by J. A. Rock
Maya reached for her glass of water. “Nobody uses the term ‘blouse’ anymore. Except old people.”
Dave ignored her. “Let’s all put our hands in and do a one-two-three Subs Club.”
We all groaned.
“Come on, come on,” Dave urged us. “I feel like we have to. I mean, we don’t have a theme song because Kamen promised to write one and never did. So the least we can do is a hands-in.”
We all leaned forward and put our hands on top of one another. Then we one-two-three-ed, and everyone yelled something different, from “bacon” to “enema buckets.”
It was a pretty beautiful moment.
“Do you think Bill should be forgiven?” I asked Ryan later. We were in our room, sitting on the edge of the bed, dicking around on our phones.
He glanced at me. “I don’t know him. At all.”
“But based on what I’ve told you?”
Ryan frowned at his screen for a second. “Based on what you’ve told me, he’s a shitty dom. But maybe it’s better that they’re teaching him how not to be a shitty dom, rather than just letting him serve some time and then releasing him back into the wild.”
“If you were counseling him, what kind of stuff would you say to him?”
Ryan had worked briefly as an advocate in San Francisco for doms who’d been accused of overstepping boundaries and, I dunno, needed help processing their guilt or something.
“I’d try to get his perspective on what happened. Find out if he’s remorseful. If he blames Hal or himself.”
I wanted to know that too. “And if he blames himself, are you supposed to, like, reassure him?”
He went back to his phone. “Not exactly. But we’d talk about how he could move forward and have healthier partnerships in the future.”
“But he, like, killed someone. By breaking a really basic rule.”
He shrugged. “I never had to be an advocate for anyone who’d killed someone. Honestly, you know what the most common scenario was? Doms would come in because their partner had safeworded, and they’d stopped.”
“What do you mean?”
He set his phone aside. “I mean they were just really shaken up that they’d been on a different page than their partner. Like, there’d be these guys—mostly, but sometimes women—who’d been topping and having a great time and thinking their partner was having an equally awesome time—and then suddenly the partner safeworded, and they were like, ‘Holy shit, how did I not realize she was reaching that point?’ or whatever.”
I thought about this for a moment. “It would probably be awesome if all sexual partnerships had a magic word that was a polite way of saying, ‘Cool it. This isn’t going as good as you think.’”
“Have you ever safeworded?” he asked.
“Yeah. When I was twenty. I thought flogging looked cool, because all my friends were doing it. So this guy starts whipping me, and I’m kinda like, ‘Okay . . . yeah . . . ow . . . This isn’t . . .’” I laughed. “And I kept waiting for it to get better, but it didn’t. So finally I just straightened up and was like, ‘Nope, nope . . .’ And he stopped at the first nope. So I didn’t actually have to safeword.”
He nodded. “I guess it’s just hard for me to imagine all this predator stuff your friends talk about, because it’s never happened to me. Like, all these shitty doms you apparently have around here . . . In San Francisco there were one or two I was warned about, but I never felt like there was an abuse epidemic.”
“Dude, you worked with shitty doms.”
“No. I just told you, I worked with people who made mistakes and were willing to admit it.” He yawned, holding the back of his hand over his mouth for a moment. “Whatever. I’m not a great fit for activism. I learned that a long time ago. I’ve always wanted a relationship more than I’ve wanted a community.”
I climbed up onto my knees on the bed. “That’s always kind of how I’ve been too. I mean, I like going to Riddle and seeing people I know.” I flopped on my back, setting my phone on my chest. “But I’m just as happy here with you.”
“Well.” He stretched out on his stomach beside me. “When I have someone who’s willing to do anything . . .”
I turned my head toward him. “Do you think we should try more stuff besides panties?”
He bumped his head against my shoulder. “Like what?”
“I’m thinking costumes. In general.”
“What kind of costumes?”
“Is there anything you wanna see me in?”
“Like, girl clothes?”
“Any kind of clothes. Uniforms, maybe?”
Ryan was silent for a second, and I was a little freaked that maybe he wasn’t into this. But then he said, firmly, “Military.”
I grinned. “Yeah?”
He leaned closer to me and whispered. “A suit.”
“Huh?”
“You’d look so fucking hot in a suit.”
I think maybe I blushed. “You should talk. I get so hot when you dress formal.”
He laughed. “I know. We should try, like, dirty-altar-boy stuff too.”
“Let’s just make a deal to try anything we can think of that doesn’t hurt. Except pooping. If you ever poop on me, I’ll leave you.”
“What about pissing?”
“Ewww!” I pulled my head back to look at him, and my phone slid onto the bed. “Are you into that?”
“Not into it. But what if I wanted to?”
“Do you want to?”
“Not particularly. But, like, I don’t know. Maybe it would be fun.”
I thought for a moment. “I guess it’s not off the table. I don’t even understand how it works, though. Like, what’s the thrill?”
“Everyone I know who does it, it’s like a human-toilet kind of thing.”
It took me a few seconds. “Oh, hell no! I wouldn’t let you do it in my mouth. But my body, I guess it wouldn’t be a huge deal.”
“But would it turn you on?”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed his back. “A lot of stuff turns me on. You?”
“I did it once when I first started domming, and it was pretty good.”
I pinched him. “Oh, so you’ve done it before, and you were just gonna pretend you’d never really thought about it—”
He jerked away, laughing. “I just haven’t really thought about it with you.”
“Because I’m so pure and innocent?”
He stopped laughing. Gazed at me real seriously. “Because this stuff is totally different for me with someone I love.”
I didn’t answer right away. I knew from past conversations I was the only guy Ryan had ever been in love with, aside from some boy when he was eighteen that he thought, looking back, probably wasn’t really love.
I also knew from Subs Club discussions that it was insulting to say that if you were a dom and really loved someone, you shouldn’t want to hurt or humiliate them, even as a game. I agreed with calling bullshit on that, but wasn’t it different for everyone? Like, it made total sense to me that it would be easier for some doms to hurt or humiliate partners they didn’t love. I remember Kel talking once at the roundtables about lending GK out to other women so she could watch him get topped, because she knew other women would be harder on her husband than she was.
“Different how?”
“I don’t want to, like, degrade you.”
“Why?” I asked softly.
“Because it’s not what you’re into.”
“How do you know?”
He ran a hand down my chest and lifted the hem of my T-shirt. Put his cold, tiny hand under there and made me jump. “I just assumed. You don’t like being punished. And you . . . you really like . . .”
“What do I like?”
“Umm . . . you like to feel good.”
“Well, duh.”
“I mean mentally, I guess. And I don’t think being pissed on would make you feel great about yourself. Right?”
“I guess.” I wasn’t surprise
d, exactly, that he’d thought about what I liked or needed as a sub. But I was kind of embarrassed to realize I didn’t know what he wanted as a dom. So he’d enjoyed punishing and humiliating guys in the past, but he didn’t need to do that stuff with me? Then what did he want from me? “But everything we do is fun. So I don’t think I would feel bad about myself. You know? Even if you pissed on me.”
He drew circles around my belly button. I had an outie belly button that he always pretended he wasn’t creeped out by. I grabbed his hand and tried to make him touch it.
“Ahh!” He attempted to pull back.
“Touch it.”
“No.”
“Touch the weird belly nub.”
“Oh my God . . .” He yanked his hand free of mine and then poked my belly button with one finger. “There. Happy?”
I nodded, grinning.
He drummed my stomach with the flat of his hand. “You’re so weird.”
We were quiet a minute. I was thinking about what he’d said about what I was into. On one hand, I was sometimes better than my friends at knowing what I wanted. Because I didn’t overthink. On the other hand, I saw how deep they were able to go psychologically in their D/s relationships because they did think so much, and they were articulate about what they wanted. What if I couldn’t have that with anybody because I never thought about what submission meant, or how to get better at it?
“I would let you pee on me,” I said finally.
He glanced over at me. “Oh, come on. You would not.”
“Yes-huh! I said I want to try everything.”
“If I volunteered to pee on you right now, you’d freak out.”
“Try me.”
He stared at me. My heart pounded, and my dick stirred. I wasn’t really hot for the idea of watersports so much as I liked the idea of a challenge.
He stared back. “Okay. I’m gonna piss on you, then.”
He lay there like he was waiting for me to back down.
“Fine,” I said nonchalantly.
“Come on. You would so not let me.”
I stood. “Where do we do it?”
He laughed like he couldn’t fucking believe me. “Uhhh, in the bathtub, I guess. For easy cleaning.”
I pulled him up, and we headed into the bathroom. “So I just . . . get in the tub?”
“Yep. And if you don’t tell me right now that you’re kidding, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna pee all over you.”
“Good.” I stripped. “Because that’s what I want.”
I climbed into the tub.
“Welcome to the Watersports Event of the Year,” I said in a semisatanic pro wrestling announcer voice.
Ryan unzipped his fly. “This is gonna be one for the ages.”
“What position?” I leaned against the wall and threw an arm up over my head. “Gently reclining? Kneeling?”
“Um, how about kneeling?”
I knelt, facing him. The texturing of the tub floor hurt my knees a little. I grabbed the bar above the soap dish. Opened my mouth to make another joke, then stopped.
Tried to think about submission.
Gould always said submission was about knowing what you could give to your dom. So what could I give to Ryan? Like, was letting him humiliate me enough?
Except I never felt humiliated by him. And even though I liked doing what he said, I didn’t look to him as a leader—at least, not all the time. He was my best friend, and I loved him. But he didn’t feel like an authority figure. Was that okay?
Miles had said something a while back about how he wasn’t really submissive—he was a bottom who liked telling guys how to hurt him. Which made sense for Miles, since he was terrible at relaxing and letting other people handle shit. But I wasn’t like that. ’Cause I’d always liked guys telling me what to do at clubs. But then I didn’t have to live with them. They were just dudes I played games with sometimes.
I made a mental note to ask Miles if I was a real sub or not.
Ryan stepped up to the edge of the tub. “You look like you’re concentrating really hard on something.”
“I’m trying to feel submissive.”
He laughed. “Oh. That’s so cute.”
“Shut up! Be full of darkness and cruelty.”
“Okay. Uh . . .” He took his dick out and aimed it at me. Gave me a look that was actually pretty dark and cruel. “Are you ready for me to own you?”
I got shivers. “Ooh, yeah.”
That seemed to give him more confidence. “Are you ready to take all of my piss?”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “That’s good. You’re good.”
“Don’t move,” he ordered, and I got a little hard.
He started to pee. It hit my chest first, then slid down. It was warm and smelled not so great, and really, I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it was, like, gross as fuck. “Ew! Okay, no, stop. This is awful. Stop!”
“I can’t just—” He stopped for a couple of seconds, but then it started trickling again.
“Quit!”
“I’m trying!” He aimed down so it hit the tub, but it still kept splattering me.
I pressed against the wall, holding my hands out like I was gonna fend off the piss stream. “Ewww! Safeword! Safeword!”
“There’s a lot in there, and it really wants to come out. Also, your safeword is not safeword!”
“I can’t remember what my safeword is because I’m covered in urine!”
“It’s not even on you anymore! I’m angling away.”
“I’m still sharing a bathtub with it!”
“Well, stand up or something! Get away from the drain.”
I hunched as far from the piss stream as possible until it stopped. “Gro-o-oss,” I moaned, knocking my head lightly against the wall.
“Oh my God. You are such a baby.”
“You peed on me.”
“Are you actually upset, or are you just being a drama queen?”
I tried not to snicker.
“You little . . .” He leaned forward, laughing. Gave my shoulder a super dainty slap.
“Wash me now,” I ordered.
He turned on the water. On cold.
“Owww! Abuse!”
He grabbed my hair and tugged it gently. “You want me to show you abuse?”
I splashed him with pee water, so then he had to strip and get in the tub with me. We stood and pulled up the shower thingie.
The water warmed up, and he rinsed the bottom of the tub before putting the showerhead back. He started lathering me up. I crouched so he could reach.
“Will you be nice to me all night now?” I asked.
“You were the one who told me to piss on you.” He rubbed shampoo vigorously into my scalp.
“I know, but now I’m traumatized. Can we order wings?”
He shook his head, clearly trying not to smile. He scrubbed my shoulders with his fingernails. “Yes. We can order wings because I peed on you.”
Game. Set. Point. Match.
“His head,” I repeated for about the seventh time. “It’s so big he keeps falling forw— Look at this. Ry. Look at this!”
Collingsworth had started walking toward me, his massive head dragging closer and closer to the floor, until finally he basically face-planted on the hardwood and lay there with his legs sticking out, rasping away in a puddle of his own drool.
Ryan, who was making dinner, glanced over. “They should stop breeding bulldogs. And all brachycephalic breeds. It’s cruel.”
“But then Collingsworth wouldn’t exist.”
“He can’t breathe. And he can barely move.”
“But he’s a freaking dog butler.”
“Yes, as long as you go to the fridge yourself, take out a beer, and set it on the floor, then go back to wherever you were sitting, he will bring it to you in his disgusting mouth.”
I gasped softly, rubbing Collingsworth’s wrinkled head. “Your mouth’s not disgusting. No. No, it’s not. You’re a good boy. They shou
ld keep making brachiosaurus breeds so there will be more dogs like you.”
“You and he are startlingly similar.”
I stood and walked over to him. “Hey. Just because I drool and bring you beer . . .”
“And snore, and would probably make friends with a serial killer if he came into our hou—”
I shut him up by grabbing him and slobbering all over his mouth.
For the next three days, Collingsworth and I chilled together whenever I wasn’t at work. We watched TV, ate sandwiches, and went for walks—except we couldn’t make it more than like a block before his head weight became too much and he face-planted. Which was fine, because it was freaking hot. I took him over to Miles’s house one day to meet Zac, and that kid and that dog were seriously calendar material. Collingsworth even listened to me work on “Snow Wanderer” each day after sandwich time.
I ended up thinking about Hal a lot. Like, where he’d be right now in life, I guess. Would he have a dog? A boyfriend? An apartment that wasn’t a total shithole?
Probably not a dog, because he’d sucked at being responsible. He’d spend days crashing on someone’s couch for no apparent reason, just saying he “didn’t feel like” going home. So a dog, not so much.
And maybe not a new apartment, because whenever anyone had suggested he try living somewhere that wasn’t, like, horror movie levels of cockroach-infested, he’d said he loved his place. So, I mean, kinda not making a lot of sense. Loved his place but never felt like going home?
Now I wondered why I hadn’t questioned that more. He was one of my best friends. I should have been like, Dude, what’s wrong? Why don’t you like going home?
Sometimes it might have seemed like my friends and I used to be closer, more supportive of one another when we were younger. Because everything was new to all of us back then, and because now we bickered like idiots and assumed we knew better than one another. But actually, for all our dumb spats now, we were way closer than we ever were. We knew each other so freaking well.
I kept that in mind while I worked on “Snow Wanderer.” Like, tried to imagine this boy who didn’t have friends, and how fucked up and lonely that would be. I played what I had for Ryan each night, and honestly, I was proud of how it was going. He really seemed to like it too.
