Content notes: D/s, bondage, vibrators

He walked across the brick walkway slowly, with a clarity of purpose and a serenity Connie had rarely seen in him in the times before. He used to look around nervously, sweeping the ground with his eyes, his posture tucked inward, hiding his chest and projecting his doubts. His mannerisms, the way he dressed, the perpetual and painful-looking curl to his spine — it had always been a request for you to forgive his existence. Now he didn’t seem to care about the outside world and its reaction to him at all.

He glided toward Connie, his shoulders rolled back, his face radiant in the breaking sunlight. His rusty-brown hair was freshly cut and bouncy and framed his cheekbones perfectly. His eyes casually focused on Connie as he made his approach.

“You’re late, Nix,” Connie admonished him, tossing a Sugar in the Raw packet across the wrought iron table where she sat waiting. A pot of blueberry green tea, Nix’s favorite, steamed into the air around them. He grinned and opened his arms, somewhat theatrically and stiltedly, for an embrace.

“It’s so good to see you,” Nix said.

Connie went into his arms, pressed herself into his chest. She let her friend hold her for a little longer than what used to be customary. He was bigger than he used to be, his arms thicker, his torso solid. But he still smelled like the Bath and Body Works cologne they had picked out together in their early twenties, the day before he came out as a man. They’d been in the Great Northern mall together, him looking around furtively, stealing smells from the various blue and green bottles, Connie keeping watch in case anybody they knew showed up.

Back then, Connie didn’t have the heart to tell him that nobody in all of Middleburg Heights would hold it against a “girl” that she enjoyed a twelve-dollar body spray designed for a “boy.” She held onto that snark for a few years, saved it up until he would be ready to hear it.

When the dam of trans denial finally bursts, there is a lot of rubble left behind. You have to overcome a lot of big, jagged barriers your mind erected to protect you and keep you from getting found out. Nix had set a lot of arbitrary rules for himself. Ways he wasn’t allowed to dress, ways he wasn’t permitted to sit. Things he couldn’t enjoy anymore. Retrograde stuff that no actual cis person even believed about men and women in 2010. So self-conscious. It takes a patient friend to help a newly-out trans person unpack that shit, but Connie had always been decent at registering her judgement in a way Nix could hear and biting her tongue when he couldn’t.

The memories of that time were nice. Helping Nix pick out pimple cream, oohing and ahhing when he modeled new joggers and skater shoes. Watching the joy spread across his face whenever she called him by his true name. She had enjoyed watching him slowly blossom. He was easy to encourage and easy to comfort. Now his big arms were enveloping her, returning some of the love and care Connie had long radiated at him.

The pandemic had been “over” in the U.S. for several months, but people still held their hugs for a long time and shared bites of food with their friends sensually, like it was making love. Connie hoped that never stopped. As she broke away from Nix, she noticed the shiny metal collar peeking out from under his shirt. He adjusted his button-up slightly, with great courtesy, and then they sat down.

Nix looked around the patio, taking in the tulips and the blossoms in the trees. They used to visit this teahouse a lot as teenagers. It was one of the more wholesome places they’d terrorized. Nobody ever yelled at teen-Connie for smoking on the patio or at Nix for showing up in days-old, crusty Rocky Horror makeup. They’d been allowed to sit outside and drink refills of the same pot of tea for hours without being scolded.

“I’m so glad this place survived the pandemic,” Nix said.

“Melt didn’t make it,” Connie sighed, referring to the old sandwich shop that sold them beer underage back in college. “And Cornerstone Brewery had to get a GoFundMe.”

Nix frowned sympathetically. “Well, let’s get a full spread here today, shall we? Give them as big a financial shot in the arm as we can.”

Connie shifted in her seat. She had been laid off for months.

Nix shook his head, realizing. “Oh, no I mean. This is all on me.”

She relaxed and mouthed thank you to him silently. Connie considered herself a giver, not someone who was meant to receive. But she was willing to let Nix take care of her a bit. He owed her that much, after all the months of being near-absent from her life.

“So your work has been going well?” she asked.

Her friend stared off into space a moment, as if he’d forgotten that he had a job. He shook his head a bit again, knocking the dust loose. “Oh, yes. It’s been fine. I’m just rotating through the same few clients and their projects. The plan really came together like I hoped. I only work a couple days a week at this point. Everything else is just…on the rails.”

Connie sipped her tea. “That’s great. That’s pretty amazing actually.”

Nix smiled, a little embarrassment hanging in his eyes. “I’m living the dream. It feels annoying to say.”

“Please, don’t be embarrassed. My unemployment doesn’t run out for six more months. You should see how much painting I’m getting done. I’m living the dream, too.”

He settled back into his seat. “I’d love to look at your paintings later.”

“Sure thing. I’ll drive us up the road after. How’s Anthony?”

His eyes went cloudy for a second again, but this time stayed pointed in her general direction. For a moment Connie worried she’d said the wrong thing, but then he came back to life.

“He is. Anthony is perfect,” her friend said slowly. “He just got a deal with Adult Swim, his pilot finally got picked up.”

“Oh my god, that is incredible!” Connie squealed, “I know how long he’s been working on that, he must be so happy. And you must be so proud!”

“I always knew that He would make it,” Nix said reverently, nudging a few dark locks out of his face. “The visuals are looking incredible, compared to how it started in storyboard. And soon He’ll have a whole team of animators. A two season contract to start.”

Connie was a visual artist, as Nix’s longtime partner Anthony was, but their work was so different she couldn’t be too jealous of his success. Her paintings of fantasy creatures were grounded somewhat in realism; Anthony’s animations were completely inscrutable and surreal. It seemed promising to her that an artist who created such arresting, fluid visuals had been trusted to make his own show. Sitting across the table from the golden boy with the two-day work week and the equally successful boyfriend, Connie felt as if a little of their luck might rub off on her.

“Anthony is gonna be busy,” she blurted suddenly. That, she realized, would go against everything Nix had wanted and planned for. “Are you worried about it?”

Nix tilted his gaze down into his lap a moment, then back up at her. “Honestly, yes. The production schedule will be punishing. That’s part of why I’m venturing out into society a bit more, I gotta say.”

“You want to have an actual life again?”

“I don’t want anything,” Nix replied quietly. “I’m just being realistic. He needs me to be less addicted to being around Him all the time.”

He slipped his fingers around the handle of the teacup, fiddled it side to side in his saucer. His cheeks were going pink.

Connie was relieved to hear Nix acknowledge the nature of his and Anthony’s relationship. She never knew when to bring it up, or if to bring it up. Whenever she looked at him, it was all she thought about, but she feared that naming it would scare him off. Or maybe that it would become too real and she’d be the one to break away running.

“You want to be less addicted,” Connie said carefully, “but not free from addiction.”

“No,” her friend smiled. “I’ll never be free.”

Warmth bloomed across his face. Her words had activated something in Nix, giving him the opportunity to affirm a fact that was, to him, deeply important. He was not free. He never would be, not ever again. He’d told her as much at the party, right before the pandemic hit. The last day she’d seen him in the flesh. The first day she figured out what he’d become.

Nix was sitting perfectly still. All at once he seemed to realize he was getting a bit indiscrete and focused back in on the conversation, blinking his bliss away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gripping the arm of his chair and grounding himself. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been out, it’s still so weird.”

He regarded their surroundings. There was an elderly couple sharing a sandwich at a bench a few yards away. Past them, a bus girl was clearing a table, filling a basin with dirty dishes and humming along to the music from the patio’s speakers.

“You’re good,” Connie said.

“No, I need to get better at this again.Talking to be people. Being normal.”

“We’ve talked all year. I know you know how to talk to people still.”

It was partially a lie. All year, all pandemic long really, Connie had been trying to get Nix on the phone or on Zoom. They’d schedule something, and then he’d cancel at the last minute via text. Then he’d circle back, those were the words he used, circle back, like she was a client. They’d get another hangout on the calendar, and Nix would appear, sitting on the floor of his and Anthony’s living room in a baggy sweatshirt and a robe, his hair mussed. He spoke with all the slow contentment of an overfed kitten. His responses to her questions were pleasant, but measured. Delayed.

It was normal, during the era of digital socializing, to not feel fully connected. Every conversation on Zoom had odd stops and starts. But with Nix, it was different. His facial expressions and reactions were slowed and blunted more than the average person’s. His words were friendly, but always brief. Polite dodges. On video chat, she only ever saw one view of one room, and Nix never moved or stood up. It was like Connie was speaking to a diplomatic envoy from the Nation of Nix, who could speak to the country’s political goals very diplomatically, but would never, ever let her past its borders. The reality of how he was actually spending his time might upset her.

For years he had been slipping away from her. All the faraway looks and the slow, purposeful way he moved, as if underwater. The words he used, the questions he asked, so close to being him, but off just enough to be uncanny. If she asked about a shared memory from their childhood, he could recall it after a moment, but he rarely brought up such things himself. His old tics, like the way he used to chew on his hangnails, had all but disappeared. Every now and then he would mimic the gesture, awkwardly, as if he’d just remembered to do it. But mostly all his flaws and foibles were just…gone.

Nix had thrown himself into the maw of something Connie couldn’t understand, and she was still figuring out how she felt about it. He was happy, but it scared her.

The waiter came and took their order. Nix chatted amiably with him about the weather and the waiter’s kids and asked for the afternoon tea special. Salad, sandwiches, the soup of the day for both of them. Petit fours. She studied his mannerisms. He was a perfect pantomime of inoffensive humanity. In superficial interactions like these he absolutely shined. It was only because she knew him so well that she could feel what was missing.

“How has your life been changing,” Nix asked, turning back to her, “now that you’re on the other side of lockdown?”

“Oh, just slowly easing back into things like this,” Connie said. “Having people over for dinner. You should let me cook for you. I mean, if you’re allowed.”

He laughed politely, a false-sounding, generous trill. “I’m allowed. I know He would be glad if I did. It’s a long time since I’ve been away from Him for more than a couple hours. I have to get used to it.”

“So that’s what all this is about?” Connie leaned across the table. “Did Anthony like, command you to go get re-socialized?”

Every time she said Anthony’s name, Connie could sense Nix was mentally dubbing it over with something else. They’d been friends for so long. Nix had done the same thing with his own name before he was out. People would use his girlname and he’d kind of squint and blink it out. Like he was willing his real name, Phoenix, to take its place. Now he was doing that with his master, or owner, or whatever the hell Anthony was.

“I don’t mean to make you feel used!” Nix said to her. “I’m so happy to see you. Through all of this, you’re the person I missed the most.”

“Can you miss people?” She asked. “When you’re…the way you are now?”

Nix’s head tilted. “Did you miss your friends when you were with Kolin?”

Connie rolled her eyes. Kolin was her first real boyfriend, the first boy who dated her as a girl. When they fucked, he held her like she was a priceless, delicate piece of pottery. He always stood on the street side of the sidewalk when they walked somewhere together. Sure, she had avoided a few texts from Nix back in the day when she was busy adoring Kolin. But she had been young, and this was not the same.

“I remember, it was annoying of me to disappear on you,” she said. “And it’s not healthy when a person gets obsessed with their partner like that. Wasn’t that the lesson?”

He paused. “I don’t know that I care about healthy anymore.”

“That’s the most honest you’ve been with me all year.”

Connie heard herself making little scoffing sounds. She was fucking this up. You’re not supposed to put the other person on the defensive, even if you think they’re taking things too far. She had read that somewhere. But she had to be herself. And all year Nix had said nothing about his new life, and his new arrangement, and Connie desperately needed some sign that he was okay.

Nix watched her, gears turning behind his still face. “You’re worried about me,” he observed after a moment.

“Of course I am!” She waved her hands up and down. “You’re not the same person.”

He took her hand. Something in his eyes seemed to drop away, like a bubble bursting. There he was, recognizing her distress for what it was, raw in his desire for her to understand.

“Connie, this is what I want,” he said. “This is the most right I have ever felt about anything. More than transitioning. Or going no-contact with my brother. This is everything to me.”

“You’re still there,” she whispered. Fuck, there was a sob in her voice. This was too much vulnerability for two in the afternoon on the patio of Clementine’s fucking Tea House.

The moment was rapidly becoming too intense, which Nix seemed to sense. He pulled back, releasing her hand, and took a measured sip of his tea. His posture straightened into confident perfection and his gaze went slightly glassy once more.

“Of course I’m still here,” he said. “Did you think I was gone?”

She sucked down the grassy dregs of her tea and swallowed the tears running down the back of her throat. “You’ve been gone for a long time.”

“I’m trying to be here with you,” Phoenix said earnestly. “All of this is me.”

When she first met Anthony, Connie liked him far more than most of her friends’ boyfriends. He was present, yet not overbearing. Usually when you meet somebody’s boyfriend, he either hits you with way too much attention, trying to win you over in a way that you know will ultimately sour, or he’s a completely inert sack of potatoes on his phone in the corner. Anthony charmed her and asked about her art. She showed him the last few panels from the comic she was writing about magical girls. He played a few animated gifs of his work for her. On his phone, a series of inky, round-assed monsters undulated in a multicolored abyss. It was freaky stuff. He seemed so straight-laced, but his work was wild and primal. She could respect that.

When the two men were together, Nix folded into Anthony’s body in an absolutely adorable way. They were about the same size, yet nested into one another perfectly. He’d never seemed so satisfied by a relationship before. They completed one another’s sentences. Exercised together. Read the same books. Theirs was the kind of love Connie had fantasized about for a very long time.

The change in Nix happened gradually at first. He became softer, mentally, though no less intelligent. He never got into fights online with transphobes anymore. He stopped agonizing over his work being perfect. Then he started making more mistakes. After breakfast, he’d put the milk in the cabinet and the cereal in the fridge. Connie would have a whole conversation with him on the phone that he didn’t seem to remember the next day. Nothing ever made him upset. His evenings were rarely free, but he couldn’t explain what had him so busy. It was like being friends with a hologram Connie couldn’t touch.

At a certain point, Connie noticed that Nix got quiet around Anthony. The two friends would be chatting casually in the kitchen, and then Anthony would walk into the house and Nix would straighten and kind of disappear inside himself. He’d keep his eyes fixed on his boyfriend for the entire conversation, monitoring his reactions to things, anticipating his needs. But her friend also seemed to be thriving. He was making more money than ever before. Most of it was getting socked away, and he talked a lot about being able to quit his job. He could set his own hours, work from home and never be far from Anthony.

On New Year’s Eve, Connie coaxed Nix and Anthony to go out dancing with her. She knew it would be an easier ask if both men were invited. After hours of vodka seltzers and New Wave music, Connie slipped out to smoke. The two men were outside already, tucked against the side of the building. She watched them gazing adoringly at one another, Anthony’s hands on Nix’s head. They hadn’t noticed her. At one point she heard Anthony call Nix it.

How is it feeling?

Energy is at 45%, arousal is at 75%, Connie could hear Nix say. Intoxication levels approaching critical.

Nix’s voice was flat, emotionless, and not at all hushed, like Anthony’s was. Connie crept a bit closer and could see her friend was standing ramrod straight, arms at his sides, staring forward. His face seemed to be completely slack.

We should get it some water, Anthony said softly.

Confirmed.

Anthony pushed Nix’s hair from his face, then snake a firm hand around the back of Nix’s neck. He directed his stiff, slow-moving boyfriend inside. Connie ducked around the corner and looked off in the other direction so they wouldn’t notice her.

Let’s get it fixed up, Anthony whispered darkly. I’ll need it to be in working order later.

That was when Connie knew she hadn’t been imagining things. The next morning she texted Nix over and over to see if he was hung over or had been on something. He didn’t reply for two days.

It was a rainy evening in early March when Anthony and Nix had their house party. They’d just moved into a spacious two-bedroom with a big yard and a finished attic, and were eager to celebrate it and show it off. Plus, they had been blowing off all their friends for months and owed everybody a big social engagement.

A local DJ who had helped score Anthony’s TV pilot was spinning records in the front room. Bodies swayed and pressed closely against one another, and a triad of strangers made out in the spare bedroom, all things that would become unthinkable by the end of the month. In the kitchen, Connie’s roommate Lainey was mixing disgustingly bright, syrupy-sweet drinks. They looked like alien blood. All the decor in the house was an unsettling mix of bright neon and black, like in Anthony’s animations.

Connie took a drink, her fourth of the night, and sucked it down. A guy with goatee whom Connie had never met before offered her a bacon-wrapped fig from the oven.

“It’s all a fucking smokescreen,” she muttered to Lainey, popping the morsel in her mouth. “The music, the food, all the people. It’s a distraction and a bad apology.”

Lainey shrugged and poured shots of Midori and vodka into a tumbler. “At least they’re trying to socialize.”

“I haven’t seen them in hours! I just want my friend. Where the hell is he?”

Connie’s roommate nodded down the hall and said, “I thought I saw both of them go in the bedroom a while ago.”

Connie’s stomach twisted with drunken anger. What the fuck was going on with these two? Why couldn’t Nix bear to be away from his boyfriend for a single second, even in the midst of the couple’s first party in months? Why was he always hanging off of him, waiting on him hand and foot? It sickened her. She was also disgusted at the depth of her own jealousy. She couldn’t stop picking at it, like a scab.

Connie pushed through the hallway, past the line of people waiting for the bathroom. Cradling her drink in her palm, she planted herself outside the bedroom door. She couldn’t hear anything but the thudding music around her and drunk people yelling. She would pretend she needed a Tylenol, she decided. She took hold of the doorknob and pushed her way in.

The room was dark and cool, a breeze from outside moving through the space. Connie flipped on the lights. The bedroom was empty and tidy, and there was no one around. She almost stormed out. Then she noticed the hole in the ceiling, glowing with shifting blue and green lights, and the ladder to the attic hanging to the floor. Connie placed herself beneath it and could hear some strange murmuring coming from above.

Connie knew she was being inappropriate. But for months, being polite and respectful of Nix’s boundaries had not worked. Something strange was happening to her friend, and it made her skin crawl. She needed to make sense of it.

“Fuck it,” she whispered to herself, and downed the last of her atomic green drink and tossing the cup onto Nix’s dresser. She stepped onto the ladder and led herself up into the bowels of the attic.

Nix had said the previous tenants had used the attic as an office. But as she entered the space, Connie saw it had been significantly transformed. Strips of bright teal LED lights lined the angled ceiling, the walls, and the floors. As she rose up the ladder, she saw the windows were blotted out with blackout curtains. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep black with occasional swirls of bright purple and blue, and wooden planks had been installed into the ceiling. A black metal cage was positioned next to a stately looking leather chair. Inside the cage, she saw padded wrist and ankle cuffs dangling from a length of chain. On the floor of the cage sat a vibrator, and, strangely, a big plastic headset, like for a virtual reality game.

Connie pulled herself up into the attic and looked around. A series of leather strips and metal hooks dangled from hardpoints installed in the planks in the ceiling, as well as a few snarls of black rope. These led down to a human form that was encased, shifting and muttering. It was clad in shiny black latex from head to toe, its arms pinned back behind it in straps that looked to be locked. She could hear the metal jostling.

There were holes in the latex from which the figure’s cunt protruded, glistening with wetness. A vibrator was tied against its leg and pressed against its engorged genitals, buzzing incessantly. Its nipples were out and clamped, a chain connecting the clamps and leading to a shiny metal collar around its throat. Its mouth was free and it was mumbling softly, saliva dribbling down its chin. It didn’t notice Connie’s presence at all as she moved into the room.

The thing swaying in front of her didn’t even register as human at first. Its motions were so jerky and repetitive and it was so unresponsive to her presence. It seemed about as alive and conscious as the vibrator thrumming between its legs. Just a sex toy, executing its designated purpose without end.

Its eyes were staring forward, glassy and blank. It did not blink, and its pupils were huge. A single tuft of dark, warm-hued hair poked out into one the eye holes in the latex, but it didn’t seem to mind. The bound, mindless thing that hung before Connie was Nix, of course. At the same time, it wasn’t a person at all.

A giant monitor had been mounted on the wall across from where Nix was suspended. The screen spun and swirled with disorienting black shapes, and oozed with bright tentacles of teal, neon purpose, and bright, atomic green. Anthony’s work always had a way of pulling the viewer’s eye in, even as it remained utterly inscrutable. But these spirals were on a completely new level. It was so intense, both vibrant and disarming. Connie could almost feel the tentacles swirling inside of her eyes as she watched it. It nearly gave her a headache. Yet it also felt satisfying.

Art by Laura Lee Benjamin.

Words sometimes flashed across the snaking abyss of colors. Things like You Are An Object and Delete Thoughts and Obey. And longer phrases she couldn’t read quickly enough, but could somehow feel flashing across her mind, like a fuzzy memory of a dream.

Connie turned back at Nix. Still he dangled there, drooling and muttering, gaze fixed helplessly on Anthony’s animations. As she approached her friend’s inert body, Connie realized Nix was wearing headphones. These too were pulsing with faint teal light. She brought her ear close to his head.There were words thudding in his ears, and music. Anthony’s voice? As he stared deep into the screen, Nix drooled and mumbled over and over.

It is a thing.
It belongs to the Controller.
It is completely His.
It has no thoughts.
It has no will.
It has no mind.

She touched it — him — on the shoulder lightly. Nix did not respond. The words kept coming forth.

It needs to be controlled.
It is a compliant fucktoy.
It must always obey.
It is just a thing.

Connie looked to the spirals again and felt her mind tuning into Nix’s words. She imagined how it must feel to have these words buzzed into your body and brain over and over again, moving past stimulation, and then past boredom, and then past conscious consideration entirely, into something much deeper and more instinctive.

Its cunt belongs to the Controller.
Its mind belongs to theController.
Its soul belongs to the Controller.
It worships the Controller.
It needs the Controller.
It is addicted to the Controller.
It will never leave the Controller.

Connie took a step back, shaking her head. It was a lot to take in. She wasn’t even into this kind of shit, yet she was finding herself getting lost in it. The dark, glowing attic was like a completely different world. A brainwashing chamber utterly detached from the party below, the life these men had once lived.

The thick vibrator pulsed loudly against Nix’s clit and a repetitive moaning began to come from his mouth. This, too, was robotic and stilted. Its eyes darted back in his head and a blush of arousal bloomed around his mouth and his cunt.

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.”

His hips bucked and his thighs twitched as the sounds emitted from him. He was oozing with wetness from both his mouth and his cunt, and his unblinking eyes were streaming with tears. Nix had not reacted to Connie’s presence at all. It was utterly lost in the spirals, the sounds. It looked back at the screen slowly and tried to keep repeating its mantras as its arousal rose and rose. Through it all, its voice remained utterly flat and inhuman.

“It is an obedient toy. Oh. Oh. It is a thing. The Controller owns its cunt. Oh. Oh. Oh. The Controller tells it what to think. Oh. Oh. It is addicted to the Controller. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. It is His mindless robot. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.”

She watched an orgasm shudder through Nix’s body, the pleasure barely registering in his face, even as his abs and thighs seized and his body swung from the ropes, quivering. He shook like a washing machine. Fluid spurted out of him, soaking the tatami mat on the floor. His cunt was bright crimson from arousal and his dick was swollen from repeated stimulation. As it — he — fought to regain his breathing, his eyes rolled back in his head and closed. He tensed up one final time. And then relaxed and seemed to almost drop down.

To be continued…

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