Chapter 11 #2
I kept my breathing even, eyes narrowed to slits, watching through the dark. Grant was a silhouette in the doorway, stinking of alcohol and moving with the jagged coordination of the truly wasted.
He didn’t wake Kit up like a person wakes up a friend. He didn’t shake his shoulder or whisper his name. Instead, he sat on the edge of the mattress and reached out, his hand sliding under the covers and—judging by where his arm went—up Kit’s thighs.
“Kit,” he rumbled. “I need it.”
I waited for the blowup. For Kit to shove him off, to tell him to get fucked, to remind him it was three in the morning and he was hammered.
Kit shifted, and sat up slowly.
“Dude,” he whispered. “I’m not on Standby.”
“Don’t care,” Grant muttered. He leaned in, his large frame crowding Kit against the headboard. I caught the sound of a zipper. “Just stay still.”
Kit placed a hand on Grant’s chest. “Fine, but not here. Reid’s right there.”
Grant glanced toward my bed for the first time. I stayed still as dead, trying not to give myself away.
“He’s out,” Grant said, turning back to Kit.
“Doesn’t matter, man. We have rules.”
Kit got out of bed. He didn’t put on a shirt. He didn’t even look at me as he led a stumbling, obviously hard Grant out of the room.
I lay there for two hours, staring at the ceiling.
The Theory
Here is my current working case: Kit is letting the guys hit.
All of them. Regularly. Consensually, based on the system, and on the zero distress in anything I’ve observed. He’s not gay, the guys are straight, and yet—consistently, repeatedly, in a managed way with a status dashboard—this is happening.
The question I haven’t answered yet is why.
Not morally—I don’t give a shit about the morality of it, that’s between them. I mean the why. Why would a straight guy let his straight roommates use him like that?
Also, what are the rules? Because there are rules. Kit said so.
There are rules. And I want to know them.
Information is always worth having, and this specific information has been living rent free in my head for a week, and I am—well, I’m interested.
I light a second cigarette off the first, and watch the smoke go.
Interested is the professional term.
Down bad would be the personal one.
* * *
Finn is the weakest link.
It’s not an insult. Finn’s just got the energy of someone who can’t keep a secret to save his life.
You can see it when he starts a sentence and then stalls, or when he laughs at a joke nobody else heard, or when he spends too much time staring at Kit.
He’s been doing all three for two weeks, and I’ve been keeping track.
So on a Wednesday night when the house is quiet and I can hear Finn’s keyboard from the hallway, I knock on his door.
“Yo.”
“Hey.” I lean against the doorframe. “Fill me in on the deal with Kit.”
A little bit of advice: questions give people an exit, statements don’t. You frame it like you’re just checking on something you already know, and they fold.
Finn’s hands freeze over the keys. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I really don’t—”
“I’ve already got the context, dude. I just want the specifics.”
His face does a high-speed reboot.
“Okay,” he says, “but first—and this is very important—I’m not gay.”
I just look at him.
“Like, at all. I want that on the record.”
“Noted.”
“Because what I’m about to tell you could sound—”
“Dude.”
“Right. Okay.” He pulls out his phone. “I’m calling Grant.”
Grant shows up with his arms crossed, Miles right behind him. I grimace internally. Miles and I have a détente built on mutual avoidance, and this is a major deviation from protocol.
“You told him?!” Grant snaps, the second he steps inside the room.
“He already knew,” Finn says, defensive. “He just didn’t have the specifics.”
“You could’ve—”
“He was very persistent!”
“I wasn’t persistent,” I cut in. “I asked only once.”
“You asked once in a way that made it clear you’d already solved the case and were just giving me a chance to confess,” Finn says, pointing at me. “That’s interrogation behavior.”
“I’m pre-law.”
“Okay. So.” Grant sinks onto Finn’s bed and rubs his face. “What do you actually know?”
“You’re fucking him,” I say, because there’s no better way to put it.
Silence.
“That’s basically it, but…“
“We don’t use that word,” Finn adds immediately. “It’s a forbidden word. It sounds gay, and we are obviously not. We say ‘using the doll.’”
Are those guys for real?
“It started with a dare,” Finn continues. “We didn’t just, like, decide this out of nowhere. There was a bet. Kit won. And then… hm… it kind of evolved.”
“The bet was about staying still,” Grant explains. “Kit went completely still. And then afterward—”
“He told us he liked it,” Finn finishes. “He started it. That’s important. He started it.”
“We established a system,” Grant says. I can tell this is the part he’s rehearsed to make the situation sound less unhinged. “A consent framework. He controls availability. Miles built an app for it.”
I look at Miles. He looks back, and I know he’s not going to perform for my approval.
“It’s a solid system,” he says flatly.
“I’m sure it is,” I say, matching his tone.
We stare at each other for a second.
“So Kit is basically a sex doll?” I turn back to the others. “A toy for the house?”
Grant winces. “When you put it like that—”
“That’s what it is, right?”
Finn opens his mouth, closes it, looks at Grant, then back at me. “...Yeah.”
“Okay.” I process that. It’s a clean summary, I don’t see what the issue is. “Does he like it?”
“He loves it,” Finn says with conviction, like he really needs me to believe him. “Like, it’s his thing. He figured this out about himself and we’re just, you know, participating. Helping him expand his horizons and—”
“He gets off on it,” Grant cuts in. “We aren’t assholes taking advantage of him, you know? The doll thing is a whole thing for him. Psychologically. He explained it.”
“So,” Finn says, “now that you know, and again, for the record, none of us are gay—”
“You’ve mentioned.”
“—I just want to make sure you understand that this is a very specific situation and doesn’t reflect on anyone’s—”
“Dude.” I look him in the eye. “I could care less about your sexuality.”
Grant lets out a snort. Miles is looking at me with an expression I can’t read, which is annoying because reading people is my best personality trait.
“You’re not weirded out?” Finn asks. “At all?”
“I didn’t say that.” I think about it honestly. “But I’ve seen weirder.”
“Where?”
“Internet.”
“Okay. Fair.”
Grant leans back on his hands, studying me with a careful look. “You cool with it?”
It’s the right question. I’ve been building the answer for two weeks, ever since I saw the tablet and felt my brain go hold on.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m cool with it.”
* * *
They throw me a party.
I didn’t ask for it, but Saturday night I walk into a rearranged living room, beer in the cooler, six pizzas, and four guys grinning at me. Well, three. Miles is on the couch with his laptop closed, sour as ever. Kit isn’t here.
“Yo! He’s here!” Walker’s the first to spot me. He’s sprawled on the couch, beer in one hand, the other arm stretched across the back.
“Welcome to the shitshow, bro,” Finn says from his place sitting on the floor.
Grant’s got an easy grin. After two weeks, I know it means he’s already three beers deep and planning to go deeper. “Bro! Finally. We were starting to think you got lost.”
“Sorry. My GPS said turn left at Finn’s dick statue,” I say, dropping my bag by the door. “Must’ve missed it.”
It’s not funny, but Walker and Grant cackle anyway. Finn gives me the finger. I see Miles rolling his eyes.
Honestly, I feel myself getting progressively dumber living here, but it feels good to actually fit in.
“Welcome to the party, bro,” Walker announces, gesturing at the spread. “Beer’s in the fridge. Pizza’s probably cold. Weed’s on the table.”
“Classy,” I say, grabbing a beer anyway.
It’s actually a good night. We eat, we drink, and Finn tells a story about a stream disaster that has Grant crying. Miles gets incrementally more human the further into the stash he gets. I’m on my third beer and something from my own stash that hits way harder than what they’re passing around.
About an hour in, though, something shifts. Finn sits up. Walker puts his drink down. Grant gets a look that I recognize now as his “okay, here’s the thing” face.
“Alright,” Grant says. “Part two of the night.”
“We have a welcome gift,” Finn announces with a grin. A shit-eating. A I-know-something-you-don’t grin.
“We talked,” Walker says, “and since you already know—”
“We’re offering you access to the doll,” Miles says, direct as always. “As a trial, I guess. If you want.”
They’re all staring. Three beers in, high as a kite, and four guys are handing me the most unhinged welcome gift in history. My pulse spikes. I don’t think I’d be able to mask my eagerness even if I tried.
“Where is he?”
“Your bed,” Finn says. “We figured your space, your call.”
I start walking, and they follow me immediately, because apparently the pack mentality is strong tonight.
The light’s off, but the hallway spills in enough for me to see a shape in my bed. I reach for the switch and practically punch the lights on.
It’s the sight of a lifetime.
Kit is—yeah. Fuck.
He’s on my bed. Naked, face down, cheek to the mattress, arms loose at his sides. His hips are hiked up, ass high in the air like he’s presenting, but there’s nothing eager about it. He looks placed there. Arranged like furniture.
The guys pile in behind me, trying and mostly failing to be quiet about it.
“Welcome to the house, bro,” Grant says, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Nobody’s used it today,” Walker says from somewhere behind my left shoulder. “We made sure it was cleaned and ready for you. It’s in prime condition.”
“It,” I say, because my brain is stalling and it needs to fix on something that isn’t the curve of Kit’s perfect ass.