Debug

by R. J. Moray

  “It wasn’t important. Your rule was stupid, and I didn’t like it.”

  He looked so defensive, his hands balling into fists and his jaw set with stubbornness. Nate examined him as dispassionately as he could. “But it was my rule. I thought we agreed that I got to make rules for you when I wanted to.”

  “Not stupid ones.”

  “That’s five times you’ve used the word ‘stupid’. I’m beginning to think that it’s not the rule you think is ‘stupid’, but me. Would that be accurate?”

  “No,” Ewan protested, sitting up straight. There was a hint of fear in the tension around his eyes and his stiff posture. “I don’t.”

  “Are you sure? I’d hate for you to think I’m an idiot, after all.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “So it’s just the rule that’s stupid, not me.”

  “I didn’t want to,” Ewan muttered.

  “Then you could have said so. We could have negotiated something else. Instead, I had this whole thing planned, where I was going to tease you with a flogger and finally let you come, just the way you like. But now we have to do this instead, and I don’t think you’ve really thought this through.” Nate cocked his head, watching Ewan’s expression twist in uncertainty. “I think you broke it because you wanted to be punished. I’m just saying, if you want that, all you have to do is ask.”

  The way Ewan clutched the edge of the table, Nate figured he’d gotten it right. Ewan definitely wanted something. He’d just gone the hard way about it.

  “Ewan. Do you want me to punish you?”

  Ewan’s mouth writhed as if it was full of curses. “Doesn’t matter what I want, that’s what you’re going to do.”

  “I’ll give you one last chance before I drag you up to the playroom by the hair: do you want me to punish you?”

  God, how torn he was. He did want it; Nate could see that. But more than that, he wanted to be defiant, to pretend that Nate had done this to him, and he was just an innocent victim.

  “Baby, you just have to say it. Can you say it for me? Just say ‘yes’.”

  He didn’t think Ewan was going to do it, and then— “Yes,” Ewan said, as if the word had been dragged out of him. He lifted his gaze, his eyes pale grey and pleading, and Nate felt something in him loosen, going soft.

  “There you go,” he said, reaching out to tuck his fingers under Ewan’s chin. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He smiled, smoothing his fingers along Ewan’s jaw. “Do you want to put your collar on?”

  Ewan nodded, lowering his eyes. He was still tense but the fight had gone out of him, replaced by fearful resignation. Nate patted his cheek.

  “It won’t be as bad as you think,” he murmured. “But it is going to be pretty bad.”

  Ewan swallowed. “I can take it.”

  “I know you can,” Nate told him. He stood, bent to press a kiss to Ewan’s hair, and then curled his fingers into it, holding on tight. “Come on, baby boy. Let’s get you warmed up.”

  Chapter 6

  Nate didn’t have to drag Ewan up the stairs in the end; Ewan went relatively easily, stumbling a little from the awkwardness of the crouch he was forced into but making it up without falling. Nate towed him into the spare room that doubled as a playroom and deposited him on the floor at the end of the bed. Ewan stayed there, head down, his palms flat against the rug. Nate fetched Ewan’s collar from the dresser of toys against the wall. It came with matching cuffs, connected by a chain; he hung those around his neck and put a hand on Ewan’s head, just resting it there.

  “You know, you did the right thing telling me. Maybe you could have told me when it happened. Maybe you could have been polite about it. But you still did the right thing, even if you went about it the wrong way. I want you to remember that.”

  Ewan shivered. He didn’t say anything. Nate took this for acceptance and put the collar around Ewan's throat. When it was buckled, he caught a handful of Ewan’s hair and yanked his head back. “Put your arms above your head.”

  Somewhat surprisingly, Ewan did. He held his arms up, wrists crossed, his gaze lowered, lashes veiling his eyes. There was something terribly vulnerable in it. Nate breathed it in, enjoying the view. Then he bent to take hold of Ewan’s t-shirt and pulled it off over his head. Ewan’s chest heaved, a shallow huff of breath. His hair was mussed, a dirty-blond muddle. Nate smoothed it back from his brow, running a thumb over Ewan’s unruly eyebrows.

  “Keep those arms raised for me,” Nate told him. He attached the first cuff to Ewan’s left wrist, then the second to his right. “Okay, up you get.”

  Ewan stood. He wouldn’t look Nate in the eye, but that was okay. Plenty of time for that. Nate unclipped his cuffs from the chain and attached them to the D-rings on either side of his collar. It brought Ewan’s hands to his jaw, not much room to move. Ewan sucked in a breath, his eyes flickering up. Nate grinned.

  “That’s better.” He scraped his nails down Ewan’s bare, scrawny chest. He was so slim it was like he could be blown away in a strong breeze. He needed to eat more, or maybe he didn’t, maybe it was just his metabolism. Nate could see his ribs, though, and he wished Ewan would let him take care of him the way he needed.

  Jack didn’t have this problem with Channon. Channon did whatever Jack told him, he just had to snap his fingers. What must that be like?

  Boring, Nate decided. He curled his fingers into Ewan’s belt buckle. “You can stop this any time. What do you say if you want to stop?”

  “Get your fucking hands off me, you pervert,” Ewan said, so flat and hard that Nate thought he meant it. Then he saw the flicker of satisfaction in Ewan’s eyes. “Or a color. I guess.”

  “If you say the first one, I’m just going to hit you harder, and you know it.” He watched Ewan’s feelings play out raw across his face, anticipation rising in him like the tide. “Hold still,” he said, and he unbuckled Ewan’s belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, and pushed them down. He made Ewan step out of them and tossed them in the corner. Ewan braced himself, locking his knees and cocking his weight onto one hip, his chin up but his eyes down. Nate stroked his cheek. “Fuck, you’re a lot, you know that?”

  Ewan’s eyes flickered to his, and his look was halfway between a challenge and a plea.

  “Do you remember the time I put you in the humbler?” Nate said, tucking his fingers into the elastic waist of Ewan’s underpants. He slid them over Ewan’s hips, releasing Ewan’s cock. He was soft, small against his thigh, but Nate could see the swell of him already. He touched the delicate wrinkle of Ewan’s foreskin, lightly brushing his fingers down to press the tips to the rounds of Ewan’s balls in their sack. “You hated it. But you didn’t hate it enough. I’ve got something better for you to really hate.”

  Ewan shifted his feet, clearly unsure of this. Nate slapped his balls lightly, a sharp upward tap, and Ewan sucked in a breath. He spread his legs a little, an unconscious granting of permission, and Nate tapped him again.

  “I’m going to flog your balls, and then I’m going to show you the present I got for you.”

  He turned away to give Ewan a (hopefully terrifying) moment of privacy. Anticipation worked on both sides, after all, so he took his time selecting a flogger, letting the moment drag out. Something soft. It was for Ewan’s balls, after all.

  From his collection of floggers he chose black-and-red deerskin with twelve-inch falls. When he turned back, Ewan was standing very still, his eyes averted, underpants still stretched around his thighs and his hands gripped into fists on either side of his jaw. Nate pushed the pants down and ordered Ewan to spread his legs. “Wider than that. Come on,” he urged, kicking Ewan’s foot to encourage him wider. “Better. Do you want a blindfold?”

  Ewan licked his lips, clearly torn.

  “Want me to make the decision for you?” Nate asked, as kindly as he could.

  Ewan nodded. Well, that was practically a ‘yes’. Nate selected a basic strip of black satin. The sleep-mask kind of blin
dfold was generally more effective, but there was something about tying the cloth over someone’s eyes that Nate enjoyed, and really, so much of this was about doing things because you enjoyed them.

  With the blindfold tied, Nate tweaked Ewan’s chin. “Okay?”

  “Aye,” Ewan said, and he looked like he was about to add, “Get on with it,” so Nate swung the flogger into his nuts.

  Ewan sucked in a breath, teetering. It was harder to maintain balance when you were blindfolded, harder still with your arms locked into place. Nate knew that, so he put his hand in the small of Ewan’s back for balance. It made using the flogger awkward, but it wasn’t as though he needed to get a proper swing. The thing with balls was that they locked right into one’s self-protective instincts, so even a light tap would set alarm bells ringing in your lizard brain. Right now, Ewan’s lizard brain was trying to make him close up to protect himself. Nate hummed. “None of that. Back straight. You won’t like what I’ll do if I have to uncurl you.”

  He kept the strokes of the flogger light, but it was still a flogger, and the tresses were still a weighty mass. Ewan twitched and jerked to get away from them, a pitiful whimpering working out through his teeth. It made Nate’s blood sing. He felt wickedly perverted, and right now it was a good feeling, so he rode the crest of it, enjoying it shamelessly.

  A few harder swings, and Ewan protested, “No!”

  “No?” Nate had the handle of the flogger vertical, swinging the tresses into Ewan’s crotch like a pendulum. He let them thud into Ewan again, and Ewan cried out, hunching over himself. “I don’t think I listen to ‘no’ from you. Pretty sure you asked for that specifically.”

  Ewan made a wet, helpless noise, bending up like a paperclip to protect himself. It was, Nate thought, a good way to take a flogger to the face.

  “Stand up straight. Stop being a baby. You can take this. You can take my worst, isn’t that what you said? We’ve barely even started.”

  “Fucking sadist,” Ewan gasped, recoiling in anticipation of the next swing.

  Nate grinned, “Thanks for noticing. I think it’s time for your present. I’ll let you see.” The sight of the thing was worse than the sensation of it…well, not really. It certainly helped, though.

  Nate pushed the blindfold off over Ewan’s head and told him to stay. Then he got out the satin bag Ewan’s present had come in and took it out.

  Ewan’s eyes went very wide. “What the fuck?”

  Ignoring him, Nate picked up a bottle of toy cleaner and spritzed the thing down, giving it a wipe with a dry cloth. It was new, and he’d already cleaned it in preparation for this, but the psychological impact of Ewan seeing him do it, of Ewan knowing it was about to go on him, was part of the fun.

  The toy was made of two sheets of plexiglass, hinged together at the top, with a hole in each sheet, one slightly bigger than the other. The sheets curved at the bottom, two arcs that met in the middle, a loose ‘W’ shape. Just above that curve, on each side, a long bolt pierced from the back of one sheet all the way through to the top side of the other, rubber rings softening the edges of the bolt holes. Each bolt had its own nut, an easy-grip ring that fit to the end of the bolt and could be wound down to provide increased pressure.

  Because that was what this was about, after all. Pressure, and the intensification of it.

  Nate held it out, showing it to Ewan and tilting it so he could catch all the angles. “Now, you know what this is.” He waited for Ewan to nod, enjoying the dismay on Ewan’s face. “And you know what it’s for, right?” Another nod, no verbal response. Nate found he wanted more. “What am I going to do with it?”

  It took a long few seconds, but at last Ewan said, “You’re going to put my balls in it.”

  “That’s right. And then what?”

  Ewan bared his teeth. “You’re gonna crush ‘em.”

  “Yup. It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

  Ewan huffed, turning his face away in what looked like an attempt to hide the anxiety on his face. Nate took pity on him, stroking his cheek.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t neuter you. On purpose, anyway.”

  The glare Ewan turned on him was hot, and Nate laughed, catching him by the collar and throwing him on the bed. When Ewan tried to squirm away, Nate grabbed him by the ankle to pull him back and was nearly kicked in the face.

  “If you kick me, I’ll beat your feet,” Nate threatened. Ewan hissed at him, struggling to get free, so Nate cuffed his ankles to opposite ends of the footboard. “You made me do that,” he sighed, spinning the ball crusher idly in his hands. “This is all your fault, baby. Remember that, when it gets too much.”

  Ewan thrashed, hissing like a wildcat, but he stilled when Nate took firm hold of his balls. Good. He had some sense of self-preservation at least. Nate squeezed him, massaging his already sore flesh. He fed Ewan’s cock and balls through the first hole in the crusher, then just his cock through the second, leaving his balls sandwiched between the sheets of plexiglass. The whole thing fit neatly against Ewan’s body. Nate checked to make sure nothing was pinching in a bad way. Then he fit the nuts to the bolts, closing the trap on Ewan’s balls. Ewan whined, wriggling in discomfort.

  Nate grinned. “You hate that, right?”

  Ewan refused to look at him, and Nate patted his thigh, enjoying his discomfort too much. This was what he liked best, having Ewan at his mercy, knowing Ewan hated him right now, and wouldn’t be shy about saying so, and then Nate would get to hurt him all the more for it.

  “Okay,” Nate said, kneeling between Ewan’s legs. He ran his hands over Ewan’s spread thighs, enjoying the way his skin shivered and prickled into goosebumps. “Let’s get started.”

  ⁂

  What Nate did to him was an agony. Every time Ewan protested, Nate would laugh, soft little chuckles that made it clear how pointless it was to object to any of it. Nate wasn’t going to listen unless Ewan used his safeword, and Ewan wasn’t going to do that.

  His balls ached. Nate teased him, threatening to tighten the bolts, squeeze him harder, and the worst part was how Ewan knew he was going to do it eventually, just not right away. Nate always gave him time to get used to each turn of the screw, torturing him in some other way. He tickled the soles of Ewan’s feet, which Ewan hated. He put clamps on Ewan’s nipples. He tugged Ewan’s foreskin with his teeth, sharp and hard enough to hurt, and Ewan felt like he was standing at the top of a cliff, the wind buffeting him close to the edge. Nate stroked his hips, dragging his nails down the outside of Ewan’s thighs, smiling down at him in this strange, sharp-edged way that made Ewan feel small and trapped and very, very much the focus of Nate’s attention.

  “I have something special for you,” Nate said, and Ewan thought, Wasn’t this the something special? “It’s going to hurt,” he promised, and Ewan shuddered all over because he already hurt, and then Nate tightened the bolts another twist, and Ewan had to remind himself how to breathe.

  Nate had something in his hand, a thin stick about a foot long, with a leather handle. Nate flexed it, watching Ewan watching him, and whatever he saw in Ewan’s face made him grin so wickedly that Ewan’s heart sank.

  “Doesn’t look like much, does it, baby boy?”

  Ewan felt his heart speed up. Nate looked so evil, like he knew something Ewan didn’t. Between the points of pain in his chest where the clamps sat, and the agony of his balls, Ewan didn’t know if he wanted to know what that stick was for.

  Nate tapped Ewan’s thigh with the stick, very lightly. “What do you think? Wanna try it? Or should I just get the cane? It’s okay if you don’t think you can take it. I won’t be upset.”

  Fuck. Ewan couldn’t back down from that, he couldn’t. It went against every fiber of his being. “No,” he muttered.

  “No, you don’t want it? Or no, you don’t want the cane?”

  Ewan’s jaw clenched. “Not the cane.”

  The smile that spread across Nate’s face was unalloyed, sadistic happiness. “I’
m so glad you said that.”

  He tapped the stick on Ewan’s thigh. It had a solidity to it that belied its thinness. It felt threatening in a way that would have had Ewan’s balls crawling up against his body if they weren’t currently being flattened in a vise.

  Nate lifted his eyebrows, an expression of delight. He flicked the stick lightly against Ewan’s skin—lightly, but again and again in a quick staccato. The bloom of pain was surprising, the burn of it lingering just below the skin. It was a lot like the cane only somehow worse, more intense perhaps because it looked so harmless.

  “Tell me how much this hurts,” Nate said. Then he caught the tip of the stick in his other hand and pulled it back to let it thwack against the inside of Ewan’s thigh.

  “Jesus!” Ewan felt like a bee had stung him. The hot slice of pain shot through him like a bolt of lightning, and he jerked away instinctively.

  “What’s that, then? Four? Five out of ten?”

  “Seven,” Ewan gasped.

  Nate grinned. “Cool,” he said, and then he pulled back the stick to thwack Ewan again.

  It burned. Ewan tried to kick his way free of the cuffs, writhing helplessly, and Nate laughed, that soft, crazy chuckle. He ran a finger over the welt that felt seared into Ewan’s flesh, sighing to himself.

  “God, that looks good. I think we can go a little tighter.”

  “No,” Ewan moaned, wrenching his wrists against the cuffs that kept them trapped at his throat. “Nate, don’t.”

  “‘Don’t’ isn’t a safeword,” Nate told him, already giving the bolts another turn.

  Ewan inhaled, held his breath, tried not to faint. He felt untethered, the pain driving him up to a place outside his own body. Every point of agony was a star in a constellation of them, a glittering merciless galaxy that throbbed in him, relentless.

  “It’s okay,” Nate told him. “You can let go. I’ll be right here.”

  And then Nate hurt him. The stick was evil, Ewan thought, with what was left of him to think. Or maybe it was Nate who was evil. He kept coming back with it, patterning Ewan’s thighs with painful welts, and then his upper arms, his chest. He tapped it threateningly on Ewan’s poor soft cock and told him how he’d use it on Ewan’s balls if they weren’t already occupied.