Page 38 of Garbage

“I watched videos,” Quincy told him. He was still sitting on the floor, so he had to look up to see Evan’s face.

“Oh? To figure out what everything was for?”

Quincy thought about lying. And he wasn’t sure why he would want to lie, because he’d never lied to Evan about anything before and it made his circuits sting. Why was this different? “Yes,” he answered. Then, “I watched your videos. In your folder.”

“Uh… Okay, okay. Um… So stuff like this is kind of like financial documents. You’re, uh, supposed to respect people’s privacy about that.” Evan’s face was going redder. Quincy had made him uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry.” Quincy apologized immediately. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s alright. I know you didn’t. Just… not all sex is like that. Um, you probably saw a lot of kinky stuff. Which some people are into, and some people aren’t. You’re allowed to like kink, or just vanilla sex, or no sex at all.”

“I liked it,” Quincy answered quickly.

“Well, good!” Evan said brightly. “You’ve learned something more about yourself. Do you want to talk more, or are you ready for a movie?”

Quincy wanted to watch a movie, with Evan sitting next to him, cuddled under the blanket so their arms would touch. But even that thought had him twitching out of his skin.

It would be different now. Now that he knew what Evan liked. Words tumbled out of his mouth. “Are you the bigger one or the smaller one?”

Evan gave him a look of confusion.

“In the videos, there’s always a bigger one and a smaller one. Well, usually.” The sizes didn’t always quite match the roles, but they often did. “There’s the one who…”

“There’s one who dominates and one who submits.”

“Yeah.” Quincy should have looked all of that up, and he did, now that he had the words for it. Information flowed through his brain. Kink. BDSM. Dominance. Submission. Play. Scene. Safe words. Consent.

He still gave Evan’s explanation most of his attention.

“It has nothing to do with body type or shape, by the way. Anyone can take either role. But, uh, my videos might tend toward a certain preference.”

Quincy could put that together. Larger men weren’t necessarily dominant—but they were what Evan liked. Evan liked people who looked… like Quincy.

That was good, right? But he had to make sure.

“So are you the dominant one or the submissive one?”

“Uh… the submissive one.”

“I thought so.”

For a long time, they just looked at each other. Quincy’s mind was empty of any words, just this overwhelming question of Would you let me do that to you?

Evan finally looked away. “So, movie time?” He started to walk toward the door.

Quincy’s arm shot out, before he even planned it. He grabbed Evan’s wrist. “Evan, could I… I mean, I would like to…”

Evan looked down at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. Quincy couldn’t read his expression.

Quincy finally got the sentence out, though he didn’t know why he was stumbling over the words. “I would like to try that… with you.”

Evan squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Q.”

Quincy dropped Evan’s wrist, hugging his own arm to his chest. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d known Evan wouldn’t want him, but he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.

It was worse than any nasty comment that had been spat at him before. It felt like someone was crushing all his gears. Subroutines crashed as his body jerked. How could he even be feeling pain, when all of his systems were operational?

“Quincy, hey… hey, buddy…” That was Evan’s soothing voice. A warm hand on his bare shoulder.