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The phone call ends. Roman vaguely feels like he was trying to keep it from doing that, stalling, vamping in some court-jester way of his to get his siblings to just stay on the line so he doesn’t have to be by himself. Maybe. He can’t remember, and it only just happened. Blood cold and face numb. It’s fine, is what Kendall was saying, it’s fine, it’s not like Dad – she’s already fine. First light and we can head out. Storm’s going to clear up by then. Then, sensing Roman had been quiet for some time – Rome, you gonna be okay? I can, like – I’m not far –
What, take a car out in this whiteout and commit yet another vehicular manslaughter just to pretend to babysit me to feel fucking useful? Fuck off, I’m fine. Roman wishes he hadn’t said that, because now nobody is talking and he’s alone with his thoughts. But he hates the way they all treat him after the funeral.
The first funeral, first of many.
She’s fine, is the thing. She’s not dead or dying. It’s Mom – Shiv on the phone – and his blood had frozen solid, but it isn’t like that. It was a scare, she’s in the hospital, but she’s fine. They should be on the way to London already, but this fucking blizzard just won’t let up. All the money in the world, stymied by some frozen bits of shit in the atmosphere. In the morning—they’ll get to fly out in the morning—just have to get through the longest night in the history of humanity and time itself. It’s only seven PM. Roman is destroyed already. Dread has gnawed clean through every cell in his body, and his mind is poisoned and mutated with it. He’s not well. Kendall knew it, Shiv probably did too, but he can’t admit it to them.
Roman knows himself, and knows who he’s going to call tonight, about twenty seconds after Ken and Shiv hang up. So the thing is, there’s no point in agonizing, or waiting, or going back and forth about it. He knows where it’s ending up. The fortuitousness of the big man being in New York and not D.C.—also stuck in the storm—is enough to make it feel fated. Necessary, even. He dials.
“Hey, kiddo. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
His favourite low, nasal drawl – slightly slurred. It’s not like Mencken to drink on the job, but it’s a slow night in the world, every normally frantic establishment from the market to the forum lulled to a quiet, peaceful slumber under the thick, relentless snow. The sky is heavy and grey-violet, purgatorial.
“Can I come over?” Roman says, trying to sound normal. “To your hotel. Just want, um. Well, whatever, really.”
He sounds amused, even through the phone. “You really have a hilarious amount of nerve.”
“Yeah, whatever, can I come over?”
Loud exhale. “You already know. I’ll tell the guys to make themselves scarce. Lucky for you I’m stuck in the city overnight—even Air Force One isn’t allowed up in this, if you’ll believe it.”
“Yeah. Lucky. See you.”
**
When Roman is let into Mencken’s suite by some Secret Service person, he is greeted by no one in the oversized marble foyer, lit by a chandelier-like fixture far too gaudy for this calibre of hotel. Shrugging to himself, he swings by the kitchenette and grabs a bottle of cucumber-infused mineral water from the stocked fridge before heading to the bedroom. Sure enough, there he finds his president, shoulders bent over the handsome bedside table, facing away from the door. Then comes that familiar, off-putting sound of someone doing a bump—deep, almost wet-sounding sniff—and he straightens up, apparently not noticing Roman.
“Really?” Roman wrinkles his nose, taking a sip of his water. “It’s, like, fucking Tuesday, man. And you’re the president.”
Mencken turns around, raising an eyebrow but otherwise not appearing surprised by Roman’s entrance. Grey hair, sharp face, tall frame, red tie, sardonic smile. All exactly as it was last time, all exactly as it should be. Seeing him in the flesh feels like a sigh of relief, like he's tethered to something real again.
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t? Hard fucking job. Want some?”
Roman makes a face and shakes his head. “No, I’m a nice young man, I don’t fucking do drugs.”
“Mm-hmm. Right. And what does a nice young man want with me at this hour?”
Roman flops, graceless and uninvited, onto a big, squashy armchair, as Mencken perches on the very edge of his still perfectly-made king bed across from it, still in his work clothes with only the suit jacket missing, his hands clasped in his lap—studying Roman intently with those pale and penetrating eyes as he waits for an answer.
“Just wanted to hang out. You know. Fucking—guys being dudes, and all. Why, what did you think I wanted?”
Mencken is this close to rolling his eyes. “You look awful. Something the matter?”
“No, fuck you. But—well, yeah. Just stuff I want to get my mind off of. Or something. Whatever.”
“Spit it out, Roman.”
When he says Roman’s name like that, a hard addendum to a condescending imperative, it reminds him of someone. He can’t help but listen, it’s etched into his DNA.
“It’s just—it’s fucking stupid, but it’s my mom. She’s sick, something happened—she’s fine, they say she’s fine, but she’s in the hospital and we can’t get out to jolly old England until morning at the earliest because of the weather, and I just—fucking—don’t want to be thinking about it. Okay, happy?”
The words are hard to say, each one making him feel somehow heavier as it comes out. By the end of his reluctant spiel, he feels like he’s going to throw up and doesn’t want to look Mencken in the eyes. He wishes they could just skip to the good part, but tonight he doesn’t know quite how to get there.
“Well, sorry to hear it. Wishing her a speedy recovery. If you need me to conjure up some business across the pond tomorrow, I can smuggle you over on AF-One. Top priority take-off and all.”
In the warm but low lamplight of the hotel bedroom, Mencken’s impassive face is half-shadowed. He sounds half-sincere and looks nothing like he is. It’s a kind offer.
“Yeah, thanks. Maybe—probably will just see how things look in the morning.”
Some silence—Mencken makes his way over to the whiskey decanter on the writing desk at the other end of the room and wordlessly pours them both a glass, and then sits back down across from Roman, taking a thoughtful sip. It seems he wants to say something but is struggling, a rarity. It’s only when he speaks that Roman realizes he’s trying to quell his curiosity—and failing. He’s clearly already had a drink or two, and it’s making him chatty.
“Remind me,” he says, “do you get along? Or is she as much of a beast as the old man was?”
“No, nothing like that,” Roman says, quicker than even he had expected. “She was better—like, fucking, I don’t know, she’s fine, always was. He was just fucking mean, you know. She wasn’t like that.”
He doesn’t want to be fucking talking about it—his sickened half-memories come crawling, limping slimy creatures that they are, out of the diseased woodwork up there. There were things that Caroline had said, things that he’ll always hold close. Scraps of warmth, small shattered pieces of something that could have been protection if they’d been collected and glued back together by someone capable of such a monumental task.
Boarding school? Bit much isn’t it, sending him away?
He needs it, is what I’m telling you. Don’t fucking do this in front of him at least, making me the villain and all. I see you, I always fucking see you.
That’s dramatic. “Needs it,” he’s ten fucking years old. Whatever the matter is, he’ll grow out of it.
He’s been needing it since he was four, he’s gotten hundreds of chances to prove otherwise and hasn’t been able to. Ken was never like this. Shiv is normal so far. He’s a fucking, he’s a fucking little milksop. Now I’m doing what I can but clearly he’s got some fucking mama’s boy thing going on, so he needs to be away from both of us to get a proper fucking backbone in him.
She raised her hands in surrender, Roman remembers, but at least she started the fight in the first place. It wasn’t the only time she had, either.
Jesus Christ, Logan, stop. He hasn’t done anything. Look, he’s crying now, well done.
Stay the fuck out of it. This is why he fucking has problems in the first place, you can’t stop fucking babying him.
Fine, I’m staying out of it. Keep hitting him, that’ll certainly solve all his psychological issues. Your wisdom knows no bounds.
You’re a cunt, you know that?
Just by the way, not one person here could give a rat’s arse who ordered what and who paid—I know you’re new money, dear, but one shouldn’t make it so obvious. Anyway, I’m leaving. Try not to permanently disfigure him, it’ll make people like him less.
“I—it’s funny,” Roman is blabbering, “I almost forget this, I actually wanted to stay with her when they divorced. They asked us to pick right in front of everyone because they were all fucking insane and then I was the only one they didn’t listen to. Sorry, you don’t fucking care, I—”
“No, it’s fine.” Jeryd is looking at him with mild interest, that way he does sometimes, the same way he looks at an article in the New Yorker that he’ll earmark for later. “Don’t apologize.”
Kendall and Shiv both pick Logan easily and quickly.
Menace and threat in his father’s voice when he says, “Romulus?”
Of course he wants to say Caroline.
“Dad, I mean, I’d like to. But the thing is, Mom—just, since they already picked, I guess wouldn’t it be fair if someone went with Mom? I just—just so it’s fair, you know, and it’s just me left over. So maybe Mom?"
“Fucking mama’s boy. She’s not done a single fucking thing for you in your life, do you not see that?”
“Fuck off, Logan,” she says, voice clipped. “The boy’s made his choice. I haven’t said a word to the other two, much as I’d like to.”
“Alright, well we’ll just fucking see about this.”
He hadn’t thought that Logan would fight to keep him, not when he was so happy to send him away five years ago, and is never happy to see him come back. But he did—and of course Caroline didn’t fight much at all in return.
“So you’ll be with your father too, I’m afraid,” she tells him a day later. “But do visit whenever you’d like.”
“But—but I said—but they got to choose,” he says, helplessly. “How come I don’t get to choose? Mom, I’ll be good, I’m away at school most of the time anyway. I won’t even bother you or anything, I just think—like, it would just be fucking nice for us, right? Away from those stone-cold bastards the three of them, no? I thought you’d like that. I thought you—Mom, I wanted—”
“Oh, Ro-Ro, don’t do this to me, please. I’d have very much liked that, but you know what your father’s like, won’t ever take no for an answer.”
He imagines what he must have said to her to get her to do an about-face so quickly. Logan always knew more of his troubles than Caroline, at St. Andrews and earlier too with the wolf-pack, which is why she felt at least a little like a refuge—less for her to use against him.
He never looked at her exactly the same after that, too scared to ask her what she knew. For her part, Roman knows that she’ll take it to her grave. He knows now that despite her airs and graces about her children being stolen away, she was on some level thrilled to not have to be a mother full-time anymore, and she was easily bribed out of keeping Roman for herself.
Still – all of her attempts, they’re just not nothing, that’s all. Everyone is as frigid as the next—Kendall and Shiv will pick her apart, just like they did Logan, trying to find blame wherever they can. Logan and Caroline certainly did their fair share of the same, the other way around. Then there’s Roman, always left to wonder why the coldness skipped him—he won’t kid himself, he's no angel, but there’s always been that one particular gulf between him and the rest that’s hard to put a name to. It isn’t a heart—no Roy gets to have one of those—but perhaps something that looks like one, bleeding and diseased and smelling of copper and rot. So he’ll sit there with the teeth-marked bones that his brother and sister left behind after tearing apart the effigies of their parents and play pretend with them, pretending that they’re whole, warm-blooded people.
“I mean, it’s nice. Always good to have one nicer one,” Mencken is saying.
“Sounds like yours wasn’t the nice one.”
Roman takes a sip of the whiskey—an unpleasant burn in his throat, not his favourite—trying to deflect away from feeling like a specimen that Mencken is examining with that same detached, intellectual curiosity.
“Oh, she was cruel beyond words.” Mencken’s offhandedness is entirely believable. “Very devout Catholic woman, to this day, and she got it in her head early on that I was a certain way, and really wanted to, ah, exorcise that any way she could.”
“Why do you have to phrase it like you’re ninety fucking years old and the Pope? Just say she tried to beat out the ol’ faggotry out of you and then join the fucking club.”
This feels so oddly normal, and not what he came for. Mencken smiles slightly at this, but it’s clearly not sentimental.
“Well, sure, if you want to be fucking crass. It’s just that she could tell, even when I didn’t even know myself. I mean, she wasn’t wrong. I clocked you, you clocked me, right. There’s something that people can pick up on. She did me a favour trying to kick it out of me so people could take me seriously. Though,” he says, inclining his head towards Roman, “like I said, I guess something still shows.”
“It’s the hands—not the hands, the way you move them,” Roman says, leaving out that it’s mostly the way that he looked at Roman, hunger in his predator’s eyes.
“Limp wrist, really? At fifty-four? Great, I’ll tell Mom, she’ll be so pleased it might cure her dementia.”
Roman snorts out an unexpected laugh at this. The way he just doesn’t give a shit, that sociopathic twinkle in his eye at every world—it can be equal parts frightening and funny. His own mother had the tiniest health scare and he’s spiraling to his death, and then there’s fucking Jeryd.
“So then,” Roman says, his own curiosity getting the better of him. “Are you, like – do you only – with men?”
Jeryd appears to consider this deeply, sipping the last of his glass. “I think so. Women are – well. They’ve, ah, struggled to capture my attention and imagination, let’s put it that way. Keep it politically correct and all.”
“Do you love your wife?” Roman asks, far too bluntly. He doesn’t really have it in him to play ball, the coy back and forth that usually is so fun. He just wants to talk, but his conversational skills have turned into a blunt, clumsy instrument in search of something—anything—true.
“No,” Jeryd says, not sounding apologetic in the least. “She feels the same, more or less. It’s a partnership, and a good one. I don’t love my chief of staff, either.”
“You don’t fuck your chief of staff,” Roman points out.
Jeryd looks over with that cruel glint in his eyes that Roman knows well. “I don’t love everyone I fuck. Surely you know that?”
Roman rolls his eyes, but he can feel his face colouring with the sudden humiliation that washes over him, prickly and warm. The whole situation is still making him sick to his stomach. “Yeah, fuck you.”
I don’t fucking love you either, is what he doesn’t say, because it makes him sound like a child, even though it’s true. Nothing this perverse could ever be called that. But then, that could be true of his whole life. The memories, those fucking memories, all of them coming up in an avalanche of sick, fetid decay, and his dad is dead, and he died thinking Roman was a sick little nothing faggot, and his mom is dying—maybe not today, but slowly, she’s not young anymore—and she’ll die not loving him the way he loves her, and there’s nobody in the world for that, and it’s sick, and he’s broken, and he’ll never not be this way, and everyone else will die, and then nobody will even pretend anymore.
Roman jumps out of the chair and starts kind of pacing, erratic half-movements in front of Jeryd.
“Listen, it’s just – like, you know what I – do you have time to – could you just – I’m just, kind of – kind of –”
He can’t fucking speak, can’t look at him either – so surprise cuts through his sudden-onset bout of insanity like a knife when he feels Jeryd’s big, cold hand on his shoulder, steadying him and squeezing just hard enough that he stops in his tracks.
“Shh, it’s alright. Daddy’s got you.”
Finally.
“I just—” Roman still isn’t looking at him. “I fucking need you to hurt me, okay. If you need to make me fucking say it. Now that we’ve had our bro-talk and our whiskeys and fucking whatever, I need you to fucking do something awful to me. Please.”
“Okay. Yeah. Well, we can work with that.” Jeryd takes a deep breath, and Roman can hear just from that how this is turning him on. Which is perfect, it’s exactly what should be happening. “One thing, though. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Why?” Roman says bluntly, annoyed into wrenching himself out of the grasp on his shoulder. “Don’t fucking pussy out on me now.”
Jeryd lightly lifts Roman’s chin with a finger, raising his head so that he is finally looking up and into Jeryd’s’ eyes, deliberately emphasizing how much smaller Roman is than him.
“Well, no, I won’t. To clarify, I don’t want to hit you. I mean, not in that violent way you sometimes love so much. Waste of a nice night, puts a dark colour on things, you know. But—if you’re up for something more fun, I can try getting all this off your mind. And most other things, too. Only if you want, though.”
“Yes,” Roman blurts, his heartrate increasing exponentially every second after he said but. Swoop of relief in his stomach, that he is about to be given the thing that makes everything better. “Yes, yeah, sure. Anything, whatever you want. Anything, please.”
“Okay.” Jeryd pats him on the cheek lightly. “Listen, you’re going to do everything you’re told and nothing else. You don’t even get to speak unless I say you can. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Heavy, heavy silence, air thick with expectation, something deeply sordid beginning to settle into the charged atmosphere between them. Jeryd, slowly and silently like some mythic predator, slinks over to the armchair Roman had previously been occupying, and looks over at a silent, suddenly obedient Roman with his head cocked slightly to the side. Still that same dispassionate observation, but now with an electric current of something very dark right beneath it, that you can see only in the thunderclouds of his eyes if you know how to look for it. And Roman very much does.
“Take your clothes off. All of them.”
Not his favourite part, but he always gets a thrilling, humiliating jolt from doing what he’s told like this. Though for him it’s an intense and profound embarrassment, Jeryd’s never said anything about his body before, positive or negative, like it doesn’t exist in a physical form, and so Roman thinks that he gets it, even if he won’t admit that he does. He hopes he can stop thinking about this or anything soon—he’s slipping under but not quite yet there.
Soon he stands naked in front of Jeryd, lazing on the armchair—he gets his cock out of his slacks, but otherwise does not undress himself.
“Well, come on,” he says, clearly trying to conceal a smile, slightly mean but not exactly. Roman’s heart does a bit of a backflip as he remembers the various substances Jeryd has been indulging in before this moment. That’s not usual for them, he thinks. “Help me get it up, will you?”
Roman knows by now that this means he wants Roman’s mouth. Obediently, he gets on his knees in front of him and parts his lips, barely getting his mouth on the already half-hard appendage before Jeryd grabs a fistful of his hair and forces the sucking motion on him, pulling his head back and forth brutally up and down his cock. The exact same thing Roman would be doing of his own volition when asked, but that’s not the point—because Jeryd could get himself hard too with a few quick strokes of a hand, but that’s also not the point. Or, it is. The idea that his own hands and Roman’s mouth both equally belong to him, are both tools at his complete and utter disposal to casually use to get his dick hard, is one that Roman knows appeals to him, and of course Roman himself would find it hot if he wasn’t focusing so hard trying not to choke on the thick and now definitely rock hard cock being fucked at an aggressive pace into his mouth and throat.
It’s over in fairly short order, as clearly Jeryd has other plans for the evening. He gets it all the way in and holds Roman’s head right up against his groin, throat full and nose pressing against his skin so that he can’t breathe. He keeps it there for just as long as it takes for Roman to start to sputter and gurgle around it, and then it’s done. A string of saliva connects them as he pulls Roman off with a wet, sick sound, Roman looking up at him expectantly for his next instructions.
“Christ,” he says, with half a smile. “Fuck. Looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing.” He points at his crotch, dick now sufficiently erect. Roman’s is getting there too, but that’s not always relevant to their activities. “Come on, let’s have some fun. Why don’t you have a seat.”
An “oh” comes out of Roman unwittingly as he realizes what he’s meant to do. Things get lubed up and readied, and Jeryd instructs him to get it all the way in, wants him sitting on his lap – facing outward – in essentially the most debauched way possible. Roman hasn’t ever done this before, and he struggles to work it into his hole, his thighs already hurting with the effort, motivated entirely by the way he can hear Jeryd’s breath hitch ever so slightly when he moves, when he gets more of his cock inside of him.
“Easy, kiddo, easy now – take it slow,” Jeryd murmurs, the amusement in his voice clear as day – still, there’s some sincere affection there, or Roman has to believe there is. He’s sitting back, enjoying the view, as Roman gasps and strains trying to fill himself up. “Don’t want you hurting yourself. Yeah, there you go. Slowly.”
Jeryd’s gentle instructions, as if explaining to a child how to tie their shoe, are jarring against the absolutely depravity of the things Roman is certain he is going to make him do tonight – that he’s already making Roman do. That Roman is willing to do, of course.
Eventually, he gets himself to where Jeryd wants him, sitting awkwardly in his lap with his legs splayed over Jeryd’s, cock buried to the hilt inside him. He expects Jeryd will want him to fuck himself on the cock he’s now impaled on, backwards facing the room, but the instruction never comes. Jeryd doesn’t move either—Roman wants to do something, anything, so frustratingly full but not getting fucked in any way, not getting anywhere close to release—but he’s not permitted. He can’t help but squirm, trying to stop his instinct to start riding him.
“Close your eyes,” Jeryd says eventually. “Keep them closed until I say. Put your hands behind your back and hold them together. You won’t be needing them.”
Roman does so wordlessly, the act of obedience itself causing blood to rush to his cock with enthusiasm that’s almost painful. Jeryd maneuvers him with another fistful of hair, easing him so that his body is fully leaned against Jeryd’s, sitting on his lap with his hole full of him, his head lolling onto Jeryd’s shoulder. It makes him feel small, almost child-sized, the way he fits into Jeryd like this, his feet just barely hitting the carpet. He’s told to open his legs more, and he does. His hands are trapped between his back and Jeryd’s front pressing together—he could certainly move them if he wanted to, but it’s close enough to being restrained to feel real.
Then he feels a finger brush over the head of his cock and it feels like he’s been struck by lightning.
This isn’t how they usually do things – when Roman gets to come, it’s either when he jerks himself off while sucking off Jeryd or untouched when getting fucked. Jeryd loves giving him the latter, all the time and multiple at once if he can manage it, but hasn’t really ever bothered with his dick before. Roman wants to shrink away, close his legs up – he likes the way they usually do it. This makes him feel too exposed, too physically present, too much of an autonomous person in this. And the way Jeryd’s huge hand wraps all the way around his small cock easily, dwarfing it – something Roman can barely do to his much girthier one with his much smaller hands – making it feel like it’s fucking tiny, and it’s humiliating. But he can’t pull away from the touch, he’s not allowed. He’s been told to keep his legs open like a good little whore. So he’ll take this.
Jeryd starts pumping his cock, slowly and then faster – it’s almost disappointing in the way that Roman feels like he’s going to be finished in about thirty seconds from now. He was hoping for a longer session.
The very moment he thinks God, I’m close and lets out a shaky moan, Jeryd’s hand disappears. His eyes fly open before he remembers that it’s not allowed and he squeezes them shut again, hoping Jeryd didn’t notice. He probably won’t really get punished for not obeying, and Jeryd’s been hard-pressed to find any punishments that Roman doesn’t like on some level, but he likes to be good just for the sake of it. A whimper escapes his mouth as he realizes what this game is.
“Oh, right,” comes the deep, snide whisper in his ear, hands brushing his waist to reposition him slightly on Jeryd’s cock. “Just one more rule. You can’t come until daddy says you can.”
Roman groans as he starts stroking again, harder and faster than last time, showing him that it’s on him to hold back and that it’ll be his fault if he doesn’t. He feels Jeryd’s hand on his exposed neck, squeezing ever so slightly as he keeps jerking Roman off. Cock filling him up, being jerked off against his will, choked, not allowed to see or speak or move – every semblance of self and mind and memory evaporates from him as he fights off the impending orgasm with every fibre of his being.
“Too close.” He realizes somewhere in the recesses of his mind that’s begging to not be given the thing he wants. If he realizes it, Jeryd certainly has and is relishing it. “Stop, stop, please.”
Sharp backhand to his face, seemingly out of nowhere. Jeryd slows but doesn’t stop – still feels merciful. “Didn’t give you permission to speak.”
“Sorry,” Roman gasps.
“Oh, and eyes open too.” Jeryd pulls his head back by his hair so he can see his face, glazed-over wide-open eyes, the order from earlier totally forgotten—then slaps him again, harder. First time was gentler, this time feels like a father, feels perfect. “Good Lord, you’re stupid today.”
“Sorr—ah—sorry.”
Roman groans in a mix of relief and frustration in incomprehensibly equal measure as Jeryd withdraws his hand again.
Behind him he hears Jeryd doing something, a light swish of fabric against fabric and then all of a sudden there’s a strip of something covering his eyes, being tied behind is head – his tie, Roman realizes, that he was just now taking off.
“There you go,” he says, and Roman can hear with a flip of fear in his stomach the slight slurring in his words. It’s not like Jeryd to get too drunk on a week night, but this is going a bit further than he expected it would. “Now we don’t need to rely on your famously terrible sense of personal restraint.”
Roman swallows, voice dry. “Thanks.”
Then he edges Roman again, deftly and with presidential efficiency, jerking him hard and fast until Roman cries out begging for him to stop again. And then again, pausing only briefly in between. As he does, Roman becomes more keenly aware of the pure humiliation of it all, which of course goes straight to his already weeping (physically and, in its way, emotionally) dick. Jeryd fully clothed still, Roman completely naked on his lap like some fucking puppet, forced to sit uncomfortably on his cock, eyes covered and hands self-restrained, his whole body stiff and convulsing and coming completely undone by nothing except Jeryd’s hands moving so lazily, as he leans back into the chair completely relaxed and unbothered, having no expectation that Roman will try to stop him from doing whatever he wants to his body, clearly feeling like he has more right to touch his cock, his everything, than Roman does in this moment. And why shouldn’t he, after all? It all reminds Roman of what a fucked up craven contemptible docile little thing he is and it makes him so horny he feels almost sick.
As Jeryd withdraws his full hand and instead lets his fingers lightly tease the head of Roman’s cock, he half-whispers, in that deep, mocking drawl of his, “Why don’t you bounce a little, hmm? My turn for a little fun. Go on, do it. Now.”
Roman hastily complies, starts awkwardly fucking himself up and down on Jeryd’s cock, so deep inside him it feels like even the slightest of movements is going to hit him where it counts and make him cum immediately anyway with how sensitive he is. It’s a sort of humiliating movement, and difficult, the bounce up and down with his eyes covered and hands still fixed behind his back.
“All the way in,” Jeryd says and Roman obeys instantly, his thigh muscles burning with the effort.
Jeryd chokes him with one hand and laughs meanly as the whimpers come out of Roman involuntarily.
This isn’t a reprieve from the hand stroking his dick, it’s just as bad—with Jeryd continually asking him to go faster, harder, hitting him on the back of the head when he doesn’t immediately comply correctly, not used to this type or this level of exertion. He’s now just fucking himself hard enough to again be riding the edge of orgasm with keen, wanton desperation, and still he won’t let Roman stop. He keeps going until he can’t anymore, not being able to expend the physical effort of the act itself along with the extraordinary mental focus needed to hold himself back from orgasming right then and there, cock untouched.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, still trying to move his hips but completely spent. Still, he wasn’t told he could stop so he does his best, more grinding than riding at this point. “Sorry, ‘mtired.”
“No, no, you did great. You can stop. Good girl.”
Roman feels a soft kiss on the top of his head. He’s being so nice, all of this is so nice. All focused on Roman’s pleasure, on keeping his anxieties at bay. It makes Roman warm to realize that this fucked-up mess of a relationship does actually involve Jeryd caring about him, no matter the ways in which that gets expressed. Better this way than any other way, actually, he thinks – this way means that he really understands Roman, gets what he needs and what he doesn’t want. Maybe in another life, he could have come to someone for comfort, been held lovingly and kissed and told that everything was going to be okay, that I’m here for you and we’ll figure this out, and sleep next to each other soundly with him in somebody’s safe and protected embrace. But that’s not what he gets in this life—in this one, he recoils at the thought of intimacy like that. Maybe he yearns for it all the same, but he knows by now that it’s not anything he can accept. Like how carrion-eating scavengers can only stomach rotting flesh and death and cannot live on anything else, there’s no place inside him that is built to hold those things that taste like sweetness.
Afer that, Jeryd’s hand immediately goes back to his cock, lightly fingering the length of it to start back up on the teasing. The combination of the good girl and the touch against his extraordinarily sensitive flesh makes him convulse so hard he feels for a second like he might be having a seizure.
Exhausted, now he lets himself collapse into Jeryd, not holding up his own head or body or anything, his legs splayed wide, head lolling on Jeryd’s shoulder. He slips out of his mind completely and just lets Jeryd touch him and tease him and lets anything come out of his mouth, moans and strings of filthy expletives and drool and whimpers. He no longer has control – each time he reflexively tries to jump away from Jeryd’s touch, he moves Jeryd’s cock inside him which also brings so painfully closer to what his body is screaming for, trapping him between two excruciating sensations and giving him no release, reprieve, or escape. The makeshift blindfold prevents him from being able to at all anticipate what’s going to happen to him next, making it that much easier to relinquish control.
“You probably hate me right now, right?”
Jeryd loves to talk to him when he’s really good and made sure he’s barely capable of speech. His hand moves from playing with Roman’s painfully stiff nipple up to his throat, just holding it there as he pumps a helpless Roman’s cock again and whispers his lilting, teasing words right into his ear.
Roman nods. He really kind of does.
“But you’ll let me do anything to you? Like now, I could do just anything to you, and you wouldn’t do anything to stop me.”
He nods again, or at least he think he nods, the whimpers coming out of his mouth still not quite words.
Suddenly Jeryd’s hand at his throat is squeezing harder than he was before, so hard that Roman really struggles to breathe.
“Like that. You know I could just choke you harder and harder until you pass out. Or, until, well, you know – worse. And you’d be thinking, well if you could think right now, that I wouldn’t get away with it. That you’re rich and important. And that might be true, but, and here’s the thing – ” He leans in so close that his breath is ticking Roman’s ear, that he can feel the vibration of his voice under his own skin. “I’m the fucking president of the United States. So, yeah, I’ll get away with it.”
Roman’s skin starts to prickle with fear and instinctual blind (literally) panic sets in his stomach from the fact that he can hardly breathe, and at the same time, the unrelenting stimulation of his cock brings him insanely close to orgasm again. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to meditate on the fact that possibly cumming against Jeryd’s orders causes almost the same amount of fear as him choking Roman to unconsciousness or death; his commands become the laws of Roman’s universe.
Jeryd lets go of his neck and his cock all at once, abruptly. He hasn’t stopped touching him, though, just teasing again now.
“I won’t, of course,” he continues lightly, sounding amused. “Anything in the world I could do, and all I’m doing, really, is trying to make you feel good. You should be grateful. I’m good to you, Roman.”
Roman nods, fervently. He would never disagree with that and tries hard to say something coherent to that effect, the words starting to form in his mind – I am, I know, I know you are, you always are – and then Jeryd starts pumping his cock again when he barely got a chance to recover from the last one and nothing comes out but an inhuman sort of high-pitched noise again.
“Right. So, then, what do we say?” Jeryd teases in his ear again.
With great effort, Roman moans out, “Thank you, daddy,” and gets an approving pat on the thigh for it – the right answer. He can’t help but preen at the implicit praise. That Jeryd just made him profess his gratitude to him for not strangling him to death while he sits there blindfolded with his cock buried to the hilt inside him being manhandled and controlled and psychologically tormented through his own dick, well, it just makes him hornier. Which just compounds the existing problems.
And on it goes for – he doesn’t know how long. Jeryd alternates between jerking Roman’s cock and doing other maddening, teasing things to ensure that he never gets close enough to tip over the edge. Sucking on his neck, cupping and tickling his balls. Grabbing his ass and shifting him so that he feels the cock inside him. Rubbing a circle with the pad of one finger on the head of his weeping cock, making the exact same motion on one of his nipples, then the other. He’s always been so delighted by how sensitive they are, has made a habit out of rubbing and tugging and sucking on them just to see Roman’s heightened reaction and then his shame at having it one after the other. Just like a girl, he would marvel. Right now, the entire naked expanse of his body is Jeryd’s plaything; hands firmly behind his back, eyes covered, he has no way of stopping him even if he had any inclination to, and so he is entirely uninhibited in running those big and rough hands all over him, still with complacent sense of ownership about it—not an ounce of self-consciousness or hesitation. He’s having fun, laughing whenever a particularly humiliating noise comes out of Roman, cheerfully slapping him around every time Roman accidentally talks without permission or breaks some other made-up rule. As for Roman, his entire nervous system has been removed and replaced by nothing except an aching need to come, so he’s limp and pliant in Jeryd’s lap, quivering and twitching only on reflex as his body is played like an instrument for his master’s amusement, letting it all happen.
“Do you want to come?”
His hand is in Roman’s mouth—three large, long fingers shoved in there all the way, just short of activating his gag reflex. He has been sucking them clumsily, sightlessly – but as intently as if there was a cock there. At this point Roman thinks you could put anything vaguely phallic there and he would have no choice but to enthusiastically blow it – there’s nothing left in his melted brain to protest. Jeryd’s other hand is violently jerking him off, Roman whimpering through his stuffed mouth. Powerless, so powerless. Can’t even speak, can’t do anything but take it. He slows and then goes fast again, and Roman has to take whatever he decides to do. Time has sort of lost all its meaning—he knows Jeryd keeps edging him but has no idea how many times he’s been brought to the brink and then denied, nor for how long it’s been happening. Ten times, a hundred. All night or an hour.
Roman makes a noise that sort of sounds like what?
Jeryd repeats it, slower and stupider, like he’s talking to a moron.
“Please fuck please,” is the vague approximation of what comes out of him, punctuated by whimpers and muffled by the fingers still in his mouth. He doesn’t even know if he really wants to, because that would mean this is over—wants to exist in this depraved space for eternity—but his body is pushing him towards it anyway.
“I might let you soon, but only when I say, okay?”
Roman nods vaguely as Jeryd pumps his tiny pathetic cock even faster. He hasn’t gotten the instruction yet but he’s unbelievably close, he feels like he’s going to fucking explode—
He stops. Takes his hand off. Roman lets out an agonized cry of frustration.
“Shush,” Jeryd admonishes, twisting one of his nipples hard to get the point across. “Too fucking loud, princess.”
To shut him up, he brings his fingers to Roman’s mouth again, which he starts sucking on again gratefully, as though they were some kind of twisted fucking pacifier. He doesn’t have enough mind left to be embarrassed, and even if he did, it would just turn him on even more.
“Thank you,” he says again without needing to be prompted—fully unintelligible—and means it.
He brings Roman to the edge roughly again, and Roman convinces himself he’s going to hear the blessed word, but he never does. Then, he moves Roman by the waist and hoists him even closer to him, grabbing his throat tight and nudging his legs open even wider and it feels like he’s really preparing to finally give it to him, and he starts slowly stroking Roman’s cock again (Roman’s entire body stiff and trembling the moment his hand so much as brushes it). He moans unrepentantly, forgetting the shushing he received only a few minutes ago, fucking into his touch, any minute now –
“Okay,” Jeryd says, and he’s going to say it, he’s going to say it, he’s going to say it – “Actually, no, not yet.”
And Roman’s left desperately humping the air again, letting out the sort of garbled, guttural whine – choked off by the hand at his neck – he had no idea he was capable of producing.
When no hand comes back to touch him again—give him another chance—for a good few moments, he grinds down on Jeryd’s cock forcefully in frustration, the only thing he can do to himself without being allowed to use his hands. He’s too tired to try and actively fuck himself on it but tries getting the message across anyway.
“Oh, that’s what you want?” Jeryd says, faux-genuine. “All this time you just wanted a good fucking? You should’ve just said.”
“Fuck you,” Roman grits out, anticipating and relishing in the rap to the back of the head that those words earn him. It’s not untrue, though—he would far prefer getting fucked to whatever unholy torture this is. He would like nothing more to go back to pretending his cock doesn’t exist like they usually do and get Jeryd to make him cum over and over the better way.
“Listen, I’m holding back too, kiddo,” he says. “Trying to keep this fun for you. It’s not easy.”
“Holding—?” Roman gasps, the words broken by noises he can’t help but make. “Fuck you, fuck you, old man. Fuck you. Holding back. Fuck you.”
Two stinging, open-handed slaps to his face for this extra insolence – he loves feeling the cold, hard metal of that familiar wedding ring.
“Come on, show me how much you really want it.”
Roman grinds harder, moaning a little louder than strictly necessary, making a show of how much he needs anything that Jeryd is willing to give.
It works, and Jeryd stands up abruptly, making Roman stumble a little and whimper as Jeryd’s cock slips out of him, but Jeryd deftly and roughly maneuvers him towards the bed and bends him over it. Roman spreads his legs wide instinctively, without needing to be told. He feels the tie being untied from his eyes, but almost immediately, Jeryd wraps it around his neck, holding both ends in one fist, and pulls it taut so that he can still choke him without having to bend too far over. Roman sputters a little but it’s not so tight that he can’t breathe almost normally. Then, before he can so much as whine for it, Jeryd thrusts all the way into him with full force and he yelps out loud.
“Oh, and here’s the last rule,” Jeryd says, lazily fucking into Roman, as if it’s an afterthought. “You’re allowed to orgasm, but absolutely no touching – no touching, no grinding, no humping, nothing. You come by getting your cunt fucked like a good girl or you don’t come. Of course that means you also have to get there before I do, otherwise you’re SOL. And I’m fucking close already since you’ve been squirming on my dick for the past hour. Understand?”
“Yeah, god - "
“Tell me what you understood.”
“Good girls cum – cunt – fucked,” he gasps out, entire frame being shaken by the roughness, barely knowing what he’s saying.
“And you’re my good girl?”
It’s meant to be degrading and humiliating – and it is, most certainly, though the harsher shame usually comes after – but somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind he realizes when Jeryd says these things that it’s all he ever wanted, to be daddy’s little girl. He hadn’t been able to understand the specific envy he had for Shiv until sometime in his twenties, figuring before then that it was just because she was Dad’s favourite. But once certain issues of his became apparent and unavoidable, he had become mired in despair, had lost all hope of ever being the sort of man his father wanted his sons to be, promised himself he would hide all of it as best he possibly could and keep fucking trying, to no avail, until the very end of Logan’s life or his own, whichever came first. (He had really thought all along that his own would somehow come first, is still shell-shocked several months later that it didn’t.) Around then he had realized Shiv had exactly what he wanted – to be loved without having to measure up to something that was, for him, impossible to attain. No need to be a man, be a man, be a fucking man – just daddy’s best little girl, rewarded instead of punished for being sweet and loving and docile. And he had what Shiv wanted, the chance at being taken seriously if he could prove his worth, something they both know she never really got. Such punishments for both of them, being born in these bodies. Well, until now. Now he has Jeryd who lets him be this pitiful half-human barely-a-man thing without any need to apologize for it. The dad he always needed.
Roman whimpers again, overcome. “Yes, daddy.”
Jeryd is the one who likes it when he calls him that—but if Roman sometimes half-drops that second syllable, the way he likes it, Jeryd won’t notice, or at least will pretend not to.
The tie playing the role of noose around his neck, he realizes, prevents him from pushing himself further forward onto the bed to grind his cock against the mattress without cutting off his own air supply further. With his own hands still forced behind him by the absolute, ingrained necessity of obedience, there’s nothing that can provide him with any needed friction.
Understanding his predicament, he tries his best to stick his ass out further in a bid to entice Jeryd into fucking him harder and deeper, but the absolute fucking asshole—who knows perfectly well how to get Roman off like this, given how much he’s done it in the past—is thrusting as shallowly as possible, so that he can’t get any closer to orgasm no matter how hard he tries—but so that he knows Jeryd draws ever closer, meaning that his window is closing. Before he didn’t care much one way or the other if he ever got to climax, but now they’re doing it the way he likes it.
After a couple of minutes he cries out in frustration. “Fuck, please—harder.”
“Alright, calm down. I’m starting to wonder why I ever let you touch your own dick, actually, when this is so much more fun. Maybe from now on you have to fuck your cunt with something if you ever want to come even if I’m not around. No touching the boy parts without daddy’s permission.”
If he could, Roman might point out that he’ll have no way of knowing, but it’s moot anyway – they both know Roman will do what he’s told.
Suddenly he’s being fucked right where he needs to be, tingly shockwaves running all around his body, and he’s right there, just ten more seconds – it’s not hard for him to cum like this, untouched (like a good girl), but it’s not as easy as the other way, either. Especially after all this teasing, he feels like he would just need a light touch to his cock and he’d be there. This takes more work, but still he’s right there, so close.
“Fuck, fuck – thank you – ”
The words tumble out of Roman as finally, finally, fucking finally, he starts to feel it coursing through him, those waves of pleasure, and cum starts spurting out of his straining, neglected cock. But after about half a second, just before it crests into its climax, Jeryd groans in the way that Roman knows well and then he’s being filled with cum and Jeryd pulls out quickly, all the way, not even pumping his load into Roman’s hole like he always does but letting it mostly trickle out.
“No, wait, no—”
Roman groans as the stimulation he needs to really, properly cum is withdrawn so abruptly that he can’t get there anymore, an empty pulse of something throbbing around his cock and the rest of his body in a poor, poor imitation of the real thing. Roman’s cock keeps weakly dribbling out its load but there’s no real pleasure in it anymore, just the completion of a process.
“Sorry,” Jeryd is saying as Roman’s ears are ringing and he’s trying to process what just happened to him – orgasm but not really, but he’s softening now so it was an orgasm of some kind and he can’t get a real one now, the absolute fucking worst of both worlds. “But those were the rules.”
Jeryd sits back in the armchair where the ordeal began, clearly worn out himself from the exertion. Sweat curls the ends of his short, grey hair, making it look longer. Roman has sunk to the floor at the foot of the bed, resting his forehead on the mattress – his whole body hurts and trembles, his hole is aching, and he’s twisted all the way through with all kinds of awful feelings that have come all the way back up to haunt him the moment this ended. In a bid to get some of the comfort back, he shuffles across the floor over to Jeryd, wanting to be nonspecifically near him.
Jeryd doesn’t stop him when he goes over and rests his head on Jeryd’s thigh, kneeling at his feet.
“Be careful, please,” he says, gesturing to the mess of semen around Roman’s lower half, front and back, and then his expensive loafers. “These are Berluti.”
Still, he starts to stroke Roman’s hair, gentle as anything, as Roman just sort of sinks into him.
“I know that, motherfucker, I paid for them.”
Jeryd shrugs, taking the point. There had been a bit of a scandal with some of the more expensive items he’s gotten with Roman’s credit cards, the papers picking up on it and wondering how much he could truly be a champion for the red-blooded mountain-folk working class with four thousand dollar shoes and silk ties by Tom Ford, so he’s cut back on the gift-giving. Or, rather, Jeryd has cut back on the gift-taking. Jeryd still wears the things that were reported on, reasoning that they already know I have ’em, right? Be worse if I just wore ’em once and then tossed ’em.
Roman doesn’t care how much they cost—it’s all nothing to him. He doesn’t want to be careful because he wants Jeryd to make him lick them clean while he watches, wants Jeryd to crush his neck by stepping on it with them, wants him to make Roman rut against them like a dog with Jeryd’s cock choking his throat if he ever wants to cum again. Wants worse, wants everything, hates it all, makes his stomach hurt. He wants to get out of here, wants to be on a plane to a cold hospital room in a colder country, wants that reality to disappear completely, wants the entire universe to fold itself into this one hotel room, warm and sick in a different sense, so that nothing else exists and he doesn’t have to be anything else to anyone, ever again. He misses his mom.
He realizes that he’s crying and tries to stop himself.
“Sorry, fuck – sorry,” he can hear himself saying – whimpering – “I know you don’t like this—”
“Hey, no, it’s good. I understand. The bond between mother and child is as godly as it gets – I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this, what you’re feeling, it’s God’s love, God’s grace, moving itself through you.”
Roman is kneeling naked at Jeryd’s feet trying to hold back his tears but failing, a sob pulling itself out of his throat, as he says these things that to Roman feel incomprehensible—God certainly never loved him before, God has only ever meant punishment at the hands of the men that chose to serve him — until the minute Jeryd reaches down to stroke Roman’s tear-stained cheek in an imitation of tenderness and then something tumbles into place in his mind. They might not be talking about the same guy, but the point is taken all the same.
Later he does in fact order Roman to lick the little mess he made off of his shoe, which he does happily and quickly, prostrated naked on the floor in front of him, relishing the feeling of expensive leather against his craven tongue so much he can feel his cock hardening again. More than that, he’s just happy to be able to show his gratitude. An onlooker could think his disturbed mental state over his mother’s illness was being taken advantage of here, Jeryd knowing that the increased vulnerability means Roman would do anything—but that wouldn’t be right, because Roman would do anything, anyway. This is kindness. This is for Roman. He hopes Jeryd will be around for every bad thing that ever happens to him from now on.
After Roman gets out of the shower, hardly able to stand on legs that feel like jelly, he finds a spare T-shirt and pair of sweatpants, too big but just right all the same, folded neatly on his side of the bed. That weird awkward kindness always overtakes Jeryd after an intense session like this one, and so he also pours Roman another drink as he settles into bed, numb and exhausted and still half-aroused and sick to his stomach at the thought of his mother. This time it’s some old-man brandy that he likes (“just drink up, okay, this helps you sleep, trust me.”). A wave of pitch-black unconsciousness threatens to blanket him, with more immediate concussive force than he knows is normal or natural to be caused by an untainted drink—it’s not the first time, and if he ever wakes up feeling like something is hurting or something was done to him while he slept, he can usually shake it off and pretend that it’s all okay. No, it is all okay—Jeryd has the right to do what he wants. It is all okay: the moment he downs the last drop, as the snow continues to fall heavy and thick outside these walls, he feels warm and perfectly cared for by his god, for the first time in all the time he’s ever known.