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🐙
It begins when Roman least expects it (dinner), with the stupidest of reactions (panic).
He’s only here because Hollis flopped dramatically across his Netflix-rotting blanket-nest and repeated please in different octaves until Roman gave in, throwing the remote at his nose.
To his left, Hollis asks a question about royalties, and the rep smiles under his curled moustache, quipping something about a weekly weighing. Roman only catches the tail end of it, spooked eyes darting up from his plate to read the other faces at the table.
He’s pretty sure it’s a boxing reference, or maybe a metaphor about drugs. That’s what makes the most sense. But he doesn’t know. He lost the plot before the main course, because he has no business being here. He wasn’t even invited. He’s felt like a trophy bitch since they sat down.
The discussion continues, but the concept of being weighed wiggles under his skin, resurrecting a memory that looms over his shoulder before it pounces.
His fork falls onto his plate, a clatter that silences the table. He stands abruptly, knocking his chair backwards onto the floor. Nearly bowing in half, he apologizes, skin crawling from the number of eyes judging. He mumbles an excuse about a headache and turns to leave.
The restaurant is bright and the faces he passes are too loud, too insistent. He has to get out. Around the corner, down a long row of intimate, two-person tables. He has to find somewhere to weather the storm. What if someone records the storm and his body chooses a fight response instead of freeze? That would be the end of him. Maybe the end of Hollis, too—he’d go down swinging for any of his friends. No one would understand that it’s not Roman’s choice. They wouldn’t even entertain the idea.
Past the kitchen, he pushes into the bathroom, flooded with the sizzle and smell of searing steak.
The pretentiously low bathroom lights soothe his aching eyes. He shoves his palms into the depths of his eye sockets, twirling until the colors behind his eyes fade. He tests speaking out loud—tries to tell himself what day it is, what year it is, that he’s in control, he’s an adult now and the past isn’t real. The connection to his mouth is already lost.
He shuffles through his collection of positive memories of the ones he loves. His mother’s hands, the poppy flowers around his grandfather’s house, the way Sara covers her mouth when she laughs, the way Hollis gets louder and wordier when he’s drunk.
Positive thoughts aren’t enough no matter what his therapist says. There are so many other thoughts in there with them. The bad voice is so much louder than his voice. Those memories are so much bigger than his nice memories.
When he pulls his hands away they shake, rabid like espresso on an empty stomach. His stomach shakes like his hands, from deep inside his gut outwards. He splays his hands against his stomach, hoping to calm them both. Instead, he falls face-first into the teenage memories he was trying to outlast.
(( A fabric tape measure slides around his middle. He sucks in his stomach, holds his breath—he promises God that if the number hasn’t gone up, he won’t eat any more fries. His throat spasms around his fingers and burns with acid; his face heats with the pride and shame of control at any cost. ))
He runs cold water over his hands and presses them to the back of his neck, the middle of his forehead. Breathe in, breathe out. He opens his eyes and looks into the mirror. Whatever rotten thing hides inside him loves to see the ugliness. It needs the fuel of his puffy, red eyes and the frizz in his hair, the acne around his mouth and the fat under his neck. It needs that fuel to finish him, and it does.
He turns away from the mirror, leans against the sink counter to stare at the painted-rose wallpaper. It’s too late. The rabidness bangs around his chest like sneakers in the dryer. Falling, falling, friction and numbness all at once. There’s no going back to the table now. He tries to reach for his phone. He needs to text. But he doesn’t. He can’t.
Always so dramatic. Always such a burden. This is why no one loves you. Especially him. How do you always find a way to make things about you?
The door swings open, assaulting him again with the restaurant noises. As soon as Hollis’s head ducks through the doorframe, Roman closes his eyes. He should have left the restaurant. He should have gone somewhere harder to find. He should have made sure this spiral was no one’s responsibility but his own. But he’s too selfish for that, isn’t he? He wanted to be found like this. He wanted Hollis to be the one that found him.
You never stop manipulating. That’s all you’re good for.
So deep down, like the layers of ocean the sun never touches, he wants to hear: What’s wrong? It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.
Every spiral is another crack in their glass floor. Every mess Roman makes is another reason for Hollis to decide he deserves better. It’s a miracle he hasn’t yet. The glass is so fragile. Please don’t step on it.
Hollis finally speaks, but it’s into a phone.
“Yeah. Yes. Fine, whatever.” Another voice through the phone Roman can’t make out. “It doesn’t matter, bitch.”
The other person is still talking when the call cuts off. A rustle of clothing, the thunk of the bathroom lock. Hollis’s sigh lashes Roman’s ears. His eyes sting behind his eyelids.
Sorry, so sorry. I didn’t mean to. Don’t be angry. Don’t regret me. Don’t leave me.
He opens his eyes to measure how badly he’s fucked up. But there’s no sharpness of blame in Hollis’s face, no assertive exasperation. His mouth splits, not to tell Roman what he’s done wrong, but into a smile of consolation with gentle eyes. His smiles don’t always reach his eyes; he was raised too polite, smiles when he doesn’t mean it. For some insane reason, right now he means it.
“You still able to talk?” Hollis asks.
Roman tries. He tries I’m sorry and the voice says No you’re not. He tries It’s all my fault and the voice says Isn’t it always? He wants to pull Hollis in closer so the voice won’t hear when he whispers: Please help me.
Hollis traces Roman’s eyebrows, arch to tail and back, repeated grounding. By his touch, Roman discovers that his own expression is pinched like he’s in pain. Maybe he is.
So dramatic. Whatever it takes for his attention, huh?
“Yeah, okay. I’m here. Listen to my voice.”
His voice wreathes each notch of Roman's spine to cradle him like a brace.
“I got you.” A kiss to the crown of his head. “No more thinking tonight, pretty baby.”
Pretty baby.
Roman’s vision tears as his body locks, slumping into Hollis’s chest. The bad voice slows, unwinds, breaks into ignorant, jagged parts. He settles in the silence that follows, the comfort of possibility without responsibility. No thoughts, not allowed, not until Hollis puts them there.
“Shit. I wasn’t–”
After a deep breath, Hollis hauls Roman into his side. With a smug grin, he unlocks the door. “Watch your feet, doll, it’s slippery.”
Doll shatters Roman’s deadened nerves. She remembers lacy socks, peony perfume, her owner’s long fingers and sweet commands that arrange her neck and chin, inch by delicate inch.
Roman watches his feet so well. The floor of the restaurant is old terracotta tile. The sidewalk outside is dark from the rain. The lights in Hollis's car make electric blue squiggles on the black leather of his shoes. His feet stop against a pebbled driveway. Concrete stairs. Kitchen tile. A slick green rug.
A quiet home. No more public, no more persona.
Hollis kneels and leans in, his hair obscuring Roman’s view of his feet. Soft grip on his ankles. His shoes slide off. Nails tickle his feet bones. His sweater slides off his shoulders, down his arms.
Hollis leads him through a dark hallway, shadows emphasized by faint light from its open doors. Hazily, Roman absorbs familiarity from the faces inside the hallway pictures. He can’t name them, but he knows them. Safe.
They stop before a closed door.
“Can you shower for me?”
Roman blinks. Alone? His gaze shifts from the closed door beside him to the open door at the end of the hall. He knows that door. He wants that door. That door is safe.
“Roman.”
Startled by no pet name, Roman looks back.
“I didn’t ask what you wanted.”
Choice evaporates like the weight on his shoulders. He grips the door frame and nods.
Hollis pushes the door to reveal the bathroom. Pale surfaces gather the street light from the flanking windows to light the room softly without electricity.
His other hand prowls down Roman’s back to pull him closer. Any ambiguity of his plans is dashed by the hunger in the way his hand wanders. Roman noses down into his necklaces and smells. Petrichor and matcha cling to his shirt, but underneath Roman seeks his real smell; the smell of his clothes at the end of the day, and the smell of his sheets first thing in the morning.
“No lights. Don’t look in the mirror,” Hollis says. “Don’t take off my jewelry and don’t let your hair get wet.”
Roman nods against his shoulder.
“Don’t run it fucking scorching like you always do.” He grazes Roman’s forearm, up to cup his elbow. “I can’t have my doll’s skin red and irritated.”
White-hot desire surges up his legs to be a doll, even as he pouts to be denied hot water.
“Only touch the pink bottle.” Roman looks through the door into the shower, scanning for pink. “You’ll like it, baby, it smells like berries. Lather until it's white and silky and wash one part at a time.”
Hollis strokes his hair, cups the back of his head. “Don’t rush. I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna play with you all night.”
Roman nods, but really, he’s rubbing his face against Hollis’s shoulder. Solid, warm, safe. He lets Roman rest, just breathe, for a long, lingering period of time.
“Tap.”
Roman points fingers at his shoulder and taps once. One tap good, two taps bad. Hollis draws him into a kiss made sloppy by Roman’s cotton candy brain and clumsy tongue.
“Don’t wash your cock.” He says it against Roman’s spit-slick lips. “I wanna taste the day on you.”
Roman suffers a long whine that never quite leaves his throat. He paws the collar of Hollis’s shirt down to bite into the swell of his breast. Gnawing, suckling. He doesn’t always like the way Hollis blindsides him with filth, always with such confidence. But sometimes it hits.
Hollis makes a cocky sound and tugs Roman off by his hair before he can make a mark. “You’re so easy.”
He kisses Roman’s forehead like dismissing him, and retreats into the room that’s safe. With TV static between his ears, Roman enters the bathroom and closes the door as quietly as he can, afraid to make noise, afraid to take up space, afraid to exist. Doesn’t feel right–
No, no thoughts.
Toilet on the right, sink on the left, the shower exists on the far, far wall. He tries not to feel like the walk to the shower is a walk of shame for being broken and needing to be fixed.
The thoughts slip back so easily when he’s alone.
No more thinking tonight, pretty baby.
He keeps his head down, watching his feet. He removes his shirt, leaves his jeans on the floor. Snooping through the bathroom, he finds a pile of bobby pins to pile his hair on his head. Turning the shower knob, he appreciates its heft and golden shine as he turns it all the way to the left. He stands in the hottest, steaming water for a glorious moment before adjusting it lower.
He lathers and lathers the pink soap, feeling spoiled. It is silky, and it does smell like strawberry shortcake, and Hollis does know him well enough to predict what he likes, even when it pisses him off. The water isn’t hot enough to help, but with the smell of summer happiness, the comforting darkness, and the white noise of the shower, it’s enough to finally let himself fall. Completely, totally– he forfeits himself, settles into a soft vacancy, the simplest of concepts.
Pretty surrender.
──── ୨୧ ────
🪽
He lights whatever candles he can scrounge from the house, because Roman thinks candlelight is kinder to his imperfections.
He replaces the dark sheets with pink sateen, because his doll wants soft and delicate, and above all, pretty.
He leaves a pink pen with a pink feather on the nightstand because Roman only remembers dollspace in scattered fragments, and likes to write notes to himself for the morning.
He chooses dainty knee-high stockings and a sheer dress, because nothing soothes his doll like being dressed up and played with.
He braids his hair, one side and then the other, because Roman likes to play with them; tugs them and pokes his fingers through them, unravels them slower than is practical, because Roman likes soft, pale things.
He changes into a cotton shirt and pants, because Roman clings to natural textures. He wears dangly, teardrop earrings because Roman likes to watch them move and tug on them with his teeth. He puts on his clear key necklace because he can’t own his doll without it.
He creeps back to the garden and snips three white roses, because being given flowers in his doll colors still makes Roman look lovesick.
──── ୨୧ ────
💖
One ball-joint in front of the other, she steals careful, barefoot steps down the rest of the hallway. Her feet leave warm, wet outlines on the dark laminate wood, even though she dried them carefully.
He left the door open for her. Lovely smells lead her closer, floral rose and bittersweet espresso, shades of their stay in Paris. Lingering in the doorway, she finds her owner reclined in the old, puffed chair by the window.
A candle lights him askew from the left, shining over his pale braids and her key around his neck. His crossed legs jiggle, overlong for the chair, and he fidgets with something at his side.
His attention shifts from the object to her. His attention warms her like winter drinks, and she could drink an endless amount; if she had her way, he’d never look away from her again.
Her owner comes to get her, one arm behind his back.
“You smell so sweet, baby girl.” He lifts the key hanging from his neck and traces the wards down the curve of her cheekbone. “Are you my baby girl now?”
Blank stare aimed at his chest, she nods a single time. His rings graze her stomach before he yanks her into the room by her waist; the rest of her body follows, limp and mindless. Her bare hip crashes against his softly clothed body, and he presents a bouquet of white roses, removed of their sharp bites. He rests the flowers on her bare chest, turning it in place to drag across her skin, rough stems and soft petals.
”Take them,” he says. “Smell them and smile and kiss me.”
She receives them with gentle hands. She keeps them against her chest, lowers her whole face into them to breathe in long, to savor, because she had only been told to smell once. Her smile is shy and tucked down, but her owner likes it, because he grips her waist harder. She presses their lips together, and she wishes she could make him taste her gratitude.
──── ୨୧ ────
🪽
Her kiss is delicate, and it sticks between them until he deepens it with a lick through her lips. Her body melts into him under the kiss, just like all his kisses before. He alternates licks and kisses, opening and closing his mouth against hers. Holding her chin, he guides her nose opposite his every time he switches sides.
She’s the man he loves but she’s also not. Not entirely, not any way he would ever let himself exist without—this. He takes her flowers to arrange them in the prepared vase, lingering over the placement as an excuse to watch her. She stands, back straight, quiet, looking around brainless in the best way. Her fingers play with the tendrils of hair that have fallen onto her neck from the pile on her head, though he hasn’t told her to move.
He pulls her to the side of the bed and her eyes go wide at the clothes he’s laid out for her.
“Sit on the edge of the bed,” he says, dropping her hands. “Back arched, toes pointed, legs together. Hands in your lap.”
She slides into the familiar pose, something half Disney princess and half pinup girl, but her eyes stay on the dress. Pressure grips his heart until he gives in to her sweet, focused attention.
“Touch them,” he says. “They’re yours.”
Immediately the delicate stockings are between her hands, fingers tracing the heart-hole pattern. She feels up the tulle dress to grasp the pearled rosary and turn it over and over.
“Not yet, princess.”
She drops the jewelry and returns to her pose. Lust leaps through him at her obedience, distracts him, tries to convince him that he could just take her now and it would all be the same. But it wouldn’t.
In the golden light her eyes are so dark, so deep. They follow him to his knees beside the bed.
He warms her lotion between his palms. It smells flamboyant and antique, like face powder and sun-baked earth beneath a garden. He smooths his flat hands over every plane of her body, trying to convey through his touch how much he needs her, that he doesn’t know who he would be anymore without her. It doesn’t mean as much to her in words; she knows how easy it is to lie. It’s harder to meet her trusting eyes under her sharp brow and take her pain away for a little while.
Eventually she begins to lose herself, leaning into his touch of her own volition. He wipes the remainder of the lotion down the breadth of her ribs to the slenderness of her waist and kisses her sternum.
“Every part of you is perfect.” Nuzzling his nose between her tits, he breathes in the scents layered onto her. “Custom made just for me.”
She looks down with a half-bitten lip, with none of Roman’s impatience but all of his devotion.
It hurts him to think about the years she braved these nights alone. It pisses him off, makes him grip her harder than he means to, that people saw her hurting and made her feel like the villain instead of the victim.
“Relax,” he says.
She drops her pose to sit naturally, knees spread and hands gripping the edge of the bed.
He tugs the stockings up her legs and licks across the elastic lace that grips them to her thighs. She ducks her head to accept the rosary and nearly smiles when the cross touches her skin. He runs her finger along the cross and up the pearled heart-beads so she can feel the textures.
“So pretty, just like you.”
He thumbs the point of her nose and laughs at her slow, confused reaction. Raising her arms high, he bunches the dress to fall over her head and pulls it down her body. The skirt fans out from her hips and he squares it across her shoulders until the deep v-neck is centered. He smooths the fabric down her chest, admiring the perfect picture she makes. Everything she wears is a clean, stark white—his white.
Through the gauzy fabric he can still see what makes her Roman—the moles and dark hair up her arms, her tattoos, the fading bruise across her shoulder from playing too aggressively with the dog.
Before he can think his face is in her chest and he laps at her nipple through the fabric until it's hard. Holding her waist, he sucks until the dress is soaked and her breath is quick and her hips twitch under his hands to stay still.
He bites her before he leans back, gratified by the way her breath stutters in her throat. Her chest is flushed between the panels of the dress and she blinks faster than normal.
He pulls the pins from her hair, trying to be gentle.
“No makeup tonight. You’re glowing so pretty. I wanna see it.”
So still, a tear falls down her cheek. God, her eyes are gorgeous, a wholly different shade of brown than his, sweet and endless. He feels a cutting rush of guilt for how much he likes seeing her cry. It’s only—she’s so fragile like this, almost like a real doll. So helpless. She gives him so much power despite how much she’s been hurt and he wears it like a medal, loses himself in it.
In return, the least he can do is give her everything she’s ever wanted.
“Sweet, sensitive toy.” He thumbs away her tear and licks it off his skin. “I’m almost ready to play with you.”
He shapes her hand around the pen.
“Write for me, angel.”
All her attention falls to the notecard. She holds it in place with her palm and runs the feather against her face before she writes slowly, as if every letter is special. Three sentences with rounder letters than Roman. He wonders what’s on her slipped mind and how exactly it is that she slips into this aware kind of emptiness.
Roman doesn’t always let him see the note in the morning. Sometimes he reads it and tears it in half.
──── ୨୧ ────
💖
Her owner slides her hips into the position he wants, tipped up and halfway down the bed. Cupping her neck, he lowers her head into the arch of pillows, sweeping her hair out from beneath her to lay on her shoulder.
Her joints sigh under his hands–thigh, knee, ankle–until her legs are bent, one higher than the other, feet flat on the bed.
“Cosita divina.”
Despite the accent, his sincerity hits; fizzy like soda, she breathes peacefully, sheltered under his attention. He raises her dress to tuck it around her waist and under her, exposing her cock and how much she likes being adjusted. He moves her jaw, centered and down, so she can watch him shrink down her body.
“You’re so perfect, baby girl, already wet for me.” His knuckles graze where she glistens against her leg and drifts down to softly squeeze her balls. “I’m gonna play with you now.”
He works his throat and then his jaw to drool across her cock before he sucks it into his mouth, cradling it on his tongue. She bites her lip, crashing her eyes closed to stay quiet. His mouth is so soft. He lifts her knee over his shoulder, fingers sliding down to dig into her leg underneath the stocking’s elastic. His tongue is wide and gentle up her length then pointed and insistent at her tip, teasing her between sensations until his own impatience clouds his face.
“Say something, bunny.”
“More,” she says immediately.
It's not exactly what she means, but she has such few words– more, yes, please, thank you.
He holds her hips down and devours her full length, tongue lurching underneath and finally giving her a rhythm to sink into. She means all her words at once, chanting them to the rhythm of his hunger shoving her higher into the pillows.
He pulls her hips into his face, shoving her cock into the opening of his throat. He waits until she’s watching to show off–rolls his eyes back into his head and swallows. Her knees shudder around his head and her toes curl into his back and she comes into the pillowy pressure of his mouth. He moans around her and she jerks at the shoulders involuntarily, fingers twitching.
Sweet surrender, lovely molten flowing emptiness, crashing freezing numbness.
He climbs back up the length of her dress, lifting her chin to follow him. His thumb splits her lips and he spits her come into her mouth. She shapes her tongue around the bitter taste of herself and offers it up when he sucks it back out.
He swallows. “Don’t you taste so sweet, pretty baby?”
Her belly shakes, body warm and liquid, limp against the silky pink fabric.
Sweet, dreamy love. Tickling pressure and heat. His weight on top of her is heavy and he moves so fervent against her, like he’s trying to crawl inside.
He holds her face, foreheads together, so she has to endure his sincerity. He loves her and there is no voice to argue.
──── ୨୧ ────
🐙
Roman feels a warm, wet towel against his forehead and for a long, festering moment he fears he’s still in the restaurant bathroom. Until he hears the muffled ring of a grandfather clock from another room.
He knows that specific grandfather clock. Safe.
Slivered memories of the past couple hours crowd his head all at once, making him dizzy.
It still surprises him how Hollis can flip him like a switch. It surprises him even more that Hollis has never once taken advantage of it. It confuses him that Hollis refuses to do anything but save him over and over.
Roman lifts his arms and the dress scratches up his skin as it’s pulled off. When Hollis reaches for the stockings, Roman makes an annoyed sound and pushes his hand away. He wants to sleep in them.
Dutifully, Hollis holds his glass of water when he drinks, and holds his shoulders when he cries, and holds his face when he whispers thank you into an exhausted goodnight kiss.
──── ୨୧ ────
🪽
Hollis wakes up before Roman and drifts in and out of sleep watching the curve of his shoulder and back. He soaks in the flood of gratitude that Roman is still here and resists reaching out to spoon him.
He wakes again later and Roman has turned to face him, comforter tucked under his chin. He looks beyond Hollis at the sun-soaked drapes.
“You my boy again?” Hollis asks.
Roman nods and looks down at his fingers poked through the lace blanket. Hollis knows shame and regret will flood him soon if it hasn’t already. But he’s smarter than the mean voice in Roman’s head.
“I love you and I always will.” He toes around the bed until his cold feet find Roman’s warm ankle. “That’s a fuckin’ threat. You can’t get rid of me.”
Roman makes a gun with his fingers and shoves them in his mouth, pulling the trigger. He dramatically falls back into his pillow, wrist smacking into the nightstand.
In his cute morning voice, he groans, “Fuck.”
He reaches for his note on the nightstand. He holds it close to his face, squinting to read it. Looking sideways at Hollis, he lowers the card.
“Share?” Hollis asks.
Shrugging, Roman hands the card over.
i love my owner. he learned how to touch sensitive things so he could touch me. i save this vulnerability for him because he’s the only one that’s ever known what to do with it.