Luka
Okay, okay, it had been a day.
More than twelve hours anyway, so that had to count, right?
I’d left Rowan alone since he left the spring yesterday evening.
I hadn’t checked on him after dinner, and I hadn’t even checked his activity log attached to his access pass.
Not that he would know I hadn’t, but goddammit, it was the principle of the matter.
I had tried to give him the space he clearly wanted, but Christ, I had a job to do, and he was here for a reason.
Which was why I had been standing outside his room, staring at the device that would give me access.
All I had to do was swipe my card and enter.
There were no indicators that told me I should go away.
He had already logged in for the day, which meant he was awake; neither privacy nor do-not-disturb mode had been activated, and he hadn’t used the private messaging system to tell me to leave him alone.
Of course, he hadn’t ever used the messaging system, but that wasn’t important.
I thought about calling Reggie, who had told me from the moment I passed my training that I could call him no matter what when I was on this job. That he would always be there to help me, because shit mattered; it always mattered, no matter how stupid it might seem.
Except...ugh, except I didn’t want to call him.
Oh noooo, my assigned guest was being stubborn and emotional, duh. The people who came here had problems, and I didn’t need to go crying to Reggie just because I wasn’t sure what to do. Other Guides had figured out how to do my job before I came along, which meant I could figure it out too.
Right, yes, exactly.
I could do this.
Right?
No, fuck that. Yes, I could.
Taking a deep breath, I pressed my card against the reader.
Only the guest’s Guide or supervisors could enter a guest’s room during standard, resting mode.
Well, there were also emergency protocols, but the AI controlling the systems had algorithms to handle them.
Or at least that’s what I was told, and considering the reader flashed green to show my card had been accepted, that meant I was walking into a room that was perfectly—
“Oh!” I cried out.
Everything in the room was where it should have been. A table and chair, if the guests wanted to eat alone, and a small nook in one corner for reading. The bed in the other corner, the bookshelf, a small fridge, and so on.
Except the breakfast area wasn’t empty, Rowan was there, his pants discarded, his hand wrapped around his—
“Shit!” I hissed as his eyes flashed open and saw me. “No, no, the door was…fuck! Sorry!”
I was out of the room before you could say ‘yessir, everything is proportional’ and slammed the door behind me.
Oh no, fuck this; I was calling Reggie.
“Hey, hey, Mr.…” Reggie began.
“Help!” I snapped into the phone. “SOS, 911, emergency!”
There was a pause, then Reggie’s voice, lacking its normal bluster and warmth, said, “An actual emergency?”
“Not the medical or life-threatening kind,” I corrected, before he got the wrong idea.
“So you’re having a personal emergency.”
“Yes?”
“Oh, good. I wasn’t ready for anything life-threatening,” he said, his tone returning to normal. “So tell Daddy what’s wrong.”
“Do not,” I hissed. “Not right now.”
“Hmm, what happened?”
I briefly explained what had happened the night before. “And I just walked in, and he was...was—”
“What?” Reggie laughed. “Choking the chicken?”
“Uh—”
“Oh shit, he was?”
“Maybe?”
“Hung?”
“Reggie!”
He laughed. “Alright, alright. Jokes aren’t going to work right now, I get that. You walked in on him in a personal moment.”
“You swore up and down the system would prevent us from going in when we shouldn’t,” I accused.
“True,” he said, and there was a frown in his voice. “Which should work, but we don’t have the AI set to know when people are jerking off. So if they don’t use the system, stuff like this is going to happen. It’s no different than people not locking their doors.”
“Reggie,” I breathed, the image still living in my head.
“You know, I’ve never asked whether you’re into men or women, but is this an attraction thing?” he asked curiously.
“No,” I said emphatically. Okay, yes, there was definitely attraction because holy fuck, that was an eyeful. It would be a lot of full things actually, but…no, okay, don’t go there. Don’t go...just no. “He’s a very private person, Reggie. And I just walked in on—”
“Him doing something all of us do, and have done since we realized what our dicks were for,” he said bluntly, in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing wrong with it. This isn’t some ultra testosterone alpha male camp where you go celibate.
He did nothing wrong, and if the system let you in, then you did nothing wrong either.
Welcome to Guiding, Luka. Sometimes it can be messy and awkward, and you have to feel things out. ”
“Bad phrasing,” I muttered because, oh Lord, in any other context I could definitely picture feeling things out.
He chuckled. “Good, there’s your sense of humor coming back. Give him a minute, or an hour, or whatever. But you need to talk to him. You can’t avoid him just because you saw him jerking it like it was going out of style.”
“I never said…” I stopped when Rowan’s door opened, and he appeared, his expression stiff.
“Come in,” he said, and hesitated. “When you’re done with your conversation.”
“I have to go,” I said faintly to Reggie.
“Alright, but one more thing?”
“What?”
“Sometimes the best thing a Guide can do is be himself. Not what he thinks he should be based on what he assumes a Guide is, but who he actually is. Keep that in mind!”
And with that cryptic response, the line cut off, and I was left to stare at my phone and give Rowan the most awkward smile on the planet. Grimacing, I followed him into the room and closed the door with a sigh.
“Okay,” I began once the door closed. “I want to be open with you so you understand. Everything we have in place to guarantee safety and privacy was telling me it was safe to come in. I’m sorry I saw...what I saw, but it wasn’t intentional. I am not judging you, or...whatever, either.”
“Or whatever,” he said in a flat voice.
“Yeah, or whatever. Or whatever you think because it’s obvious you think the worst,” I said, feeling my temper flare before I could get hold of it.
“Because you seem to think I’m incompetent or useless or annoying, or whatever.
I don’t care that you were jerking off. I mean, I care because it was a private moment.
” Not a hot moment, not hot. I definitely didn’t see him stroking his long, thick, cut cock and think ‘holy fuck I wish that were me’ even for a moment.
“And I shouldn’t have witnessed it, not because it was wrong but because it was not meant for me. ”
“I see,” he said dryly.
“Oh, you know what? Fuck off,” I said, and for the first time, his eyes snapped to me in surprise.
“Yeah, fuck you. I’m sorry I walked in on you jerking off, and I’m sorry I’ve been getting on your nerves since you got here, but you know what?
You’ve been getting on my nerves, too. That’s what fucking happens when you’re dealing with people so closely; you get on their nerves, and sometimes you see them jerking off. ”
“I don’t think—”
“No, you think too damn much. And you think you’re the only one who thinks.”
“Er—”
I took a deep breath, focusing on why I was here, because that was not it. “I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday. I’ll be honest, I’m new to this, and despite all my training, I’ve been trying, but I haven’t quite figured it out. So, I’m sorry, but fuck you.”
He looked hesitant. “Am I allowed to speak now?”
I narrowed my eyes, not sure if that was a genuine question or if he was being an ass. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, taking a deep breath. “I’m not sure how I feel about your...speech, as I wasn’t expecting to get yelled at after being caught in such a...private moment. And I definitely wasn’t expecting you to yell at me.”
“Yeah, well, thank Reggie for that,” I muttered, still feeling guilty about having walked in on him. “And for the record, the system showed you were accepting visitors and not wanting private time. So I just came in.”
“Odd, I’m sure I set it to privacy mode.”
“Well, I can’t come in if that’s the case, even my card won’t let me, not unless I clarify that it’s an emergency, and me in emergency mode would have been a lot louder.”
“Wait, Reggie told you to...yell at me?”
I snorted. “No, but I called him because I freaked out when I saw...you. Wanted a bit of guidance, and when he was done making sure I was over freaking out, he told me the best thing a Guide can do sometimes is be himself.”
He stared at me. “We’ll circle around to the first part of that in a moment. You being yourself involves yelling at me?”
“Me being me involves not putting up with someone when they’re an arrogant, rude asshole,” I told him with a huff.
“And you’ve been a standoffish jerk from pretty much the moment we met.
And then when I tried to apologize because I was freaked out, you were showing signs of being an ass again, so I lost my temper. ”
“For someone who says there was nothing wrong with what I was doing,” he said stiffly, and even though he was doing a good job at seeming dignified, he was obviously shaken by what had happened. “You freaked out.”
“Well, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with it, Jesus, everyone does it,” I said with a little laugh. “I just...it’s also super private. And you’re already a super private person, so I was a little freaked out, yeah.”