Chapter 2: The Bartender's Return
The hum was still there in the morning, a low-grade tinnitus of power singing in Avery’s skull. He drank his coffee black, staring out his kitchen window at the brick wall of the adjacent building. His body felt the same—thin, unremarkable—but the space inside his mind felt cavernous, echoingly vast. He thought of Marcus. The memory of last night played on a loop, not in a haze of erotic afterglow, but with the crisp clarity of a scientist reviewing a successful experiment. The sequences of control.The moment of conversion.The obedient, desperate sounds.The ease of it.
He tried to watch a movie, read a chapter of a book, but the words and images slid off his consciousness.They were mundane scripts, written by others. He had become the author of a far more interesting story.A compulsion, sharp and undeniable, pulled at him. He needed to see the results in the light of day.He needed to verify that the rewrite had held.
His knock on Marcus’s apartment door was casual, three firm raps. From within, he heard a muffled curse, the thump of something being bumped into, then the scrape of the deadbolt.
Marcus opened the door, squinting. He was wearing loose grey sweatpants and a faded band t-shirt, his hair a messy, sleep-flattened version of its usual crop.He looked normal. Tired, but normal.“Ave?What’s up? It’s barely noon.”
“Just checking in,” Avery said, stepping past him into the apartment. The air was different—stale with sleep, but the ozone sharpness was gone.The hum was quiet here, waiting. “You seemed pretty out of it when I left last night.”
Marcus rubbed his face, yawning. “Man, I don’t even know.I crashed so hard. Had the weirdest fucking dream, though.” He shuffled toward the kitchen, gesturing for Avery to follow.
“Yeah?” Avery leaned against the kitchen counter, watching as Marcus fumbled with the coffee maker.“Yeah.Crazy shit. Like, we were… I dunno.” Marcus poured water into the reservoir, not meeting Avery’s eyes.A faint pinkness tinged the back of his neck. “It was all messed up.Freaky.Woke up feeling… I don’t know. Off.” He finally looked at Avery, offering a sheepish, confused grin. “Too much of that cheap whiskey, I guess.My head’s pounding.”
Avery felt a surge of cool satisfaction. The patch was holding. The narrative of a confusing dream, the physical discomfort chalked up to a hangover—it was all exactly as he had designed it. Marcus’s mind had accepted the cover story seamlessly, smoothing over the jagged, impossible edges of the truth.
“You okay now?” Avery asked, his voice feigning concern.“Yeah, yeah. Just need caffeine and maybe a greasy breakfast.” Marcus turned, his back to Avery as he scooped coffee grounds. The sweatshirt stretched across his broad shoulders. For a moment, Avery saw him as he’d been last night: kneeling, presenting, begging.The image superimposed itself over the current reality, a ghost of his own design. The power thrummed gently in response, a quiet purr.
He couldn’t leave it at this.The verification wasn’t enough.He needed to run the test again. To see if the alterations were truly toggle-able, a switch he could flip at will. The hunger to feel that absolute dominion again was a physical ache.“You don’t remember anything else? From last night, I mean.” Avery kept his tone light, conversational.Marcus paused, the coffee scoop hovering. His brow furrowed.“Nah. Just closing up, coming home, having a beer… then nada.Like a blackout, but softer.Why? Did I do something stupid?” He laughed, but it was uneasy.Avery didn’t answer. He pushed off from the counter and walked into the living room.He stood in the exact spot where Marcus had knelt. He could almost see the indentations on the carpet. The memory was so vivid it felt more real than the sunlit room around him.He turned to face the hallway leading to the bedroom.The door was ajar.
Marcus came out of the kitchen, holding two mugs. “Here,” he said, handing one to Avery.“So, what’s the plan for today? Feeling sorry for me and taking me for hangover food?”
Avery took the mug, his fingers brushing Marcus’s. He held his friend’s gaze, letting the silence stretch a beat too long. He saw the flicker of confusion in Marcus’s eyes, a faint echo of last night’s glassiness. It was still there, just beneath the surface.The pathways were carved.He just needed to activate them.
He didn’t speak the command aloud this time. He focused, forming the intent with crystalline clarity in his mind.The hum intensified, centering behind his eyes. He aimed it at Marcus, not as a blunt instrument, but as a precise surgical tool. He didn’t want to erase the present; he wanted to overlay it. He summoned the exact state from last night—the desperate, submissive need, the physical conditioning, the identity of the willing, hungry slut—and he pushed it into the fabric of Marcus’s being, reactivating those latent channels.Marcus’s hand jerked. Hot coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug, splattering onto the floor. He didn’t seem to notice.His breath hitched, a sharp, inward gasp. The easy, confused expression melted away, replaced by a dawning, shameless hunger. The pink on his neck deepened to a full, hot blush that spread up to his cheeks. His eyes, fixed on Avery, darkened, pupils swelling to swallow the warm brown of his irises.
“Oh, fuck,” Marcus whispered, his voice already dropping, roughening.The mug trembled in his hand. Avery stepped forward and calmly took it from him, setting both mugs on the cluttered coffee table.
“What is it?” Avery asked, the question a tender formality.
“I feel… God, I feel it again,” Marcus moaned, his hands coming up to clutch his own stomach, then sliding down to press against the front of his sweatpants. “It’s like… it’s like the dream, but it’s real.I’m so hard. I feel so fucking empty, Avery.” He took a stumbling step closer. His usual confident swagger was gone, replaced by a clumsy, urgent need.“I need you.Please. I can’t… I can’t think straight.”
Avery watched, mesmerized. The transition was faster this time, smoother.The blueprint was already in place; he was just applying the voltage. “What do you need, Marcus?” he prompted, his own blood beginning to heat, a response to the absolute control he was witnessing.
“I need you to fuck me,” Marcus blurted, the words crude and raw in the quiet afternoon room. There was no hesitation, no embarrassment, just a stark, stunning honesty.“I need you to use my hole.It’s all I’m good for. I woke up wanting it. I’ve been wanting it all morning and I didn’t even know why.” His hands were now fumbling with the drawstring of his sweatpants, pulling the knot loose.“See? Look what you do to me.”
He shoved the sweatpants and his boxers down just enough to free his erection, which was already fully hard, curving up against his stomach.He was leaking. The sight of him, standing in his sunlit living room, so blatantly and desperately exposed, was more powerful than any porn, any fantasy. This was a person, a soul, rewritten for his pleasure.
“You’re such a slut,” Avery said, the words not an insult, but a coronation.Marcus whimpered, nodding vigorously. “Yes.For you.I’m your slut. Just your fucking whore.” He took another step, closing the distance, and fell to his knees. It was the same motion as the night before, but now conscious, deliberate.He looked up, eyes pleading. “Don’t make me wait.Please, Avery. I’ve been so empty.”
Avery reached out and tangled his fingers in Marcus’s short, coarse hair.He exerted pressure, guiding Marcus’s face forward. “Then do something about it.”
Marcus understood immediately. His hands scrabbled at Avery’s jeans, unsnapping and unzipping with a frantic, practiced efficiency that belied the haze of his own need. He took Avery into his mouth with a desperate, hungry noise, a deep, groaning sigh of relief as if he’d been granted water after days in a desert. He was sloppy, over-eager, his tongue working fiercely, his lips stretched wide. He gagged once, pulled back with a wet pop, gasped for air, and dove right back in, tears brimming in the corners of his eyes from the force of his own enthusiasm.
Avery held his head, not thrusting, just observing. He watched the powerful line of Marcus’s back, the way his shoulders worked, the absolute surrender in his posture.He was using his best friend’s face. The thought was not grotesque, but exultant. This was the purest form of his power—to take what was familiar and reshape it into something that served him completely.
After a few minutes, he pulled Marcus off by the hair. A string of saliva connected Marcus’s swollen lips to Avery’s tip.Marcus looked up, dazed, wrecked. “Was that… was I good?”
“Good enough,” Avery said, his voice thick.“Now, the bedroom. On the bed.Ass up. I want to see that hole you’re so proud of.”
Marcus scrambled to his feet, pulling his sweatpants up just enough to shuffle down the hallway without tripping.Avery followed, a slow, deliberate predator. In the bedroom, the afternoon light filtered through the blinds, painting stripes across the rumpled bed. Marcus was already there, having shucked his sweatpants and shirt entirely. He knelt on the mattress, then folded his torso down, pressing his face into the comforter, his ass raised high in the air.He was trembling. The position was one of profound, animal submission. The daylight revealed everything the shadows had obscured last night: the powerful musculature of his thighs and back, the dark hair dusting his legs, the flushed, perfectly prepared entrance that glistened faintly, already slick with his body’s forced readiness.
Avery undressed slowly, folding his clothes onto the dresser, once again covering the photograph of their younger selves.The hum in the room was a palpable force now, a pressure in his ears. He approached the bed.He ran a hand down the knobs of Marcus’s spine, feeling him shudder.
“You’re already open for me,” Avery murmured, a clinical observation.
“Made for you,” Marcus choked out, his voice muffled by the bedding. “Only for you.”
Avery didn’t need lube.The reality he had commanded had taken care of the physics. He positioned himself, the head of his cock pressing against that waiting heat. He pushed forward, a slow, inexorable invasion.
Marcus cried out, a sharp, broken sound that melted instantly into a low, continuous moan.His back arched, pushing back against Avery, taking him deeper. “Fuck, yes… so full… thank you…”
Avery started to move, a hard, steady rhythm. There was no tenderness, no exploration.This was a function.A reaffirmation of the new order. He gripped Marcus’s hips, his fingers digging into the dense muscle, using him for leverage. The slap of skin on skin was loud in the quiet room, punctuated by Marcus’s lewd, whimpering sounds.
“You love this, don’t you?” Avery grunted, driving deeper.“Yes!God, yes!I love being your fucktoy! I love being used!” Marcus babbled, his words slurring, descending into incoherent grunts and pleas.“Harder… please, harder… ruin me…”
Avery obliged. He was chasing a feeling beyond physical pleasure.It was the feeling of the world bending. With every thrust, he felt the confirmation of his power.Marcus was not just consenting; he was engineered for this. His body’s responses, his choked words of worship, the way he pushed back desperately to meet every stroke—it was all a perfect feedback loop, proof of concept. Avery lost himself in the rhythm of control. He watched the way Marcus’s body yielded, the way his own slender frame commanded the stronger man beneath him.It was the ultimate inversion.
His climax built, not as a wave of ecstasy, but as a peak of authority. When it came, it was silent, a sudden, totalizing rush of heat and release that locked his jaw and blurred his vision. He stayed buried deep, pulsing inside the reality he had remade.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths.Then, carefully, Avery pulled out.Marcus collapsed onto his side, boneless, spent. The glaze of absolute submission was back in his eyes, vacant and satisfied.
Avery went to the bathroom, cleaned up.His reflection was calm, composed. The hazel eyes that once darted away now held a steady, knowing depth.He returned to the bedroom. Marcus was still curled on the bed, watching him with dumb, animal devotion.
Marcus was still curled on the bed, watching him with dumb, animal devotion.The sight was satisfying, but it was also a closed loop. Avery wanted to open a new one. He stood at the foot of the bed, considering the sprawled form of his best friend.The power within him flexed, curious. He had turned Marcus on and off like a switch.What about a dial?Could he partition him? The idea, cold and surgical, captivated him. He would restore the mind, the personality, the familiar Marcus—but leave the body’s programming intact.A living, breathing paradox.
He focused, the hum narrowing to a razor’s edge.He didn’t push a command this time. He carefully reversed one specific layer. He visualized pulling the psychic filaments of submissive identity back, leaving only the raw, physical wiring of arousal. He willed Marcus’s consciousness to surface, clean and unaware, while his nervous system remained a live wire of need. He felt a complex, draining tug, like untangling knotted cords in the dark.Marcus blinked. He shook his head, the vacant gleam in his eyes dissolving into familiar, confused awareness. He looked around his bedroom, then down at his own nakedness, a frown creasing his forehead. “Whoa,” he said, his voice rough but normal.“Did I… did I pass out again? Man, my head is all over the place.” He sat up, wincing slightly. He seemed utterly oblivious to Avery’s nudity, to the wetness streaking his own thighs, to the fact that he was half-hard again.“That dream was so vivid. I swear I could feel…” He trailed off, laughing awkwardly.“Never mind.It’s fucking weird.”
Avery watched, fascinated. The mind was back.The body, however, was not. Marcus moved to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing his neck.A slight, unconscious shiver ran through him. His cock, resting against his thigh, twitched and began to firm again, completely of its own accord. Marcus didn’t notice.“You just crashed hard,” Avery said, his voice calm. He didn’t move to dress.He stepped closer to the bed. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“Yeah?” Marcus looked up at him, his expression sheepish and open. Then his gaze inadvertently dropped.He saw Avery’s erect state.A normal flush of awkwardness would have followed. It didn’t.Instead, Marcus’s breath hitched. His own body responded instantly, a full, aching erection springing up. He glanced down at himself, a flicker of confusion crossing his face, but it was buried under a sudden, overwhelming physical response. “Shit, Ave, I…” he started, his tone still conversational, but his body was arching subtly forward.
Avery placed a hand on his shoulder, pushing him gently back onto the mattress. “Just relax,” Avery said, his words banal, instructional.
“Okay, yeah,” Marcus replied, lying back, his head on the pillow.He stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the conversation. “Maybe I’m still dehydrated or something. I feel… really strange.” As he spoke, his legs fell open, a natural, inviting posture his mind didn’t consciously choose. His body was arranging itself, ready and waiting.Avery positioned himself between those open thighs. He didn’t guide himself in. He simply pressed the head of his cock against Marcus’s entrance, which was already slick and yielding from earlier.The physical memory was flawless.
“So, about Thursday,” Marcus said, his voice straining slightly for normalcy.“The distributor is coming by the bar at four. I need you to back me up on the keg order, the last one was all foam—” His sentence dissolved into a sharp, surprised groan as Avery pushed inside him in one smooth, deep motion.“Fuck! Oh, Jesus.” His hands flew to Avery’s arms, not to push him away, but to grip him, his knuckles white.
“You were saying about the distributor?” Avery asked, beginning to move with a slow, deliberate rhythm.He watched Marcus’s face twist in pleasure.
“I—the… the invoice,” Marcus gasped, his eyes screwed shut. He was trying desperately to hold onto the thread of conversation, to anchor himself in the mundane. His body, however, was bucking fiercely, meeting every thrust. “The pale ale… oh, God, right there… the pale ale shipment is fucked.” He bit his lip, a moan escaping anyway. “We need to… to complain.Fuck! Avery, harder… please, harder.”
“Complain how?” Avery asked, punctuating the question with a particularly deep stroke. He felt the tight, hot clench around him, a body singing a song its mind couldn’t hear.
“A phone call… we just… call them…” Marcus’s words were fracturing, his hips rolling erratically. “Tell them… tell them the quality… oh, Christ, yes… the quality is unacceptable.” He was babbling now, a chaotic mix of business and obscenity. “Don’t stop… don’t you dare stop… we can’t accept subpar… fuck, yes!… subpar product!”
Avery accelerated, driven by the exquisite perversion of the scene. Marcus’s hands scrabbled at his back, pulling him closer. His legs locked around Avery’s waist, his heels digging into the small of Avery’s back. All the while, small, desperate fragments of conversation tumbled from his lips, instantly swallowed by groans.
“The trash pickup… nngh!… is on Wednesdays now… oh, right there!… you fucking beast… remember that.”
Avery couldn’t help but laugh, a low, dark sound. The power wasn’t just control over flesh.It was control over context, over reality itself. He was fucking his best friend’s conscious mind right out of his own head, leaving only the primal, wired body beneath him. He watched Marcus’s struggle, the futile battle between a normal thought and a body screaming in ravished pleasure.Marcus’s coherence finally shattered. “I can’t… I can’t think,” he sobbed, his hips pumping wildly. “What are you… what are you doing to me?It’s too much! I’m gonna… gonna…” His threat turned into a ragged, shouting climax, his body convulsing violently around Avery, milking him deep inside.Avery followed him over the edge, his own release a silent, potent surge of dominion. He stayed buried within the clenching heat, feeling the aftershocks. Marcus lay beneath him, panting, sweaty, a stunned void in his eyes where confusion and satiation warred.
After a long moment, Avery pulled out and stood.He dressed silently. Marcus slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, looking dazed and physically wrecked. He looked at Avery, then down at his own spent body, as if seeing it for the first time.
“What the hell was that?” Marcus whispered, his voice hoarse.“I just… I had the strongest… like a waking dream. My whole body is buzzing.”
“You’re just exhausted,” Avery said, his tone flat and final.He wielded his power once more, a soft, definitive press. This wasn’t a command for action, but for belief.It was a strange physical episode.A fluke. You are just Marcus.You are fine.He felt the energy leave him, a spent currency.
The profound confusion in Marcus’s eyes smoothed over, replaced by a weary acceptance.“Yeah. Must be.I feel wiped.” He shook his head, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “Sorry, man. That was weird.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Avery said, turning toward the bedroom door.The hum within him was a satisfied purr. He had done it.He had created a dissonance so perfect it was its own kind of harmony. The mind of his best buddy.The body of a desperate, used slut.He could have both. He could have everything. The city outside, full of other minds and other bodies, seemed to glow with potential, a vast canvas awaiting his brush.