Sex in C Major

With a wrenching noise, Stefan threw up on the threadbare carpet.

There wasn't much to void but a thin trail of bile and the stench of cheap vodka. The smell made him retch again, then he staggered up from the mattress and towards the bathroom. The cold shower helped, punching at his headache but scraping the sleepiness and the nausea off his skin. He clutched his arms around himself and shivered, staring resolutely at the tiles to avoid seeing his peaked nipples.

His owner had called. He ought to go.

And fuck, his owner had called. He was owned. Not wanted, not loved, not cared for. Owned. And he wanted it.

"Freak," Stefan whispered. "Freak, freak, freak, freak."

The pipes began to rattle warningly. His toes were numb. He shut off the shower, sobered by the frigid temperature, and stepped out. He had no clean underwear-save that drying at Daz's-so picked a heavier pair of jeans. The emergency back-up binder came out of the wardrobe, and was buried by a T-shirt, heavy jumper, and heavier coat.

On the way out the door, he picked up his headphones to drown out the world, and turned the music up loud.

Something felt jagged and fragile this morning. Stefan felt jagged and fragile. He didn't want to talk anymore. He didn't want to have his freakishness spelled out. He wanted to just-forget it. Just try and enjoy himself without the voice in his head reminding him all the time that normal people didn't want this, normal people didn't ask for this, normal people didn't reject affection and embrace abuse. Normal people would rather talk to their new owner about boundaries than have their owner drag them into a public toilet and fuck their face.

Normal people, Stefan reminded himself bitterly, didn't want owners.

Yannis had said not to worry about what other people thought was normal, but it was easy for him to say. He wasn't the one asking Daz to rape him. He wasn't the one with a phone full of videos of kidnaps and torture porn. He was just-just a student. He was normal. He probably even had a health condition to explain why he didn't want to have sex all the time-what did Stefan have? Some kind of weird sexual addiction, and a seriously fucked up brain.

Stefan was sick in the head, there were no two ways about it.

Because even as he was chanting wrong-wrong-wrong in his head, he kept walking. He walked right into town without pause, without hesitation. He told himself he had to stop letting Daz use his feminine attributes because real men neither had cunts, nor enjoyed being fucked in them-and yet his dick twitched at the memory of that fuck, and had him hoping Daz would do it again when they met in the city. The thoughts all crashed together in a sickening tangle. By the time Stefan reached Briggate, he was shaking both from desire and disgust.

And Daz was waiting.

Sprawled in the same chair as last time, but he was at least waiting alone. He lifted a couple of fingers in a gesture so casual they might as well have been colleagues, not a client and his cocksucker. Stefan's chest-and dick-ached.

"Not getting yourself a drink?" Daz asked mildly as Stefan sank into the opposite chair.

"No. No money."

"No change from the taxi last night? What a rip-off..."

"That's yours."

Daz shrugged. "Keep it."

"What do you want for it?"

The question emerged without Stefan's say-so; his dick began to swell at the idea of being paid for, even as his brain recoiled. God, what was he doing?

Daz snorted.

"I don't pay for it. You're here because you want to be. Not because I put cash in your waistband."

Stefan crossed his ankles and spread his thighs a little, trying to ease the scrape of denim on his bare cock.

"You look uncomfortable."

"Little bit..."

Daz's eyes narrowed. "You also look ill."

"Uh-"

"Pasty."

Stefan flushed.

"And you sounded odd on the phone."

Stefan saw the moment it shifted into place, and realisation dawned behind Daz's eyes.

"You're hungover."

Heat flooded Stefan's cheeks.

"Well, I was going to try talking boundaries with you, but never mind."

"Never m-what?"

"You're drunk."

"I'm hungover! Not drunk."

"Yeah? What'd you have?"

Near enough two litres of the cheapest vodka the corner shop had to offer. The labels spelled Smirnoff with an 'e' and there'd been a report in the paper last year about some students going temporarily blind after doing shots of the stuff.

Somehow, Stefan thought Daz might not like that.

"Pint of cider," he lied.

"Really."

"Yes."

"Lightweight?"

"Um. Yes."

"The truth."

Daz's voice hardened, and Stefan swallowed and dropped his eyes.