by Amy Lane
“Well, I think the cow makes it,” Bobby said, putting the package and a bottle of something in Reg’s basket. “But I know what you’re getting at. Here—we can get some bread and some veggies too. I’ll make it tonight.”
Reg’s breath suddenly stopped jamming up his chest. “That’s a good idea, Bobby. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Bobby returned easily. He winked, but he didn’t kiss Reg or grab his hand or anything.
Reg wondered that he’d want that.
He’d never wanted that with the Johnnies guys before. Ethan would hang on everybody, but that was expected. The guys roughhoused, they slugged each other’s arms—their physical space was sort of nonexistent.
But Reg had never wanted… affection from anybody. Not in public.
But he didn’t know if Bobby wanted any either.
“C’mon, Reg—let’s finish up and get your food to your place. Then we can take my truck to the apartment.”
Reg followed him quickly, suddenly all questions about his sister and public displays of affection lost in the promise of the two of them.
But when they got to Reg’s house, V had taken apart the kitchen, throwing the plates and the silverware on the floor, the old contents of the refrigerator, the little rack of plants Reg liked to keep—and, oh God.
“Books?” Reg asked, his voice wobbly. “You got me paperbacks for Christmas?”
He must have raided the used bookstore for an entire box full, because his present had been pretty big and heavy—and now they were spread all over the rotting, melting food.
“Here,” Bobby said, all practicality. “Let’s get the books up and stacked first. You do that, and I’ll get the food in a big trash bag, and then we can throw the dishes and stuff in the sink and wash the food off. We can fix this.”
Reg nodded, his lower lip not firm at all. This. This was what Bobby had been talking about, and now he was probably going to get all “I told you so!” on Reg and they would never have sex, never be together, and never even hug again.
To Reg’s surprise, Bobby looped an arm over his shoulder and kissed his temple. “It’s okay, Reg. We can fix this. Get the books stacked and go find your sister. Deal?”
Reg nodded. “Books?” he asked again, because he’d loved reading the books with Bobby and V—but he’d never thought somebody would think he was a good bet to give a book to.
“You wanted ones where people treated each other decent. I asked my mom, and she said that was mostly romances, so I got a bunch of those.”
“Like boys and girls?” Reg just wanted to understand.
“Well, I’m sure they’ve got boys and boys,” Bobby told him, blowing his mind. “But these are about being nice to each other. I thought they’d make you happy.”
Reg nodded and fought the burn in the back of his eyes. “They do,” he said gruffly. “That was a really good present, Bobby. Let’s save them.”
Fifteen minutes later, Reg had stacked most of them in the corner, relieved because they were only a little sticky on the covers and he’d been able to wash that off. He’d had to throw away a few, but they were small, and he made Bobby put the titles in his phone so they could find them again.
Then, while Bobby finished up the cleaning, Reg went and found V.
He knew where she’d be—she was always in the same place.
In her closet, crying.
This time, as Reg looked in, he saw a tiny bag of pills in the corner of the closet, and he wanted to smack his head with his palm like an idiot.
“You hid them?” he asked, hunkering down next to her so he didn’t look scary.
“I felt so good,” she whispered. “And then… you know. I heard them.”
“Voices,” he clarified.
“I know they’re not real.” She turned her face up to him, tracks working their way through the grime. “I just… I wrecked your present,” she moaned, wiping her cheeks on her knees.
“Why’d you do that?” Because damn. Bobby had left her something good, and she’d already opened it.
“There were bugs in them,” she whispered.
Reg held out his hand. “Give me the pills, V.”
She did, docile in her emotional exhaustion. He pulled out a dose and an extra sedative, figuring she’d need the rest and he and Bobby had earned the peace of mind.
“Swallow,” he told her, his voice flat. He wasn’t going to go get her water either, because he knew that trick. The lock was still busted on the door from the last time he’d had to break it down.
She dry-swallowed and showed him her tongue, over and under. He looked around her room and sighed.
It looked like the kitchen, minus the food.
“Get in bed,” he ordered gently. “I’ll start picking this up.”
“I’m hungry,” she begged plaintively, and he fought off a moment of terrible rage.
And swallowed it down, because that’s what you did when someone heard voices and was at the mercy of their imperfect brains. You swallowed that anger, because it didn’t do a goddamned thing.
“Well, you’ll have to wait until Bobby and I pick up the shit you threw on the fucking ground,” he said, his voice short but not sharp.
She slapped him—but not hard. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’m hungry.” It was the truth—they’d been planning to make sandwiches. “And I’ve got another hour or two to go.”
She let out a growl, and he had just enough time to dodge backward before she got him in the head with a shoe. He snatched the damned thing out of her hand—high heels, back from the days when she’d take the bus into town and go dancing—and threw it across the room. She wasn’t very strong, but he’d seen that movie where the guy got caught with a spike heel in the eyeball, and he wasn’t excited about having those in the closet anymore.
“All done?” he asked, his stomach gurgling.
“I hope the bugs eat you,” she snarled, and he stood up and hefted her out of the closet and over his shoulder, kicking and screaming as she went.
He reached to the top of the closet, where she couldn’t reach and mostly couldn’t see, and grabbed the box he’d gotten from the sex toy shop about a year after he’d gotten his job at Johnnies.
He’d wanted an actual straightjacket, the kind they used in the movies or in the more hard-core medical facilities, but apparently they didn’t sell those retail. What they did sell—at least what he was familiar with—was bondage equipment.
The good stuff.
The padded cuffs that went around the bedframe and the anklets that left her helpless.
He hated doing this.
Most of the time, he’d just as soon give her sedatives, but she’d been hoarding pills for a long time, and her medication levels were probably down. He needed to clean her room, and he needed her to not be attacking him with deadly footwear, and dammit, eventually they all needed to eat.
He had a gag—not a ball gag, because those broke your teeth and hurt your neck if you used them for too long—but a basic elastic gag that she couldn’t reach after he handcuffed her to the bed.
He hated this. This was worse than the three-point restraint. Every movement was a fight, and he knew, no matter how gentle he tried to be, he was bruising her wrists. He worked out every day, for fuck’s sake. She had no chance to overpower him, none at all, and he was just a big ugly fucking bully, locking her in metal cuffs.
When he was done, she stared at him, angry tears rolling down her cheeks, and he shrugged, his own eyes burning and sore. “V—dammit. You tried to blind me with a fucking shoe.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed behind the gag.
He sighed and shoved a pee pad under her hips, because if she lost control of her bladder, it was easier to change her clothes than it was to change all the bedding.
After that, he stood and began to clean up. The clothes went back in the drawers; the knickknacks that weren’t broken went back on the dresser. The broken ones he stacked on her mo
stly untouched desk.
“I see you left the fucking computer alone,” he muttered, ignoring her muffled scream of outrage. “And….” Hell. “You didn’t slice up the stuffed animals we got you for Christmas.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell Bobby that’s where most of her stuffed animals had gone when she’d been in her early twenties.
He looked from the stuffed unicorn and the stuffed leopard to V, hands resting by her ears now, body sagging into the mattress. “Well, I love you too,” he told her, voice sinking. God, he needed to take the trash downstairs, but first he needed a—
The door opened, and Bobby stood there with two trash bags and two pairs of plastic gloves. Together they picked up the remains of the bathroom garbage she’d strewn about her floor. Reg noted dully that she was on her period. Doctors would know, he thought. Doctors would know if maybe the stuff that went on in her brain didn’t fuck with her meds. Doctors would know if maybe there wasn’t something they could do when things got too overwhelming.
But doctors would take her away from him.
He looked at her, chained to her own bed with padded handcuffs, and wished he could sink into the floor.
“Hey,” Bobby said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “She’s asleep. Should we unchain her now?”
Reg shook his head. “I’ll chain her to the bedframe and put the other stuff away,” he conceded. “She’s… she’s going to need some of this until she gets her med levels back.”
“Okay. Let’s do that, then.”
They gave her room to move and a bucket to pee in—and some paper to wipe. But Reg had John bolt the bed to the floor years ago. She couldn’t get out, she couldn’t get to her computer—she just had to lie there, and rest, and chill the fuck out.
It was the only medicine Reg had.
Then Bobby took him downstairs, and Reg’s breath caught.
The kitchen was clean—everything. Swept, wiped, gleaming, as much as the battered tile and cupboards could gleam.
“Here,” Bobby said, pulling a chair out for him. “I made lunch while you were upstairs. Sit and eat—I’ll take her a plate in case she wakes up.”
“No forks,” Reg reminded him. He had scars.
“I figured,” Bobby said dryly. He set down a sandwich with some fruit on the plastic plate and added a cup of milk. Then, while Reg was looking at it in naked gratitude, he disappeared up the stairs with one on a paper plate for V, as well as a bottle of water.
By the time he got back down, Reg was still staring at the sandwich, just flummoxed.
“Reg? Is it any good? It’s just meat and some pickles and—”
Reg shook his head and wiped his eyes, because his vision was blurry. “It’s great,” he said, and his voice cracked, and Bobby was there. Just there. Not kissing or groping—just there, holding him while he cried.
He had no words for what it meant. Not just the help, because he’d had that before. But the aftercare, the quiet support—from a guy who might want sex, but who had been there, in Reg’s life, steady as a clock, and who hadn’t complained once that they hadn’t had it.
The tears dried to hiccups, and Bobby wiped his eyes with a napkin, then bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Eat, Reg,” he said quietly. “Obviously, I’m staying here tonight. We’ve got time.”
Reg nodded and looked away, feeling… God. Young. He felt young. He felt like a little kid, lost among the great and terrible grown-up things that were happening around him.
He couldn’t look at Bobby as he ate—but Bobby was sitting next to him, eating his own sandwich too.
After lunch Reg went upstairs to clean up V’s meal and make her take her night meds. She’d finished her sandwich, but she threw the plastic plate at him as soon as he walked in the door.
He thanked her for it cordially and declined to escort her to the bathroom. She had the bucket. If she wanted to use a toilet so bad, she could not be so damned awful.
When he got back downstairs, Bobby had lunch cleaned up, and Reg realized it was lunch, and only three o’clock in the afternoon.
He sighed and flopped onto the couch. “TV?” he asked, feeling drained.
“Sure,” Bobby said, a little smile on his face that seemed to be saying something the opposite. Reg started flipping through the channels listlessly, feeling as though his entire day had been ravaged. All the good times the two of them had been planning had been taken over and destroyed by his sister’s mental health issues, and he dreaded Bobby bringing up the subject again.
So he was really surprised when Bobby didn’t sit next to him on the couch.
Instead Bobby grabbed a cushion and threw it on the ground between Reg’s spread thighs and sank slowly to his knees, regarding Reg with a tiny quirk to his lips.
“What’s this?” Reg asked, bewildered and stunningly aroused.
“Just kick back,” Bobby said, his lip quirk growing into a playful smile. “I haven’t done this for fun before. Let me play.” He went after Reg’s belt and the riveted buttons on the 501’s with great concentration.
“Pl—ay?” Reg’s voice shot up when Bobby grabbed the waistband of his jeans and tugged down. Reg was sitting on his own couch, bare-assed naked.
“Yeah,” Bobby murmured, kissing the insides of his knees. Reg sucked a breath in through his teeth.
“Why play?” he asked, his voice gravelly with sudden, surprising want.
“’Cause you need to play,” Bobby said, his eyes sober as he pushed up to kiss Reg’s inner thigh. “I’ve been taught to kiss here and touch there and penetrate this way—but I’ve never had a chance to just… play.”
“Ahhh….”
Bobby’s idea of playing included using the tip of his tongue to taunt Reg’s inner thighs. Reg struggled with the legs of his jeans, and Bobby helped him kick them off so he could prop his feet on the edge of the couch and leave all his body—all of it—spread out for Bobby to play with.
He nibbled. He nuzzled. He tasted.
When he was done with Reg’s thighs—enough to leave Reg tingling and squirmy and sweating for something more direct, more aggressive, more arousing, if that was even possible—he placed both his palms on Reg’s asscheeks and spread them.
For a moment Reg couldn’t catch his breath. He loved a good rim job—he’d showered thoroughly, and he thought… maybe…. But Bobby blew softly and then licked Reg’s crease to his taint. Reg moaned slightly and tangled his hands in Bobby’s hair, resisting the impulse to hold him there until he tongue-fucked Reg to orgasm.
Bobby was exploring. Reg’s job was to be Bobby’s playground, to abandon any sort of illusion that he could control what was going to happen and have faith that whatever it was, he’d enjoy it.
Bobby’s tongue hit the base of Reg’s dick, a particularly sensitive spot that Reg usually pushed at with his thumb when he was stroking off.
Bobby’s tongue was a tease, a delirious, tingly, half-kept promise of a tease, and Reg grunted, “Harder… right there… please—oh God. Yes.”
He was so good. He wrapped his hand around Reg’s cock and stroked, pressing that spot and then teasing his head, licking it a little and blowing on it and licking it, using the faintest hint of his teeth on the bell of it before soothing by taking the whole head in his mouth.
Reg lost words.
It was like he left his body on a glow of sensation and floated above them, Bobby with his green-brown eyes big, fixed on Reg’s face, Reg’s cock stretching his lips, and Reg, half-dressed, splayed, and shameless on his couch.
He spurted precome just when Bobby was tongue-teasing again, and Bobby caught it across the cheek.
Reg suddenly wanted to lick it off, to taste his mouth, to grind up against him. No kisses yet. We ain’t had no kisses.
But Reg couldn’t voice that—he could only shove his palm in his mouth and scream, bucking his hips. He wanted to be penetrated, wanted his asshole stretched and his taint rubbed, and though he’d never had trouble asking for what he wanted before,
this—this was too much. He reached down with one hand and pulled his cheek aside, begging without words, and Bobby’s chuckle against his cock reassured him.
“Want something, Reg?”
“Nungh!”
Oh, how embarrassing.
But Bobby rewarded him.
First he held Reg’s cock up and out of the way, and then, using his other hand, he helped Reg spread his ass so he could lick—and then drill—with his tongue.
Reg made a sound, gut deep and chest long, welcoming the invasion, the pressure, the everything. He wanted more. He wanted fingers. He wanted cock. He wanted Bobby’s mouth on his dick and something up his ass and…
“Yes!”
Two fingers, not smooth but manicured, slid right in and scissored. Reg’s whole body washed cold, and when Bobby sucked his cock in again, he spurted some more.
“Lube,” he managed. “Fuck… fuck me….”
Bobby must have kept the lube in his pocket, but Reg didn’t care where it came from. It was warm and silken around his hole, and Bobby—oh!
Reg’s eyes widened as Bobby positioned himself, as he remembered Bobby’s biggest attraction on the porn set.
“Jesus God,” he said in wonder. “I’d forgotten how fucking big you are!”
Bobby grinned at him shyly and then moved back from Reg’s asshole and dropped his head to take Reg’s mouth.
Ah… spit-sloppy and come-flavored. Raw and animal, Reg suddenly felt very much at home in his own skin, returning that ravenous, all-consuming kiss.
Forever.
That’s how long they kissed. Until Reg needed again, like a wound, he ached so bad inside for Bobby’s cock.
“Please,” he half sobbed, pulling away from the kiss only because he hurt for possession. “Please—oh God. Oh God—keep coming.” Because he was huge. Ginormous. He stretched Reg’s asshole beyond burning or stretching, into Reg’s heart, lungs, and diaphragm. But Reg begged some more, his breath coming short, while Bobby took over his body, like Reg was his other skin.
“Ahhh… yes.” All the way. He was all the way inside, and Reg shook from his toes through his heart, just trembled with all the pleasure, all the sensation, all the awesomeness of having this boy, this beautiful boy inside him, driving out sadness, pain, and fear.