sex drawer, but let’s just say that it has all the types of lubricant an intimate experience could call for, as well as proper soaps and disinfectant for any toys that may be involved.”

Dustin stared at the contents of the drawer. It felt like the world was floating slightly. “Different uh, types of lube?”

“Yes. There are different types. What do they cover in this sex class of yours?”

A small fire had started in Dustin’s cheeks. “Not, well, different types of lube. Yet. I don’t think.”

If they’d covered it, Dustin couldn’t remember.

Luka’s sigh was as heavy as a gust of wind bearing the weight of the world. “What material?”

“Huh?”

“Your butt plug.” Luka’s patience was clearly deliberate. “What material?”

Dustin thought of what he’d seen on the trays he’d tried to not look at. “Metal. I think.”

“Good choice. Simple. Elegant. Unbreakable. You’ll want the silicone lubricant, unless you’ve been told otherwise. No? Then yes, you’ll want the silicone lubricant. Here’s your lube shooter, here are some gloves.” Dustin took the syringe and gloves while trying to focus more on Luka’s words than the deep sense of humiliation that was now turning into a black hole under his stomach, sucking all other emotions into it.

Luka gestured broadly with one orange-painted fingernail, bracelets jangling and glinting. “And before you do anything with your plug and this lube, you will put a double layer of towels down and put on these gloves. If you get any of this on my sheets or, God forbid, my floor or walls, you’ll discover the entire possible extent of my displeasure. And I assure you, it is vast.”

“I won’t,” Dustin mumbled.

Luka offered out a bottle, and Dustin took it. “This soap will do you well as both cleanser and disinfectant. I see that you’ve noticed it is simply dish soap, clever man, but you will absolutely not use the dish soap in the kitchen for your salacious purposes.”

“I’ll be careful,” a voice like Dustin’s said from the far-off room where Dustin’s mind dwelt while his body was being slowly sucked into the bottomless pit of humiliation.

Luka’s smile was warm and unexpected. “Do you need any more help, my dear? Other than to put it in, that is. That is entirely out of my job description.”

“I, ah, yes. Just one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Is there a toilet?” Dustin cleared his throat. “With a bidet?”

Luka’s head tilted a little, their very straight brown hair swishing. “They all have bidets. Haven’t you seen the controls? Do you need a tutorial? I could very likely pull one up for you on a tablet as, again, giving your ass a shower is outside of my job description.”

Dustin hadn’t seen the controls. But then, he hadn’t been looking. He choked out. “I, uhm, I can figure it out. Thank you.”

“Keeping the oldest young Brooks happy keeps us all happy, darling. Have a lovely night.”

Dustin watched Luka’s back as they left. The only way to describe the way of moving was, Dustin thought, a mince. He had heard of people mincing but had never thought it was a thing that people actually did before watching Luka retreat. It wasn’t until that moment that he saw that Luka was wearing brown stiletto pumps under their loose linen pants. It made their butt—

Being cooped up was making Dustin too horny. He gave his head a brief shake to clear the momentary distraction, then he looked back down at the equipment that Luka had placed in his hands. Standing around wouldn’t make it better. Dustin sighed heavily, grabbed two towels on his way out of the laundry room, and made his way upstairs.

In his room, Dustin stripped and eyed the narrow space. Luka had mentioned not getting lube on the sheets or the floor, but the bed looked like the far more comfortable of the two options. Dustin tossed the pillows and blanket on the floor and spread out the towels. He looked at the objects in his hand, put the dish soap on the dresser for later, and looked at the towels on the bed again. There was a subtle sensation on his ears, a pressure that wasn’t a sound, and it spread slowly to Dustin’s jaw.

He took a step toward the bed, then whirled around and locked the door. The moment of panic had ripped off the strange cottony sensation that had been descending over him like someone tearing the covers off a comfortably warm bed.

After a few moments of staring at the towels, he decided that it wouldn’t be made better by continuing to just think about it. It seemed strange to be so self-conscious when alone in a room, but there was no denying the sensation that he was being watched as Dustin stripped down to just his cage and lay on his back. The sheets were crisp under his back, the towels soft and comfortable under his butt. Eyes closed and fingers exploring, he found the handle of what had been sitting inside him so uncomfortably all day, a curve like a shallow, smooth, abbreviated C that rested neatly between his cheeks and curved forward toward his taint.

All day. The instructor had said to do this every few hours. Dustin broke out into a cold sweat. Hopefully that hadn’t been a massive mistake that he would pay for with permanent injuries or something. He supposed he would find out if there was, well, blood or…

Dustin yanked his thoughts away. He tried the handle gently, expecting the thing to slide out of him. It did not. He had thought that pulling it out and putting it back in would be nothing and could be done quickly, but he had closed around where the plug indented before the base, and his body seemed like it wanted to be stuck there, thank him very much.

He tried to think back to what the instructor had said. Lube going in, lube going out. And Trey’s fingers had touched, well, everywhere. Dustin dabbed some lube on his fingers and rubbed it around where the base entered him, and he tried to ignore the way that touching himself there felt good, and the increasing warmth of arousal in his body. His cage gripped his cock like a hand, and then started to squeeze, somehow unpleasant and not unpleasant at the same time.

It ended up taking a lot of lube, and by then, Dustin’s entire body was flushed with heat. To pull it out meant relaxing until the thickest part could leave his body. The taper of it followed almost immediately. The relief after he got it was sudden and intense, but he knew that it had to go back in.

To Dustin’s intense and almost embarrassed surprise, getting it back in was almost easy. He lubed it back up fast and pressed firmly. Other than the too-much-stretch sensation as he approached the thickest part, he could simply press it in, only having to stop when the sensation of fingernails under his skin made his abs spasm. He breathed through that and the later stretch, and then it was in. Pulling it back out again was also easier. He could, if he was admitting it to himself, see now why his first boyfriend had liked anal.

Under different circumstances, he might have enjoyed playing with the plug. But sweet fuck, Dustin ached in his cage. It hurt. If he could take himself out of the cage and jerk off. Or even if he was wearing the cage because he wanted to and could play with the plug. But if wishes were horses, they’d already have carried him back home.

Flushed and sweaty, Dustin looked from it to the soap on the dresser and back. His hands were covered in lube. His thighs were covered in lube. He had to clean up. He had to wash the plug and let it dry. And the only place to do that was the public bathroom.

When Luka had told him that his room was the most desirable room in the house, Dustin had thought that they were being sarcastic. Now, he wondered if it hadn’t been a kindness. At least he didn’t have to walk too far down the hall with a butt plug and soiled towels in one hand and soap in the other before entering a bathroom where there were definitely other people present.

Dustin made eye contact with no one. Now he knew why there was a deep-bottomed industrial sink in the corner across from the showers, and he fervently wished that he could wash himself down the drain with the soap.

Chapter Text

When Dustin entered the gym the next morning, his butt plug had been returned to its place, he was wearing one of the thongs he had found in the dresser alongside the clothing he had previously abducted from the laundry room, and his eyes were lined from his attempts with the liner he had found on his medicine cabinet shelf and had experimented with in the bathroom while people he didn’t know ebbed and flowed around him, seeming to pretend that he wasn't there.

Hart had him strip, looked him over, and grunted in approval. “See you after lunch.”

When René dropped Dustin off at the school building where he took his sex classes, Trey again waited on the sidewalk out front. This time, when Dustin joined him, he lacked some of the eager-puppy look that he’d had the first two days. His troubled dark eyes studied Dustin’s face. “About yesterday, man?”

Dustin had rehearsed how he wanted to respond, and he hoped that it would come off natural instead of the product of painstaking practice that it actually was. He reached for Trey’s hand and took it. “Thank you for caring enough to look into it.”

Trey squeezed Dustin’s fingers. “I should’ve thought about it before. I was just so fucking excited, you know? But if it wasn’t, you know, okay with you? And I’d done that shit?”

Dustin swallowed, the mouthful of bitter-tasting saliva going hard down his throat past the blister of his collar. He should say something, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t say that things weren’t okay with him, and he’d already given the only statement he had rehearsed.

He wasn't a good liar. He didn't intend to become a good liar. And it hurt to deceive Trey. He seemed to be trying to do his best. Maybe, somehow, Dustin could nudge him toward some abolitionist literature. Something about psychology. Something that could lead Trey to think about the pressures that Dustin might be under to say what he was saying without Dustin’s having to say it himself.

That could shoot him in the foot, though. Trey might realize what was happening and not want to be involved anymore, and then what? Dustin would be off to getting fucked by the security force at best, shipped off to Vegas at worse. He could vividly imagine Hart slamming him up against the locker-room wall, or maybe above the toilet in one of the stalls, fucking him hard and saying how disappointed he was in him.

An icicle tracked its way down Dustin’s spine and he shuddered.

Trey nodded, as if the shudder had said as much as a thousand words. “Yeah, man, it would be like that.”

It took Dustin a second to realize that the young man was not, in fact, confirming that Dustin would just be a hole for anyone in the house to use. Trey thought that Dustin was shuddering at the thought of being a rapist. Dustin took in a deep breath to try to settle his stomach, let it out slowly, and said, “Yeah.”

There had to be a way. There had to be. Hadn't Trey’s dad said something about giving him to Trey on his birthday? If he could make it that long, Hart wouldn't have the power to get rid of him. Right?

That line of thought felt dangerous. It felt too much like hope.

Trey squeezed Dustin’s hand and then released it. “Let’s go, man. We don’t want to be late.”

They walked to the classroom with its chairs and mats without speaking, as if they were both absorbed in their own thoughts. Today, the silvery metal trays with their equipment weren’t hidden away. There was a theme that Dustin was noticing to the classes. They were becoming less like normal classes and more like what they really were each time the students entered the room. The class seemed to be normalizing some pretty bizarre behavior.

Or maybe it wasn't that bizarre for people of Trey’s social set. Maybe they had group sex parties all the time, and Dustin was the only person weirded out by sex mats in a room full of people.

When Riley entered the room, his too-white teeth flashed in his tanned face and his sunglasses were pushed up into his sun-streaked hair. He didn’t have his TA with him. After the door lock slammed home and Riley told the pets to undress, Dustin complied without hesitating.

I thought they weren’t going to turn me into a pet?

They weren’t. It was just that it wasn't new and shocking, that was all.

On his way to the front of the room, Riley addressed Dustin with the warm sort of approval one might use on a dog that did a particularly good trick, “Good work, Dusty. It's always nice to see a pet adjusting well to class.”

Fuck you, Dustin thought.

Trey reached over and stroked his fingers through the longish waves of Dustin’s hair. Reinforcement through touch. Intro to Training indeed.

“Now,” Riley said, chipper as a squirrel in spring that happened to have a buzzsaw in its throat. “Who completed their homework?”

More than three-quarters of the room put their hands up. Dustin hesitated before putting up his, not sure whether he’d complied with the spirit of taking his butt plug out and in at least three times, since it was supposed to have been done every few hours.

Riley saw it, because of course he did. “Dusty, it took you a moment. What’s up?”

Fifteen sets of eyes swung to Dustin. His vocal chords froze solid. Both of Riley’s brows lifted. They were slightly uneven, and the imperfection in the man's method acting both pleased Dustin and broke the ice. He cleared the blockage from his throat. “I, uh, got busy during the day with, with other training, and I forgot to take the plug out until last night. I did do three times, but not with, well. Time between. And rest.”

“What kind of lube did you use?”

“Silicone,” Dustin said. Then he reluctantly added, “Sir.”

“Were you sore inside before you took it out?”

Dustin shook his head. He knew what it meant to be sore inside.

Riley lifted his finger like the pontificating professor he was supposed to be. “That, students, is the benefit of silicone lubricant. A water-based lube would have been absorbed and likely caused Dusty here some serious discomfort, if not damage.”

One of the students across the arc asked, “So why use water-based at all?”

“Anticipating the lesson.” Riley’s voice purred with the subtly different approval he used for the nonpets in the class. He dimmed the lights and turned on the projector.

What followed was a lecture, complete with slides, about anal toys and the specific types of lube that were compatible with different materials, the pros and cons in terms of cleanup and how they affected materials they came into contact with. Dustin did the best he could to memorize every detail. But he kept wondering why this was coming after the plug practice. Had Riley wanted someone to get hurt?

When Riley snapped the projector off, he said, “I’ll email you the slides and my notes so you can review them.”

Ah. There were emails he didn't have access to, as a pet, that were being given to the students. That explained a few of the things Trey had said. What was in the rest of the emails that Dustin hadn’t seen?

“Today, we’ll start the practical off with seeing if your pet can take a larger plug. This is all part of anal training. The goal is to stretch your pet and accustom them to the sensations, so that you can engage in anal sex – or pegging, or anal toys, or whatever else you desire – with them comfortably.”

Sour spit flooded Dustin’s mouth. He’d known that was about, of course, but to hear it said out loud so casually and with such enthusiasm, to see the way that Trey leaned forward with sudden interest, was like a blow to the stomach.

Riley’s outline continued. “And then we’ll segue into how you, as the masters, might also enjoy anal play. Yes, ladies, I’m including you as well. The anus has a remarkable number of nerve endings, and the sensation of internal pressure can…”

Riley was still talking somewhere, but Dustin was no longer there. He was bent forward and resting his elbows against a painted-block wall, the smells of toilet cleaner and urine thick in his nose, while Logan pounded into him from behind. Knew you like it, bitch. Keep singin’ for me.

When Dustin came back to himself, Trey was undressing and most of the pets had stood and started heading for the bathrooms. It felt like time was a room that he had left briefly and then stepped back into. Dustin scrambled to his feet and joined the other pets. After using the bidet at in the servants’ quarters back at home, the wand-style bidet in the classroom stalls looked primitive. There was no selection of water temperature or water pressure, no option to air dry. He tried not to listen to the soft sounds of other men pulling out and putting their plugs back in, and he tried not to make any sounds of his own. After, at the sink, he again kept his eyes down, making eye contact with no one.

When he returned to the classroom, Trey was waiting for him on their mat, naked. The moment that Dustin sat down, Trey began stroking his body, playing the erogenous zones he was familiar with like a pianist stroking ivory keys. Dustin was almost immediately aroused, the metal bars around his cock at first gripping him, then making him uncomfortable, then sending an ache of pain shooting into his groin. When he groaned, it was equal parts pleasure and discomfort.

Trey heard something in it. He whispered in a voice as low and smooth as well-sueded leather, “Are you okay, Dusty?”

“Yes,” Dustin mumbled. “It’s just the cage. It fucking hurts.” Then he got his mind under him. “Not bad. Just. Fuck, do I need to jerk it.”

Trey’s lips brushed Dustin’s neck behind his ear, well away from the collar. “Okay, man, I’ll ask the prof about it later. For now, do you want to. I mean. Get on your hands and knees for me, Dusty.”

It wasn’t a request, it was a command, but an uncertain one. Again, Dustin wondered what Trey was getting in his emails.

This time, his shift to his elbows and knees was without hesitation. Trey wasn’t going to fuck him. The plug, well, that had already been done. The thought of trying a larger one made his stomach do a slow flip, but it wasn’t the same as thinking about having a cock in him. It didn’t come with the same baggage.

Instead of the syringe that Dustin had used to get the lube inside him that morning, Trey used his fingers again, pressing more and more in while he fingered Dustin’s ass. He seemed to be trying to hit Dustin’s spot in particular, and he probably did enjoy making Dustin gasp and shudder and moan. The pain of the cock cage receded, instead becoming an intense sensation that he wanted to fuck against. Or back into Trey’s curling finger.

Trey’s whisper was heavy with his own desires. “Damn, man, I guess you do like it.”

Dustin’s embarrassment made him stop. But he couldn’t stop the way his breath panted in and out, or the way that he groaned and flexed when Trey found the spot that sent fire racing under his skin.

The tip of the new plug slid in easily. When it stopped, Trey began pulsing it, and the occasional brush over his p-spot left Dustin gasping. The pressure built steadily until Dustin thought that he couldn’t possibly stretch anymore.

“I can’t,” he moaned into the space between his fist-closed hands and his elbows, where his head was resting.

“You can,” Trey encouraged him. “You thought you couldn’t yesterday, and you said you liked it. Just a little more.”

But it turned out that Dustin couldn’t. He was so deep in his own head that he barely heard Trey consulting with Riley. He was only aware that Riley was even nearby because of the annoying buzz of his voice and the aggressive clove smell that couldn’t be ignored.

The next time something pressed into Dustin, it was smaller, and he pressed back against it. When the relief of closing around the base came, he was covered in sweat and oozing so much precum that he could watch it drip in its own pulsing rhythm. Trey stroked his sweaty body as he shuddered. The young man’s hands felt so soft and good compared to the brick in his ass or the impossible ache of his cock.

“You did so good. Damn that was hot, how you fucked back against it. Holy fucking shit.”

Riley’s voice was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. “How’d he do, Trey?”

The stilling of Trey’s hands on Dustin’s body was another reason why Riley’s interruption was unwelcome. “Really good after we went back to the other size, Mr. Riley.”

“You look pretty horny yourself.” Maybe it was the encouragement in Riley’s voice, or the context of the moaning of men in the background and the smell of sex, but it didn’t sound nearly as weird as it should have, coming from a teacher.

“It was so fucking hot. Uh, I’m sorry, professor.”

Dustin’s breathing started to steady out. The warmth of Trey’s hands on his skin was starting to be the only area not cooling from the evaporation of his sweat. His balls ached fiercely.

Encouragement seemed to be Riley’s middle name, at least when talking to one of the students. “Maybe you’d like to try out a little anal play yourself, Trey? Feel what you’re making Dusty feel, that had him moaning like a whore?”

Dustin's face felt like someone hit it with a torch. Surely he hadn’t been that loud.

“Fuck yes.”

“Try lying on your back. Dusty should be able to find your p-spot with the same finger-curling motion.”

Dustin's forehead was still on his clenched fists, but he heard it when the creepy teacher moved on. Trey’s hand rubbed down Dustin’s side again. He murmured, “Only if, you know. You’re ready or want to.”

The lust in his voice was palpable. Dustin forced his forehead up off his fists and shifted. The head rush was intense, and when he swayed, Trey’s hand steadied him.

Dustin mumbled, “You might want to lie on the other side. I, uh, leaked.”

Trey grinned. He was standing at half-mast and had his own leaking going on. “Maybe a little bit, man.”

Chapter Text

Contrary to what Riley seemed to believe about Dustin based on his very thinly disguised instructions about how to finger another guy, helping Trey discover the joys of his p-spot wasn’t going to be Dustin’s first time. Hart’s description to Trey hadn’t portrayed Dustin as the paragon of youthful fucking around, but Dustin’s old boyfriend, Terrell, had enjoyed butt stuff, and since Dustin had not, he’d done a fair bit of topping before that relationship had spectacularly imploded. Come to think of it, they’d been about Trey’s age.

Trey scooted to the other end of the mat, lay back, and spread his legs. He had the thick thatch of crinkly hair that Dustin had felt, the time that he’d had the man in his mouth. His legs were muscled like runner’s legs, and the stomach that Dustin had touched was hard and muscular under its layer of soft, smooth skin. Not show muscles, but the functional muscles of someone who enjoyed fitness or played a sport.

There were no clean gloves on the tray, only the gloves that Trey had pulled off after using them. Dustin picked up the slippery lube bottle and squired some onto the tray. He tried not to feel Trey’s eyes on him, but there was no way to not.

“Spread your legs a little more and lift your knees,” Dustin suggested, thinking of what Terrell had liked when they had played at anal. It couldn’t be that different. And certainly it would be like riding a bike.

When he circled his fingertip around Trey’s hole, the young man gasped and clearly struggled to not buck his hips. His half-mast cock rapidly went full-mast as Dustin swirled and fingered. And he was eager for it. It took Dustin almost no time at all to get inside him, to start stroking around.

He knew that he found the right spot when he felt the smooth bump under his fingertip, stroked it, and Trey’s abs spasmed. The air left his lungs on a wordless exhalation. Dustin toyed his finger there again, the young man’s muscular legs flexed, and he sucked in a gasp. “That feels so fucking strange in the best ways.”

Out of his upper peripheral, he saw Riley moving, quite distant. Apparently trying to stay out of Trey’s line of sight, though the young man’s eyes were squeezed so tightly closed that it was a wonder he didn’t turn his eyelids inside out. Riley made a lewd gesture that only had one meaning.

It wasn’t an unexpected command at all. Dustin shifted carefully, still stroking with his finger, mostly hitting the spot that had Trey gasping and moaning. When Dustin licked the tip of Trey’s cock, the man cried out and thrust upward. Dustin was careful to not let him hit teeth, then he wrapped his hand around Trey’s thick cock for more control and began the process of giving him a blowjob while stroking Trey’s p-spot with his fingertip.

The younger man came almost immediately. The speed of it and force of his shot caught Dustin completely by surprise and almost choked him. Trey’s wordless exhalation was so loud that only a man in the throes of intense pleasure could make it unselfconsciously, much less in a room full of people, even if those people were distracted with their own sexual activities. Dustin continued to stroke and suck as Trey shot again and again, his hips making unsteady little thrusts that Dustin just barely kept from slamming the back of his throat. As it was, his stroking fist was banged hard against his upper lip.

“Fuck, Dusty, stop.” Trey’s voice was hoarse. Dustin stopped stroking and withdrew his finger immediately, though he did give the tip of Trey’s cock one final lick that left the man shuddering.

Dustin sat back, the shift of the big plug against his own p-spot sending a zapping of sparks shooting under his skin. His cock throbbed painfully, aroused by the sounds, sights, smells of pleasuring another man. He hadn’t been this horny since high-school. Elsewhere in the room, another cry of ecstasy rang out, and the skin on Dustin’s entire body tightened. His balls ached abysmally.

Trey lay on his back, panting, sheened in sweat, like a statue that no Roman would have dared to carve. Dustin caressed the top of the man’s thigh, and he shuddered. His deflating cock still oozed cum. Eventually, he heaved in a breath and opened his eyes.

“Is that what it feels like for you?” The pleasure thickened his voice.

Dustin wondered what it would be like to cum with fingernails of fire stroking under his skin, and he shuddered. “I mean, I can’t get off. The cage. I’ve never—”

It felt like a sucker punch when Dustin’s mind slammed up against the vivid memory of Logan fucking his ass and telling him that maybe he’d let him jerk it next time, if he was good. Nausea crawled up the back of his throat, and his mouth tasted like lemon and cum. His heart pounded viciously.

But at least Trey was in no state to notice any distress. He was sprawled on his back with his eyes closed, breathing raggedly, and he stayed that way for some time. Somewhere else in the room, someone came, more of a loan and drawn-out groan than Trey’s shout of pleasure.

Dustin cleared his throat. “I should wash my hands. Before I, you know. Touch anything on accident.”

“Mmm.”

Dustin decided to take the other man’s pleased hum as agreement. He put on this thong after he stood so that he wouldn’t leave streaks on the classroom floor. He passed Riley on his way to the bathroom, and the man nodded approval to him.

Go fuck yourself, Dustin thought at him. Fortunately, he was still not telepathic.

In the bathroom, the water hissed into the relative quiet. Dustin took care washing his hands, scrubbing under fingernails that were, fortunately for Trey, no longer roughly bitten off. He stared at his hands and wondered how he felt. He had to wonder because he couldn’t actually feel anything. Not the things he should feel, and not the things he shouldn’t feel. There was just a blankness where his emotions should be. It wasn’t the sucking void of depression, he decided. It felt more like a space devoid of texture. Like raking his hands in the air in pitch blackness.

He bent and took a handful of water. Even though his hands were clean, he used the one that hadn’t recently been up a butt. He rinsed, spat, rinsed again. The man in the mirror over the sink wore his face but didn’t look like him. He’d had the dark circles under his eyes when Isabell had been an infant and Eva a toddler, but he’d never had the ashy tone under his skin.

I’m still me, Dustin thought to himself. Dustin Merrill, nobody’s pet, no matter how horny I am or what they do to my body. I’m nobody’s pet.

It sounded more hopeful in his head than he would have liked rather than firm and convincing. But the face in the mirror did, at least, look more recognizable. Dustin Merrill, tired, clean-shaven, and needing a haircut. But still him.

“Pretty rough day, right?”

Dustin whirled on his feet, hand forming into fists. The freckle-skinned man took half a step back. He loosed a ‘ha’ that was entirely unlike a laugh. “Sorry to startle you. I get chatty when I feel like shit.”

Lowering and unclenching his hands, Dustin said, “I’ve had worse. But yeah. Not a great one. Not a great week, for that matter.”

The man nodded, his light hair flopping in damp strings. “No greater truth spoken, my dude.”

He went into a stall. Dustin took a deep, shuddering breath, dried his hands, and went back out to the classroom.

When he got back to the mat, Trey was dressed but looking disheveled. He’d pulled over a second mat and sandwiched the evidence of their activities between the two. Dustin pulled his own clothes on and joined Trey in sitting.

Trey scooted closer to Dustin and put a hand on his jean-clad thigh, then he leaned in to whisper, “Are you sure you’re an accountant? That was absolutely sick.”

“It was part of the lesson,” Dustin murmured back. Riley had taken care to not show Trey that he’d commanded Dustin to suck Trey off, but no one had told Dustin to stay silent about it.

Though it wasn’t clear to him that Trey fully understood. He squeezed Dustin’s thigh and whispered, “Yeah, but that blowjob. Man.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

At the front of the class, Riley lifted his hand to get everyone’s attention. “Another great class. Good work by everyone, I can tell you’re all very enthusiastic for this elective. Even those of you who didn’t manage the homework.” He waited for the chuckle to clear out of the air. “Homework remains for pets to stay in chastity. Owners, you’re to leave the pets alone and carefully review the material I’m going to send you.”

The hand of Trey’s that wasn’t on Dustin’s thigh lifted. “Mr. Riley?”

“Yes, Trey?”

“The chastity thing seems to be really causing Dusty pain, you know? When can I take him out of it?”

“Not yet.” Riley smiled his too-encouraging smile. “It's like how your homework was to not masturbate last night. When you let him take it off, it'll be better for it.”

When Trey let him take it off, Riley had said. But Trey couldn’t let him take it off, yet. So who really was keeping his cock locked up?

In that moment of attempting to shift responsibility for what was happening away from the person actually doing it to him, Dustin realized that he liked the young man. Hated what Trey was doing to Dustin? Yes. But liked him? Also yes. He was trying to do right. That had to count for something.

Trey’s hand gave Dustin’s thigh a gentle squeeze. In Dustin's head, he heard the echo of Riley’s voice. Touch is part of how we bond.

Suddenly, Dustin wanted nothing as much as to push the young man's hand away and start shouting, screaming even, for the guy to stop touching him.

Instead, after class was dismissed, he let Trey hold his hand on the way out. Like two boyfriends out for a stroll, if one’s palm was slick with sweat and caused by intense, stomach-churning nausea. After Trey kissed Dustin goodbye, he murmured, “I've talked with my dad about that permit. It's a little complicated, but he thinks we can make it work. Doing good in class will help, and we're hitting the basket from mid court, so I've got my fingers crossed.”

“Thank you,” Dustin said quietly. “I'll behave.”

Trey’s grin was broad. The perpetual West Coast sun glittered in his dark eyes. “I don't have doubts, man. But. I better let you go.”

Dustin nodded and stepped back, careful that Trey was the one who let their fingers unlink. “Until tomorrow.”

“See you.”

Dustin watched the young man walk away, his stride confident, a little buoyant, even. When he turned to the car, René opened the door for him. It had to be in the 70s, and René was wearing full chauffeur livery while standing in the sun outside, and it wasn't lightweight fabric.

Dustin mumbled, “You don't need to do that for me, you know.”

“It’s my job.” René wasn’t attempting to argue or explain. It was just fact. He went to the front of the car, checked for traffic, and then opened his own door and got in.

Dustin would trade standing around in the heat, baking in a black uniform, for ages over his own so-called job. He didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of his voice when he spoke. “My job is to get fucked by your ‘good boy’ over there.”

“Yes.” René seemed completely unfazed, not even looking up from the phone screen he was fucking with. If he had any tone other than polite formality, he kept it well under wraps. “I will not say that mine is worse. Do not pick a fight with me, please. I didn’t put you in this position.”

Dustin sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just…” He found himself echoing the freckle-skinned man. “It was a pretty rough morning.”

“I accept your apology.” René tapped the phone screen and a mellow beat began rolling out of the speakers, shortly joined by melancholic bars in French.

Dustin didn't hazard any other conversation, and René offered nothing else. Dustin simply watched the roads and streets and highways pass him by, soaking in the energy of music he didn’t understand but felt all the same.

Chapter Text

That afternoon, Dustin asked for a break in the middle of Hart’s kicking his ass in the gym to ‘attend to something personal.’

Hart, whose face was not streaked with sweat the way that Dustin’s was, frowned at him. “What?”

Dustin tried to channel Luka’s complete nonchalance, even though he was covered in sweat and panting for other reasons. “I need to take out my butt plug, give my stuff a break, and then put it back in.”

He'd been half hoping to faze Hart, and he hadn’t succeeded. The man's low voice was the same gravel slowly rolling downhill that it always was. “A break for how long?”

“About an hour?” Dustin wished he was more sure. He knew Riley had covered it somewhere, maybe in his slides, but he couldn’t exactly remember.

“Uh huh.” Hart’s two words carried about twenty pounds of skepticism. “And you want that hour off.”

“No. I can come back, I just. It has to happen. For the class. And, and for the rest of the, well, stuff you want to happen.” Dustin found himself mumbling. “I don’t want to get hurt.”

Hart studied Dustin’s face, then he shrugged. “Fine. But this butt-stuff time? I’m adding it to the end.”

Dustin dashed up the stairs. He made sure to twist the lock on his door before getting the lube out of his drawer, laying down the towels, and getting to work. After pulling the thing out of him, Dustin stared at it. It wasn’t as big as it felt, but it wasn’t as big as a cock, either. Well. Maybe a particularly skinny one. Maybe—

Dustin smelled the foul odor of Logan’s rotting teeth and felt the impossibly perplexing sensation of an arm pressing across his back like a steel beam. He struggled to breathe through the sock gag in his mouth. The sudden cramping pain bloomed in his guts like a terrible firework display, hard to comprehend. There was no sight, no sound, just the confusing pain of something being forced very suddenly up his ass—

—and then he was back in his body, shuddering and covered in cold sweat. The butt plug had fallen from his fingers, and he had one moment of panic at the thought that it had bounced on the floor, the sheets, somewhere that would give one more person an excuse to make his life hell. But it was just on his stomach, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

After Dustin had washed up, he found Hart in the gym, leaning against one of the stationary bikes, a phone looking small in the huge mitt of his hand. When the man saw Dustin, he pushed off and tossed a yogurt tube at him that Dustin barely managed to catch. It was strawberry flavored and tasted unreal, but only in the usual way that strawberry flavoring never managed to taste like the real thing. After Dustin had choked it down the thick substance that had no real relationship at all to cum, Hart nodded at the rowing machine. “Let’s go.”

They started slow to warm him back up. Every shove of Dustin's legs reminded him of how empty he was, and he hated that it already felt strange to be empty. The next hour left Dustin gasping for breath, nauseated, and feeling as wrung-out as a damp rag.

After Hart stopped him for the next break, the wide-bodied man rolled his shoulders. “You need to put your butt plug back in?”

“Yes.” Dustin wheezed.

“Clock’s ticking.”

Somehow, Dustin staggered up the impossibly tall stairs. Luka’s cart was at the close end of the hallway, so he stumbled around it. He briefly glimpsed bright color out of the corner of his eye and movement that might have been sweeping or mopping in a room that was much more colorful than Dustin’s own.

He was in the middle of trying to get the plug back in, about maybe two-thirds or three-quarters along and despairing that he absolutely couldn’t stretch anymore, when his door latch rattled like someone was trying to get in. He froze, not daring to look at the door, waiting like a startled rabbit for the car to run him down.

“My apologies, it's just housekeeping.” Luka’s voice was weighed down by a sardonic tone. “If you’re occupied, I can return at a later time.”

“Occupied,” Dustin breathed out. He didn’t hope that his strain wasn’t in his voice because he knew that hope was impossible. He did hope that Luka just thought he was out of breath from working out.

Dustin waited for a response, but none came. His heart didn’t stop pounding, it was impossible for it to stop pounding, but it slowed. He decided that Luka had simply moved on, and went back to the process of trying to ease what felt like an elephant up his asshole while his cock throbbed and ached angrily at the pure sensation of it. Finally, he managed to press the end into himself and the stretch eased. There was only pressure and fullness and the maddening ache of self-inflicted, torturous horniness.

Inside him, it felt more like an eggplant than the moderately sized plug he had looked at. He thought of how he had compared the size of the plug to Logan’s cock, and he was relieved that the simple and unintentional comparison didn’t throw him back into the ocean of horror that his memories had become.

The cart was outside the bathroom door when Dustin went into the bathroom to wash up. Luka was in there, but he offered no greeting and pointedly didn’t look at him. Dustin dropped the lube-soiled towels into the hamper and managed to not look at the flamboyantly dressed person cleaning in a bathroom stall while he washed up, dried off, and dashed out in new gym shorts and a new top.

Back in the gym, Hart looked up from his phone and scowled at Dustin. “That took a lot longer.”

Dustin snapped before thinking. “Imagine trying to ease an eggplant up your ass.”

“Watch your tone with me, Merrill.” Hart's black eyes were as pitiless and expressionless as a snake’s.

Dustin immediately looked down and to the side. If he'd been a dog, he would have shown his belly, but that was the best he could do. He mumbled, “Sorry. It’s just. A lot.”

“I don’t care.” Each word was clear and without inflection and yet somehow still managed to convey anger and threat. “Talk to me with respect. Or don’t talk.”

Dustin’s stomach dropped through the floor, and he waited for Hart to shock him. When he stopped trying to hold his breath, Dustin cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hart. I won't do it again.”

“Stretch. Quickly. And get your ass on the weight bench.”

Dustin did. Hart worked him mercilessly. It seemed to be upper-body day, and every time he tightened his abs to do another set, the plug reminded him it was there. It was good that it seemed like he couldn’t push it out on his own, or there would have been a very embarrassing situation.

One side effect of Hart’s keeping his promise was that, by the time Dustin had finished showering his noodle-loose body and eating his dinner, there was very little time left for him to socialize. When he went into the living room, it seemed like an entire party was gathered around the TV, even the habitual card and backgammon players. The couches didn’t have enough room to hold everyone, and they had been pulled back and spread apart, the space between them filled in with chairs.

Everyone’s back was to Dustin. There were no open spaces. He thought the group would make room for him if he joined them, but the wall of backs was too intimidating for Dustin to even want to try.

Instead, he turned to the reading nook. Luka was there rather than with the group of television watchers. There was a new yellow shape on the knitting needles, and earbud wires ran from a tablet to Luka’s ears.

When Dustin paused as if to ask permission to sit, Luka gestured magnanimously toward the other chair. Their voice was a little too loud, like someone talking to be heard over the hum of a party in the next room. “You don’t need to ask my permission.”

Dustin eased down into the chair. He felt like he melted into it, every part of him boneless except for the hard metal thing up his ass. “Thank you. It just doesn’t feel right to interrupt you.”

Luka pulled an earbud from an earring-decorated ear. “What was that?”

Dustin cleared his throat, having managed to do exactly what he’d tried to avoid. “I said thanks and it didn’t feel right to interrupt you.”

Luka’s shoulders lifted and fell. “I wouldn’t engage if I wasn’t of a mind to. Ignoring you would be quite easy, actually, with your habitually downturned eyes and charming mumbling, but I quite feel for your position as the new mouse in the house.”

“You do?”

“No. I’m simply in the habit of espousing views I don’t have.”

Dustin’s cheeks felt hot as the blood rushed to his face. He flailed around, looking for a change in topic. “What’s on TV that has everyone so interested?”

“Wednesday,” Luka said with palpable disdain, “is reality television night.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Dustin glanced toward the group around the couch. They seemed so cozy together. “Do you ever get the urge to just, I don’t know, join them?”

“Do you know what’s worse than watching free people participate in a demeaning television competition?” Luka asked.

“No?”

“A shame.” Luka made a small, elegant hand gesture, knitting needles pinched together in one hand, earbud in the other, as if to indicate that Dustin had expressed the point exactly. “I suppose I’ll just have to keep searching for the answer.”

Dustin looked toward the TV area again. A chorus of laughter started up, with some combination of ‘I can’t believe it’ and ‘no fucking way’ and ‘I told you so’ under the general wave. Dustin felt a powerful draw toward the people at the couch, but at the same time, he felt like he’d be the uninvited guest.

“They aren’t excluding you on purpose,” Luka said. Their voice was gentle. “They’ve known each other for a long time and you likely won’t be here long.”

Dustin sat up straight, blinking in surprise and a strange combination of alarm and hope. “What do you mean?”

Was there talk about sending him away? Or did Luka have some inkling of how long Dustin’s contract was, and it was short? What ‘not long’ mean? Months? A couple of years?

But Luka answered Dustin’s question with a question. “Have you met Mr. Brook’s secretary?”

“I haven’t met many of them at all.” Dustin felt his brows furrow, and he started to look toward the TV crowd.

Luka lifted a hand, bracelets rattling. “Let me save you the trouble of trying to pick her out from the crowd. The answer is that you have not. The reason is that she isn’t here. Mr. Brook keeps her in an apartment near his law office for those nights he has to work late.”

Dustin swallowed hard. His stomach shifted like it was full of congealed yogurt and dread. He wanted to ask, but he couldn’t make himself.

Luka went on anyway. “There is a majority sentiment that, as soon as it’s allowed by young Trey’s parents, he’ll box you up and begin dragging you back and forth with him to college. The minority position is that there will be some power play on the part of his parents to persuade him to move home and commute to school, in which case he’ll have you installed in his room. Under either scenario, there’s a great deal of doubt about whether you’ll be with us very often.”

“I see.” Dustin’s voice sounded faint to his own ears. He looked toward the group at the TV and, for one moment, he truly hated them.

Luka’s look wasn’t compassionate, exactly, but it wasn’t hard. There was something else there. Pity, maybe. “I wouldn’t feel too heartbroken at not being invited to the viewing circle if I were you. It’s the fashion of young men to show off their secretaries. I’m sure you’ll see plenty more of the world than you would find in reality television.”

Luka hadn’t put any particular emphasis on ‘the world,’ but Dustin’s mind immediately went to the sort of activities that went on in the classroom.

A warmth built up in Dustin’s stomach and then burst over the top, filling his chest and radiating out into his arms. It was hot anger, and Dustin couldn't recall a time he'd ever been so angry near someone he could target it at without getting his ass kicked. “Oh, yes, better to be repeatedly raped than watch reality TV. Fuck you, Luka. What would you know about it?”

The expression on Luka’s face shifted. Normally, they wore a carefully cultivated mask of aloof humor. Despite the heat in Dustin’s voice and his vulgarity, Luka’s tone was as light and airy as ever, but now there was no humor in their eyes. “What an interesting question.”

The anger flushed out of Dustin’s system almost immediately, replaced by black wave of shame that turned his eyes down and away as neatly as Hart’s earlier anger had. Dustin knew almost nothing about Luka, other than that they were learning to knit, cleaned the second floor in the afternoon, and had some other duties around the main house.

What other duties did Luka have? What, if anything, had Luka done before their current position?

Dustin swallowed hard and lifted his eyes, prepared to apologize. But Luka’s earbuds were back in and their attention was pointedly focused on the tips of the knitting needles.

If they didn't want to engage, they wouldn't engage. Message received. Dustin stood and went upstairs.

Chapter Text

Mornings had become an unwelcome and exquisite form of torture. First, after upsetting Luka, Dustin had gone up to bed as early as possible to ‘get eight hours of sleep.’ But Dustin had always been more of a seven-hour-at-most man, so he woke up before his alarm in the slow, gradual way of someone who actually had had enough rest.

Which was to say, he faded into a sex dream about constantly interrupted efforts to have Jake suck his dick. In the dream, he was so horny it hurt, but Jake kept starting and stopping and nothing Dustin said would convince him to follow through with it. And his own hands were in bright green oven mitts, useless as trying to fuck a pillow.

Which was exactly what Dustin woke up doing, trying to fuck his pillow while his dick was being held down by that God-damned metal curve. He spent the next endless stretch of tortured time pounding his fist onto the bed and desperately trying to will down his captive erection. Or rather, the lack of erection. He didn’t wrap his hand around the demonic metal torture device, he didn’t try to yank it off, but the fantasies were constant.

His knuckles were raw from beating on his poor, ill-used pillow when he realized that he shouldn’t wait for his dick to go down. Or, well, for it to stop trying to go up. Putting in the butt plug would only rile him up again. He spread out the towels he had taken to his room the night before, got the lube and the massive-looking metal object from the top of the dresser, flopped onto his back, and got to work.

It was the morning's second exercise in torture. It wasn’t physically painful, not like, well, other things had been. But it was physically uncomfortable as he tried to relax and let his body stretch. And it was emotionally uncomfortable as his body reacted to the stimulation. He tried to tell himself that he had no control over what his body did, but that did little to ease his deep sense of shame.

Knew you liked it, bitch, Logan whispered as he fucked Dustin while jerking him off, spiking horror into his stomach right along with a purely physical animal pleasure.

Finally, when the flashbacks were over and the plug was in and the tears had been wiped from his face, Dustin had the distinct displeasure of sneaking into the busy bathroom without making eye contact with any of the strangers, then standing in the shower and trying to wash the lube from his thighs and the crack of his ass and his taint while the water caressed over his body, through the cage, over his cock. He tried not to think about how desperately horny he was. The last time he’d gotten off was a few days before he’d left the pen, and how long ago had that been?

What was time?

For now, what he had was the deep ache in his balls and the sensation of being so horny that ants were crawling under his skin, stirred up by the occasional pulse of sensation that the shifting plug inside him brought. His body insisted that the strangeness felt good. His cock strained against the cage so hard that he imagined it breaking through the metal.

Dustin shoved the mental image from his mind as he went downstairs. He pulled the banana and yogurt and granola from the fridge and moved them into proper containers. By now, all the other servants had passed through the kitchen and to their daily labors. Dustin sat alone, staring out the wide windows, inhaling the smell of sun-heated grass and what he thought were poppies along the side of the main house. He recalled something vague about a water shortage along the West Coast, but if the Brook family had heard of it, it didn’t show.

Dustin’s mind drifted. He drifted with it and found without surprise that he was in the place where he had existed in the pen. It wasn't even waiting. It was just existing as a prisoner in his own body. He remembered his anger of the night before like someone might remember a country they had visited years ago. Something seen, not something experienced.

The profoundly unpleasant sound of Dustin’s phone alarm popped him out of whatever contemplative bubble his brain had dropped into. He saw that he had five minutes left to get in the gym without angering Hart. Even in his apathy, the threat of the kink-house loomed as terrifying as a thunderhead rolling fast into a wide-open field. Dustin snatched up his dishes and rinsed them quickly before popping them in the dishwasher, and he hustled to the locker room.

Hart gave him a quick check over, grunted, and passed him out to René, who let him into the car without a word. Dustin stared out the window as he was driven to class, surrounded by the now-familiar sounds of hip-hop in a mix of French and English. He would almost forget the plug until a bump shifted it inside him. The perpetual state of half-horniness wasn’t as bad as the full-on ache, but it was maddening.

He did a physical check of his lap before he got out of the car at the school. He had finally figured out that the padding in the satiny material of the thong was probably to keep him from leaking spots into his jeans, but after the intense morning, he was a bit worried about it anyway. Nothing. Good.

Trey waited for Dustin on the sidewalk. Unlike the first three days, he was looking at his phone, his gleaming dark curls falling around his face. But his head lifted as soon as he heard the SUV door thump closed. The young man’s grin lit up his face, he slid his phone into his jeans pocket, and he approached with his long legs stretched to the limit of his strides.

Dustin waited. Trey pulled him close into the body-spray cloud that followed him and kissed him deeply. The public display of affection was something would have made some versions of Dustin die from embarrassment, but now he was entombed in a sense of apathy so deep that it was like drowning. At least Trey didn’t grope him. It wasn’t an irrational concern. Dustin could sense from the way Trey’s hands stayed put that it was an effort on his part.

When they pulled away, there was a hint of rose under Trey’s complexion. “It wasn’t homework to not, you know. I didn’t, though, man. I wanted to see, and man, I’m sorry I couldn’t get you released out of it yesterday.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m getting used to it,” Dustin lied without feeling.

“Yeah? It’s not that bad?” Trey's skepticism was almost strong enough to grab with both hands.

“I’ll live.”

Trey glanced away, glanced back, and ran his hand through his hair. “And, you know, what about the rest?”

Dustin tried to not to let himself feel anything, but curiosity pricked him through his bubble of carefully held nothing. “The rest?”

Trey grinned. “Shit, man, I forget sometimes that you don’t get the daily reading for class. About how it’s supposed to keep your mind focused on me. Since I’ve got the key, my pleasure is your pleasure, all of that stuff.”

“Oh, right. That.” Dustin felt himself swallow. The flexible band of the collar around his throat kept him from choking, but it emphasized the feeling of the hard plastic blister against his skin.

He’d been doing so good at feeling nothing. Now he was feeling… something. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want his brain to kick in, either, but it started rolling like a gently nudged rock starting to roll downhill.

As they walked through the atrium space and stood at the elevator bank, the young man chattered away. “The more I think of it, the more I like the thought of, you know. When you get horny, you think of me. Like with the plug. The thought of you thinking about me when you put it in or, you know, feel it in you… shit.”

Trey looked into the atrium, stuck his hands in his pockets, and did one of the subtle adjustments that horny men in public had been doing since men had started wearing pants.

He probably wasn’t supposed to be sharing the whole point of the psychological manipulations, much less with the earnestness of a puppy who didn’t understand what he was sticking his nose into. Dustin wondered about how the other young people were reviewing the material and thinking about it. If any of them shared it with their pets. If any were as naïve as Trey.

As they stepped into the elevator, Dustin half-asked, “It turns you on.”

Trey laughed. “It sure does, man. It wouldn’t turn you on?”

“It would.” The thought of an attractive man thinking of Dustin every time the man touched himself sexually was a powerful turn-on, and one of the things that had made warming up with Jake so enjoyable. It was flattering and made him feel powerfully sexy. “And it’s my job to turn you on, isn’t it.”

Trey pushed the third-floor button. The doors slid closed. “Yeah. But man, I mean, it’s just for class. If you don’t like it after, you don’t have to wear it.”

“Okay.” Dustin didn't intend to keep his cock in a torture chamber for one second longer than he had to.

Trey’s outward whoosh of breath was relieved. “I’m glad it’s not that bad, man. This is going to make me sound like a lovesick kid or something, and I know it’s just a job, but like. I don’t know. I like having you as a secretary. I thought having a secretary would just be, like, you know, just fucking. And a status thing. But I’m really starting to like you.”

The slowly rolling rock of Dustin’s mind hit a bump.He likes me. Then it bounced. At what point is he going to get so into me that I can stop worrying about Hart packing me off to Vegas?

The more attached Trey was to Dustin, the less likely it was that Hart would be able to pack Dustin off in a box to Vegas and send him to a kink-house. Right? Wasn’t the whole point of the illusion to keep Trey happy? How happy would he be if he got attached to Dustin, and Dustin was yanked out from under his nose?

Dustin tried to organize his thoughts as the elevator climbed. He tried to formulate a plan. After the little metal box bounced to a stop and they stepped out, Dustin snagged Trey’s hand and gave it a slight tug, pulling him up short. “Trey.”

The young man turned to Dustin, a faint furrow between his dark brows. “Yeah?”

“I like you too.” Dustin wasn’t an actor, but he met the young man’s eyes and willed there to be sincerity in his face. He toyed with the idea of adding an ‘I’m not just saying that,’ but thought it might be a step too far. Keep it simple.

The concern melted from Trey’s face and he relaxed into a smile. He had bought the lie. Maybe Dustin wasn’t as bad of a liar as he thought. Or maybe it was one of the things that the class was unintentionally teaching him.

I thought I wasn't going to let them make me a liar. I thought I promised myself that not even two days ago.

Well. Better a liar than shipped off to Vegas.

Chapter Text

Professor Riley was his sublimely terrible self at the front of the class. He wore a pale pink polo shirt unbuttoned at the top to show off an extra triangle of sun browned skin, and his sun-streaked hair looked like it had been windswept in an unnaturally perfect wind tunnel and pinned into place with glasses that were utterly unnecessary indoors. He had leaned back in his chair and perched his ankle on his knee. He was the stereotype poster-child of a ‘cool’ professor and a successful West Coast white man, and exactly as proud of it as such a stereotype would be.

Some other things about the classroom were the same. The mats, the trays, the young owners up on their chairs, the naked pets at their sides like obedient dogs. Dustin, sick to his stomach with disgust and anxiety, wondering why the supposedly concerned ‘good kid’ sitting on the chair next to him wouldn’t just look around at the anxious, miserable faces of the pets around him. But he had turned in his chair and was talking with the owner in the next seat over, a dark-haired kid whose name had made Dustin think of a pizza place on the fringe of his old neighborhood.

Anything was better than thinking about the thing in the classroom that had changed. The other chairs.

The chairs had been set up around the outside of the room that hadn’t been there before, the chairs on their own mats, the chairs that looked a good deal heavier than the chairs in which the students sat, the chairs with straps on them. One glance at them had filled Dustin’s mouth with a bitter-lemon flavor as his stomach tied itself into a series of painful knots.

The rock of his consciousness had long sense rolled out from under the sensation of inertia that had covered his morning like a heavy wool blanket. He wanted his fucking blanket back. He didn’t know whether the desire to not feel anything or care at all about it was part of the training or incidental to his own personal cowardice, and he didn’t care. He just wanted it back.

Riley started the class as if he’d overheard the conversation between Dustin and Trey outside. “I know there’s been a lot of concern about whether your pets are enjoying themselves. They’ve been stuck in chastity since the start of class, while you owners have been enjoying their bodies. I assure you that there has been a method to my madness. Today, I hope to introduce you to exactly how much pleasure your pets can experience while still in their cages. It will probably surprise you. For that matter, it’ll probably surprise them.”

The young students looked eager. Dustin could see the same trepidation that he felt in his stomach written on the faces of the other pets. Well, some of them. Others were apparently better at controlling their faces, or had found their own wool blankets of apathy.

“There’s a bit of a test in this,” Riley went on. His hand painted a lazy shape in the air. “Not in the graded sense, Gio, don’t worry. It’s more in the nature of an experiment to help you figure out how far you have to push your pet before they tip over into pleasure. We’ll talk about it more when they aren’t listening.”

Riley indicated the trays with another fluid gesture. “First, you’ll help your pets prepare. Hopefully you’ve studied the class materials. And if they’ve been wearing their plugs and practicing as they should, this shouldn’t be difficult at all.”

Trey’s head turned and he smiled down at Dustin. It was the earnest, cheerful eagerness that made it obscene, Dustin decided.

“Get on your hands and knees?” The subtle lift at the end of Trey’s voice made it sound like a question, not like the command it was in context.

Dustin exhaled slowly. He told himself that this wasn’t going to be what he was dreading. It wasn’t going to be the Logan of it all. It couldn’t be. Because if it was, why were there bondage chairs?

He shifted onto his hands and knees, bare ass facing the front of the room. His clenching, gurgling stomach protested at the shift, but the nausea didn’t threaten to turn into a mess. He waited to hear the rustle of clothing being removed by the students, but he didn’t. When Trey knelt at the end of the mat, Dustin felt the mat shift, and he tensed.

He almost yelped when Trey touched him. The young man’s bare hand stroking over Dustin’s ass, rounding from the small of his back down the backs of his thighs. He took in his breath to ask whether Trey was going to put on the gloves, but he let it out with the question unasked. He was profoundly aware of Riley and the unspoken classroom rules. The pets weren’t permitted to question.

And he didn’t want Hart to get a bad report from Riley. Yes, Dustin’s new plan was starting to unfold in his head, and he thought he was a good few steps on the path without even having tried to get there. But he knew in his bones that he wasn’t there yet. Trey might be unhappy to have Dustin replaced, but his feelings toward Dustin were still a man’s infatuation with something new and exciting. Trey would be disappointed if Dustin was replaced, Dustin was sure, but he didn’t think that he was irreplaceable. Yet.

At first, when Trey started pulling on the base of the plug while circling a lubed fingertip around Dustin’s asshole, Dustin tensed up. Trey murmured, “It’s okay, Dusty. Relax.”

Trey’s fingertip stroked warm interest forward into Dustin’s body. Unlike when Dustin did this to himself, Trey didn’t lube him up all at once and wait for the stretch. His finger continued to stroke lube around as he tugged on the base of the plug. The warmth and stretch of it all had Dustin’s cage gripping him like an unwelcome hand.

He was eventually able to relax to the point that the plug finally emerged from his body with a popping noise that had to be in his imagination, then slid past his tailbone, trailing both relief and a strange sensation of emptiness.

“Good job,” Trey said, his voice low and a strangely breathy. “Damn, man, that’s hot.”

Dustin hoped that his hum in response sounded more like pleasure or agreement than the half-pained noise it really was. He waited for the next plug, the one that would stretch him more, but it didn’t come.

Instead, Trey’s finger pressed into Dustin easily. He’d lubed it, but he didn’t need to tease and press his way in. Dustin’s ass was loose and ready, and as Trey lubed him up inside, the other man paused from time to time to stroke the deliciously torturous place inside Dustin, sending electric fingernails raking pleasurably under his skin.

“Jesus Christ, Dusty. That’s so fucking hot.”

Dustin’s cock wasn’t the only place the hot flood of blood went when he realized that he had been subtly fucking back into Trey’s fingers to try to get him to stroke that spot. Both of Trey’s fingers. He hadn’t even been trying to resist.

He flexed, and Trey pulled his fingers out. “Shit, man. Sorry if I distracted you.”

Why was Trey’s voice shaky? It wasn’t like he was the one acting like a desperate slut and drooling precum all over the mat.

A smooth, clean hand stroked reassuringly down Dustin’s ass. All of his reluctance as Trey started to finger him again was from his own behavior. It was disgusting and confusing and shameful, and his hate bounced around from Riley to Trey. To himself.

How could he be participating in what was happening? Had he completely lost his mind? His entire sense of shame? He couldn’t even excuse himself for being so horny. He’d been horny before and behaved like a perfect gentleman.

Only until I got somewhere private and jerked it.

Okay. Fair. But still. He stopped clenching closed as Trey started fingering him again, but he didn’t let himself get lost in it. He clenched his teeth so tight that he thought he heard his jaw creak.

“Once you’ve prepared your pets, please take them over to the chairs and order them to sit.” Riley’s buzzing encouragement was directed at the students. It sounded like at some point he’d gotten up from his chair and started moving. Watch, maybe. Probably getting off on it, the sick fuck. “Adam will help them out while you go wash your hands.”

Trey walked Dustin over to one of the chairs. It looked like a medieval torture implement, its solid square base as solid as an anvil’s covered with a black fabric that didn’t disguise how heavy the chair was. The chair itself seemed to be welded of metal. As for the seat, there wasn’t much to it. Dustin could see how it would support his thighs while leaving his ass and junk exposed through the wide, soft-edged U that extended forward from the back.

It was like the bastardized child of a chair and a toilet, except if the chair had restraints built into it.

Dustin could feel his legs starting to tremble. Trey must have seen or sensed it, because his dry hand smoothed over Dustin’s shoulder and down his back. He murmured, “Trust me, Dusty. This looks intimidating as fuck, but I’ve watched all the tutorial vids, and it’s going to be really fun. You’ve been doing so good. You’re fucking great at this shit, man. And I won’t let you get hurt.”

Dustin did not believe that it was going to be fun. It didn’t look fun. He resisted the belief that Trey wouldn’t let him get hurt, but then grudgingly allowed that Trey might be honest about that. He wasn’t Hart. He did seem to give a shit about whether Dustin suffered or not.

And in any case, what choice did he have?

Past profoundly dry lips, Dustin whispered, “I trust you, Trey.”

Adam materialized from the edge of the room. He looked like he’d stepped from straight from the previous day into the present one. His straight, black hair had been pulled up into a ponytail that emphasized the stark lines of his cheekbones. His enthusiasm came off as less authentic and more forced than Riley’s, though Dustin thought that was just a lack of practice at making it seem natural. “I’ll take good care of you while Trey’s washing his hands, Dusty.”

Trey’s hand rested for a moment on Dustin’s back, then it slid down to Dustin’s ass and fondled it. before he turned and moved toward the bathroom. Dustin turned to watch him go, his long strides eager, his pace fast enough to ripple his tour shirt.

Was it a good or a bad thing that the other students were still working to get the plugs out of their pets or lubing them up? Dustin told himself that it didn’t matter whether his asshole was looser from practice or natural ability or—

I knew you liked it, bitch, Logan whispered in the back of Dustin’s mind.

—or because he was so fucking horny and such a disgusting piece of shit that he wanted Trey to touch him, as long as it meant feeling good.

When Adam touched Dustin’s wrist, he jerked his arm away.

“Easy, 107.” It was the voice of the female nurse that had helped the doctor sterilize him after strapping his ankles to stirrups. But it wasn’t. The past and the present separated back into their respective places, and Adam said again, “Easy, Dusty.”

And, on top of his other problems, Dustin might be going insane.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I was just startled, please don’t mark me down.”

“Of course not,” Adam said earnestly. “I just needed to get your attention. You were staring off into space and not responding to your name.”

He was definitely a few marbles short of, well, however many marbles a person was supposed to have.

“Could you take a seat in the chair? And press your arms to the arms, flat, and back your ankles over to the legs. Your owner isn’t experienced enough to do this yet without hurting you, so he gave me permission to touch you.”

The part of Dustin’s mind that wasn’t self-loathing or fear-of-insanity snagged onto that strange turn of phrase. Trey had given Adam permission to touch him. He didn’t know what it meant, or why it mattered, but he grabbed it.

Still sweaty and feeling like his knees folded the wrong way, Dustin eased down into the chair. The metal seat was cold against his bottom, but it warmed up.

The chair’s arms felt like ice when Dustin rested his forearms over them. Adam leaned over him. There was a whiff of a guy who hadn’t put on enough deodorant. Strong fingers moved Dustin’s arm, then a strap went over the narrowest part of his wrist and tightened it down. There was enough give for Adam to slip a finger between the Velcro strap and Dustin’s wrist, but it wasn’t much.

“You know how fucked up this is, don’t you?” The words tumbled out of Dustin’s mouth without any forethought at all, and the moment after the last word, the coldness under his forearm radiated through his body. It seemed that he still froze in the face of danger, even if it was danger that he himself had created.

“Bro, don’t,” Adam mumbled, the professionally fake TA voice no part of it. “Don’t make me report you.”

The touch of Adam’s hands on Dustin’s ankles, the manipulation of them to the chair legs and the strapping of them there, sent Dustin reeling back into the past again. He knew that he was looking at the classroom and not the inside of a black bag, and yet his mind was so fully convinced that all was already darkness that he barely noticed Adam fastening an elastic blindfold over his eyes.

Chapter Text

Dustin floated in a dark void that was probably some religion’s version of hell, disturbing sensations rolling through his body that weren’t actually there, the sounds echoing around him moans that could have included pleasure or pain. The darkness felt unreal, half like a dream. If it hadn’t been for the discomfort from the chair, cold but slowly warming under his forearms, the backs of his thighs, and the backs of his calves, he might have actually been convinced that he had died. Instead, he was just letting whatever was going to happen to him happen, a passenger to the direction of his life, floating along through a hell that was worse than any hypothetical imagination. His hell hurt.

A callused, masculine hand touched Dustin’s shoulder and he flinched. “I’m back. Are you okay, Dusty?”

Dustin’s dry tongue wasn’t able to add any moisture to his dry lips. He thought that his voice sounded like a wind sweeping a tumbleweed across a desert. “I’m okay. I am okay.”

He hoped that he convinced Trey more than he convinced himself.

He didn’t. Trey said, “Are you sure? Like, I know it’s a test or whatever, but the professor said not like a graded one. And they had on the sheet that if you freaked out, we could go back to like, trust-building exercises.”

He didn’t say Until you trust me. But it was implied. And in any case, he’d said that the sheet said that they would do that if Dustin freaked out, not if Dustin opted out.

Wake up, Trey. Think about it. Please fucking think about it.

“Do you want to go back to the mat?”

Dustin didn’t want to go back to the mat. He wanted to go home, back to Chicago, back to his girls. Farther than that. He wanted to go back to his old life, even if it meant dealing with Jacob’s drinking and fucking around. They could try counseling again. Dustin would find some way to, how had Jake put it, stop whining and nagging like a little bitch just because a guy liked to have some whiskey after a hard day’s work.

Trey’s fingers smoothed down the curve of Dustin’s shoulder. Dustin said, “No. I trust you, Trey.”

It was a lie. He didn’t even trust himself anymore.

“They said it was going to be intense, man. But you’re going to like it. I promise. It’s more p-spot stuff. You’ve liked that so far, right?”

Dustin thought of himself fucking back against Trey’s fingers. His skin tightened and the sour taste crawled up the back of his throat. “Yeah.”

“I’m going to put mufflers on your ears so you can concentrate on the sensations. But I’m going to be here with you the whole time. You’ll feel my hands. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Something soft touched Dustin’s forehead and then moved back over his too-long hair. A subtle pressure came down over his ears, and then it was just Dustin and the chair, alone and empty in a sightless, soundless void. He thought he could hear the white-noise background of blood rushing in his ears. Or maybe that was just an aural illusion, like the way he still saw spots behind his eyelids even though he’d been blindfolded.

Like when the hood over his head had made him rely on his ears more, the lack of both eyes and ears made him focus on what he did have. The sensation of the subtle changes in the classroom air. The smells of lube and fear-sweat and the pervasive aroma of Trey’s body-spray. The way the hard arms of the chair contrasted with the softness of Trey’s hand stroking down Dustin’s arm, then his chest, like someone might pet an anxious dog.

He focused mostly on that, on the feeling of Trey’s hands, masculine and sensual, stroking over his arm. Tracing his fingertips against the back, the erogenous zone that Trey had discovered during the first class. The sensation that shivered through his body at that touch, the warmth and heaviness in his groin increasing, the heaviness of the cage starting to grip him like a hand.

The press of something against Dustin’s asshole wasn’t unexpected. He tensed and tried to pull away, but the restraints held him. It pressed harder, and it was going to happen anyway, so Dustin relaxed into it. Although he wasn’t trying to concentrate on that particular sensation, it was hard to not. It didn’t seem to be just his imagination that the process of having something new pushed into him went faster. It had a different texture from the metal plugs, and it wasn’t quite as unyielding. The stretch didn’t increase to uncomfortable, not like sliding a new plug in, and it didn’t suddenly narrow at a base. There was no settling of the comfortable curve of the handle between his butt cheeks. Held open, Dustin’s kegels occasionally flexed as if to measure the girth of what was holding him open.

Trey’s hands stroked down his chest and over his stomach, then back up. The thing inside Dustin pulsed slowly inward, then began to withdraw.

In the darkness and silence, the vivid memory of the doctor pressing his cock into Dustin’s ass and pulling out slammed into Dustin like a truck. He found himself gasping and shaking. His eyes felt hot and gritty. He waited for the hard thrust, the cramp.

It didn’t come. Trey’s hands continued to stroke him, soothing him on one hand but playing up the insides of Dustin’s thighs on the other. Both hands went to Dustin’s chest and smoothed outward, and he made his breath go with it.

The cramp didn’t come. After his muscles lost their tension, the object simply slid a little in and then a little out, in and then out. The friction at Dustin’s asshole was pleasant. It wasn’t the same sensation of fullness and emptiness as the plug, but it was enough to make his cock ache where it was being held down.

After a few slides in and out, the object stopped moving. Dustin didn’t think it was his imagination that something subtle changed before the object began moving again. By that point, his terrified reactions had stopped. He just breathed and waited for something. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. The object stopped its slide again, there was that subtle feeling of adjustment.

The next time the object moved into him, the smooth, rounded, lube-slick tip stroked over the spot that Trey’s fingertips had stroked. It was a brush instead of a press, but the sudden and unexpected surge of heat under Dustin’s skin made him gasp and jerk. The restraints at his wrists and ankles held him in place. Trey’s hands went splay-fingered on Dustin’s chest, then began teasing his nipples. The sensation shot from Dustin’s chest straight down to his dick, and he couldn’t help but groan.

The pulse came again when the object slid into him. Dustin’s unintended whine sounded as loud as a siren in his covered ears, and he hoped that it was much quieter out loud. He tried to shift to the side. The next slow pulse of the object didn’t quite directly stroke over the spot, and Dustin was left trembling.

Trey’s hands dropped to the tops of Dustin’s thighs. He ran his nails up the insides and Dustin’s gasp sounded as loud in his ears as a shout. The pulse came again against Dustin’s spot, the fire spread under his skin, his cock throbbed painfully, and he found himself panting. It came again. Trey’s fingernails traced up the insides of Dustin’s slightly spread thighs and he shuddered. The pulse that came in the middle sent sparkling fingertips of lighting and fire stroking under his skin.

He didn’t know how long it was before he found himself straining after the sensation. Anticipating it and positioning his body so that it would hit straight-on. It was strange. It was delicious. His squeezed dick no longer hurt. It felt almost strangely pleasant as the tension built in his body. Everywhere Trey touched, the electric sensation spread under his skin.

The insides of his thighs began to tremble from the strain. It was a familiar trembling, the feeling of chasing an orgasm that was slow in coming. Then his calves. Then even his feet, he was incapable of not straining toward it. He didn’t even know what he was straining after, but he wanted it. He couldn’t stop panting.

Was it his imagination, or was the pulsing faster? Not increased all at once, but whatever was smoothly fucking into and out of him was either coming faster, or time was starting to do strange things in the darkness and the silence where the only feelings were Trey’s hands on his skin and the slide in his ass, and the sensation of a fire under his skin that was slowly but steadily having branches thrown on it. The touch of Trey’s hands was becoming exquisitely pleasurable, almost too much.

The orgasm was like nothing Dustin had ever felt before. The building waves of fire suddenly exploded across his entire body, wave after wave of a pleasure so intense that it tore all the air from his lungs and left him gasping and shuddering. The sensation of his caged dick, the way his balls tried to draw up, the way that what was normally a punching pulsing pleasure was instead an exquisitely strong squeezing. It receded, and he thought it was over, but the wave started to build again almost immediately.

“Oh, god. Am I still cumming?” He might have whispered the question through his attempts to get his breath back.

The release of the tension that had built up over hours, days, maybe even years was like the most pleasurable running of a keg from full to empty. The tap was still open, but there was nothing else to drain out. And yet.

It was too much. It felt like the fire was starting to crisp his hair. He couldn’t stand the hands on his body anymore but he had nowhere to flinch back from them.

When the dildo stumped pumping into him, it was a relief and a disappointment at the same time. He wanted. But he couldn’t stand it. But damn if it hadn’t been building again. His legs felt like jelly. The post-orgasmic relaxation was spreading under his skin, and in its cage, his cock was ridiculously sensitive. But it was still held firmly.

He was still gasping and struggling to get his breath when something touched his chin and gently pulled it to the side. Trey’s fingertip traced a circle around Dustin’s lips, then it slid into Dustin’s mouth. He could taste his own sweat on it, a salt flavor that filled his mouth with saliva. Struggling to heave breath in through his nose. Dustin sucked the fingertip, and it also withdrew, spreading Dustin’s saliva over his lips.

The next thing that touched his mouth was a different kind of soft-over-hard, and if he hadn’t known what it was, the aroma would have told him right away. The precum that slicked his lips as it was circled around was familiar. Every man smelled different, tasted different, and Dustin was starting to know this smell and this taste.

He had no control over Trey’s cock as the man slipped it into Dustin’s mouth. Through desperate gasps for breath through his nose, Dustin at least managed to pull hips lips over his teeth. Trey’s first thrust took him too deep, and Dustin choked, but the next didn’t go quite as far. He managed that control for a time, but there was only so much control that a horny twenty-year-old could exhibit while fucking a man’s face. Fortunately, by the time he was fucking Dustin’s throat, Dustin had relaxed it and pulled on his old knowledge of how to not fight against his gag reflex.

The thrusting grew more desperate, Trey’s hold on Dustin’s hair painfully tight. When Trey let go over Dustin’s hair and he pulled out, Dustin was confused for a moment. The young man hadn’t cum, the taste of him wasn’t in Dustin’s mouth. Not in that way at least. Then the cum spattered Dustin’s cheek, his chin, dribbled onto the shoulder his chin had been pulled to face, and he understood.

Trey hadn’t been able to finish without more pressure than Dustin’s loose mouth could offer, so he’d finished himself. A thumb slid through the cum on Dustin’s cheek, then pressed into his mouth, and Dustin sucked the thumb clean.

Something soft touched Dustin’s face and he flinched. Then he smelled the subtle aroma of detergent. Trey toweled the cum off Dustin’s face, then folded the towel and wiped down his sweat-streaked face, chest, arms. If Dustin admitted it to himself, the soft touches felt nicer than he would have liked. More comforting. His mind didn’t trust the feeling, but his body craved it.

Dustin desperately wished that the greasy slick of sweat down the back of his neck and under his chin could be toweled off, but it couldn’t. It would have to wait for the direct spray of the shower that he desperately needed. The one he wanted to crawl into until his skin truly did scorch off.

Finally, the thing holding his asshole open withdrew, and now he truly did feel loose and empty. The muffler came off first, the sounds of moans and whines and whispers of men like him being ‘trained’ assaulting his ears. He picked Trey’s voice out from among them, a pant that just kept repeating, “Holy fuck. Holy fuck, man. Holy fucking shit.”

The fingertips that peeled at the edge of the blindfold were damp and trembled. The dampness could have been Dustin’s sweat, but he thought it was probably cum and spit. Dustin kept his eyes closed as the blindfold came off. The light through his eyelids was even too bright, too pink.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Trey said, when talking was possible. His voice was rough on top with the still water of his release underneath. “Did you like it?”

“Yes.”

The thing that made Dustin feel more damned than anything was that he wasn’t lying. Not entirely. The orgasm had been, hands down, the best in his life. Zaps of fire still traveled from time to time under his skin as he moved. His entire body sung. His horror at his pleasure was also distant, at least for the moment, though he knew it would ambush him later.

Chapter Text

Adam had strapped Dustin into the chair, but it was Trey who unstrapped him and helped him make his way on his jellied limbs to their mat. Dustin’s body shook like he'd run a marathon without having eaten for days, worse than any workout Hart had ever put him through, and Trey’s solid arm under his was the only thing that kept him from entirely collapsing. That fact was a light layer of shameful oil spread over a deep pond of the stuff.

Yes, Dustin had been strapped down. Yes, he hadn’t been able to get away from the rhythmic press of the machine. But he hadn’t needed to lean into it like that, to chase it like that, like he’d chased the sensation of Trey’s fingers stroking inside him. What the fuck was wrong with him? Despair bubbled up in the base of Dustin’s stomach, and he hoped that his weeping just looked like running sweat, or could be explained another way, if Trey noticed.

The young man did not notice. He pretty much had to lower Dustin to their mat like a sack of sand. Dustin’s legs were starting to work, but the muscles twitched spastically and were profoundly unreliable. The jolt of Trey half-dropping him as his arm slid in the sweat sent a spike of pain up into Dustin’s body that made him breathe out sharply. His bottom was too sore to sit on, and he was able to arrange his limbs into something more like a stretched-out noodle than a pile as the mat shifted with Trey’s weight.

For the first time, Dustin and Trey were on the mat together without it being already lube-streaked. It smelled like cleaning solution and foam instead of sex. Instead, the air smelled like sweat and sex, and the unselfconscious cries of pain or pleasure or both from the men in the chairs carried through it like a strange song under a pungent perfume.

Trey folded around Dustin like a soft blanket. The young man stroked Dustin's arms and chest, murmuring about how good he had done despite his bad experience before, how proud of him Trey was for trusting him and not fighting him, how proud Trey was that they were the first finished, how fucking sexy it had been to fuck Dustin’s mouth while he had been strapped to the chair and so clearly still buzzing from his orgasm.

“That was okay, wasn't it?” Trey’s whispered. “Professor Riley suggested it and I thought, well, you've usually got me even when you couldn't, you know, get yourself.”

“It was.” The lie was as tired as Dustin.

Trey’s hand rested low on Dustin’s stomach, not quite touching his pubes. “I can't believe how hot that was,” he whispered. “I know they said you’d like it but, man, I kept expecting you to call it off, and you didn’t, you started fucking it back. You did so good. It was so fucking hot, man.”

Dustin’s eyes kept leaking, the tears tickling across his nose and down faster than the sweat beaded along his hairline and made its own tickling tracks. He’d known that he’d been chasing the orgasm, but to hear it from someone else. To know how obvious it had been. The shame was almost unbearable, spreading from a pond to a lake to an ocean.

All of a sudden, Riley’s buzzing mosquito whine of a voice broke in. “Great work, Trey! I hope you've told your pet how good he was. A first-place finisher, even though the test wasn't timed.”

“I did, professor.” Trey stroked his hand across Dustin’s stomach. The fingers no longer spread comfort under Dustin’s skin, only nausea.

Riley chuckled. “He's clearly been doing his homework.”

“I have,” Dustin mumbled, not because he’d been asked for a response, but because he didn't like that Riley was talking over his head like he wasn't there. There was an unspoken rule that pets weren’t to speak until spoken to. No one had said that to him, but it was clear from all of the subtext.

So why had he done that? Riley was the one who gave reports to Hart. What if Riley reported that he’d been impertinent?

Riley continued talking to Trey as if Dustin hadn't spoken. “Did you end up enjoying the bondage aspect?”

“I did,” Trey admitted. “It’s, well. I don’t know why I did. I just thought it was hot.”

“It left you feeling powerful,” Riley supplied. The noxious odors of cedar and clove was starting to cut through the smells of sweat and sex.

“Yeah,” Trey said, but Dustin wasn’t sure that it was full agreement that he heard in Trey’s voice.

Across the room, one of the men gave a hoarse, sobbing cry and announced that he was cumming. Dustin’s eyes, already closed, squeezed even more tightly.

“We do have other special electives. The ‘Intro to Bondage’ class could be a good one, if you’re interested. Or perhaps ‘Intro to BDSM.’ Both do come with temporary access to the pet play area, though after that, there would be the membership fee, of course.”

He’s making a sales pitch, Dustin realized. Trey’s relaxed and susceptible and he’s trying to sell him on more classes, more products.

He didn’t know why the so-called professor’s slimy behavior surprised him.

“Is it like, in the class brochure?"

"Mhm, the special electives section. The length of the other classes aren’t quite this abbreviated.”

“I’ll talk with Dusty about it. Thanks.”

Dustin couldn’t see Riley’s face, but he could hear the professionally encouraging smile in the man’s voice. “Any time, Trey.”

Dustin’s ears followed the man’s retreat back toward the fucking machines. He carefully didn’t look. At least at some point, the tears had stopped.

Trey’s inward fold around Dustin lost a measure of tension that Dustin hadn’t even been aware that he’d had. He asked, “Would you want to?”

“Uh, what?”

The young man’s hand stroked back up Dustin’s stomach, toward his chest. “Do the bondage elective. Or the BDSM one.”

No, Dustin very much did not want to do more sex-school electives with Trey. But if his strategy was to make himself indispensable to the Trey. To keep him on the hook until there wasn’t any chance that Hart would yank him away and send him to an even more terrible place is Vegas…

Dustin drew in his breath slowly, and felt Trey’s fingers shift with the rise of his ribs. “If that bondage one is something you’d like to do.”

Trey’s fingertips stroked through the fine hair on Dustin’s chest, making circles against one of his exercise-sore pecs. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to. If I can fit it in between my classes and practice, somehow. I guess I’d have to figure that out first.”

Dustin desperately wanted to steer the conversation away from sex. “What sport do you play?”

“Shit, man, sometimes I forget that we hardly know each other. With all the, you know.” Trey’s hand lifted long enough to make a gesture that probably encompassed the men being fucked by machines, the hoarse cries and heavy breathing and mumbled voice of encouragement. The evil musical background to Dustin and Trey’s personal play. “I play basketball. Played? I don’t know. I’m not really shooting for the RBA. When I was a kid, I thought I’d go pro, you know? But I’m not a scholarship player, and I don’t think I want to make a career out of it. I actually like school, man.”

By the end, Trey sounded highly defensive. Dustin, previously not really sure what to do with his hands, touched the back of Trey’s where it had come to rest on his chest. He sensed an opportunity to avoid the bondage thing and tried to ease himself into the crack.

“Maybe it’s better to focus on your actual classes right now?”

Trey chuffed a breath out into Dustin’s hair. “You sound like my mom, man.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah.” Trey sighed. “But you’re right. If I start quitting stuff just ‘cause I have a pet, my mom might flip and make dad send you back.” Dustin’s heart stopped and ice flowed through his limbs. “But it’s not like I wasn’t talking about dropping the team before. Man, I don’t know.”

Dustin’s mouth was suddenly hardpan desert, and his voice was a jagged-edged tumbleweed that rattled across it. “You don’t have to decide right this moment.”

Trey’s body lost a notch of tension again. “Yeah. You’re right, man. I should focus on how good this feels instead of the mess everything else feels like. At least you are a good thing I’ve got going.”

And Trey represented everything wrong with what Dustin had going, but the best possible option was to drag it out as long as he could. Life was so fucking unfair.

They lay together quietly for a while, their mat a rectangular slice of stillness in an atmosphere filled with desperation and sex. Some others joined them on the mats, though not everyone. Dustin wondered if he would be allowed to lay with Trey all day, no going home to work out, if the men on the machines weren’t able to orgasm. He hoped so. He didn’t think that Hart could make him work out with a literal whip. His muscles just could not.

Riley eventually clapped his hands from his place at the center of the arc. “We’re going to have to call it for today! Owners whose pets haven’t completed the assignment, please turn off your machines.”

Dustin didn’t want to look but he wanted to know what had been done to him. From the way one of the women put down a controller, it seemed like it was the owners who had set the speed and depth of the piston-mounted dildos. And it was the owners who slid the fake cocks out of the bodies of the three strapped-down men who were left. The skin all over Dustin’s body tightened and he shuddered.

Trey’s hand went to Dustin’s chest and stroked his fingers through his coarse, fine hair. Close as they were spooning, Dustin could feel Trey getting aroused again, a gentle press at first that became more insistent as the unsuccessful owners unstrapped their pets from the machines. Even Dustin started to get a little warm, his body interpreting the soft sounds differently than it had the men’s panting, desperate noises. Those had sounded like pain. These sounded like relief, which was much closer to arousal, at least to Dustin’s dick.

How he could be getting horny again already wasn’t quite clear to him. At Trey’s age, he had been a fiend, able to go three times a day with Jake, or maybe more. It had tapered off over the years, to where Dustin only jerked off a few times a week and sex with Jake had been a rare treat. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d gotten off and been horny less than hour later.

Reluctantly, Trey sat up on the mat, and Dustin joined him. He had to lean against Trey’s side, his muscles still jelly, his ass profoundly sore. The nudity in the room was no longer surprising or embarrassing, not after they’d been so masterfully eased into the context. At the front of the class, it was almost as if the dressed Professor Riley was the one in a strange uniform. Or maybe that was just Dustin’s addled mind.

Riley grinned at the room full of bright-eyed owners and exhausted, wrung-out pets. “For those of you who weren’t successful today, don’t sweat it. Sometimes it takes a pet a little longer to adjust to a new sensation, or to relax into it. Class is starting to diverge a little based on the physiology of your respective pets. This happens with every class. I want to reassure you that this is nothing wrong. Every pet is built different. I assure you that you’ll be able to get them there from penetration alone with time and patience.”

There was something about the way he said it that made Dustin doubt whether that was really the case. Perhaps it was the brief pause before Riley went on. “As for homework, your pets are almost certainly sore. They’ll need some rest. If they were successful with the larger plug yesterday and it isn’t yet to the diameter you’d like, ask them to try to move up size. Again, it’s okay if they can’t take it. Between now and then, I’d like them to have at least three hours’ rest.” His voice went subtly stern. “Pets, as far as the plugs go, continue to do your best to take them in and out and rest regularly. I expect full effort to increase the size to where your owners want it. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Great! See you all tomorrow.”

Dustin’s legs were still unsteady, and he bumped into Trey a couple of times until the younger man took his arm.

And like Riley had said, he was sore. But it was a strange sort of soreness. There was no continuing, cramping pain that hit his stomach by surprise, no fierce ache that sometimes flared to true pain when he moved wrong. Compared to some of the things he’d endured, the ache was muted. It radiated instead of flared.

Trey’s voice buzzed with excitement. “This next plug is the right size for me. I hope you’re able to wear it, man. I mean, it’s totally okay if it doesn’t fit yet, and you can keep wearing the old one until you stretch a bit more. But, man, I don’t want to have to take the remedial week. It’s going to be insane enough with practice starting back up, man.”

Dustin considered not giving this new size of plug his full effort. It sounded like the longer that he wasn’t able to get himself able to take Trey’s size, the longer he’d be able to put off the part where Trey actually fucked him.

It didn’t make sense that that was so important to him. They’d had plenty of sex. Shit, even Trey putting the plug in him had been sex, penetrative sex at that. But for some reason, the ideas of having something metal up his hole versus having Trey’s cock up there felt like wildly different things.

Dustin took a slow, deep breath. It was inevitable. It was going to happen. Trey was going to do it to him. And if he wasn’t ready—

For a moment, Dustin was back in the bathrooms in jail, Logan forcing himself into Dustin with only the most rudimentary preparation. The bright pain, the cramping, the feeling like someone was shoving a baseball bat into and out of his guts. Pain on pain on pain.

The old, familiar nausea grabbed the bottom of Dustin’s stomach and twisted. His mouth flooded with an almost citrusy sour taste. It was all he could do to not bend double and vomit on his shoes. He stumbled, and it was only Trey’s grip on his arm that kept him from dropping to his knees.

Trey sounded alarmed. “Dusty, man, are you okay? It’s not the fucking collar, is it?”

Dustin wasn’t in the jail. He wasn’t being fucked by Logan. If anything, he thought it would be more like with the doctor. Pain, but also pressure, forcing him open even if he wasn’t ready. Cramping him up without the tearing, visceral pain. At least thinking about that didn’t take him back to the BISA exam room, because Trey had hauled him upright and was looking at him with serious concern.

Dustin took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was just…” He searched for an excuse that wouldn’t involve flashbacks to the last two men who had raped him. “I feel like my legs are made of jello. And I put my foot down wrong. And, and I really am sore.”

Trey’s dark eyes darted away, then came back as apologetic as a puppy who had chewed through a shoe. “What I said about the remedial classes, I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have said that. If you don’t want to try something my size yet, that’s fine. If we need to keep coming back, I’ll make it work with my schedule. Whatever you need, man.”

It’ll be fine, man. Whatever you need. Just more public rapes until we get to the private ones.

Dustin shook his head. “I want to try it out. I want—” Dustin’s first thought was to say ‘for you to not fail this class,’ but then he remembered his strategy. He hoped that the pause was interpreted as embarrassment. Anticipation, maybe. He cleared his throat. “—I want to be able to go all the way with you.”

Go all the way. How Dustin hated that phrase. As if the act of having sex with someone wasn’t complete until after one person shoved a body part into another person’s hole.

“Yeah, I mean, I want that, too. But I want you to have a good time.”

Dustin cleared his throat for the second time in under a minute. “I want that, too.”

Chapter Text

Hart kicked Dustin’s ass up and down the gym that afternoon. For some perverse reason, he had decided to focus on Dustin’s legs, and the already-strained appendages wanted to outright give out. Hart was a good trainer, though. He shoved Dustin right up to the edge of maximum effort without tipping him over it and letting him hurt himself. By the time they were stretching to cool down, he’d lost the ability to focus on anything, including the fucking machine. Even if the ache hadn’t forgotten about him.

Dustin was tired of eating lean protein and vegetables for dinner, no matter how many ways Abby prepared it. Sitting in the dining room and watching other people eat meals with carbs filled him with a craving for pasta that was second only to his craving to be sitting with his family instead. Well, just his girls. Did Jacob make them dinner, now that Dustin was gone? Did they eat as a family? Did the girls—

Dustin tore his mind away from the worst of his pain.

Luka wasn’t in the alcove. Dustin tried to tamp down his disappointment. He owed them an apology, and he wanted to give it, but he couldn’t blame Luka for avoiding him. Not after Dustin had brought up their own bad memories.

He looked toward the others in the living room, hesitated, then pulled his phone out of his back pocket. Typing with the number keys was insane. He sent a message to Hart.

- Not sulking need 2 do homework

Then Dustin closed the phone and made his noodle legs take him up the stairs. He half thought that Hart would drag him back down to the gym and zap his collar for sulking, then he remembered that Hart could probably shock him from anywhere.

The plug was waiting for him in his room. It had a discreet black box, and when Dustin opened it, it had the size that he hadn't worn since that morning and one even larger. Dustin had done his preplug prep in the bathroom, knowing what the point was, but actually looking at the plugs made the sick sensation that had taken up residence in the base of his stomach stir like a cat stretching its claws. The answering ache from his cock was a surprise, though. He was more surprised to see that, when he looked down, he was already filling his cage.

The bad kind of crawling sensation began under Dustin’s skin and broke him out in bumps. He wasn’t turned on, not at all, but the anticipatory clenching of his kegels had provoked the soreness in his body. It was not entirely unpleasant. And on some level, he knew that when the plug was inside him, it was going to rub that spot in all the right ways.

Dustin pried the glinting steel plug out of its soft, form-fitting case. It fell from his nerveless fingers and clunked hard before rolling toward the dresser. Dustin’s next thought was half-hysterical. If that dented Luka’s floor, they’re going to piss in my shoes.

He bent to retrieve it, the ache radiated in his body, but it didn’t seem like the floor had dented. Maybe there was a little scuff in the wax. Maybe. His cock throbbed hard, angry, wanting to be let out of its cage.

It was so fucked up. The thought of pushing a plug into his body so that another man could rape him more easily was fucked up. The thought of that sore ache turning pleasant was worse in ways that defied description. Dustin looked from the plug to the towels to the lube to the towels, sweating, and tried to think about what would happen to him if he didn’t do his ‘homework.’

And still, he couldn’t do it. Not with his dick all but aching for it. He put the plug back in its case and thought about taking out the smaller one, instead, but the creeping sense of horror came into him.

The issue wasn’t the size of the plug, it was the way his body craved the sensations, that fucked up fullness and the pleasant rub of the plug when he bent or flexed. The horror was that he was still horny after what had happened, even though part of him had hoped that he would never be horny again.

House izzy. Dustin prodded his mind with the threat. Vegas.

But it didn’t work. He couldn’t make himself do, well, that. Not yet. He needed some time. That was all.

Instead of setting his bed up, he stumbled over to it and sat. Even sitting made a pleasant ache radiate up through his body, and the cage gripped him again. After Dustin stripped off his clothes, he didn’t lay towels down on the bed. He stared at the supplies, shook his head, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it over him. He wept.

And either he was more tired than he thought, physically or mentally or both, or his brain had finally had enough. He didn’t fall asleep as much as his mind simply shut off.

The knock on Dustin’s door wasn’t soft or subtle. He jolted awake, his heart beating wildly. His limbs felt flooded with a sick sort of heaviness, the kind that he always had when he’d started to take a nap but hadn’t finished. The kind he had when Jacob had shaken him awake and demanded where his supper was at after Dustin had finished a long day of tax prep and had decided to just ‘lie down on the couch for a few minutes’ after work.

The lights in the room were on, and for a moment, Dustin experienced extreme disorientation. The lights were on, but it was dark outside. He was entirely undressed rather than sleeping in his boxers. His face felt strangely hot, his eyes full of sand.

The knock came again. Dustin scrubbed at his eyes and tried to swing his strange-feeling legs out of the bed. He could barely move, his muscles were so tight. He mumbled, “Just a minute. I need a minute to get dressed.”

Hart’s voice was muffled by the door, but still low and dangerous. “Don’t bother.”

The shot of adrenaline, coming so shortly after Dustin had woken with a start, made all of his limbs start shaking. They hurt so bad he could barely move and they shook anyway. The animal part of Dustin’s brain, the part that made him freeze, tried to convince him that if he just stayed in the room, nothing bad could happen to him.

It was a lie. The bad things had already happened to him. Were continuing to happen to him. But he couldn’t make himself move.

While Dustin stood frozen, the knock came again. And then the painful spark bridged the gap across his throat, and he was coughing then choking. The pain didn’t take him to his knees, but the loss of breath was as panic-inducing as it ever was. More panic ladled onto an already panicked mind.

Keys jangled in the hallway. The lock on the handle to Dustin’s room turned, the keys jangled again, and the door was pushed open.

Hart loomed out of the darkness like a werewolf in a horror movie. The wide man took up the entire door. His light-colored tank top and shorts clung to his muscles. The hallway behind him was black, and the light in Dustin’s room made him a sharp-edged outline against it.

“Please,” Dustin whispered hoarsely. He wasn’t sure yet what he was begging for, or why he was even bothering. Hart’s eyes were hard and dark as stones, and they held no kindness or mercy.

Hart stepped into his room. He closed the door behind him without taking his eyes from Dustin’s face or taking his thumb from the buzzer clutched in his left hand.

“The fuck is going on, Merrill.” It was a statement, not a question.

Dustin’s mind stuttered over the same idea back and forth. “I fell asleep. I just fell asleep. I wasn’t sulking, I just—”

“Shut up.”

Dustin’s mouth slammed closed so hard that his teeth clacked. His face was the hot like he was about to burst into tears, but it was also the cold of someone whose blood had simply refused to stop running there. Interrupted fatigue still swirled in his mind and in the bottom of his stomach, where nausea already lived.

Hart’s voice was that of a demonic meditation instructor. “Take a deep breath. Hold it. Now let it out. Take another one. Hold it. Right. Now. Try again.”

Dustin couldn’t keep looking at the man’s hard eyes. His slipped aside, to where his ‘homework’ supplies were lined up on the dresser. He had to take another deep breath and let it out before he could speak. He thought about dishonesty, he seriously considered it, but there was no way of knowing how much Hart knew.

“I came up to do my homework, and I lost my nerve. I lay down to just, just take a break and get it back. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, it just happened. I’m not depressed.” Once the words started, they began to run out of Dustin’s mouth like a dam upstream had broken. “Please don’t get rid of me, Mr. Hart, sir. Or, or cane me. Trey doesn’t know anything. He likes me. I’m doing a good job, I just…”

“You fell asleep.” It was a horrible confirmation, the words like a slap. “After not doing your homework.”

Dustin nodded. His head hung limp from his neck. He was sweating so profusely that he could feel the tickle of a runnel of it moving down his side from under his armpit.

“Grab your shit and come on.”

Dustin snatched up the towels, lube, and box of plugs from the top of the dresser. He held them all in his arms like a drowning man might hold a buoy. His mind kept flicking between possible outcomes, and he didn’t like any of them.

Dustin didn’t walk, he staggered. The hallway was night-dark. Dustin didn’t have the hands to turn off the light, and when the door swung gently closed behind him, a bar of light that shone out from under his door like a ray of sun in a world of darkness.

Dustin’s world was the world of darkness. He wasn’t sure what the ray of sun was supposed to be, but whatever it was, it was hidden by clouds much darker and more dense than the utter lack of anything that blocked the light shining out from under his door.

His legs were shaking so badly as he lurched after Hart that he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage the stairs. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would fall down them and break his neck at the landing and put an end to his misery.

And never see his girls again?

No. That wasn’t an option. Whatever else happened, he was getting back home.

Chapter Text

Hart’s steps thudded on the each individual stair, the sort of short, hard, and fast cadence that a man could only manage when he was angry. Dustin managed to not break his neck stumbling down the stairs after him with his arms too full to grab the handrail and his legs shaky from too much exertion and fear and adrenaline. If he had stumbled, he would have fallen into Hart’s broad back. And then maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about whether he was losing his mind. Hart might not need much to tip over from being a scary man to being a huge, scary monster that wanted to screw Dustin’s head on backward.

The living room was dark and empty. The only light was the ambient, sickly yellow glow of a city at night, and that only to the extent it lit the areas near the windows. The izzy house was utterly silent.

Maybe it’s the witching hour. Maybe Hart’s the witch. Dustin’s thought buoyed up over the dread on a wave of giddiness. Laughing would not make things better.

The locker room was brilliantly lit after the dimness of the house, and the light shined harshly off the white-tile floors and walls. It smelled like bleach and toilet cleanser, nothing like the bathrooms in prison, but the stab of visceral dread was the same.

Hart pointed at the brushed steel bench. “Put your shit down. No, don’t sit.”

Dustin barely caught himself in time and got back to his feet. The dull, radiating ache that had been with him since the fucking machine was almost gone, the ghost of a memory compared to the screaming of muscles that hadn’t been properly stretched after hard use.

The broad man crossed his burly arms. His eyes were hard agates of striated brown. “What was your homework?”

“I was supposed to put in the new plug,” Dustin mumbled. “But I lost my nerve. I’m sorry, Mr. Hart, I—”

“Stop. Stop rambling. Just answer the fucking questions.”

Dustin’s mouth was dry as cotton and tasted as bright as a copper penny. “Yes, sir.”

“Which plug? This one?” Hart pointed at the larger of the two.

Dustin shook his head. “To at least try the other one.”

A rubber band snapped across Dustin’s throat and he was coughing. “Don’t ‘at least’ me, Merrill. This one?”

Hart had picked up the larger of the two plugs and was shaking it like someone would shake a shoe at a very bad dog. Dustin nodded, the corners of his eyes wet.

“You done this size before?”

Dustin shook his head. Hart put down the large one and picked up the one Dustin had been wearing the day before. “You done this size?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On your hands and knees.”

Dustin just stared at him, uncomprehending, until the zap of choking static danced across his throat. After he’d finished cough-wheezing again, Hart said, “Remind me, Merrill. Who’s the boss?”

“You,” Dustin choked out. He dropped to his hands and knees on the floor. Then he hesitated and went down to his elbows. He thought that he knew what was coming, and he tried to keep breathing.

Hart did not jam the plug into him dry. The touch on Dustin’s asshole was a lubed finger, stubby and callused, and he tried to relax into it. The next thing that pressed was small. The little lube syringe. It didn’t fill him, except in the ways it did, and those ways were terrible. He’d never had an enema, but he suspected that it had to feel like this. Not the same pressure as a plug but the strange sense of spreading fullness and needing to use the restroom.

The cold touch of the metal plug on his asshole filled him with terror. He sucked in his breath, expecting it to be forced in, expecting the terrible cramping, the bright tearing pain. Instead, it pressed, hard but steady.

Hart’s voice was still flat. “Loosen up. I don’t want to hurt you.”

You don’t? It sounded like a lie.

Dustin breathed out and tried to loosen up. Hart didn’t shove the plug into him, but he wasn’t gentle, either. When Trey had put the second plug in him, the fact that it had felt too big had made him turn it into a game, a pulsing in and out that got Dustin a little more open each pulse. Hart’s version wasn’t like that. The pressure was constant, the increasing sensation of stretch and fullness was intense, and Dustin had no doubt that the plug was going in one way or the other. He believed in his bones that Hart would tear him open to get the plug into him.

The constant pressure spread Dustin up to the point where he suddenly closed around the base. Without the gradual sensation of going in and out, and while trying to keep himself fully relaxed, he hadn’t realized it was almost in. Tears leaked down the sides of Dustin’s nose, though he hadn’t thought he was weeping. Maybe it was just sweat. The onion-fear smell of his armpits had overwhelmed every other odor in the room.

Dustin stayed on his elbows and knees, his forehead pressed against his wrists, even after Hart had finished violating him with the plug. Even though he heard Hart moving around. He watched a runnel of precum from his aching cock add itself to the lake that was forming on the tiles.

Two low pops like distant cap pistols made Dustin flinch. “Look at me.”

Dustin looked up. Hart knelt in front of him with what looked like a long piece of bamboo in his hands, resting across his bent knees. “Do you know what this is?”

Dustin swallowed hard past the collar. “A, uh, cane?”

“Yeah.” Hart gave it a swish. It hissed ominously through the air. “Hurts like a bitch. Leaves welts. For days. You feel me?”

“Yes,” Dustin mumbled.

“What’s going to happen if I cane you?”

“Trey will…” Dustin’s mind groped around before he found what he hoped was a satisfactory answer. “He’ll want to know why.”

“Uh huh. What then?”

Dustin blinked hard on his hot eyes. He swallowed again, but he couldn’t manage even a mumble. He whispered, “You send me somewhere else.”

“Yup.”

Dustin’s body seemed to alternate between feeling hot and cold. The sensation of fingernails under his skin was not the pleasant kind. There was no room in Hart’s statement for an answer. There was no indication in anything Hart was or ever had done that the man had any mercy.

Dustin tried anyway. “Please don’t. I’ll be good. I’m doing my best. Please.”

“I don’t care. You do what you’re supposed to? Good. You don’t? Fine by me. The next guy might do better.”

Despite the stretching silence, Dustin didn’t look up. The words had sunk a cold so deep into his center that there was no room for feeling. Well, not quite. There was room for terror. Numbness and terror.

“Tell me,” Hart said slowly, “That you understand.”

“I understand.”

Finally, Hart’s knees popped again when he stood up. “Get on your back.”

Dustin rolled over exactly like a dog showing its stomach to a much larger, meaner dog. Hart was a dark outline against the bright white LED lights in the locker room. His voice rolled out of that shadow like thunder.

“What was your homework?”

Dustin tried wet his dry lips with his dry tongue. It didn’t do anything. “To try the larger plug. Three times.”

Hart plucked up the larger plug form the box and passed it down. “Do it.”

Dustin almost dropped it. It was impossible to split his focus between the plug and the cane, and his eyes kept getting caught on the cane. The long, limber thing didn’t look dangerous, but it was made of doom. So was Hart’s face, for that matter. The eyes glittering darkness in the shadows of the sockets as the wide-bodied man looked down at Dustin.

Dustin lifted his knees and reached between his legs. His wrists caressed against his tight, sensitive balls. He felt the sticky wetness of his own precum as his dick drooled. It was mortifying. It was difficult to pull the plug out under normal circumstances. It was worse with Hart watching him with his cold, pitiless eyes.

“Quit wasting time.”

I’m not, Dustin wanted to protest, but he didn’t think Hart would believe him. He breathed out to empty and then gave the plug a hard pull. It came out easily. He hastily lubed up the larger plug, and it started inward easily. Until it seemed to catch.

Hart stared down at him. Impatient. Pitiless. “If you stop, I better see blood.”

Jesus.

Dustin closed his eyes and tried the steady pressure, backing off when he had to. He stretched well past the point where he ever though he could stretch. Not even the rub against his p-spot could distract him from the terrible sensation of pressure and fullness. With the threat looming over him, he was too terrified to tighten up.

There wasn’t even relief when the largest part of the plug passed his asshole and he closed around the base. The base alone was thicker than he first plug had been. He couldn’t even tighten his kegels, not really. He was so full that there was nothing to tighten. The stretch was impossible.

“Three times,” Hart said in a flat voice. His eyes were hard and dark, but he had an erection. Dustin could see it pressing into the man’s jeans.

Security is horny as fuck.

Dustin didn’t want to be a house izzy. He didn’t.

When Dustin pulled the larger plug out, it felt like he was shitting an eggplant. He immediately reversed course and pumped it back into himself. As he stretched and the widening taper first brushed and then stroked his sweet spot, his cock ached with terrible need. It was like the fucking thing hadn’t received the memo that this was not pleasurable. It terrifying and terrible in equal measure.

Dustin pulled the plug out and pumped it into himself three times. He did it faster and more surely than he had ever practiced putting in a plug. By the last time, the precum puddle was running down to join the lube. Dustin’s eyes had closed and he was gasping like he’d run a race. His world had become a pink haze that smelled like fear and lube and sweat and sex.

“Hands and knees,” Hart said.

Dustin again rolled to obey, not even opening his eyes. He flinched when Hart’s knees popped.

The first truly sharp crack of sound was followed by a bright pain. Startled Dustin crawled forward, and then the crackle came across his throat and he started choking, instead.

“Stay still. You earned this. Want me to cane you?”

“No, sir,” Dustin coughed out.

“Run from my hand again? I’m grabbing the cane.”

He recognized the next crack as the slap of a hand. It stung. The idea of Hart spanking him like a child, him a grown man, was absolutely mortifying. But it happened anyway. Dustin let it happen anyway.

That wasn’t the worst thing. The worst was how the impact of Hart’s hand also jolted Dustin’s plug, and the sensation on his sweet spot would have been intoxicating if it wasn’t so horrifying. The sting built up as Hart alternated cheek to cheek until Dustin’s ass felt like it was on fire. After an eternity, it stopped.

“Clean up this fucking mess. Then get ready for the day. If I step in any lube…” Hart didn’t finish, he just let the threat hang in the air.

“You won’t, sir,” Dustin whispered.

“I better not.”

Dustin heard Hart walked away. He left Dustin on his hands and knees, ass burning like fire on the outside and so impossibly, terribly stretched on the inside, still dribbling precum onto the tiles.

Eventually, he was able to get his body moving. The floor was streaked and smeared with lube and precum like someone had given a chimpanzee fingerpaints, and there wasn’t anything Dustin could do about it without soap. He stumbled to his feet and grabbed one of the towels from the brushed steel bench and pressed it to his cock cage. The soft material felt insanely intense where it pressed against the angry flesh of his restrained erection through the bars. Dustin gasped. If the throbbing was his body pumping out any more precum, the towel wasn’t going to be good enough. He told himself that it probably felt worse than it was.

There would be soap in the supply closet off the laundry room. Thank god it was the middle of the night, Dustin thought, as he stumbled out of the laundry room.

He almost ran into Abby as he made his unsteady way around the corner where the hallway turned into the living room. The short woman stepped back with a little screech, like he was a ghost that had jumped out at her, and in the dimness of the morning hallways, he might very well have been. The ghost of a naked and stumbling man holding a towel against his crotch.

Her eyes went wide, and her head turned quickly as she looked away. Dustin had thought he was beyond feeling shame, but it turned out that was a lie. The flush that ran through his body hit his already-burning ass particularly hard.

He couldn’t stop. If he didn’t clean up the lube… Dustin lowered his head and continued past.

“Dustin.” When she spoke, he flinched, even though her voice was gentle and compassionate. He wanted to literally die. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that this is happening to you. If there’s anything I can do…”

Dustin’s throat closed up. There was nothing she could do. And having someone else observe his humiliation only made what had been a nightmare ground itself in reality. If he hadn’t already been so emotionally spent, he might have felt worse, but there was nowhere lower to go. The only thing he felt was relief when he emerged from the laundry room with a bottle of dish soap and saw that she was gone.

Chapter Text

After René drove the car away from the sidewalk, Dustin stood awkwardly on the curb. Even though he’d taken out the third-sized plug to wash up and use the bathroom and the bidet, he still felt filthy after his encounter with Hart. He wondered if he’d ever feel clean. Maybe it was one of those can’t-go-back things. It felt like he was running into one of those every day. They had to run out sometime, he told himself.

On the sidewalk that wound its way toward the upward-sweeping sleek columns that were the primary feature of the modern building, Trey was talking with another young man on the sidewalk. Not having Trey rush him the moment he got out of the car gave Dustin a little time to adjust, to remind himself that no one else knew how violated he felt or how full he was. He could walk normally if he concentrated on it, he was sure.

The person Trey was speaking with wasn’t from class. The two young men were similar in build, and Dustin guessed before he was close enough to hear the conversation that the man was on Trey’s basketball team. He was tan, and although he had the same tumbling style of curls that Trey did, his were light brown and messy instead of carefully maintained and gleaming black in the sun. Dustin wondered if it was the style among basketball players, or young men in the Southwest Coastal Territory in general. The other man’s clothing style was entirely different, though. He wore light-colored pants and an open-fronted teal button-up over a white undershirt.

When Dustin got close, the competing smells of body spray overwhelmed the smells of sunbaked grass and sunbaked concrete.

“—can’t believe we didn’t make the tournament this year,” the other young man said.

Trey shrugged. Dustin could hear the smile in his voice when he responded. “At least we get a spring break?”

“I guess it’s nice to not have practice every day.” The words were agreement, but the tone was heavily skeptical. “You hear from Viralla?”

Trey was talking about what one of their mutual friends was up to in Europe when the other man’s eyes flicked over to Dustin, and Trey turned, still talking. A smile came into his face and into his eyes. Dustin supposed that another man under other circumstances might get something else from than that look than a sensation low in his stomach that felt like butterflies from hell, but he wasn’t another man.

The friend nodded to Dustin. “This your secretary?”

Trey’s smile turned to a grin. “Yeah.”

The friend whistled through his teeth. His voice was half impressed and half jealous. “I wish my folks could afford to get me a secretary.”

“If they win the lottery, make sure you sign up for pet classes. This intro class has been intense.”

“Classes.” The friend gave a short laugh. “Who needs classes to learn to fuck?”

Trey stepped sideways to be closer to Dustin, the sort of move Dustin might have done unconsciously with one of his boyfriends. “It isn’t just about that, man. It’s about the bond.”

The friend’s responsive grin was all good-natured teasing. “Your folks just don’t want pics of you getting blown by yet another escort getting splashed across the tabloids.”

“Man.” Trey blew out a breath and defensively shoved his hands in his pockets. “That wasn’t as big a deal as folks act like it is, man.”

“It got you benched, didn’t it?”

An emotion that Dustin hadn’t seen before flashed across Trey’s face, but before he could respond, his smart watch beeped and he looked down at it. “Shit, man, we can’t be late to class.”

The friend lifted a hand. “Later.”

“Later.” Trey’s voice was amiable enough, but his smile didn’t have the usual 1000-watt intensity.

They walked together into the atrium of the class building. Or rather, Trey walked. Dustin felt like he was waddling, the constant press of the massive plug sending little shocks through his system while also making him want to rush to the bathroom. The day wasn’t cloudy, but the atrium wasn’t as bright and cheery as it always had been. It took a moment for Dustin to realize that the change in vibe was purely Trey, nothing wrong with the room. There was no excited chatter as they made their way to the elevator, into it, and up. It wasn’t until they were in the hallway that Trey spoke.

“Last day of class. As long as we don’t fail the final.”

The demonic little butterflies that fluttered in the base of Dustin’s stomach grew into the demonic kind of birds. Maybe crows. No, the sensation was too small for crows. Maybe vultures. “Is today the final?”

Trey let out a short laugh. “What, did you think we were going to have take-home essays or something?”

Dustin shook his head. He’d had no idea that there would even be a final. He tried to swallow his mouthful of thick saliva, but it wouldn’t go down past the hard edge of the collar, and he choked a little all on his own.

“You okay, man?” Trey’s alarm seemed genuine.

“Yeah,” Dustin lied, his eyes watering. “It just went down the wrong way.”

“Good. Because if it had been that fucking collar.” Trey didn’t finish the thought. Dustin thought that it wasn't the kind of thought that the young man would want to finish, not with the full depth of the implications under the shiny surface. If he looked too closely, he might feel compelled to feel some kind of way. It was easier to just deflect off the surface.

Trey grabbed Dustin’s arm and gave it a squeeze, then pulled open the classroom door and held it. Dustin had to drag his feet out of the cement that was trying to set around them to walk through. Dustin had been expecting someone to have rolled hospital beds or cots or something into the rooms, a place for Trey to fuck him and get graded on it. Instead, it was the usual chairs-and-mats setup. It didn’t relax him, Dustin didn’t think it was possible for him to relax ever in this classroom, but it turned the stomach-vultures back into stomach-crows.

Riley was in his chair at the front of the room, TA Adam stood nearby in shorts and a pale blue polo shirt that might very well have been part of a uniform. Dustin and Trey weren’t the first arrivals. Riley smiled his false-shark’s smile at Dustin and Trey as they came in. “Take a seat, Trey. Dusty, clothes off.”

How didn’t Trey notice the difference in the man’s tone when talking to each of them? But he’d never seemed to.

Stripping down to just his cock cage in a room occupied by relative strangers was no longer the extremely embarrassing experience that it had been. He still noticed the weight of the cock cage when it was completely unsupported, though. He’d thought that the thong didn’t give it any support at all, but that was just in comparison to the support belt. Anything was more helpful than nothing when it came to the metal torture prison.

Dustin took Trey’s devices to the table and then sat on the cushion next to him. He found himself edging closer to Trey’s chair, and the young man’s hand drifted down to Dustin’s hair.

He ran his fingers through it and murmured, “You nervous, man?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. The practical should be easy but like, the written test, man. I’m not great with written tests. Give me labs any day.”

The written test?

Trey continued stroking Dustin’s hair until Riley headed to the back to lock the doors. When he returned to the front, he grinned his too-white shark’s grin at the room. “Happy Friday and happy last day of class to most of you. For those of you who don’t pass the written or the practical, don’t worry. That doesn’t mean a fail of the class. It just means that I’ll be seeing you next week. There are several scheduling options for the remedial classes, but they’re one-on-one, so make sure to sign up through the student portal.”

There was a general nervous murmur of understanding. Trey’s fingers stilled against Dustin’s hair, and he hated that he wanted the gentle touch back.

“We’re going to separate the students from the pets,” Riley said. “We’ll have the pets in here for the practical, first, with the students across the hall for the written portion. Then we’ll swap. Finally, we’ll come back together for the close of class. We’ll have your finals graded by tomorrow.”

Trey took in a short breath. Dustin tried to not read anything into it, or into the grading of the finals. He tried not to dread what it meant to have a ‘practical.’ He tried to feel nothing at all, and he failed.

Trey gave Dustin’s hair one last stroke before he stood. “You’ll do great, man.”

TA Adam led the students out of the room. It surprised Dustin not at all that there was no concern about the privacy of the pets, in terms of whether the door was locked when they were naked.

After the door closed, Riley gave them a critical look-over. “There are trays on the table along the right-hand wall. Press and hold the button in the middle before you insert your new plug.”

Dustin was lucky that he was at the end of the arc, or he might have failed the test before it even really started. The press and release of the massive plug against his sweet spot had him a perpetual state of half-hard, horny torture, and he just wanted the thing out of him. The plugs on the trays looked smaller, though they had a strange shape that Dustin didn’t like. The first two pets simply grabbed trays and turned to return to their mats, but the third man, the one with the milk-pale skin and heavily freckled back, walked past the line toward the bathroom.

To use the toilet, and the bidet. Like they’d been taught in this class. The smell of spring-morning soap made Dustin want to throw up. Or maybe that was just the circumstances.

Dustin changed his trajectory to follow the third man as if he’d never intended to get in the tray line.

It was the right choice. In the bathroom were trays for the used metal plugs. They had tape labels with names on them. Dustin grabbed ‘Dusty,’ and, for a moment, felt the severe pang of shame at the thought of his mother’s pet-name for him being used in this place. What would she think about it? Was she okay, out there in the world?

He pushed those thoughts aside harshly. Thinking about his mother under the circumstances was really fucked up, even if he hadn’t needed to focus on what he was doing and not descend to weeping.

Dustin had some trouble getting his plug out with the limited mobility imposed by the toilet stall and the massive fucking size of the thing. When it was out of him, the widest part near the base was really no larger around than a large man’s thumb. He placed it on the tray, used the toilet and washed thoroughly with the bidet, and then washed his hands more thoroughly still while a different man, who had been waiting more or less patiently, slipped into the stall behind him. Of the eight pets in the room, four had come into the bathroom to use the three stalls. After watching the third pet go into the bathroom past the trays, how could those last two not realize that this was part of the test?

Along those lines, how long had Dustin been washing his hands? He could vividly picture Hart coming into the room and tearing him out of it, taking him somewhere to cane him. Riley was out there, waiting to give a report, regardless of whether Dustin passed or failed the test, he imagined. How long could he wash his hands before he failed the test?

He looked at himself in the mirror. You can do this.

And he could, even though he didn’t want to. He would, even though nothing about the class had changed him. He was still determined to resist. He just needed to find the right way.

Back in the main room, half the mats were occupied with pets in various states of slipping something up their asses. Riley watched over them with a tablet in his hands that he occasionally tapped on. Dustin had thought that having an eggplant shoved up his ass had been making him walk funny, but the emptiness inside him made him even more self-conscious and so turned on that the cage was squeezing him hard. It was so fucked up.

Dustin took his tray and headed back to his mat. It had a pair of gloves, lube, and a large and curved black object with subtle bumps, somewhere between the second and third plugs in size. When Dustin turned it around, it had three buttons, just as Riley had said it would. A vibrator, then. Dustin had never used one, but the thought of the last day’s pounding of his p-spot on the chair made him shudder and break out in chill sweat.

You can do this. You have to do this.

He pressed the center button first until it started flashing blue, then put on his gloves, lay on his side on the mat, and pumped lube into his hand. He smeared the object thoroughly, the flashing blue button in the middle making him cold inside, and then he circled his freshly cleaned asshole with some lube. At least there was plenty inside him from earlier. Part of him thought that he ought to have been ashamed about how easy it was to relax and let the vibrator stretch him and fill him.

But why shame? He wasn’t giving in.

Because he associated the sensation with being violated, he thought. If it hadn’t been for that, maybe the sensation of the object’s bumps pressing and then gliding over his sweet spot would have made the scratch of electric fingernails along the insides of his thighs feel good instead of humiliating. Or maybe it was knowing that Riley was watching him do it.

By the time Dustin had seated the plug in his body, he thought that the stroking of electric fingernails had done something strange to his skin. It felt like he was wearing a suit that belonged to someone else, not quite the right size, and strangely distant. Dustin sat up, stripped the gloves off his hands, and deposited them on the tray.

It wasn’t just his body that felt strangely distant. All of the actions he took felt mechanical, like things that happened rather than things he did. The vultures circled in the base of his stomach like he was roadkill and they were just waiting for an opportunity to start picking the flesh off the bones of his corpse.

Riley glanced up from a tablet in his hands and gave Dustin an approving smile. “Take your tray back to the table, Dusty. And full marks. Very well done.”

Hot anger cut through the cottony distant sensation, flaring at the base of Dustin’s throat and radiating out through arms that felt like his again. Fuck you, Dustin wanted to scream in the man’s face right before smashing a fist into it. The urge was surprising and mildly frightening. That wasn’t how he’d been raised.

Instead of decking Riley, he picked up his tray and took it over to the table without saying the words.

He would keep his full marks. This wasn’t the place or time for resistance, not yet. Soon. Somehow. Just not yet.

Chapter Text

After the owners were brought back into the main classroom, Riley immediately ordered the pets to follow Adam to another room for the written portion of their test. Dustin barely had a moment to make eye contact with Trey, and part of him wished that he hadn’t. The young man’s grin and subtle upward tick of his chin reminded Dustin about both sides of what was at stake. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t, in the most literal possible ways.

But he couldn’t think about that right now. He needed to focus. The hot anger that he’d directed at Riley had pulled Dustin back into his own body, but he had the impression that if he didn’t stay on guard, he would float off again. Part of Dustin wanted to welcome the prospect of being distanced, even if just mentally, from everything that was happening to him. The other part of him worried that giving in to it might mean never coming back.

Dustin tried to stay focused and present in the moment. Last in line as always, he watched Adam and a different TA sort the pets into two small groups. The new TA, a pear-shaped young woman with very short hair, led away the pets who hadn’t used the bidet before fitting the strangely shaped plugs into their bodies.

“Okay, pets,” TA Adam said. His straight black hair brushed the shoulders of his pale blue shirt when he turned. “Follow me.”

Although Trey had mentioned a written test, Dustin hadn’t expected that he would actually be given a written test. Surely only the owners would take the written test, since the pets hadn’t had any written materials to study. But the room Adam led the four of them to had classic-style desks, even if they looked a little strange with the thick towel cushions on the seats.

“Hold out your hands,” Adam said. Two of the pets in front of Dustin were sent to an adjacent room to wash off stray lube, but Adam sent Dustin directly to one of the desks.

A very basic laptop sat on the faux-wood surface. When Dustin eased into the chair, the vibrator shifted inside him, and his cock cage squeezed the warm weight of his attempted erection like an uncomfortable hand. He gritted his teeth and waited for the now-familiar but still completely unwelcome sensation to pass. On the whiteboard at the front of the room, someone had scrawled their names, followed by ID codes and passwords.

When they were all seated, Adam said, “Go ahead and get started.”

Dustin’s laptop was already loaded into the exam software when he unlocked it. It displayed a multiple-choice question about the first step to putting in a butt plug, but Dustin noticed that only peripherally. Most of his mind caught on the fact that they were using the exact same exam software that he’d used in college not that long ago.

The beginnings of hysteria bubbled in the bottom of Dustin’s stomach, rose through his chest, and caught in his throat. His shoulders shook with barely suppressed laughter. He hoped that TA Adam didn’t have some sort of proctor sheet up front, where he was marking Dustin down. Two points off the sex test for laughing at it. Fuck sake.

Dustin grinned and shook his head, then reread the question. The answer was obvious to anyone actually in the room. The people who might have missed it had already been led away.

As Dustin clicked his third answer, one of the men in the room gasped harshly. Dustin barely noticed, thinking that the guy must be having his own reaction to the absolutely insane idea of taking a written test completely in the nude, with the subject of the test shifting in your ass every time you moved. But the first pulse of Dustin’s vibrator came a moment later.

It was nothing like the electric-fingernail-stroking of a brush of a plug against his sweet spot or the subtle rubbing of a finger. Dustin’s body flared with hot sensation. It felt like someone had shoved him into a bonfire that his body tried to interpret as pleasure. His cock, which had calmed down with stillness and the focus on the test, was suddenly hot and heavy and being squeezed by the bars of the cage.

It only lasted a second, but Dustin had folded forward over his stomach so hard that he’d almost knocked the laptop off the desk.

“Careful,” Adam warned from the front of the room. Dustin made himself breathe and straighten.

He knew that it wouldn’t just happen once, but it was hard to actually prepare for the vibrator’s pulses. They came at strange intervals and didn’t seem to affect all of the pets in the room at once. There would be a period of timeless relative quiet, during which Dustin might be able to drag his focus away from his aching cock or the way precum trickled from his locked dick down his balls and onto the towel long enough to read a question or tap an answer. Then Dustin might hear another man gasp or choke, and his own body would tense. Sometimes, nothing would happen. Other times, it seemed like all of the men in the room would be hit one at a time.

Occasionally, Adam would call out warnings. “Quiet! The other pets are trying to concentrate.” Or, “Hands on your laptop!”

It was absolute insanity. At one point, Dustin did start giggling, and he couldn’t stop until the vibrator kicked in and knocked the breath out of him. It was almost impossible to concentrate between the horniness, the anticipation, the hilarious insanity of the situation, and the inane test questions.

Dustin was in a section that presented diagrams of sexual positions followed by questions about each diagram when Adam called out a five-minute warning. He had no idea how close he was to finishing. The test, at least. His legs were tensing and releasing even when the vibrator wasn’t pulsing as he chased an orgasm like the one he’d had the day before. But although squeezing his body against the vibrator and rocking on the chair provoked some sensation, it didn’t seem likely to do enough to bring a release to the terrible, aching tension.

“Time.” Adam sounded way too amused for a proctor.

Dustin took his hands away from the laptop. A pulse from the vibrator almost doubled him over, and he pounded the top of his thigh with one of his fists.

After Adam instructed them to stand up, the towel tried to stick to the backs of Dustin’s legs. He’d made such a mess. Dustin had a sudden, brief flashbulb memory of Luka saying if he got the lube on his floor, he was going to regret it. It made him want to start giggling again.

Dustin waited for the next pulse of the vibrator to possibly take him off his feet entirely as the men in the room formed into a short line, but it didn’t happen. Which was good, but at same time, he was already bad off. Every shift of the vibrator as he moved made him ache. The plugs he’d worn had occasionally brushed his prostate, but either the vibrator was specially shaped, or the prolonged, unpredictable pulses had driven him to a crazy level of sensitivity.

Dustin had thought he had known what desperate horniness felt like. He hadn’t. Just walking made him want to reach down to grab his aching sack and rub it. It was so sore and heavy that he thought he might be able to orgasm from playing with it alone. He knew it wouldn’t be allowed, but the temptation was almost impossible to resist.

In the main classroom, the mats looked like they had been freshly replaced. There were only four of them, widely spaced. Trey sat on theirs, his eyes so very dark in the intimately low lighting. Dustin crossed to him, wanting relief and dreading it at the same time. He knew the only way he was going to be allowed to get relief. If he’d be allowed to have relief at all.

“Hey.” Trey’s voice was lower and more throaty than usual. He had on only his boxers, and Dustin wasn’t the only one horny.

The solid mass of the vibrator rubbed Dustin’s p-spot when he eased down to join Trey on the mat, and he barely managed to keep his gasp from turning into a groan. It would have been a groan of frustration, Dustin tried to convince himself.

Trey’s teeth were white as snow in the intimate darkness of the room. “It’s that good, man?”

“I’ve never been so horny in my life,” Dustin said honestly. The parts of him made of disgust or shame or fear would probably return later, but at that moment, the driving force in his body was the aching need between his legs.

“Damn, that’s hot. I hope—”

Whatever Trey hoped was cut off by Riley’s buzzing voice. “Okay, owners! Time for your practical! Don’t forget that there’s nothing wrong if your pet can’t take your size.”

Anxiety raked claws through the base of Dustin’s stomach. It was the first thing to even come close to reaching through the fog of his vibrator-induced horniness.

“Are we going to…” Dustin couldn’t finish the question.

“Here? With all these people?” Trey sounded horrified. “Fuck no, man. It’s just a dildo.” Then he added, “You really are horny, aren’t you.”

The relief turned Dustin’s limbs to water. “I really am. Sorry.”

Trey’s hand touched Dustin’s chest and played with one of his pebble-hard nipples. A hot sensation radiated directly down to Dustin’s crotch, and the cage squeezed him in a way that had stopped being unpleasant a long time ago. “Don’t be. It’s so fucking hot, man.” He pulled his hand away. “Let’s do it knees up? I want to, you know. Be able to see your face.”

Knees up. Where had Dustin heard that before? Knees up.

It came to him from the fog in his mind. Knees up had been one of the sex positions on the quiz. Not doggy style, which was the only way he’d thought about having sex, but more like missionary position for straight folks.

Dustin shifted onto his back and pulled his knees up toward his chest, holding them there with his hands. Part of him howled at being so compliant. Part of him made excuses about how he was just doing it to get Trey to like him so that he couldn’t be taken away. But the truth was that he was just that fucking horny. He probably would have let a stranger fuck him in an alley if it meant he might be able to get off.

Trey’s fingers rubbed along the back of Dustin’s thighs, and his caged cock gave a throbbing squeeze. The sensation of the vibrator being pulled from his ass, the way the knobs warmed his skin as they stroked past his sweet spot, was exquisite. He closed his eyes, and the classroom disappeared.

The thing that pressed against his asshole was cool and very, very slick. The blunted end of it didn’t taper like a butt plug did. The pressure was more uniform and intense, and Dustin relaxed into it, wanting whatever it was to go deep enough into him to rub his p-spot. He almost didn’t notice the stretch, which was as intense as the third plug at its thickest.

When the dildo did rub across Dustin’s sweet spot, it was exquisite. His cock throbbed in its cage. He groaned.

“Too deep?” Trey’s concern was a mile away.

“Mm-nn.” The breathless negative was all Dustin could manage.

“I’m watching, but like. Tell me to stop when it hurts. It’s not supposed to hurt.”

“M’kay,” Dustin whispered. His legs were shaking so badly that it was good that his hands were holding his knees.

The dildo withdrew. When it came back again, it was slick, and Dustin found himself rocking his hips with Trey’s presses. He couldn’t even be embarrassed. The lust that filled his body like an overfull water balloon didn’t leave space for anything else. Dustin started trembling, straining. His fingers gripped tight into his legs. He thought maybe, maybe… maybe.

But no. When a cramp came, he breathed out. “Ouch.”

“Shit.” Trey sounded breathless himself. “Sorry. I’m trying, man.”

“How’s it going over here?” Riley’s obnoxious buzz-saw voice was so unexpected that it made Dustin jerk. The dildo, which Trey hadn’t entirely withdrew, rubbed hard against his sweet spot, and he gasped.

“This far,” Trey said.

“Dusty,” Riley said.

“Yes?”

“How does it feel?”

Dustin felt his face flare with embarrassed heat. “Good.”

“Do you think you could get off on it?”

Dustin did. Damn him, but he did. And if he admitted it, maybe… “Yes.”

“It went too deep, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“But Trey noticed and stopped?” It wasn’t the encouraging voice that Riley used on the masters, but it was full of approval.

“Yeah,” Dustin mumbled.

“That’s it for the practical,” Riley said to Trey.

The feeling that punched Dustin in the stomach was too big and complicated to identify. Disappointment? Relief? Something.

“Okay.” Trey’s voice held only disappointment, and it was thick enough to cut with a knife. “But prof, do we have time? It’s been intense.”

“Time for what?” Riley prompted.

“Well, to hold him. Right?”

Riley’s voice radiated warm approval. “Very good, Trey.”

The sneakers scuffed away.

“We’ve got to put your other plug back in, man. Can I do it?” Trey’s question was all eagerness.

“Go ahead,” Dustin mumbled. He just barely bit off a ‘please.’ It was so fucked up, but he was so fucking desperate to have something, anything, keep rubbing his sweet spot. And maybe...

The gentle pulses of the plug from Trey were nothing like Hart’s grim, steady pressure. But they were also nothing like the machine’s steady pounding.

After Trey stretched out alongside Dustin, he slowly let his legs down. Trey stroked his hand down Dustin’s chest, and his fingertips left heat in their wake. Dustin wasn’t surprised that the fingertips more slipped than stroked. He was covered in sweat.

“You did so good, man,” Trey said. “Not just today but for the whole class. Damn I’m lucky. You’re so fucking hot. And the way you moan, man. You’re so damn good.” His attempts at praise were heavily leavened with excitement, and Dustin knew that it was just part of the class, but still. The stroking of his hand felt good. Calming.

Dustin was still working on getting his breath back. His skin felt strangely over-stretched. Then Trey spiked anxiety into Dustin’s water balloon of slowly deflating lust and popped it entirely.

“I can’t wait for us to get our grade, man,” the young man said. “Dad said we’ve got to wait until I pass the class. It’s so fucking unfair, man. I’m not going to hurt you, you know?”

“When?” Dustin’s lips felt numb.

“Should be posted to the portal tomorrow. Sunday, maybe, but I sure fucking hope not.”

Dustin’s stomach twisted with nausea, but a traitor voice whispered in the back of his mind. Maybe you’ll be able to get off tomorrow.

He immediately pushed the thought away, but the physical need that had created it in the first place departed much more slowly.

Chapter Text

The locker room in the servants’ house, brightly lit and with its cheerfully green bench and stalls, had never felt as oppressive as it did when Dustin got home. He’d had a painful attempted hardon the entire way home, stoked to throbbing every time the car had gone over the slightest of bumps, but at least walking to the locker room had helped. And focusing on everything immediate in his surroundings had helped. The smell of cut grass. The warmth of the sun on his skin. The heat of the air baking off the pavement. Anything but how full he felt.

Changing out of his clothes, the padded thong was heavy from absorbing his constant stream of leaking of precum. When he bent to slide the thin red satin loops off his legs, the thick plug inside him rubbed against his sweet spot, and just for a moment, he was back in the classroom, lying on his back and subtly humping the air as the dildo slid in and out of him. Dustin unconsciously flexed, and his cock throbbed, the cage gripping him painfully but in some ways like a lover’s hand.

Nausea burbled up from where it lived in the base of his stomach like a natural stream burbling up from a crack in a mountain. There he was, all but humping the air. And, horrified as he was, he wanted to go on doing it. Needed to. Now you’re torturing yourself. They don’t even need to torture you. What the fuck are you doing?

Despite mentally berating himself, Dustin flexed again. The thick plug pressed his sweet spot. His cock pressed painfully into the bars of the cage. He barely caught it in the back of his throat, blowing it out through his noise in a sound barely less horny. When he breathed back in, the aromas of sex and sweaty dick almost overpowered the background bleach smell of the locker room. As the discomfort of his cock constricted to tighter and greater pain, he managed to not fuck into the sensation.

But he still wanted to. And no amount of mental berating could stop him from wanting to. It was so disgusting. The situation, yes, but Dustin himself was disgusting for how he was behaving. He desperately wanted to throw himself into one of the shower stalls and scald off his own skin, and the only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that if he did, Hart would be angry and likely would hurt him.

Slowly, Dustin unballed his fists and reached for his locker.

Hart showed up while Dustin was still putting on gym clothes. After making Dustin sit, the broad-shouldered man pushed up the edge of Dustin’s shorts and jabbed him with a syringe. How the man could stand the smell of sweaty dick, Dustin didn’t know, but there was a vicious sort of pleasure at that thought that was much nicer than the pit of despair he was trying to not wallow in.

He asked, “What’s in there, anyway?”

“We already talked about it.”

A ‘performance enhancer’ wasn’t an answer. “I can’t stop you from doing it, so why not just tell me?”

Hart ignored him. He capped the syringe and put it in his pocket, then stood, his knees popping like gunshots. “Good work in class, Merrill. I wasn’t a fan of buying an accountant. But you surprised me.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Dustin managed to strip the anger out of his voice, but not the bitterness. He pulled the dry-fit shirt on, hoping that it would conceal whatever expression was on his face.

“Yup. But you didn’t fail.”

So, the four men who had been taken away from the class had failed? Trey had talked about remedial classes, but Trey didn’t seem to know very much about the entire izzy process. A cold finger tracked up Dustin’s spine. “What will happen to the ones who failed?”

Hart shrugged. Then he turned toward the door to the gym. “Come on.”

It wasn’t one of the days Hart worked him ragged with cardio and weights. It was again all yoga and resistance bands, and after days of aching muscles, the stretching felt divine. Even the static poses were nice by comparison. Hart’s pattern, to the extent he seemed to have one, consisted of one day upper body, one day lower body, and one day of stretching. And core. Everything was core.

“I never thought about dudes working out their stomachs.” Dustin half-mumbled, half-panted his observation to himself.

“A six-pack has to come from somewhere.”

“I’ve never had a six-pack in my life.”

“Yeah. You’re pretty soft. But we’ll get you there.”

Dustin couldn’t find resentment, even though he reached for it with both hands. It was true that he’d let himself go after becoming a dad. Not that he’d been a gym rat before. That had always been Jacob. The closest thing Dustin had ever done as sport had been marching band, mostly because it would get him out of having to take the mandatory gym credit. At the time, he’d thought that meeting Jacob had been the nicest thing to come out of marching patterns during half-time games. Now, if Dustin could go back in time, he’d suck it up, take the gym class, and join the track and field team or something like that.

Even though the workout itself was much lighter, Hart still worked him out until the barrel-shaped little sadist declared that it was time for dinner. For the brief shower, Dustin dialed the heat as high as it would go and imagined it scalding off his skin. If he burned alive, he wouldn’t have to worry about what his body was still trying to do to him.

He had to focus on something other than the perpetual low-grade horniness that not even working out had been able to cure. The towel was very soft. The smell of the body wash riding the steam was subtly astringent. The bottle called it sea salt and citrus, which was profoundly weird, but Dustin thought that the citrus was probably an orange of some kind.

One of the things that Dustin noticed in his deliberate noticing of nonsexual things was how long his hair was getting. In the mirror, he was as shaggy-headed as the college boys. It looked wrong. He had maintained his neatly trimmed, professional style ever since he’d started an accounting internship where his mentor had taken him aside to explain why he didn’t look like a professional. And he missed his facial hair.

After Hart got out of his own shower, and Dustin turned to him. “When can I cut my hair? And do I have to keep shaving?”

Hart shrugged his broad shoulders. The harsh overhead lights made his well-defined muscles appear to be coated in oil. “Not my call. Ask the kid.”

For some reason, the idea of Hart telling him that he couldn’t cut his hair or shave was simply something expected. But the idea of having to ask Trey, of all people, whether he could cut his hair or start growing back his goatee was mortifying.

Still. He’d have to do it. His hair didn’t do anything good when it was long, and it had been a month since it had been trimmed.

Just a month. It had only been a month.

“Quit staring at yourself.” Hart’s voice was a warning. “Go eat. Responsibly.”

Hot resentment flared in the base of Dustin’s throat, and that time, he did manage to grab onto it. The only thing that stopped him from telling Hart to fuck himself was the vivid mental image of being on the floor, clutching his throat. Hart’s closely set eyes were fixed on Dustin’s face like he was stripping the half-thoughts from his mind and getting ready to ‘correct’ them accordingly.

The defiance flowed out of Dustin. He looked down and away like the outmaneuvered primate he was, turned, dropped his towel in the hamper, and left.

There had been a pattern to the weekdays. By the time Dustin had finished up in the gym, most of the other izzies would have eaten their dinners and moved into the rec room. That night, there was something going on in the kitchen. The break in routine jerked Dustin up as short as if someone had attached a chain to the back of his collar and given it a yank.

The bustle and conversation in the kitchen was profoundly intimidating. From the hallway, Dustin could see that the room was relatively crowded. There had to be seven or eight people there, and more in the dining room. The strong smell of cooking fish had invaded the hallway in a way that was profoundly appetizing. But the crowd.

Go eat. Dustin’s back tightened as if Hart had actually whispered it into his ear. If he didn’t want that very thing to happen, he had better brave the horrors of a crowded kitchen long enough to pull his meal out of the fridge and heat it.

When he shifted his weight, the plug shifted inside him. It was massive. He was walking funny. Everyone in there knew why he was there. They’d be able to tell. Jesus.

They won’t be able to tell, Dustin told himself. They don’t know how you normally walk.

It wasn’t very convincing, but Dustin had to go eat. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, dropped his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to meet anyone else’s, and went in.

It was exactly as crowded as it had looked from the hallway, and the hum of conversation and hiss of the stove made the air feel oppressively thick. René stood just inside the archway with a glass of red wine in one hand. His outfit was jarringly casual, a grey cardigan over a dark shirt and slacks instead of his usual over-the-top chauffeur’s uniform. His attention was on Will, the brown-haired young driver gesturing animatedly as he made some point. Dustin hadn’t paid much attention to Will during their previous meetings, since he was usually on the other side of Dustin from Maria.

And really, there wasn’t much to pay attention to. Will was a young white guy with short brown hair, the kind that had been a dime a dozen in the schools Dustin had attended as a kid. His round, earnest face was not handsome but not ugly. Not one thing about him stood out. He seemed to be in an enthusiastic discussion of the plot of some TV show Dustin vaguely remembered having heard about.

Dustin edged his way around them without them seeming to notice him. He made it as far as the refrigerators, but his shelf, which had been empty after lunch, hadn’t been filled.

“You look lost, Dustin.” René’s accent turned Dustin’s name into something far more lyrical than it actually was.

The chauffeur’s closely set, heavy-lidded eyes had always looked sleepy to Dustin when they were in the car together, and they still did even though they were clearly focused on him. Maybe the man wasn’t as bored and disinterested as he’d always seemed, maybe that was just his resting expression. If Dustin thought of René as a big, perpetually sleepy black cat, he wasn’t nearly as intimidating. And René, at least, would know what he was supposed to ‘go eat.’

Dustin edged back toward René and Will. He could feel the weight of Will’s light brown eyes and the heavy silence of two men waiting for a verbal push to start a conversation rolling.

Dustin cleared his throat. “I can’t find my supper.”

“It’s Friday.” Will lifted the can beer in his hand as if its existence was some sort of explanation.

“So. Is there some kind of, well, celebration, or something?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Will grinned. “It’s your first Friday with us, isn’t it? On Fridays, the family eats out, so we get together and let our hair down a little. Except for Tseng. The poor bastard’s always stuck driving.”

René’s voice held cool amusement. “It only makes sense. He is Mr. Brook’s driver, and the family fits better in the limo.”

“So you don’t think Tseng’s going to get that rotation thing through?”

“Mr. Brook will have to have us all licensed for the limo. It seems unlikely.”

“He’s really pushing, it, though. But anyway.” Will shook his head and turned his attention back to Dustin. “You should let Abby know you’re here.” He ticked his beer toward the stove, where the short woman was clearly at work. “There’re drinks in the second fridge or on the counter, temperature depending, and there’s a cheese board on the island, if you can reach it.”

The island was where a clot of five or six people had gathered. Dustin didn’t know any of them. Simply being in a room with so many unfamiliar people was making him jumpy, much less trying to push his way through them to get a nibble of cheese. He swallowed past the hard blister of plastic pressing against his throat. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” Will said amiably, and René nodded.

It was as clear a sign as any that Dustin was on his own again. A grown man at a house party. Or a rat thrown into a box with several other, unfamiliar rats by an abusive owner who didn’t care whether he figured it out or not, as long as he followed orders.

Chapter Text

Dustin hadn’t caught sight of Luka on his first visual pass, and he didn’t on a second, either. He didn’t see Leon or Maria, for that matter. There was a short Hispanic man with a glorious mustache speaking with an even shorter man with well-tanned skin and hair that was naturally or artificially bleached with paler streaks. There was a tall, broad-shouldered Asian man with a profoundly engaging smile in a small triangle formed by himself, a sallow-looking woman with very evenly auburn-colored hair and heavy straight bangs, and a short, thin woman with striking grey streaks through her dark hair. As Dustin tried to take in the room through his anxious paralysis, a tall woman with generous proportions and very rosy cheeks turned from the stove area and slid a bowl onto the island before swinging toward the refrigerators.

Dustin wanted to slink on his belly along the edge of the room, and from there, along the hallway, out into the living room, up the stairs, to his room, and under his bed. The room’s festive mood didn’t suit his disposition at all. But if he didn’t eat, Hart would have something to say about it. Or more than say, most likely.

For a moment, Dustin was on the locker-room floor while Hart relentlessly shoved a plug into him. The man had been sporting an erection. He might like any excuse to ‘punish’ Dustin for something.

Therefore, Dustin needed to eat. Responsibly.

A look at the alcohol reminded Dustin too viscerally of Logan for him to even consider having a beer, much less a glass of wine. Fortunately, there was pop, and he took a diet cola as much to have something in his hands as something to drink before he slunk along the outside of the room, making eye contact with no one. Chef Abby had just finished drizzling something over a pan of roasted carrots. The plump woman returned to the stove with a platter of fish steaks covered in saran wrap. She put it down on one side of the oven, murmured something, headed around behind Abby, and started using tongs to transfer the carrots to a waiting bowl.

Abby’s face lit into a smile when she saw Dustin. Her voice was warm and welcoming. “Dustin! What a pleasure to have you with us. Will you want one salmon steak, or two?”

Eat responsibly, Hart said in Dustin’s mind.

Dustin glanced down at the diet cola in his hands and decided that it would qualify as responsible. As far as the fish went, though, he actually had an appetite for once, and a desire to have any kind of excuse to avoid socializing with people. “Two, ma’am, if you think Hart wouldn’t mind.”

“Ma’am.” Abby laughed, but somehow, she didn’t make Dustin feel laughed at. “Please, no. I’m not that old yet. As for Hart, I think he’d shove five salmon steaks down you, if he could. The man’s obsessed with protein to the detriment of a more properly balanced diet. Just make sure you eat some salad.”

“Two, then. Thank you.” Dustin let his eyes drop. The idea of retreating from the crowd pulled at him like gravity pulled his feet to the floor.

“Sara, have you met Dustin Merrill?”

The bottom dropped out of Dustin’s stomach. Introductions were not a thing he wanted to do, particularly not in a room so full of people and noise. But the other woman turned toward. She was heavyset, and all of the padding was in excessively feminine places. Her breasts, hips, and thighs were all models of curves. Some skin condition had drawn unfortunate lines of red down either side of her face, from her cheekbones to her chin and out across the planes of her cheeks. Only her nose and chin were unmarked by it. The color was only emphasized by the black scarf that held her hair back, precisely like Abby’s, though where Abby’s forehead had fine lines, Sara’s was starting to wrinkle.

If she was dressed in red, Dustin thought, she’d be a stunning model for Mrs. Clause.

Her voice had the lilt of a southern accent so light that it was homeopathic. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Merrill.”

Dustin’s mind stumbled around, looking for normal human pleasantries. “A pleasure to meet you, uh…”

Her smile forgave him for already forgetting her name. “Miss Sara will do me fine, thank you.”

What had she done to end up in such a place, Dustin wondered. What had any of them done. He could understand why it might not be polite to ask, but it was very hard to not.

“Nice to meet you. Are you, well, another chef?”

“Goodness no. The house can barely support Miss Abby. I just help out from time to time, for the events and such. I’m the senior housekeeper.”

Senior implied the existence of a junior. Was that Luka? Surely, the house wasn’t big enough for more than one housekeeper.

And was he supposed to introduce himself back? As Trey’s secretary? They all already knew. They were all probably looking at him. He had not been making eye contact to avoid sidelong looks of pity? But he knew they were there.

Suddenly the air in the kitchen felt too hot, too stifling. Dustin mumbled, “I’m sorry, I need to step out.”

“Of course,” Abby said, while Miss Sara said, “You do look a little pale, dear.”

Fortunately, nobody tried to stop Dustin on his way out of the room. He really did feel sick to his stomach, and he wanted a clear line to make a run for the toilets if the last tube of yogurt that Hart had forced down him made its way back up.

The dining-room windows were all open, letting in the early evening smells of forming dew and the ever-present aroma of freshly cut greenery. Not grass, this time. Something else. As he made his way along a table whose length had been expanded with drop leaves, Dustin wondered how much yard the mansion had and how precisely did it have to be kept. He wondered about it in the way a man focuses on the coming weekend to avoid thinking about a verbally abusive boss.

All of the lights were on in the living room. Dustin drifted to the archway and looked to the reading nook like a drowning man looking for a lifeline, but the only people in sight were Leon and Maria playing dominoes on the gaming table, both with bottles of beer.

Dustin wanted to go upstairs and hide in his room. He wanted to go outside. He never had asked anyone whether there was a rule against going outside, and he wanted to ask Luka, now, but Luka was nowhere to be seen. And he couldn’t go up to his room without eating. Hart might put Dustin over his legs and spank him again. Or send him to Vegas.

Dustin hated that that particular threat loomed over him, even though some part of him was coming to believe that Hart wouldn’t follow through. Surely he couldn’t, not with Trey so desperately interested in him. But there were probably other ways to make Dustin’s life unpleasant. Ways that he didn’t want to find out.

And just because there was no one in the reading nook didn’t mean that he couldn’t go. He had just worked himself up to the possibility that Leon or Maria might try to talk to him as he passed the dominoes game when a male voice came from behind him.

“Dustin, isn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to meet you, yet?” The tone was as warm and reedy and mellow as a bassoon, but Dustin flinched and turned as sharply as if it had been a threat.

The man attached to the voice was the tall Asian man. His smile was as warm and charming as his voice, and something about his eyes was almost childlike. The impression of youth was only emphasized by the way his heavy dark-brown bangs waved down to his eyebrows. He lifted his hands, palms out, fingers splayed, in the universal sign for meaning no harm. “I’m sorry if I startled you?”

“No,” Dustin lied. Then, “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s all too much.”

“There’s an adjustment period for everyone. But,” he hesitated, “I’m sure there’s even more of one for someone in your position? I’m Ben, Ben Park. The servants’ house assistant? I’d wanted to give you a chance to settle in before coming to speak with you, to see if there’s anything I can’t do for you? Is now a bad time?”

The little lift at the end of each of Ben’s sentences made each one seem like question, even the ones that were clearly statements. Dustin had no idea if it was a device he was using to be deliberately disarming considering Dustin’s skittishness, or if it was just an idiosyncrasy of the way the man spoke, but between the childlike appearance and manner of speaking, his soothing voice, and his amazing smile, nothing about Ben was threatening, and everything about him was engaging. He was, Dustin thought, the kind of man who had fifty people all convinced that they were his very best friend, and those people very well might not be wrong.

“No, it’s fine,” Dustin lied. But then a question did occur to him. “Can we go outside? The izzies, I mean.”

“The indentured servants?” Ben emphasized the words, clearly having distaste for the use of the slur even by the people it applied to. “Are permitted on the grounds within reason. As long as you stay on the property, the collar won’t shock you or report that you’ve gone out of position?”

Dustin lifted a hand toward his throat absently, but he’d learned better than to touch. “Is there any way to tell where the line is?”

Ben’s manner of turning all of his statements into questions was starting to sound more natural to Dustin’s ears. “I’m afraid not specifically? But generally, it’s the hedges that line the property and the end of the driveway. Please make sure that you’re dressed appropriately and that you’re not disturbing any guests of the house?”

“Of course. I’ll be considerate.”

Ben’s smile turned on, and it was like stepping into the first ray of spring sunshine after a long, grey winter. “Is there anything else I can do for you? You’ve been keeping to yourself a lot, and I’m sure some of that is adjusting to your, hmm, job, but I want you to know that newcomers are always welcome to join us in meals, at games, around the television, anywhere. I know that a family dinner night probably seems silly to someone just being introduced to the culture of our house? But we’re all long-termers and truly have come to feel like a family.”

Ben’s mention of family dinner suddenly brought to mind the time he’d tried to introduce the girls to fish. Eva loved fish sticks, and Isabell ate them, but they hadn’t been ready for tilapia. In the end, he’d eaten their portions and nuked them some more fish sticks. The memory tightened his throat. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded.

Ben’s brilliant smile flickered a little, and he tugged at the sleeve of his black button-up shirt. He wore it open at the throat over pale slacks, which seemed to be in style in the Southwestern Coastal Territories. “I’m sorry if people have seemed standoffish? I’d asked everyone to give you your space and not overwhelm you, but I’m starting to wonder if that was the right tack to take? We’ve never had a secretary here before?”

Slowly, Dustin was starting to feel less like a cat backed into a corner. He could no longer feel his heart beating in his throat against the collar, and if he’d had fur, it would have been slowly coming down from standing on end.

Dustin cleared the blockage out of his throat. “It isn’t that. It’s just a lot. I was used to a quiet life before, well. Before.”

Even thinking back to his former life, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been at a party. After Eva had been born, his and Jake’s friends from college had slowly drifted away. Jacob hadn’t liked it when Dustin people over from the parents’ groups when he wasn’t there, and Jake had rarely been there. He had still gone out to the bars. But someone had to stay at home with the baby. At the time, it hadn’t felt wrong.

Ben was talking, continuing a conversation that Dustin had almost lost track of. “I completely understand. Do you want me to introduce you around tonight, while everyone is here? Maybe around the dinner table?”

The thought of sitting in a circle and introducing himself like at a business conference tracked a fingernail of ice down his spine. “I’m, I’m not sure. It would be nice to know people but.”

Ben’s bassoon-lovely voice was heavy with empathy. “But you’re nervous?”

Dustin nodded.

“Maybe we should do it now, before the pressure is on?”

Dustin nodded again.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Part of him knew that he needed to get to know the other indentured, but another part of him simply wanted to please Ben. “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

“Shall we introduce you around, then?” From the cordiality of Ben’s voice, Dustin almost expected him to offer out his arm.

Dustin swallowed a mouthful of copper-flavored spit, and he felt it slide against the hard blister on the front of his collar as it went down. “I’d, well, appreciate that. If we could, you know. Maybe one at a time.”

“Maybe Leon and Maria?” Ben nodded over to the card table where the pair was chatting and placing dominoes and not looking toward Dustin and Ben’s conversation with what seemed to be a deliberate lack of attention.

“I’ve already met.” Dustin lifted his hand toward them, and two hands lifted in return.

Ben looked back into the dining room. “Some of the kitchen group has broken off? Let’s head that way?”

Dustin found himself adopting Ben’s slightly formal manner of speech. “Certainly.”

As Ben took Dustin around and made introductions, he learned that the short, tanned man with bleached hair was Vaughn, in groundskeeping. The other groundskeeper, Dan, was a square-jawed man with eyebrows like brown caterpillars crawling across his forehead. The sallow-skinned woman with very auburn hair was Audrey, Mr. Brook’s indentured legal assistant. Dustin learned that the elder Brook’s ‘secretary’ was kept off the grounds, but her name was Jean. Not to be confused Jeanette Garreau, the woman with striking grey streaks through her hair, who was the sommelier Luka had mentioned. Her French accent was much thicker and more easily identifiable than René’s, and she was quick to drop that hers was an immigration indenture, as if to deliberately set herself apart from the criminal or debt-based indentures.

The Hispanic man with a glorious mustache was George Hoyos, one of Mrs. Brook’s indentured assistants. The other was Blake Bennett, a slender white woman with hair that looked much more naturally red than Audrey’s. The two mentioned other, nonindentured assistants, and Dustin found himself wondering what it was that Mrs. Brooks did that required so many assistants.

And that was it. What had seemed like an entire pack of people had really boiled down to fourteen. Eighteen slaves total, counting himself and the absent secretary and driver and including Luka, who had appeared at some point to take a plate. The dinner was informal, people flowing from the kitchen to the dining room to eat to the living room to hang out like a river slowly making its way down familiar banks. Dustin and Ben were the last to approach Abby for their steaks. Dustin felt guilty that she had clearly been waiting for them to finish making the rounds, as she fried up the last few servings of fish rapidly and plated them.

The generous portions of sides on the center island had been heavily reduced, but there was still a salad of spicy arugula with strawberries and walnuts and goat cheese. Dustin loaded almost all of what was left into a bowl, and after a guilty glance around for Hart, he added a little poppyseed dressing. He also took the carrots, which had been drizzled with some sort of sauce that brought out their natural sweetness.

Abby joined Dustin and Ben on their way to the dining room. Luka sat down at the far end’s corner, giving off the distant, slightly aloof air of someone who wanted to eat alone. Dustin also was feeling socialed out, so he mostly listened as Ben and Abby went back and forth about the most recent hockey scores, barely tasting the delicious food that he shoveled in his mouth to avoid having to talk. Ben seemed just as interested and fluent in hockey as Abby.

Was he actually interested in hockey? Or was part of his job to ensure the comfort and familiarity of the atmosphere the izzies? To make them feel at home in a place that seemed to be, for most of them, a long-term arrangement?

After the others had left, Ben turned to Dustin. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

There was. There was something Dustin desperately wanted to know, but even brushing the edge of his mind against it made him flinch back. He mentally flailed around for anything else, and found something that he’d forgotten that he wanted.

“I was wondering about clothes. Is there any way I could get something else to wear than the same, well, this.” He gestured at his pale-blue t-shirt and jeans. “And maybe a haircut.”

Ben’s hands lifted, his fingertips brushing back and forth over his chin. He had a profoundly triangular jawline. “I don’t see why I couldn’t ask what Trey what he’d prefer to see you in? He doesn’t exactly follow fashion, but I don’t know if he even knows that he could request that I dress you, now that I think about it? And the same with your hair.”

That wasn’t exactly what Dustin had meant. He’d meant he wanted clothes for himself, more like he’d dress himself. Business casual, closer to what Ben was wearing than the t-shirts and skinny-legged jeans over kicks that Trey favored. Or whatever it was that Trey thought a sex slave should wear.

But anything would be better than the same shirt and jeans, day in and day out, so Dustin nodded.

“And is there anything else, Dustin? Truly, I’m here to help.” His earnest smile made it impossible to not believe him. “There isn’t anything that you can ask me for that I’ll take the wrong way, even though I might not be able to get it for you. This isn’t like some other places of indenture? The Brooks house prides itself on being humane.”

Finally, Dustin made himself face his real question head on. Every time Ben or anyone else had mentioned them all being long term, he had wanted to ask what ‘long term’ meant. Even more than that, he wanted to know what his own term was.

He took in a slow breath. “Do you. That is. I was wondering about the, the term of my indenture. How long. If you know?”

Ben’s smile didn’t change at all, but a caution came into his childlike eyes that Dustin hadn’t seen there before. “I believe a little less than ten years? I can find the exact number for you.”

Ten? It felt like a punch to the stomach.

When Dustin had run out the average length-of-indenture numbers based on his age and education, he’d figured on seven years. Much lower than the 25 to 42 years he had been looking at if Jacob had managed to convince a jury that he’d done something he hadn’t. But when Dustin had heard Hart mention that he’d been expensive to obtain, part of him thought that it had to be less. A few years, maybe.

Not ten.

The sting at the corners of Dustin’s eyes was sudden and intense. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I should clean up my dishes and get some sleep. Tomorrow might be a long day.”

The one good thing about the Friday dinner had been that it had let him forget, if only for a moment, what the next day was going to bring.

After everything that had happened in the sex classes, it shouldn’t feel like he was staring down the barrel of the first day of ten years of being a sex slave. But it did.

And in the back of his mind, Logan’s evil voice whispered Dustin’s worst fears. You’re going to enjoy it. You got hard when I fucked you, didn’t you? Different daddy, same horny little bitch.

Chapter Text

As if the number was cursed, Trey’s call came at almost 10 am on the dot. Dustin was in the gym, Hart standing over him as he tried to kill Dustin with the rowing machine.

Rowing. Whoever would have thought that rowing involved so much more of a person’s body than just the arms. At least Hart had put down a towel for him so he didn’t leak all over equipment that someone else would have to use. Dustin tried to ignore the thick plug inside him, but the constant rock of pulling on the machine's bar pressed it against his sweet spot over, and it was only the heavy nature of the work that kept Dustin from exploding in a shower of horniness.

“Stop.”

Dustin obeyed Hart’s command without questioning or complaining. Since the night before, he’d felt like someone had beaten all of the emotion out of him like they would beat a rug with a broom handle. Only when he stopped could he hear a cellphone ringing over his own ragged gasps for breath.

Hart dug the phone out of his pocket, the one labeled ‘Merrill,’ and he passed it over. The phone shook in Dustin’s sweaty palm. The shaking was from exertion, he tried to tell himself unconvincingly. He flipped up the top and held it close to his sweaty ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, man, it’s Trey. You got a minute?”

A sort of bitter amusement bloomed at the base of Dustin’s throat. Hart had already told him that he was at Trey’s disposal and that they would make up any missed time in the gym later. “Yeah,” Dustin panted. “Sure.”

“It’s just cause you sound like you’re in the middle of something. If you are, man…”

“No, it’s fine. Hart was just working me out.” Right down to the bone, so that he could fashion Dustin into the shape he wanted him, because Dustin didn’t even own his own body anymore.

“I just got the notification that we got our grades back, man.” The excitement made Trey’s low voice bubble like champagne. “Since it’s both of us, I thought, you know, we’d open it together.”

And then we’ll fuck, Trey didn’t say. Dustin’s stomach twisted into a small knot at the bottom, though it didn’t yet begin to squeeze. “Let me shower, and I’ll be right there.”

“Awesome. I’ll meet you on the patio.”

After hanging up, Dustin peeled himself off the rowing machine and turned toward the locker room. Behind him, Hart said, “Wait up, Merrill.”

Dustin’s mouthful of saliva tasted like iron, and it went down hard past the blister of the collar on his throat. He paused, and Hart walked with him into the locker room.

“Strip. Sit on the bench.”

Dustin did as he was told, and he watched with a strange sort of detachment as Hart went to one of the lockers. The little ogre came back with thin black rod, holding it up to show Dustin the prongs on the end. Not threatening him with it, just making sure that Dustin knew what it was. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Okay.”

Some part of Dustin wished that the cattle prod would be necessary, that he wasn’t going to keep going along like a good little pet. But he knew better. The weight that had settled onto his chest was the heaviness of inevitability. He was a coward. The only stupid things he’d done lately were pleading no-contest and taking the indenture. And so he just sat there, his usual post-workout hardon aching in its cage, as Hart went around behind him.

There was a faint pressure at the back of Dustin's neck, then a click. Then the collar slid away from Dustin’s throat, pulled off to the side, tickling off his sweaty shoulder. It was such a surprise that Dustin couldn’t react. His throat felt strange without the pressure and weight of it, and along with his sweat, Dustin smelled the musty odor of unwashed skin.

“Scrub up good. I mean everything.”

“Right.” Dustin’s voice sounded dull to his ears. He stood, and Hart smacked him on the arm. It wasn’t hard, but the sound reverberated off the hard walls in the room, and that as much as the sting made Dustin flinch. The surge of adrenaline snapped him back into his body like a rubber band.

“Everything, Merrill.” Dustin’s confusion must have looked as genuine as it felt, because Hart didn’t smack him again. Instead, his hard, dark eyes drilled into Dustin like he was a piece of heavy furniture that needed to be screwed firmly into a wall. “Ass especially.”

The skin all over Dustin’s body tightened. His balls still hadn’t learned that they couldn’t draw up all the way, but they tried, and the rest of his flesh broke out in bumps. He even felt the sensation on his scalp and thought that, if he was a cat, his hair would have stood on end. His least-favorite bitter-lemon flavor crawled up the back of his throat. “I can’t take my plug out. My stuff is all upstairs.”

Hart’s eyes were dark and hard and unyielding as wet stone. He didn’t shift the cattle prod in his hand at all, but somehow, Dustin’s attention was drawn to it. “There’s stuff in your locker.”

Dustin turned to the locker that was labeled with his last name, and not with anything as temporary as marker on tape. The name ‘Merrill’ had been etched into a metal name-plate and slid into the little frame for it, clearly intended to last.

There was indeed stuff in Dustin’s locker. A bottle of dish soap, a bottle of lube, and the syringe that would send lube in deep. That was all he needed, really. The plug was already sitting heavy in him.

A hard swallow almost caught itself in Dustin’s throat, despite that there was no collar to press against it on its way down. “Here? In the middle of the room?”

Where anyone could walk in?

“In the shower.”

The relief that flowed outward through Dustin’s stomach ashamed him. He hated that he felt so much gratefulness at being shown the barest nod of humanity. If you’re good, you can have privacy while you put something up your ass. If you’re good, if you do what I say, if you don’t show me any defiance, I won’t hurt you. If I hurt you, it’s your own fault.

And what was Dustin doing? Going along with it. Because he wanted privacy, and he wanted to not be hurt.

But it wasn’t his fault. He held onto that. Dustin had always thought that he was a coward, but was he, really? What was the alternative? Compliance wasn’t cowardice, it was self-preservation. Cowardice would have been. Well. He wasn’t sure what cowardice would have been. But it implied having a choice.

Pulling the opaque curtain around the shower area felt like privacy without the collar around his neck. Hart still stood just outside the curtain, close enough that Dustin could hear him breathing. Dustin’s mind worked through the logistics of the situation like someone might solve a logic puzzle in their spare time. The plug had to come out. He had to wash it. He had to wash himself. He had to put the plug back in. He had to put down towels or he’d slip in the lube. But the towels couldn’t stay on the shower floor while ran the water. It was all very mundane, very distant.

Taking the plug out was becoming easier. Dustin knew how to relax into it, and even though he could feel the stretch, he didn’t think it was as bad. The sensation had the cage squeezing his dick. And it wasn’t going to get better.

When Dustin finally turned on the shower, the mist gathered around him like a cloud, smelling of a popular brand of antibacterial soap that he’d never used before coming to live in the servants’ house and the shampoo ‘for men’ that he’d never bothered with in his life. They’d become familiar smells, except for right now, when his mind seemed to be hyperfocused on every little detail. He shaved with his new shaving cream and the new razor that had been waiting for him, and the tickle of it passing over an area of his neck that had been covered for so long was welcome and bizarre.

Then Dustin’s heightened focus slipped to something he didn’t want to think about, shifting to how turned on he’d gotten by washing himself. After a week of being locked up, the horniness was impossible when he thought about it. He ached in the cage while the water ran down his body. The curve of the metal held him down, but he could somewhat scrub himself with a washcloth. Every touch of the cloth through the rings that kept his cock in a literal prison made him gasp in the mist. His balls were worse, aching and sensitive even before the washcloth. And his ass…

“Merrill.” Hart’s warning was hard and flat and backed up by the promise of violence.

Dustin rinsed off quickly, dried with a clean towel, and spread it down on the damp tiles. “I just. I’ve got to get the plug back in.”

“Then do it. Stop fucking around.”

Torture on torture on torture. Lubing up sent warmth radiating from his asshole forward to his already-overstimulated cock. There was the mental torture of how easy it was to get the plug in. No need to press and release it over and over and over, just a few presses and releases and it was rubbing its way past his sweet spot, which had its own brand of sensitivity, and then he was closed around the base. Well, as closed as one could be around the base. He was even getting better about not splashing the lube liberally all over himself.

Practice makes perfect. The anxious twist in Dustin’s stomach started to spread up through his chest, but it wasn’t anxiety, it was worse. His lips twisted into something resembling a grin, and he had to clamp down tight against the urge to start laughing. Laughing and howling and screaming.

Metal rings clattered harshly against a metal bar as Hart yanked open the shower curtain. He loomed with the prod clutched in his fist.

His appearance shoved the hysteria out of Dustin’s body so hard that it almost knocked his ability to talk out of it, too. “I’m going as fast as I can!”

He wasn’t sure whether Hart believed him or not, but the big man didn’t shock him. “Move.”

Dustin scrambled into the clothing Hart had laid out for him. A lingerie-red thong to be worn under the usual jeans and t-shirt, like it was a class day. The collar that Hart clasped around his throat had a slightly astringent smell, as if it had taken its own little shower. The thought made Dustin want to giggle and he swallowed down the urge.

Hart put the cattle prod away. Then he frowned at Dustin. “Go on.”

For no reason that Dustin could discern, he’d had the idea that Hart was going to walk him over and hand him into Trey’s waiting arms. But of course he wouldn’t. It would look too much like the coercion it was. And Hart didn’t need more than he already had. The coercion the man needed was wrapped around Dustin’s neck and the whisper of Los Vegas in the back of Dustin’s mind.

Dustin left the locker room on his own. The foyer was bright and airy and cool and completely empty. Outside, the sun was what Dustin was coming to think of as coastal blue. Beautifully sunny and with high wisps of cloud that barely took the heat out of it. One of the groundskeepers from the night before, Dan was his name, was on his knees in the flowerbed along the curving fieldstone pathway that would take Dustin around the mansion to the back patio, where Trey was waiting. Somewhere in the mansion’s vast yard, a small engine was running. Hedge trimmers, maybe.

It all seemed so nightmarishly normal. The day shouldn’t be sunny. People shouldn’t be just going about their chores. They should all feel the dread and foreboding and despair and resignation that Dustin felt. But they didn’t. Because it was, in fact, completely normal, as far as they were concerned.

Dustin hated them for it. He hated himself for it. But he kept walking all the same.

Chapter Text

Trey waited for Dustin on one of the apparently little-used patio chairs next to the completely clean outdoor firepit, under the overhanging part of brown adobe roof that protected the outdoor patio. Instead of his usual skinny jeans and oversized t-shirt, he wore dark basketball shorts and a sleeveless green tank-top. His pose seemed to be deliberately casual, leaned back in the chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him as he scrolled his phone.

He had a nice body. So. At least there was that. Dustin was being raped every day in new and distressing ways, but at least it was by an attractive young man. It could be worse, couldn’t it?

Dustin’s attempts at – what, cheering himself up, trying to feel less bad about what was likely coming next? – were utterly unconvincing. He couldn’t even tell himself that it would be no worse than the other days because that was entirely untrue. Every touch, every blowjob, the plug up his ass, they all had been entirely nonconsensual. He had already been violated. Was actively being violated. He was viscerally reminded of it every time a particularly long step or a hard-landing foot shifted the plug inside him. So why should the thought of it being Trey up his ass rather than the plug bother him so much?

Knew you liked it, bitch, Logan whispered in his mind, the foul odor of his rotting teeth carried on his breath as he slammed cramp after vicious cramp into Dustin’s guts.

Unusual for a man to get off on his first time being raped, the BISA doctor’s raspy voice joined in.

Despite the heat of the day, coldness tracked under Dustin’s skin as if someone had opened a tap in the bottom of stomach and drained all of his warm blood out.

Trey shot to his feet the moment Dustin rounded the corner. His grin was irrepressible enthusiasm personified. Dustin’s feet felt as if they had suddenly been encased in concrete, but he continued trudging forward anyway, moved along by the threat of being sent to Los Vegas. It was easily more coercive than Hart’s holding the cattle prod had been.

“I didn’t look yet.” Trey’s excitement made his words come fast. “I know I was supposed to make sure we passed before I saw you, but man, I’ve got a really good feeling.”

“I’m pretty sure we passed.” Dustin tried to make his voice cheerful. Or at least not terrified.

He still wasn’t a very good liar. Trey’s grin flickered off his face. “You okay, man?”

“Just nervous.” Dustin willed Trey to believe it. Hell, he willed himself to believe it. Just anxiety, that was all.

“We can just look at the grade and see how things go, man. We don’t have to, you know, just start fucking like rabbits or whatever.”

No matter what Trey might think, or even honestly intend, Dustin knew what was expected. He swallowed hard on his mouthful of lemon-flavored spit and made himself smile. “Let’s just see how it goes.”

Trey went to the glass double-doors with long strides, then pulled one open and held it for Dustin, chivalrous as a knight. After the young man followed Dustin in, he kicked his shoes off just inside the door, and Dustin took the hint and stepped out of his sandals.

The inside of the house was cool despite the massive windows. The length and breadth and height of the open space was astounding. Dustin could have fit two or three of his college apartments into just the living area alone. The smell of fresh lilies radiated from a vase on the center of the island that separated the living room from the kitchen. Sara bustled around over there, even her generous body seeming small compared to the open space. As far as Dustin could tell, she was the only person in the entire house.

As Trey’s long strides rapidly took them across the quiet living room, Dustin tried to not mire down in the swamp of his own half-expressed thoughts and feelings as he followed behind the eager young man “There don’t seem to be a lot of people home.”

“Yeah,” Trey said absently. “Mom and pops are pretty much always at work. Deshaun’s got soccer practice. Shit, I’d have practice myself, if we’d made the tournament.”

“Ah.” It sounded like a pretty lonely life, to Dustin. But then, he’d always had a close family, and hadn’t been very into team sports. Maybe the one was a good replacement for the other.

The route that Trey led Dustin along felt familiar. When they stepped into a hallway and Dustin smelled the old books, he realized why. They passed the study where he had convinced Trey that all of this was consensual, but this time, they continued down the same hallway. It ended in a T-intersection that had a large photograph of a family hanging in the middle of the wall. Two parents, two children. All it needed was a dog.

The hallway that they turned into was heavily decorated with family photos, but they sat wrong against Dustin’s senses. He’d had a similar hallway in his own house. When he and Jacob had had their last fateful confrontation, he’d been in that very hallway. Pictures of him and Jake and their girls had looked on as Jake had shoved Dustin backward into the antique mirror and shattered it.

The photos in Dustin’s house had mostly been candid shots. The ones that Dustin had liked the best from his and Jake’s wedding, the one that the photographer had taken of him and Jake exchanging vows, and the one that Dustin’s mom had taken of the two of them cutting the cake together. A photo that Jake had taken of Dustin propped up in the recliner with baby Isabell on his shoulder, both asleep in a way that was, on reflection, probably quite dangerous. A photo of him and Jacob leaning together in front of a lighthouse on Lake Michigan. A photo of the girls playing in the sand on a beach, Isabell still in diapers. A photo of Eva on the front steps on her first day of school.

The framed photos in Trey’s hallway were different. Instead of reminders of private moments, it was more like an art gallery. All of the photographs looked like they had been taken by a professional, all the subjects carefully posed for the best composition. If Dustin’s hallway had been dedicated to the soul of his family, this hallway was dedicated to The Brook Family as an ideal.

When Trey opened the door at the end of the hallway, Dustin wasn’t sure what would be on the other side. It ended up being a perfectly normal, if very large, bedroom. The door opened onto a short entrance-type hallway that, like the rest of the room, had light blue walls and a slightly darker carpet. Stepping into the room itself, the ceiling opened up. It wasn’t as high as the vaulted living-room ceiling, that one had to be more than twenty feet, but it was very high for a bedroom. The light-blue walls contributed to the spacious feeling, as did the large, Tuscan-style windows on two walls, framed by curtains so dark that they were almost navy. Trey or someone had pushed the curtains wide. The east-facing window was flooded with light, though north-facing window was more muted.

There was a queen-sized bed with dark blue sheets flanked by nightstands, and a short, functional desk that had a laptop open on it. The room had its own TV in the corner, facing a massive bean-bag sack of blue material over a small entertainment center with game systems underneath. The size of the room made the furniture look small, as if intended for a doll. The walls were almost empty of decoration, like a teenager’s posters had been removed but not replaced by more adult art, but there were accent shelves that held sports-related trophies. They glinted in the light, utterly dust free.

In fact, the whole area was cleaner than a normal young man’s room, but it didn’t feel like a studio piece. Perhaps the oddest thing about it was that the carpeted floor was clean of debris. The benefits of having an in-home maid service, Dustin supposed. Still, not even the maid service could take the young-man smell out of room. Trey’s body spray barely covered a hint of dirty socks and marijuana.

While Dustin had hesitated to take in the room, Trey had crossed immediately to the desk against the far wall. Dustin trailed behind, his feet dragging against the carpet as if the blue fabric was knee-deep water. By the time he made it to the desk, Trey had already descended into the fabric-backed chair and tapped his password into the computer. Dustin loomed over him like the most awkwardly leaning stone at Stonehenge.

“Okay,” Trey breathed out. “Here we go.”

He clicked into a student portal in the web browser, then pulled up ‘Intro to Training.’

Criteria marched along one side and results on the other. Attendance. Bonding. Written. Practical. Pass, pass, pass, pass, and finally on the bottom, PASS.

Trey swiveled in his chair, turning to Dustin with a huge grin on his face. “Fuck yes, man. I knew it. There was no way we didn’t pass.”

“I didn’t doubt we would,” Dustin said past numb lips.

Trey snagged a keyring that had been tossed onto the desk with the rest of the random desk-related shit and stood up. Dustin would have backed up a step if his feet hadn’t been frozen solidly into the ground.

“We can do something else, man.” Trey’s face was full of such excitement and enthusiasm that it overwhelmed even the oddity of his ill-conceived attempt at a mustache. “Chill and watch TV or whatever. But my dad said if you passed. Like, not outside the room man. But turn around.”

Trying to parse the phrases, Dustin slowly turned to face the room. Across from the bed, opposite the short hallway they had entered through, there was a closed door. Dustin focused on it to try to keep his skin from crawling off. It was probably a walk-in closet, he decided, trying not to panic as he felt Trey stepped in behind him. A walk-in closet would explain the lack of dresser.

“Hold still,” Trey said, as if Dustin wasn’t completely frozen.

There was a small press against the back of Dustin’s neck, a click, and then for the second time that day, the subtle pressure eased off his throat and his collar tickled as someone pulled it off. It clattered on the surface of the desk.

“No permit yet, but, you know, man. Just in the room. So we don’t have to worry.”

“That’s ni—” Dustin started to say, but the words cut off with a gasp when Trey’s lips pressed against the side of his neck. The short hairs of the young man’s mustache tickled. Skin that had felt only pressure or nothing for weeks leaped at the sensation of something new after so long.

The reaction from Dustin’s body was everything he’d feared. No, it was worse than that because the he’d thought he would just freeze. Instead, Dustin’s mind noted with horror that he had pressed back against Trey and that his head had tilted to the side. Inviting more. As if it had a mind if its own. The horror hadn’t been strong enough to keep him from doing it. And it wasn’t strong enough to quench the heat that went straight to his dick. The cage squeezed painfully.

That was when the detached part of Dustin realized that he was in very deep shit.

Chapter Text

Trey’s lips moved firmly up the side of Dustin’s neck, but it was the tickling off his little mustache that made Dustin’s skin tingle with sensation. Dustin had already pressed back against Trey, and the young man murmured against the shell of his ear in a voice as low and smooth as fine leather. “You still nervous, man?”

“I’m, uh.” Before Dustin had to lie – not that he was sure which direction his lie would have gone at that precise moment – Trey sucked on his earlobe and grazed it with his teeth. Dustin groaned instead.

Trey’s teeth were gentle, but his hands were not. One hand pulled Dustin even more tightly back against Trey’s body, while the other jerked up Dustin’s shirt, then felt up his pecs and twisted his nipple.

Not that Dustin needed Trey to hold him in place. He was pressing back against him all on his own, groaning, providing pressure for Trey to grind against. Every single last thought had been knocked out of his head by his sudden and utterly painful horniness. The cage gripped him and held him down and he ached but god damn was he filled with need. He was a masculine animal and he wanted to fuck and he’d been denied it for too long and another man pressing against him, grinding against him, making out with the back of his neck was too much.

His hands. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, except that he did. His arms and Trey’s made a tangle as he tried to unbutton and unzip his jeans. He needed them off. The pressure and the way they brushed against his package every time he moved was too much. Damn it, it was all too much.

The second he had his pants open and was pushing them down, Trey’s hand was there. But the other man’s fingers banged against the cage, jolting Dustin in a way that made him groan out loud.

Trey laughed against the side of Dustin’s neck, and his voice was thick with desire and smelled of mouthwash. “I forgot about the cage, man. Don’t know how. It’s hot as fuck.”

Trey wriggled his fingers under Dustin’s thong and ran his fingers over the metal. There was enough room between the bars for his fingers to tease, and when he did, Dustin groaned again. Then the young man’s fingers cupped underneath, gently playing with Dustin’s balls. Having his full balls stroked almost took his knees out from under him. The word that tore out of his throat couldn’t properly be called a moan or a groan. “Fuck!”

It was hard for Dustin’s body to interpret the sensation. It hurt, being held down by the cage while he was so desperately horny, it hurt like hell, but it also felt almost deliciously good, like his brain was flickering back and forth between the two options so rapidly that it was shorting out.

Hardness covered by the silky material of basketball shorts ground against Dustin’s ass. Trey was breathing hard, too. “Hot as hell. But we’ve got to get you out of this damn thing.”

The pressure of Trey’s body pulled back. There was the fumbling clatter of metal. Dustin hooked his thumbs through the sides of the thong and shoved it down. It only took an instant for Trey to find the keyring he’d been looking for.

Somehow, Dustin didn’t trip over his own clothing when Trey turned him around. No, that wasn’t right, they both turned him around. While Trey fumbled with the keys, Dustin yanked his own shirt off and got at least one of his legs out of the tangle of his other clothes. Then he started pulling at Trey’s clothes, too. He dragged the young man’s jersey up over his head, completely interfering in the fumble with the metal set of keys. Trey groaned when Dustin shoved his boxers down.

Then he had to stop, because Trey’s hand was on his hips, then on his locked cock. It hurt so badly and it hurt so exquisitely and metal was banging off metal, off the cage, off of everything. Dustin probably couldn’t hear the click when the little heart-shaped padlock separated, it was probably just in his mind.

He almost lost his feet when Trey pulled the sheath off, though. His breath burst out in a wordless cry. It wasn’t at all like being stroked, it was so much more than that. The relief itself was almost like an orgasm. A single throb and he was as hard as he’d ever been in his life. The way the base ring pulled up his balls and put pressure on the top of his cock wasn’t at all unpleasant.

Trey’s shorts were gone. They were stumbling backward over clothing, their hands all over each other, their mouths all over each other.

When the bed hit the backs of Dustin’s legs and he fell on it, the plug jolted inside him, and he yelped. If the sensation of electricity shooting through his body had felt good when he’d been locked, it was beyond description now that he could be hard. His cock ached, and the only reason he didn’t touch it was the only thing that could have cut through the fog of lust.

Shame. Some part of him could still feel shame. He was already participating, he didn't know why that would cross a line, but there wasn't space or time to work logic through the thoughts. Ninety percent of him was lust, but there was still that ten percent, disgusted that he was acting like they had made him.

Trey came down onto the bed on top of him, but carefully. Dustin probably wasn’t the only man who’d had his balls tapped unpleasantly by a partner coming down carelessly. He kissed Dustin until neither of them had any breath left.

“I want to fuck you so bad,” Trey said.

“Okay.” Dustin barely managed to pant the word. It was happening too fast. He should resist, shouldn't he?

But how? And to what end?

Dustin remembered how to position from the damned test. He pulled his knees up to his chest, and Trey’s knuckles brushed his nuts, the insides of his thighs, as the other man tried to figure out the handle of Dustin’s plug. It was the first time someone else had tugged on it. Instinctively, Dustin tightened, and for the first time, the sensation of pulling and stretching wasn’t one of pure unpleasantness.

It let up so abruptly that it was like having a rug jerked out from under him. Trey’s body was no longer against Dustin’s thighs. The plug was still in. Through his confusion, Dustin managed a, “Whuh?”

“The fucking lube, man.” Trey was panting. Dustin wasn’t the only one half-insane with lust. “So I don’t hurt you.”

Dustin hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes, but he slammed them open. Trey was at the desk, fumbling around in one of the drawers. Dustin recognized the lube that he came up with and just watched while Trey uncapped it and stroked himself with a handful of glistening liquid. There was no room in Dustin’s head for thought. Any time the thoughts scratching at his mind tried to claw their way in – this is so fucked up, why are you letting him do this – he pushed them back out and tried to focus only on his body.

When Trey made a throaty animal noise, Dustin's cock throbbed like it had its own heartbeat, and Dustin was back in position, and Trey’s lubed fingers fumbled with the plug, and every pulse as he tried to pull it out of Dustin just stoked the fires of his body’s lust. His fingers were gripped so tightly into his own knees that they’d gone numb. He thought he might cum just from Trey pulling out the plug.

He didn’t. The weight of Trey’s body came against his thighs, and then the hot pressure against his asshole was not a plug. The terrible thing was that some part of Dustin did want it. Trey thrust into him hard, the young man's own patience completely overwhelmed by then. The friction was a delicious heat, the stretch wasn’t something Dustin fought at all. There was no burning, no pain.

He didn’t nail Dustin’s p-spot like the fucking machine had. Instead, every inch of Trey’s thick cock rubbed against it. Hot fire licked across Dustin’s nerve endings. It had taken the machine a ridiculous amount of time to work him up to this kind of bonfire. His abs spasmed, and maybe that was part of a cramp or maybe it wasn’t. Everything felt too good. It was too much. The jolt to his balls when Trey slammed home was definitely not pain.

He no longer had the capacity for shame. As Trey pulled out and slammed into him again with his own throaty exhalations, Dustin let go of his death grip on one of his knees and worked his hand between them. Touching his cock while Trey fucked him was like grabbing a live wire.

When Dustin came, it was the new most intense thing he’d ever experienced in his life. It wasn’t just the usual punch of pleasure in his groin, though there was that too. His entire body clenched. It exploded in sensation, wave after wave of pulsing electric firestorm under his skin. Time became abstract. Every jolt of Trey slamming home was a new flash of lightning.

And then it was too much. He was burning alive from the fiery electric sensation and he wanted to shove Trey off of him, to make it stop, but his limbs had turned to rubber and the other man was too heavy. And Trey was finishing anyway, his thrusts getting jerky.

“Oh, god,” Trey moaned. “I’m cumming.”

Dustin wasn’t sure whether he was that exquisitely sensitive or whether it was part of his imagination, but when Trey slammed home the last time, Dustin thought that he felt the first hard pulse of his orgasm.

The thought of Trey’s cum inside him sent tendrils of shame and horror creeping along the walls of Dustin’s utterly mindless post-orgasm bliss. But the horror had nothing to hold onto, and it slipped off without sinking in its claws. Yet. For the moment, Dustin’s mind had turned to gelatin in the same way his body had.

Trey lay on top of him, panting as his own orgasm tapered off. The sensation of him pulling out sent electric fingernails dragging over Dustin’s too-sensitive skin and made him cry out, and to go from so full to so empty was its own kind of shock. Dustin’s body flexed around nothing, and he knew intellectually that he was sore, but it was like all the other pain had been. Pleasurable in its own terrible way.

Chapter Text

The bed shook as Trey flopped to the side. Their panting filled the room. Little shocks traveled under Dustin’s skin in unexpected places, and he wasn’t sure whether he flexed his ass when they happened, or whether they happened because he flexed. It all came around to the same place, he supposed.

Getting off usually left Dustin energized, but the post-orgasm rush in his veins was like a river raging toward an ocean of darkness. I thought no matter how horny I got, they weren’t going to change me. But there I was, jerking it while he raped me. Is it even rape, at that point? Maybe Logan was right. Maybe on some level, I liked it.

There was a hole in the center of Dustin’s chest. Dustin didn’t fall into it as much as it grabbed him with a tarry hand and pulled him down. Every time he breathed out, breathing back in felt like pushing the weight of the world up and off of him. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to, but his body kept insisting on it. Just another thing he couldn’t control.

When Trey spoke, he was still panting, each phrase blown out harshly. “Holy fucking shit. That was so hot. When you came. The sound you made. Man. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Had he made a sound? Dustin couldn’t remember, but he didn’t know why Trey would lie to him. His throat did feel raw. The rest of his body felt dead. No, that was a lie. It felt good in a way that made him wish he was numb.

The thick darkness didn’t have to pull Dustin into it, that time. He dove like a suicidal swimmer into the numb despair. Why would he fight it? He belonged there. He deserved to belong there, after what he had done.

Dustin jerked instinctively when a hand touched his shoulder. His eyes shot open, and all he saw was blue.

“Shit, man. Sorry.” The young man’s apology was rueful and it came from a long way away, echoing down the sides of the hole that Dustin had fallen into. It came from the distant land of a white ceiling fan on a blue ceiling held up by blue walls in a room unfamiliar in every way except for smelling of sex and Trey. Body spray and despair.

The silence stretched, and Trey pushed himself up onto one of his eyebrows, his dark brows drawing together with concern.

Part of Dustin wanted to simply stop breathing, but there was another part of him. The animal part that atavistically clawed for survival. It was the part that made him keep breathing. And it was the part that knew that, if he remained drowned in his pit of despair so deeply that Trey noticed, things would get worse.

Sell you to some house in Vegas, Hart whispered, and adrenaline shot through Dustin’s body in response.

It didn’t clear the darkness from his system, but it did hit him like a slap. He had jumped into the darkness like someone jumping off a bridge, but the adrenaline was the bungee cord that had stretched to its maximum before jerking him back up.

Dustin cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I sort of dozed off.”

The young man’s expression relaxed into a smile. Not an energetic youthful grin, or a lustful leer, but just a smile. “Jizz sleepies. Can’t say I’m surprised, man. I’m a little busted, myself, but I’ve got to piss. And shower. And, I’m going to be real with you, man, you need a shower worse than I do.”

It was the truth. The sex smell was mostly Dustin, the slickness between his ass cheeks not just lube anymore And Dustin’s stomach and chest were starting to itch – because, he realized, he’d cum as high as his chest like a kid desperately jerking it after a horny day. He felt profoundly unclean in a way that had very little to do with what was staining the sheets. The tarry darkness of what he’d done had coated his skin.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

Trey’s hand caressed up Dustin’s bicep. His skin was still strangely sensitive, and the closest thing that Dustin could associate with the sensation was the discomfort of rubbing his fingers together after he’d been scalded by grabbing a too-hot plate out of the microwave. A plate of fish sticks for the girls, maybe. He had to get home. He needed to hold onto that.

“My shower’s big enough for two, man. I’ve always sort of wanted to try showering with someone, not like, in a locker-room way. I don’t know, man.” Trey’s hand caressed down Dustin’s chest, not with any sexual interest, just as if the young man liked the feel of skin on skin. His hand glided in the sweat that was still cooling there, then detoured around one of the itchy patches.

Dustin thought that, if Trey kept talking, he might be able to avoid getting dragged back into that terribly attractive pit of black despair that had carved itself into his sternum. “You never brought a guy home?”

“I just had girlfriends. It wasn’t like that. And then, you know, you don’t bring home escorts, right?” The wry twist to his lips and the little chuckle at the end seemed to try to make a joke out of it.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t like this.” Trey blew out an amused breath. “Man. I should have figured it out, but it took me a while to get that I’m into guys. I just always thought, you know, folks were talking it up. Being with girls or whatever. And I thought, you know, everyone’s sort of attracted to their own body, right? And checking other guys out in the locker room. I thought everyone did that.”

“Ah.” Dustin couldn’t relate. He’d known that he was gay since he was old enough to be physically attracted to anyone.

Trey sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “You know how I figured it out, man?”

“Hmm?”

Trey’s grin was the same friendly puppy grin that he’d greeted Dustin with the first time Dustin had been dropped off for sex class. “It was a fucking meme, man. One of those ‘you know you’re gay when’ memes. I started reading about by guys figuring out they were into other guys, and getting advice and stuff, and man, I didn’t stop reading for like three days.” He rolled out his shoulders and offered a hand down to Dustin. “How about you?”

“I knew earlier. From movies.” That atavistic survival part of Dustin made him move to the edge of the bed despite the horrifically pleasant ache in his body, and it moved his arm through air that still felt thick and unwelcome.

The young man clasped his hand. “Man, I wish my parents hadn’t been so controlling about my online shit.”

“Not porn. Just movies. The actors.”

Trey pulled Dustin to his feet. His legs were like rubber noodles, and Trey grabbed him by the arms to steady him. At least Dustin’s skin no longer felt raw. Everything else, though—

He jerked his mind away from that yawning edge of the pit and made himself focus on what Trey was saying.

“Lucky, man. I think about what I missed, you know?”

“Not much.”

Trey looked at Dustin with avid curiosity, as if he was the living version of one of the coming-out stories Trey had read. You couldn’t tell a college kid that he was still very young, though. Certainly not one who had—

Dustin dragged his mind away from that and groped for anything else to think about. “I guess some guys really go for it in high school. But. I was a shy kid. You know my, well, my sexual history. Though. You seem more outgoing, so…”

Trey’s smile shaded rueful again. He carefully let go of Dustin, and when he stayed on his feet on his own, Trey ran one of his hands back through his sweaty curls. “If I’d figured it out earlier, I might’ve had a real boyfriend and wouldn’t have ended up in the tabloids. Man, dad was pissed. But that’s hard to regret, man. I wouldn’t have met you.”

Met? They hadn’t met. Dustin had been purchased for him as a fucking present.

Had that purchase been by a doting father or a calculating one? With Dustin as a prepurchased and socially acceptable sexual outlet, Trey probably wasn’t going to go back to paying men for sex. He could have as much sex as he wanted for ‘free.’

And you’re going to like it, bitch, Logan whispered from the pit. You liked it when I fucked you. You sang for me, too. You liked being daddy’s little punk.

Dustin shuddered.

“Yeah,” Trey said. “It is kind of chilly with the fan going. Let’s get in the shower, man.”

Chapter Text

Trey’s bathroom featured blue, but not as heavily as his bedroom. The décor felt more like someone’s idea of a foggy ocean. The floor was blue tile, cool under Dustin’s feet. The sink had an overly large marble countertop. The very generous white sink was ringed almost the entire way around with various hair and body products. In fact, the fixtures were all white, with the sink and toilet on the left, the shower on the right.

Not only was the shower large enough for two people, it probably could have fit three, and there was a separate nook for a soaking tub that took up the back wall. Large panels of frosted glass over the shower and side of the tub let in natural light from outside, and a ceiling almost as high as the one in the bedroom was painted with vaguely cloudlike white and light grey whorls. It was easily most spacious bathroom Dustin had ever been in.

It was while Dustin was standing over Trey’s toilet and holding his dick to piss that it really struck him that his dick was no longer in prison. Unlike the emptiness of the lack of plug, there was no sensation of something missing. A literal weight had been lifted off him. He never wanted that fucking thing on him again.

After he shook off, Dustin felt where the ring went down around his balls. He was pretty slick from, well. Better not to think about what he was slick from. But the lube made it the easiest thing in the world to pull the ring off. It wasn’t comfortable, but now that Dustin knew what true discomfort was like, it was nothing.

He wanted to drop the ring into the trash can next to the toilet, but something stopped him. Trey hadn’t asked him to keep it on or to get back into the cage, and though he had mentioned liking the thought of Dustin in it, it didn’t seem like he was going to ask Dustin to put it back on. But one of Dustin’s options had a level of plausible deniability, and the other did not.

The little piece of metal clicked when Dustin set it off to the side on the marble countertop, by the shea butter.

“Water’s good.” Trey stood on the edge of the shower, a hand held out to the spray. “Or it was until you flushed.”

“Sorry,” Dustin mumbled.

Trey laughed and stepped into the shower. “It’s okay, man. It’s just water.”

Dustin turned, and his foot landed in something cold and slippery. It wasn’t the only splotch of careless drippage on the floor. Dustin grabbed a square of toilet paper. “Sorry. Watch your step, I guess.”

Trey stuck his head out of the shower. His curls were already plastered to his head. His nose wrinkled and he made a face. “Hey, man, you don’t have to bother. It’s going to get mopped anyway.”

Dustin pictured Luka or Sara running a mop over the floor and knowing what the streaks were from. What had happened to him. The bottom of Dustin’s stomach tightened, and the part of him that had been driven underground by physical need and satiation grabbed onto it. All of a sudden, he wanted to throw up.

Instead, he tossed the square of white paper in the trash. “Okay.”

Trey disappeared back into the shower. Dustin hesitated. He needed to get in the shower, but he didn't want to. Or, no. That wasn’t right. Dustin desperately wanted to feel clean. Not that he could be. He could wash the evidence off his own body, but there was no way to wash Trey’s cum out short of an enema. Then again, scalding himself might get him half-way there. In any case, Dustin didn't want to get in the shower while Trey was in it. Not when Trey was the one who had done it to him.

Or had he done it to himself by letting it happen? Or had Trey’s dad done this to him by buying him? Or had the government done it to him, by letting people purchase other people for sex. Or had Logan done it to him by making jail so unbearable that he’d do anything to get out. Or had Jacob done it to him by being a lying abusive drunk piece of shit. There was a lot of hate to go around, and all of it lived in the center of Dustin’s chest, a hot ball that was rolling up into his throat and out into his arms. He wanted to tear everything to pieces. Including himself.

“You coming, man?”

Dustin blew out his breath and took another deep one, then blew that one out too. At least he wasn't likely to tear into Trey. Even without the threat of Vegas, hating Trey felt like trying to hate a golden retriever puppy who was wrecking the living room by just not knowing any better.

Dustin made himself step into the shower. Trey had stepped back away from the showerhead to make room, so Dustin stood right in the stream. The shower wasn’t as hot as Dustin would have liked. He wanted it to be hot enough to boil off his skin and purify him. But warm was better than nothing.

When Trey caressed Dustin's back, he gave a little yelp.

“Shit. You okay, man?”

“Yes,” Dustin lied automatically. And then, “I’m just, I don’t know. In my own head.”

“About what we did?”

Despite the warmth of the water, cold prickled under Dustin’s skin. He already was skirting dangerously close to the truth without meaning to be, and he didn’t want to ruin it for the kid. Not out of concern for Trey, but out of concern for what else could happen.

It was hard to think of a convincing lie. Maybe it would be easier to bend the truth.

Dustin licked his lips, but they were already wet. He was glad that Trey was behind him and couldn’t see his face. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting, well. How much I liked that.”

A vivid splash of the memory of Dustin starting to jerk himself off while Trey’s weight pressed down on him sent lemony bile surging up the back of Dustin’s throat. The warm water washed away the cold sweat. I knew you liked it, bitch.

“I’m glad you liked it.” Trey’s words were a chilling echo of Logan’s. “Like, I wouldn't have pressured you or anything, and I meant what I said about waiting, but damn am I glad you want to be with me, man. Have I said yet how fucking hot that was?”

The warm water rushed down over Dustin’s ice-cold body. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and if he opened his mouth, he might throw up. Now that would ruin it for the kid, wouldn’t it.

Trey reached past Dustin to grab a washcloth from a rack and pump shower gel into it. The gel, with its black-and-blue theme and the conspicuous marking ‘FOR MEN,’ was of the same brand as Trey’s body spray, though not quite the same scent. Dustin braced himself and managed to not flinch when the cloth pressed against his back.

The young man didn’t crowd in close, which was good, because Dustin still felt on the ragged edge of vomiting. Part of him wanted to scream and turn on Trey, to tear the fucking oblivious cover off the guy’s head and make him face the facts that Dustin did not want to be with him and that his fucking brain was so far in his dick that it would be laughably delusional if it hadn’t been sick as fuck. It was only the facts that Dustin’s feet were frozen solid on the tiles and that his throat was clenched tight against throwing up that saved him from the impulse.

Whatever Dustin needed to do to keep up the illusion was what he had to do. He took deep breaths and made himself relax. He focused only on the physical sensation of the washcloth. It felt nice. Damn it, Dustin knew that it was the warm attachment he always felt after sex, but if he set everything else aside, having someone else wash his back felt nice.

Trey talked while he moved the washcloth in slow circles. “Are your shoulders always this stiff?”

“No. It's just,” Dustin made his brain surface again, and he tried to keep a grip on it. “Just from working out this morning.”

“Hart’s a hardass, isn’t he?”

A short, sharp laugh escaped Dustin. “Yeah.”

Trey didn't know the half of it.

He started scrubbing Dustin’s arms. “I’m sort of sorry I said something about you not being in shape, man. That first time seeing you, I was a little high, to be honest.”

“I could tell.”

“Really?”

“I could smell it on you.”

Trey scrubbed the lines of Dustin’s hips and ass. Dustin’s ass needed a lot more cleaning than that surface scrub, and he could feel the lube in the lines of his crotch, but that was not something he wanted Trey doing for him.

“Yeah, well. But some of it was the pose, man. That real confident pose. If you’d had, you know, abs and shit, I probably would’ve sprung a full one right there in front of my folks.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that I’m not really in shape, then.”

“You’ll be even more hot when you are. Turn around?”

Dustin turned.

There weren’t many places to look other than at Trey, at least not without being it obvious that he was avoiding it. Without the excited and perpetually lustful look on his face, Trey looked a little older. There was a pleasure and contentment in his expression that hit a hollow place in Dustin’s stomach and made it echo like a gong.

God, he wanted to hate Trey, but the man was making it so fucking hard.

Trey worked more bodywash into the cloth and began scrubbing Dustin’s neck, his chest, his stomach. The washcloth lingered there, then tracked lower. A hard sensation thudded in the base of Dustin’s stomach.

“I’m going to need something stronger than bodywash for that,” he blurted.

“Yeah.” Trey’s smile was a little rueful. His damp, black curls hung into his eyes, and he swiped them back with his forearm. “I can feel the water sliding off my own dick, man. I’ve got stronger soap around here, somewhere, for that.”

The washcloth avoided Dustin’s groin and went lower. He didn’t know why he was surprised that Trey would get down on his knees and wash Dustin’s legs, but he did.

Actually, he did know why he was surprised. Everything about the class had emphasized that Trey was the owner and Dustin was the pet, and being down on your knees in front of another man was a subservient position.

The water hissed around them. No words were exchanged. The washing was soothing, and Dustin’s mind eased away from hatred and anger. He felt just… tired. Tired and sad.

After Trey finished, Dustin turned in the spray and rinsed. Trey passed him a bottle of good old dish soap, and Dustin tried to not die of embarrassment as he dolloped some into his hand and began the very intimate process of cleaning the underside of his balls and his asshole and his crotch and his upper thighs of the extremely slippery lube that the class had him using, all in front of his golden-retriever rapist.

“Man, next time, I’ve got to remember to tell you to use the makeup wipes before you get in the shower. Waterproof or not, it looks like you’re crying black.”

Dustin’s smile felt like it could crack his face. “Honestly, I forget I was wearing it.”

“It really brings out the shape of your eyes. I thought I had a thing for goth girls, but it turns out it was just the eyeliner, man. It's sexy as hell on you.”

“But you don’t wear it yourself?” It was profoundly odd to hold a very normal conversation while scrubbing his sore asshole with his fingertips.

Trey shook his head, sending droplets of water spraying like a dog shaking off its coat. “It doesn’t look good on me. It doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, I’ve got these bags under my eyes.”

There wasn’t much Dustin could do to argue. Trey did have deeply set eyes.

After Dustin finished cleaning himself and rinsed off, they swapped places in the spray. Despite the way that a nearly silent exhaust fan pulled a lot of the steam from the room, it couldn’t fully clear the For Men-scented mist from the air.

Trey passed him the washcloth, and it was Dustin’s turn to scrub. The young man fell silent as Dustin ran the washcloth over his skin. Unlike Dustin, the guy was fit. He had the subtle tan-lines of a jersey on his shoulders, a large mole in the middle of his back, and the sort of triangular figure that was, to Dustin’s mind, the masculine ideal. His ass clenched when Dustin washed it.

When he turned around, he had thickened up again. Seriously?

But then, at that age, hadn’t Dustin been perpetually horny? The guy had said he hadn’t been masturbating, and he was twenty. Dustin could remember when he’d been that young, when he and Jake first got together and hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. Three, sometimes four times a day. It had been crazy.

And that might be what Dustin was in for. He tried to distract himself as he washed Trey’s fuzzy chest. Facial hair wasn’t the only area that Trey’s hair-growing difficulty extended to. Dustin continued washing down over Trey’s hips. He carefully avoided Trey’s thickening dick. If he asked, Dustin would say… would say that it had lube on it, and the washcloth would get dirty…

But it was going to need to be washed. It had been inside Dustin’s body. It had—

Dustin tried to shove the thoughts away. He pushed them hard and they stayed but retreated to the background. His stomach twisted into a knot, and he had to clench his teeth against a fresh urge to vomit. The anger was nowhere to be found. The only thing he could come up with was self-loathing.

His emotions were a pendulum that couldn't stop swinging. Physical relief and rage and comfort and horror and disgust and it all felt like too much to keep operating. He needed to get out of there. He was an animal backed into a corner and he needed to get out. But there was nowhere to go. And Trey was watching him, and he had to keep Trey on his side.

Dustin went down to his knees and tried to avoid looking at the dick in front of his face. He rubbed the washcloth over the man’s legs. If Trey pulled his head forward, tried to get Dustin to suck his dirty dick, that was going to be it. He would scream in rage or fear or despair, and punch Trey or run, then he’d be assigned as a house izzy – and security is horny – or he’d be shipped off to Los Vegas and who knew what would happen then.

Trey’s hand moved, and Dustin jerked away so fast that he actually fell on his rump and scooted, like a person who has tripped while being chased by a bear. Then he realized what was actually happening. Trey had started to reach for the dish soap to squirt some into his hand.

The young man’s cleared his throat. “Uh. I don’t know what you’re into as far as, you know, butt stuff, man, but uh, horny as I am, I can’t help but think about where it’s been. You know? So, like, you don't have to worry, man.”

“Sorry. I thought. But, yeah. I don’t want to.” Dustin slowly got to his knees on the tiles, then his feet.

Trey shook his head. “Then it’s off the table, man.” He pumped some soap into his hand. “It’s my bad. Getting hard again’s probably mixing up the signal. But earlier? That was so fucking hot, man. I want to do it again so bad.”

Trey gripped himself and stroked. The soap barely lathered. Dustin stared from where he stood like a deer frozen in headlights. Even his mind felt like it had seized up.

Trey sighed and turned to rinse off. “But I’m starving.”

“Me too.” Dustin hoped that his response didn’t come too quickly past the blockage in his throat.

Trey spoke loudly enough for Dustin to hear him over the spray, even though he was faced away. “I wish my mom wasn’t so fucking strict about food in the bedroom. I’d just call Abby and have her bring us something. But I’ve even got to sneak energy drinks in here, man. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” It was going to happen again. Dustin knew that. But he wanted to put it off as long as possible, even if that was just another hour.

After they did their final rinses and dried off, Trey led Dustin out of the bathroom and back to the desk, past the messy bed and the butt plug on the floor. He sighed. “Sorry about this, man. I don’t want to get us in trouble.”

Trey picked the collar up off the desk and fastened it around Dustin’s throat. A press of the key, and it clicked in the back. The weight of the unyielding shock blister against his Adam’s apple felt like an accusation. Not as much of an accusation as the way that his body still thrummed from his orgasm, but still. You could have run.

He couldn’t have. But it was hard to move despair with logic.

Chapter Text

As Trey led Dustin back to the bedroom door, he tapped his watch. “Text Abby. Hey, I know it’s early, but I’m starving. You got anything special for lunch?”

As they walked past the wall of posed family photos through the high-ceilinged mansion hallway, the idea of a young man texting his family chef about lunch shouldn’t have seemed so odd, but it was just so far outside Dustin’s experience. He wondered what growing up like that would do to a kid. Maybe having instant gratification of his every whim, every day, was part of why Trey didn’t really question having a sex slave.

Trey glanced at his watch a moment later, before they had even rounded the corner, and he smiled sideways at Dustin. “She’s already working something up. I guess she knew it was test day, man, but it’s weird to think about someone thinking about having lunch ready if you’re hungry after, you know.”

“I guess it’s part of the job description for an indentured home chef. You must know to have a meal ready for when someone’s hungry after fucking his secretary.”

Trey grinned as if it had been a joke. “Maybe it’s written down somewhere, man.”

The vastness of the living room continued to throw off Dustin’s sense of proportion. His mind kept trying to interpret it as a living space rather than a display of wealth. If Dustin had wanted to get the attention of Abby, who was in the kitchen across the open-floorplan area, he would have to yell. Trey’s long-legged strides required Dustin to really stretch his own, and between the way his cageless dick rubbed in the padded thong and the sore emptiness of his ass, he felt every step.

And yet, he also felt more human. More stable. As if the clothes were keeping him inside his skin. Or maybe as if they were keeping out the threat of Trey being inside him.

Trey nudged aside one of the stools at the island and leaned against it. “That smells insanely good.”

Abby turned from the stove with a smile on her round face that showed off her dimples. Compared to the tall, lanky Trey, the short, curvy woman seemed tiny. The expansive kitchen space and the oversized appliances didn’t help. “Good afternoon, Mr. Brook. I know you normally like too have a sandwich, but Mr. Hart has Dustin on a strict diet, and I thought you might want something a little more substantial. I have chicken and asparagus going, and a salad done as well. Do you want anything else?”

“A side of something with carbs, ma’am? We’ve been burning through energy.” Though Trey had said that it was strange that she had thought of them fucking, he sure didn’t seem to mind boasting by implication. Dustin felt the heat rush to his face.

The small chef didn’t seem at all shocked. “Hmm. Gnocci with sage-butter sauce?”

Trey’s arm slipped possessively around Dustin. “You sure you can’t make any for Dusty? He’s going to get jealous if you keep talking like that.”

Abby’s smile widened. “I can’t tell you what to do, Mr. Brook, you know that. But if you’d like my advice?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I’d suggest following Mr. Hart’s recommendations. I’m sure you’d all like Dusty to get into shape as quickly as possible.”

Abby’s statement about Hart was very carefully unemphasized and had included a flick of the eyes toward Dustin. Would he get in trouble if Trey let him eat something outside of his diet? That didn’t seem fair, particularly if Dustin wasn’t asking Trey for food he wasn’t allowed to have. Or what if Trey tried to feed him some? The guy didn’t seem above overblown romantic gestures like that.

Dustin’s heart thudded low in the base of his throat. His mind raced. But he realized that she’d actually fed him the answer. “Well. I do want to get in shape, for Trey.”

Trey squeezed Dustin’s hip. “Man, you’re already sexy as hell. You’re going to be smoking with some definition.”

“I wonder how long it’ll take to see the changes,” Dustin said, actually wondering how long he was going to be confined to protein and greens.

Trey shrugged. “You’d have to ask Oman. He’s better at all that shit than me.”

“I will.”

Abby had turned back to the stove to flip the chicken breasts. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Where would you like to eat, Mr. Brook?”

It was a moment before Trey answered. “In the nook. It's a little more private.”

Abby nodded. “It shouldn’t be more than ten to fifteen minutes.”

The nook was directly connected to the kitchen on the pool-facing side of the house. It had a small, round table with a brightly teal-striped tablecloth. As with the rest of the house, tall, broad windows let in plenty of light. The view included the patio and what looked like an entire second kitchen, centered around a grill instead of a stove. Ferns overflowed pots in the windows, and there was a vase of fresh-cut flowers in blues and whites and yellows centering the table.

Trey pulled two of the round-backed white chairs closer together. They were light in construction and looked too casual to give off the right aura. Like the hallway, they were more of a statement that this was an intimate family eating area than something that appeared grounded in reality.

The young man settled into one chair, and Dustin took the other. It was good that he sat gingerly by habit, these days. There was no plug to rub his insides and no cage to painfully hold him down if that rubbing turned into a attempt at an erection, but there was a radiating soreness from his ass. It wasn’t the sharp, bright pain and intense ache that he was more familiar with from his times with Logan in jail.

Physically, it was more endurable. Mentally, it was not. Even if the men had entirely different means and intentions, it meant the same thing coming from Trey as it had from Logan. Every time Dustin shifted and was sore, he thought of how Trey had been inside him. How the man’s cum was still inside him, like a dark stain marking him, not as a person, but as property. Property of a rich kid instead of a prison daddy, but still property.

And this stain would never go away. It wouldn’t even have a chance to fade. Trey would fuck him again. And again and again and again. Maybe Dustin would be sore forever.

Trey’s voice snapped Dustin out of his depressingly dark whirlpool of thoughts. He leaned one of his elbows on the table and turned to look at Dustin, his tone light-hearted and chatty. “Ben said we ought to get you a haircut. What do you think?”

I shouldn’t have to ask someone else to get my fucking hair cut, was what Dustin thought.

What he said was, “My hair is getting pretty long.”

“I don’t know, man. It looks stylish to me. All those waves, and a little tousled, and you didn’t even do anything to it.” Trey reached out a hand and brushed it down the side of Dustin’s cheek, tracking a finger along his hairline from his temple behind his ear and down to his jaw.

Dustin shivered. Trey grinned. “But it’s your hair, man.”

It wasn’t. The fact that he needed Trey’s permission to cut his hair and get clothes said as much. Logan had owned Dustin in prison. The BISA doctor had owned Dustin in the warehouse. And now Trey owned Dustin in this mansion, no matter how cheerfully decorated the table was.

Dustin took another stab at getting his hairstyle back. “Just a trim, then? But if you want to, you know, see how it looks shorter, later….”

Trey nodded. “We can snap some pics and put filters on.”

It had been too much to hope that he might nudge Trey toward cutting his hair and that he’d like how it looked when he saw it. Dustin only just managed to not sigh. “Right.”

“Man.” Trey drew the word out into a long exhalation and dropped his hand to the table. “I wish I had your hair. Mine’s so much fucking work.”

The sort of ringlets that Trey had would require a lot of upkeep to keep glossy and healthy, unless he wanted to take his hair pretty short. And short was evidently not the fashion in the Southwest Coastal Territories. “But it looks good.”

Trey smiled, then he lifted his brows. “Ben said clothes, too?”

“If that’s okay.”

Trey laughed. Damn it, he had a nice laugh. “Man, I’m glad that plain shirt and jeans thing you’ve got going isn’t a you thing. Like, I thought you liked dressing like that, and I wasn’t going to say anything, but.”

Dustin glanced down at his outfit. It was definitely not a ‘him’ thing. “It’s just what they had available in the servants’ quarters. All I had when I came from the warehouse was grey sweats.”

Did Trey shift uncomfortably at the mention of a warehouse? Did it make him uncomfortable to remember that Dustin was his property, not his boyfriend?

Probably. Dustin wasn’t supposed to ruin it for him, but…

… but if Dustin was going to find some way to resist being a flesh-and-blood sex doll for a decade, he couldn’t completely avoid causing Trey any sort of discomfort. He needed to find some way to gently bring Trey around to the reality that what was happening wasn’t really consensual. But doing that would not be safe. And Dustin was a coward.

As a coward, he should just give up his resistance and just get through what was happening to him. Not consent to it, that wasn’t who he was, but he could try to, how had Hart had put it, just get over it? Find some way to accept that it was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not. Or try to twist his mind around to somehow let it be okay. The low thrum of postcoital pleasure under Dustin’s skin wasn’t just a source of shame, it could be a siren’s song. It had felt good, hadn’t it?

He could sell himself that fantasy. Just to get through the days. Maybe the nausea would even go away.

Except that he couldn’t do that and maintain any sense of self-respect or decency. Not resisting at all was like reaffirming that he was, in fact, property. He wasn’t. He was a fucking human being. If he was going to ‘just get over’ anything, it should be the fear of how wrong things could go.

You’re not a coward. Dustin tried the thought out tentatively. Then he tried it again, talking to himself like he would have talked to a friend. You’re not a coward because you are going to resist. Not by making some grand, sweeping gesture, but maybe it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture to be bravery. It’s brave because you’re going to do it even though you might get punished.

Weighty as the thoughts had been, Dustin’s internal back-and-forth had been lightning-fast. The moment of awkward silence between him and Trey hadn’t yet resolved. If Dustin’s past was making Trey a little uncomfortable, and if he was alone with Trey in a quiet nook of the house, it made the stakes of resistance feel rather low. He didn’t think that Trey would complain that Dustin was talking a little about his past.

Dustin looked away from the young man’s dark eyes and instead looked at the patio, as if he wanted to study the furniture that didn’t belong outdoors and the natural-gas firepit that was either never used or scrubbed thoroughly each time. “They’d already taken my clothes when I was going into jail, so the warehouse wasn’t so different, I guess. It was just that everyone was in grey sweats with numbers on them. That was what we were. Just numbers they called when they wanted us to…”

Masturbate, 107. The memory of the doctor’s voice during Dustin’s ‘medical examination’ closed his throat. Which was good, because his stomach clenched hard on nothing, and his tongue tingled a warning that he was on the edge of vomiting.

It had been stupid to try to talk about the BISA warehouse when what had happened to him there had been so close to what had just happened to him in Trey’s room. It had been an idiotic idea. And it hadn’t been resistance. Who the fuck was he kidding?

Dustin pushed back against his inner darkness just a little. It wasn’t stupid. It was a start.

Trey reached out and squeezed Dustin’s sweaty hand where it rested on the table. His fingers were strong and the fingertips were rough with calluses. “Well, you’re not just some number to me, Dusty. And you can wear whatever the fuck you want. What kind of clothes do you like?”

Dustin’s breath shuddered a little on its way in. His mouth tasted like fermenting lemons, but he didn’t think he was going to throw up. He made himself turn his clammy hand over and squeeze Trey’s back. “I like business casual. Like, well, like what Ben wears. Slacks and nice shirts. Jackets, though I guess jackets would be too hot here for the most part. Nice shoes.”

“It’s a good thing we’re not cutting your hair then,” Trey teased. “You’d look like an older brother instead of my secretary.”

“Twenty-nine isn’t old.”

Trey cracked a smile. “That’s close to retirement age for basketball.”

“Oh.”

Trey’s smile broadened into a grin of perfectly straight, artificially white teeth. “But don’t worry, man. Even if you could be my older brother, you’re hot as fuck.”

“As long as you think so.” It wasn’t a lovey-dovey statement. That Trey thought that Dustin was hot was a curse necessary to his survival.

Trey bumped Dustin with his shoulder. “Okay, man. I’ll tell Ben to send you shopping. But pick up something sexy while you’re out, okay? And something to swim in. I wouldn’t mind you swimming nude, man, but I wouldn’t want my real brother to see you and get jealous.”

Dustin’s cheeks lit on fire at the thought of the middle-schooler from the family portrait seeing Dustin naked in the pool, even though that clearly had been an older photo and he had to be an older teen, if not an adult.

Abby chose that moment to bustle into the breakfast nook with a platter and covered plates. “Here you go!”

Dustin didn’t think anything about the detour that Abby took around the table until she had to rest a hand on Dustin’s shoulder to keep her balance while she leaned across to place Trey’s plate before him. The contact wasn’t incidental. Her fingers gave his arm a quick squeeze and release before she stood with the empty tray.

Dustin stared at the food to keep the sting out of his eyes. It was silly that a brief moment of comfort from a stranger should affect him like that. As for the food, he hadn’t even seen anything like it at the fanciest restaurant he’d ever been to, much less at a cheerful little table. He knew from the Friday dinner that she was a fantastic cook, but the plates that she had set down were works of art. The fizzy green drink that went next to Trey’s looked cheap and tacky by comparison, even in a beautifully etched drinking glass. Dustin preferred his ice water.

“Wow, ma’am,” Trey said. “I shouldn’t have kept asking for sandwiches.”

“It’s my pleasure to cook for you when you’re home. I doubt that that college feeds you half as well as I do.”

“Not even close!”

“Well, then.” Dustin couldn’t see Abby’s smile, but it was in her voice. “I hope you’ll come out of your den for another proper meal this evening.”

As Trey confirmed that they would, there was no doubt in Dustin’s mind that she was intentionally buying him breaks. He cleared some of the thickness out of his throat. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“My pleasure. Enjoy.”

Dustin did enjoy the food. He had worried about whether his low-grade nausea would let him eat, but he was able to get it down. And it was legitimately delicious, the chicken tender and juicy and the flavor of the asparagus brought out by cracked pepper and balsamic vinegar. Even the yellow bell peppers in the salad were perfectly crunchy and sweet. Had he thought that he was getting tired of lean protein and vegetables? Maybe it was only because he’d been reheating prepared meals.

But he had an ulterior motive for lingering over lunch. Dustin wanted to take full advantage of the break that Abby had bought him by cooking the gourmet meal, even if it was just putting off the inevitable.

Chapter Text

The moment the plates were empty, Trey wanted to go back to his room, which only surprised Dustin in the sense that they’d actually finished lunch first. The bedroom door was barely closed before Trey pressed against him, kissing him deeply, gripping Dustin’s ass in his hands, and squeezing. They ground together until the young man’s cock was hard again. Dustin’s was not. The room still smelled of their earlier sex, and he found the smell stomach-turning.

When Trey’s hands started tracking up Dustin’s back, he forcefully pulled out of the kiss, panting. “Careful of the collar.”

“Oh,” Trey mumbled. “Right.”

He had Dustin’s collar off in short order and tossed it carelessly onto his desk. Their clothes were on the floor as soon as they could get out of them, and then they were back on the bed, Dustin’s knees up and spread and the younger man pounding away.

Dustin was sore, but the constant rubbing of his sweet spot was a fiery intoxicant, and the ache and occasional cramp faded past the background curtain of a horny buzz. He couldn’t keep the raw physical pleasure out of his panting breath. Eventually, Trey lost what control he had, buried himself deep, and came.

Dustin might have pleasure spreading warm rivulets under his skin with each beat of his heart, he might be hard and aching even though it couldn’t have been more than two hours since he’d last gotten off, but he hadn’t lost control and touched himself. He hadn’t given in to what was being done to him. That had to mean something.

Trey shifted his position so that he could kiss Dustin’s mouth, and the shift of the other man inside him made Dustin’s abs flex. Trey breathed out hard. “Damn, man. You’re so tight it, like, kind of hurts to cum. You know?”

Dustin nodded a little, remembering that the sensation from his times with his first boyfriend, Terrell, who had been a fiend for anal. At the time, Dustin had wondered whether it had been the condoms. Apparently not.

When Trey pulled out, Dustin shuddered. Being empty was a relief in more than one way. Trey flopped onto his back, panting and radiating an oniony post-workout smell. Dustin was glad that there was enough room for them to lie together separately. His skin was too sensitive, and the thought of Trey touching him made his throat tighten enough that it became hard to swallow.

So of course as soon as the young man wasn’t puffing like a bellows, he rolled onto his side and stroked his hand up the inside of Dustin’s thigh. Dustin gasped and shivered. His cock had started to lose its heaviness in the interim, but he felt the throb and sudden awareness of himself as it reacted with interest.

“You want me to get you, man?”

“Uh.” Dustin scrambled for a good reason to say no. “I mean, I’m not sure. It’s okay. I haven’t, you know, twice, since, well.”

The straight, white, perfect teeth in Trey’s grin probably wouldn’t have looked as predatory under other circumstances. “Sounds like a challenge.”

Dustin’s eyes closed. He didn’t want to see Trey’s teeth or the look in his eyes. As Dustin stretched up one leaden arm to allow Trey to slide in closer, he tried to picture Trey as someone else. Jake? But no, Dustin’s husband hadn’t really helped when he’d been the one to get off first.

Trey’s sweaty body pressed against Dustin’s side and he rested his forearm against Dustin’s thigh. His hand was tentative as it first closed around Dustin’s cock, as if he was taking the measure of him. Or maybe as if he’d never jerked another man off. Trey tugged and stroked Dustin’s half-hard cock like Dustin would have if he’d been warming himself up. Dustin’s breath sucked in.

“That feel good?”

“Yeah.” It was the truth in the physical sense only, but even admitting that much felt like standing on rotting wood.

Trey’s head bent to kiss Dustin’s chest. His breath was warm. “Let me know if I hurt you or something.”

Jesus.

Dustin tried to turn his mind off, to focus on his body and only his body. The sore space inside him ached pleasantly, especially when he tightened his ass to thrust up into the hand that was gripping him and stroking more confidently. He would start to feel the building of an orgasm, but then his mind would flick to where he was, who he was with, and he’d lose the edge. It felt like forever before the building pressure started to tip.

“I’m cumming.” The announcement was a breathless pant, and then the punch of pleasure hit him in the groin, making him groan and twist his fist into the sheet.

The orgasm itself was muted. Maybe because Dustin had already cum once, or maybe in comparison to the full-body orgasm he’d had earlier. When it was over, he lay panting on his back, the buzz under his skin making him want to relax and weep at the same time. He didn’t want to open his eyes, but he didn’t want to stay in the darkness behind his lids where the worst of the feelings were. He opened them and stared at the distant ceiling, his feelings an inseparably tangled ball of pain, remorse, apprehension, and hopelessness. He just wanted to be left alone.

Trey’s fingers stroked through the coarse hair on Dustin’s chest. Neither of them spoke for a time, then Trey half-sighed. “I’ve really got to piss, man. And I suppose we ought to take another shower.”

“Yeah.” Dustin made himself swallow a mouthful of thick spit. “Together, or?”

Trey laughed. “Man, you can’t turn me on again. My dick’s starting to feel beat up. You want to go first?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dustin said. Melodramatically, he thought, Nothing matters.

The ridiculousness of the thought, which would have been better suited to a depressed teenager, almost made him roll his eyes at himself. Yes, he was depressed, but there was plenty that still mattered. Lying alone in Trey’s room and looking at the ceiling, he tried to remind himself of that. In the general sense. He didn’t want to think about the specifics. Keeping a tally of things to live for passed the time.

When Trey got out of the shower, it was Dustin's turn. That time, he was able to dial the temperature up until it was as hot as he deserved, but no matter how hard he scrubbed his skin in the nearly scalding spray, he couldn’t wash the unclean feeling from his body. He had to give up before he rubbed himself raw. He helped himself to some of Trey’s shea butter, but there was no way he was going to touch any of the body spray. Even the deodorant was too strongly scented for his tastes, but he needed something.

When Dustin returned to the bedroom, Trey was on the big beanbag chair under the TV. A basketball game was on. Dustin’s eyes flicked over the floor, but didn’t want to put his nasty thong back on, and he didn’t want to sit on the damp towel wrapped around his waist. “Do you have any clean clothes for me in here, or?”

“No, man, but you can wear my boxers if you want. The band might be kind’ve tight. They’re in the second drawer in the closet.” Fortunately, Dustin had turned to what he presumed was the closet before Trey continued. “I’ll have to find some room in there for your shit.”

The familiar sickening drum in the base of Dustin’s stomach thumped. But of course he’d need clothes in Trey’s room. That didn’t necessarily mean he’d be here all the time, though, did it? Trapped in the room every hour of every day? He hadn't been in the izzy house long, but the thought of not going back made him painfully homesick.

Dustin took a deep breath after he pulled on Trey’s boxers, which were indeed tight around his waist, and he rehearsed the question mentally before he stepped out of the closet. He tried to sound like he was just curious. “Am I going to move in with you?”

Trey stretched around on the beanbag chair to look at him. When his arms were stretched like that, he had an impressive wingspan. “Well, not with me. I can’t take you to college yet, man. I can’t change to pet-friendly dorms ‘til fall semester. But I thought you might like the room ‘til then? And I'll have some time on weekends, even if I don’t drop the team.”

Dustin's throat tried to close up, but not before the bitter taste hit the back of his tongue. His hands felt suddenly too large and unwieldy. He didn't want to stay in the room where he’d been raped. But it wasn’t like he could say that to Trey.

No. That was wrong. Dustin was not a coward. He could say something.

Trey’s brows were starting to furrow. Dustin tried to clear the tightness out of his throat. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it. But, I think, if I was here alone, I’d get lonely. I’m starting to make friends…”

Well, that was a stretch. And Dustin had run out of room to massage the truth.

“Oh.” Trey’s head gave a little shake that flopped his damp curls around. “I didn’t think about that, man. Stay in the izzy house when I’m not here, if you want.” The young man’s brows drew together again. “Or even when I am here, if that’s what you want to do, man.”

Dustin knew that that wouldn’t be an option, but at least he wouldn’t have to stay in the huge blue room alone. He made himself smile. “Thanks.”

Did Trey look uncomfortable for a moment? He rubbed his hand back over his still-damp curls without digging his fingers in. “You don’t have to thank me. I want you to be happy, okay?”

“I know you do.” Be brave. Push back. Dustin drew in a deep breath as he moved to join Trey on the beanbag. “I just don’t know all the rules about, like, what it’s okay for me to do, yet.”

Trey didn’t say anything. Dustin wasn’t actually sure whether he’d picked up on the implication that there might be other things than Trey that constrained Dustin’s choices.

The beanbag chair was large enough to seat a whole family, but there was only so far Dustin’s little ember of courage could go in terms of pushing back against expectations. He eased down next to Trey, the young man put his long arm around Dustin’s shoulders, and Dustin leaned against him.

They watched the game. Or more accurately, Trey watched the game and enthusiastically explained basketball and the teams that were playing in the college tournaments. Dustin hadn’t been into basketball – football had been his game – and he tried to pick up on the rules. Trying to learn basketball was better than sinking into a pit of self-loathing as wide as the Pacific Ocean.

He was jerked out of his deeply inward thoughts when the door clicked. Trey must have felt him jump because the young man tightened his arm around Dustin and murmured, “It’s just someone to fix up the room.”

Dustin felt the warmth start in his chest and spread upward. Of course someone would need to change the blanket. Not the sheets, they hadn’t made it to the sheets, but the blanket was ruined. And the bathroom floor.

Someone was going to know how well-fucked Dustin had been. It was so mortifying that he gladly would have fallen into a hole and buried himself. Everyone in the izzy house knew what Dustin was there for, but there was something drastically different between someone knowing something from logic and gossip, and someone actually looking at the evidence. And clean it up.

Dustin didn’t even have to wonder who it was. The rattle of bracelets didn’t carry very well over the sound of the TV, but they did carry. How was he ever going to be able to look Luka in the eyes again?

He must have shivered or shuddered because Trey’s hand stroked down his arm with the absence of a man stroking a startled pet. Dustin tried to focus his attention on the back-and-forth of the game, the way the men seemed to almost dance a graceful choreography, but his attention was split between that and the sounds in the suite until the door clicked closed behind Luka.

Chapter Text

Trey had switched to another tournament game after the first, and it was almost over when the knock came on Trey’s door. The young man turned his head slightly to the side. “Yeah?”

“Can I come in.” Even muffled by the door, Hart’s tone made it clear that it wasn't really a question.

Dustin didn’t think he imagined Trey’s flinch. Or maybe it was Dustin’s flinch, and it just felt like Trey’s body was the one moving. Was the sweat smell from earlier, or was it fresh fear?

Trey’s arm slipped from around Dustin’s shoulders. He put an elbow on the back of the bean-bag chair and turned to the door, “Sure.”

With the slow-motion feeling of a man in a nightmare, Dustin turned too. The door opened and disgorged Hart into the room. The man’s expression was blank, his eyes as sharp and black as obsidian. “Your izzy’s collar has been deactivated for hours.”

“Man.” Trey’s voice had the subtly whiny burr of a teenager anticipating a lecture. “The GPS is still on, isn’t it?”

“BISA isn’t likely to find out,” Hart confirmed. “But your dad wanted me to check on you. He’s not happy about it.” His eyes flicked to Dustin and back, quick as a snake. “He said he’d given you an inch and you’d taken a mile. But frankly? I think he was worried your new dog bit you.”

Trey sat up straight. “Shit.”

Hart ticked his chin toward Dustin. “He’s coming with me.”

“Shit,” Trey said again. He turned to Dustin. The regret in his face did nothing to soothe Dustin’s sense of doom. “Sorry, man. I hope I didn’t get you in trouble.”

He turned back to Hart. “It’s not his fault, Oman. I took it off him and didn’t put it back on, man. You feel me?”

“Yeah.” Hart shrugged. When he turned his hard eyes back to Dustin, they held no indication that whose fault it was mattered. “Get up. Get dressed. In your own clothes.”

The sore ache flared up inside Dustin as he took down Trey’s boxers, gathered up his clothing, and put it back on. It really sucked. The collar clicked at the nape of his neck after Hart fastened it around his throat.

Trey sighed. “See you later, Dusty.”

Dustin hoped that he would, in fact, see Trey later. Being with Trey was bad, but things could be so much worse, and Dustin didn’t think that Hart was going to accept excuses or apologies. He was going to have to find some way to keep himself safe from Trey’s poor decision-making in the future. If there was a future.

Dustin followed Hart into the shadow-filled hallway like a whipped dog expecting another beating. The house was silent, the lights not yet turned on, even though it was starting to go dusky outside. Somewhere, a person was holding a one-sided, muffled conversation. The family portraits on the walls were creepy dark shapes.

Deep in his soul, Dustin knew that nothing he could say would change anything. Hart had never given Dustin any sign that explaining, pleading, or begging would do him any good. All signs pointed in the opposite direction. But Dustin couldn't stop himself from turning up his belly and trying.

“It wasn’t my fault. He took it off me. I couldn't tell him to put it back on.”

“I don’t care.” The lack of inflection in Hart’s gravelly voice made it more ominous, not less.

Dustin’s heart pounded in his throat as he followed Hart into the living room. The TV over the fireplace was on but silent, the image stationary like someone had just paused it to step away for a moment. “There wasn’t anything I could do. Please don't—”

“Hush.” The softly-spoken word still packed the punch of ‘shut up’ when said in Hart’s gruff voice.

Will you fucking stop? He said he doesn’t care. Grow a spine already. They were his own thoughts but not really in his voice. No part of Dustin had ever spoken to himself like that. Except maybe the part that had encouraged him to be brave.

But Dustin literally could not stop the words from pouring out in a whisper, even though he knew it was pointless. “Please, Mr. Hart. It wasn't my fault.”

“Don't make me zap you in the house.” Hart’s low voice was pleasant. He reached out a meaty hand and put it on Dustin’s shoulder. The squeeze was hard enough to hurt. “He could come out here. Then what?”

Dustin would have turned around to make sure that Trey wasn’t following them, but Hart’s hand on his shoulder prevented that. His stomach remained a rolling tar-pit of dread, but he swallowed the pleas down with a mouthful of sour spit when they tried to bubble up again.

The air outside was cool and moved lazily, as if the sun sinking toward the horizon was beckoning for it to follow. It felt later than sunset to Dustin. Hart didn't say anything as he led him to the izzy house, and even though his heart didn't stop beating hard in his throat and the urge to plead his case was almost as visceral as breathing, he kept his mouth closed.

Hart held the front door open for him and propelled him through with a push on his shoulder. The foyer lights were on and the TV was going in the living room, but the lights weren't on in the locker room until Hart hit the switch. The harsh white lights made the tiles glow like they had been lit from within.

“Strip.”

Dustin's pleading protests caught in his throat. Stop it. Try to grow a spine. At least try.

In no time at all, Dustin was naked. He had carefully folded his clothing on the green locker-room bench. His shivering was not from the temperature. The smell of fear-sweat was strong despite Trey’s scented deodorant, and Dustin felt a drop tickle down his side. He clutched his hands in front of himself protectively, as if Hart hadn’t seen it all before.

The squat, thick-bodied man frowned at him. “Move your hands.”

Dustin made himself move his hands to his sides. Hart grunted, as if he didn't like what he saw.

“I let him fuck me,” Dustin said defensively. “He thought I liked it. I did what I was supposed to. The collar—”

“Where's your base ring?”

Dustin blinked at the seeming nonsequitor. “What?”

“The base ring.” Hart’s low voice was slow-paced, as if he was speaking to a particularly thick child. “For your cock cage. Where is it?”

“It’s, uh.” Dustin had to think. The afternoon had already blurred into a series of vivid images, like a picture album of rape. “On the counter. In his bathroom.”

“He took it off you?”

Dustin swallowed hard. He stared at the floor. “Yes. He unlocked it when he, when we…”

“Stop fucking around.” Hart’s voice was like a slap, and it was followed by a zap of pain across his throat. Dustin coughed and struggled for breath. His hands clenched into fists so that he wouldn’t try to pull off the collar. Touching it would be worse.

“The ring, Merrill. Who took it off. Answer the question.”

Dustin shook his head, dislodging one of the tears in the corner of his eyes. He coughed. “I took it off. To shower.”

“And you didn't put it back on.” Hart sounded like he was dangerously warming up to the conversation. Dustin, meanwhile, was getting colder and colder. He wedged his hands into his armpits, shivered, and shook his head.

Hart turned to one of the lockers, and the *chunk* of him operating the mechanism made Dustin flinch. He blurted, “I didn’t think I needed to.”

Except that on some level he had known, or he wouldn’t have thought about throwing it in the trash. He wouldn’t have thought about plausible deniability. Part of him had known what he was doing and had just hoped it would slip someone’s attention.

It had been foolish. Dustin’s mind scrambled for an excuse. “I didn’t— I don’t know how to, to put it back on.”

“And yet. You took it off.”

Dustin was starting to get dizzy. His chest heaved where his arms had tightly crossed over it. “I.. I…”

“Here’s what I think. You thought he wouldn't ask you to put it back on.” Hart didn’t slam the locker door, but the sound of it closing still made Dustin flinch. “You're probably right. The kid’s sweet. So even though he told his teacher that he thought a locked cock was hot as hell. He probably wouldn’t ask you to put the cock cage back on. Not after you took off the base ring.”

Hart turned. His eyes were flat black stones. He opened his hand, and metal clattered to the surface of the green bench by the lockers. The circle of a base ring almost fell through the space between two slats. A heart-shaped padlock did slip through to clatter on the floor. A pump bottle of lube thudded against the bench and fell onto its side.

Dustin sat before Hart asked him to. A dull ache throbbed through his insides, then subsided. Hart dropped a chemical ice-pack on the bench with a plastic smack. Then he looked at Dustin expectantly.

Dustin reached for the ice pack.

There was something worse about putting the cage on himself. Yes, Hart was there, dictating steps that were actually very simple, and his physical presence was a threat of ‘or else.’ But it was Dustin’s hands moving his body and the metal. Just like it had been his hands stroking himself when he…

Dustin yelped when the collar zapped him, then choked and coughed.

“Stop stalling.”

Hart wouldn’t care that he hadn't been stalling. Dustin fumbled the little heart-shaped padlock and got it to snap closed, holding the sheath in place. Hart tossed Dustin a towel, and he dried his hand with it. The lube had been water-based and was starting to get tacky.

“Bend over the bench.” It was a direction as bland as ‘turn left’ or ‘lube the sheath too.’ But that Hart was starting to unbuckle the belt that looped through his jeans.

Dustin’s mind hung like a file that wouldn't load. The circle just kept spinning.

“Merrill.” It was Hart’s last warning.

“I didn't do anything. Please.” Dustin blurted the words out, but he still bent over the bench, putting his palms on the surface in what he hoped would be a stable position.

“Lie to me again. And you’re going to piss me off.”

Dustin’s bones turned to shards of ice. If this wasn’t Hart being pissed, he didn’t want to know what a pissed-off Hart looked like.

The first crack of the belt came without warning. Dustin heard the snap of the leather and felt the thud of impact a moment before the fiery pain licked up his back and down the backs of his legs, radiating like the ripples of an earthquake from an epicenter. Dustin shouted in surprise as much as hurt. It was painful and humiliating enough without the way the strike jolted his sore ass. He’d let himself be fucked, and he was being punished anyway. It wasn't fair.

Dustin wished that he’d stop his pointless begging even as the words poured from his mouth, now tightened and quickened by pain. “Please don’t. If he sees the marks…”

Dustin literally couldn’t finish the rest. The thought of what might happen caught in his throat as if Hart had zapped him.

The burly man’s chuckle was as dangerous as the rumble of earth before an earthquake. “This isn’t about him. This is about you. But if he thinks it’s about the collar? Maybe he'll pay attention rules. Or maybe he won’t want a secretary. Actions have consequences, Merrill.”

The belt cracked against the meat of Dustin’s ass again. If anything, it hurt worse than before. That time, he managed to bite off his pained cry, and it didn’t echo back nearly as loud as the crack of the belt. The pain was almost nothing compare to the fear that swamped him. To have gone through everything he had, only to have something worse happen to him—

“I don't think that’ll happen,” Hart said calmly. “This barely leaves marks. Not like the cane.”

The belt cracked against Dustin’s ass again, and the fiery pain just kept building. If it hurt this much but was barely going to leave marks, Dustin didn’t want to know what a caning was like. The only thing that kept him in place was the bone-deep knowledge that, if he moved, Hart would do something worse.

“And the kid’s got a taste of your ass, now. He wants to tap it. You’ll come up with something. If his dad doesn’t get rid of you. Bad investment, maybe. Disruptive.”

The belt snapped two more times. Dustin thought his skin might split. Or maybe it had, and the radiating warmth was actually his blood.

“That’s five, Merrill. Next time? It’ll be more. If you lie to me again? We’re going to be in ‘fuck around and find out’ territory. You feel me?”

A tear dripped off the side of Dustin’s nose and made a glistening dot on the green metal of the bench, at home among the other glistening dots. He hadn’t even realized he was weeping. “Yes, sir.”

The burning pain became a screaming sting. Dustin flinched but didn’t move. It took him a second to feel the warmth of Hart’s hand through the hot pain from the belt. He heard the subtle hiss of skin on skin as the man caressed his burning butt. “You aren’t on board yet. You’ve still got ideas. The sooner you get over them? The less we’re going to have to do this.”

Tears continued to leak from the corners of Dustin’s eyes and drip from the tip of his nose. His muscles were taken by a fine trembling. He wasn’t sure which hurt more, his body, or his soul. And he didn’t know how long Hart caressed his burning ass, the sting a rising symphony of violins, but eventually, the hand dropped away. “Don’t put your clothes back on. Not until morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dustin didn’t realize that it was over until he heard the thump of the door across the room. Even then, it took him some time to catch his breath, to stop shaking, to be sure that he wasn’t going to start sobbing. He stood slowly, and it felt like the skin of his bottom was the paper on the outside of an onion, ready to crack and peel off at the slightest touch.

Moving was torture. Every bend and twist hurt. After fishing his phone from the pocket of the jeans, Dustin put the clothing he had stacked on the bench into the hamper. He held onto the shirt for a moment, thinking about how he could hold it in front of him to protect his modesty at least a little as he walked through the night-full living room. But Hart had told him to not put his clothes back on, and if humiliation was the point, it would be as good as asking for another whipping.

Dustin made his fingers loosen and let the shirt fall from his fingertips into the hamper. He shuffled to the locker-room door wearing nothing but the metal cage that hung from his dick. And that, he knew, would draw more attention than protect it from prying eyes.

Chapter Text

Dustin prayed that there would be no one in the hallway when he stepped out into it. He had wiped his face off with the shirt before dropping it into the hamper, but he knew that his eyes would be bloodshot and red-rimmed. And, of course, he was utterly naked. He stood at the locker-room door for a long time before he gathered the courage to open it.

The main hallway was brightly lit, but not compared to the harsh white light of the locker room. The sound of the rec room TV drifted on the air, an auditory reminder that he was going to have to slip through a room full of people with his ass and eyes red and everything else on display. But he told himself that he only needed to go around the corner to the stairs. He told himself that the main body of the living room was in the other direction, with the TV facing away. He told himself that it was possible that no one would see him. He told himself that he would go fast and keep his eyes down. He told himself that he could do it without freezing up.

It didn’t matter that he was under standing orders by Hart to socialize and not go to bed early. He’d socialized with Trey and wasn't going to bed right away. Hart might not accept that rationale, but though Dustin hadn’t been willing to take a second whipping for the t-shirt, but he would take one over lurking naked in the rec room for an hour.

Dustin took a deep breath, shielded himself with one of his hands, left the locker room, and started down the hallway.

He made it three steps before he froze. A woman, skinny and white and with very red hair, stepped into the hall from the kitchen. He’d been introduced to two women the night before with a similar look, and he couldn’t remember which was which. Not that it mattered. Dustin hoped that she wouldn’t notice him, but she must have caught movement in her peripheral vision because she turned to him with the standardly polite smile of someone about to greet an acquaintance.

She almost tripped over her own feet. Her mouth formed a little ‘o’ and her eyes flicked down Dustin and back up. Her face turned almost as red as her hair and she retreated into the dining room without saying anything.

It was only a slight exaggeration to say that Dustin wanted to die of embarrassment. Or throw up on his toes.

He kept his eyes on his feet. When he could convince his frozen muscles to move, he didn’t run, but he walked with long, fast strides that his burning ass strongly protested. Around the corner. To the stairs. He hoped that no one in the main room noticed him, but Luka was sitting in their habitual place in the reading-nook corner made by the L-shaped stairs. It was too much to hope that they hadn’t seen him. Dustin kept his eyes down and his hand firmly in place, and he made his stiff legs keep moving.

He now had two reasons why he’d never be able to look Luka in the face again.

At least the upstairs hallway was empty. And then Dustin was in his room, with the door closed behind him. He was, if not safe, at least not actively in danger. His body processed that before his mind did, and he started shaking. It was an exhausted trembling that began in his hands and quickly moved across his body like the aftershocks after an earthquake. He actually watched his hands shake, not feeling particularly connected to them.

When the knowledge that he’d been raped and beaten and humiliated but was still alive hit, laughter dug its claws into his diaphragm and started bubbling up into his throat. He barely made it to his bed and grabbed the pillow before he gave in to desperate, manic laughter.

Some part of Dustin sat back and watched with the wariness that someone would devote to an unknown dog behaving strangely. Even to himself, he felt unhinged. The rest of him screamed with laughter until he started sobbing, without any clear delineation between one and the other. Spanked with a belt and sent to his room sobbing like a baby. Except that Dustin’s parents had never hit him, so there was nothing to compare it to.

By the time he had finished, the pillow was wet. He was just moving to toss it on the bed when there was a light knock at his door.

Dustin froze.

The quiet knock came again. Then Luka’s voice came through the door, and Dustin was so relieved that it wasn’t Hart that he almost couldn’t process the words. “I know that you might be thinking, ah, there is no way that I’m prepared for visitors, particularly at this hour and under these circumstances, but you really do want to let me in.”

“I’m not—” Decent, Dustin thought, and the laughter started to try to bubble in his stomach again through the thin tar-pit of nausea. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

Luka’s voice was as light and airy as Dustin’s was unsteady. “I understand, darling, I truly do, but there is nothing about seeing you that would be startling to me, and you do want to see me. Ideally before anyone notices me standing outside your door.”

Was it something in their voice? Was it something about the slight urgency of the last sentence? Whatever it was, Dustin wasn’t going to step to the door and open it, but the giddy the hysteria that had been threatening to come back popped like a soap bubble. He lowered the pillow, clutching it in front of his crotch. “Uh, okay. It’s not locked.”

Despite knowing that it was going to happen, Dustin flinched when the door opened. It was unlikely that Luka saw it. They had bumped the door open with their hip and were closing it behind them with an elbow.

When Luka turned, their brown eyes fixed on Dustin’s face and stayed there. Luka didn’t even glance toward Dustin’s desperately held pillow. “Considering the way that our dear friend Oman has been working you in the gym as if you’re in the running for the Olympics, I think it highly unlikely that he sent you to bed without supper. And yet, these boxes remained in the fridge, despite the hour.”

Dustin’s mouth opened, closed, and then he actually saw what was in Luka’s hands. Two snap-lock containers, one slightly larger than the other. Meal-prep boxes.

Luka took a delicate step forward and turned to Dustin’s dresser, placing both of the containers down before producing a bowl from under one arm, a fork from one pocket, and a full water bottle from the other. It was a startling amount to have hidden on so thin a person, but the flowing geometric top and loose linen pants seemed to offer plenty of places to hide.

Their voice was as dry as a desert. “I can only imagine that our friend will be looking for any other excuse to whip you, as he quite enjoys that kind of thing.”

“I didn’t think about eating.” It was a stupid thing to say. Clearly he hadn’t.

“Yes. Well, here you are. I would offer to simply leave you to your salad and your undoubtedly well-cultivated sense of humiliation, but we aren’t supposed to keep food in our rooms, and someone will have to smuggle your leavings back to the kitchen. I doubt you’re up to it.” Luka stepped back away from the boxes. “Do you mind if I take the window? I could study my nails while looking at the door for fifteen minutes, but I do believe that the view would become tedious.”

“Uh. I mean, of course.”

The room was wide enough for two people to pass in the center aisle, but only just. Dustin hesitated, then decided that if he was going to bump Luka with anything, he’d prefer it to be his crotch instead of his burning ass. He leaned backward into the sleeping nook. But Luka managed to get past him with only the barest brush of loose clothing against Dustin’s protective pillow and went to stand by the window.

Dustin looked at the two boxes on his dresser, the plate, the fork, the water bottle. For no reason at all, small pieces of things barely noticed and half-remembered popped into place like someone straightening a stiff joint. “This happened to you, didn’t it.”

Luka’s voice became acid. “In return for my benevolence under the present circumstances, I would like you to remember that I prefer not to talk about my past.”

“Sorry,” Dustin mumbled. He wasn’t hungry, but he decided to put food in his mouth before he put his foot back into it. The larger of the two containers held a salad with goat cheese and slices of apple that somehow hadn’t browned. The apple slices were a little sour. The other box held baked chicken, of course. Dustin made himself stab the greens with the fork.

After a long stretch of silence broken only by the sounds of the crunch of lettuce between Dustin’s teeth, Luka sighed. “I apologize as well. I’m aware that you are not exactly a rational person right now, and do not actually intend to insult me or ignore my preferences.”

The memory of telling Luka off flashed through Dustin’s mind. I told them to fuck themself. What did I say? I think I said, what would you know about being raped. And they said that was an interesting question.

Why Luka didn’t want to talk about their past should have been obvious, at that point.

Dustin cleared the tightness out of his throat. “You aren’t the one who should apologize. It’s clear, you know, that you’re a private person. And I appreciate you doing this. After I told you to, well. After I was rude a couple nights ago.”

“A rational person does not always apologize on account of being wrong. A person might apologize when there is something more important than being right.” Luka was half-turned to the window while examining their rainbow-painted nails. “You should remember that when you become a rational person again.”

Dustin’s laugh was short and bitter. “That seems pretty unlikely.”

“It’s truly amazing what one can become used to living with, given the miracles of modern pharmacology.”

The miracles of… oh. Luka meant mood drugs. Dustin tore off a bite of chicken and washed it down with a mouthful of water. It sat precariously on top of the salad in his stomach, balanced on the tip of a pyramid of nausea, but it didn’t fall. He cleared his throat again. “I’m not sure that that’s allowed for, you know, me. Hart said that it’d be on my medical record, and Trey might see it and not want me anymore, because of knowing that, uh. And then they would...”

Dustin couldn’t make himself say the rest, but it turned out that he didn’t need to. Luka’s voice was as light and airy as if Dustin had never annoyed them. “Our dear friend Oman threatened to put a ‘free use’ placard around your neck and turn you out into the garden, I assume?”

“Something like that,” Dustin mumbled.

“If that’s what he has you by the balls with, my dear, let me assure you that it seems like a vanishingly slim possibility. I doubt your young master is inclined to peek into your medical records. He doesn’t seem like the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying goes.”

That rang true as a gong. Trey wouldn’t look for anything that he didn’t want to see. And Dustin wasn’t entitled to much, but he was entitled to medical care. When his social worker came around, he’d talk with them about his mental health. “Thank you. Again.”

“Are you done eating?”

Dustin glanced down into the boxes and was surprised to see that they were both empty. “Yes.”

“Wonderful. I’d like to get this detritus back to the kitchen before the stairs become more in vogue. Discretion is the better part of disobedience, and as charming as you presently are, I would not like to spend my recreation time hiding in your room from our dear friend Oman.”

The sarcasm that Luka placed on Dustin’s being charming stung, but he didn’t deserve any better. He leaned back to let Luka switch places with him, then watched in amazement as everything but the largest box disappeared into Luka’s garments.

They looked back once before leaving. “I won’t bid you a good night, but I will suggest that you sleep on your stomach.”

“Thank you.”

And then the thin person was gone from the room like a wisp of smoke being pulled out by a fan. Dustin leaned against the counter and looked at where Luka had been, thoughts swirling and tumbling in his head. They hadn’t sorted themselves into any sort of coherent order before he decided to try for the bathroom so that he could do his nightlies as best he could. After what Luka had said, it seemed wise to get through that before the living room crowd decided it was time for bed. Hart hadn’t given him permission to not brush his teeth.

Chapter Text

Luka’s advice to sleep on his stomach was good, but that didn't mean Dustin was able to sleep well. He was not normally a stomach-sleeper, so not only did the cock cage dig into his pelvis, he kept trying to roll onto his side. The second his burning ass touched a surface, it hurt almost as bad as when Hart had been whipping him. Eventually, Dustin took his pillow out from under his head and stuffed it under his hips to provide some support. That helped a little.

The second problem was that he kept listening for the *ding* of a text message or for the innocuous chiming that Hart had set as Trey’s ring-tone. His body was Trey’s to do what he wanted with it, and presumably if Trey wanted a 3 am booty call, Dustin would have to find his way through the house to Trey’s bedroom.

Naked. Ass burning. Terrified of how he would explain it. Even more terrified that Trey might find it hot, that the comment would get back to Hart, and that it would give Hart an excuse to administer more whippings.

Hart enjoyed them, Luka had said. Dustin's mind jumped to Hart caressing his burning ass, then back to Hart spanking him for forgetting to do his plug homework, and from there to how the man had had an erection.

The pain and worry melted into Dustin's dreams. In his dream, instead of just stroking Dustin's ass while he wept, Hart spread Dustin's cheeks with his thumbs and fucked him hard and fast. Then Hart became Logan, telling him to be good for daddy and sing, bitch, sing. When Dustin's ass clenched, the sore ache half-woke him. The awake part of Dustin knew that it hadn’t been Logan who had hurt him this time, it had been Trey. The asleep part of him incorporated that knowledge into the dream, and instead of Logan, it was Trey fucking him and telling him that if he was good, daddy might let him cum next time, but only if he admitted that he wanted it and begged for it like the little slut he was.

It was a bad night.

Dustin was groggy when his phone went off in the morning, and his butt was tender, but it wasn’t still on fire. What had Hart said about his pants? Not until morning? It was morning, but it was better to not risk it. Dustin wanted a record of his diligence.

- Dusty: Can I wear my pants now?

The response was almost immediate:
- Mr. Hart: Sure

Except that Dustin had to put his plug in, first, which meant he needed to use the bathroom. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why did everything have so many steps? He wrapped his towel around his hips and went to the bathroom, and at least no one was in there. He was able to get in, out, and back to his room without encountering a soul.

Getting the plug in was a literal pain in the ass. The skin of his butt felt sore and bruised, and his ass itself was sore in a different but expected way. As for the plug, when he was pressing it into his body, he had the vivid mental image of himself arching up into Trey’s body and stroking his cock while the man raped him.

The flashback was complete and visceral. The sight, the sounds, the sensations, even the smell of Trey’s body spray. When Dustin came back to himself, his hands were shaking badly and the plug was back out. At least he’d put a towel down, so it wasn’t on Luka’s delightfully clean sheets.

The urge to laugh at the thought of Luka being pissed about having to clean Dustin’s sheets when he was the person who had had to deal with the mess in Trey’s rooms was as intense and painful as a blow to the solar plexus, complete with the breath bursting out of Dustin in a harsh caw. Giddiness threatened to float Dustin on a sea of hysteria, but he managed to get ahold of himself with both of his mental hands and wrestle himself into some semblance of sanity.

Trey still hadn’t texted Dustin by the time he’d finished and cleaned up. So, what then? Breakfast, probably, and then to the gym? Like a class morning without the class? Following the usual schedule seemed like a good idea. The safest idea. The one that wouldn’t give Hart an excuse to whip him.

After a breakfast that he didn’t taste, surrounded by people who paid just as little attention to him as he did to them, Dustin went to the gym. Hart was indeed waiting there. The broad-shouldered man had his arms crossed, and a smirk twisted his lips. “How’s your ass?”

“Fine.” Dustin tried not to sound defensive. If Luka was right about Hart liking Dustin’s pain, he wasn’t going to give the man any more satisfaction than he had to.

“Well, then. Let’s do some rowing.”

Dustin cleared the tightness out of his throat. “Shouldn’t I be available? In case Trey texts me?”

“Nope. You’re all mine.”

Dustin felt his heart stop. There was a single thud in the center of his chest and then nothing but the sudden, visceral need to check his pulse. He hoped that Hart couldn’t see that the way that he clasped his hands together dug his thumb into the soft point in his wrist. According to that, his heart beat hard and fast.

Hart turned to the lockers. “The kid’s grounded.”

Relief flooded Dustin’s body, and not just because he wasn’t going to be all Hart’s in more than a temporary sense. Grounded had to mean a reprieve from Trey and everything that the man expected. Dustin might have some time to get his legs back under him. How long would a rich kid be grounded from his sex slave for the offense of not obeying the spirit of a rule? A day? A week? A month? A month felt like too long to hope for.

Dustin took in a deep, slow breath. “Do you know how long he’s grounded for?”

Hart shrugged. “Get changed.”

The morning in the gym was brutal. Hart ran Dustin to the ragged edge of exertion and held him just short of hurting himself or throwing up. He would have been a good personal trainer, under other circumstances. After just a week of the Hart Program For Muscles, Dustin hadn’t noticed much of a change in how his body looked, but he felt stronger. He was stronger. He could lift more weight for longer, row for longer, do more squats. It was more progress than Dustin had expected after so short a time.

He was wringing-wet with sweat by the time Hart released him for lunch with the order to be back in an hour.

Instead of the kitchen being empty, Chef Abby was presiding over the stove. The smell of baking bread was mouthwatering, even more so because Dustin’s body was being starved of the carbs he desperately wanted.

The woman’s light-brown eyes widened. “Dustin! I didn’t expect to see you today.”

The reasons why she might not expect to see him hung unsaid in the air between them the like a crooked painting. Had she expected that he would still be with Trey? Or had the red-haired woman in the hallway talked about seeing him after the whipping? Both options were mortifying.

After an awkward moment, Dustin cleared his throat. His collar vibrated. “I’m starving. Hart’s murdering me in the gym. By the way, thank you for all of your delicious meals. This diet is so hard. I can only imagine it without, well, all the things you can do with chicken. And fish.”

Her smile was warm and gentle. “Thank you. I’ve prepped your meals for the start of the week. But if you can wait another half an hour or so, we’re all getting together for lunch after the services?”

“The services?”

Abby nodded. “Mass for the Catholics, other things for the protestants. The agnostics are around here somewhere.” Now that she mentioned it, Dustin did vaguely recall other people being in the gym through his haze of exhaustion. “But it’s traditional to have an afternoon meal together on Sunday afternoon. Ben didn’t tell you?”

Dustin shook his head. He felt a trickle of water from his recent shower start down behind his ear.

“Oh. He must’ve thought you wouldn’t be able to make it.” The woman’s smile was apologetic.

Dustin felt like a comma in the center of a book of blank pages. He tried to smile away the feeling that he was profoundly out of place. “That’s fine. I can’t make it anyway. Hart wants me back in the gym in—” Dustin checked his phone “—thirty minutes.”

“Let me fix you a plate. Everything but the biscuits are done.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry you have to work instead of, well, if you’re religious.”

Abby’s smile had a wry twist in the corner. “My morning’s Saturday.” She began to bustle around to get him a plate and bowl together. “I’m sure you’d be welcome to attend services, when you’re free. Or if you’re not religious, it can be a nice excuse to get off the grounds. Though…”

Dustin had been watching, knowing that trying to help would mean getting in the way. From the way she had trailed off, he thought he knew what she’d been going to say, but he needed to hear it. “Though?”

Abby’s reluctance lasted for as long as she used tongs to transfer salad into a bowl. Then she sighed. “Mr. Brook’s secretary was rarely around on the weekends, even before she was moved out.”

“Ah.” A large part of Dustin wanted to avoid the topic, but a larger part felt the need to know. “I suppose that makes sense. And. Trey talked about ‘pet-friendly dorms.’ So I suppose it’s not likely that I’ll be around even for the weekdays, soon, either.”

“Probably not.” Abby sighed. “I’m sorry, Dustin. You seem like such a nice man. I can’t imagine what you did, to end up here. Not that anyone deserves what you’re going through.”

Dustin suddenly respected Luka’s intense need for privacy. The raw wound that was Jacob and Logan was not something that Dustin wanted to talk about. He tried to deflect the subject. “I could say the same about you. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve met.”

“Kidnapping.” Abby’s expression had returned to wry. She slid a plate and a bowl across the island to Dustin. “Not that I thought of it that way at the time.”

Dustin felt too shocked to respond. It was hard to imagine this small woman whose cheeks dimpled when she smiled kidnapping anyone. And he’d thought that violent crimes—

Abby went on as if she was talking about the weather or the hockey scores. “In the first place, they were my own kids. In the second place, the kinds of drugs I was on didn’t leave me very clear-headed. They were in protective custody when I took them. And so.” She made a circular gesture with the tongs. “Here I am.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I am, too. It’s quite a long sentence.” For something that Luka had said people were reluctant to talk about, Abby certainly didn’t seem to feel the same way. “I hope the Brooks will keep me on when it’s over. I’ll be too old to restart my life.”

Dustin blinked. “People do that?”

The furrow of Abby’s brows was particularly obvious under the line of black material that held back her hair. “Of course we do. There’s Oman, for one. And Mr. Brook has offered Audrey a generous package to stay on as his legal assistant, though I think she’d rather get her own apartment than stay on the grounds. Having a wealthy family purchase an indenture can be like winning the lottery.”

Just not for you. She didn’t say it out loud, but there was pity in her eyes.

Dustin didn’t want to be pitied. He gathered up the utensils, took the plate and bowl off the counter, and nodded to Abby. “Thank you very much for lunch, ma’am.”

Abby snorted. “You don’t have to ma’am me, Dustin. Enjoy.”

As Dustin ate alone, listening to the relative silence of the house, he thought that he’d never felt so much a part of a thing and not a part of it at the same time. He was an indentured servant, but he wasn’t subject to the same rules and relaxations as the rest of them. They all had normal jobs and more or less set schedules. He didn’t. They were all long-termers, but he didn’t know how long he’d be living with them. Certainly not his full ten years, and he had no intent to stay on after he was free. No wonder Ben didn’t bother to make sure he was told about the things that everyone else already knew.

He didn’t want pity from anyone, including himself. He tried not to wallow in it too deeply. Abby’s cooking deserved more attention than that.

When the foyer door opened, the house burst to life, injected with the energy of people who had been off the grounds and had a fine meal and good company to look forward to, Dustin hurried to the kitchen to rinse his dishes and put them in the dishwasher. He didn’t care whether he’d be early getting back to the gym. He’d rather face Hart than run into the red-headed woman who had seen him the night before.

Chapter Text

Dustin fully expected to spend the entire afternoon in the gym, with Hart kicking his ass. He hadn’t expected Ben to rescue him about two hours after lunch.

“Sorry, Oman, but I need him for some chores?” The tall man looked down into Hart’s scowl, and Dustin realized that Ben was not, in fact, everyone’s best friend. It also looked like Ben outranked Hart. For his part, Dustin hadn’t been released yet, so he continued to pedal at the stationary bike, though not as furiously as he would have had Hart’s attention still been on him.

“Fine,” Hart said begrudgingly. “Shower, Merrill. And put your plug back in.”

Dustin’s face warmed. He’d been allowed to take a break from it for their after-lunch workout, and he didn’t mind it as much now that he knew what it did for him in terms of making it more physically comfortable to be fucked by Trey, but to have something like that said right out loud in front of someone? The humiliation almost certainly had been the point. Luka’s words had shattered any impression that Dustin might have had that the man was impartial.

“Right,” Dustin mumbled, and went to do as he was told.

Ben was waiting for Dustin the foyer after he had showered and changed. Dustin told himself that there was no way that Ben would be able to see the difference in how he walked, now that he had a metal rocket up his ass that occasionally rubbed his sweet spot and sent warm tingles dancing under his skin. Anyone who checked out the bulge made by the cock cage and padded thong that kept Dustin from staining his jeans would both deserve what they got and think that he just had a particularly large package, he also told himself. Whether either thing was true, he decided to believe them.

Dustin was mildly surprised that Ben took him to the extremely clean single-car garage with its black SUV, and he was more surprised that Ben was the one who got into the driver’s seat. Dustin had thought of it as René’s car. And yet, Ben had the keys and adjusted the seat and mirrors with familiarity.

Ben turned one of his engaging smiles on Dustin. “We’ll get your hair cut, first, and then go shopping?”

“Sounds good.” Dustin didn’t actually care. He clicked his seatbelt home. “But what if Trey wants the car?”

Ben’s laugh made his mellow, reedy voice even more pleasant. “No, no, Trey has his own car. The family’s cars are all in the garage? This is the one for the indentured servants’ use.”

“I didn’t think, I mean, I thought René was the driver.”

“Well, not everyone can drive? But some of us have to run errands? And not all of them are for Trey?”

“But, my collar. Won’t I get zapped for leaving the grounds?”

“Don’t worry, this isn’t my first time taking someone off the grounds?” Ben pressed the button to start the engine, and the car purred to life. “I set your permissions appropriately.”

It felt surreal to be in a car after everything that had happened. Of course, he’d been in a car a couple of days ago, but the gulf between then and now felt as wide as an ocean. A couple of days ago had been before every bump jolted the plug and reminded him that he’d been raped the night before.

Ben didn’t put on any music. As they drove, he tried to draw Dustin into conversation about how he was doing. After numerous monosyllabic and evasive answers, the tall man gave Dustin a sidelong glance. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me? I understand your situation is likely very difficult? But the social worker is coming early next week, and I’m curious what you’re going to say to her?”

Dustin watched the landscape scroll past the window without really paying attention to it. Compared to Hart, Ben was as threatening as a kitten. “Are you telling me to lie?”

“No.” Ben’s quick, emphatic response stripped it of its usual rising inflection. “Actually, I want you to be truthful with her about how you’re doing, because I’m worried about you?”

Anger burst into Dustin’s chest and slammed its way up his throat and out into his arms. “You aren’t worried about me. You don’t know me. You’re worried about what’s going to happen if I crack up. Well, guess what, so am I. So quit fucking worrying about what I'll tell her.”

After that, Ben stopped trying to draw him into conversation. Dustin’s anger flickered like a guttering candle and went out, and when Ben started chatting about something else, Dustin tried to nod and make affirmative noises at more-or-less appropriate times.

At the barber shop, they weren’t the only men in collars. When the barber called Dustin back, Ben waited out front, scrolling on a phone that was markedly more updated than Dustin’s. After the barber washed Dustin’s hair, he combed it forward. He was a young, white man with shaggy brown hair. His thin collar almost could have passed for jewelry. “What would you like done with it?”

“Just a trim.”

The man went on as if he hadn’t heard Dustin. “Highlights could really bring out the shape of your face, if your owner doesn’t mind paying a little extra.”

“Just a trim,” Dustin repeated. He hesitated, then added, “I don’t want it longer than this.”

“Mmm. When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me check with your supervisor real quick, m’kay?”

Dustin nodded. After the barber came back and finished the cut, he told Dustin, “See you again in two weeks.”

Dustin finally looked in the mirror. He was careful to only look at his hair, though he still noticed the dark circles under his eyes. The cut wasn’t as short as he’d have liked, but it was no longer threatening to fall into his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Back up front, Ben said, “Dustin! Your hair looks great.”

Dustin just shrugged in response, but some part of him was relieved that he wasn’t going to get in trouble for taking his hair too short. Another part preened vainly at the compliment. A third part of him felt bad for speaking so harshly to Ben. There were too many parts for Dustin to sort into any semblance of order.

Their next stop was an outdoor mall. Dustin had never seen anything like it. Other than strip malls, the malls around Chicago were indoors and covered, for weather-related reasons. The mall that Ben took them to was more like a series of small, quaint-fronted buildings along long, sweeping pathways, with only the entrance arch and the foot-only traffic signs to mark it out as a mall.

As they strolled past shops with tasteful and expensive window displays, among everyone from women strolling babies to old men in tracksuits, Ben turned to Dustin. “Trey said business casual? But that he didn’t want you to look old?”

Dustin nodded.

“I have some ideas, then.” There was a mild amusement in the smiling man’s voice. Ben, wearing the Southwest Coastal version of business casual, certainly didn’t look old. “And I think maybe some casual outfits, as well? For when you’re just in the indentured house?”

“If that’s okay.”

Ben took Dustin around to shops whose names he didn’t know, where the selection of clothing seemed much like what Ben wore. The prices made Dustin blink, but then, it wasn’t his money. He couldn’t have money. Ben couldn’t, either. Everything they purchased was in the name of the Brook family. Even the clothing technically belonged to the family.

It felt to Dustin that Ben bought the stores out. The bags that they slung on their arms became numerous and heavy with shirts, slacks, pants, socks, and shoes. Just when Dustin thought that he couldn’t carry the bags anymore in his exercise-aching arms, Ben took him to a shop where they took Dustin’s measurements and abducted most of the clothing. He was profoundly bewildered. He’d had suits tailored, but never daily-wear pants or shirts.

When he asked about it, Ben looked at Dustin like his question was baffling. “Well, of course they have to be tailored? We want you to look good, don’t we? These fit well enough for now.” Ben patted the two bags that he’d retained. “But we’ll send them in, too, after picking up the others? Now that they have your measurements, it’ll be easy?

“Right,” Dustin said, as if it made perfect sense to tailor a t-shirt.

After dropping off the clothing, Dustin had thought that they would be done and head for the exit with bag of socks, shoes, and undershirts. The arrangements of the little streets had him turned around, and he didn’t realize that they were still shopping until Ben led him into another store. A makeup store.

He cleared his throat. “Uh. Makeup?”

“We want you to look good?”

Dustin kept his sigh internal. “Right.”

The salesperson’s lips turned into a moue of displeasure when Dustin showed her the way that he’d been lining his eyes. He came out of the store with not just eyeliner, but some foundation and cover-up that she assured him would be unnoticeable but help ‘those uneven areas and the unsightly bags under your eyes.’ She even gave him an instruction booklet.

Outside, Ben hooked the bag into the crook of his elbow before turning to Dustin. “Was there anything else?”

Dustin was seriously tempted to pretend that he didn’t remember what else Trey had mentioned, but if the young man complained about it or even just brought up the oversight in the hearing of someone who reported to Hart, he would be in serious trouble. Dustin looked down at his feet, now clad in slacks of a soft brown and loafers, and he wet his suddenly dry lips. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “He wanted, well. For me to pick up, uh, something sexy.”

Ben was unfazed. “I really should’ve thought of lingerie, but I hope you’ll forgive me? It’s been a while since I dressed a secretary? But I know just the store?”

The fact that it was called Secretary’s Secret managed to pull a disbelieving laugh out of the cotton that had crept in to cover Dustin’s day. He’d expected a sex store, but it wasn’t like any of the tawdry stores that he’d visited with Jacob. Even the bondage gear was tastefully displayed. It smelled of talcum powder and leather.

When the salesperson asked Dustin what his master wanted him to wear, he couldn’t do better than stammer that he didn’t really know other than lingerie. He was whisked around the store. In tow, Ben somehow managed to keep a serious expression on his face. As well as a large quantity of very normal-looking black boxer-briefs, Dustin ended up with several thongs in different styles, and a variety of lace briefs and boxer-briefs that emphasized his package, and others that were designed to have everything out on display, be ‘accessible’ while worn, or all of the above.

He couldn’t imagine himself wearing crotchless briefs that barely had a strip of lace across the taint to hold them together between the legs. Except that he was very sure that he’d be wearing them. A dark haze of apathy stole over the sunny, cheerful mall, and Dustin waded through it like a swamp.

On the ride back, Dustin simply looked out the window. He didn’t even go to the effort of pretending to respond to Ben’s stories and anecdotes, and eventually, he wore the cheerful man down to silence.

Chapter Text

Dustin never would have expected that he would come to appreciate the way that Trey had fucked up the situation with his collar, especially not after it had earned him a whipping. Sure, his cock was locked in a cage, which made the mornings and post-workout showers feel like someone was slowly increasing a torture dial labeled ‘desperately needed yet unattainable release.’ Only the overwhelming anxiety that gripped him when he thought about the last time he’d gotten off – and what it would mean to get off next time – kept him from being constantly turned on. Nothing turned him off as fast as his blood running cold. And there was a plug up his ass, but the thing was? It was only a plug. And Dustin was now living in a world where that was also a welcome relief.

What Dustin appreciated most was how the week that Trey was grounded gave him time to do some of his own grounding. It wasn’t quite like his time in the BISA pen, when there had been nothing to do but sit and think. Dustin was on a strict workout schedule with Hart, and the man worked him to the knife-edge of his endurance every day. But Dustin didn’t really need to think about what he was doing when he was working out. And though he was still under orders to socialize in the evening, it seemed to count as ‘socializing’ for him to make brief small-talk in the reading nook with Luka before diving into a book. At least there, the smell of the old, unread books on their shelves was comforting, and the sound of the other izzies enjoying their lives was muted.

He had first tried the e-books, but he had a very hard time reading between intrusive flashbacks of being with Trey, or in the sex classes, or at the BISA doctor’s medial exam, or in jail with Logan. Did he have trouble concentrating? Yes. But the larger problem was the way his hands shook afterward. It made it difficult to focus on the words. It was easier to put in earbuds and listen to a book. At least then, he only had to rewind after the flashbacks.

A psychologist probably would have picked apart the way that his interest, which had previously been science fiction, had turned to a survival story. After some almost guilty browsing, he settled on ‘Endurance,’ about Ernest Shackleton’s voyage to the Antarctic. He identified with a doomed ship being slowly squeezed by thickening ice until the strongest beams cracked in a way that couldn’t be healthy but made him feel understood. The only problem with the audiobook was that his hands had nothing to do.

On Thursday, Luka shifted their long hair behind an ear and pulled out their earbud. Dustin lifted his hands from his lap, pausing his book and pulling out his own earbud. He was usually the one who initiated their conversations, such as they were.

Luka pointed a pink plastic knitting needle toward Dustin’s abdomen. “If you continue wringing the bottom of your shirt like the neck of a particularly annoying rooster, my dear, you’ll pull it out of shape. And as that is a brand-new shirt, I do believe that Ben might have some slightly unflattering things to say about your choice. One should not lightly annoy the man who has a great deal of control over the more comfortable aspects of one’s life.”

Dustin blinked and looked down. He was wearing one of the soft, casual t-shirts instead of one of the button-ups that they had picked up on their shopping trip, but even the t-shirts had been tailored. And Luka was right that he’d wrung the center into a spiral like someone wringing out a washcloth. Dustin tried to smooth it out. He didn’t think that he’d done it any irreparable harm, but Luka was right that he was going to pull it out of shape if he kept doing it.

He tried lacing his fingers gently, but he found himself rubbing his hands together, running his thumbnail along his other fingers, chewing his nails, pulling on his knuckles, and otherwise fidgeting with them for the rest of the night.

The next night, Luka warned him that he was going to give himself arthritis and, worse, ruin his nails if he kept doing that.

Dustin sighed. “I can’t help it. I just can’t hold them still. I don’t know.”

“It would seem that a hobby might be beneficial.”

“A hobby.” The words felt like foreigners from a strange land.

“Yes, darling, a hobby. A hobby is a thing that a person might do to occupy the hands.” Luka waggled their knitting needles at him. The shape on the end was no longer a yellow rhombus. Now, a purple circle was forming there. “I would suggest knitting, but alas, there can be only one knitter in this household. I would become quite jealous if anyone attempted to sidle in on my area of expertise. But there are other hobbies.”

Dustin chewed on his lower lip.

“Making jewelry,” Luka suggested. They jangled one of their beaded bracelets at Dustin. “Drawing. Painting. Calligraphy. Folding paper. Solving a Rubix cube. I would suggest learning to play piano, but I’ve come to enjoy your company here in my cozy corner. I might allow crochet, but that is perhaps too close to knitting, so I would need to be convinced.”

For a moment, Dustin was distracted by the idea that Luka enjoyed his company. They didn’t do anything but sit together. Then his mind caught up with the question, and he shook his head. “I used to play trumpet in a community band, but after my girls…”

Dustin’s throat closed abruptly. Parenting young girls hadn’t been a hobby, it had been a full-time job on top of his other full-time job. And he had loved it.

One of Dustin’s knuckles popped, and he breathed out, forcing his hands to relax. Luka wasn’t looking at him, but with the deliberate disinterest of someone trying not to pay attention to a person doing something embarrassing in public. Their earbud was still on their leg, though.

Dustin took another deep breath and cleared the tightness out of his throat. “If I wanted a hobby, how would I, well. Get materials?”

Luka shrugged one narrow shoulder. “The same thing you do if you want for any comforting or useful item, my dear. Speak with Ben and explain the need for it. Ideally while wearing a shirt that you have not attempted to tie-dye without dye.”

Of course. Dustin tried a smile. He thought that his face creaked like a warped board. “Thanks, Luka.”

“My pleasure.” Luka plucked up their earbud up with multicolored nails and inserted it back into their ear. They didn’t speak again until the usual good-nights, but that wasn’t surprising. The conversation about hobbies had been the longest that they’d had since Luka had come to Dustin’s room and saved him a second whooping.

The next night was Friday, and after eating a freshly cooked meal while people socialized around him, Dustin lost his nerve about approaching Ben. He seemed to be mostly in conversation with the red-headed woman who had seen Dustin naked in the hallway, and no amount of cajoling himself could make Dustin break into that conversation. He could barely look in her direction, much less speak with her.

For Dustin, Saturday was almost the same as any other day. Almost. Hart worked him to the very edge of his gradually increasing endurance, but as they wiped down the gym machinery, the squat man said, “Make sure you’re ready to go tomorrow.”

Dustin’s hand stopped moving mid-wipe. He didn’t want to know what Hart meant. The part of him that already did know was viciously shaking its head. He wet his lips and made himself take in a deep, slow breath. “Ready to go for…?”

Hart shrugged. “The kid was grounded for a week. A week ago. There’s no school on Sunday. He’s got maybe half a day of practice.” Dustin didn’t need Hart to keep going, but the gravelly voice was inexorable. “After that? He’s probably going to come home. And want to fuck you. So be ready.”

The blood rushing in Dustin’s ears made a sort of white noise that tried to drown out the ambient noise in the room. His own voice sounded far away. “Okay. I mean, I still wear the plug, so.”

“Merrill,” Hart growled. Dustin’s veins turned to ice at that tone, and his sweat went cold. “He bought you makeup. Lingerie. Do I need to spell it out?” He was already spelling it out. He kept on spelling it out. “Make sure you look sexy for him.”

“Okay,” Dustin said past numb lips.

It was good that the process of showering and putting his plug back in and eating dinner had become so routine, because he didn’t need to think to do any of it. The cotton batting that had filled his head only became an issue when he sat in the reading alcove. If he went up to his room to get the earbuds that he’d claimed as his own, he wasn’t going to come back down. He knew that about himself. And if he did that, Hart was going to punish him. The marks from the belt-whipping had faded, but not the day after.

They wouldn’t fade in time for…

Dustin leaned forward in the easy chair, parking his elbows on his knees, clasping his fingers tightly together, and trying not to keep swallowing on the bitter-lemon flavor that had crept up the back of his throat. If he swallowed too many times, he would be more likely to throw up, and it was a long walk to the locker-room toilets. He couldn’t go up stairs. He could not.

“Dustin.” Luka’s voice was airy and melodic.

Dustin flinched. If Luka tried to talk about it, Dustin was going to lose it.

“I believe that you had intended to speak with Ben regarding your desire to not give your future self arthritis, yes? Looking so intently at your shoes as you are, I imagine that you haven’t seen that he’s presently free.”

Lifting his hanging head, Dustin saw that Luka’s eyes were focused on the tips of the plastic pink needles moving more-or-less gracefully between their delicate fingers. Dustin watched them tuck a few falling strands of straight brown hair behind an ear and pluck up the earbud from their leg. Not once did they look at Dustin, and it was exactly the lack of attention that he wanted at that moment.

Dustin pushed up out of the easy chair. He wasn’t actually moving through a thick soup of fog, it just felt that way. Turning, he saw that Ben was standing at the edge of the table where Leon, Maria, and Will played dominoes. Will said something, and Ben laughed.

When he turned to Dustin, the laugh was still in his eyes. But only for a moment. The smile, however, stayed. “What can I do for you, Dustin?”

After taking in a deep, slow breath, and clearing the blockage from his throat, Dustin said, “I was hoping to take up drawing or, I don’t know, maybe calligraphy. As a hobby. I was wondering if, well, if I could have supplies. To do that.”

The broken cadence of Dustin’s voice, the short sentences with the pauses between, brought Hart viscerally to mind. God damn it, he didn’t want to start sounding like that man, of all people. He cleared his throat again. “Sorry. I’m feeling a little under the weather.”

Dustin pretended to not see the players at the dominoes table as they exchanged glances.

Ben’s smile didn’t change at all, but the warmth came back to his eyes. “Those are great hobbies, and I think we have some materials around for both in storage already? I’ll find them and have them up to your room tomorrow?”

Tomorrow.

Dustin nodded. “That’ll work. Thank you, Ben.”

The man’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Dustin shook his head. And then he was back in the soft, green armchair in the alcove, not sure whether he’d made the proper goodbyes or simply walked away in a haze. He stared at his laced fingers and hoped that time would stay shrouded in fog forever.

It didn’t.

Chapter Text

Anyone observing Dustin as he made his way around the house Sunday afternoon would have seen a light-skinned Black man in black slacks and a sage green button-up left loose near the collar, showing off an undershirt the color of buttery cream. He could have passed for any of the younger men he’d seen at the school or the mall if not for the golden band of his collar. His makeup was subtle enough to be unnoticeable, except for around his eyes, and for those, he’d followed the booklet he had been given by the boutique saleswoman. The eyeshadow was subtler and the eyeliner was not as thick of a line as he’d worn previously.

Nobody looking at him would have seen that, under his slacks, the crotchless cream-lace lingerie masquerading as boxer shorts didn’t cover his cock cage or the handle of his butt plug. No one would have known that he was wearing the black slacks to try to hide any drippage. No one would have seen the way that his heart was pounding and his palms were slick with sweat. It was likely that no one would have seen how sick to his stomach he was, since he’d spent all morning and half the afternoon alternating between stretching his sore muscles and practicing his smile in his mirror, trying to find one that didn’t look forced and then remember how he’d made it.

That smile was pasted on as he approached the corner that held the windows to Trey’s room. He didn’t know if the young man would be waiting inside to watch him go past like a puppy watching a small prey animal through a window, but considering the plan that Dustin had, it was better to not risk it. He needed to look happy.

He shouldn’t have worried. When he rounded the curve of the walkway past the pool, he saw Trey sitting on the covered patio, exactly where he’d been the first time. The lanky young man wore a sea-blue jersey over black basketball shorts, and even though his pose was casually slouched, his left knee bounced like a spring was under his heel.

Trey popped to his feet and raked a hand back through his dark curls, which were messy like he’d been doing that for a while. His tentative smile lacked its usual confidence. As Dustin crossed the space to him, he said, “Look, man, about last weekend. I’m sorry as hell that things ended like—”

The thing was, Dustin didn’t want small-talk and apologies to upset the grim determination that was a necessary ingredient of the plan that he’d cultivated that morning. He did not give Trey the polite, apologetic social distance of two people who hadn’t seen each other for a week after a bad situation. He pressed right up against Trey’s chest, wrapped his hand around the back of Trey’s neck, and pulled the man down for a kiss.

It was not a gentle kiss. After Trey got over his shock, he kissed Dustin back just as hungrily, and his hands went around him to take a double handful of his ass and squeeze. Dustin wriggled his free hand between them and fondled Trey’s developing erection through his shorts.

The young man made a coughing noise, let Dustin go, and pulled back a step. His skin had taken on a rosy tone, and he glanced toward the window wall as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Shit, man, my whole family’s home. Anyone could see.”

“So let’s go somewhere they can’t.”

It was usually Dustin who was left wordless and blinking, not Trey, but Dustin’s owner recovered swiftly. “Uh, yeah man. Let’s fucking go.”

He held open the door, but it was Dustin who lead the way across the expansive living room with long-legged strides. There was indeed someone stretched out on one of the couches, tapping a phone. Dustin registered the person as young, with masculine features, but he didn’t take a good look. At least the person’s back had been to the window wall.

Not that it would have mattered. There was no room in him for self-consciousness or embarrassment. All he had was determination, and he kept a grip on it with both hands.

Dustin pulled the door of Trey’s bedroom closed behind them. A backpack and gym bag had been dropped inside to the left, out of the way, and the air was a little humid with a ‘For Men’ smell to it, as if someone had just jumped out of the shower. Trey started to turn to reach for the desk, where a keyring had been tossed, but Dustin grabbed his arm and turned him back to resume making out where they had left off.

Trey moaned into Dustin’s mouth when he rubbed the hard cock that Trey’s shorts and boxers were struggling to restrain. “Dusty—”

Dustin interrupted him. “I want you to fuck me.”

He nudged Trey’s chin up and kissed his throat. Trey shuddered. The fingers digging into Dustin’s ass seemed as much a support to keep Trey on his feet as to hold Dustin in place. “The collar—”

“I want you to fuck me now.” Dustin hooked his thumbs through the elastic bands of Trey’s shorts and boxers and pushed them down.

“Jesus.”

Jesus didn’t have anything to do with it. Dustin needed it to be over with.

Trey didn’t try to hold onto Dustin when he dropped to his knees. Trey’s cock was clean and hard, and Dustin teased the slit with his tongue before taking it into his mouth.

The man gave a wordless moan and wrapped the fingers of one hand into Dustin’s hair. Again, it didn’t seem to be part of any attempt to take control of the situation. He didn’t tug, he just held on while Dustin worked him over with a hand and his mouth. He’d given enough blowjobs in his life that he could do it with only half his attention. He used his other hand to unbutton his own shirt.

Dustin’s fingers were starting to tremble. That wouldn’t do. This needed to be done now, before the nerves that he’d spent all morning working up broke and left him shattered and unable to pretend.

He released Trey’s cock from his mouth and gave it one long lick, adding saliva instead of sucking it off. Trey shuddered and said something that Dustin didn’t hear. His hand fell out of Dustin’s hair when he stood.

Trey’s eyes had the glazed look of a deer in headlights. He was panting and reached out, but Dustin was already stepping back, away from the door and the nearby desk. Shrugging out of the button-up. Pulling the cream undershirt over his head. Belatedly, Trey realized what was going on and pushed down his shorts. Then he stared, because Dustin was bending while taking off his slacks.

The cream lace boxers hid nothing. If anything, they emphasized the metal cock cage. Dustin had filled it and started to leak, but he told himself that that was fine and added to the image that he was trying to cultivate. He turned his back on Trey and bent, pulling his plug out easily. The seam of the shorts didn’t start until up by his tailbone.

He had intended to tell Trey to fuck him again, but he couldn’t get the words out. That was okay. He was sure Trey would get the message.

Dustin crossed to the bed and presented his ass, doggy style. His knees were starting to shake. He crossed his arms under his forehead and breathed in the smells of Trey’s fabric softener and his own arousal. The bed shook as Trey got on it behind him. One of his hands grabbed Dustin’s ass, and he could feel the other hand brush his skin while Trey lined himself up.

Then Trey was in him. There was no resistance at all. His mouth had left the man’s cock plenty wet, and Dustin had lubed up well before putting in the plug.

Trey groaned when he bottomed out, and Dustin’s abs spasmed with a cramp that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Trey was thick enough to put a constant rubbing pressure on Dustin’s p-spot, but at their angle, he was longer than Dustin was used to taking. That was fine. Dustin wanted it to hurt. He did not want to enjoy what was happening, even if just physically.

Trey stayed deep inside him for a moment, panting and caressing the lingerie over Dustin’s hips. For one terrible moment, he thought that the young man had stopped because he’d noticed something wrong.

Dustin shouldn’t have worried. After that first groan and hesitation, Trey started pounding Dustin’s ass like he was having his first fuck after being celibate for years. His slamming weight blew Dustin’s breath out in grunts. The heaviness of the cage being jerked around hurt almost as much as the way it squeezed his junk, keeping it soft no matter how badly his body wanted to get hard. Red-hot fingernails of pleasure scratched under the skin of Dustin’s entire body from Trey’s pounding, but he wasn’t worried about it. Trey was going fast and hard, but he wasn’t fucking-machine precise or vibrator fast. There was no chance that his body would betray him this time.

For all that Trey had worried about someone seeing them making out, he did not keep his volume down, especially not the shout when he hilted into Dustin and his pounding turned into a jerky grind. Dustin was sure that he felt the pulse of Trey’s first and hardest shot, he was sure that it wasn’t just his imagination and that he could actually feel himself being used.

It was over. The thing that had given Dustin nightmares right up until he’d staggered to the bathroom and vomited. The thing he’d worked himself up to all morning and half the afternoon. It hadn’t been worse than Logan. It hadn’t been worse than the first time. Bad, but not worse. Dustin had been used, but he hadn’t liked it, not on any level. Fuck you, Logan. I never did.

Trey’s fingers gripped Dustin’s hips. He didn’t pull out right away. Even if Dustin hadn’t been able to feel the way the young man was shuddering, he could hear the extremely ragged edge to his pants. When Trey’s weight and heat finally pulled away from Dustin’s ass and the back of his thighs, leaving him empty and cold and shivering, he tried to muffle his own sound. It hadn't been a sob, he told himself. It had just been a noise of discomfort. That was all.

“Damn.” It was more of an outward breath than a word. The bed shook when Trey flopped onto it.

Dustin had been holding his position stiffly, trying not to shake too badly, but he cautiously unfolded. Hopefully, Trey would take his hitching breath and trembling as exhaustion. It had been work to not collapse under the weight of Trey’s thrusts. And the guy didn’t have any real observational skills.

The room was brightly lit by afternoon sunlight streaming in the windows, and when Dustin lifted his head, the light hurt his eyes. For some reason, he had expected it to be night out, and dark like it had been in the circle of his arms. He first tried to lie on his stomach, but the cock cage was just too painful, his body throbbing with a desperate ache for relief that his mind didn’t want. Instead, he stretched out on his side, feeling the slick spread of lube and fluid between his ass cheeks every time he moved. It felt black as oil that would stain no matter how much it was washed.

Trey was on his back, an arm held over his face, but he must have felt Dustin shifting. He flopped onto his side with a goofy grin. “I’m the luckiest fucking guy, man. You’re—”

Trey cut off as his dark eyes moved down Dustin’s body. They lingered on Dustin’s crotch, where his dick filled out the cage and his balls were dark and heavy, pushing the metal bars out farther, like someone waving a red-brown flag against cream-colored lace.

“I’m selfish as fuck, man.”

“No.” Dustin’s voice was a croak. “No, it’s okay.”

But Trey wasn’t listening. He stood, holding a hand under his shrinking cock so that he wouldn’t drip on the carpet as he crossed to the desk. Dustin’s eyes followed, full of dread, as the young man retrieved the keyring and came back.

Dustin’s stomach twisted. He wasn’t supposed to get off. The whole point of the plan was that Dustin would not get off. The plan was for Trey to fuck him and take a shower. Dustin would pretend to fall asleep. It would be consistent with the last two times. Believable. He wasn’t supposed to get off too. He wasn’t supposed to be complicit in his own rape, not in that way. Trey was supposed to be a selfish lover, damn him.

But why had Dustin thought he would be? This was the same person who’d given him a handjob last time.

The key to the heart-shaped lock on the cock cage was heart-shaped too, of course. Dustin’s eyes were pinned on it like an insect pinned to a collector’s board. “Trey, I don’t need to. This was about you. Really, it’s okay.”

The keys clatered together. “I’m not like that, man. I want you to have a good time, too.”

Dustin could hear the echoes of the sex class in his words. You want your pets to enjoy it too, don’t you? See how much fun they’re having. They want you to fuck them like the little sluts they are.

Tell him you don’t want to. But that would be too dangerously close to the entire truth.

Trey’s warm hands brushed up the insides of Dustin’s thighs to the cage, and Dustin felt his balls jump. His heartrate kicked up a notch. Damn it. Damn him.

The gentle pressure of Trey’s hands encouraged Dustin onto his back. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the soft covers that they never managed to get under. It wasn't over. It would never be over.

He heard the little heart-shaped padlock *snick* as Trey unlocked the cage that had been Dustin’s protector as much as his prison.

Chapter Text

Having the sheath of the cock cage pulled off was not entirely unlike pulling out of someone’s mouth, though the combination of the intense throb of relief combined with the sudden and intense awareness of his hardening dick was an experience that was indescribable. Then Trey’s fingers slid to where the base ring went over top of Dustin’s dick, and he gasped in alarm. “Don't.”

Trey’s hand withdrew immediately. “Shit, man, did I hurt you?”

Dustin took a couple of deep breaths. Heart-pounding anxiety was different from heart-pounding horniness, and flipping between them was disorienting. “No. It’s just, it doesn’t come off. When I’m hard. It can’t.”

It was true, even if it hadn’t been the reason for Dustin’s visceral reaction.

The young man’s fingers stroked where the ring circled down behind Dustin’s balls, making him shudder. Amusement colored his voice. “It does seem pretty tight. Spread your legs?”

Dustin’s legs had already started to spread on their own from the toying with his balls, despite all his promises to himself that he wasn't going to be complicit, but he followed the order. Why not. Dustin had lost, so why not break his promises to himself. It didn't feel like being horny, it felt like despair.

He also opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling distant ceiling, where a lazily circling fan stirred the air. How could Dustin ever have thought that this guy would just, what, be satisfied and then go about his own business? It had been Jacob who would check out after he got off, not Trey. At least not yet. Maybe when he was less enthralled with his new toy. It was a strange thing to hope for.

Trey’s fingers toyed along the back of Dustin’s balls, playing in the dampness from their earlier sex, and Dustin shuddered and closed his eyes again. The bed shifted as Trey’s weight redistributed, and when his knee nudged the inside of one of Dustin’s, he obediently widened his legs even further. The young man’s fingers stroked the back of Dustin’s balls, then slid farther down, passed over the thin strip of lace that crossed his taint and gave the underwear some shape between where Dustin’s dick was accessible in the front and his ass was accessible in the back. Trey nudged one of Dustin’s knees up and played in that second place, circling his fingers around Dustin’s asshole, radiating a sore but tingling heat forward from the sensitive skin. When he pressed, Dustin relaxed and let him in.

Why resist? Trey couldn’t want to have sex again. Not even at his age had Dustin been ready to go a second time right away. He’d heard rumors of guys like that, of course, but they had to be fake. It couldn’t be physically possible.

Dustin lost his muddy line of bleak thoughts when Trey’s fingers found his p-spot and rubbed it. Electric-fire fingertips stroked under Dustin’s skin, particularly along the soles of his feet, and his breath sucked in. Trey’s body shifted, nudging Dustin’s knee higher as he fit his body between his legs, but Dustin barely noticed. Trey’s fingers stroked again, Dustin’s abs spasmed, and he felt the heaviness of his cock moving with the flex.

“Feels good?” Trey’s question was low, distant thunder.

“Yes,” Dustin whispered, hating that it was the truth.

And then Dustin really gasped, because Trey’s tongue tracked up the underside of his cock, and he took it into his mouth. Trey hummed, and the noise vibrated through Dustin like the most pleasurably plucked string. Trey’s fingers stroked again. And again.

Dustin had been sucked off before, of course, but not while he was being fingered. He didn’t know that he’d wrapped his hands so hard into the sheets until later, when they were more sore than any grip-strength workout with Hart would have warranted. He was vaguely aware of the little thrusts of his hips, but only in relation to how they changed the sensations into rocking waves in an ocean of pleasure.

There was no building storm. An orgasm burst through Dustin’s body like a sudden squall carried by a hot lightning under his skin that complemented the swell of pleasure from his groin. His entire body thrummed with the sudden relief of a bursting dam, and his shout echoed off the far ceiling and hard walls of the room.

Trey choked and started coughing, but despite that, he managed to keep stroking until Dustin’s pulses subsided. Then he pulled his fingers out and started the snorting chuckle of someone trying not to laugh too loudly while still coughing. “Holy shit, man. You almost amputated my fucking tonsils.”

Dustin was more of a body-buzz with a heaving chest than a human being, electricity still tingling across the palms of his hands and soles of his feet with his heartbeat. The words hit his mind and stuck on the surface, not really sinking in.

Slick fingers stroked up the inside of Dustin’s thigh and back down. It felt like someone brushing a live wire over his skin, electric and slightly painful. His leg jerked away.

“Sorry.” Trey didn’t sound sorry. “Did I kill you?”

Dustin managed to catch his breath long enough to put a word in it. “Yeah.”

“Look, I’ve got to take a shower before I touch something, man. My hands are a fucking mess. You going to be okay?”

“Mhm.”

Dustin heard the bathroom door close and the water start running, but he remained a puddle in the shape of a well-blown person. If he didn’t move, if he didn’t think too hard, he might continue to avoid existing.

Of course, thinking about wanting to avoid his thoughts and feelings brought them firmly to mind. Guilt. Shame. Disgust. He started to ask himself whether he’d actually wanted the sex, if that was why he’d been so insistent that they do it, but he pulled himself up short. He only had to remember back to vomiting and weeping in the upstairs bathroom toilet of the izzy house at 3 am to know that he hadn’t wanted this to happen.

Dustin tried to concentrate on his breathing, hoping that an intense focus on the rise and fall of his own chest would drown out the bleak thoughts and slow his heart. It must have worked too well, because when Trey touched his arm, he jolted awake with a noise that was just shy of a scream.

“Shit, man!” Trey jumped back, his shiny black curls bouncing damply. The only thing he had on was a pale blue, fluffy towel wrapped around his waist, and he grabbed it before it slipped. “Sorry. I just wanted to let you know that the shower’s free.”

Two fast breaths, and the combination of the earthy smell of sex and the ‘For Men’ smell of the shower reminded Dustin who he was, where he was, who he was with, and why he was so sore and relaxed. A black wave of shame slapped him, but he made himself breathe a little deeper, willing his heart to stop pounding. “Okay. Sorry. I dozed off.”

The corners of Trey’s lips curved up. He had a good smile, the kind that Dustin would have found attractive on anyone else. “I noticed. No worries, man. Next time, I’ll try to not startle you so bad.”
Next time. Because there would be a next time.

Dustin’s breath shuddered a little on the way in, but he thought his voice sounded even enough. “My turn to shower?”

“Yeah, I've got to lotion, but the shower’s free.” Trey tilted his chin toward the desk. “The key for your collar’s there. Not that, you know, we should keep it off long.” His smile faded into a grimace. “But I’m sure you want to wash the sweat out from under it.”

“Okay.”

Trey bounced up off the bed and headed into the bathroom with his towel. Dustin considered his hands, which were clean of nothing more than their usual share of germs and guilt, and he eased himself up. He was sore. He was sticky. He ached. He felt disgusting inside and out. A shower would help with some of that.

His fingers hesitated over the key ring on the desk. There were only a few keys on it, and the one for his collar had to be the flat, black electronic rectangle with the slider and buttons. One of them was a lock/unlock icon. Touching the key ring made his heart beat furiously, he almost fumbled it, and then he tried to get the flat black key close enough to the back of his neck without touching the collar.

He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that he didn’t try, it was that he couldn’t seem to get it all to line up right. There was a sound the collar made when it unlocked, but touching the rectangle to the collar and pressing the button wasn’t enough to do it. Touching the collar to pull it around to where he could see it was out of the question.

Dustin blinked hard on his burning eyes. It was a foolish thing to get upset about. It wasn’t like he’d been planning on taking it off and making a run for it. Not really. Where would he go?

When Trey came out of the bathroom, he was dressed back in the blue tank top and loose shorts that Dustin had all but pried him out of. His brows drew in when Dustin held the keyring out to him.

Dustin cleared his throat. “I couldn’t figure it out without risking, you know. Touching it.”

“Oh. Well, it’s easy, man.” Dustin tensed when Trey took the key ring around behind him. “You just have to orient this here, and line it up with this, then push the button. Then when you pinch here, it just…” The collar made a snicking noise and came unlatched from the back of Dustin’s neck. He caught to keep it from falling into his lap, then put it on the desk like a golden snake that might bite him.

Trey’s voice was rueful. “I should’ve guessed that it wouldn’t be obvious without looking at it. I mean, that’s probably the point.”

It was, in fact, the point. Dustin silently urged Trey to think about why it would be the point.

But being raped and traumatized had failed to make him psychic, and Trey didn’t give any sign that he noticed the pointed edge to the silence. The man just put the keys down on the desk with a clatter by the collar. “We’ve got to make sure to put this back on, though. We’re not getting grounded again, man. Dad said it’ll be a month next time.”

Dustin nodded. If he spoke, he was probably going to say that another whipping would be worth a month off, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. There was resisting, and then there was just saying shit that was going to get him punished because he felt like he deserved to be. But the punishment of being sent into a worse situation would not be worth the crime of getting off in his current bad situation.

Thinking of which. Dustin made sure to pick up the sheath and heart-shaped padlock for the cock cage, as well as his butt plug. When Dustin stood, he saw that Trey had been checking him out. His eyes seemed stuck on where Dustin’s deflated dick and balls hung out the front of the cream-colored lace lingerie. Dustin just barely managed to resist the urge to cover himself with his hand.

He cleared his throat. “Did any of my underwear get put in here?”

“Yeah, man, there’s some in the closet.”

Dustin had been talking about the plain black boxer-briefs that Ben had picked up for him. Judging by his tone, Trey was talking about something else. Dustin tried not to make it too obvious that his mouth had suddenly gone dry and sour as an alkaline flat. “Did you want to, uh. Pick some out for me?”

Trey grinned. “I think you’re pretty good at picking out your own. But, yeah, I’ll find something I might like. Shit, man, we could do a little show. We could have you model some shit and figure out what we like.”

There were a lot of mutual phrases in those sentences, Dustin’s brain snagged on every one, and he found it tiring. “Sounds good.”

And then he went into the bathroom to take a shower. Scalding himself was a punishment he could have without risking worse, and he might even feel a little less dirty and used afterward.

Chapter Text

When Dustin talked himself into leaving the bathroom, Trey was slouched in his desk chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him, talking to his phone. “—going to stay in tonight, man.”

The phone’s speakers were tinny but not quiet, and the first sound of an unfamiliar voice made Dustin freeze in place. “Dude, you haven’t done shit with us all week. I’m telling you, it wasn’t Toph who ratted you out, man, but even if it was, we could go over to Maria’s place. He’s not going not going to show his face around there.”

When Dustin managed to pull his body out of the concrete pond that his anxiety had turned the carpet into, he turned the handle of the bathroom door under his damp palm, drawing the latch in before he closed it to try to avoid the click. It did close quietly, but Trey must have caught the movement, because he rotated his chair and grinned at Dustin over his phone.

“Toph is a fucking snake, but this isn’t about him, man,” Trey said to the phone, then swung the front camera around to face Dustin.

He froze with his hand on the doorknob. His heart pounded in his throat hard enough to make his head swim. Thank fuck he’d wrapped one of Trey’s fluffy blue towels around his waist, so that the cock cage that he’d put back on after the shower wasn’t clearly visible. But still. The face on the phone screen leaned closer, then the young man laughed. Dustin couldn’t really make him out from the distance, other than light skin and dark hair. “Holy shit, you did get a secretary. I thought Sam was talking out his ass.”

Dustin’s mind and body stayed mired in concrete even after the phone was turned away.

“Like I said, I’ve been busy.” Trey’s grin invited the other man to use his imagination. Dustin’s eyes closed at the boasting, and he tried to breathe while he prayed that Trey wouldn’t turn the phone back around to him.

Or invite the strange man over. Do some hanging out, fuck Trey’s secretary. Why not? Dustin’s concrete-clad limbs were suddenly frozen ice. He could picture himself as a ship stuck in the Antarctic as the ocean froze around him, squeezing in, just waiting to snap his bones.

Distantly, he heard the other man’s tinny voice. “Why the fuck aren’t there pics on your socials? Everything thinks you’re still pissed and Sam’s just covering for your ass. If I had a secretary, man, I wouldn’t post anything else.”

“Been too busy for pics, man.” Trey’s next sentence froze his heart in his chest. “I’ll snap a few before dinner. Because I am not a lying little bitch.”

He had talked about having Dustin model lingerie. He didn’t mean that he was going to post pics of that. He couldn’t. Except that he almost certainly did.

The conversation went on for a little longer, but Dustin couldn’t focus on it until Trey started calling his name. “Dusty? You good, man?”

Dustin shook his head as if that could clear the cotton out of it. “Yeah, I just didn’t want to interrupt.”

Trey unfolded his lanky body from the desk chair. “Come here?”

Dustin made his legs carry him to where he was called. Trey threw an arm around his shoulders and started to angle his camera toward the two of them, then he frowned. “Shit. We better get you back in your collar.”

“Yeah.” Dustin’s ears had been stuffed as full of cotton as his brain. The words sounded muted, both Trey’s and his own.

Fortunately, Trey didn’t need Dustin’s help to snap the collar around his neck. Then it was all pictures snapping, first of their heads together, then of them kissing. Trey leaned away, his thumbs working his phone. “I can’t believe they thought I was lying or something, man.”

“Yeah,” Dustin heard himself say. He wanted to believe that, when Trey had talked about posting pics, he just meant ones of them kissing. But he knew better.

“Hey.” Trey looked up from his phone. His deep, pleasantly smooth voice had a hint of eagerness to it. “You know how we were going to try out that lingerie, man?”

“Mhm.”

“Would you mind if a snapped a few pics of you in it?” Trey made it sound like it was the most original idea in the world. As if Dustin couldn’t have seen it coming from a mile away. Or as if he had some sort of choice about the matter.

Fortunately, the cotton had already come down to wrap him in an unreality where he didn’t have to feel any of the things he might otherwise feel at the thought of sexy pictures of him being posted on the internet. His head shook, which was somehow not quite connected to his neck.

Trey grinned. “Sick.”

They got the lingerie out of the closet and spread it around on the floor. From somewhere, Dustin looked at the array of lace and satin thongs both regular and pull-away, briefs with and without fronts, boxers with and without crotches. By the time Ben had purchased them and the salesperson had packed them up, Dustin had been almost on fire from embarrassment. The parts of Dustin that were horrified now were far away in the cottony fog.

“What do you think about this one, man?” Trey lifted a black satin thong with silver tracery out of the lineup.

What did he expect Dustin to say?

“I mean, I bought them, so.” It occurred to Dustin that that was as much a lie as all the rest of it. “I think they all look pretty good.”

“I like them all, man, but this one’s going to be hot as hell in pics.” Trey extended his long arms, studying the thong, looking from it to Dustin. “Gio’s going to be so fucking jealous.”

Hot anger burned through the cotton around Dusty like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. It surged across his chest, tightening his muscles. He had the sudden, vivid image of wiping the puppy-dog grin off Trey’s face with his fist. He’d never been so close to actually taking a swing at another man.

Dustin clasped his hands together behind his back and clenched them tightly around each other to keep himself from doing something stupid. “Could I use the bathroom?”

“Sure, man.” Trey stared down at the array of lingerie. “Maybe I’ll put these in order. Yeah. We should do a bunch of them and see what’s on fire.”

Dustin forced his fists to unclench before he turned to the bathroom. When the door was safely locked behind him, he leaned hard against the counter. The air was still humid from the shower, and water had condensed on the surface, but he still gripped the edge so hard that he imagined cracking the marble. He didn’t know how long he had to breathe for the pounding of his heart to slow and the urge to attack something to fade from his chest.

When it left, it pulled the cover off a yawning pit and an inky well filled with bleakness. The anger had been easier. Dangerous, but it hadn’t felt as bad. He finally looked in the mirror.

You’re not a violent person.

He hadn’t been.

You can’t be a violent person.

Well, that was true.

Dustin blew out a breath. He didn’t know how long it had taken for him to get himself under control, but Trey had to be wondering what was taking him so long. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was so involved in sorting out what underwear he wanted to dress his human-sized sex doll in that there was no room in his head for thoughts of anyone else. That would be typical for him.

Still. There had to be some reason he’d been in the bathroom so long.

Dustin started opening and closing drawers. Ben had said that some of the makeup would be in here, somewhere, and he found it stashed in a low drawer near the sink. He didn’t need the instruction book to apply it the second time. When he finished, he gave himself another long look in the mirror.

He would have found himself sexy. If this Gio or any of Trey’s friends were attracted to men, they’d probably find him sexy, too. The thought was neither comforting nor distressing. It fell into the empty well in the middle of his chest and sank there like a dropped piece of lead. He unwrapped the towel from his waist and let it fall from his fingertips into the hamper on his way out.

Back in Trey’s bedroom, the lingerie was in a new configuration on the floor, with the black and silver thong at the front of the line. It couldn’t have been too long because the angle of light coming in through the windows hadn’t much changed. Trey had slouched into his desk chair and was on his phone again, his thumbs working furiously. When he glanced up, his mouth actually fell open a little. “Damn, man.”

Dustin spread his arms and lifted his brows. Ta da.

“Yeah.” Trey cleared his throat. “Yeah, the glow up was a great idea. Okay, let’s start with the silver one. I took the blanket off the bed because, yeah, you know.”

Dustin did know. His only surprise, to the extent that anything he felt could be called that, was that Trey wouldn’t want him to pose on the sex-messy blanket as even more of a brag. He bent to pick up the black thong and slid it up his legs. Without the plug in, the string rubbed his sore asshole uncomfortably. And the cock cage made it look like he had stuffed a rolled-up sock down the front.

Trey’s grin turned up by about 1,000 watts. “They’re going to shit their pants.”

He put Dustin through a series of pinup poses on the bed. Then they switched to the lacy cream-colored briefs and did the same thing. Then the pink thong that was high-waisted and had a triangle in the back. Then the lacy black boxer-briefs. The pull-away green thong. Trey skipped over the crotchless versions for the photo shoot. Dustin would have been grateful if he could have felt anything at all. The smile that he put on for the photos felt like a clay mask on his face. It was good that he had spent so long that morning practicing it in the mirror.

When they had finished, Dustin was in the leopard-print pull-away thong that he had found laughably ridiculous when Ben had put it in the shopping basket. Trey sat on the sheets next to Dustin and swiped through the photos, ostensibly asking for Dustin’s input about which to post.

“For real, man, I think this one is the best.” Trey had stopped on one of Dustin wearing a dark-gold-colored lace thong. The color stood out very well against the background of Trey’s dark blue sheets and complemented Dustin’s complexion. In the photo, Dustin was back on his elbows, one knee up and the other leg stretched out. Between the cock cage and the way that his upward leg turned everything slightly toward the camera, his package looked huge.

And that was the picture Trey wanted to put on his socials, like a kid posting a photo of his new car. When Trey took him around to meet his friends, Dustin wasn’t going to be able to look any of them in the eyes. “It looks good.”

Trey sat forward, his thumbs working the phone, then he tossed it toward the bean-bag chair and turned to Dustin. The bed shifted under him. From time to time during the photo shoot, a turn or pose had outlined an erection under the loose shorts that Trey seemed to like to wear around the house. There hadn’t been any doubt in Dustin’s mind about how the shoot was going to end.

His slightly callused fingertips brushed across Dustin’s stomach. “Whatever you’re doing is working, man.”

It took Dustin a moment to realize that he meant the workouts. Glancing down, he saw that, though he didn’t have any visible muscles, the softness of his stomach had visibly flattened out. Huh.

Trey’s finger toyed the trailing end of the laces holding the thong together back and forth over Dustin’s hip, and he became very viscerally reminded of the cage on his cock. The warmth promised to become pain if it went on for too long. Trey pinched the string and slowly pulled it, reducing the size of the curve in the bow until it was gone and the knot let go. Without the tension holding it, the thong immediately stopped holding his cage up and in place, and everything shifted down as the thong’s front triangle slid off to the side.

The other man’s fingers moved to the cage, the tip of one finger running over the cruel metal curve that would keep Dustin from getting hard no matter how turned on his body became. He shifted where he sat to turn even more toward Dustin. “I’m so glad you like this. I’ve been thinking about getting one for me, man. I try to save it for you, but damn, I'm so shitty at self-control. Like, it’s got to suck to not be able to jerk it, but when we’re together, you get off so hard.” Trey sighed. “But then, what if someone in the dorms saw it? I kept thinking, bro, you could wait ‘til summer. But I’m still going to have practice. Locker rooms. You know?”

Dustin nodded. He did in fact know about the embarrassment of someone seeing him with his cock locked up. The red-headed woman in the hallway after Hart had whipped him—

Trey took Dustin’s shudder for something else. He sighed again. “Yeah. Maybe by then, I can drop the team without it looking too sus.”

His fingertips traced off the end of the cage and brushed down Dustin’s balls. That time, Dustin’s shudder was exactly what Trey thought it was. The squeeze of the cage became painful as the sensation of having his balls stroked traveled up his groin and into his stomach.

“At least you—”

On the beanbag chair, Trey’s phone started beeping. His head turned toward it, his thick lips pressing together, but then he sighed. “That’s the dinner bell. I guess we’ve got to eat sometime, man.”

“Yeah,” Dustin said. He wasn’t hungry. Under his horny ache, there was only a faint nausea that twisted his stomach and took up all the room there. But if they were eating, Trey wouldn’t be fucking him again, and in that sense, food was the most appealing thing in the world.

Chapter Text

Now that Trey had mentioned wearing a cock cage himself and wondering whether anyone else would notice it under his clothes, Dustin felt like his own cage was an embarrassing secret, even though it was unlikely that anyone would be able to tell that he had one on under his thong and black slacks. He had all his clothing back on, including the white undershirt and the sage-colored button-up, though he hadn’t buttoned it back up.

Why bother? By the time they were in the clothing-removal stage, Dustin would want it over with. Dinner was for delay. When things were already in progress was the time for speed.

Not that getting it over with was going to save him. Trey seemed obsessed with Dustin’s pleasure in a way that he would have welcomed from a real lover, but not from him. Not from this. Trey might hold Dustin’s hand as they crossed the living room, he might think that he was treating him like a boyfriend, but it was only in the juvenile sense. They held hands and made out and fucked, but Trey didn’t show a genuine boyfriend’s interest and empathy.

How long was it going to take to wake the guy up? Dustin needed to wait until his ownership had been transferred, so hopefully Trey would be primed for the truth by that point and it wouldn’t take him too much longer to bring him around gently. The worst had already happened and happened and happened. Everything now was about damage control and holding on. Dustin was becoming legitimately concerned about how Trey might react if he didn’t ease him into the truth.

The smell of baking fish suffused the air of the entire living space. Trey pulled Dustin over to the counter island, where Abby was busy slicing cucumbers and sliding them into a bowl with her knife.

“Baking a fish?” Trey asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.

“Mhm,” Abby confirmed. “With garlic and lemon. And an Asian cucumber salad, roast carrots and potatoes, and spinach-and-mushroom-stuffed zucchini boats.”

“Who all is coming? Just us?”

Abby’s smile was wry. “I’m sure the two of you could eat an entire baked fish. But no, Mrs. Brook is also in the house, and your little brother.”

“Dad?”

“Mr. Brook had to work late.”

“I’m sure he did.” Trey’s sarcasm was thick enough to dress the salad.

Sara bustled in from the hallway wearing a long floral dress that tucked in at the waist and showed off her curves as if she were a much younger woman. She had an empty basket hooked over her arm. “The table’s set,” she told Abby. “Is there anything else you need?”

“If you’ll help me with the plates when it’s all out? Thanks, Sara.”

“Of course!” The way that Sara avoided looking toward Dustin and Trey was obvious. Dustin told himself that it was about her paying respects to her owner, but he knew what it actually was.
Trey gave Dustin’s hand a tug. “Let’s sit down.”

“Okay.”

Dustin let Trey pull him along and was mildly surprised that they moved away from the kitchen nook that they’d had lunch in the last time. He hadn’t paid much attention any time that he’d been passing through the huge living room, but now he was being dragged toward it, he noticed that, across from the window wall facing the back patio, a broad archway led into a dining room.

It contained as conspicuous a display of wealth as every other large, tall-ceilinged room in the house. The gold-toned, solid-wood table was centered under a brass-and-glass chandelier that glinted with a subtly yellow light. Although it had the same big windows with muntins that all of the rooms had, its windows faced east toward the complex landscaping of the front yard. The broad yard was still sunlit, but the house cast a long shadow over the flowers and hedges.

A crisp, bleached white tablecloth covered the table. Dustin hadn’t intended to dress consistent with the décor, but he was amused to see that the accents were all green. Four places had been set with everything but plates and salad bowls. Trey tugged him toward the nearest chairs. Their backs were to the archway to the living room, and the thought of people being able to come up behind him made Dustin’s skin crawl.
Trey released Dustin’s hand only as they parted to sit down. “Man,” he complained. “I’d hoped for something quick. Not that we don’t have all night, but I’ve got early practice.”

“Which is why it’s so lovely to see you, Trey.”

The flowing, lyrical female voice behind Dustin made him jump, and his head turned fast. The woman attached to the voice was a light-skinned Black woman. Her loose shirt and flowing pants were as blindingly white as the tablecloth, and her wheat-colored box braids swung as she bent down to kiss Trey’s cheek.

Dustin had seen Trey’s mother before. In the living room when Trey had unboxed him. After Trey had pulled Dustin’s thong apart, and he’d been completely naked with this woman in the room, looking at him with disapproval. Dustin felt the blood rush to his face and his throat tighten.

The woman straightened and gave Dustin an assessing look. He could see aspects of Trey in her face, including in the fullness of the lips that pursed at him. “Good evening, Dusty.”

Dustin tried to clear the blockage out of his throat. It was a struggle to maintain contact with those hazel eyes. “Good evening, ma’am.”

“I hope my son is treating you well?”

“Mom!” Trey’s protest was somewhere between affronted and embarrassed.

Mrs. Brook didn’t respond to him. She continued to study Dustin. He absently wiped his suddenly sweaty palms against his slacks, glad that they were under the table. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” She smiled and gestured with a sunshine-yellow clasp purse. “And I’m glad you could join us for dinner. It’s so rare to have a guest.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She finally turned away, and Dustin was able to let his eyes sink back to the empty place-setting. He doubted that any guest had ever felt something like the way that sitting on the handle of his plug made his body ache despite the thick padding of the chairs, or if they had, that it hadn’t been associated with the same shame.

Guest. What a joke. And if his body took the thought literally, his stomach startled to burble with giddy laughter. Choking down on the laugh flexed Dustin’s abs and made him ache. He swallowed and hoped that neither of them had noticed his effort to control himself.

After Trey’s mom sat, she struck up a conversation with him about his classes and grades. Dustin’s swimming brain had trouble following it. The only thing he noticed was that Trey’s normally relaxed diction shifted to Mrs. Brook’s formal way of speaking. He certainly didn’t call her ‘man.’

“Hey, he’s in my spot.” Another voice, young and masculine, made Dustin jump. How the fuck did these people keep sneaking up on him? The floors were wood, for fuck sake.

Mrs. Brook’s well-manicured hand caressed the curved back of the chair beside her. “Your dad’s not joining us. You can sit with me.”

“Of course he isn’t.” Trey’s brother put almost exactly the same sarcasm in his voice that Trey had. His voice wasn’t quite as deep as Trey’s baritone, but it was a near match.

The person who went around the table was not the middle schooler from the posed family photo wall. He was an older teenager, probably close to finishing high school. He had Trey’s lean frame and they were clearly brothers, though the younger brother kept his hair short and wasn’t yet trying to grow any facial hair. He slouched into the seat across from Dustin with a tablet in his hand.

“No devices at dinner, Deshaun,” Mrs. Brook said promptly. The teenager sighed and put the tablet face-down on the corner of the table.

Unlike Mrs. Brook, Trey’s brother didn’t make any effort to make Dustin comfortable. He stared. Then his eyes shifted over to Trey, and he spoke like Dustin wasn’t there. “I’m surprised he’s got clothes on.”

Trey took in a breath, but Mrs. Brook beat him to it. “Deshaun!”

“What?” The teenager shrugged. “He’s not wearing much in the pics.”

“The pics?”

“The ones Trey posted on his socials.”

Dustin’s face had been burning, but it turned to ice as the blood drained from it. His eyes fell to the table. His stomach clenched, and the back of his tongue started to tingle.

It had been bad enough when he’d thought that Trey was posting the lingerie photos to a chat with his friends or something. Apparently he’d put them on social media for the world to see. As ice tracked a finger up Dustin’s spine, he told himself that there was absolutely no way that his former social circles overlapped with those of the Brook family.

Mrs. Brook’s tone was as icy as Dustin’s body felt. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” the teenager said. “He put up pics of this guy wearing—”

“I’m not speaking to you, Shaun. I’m speaking to your brother.”

Next to Dustin, Trey shifted. His chair creaked a little. “He was okay with it, mom. And he’s not naked.”

“Yeah, he’s got a thong on.” Shaun was clearly not trying to help Trey out.

“Take them down,” Mrs. Brook said.

“Mom—”

“Devonte Frederick Brook, you will take those pictures down immediately, or I’ll be speaking with your father.”

Trey’s hands went up. “Okay, okay.”

His mom might have had more to say if the auburn-haired sommelier, Jean was her name, hadn’t come in to ask Mrs. Book to approve the wine that she wanted with dinner. The descriptions of the wine options were complete gibberish. Or maybe that was just the way that the dizziness was tipping Dustin from side to side, like a man trying to stay in a boat on heavy seas. Sara appeared from nowhere and had to ask him twice what he’d like to drink.

“Just water,” he mumbled.

The conversation that started afterward was normal in tone and pitch and seemed to have to do with sports, but Dustin couldn’t focus on it. He was trying to breathe, to get his heart-rate down. The press of Trey’s leg against Dustin’s under the table made him flinch, but then he relaxed his leg against his owner’s. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything.

When Abby came in with the fish, Mrs. Brook’s tone became pure sugar. “Why, Abby, that smells delicious!”

As Abby again described the dinner, Dustin stared the white tablecloth in front of him. Abby or Sara put a bowl of salad and a plate in front of him. Dustin made himself eat, but the food had no flavor or texture, and it sat as heavy as a boulder in his stomach. It was only the sound of his name that brought him back.

“Dusty, it was nice to properly meet you,” Mrs. Brook said in a pleasant voice.

Dustin glanced up at her. Her smile seemed genuine. He didn’t trust it, but his mother had taught him proper manners. “It was nice to meet you, ma’am.”

She said, “Let me know if you need anything, anything at all.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dustin’s lips felt numb. He couldn’t quite decide which was worse, being treated as a commodity or some bizarrely skewed version of a house-guest. Maybe that was where Trey got his delusions from. The shape of his chin and the willingness to play pretend about Dustin’s status in the house.

After she left, Trey nudged Dustin. “Let’s go, man.”

“Okay.” Dustin pushed his chair back and stood. He still felt like he had only one foot in the real world.

Trey stood too, then looked across the table. “You’re a petty little bitch, man. I hope you know that.”

“Fuck you, too.” Trey’s brother reached for his tablet.

“Come on,” Trey said to Dustin.

Dustin glanced back as he followed Trey out of the room. Shaun gave Dustin the finger with a ‘fuck you very much’ smile on his face.

He knew that it wasn’t about him, it was about Shaun’s relationship with Trey, but it still stung that someone he didn’t know had such antipathy toward him for no reason. Or, no, that wasn’t right. For reasons that Dustin also wished didn’t exist.

Chapter Text

“I’m so fucking sorry, man,” Trey said as soon as his bedroom door had closed behind them. He then popped any idea that Dustin might have had that he was developing some self-awareness and apologizing for posting pictures of Dustin on the internet. “My brother can be such a piece of shit sometimes.”

“What’s his problem?” Dustin watched Trey grab his phone off his desk, swipe in the passcode, and hopefully begin the process of deleting whatever sexy pictures he’d put up on his socials.

Trey grumbled. “Fuck if I know, man. He’s always been jealous of my shit. It’s not my fault he was born second. And he gets away with way more shit than I ever did.”

Dustin started toward the bed, then stopped. The blanket that had been a messy pile had been replaced, and the underwear that had been scattered on the floor had been tidied away. Everything now smelled subtly of fabric softener instead of old sex. Warmth spread up the back of Dustin’s neck. How Trey showed absolutely no embarrassment or concern that someone else cleaned up the room after they’d had sex in it was beyond him.

Trey sighed and put his phone down on the desk. “There. Done. Man, it fucking sucks. There were so many likes on those pics.” Dustin’s stomach tried to turn on its side, but it had been too much to hope that nobody had seen them. “But I guess it’s not like I had to take them off of my phone or something. I can still see your face when I’m missing you.”

“Yeah.” Dustin’s hands felt large and awkward at his sides, but he wasn’t sure where else to put them.

Trey dragged his hand back through his messy curls and sighed. “I know we were about to get up to something, man, but I’ve lost the mood. I’m sort of pissed, you know?”

Dustin nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. To hope.

Trey ticked his chin up in the direction of the velvet bean-bag chair that was a darker blue island on the pale sea of carpet. “Do you want to play some games or something? I’ve got RBA 2025. I know you’re not really into basketball, but we could play co-op. I haven’t had much of a chance to play it, but I’m actually all caught up on my classwork, for once, so.”

“I’d love that,” Dustin said quickly.

Slouching on the velvet bean bag with a controller in his hand, staring up at the wall-mounted TV while maneuvering his characters back and forth on the basketball court and listening as Trey said things like, ‘pass, pass, pass,’ felt almost, what. Normal? Nostalgic? It felt like being in college with his friends, swapping controllers back and forth between beers they were too young to legally drink. Dustin allowed himself to sink into the illusion of normalcy.

It had to end at some point. After they won the match and the game cheerfully announced that they were advancing in their bracket, Trey set the controller aside and rested his hand on Dustin’s thigh. Dustin held onto his controller like a life-preserver, but he glanced sidelong at Trey.

The young man’s smile promised mischief. His hand tracked higher along Dustin’s slacks, his fingers sliding up the inside of his thigh in a way that made his balls want to jump. “I was thinking about that shower we took together. You know?”

Dustin’s tongue glued itself to the roof of his mouth, but he managed a nod.

“I was thinking.” Trey’s fingers massaged the inside of Dustin’s thigh. “What if instead of taking a shower after. We just fucked in the shower?”

He said it like it was the most original idea a person had ever had about sex. Dustin swallowed down a mouthful of lemon-flavored spit and willed his tongue into motion. “We could do that.”

“I think it would be hot as hell.” Trey shifted toward Dustin on the squishy chair material, and Dustin tilted his head so that Trey could kiss him. The wisps of the young man’s attempt at a mustache tickled under Dustin’s nose. When they pulled away, Trey grinned. “I’ll get the keys.”

That was how Dustin ended up back in the white shower in Trey’s ocean-fog bathroom, ‘For Men’ mist scenting the air while Dustin pressed against the shower wall and the other man’s hands massaged up and down Dustin’s back. Trey had unlocked Dustin’s cock, so when his hands slid around to Dustin’s chest and down, there was nothing to keep him from touching Dustin intimately. He’d been thick from the water rolling over his stomach and down, and Trey’s hands only increased his body’s interest. He let his head be nudged to the side, and Trey kissed the side of his neck while he stroked Dustin’s cock.

Trey didn’t need any help. He was already hard against Dustin’s ass, sliding wet skin against wet skin instead of grinding. His fingers stroked to where the base ring of the cage still held Dustin under the balls, and Dustin gasped.

Trey chuckled. “You really like it there.”

“Yeah.” Dustin breathed out the lie and rested his forehead against the slick tiles.

The water slid down his back instead of his front, and Trey groaned a little. One of his hands stayed on Dustin’s dick, but the other went behind. He tried to set his feet and relax, but the hot press of Trey’s cock hurt when it came. Dustin was sore.

And then Dustin was not in the shower with Trey at all. He was bent forward over a metal prison toilet, smelling piss and bleach while Logan forced himself into Dustin’s chafed, painful hole with nothing more than spit for lube.

“Please, don’t,” Dustin begged.

He expected tearing pain as Logan’s hoarse, cracked voice ordered him to beg for his daddy to fuck him. Not for the pressure to disappear and for an smoother, deeper voice to sound concerned. “Shit, man. What was that?”

Dustin’s forehead was resting against the slick, clean white tiles of Trey’s shower. The air smelled of cedar-scented shampoo, not bleach and piss. Water roared past his head, or maybe that was the blood roaring in his ears, but it was not the sound of the prison toilet.

He was losing his mind. They already had his body, and now they were going to take his mind, too.

Fortunately, the giddy horror of the thought passed quickly. Trey had asked him again what he had said, but only once. Dustin cleared his throat. “Lube. Please.”

Trey kissed the side of Dustin’s neck. The rolling water slid to the sides of where their two bodies pressed. “Sorry. I should’ve realized. Did I hurt you?”

You’re hurting me all the time.

“Not really.”

Don’t ask me if I want to keep going. I’m so tired of lying.

Trey spared him that. His selfishness wasn’t good for much, but it was good for that. The man’s lips pressed again, the tickling hairs of his mustache brushing behind Dustin’s ear. “Sorry, man. I’ll grab it.”

After the pressure of his body lifted away, Dustin took a deep breath. He wouldn’t have much time to settle back in reality. They’d brought the little bottle of lube into the shower, Trey had just forgotten it. He was young, and stupid, and didn’t think farther than the end of his own dick, and if any of those things changed, he probably wouldn’t still be Trey.

Dustin stayed against the tiles, his forehead pressed against them and the water rolling warm down his back, until Trey’s thumb gripped into his ass again. Dustin lifted his face away from the tiles, but his body didn’t flinch. And that time, when Trey’s cock pressed Dustin’s hole, he entered easily and without resistance.

Without resistance. The thought made Dustin want to start the bad kind of giggling. But his ability to think about it was cut short by the stroke of Trey’s thick cock across his sweet spot, which was also the stroke of electric fingertips under his skin. The way they combined with the roll of the water was new and strange. Dustin gasped in the damp air, and Trey groaned as if in response.

“Damn, you’re so tight.” Both of his hands had dug into Dustin’s ass as he pulled out and thrust again. It was a wonder that neither of them slipped, no matter how textured the grippy tiles were.

Dustin’s cock demanded his attention, the runnel of water along its side and over his balls begging for his hand. He realized that Trey wasn’t going to keep stroking his cock. He probably couldn’t, not without losing his footing. The electric heat arced under Dustin’s skin when Trey slid inside him like a demand.

Dustin told himself that, if he didn’t get himself off, Trey was going to want him to after. And it was just going to drag it out. Getting off was the right thing to do, even if Dustin was going to hate himself for it later because he knew he was lying.

Stroking his cock turned the sensation up to eleven. He was rock hard, and rubbing his fingertip under the curve of his glans of made his balls pull up with a suddenness that might have been painful if it hadn’t felt so good. Trey was still fucking Dustin when he spasmed in his own hand. Even if he’d wanted to hold in his moan when the pleasure hit his groin, the way his skin was on fire wouldn’t have let him. He exhaled a sharp cry, and that just spurred Trey to fuck him harder.

The fact that Dustin had finished and couldn’t keep holding his suddenly-too-sensitive cock didn’t change the heat under his skin. He pressed both of his forearms flat against the shower tiles and tried to catch his breath despite the way that his palms and feet felt licked by fire and the way that the water rolling over his skin was too much pressure to be borne. But at the same time, he felt like he hadn’t stopped cumming, not really. The fire was pleasure, too, and every spike of it made his breath catch.

It only stopped when Trey slammed home, causing him to cramp even as the man's shout of raw animal pleasure assaulted his ears.

Trey’s death-grip on Dustin’s ass loosened, he pulled out, and he started rubbing his hands down Dustin’s hips. One left a greasy smear of silicone lube, but both slid easily in the water that was still pouring down Dustin’s back and toward the drain. “God damn, man.” Trey’s words were pants. “That was. Just. Damn.”

The press of his lips on the side of Dustin’s neck made him shudder. Trey nuzzled, then mumbled. “We better clean up. I’ve got to wash my hair tonight. Jesus. That was so fucking good.”

He didn’t seem to be looking for an answer, which was good because Dustin couldn’t give him one. He was too busy hating himself for the way that he’d jerked off while Trey had fucked him. Had it really been a good idea, or was that just his justification for getting off? There wasn’t enough soap in the world for Dustin to clean up. Not when the filth was inside of him, and he was as much a part of it as Trey was.

Chapter Text

It was strange for Dustin to complete his nightly rituals with another man. Ben had made sure that Dustin had general supplies in Trey’s bathroom, so at least he had a toothbrush of his own, but it wasn’t like the dorm-style bathroom that all of the izzies shared, where people tried to do their business and not look at or speak with each other. Trey rambled on about what a good night he was having and what good company Dustin was, and the only time that Trey stopped talking was when he was brushing his teeth. Dustin, feeling connected to his body by a loose and tenuously attached string, tried to drag out his own bedtime rituals, and nodded and made affirmative noises at what he hoped were the right times. It was a skill Dustin was getting some practice at.

Trey’s nighttime routine was significantly more complex than Dustin’s, involving detangling and moisturizing and twisting his curls before tying his hair up in black silk. No wonder his bouncy curls always looked soft and had significantly less frizz than Dustin would have expected from the way that he constantly ran his hands through them. Dustin, who usually just ran a comb through his wavy hair, was left standing by the sink and just watching.

He really was an attractive man. Not conventionally handsome, with his eyes too deeply set, his scruffy mustache, his ears a little too large for his head, and of course he was too young for Dustin’s taste. But he had a nice body, particularly when the lean muscles of an athlete were freshly sheened by moisturizer. That hair, that smile. It felt even more unfair that Dustin might have been attracted to Trey under other circumstances. Hating it felt like one more thing that had been taken from him.

Trey caught Dustin looking and stretched his arms up over his head in a deliberate stretch. “Like what you see?”

“You’re good-looking.”

Trey’s arms fell. Dustin expected some boasting comment, but instead, he asked, “Are you okay, man?”

“Yeah.” When Trey didn’t respond for a moment, Dustin’s mind caught on to the fact that he probably didn't seem alright. He searched for some excuse in the scattered clouds of his thoughts, looking for a believable lie. “I'm just tired. It was a really good day, but, well, exhausting.”

Trey’s grin came back. “We were a little active.”

Dustin nodded.

“It’s going to be nice to have you sleep over, man. Are you a big spoon or a little spoon?”

Dustin’s brows furrowed. The thought of Trey being curled around him all night added another gallon full of dread to the ocean in his stomach. Being curled around him wouldn't be enjoyable, either, but it felt less threatening than having Trey at his back while he tried to sleep. “Big, I guess. But should we? With the collar?”

Trey winced. “Ah, shit. It’s going to shock you if I touch it, right?”

Dustin nodded. He didn’t care if the idea of the collar made Trey uncomfortable. At this point, he needed to get himself some space for his sanity.

Trey’s hand went up to his protected hair, ran over the silk then dropped. He sucked on his teeth. “I think we can get around that, man.”

Adrenaline slammed into Dustin like a truck with no brakes, shattering the cottony layer of unreality and apathy. Whatever half-cocked scheme Trey was hatching, he wanted no part in it. He blurted, “We shouldn’t.”

It wasn’t the vivid pain of Hart’s belt whipping that Dustin was terrified of. He believed that that had been about the cock cage. What terrified him was Hart’s words, echoing through his head in the man’s utterly uncaring deadpan. His dad might get rid of you. Bad investment. Disruptive.

Meanwhile, Trey’s enthusiasm seemed to be carrying him away. “Man, I think as long as we clasp the ends together, it’s not going to report us.”

Nobody is going to save you from his fuckups. You have to save yourself.

“Trey, please.” The young man’s voice faded off, and he looked at Dustin with a confused tilt to his head. Dustin's arms were made of lead, but he spread his hands, fingers wide as if trying to stop the idea with a forcefield strung between them. “Please. What if someone comes in?”

A small line formed between Trey’s brows. “That’s not likely. Nobody's come in at night since I was a kid.”

Desperation thrummed in Dustin’s chest like the crescendo of a band’s horn section. “But what if? What if the collar says something is wrong somehow and your dad sends Hart to check on us or something? Do you want to risk—” Dustin’s mind stumbled. What could he say that wouldn’t jeopardize his position even further? Just coming out and saying that Dustin might get sold likely would shatter the young man’s illusion too soon and too fast, and he was too impulsive to trust. Dustin’s mind raced. His heart raced. “—well, risk getting grounded again?”

“Shit. Yeah, that would really suck.” Trey’s brow-furrowed silence made Dustin want to shove a wedge into the gap before the guy talked himself around to why it would be worth the risk or whatever other stupid thing got into his head.

“Couldn’t you just, you know, ask him if it would be okay?”

“Man, I’m not a kid.” The whine in Trey’s voice suggested otherwise.

“But you’re his child. He’s always going to think of you as his kid.” Dustin’s mother had said that to him, once. “I don’t belong to you, yet, I belong to him. What if he fires me?”

Had that been too far?

The line between Trey’s brows deepened as his hand went up toward his hair, touched the black silk, and dropped again. He sighed. “You’re right. It’s fucking garbage, but he could. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll fucking ask him.”

Dustin’s legs unfroze and turned to water. He had to put a hand on the counter to steady himself. His mind flitted between relief and worry like a frightened bird. What did Trey mean when he’d said it wouldn’t be the first time?

“Hey, man.”

Dustin hadn’t realized that his eyes dropped until he had to look up. The furrow between Trey’s thick, dark brows was a canyon. His expressive lips had turned down in the corners from the way they were pressed together. “I didn’t get you in trouble last weekend, did I?”

“No,” Dustin said too quickly.

“Bro.”

Why did Trey have to be perceptive at exactly the wrong moment? But Dustin didn’t even have to lie, not really. The whipping hadn’t been about what Trey had done. Dustin drew in a slow, deep breath. “Hart, well, he said some things. About, you know, what could happen, if your dad thought I was disruptive.”

Trey’s eyes searched Dustin’s face. “What did he say?”

Dustin couldn’t meet the scrutiny in those dark eyes. His dropped automatically. His throat was tight, and he had to clear the blockage out of it before he could talk. “Just. You know. Your dad could send me away or something.”

When Trey’s hands settled onto Dustin’s arms, he flinched. Trey said, “Man, I am so sorry. I’m not going to let that happen, okay? Hart doesn’t have any say in it. And Luka’s still here, right?”

Dustin nodded. He couldn’t look up. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. And it wasn't because of fear.

The heat of anger was back in his chest, and if he opened his mouth, he was going to yell at this idiot boy that Hart almost certainly had more say in what happened to the izzies than Trey did. That Hart wouldn’t ‘send him away,’ he'd be sold like property. He wanted to shake him. He wanted to shove the manchild into the wall and get in his face until he woke the fuck up.

Abruptly, Trey pulled Dustin into a hug. The light pressure of arms on Dustin’s back made him feel trapped, and angry and trapped was a bad combination in any animal. But some part of him, the nasty and betraying part that had liked it when Trey had stroked his hair in class, wanted to take comfort from the kind, genuine touch that was so rare in Dustin’s current personal hell.

He made the stiffness in his muscles relax and his neck bow forward so that his forehead rested against Trey’s shoulder, and when he breathed out, most of the rage went with it. When he breathed back in, he smelled what Trey smelled like without all of his usual body spray. Shea butter and an odor that could only be the way that his skin smelled.

“I’m sorry,” Trey said softly. “I’ve only been thinking about me.”

Truer words had never been spoken.

“It’s okay,” Dustin mumbled.

It wasn’t.

“I didn’t think about how you might get fired. I’ll do better, man,” Trey said.

He wouldn’t.

“Thank you,” Dustin said.

Trey released him. “I’m going to ask dad about you staying the night without the collar. He’s probably balls-deep in Jean, but if he doesn’t get back to me, I’ll… well, you can go back to the izzy house so I don’t accidentally zap you. Or sleep over on the floor or whatever. We’ll have other nights.”

He made it sound like Dustin was the one who was going to be disappointed. Dustin cleared his throat. “Okay.”

When the bathroom door closed, Dustin turned to the white marble countertop and pressed both hands flat. The marble was cool but started to warm immediately. He took slow, deep breaths. He couldn’t start screaming.

Disaster had been so close. Or rather, disasters, plural.

The latch to the bathroom clicked, and Dustin’s body jerked upright as if the loud noise had been a gunshot. Trey stuck his head in past the door, a grin on his face. “He said yes!”

“Good.” It wasn’t really good. Dustin didn’t want to spend the night with his rapist. But it could have been much worse. Dustin waved vaguely at the disassembled cock cage that still sat on the counter after its cleaning. “I've still got to…”

“Sorry, I’ll let you finish up in here, man.”

“Thanks.”

After the door closed, Dustin looked at the man in the mirror. He looked tired, but not afraid or angry. “Thank you,” he whispered to himself. “Thank you for not being a coward. But please, for the love of God, don’t turn into Jacob.”

He had been so close to shoving Trey away, slamming him into the wall. A shove had been how everything started, and it would be just too comically tragic for a shove to be how everything ended, too.

Chapter Text

When Dustin went out to the bedroom, there was a new blanket on the bed. Trey must have stripped off the ruined blanket and retrieved a new one from his closet, an identical navy-colored one that still complemented the dark blue of his sheets. There were also two pillows. Had there always been? Dustin didn’t think so. It seemed unusually thoughtful, coming from Trey. If he thought that Dustin was his boyfriend, maybe he was in that ‘impress your boyfriend’ stage of the relationship.

The lanky young man sat at his desk in just grey boxer-briefs, sliding his finger down his phone. Dustin’s golden collar sat fastened into a circlet next to him. Dustin could only hope that Trey hadn’t been lying when he said that his dad had approved the plan. He told himself that Trey had seemed excited enough for it to be true, but the wary part of him, the one that felt that he had to protect himself from Trey’s recklessness, wasn’t so sure.

Dustin didn’t have a phone or anything to distract himself with, so he turned the blanket down to the sheets and sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. A familiar ache throbbed once through his guts and subsided into a low background hum. God, he was so sick of this particular ache. There was no doubt in his mind that Trey would want to fuck again in the morning, and he looked forward to that future with bleakness.

Maybe you could tell him you need a break so that he doesn’t hurt you. It was the small, quiet voice that told him that he wasn’t a coward. And it was probably right. For all of Trey’s flaws and the expansive list of ways that he regularly hurt Dustin, the young man hadn’t done any of it maliciously.

Dustin stretched out on his side, pulled the sheet over his legs, wrapped his arm around the pillow, and stared across the room. His head was to the window and he faced toward the bathroom and short hallway to the door, which kept Trey’s desk in the lower edge of his vision. It felt strangely right, though the strangeness faded when he belatedly realized with no real surprise that he’d taken the side of the bed that he would have taken had Trey been Jacob and had this been his real bedroom.

And how was Jake sleeping? Could he sleep at night, knowing what he’d done to Dustin? Probably. Fuck him. How were the girls sleeping?

Dustin slammed the door on those thoughts closed so hard that, for a moment, he had no thoughts at all.

Trey’s voice made Dustin jump a little. “Just answering some messages. I’ve got practice in the morning, so I’ve got to get up pretty fucking early. Sorry, man.”

Closing his eyes, Dustin was dropped out of the world of blues and into a world of pink. “It’s okay.” If he kept leaving everything with that tepid ‘okay,’ he was going to start sounding as depressed as he actually was. “I get up pretty early to meet Hart in the gym.”

The phone clattered on the desk. The world of pink disappeared, replaced by a world of yellow-streaked grey. The bed shifted, and then warmth pressed against Dustin’s back. A sheet was pulled up to rest lightly over his body. An arm looped around him. Dustin was trapped, and his breath and heart both kicked up a notch.

What the fuck? Dustin had said he’d be the big spoon. What the fuck was this?

‘This’ was his own fault. When he’d kept his eye on Trey, it had put his back was to the rest of the bed. Where else was Trey supposed to lie? And if he was lying and facing Dustin, he was at Dustin’s back. The end.

Damn it. It wasn’t enough to be on guard against Trey’s recklessness, he needed to keep an eye on his own, too. But he was so tired.

Trey’s nose and lips nuzzled at the back of Dustin’s head. He murmured, “You smell good, man.”

“I probably smell like you.”

“Well, then, I guess I smell good.”

He did, actually, without the cloying cloud of body spray. “You do, when you get out of the shower.”

Trey kissed the back of Dustin’s shoulder. The light brush of lips and tickle of mustache sent a thrill down Dustin’s spine all the way to his tailbone. The skin there was sensitive, probably since it hadn’t touched much of anything other than a collar for almost a month. Or, no. Not even a month, and with at least a chunk of that in the BISA warehouse. Dustin was moving through time like it was molasses. Almost ten more years of this. Time would have to start passing faster at some point, wouldn’t it?

Trey’s smooth baritone sounded even lower when the volume was turned down, and a little hesitant. “But not the rest of the time?”

Dustin floundered. “It’s not that you, well, smell bad. It’s just, you know, the body spray? You go a little hard.”

He had dressed in the normal black boxer-briefs he’d purchased on the shopping trip with Ben. Trey’s fingers dipped under the stretchy band, the callused pads rubbing back and forth. Dustin did not expect the warmth in his groin that demanded that he be aware of it.

He’d already gotten off twice. He was sad and he was anxious. He did not expect the man’s touch to give him wood. But there he was, starting to fill out for no more reason than a touch on his stomach. What the fuck was wrong with him? At least the cage would keep him safe.

The brush of Trey’s lips and the subtle scratch of his mustache against the back of Dustin’s shoulder sent another thrill down his spine, which was followed by the warmth of the man’s breath. “Sweat would be better, man?”

“You don’t smell like sweat. Not when I’m around. Except, well.” Except when they were having sex.

“Hmm.” Dustin expected Trey to follow up his thoughtful noise with some comment about them fucking, but the other man surprised him. “So. What do you do when I’m not around?”

Dustin drew in a breath through his nose, slow and even. “Work out, mostly. So. I guess I smell like sweat. Then I get a break for lunch, then I’m off after dinner.”

Trey’s fingers continued to caress Dustin’s stomach back and forth under the belly button. “No wonder you’re getting fit, man.”

“I’d have to be.”

“What about at night?”

“Recreation.” Dustin hoped that the wry twist he felt at using Hart’s word for it didn’t come too through heavily in his voice. He didn’t want to sound sarcastic. “There’s a rec room. There’s a TV, computers, a game table, a reading corner. I like to read.”

“And you have friends, there.” It wasn’t a question, it was a confirmation.

“Yes.”

Trey’s finger continued to stroke slowly back and forth at the edge of Dustin’s shorts. “So you’re not going to be, I don’t know, neglected or something man? Practice eats a lot of time, even on the off-season, and I’ve got classes. I was thinking I might come back Thursday night, pick you up for a party.” Trey’s tone went a little sour. “If dad’ll let me.”

A break until Thursday sounded absolutely divine to Dustin, and he hoped that Trey’s dad would shoot down taking a new pet to a party. But he couldn’t say that. “I’ll be fine.”

Trey sighed, the warmth of his breath tracking down Dustin’s back. “Summer feels like such a long way off. I’ll spend a lot of time with you, then. I’ve got a trip to Europe planned, man, and you’ll be mine for real by then, so nobody can stop me from taking you on it. And then in the fall, I’ll get a pet-friendly dorm. And then we can be together most of the time, and I’m sure you’ll make friends there, too.”

Dustin’s heart started to pound again. He didn’t like living in the izzy house, exactly, and he’d be glad to never see Hart again. But it was becoming familiar. And although the careers mostly avoided him, he didn’t think he was lying about having one or two friends.

But what could he say to Trey? Don’t move out of your parents’ house? Dustin loved his parents, but he’d still been eager to get out at Trey’s age.

He didn’t want to keep talking about it. He didn’t want to keep thinking about it. He tried to make himself sound sleepy. “Mm-hm.”

Trey’s lips brushed the back of Dustin’s neck again. He whispered, “Sorry, man. I wore you out. I’ll should let you get sleep.”

Dustin didn’t object, but he also did not sleep. It was Trey whose breathing went deep and even, his fingers relaxing from Dustin’s stomach to rest against the bed. He didn’t snore, but his breath whistled when he breathed in through his nose, and it tickled down Dustin’s back when he let it back out.

Dustin stared at the distant side of the room, his eyes slowly adjusting to the radioactive yellow glow of the city at night that came in through the big windows. His mind would start to wander, then come back to the core concept that Trey had already plotted out years for them – for him – and it had only been a week. Time stretched in front of Dustin as a long ribbon of darkness pulling him on toward a deeper night. Ten years? His sentence might as well be forever.

Surely, Trey would get tired of fucking him sometime between now and then and find some other use for him. He’d be almost 40 when he got out, and Trey would be in his early 30s. At some point, he wouldn’t be Trey’s shiny new toy, getting raped two or three times a day. At some point, Trey would want a real boyfriend to start a life with. Right?

Except that Trey’s words about his dad, who had to be in his 50s, being balls deep in his secretary tried to scratch at Dustin’s certainty. And with his sanity feeling like it was slipping through his fingers like a handful of wet sand being pulled at by waves, Dustin wasn’t sure that he could last even that long.

If Dustin could get Trey to see what was happening, would he give up Dustin’s indenture? Everyone kept saying that Trey was a sweet boy. When Dustin brought Trey around to seeing that what they were doing wasn’t and could never be consensual, could Dustin leverage the guilt from the rapes to get Trey to let him go? Was that even allowed? Legal?

Dustin would have to ask his social worker. That meeting, at least, would be a short time in coming.

Finally, he closed his eyes. He tried to slow his breathing, to let the oblivion of sleep give him at least some kind of reprieve from his worries, but it was impossible with the anxiety that Trey being at his back kept provoking. His mind told him that, at any moment, the young man might spring into action for another horrible round, so instead, Dustin bounced in and out of a doze. He started awake every time Trey so much as twitched, and he wasn’t deep enough to escape the intermittent discomfort from his caged dick when it tried to get hard from an accidental brush by Trey or for no reason at all. At least if he had dreams, there were none that he remembered.

Chapter Text

Any concerns that Dustin had about Trey wanting to fuck in the morning were unfounded. His phone alarm started blaring from across the room when it was still dark out, and they’d separated in the night, so Dustin’s abrupt jerk at the sound didn’t break Trey’s teeth against the back of his head. Trey groaned. He rolled back onto Dustin’s side of the bed and pulled Dustin against him.

The hardness of the man’s morning wood pressed against the fleshy part of Dustin’s ass. He barely breathed as Trey’s callused fingertips kneaded against his chest, but then they relaxed. Trey hugged him like a pillow or teddy bear instead of a horny young man while the alarm wailed indignantly for at least five minutes. Dustin had no idea how he could sleep through it.

The alarm started blaring again a few minutes later, just when Dustin’s heart had started to slow down from the first round. Trey groaned against the back of Dustin’s shoulder exactly like a kid who didn’t want to be woken for school. He squeezed Dustin tight for a moment and kissed his neck, then released him.

Dustin’s back was abruptly cold, the bed shifting as Trey rolled away. His body passed between Dustin and the light coming off the phone, and the obnoxious blatting stopped.

“Sorry, man.” Trey sounded half-asleep. “Practice is early. I’m going to turn on the light.”

Dustin lifted his aching arm to shield his eyes, but the light was still bright through the lids. His mind was sluggish to get started, and his eyes felt gummy. When he moved, he was even more sore than he’d been the day before. The small voice of survival whispered in the back of Dustin’s mind, both like and unlike his usual mental voice. You’re going to get hurt, going on like this.

He breathed out through his nose. If Trey asked him to do anything penetrative, he’d offer a blowjob. It would be okay to say that he was too sore. He could do that. No, he would do that.

Trey groaned again, and even at his distance, Dustin heard the wet crunch of one of the young man’s joints popping. Dustin dropped his arm and squinted across the room, catching the end of a massive arms-over-head stretch that looked more functional than the sexy showing off from the night before.

When Trey saw Dustin looking, he grinned. It was full of all perfect straight white teeth that money could buy. “You did a number on me, man.” If that was what he thought, he should take a turn in Dustin’s body. Except, well. Not like that. “Do you need to piss?”

It wasn’t the question Dustin had been expecting. His voice was froggy from not speaking, and he sounded uncertain in his own ears. “No?”

“Okay. I’m going to hop in the shower, man.” His low voice went thoughtful. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s not like you haven’t seen all there is to see.”

When the bathroom door clicked, Dustin started shivering despite the sheet pulled up to his chin, and it took a moment for his mind to catch up to the point where he realized it was relief. He’d spent the night expecting to wake up with the horny young man already fucking him. He’d expected Trey to come back to the bed after the alarm and want to fuck, and he’d expected to have to find the courage to make some other suggestion. That neither had happened was such a sudden release of tension that it felt like Dustin had fallen over from not having an expected weight pushing on him from the other side.

He sat up slowly, looked at his trembling hands, and wondered how things had gotten to be like this. Two months ago, he would have been drinking coffee at home while trying to get the girls ready for school and daycare, respectively, before heading to the office. Two months ago, Jake already had been out of the picture, staying in the apartment he’d gotten after Dustin had filed for divorce, but he’d never been part of the morning routine before anyway. Had it really been that short a time between going from normal mornings at home to waking up in some rich brat’s bed, grateful that nobody was trying to rape him first thing?

Dustin breathed slowly until he got the trembling in his hands under control. It didn’t take as long as he might have thought. The shower was still running. Dustin had things that he needed to do in the bathroom, but one of those things was putting in a butt plug, and he didn’t want to give Trey any ideas. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed, stretching his stiff and very sore limbs and trying to decide how deep and bad the ache inside him was.

Bad. But there was none of the tearing red pain that he’d experienced before. Logan had hurt him worse.

When Trey came out of the bathroom, he was wearing the skinny jeans and black shirt combination that Dustin remembered him wearing to the sex classes at the university. It wasn’t the same shirt, it had long sleeves and a different set of artists printed on it, but it was an almost identical look. It seemed that comfortable shorts and jerseys were for at home, skinny jeans and hip-hop artists were for socializing.

Dustin stood reflexively, popping to his feet like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Trey crossed to him and kissed him hard on the mouth, his bristly little mustache damp, smelling of body spray. Though the cloud of smell didn’t feel as cloyingly thick, as if he’d taken Dustin’s words of the night before to heart.

The young man didn’t linger in the kiss. “Sorry. I’m running late. See you Thursday if I can.”

“Okay.” And then, because it didn’t seem like enough, he dolloped a lie on top. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Trey hesitated as if he was going to say something else, but he shook his head, snatched his phone and keys up off the desk, and reached for the backpack and gym bag that was parked by the closet door.

Dustin’s eyes caught on the desk. “Wait!”

Trey turned to him, confused.

“The collar?”

“Ah, shit. Right.” Trey snatched up the half-collapsed golden circlet, then he yelped sharply and dropped it. The collar – the closed collar – rattled back down onto the desk. “Fuck!”

Dustin’s heart froze. He thought of the crippling pain that the thing could inflict. He teetered between hoping that Trey thought about it, and dreading how he would take it.

The young man shook out his hand. “I forgot that thing zaps, man. It's like the worst static fucking doorknob.”

Static doorknob? What?

Dustin figured it out almost before he finished the question. The collar hadn’t been pressed against Trey’s throat, so it wouldn’t have choked him, and if the bubble was the source of the shock, he’d probably only picked up whatever current traveled around the rest of the flexible band. Dustin couldn’t remember it ever shocking the sides of his neck at all, but of course, he’d always had other things on his mind. Like breathing.

Trey used a pen from his desk to prod the collar into a position where he could line the key up against the back and pop it apart. Dustin thought he saw a flash of red somewhere near the solid oval in the front. Some kind of signal that it had gone off? Anxiety made him want to chew through his lower lip, but if he was going to be punished for it, there was nothing he could do at this point.

With a few prods of the pen and contortions of the keyring, Trey got the flat black rectangle of the key against the back of the collar, and it popped apart. Dustin, who had reflexively stood and taken a step toward Trey when he’d been shocked, turned his back. Trey slipped it the flexible gold band around his neck like the world’s shittiest necklace. Dustin felt the blister on the front of the collar settle against his throat, and it snicked as it closed in the back.

Trey gripped Dustin’s shoulders from behind and gave them a squeeze. “I’m sorry you have to wear it, man. I’ve got to ask dad again about a permit to have it turned off.”

“Okay,” Dustin said. Then he turned to Trey, because he knew what would be expected, and lifted his chin for a kiss.

After Trey pulled away, he smiled at Dustin. There seemed to be genuine warmth in his eyes. Dustin hated it. “Be seeing you.”

“Later.”

Then Dustin was alone in the room. He found his own cell phone in his slacks, checked the time, and saw that 8 am was still hours off. More than enough time for what he had to do in the bathroom and to have breakfast before he had to be in the gym.

The predawn air was refreshing and surprisingly cool, enough that Dustin was grateful for his long-sleeved button-up. Despite the subtly radioactive skyglow of the nearby city, it was dark enough to make the pool set in the ground appear to be an enticing bean of electric blue. But what shocked Dustin most was the quiet.

Yes, there were the sounds of a city in the background, the occasional sound of a vehicle as someone like Trey drove on the quiet streets. But Dustin had become used to the background sounds of small engines in this posh suburb. Yes, there were other sounds – the night sounds of insects, the almost subliminal hum of the pool motor – but they weren’t the human-made sounds that usually prevailed in Dustin’s new world.

He took his time to enjoy the walk around the house, even taking a moment to pause where the curving pathway crossed the front driveway to admire the house itself, glowing in the indirect lights strategically placed in bushes. It didn’t resemble a winter-frozen Icelandic fjord in any way except the ways that it did. Majestic, yes, but also cold and sterile. The izzy house might be a small imitation, but it, at least, exuded a warm feeling. Maybe it was the lights in the izzy house windows, not set to full, but a buttery yellow glow that Dustin knew from the upstairs hallway at night.

He didn’t expect anyone to be moving around the house, given the hour, but he heard a noise from the kitchen as he passed. Glancing in, he saw Abby rinsing a dish in the sink. He might have been able to pass without her noticing if his soft brown loafers hadn’t been squeaking off the wooden floor with their dewy bottoms. Abby’s head had turned toward the hallway.

In the low light, her eyes were amber, luminous as the eyes of a nocturnal animal caught in a headlight. There was a small smile of greeting on her face, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It also didn’t hold any pity. If there had been pity there, Dustin would have turned and left, even though she called to him.

“Dustin? Good morning. Come in?”

Dustin took exactly one step into the kitchen from the hallway. He cleared the tightness out of his throat. “Good morning, Abby. You’re up early.”

The sadness to her smile took on a wry twist. “Someone has to make breakfast, and Mrs. Brook is an early riser.” Her eyes flicked to the hallway behind Dustin, then back. “Wait here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Dustin could feel the puzzled furrow between his brows as he watched the short woman disappear into the pantry, where no one else was allowed to go.

When she came back out, she approached him directly and held out her hand. “Take it. But don’t hold onto it.”

Dustin’s eyes had darted with an abused animal’s wariness to the quick movement of her hand. She had a small square of waxed-paper foil on her palm, and inside the opened wrapper was a small chocolate disc.

Chocolate. Dustin’s mouth burst into a water so hard that it hurt. He hadn’t been allowed any sort of sugar outside that which naturally occurred in vegetables and yogurt. He hesitated, glancing toward the hallway.

“He won’t be up yet,” she said quietly. “He won’t expect you back this soon, either. Go on.”

Dustin’s fingers plucked up the little disc of chocolate and popped it into his mouth. Abby closed the wrapper, tucked it into the pocket of her white smock, and was gone before his saliva had soaked into the surface enough for him to taste it.

Rich and creamy sugar melted slowly across his tongue. It wasn’t the milk chocolate of the bars from his childhood. He thought it might be baker’s chocolate, not usually for eating, but even the bitterness couldn’t detract from the sheer pleasure of his tongue being coated with sugar. It was almost as good as an orgasm. No, it was better, because no one had ruined chocolate for him yet.

He probably shouldn’t stand in the kitchen, sucking on the insides of his mouth and tasting what was left of Abby’s kindness, eyes burning from tears that he couldn’t shed. Abby might not think that Hart was up yet, but he could be. And even if he wasn’t, Dustin had things to do before he could go to the gym.

He wished he’d thanked her. Maybe that was why she had left so quickly, not wanting to deal with the sheer amount of gratefulness that a grown man might have for a bit of chocolate. Dustin turned to the hallway and headed for the rec room, the bittersweet taste lingering on his tongue and teeth and back of his throat. It didn’t make anything better, not even a little bit, but it told him that he might not have been lying when he’d told Trey that he had friend.

Chapter Text

The morning started off bad. Hart held a cattle prod in his hand as he took off and replaced Dustin’s collar, and Dustin stood as still as a statute and sweat bullets at the thought that he might find an excuse to use the evil-looking thing. After that, they started torture yoga. That was what Dustin thought of the stretching that Hart put him through. The sensation of being full had become cruelly familiar rather than something his mind commented on constantly, like a pervasive bad smell, but he couldn’t easily ignore it when he was bending to touch his toes. Large motions like that made the plug shift around.

The vast majority of the shifts just reminded Dustin about how sore he was, but others brushed across the place that sent strange sensation tickling under his skin. It didn’t have the sort of rhythm that Dustin could fall into, but it was enough to make his body interested, like a sleepy dog lifting its head at the sound of its master’s car coming down the road. Then the cock cage that was supported by the little band around his waist became a different sort of heavy and pulled at his attention. And then came the near-painful discomfort of trying to get stiff in too-tight underwear.

What was wrong with him? Hadn’t he gotten off enough?

But no, he hadn’t. He’d been jerking it at least once a day since he had figured out how it worked.

“Merrill.” Hart’s growl was a low, dangerous warning.

Dustin, who had been letting his upper body hang toward his feet, straightened fast enough to make the world a little swimmy. “I’m sorry. I lost track of, uh. The instruction?”

“Did you.” It wasn’t a question. “I said to lift slowly. Until your back is a table.”

Dustin bent in half. His feet were planted in a solid position on the gym mat, and his brief period of dizziness didn’t follow him down.

Hart grunted. “Hands on your thighs. Gently. Don’t grip them. Right. Go back down. Shoulders loose. Breath into the stretch, Merrill.”

When Hart brought him back up, Dustin noticed that he was making a wet spot on the front of the gym shorts. Which meant that his boxer-briefs were soaked, and not in a place where his sweat usually gathered. He was leaking, just like he always leaked when his body ached like this.

“Can I change my shorts?” Dustin asked at the next break. He sounded surprisingly winded for someone who had just been doing stretches and walking on a treadmill all morning.

Hart’s lips pressed, making him look like a bulldog with the way his lower lip puffed out from his flat face. “Why?”

Dustin gestured down his front. He cleared his throat. “Just in case, you know. You want me on the bike. Or, or rowing machine. Or anything.”

“Huh,” Hart said, eyeing Dustin’s crotch. “Getting turned on by the plug? Good. It’s about time you got on board.”

Dustin’s face went hot half a second before his chest did. The first was embarrassment, the second was anger. Energy radiated out into his arms, carrying with them the urge to swing, to beat his fists against something. “It isn’t being turned on by the fucking plug. It’s that I’m sore and the damn thing is rubbing in—”

The rest of Dustin’s words cut off with a yelp. Hart hadn’t shocked him, he had bodied Dustin back into the wall behind the gym mat. The yelp had come when the back of Dustin’s head had thunked off the bricks.

He was at least half a head taller than Hart, yet it felt like Hart was the one looking down into his face. He was close enough that Dustin couldn’t just smell his breakfast, it stuffed its way up his nose like the man was still chewing it. Hart said, “We talked about this.”

The anger in Dustin’s chest immediately turned off like someone had flipped a switch. If he had been a dog, he would have been on his back, showing his belly and whining. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to what, Merrill.”

The hot ball of sour saliva went down hard past Dustin’s throat. He couldn’t look into Hart’s snapping dark eyes, but there was nowhere else for him to look. “To, uh, take that tone with you, sir. I’m sorry.”

“And yet. You did it. We’re done stretching. Get on the rowing machine.”

Dustin slunk over to the rowing machine. Sitting on the seat hurt. Hart crossed his arms and watched as he tried to find a comfortable seated position. There wasn’t one.

After a few seconds of Dustin’s squirming, Hart said in a flat voice, “Row.”

As Dustin pushed his legs away from the panel and tightened his core to pull on the bar, his abs clamped down and the base of his butt plug shifted on the bench. A spike of pain shot from Dustin’s ass to his throat, taking his breath and expelling with it in a sharp, pained huff. When his legs collapsed in so that he could curl his body around his stomach, the seat automatically slid forward so that his knees were up, ready for him to push again. He didn’t mean to stay doubled over with a hand on his stomach, he didn’t want to give Hart the satisfaction, but the pain demanded the posture.

“Merrill,” Hart growled.

One of Dustin’s hands left the handle. It settled to his stomach. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t. It hurts.”

“It hurts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“It’s, well. I’m sore.” Dustin couldn’t bring himself to say why. Hart already knew, anyway.

So when he asked, it was from cruelty, not curiosity. “From the kid fucking you yesterday?”

Dustin winced. His eyes darted around the gym, but whatever chores the other izzies had meant that no one else was there on a Monday morning. He tried to wet his dry lips with the tip of his equally dry tongue. “Yes.”

“Was your ass bloody this morning?”

Dustin swallowed hard. He could feel the lump move slowly down past the collar. The only thing choking him was his own anxiety. “No.”

“Suck it up. Grab that handle. Or do you want me to show you what real hurt is?”

“No, sir.” Dustin wrapped his hand around the rowing machine’s pull bar.

“Pull!”

Dustin cried out in pain as he tightened his core, shoving with his legs and pulling with his arms. But he did pull, and the machine’s whir sounded satisfied with his effort. More importantly, Hart didn’t say anything. If Dustin’s pained noises bothered him, he didn’t show it. But realistically? Dustin thought Luka was right. He probably liked them.

When Dustin eventually stumbled into his austere bedroom, waiting for him on the low-topped dresser were a legal-pad-sized sketchbook, large and small lined notebooks, sets of pencils, pens, brushes, and something that looked like a protractor set on Dustin’s dresser. Under the sketchpad was an instruction booklet about how to make art by repeating geometrical patterns. Anyone could do it! The radiating circles on the front looked a bit like a mandala. Soothing, maybe. God knew he needed something soothing.

That evening, Dustin sat in the reading nook, hoping that Luka was paying attention to their knitting rather than his attempts to follow a step-by-step guide about how to draw nothing in particular while trying to not trying to follow any sort of rules or guidelines. Dustin wasn’t very good with that kind of contradiction, and despite the booklet’s declaration that nothing was a mistake, he used both a pencil and his protractor to make repetitive, curved lines.

In Dustin’s earbuds, a narrator described the efforts to salvage everything useful from a ship that was being slowly ground to kindling by sea ice. Dustin identified pretty heavily with the Endurance. The drawing thing was supposed to be meditative, and the book was not, but Dustin needed his book fix as much as something to do with his hands.

Movement caught Dustin’s eye as a pair of light grey slacks that stopped along the walkway to the stairs. Dustin pulled out one of his earbuds and looked up into Ben’s earnest smile.

“Hi, Dustin? I hope you’re doing well?” Ben asked.

“Living the dream.”

“That’s great!” Although Dustin’s sarcasm had been as thick as a layer of soot on glass after a forest fire, Ben pretended to not notice it. His voice was as warm and soothing as the deep reed section of an orchestra. He glanced to Luka, then back to Dustin. “The social worker is coming tomorrow? Some time between noon and three? She’s very busy, so she’d like you to be ready to meet her here in the house?”

Dustin’s body broke out into a cold sweat immediately. He had thought that it was just a saying that a person could begin sweating so swiftly, and cold at the same time, but a tickle under his armpit told him that it was the absolute truth. “Hart isn’t going to like that.”

“Don’t worry, Dustin. Mr. Hart doesn’t have priority here.” It was one of the few times that Dustin had heard Ben’s voice fail to rise into a question at the end. It made the statement seem even more official and unarguable.

Dustin tried on a smile to see if it would break his face. It felt foreign but he didn’t think that he looked deranged. “Okay. I’ll be here.” But the thought of sitting for three hours with nothing to do but think made anxiety claw up his throat and begin to squeeze. “Can I bring my sketchbook? For while I’m waiting?”

Ben nodded, the smile still on his features. Dustin wondered whether the tall man’s face was permanently stuck in that smile of warm, childlike wonder. It seemed like great lengths to go to pretend to be happy. Or maybe he genuinely was happy. He certainly wasn’t going through anything close to what Dustin was.

What had his crime been? Some part of Dustin thought it had to be related to drugs. Or maybe Ben wasn’t criminally indentured. The sommelier was an immigration-related indenture, after all. Not everyone was sporting a conviction for crimes real or fake.

Ben lifted his phone in his hands and turned to leave. “I’ll let her know you’ll be waiting?”

“Okay.”

Something moved in Dustin’s peripheral vision, and he flinched before noticing that it was just Luka gesturing for his attention. The warmth that radiated up his cheeks was lava compared to how cold he had felt moments ago. “Yes?”

Unlike Ben, Luka was not happy and earnest. Typically, their form radiated sardonicism and condescension, but this Luka was deadly serious. “Be honest with your worker, my dear. She’s one of the good ones, she hasn’t been in the game long enough to have had all of the bright-eyed enthusiasm beaten into a thin layer of apathy, and if she’s not in a terrible hurry, you’ll have about fifteen minutes. You might consider writing down any questions or concerns you have in advance to minimize the mumbling or stumbling that so typically mars your speech.”

Dustin cleared his throat. “I’m not sure, well, what, exactly—”

Luka lifted a slim index finger and circled it in the air like a conductor’s baton. The tip flashed teal. “Exactly. Get it all out of your system in advance. I’ll be quite put out if the perpetual motion machine of your fence-wobbling eats into my time.”

“Your time?”

Luka’s laugh was short, sharp, and only a little mocking. “Oh, sweetheart.” Their head shook, and the thin-lipped smile under their hawkish nose looked more genuine than Ben’s. “Do you think she’d come all this way to see just you?”

The hot blood drained away, leaving Dustin’s face cold again. His words weren’t the only things that couldn’t decide on a place to settle. “Are we all going to. I mean, will we be in the same room. Will, uh, will Hart…?”

Luka’s spidery fingers spread and patted the air comfortingly. “The meetings are private, more or less. Now, if you will excuse me, I seem to have dropped at least one stitch, and Lady Catherine is about to confront Elizabeth.”

Their teal-tipped finger tugged free a long lock of straight brown hair that had caught in their short beard, tucked it behind their ear, and set in the earbud. Someone listening to Luka might think that Dustin had interrupted them rather than the other way around. They also might think that Dustin had at least some idea about the people Luka was talking with. They would be wrong.

Still unsure whether to be relieved, insulted, or merely confused, Dustin watched Luka’s hands lift and begin to manipulate the pink plastic needles. Whatever magic was being worked still made absolutely no sense, but based on Luka’s mumbled tone and the uncertain stabs and twists of the needles, it probably wasn’t going well.

Dustin took a slow, deep breath. Luka was right. He would have to write down his questions and concerns. Fortunately, the list was pretty short. How long was his indenture. If it really was more than nine years, why was it so long. And could he please have some sort of treatment for his mental health, because he wasn’t going to last nine more weeks, much less nine more years, without cracking into a million shiny and sharp pieces ready to slice himself to ribbons.

Chapter Text

After Ben led Dustin into the cheerfully green-accented dining room, he tried to not stare at the social worker. She was a tiny Latina who couldn’t be older than her mid-twenties, pretty, with her hair back in a high ponytail tied with a hot-pink scrunchie. The hairstyle showed off huge, dangling earrings of pink plastic. She wore a high-necked lavender blouse and tan pants that he thought were probably supposed to look professional, except that everything above the shoulders looked like a caricature of a 1980s teenager, right down to the bubblegum-pink lip gloss. Clipped to her blouse was a small plastic-covered rectangle with her name and photograph under BISA’s blue seal. By her feet was a brown accordion file. On the table in front of her were an open manila folder and a black cloth case that resembled a small suitcase.

She looked up and smiled, and the expression did nothing to cut through Dustin’s confusion or apprehension. “Dustin Merrill? I’m Rosalita Aguilera, but I’d prefer it if you’d call me Rosie. I’m your social worker. Will you step up on this scale over here?”

A flat plastic scale sat on the floor near her chair. Still feeling bemused, Dustin stepped up onto it and watched the LED numbers tick upward and settle. He’d lost some weight. The young woman made a note in her file, then patted the back of the chair next to her while pulling something out of the suitcase. “Will you sit here, please?”

Dustin sat in the chair that she had indicated. She smelled subtly of jasmine. Despite that everything about the young woman was nonthreatening, he flinched away when she reached toward him.

“It’s okay, I just need to scan you.”

He sat still while she pulled his ear forward and pressed the scanner behind it. The beep took him back to the BISA cells, and he shivered. Rosie reached into the case again and pulled out a blood-pressure cuff, which did nothing to dispel the feeling of being back in BISA custody. He had the visceral mental image of putting his feet up in the stirrups so that they could inject something into his balls to keep him from having children.

The social worker said something. He didn’t hear it. She said something again, and he unbuttoned his cuff and started to roll up his sleeve.

“Oh, you don’t need to roll up your entire sleeve,” she said. “Just the cuff.”

After pressing the stethoscope to the inside of his wrist, she jotted another note down in the open folder. It had, he saw, a picture of him paperclipped to the left-hand side over a printout with small text. The notes that she made were in blue pen on a sheet of paper fastened to the right-hand side, which had spaces for data. After she’d filled in a couple of blanks on the form, Rosie took the blood-pressure cuff off his arm. Still feeling fuzzy-headed, Dustin rolled his sleeve back down over his wrist and struggled to fasten it one-handed.

The tip of Rosie’s pen hovered over an area of empty lines on the form. “Now, Mr. Merrill, do you have any areas of concern?”

Despite Luka’s statement, it would have been a stretch to call the meeting ‘private.’ All of the izzies were gathered in the living room, like it was time for evening recreation, except that the TV was turned off. Dustin had been aware of the tones in the low murmuring voices while he’d been waiting, and he knew that they’d hear the same. The only comfort was that, when people had spoken softly, he hadn’t been able to hear the words.

Luka had said Dustin would have fifteen minutes. How much time had passed with the preliminaries?

Dustin’s throat was tight. It was good that he’d taken Luka’s advice to write down his concerns, because his thoughts had flown from his mind like birds scattered from a road by an oncoming car. “Can I, uh, reach into my pocket? For my notebook?”

“Go right ahead.”

Dustin’s fingers shook a little as he pulled out the yellow three-by-five notebook with a white plastic spiral at the top. It had been in the drawing supplies. He flipped to the first page, then cleared the blockage out of his throat again.

First bullet point. “Could you tell me, how long is my term?”

Rosie’s pen shifted to the fact-sheet under his photo, the tip sliding down as she studied the lines. “Let’s see. The Brook family purchased your indenture on February 8, 2025. And your term ends August 17, 2034. So that would be...” One of her cheeks sucked into her mouth as she referred to a calendar printed on the folder itself. “Nine years, six months, and nine days.”

Almost ten years. Ben had been right. Dustin’s tongue tried to wet his dry lips, but it felt like a moldy sausage in his mouth. “But I thought. I ran the numbers. I was an accountant? For the $163,000 that, well, they said I took, it was supposed to be, uh, maybe seven years?”

Rosie’s pen slid down a few lines. “Well, yes, it says you embezzled $162,894.85 dollars? And of course you have to pay that back. But then there’s the jail costs, attorney fees, medical bills for Jacob Warner—”

She named a few other things that Dustin’s lawyer absolutely had not mentioned, but his mind had hung up on the idea that he was paying for Jake’s medical bills. Dustin had pled only to the embezzlement, so how could he be on the hook for Jacob’s medical expenses?

“That’s, that’s ridiculous,” Dustin said, cutting off the flow of Rosie’s recitation. He immediately felt his face start to burn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“I understand,” she said with professional courtesy and a smile still pasted on her glossy pink lips. “That does seem kind of weird, given your crime. It says that the restitution was approved by the judge because the injury was part of the criminal scheme, but sometimes, mistakes are made. Do you want me to check into it?”

Dustin’s voice was starting to shake as badly as his hands. He clasped them together on the table, over the notebook, to try to keep them still. “I mean. I know why it’s on there. He broke his own fingers and said I did it. But, but nobody said medical bills. Not the lawyer or, or anybody. And. But, I’m the one being raped, beaten, and going crazy for, what, three more years? For something he did to himself? It’s…”

It was what, exactly? Unbelievable? Unfair? Of course it was.

“Um.” Rosie’s pen went to the other side of the folder and hovered over the blank lines. “Beaten? Can you tell me about that?”

Dustin’s eyes darted to the two archways and he lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “The security man. Oman Hart. He held me down and whipped me.”

Rosie seemed concerned. “If the beatings are excessive, that’s not okay. Do you have any untreated abrasions? Deep bruises, scars, or other marks? Broken bones? I’ll need to document them, but we can go somewhere private for that.”

Dustin’s throat was closing again. She looked like a teenager and he was supposed to tell her one of the most humiliating things that had happened to him in his life? But he had to, if he wanted anything to be done about it.

He cleared his throat, his voice still low. “Well. He whipped me with a belt on, uh, on my butt.” Unable to meet Rosie’s eyes, Dustin focused on the windows. It was just starting to rain after having played an on-off game with drizzle all morning. “The belt left, uh, welts. But they aren’t. That is, they went away after a couple days, so. So I can’t show you anything.”

Primly, Rosie said, “Your servant supervisors are allowed to impose appropriate discipline when necessary. It was in the indenture packet. You did initial that you received the packet.”

Disbelief flooded Dustin’s chest and his eyes flicked away from the window and back to Rosie’s face. Her smile was probably supposed to be reassuring, not ghoulish. He could no longer remember what was in the packet that his attorney had given him what felt like years ago and which had been taken away by the BISA agents with the rest of his things. “But…”

He couldn’t finish. The tightness In his throat was making it hard to breathe. He was starting to get dizzy.

“Could you tell me more about the rapes?”

Dustin stared at the candy-pink smile and felt like he was drowning in bubble gum. Then he sighed as the tension bled out of him all at once. His voice was dull. “Why bother? You’re just going to tell me that you can't rape property.”

He didn't take any satisfaction from the way Rosie’s composure flickered. She looked down at the small-text sheet under Dustin’s photograph. “Well. It says sex work on your purchase sheet. But, if you’re being treated violently, I can document that.”

She clearly had fully bought into the propaganda that a term of indenture was kinder than being locked in a cage, never mind what his ‘job’ was.

“They rape me very gently,” he said.

Rosie bit her lower lip, then changed the subject. “You mentioned going crazy? Can you tell me about that?”

The blue pen was poised under the few lines she’d written on the form. But why bother? In her peppy voice, this fresh college graduate was going to tell him that his struggles were normal and he’d just have to get over them. You could dress an excuse up in fancy language, but it would still be an excuse, and she had an excuse for everything. She might be young and female and bubblegum-pink and lavender and jasmine, but she was made of the same material as Hart. What was the point?

Except. He’d promised Luka that he would tell his social worker about his mental health. So, studying his hands, Dustin talked about the panic attacks, the nightmares, the despair. He left out his anger. There was being honest, and then there was being stupid. If they thought he was dangerous, they’d do something about it, and even if not, it would go into his record for Hart or anyone to see.

After he finished, Rosie made a final note on the page, then met his eyes. She had the same earnestness as Trey, he thought. Well-meaning and completely oblivious. “I see. Well, those are pretty normal adjustment issues, Mr. Merrill. There’s nothing wrong with how you’re feeling.”

The apathy broke. An ocean of despair rolled over Dustin’s head and drowned him. The heavy sensation in his chest felt like the last breath of air in the world had been taken by someone else. He would never be able to breathe in again.

Rosie looked back down, her pen starting to scratch again. “I’m going to ask that your servant supervisors give you some medication for that. Its very important that you take it. Anxiety and depression are just like high blood pressure or anything else you might take medication for, okay? This really is very normal. Can you promise me you’ll take it?”

After blinking away his shock, Dustin said, “Yes.”

“Thank you.” So earnest. So much misplaced empathy. “Was there anything else, Mr. Merrill?”

Dustin made his hands unclench. He looked down at the little notebook, where someone had written a bullet-pointed list in a very neat hand. He wasn’t done.

“I know I can’t do phone or video calls at all. But can I write letters to my girls?”

“I’m sorry, but there’s a no-contact order between you and the victims.”

A hammer hit Dustin’s chest, but it was the answer he’d expected. That, at least, was something that his lawyer had mentioned. Still, the hope had guttered until the hammer had smashed it to melted wax.

Next bullet point. “And what about my mom?”

Rosie’s pen went to the right-hand side of the folder, hovering under Dustin’s picture and sliding down the page. “Leah Merrill?”

Dustin swallowed hard. He couldn’t make himself speak, since even hearing her name made him want to weep, but he nodded.

“For security reasons,” Rosie chirped, “anything that you write to a family member will be read, redacted of any potential locational information, and anonymously postmarked. But, yes, as per policy, you can write one letter a month to one immediate family member. I’d give you the approved list, but it looks like your mom is your only family?”

Dustin nodded again. If he tried to speak, he’d lose control over the way his eyes were threatening to sting, and that was not something he was going to allow.

“It’s important to know that this is a privilege, not a right. It can be limited or taken away by your owner. Or if your servant supervisor provides credible evidence that you’re a flight risk. Okay?”

Dustin nodded a third time.

“Was there anything else?”

Dustin glanced down at the list. His thumb had marred the edge of the paper with sweat, but it hadn’t smudged any of the ink. There were no more bullet points, so he shook his head.

“That’s great!” Rosie stood and stuck out her hand. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Merrill.”

The social niceties that his mother had drilled into him took over, and Dustin stood, cleared his throat, and took the offered hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

She had a surprisingly firm handshake. “I’ll see you in six months.”

Dustin went back into the rec room. All of the conversation there had stopped, and his face grew hot at the thought that someone had heard him say something embarrassing. Then he saw Hart leaning against the wall by the gaming table, the man’s thick arms crossed over his barrel chest, his expression like that of a gargoyle ready to pounce on any conversation and shred it with his claws.

Dustin’s body went cold all over. His muscles froze. His legs planted themselves in concrete. The fingers gripping his little yellow notebook turned to stone. He tried to tell himself that there was no way that Hart could have heard his near whispering, despite that he was perched just inches beyond the archway. Absolutely no way.

“Gym, Merrill.” Hart’s voice utterly lacked inflection, and his eyes were as dark and unreadable as ever.

If Hart had heard anything that Dustin had said to the social worker about rapes or his mental health, he gave no sign. He worked Dustin into the ground and held him late, until supper had passed for the rest of the izzies, but that wasn’t different from any other time Dustin had taken time away from working out in the afternoon.

But then, later that night, just after Dustin had come back from the bathroom and was about to flip the light switch, a knock came on his door. Had he thought he was safely about to go to bed without answering for his disobedience? Foolish. He was never safe. And he froze, because the last time someone had knocked on his door, he had been dragged down the stairs and whipped.

No, that wasn’t right. The last time, Luka had saved his ass by bringing him dinner. After Hart demonstrated that he had keys to Dustin’s room and that a locked door couldn’t stop him. Dustin cleared the tightness out of his throat. “Can I, uh, have a minute to get dressed?”

“Of course?” The slight upward inflection to the mid-range reedy voice was unmistakably Ben’s.

Legs watery with relief, Dustin dragged an undershirt out of his dresser and took some slacks down from a hangar in his little closet. When he opened the door, Ben stood in the hallway, smiling.

Of course he was smiling. He was always smiling. Even though it wasn’t actually Hart, Dustin immediately and reflexively scanned for danger, but there was nothing threatening about the small bottled water that Ben held loosely in his hands.

He asked, “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” Dustin stepped backward into his room, only belatedly noticing that his butt plug was still in its tray on the dresser, drying. It was crazy what one could get used to, as Luka would have said. He tried to lean against the dresser so that his body would be between it and Ben.

The tall man closed the door behind him but didn’t come any farther into the room. He offered the little water bottle to Dustin, who had to step forward again to take it, and then Ben reached into the pocket of his own slacks and came up with a prescription bottle. He tipped a small off-white oval pill into his palm. When he offered it out, Dustin took it, too.

“You’ll have a pill sorter on your shelf in the bathroom from now on? This one’s going to need time to come online, but you’ll take it in the evening?”

Dustin made himself breathe in slowly and evenly. “Okay.”

“And there will be a second pill there that you’ll take first thing in the morning, okay? Just for a few weeks, to get you through? And tell me about any side effects?”

Dustin looked at the little off-white pill in his palm, then back up. It was hard to believe that anything so small could bring him any kind of relief. “I’ll do that. But what about, well.” Why was Dustin hesitating to say it? Ben knew. They all knew. Dustin cleared his throat, hating the nervous tick but feeling unable to speak without doing it. “What about when I’m with Trey?”

Ben’s smile didn’t change at all, but he did fidget, brushing aside the thick bangs that came down to his eyebrows even though it was impossible for them to be in his eyes. “There’s going to be a sorter in your drawer in his room, too? And if he gets permission to take you anywhere, be sure to grab it before you go, if you haven’t been packed an overnight bag in advance?” Ben hesitated. “But Dustin? Please don’t take both at the same time, or on the same day, and be careful with alcohol?”

Oh. That was why they weren’t just giving him control over his own medication. Pretending that uncapping the water bottle took all of his attention, Dustin said, “I’m not suicidal.”

Ben’s breath drew in a little more quickly than normal. “I’m glad to hear it! And that you’re getting help? Oh! Rosie said you might have a family letter? I normally take them on the first of the month, but it you have one now, I can take it?”

Dustin didn’t look up. “I’ll have one for you when you normally take them. Thank you.”

Ben didn’t say anything else. The pill was smooth and easily slid down Dustin’s throat. He recapped the water bottle and passed it back over to Ben.

“Have a good night?”

“Mmm.” Dustin hoped that his response sounded more affirmative than noncommittal.

After the door closed behind the tall man, Dustin slowly took his clothing back off. He looked down at his hands and mentally prodded the fear spaces in his mind. Hart. Los Vegas. Trey raping him again. Logan raping him that first time. Dustin’s hands started to shake, his breath came quick and fast, and he could feel his heart thumping hard in his throat. He couldn’t swallow.

Okay, stop. It just doesn’t work that fast, that’s all. It’ll get better soon. It has to.

But once the fear-thoughts started, it wasn’t like he could stop them on command, or they would never start spiraling in the first place. With shaking hands, Dustin snapped the light-switch down and went to bed. Pulling the green and yellow quilt up to his chin didn’t stop the shaking. Only time would. Dustin desperately hoped that he’d feel better by the morning.

Chapter Text

By Wednesday night, Dustin would have stepped in front of a bullet to put an end to his dreadful horniness. Almost everything sent a warm, aching awareness of his dick up through his stomach and into his brain. First, the cock cage would squeeze him like a hand. Wanting to rock his hips into that tantalizing grip was the worst, because he knew it would just turn him on more. Sometimes, he could resist the urge, and sometimes, that was the end of things.

But other times, he couldn’t resist, or resisting didn’t matter. Then hand would squeeze tighter, getting uncomfortable, and the base ring would start to press behind his balls to hold him tight. In a way, that too felt damnably good. Dustin had always enjoyed fingers stroking there, or even a gentle tug when he was going to cum. It was the very definition of mixed signals. From there, his body would strain against the cruel downward curve of metal until, after an eternity, the discomfort would get the better of him or his body would finally lose interest. Usually, the process left his balls tender and aching and feeling overly full.

The relief never lasted. Sooner or later, something would start the process again. The shift of the plug against his sweet spot was the most common trigger, or the brush of his thong against his too-full balls, but it could be something as innocuous as looking out the window and seeing Will bend to pick something up off the grass. It could even start for no reason at all, like a fire flaring up out of embers and taking off to burn the whole forest down.

Dustin stared Thursday in the face was dreadful anticipation. He knew what was going to happen to him and he hated it, but god, his body needed the release. He was disgusted with himself for that, but his body didn’t care. He’d been a habitual masturbator, his body was used to a certain standard of living, and it was seriously upset that it wasn’t getting the maintenance necessary to let off the pressure that had built in his aching his balls.

Trey didn’t come home Thursday night.

It wasn’t a surprise, since he’d only said that he’d hope to see him Thursday, and Dustin was relieved. Mostly relieved. The thinking parts of him were, but his balls were not. Worrying about sex had meant thinking about it, and thinking about sex with apprehension and anxiety and self-loathing was still thinking about sex.

In the very early hours of Friday morning, Dustin woke up on his stomach, humping his pillow like a kid who wasn’t yet sure why his body thought it felt good. But it didn’t feel good, it felt maddeningly uncomfortable. And yet there he was, awake but still rocking because it was at least something.

Then a visceral image of pulling one ball through the metal ring slapped him in the side of the head, and he groaned into the mattress before yanking the pillow out from under his hips and flipping onto his back. Panting, he stared at the ceiling of his nook, which reflected the radioactive light of the distant city coming in through his windows. All he could think about was how his balls were full to bursting.

He shouldn’t touch himself. It wasn’t going to make anything better. He couldn’t pull on the cage, not without risking the horrifying one-ball scenario, but he found himself working out of his tight black boxers anyway. The movement shifted the cage torturously against his body, especially his achingly sensitive balls, and Dustin bit down on a moan. His fingers hesitated over the thin support belt around his waist that kept the torture device from hanging free, but he left that on. As for his underwear, he flung it across the room, barely noticing the rattle and thud as it knocked some things off the low dresser. Then he stretched out with his legs slightly parted and his hands inching toward the horny ache.

Dustin telling himself to stop making it worse was like arguing with a particularly belligerent wall. He brushed the hot metal of the cage with his fingertips and felt himself throbbing with the discomfort of the suppressed erection. He could just brush the flesh of his cock between the wrap-around bars of the cage, and even that light pressure was enough to make himself clench his teeth against a moan. T turning his fingers sideways and trying to get them through the bars was nowhere near enough to do more than tease.

Dustin tried to slip a finger into himself, still lubed from when he’d taken out the plug, but he couldn’t get it deep enough without crushing his aching balls with the pressure from his wrist. They already felt like they were going to explode. They throbbed too, painful and heavy. Almost sick with curiosity, Dustin lowered his hand and stroked his fingers against the crinkly pubes that covered them. Pleasure radiated up into his stomach. His ass clenched, making him hump the air as he played with himself.

He wanted to cum so badly. He almost thought he might be able to get there from stroking his balls alone. The fucking machine at the school had been able to give him off despite the cage, so why not try?

Minutes or hours later, Dustin was coated in a film of sweat, his legs trembling and his body more uncomfortable than ever. He collapsed back against his bed, panting and wanting to cry. He’d trade away the Brook family fortune to have a fucking machine installed in his room. Even the gym. He could call riding the thing a workout. His legs certainly trembled like Hart had been working him ragged, and not just because his muscles were fatigued from the day’s actual workout.

Dustin’s mind hooked onto the idea of the gym. Maybe he could find something there that he could use to massage his sweet spot with while touching his balls. The metal rod for the dumb-bells flashed through his mind and was rejected as too dangerous. The rowing machine handle wasn’t too thick, and it was covered in rubber. It was an impossible fantasy, the idea of sneaking to the gym, ramming himself full of the rowing machine handle, and fucking himself with it until he found relief.

You idiot. You already have something actually designed to go in your body, and it’s already here.

Dustin turned his head. The tray that he usually put his plug on to dry was a shadowy shape on his dresser, empty and askew, but it didn’t take much looking to find the glint of the metal plug on the floor with the scattered drawing supplies.

His imagination whispered promises of relief.

Normally, when Dustin was horny, putting the plug in was torture. It would rub his pucker and brush his sweet spot and get him started. But now? He was well past started. As he lay on his back in the dark, legs spread, towels under his butt, it was still torture. But it was also delicious. His asshole was its own kind of sensitive, and just pressing the tip in and out radiated heat up into his stomach and forward into his cock. Dustin might have taken his time to enjoy it if he hadn’t been so desperate. When the metal was in, he flexed his abs around it, and it barely rubbed his sweet spot. Pressing would be better but maybe rubbing could work? In any case, his entire groin was an angry ache, but the electric fingernails under his skin beckoned him seductively.

Dustin wrapped his slick fingers around the handle. His wrist rested more gently against the cock cage as he tried to pump it in and out. Hot fingertips tickled under Dustin’s skin when the plug brushed his p-spot, teasing, and he could feel himself leaking a river of stickiness against the inside of his wrist as his fingers struggled to hold onto the slippery handle.

After minutes or hours of trying, he realized it wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t get a good enough grip on the lubed-up handle to angle the plug, and the kind of lube he used was designed to stay greasy for a long time. It didn’t wipe off easily. Dustin flopped back into the bed with sweat streaming off his body and tears of effort in the corners of his eyes. His arms were shaky, his forearms burning like it had been a sadistic form of exercise prescribed by Hart or some other, equally evil demon.

But Dustin couldn’t give up. There had to be a way. He worked his mind through sexual geometry while his breathing slowed down, then he shifted his legs so that he could reach under his thigh.

That was easier, but he still couldn’t do it fast enough or get it to press as well as slide. His abs spasmed like they had a mind of their own, and when he clenched his ass and thrust his hips, he often lost his grip on the handle. He was physically incapable of staying relaxed while fucking himself with it. The smells of horniness and sex only made things worse, keying his body in on something that wasn't happening.

Dustin wanted to weep. His breath did cough out once, but he told himself that it was from desperation, not weeping. It was true that the rubbing didn’t press his sweet spot like the chair had, but he still thought it might work, if only he could do it faster and not keep losing rhythm.

Thoughts about clenching and rocking the handle and stroking his balls and fucking the god damn plug swirled in his mind. They abruptly clicked into a new pattern. He knew in the bleak places of his heart that the new idea wasn’t going to work any more than trying to fuck himself with the plug had. But an idea was an idea, and all of his experimentation had only left him more desperate for relief.

Dustin made himself wait until he caught his breath, then he sat up and grabbed another towel. After rubbing his sweat-soaked neck and torso dry, he shaped the towel into a wedge and put it on the second towel he usually spread when lubing up. He stared at the inverted V of soft material and prayed that it would do the trick, because if not, he was going to tear off his own balls to get his cock out of the cage.

With that unsexy mental image in mind, he straddled the wedge and eased himself down onto it. The towels rode into his crotch almost like a soft bicycle seat, tickling under his balls. He rocked forward once, experimentally, and the plug shifted inside him. It didn't slide, it tipped, providing a gentle press and release that was somewhat controlled by the towel wedged against the handle. Dustin touched his balls, stroking his precum-slick pubes, and his body threatened to turn to shuddering gelatin.

He thought for a moment about what would happen if the metal behind his balls somehow got tangled up with the towel or the handle of the plug, but the idea of getting one ball stuck outside the cage was less terrifying than the thought of them exploding in a shower of gore and lust.

Dustin began rocking. Thrusting pulled the base right against his taint, right where he liked to be touched. Stroking the surface of his balls felt as amazing as it did while he was getting blown. And most importantly, the plug pressed inside him every time he humped forward and back, must faster than he’d been able to fuck himself. It stoked the electric fire under his skin much more slowly than real friction and direct hits, but it did stoke. The fire built up until he thought he was going to burn him up from the inside, but he didn’t stop.

Dustin was going to cum or die of overexertion. There was no other possibility.

An unmeasurable amount of time later, when he finally did cum, it was a strange and exquisite relief. There was no punch of pleasure in his groin. The fiery lightning simply built under his skin until it was too large for him. The head of his cock pulsed first, and then the tension broke, releasing in slow, strobing pulses throughout his entire body. It went on for longer than any orgasm ever should. Dustin’s fingers continued to stroke his balls spasmodically, and they grew sticky with the hot cum that pulsed only once before dribbling out of his body like someone had turned a faucet.

When it was over, his balls still ached, but with an exquisite emptiness that was dizzying. He was utterly an utterly breathless, cramping wreck of a man with skin so sensitive that it felt badly sunburned.

He was just about to collapse when someone knocked on the door. Dustin gave a breathless yelp and froze.

“Excuse me?” The voice that came through the wood was muffled and feminine and not immediately recognizable. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dustin panted out.

“It’s just that you shouted, and I thought…” Whatever she had thought trailed off to nothing.

“Bad dream!”

“Oh!” The woman sounded relieved and embarrassed in equal measure. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

No more words came. Dustin might have heard the sound of the door to the room next to his closing.

A bad dream. Amusement flickered over Dustin, but it didn’t turn into hysteria, because he had no energy left for it. It really was a bad dream. His whole life was a bad dream. But at least he had found a way to get relief.

He rested his elbows on his knees, shuddering and panting and still sometimes feeling the heat under his skin flare until it melted into a postcoital relaxation that made him want to fall onto his back and sleep. He couldn’t do that until he’d cleaned up. No one explicitly had told him that he couldn’t get himself off, if he could find a way, but he definitely was disobeying the spirit of the rules.

Dustin didn’t want to be punished. But just as importantly, he didn’t want someone to find a way to keep him from doing it again.

Chapter Text

Family-dinner Friday wasn’t quite as stressful the second time. As Dustin wove his way through the crowded-feeling kitchen to load his plate with the freshly cooked meal, he knew what was going on, he at least had a vague sense of who was in the room, and he felt the weight of people’s stares less keenly. It wasn’t that they weren’t looking at him – he knew they were, and that he was an object of pity and an uncertain comma on the pages of their lives – but it didn’t sear his soul quite as badly as it had only the week before.

He begrudgingly allowed that maybe the anxiety medication was working. Even though he’d desperately needed help with his sanity, some part of him had been worried that it would change him into a different person. Maybe the sort of person who just floated through his term as a slave without any desire to do anything about it, a sex-doll zombie that wouldn’t care what Trey did to his body. But that wasn’t quite how it seemed to be working.

The core of Dustin remained unchanged. He still worried about when Trey would come back and what he’d make Dustin do. His throat still tightened and his mouth still flooded with sour saliva when Hart made a sneering reference to strengthening his legs so that he could ride Trey’s cock better. But Dustin hadn’t experienced anything that felt like a heart-attack and hadn’t become nauseatingly dizzy. Things simply felt, what, slower? Like his brain didn’t spin up so fast into a dizzying spiral? Like he could still breathe? He didn’t always feel paralyzed the moment something even mildly unexpected happened.

For instance, despite running into the red-headed woman who had seen him naked in the dining-room archway, Dustin was able to mumble out a greeting to her and Maria before turning his eyes down and heading to a chair. He was embarrassed half to death, but he didn’t choke, and he was able to eat and focus. Not just that, he was able to enjoy the delicious meal that Abby had prepared. Falafel and quinoa salad with grilled zucchini, a mouthwatering mix of flavors and textures after the same proteins and vegetables on endless repeat. Hart had limited Dustin to only one falafel, so he lingered over the fried ball of chickpea dough, cutting off tiny bites with his fork so that he could come back to the heavily spiced crispness over and over. He hadn’t really been an olive person, but he enjoyed the way that the bright acidity of the olives in the salad played off the smooth chunks of feta cheese. He sipped his cucumber-infused ice water and marveled at the novelty.

When his food was done, he surreptitiously watched the way that the other izzies engaged with each other. Blake left with Audrey and Jeannette, the three women discussing a movie that they wanted to watch. He realized that Maria and Will’s relationship seemed to go beyond friends, despite that she was older than Dustin and he was probably Will’s age. René, Ben, and one of the groundskeepers whose name Dustin couldn’t remember stayed in the kitchen, drinking and helping Abby clean up, while George and the other groundskeeper went into the rec room to play pool. The only people obviously missing were Luka, Sara, and Hart, and as for that last one, Dustin hoped he was curled up in one of the lockers, starving to death.

After he finished eating, Dustin bounded up the stairs to grab the drawing supplies from his room, hurrying so that if Hart showed up, he wouldn’t be able to accuse Dustin of failing to socialize. He considered the selection only briefly, then made his way back down with a full-sized lined notebook and black pen. The set of differently textured pencils that he’d used the past few nights to occupy his hands with the zen art remained in the drawer under the bed that he’d designated for hobby equipment after the towel-throwing incident. He should be using the pen for the zen art, too, but the thought of screwing something up made him too anxious. He simply didn’t trust the instruction saying that there could be no mistakes, that everything could become part of the pattern.

There could be mistakes. There could be plenty of mistakes. And even if they could become part of the pattern, the question was whether they should.

The art felt more zen with pencils.

But just then, Dustin needed the pen for something else. Sitting in the armchair with the sounds of a party taking place, he propped one ankle up on the opposite knee to try for a flat writing surface. Then he just stared at the lines on the empty page. The subtle yellow glow of the reading-nook lamp made the paper seem to be suffused with a subtle dawn light. He was still staring at it when Luka eased into the other chair and began working their long pink knitting needles in a slow, circular pattern.

The first line should have been easy enough, but it wasn’t. After Luka joined him, Dustin finally wrote:

Mom,

Then he swallowed, a lump of feta-flavored feelings going down his throat much harder than dinner had. He had no idea what to write. He was profoundly aware that someone would be reading the letter, looking for Dustin-didn’t-know-what, and he had no idea how his words could be used against him.

And then there was a yawning pit standing between him and the things he could tell his mother about his life without distressing her. Yes, she had dementia, but unlike their goodbye video call from the jail, the letter would linger and refresh her memory. Even just telling her that he’d taken indenture was too risky. She was an abolitionist, and she knew all the horrors of the indenture system. She would worry about sexual violence even if he didn’t come out and tell her that he’d been purchased for a young man to use. While Dustin wanted her to have a physical reminder that he hadn’t abandoned her, he didn’t want that reminder to cause her a different kind of distress.

“Considering first that you are holding a pen over lined paper rather than a pencil over a sketchbook, and considering second that the tip of that pen hasn’t moved for over half an hour, one might surmise that you’re attempting to work on a family letter.”

Luka’s sardonic observations almost made Dustin jump out of his skin. He’d been so deep in thought that he’d forgotten that an outside world existed, much less that people lived there, and Luka was rarely the person who initiated one of their rare conversations.

“I, well. Yes. I’m trying, anyway. To write my mother.” Dustin stared down at the single word written on the lined paper. He felt as if all of the delicate emotional skin that he had developed over the last few days had been peeled away, leaving him raw and bleeding.

“Before you begin to write anything, my dear, you should keep in mind that the family letter is just one more form of control that our benevolent owners are quite delighted to hook us through the nose with.” Their voice was sweet on top but bitter underneath. “If you are a very good boy, if you sit for them, if you prance for them, if you bark when they tell you to speak, if you show your belly and piss on yourself when they deem that you ought to beg their forgiveness, then perhaps once a month, you might be allowed to send a few meaningless words to someone on the outside. Provided that you don’t mind that those words are monitored and poured over and redacted and perhaps will never reach the designated destination.”

Dustin squeezed the pen so tightly that, if it had been one of his pencils, it would have snapped in half. His knuckles were white, and for all that the anxiety medication did for him, it did not suppress the urge to punch Luka for needling him.

What the fuck is your problem. The words rose as far as the back of Dustin’s throat, but he managed to not say them. The last time he’d asked a question like that, he hadn’t liked the answer.

Instead, Dustin breathed slowly out through his nose. “I know. I’m not an idiot.”

“You are indeed one of the more intelligent specimens to grace our overly green abode.” Luka glanced up through a waterfall of straight chestnut-brown hair. “It has appeared from time to time, however, that the finer nuances of certain situations escape your notice.”

That was a fair point. It still pissed Dustin off.

Luka placed both earbuds in their lap and slid their yarn more securely onto the end of the pink needle and rested the thin circle of developing fabric in their lap. The purple yarn was incongruous against the brilliant orange and green patterns on their white shirt, which reminded Dustin vaguely of lilies. The tent-like tunic went down almost to their knees.

A single, perfectly arched brow was lifted at Dustin. “And what have I done to deserve such a sour and salty look, sweetheart? When I have I ever done anything but try to help you navigate the difficult situation into which you have been thrust? But I will readily admit that my own social abilities are as tarnished as antique silverware, and I might come off different from how I intend.”

Dustin scrubbed his hand across his eyes and managed to not take either of them out with the pen. He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just feeling, well. Raw. If it helps, I’ll acknowledge that you’re probably my best friend.”

Luka’s thin lips pulled up in one corner. “That would feel more meaningful were pickings not so slim. And if it would help, I might acknowledge that I am perhaps a little jealous that you have someone to write to at all, though such an acknowledgment would never, of course, pass such pinched lips as mine. What troubles your mind while your fingers attempt to put thoughts into words, my friend?”

Dustin looked down at the single word on the paper in the impeccable penmanship that his school-teacher mother had drilled into him.

Mom,

The lump that Dustin had to clear out of his throat was not made by anxiety. “I’m trying to write my mother. She’s in a nursing home. I called her before I, well. Before all this. But she has dementia, and I don’t think she remembers. A letter, though.” Dustin trailed off.

“Ah, yes. The joys and perils of a written reminder.”

“Yeah.”

Luka sat forward a little. “Let’s conduct a small exercise, my dear. I wouldn’t suggest that you imagine switching places with your mother, as that might lead to some awkward mental images.” Or the urge to punch Luka, which again surged from Dustin’s chest into his arms, but if the thin person noticed Dustin’s flush of rage they hopefully took it for embarrassment. “I would like you to imagine that, if you were to imagine that you were a doting mother, what would you like to hear from your beloved son?”

Dustin breathed out slowly. “If I write what I’d want to hear, it’d just be a bunch of lies.”

Luka’s head tilted in a gesture that made Dustin think of a curious hawk. “And while I’m sure that such an upstanding young man as yourself was raised to not lie to his mother, I’m also certain that a well-brought-up young man would have been raised to extend every loving kindness to the angel that brought him into the world. Honesty may be a virtue, but truth is not always kind.”

Dustin’s chest tightened, then it relaxed. He sighed. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“What is a friend for, if not to provide advice and support?”

Before Dustin could reply, Luka’s delicate, magenta-tipped fingernails had lifted their earbuds from their lap and brushed straight strands of hair behind their ears, and they had lifted the knitting needles back up. Dustin looked down at the page, took a deep breath, and pressed his pen to the page.

Mom,

I love you and I miss you. I’m sorry that I haven’t visited recently, but I’m out west right now for work. You wouldn’t believe the weather…

Chapter Text

Fortunately, Dustin had finished the letter to his mom before his phone started to vibrate in his pocket with the cheerful ringtone that Hart had given Trey’s number. Ice clogged Dustin’s veins, but his fingers moved to his pocket and slid out the antique phone. He flipped it open and held it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, man, it’s Trey.” As if anyone else would be calling. “I just got back from dinner with my folks. I was wondering if maybe you want to come over and chill or something?”

“Yeah. Uh.” Dustin had not expected Trey to call him. He didn’t have makeup on, and he was dressed in casual clothing. He knew how that would go over if Hart heard about it. “Give me 20 minutes?”

“Sick. I’ll be in my room.”

Dustin snapped the phone closed and gathered up his materials. He’d gotten into the habit of saying goodnight to Luka, even though half the time they just responded with a flutter of painted nails. This time, as he stood, he couldn’t look at them. He didn’t want to see whether there was pity in their eyes.

Upstairs, after washing his face, Dustin studied his eyes in the bathroom mirror. There were still dark circles under them, but they looked less bruised from horror and more simply tired. Had it been the break? The medication? Did he have time to do his makeup properly to cover them up? He didn’t think so. He’d just do his eyes and hope that the liner would draw any attention up and away.

By the time Dustin was adding the finishing touches to his eyes, the mascara wand shook a little in his hand, and it was hard to swallow. He could have put his eye out. A brief thought of that old Christmas movie with the BB gun floated through Dustin’s head, and he barely swallowed down the start of a manic giggling fit. So much for the medication.

Well, that wasn’t true. His heart wasn’t pounding, he wasn’t dizzy, and he wasn’t sweating through the undershirt that he was wearing. He breathed until his hand stopped shaking, then finished the other eye. Combined with the lacy pink briefs under his brown slacks, Trey would find him plenty sexy. Mission accomplished.

Dustin shrugged back into the tan jacket that he’d picked out, and he was so far in his own head that he almost ran smack into Dan the groundskeeper in the door to the shared bathroom. As Dustin stepped out of the way of the square-jawed man, he made the mistake of looking up. Under Dan's massive caterpillar brows, his eyes held discomfort and pity.

“Excuse me.” Dustin’s mumble was barely audible. The way that Dan slid past him without a second glance was as pointed as a stare would have been. Dustin fled.

The night air outside was cool and dewy, but it didn’t smell the same as it had at home. The landscaping included tall flowers with a sweet and spicy scent that didn't go well with Dustin’s idea of winter. Between the indirect lights pointed at the house and the radioactive yellow glow from the city, he had no trouble seeing the gracefully curving path through the landscaping. In the tiniest possible ember of rebellion, he took the shorter path that went across the front driveway, even though he’d been warned to not go past the front of the house. If Hart said anything, he’d say that he was in a hurry, and didn’t they all want Trey satisfied sooner rather than later?

Dustin continued along the winding route through the fragrant greenery. The corner of the house that held Trey’s bedroom spilled light from the windows across the curve of the path. Part of Dustin expected Trey to be standing at the window, watching for him like an eager puppy, but instead, he caught a glimpse of the young man in profile, sprawled on his bean-bag chair, facing the corner with the TV.

Dustin slipped along the electric-blue bean of the night-lit pool, ducked into the back patio, went to the back door wall, and let himself in. The living room lights weren’t on. Not that it really mattered with the light coming in through the windows and the safety lights in the kitchen. Why he had worn loafers instead of sandals? There was no one waiting to see him in them. He bent and removed them, placing them neatly with the other shoes by the back entrance.

Compared to the living room, the hallway with the staged with family photos was very dark and creepy. From the opposite direction of Trey’s room, the sounds of a sports game on TV snuck out from under the bottom of a closed door. Dustin turned the other way and headed to Trey’s door, where he took deep breaths until his hands stopped shaking before he knocked.

“Hey, man! You don’t have to knock, it’s your room too! Just come in.”

Dustin managed to not roll his eyes as he let himself in. Trey was on his feet like he’d been there all along, and Dustin tilted his chin up for the kiss that he knew was coming. The young man pulled Dustin close and invaded his mouth with his tongue. But when Dustin felt Trey’s hands start to slide up his back, he pulled away. “Collar.”

Trey was grinning like a kid with a birthday present. Which he was. “Sorry, man. Just a sec.”

His keys were in a heap on the desk. Dustin turned around so that Trey could press the black square to the back of his collar and positioned his hands to catch the falling golden control device. He’d wanted to get a look at it ever since Hart had made him change his in the locker room. The two silver dots on the inside curve of the blister had to be the leads that shocked him, and the small metal square likely popped open to reveal the charging port.

Could there be some way to disrupt the way the leads touched his skin without touching the collar? Maybe something like slipping a thick sheet of paper under the blister before grabbing the band with something nonconductive? Could he… but why was he bothering? Even if he got the collar off, where would he go?

Dustin turned and tossed the hated thing on the desk, where it coiled like a snake that promised to bite him later.

Then Trey was all over him, making out, his hands crushing their bodies together. Dustin worked the fingers of one hand into Trey’s soft ringlets. He didn’t want to appear reluctant, but he knew from last time that encouraging Trey wouldn’t get it over with and would make his soul feel like it had been smeared with tarry black fingerprints. Besides, the erection that Trey ground against Dustin’s hip made it clear that the young man didn’t need any encouragement.

When they came up for air, Trey unfastened the front of Dustin’s slacks and slid his hand inside. Dustin’s suppressed erection ached, but Trey’s fingertips couldn’t tease him through the cage, not with the briefs between them.

Feeling the lace, Trey grinned. “Dressed up for me, man?”

“Of course.”

He stepped back. “Can I see it?”

Dustin smiled. He thought that he might be getting better at fake smiles. He shrugged out of his light blazer and unbuttoned the dove-grey shirt that he’d been wearing under it.

Trey watched him like a man in the desert looking at an oasis of water. “Damn, you’re hot. You’ve really been working out, huh?”

“I’m in the gym pretty much all day.” The slacks were easy to slide out of since they were already unbuttoned and had been pushed half-way down by Trey’s eagerness.

“Don’t hurt yourself, man.” Trey made it sound like it was Dustin’s choice.

Dustin didn’t go out of his way to make getting undressed sexier than it would have been, but he knew how much the sight of a man bending over in lingerie was a turn-on even when it wasn’t part of a strip tease. He pulled his socks off while he was at it, even though it would further show off his ass, because he hated sex with socks on.

When he was done, Dustin stood and spread his arms a little, doing a slow turn in his lacy pink briefs. When he had turned back to Trey, the young man had pushed his own shorts and boxers down and was stroking his cock.

Dustin knew that the pink looked good against his skin tone, which was why it had been purchased for him and why he’d put it on, but something about the color felt demeaning now that a man was staring at it while he beat his meat. At least he hadn’t put on the ‘accessible’ lingerie. Somehow, having Trey fuck him with underwear on had been worse. Maybe it was like the socks.

Maybe he didn’t have to be fucked at all. Trey was really going at himself. Dustin cleared the tightness out of his throat. “Can I suck your cock?”

Trey’s breath caught in. “Fuck yes.”

Dustin dropped to his knees, then tugged Trey’s shorts and boxers down a little more. The young man had spread his legs when he’d stepped in close, so they weren’t going any lower than his thighs, but that was far enough for their purposes. Dustin teased the tip of Trey’s cock with this tongue, swirling it and tasting his unique flavor. The man’s fingers went into his hair and urged him forward, so he went to work for real.

Trey was young and horny and trying to ‘save himself’ for Dustin, so it was no surprise that his balls drew up almost the moment Dustin started toying with them, going high and tight into a shooting position. He had just felt the subtle shift in hardness of a man on the edge of cumming when Trey groaned. “Wait.”

Dustin pulled back on command, and black tendrils of dread moved up from his stomach into his throat and down into his balls. Which ached, because of course they did. Blowjobs had always been one of Dustin’s biggest turn-ons, giving more than receiving, though he certainly liked both. His treacherous body wanted to get off so badly that it hurt.

Trey’s fingers ruffled Dustin’s hair. His low voice was breathy. “I want to feel what it’s like for you, man.”

“What?” Confused, Dustin absently wiped away the dampness from under his lower lip his knuckles. He’d missed a spot shaving, and the skin rasped against the back of his index finger.

The stroking of Trey’s fingers had an eagerness to it, but it was also soothing. “I want to feel like what it feels like you for you, man, when I fuck you. So could you?”

Could he what?

Oh. Oh.

Dustin cleared his throat. “I can, but have you, like, practiced with anything? A dildo? Plugs, maybe?”

“No, man,” Trey admitted. “I’ve wanted to try a plug but I can’t. I’ve got practice. There’s the showers and the locker room. It would be just really fucking weird, man.” He managed to sound both sheepish and defensive. “But I’m not sure it matters, man. It seems really easy.”

It only seemed easy because Dustin had been preparing to take a cock for more than a week before he did. Trey had to remember that, right? It had only been a couple of weeks ago. And even that had been a rushed job. He was lucky Hart hadn’t hurt him, forcing that second plug in.

But there was no point in saying that to Trey. No doubt the young man was immediately great at everything he tried, so why should anal sex be any different. Didn’t he keep thinking about how he’d been, when he was Trey’s age? Not just horny, but convinced of his own superiority.

Dustin made his head pull away from the now-anxious kneading of Trey’s fingers. Part of him wanted to try it, anything to keep Trey out of his own ass. Another part of him was worried what would happen if he hurt the young man. Trey didn't seem like the type who would be willing to try something he wasn’t good at for a second time.

Dustin breathed slowly through his nose. “Do you have any condoms?”

“I mean, we both know you’re clean, man.”

“For the lubrication,” Dustin clarified. “We’re going to have a hard time getting the lube up where it needs to go if you haven’t been practicing.”

“Oh.” Trey wasn’t usually the one who sounded uncertain. Maybe Dustin was finally breaking through to him. “I might have a condom in my desk, maybe, man. Back from when I used to fuck girls.”

“Okay. Well, let’s see.”

Trey’s fingers settled into Dustin’s hair and gave it a little tug. His cock still stuck out like a pole in front of Dustin’s face, but now that he didn’t think it was going inside him, he had no urge to finish the blowjob. Even though Dustin wasn’t interested, the thought of the penetration going the other way around didn’t distress him. In fact, he wanted it to work. He wanted Trey to find that condom. He wanted Trey to like getting fucked. It still wouldn’t be consensual, Dustin wasn’t an enthusiastic yes by a long shot, but he didn’t think that topping would have the same baggage. And he wasn’t going to have any problem getting hard enough with the way that his own cock still ached in its cage.

Chapter Text

“Found them!” Trey splashed a few condoms onto the surface of the desk. One of the bright blue foil wrappers slid up against the side of the golden collar like a strange punctuation mark. The young man ran his fingers back into his bouncy curls, pulled them out, and tried to run his hand back through them again. He had to stop. They were starting to get tangled. Dustin’s curious amusement felt like a foreign creature as he wondered how the young man managed to keep them looking good so much of the time.

Trey picked up one of the foil packets that he’d just discarded and started to fidget with it, rolling it between his fingers like a magician about to perform a coin trick, then he held it out to Dustin. “So, uh, how’s this work?”

“Well.” Dustin cleared his throat. “The most important thing is that you’re comfortable. And turned on, but that doesn’t seem like a problem.”

Trey’s grin was full of straight white teeth. “Around you, man? Never.”

Dustin made himself smile as if it had been a compliment he enjoyed. “As far as the position, that’s up to you. But if you want my advice?”

“Yeah?”

“People usually think of doggy, but missionary might be better.” Dustin’s throat tried to close around the next thought, but he cleared the tightness out of it. “Like, well, the first time we did it. It’ll give you some control. So. If you start to get uncomfortable, you can push me away with your legs. And it’ll let me watch your face for, you know, to make sure you’re okay.”

Trey sucked on his lower lip. “You’re pretty experienced with this, huh?”

Dustin shook his head, but his words had the opposite meaning. “My first boyfriend, well. He liked bottoming.”

Trey’s hand reached out, his fingers tracking up and down Dustin’s forearm. “I’m glad you like it, too, man. The way your body arches and the sounds you make. Like, damn. It’s so fucking hot, man.” Dustin’s arm broke out in goosebumps, but probably not for the reason that Trey thought as he went on. “I want to feel what you feel, man, whatever it is that makes you shout like that.”

He would never feel anything like what Dustin felt. “We can try. But, well. You’ll need to unlock me for, you know, penetration.”

Trey glanced down. “Oh. Shit. Right.”

After checking that the packages said latex-free, Dustin tossed one the condoms and the little bottle of lube from Trey’s desk onto the bed. He slid his lingerie down and stepped out of it, and Trey’s fingers fumbled the keys when he was unlocking Dustin’s cock cage. He was clearly getting nervous, and Dustin’s heart sank a little. He didn’t think that they’d be able to do anal like Trey thought of anal. The important thing was going to be making sure that he had a good sex experience even if the cock-in-hole part didn’t work out so that he didn’t just go back to pounding Dustin in the ass as his default experience.

Unless Trey was some sort of natural, it wasn’t going to be easy. Dustin’s first boyfriend, Terrell, had already been into anal when Dustin had met him, so it had never been a problem for them. But he had learned a lot about what bottoming felt like over the past couple of weeks, especially the sensation of having something inserted into his ass. His mind tried to twitch away from the sex class, but not before he wondered whether Trey had entirely forgotten how long it had taken the two of them working together to get Dustin to relax enough to take something thicker than a finger. Even the smallest plug had taken forever and felt like a missile.

The sensation of the cock cage’s sheath slipping off dragged Dustin’s mind back to the current time and place. At some point while Dustin’s mind had been trapped in the past, Trey had pulled off his jersey and stepped out of his shorts and boxers. The young man already had lost his erection, which was fine, but he sounded uncertain. “So, how do we…”

Dustin stepped toward him and reached one of his hands up. Trey had hopelessly tangled his curls on top, but they were soft and bouncy where they turned into fuzz at the nape of his neck. Trey’s arms went around him almost reflexively. The kiss started gently, another sign that Trey was nervous. Dustin slid his other hand down, tracing his fingers along the line of muscle where Trey’s hips tilted toward his pelvis. His breath caught in through his nose. His hands started to knead and slid farther down Dustin’s back, but he didn’t drag him in close.

Dustin kissed and touched Trey how he remembered that Trey had liked from the sex class that he couldn’t acknowledge. He ran his fingertips through the coarser hair at the edge of Trey’s pubes, teasing rather than going for his dick right out of the gate, and he felt the little jump of the young man’s tensing at the delicious tickle. Dustin imagined the thrill that would be spreading through his own body at having another man’s fingers teasing him right there. The warmth and heaviness that would be starting in his groin.

Well, he didn’t have to imagine what that would feel like. Dustin was actually feeling the warmth, the heaviness, the way that his body demanded that he be aware of the anticipatory tension. He hated how turned on he got by the sheer physicality of a situation, but he shunted his self-loathing off to the side and focused on teasing Trey. He pulled out of the kiss and started running his lips and tongue under Trey’s jaw and down his throat. The skin there tasted of sweat and something bitter, maybe the source of the body-spray scent that was crawling up Dustin’s nose. He dragged his smoothly manicured fingernails up the inside of Trey’s thigh, then slid his hand low, cupping his balls.

Trey breathed out sharply through his nose. “Fuck, man. You’ve got no idea how bad I want to throw you on the bed right now.”

He was wrong. Dustin knew exactly how eager Trey usually was. He’d never seen the young man so passive. Bottoming didn’t have to be passive, and maybe it said something about the example that Dustin had set, that Trey was treating it that way. Or maybe it was his uncertainty. Whatever the case, it was working out in Dustin’s favor.

“I do, actually.” He dragged his teeth against the side of Trey’s neck, where the curve of the man’s neck met his shoulder.

Trey groaned again. “Can’t we just—”

“Hush. Focus on your body. It’s going to feel a lot better here soon.”

When his fingers finally rounded around Trey’s cock, the young man was thick and hot and rock-hard. The skin under Dustin’s hands was a little sticky from his own dried saliva. Trey sharply breathed out through his nose, his fingers dug into the muscles in Dustin’s back, and he pressed into Dustin’s hand. But he didn’t yank him in closer.

Dustin wasn’t just dragging it out for Trey’s benefit. The feeling of control was almost heady enough to make him light-headed. Deep down, he knew it was a mirage, but even an imagined sip of water was more than he’d had in a long time.

As he stroked Trey, Dustin nudged up the young man’s chin back up and kissed along his throat. With his mouth freed up, Trey moaned. “Man, that feels so good.”

Dustin’s lips moved against the side of Trey’s neck. “It’s going to feel even better when I’m in you.” Then he sucked the lobe of Trey’s ear into his mouth and bit it gently.

That finally broke Trey’s control. His hands dropped and he grabbed Dustin’s ass and squeezed hard. Dustin barely got his hand out of the way in time before Trey pulled him close and ground them together, his hard cock leaving a slick smear of precum on Dustin’s stomach. The sensation of Trey’s body rubbing against his own made Dustin gasp. Trey hadn’t been the only one getting turned on by the teasing.

Breathing out, Dustin said, “Go lie on the bed? On your back?”

Trey pulled away like someone whipping a tablecloth out from under a full table setting without disturbing the glasses. He crossed to the bed and crawled backward on the blanket, then spread his long legs and stroked himself as he watched Dustin follow him. Young and fit, Trey was objectively attractive, and his vulnerable position sent a thrill through Dustin’s body that had nothing to do with the way that he was stroking himself too.

He crawled onto the bed without reaching for the condoms. He nudged Trey’s legs apart with his knees and stretched over his body, hovering as he kissed Trey breathless, supported by just one elbow since his other hand was busy toying with Trey’s balls. Sliding his fingers side to side over the crinkly hair, drawing them up in gentle pulls behind the young man’s sack. Doing what he could right-handed, because Trey was furiously stroking his own cock from the other side, banging his knuckles into Dustin hard enough that he thought he might end up bruised.

“Man.” Trey’s outward breath was half a plea. “I’m going to get off before you even get in there.”

“I’m not the one stroking your cock that hard.”

Trey chuffed through his teeth and relaxed his pace, though he didn’t stop entirely. Dustin lifted away, and he protested. “Hey.”

Dustin had to balance on his knees and stretch to reach for the things he’d thrown on the bed. His own cock rubbed against the inside of Trey’s thigh, and they both made horny noises. He pulled the condom to be closer at hand, but it was the lube he’d really been reaching for. He applied a dollop to his fingertip. Trey was still stroking his cock, but he had lifted up onto an elbow to watch Dustin at the same time. His eyes followed the lube bottle like a cat following a teaser toy.

When Dustin began swirling the lube around Trey’s asshole, the young man snapped back down onto the bed like he’d been spring-loaded. He groaned and flexed his hips, and his powerful thigh-muscles clenched the outside of Dustin’s. When Dustin started to press with his finger, Trey tightened up.

“Relax.” Dustin began swirling his finger around Trey’s hole again. The pressure fell away from the outside of his legs, and the next time he pressed, his finger went in easily. Despite his nerves, Trey was eager for it, stroking himself and moaning as Dustin fingered him.

When he pulled his finger out, Trey whined. “Hey.”

“Hush. I know what I’m doing.” There was no such thing as too much lube.

Dustin’s headspace was strange. The sights, sounds, and smells of sex were cues for his body, but his mind felt strangely detached. If Trey had been a real lover, he might have had less control, might have thought less about the logistics and practicalities of what he was doing. Instead, he wet his finger again and pressed it back in. Trey welcomed him deeper. Dustin felt around until he felt the subtle bump he was looking for and circled his finger against it.

Trey’s abs spasmed and he moaned. “Jesus, man.”

“Keep yourself hard.” Not that Trey needed any encouragement. He was still stroking his cock, his balls drawn up tight, as if the struggle was to not cum rather than to stay hard. The detached part of Dustin noted that, if Trey came, that would be fine too. Whatever got him off without being inside Dustin was fine with him.

When he thought the young man was loose and wet and eager enough, he started stroking his own cock. The position of his legs wasn’t comfortable, particularly not after their static hold with Trey squeezing his legs in against Dustin’s every time his hips bucked, but Dustin focused fully on the physical. How nice it felt to actually stroke his free cock, teasing the head with his index finger like he preferred.

When Dustin was ready, he slipped his finger out of Trey and reached for the condom wrapper. He’d been careful to not get lube on his ring finger, so it was easy enough to tear it open. The process of rolling on a condom and applying extra lube to the outside while stroking himself back to full hardness wasn’t one he’d done in a while, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. Like riding a bike, he thought, still feeling like he was borrowing his observations from someone else.

Trey tensed a little when Dustin lowered himself back over his body. His knuckles brushed against Dustin’s stomach as he kept slowly stroking himself, which made Dustin’s body flex and his cock jump. The flex made the plug rub inside Dustin in a way that was profoundly unexpected. He’d never fucked another man with a plug in. A testing flexing of his hips moved it, and while it didn’t as press hard into his p-spot as it did when he was deliberately fucking the plug, it still sent a trickle of unexpected static buzzing under his skin.

It was difficult for Dustin to look down into Trey’s face, but he needed to. He had to know whether he was going too fast. At least the man’s eyes stayed closed. Dustin slid a hand between them, lined himself up, and pressed slowly.

It went about like he’d expected. Trey had opened to his finger easily once he was wet and eager enough, but that wasn’t nearly the same thing as even an average-sized cock. Dustin stopped when Trey’s thigh tensed against his arm and he met resistance. He pulled out.

Trey groaned, then his breath chuffed out in something between arousal and frustration.

“Relax,” Dustin murmured. He tried again.

After four or five tries, Dustin realized that it was an impossible task. Trey was only becoming more frustrated, and some of his gasps sounded like attempts to endure rather than pleasure. Stray curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat, and the rest had spread out on the blanket like he was drowning. He was still stroking himself, but he had to be getting oversensitive.

Just as bad, Dustin was losing his own hardon. His body was sore from working out, and the static hold was starting to make him tremble. He needed to go or stop trying, and he wanted Trey feeling good, not feeling pain. For everything the man had done to him, he didn’t want to hurt him. And it wasn’t for entirely unselfish reasons that he didn’t want Trey’s first time trying to bottom to end badly.

When Dustin shifted back and away, the young man’s eyes shot open and he got up onto an elbow. “Hey, man—”

“Trust me.”

Trey flopped back down. Dustin began kissing down Trey’s chest. He sucked one of the man’s nipples into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue. The new position felt nice, even only because it was a change. Dustin’s finger was still slick with lube, they really did use the good shit in the Brook house, and he slid his finger back into Trey. In and out, in and out, making sure to curl his finger against Trey’s sweet spot on every out. He could feel Trey’s body spasm when he stroked it hard enough.

Trey’s moan was pure desperation as he beat himself off faster. Then balls that rested against Dustin’s wrist went rock-hard, and the man groaned. “I’m cumming.”

Dustin slid his finger in and swirled it around the hard little bump of Trey’s prostate, pressing faster. He sucked hard on the young man’s nipple. Trey’s breath sucked in, then loosed all at once in a primal shout of pleasure. His entire body shuddered. Hot cum shot against Dustin’s stomach. After Trey had let go of his cock and collapsed back against the sheets, Dustin slid his finger out.

“God damn,” Trey breathed out more than said. He was covered in sweat and panting too hard to manage proper speech. “God damn.”

Dustin’s aching arms protested when he pushed himself up and eased out from between Trey’s legs. He wiped his greasy, dirty fingers on the blanket, pulled the condom off his softened dick, and tossed it there too. He’d throw it and the wrapper in the trash later, but the detached part of him noted that it was another ruined blanket for Luka or Sara to clean up. Another trash can that would need to be changed. Another time that someone would know what had happened in the room.

Why does it matter? They already know.

He didn’t know why it mattered, he just knew that it did.

Chapter Text

Dustin disengaged from Trey and flopped onto his back. The queen-sized bed left enough room for him to do that off to the side, with the bottle of lube, the lube-streaked blanket, and the used condom between them. They were impossibly small barriers, easily overcome, but they were better than nothing. At least Trey wouldn’t enter Dustin’s space unthinkingly.

Not that Trey seemed in any state to move at all. If it felt for him anything like it felt for Dustin, he’d still be feeling little aftershocks of electric heat under his skin. Not very much like the relaxation of the more traditional orgasm, but there would be that, too, if Trey could get past the stray skin sensations. Or maybe he didn't feel anything like that at all. Maybe his version of orgasm was completely different from Dustin’s. He’d certainly heard them described in different ways by different people.

Whatever Trey felt, maybe he’d get addicted to it. Maybe he would find some reason in it to leave Dustin alone.

“It was good?” Dustin asked, as if he were a solicitous lover instead of someone with a profoundly selfish interest in the answer to the question.

“God yes.” It was an outward breath more than words, but then Trey sucked in a real breath. “That’s what it feels like when you cum when I fuck you?”

“Yes,” Dustin lied. Was Trey reading his thoughts? But even if it physically felt the same, it wouldn't have the same meaning at all.

The two of them lay together but apart in silence for a while, Dustin treasuring the moments when nothing was expected of him while also dreading what might happen next, Trey seeming to be just catching his breath. Eventually the young man rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his fist. Sweat still stuck the curls against his forehead in the same positions. Dustin tried to pretend that he couldn’t feel the young man’s dark eyes surveying his body. He knew that there was no way that he could physically feel the pressure of a look, but his brain insisted on inserting it anyway.

The mess on the blanket lay between them like the moat Dustin had hoped it would, cutting off Trey’s inevitable desire to have him back. Which was good because of what Trey said between heavy breaths. “Sorry that didn’t work out, man. I’ve got to catch my breath. But then we can get you.”

“Get me?”

“You know.” Trey made an obscene gesture. “Get you.”

Dustin cleared the sudden tightness out of his throat. Practice or not, anxiety medication or not, the coming conversation was going to be hard. “I’ve been meaning to, well. Talk with you about that.”

Trey’s brows pulled toward the middle of his forehead in a concerned little crease. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I just…” Dustin felt the weight of Trey’s eyes on him again after he trailed off, but the young man didn’t interrupt. “You don’t need to, uh, get me, after.”

Trey became defensive. “I’m not like that, man.”

Dustin wiped his hand down his face. He was almost surprised that his own forehead was sweaty and his arm ached. He’d been focused so intently on the work of his hands that he’d forgotten that the rest of his body had been in a static hold for who knew how long, and it had stiffened up. “It’s not that.” Dustin found the words that he’d practiced and fumbled through them. “It’s that I like the, well, I like being horny, but not necessarily, uh. You know?”

“Not what, man?” Trey seemed puzzled and uncertain.

Dustin’s tongue wet his lips. “It’s that, the longer I go, the uh, more special it gets. Okay?”

“Oh,” Trey said. Then again, with seemingly more understanding, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Dustin made himself smile. It still felt like a mask he was wearing, and he had the vivid image of someone else’s skin pressed over his face. “It’s better that way.”

Trey’s face relaxed and he nodded. “I get it. Man, I try to save it for you, but it’s hard. But then, when I do, it’s so fucking good. And that fucking orgasm, man, that was something else.” He let his head drop, rested his arm under it, and stretched out. His voice went a little smug. “So, you just want to get off when I’m with you if it happens natural?”

Dustin wet his lips. That wasn’t really what he had been going for, but it was at least closer. “Well. Even more than… look. I like wearing the cage. When we, you know.”

The young man stared at Dustin like he was some sort of alien creature. And maybe he was, to a horny 20-year-old. “You don’t want to get off at all?”

Dustin cleared his throat again. He hated that he did it constantly, but it had become a tic that he couldn’t seem to stop. “Do you remember. In the class. The fucking machine?”

Trey whistled low through his teeth. “I almost forgot you can cum in the cage, right? Things are just moving so fast, man. And, damn, I can't believe it left my mind. You seemed to cum forever. I thought, there’s no way Dusty can keep going, but you just kept drooling like a faucet. It was insane.”

“Yes.” Dustin was full of relief. “Yes, it felt, well, really good.”

“Even better than getting off on my cock?” Trey smirked like it was a joke.

Dustin wet his lips. “Well. If I got, you know. Pent up enough. Maybe. I still could. On your cock. You know?”

Trey blinked. “Shit, man. I didn’t even think about that. Do you think I could?”

“Yes,” Dustin lied. With the orgasms he was giving himself with his plug, he didn’t think he was at any risk of cumming just from anal. Or what would the point be? That his body betrayed him when Trey was doing things to him was the worst part of the rapes. If he could end that, if nothing else, it would be… well, not better, but better than nothing.

“Well.” Trey breathed out. He extended a hand across the lube moat and traced a pattern in the sweat on Dustin’s chest. “Well. I want to give you what you like, man. If you think you’d like this, that’s cool. I mean, if you don’t, it’s not like we can’t go back, you know?”

“Right.”

Trey sighed. “I guess I could give up my dreams of you fucking me for that, man, if this is what you want.”

It wasn’t anything close to what Dustin wanted, but it was better than all the alternatives. “Mhm. It is.”

Trey’s hand shifted upward and cupped Dustin’s cheek. His thumb stroked dampness across Dustin’s cheekbone as he pulled Dustin’s face toward him. “You do so much for me. I want to give you what you want.”

Dustin let his head tilt into that warm pressure. “Thank you.” He hoped that he looked sincere.

Trey’s cheeks darkened with blood. His hand stayed on Dustin, but he looked away, his lips pursing before he took a breath like a diver leaping over uncertain water. “You don’t have to thank me, man. I think," his words sped up. “I think I’m in love with you. Not that I expect that from you, I know it’s just a job to you, but that’s why. Anything I can do to make you happy. You get me?”

Dustin wasn’t surprised by the declaration. Getting Trey to care for him had always been part of the plan. If Trey loved him, it would be a lot harder for Hart to just disappear him. He knew that it would be best to tell Trey that he loved him back.

He was getting a lot of practice at lying despite his promise to not let his indenture turn him into something he wasn’t. Every day, lies felt like something he had to reach for less and more like a survival-skills part of him that was good at saying what someone wanted to hear. It helped that Trey was so self-absorbed. He reached for the words. And yet, despite it all, the lie that he loved Trey too filled his stomach with nausea that caught in his throat.

Dustin swallowed hard on a mouthful of sour spit and was glad that Trey had looked away. “I get you.”

Trey’s eyes, normally so dark but accented with lines of lighter brown up close, cautiously returned to Dustin’s face. His thumb stroked the line of his cheekbone. “Thanks for not laughing at me, man, even if you don't feel the same way.”

“I wouldn’t laugh, Trey. I’m happy you care for me. I just hope you don’t come to, I don’t know, regret it, or something.”

“Regret it how?” A new puzzled line drew itself between Trey’s brows.

“Like, well, like by letting it keep you from getting a real boyfriend. Someone you can have a life with. You know?” Again, the sentiment wasn’t purely unselfish. A real boyfriend would be a giant distraction and different focus for Trey’s sexual energies. “Even if it means that, you know, you have to set me aside, or something.”

Trey frowned. “I'm not going to just get rid of you, man. Any boyfriend I get is going to have to like you too. We’re a package deal.”

Fingertips holding a cube of ice drew a straight line down Dustin’s spine. He hadn’t considered that, instead of directing Trey’s energy elsewhere, a boyfriend might result in threesomes. Or Dustin being available for the new guy to rape. Or anything like that.

Suddenly, he wished that he’d told Trey that he loved him, too. That he had tried to convince Trey that, even though he was functionally his slave, he’d come to really care about him. That they had some sort of future together, no third man required.

Trey was going on, “But I don’t want a boyfriend, man. I like what we have.”

Dustin turned his head and kissed Trey’s palm, like he might have if they really had been lovers and Trey had told him something so vulnerable. The salt taste on his lips was sweat, not tears. “I do, too.”

It wasn’t even that far-fetched of a lie. Regardless of what they had, it continued to seem better than any of the likely alternatives.

Chapter Text

Even though all that Dustin and Trey did after that was play the basketball videogame and sleep, Dustin found his time in Trey’s room to be intensely stressful. It embarrassed and irritated him that, while they had been in the shower, the blanket had been changed. At least he’d taken the condom into the bathroom, wrapping it in toilet tissue before dropping it into the little trash can. Despite the change in bedding, the room still smelled subtly of sex, and Dustin’s body had certain expectations no matter how disgusted his mind was with it. Even Trey’s casual touches provoked reactions from Dustin’s body, and there was always the possibility that the younger man would notice and become interested and the brief brush of arms would escalate into something else.

When they went to bed for real, the man insisted on being the big spoon. He hadn’t asked Dustin his preference this time, and clearly, their earlier conversation about it hadn’t stuck. It was the epitome of everything that Dustin hated about Trey. The man asked for form, heard only what he wanted to hear, and did what he’d wanted to do anyway, but his behavior wasn’t malicious. Dustin wanted to hate him, but all he could manage was a simmering resentment.

The weight of Trey’s arm around him felt prison. Dustin barely skimmed the surface of sleep, drifting in and out of nightmares until the man’s alarm went off at some ungodly hour of the morning. The sky wasn’t even light. Trey shifted and pulled Dustin against him like an overly large and expensive stuffed animal. He ground his morning wood into Dustin’s butt and nuzzled into the hair behind his ear, his scraggly attempt at a mustache tickling in a way that stippled Dustin’s skin with goosebumps. He tensed, waiting for some whispered request or caress that promised to be the start of something sexual.

It didn’t come. The alarm finished its cycle and turned itself off. Trey’s breathing started to settle toward deep and even again, and his hand relaxed on Dustin’s stomach, the callused fingertips tickling in a way that made Dustin warm. The next time the alarm started to play, Trey sighed, gave Dustin a squeeze, and rolled out of bed.

“Sorry, man. I have practice,” he complained. “I hate this fucking team. I’m going to drop it before next semester.”

“I don’t mind,” Dustin said. He carefully ran through the couple of lines that he’d practiced in his head between nightmares. “It’ll give me time to work out. And.”

Dustin couldn’t see Trey as more than a moving shadow, but it was obvious that the shadow became stationary. “And?”

Dustin cleared his throat. Despite his mental practice, the words he wanted to use to draw Trey further into their relationship came hard. “You shouldn’t cancel something on my account. If, you know, you enjoy it. A little time apart makes our time together more, well. Memorable. And, and gives us something to look forward to. You know?”

Dustin could hear the grin in Trey’s voice, even though he couldn’t see it. “I’m so fucking lucky. You’re amazing.”

The compliment made Dustin uncomfortable. “Maybe a little.”

“Well, plan on a memorable night, okay? I probably won’t be back ‘til after dinner, man, because I’ve got to study after practice. But we’ll have another night together.” Trey echoed Dustin’s words. “Something to look forward to.”

“I will.”

The sun was still under the edge of the horizon when Trey gave Dustin a goodbye kiss that tasted of toothpaste. Dustin sighed through his nose as he trudged through the morning chill back to the izzy house. His sore, stiff muscles weren’t looking forward to time in the gym, and he was supposed to eat breakfast first, anyway. In the kitchen, his meal-prep box had hard-boiled eggs and thick slices of not-quite-bacon that seemed to be made from some kind poultry. Turkey, maybe. He wasn’t sure whether it was allowed, but he took a salt shaker with him to the dining room for his eggs.

They tasted different than store-bought eggs, and Dustin wondered if Abby got them from somewhere special. Did they have farmer’s markets in a city this big? The bacon was extra crispy after coming out of the air fryer, but instead of splintering into the crunchy crumbs that Dustin liked, it was still chewy. Closer to leather than bacon, really.

After rinsing and racking his plate, Dustin ambled to the locker room. He hadn’t texted Hart yet and didn’t expect anyone to be there, so he was surprised when a ray of bright white spilled into the foyer after he opened the door. The shower was running, filling the room with scented steam, but it cut off almost immediately after the locker-room door thumped closed behind Dustin.

Normally, he would have been too polite to pay attention to a gym shower, but he wasn’t comfortable changing into workout clothes when there was the possibility that someone might step out from behind the curtain at any moment and see him in just his cock cage. He fidgeted in his locker and cast regular glances toward the curtained corner.

It was Luka who pulled the curtain and stepped out, a bright white towel wrapped around their too-thin waist. Dustin’s mild surprise lifted his eyebrows. The willowy person did not seem like the working-out sort. He couldn’t help but ask, “What are you doing here?”

Despite the damp, stringy brown hair clinging to the sides of their face, Luka stared down their hawkish nose at Dustin like royalty. Their nostrils flared and their voice was as caustic as cleaning powder. “Are chambermaids not allowed in the sacred space of this entirely unisex locker room?” Luka paused, but before Dustin could come up with a response, they lifted their hand to stop him. The curl on their lips was not a smile. “Perhaps such a maid would not need to work out at this unsightly hour if said maid could return a regular schedule rather than being called two or even three times an evening to keep a certain bedroom presentable.”

It was a verbal sucker-punch, a hit to a sensitive place that Dustin hadn’t seen coming and couldn’t have prepared against. It slammed him into a jumble of too-vivid images and sensations and feelings that felt like being dropped into a washing machine mid-cycle. The chaos filled his head with a horrible static that was as blue as Trey’s bedroom and smelled like body spray.

Dustin ended up in own his room somehow. There was no transition between the harshly lit white tiles of the locker room and indirect lighting of his bedroom. He couldn’t remember leaving or going up the stairs. He stared into the mirror over his long dresser, his reflection looking exactly as hurt and bewildered as he felt. “How is that my fault?”

He looked with all of his mental hands, but he couldn’t find a response for his question. Every atom of his body viscerally wished that Luka didn’t have to change the bedding so often, and even just brushing lightly against that thought dropped Dustin head-first into a chaotic storm of memory scraps.

The sound of a lawnmower starting up jerked Dustin back to an awareness of the time. He fumbled around in his pocket for his phone and saw that he should have been in the gym half an hour ago.

Hart was going to kill him. It wouldn’t be anything as mild as a belt-whipping or even a caning, the man was probably going to beat him into a pulp, shove what was left of him into a gallon jug, and mail him to Vegas. Dustin flipped the phone open. There was no time for a text message. He hit the button to speed-dial Hart’s phone.

It rang only once before it was picked up. Hart’s gravelly voice was toneless, and the neutrality was profoundly threatening. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Dustin blurted. “I didn’t last night sleep. I’ll be right there.”

“Merrill.” Dustin’s sweaty hands almost made him drop the phone during the pause, even though it was barely more than a comma’s worth. “Stretch. Take the morning off. Take a nap. Do not sleep all day. Be ready for when he calls. That’s your job today. You hear me?”

Even Dustin’s relief tasted sour. “Yes, sir.”

Before Dustin could think of anything else to say, the connection went dead. He pulled the heavy phone-shaped brick away from his ear and stared at the grey rectangle of its screen without comprehension.

Confused and hurt. Confused and, well, just more confused. Had he been given the morning off after the first ti—

He was on his back on the bed, everything blue, fire under his skin as he jerked off while being raped.

—gagging over one of the too-fancy toilets in the izzy bathroom without transition, boxed in by a sage-green wall and slightly darker green metal stall dividers. Tears streaming down his face, body covered in sweat, mouth tasting of acid and half-digested eggs. Panting between bouts of nausea. Wondering whether he’d even remember this in a few moments.

Dustin’s sense of time and place shivered and settled. He wished it hadn’t. He could have lived without the memories of flushing the toilet and stumbling to the shower and stripping out of last night’s clothing and trying to scrub off the top layers of his skin. The only consolation was that it was the middle of the morning and there was no one around.

When he was back in his bedroom, Dustin unwrapped the towel from his waist and fell into his bed. His dreams were more anxiety and terror and confusion. He was being chased through unfamiliar streets by a horror that he couldn’t even name. All he knew was that, if it caught him, something terrible would happen. If he couldn’t find the girls, it would eat them, too. He tried to stop strangers for help, looking for a hiding place, or a vehicle, or anything at all that might give him some sort of respite, but there was nothing. The horror was always snapping away just inches from his heels. He couldn’t find the girls.

He woke up gasping and soaked in sweat. He hadn’t remembered to set an alarm before passing out, and despite what Hart had ordered, he had slept too long. At least waking from the horrors didn’t have the same feeling of displacement as skipping in and out of them while he was supposedly awake.

The slant of the light through his windows told Dustin that it was early in the afternoon. He needed to get the foul flavor out of his mouth. Only half-awake, he stumbled out into the upstairs hallway. And bounced off Luka’s cleaning cart.

It would have been too much to hope that the person would have been in one of the rooms so that Dustin could have detoured around it without a repeat of their morning confrontation. Instead, Luka had been in the process of emptying a hamper of dirty clothes into the oversized trashcan at the far end of the cart. They started at Dustin’s sudden appearance, eyes widening and with surprise.

Dustin, master of the freeze school of fight or flight, suddenly found himself unable to move. Luka’s eyes, the brown of a Labrador retriever that had bit Dustin without even a growl of warning, studied Dustin’s face. He braced himself for a fresh attack, frantically hoping that, if nothing else, he’d be able to hold himself together long enough to get back into his room and lock the door.

Luka’s eyes flitted away. “I apologize.” Their voice held none of the sarcasm or sardonic humor that usually accompanied it, and it had all the airy quality of a bird dragged to earth. “Although there can be no excuse for my behavior, by way of explanation, I will offer that I had a rough night and difficult morning.”

Dustin just stared at them. The jumble of emotions in his chest felt like everything and nothing all at once, and the end result was paralysis.

Luka placed the empty bathroom hamper on the floor with the deliberately paced delicacy of someone transferring a sleeping infant to a crib. The sleeves of their loose floral-patterned teal blouse fluttered as their fingers went to one of their bracelets, twisting at the beads with fingernails the orange of sunset. “Yes. Well.” The airiness had returned to their voice. “I do understand that my apology is quite insufficient. I shall remove myself to the chamber across the hall for the nonce, so as to not cause further discomfort.”

Dustin’s paralysis didn’t break until after Luka had plucked up a small bucket of cleaning supplies, slipped into the room across the hallway, and soundlessly closed the door. Even though he could move again, his mind was still half-frozen, perched on the edge of a screaming vortex of chaos. He managed to move his body into the bathroom, but no amount of splashing water on his face or brushing his teeth could make him feel fully present, much less normal.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t too late to call the meal that Dustin ate ‘lunch,’ though if he had been keeping to his normal schedule instead of whatever trauma-skewed day off he’d been experiencing instead, he would have eaten hours before. After picking at the chicken, he pushed the Brussels sprouts around on the plate with an utter lack of enthusiasm.

It wasn’t that he disliked the sprouts. They had been baked in some sort of vinegar and cracked black pepper, and they had crisped back up nicely in the air fryer. They had plenty more flavor than the ones his mom had made, which had been barely more than tiny boiled cabbages. Intellectually, he knew that the food was delicious, but it had the appeal of soggy cardboard and it sat unsteadily on top of his stomach.

His mind kept going to the confrontation and apology with Luka, and he told himself that that was why he was playing with his food instead of eating it, as if a magic sprout formation could help him untangle the knot that the morning had made. If he focused on that, he could pretend that his upset stomach had more to do with social anxiety than his earlier retching fit.

So. The Luka problem. Should he handle that knot in the Gordian way? If their interactions were sliced cleanly down the middle, the answer was that Luka hadn’t lied, had had a bad morning, had been irritable, and had regretted the words later. Dustin thought that he never deliberately would have said such cutting and hurtful things to any of his friends, even when he’d been in a bad mood. But he grudgingly realized that, with how enormous his own losses were, it could be hard to remember that everyone in the house was probably living through their own personal tragedy.

The words had been acid, but Luka had been acerbic from the start. Was bitter and snappish how they always had been? Or had their personal tragedy led to that? A not-so-secret-from-himself part of Dustin wanted to know out of the deep worry that he might slide into the same bitter and lonely place himself. But who would he even ask about it? Not Luka.

Dustin’s fork squeaked slightly off the porcelain as he pushed a Brussels sprout from the side of the plate up onto the beveled rim. The food made him think of Abby. She seemed to have been at the house a while. Maybe she would know?

Dustin pushed a new sprout into the growing formation on the plate’s rim. It was possible that, even if Abby knew, she wouldn’t tell him.

He continued to move the now-cold vegetables as he felt his way through the dilemma, one sprout per thought, each one leaving a dirty smear of sauce on the glossy white surface.

He couldn’t know what Abby would say unless he asked.

Would Abby tell Luka that Dustin had asked, even if Dustin asked her not to?

Probably not.

But if she did, would Luka resent the shit out of Dustin for prying into their personal life?

Probably. Luka was an extremely private person.

But was Dustin going to eat himself alive by wondering whether Luka had always been this way, and tangentially, whether what had happened between them was something that could be understood as anything other than an opening rift in the sole friendship that he had?

Almost certainly.

Dustin knocked the Brussels sprouts back into the plate when he came to a decision, shifting them out through the olive-colored sauce that had flavored the chicken until they formed a shortened C. Before he looked for Abby, he would need to make sure that he was ready for when Trey came back. Somehow, he’d managed to not stretch Hart’s patience, but he knew that he was pushing his luck.

Dustin made himself finish the meal, rinse the plate, and put it away. He made himself go upstairs, change into the clothing that had been bought for him, and fix up his face. He had to admit that he did actually look quite good in smart clothing and with a little foundation and eyeliner, even if he wished he hadn’t found out this way. Though he wasn’t sure what other way there could have been. He had been a masculine man attracted to other masculine men, and makeup had never occurred to him.

Dustin only realized that he’d lost his grasp on time when the door to the shared bathroom slammed open, making Dustin flinch. He fumbled the liner tube up onto his shelf and hurried out through a cloud of grass and gasoline, never meeting the eyes of the person it was attached to.

Downstairs, Dustin hesitated on the threshold of the foyer. Ben had said that he was allowed go out, as long as he didn’t go past the driveway. It was a nice day outside, not entirely sunny but with a high haze and wisps of cloud. The heavy rain of the week before had broken the streak of what had felt to Dustin like summer temperatures, and he was now comfortable in his long-sleeved button-up.

He didn’t take the shortcut past the front of the house, not in the daytime. The long way took him behind the garages and the hedges of almost sickly-sweet white flowers that briefly overwhelmed the smell of freshly cut grass. Everything along the sweeping stone path was so neatly trimmed that Dustin could have mistaken for astroturf if not for the man who had come into the shared bathroom. Maybe he had smelled so strongly because he had been cutting the grass with a ruler and scissors.

Dustin knew that he was trying to distract himself by focusing on the details of the weather, the path, the grass. He didn’t want to think about asking Abby about Luka. If he did, he might realize that it was a bad idea and lose the courage to act on it. He might never have the answer to his question abut the source of Luka’s cruel disdain.

And if he stopped obsessing about they'd morning, he might start to think about what had happened the night before.

As Dustin stepped across the back patio into the cool shadow of the overhanging roof, he realized that he had not asked Ben, and didn’t know for himself, whether the izzies were allowed in the house without an escort. A nervous sweat slicked Dustin’s palms, and he wiped them against the tailored beige trousers, high enough up that his pale blue button-up would conceal any damp smears. He took a breath and told himself that, if Abby wasn’t in the kitchen, he would stay on the back porch and pretend that he was just sitting by the unused fire pit until he caught sight of her.

When he stepped to the glass door-wall and slid it half-way open, he heard pop music playing softly from the direction of the kitchen. Standing on his side of the threshold, Dustin leaned in and cleared his throat. Abby didn’t look up from the huge stainless-steel mixing bowl in front of her. He watched her crack one egg into it, then another, as she hummed along with the music.

“Abby?”

The blonde-haired woman started and looked up, but then she relaxed and smiled a little. “Dustin? It's good to see you out of the house.”

“I was just, well. Wondering if I could come in? To talk to you. If I’m not allowed in, well, that’s okay.”

“I don’t know.” The woman cracked a third egg into the bowl, then set the shells aside and wiped her hands with a fluffy cream-colored towel. “Izzies don’t usually come in unless we're on duty, but I honestly don’t know if it’s against the rules, poor form, or what.” She hesitated, then went on. “But. Since you sometimes have duties in the house, probably the worst thing that would happen would be a scolding.”

The worst thing that could happen to him was much most severe than a scolding. The possibility of getting in trouble caused Dustin’s stomach to twist, but the panic that might have closed his throat the week before felt muffled. Maybe there was only so much fear that a mind could endure before it began to tune it out, like a bad smell.

Even though his hands were sweating, Dustin stepped over the threshold and started to toe off his loafers. He mumbled, “I guess I’m risking it.”

Abby’s pale pink lips curved a little on one side into an uncertain smile. “If you're worried about it, it's okay. Just let me finish this and I can join you on the patio?”

“Trey loves me.” The words were as awkward abs dirty as a terrible secret, but it wasn’t a hyperbolic statement, except in the ways that Trey’s feelings were hyperbolic. Dustin trusted that what he said was true. “He won’t let anything too bad happen to me.”

Abby seemed to study Dustin’s face, but whatever she saw there, she kept to herself. “So, what can I help you with?”

Dustin couldn’t make himself ask the question that he’d intended to, at least not straight away. He padded across the wooden floor to the kitchen area in his black dress stockings to buy himself time. “What are you making?”

Abby glanced down into the huge steel bowl, and Dustin saw the glossy pink-reddishness of fresh ground meat. “It’s going to be hamburgers. Trey didn’t tell you?”

“No. He doesn’t tell me much.” And what he did wasn’t always accurate.

Abby set aside the towel, grabbed a bottle, and tipped a generous amount of a brownish liquid into the bowl. “He’s invited his team back for a cookout.” There was a small twist to her mouth, but Dustin didn’t need Abby to tell him that ‘cookout’ meant that Trey wanted to show off his new present. “He’s asked for hamburgers.”

The older woman turned and put her hands under the faucet. It was motion-activated and began to pour immediately, and she used another motion-activated dispenser for soap before she began washing her hands. Dustin watched until he got up the courage. “So. Will the family be there, too?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Brook will both be downtown. I’m not sure whether we’ll see Mr. Shaun for dinner, but it’s possible. I think he’d likely want hamburgers, but if he wants something else, I’ll be happy to make it for him.”

The part of Dustin that had hoped that parental supervision might temper the planned party shriveled and died. “Oh.”

There was a silence. Abby dug her clean hands into the meat and began kneading the concoction around with wet sucking sounds. Dustin had always hated the feeling of meat between his fingers. It had been Jacob who ran their grill. Though he had enjoyed wings more than hamburgers…

Dustin’s thoughts were drifting again. He cleared his throat and tried to get back on track. “I had wanted to ask…”

Abby glanced up from her kneading, but she didn’t say anything to prompt him on.

“I’d wanted to ask about Luka.” Dustin briefly outlined the situation from the morning, and he was a little mollified to see Abby’s wince at the words that Luka had said. At least Dustin wasn’t being overly sensitive or making a mountain out of a molehill, as Jacob had always said. Dustin finished up with, “I thought we were friends. I’m just trying to understand. I was wondering if, well, something happened to Luka. Or, have they just, you know, always been like this.”

Abby sighed. “Luka’s story isn’t mine to tell, Dustin. If you want to know, you should ask them.”

Hot embarrassment washed up Dustin’s throat and into his face. “Please don’t tell them I asked?”

“I won’t,” Abby agreed. She hesitated, then went on. “But you aren’t the only person they’ve snapped at, and you wouldn’t be the first person they’ve driven away with harsh words. I think there’s real regret behind their apology, if that helps.”

Dustin turned that over in his mind. Dustin’s anger and hurt when he had told Luka to fuck themself hadn’t truly been about them, and it was a statement that he had truly regretted later. It was a statement that Luka had forgiven him for. Slowly, Dustin said, “That helps a lot. Thank you Abby. Truly.”

“Anything I can do to help,” she said, and Dustin believed that she meant it.

“Well. Is there anything I can do to help you?” Abby’s smile turned polite, and Dustin quickly gestured to the counter. “I mean, with dinner. Honestly, it would be nice to have something to do.”

Abby’s nostrils flared as she breathed in slowly through her nose. He saw her realize that having something to do would be helping Dustin as much as he would be helping her, and he was surprised that he wasn’t ashamed by it. Or at least not ashamed enough to withdraw the offer.

“I’d prefer to slice the tomatoes and onions myself,” she said. “But you could slice lemons and cucumbers for the water infusers. Not that I expect any of the boys will be drinking water.” Her tone was mildly disapproving. “But we should keep up appearances.”

A surge of relief propelled Dustin to the sink to wash his hands. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he wanted to feel useful, to feel like part of a team. Even if the team was just Team Menial Labor.

Chapter Text

Dustin wasn’t allowed to stay on Team Menial Labor for long. He was washing lettuce in a colander when he heard the first of the car doors slam out front, followed by the sort of chatter that excited young adults always made when they congregated in groups, though it was too far to make out any words. More doors thumped closed, and a few moments later, it was like someone abruptly clicked on the volume for a whole-house sound system.

“—if Maria’s sister can pick some up.” Trey’s deep voice was as easy to pick out over the rest as if he’d been Dustin’s real lover. Long, confident strides brought him into the living room from the front entryway like a wolf leading the pack.

Dustin wondered what Maria’s sister had to do with anything? Was she also indentured?

A different young man spoke from behind Trey, on the edge of laughter. “If that Chicana is coming, she’ll load her whole trunk with liquor so she can get laid. She has a face like a dog’s ass.”

A third voice, also young and male, talked over the second. “If nothing else, your parents have a whole fucking bar, man.”

The man attached to the voice followed Trey into the living room as he spoke. He was a young white man with light-brown curls who was attractive in the blandly generic way that would fade in a few years. He looked familiar, and Dustin tried to place him from the fog of trauma-packed yesterdays. It could be man Trey had been speaking with in front of the university building, when he had been taking Dustin to sex classes.

Trey sliced his hand through the air. “No fucking way are we breaking into it again, man. I’m not dealing with that shit right now.”

A dark-haired, pale young man was on their heels. Shame washed up into Dustin’s body before his mind caught up to why. It was the guy who had seen Dustin in his lingerie during the video chat. Gio, his name had been. His head was turned to talk to the man behind him. “Don’t talk about my girl’s sister like that, asshole.”

“Don’t get pissed at me.” The Hispanic guy that rounded the corner behind him was grinning and shaking his head. “Get pissed at God.”

The man with lighter curls smirked at Trey. “Still afraid mommy will get mad at you?”

“Bro, if your dad owned your secretary, you wouldn’t want to piss him off either.”

Dustin had frozen in place. His thumb still depressed the handle of the sprayer, showering the lettuce with cool water, though he wasn’t actually rinsing it anymore. He wasn’t quite like a deer in the headlights, since he wasn’t blinded, and deer at least had the good sense to get off the road. Maybe he was more like a rabbit hoping that it wouldn’t be noticed by a pack of predators.

If that was his strategy, it didn’t work. A smile like a warm sunrise spread over Trey’s face when he looked into the kitchen area. “Dustin! I was just going to call you, man.”

It was an effort for Dustin to stop gripping the water sprayer for dear life. He meant to put it back in the holder, but he fumbled it, and it clattered into sink. All four of the men were looking at Dustin now, with expressions ranging from Trey’s affectionate excitement to Gio’s cool amusement to the other two men’s barely concealed jealousy.

Dustin’s throat was as tight as if someone had taken a ratchet to the collar around his neck. He tried to not clear it too loudly. “Oh. Well. Here I am.”

It was a lame thing to say. Not that anyone was all that interested in what he had to say.

One of the pack whistled. “A secretary that cooks. I'm so fucking jealous.”

Dustin didn’t know who had spoken. He had eyes only for Trey, who was gliding across the open floor plan with those easy long strides that devoured the distance. “Yeah, I love a man who knows his way around the kitchen, man.”

Then Trey was around the counter and pulling Dustin into a kiss. Dustin responded instinctively, his chin tilting up, his hands going to Trey’s body even though his hands were wet. Trey’s little mustache tickled Dustin’s upper lip, and his tongue invaded his mouth. If Dustin was embarrassed by how deeply Trey kissed him in front of strangers, or the way his hands slid down Dustin’s back to grip his ass to pull him in closer, it was blanketed by the subtle sense of unreality that had begun to fall over him when the pack of had entered the living room.

One of the friends teased. “Keep it in the bedroom! You’re making James jealous.”

Trey pulled out of the kiss. Dustin’s eyes had stayed open with his shock, and so he found himself looking into Trey’s face. The corners of his thick, expressive lips were curled into a smile that was now more possession than affection. “Let him be fucking jealous, man. I’ll take it to the bedroom when I’m good and ready.”

The pack laughed. The blonde man, who had to be James, said, “I’d join if you’ve got a secretary with a pussy hiding in your closet. If she’s our age.”

Trey didn't respond to the bait. He grabbed Dustin’s wrist and pulled him out from behind the shielding counter. “Come on, Dusty, I want you to meet the team.” He gestured first to the dark-haired man with the amused expression. “This is Gio.” Then he waved to the Hispanic guy and the blonde guy. “Viralla, James.” A fifth guy had joined them, and Trey made it clear that the resemblance between the two white guys wasn’t just a generic college aesthetic. “And that’s Sam. Him and James are cousins.”

“Hey,” Dustin said. He no longer felt like the hands were squeezing his throat shut, so surely the anxiety medication had to be doing something, but the feeling of being just half a step outside reality was still there. It didn’t help that the team had come closer. Trey always had been taller than him, but now he wasn’t the only athletic slim giant. It felt like Dustin was lost in a forest of trees with hair.

“Are we going to get another lingerie show?” Gio eyed Dustin as if he could see through his semicasual clothes, and it didn’t sound like he was joking.

Before Dustin’s body could decide whether to freeze, Trey laughed. “No, man, there’s some shit that really should stay in the bedroom.”

“And some of us aren’t interested,” James or Sam said.

The other cousin added, “Yeah, Gio, when’s Maria’s sister coming? Jim’s fucking desperate.”

He dodged an elbow from James. “Fuck you, Sammy. Chie’s bringing Theta.”

Gio’s eyes broke away from Dustin and he reached for his pocket. “I’ll see where they’re at.”

“Patio’s this way.” Trey gestured across the living room, talking to his guests whiletugging at Dustin’s wrist again. He felt like a dog on a leash, a shy and overdressed beagle in a pack of eager but casual greyhounds.

One of the cousins asked, “Hey, can we swim?”

“When it’s this cold?” Gio asked.

“If you want, man.” Trey said. “The pool’s heated, and we’ll have the firepit going to warm up.”

“Let’s get a few drinks in you.” One of the cousins teased to Gio. “You’ll be begging to skinny dip, if only to show off Maria’s tits.”

“Just her tits?” Gio’s tone carried his smirk.

It was like stepping back a decade. Dustin had the surreal feeling that, if he looked around, he’d spot Jake and his football buddies. The similarities persisted as more people arrived and it turned into the same type of college party that Dustin remembered from not that long ago. Two young women who had to be Maria and her sister – who really was ugly – arrived and unloaded bottles of cheap liquor onto the kitchen island. Some others brought beer or harder drinks. As the sun dipped toward the horizon, people kept showing up, and it became crowded and loud, even when outside. Someone put music on in the living room, and the window wall didn’t contain the thump of the bass.

It was only Dustin’s place at the party that was different. He felt like a mobile accessory, Trey dragging him from place to place like a party balloon. He was shown off but not introduced. He wasn't talked to, he was talked about. People talked about his body like he wasn’t right there, and Trey’s innuendos were barely shy of explicit. Dustin settled into the embarrassment like someone sinking into a hot tub, and he got used to the temperature. It didn’t go away. He just stopped feeling it so intensely.

Maybe that was why he began to feel like a distant observer. An anthropologist studying the flow of a college party. He certainly wasn’t a participant. Trey had offered Dustin a drink, but he turned it down. He didn't need the social lubricant.

What could he have talked about, and with whom? He had nothing in common with these young basketball players and their social circle. Not all of them seemed as wealthy as the Brook family, but he wasn’t the only secretary there. The others – masculine or feminine or androgynous – were dressed in a variety of styles, but they all shared the same meaningless mask for a facial expression. He couldn’t tell whether there was dread or shame or apathy or tiredness underneath, but no one seemed excited to be there. Or maybe Dustin was projecting.

Trey took a turn at running the grill, though it was mostly Abby who created and maintained the refreshments. Unlike some of the partiers, Trey drank only beer and didn’t sloppy. But when a guy came by and asked Trey if he wanted to smoke, Trey asked Dustin to stay behind, saying something about secretaries and drug tests. Dustin was glad to be able to eat some of Abby’s delicious food and take a bathroom break. None of the guests bothered him. One look at his collar and their eyes slid right off.

When Trey came back, he smelled of marijuana and fresh body spray, and he dragged Dustin to the chairs around the fire pit. Trey tugged Dustin into his lap and pulled him back against his body, and Dustin tightened his core until he realized that he wasn’t going to crush the guy. At worst, he was going to put Trey’s thigh to sleep. Trey’s arm went around him and he rested his hand on Dustin’s thigh, but it was a tame, affectionate gesture, not a request for something more.

Dustin slowly relaxed and sipped his cucumber water. A dark-skinned guy whose hair had been buzzed into lightning bolts bumped into another man by the pool. It wasn’t clear through the crowd whether it was an accident or a deliberate push, but either way, the second man shouted in surprise before his fully-clothed splash disrupted the electric-blue water. It started a general ruckus of shoving and shouting and splashing and laughing and complaints. Someone got into the pool shed and dumped toys in the water. Others seemed to start an impromptu game of drunken water polo. Dripping, shivering people came to stand by the firepit to warm up. The bleach smell of chlorine added a new scent to the party. Dustin took it all in, there but not there, except to the extent that he was relieved that Trey was absorbed in a conversation about hip hop with the next guy over and didn’t seem eager to get involved.

From his anthropological throne, Dustin noticed the tonal shift in the young men on the other side of the firepit before he knew what was wrong. The brown-haired guy across from them, Viralla he was called, had been slumped and drinking some sort of liquor punch while scrolling on his phone. His brows lifted at something before he looked up at Dustin, back down at his phone, and then back up. A grin slowly spread across his face.

Viralla nudged the arm of the guy next to him and tilted his phone. “Check this out.”

“What?” The guy slurred and rocked a little on his seat, but he automatically reached for the phone. The drunk man had startlingly pale eyes, and the yellow firelight flickered in them as he looked from the phone to Dustin. He grinned. The girl who he gave the phone to next looked from it to Dustin, then she giggled and leaned against the girl next to her.

Dustin was no longer a distant observer. The tension in his body ratcheted up a fresh notch with each new look, and by the time the phone made it to their side of the firepit, he was struggling to keep his breathing regular.

The girl on the other side of Trey’s conversational partner leaned forward, and Dustin was so hyperfocused that he could hear her hair beads rattle even over the thump of the bass. “Hey, Trey?”

Trey leaned a little to see around the man between him and the girl, bumping Dustin forward as well. “What’s up?”

“Your mom's going to be so pissed.” She turned the phone around and held it out.

On the screen was one of the lingerie photos, the one where Dustin had been posing back on the bed on his elbows, wearing only a gold thong that emphasized his package and a fuck-me expression.

Dustin actually felt the blood drain from his face, as if someone had opened a faucet under his chin. His head felt light. His lips went numb.

Trey demanded, “Where?”

“TMZ.”

Trey started digging in his pocket for his phone even before the girl leaned away. The motion shifted Dustin in his lap, and he moved with it bonelessly. Greyish spots swam at the edges of his vision, and it was the dizziness that made him breathe in, not any desire to fill his lungs with air.

Whatever anxiety medication Dustin was on was not prepared to cope. The feeling of relaxed distance that he had cultivated was as distant as a memory of a childhood summer. He watched with sick fascination as Trey swiped into his phone and pulled up a website.

And there he was. A couple scrolls down, the photo of Dustin was inside a red border under a headline in giant capital letters, red as blood:

DIRECTOR’S SON HAS HOT NEW SECRETARY: SITTIN’ PRETTY FOR BAD-BOY TREY BROOK!

It looks like Trey Brook -- son of producer-director Anette Brook and Hollywood superattorney Reshard Brook -- didn’t suffer after being caught in a steamy encounter with a prostitute two months ago. “I thought to myself, I wish my parents would react like this if a hidden camera caught me with my pants down,” says TMZ’s inside source.

There was another photo, just as bad, and Dustin’s eyes closed before he could read any farther. The bitter-sour flavor clawing up the back of his tongue was as familiar as the face of an old friend.

“God damn it.” Dustin’s eyes flinched back open, and he saw that Trey's fingers had tightened around the phone case like he was trying to break it. Then he sighed. “Get up, Dusty. I need some of that rum punch, man.”

Chapter Text

Three cups of rum punch later, Trey was drunk, and Dustin was still reeling. The crowd had become as oppressive as summer sun on pavement. He was aware of the weight being every look even without glancing up from his own knotted-together hands. But he had managed to not throw up, despite the too-sweet smell of the rum that Trey kept having him get. So. That was progress.

Trey had to slur his request two times before it sunk into Dustin’s brain. “Let’s get in the pool, man.”

Dustin’s slacks weren't going to lend themselves to clothed swimming. Underneath, he was wearing the black-lace boxer-briefs that he’d put on for Trey. Everyone would see—

He swallowed the lump in his throat. It bobbed back up like a cork, but he could speak past it. “Isn't it too cold?”

“I want to clear my head, man.” Trey tried to put his plastic cup in the chair’s cup holder, missed, and slammed it against the arm. If it hadn't been empty, he would have covered them both in sticky sweet liquid.

He turned further in Trey’s lap, so that he could speak softly. “I can’t swim in, in what I’m wearing. And. What about the collar? Won’t it, you know.”

“Man, lots of guys are swimming in their underwear,” Trey slurred reassuringly. His eyes were slightly out of focus and had a glassy sheen, and the way he waved his free hand was too generous. “Girls too. Man, Maria’s even got her fuckin’ tits out. Just don't put your head under. It'll be fine, man.”

He didn’t get it, because of course he didn’t. He was oblivious most of the time, and that was when he was sober. Shame gripped Dustin by the testicles and squeezed, spreading an ache up into his lower stomach. Dustin whispered, “I’m not wearing something I want to show anyone but you.”

Trey opened his mouth, but Dustin leaned in close. He kissed Trey’s ear, and something not entirely unlike courage prompted him toward self-preservation. He whispered. “Trey, I don't want to swim in my underwear. Please.”

“Oh.” His glassy eyes blinked slowly. “Okay man. Uh. I’ve got trunks in my room, man. You could wear those.”

Dustin didn't want to swim at all, but his trickle of courage had dried up. Despite the relief, an elephant still sat on his chest. But it was a smaller elephant. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Trey gave Dustin a sloppy kiss that was full of awkward tongue. After they got up, Trey almost stumbled over the chair. “Whoops. Shit, man, I spilled my drink.”

Dustin left before Trey could ask him to get another one. Dread of dozens of half-formed possible ends to the night sucked at his every step. It was probably just his imagination that one of the girls went out of her way to grind against him as he edged past a knot near the door. Probably.

Compared to the ruckus outside, the living room quietly unchaotic. Yes, someone had put a YouTube music feed on over the fireplace and loud hip hop music was blasting from the entertainment system, but there were only a few people still grinding together in the open space that had been made by pushing the furniture against the walls. Two people seemed passed out on the couch that Dustin skirted around. Something seemed out of place, but he couldn't put his finger on what.

The music faded and became the distant rumble of bass thunder as Dustin slogged down the well-lit hallway that led to Trey’s bedroom. He didn't hurry, and he stood aside at the wall to let a reeling young woman pass, even though there had been plenty of room for them to pass each other. Maybe if the errand took him long enough, Trey would pass out, or get distracted.

The room off the right end of the T was apparently a game room, and there was a loud game of pool or something like that going on. He was just in time to see Luka float out of that room, carrying a tray of empty plastic cups and used snack plates.

That was what had been off. The usual debris of a college party was being cleaned up even as it was being created. Luka’s acid words about being able to work out at a decent hour if he didn't have to clean up messes floated through Dustin’s head. At least he wasn't responsible for this particular mess.

Trey’s room was a quiet refuge. Dustin closed the door behind himself and leaned against it. The picture of himself on that website flashed into his head and his fingers tried to dig themselves into the door. The ‘inside source’ was probably at this party, might be taking pictures of him surreptitiously, pictures of Trey drunk and sloppy and kissing him. At least they wouldn’t get one of him in his lingerie. Well. Another one, anyway.

When Dustin’s breathing had slowed, he pushed away from the door. He left the lights off. Trey never had his curtains drawn, and despite that there didn’t seem to be any traffic on this corner of the house, Dustin couldn’t get the idea of cameras pointed at him or people taking naked pictures of him through the windows. Best to not draw attention to the room and just change in the closet.

The closet was full to the brim with clothing. The swim trunks weren’t on hangars obviously. He found them in one of the drawers, and true to his word, Trey had several pairs. Dustin thought of wearing Trey’s boxers that one time, and how tight they had been at the waist, but that would just have to do. He selected a black pair, hung them for the moment from a nearby hook, and started stripping his clothing into the hamper.

Dustin had just tossed his pants in the hamper and had his thumbs hooked through the briefs when the light snapped on in the bedroom. His stomach twisted and he went cold. The last thing that Dustin wanted to deal with was a drunk and amorous Trey. He didn’t want the man to pull him into the bedroom, into the bed, with whatever happened next lit as if with a spotlight and visible to the entire pool area. “I’m sorry, I’ll hurry so we can get in the pool.”

It wasn’t Trey who came around into the closet. It was Gio, the dark-haired, pale-skinned man who had seen Dustin on the phone wearing nothing but a towel. There was a half-smile on his face, one that Dustin didn’t like the look of. His face was flushed from drinking, but he didn’t look half as drunk as Trey.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We don’t need to hurry.”

Dustin’s feet felt stuck to the floor and his heart kicked up a notch, but nothing jumped into his throat to closet it. “Trey’s waiting for me.”

Gio took another step into the closet. He closed the door behind him. “Yeah, but, you know, we’re like brothers. We share everything. He said I could share you real quick. I don’t have my own secretary, you know?”

He was lying. Dustin didn’t have to read it in Gio’s face, though it was written there, too. Dustin had been aware, in a vague way, that some of the other secretaries at the party were being touched by people other than their owners. There wasn’t any visible sex going on, but the way people were coming and going, it was implied. But Trey wouldn’t just share Dustin around like alcohol someone had brought to the party.

Dustin, master of freeze, told freezing to fuck off. Warm anger spread through his chest. This guy wanted to rape him, that much was clear, and fuck standing around and stammering until it happened.

His eyes dropped and turned to the side, but what he said was, “No.”

He could hear the scowl in the other man’s voice. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“No. Trey wouldn’t do that.”

He grabbed the swimming trunks off their hook, ducked his chin, and started to shoulder past Gio in the narrow space. His half-formed plan was to run for the bathroom and lock himself in. Trey would come looking for him eventually. Or he wouldn’t, and Dustin could spend the night on the floor.

Except that he was barely past the man when white pain shot across his throat, the choking doubling him over. Only pain-reinforced habit kept him from clawing at his neck. What—

He grabbed your collar. The survival part of Dustin leaped to the front, urgently. You have to get out of here.

He tried to stumble to the closet door, but the taller, far more athletic man had wrapped his hand in the collar of Dustin’s shirt, dragging him and spinning him. His knuckles must have knocked against the collar, because hot lightning shot across Dustin’s throat. His lungs screamed for air, but he’d coughed it all out and couldn’t draw in a fresh breath. Dizziness swamped him and grey sparks started swimming at the edge of his vision.

Things got confused. The next thing Dustin remembered was trying to crawl away on rug-burned knees, but he’d gotten turned around. Dustin to crawl to the door, Gio caught him by the too-long hair and yanked. The sharp crackle of hair tearing came a moment before the sharp pain.

“You’re not leaving until you suck my cock, izzy.” Gio dragged Dustin up and shook him by the hair like he was a doll.

“No,” Dustin choked out. He tried to pull his head away, but the grip in his hair was iron. He took in as deep of a breath as he could. “Help.” It wasn’t going to be loud enough, that wheeze. He tried again. “Help!”

Between the red pain of his hair being pulled and the white-hot fire that shot across his neck, Dustin lost track of what happened again. Pain, that was all he knew. Pain and then a half-hard penis was in front of his face, pulled through boxers and the fly of the man’s pants. “I said suck it!”

Dustin opened his mouth. It wasn’t obedience. He was out of options. It was comply or be choked to death. If Gio killed him, something bad would probably happen to the other man him, but it wouldn’t matter to Dustin, because he’d be dead.

Gio’s half-hard dick tasted like sweat and bitter salt as the man pushed it into his mouth. Dustin didn’t really cooperate, but it didn’t seem to matter to his rapist. The guy pulled him back and forth by the hair while fucking his face, his hardening cock sliding across Dustin’s tongue, not even seeming to care when he scraped teeth. Dustin’s continued choking and gagging only seemed to turn him on more.

When he was fully hard, he let go of Dustin’s hair and shoved him back. Dustin landed painfully on his ass, the plug inside him jolting hard. Even his pained exhalation was breathless.

“Good enough.” From Dustin's place on the floor, the basketball player looked as huge as a malevolent god. “Get on your knees. I mean, hands and knees. Turn the fuck over.”

“Please,” Dustin knew it wouldn’t help, him begging for mercy never helped, but the fight had gone out of him somewhere in the middle of the face-fucking. His head was swimming. What little defiance he had had been sucked into the void where his breath used to be, and he retreated back to his default. “Please don’t.”

“Please, please.” Gio mocked him, then his voice went hard. “Don’t make me zap you again.”

Dustin still couldn’t breathe but in ragged breaths, and the swimming in his head hadn’t quite subsided. He complied. Hands and knees wasn’t possible, but he could get his ass up, which was all the other man wanted. Dustin’s nice shirt slid up his back with the rasp of fabric on skin. He wasn’t sure whether he was leaning against the floor, or the floor was leaning against him. His face was wet. Tears and snot, he though, but his mouth tasted of iron and something bitter.

Gio grabbed the back of his pants and yanked, and when nothing happened, he kicked Dustin in the back of the thigh. Compared to everything else, the pain was dull and distant. “Unbutton your pants, dipshit.”

Dustin tried to get up off his elbows, even if the dizziness hadn’t made it hard, the dry-heaving would have prevented it. Not even his heaving, ragged breaths seemed able to get him enough air, no matter how fast he took them. All he could manage was a one-handed fumble at the button and fly of his slacks. The other man yanked down Dustin’s pants and the lacy briefs that had started so much trouble. Dustin felt them dig painfully into his pelvis before they gave way with a sharp ripping sound and were shoved downward.

Unfamiliar hands with hard fingers gripped his ass. The spit-wet cock slid between Dustin’s cheeks, hit the handle of his plug, and slid along it. His brief, disconnected hope that Gio would just get lost in the frottage popped like a soap bubble when the man growled and pulled away. Fingers dug between Dustin’s cheeks and yanked.

Having the plug torn out was excruciating. Dustin hadn’t relaxed into it, but his body couldn’t resist Gio’s strength. It hurt almost as much as when the man’s cock slammed all the way in. There was red pain and a deep cramp that made Dustin gag.

“You tell that asshole this is for what he did to Toph.” Another thrust and deep cramp, another cough of pain.

Dustin smelled bleach and tasted the lemon-bright of stomach acid and the iron-bitter of blood. His grip on reality slipped, and Logan was behind him, mumbling about how tight his new bitch was. Dustin rested his forehead against the wall behind the toilet, which was bizarrely soft. It didn’t make sense. But nothing did.