Debug

by R. J. Moray

  All the while, Nate kept touching him, whether to hurt or soothe. Ewan felt the focus of his attention, a hot thread running between them, spun from the giving and taking of pain. It bound them together, a connection that went deeper than any other in Ewan’s life. This was what he wanted, Nate’s attention. The comfort of knowing he could trust Nate with this, the most dangerous part of him.

  Nate released one of Ewan’s nipples from its clamp, and Ewan screamed. Then Nate flicked the stick against it, and Ewan felt like he was going to pass out.

  He didn’t, but he did go away somewhere, into the blissfully empty place in his head where nothing could ever be wrong. His body felt like it belonged to someone else, and he supposed that it did. It was Nate’s. Nate could hold him and hurt him and have him and everything he wanted was okay because Ewan’s body wasn’t his anymore, just Nate’s. For his use. Ewan didn’t need it anymore, all he needed was Nate.

  “Nate,” he moaned, and it was the only thing that made sense anymore. Just Nate, Nate, Nate…

  Peripherally, he was aware that something was happening to him. The pain changed. Lessened. Became the blissful stroke of hands, the wet pressure of a mouth sucking one of his abused nipples. And then his balls, which were so tender he could hardly bear it. He sobbed. He pulled his feet up, now free from the cuffs. Hands pushed his thighs apart, thumbs between his arse cheeks, holding him open. The slick slide of a tongue over his hole, opening him up, and he tried to say ‘no’ because it made him feel so, so loved. Worthy of it. Worthy of Nate, and he wasn’t, he was dirty and ruined and awful. Nate shouldn’t.

  “Shhhh,” Nate said. “You’re beautiful. Let me do this.”

  He couldn’t argue anymore. Nate delved into him, teasing him wet and slick and open, and then there were fingers on his rim, the cold slick of lube, fingertips easing into him, Nate’s long, elegant fingers inside him. They brushed his prostate, but he didn’t want that, didn’t need it. Just Nate.

  “Okay,” Nate said, soft and gentle, so gentle with him now that it made his chest ache. “Just this, then?”

  Nate’s cock felt impossibly big right now, and he didn’t waste any more time. He pushed; Ewan took. Nate slid into him like he owned him, and then he fucked his way deep. That connection between them thickened until Ewan felt subsumed, Nate’s and Nate’s alone, nothing left of himself at all.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful when you let go,” Nate told him, fucking into him with long, slow thrusts. “God, Ewan. I can’t—” he panted. “I can’t be trusted with you. You shouldn’t trust me. You should be very fucking afraid of me, and you’re not, and it’s so good—” and he shuddered, driving in hard, his hips jerking as he gasped out his release.

  Ewan wrapped his legs around Nate’s hips, clinging to him. When Nate touched his cock, Ewan whined for him to stop. He didn’t want to come, he just wanted Nate inside him, with him, to be part of him. Never leave.

  “Okay. Okay, baby boy.”

  Nate had taken off the collar and cuffs some time ago, so Ewan curled around him like a monkey, burying his face in Nate’s neck. Nate didn’t let him go, just made them both more comfortable, still buried in Ewan’s body. He kissed Ewan’s brow, and then his cheek, and then his mouth. Eventually, he withdrew, but when Ewan whined at him in protest, he pushed two fingers into Ewan’s wet hole, and that was good. Ewan didn’t want to separate from him yet. He didn’t feel like he could. His body was still not his, belonging entirely to Nate. Nate’s property. God, it felt good.

  Until it didn’t. Ewan blinked, the fog of endorphins fading. He shivered, suddenly cold despite the blanket Nate had pulled over them.

  Nate tightened the arm around him. “All right, baby?” he murmured.

  “Get off me,” Ewan said, pulling away. “Get out of me.”

  To his surprise and relief, Nate did, rolling away to reach for the wet wipes on the bedside table. Then Nate was up, peeling back the covers and tugging them out from under Ewan’s body.

  “In,” Nate said.

  Shaking now, Ewan did as he was told. Nate lay down next to him, on top of the covers. The duvet was a thick barrier between them, but Nate stroked Ewan through it, rubbing him with firm strokes of his palm.

  “You okay?” Nate asked. “Need some juice?”

  “No,” Ewan said, shivering. He felt so…he didn’t know. It had been perfect, but now he felt foolish. He was soaked in sweat, sticky with Nate’s come. Blotchy and horrible and ugly, and Nate was looking at him like he was worried.

  “Hey, hey,” Nate said gently. “It’s okay. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Nothing,” Ewan said, his mind spinning up a list of reasons why he had to get out of there, away from Nate. God, he felt so fucking humiliated. He’d let Nate do all of that to him. Why? Why did he want it? It was sick.

  “Whatever it is,” Nate said, his voice suddenly urgent, “if you’re angry with me, if you hate me, I just need to know, Ewan. Did I hurt you too much? You looked like you were enjoying it, but…” He swallowed, his eyes bright. “Did I fuck this up?”

  “What?” Ewan stared at him. “No! You…no.” Nate didn’t look convinced. Ewan sat up, clutching the duvet to his chest. “It was…I liked it. I liked all of it. It was good.” He took a deep breath. “It was amazing.”

  Nate breathed out. “I mean, I thought it was at the time.”

  “I just…” Ewan had to stop and swallow. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s fine. You’re allowed to feel shitty after a scene. But just do me a favor, okay? Let me look after you.”

  Ewan forced himself to meet Nate’s eye, as his body shuddered and shuddered. Nate looked… God, he looked needy. Like he really did need this from Ewan. It made Ewan feel like an arsehole. “Okay,” he said, weak in the face of Nate’s obvious weakness.

  “So. Juice?”

  But juice was the wrong kind of sweet, too acidic. “Hot chocolate?” Ewan asked, feeling pathetic.

  Nate grinned, relief washing over his face. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

  Ewan ended up bundled in the duvet on the floor, leaning against one of the kitchen cupboards while Nate heated milk in a pot on the stove. Then Nate carried him to the sofa, and they curled up together. Nate let him put on Parks and Rec. Ewan snuggled against his chest, stickily content.

  “Hey,” Nate murmured into his hair. “How you feeling?”

  “My balls hurt,” Ewan said gruffly.

  Nate laughed softly. “I should fucking hope so. But…we’re good, right?”

  “Yeah.” Ewan nuzzled up to Nate’s jaw, pressing his mouth to the bristle of Nate’s stubble. “We’re good.”

  Chapter 7

  “What, never?” Ewan asked, skeptical beyond words.

  Channon ducked his head. He was probably blushing, but in the muted light of the Club, Ewan couldn’t tell. “It’s a rule.”

  “So, what, you just don’t come ever because your boyfriend told you so?”

  “I do,” Channon protested. He hunched his shoulders, embarrassment radiating off him. “Jack makes me, sometimes. But he gets to decide, every time.”

  “Why the fuck would you agree to that?”

  Channon flashed him a bashful smile. “Because it’s nice.”

  It sounded horrific. “You like letting him have that much control over you?”

  “Yeah. I like belonging to him,” Channon admitted. “It feels really good.”

  He looked so happy about it that Ewan found the whole thing stuck in his head for days, refusing to dislodge. Channon liked belonging to Jack Nash. Channon liked being told not to come, ever, without permission. Channon looked at Nash like he was the most wonderful thing in the world. Channon worshipped the ground he walked on and was happy.

  And Ewan? Ewan couldn’t get anything right.

  When Nate had told him not to come, Ewan had just gone ahead and done it. Sure, Nate didn’t seem to care, once he’d wrung Ewan dry. (Every time
Ewan thought about that, he quivered with the memory of how it had felt to be taken apart by him. God, the things he could make Ewan feel…it was unfair.) Nate had seemed to enjoy the opportunity to be cruel. So the rule itself hadn’t really mattered.

  But that wasn’t how it felt late on Sunday evening when Nate dropped Ewan home and said, “Try to get to work on time this week.”

  “Is that a rule?” Ewan sneered.

  Nate leaned across the console to tweak Ewan’s hair. “Could you keep it if it were?”

  Ewan huffed and kissed him goodnight and got out of the car, but when he was brushing his teeth, he caught the savage look of his own reflection and thought, You bastard.

  Sure I can, he texted Nate, and went to bed.

  In the morning, he got back, Good to know. That was all, though, and after morning stand-up, Nate had meetings all day.

  So Monday was fine, as were Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday, Ewan and Sadie went to the movies, and he put his phone on ‘do not disturb’. Friday morning he woke to the feeling that something was wrong; when he checked his phone, he realized with sick jolt that it was past eight o’clock. He had to shower in a rush and find something clean to wear, and then he missed his bus. By the time he got to work, stand-up had already started. Nate arched an eyebrow pointedly as he came in but said nothing. Ewan felt it sink in his gut like a stone.

  He had to carry that with him all day. It ached in him, this disappointment with himself, frustration, anger. How could Nate do this to him? He hadn’t agreed to this. Nate couldn’t just take over his life like this. It wasn’t fair. It crossed the line between Nate as his boss and Nate as his Dom, and Ewan felt sick at the thought that he’d made a mistake. Nate had warned him that the line could blur, had told him they had to be careful not to mess that power dynamic up, and here it was. Nate had been right. Fuck, what else had Nate been right about?

  His phone pinged around five. It was Nate. Remember how much you hated that tea party? How do you feel about going to a ‘graduation’ dinner?

  Ewan squinted at the screen. What the fuck is that?

  Mr White’s throwing a party for his girl. She’s growing up into a Dom. It’s very high protocol. You don’t have to go if you don’t want.

  What’s the catch? There had to be one.

  The answer only took a minute. If you come with me, you have to serve. I mean, you have to be a service person. There’s a dress code and everything.

  The thought of it made his lip curl. He hated that kind of service. Even just for Nate it was bad enough, but with people watching? Nuh-uh.

  Before he could reply, Nate messaged him again. Think about it. Anyway, wanna hit the club tonight?

  I’ve nothing to wear, Ewan swiped, his jaw tense enough he thought his teeth might crack.

  Then don’t wear anything :D

  Ugh, he was awful. Not in the mood to get kicked out naked.

  OK how about just boots and a jock? I’ll let you borrow my jacket on the way in.

  Nate had attached an obnoxious series of emoji to that message, and Ewan hated every one of them. He wanted to yell at Nate. He wanted to yell at himself in a mirror. He felt trapped, and worse he felt trapped by his own thoughts.

  Ping. Or we could go back to my place. You don’t need clothes for that.

  Ewan shot out of his seat and stormed into Nate’s office. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Infuriatingly, Nate held up a hand. “Hang on, let me kick off this test.”

  He tapped at his keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen, and every keystroke tightened the winch on Ewan’s emotions, like that fucking ball crusher, agonizing and inevitable.

  At last, Nate pushed his keyboard away. “Okay. Ask me that again.”

  “What the fuck are you planning this time?” Ewan demanded, steaming mad and only too aware of how little justification he had. “Gonna crush my balls into paste? Beat me bloody?”

  Nate blinked. “Pretty sure you’re a hard ‘no’ on permanent damage and intentional bleeding.”

  “But you’d do it if I weren’t,” Ewan went on, unable to stop himself now he’d started. “If you could. That’s what you’d do to me for breaking your fucking rules.”

  Now Nate looked alarmed. “What did you do?”

  “You know what I did!” Was Nate going to make him say it? “I was late! You said not to be late! And I fucking was, okay?”

  If anything this only seemed to alarm Nate further. “Sure, but I’m not going to beat you for it. Ewan, what’s going on?”

  “You gave me a rule and I broke it!” Ewan snapped. He flailed his hands in the air, his breath gone short and panicked, because whatever was coming would be so much worse than last week. He didn’t know if he could stand it. God, he couldn’t breathe.

  Nate stepped out from behind the desk. He caught Ewan’s hands and held them against his chest. “Baby, calm down.”

  How could he just say that? “I’m a fuck up. Don’t you get it? I’m not what you want. I can’t be that, I’ll die!”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not going to let that happen. But I need you to breathe now. Can you do that?” Nate inhaled, long and slow, and exhaled. “Like that. Come on.”

  It was just a simple instruction. Ewan did his best. The blind panic that had smothered him melted away, the weight of Nate’s hands and chest an anchor to brace himself against. Almost at once he was humiliated. He was behaving like a needy idiot, and Nate would never look at him the same way. Ruining everything. God, he was so stupid.

  “Better?” Nate asked. Ewan nodded, jaw too tight to speak. Nate lifted a hand to cup Ewan’s cheek. “You know, I think you’re making some assumptions about what I want you to be without actually checking.”

  “You want me to follow your rules,” Ewan gasped. The adrenalin had drained out of him, leaving him sick and exhausted. “I don’t do rules.”

  “Sure you do. You take your shoes off in my house. You don’t call me a dickhead at work. And you have rules for me, too.”

  “No I don’t,” Ewan scoffed, but Nate went on as if he’d said nothing.

  “You don’t want me playing with anyone else. You don’t want me flirting with you at work things. You don’t want me to meet your friends.”

  “You don’t want to meet my friends,” Ewan said quickly, but when he looked up, Nate’s eyes were crinkled sadly in the corners.

  “I don’t mind if you don’t want me to. But you’re the one who decided I wasn’t going to meet them, not me.”

  Fuck. Ewan curled his fingers into the cloth of Nate’s T-shirt. “I’m not ashamed of you,” he said, needing Nate to understand this.

  “It’s okay if you are,” Nate said gently, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t okay at all. “Hey. Do you want to come home with me? Talk this out? Don’t automatically say no,” he added. “Think about it. I want to know what’s going on and what I can do to fix it, so you’re going to have to use actual words instead of expecting me to read your mind.”

  “I don’t expect you to read my mind,” Ewan protested. “I just don’t want all the blather.”

  Nate sighed. “I don’t want you feeling however you were obviously feeling when you came in here, and since I sadly cannot predict the future with any accuracy, I need to rely on normal human words. Take pity on me.”

  God, he knew exactly how to get under Ewan’s skin. “Fine,” Ewan said, his resistance gone. “I’ll go with you. We can talk.”

  Nate smiled, but it was worn. Still, what he said was, “That’s all I want,” and he made it sound like the truth.

  ⁂

  Nate tried not to start in on Ewan in the car, but Christ, his nerves. Things had been good, and then they suddenly weren’t, and if that didn’t characterize this whole relationship then he didn’t know what did.

  He ached to set things straight. To just exist within a comfortable framework of rules that could be pushed or changed or overridden as necessary, but which gave them a starting point. Now, he had
nothing. Everything he did could be wrong, so wrong that it left Ewan in hysterics. And yet, Ewan didn’t want to tell him things, because he thought it took the fun out of it.

  Maybe Nate was a bad Dom. Maybe a good Dom would have forced Ewan to sit down and do this properly instead of teasing it out bit by bit. It occurred to him that he had begun this relationship on false pretenses: Ewan probably thought Nate was an expert in it but, really, he’d never done this before.

  The chasm of his inexperience yawned beneath him. He had never done this like this, an actual relationship with someone he wanted to spend time with outside the playroom. There had been Jack, but Jack had been nothing like this, and so fucking long ago. After Jack there had been only temporary scene partners, short flings, one night stands. He'd played. His technique was good. He was, he thought, a receptive and responsive top, a considerate sadist—but was he, when it came down to it, actually dominant? Or was that just something he told himself?

  That kind of thinking can ruin you, he thought, letting them both into the house.

  “Tea?” Nate asked. Ewan shook his head. “Too dire for tea, then?”

  “Why did you give me a rule and then not care about it?” Ewan demanded. He was pale, hollow-eyed, and his work clothes seemed more disheveled than usual. Nate longed to undress him and kiss his skin, but that was entirely the wrong thing to do right now.

  “What rule are you talking about?”

  “The ‘not being late to work’ rule.”

  Nate leaned against the kitchen counter, his hands gripping the edge of the countertop. “I didn’t realize I made that a rule.”

  “So it wasn’t?” Ewan had wrapped his arms around himself, looking haunted and miserable.

  “Not as far as I was concerned.”

  Ewan shook his head, bristling with irritation. “Then why did you say it?”

  “Because it would be good for you to get to work on time? If you miss stand-up—”