“W-what?” My whisper is intimate in the small space between us.
“I’m letting you choose where, not with who. Whether you admit how much you like it or not, you’ll be staying with me. I really thought I’d made this clear.”
“You haven’t made anything clear,” I pout, even though my mood is swinging right back up again, and I wish he’d step even closer and press himself against me. “I don’t even know what you mean by that. And why do I have to stay with you? Why don’t I get a choice on that? Isn’t that kind of fucked up, too?”
He sighs, his other hand coming up to hold my chin very, very gently. “So, it’s like that then. Don’t worry, Tommy, I think I get it.”
I shove his hand away, look down at the floor. But I don’t say anything. If he gets it, I hope he fucking explains it to me soon, because I’m lost. My blood is humming, the world is a frighteningly bright and exciting place when he’s around me. I can’t handle how good and thrilling it is. It almost hurts. I think my heart might beat so fast that I’ll die.
He reaches up again, even slower, but I don’t stop him from softly reclaiming my chin, from bringing my face up so I have to look at him.
“You listen to me, young man,” he says, low and smooth and just threatening enough that my eyelids flutter and my knees go weak. “You can choose the place, because you’ve earned that. But you’re staying with me. For your own good.”
“For my own good?” I hiss, trying to act like that isn’t the single hottest thing anyone has ever said to me before. Like I’m not getting turned on, flushed with heat, antsy with overpoweringneed. “What the fuck do you know about my own good?”
“You don’t get to make choices that aren’t good for you,” he says, not really answering my question. “And I understand if you want to pretend you don’t want it, if you feel like you have to act like you don’t need it, but that doesn’t excuse you from what happens if you lie. So lie if you want, but you’ll have to be corrected afterward.”
Fuck.I’m panting in his face now, I can’t stop it, and his eyes dip down to trace my parted lips. If I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know he was straight, I’d think he was about to kiss me, and just the thought of that makes me half-hard in my jeans. Okay, who am I kidding, I got half-hard when he told me he knew what was good for me.
I squirm out of his hold and press myself against the cool glass to try and calm down. It’s beensooolong since I’ve had any relief ofthatkind. When I try at night, I haven’t been ableto finish, and when I was at the club, I wasn’t comfortable taking anything to help me relax when I was supposed to be watching the girls. I’m a fucking ticking time bomb, I’m weak, I’m one more stern touch away from humping him.
And the worst part is that even if I did lose control and try to jerk off on him, I probably wouldn’t come anyway. I’m too fucked up. I need help to do that, and I don’t have that help here. Maggie has it, at the club.
“Fine,” I say, needing some space, needing to compose myself, to bring myself under some semblance of control before my head spirals and I get that sour-sick-shame feeling again. “Whatever.”
He backs off, spinning so that he’s leaning against the window right beside me, almost shoulder to shoulder except he’s taller than me, so it’s more like shoulder to bicep. I don’t expect him to do that, and I end up speechless, unsure what to say.
So he breaks the silence. “Do you actually want to choose a different place to stay?”
Lie, don’t lie…the choice feels important. Weighty. Like this decision will show more of me than I want it to, whichever way I choose. I’m tempted to lie just to see if he means it about the correction, but I don’t know if I can handle all of that in my current headspace, on the edge of a sexual-frustration fueled meltdown. So I don’t lie.
“No.” The single word is so quiet I’m not sure he can even hear it, but he does.
“Good boy,” he returns, almost as quiet. “Do you understand why you don’t get a choice about staying with me?”
“For my own good,” I whisper.
“That’s right,” he practically purrs. “Good boy.”
I’m not looking at him, he’s not looking at me, we aren’t even touching. But I think this is the most intimate I’ve ever been with anyone.
“What’s actually bothering you about being here instead of with Kira?” he asks, surprising me and confirming that this isn’t flirting or fighting, it’s a real conversation, about real things. And that’s horrible, it cracks me open, but… I don’t put a stop to it.
“Oh, lots of things,” I huff. “I’m a fucking circus of problems, Young-gi.” He tsk’s his tongue once, warningly, and I suddenly recall the taste of soap. With a grimace, I correct myself. “I don’t know why it bugs me so much. There’s a lot there. A lot… inside my head. It’s loud. I can’t always figure it out.”
“I know the feeling.”
“You? Really?” I ask, incredulous, unbelieving. We look at each other then, breaking the little no-looking game we were playing, and he nods.
“Haven’t you noticed?” he asks. “Everyone does, eventually.”
“I–” I hesitate, and think things over. His apathy, his intensity with no emotion, his focus with no clear motivation. “I guess I have.”
“Does it bother you?” he asks, surprising me. “That I don’t feel things?”
“You feel things,” I say.
“Maybe,” he sighs. “I feel a lot of things, but none of them have names or make sense. A lot of the time, everything feels the same. Muddled, and distant. Unimportant. I don’t remember things with sentimentality, usually. I don't have a lot that I care about.”
