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“What do you want to do today?” Ratio asked.
They’d settled on something simple, to begin with: a weekly call, deep in Aventurine’s night. Ratio was feeling rather bright himself, but Aventurine was observably not at his best. His late hours were Ratio’s balmy mornings, dewy leaves shifting green-laced sunlight into his bedroom. It was a small thing but Ratio enjoyed the imbalance; Aventurine sagging like an unwatered plant, bitter as yesterday’s coffee grounds left in the pot—Ratio sleep-soaked and comfortable, looking forward to the Sunday to come.
“Anything,” Aventurine said. “Whatever you like. Though I’m no good to anyone like this.” He was sitting in bed, looking small despite the suit still snug around his shoulders. He’d set his tablet on the headboard of his bed, tilted down, and therefore couldn’t help the impression he gave off.
Ratio didn’t take the bait. Aventurine had delayed this call twice, and then refused to pick up until it nearly rang out. Then Ratio had sent him a very stern message; now they were here.
“Maybe I should punish you,” Ratio mused, fishing for a reaction.
Aventurine didn’t even blink. “Oh, I’ve been so bad. Please spank me, daddy,” he said, in a monotone simper. Then he switched tracks. “You’d be well within your rights to, of course.”
“This is a collaboration,” Ratio reminded him dryly. It had been in the contract.
“Maybe I’m not a team player.”
“Neither am I. But I understand that you don’t want to think.”
Aventurine’s expression flickered. As though he hadn’t expected—what? To be read, interpreted? “Maybe this can be about what you want,” he pressed, charmingly hopeful in this tactic. As though he didn’t know Ratio would see through it—but Ratio suddenly wondered. Did he know? “I can be good.”
“Can you, now?” Ratio said softly. There was the faintest reaction, a minute crack in the mask. Then Aventurine shrugged.
“Or maybe not,” he replied lightly, effortlessly ironic.
Ratio ignored him. “Tell me what you’ve liked so far.”
“Uh,” Aventurine licked his lips. “Can you spank me instead?”
“Let me be clear,” Ratio said sharply. “You’re not entitled to ‘instead.’ If you don’t want to do something, you can say that, and if you want something, you can say that. But there will be no bargaining with me. Do you understand?”
Aventurine swallowed. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, sir.”
Ratio was no closer to figuring out Aventurine than anyone else in the universe, but he knew more than most; he knew that if he let Aventurine press his buttons, he’d be reduced to entertainment, channels changed on a whim. But he wasn’t made of stone. He’d react, if the consequences were harmless. Not here, not now. He didn’t need Aventurine to feed into Ratio’s authority, flattering him for leeway. They both knew the power he’d been given. It was enough. He let the silence pull on until Aventurine began to fidget, then repeated, “Tell me what you’ve liked so far.”
Aventurine answered rapidly, outrunning his own thoughts. “I liked when you made me strip. I liked—I felt like a mannequin. In a shop.” He shuddered, uncomfortable in his skin. “And when you made me hold the ice. It kind of hurt. I don’t know what I like. I wish you were fucking me. I know what I like then.”
“Did you think about that?” Ratio asked. “About me fucking you?”
“I thought,” Aventurine squirmed. “I thought about giving you a blowjob. And I thought that you’d, you’d tell me I did well, I’m good at sucking cock. But then I thought you wouldn’t say it. You’d just tell me that was fine, that I’m done.”
“You want to be good,” Ratio said, as though reminding him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Aventurine said. His cheeks were red. He was looking mainly at his feet, picking at the threads of his socks. “But I’m not.”
Suddenly, Ratio was so hard it hurt. He’d been vaguely aware of an arousal pulsing in his blood, until now compartmentalized. It could no longer be ignored. He ground the heel of his hand into his groin, off-screen, and said roughly, “Go undress. Come back without your clothes.”
Aventurine practically ran off. Ratio unzipped his pants, letting his hand graze his cock, then pump it slowly, once or twice. There wasn’t really a point to holding back for him; no one monitoring his actions. But it wasn’t about that. It was about the whole of it, feeling together with someone across all the lightyears between them. And the anticipation, raw as lightning. The way it built and built.
When Aventurine came back, he was completely naked. Pretty, all the vulnerable places already highlighted in white. His nipples were almost pink. His overlong blonde hair brushed his shoulders, curled in the dips of his clavicles. Lower down, even the soft shell of his stomach was scarred, even the insides of his thighs. There were so many places Ratio couldn’t see and couldn’t touch. He had no doubt the damage ran deep. But Aventurine was a gambler to the core, inviting his enemies into that well of hurt and drowning them in his own pain. Ratio had seen it done. He was no stranger to ruthlessness. But he couldn’t help the smidgen of worry, the urge to remind Aventurine that even scars and brands could be healed, hidden or erased. That Aventurine painted a target on his back like he wanted someone to try for the bullseye.
“What now?” Aventurine said; plaintive, impatient.
“When was the last time you had sex?”
“Couple days back,” Aventurine answered. “If you’re planning to ask me what it was like—I don’t remember. Well? Am I sexy enough for you?”
“That remains to be seen,” Ratio said, unblinking. “Pinch your nipples for me. Five seconds each.”
“Uh,” Aventurine said. “You’re really gonna make me do all the work myself? I have clamps.”
“I didn’t ask you what you have.”
Aventurine blushed. “Okay,” he muttered, obeying hesitantly. He pinched himself harder than necessary, then lacked the desire to back down from hurting himself. Maybe he was trying to impress Ratio. And clamps, Ratio mused, wouldn’t have done the same job. Aventurine would collect himself while fetching them, move away from the pain and into his own head without time and his own hands to attend to. There was something about having to touch oneself, administer to oneself. And now Aventurine was pink-cheeked and out of sorts, a delicate tenseness wound into his shoulders, curling in even as he tried to keep them straight and high.
“Ow,” he whispered.
“Was that very hard?” Ratio asked, devoid of either sympathy or mockery.
“You tell me.”
“It looked difficult,” Ratio mused. “I’m sure you can take more. But this didn’t look easy.”
“What gave it away,” Aventurine was fragile, cantankerous about it. Ratio pressed his advantage.
“Do you want to do something even more difficult?”
“What if I say no?”
Ratio raised his eyebrow.
“Yes,” Aventurine mumbled. “Yes, I want to.”
“You’re going to do well,” Ratio assured him. He let it sink in, until Aventurine wound down, slumping. Slowly, he changed positions, went from having his legs folded under him to having them loosely crossed, became conscious of the way the angle and pose exposed his cunt. He was rarely so transparent. Ratio enjoyed it, enjoyed looking, even as Aventurine became increasingly flustered and uncomfortable with himself. Only when it became very clear that Aventurine couldn’t think of a solution himself did Ratio intervene. “Put the pillow in your lap.”
“Oh,” Aventurine swallowed. He pulled it onto his knees, covering himself a little, and bent into its softness for a moment. “M’ready.”
“Alright,” Ratio said. “You’re going to do well, aren’t you?”
“No,” Aventurine muttered.
“Say yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir, I’m going to do well.”
“Yes, sir, I’m going to do well—this is pointless.”
“It’s really not,” Ratio said. “Pinch yourself with one hand. You can change where you’re pinching, but that’s all that one hand is for, alright? And your other, put two fingers in your mouth.”
“I have a dildo—”
“Your fingers,” Ratio said severely.
Aventurine obeyed. His eyes were glassy even before he began. He had such pretty tits. Earlier Ratio thought them unremarkable; now he found much to say. He wanted to slide his mouth over his nipples, bite the tender underside, tease him through a shirt—and hurt him, through it all, hurt him until he stopped understanding why he was hurting. Until that dazed sheen became a permanent fixture. His instincts, already broken, wouldn’t need much coaxing to reshape under Ratio’s will. And it would be easy, then, to comfort him. To imprint a new standard of safety into him, so that trusting Ratio was in his nature.
He was already so pliant. He sucked on his fingers and pinched his nipples, without regard, the pain pushing him into an overwhelming desperation to please. The longer Ratio watched, and said nothing, the more Aventurine’s need grew, until he was whimpering softly, by his own doing undone.
Ratio saw the moment that Aventurine truly crossed some hidden line. He physically stuttered. A deep tremble rattled through him. He wanted to keep going, tried to keep going, but it was no longer within his grasp. If he’d been within reach, Ratio would’ve pulled him in, caught his hands, stilled his shaken body. As it was he had to depend on Aventurine himself, who was in no shape to take care of himself—the ever-present danger of long-distance.
“You’re done,” Ratio said, firmly and steadily, said it again and again until Aventurine was able to take notice and relent, tilting sideways and onto the bed in a curled-up heap, clutching the pillow against himself. “You’re done, Aventurine. You were very good. You are very good. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Aventurine whined. He was still trembling, shuddering quakes that rolled on and on. “I’m c-cold. I’m s-so cold.”
“The blanket is near you,” Ratio said. “Focus on my voice. Focus on me. I know it’s bad right now, but I need you to sit up, for a second, alright? Be good. Bring the tablet down, get under the blanket. You’ve got this. You’re good.”
He let Aventurine have the time it took to make sense of this and translate it into action, clumsy as it was—Ratio ended up in the dark, listening to Aventurine fumble with the duvet. When he was made upright again, Aventurine was ensconced within it, only his head poking out. His hair was mussed.
“Good job,” Ratio said. “You’re warmer now, aren’t you?”
“Y-yeah,” Aventurine said. “Fuck. I was so bad at the end there, even though you said—”
“I said you were going to do well,” Ratio reminded him. “You were good. You’re still good. You don’t have to blame yourself for what I did to you.”
“I don’t understand,” Aventurine said plaintively. He tucked his face into the blanket, hiding his nose. “I’m sorry.”
“I pushed you,” Ratio explained. “I pushed you until you couldn’t take it.”
“I couldn’t…”
“No,” Ratio said. “You couldn’t. You know it. I also knew.”
“How can I be…”
“You are.”
Aventurine sniffled. “I wish you were here.”
“Don’t we both,” Ratio replied. “Can you understand me?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re very obedient,” Ratio said. “You’re a brat, of course. I knew that already. But you want to do as you’re told. You enjoy being told, and you listen well, without pressing the rules more than you need to. You try so hard. You’re very, very beautiful, though I’m sure you’re well aware of that. It’s a pleasure to make you use your body to obey me—you’re wonderfully pretty as you’re listening and trying. You’re more than sexy enough. And, just in case you need it again, you’re very good.”
“A good boy?” Aventurine pushed.
“The very best,” Ratio said.
“And I’m sexy,” Aventurine stressed. “Sexy enough to jerk off to?”
“Yes,” Ratio admitted.
Aventurine squirmed closer to the tablet. “Can I see?”
Ratio exhaled. He knew when to give in too. “Yes, you can.”