by SA Payne
There was no stopping, not without death, Ichi was certain now. He was hurtling out of control
and the very fact that his own will had been overridden just made the entire experience more
erotic. He collapsed onto the sofa, surrendering. His skin shivered at the feather soft brush of
touch, Rye's hands ghosted across his skin. They teased the joint where leg met hip, fluttered up
to lightly encircle Ichi's waist, just brushing his ribs before gliding down to torment the exposed tops of his thighs. And all the while, that eager, very talented mouth, devoured him.
Ichi heard gasping, shuddering moans and was startled to place them from his own throat. He'd
never been overly vocal, ever. Andrew had teased him that it was a control issue but Ichi just
didn't like to seem whoreish. He wasn't the kind of man to moan and sob but here he was, doing
just that and the more the strangled moans escaped his control, the more Rye worked to drag the
sounds from him.
"No, Rye, I can't, I..." He gasped, shivering now on his sofa, trying to get the pet to stop before the last shreds of his control shattered. It was bad enough he'd allowed this but to come this way, it would be unforgivable. "Rye, stop, please, stop, I can't... I'm going to..." Hands gripped his hips again and held him in place and just thinking about the word pushed Ichi beyond his last
fragments of control.
"Oh, god, yes, Rye..." He moaned as his body broke apart into base elements and lost all
connections to each other. For those few moments, Ichi became a thing of pleasure and he
would have done nearly anything to hold onto that moment forever. It was beyond his scope,
beyond his experience and he came with total abandon. "Oh, Rye..." he sighed as some small sense started to return.
He'd never come like that. Ichi's body still trembled, still twitched in lazy delights and it felt like his body belonged to someone else. Someone sexy and sensual, someone not himself. Never
had he so been overwhelmed, so lost in pleasure. He'd always felt awkward, reserved, even a
touch fearful at such raw vulnerability but in this moment, there was just total surrender. As Ichi's breathing slowed and his mind gradually restarted, he knew this was going to complicate things
beyond measure. All the work he'd been doing to discourage Rye from thinking in terms of sex
had just been unraveled.
As sense and logic returned Ichi found himself running his fingers across that silky hair. Rye had
pillowed his head against one of his thighs, his bright grey eyes watched everything with what
Ichi thought looked to be lust and sparkle of triumph. His pet was gloating about blowing him and
the idea made Ichi blush slightly.
He tried to sit up, now with no forceful hands holding him in place, but Rye kept the side of his
face tucked close to him. Ichi brushed the layered hair back from the handsome face. "That was bad, Rye." But there was only gentle affection in his voice.
Rye whined slightly and rubbed the side of his face against Ichi's leg.
"It's okay, I'm not going to punish you, though I probably should."
Rye whined again and this time his body arched slightly. Ichi felt the pet press himself against his leg, sliding, and than the unmistakable feel of neglected arousal. He sat up further and there was
little doubt the Rye was painfully hard, the kilt, even the longer one, did nothing to hide his state.
"Shhh, it's okay, come here." Ichi wasn't sure what he was going to do but he wasn't leaving things like this. He reached for Rye's shoulder and the pet trembled and slid out of his reach.
Ichi's thigh suddenly felt cold and empty without the comforting weight of the pet's head. He
frowned. "What? You don't want to be touched?"
Rye's head bowed down and his hands hovered over his groin, touching but not quite touching.
He was shivering too, trembling but the look he tossed to Ichi was lustful and almost desperate
now.
It sunk in that Rye was trying to ask permission. "It's okay, go ahead." He tried to make his voice
sound gentle and encouraging but the idea that he was granting permission for Rye to masturbate made his voice break like a teenagers.
Rye's grey eyes flicked from the floor up to meet Ichi's and than darted to his crate. He whined,
low, desperate, needy.
The request startled Ichi but he nodded. "It's okay, go to your crate, it's okay Rye, crate."
The red head didn't wait to be told twice, he moved with his normal fluid grace across the room
and disappeared inside. It left Ichi sitting on his sofa, startled twice in a very short time. Pets were supposed to be utterly shameless about sex, as shameless as they were going using the
bathroom. There was no doubt what Rye was doing in the false privacy of his crate, low moans
soon drifted out to tickle Ichi's ears.
He was masturbating, but he was doing it hidden in his crate, that denoted shame or at least a
sense of self and a desire for privacy. All weren't supposed to be aspects a pet had, even a
mistreated pet, one taught to be skittish and shy, shouldn't have that sense of self.
It left Ichi sitting on his sofa, wondering if he was simply reading too much into the situation. He'd been alone for so long, and than to have another living thing invade his privacy, topped off with
an amazing blow job, he was getting too attached to Rye. It was only natural that he'd project
human traits where there was none. Amanda had said it the clearest, PETS simply didn't make
mistakes. He just wanted Rye to be more than he was, the way he overlapped the news anchor's
voice with Rye's eyes in his fantasies.
He straightened his pants and closed them. Trying to think logically about Rye, to analyze his
actions from a scientific point of view and trying very hard not to listen to the increasingly more desperate moans from the crate. Ichi was trained to observe things, so when the sounds drifting
from the crate turned from random moans and stuttered grunts to syllabic his ears sharpened
and tuned to it.
It hadn't been so long since he'd at least seen pornography that Ichi mistook the sounds of
release. The tone, the sound changed and Ichi felt his own pulse quickening at the desperate
desire contained in it.
"Oh ahhh...." Rye moaned. "Oh.... Ichi... ahhh"
Ichi's ears tuned so sharply to the sounds that his entire head swiveled to the crate. There was
no way, no earthly way, that he'd heard what he'd just heard. He was imagining it, putting his own
fantasy into the nonsense sounds Rye was making as he tumbled over the edge and came.
PETS didn't make mistakes and he'd been alone far too long.
But, what if they had. The thought chilled his blood. It was something from a nightmare, just the
thought of it. It left him sitting in dumb uncertainty, torn between his scientific need to know for certain and his deep rooted fear of confessing what he believed and being thought an utter fool.
He was still sitting there, startled and uncertain, when Rye slinked from his crate. He was licking at his hand but his face, normally so neutral and steady, looked eased and relaxed, even mildly
happy. Ichi sat silent as Rye padded on bare feet to the sofa where he happily dropped down to
sit next to Ichi's legs. When he wasn't scolded, Rye scooted over slightly and very lightly leaned
against Ichi, resting the side of his head against Ichi's knee.
Ichi reached over and petted a hand across the red hair. "It's okay, Rye, we'll figure this out." His own worry of being the butt end of everyone's jokes seemed trivial. Ichi picked up his notebook
and accessed the med lab's appointments, which were wide open. He sch
eduled an appointment
for the morning, marked it as urgent and knew Will and Amanda would be waiting for him, first
thing. He petted the hair again as he dropped the access panel. "We'll figure it all out."
Surprisingly, Ichi slept soundly. There was nothing to do until the morning anyway so he simply
got them both ready for sleep and expected to lay awake lost in thoughts. His mind had better
ideas, the surprisingly shattering orgasm had worn him out, drained him of stress and left him to
sleep soundly.
In the morning he awoke before his alarm and found Rye awake and sitting near his bedroom
door as he always was. Ichi moved for coffee with the silent pet following behind him and refilled
the now empty water bowl and added new kibble. He showered, Rye showered and Ichi laid out a
soft blue grey shirt for the pet. When he'd finished his coffee and quick breakfast, Rye was dry
and dressed his shorter hair simply shaken into place. Everything was very normal.
Until Ichi made the turn that would take them to the med lab and not to his research lab. Rye
stopped and glanced down the hallway that led to work and back to Ichi with confusion on his face.
"Not this morning, Rye, come on." He tapped his leg and kept moving, Rye followed, head
bowed.
The med lab was well lit and Amanda sat at the one of the access screens and Will leaned
against one of the beds. Both had cartons of coffee steaming nearby but their conversation
stopped when Ichi joined them.
"Don't tell me, you've poisoned us?" Will teased as soon as Ichi passed the doors, Rye following.
"No, I didn't." He missed the joke and led Rye to one of the medical beds and patted it. "Sit." Rye obeyed docilely and Ichi brushed some of the stray hairs back from his face. He drew a breath
and turned to his friends. "I need you to run full tests on Rye. I have to know how aware he is."
Amanda frowned. "What's happened?"
"I..." He prayed he wouldn't blush. "I think he said my name." But the memories were too vivid and he felt his face going red.
"Good god Ichi, we need to get you a boyfriend." Will sighed. "Stop projecting onto Rye, don't you get it, it's a thing. It's not capable of speech or thought, or even any complex emotion."
"I'm not..." He shook his head. "I'm not projecting. I would have thought people from Avalon of all folks would be a little more open minded and a touch more sympathetic."
"I am sympathetic, you're my friend." Will went on. "You need a real relationship, some true human interaction. Rye's fine, don't get me wrong but Ichi, he's livestock. Fuck him all you want,
that's what he was made for. Use him, that's the point of livestock but don't think for one moment
that there can ever be anything more here."
"Will!" Amanda snapped. "Enough!" She understood his reaction but Ichi didn't and she wasn't sure if the proud outsider would forgive her stupid husband if he went too far.
Only Will didn't need to be stopped, he'd stopped himself. His eyes were resting on Rye but they
were unfocused. "Oh, gods, Amanda." He whispered. Will blinked quickly and stumbled
backwards. "This can't be. I..." He shook his head but his wife was at his side, rubbing his shoulder and pushing him to sit.
"What is it?" She asked gently, knowing Will hated his ranking, just high enough to be a pain in the ass without really being useful.
"Humiliation and shame. Heavy, horrible shame." He looked to Ichi but found only confusion on his friend's face.
"From Ichi?"
Will shook his head. "Rye."
"But, that would mean he could understand you." She shivered at the thought and glanced to where the pet sat, as docile as ever, with downcast eyes on the medical bed.
"I'm sorry, Ichi, I can be an ass. I..." He shook his head. "You're right, we need to test him."
Amanda stroked her husband's head and smiled softly at his admission. "This is going to take a while. Did you want to leave him here or...?"
"I'll wait." Ichi agreed instantly, knowing there was nothing for him to do but knowing he'd never be able to focus on work while Rye was here.
She nodded. "Then you'll stay out of our way and not bug us. We're not going to tell you a think until we're done and have had a chance to look everything over."
"That's fine." He moved out of the way and took over a small workstation in the corner. He'd brought his notebook and there was work he could do from the med lab but every time he
glanced up, Rye was watching him with wide, worried eyes. It made working difficult and he
ended up sitting, drinking too much coffee and watching.
Amanda and Will had a half language of long term partners, sentences were unnecessary so it
left Ichi in the dark for most of the morning. Some of the equipment they pulled out were things
he knew, some wasn't and a few items were obscure enough that the couple had to hunt it down
in storage. If nothing else, he was comforted that they were taking this seriously.
Around lunch Amanda stepped out of the lab to fetch something from their research lab and Will
came over to sit by Ichi. Rye lay still and accepting on the medical bed, outwardly calm but Ichi
knew the pet well enough to see the tension in how he was holding his body.
"I had a puppy, as a kid." Will started as he sat down.
"And I didn't, for which I am deprived and pathetic, I know, you've told me."
"No, I..." Will glanced to Rye and than down to study the stations work surface. "The Concord landlords didn't leave us with much, if it was of value, they took it. Even a families garden they'd just come in and take what they wanted. We were hungry all the time. My earliest memories are
of a really bad winter and watching some of my neighbors slowly starve to death."
"Will, I'm sorry." But sorry really didn't mean a whole lot compared to that.
"Anyway, food didn't come in from outside, it went to the landlords and they made the choice to allow it to reach us or not so we really had to scramble to find a way to make it. What livestock
the village had we pooled together but the landlord took it. Some of the men were able to poach
rabbits occasionally and once or twice a deer but one of them got caught. The landlord had the
man beaten to death in the village square, made us all watch. So in an effort to survive, the
elders made the choice to start breeding dogs for food. It was something outside the landlord's
imagination, they had large litters, they matured quickly. Anyway, one spring when I was like
seven I got really attached to this one puppy. Named it, taught it to fetch. That stupid dog was
my best friend until the following winter when my father slaughtered it so we could eat." He
picked at a rough cuticle on one of his fingers in an effort to not have to look at Ichi.
"I'm so sorry."
Will shrugged. "It's just, some times, I get a little twitchy about things. Times got really hard out in the rural villages, a lot of things were done. Amanda says I'm a walking emotional breakdown."
He tried to joke but it fell flat. "I didn't mean to go off on you like that, earlier. It's just..." He sighed. "I haven't had a pet since, just can't do it. It's the biggest thing stopping us from having kids too. I just wanted to let you know I didn't mean to be cruel, that it was me, not you, okay?"
Ichi nodded but Will was looking down and didn't see it. "There's nothing to be sorry about.
Thank you, for trusting to tell me."
"Anyway, couple more tests and we'll figure out what's up with Rye. Okay?"
"Thank you."
"So did you... you know?"
He felt himself blushing again but he shook his head. "No."
"Aww, you just seemed, I don't know, less stuffy today."
He nudged Ichi with an elbow. "Though maybe you got some."
He had, he had gotten plenty. "And if I had, I certainly wouldn't share it with you." Ichi arched an eyebrow.
The med lab door opened and Amanda rejoined them with whatever item she'd wandered away
to fetch. She tapped Will's head as she went by. "Back to work for you."
Will sighed dramatically and pushed himself to his feet. Ichi watched them, unable to work now
with so much on his mind. He really did know far too little about them, as little as they knew
about him. It was his choice to keep things that way, wrapped in his own privacy and
awkwardness, he'd assumed the comfortable ease the Avalon folks showed was as deep as they
ran. He was quickly learning the laughter, the joy in life, was a learned cultural reaction to a
suffering he'd only scratched the surface of. There was a great deal he'd been missing by being
so near sighted.
Part Seven:
His thoughts distracted him so much that another hour slipped by and it wasn't until Amanda
stood in front of him that he shook himself awake. "Well?"
"Well, you should take him home. We've a lot of data gathered but I want time to look it over.
He's mildly sedated, let him sleep it off, okay?"
"But, what do you think?"
"I think you need to take him home and let him rest and we'll let you know in a couple of hours."
"Amanda."
"Go, out of my lab!" She shooed.
He relented and gathered up a yawning Rye but he didn't lead them home. He'd just sit there and
worry, instead he went to his own lab. As soon as they were inside, Rye went to his cushion,
pulled his blanket over his shoulders and curled up to sleep. Ichi tried to work, he really did, but it didn't work out that way. In the end he gave it up and simply sat and watched Rye sleeping,
trying to make sense out of the mystery hidden in the pet's silences.
As dinner time slowly rolled around, Rye stirred in his sleep and slowly woke up. He yawned and
stretched but forced himself to wake and sit up. It was something Ichi had noticed, Rye had an amazing sense of time. Even in the mornings, the pet would be awake before the alarm. He'd