Archive of Our Own

The first time Roman remembers, Hollis denies an invite from Ryan on his behalf. Like speaking for Roman is something he does all the time. His arm, once casually around Roman’s shoulders, hauls him closer by the neck. Roman has been caught between awe and discomfort since his drink came with gold flakes, so he lowers his face behind his hair.

Hollis’s breath whistles into his bottle when he adds, “He’s mine, get your own.”

Everyone laughs, varying lengths and efforts. Roman laughs, too, a little too late. Why is anyone laughing at that? Such a weird, aggressive joke. What if he wants to go? (He doesn’t, not without Hollis.) He doesn’t like the way the laughs are automatic, like his ownership is an inside joke between everyone else.

Roman thinks so much about secrets he stops talking. He sulks, replays the laughs, defines “mine” over and over until it loses meaning. The emotion he lands on is safe indignation. He doesn’t belong to anyone. They're friends. They’re equals. It was a weird joke.

“Don’t say I’m yours again.”

Roman blurts it out later as soon as they’re alone waiting for more drinks. He rakes his hair from his face, eyes nervously sliding around the granite supporting his elbows. He spins his rosary, beads gliding along his neck.

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

Hollis studies him, a familiar falling journey down from the angles of his face to linger on his neck. Sometimes he watches Roman’s neck move like he needs something from it. It makes Roman feel like a sweaty teenager again, makes his voice waver and his word choice awkward.

“You’ve belonged to me since before anyone else here knew your name.” Hollis looks up and behind him, eyes falling on three distinct spots, which must be their friends. He looks back down and smiles, innocent bunny teeth and gums. “It didn’t even take that much money.”

A shock of anger slashes through Roman’s skull. He opens his mouth to argue, but a flood of arousal shuts him up. This is a game. He should be laughing. He should spit something hurtful back, because God knows Roman is a bigger bitch than Hollis. That’s their script.

But money? Fuck, he knows that’s a sore spot, and he’s usually so kind about it. It doesn’t make sense. Lost, Roman stares at his I know something you don’t face.

“Well?” Hollis asks.

The nudge shows Hollis’s hand so transparently. He wants an outward response. He waits for an outward response. Practically drools for one.

He didn’t say Roman was bought and owned because it’s true. He said it because once Roman told him that being bought and owned lives inside him somewhere between nightmare and fantasy, and Hollis is offering to play with it.

The stiffness of the party crumbles away. The idea that they’re friends or even peers seems absurd now, like a staircase to the ceiling.

“You didn’t mean any of that,” Roman says.

“I meant half of it.” Hollis closes his smile around an olive. “Guess which half?”

Roman feels the tenuous swing to feminine as soon as they land in Mexico. It’s an experience all to himself, won’t ever share it, hates the idea of explaining it, isn’t sure he could. Doubts anyone would understand, and really, who cares? But the difference is night and day for anyone that’s looking. His limbs fall looser under flowing fabric with a youthful grace. He smiles easier, wider. He craves skin, any skin, on his skin.

He can’t express it fully, but he gets his hair done–extensions, braids, ribbons. It’s safe. Everyone knows how passionate he is about his heritage. He stares at himself in the vanity, head pulled left and right by the hands tugging at his hair. He thinks about the lesson Hollis taught him about reactions and smiles at himself.

Seven hours later, Hollis’s hand has been on his head all night: palm flat between his pigtails, fingers tracing the loose hair at his temples, stroking his throat. He swallows the pills Hollis presses into his tongue, floating farther down the river, silky smooth. Hollis doesn’t take any; Roman knows the difference. He could grasp the reason for the difference, maybe, but he doesn’t want to think, he wants to feel. And right now he glows with gratitude, lightweight and pretty like a kite, preening into every drug-bloated minute of Hollis’s attention.

Until he barks at Roman to stay and leaves him alone with a closing circle of excited talkers, who turn their questions from Hollis onto him. He pouts for his loss and opens his eyes. How long have they been closed? He can’t see Hollis’s height through the crowd, nor any of his friends. No one. Only faces he doesn’t know. Oh, God, is he alone? He tries to walk straight and stumbles right, the nearest body catching him before he falls.

Roman doesn’t like the sound of his voice. He says something about music. Belleza, belleza. He touches Roman’s shoulder, then his chest where his rosaries fall.

Where is Hollis? Why is he alone? His head spins like the records playing too loud in his ears. Someone else touches his waist, and another across the sensitive skin above his belt. Long nails turn his chin and a pretty girl with too much eye makeup laughs softly in his face. He hums at her and smiles, leaning back into the attention. Someone else compliments his body and he laughs, drowning.

Cold fingers wrap around his tattoo. He’s facing the east exit and then he’s not, whirled so fast the lights bleed. Yanked from his adorers, only the hold on his upper arm stops him from stumbling back onto his ass.

“I told you not to move.”

The girl lingering beside them startles at Hollis’s voice like a skittish cat. She disappears through pockets of people, rumors no doubt already typed into her phone. Hollis’s volume could be blamed on the music, but his sharpness couldn’t.

“Look at me.”

Roman looks at the cracks in the floor and the intersecting metal on the ceiling, then the liquid bodies to either side. Anywhere but the body in front of him, close like an exclamation. Anywhere but the eyes that dig into him like a question. Around him, under him, despite him. A microdose of the childish rush of keep away.

“What’s with you?” Hollis asks.

Sweet. Sincere. Obnoxious.

“If you were paying attention, you’d know.”

“Fuck off,” Hollis laughs. “You’re spoiled with my attention.”

Roman tries to storm off, but he’s held in place. He yanks right and left, pushes at the grip on his arm. Nothing. Not even a struggle. He glares up to find Hollis looking down with an eager openness that dwarfs him.

Hollis has always been comically tall, but Roman never thinks of him as big. Not thicker than him, can’t see around him, strong enough to hold him still big. Not strong enough to hold him down through a struggle big–

“Let go.”

Roman jerks his arm again for emphasis.

“That’s not what you want,” Hollis says. “Why don’t you admit it?”

Roman huffs a sarcastic laugh, loud with the spite of unmet wants. “What the fuck do you know about what I want?”

Hollis crowds him back against a table until their bodies are flush, chest to knee. Warmth pulses between them, combined body heat deliciously uncomfortable.

“Just because you won’t fuckin’ ask–”

Hollis bends to kiss one side of Roman’s sweat-slick neck and then the other. Such a light graze of his lips it feels like a joke at Roman’s expense.

“–doesn’t mean I don’t know what you want.”

Roman makes a defensive noise, but his body betrays him to grasp at Hollis’s shoulder under his jacket. His breath heats Roman’s ear.

“Are you gonna ask for it?”

Roman swallows, but pride sticks in his throat.

“No.”

“No.” Coldly repeated, no inflection. Hollis’s warmth abandons him and he looks at the time on his phone. “Alright.”

Roman steps closer. “What?”

“I’ll see you back at the hotel.” Hollis turns away before he finishes speaking. “Take your time. I’ll be a while.”

Roman has another beer. He wanders and meets new faces, dances until people touch him, but he’s not really present. He ruminates half the bottle on the ghostly pecks into his pulse and the other half on Hollis’s arrogance.

Hollis doesn’t know what he wants. How could he with the way he acts? Being asked to perform on command makes him itch all over, but thinking about Hollis fucking someone else makes him sick to his stomach. He works himself up until he downs two more shots before leaving.

“That’s dangerous,” Hollis would say about the cocktail in his stomach. His way of saying Don’t do that without actually having to say it. To give Roman a command that doesn’t sound like a command. Relieving Roman of the burden of being contrary. Hollis would say that if he were here, which he chose not to be.

Roman always chews his lips when things are left unsettled.

Two people interrupt his escape. They speak but he doesn’t understand what they say. Compliments? He fakes his best smile, eyes heavy. Apologizes, thanks them. For what? Who knows.

He makes it out the back door, drags in lungfuls of damp, polluted air before the drunk cogs in his brain remember that his ride already left without him.

“Fuck.” He slams his head back against the stucco wall. “Ow.”

He checks his phone. Two messages from Hollis. Proper spelling and grammar that makes him feel like a scolded child.

Asking for what you want doesn’t cheapen it.

If you need me to claw it out of you, get in the limo.

Roman’s thoughts are lush and heavy. He rubs his palm on the side of his neck, lids drooping. He reads the texts twice and then a third time, trying to parse whatever weird symbolism Hollis thinks limos hold. Escape or some shit. Luxury?

Bright headlights flash down the street, hurting his eyes. He lowers his phone, lip curled. A black Lincoln limousine is parked against the curb.

Hollis is the most annoying person Roman has ever met. He hates the lengths he’ll go just to make a point, to prove himself right. He resents the decisions he makes, the stupid shit that falls out of his mouth just to see what will happen—

Roman stomps down the alley, ribbons trailing behind him. Resentment steadies him. He doesn’t even consider that anyone else could be inside, because only a pig-headed gringo would hire a fucking limo. Here.

It didn’t even take that much money.

Roman flings the back door open, hunches to step inside. Hollis sits far down near the driver, shielding his eyes against the lights. He’s not wearing his I told you so face, or even his made you look face. He looks just as disinterested as he did when he left. Jagged severity on Hollis’s face, usually so open with his emotions, drains Roman of his deluge of anger.

He slides into the first seat and closes the door. The overhead lights quit once the door is shut. The bar lights stay, reflected by mirrors, casting the slick leather seats in sharp contrasts of white light and deep shadow. Hollis’s crossed legs and stiletto boots are lit; his face is in shadow.

Roman sits as if in a spotlight of the bar lights, feeling stupid without his thoughtless outrage. The back of his neck prickles to be watched and embarrassment flushes down his chest.

Tugging on one of his ribbons, he bites at the dry skin on his lips. Anger carries him so far to get him into so much trouble. Where is his temper once the danger really starts? By getting in the limo he agreed to be clawed open. What’s inside? Hollis claims to know. How could he? Roman doesn’t know.

Or does he? Roman’s thoughts swirl like a bath. He thinks about the limo as a cage and Hollis as the caged. Roman is caught now either way. What’s the point in pretending in the face of this? For whose sake does he keep their heads above water?

He wishes he could level with Hollis, but in the severity of this light that feels immature. In his wish he sighs and shows his belly. He has the bravery to ask his best friend, What are we doing? When did it stop being simple?

But he has so much pride and Hollis hasn’t made a sound.

“I don’t see your claws.”

Hollis laughs like when a child uses a swear wrong. He raises his right hand into the bar-light, twisting at the wrist. Above the knuckles of two fingers, thick rings sport long, curved claws, painted realistic.

Of course he owns claws. Asshole. Fucking freak.

“Do you want them?”

Yes. What does that mean? Yes, yes. Is he going to—? Fuck, just say yes, let yourself have this.

“Yes—”

“Shut up.”

Roman closes his mouth. He closes his legs. His ears ring with the disgust in Hollis’s voice. He feels delightfully inside-out and craves hearing it again.

Hollis knocks on the driver’s window. Roman sways on the seat as the limo pulls away, carefully stilling a roll of his eyes.

A few taps on his phone and Hollis shows him a timer, already counting down from fifteen minutes. He sets it on the bar where they can both see it tick down.

Roman’s heart slams against his ribs, palms sweaty on the slick seat. He’s not good with pressure. Anything could happen in fifteen minutes. He could fuck anything up in fifteen minutes.

“Fifteen minutes to the hotel.”

Hollis unbuckles his belt and tugs his pants down around his hips.

Roman straightens awkwardly back against the seat. He's never tasted cock other than his own, but the desire to know if Hollis tastes similar burns in his gut. Sickly, whirling disgust turns him upside-down. He would suck any cock Hollis told him to. As long as Hollis was watching. As long as it was an order.

Roman blinks, breathes carefully through his nose. It’s all he can do. Maybe all he’s allowed to do.

Hollis puts his hands behind his head. “If I’m not hard enough to fuck you by the time we get there, I’ll fuck someone else.”

What the fuck?

Roman licks his lips, then licks them again when he finds them cracked. His mouth is sandy, his head is like cotton. He can’t give his best blow job like this. He can’t even give a good blow job if his mouth is this gross.

Roman sighs. He wasn’t told to be good, he just has to make him hard. Everyone’s first blow job is probably shitty, regardless of their spit game. He lifts away from the seat and reaches out—

“No.” Hollis’s voice pushes him back into the seat. “You’re not allowed to touch me.”

“What?”

“Talk to me.”

Roman looks at the timer. Below twelve minutes. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if this night ends with Hollis wetting his cock in some insignificant bitch. But he’s not great at words sober. Dirty talk is pointless. Why should he describe what he wants to do when he can just do it?

He’s never let himself think—
not in complete sentences—
but now he has permission–

“I want—”

He swallows. What does he want? Like a vision, he sees Hollis hollow his cheeks between his thighs. His eyes are ringed with smeared makeup, so big, so sincere when he moans around Roman’s cock.

Roman grinds his hips into the seat.

“Fuck.”

Fuck, fuck.

Hollis makes an annoyed clicking sound with his mouth. “Ten minutes.”

Roman slumps and spreads his knees, taking up both back seats with the wide bow of his legs. It’s not safe. It’s not what Hollis told him to do. He does it anyway, because he has at least ten minutes, and maybe that’s long enough to bait him.

Over his jeans, he rubs the heel of his palm against his cock. He pushes in circles, friction different from either side. His moan is delicate, lingering low and long with what he’s too stubborn to say.

“I said use your words.”

“I thought—” Roman’s thighs tingle when he realizes he is about to perform, just like he never wanted, despite the fit he threw. “I thought you were gonna fuck my face and I wanted it.”

‘Wanted’ leaves him so petulant, whined from deep in his chest. He wants. He never lets himself want. His want never matches anyone else’s. His want is too much, too weird, too intense.

“I want you in control.”

He falls into a pout at the resulting silence. Hollis doesn’t even move. Roman can’t see any sign that he’s hard and time is moving so fast. His breath hitches, and he pretends it’s from his hand and not his heart. He grits his teeth, spite flaring—he won’t let this fucker see him cry, not before he gets what he wants. Gripping the head of his cock, Roman twists his hand and arches with pleasure.

“Please take control. I’m asking for what I want. Fuck, please. I don’t know why you won’t.”

Hollis slides down the vertical row of seats. No emotion in his eyes as he watches Roman’s hand. Roman performs, biting back the rest of his longing. He wonders if this is all that’s in it for him— pathetically rubbing himself off with an audience.

Six minutes.

It doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes, drifts away from the limo. He undoes his belt and squeezes his cock through his boxers, nails tickling his thigh.

“I wish it was you,” Roman says. “I always wish it was you. Every time, every girl, every guy—”

Is that true? Not really. Maybe mostly. Does it matter? Not with Hollis’s rules. Not if it has its intended reaction.

“You’ve been with men?”

Roman feels the jealousy in Hollis’s voice from his cock to his curling toes. Emotion, finally, and so much of it. He won. Whatever happens, he broke Hollis, if only for a second. He slows his hand.

“Yeah.”

He breathes it out, smiles sleepily like the memories of other people matter. Like he didn’t use both men because their blonde hair was long and their mouths were big.

Hollis is on top of him before Roman hears him move. Knee between his legs, curving over Roman’s slumped body. His claw-rings stab into Roman’s cheek, jaw clutched in his hand. His necklaces shine in the sweat of his neck and his soft hair sways in Roman’s face.

”No,” Roman gasps, anxiety spiking.

Panicked, he struggles back against the seat. There’s nowhere to go. He tries to find the timer, but he can’t move his head. He’s too slouched and Hollis is so big. Pride broken, eyes wet, he looks up at Hollis like he remembers praying.

“Please don’t– Please, I— was being good. You touched me. That's not fair.”

Hollis takes Roman’s hand to press down past his stomach to the heat of his cock, excited against his hip. Roman bites his lip. He thought it would be bigger. He sucks in his entire lip so he doesn’t say it out loud.

He wonders how much cock shame it would take to get face fucked.

“I knew I could break you.” Hollis raises Roman’s jaw to lick across his dry lips and pushes his cock into Roman’s wandering hand. “I didn’t know you’d look this fucking good broken.”

The timer blares through the limo and Roman jumps. Hollis turns, bats at it to stop, hands shaking. The timer quits. His phone falls to the floor. He turns back.

“718.” He shoves a keycard into Roman’s jeans. “Go directly there. Don’t fucking talk to anyone. Get naked and kneel in front of the door. Don’t touch yourself. Wait for me.”

Roman escapes to the room like hunted prey.

Some guy stands near the entrance, smoking next to the No Smoking sign. He watches, bored, as Roman stumbles with wobbly knees out of the limo. Roman glares while he re-buttons his jeans. The limo pulls away behind him. Where the fuck is Hollis going now?

Holding his dick, Roman rushes through glossy shine and classical music of the lobby. He shares the most uncomfortable elevator ride of his life with a middle-aged woman that seems to know his biological predicament. She looks like she would call it a biological predicament. Is this technically sexual harassment? What if she complains to the hotel?

He rushes out onto the seventh floor and turns the wrong way before reversing and jogging the correct way. His stomach hurts with unresolved lust. New sweat drips down the old sweat down his back, and he shivers from the air conditioning. His heart beats so fast he can feel it in his fingertips and behind his eyes.

He has to calm down. He has to catch his breath.

He forces himself to walk to 718. Once the door is closed behind him, he slumps against the wall, face-first into the textured wallpaper. Breathe in, breathe out. Easier, safer in the dark. Electronics hum and the air conditioner shudders to life. Slowly, his chest and belly stop aching. Reasons to run surround him like a pit, but he sinks farther down.

Let yourself have this.

He strips off his clothes. There’s a relief in the shedding, like a winter coat, no longer asserting something about himself that isn’t currently true. He feels his way into the bathroom, squinting at the harsh light. He gulps three full glasses of water, one after the other, while staring at his own bloodshot eyes. In the mirror, the falling-rain shower and fluffy towels call to him. He’s gross from head to toe and misses the heat of the party, bare feet on cold tile. Heat and water pressure would relax him, sober him up.

He really fucking wants to shower, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because Hollis left him a list of things to do, and none of them were shower. Therefore Hollis wants him dirty. He doesn’t really know if that chain of thoughts is logical, but he feels a thread of wonder creep through him. It’s not often that when their wants diverge, Hollis’s wants supersede his own.

The sitting room of the suite is mostly bare. The butt of a cigarette sits in an ash tray, and Hollis’s laptop charges on the desk. Everything else looks Housekeeping-fresh. The thought makes Roman return to the door to add the Do Not Disturb sign. Just in case.

Swinging open the double doors to the bedroom, Roman freezes with one bare foot inside.

They always stay in two-bed rooms. Hollis gets the left bed, and Roman gets the right bed. Practiced co-habitation. Respect. Kind of. Often Roman falls asleep on the left bed because he knows Hollis won’t switch or make him move.

There’s only one bed. It’s as big as two beds. But it’s not two beds. It’s a statement.

On the solid white blanket is a solid white box. It feels left for him to find, so he sneaks around the left side of the bed (Hollis’s side?) and lifts the lid, leaving it on the blanket. Collected inside are sex toys and bottled liquids and nefarious bags, which could contain anything. It’s all more than one person needs, really. Surely a lot of these do the same thing. Roman bites into his finger examining what he can see without touching. Some of them aren’t for him, shaped with curves and hooks to stimulate parts he doesn’t have.

But there are plenty for his parts. His heart beats off-balance again at the unwelcome thought of Hollis fucking him with glass instead of his cock. More teasing, more waiting.

Is that even what Hollis wants? What if he wants Roman to use the toys on him? What if— shit, what if Roman read everything wrong? What if after everything, he’s not even the one getting fucked?

Struck dumb, the brightly colored silicone and glass turn into a neon blur. One leg crossed behind the other, he stabs his toe down into the carpet while he thinks.

He bites harder into his finger. It seems all of Hollis’s wants supersede his own.

The electronic lock clicks and beeps.

Fuck.

Panicked, Roman leaps his awkward deer legs through the suite, but it’s not in time. He tumbles to his knees, suffocating a hiss as his sensitive skin slides across the carpet. Hands behind his back, chin high, he finally does as he was told: waits.

Hollis slips into the door, both hands full, and allows it to swing shut behind him.

Roman’s eyes are wild, guilty. His shoulders rise and fall too quickly. It’s so clear that he wasn’t waiting.

Hollis glances into the bathroom, at the overhead lights, at the open bedroom doors. His eyes settle on Roman with the same Disappointed in you, mijo look that his mother has given him a thousand times. His lips quiver with the impulse to argue his case, and maybe to ask about the mini sex shop in the other room, but he doesn’t.

Hollis throws his keys and wallet onto the coffee table with aggressive thunks. He slides a bomber into the fridge and groans, lifting his hair to expose the back of his neck to the air conditioning. Carefully, he slips his wig off and takes it into the bathroom, returning to hang his jacket near the door.

He strides past Roman like he isn’t there and into the bedroom. Roman doesn’t think he’s allowed to look back. He listens to the domestic noises of Hollis shuffling around without speaking, slips of fabric and zippers and open drawers, breaths and sniffs and sighs. The metal lid of the sex box clangs shut and snaps closed. Roman curses at himself, lowering his head.

Hollis returns to the sitting room and the air conditioner beeps through the silence seven impatient times. Finally he stands in front of Roman where he belongs. Roman tries to convey his apology through a silent look.

Hollis reaches out. Roman closes his eyes, waits for the hand to cup his cheek. Four of Hollis’s fingers worm between the plaits of his left braid. Twisting the braid around his hand, Hollis yanks it down. Roman falls to the side and yelps over the sound of his extensions tearing, a sharp sting rushing across his scalp.

Hollis finally speaks, letting go. “You don't ever fucking think, do you?”

Roman’s heart flutters at the width and breadth of cruelty in a single question. The biting cold in his eyes makes Roman feel—drunkenly, insanely—both protected and hunted. Surely one of those was a lie.

Roman cocks his head and affects a blank stare, his example of never fucking thinking.

“What d'you mean?”

The slap is a plunge head-first into freezing water. It’s the final confirmation that they’re not playing anymore. Hollis is in charge; Roman put him there.

Roman gasps so loud it scratches his throat. Hollis has never put his hands on Roman. Never even made a stupid joke about it, never even a friendly punch that sort-of hurt the next day. It bloats between them in the silence after.

Hollis fucking hit him.

It only hurts a little. Nettle-stings across his cheek in the hot shape of Hollis’s hand. It only hurts a little—not enough.

“I want nothing more than to train you, baby.” Hollis pulls through the knots and plaits of his ribbons one by one to watch them slither to the ground. “Nothing. Not even to fuck you. So you better be a little more careful.”

Roman shoves his reaction to the pet name down, deeper into his chest, so far away from his carefully blank face.

“I was gonna let you wash me in the shower, but you can’t seem to follow directions. I can’t reward that, can I?”

He stares at Roman with expectation. Roman quickly understands that all questions demand an answer here, even if they’re rhetorical.

“No.”

Hollis retrieves the pink ribbon and ties it with a bow around Roman’s neck. He arranges the bow until it’s centered and even, fingers grazing Roman’s throat.

“Now I’m gonna shower, and you’re gonna prove that you can wait on your knees.”

Roman has never wanted him more.

It should be an easy task just to wait. He doesn’t even have to do anything. Roman tries to think of the last time he waited for something he wanted, and allows the shame when he comes up blank. His shoulders twinge and his knees burn and he imagines hot, falling water on his tired limbs.

Loyal like a statue, with no place to direct his excitable energy, Roman feels every step of his body’s reaction to the cold. The hair on the top of his thighs raises, and goosebumps prickle down his arms. His nipples get hard. He shivers with his full body, out from his tense belly. It’s a little obscene while on his knees waiting for someone in the shower.

The shower turns off sooner than he expects. He heaves a sigh of relief, relaxing his tense shoulders. He concentrates on the familiar sounds of Hollis’s night routine and swallows a lump of fear that Hollis might just fucking go to bed and make him sit here all night.

The bathroom door opens, spills light across the room before Hollis turns it off. Again, without acknowledgement, he passes Roman for the bedroom. This time Roman devours the sight of him naked, the way his thighs and stomach shift as he walks.

Please come back, please come back.

More stabbing at the air conditioner, and then he reappears with new boxers and wet hair gathered into a claw clip. Roman appreciates the way his waist curves into his ass while he retrieves his beer. He stalks closer and gulps half of it, inspecting Roman like he’s choosing produce. Shamefully, Roman feels blood return between his legs.

“Not an inch. Good boy.” He lingers on the phrase, taking another drink. “Or is it girl right now?”

Not rhetorical. But what can Roman say? He looks around Hollis’s expectant face for a way out.

Hollis tears through his right braid, as easily as he did the left. “Answer me.”

Roman doesn't know. Like a spooked animal, his heart rams against his ribs trying to get out. He’s never had to make a choice. Not out loud, not in front of anyone else. How can he be asked to decide that now— considering—

“Girl,” he chokes out, like part of him doesn’t want to say it.

Around a curve of his lips, Hollis hums approval laced with pleasure. He cups Roman’s cheek, finally. A reward.

“Not so hard to obey, is it?”

“No.”

“Good girl.”

Roman closes his eyes. The words, only two, so small, feel like Hollis’s hands everywhere on his body at once. His cock throbs, grows. Wavy like tinsel, he shimmers from inside out. Seen, heard, protected.

Setting his beer down, Hollis presses his thumbs into Roman’s closed eyes. Soft like he’s divulging secrets, he asks, “You remember how to make me stop?”

Not rhetorical. But remember? Who was he confusing Roman for?

”I won’t want you to stop,” Roman says.

“You weren’t always such a bitch.” He feels reverently up the length of Roman’s cheekbones. “I made you this way.”

The idea that Hollis made him, shaped him, settles between them. Reinforcing his anger, his bitterness. Rewarding sarcasm, rewarding attacks. Molding Roman contrary just so it would feel better when he finally obeyed. That’s not possible. Is it? A memory of their first meeting, the shyness of not looking Hollis in the eyes, threatens to disagree.

“Say red if you want me to stop.”

What if my mouth is full?

“What if you ask me my favorite color–”

Roman knows the slap is coming this time, because he watches Hollis swing back to make it hurt. He interrupts his back talk to brace for it. Fuller force than before, stiff palm against his teeth and jaw. Pain shoots through his sinuses and up into his ears. Bright lights pop through his vision and he’s thrown onto all fours, facing away.

He stays where he falls.

Hollis jerks him upright by a mostly-destroyed braid. His claws dig into the underside of Roman’s tongue. “Tell me you understand how to make it stop.”

Roman stifles a gag at the pricks of pain, talks around the metal in his mouth. “Red makes it stop.”

Hollis retracts his claws. “How’s your knees?”

“They fuckin’ hurt.”

“Good.”

Hollis retrieves his beer from the floor and downs the rest.

“You want some?”

Snorting a laugh, Hollis shakes the mostly empty bottle near Roman’s face. This laugh is at his expense, too, but he needs to be front and center even when he’s the jester. He nods and inches his protesting knees closer to Hollis’s feet. Slowly, bracing for another slap, Roman rests the point of his chin against the elastic of Hollis’s boxers. He holds his mouth open. Waiting.

“Lick it up.”

Hollis tips the mouth of the bottle wrong. What’s left splashes down his sternum and over his stomach, foam sliding slower than fluid. It runs in rivulets around Roman’s chin to soak into Hollis’s boxers and drip onto the floor.

Disgust tears through him as he follows it to the ground. He shuffles backwards and bends. He chokes out a shocked whine, gagging on the rough, soggy fibers of the carpet.

Look at how good I am.

“What the fuck?” Hollis asks, as soon as Roman climbs back up his legs. His grin stretches his entire face. “Always a greedy whore or just pent up?”

Even greedy whore sounds like devotion if the right person says it. Roman sucks in a deep breath. Hollis’s muscles seize under a long lick across his stomach and he stifles a laugh behind his hand. Roman hallucinates—fuck, remembers?—Hollis’s old body under his long nails, admitting he’s ticklish around his belly button.

Roman mouths up the rise and fall of Hollis’s abs, sucking away the bitter mess. He opens his mouth wider and slurps higher. He licks up and down and right to left and left to right, until, finally, Hollis pushes Roman’s head down to his lap where they both want it.

Roman lingers, tongue testing, just breathing, unsure what to do. After everything he’s admitted to wanting, getting it now feels like jumping off a cliff. No turning back from this. No blaming drugs, no blaming adrenaline.

“Go get the small white and gold tube from my box.”

Roman pouts and leans back. His knees pop when he stands. The box is exactly as he found it the last time, and he opens it now with permission to dig through it. The tube is near the top, and he reads throat numbing and vanilla on the side before returning.

“Does this shit actually work?” Roman asks, handing it over.

“Bring me the desk chair and a towel.”

Roman bites his lip through obeying, hauling the chunky wooden chair and grabbing a towel from the bathroom. When he gets back Hollis is naked again. He sits on the towel on top of the chair. So clean, so polite. They could have made a mess. Roman is sure he paid enough.

Hollis snaps his fingers between his legs and Roman trips with how quickly he falls to his knees and shuffles closer. Hollis holds his jaw in one hand, ring-claws sliding against the nape of Roman’s neck.

“Don’t pull away.”

Roman watches the numbing gel coat Hollis’s fingers, watches his fingers reach for his mouth. He presses down a long stripe of Roman’s tongue with two fingers. Roman’s mouth revolts and his nails dig into Hollis’s knees. Still, he continues to press the gel all around Roman’s mouth, the roof and the sides. Afraid to swallow, Roman lets his saliva drip between them.

Hollis watches his mouth with the kind of intent that previously seemed reserved for digital audio workstations.

When he’s finished, Hollis wipes his fingers off on Roman’s shoulder like he’s a napkin.

“Well?” Hollis asks, smirking. “Does it work?”

Roman wiggles his tongue, puffs out his cheeks, feels the strange separation of pressure without sensation.

“Not really. Not for blowing someone.”

Hollis hums like he’s bored and pulls Roman’s lip down with a finger. He jerks himself lazily in front of Roman’s face and Roman licks the finger over his lip. Opening his mouth wider, he tongues at the corners, around his teeth. His efforts don’t work; Hollis strokes himself fully hard without Roman’s help. Roman pouts; he wanted to know what it felt like.

As soon he pouts, Hollis shoves his cock across his tongue. He closes his lips around what’s been offered. The cough-drop effect makes it more awkward, hot and cold at the same time, but Roman is eager. Hollis makes a gravelly sound in his throat and pushes deeper, and all at once Roman loses access to several levels of his brain.

When he gags, Hollis pulls out to stroke himself through the spit. Mouth hanging open, Roman follows, reaches forward to have it back. Hollis plays his own game of keep away and laughs. Roman glares. He shoves his face down against the towel to mouth at Hollis’s balls until he manages to suck one into his mouth.

Nails scrape against his scalp. “Fuck yeah.”

Hollis rewards him, releases his cock to Roman’s attention entirely. One arm over his wet hair, Hollis repositions, leans back with a groan, closes his eyes.

Roman does his best to shape his mouth and work his neck. He uses his hands to help, but it’s clumsy and bad, and the harder he tries, the more frustrated he gets. Hollis moans encouragement all the same, breath heavier than it should be.

Even with his moderate length, Roman can’t take it all. He tries, and then tries again, but both times his body jerks with a retch. He pulls off to whine, feeling all the more pathetic with spit smeared on his hands, his face, his hair.

“I can’t–”

Maybe Hollis takes pity on him.

He positions Roman’s face by the sides of his head and moans for him to stay. Roman stays, even though one of Hollis’s claws stabs into his ear, because maybe if he’s good enough, he’ll hear good girl again. Hollis holds his head and fucks his face, just like he wanted but better, with a sense of desperation Roman doesn’t fully understand. Faster, faster, then slower to catch his breath. Deep until Roman chokes, holding the apex a little longer every time.

He pulls Roman off and leans down to kiss him. He kisses him for the first time disgusting with spit and sweat and precum and the sticky remnants of beer. It may be the only worthwhile kiss Roman’s ever had, despite the taste; no one has ever kissed him like he’s the only person in the world. Hollis moans into his mouth as he pulls away and lifts his foot onto the chair. He guides Roman’s mouth back down over his cock.

Overwhelmed, mesmerized, kissed, Roman is in love with being used. Whatever Hollis wants, however he wants, in every bathroom and green room and bedroom until Roman finds a way to fuck it up.

“I thought you’d never let me–”

Deeper, harder. Roman uses his own claws to scrape at Hollis’s thigh and breathes so heavily through his nose he thinks he might hyperventilate.

“I was sure– you didn’t want–”

Roman protests, only a soft vibration between them. Their other sounds are so loud, so wet, so gross.

“I fuck her with my eyes closed– thinking about the way you move–”

Truths maybe, lies probably, but the confession makes him react. He won’t stay passive, not after that— he sucks deeper, swallows, moans again because he wants to be better than all of the other girls, the best.

I’ll do anything.

Roman struggles to gain a rhythm around the hips slamming against his face. His eyes unfocus, reality blurs, disperses. Pleasure bursts across his torso and behind his eyes, and he doesn’t realize he’s jerking himself off until he’s coming.

He thanks God his mouth is too full to fucking speak.

I’ll do anything for you. I can be anything you need. Everything you want. As long as it's you. Top or bottom, boy or girl, fucked or romantic. Me. Only me.

“How many m—” Hollis moans and starts again. “How many men?”

It sounds like a riddle at first, knocked into Roman’s brain between the squishy orgasm thoughts I want this every night forever and I hope I’m not ruining the best thing that ever happened to me.

Hollis hauls him off and holds his face away. He tightens his grip on Hollis’s thighs and watches his cock bounce back, flushed and slick. Swallowing past the salt and spit he licks his lips, tongue flighty, too light.

Hollis shakes him by the roots of his hair. “How many cocks have you taken, whore?”

Roman’s jaw aches and clicks. “Only yours.”

Fucking into the back of his throat, Hollis holds him down through the coughing and the anxious slaps at his stomach, his arms.

“Bullshit.” Hollis releases him. “An hour ago you whined that you wished they were me.”

Roman answers, hoarse, “Only two, and they only sucked me off.”

“Two,” Hollis says carefully. Something changes. Not disappointment. But what? “And they were fine with that?”

Of course they were, fucker. Look at me.

—is what he would have said if he were clothed and sane, not watching Hollis’s wet cock like it’s the last piece of birthday cake.

“They only got that much because they looked like you.”

Hollis’s eyebrows shoot up and his eyes soften before he can school his face back to neutral.

“They looked— oh, Roman—”

Roman wiggles free and takes his cock again. Hollis moans, hitched, down at Roman’s working mouth, disconnected like he’s caught in a dream.

“Pull off,” he chokes.

Roman’s stomach flares and aches, but he’s learning. He’s learning that letting go of what he wants and trusting Hollis always ends in something better. Against every hedonistic instinct, he pushes away, heaving through his agitated throat. He looks up, waiting for guidance.

“You look so wrecked,” Hollis breathes, like he’s running out of steam. “Fuck–”

Come shoots across Roman’s cheekbone, over his eyelashes. He opens his mouth, peeks out his tongue to try to catch the next two with one eye. He mostly fails; come hangs off his lips, drips from his face. He knows wrecked is a far cry from pretty, but Roman has never felt prettier.

“Sorry.” Hollis sounds so tired. “I didn’t even ask if I could—”

Anything, everything. Roman glares at his timid eyes and wipes the come from his face into his mouth. He swallows. “Shut the fuck up.”

As if to change the subject, Hollis redistributes his weight in the chair and reaches down.

“Oh.” Hollis looks down at the mess in Roman’s lap. “You already–”

Does he look disappointed? Roman flushes down his chest, his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Roman says, loving even this shame a little.

As long as it’s you.

Hollis pulls Roman into his lap. Roman yelps when their cocks slide together, and Hollis shivers from his shoulders to his knees.

“Mine,” Hollis pants into his face. He kisses Roman softly, incongruent. “I own you. Say it.”

How could Roman argue this time?

“You own me,” Roman says against his shoulder. His consciousness fades into only the feeling of Hollis’s palm rubbing up and down his back. “All of me.”

The next morning Roman wakes up in the stupidly large bed, on the right side. Hollis makes noise in the bathroom, and Roman stares up at the ceiling to mentally repeat every prayer to every God that Hollis doesn’t come back into the room acting weird.

“I’m hungry,” Hollis says, once he sees that Roman is awake.

He smiles like normal, like nothing happened at all. Roman’s heart skips a beat. He didn’t ruin anything. Roman sits up and lets the blanket fall down to his hips.

“I think if you fuck my mouth for an hour you have to buy me breakfast. Some place really nice where I can order, like, three drinks and a fruity cocktail and as much meat as they’ll give me.”

“Oh.” Hollis’s smile falls. He kind of looks like Roman just said he killed a guy and they gotta run. His hands can’t seem to find a comfortable grip on his hips, so he crosses his arms. “You, uh. You remember.”

“That you basically broke my jaw?” Roman rolls his eyes. “Yeah.”

Hollis clears his throat, still slow with sleep. “You don’t usually remember.”

”Remember what?”

“When we fuck.”

“Don’t be stupid, we’ve never fucked.”

Hollis looks so sad before he’s able to veil it. He shrugs with one shoulder. “Point proven, man.”

“I would know if I’ve been fucked. My throat sure as hell knows. Is this another horny mind game? I just woke up, feed me first.”

Hollis glances around the room like he’s looking for an escape. Terrified, caught in his own cage.

”I don’t think you’ve ever been with another guy. I’ve blown you twice.” He tugs on the hem of his tank top and frowns at it. “Unless you lied, you don’t even remember it was me.”