The Contract

Chapter 16: Chapter 16

Derek woke the way he woke now, without moving at first, just lying there and taking inventory. The twelve inches were still in him. He could feel the flared base pressing against the harness leather, the shaft seated so deep that when he shifted his hip a fraction the head knocked against something inside him that made his whole body shiver. His cage hung small and cold between his legs, and there was a wet patch on the sheet under him where he had leaked all night.

Good. Full. The dream man's voice was still in his head, calm, patient, the way the beach had sounded in the dream, waves and warm steel. You arrive full for inspection. Derek pushed down on the dildo the way he had been taught, gripping it with his inner ring, feeling it hold. Yes. Full. He said it out loud in his new voice, high and lisping, and the sound of himself saying it made his cheeks burn. "Full for inthpection." He hated that voice. Kai had told him to keep it, that the lisp should go unnoticed, and now it was just his voice, forever.

He showered carefully, soaped around the harness straps, did not touch the cage because there was no point touching it, and ate nothing because there was nothing to eat until the cafeteria. His apartment felt smaller than it used to. He looked at himself in the mirror on the way out, and the mirror showed him a scrawny pale white boy, 59 kilograms dripping off him, ribs showing under the loose t-shirt, hips narrower than the leather harness straps that framed his crotch. The walk happened as soon as he stood up, the little arched bounce, each step making the dildo shift inside him. He couldn't turn it off anymore. He had stopped trying to turn it off around the time his voice changed.

In the cab he huffed poppers before he even realized he had the bottle out. His hand had just done it, thumbed the cap, tipped the little brown glass under his nostrils, one hit each side, and the cab driver, a thick-necked Chinese man in his forties with a gold ring and a shaved fade, glanced at him in the mirror with that same knowing smirk. Derek's head went warm and loose. He catalogued the driver the way his training made him catalogue every one of them. Big hands on the wheel. Thick wrists. A crease of muscle at the collar of his shirt. Derek imagined the chest under it, heavy and smooth and gold, the arms, the weight of him, the cock Derek knew would be big because all of them were big, because that was what they were. And the driver didn't look at him again. Didn't think about him at all. Straight, married probably, a man who drove fags like Derek to their appointments and forgot them by the next fare. Derek felt the shame rise and then Kai's voice came over it, warm and steady, from some VR session burned into him. Wanting forever is the gift. They don't owe you their attention, faggot. You owe them everything. Derek's eyes watered and he took another hit.

The lobby of the tower was busy the way it always was, and Derek stood where Huo Xiao had texted him to stand, near the security desk, bouncing gently on his heels, the dildo knocking that deep spot with every little bounce. That was when he saw them.

Two other white guys. Skinny like him. One was tall-ish and wiry with a haystack of unwashed brown hair, the other short and freckled with red hair buzzed close. Both wore loose jeans and plain tees, the same shapeless day-wear Derek wore, and both stood near their own handlers, each handler a Chinese man in a suit, tall, broad, immaculate. The tall one's handler had silver-rimmed glasses and a jaw like a shelf; the redhead's handler was younger, thick through the shoulders, black hair combed back and gleaming, one hand resting on the redhead's shoulder the way you'd steady a piece of furniture.

Derek's heart slammed. Other fags. Other assets. He stared before he could stop himself, and his training catalogued them too, uselessly, hungrily, and then the shame came, because they weren't the sexy ones, the handlers were. The handler with the glasses had a rare, heavy build, the kind of chest that pulled a dress shirt taut, and Derek thought about what was under that shirt, the smooth gold skin, the big soft nipples, the heavy dick swinging over heavy balls, and he hated himself for thinking it, and he thought it anyway. The redhead caught Derek looking. Their eyes met for half a second and the redhead's face did something awful and familiar, a flicker of terror and recognition, one faggot seeing another faggot across a lobby, and then he dropped his gaze to the floor. Derek dropped his too. Neither of them said anything. You didn't talk. Kai's voice: Faggots don't talk to each other. What would you even say? You'd just compare cages. Derek almost laughed and almost cried and did neither. He stood bouncing, smelling faintly of poppers, and waited.

Huo Xiao came out of the elevator bank at 9:04. Derek knew his walk now, the crisp precise stride, the slim black suit. Huo Xiao was not the biggest of them, not the heaviest, but he was the one who owned Derek's mornings, and Derek's body reacted to the sight of him like a plant to light, straightening, softening, readying. "Inspection day," Huo Xiao said. No hello. He looked Derek up and down once, professionally. "Chen's office. Walk normally."

Derek walked normally, which meant bouncing. The elevator rose and Derek watched the back of Huo Xiao's neck and remembered the dream, the stone table, the weight of him, and his hole clenched involuntarily around twelve inches and he had to breathe through his nose.

The conference room on the forty-first floor had a long table and three men at it. Mr. Chen at the head, of course, silver cufflinks, that same dark amusement in his eyes. To his right a man Derek had seen only in passing, a senior executive named Director Fan, heavyset and handsome with a boxer's flattened nose and a chunky steel watch. To his left, the third, a lean elegant man with reading glasses, whose name Derek didn't know and didn't dare ask. And the wall screen behind them showed his file. His numbers. His weight curve falling like a skier. Stills from his training sessions.

"Stand there," Mr. Chen said, pointing at a spot on the floor, and Derek stood there, in the light, in front of the table, hands at his sides, bouncing.

Huo Xiao came in and sat at the end of the table with a tablet. The elegant man with the glasses spoke first. "Fifty-nine kilograms. Down from eighty-two." He said it like a weather report. "He looks almost translucent."

"That was the projection," Chen said. "The diet worked faster than the model. Zhang Ming attributes it to compliance. He stopped fighting the salad somewhere around week four."

"The voice," Director Fan said. He leaned back and looked at Derek. "Say something."

Derek's stomach dropped. "I, um." He swallowed. His voice came out high and lisping, breathy. "I'm ready for inthpection, thirth." He heard himself say sir and the lisp made it a hiss.

Fan laughed, a short bark. "Three weeks ago he sounded like a normal fag. Now listen to him." He turned to Chen. "Is the lisp stable?"

"It's permanent," Huo Xiao said, reading from his tablet. "Vocal cord conditioning plus behavioral reinforcement. It will not revert."

Derek stood there while they discussed his voice like a spec sheet. His face was burning. His hole was pulsing softly around the dildo, and he could smell the poppers residue on his own upper lip.

"The begging," the elegant man said, and tapped something on the table in front of him. "This incident is in the file. He begged his handler for cock."

The room went quiet in a way that made Derek's knees feel loose. Huo Xiao did not look up from his tablet.

"When," Chen said.

"Two weeks ago. During the endurance module. He asked Huo Xiao to fuck him. Verbally. Twice." The elegant man looked at Derek over his glasses. "You are aware that cock is not on your program."

"I'm thorry," Derek said. The lisp made the apology sound fake, or filthier, or both. "I didn't mean to. I wath, he wath tho," he stopped, because there was no version of that sentence that wasn't worse. Kai's voice slid in under his panic, patient as ever: Wanting is fine, faggot. Wanting forever is the gift. Saying it out loud is not.

"The rule exists for reasons," the elegant man said, folding his hands. "Cock makes fags stupid in a different way. They bond. They start thinking they're lovers. You are not a lover, derekreads. You are equipment." He said Derek's handle like a brand name. "Sucking cock would also stretch nothing. It serves no training purpose. Do you understand why it's forbidden?"

"Yes thirth."

"Do you understand why you begged?"

Derek's mouth opened and closed. The truth was yes, he understood, the truth was the begging had come out of him like a reflex, the truth was Huo Xiao's hands inside him during the douching were the most intimate thing that had ever happened to his body and his brain had shorted out. "Because I'm a faggot," he said, small, lisping, "and he wath inthide me, and I forgot what I wath."

Nobody smiled. Director Fan nodded slowly, like the answer had been correct on an exam. Huo Xiao wrote something on the tablet. Derek stood in the light with his ears ringing and realized his hand was already at his nose, the poppers bottle warm from his pocket, one hit, then the other, automatic, done before his thinking mind caught up. The fumes spread through his head, warm, golden. Nobody commented on it. That was somehow the worst part, that none of them even found it worth remarking on.

"Questions for him," Chen said. "Director Fan. Go ahead."

Fan studied Derek the way he might study a used car. "The harness. Twelve inches now. How does it feel when you walk?"

"Good," Derek said, and it came out honest, and he heard the honesty and wanted to die. "It feelth, um. I feel him inthe me all day. Every thtep." He pressed his lips shut. He'd said him. Nobody corrected him, so maybe it was fine, or maybe they just logged it.

"And when you sit?"

"I don't sit flat. I perch." He bounced once, demonstrating without meaning to. "Like thith."

"Show us empty to full," the elegant man said. "Push out."

Derek's face flamed and his body obeyed before his shame could vote. He bore down, pushed out against the shaft, felt the thick length shift inside him, the base flaring the outer ring, and a small sound came out of his new voice, and Director Fan grunted approval and the elegant man made a note.

"Appetite," Chen said. "Zhang Ming's logs show the emptiness response converted at the full-stroke module. He now experiences removal as hunger. That was the milestone we were waiting on."

"He huffs at lunch," Huo Xiao said, reading. "He huffed in the cab this morning. He huffed just now in front of this table without deciding to." A pause. "Dosing behavior is fully internalized."

Derek stood there listening to his own life being read out. The poppers were still humming in his skull. He was aware of all three executives' bodies without wanting to be, Chen's tall tailored frame, Fan's heavy boxer build and the probable slab of chest under his jacket, the elegant man's lean wrists, and he was imagining all of them undressed in flagrant detail, the gold skin, the heavy cocks, Fan's dick must be a tank, thick as a wrist, and he was disgusted with himself for standing in a boardroom picturing three straight men's cocks while they graded his hole, and Kai's voice came over the disgust like a hand smoothing a bedsheet: They will never think about you, and that is correct. You think about them. That is the whole design. Derek exhaled shakily.

"Huo Xiao's report says the dreams have begun teaching," the elegant man said. "The arrival-full protocol. The no-cock rule, delivered by generated personas while he sleeps." He looked at Derek. "Did you know your dreams are curated?"

"No thirth." A beat. "I thuthpected."

"Good. Suspected is better than suspected nothing." Chen closed the folder in front of him with a soft clap. "Overall assessment. He's ahead of schedule. Weight on target. Voice stable. Appetite converted. Attitude converted. The begging incident is noted and closed." He turned his dark amused eyes on Derek and Derek felt the look go through him like a rod. "You're doing well, derekreads. Genuinely. By next week, if the numbers hold, you may be ready to take a real fist."

The words landed in Derek's body somewhere below language. His hole clamped down on the dildo hard, involuntary, and a wave of heat went from his chest to his face to his caged useless little dick, and he heard himself make a sound, a high lisping "oh," and he was grinning, he realized, grinning like an idiot in front of the table, and he didn't care, he couldn't care, a real fist, a real hand, inside him, his whole body going hollow and useful at once. "Thank you thirth," he heard himself say. "Thank you. Thank you thirth."

"See," Fan said dryly, to the room, "and they say you can't condition gratitude."

"Lunch," Chen said. "Cafeteria. Your salad." A small pause, a small mercy, delivered like a bonus line item. "He may have a jell-o today."

Derek's eyes actually stung. Jell-o. Red, probably, sugar-free probably, a cube of it on a small plate, and it felt like a medal. "Thank you thirth," he said again, and meant it so hard his voice cracked.

Huo Xiao stood and Derek followed him out, past the elevator bank, into the wide quiet corridor, and Derek couldn't stop the bounce now, the dildo knocking that spot with every step, the grin still on his face like something stuck to it.

"Today is not a training day," Huo Xiao said as they walked. He didn't look at Derek. "Today you adjust to the twelve inches. Light duty. Walk, sit, eat, log your sensations if the app prompts you." They reached the elevator and he pressed the button. "Tomorrow you'll be sore from nothing. That's normal. The body learns to carry it."

"Yes thirth."

The elevator opened and they stepped in. Huo Xiao looked at him then, straight on, and Derek felt pinned. "One correction." His voice was even, unhurried. "You walk like a total faggot now. That's fine. That's intended. But fine is not the same as licensed." The elevator sank. "In the lobby this morning you stared at another firm's assets and at two senior handlers. You catalogued them. I could see it from across the floor." Derek's stomach dropped through the floor of the elevator. "Bounce all you want. But in the presence of Chinese men you are small. Eyes down. Voice small. Body available. You defer before you're asked. Do you understand the difference?"

"Yeth thirth. I'm thorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be smaller." The doors opened on the cafeteria floor and the smell of the kitchen came out, garlic and frying oil and rich meat, food Derek would never eat again, and Huo Xiao held the door with one hand and reached into his jacket with the other. He produced a fresh poppers bottle, and it was bigger than Derek's, the glass darker, the label a deeper brown. He put it in Derek's palm and closed Derek's fingers around it. "Stronger than your last. Take it slow the first day. You'll be useless by two o'clock if you don't pace it." He gave Derek a flat look. "And derekreads. Eat the jell-o slowly. Earn it again tomorrow."

"Yes thirth. Thank you thirth."

He left him there. Derek stood at the mouth of the cafeteria, bottle warm in his fist, dildo seated, cage cold, and through the glass wall he could see the salad station, the shaved-head attendant in light blue scrubs moving with those big arms, silver threads in the stubble of his chin, and beyond him the long tables filling up with men in suits, tall ones, broad ones, bowls of noodles and trays of beef, laughing in Chinese, occupying space like they owned the air in it, and none of them had looked at Derek once and none of them ever would, and Derek thought about the jell-o, red and cold and sweet on his tongue, the best thing he'd been given in weeks, and he thought about a real fist next week, knuckles and wrist and a whole man's forearm opening him, and he took one slow hit off the new bottle, just one, pacing it, and walked in small.

The salad station attendant didn't speak, as always. He ladled the wet leaves onto the small plate and slid it across the steel counter, and his forearm flexed doing it, the sleeve of the light blue scrubs riding up on the big bicep, and Derek's eyes went there before anywhere else. Shaved head, that heavy jaw with the silver threading the stubble, shoulders that strained the scrub top at every motion. Derek imagined the chest under the scrubs, the dark flat nipples, the weight of the arms, the big cock Derek knew had to be hanging there in the uniform pants, thick and heavy and completely unavailable, belonging to a straight man who had never once thought about the skinny white thing he fed lettuce every day. Heat in, heat out. Derek took the plate with both hands and said thank you, sir, and the attendant had already turned to the next tray.

He ate alone at the end of a long table, perching on the edge of the bench the way he perched now, the dildo's base pressing up into him with every small bounce of his heels. The salad was the same wet green nothing, no dressing, no salt, a pile of leaves and shreds of cucumber and two pale tomato slices. Each bite was a gram of him disappearing. Sixty kilos going to fifty-nine, fifty-nine going to fifty-eight, skinnier and weaker and stupider, sir, and he chewed and swallowed and loved it and hated it and Kai's voice said the hunger is the diet working, the weakness is the program working, and around him the cafeteria filled with the sound of men eating real food.

The cooks worked the line behind the glass, five of them in white, and Derek catalogued them per chews. The tallest one with the long braided topknot flipping noodles in a wok, his forearm rolling with each toss, the burn scar on his wrist like a signature. The short heavy one at the grill, sweat beading under his soft jaw, thick fingers working tongs, the kind of stocky powerful build that Derek pictured naked in vivid unhelpful detail, the soft belly over a hard cock, and he flushed into his lettuce because the man was married maybe, was someone's uncle maybe, and Derek was imagining his dick over lunch. None of them looked up. Nobody ever looked up.

The tall businessmen took the middle tables, suits off or jackets open, sleeves rolled on veined forearms, chopsticks moving fast over noodles and braised beef, and one of them, a broad six-footer with his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat showing the first suggestion of a heavy chest, threw his head back laughing at something his friend said, the column of his throat working, and Derek watched the throat and thought about the rest of him and felt the familiar self-disgust rise and convert, rise and convert. They were straight. They were busy. They were laughing about quarterly numbers or a woman or a game, and Derek was a faint smell of poppers at the end of a table eating leaves, and wanting them was the only thing he had left that was fully his.

A cafeteria worker set a small plate at his elbow without a word.

The jell-o was red. A single square, trembling, sugar-free probably, cold and wet-looking under the cafeteria lights. Derek looked at it and his throat actually tightened. A treat. A medal. Chen had said he may have a jell-o today, out loud, in front of the table, and Derek had thanked him until his voice cracked, and here it was, red and quivering on white ceramic, the best thing the program had given him in weeks.

He was lifting the first wobbling cube of it toward his mouth on the provided little spoon when someone sat down across from him, and he knew the weight of the sit before he looked up.

Wei Li.

Wei Li was in a charcoal suit today, no tie, the top button open, and he was built like a door, wide and flat and solid, black hair clipped short at the sides and longer on top, pushed back with his fingers, a jaw you could set a level on, skin the deep gold that made the white shirt look like paper. His wrists were thick and one of them wore a plain steel watch, and when he reached across and took a napkin from Derek's stack, Derek watched the forearm move, the vein on the inside of the elbow, and thought about the chest under the shirt, the heavy slabs of it, the big soft nipples, and underneath everything the big cock, thick, swinging heavy over heavy balls, because they were all like that, all of them, and Wei Li was straight and important and had no idea or complete idea what Derek was thinking and either way didn't care.

"Eat your jell-o," Wei Li said. "You earned it. I want to see it enjoyed."

Derek put the spoon in his mouth. The red cube broke on his tongue, cold and fake-sweet and wonderful, and he made a small sound and his eyes closed for a second, and when he opened them Wei Li was watching him with the flat satisfied look of a man watching a machine run correctly.

"Good?"

"Tho good, thirth." Derek said it lisping and didn't flinch at himself anymore, mostly. "Thank you, thirth. Thank you, Mr. Chen thaid..."

"I heard what Chen said. I read your file this morning, top to bottom." Wei Li peeled a mandarin orange he'd brought, section by section, and ate it. His fingers were clean and precise. "You did well in the review. Chen doesn't hand out jell-o to everyone."

Derek glowed. Then, because the poppers had left the floor of his mind soft, the question came out before he could vote on it.

"Thirth. The other guyth. In the lobby." He kept his eyes on the plate. "White guyth. With handlerth. Are they..."

"Assets." Wei Li ate another section. "Yes."

"Are they in the program? Like, my program?"

"You're not the only faggot in the program, derekreads." Wei Li said it the way he'd say the cafeteria closes at two. "There are many. That was your intake group. Same cohort, same start date. They ran their reviews this morning the way you ran yours. Lately the firm's been bringing cohorts together for the final phase, so you'll see more of them in the building, not less."

Derek's spoon stopped in the empty dish. Other fags. Other little white guys walking around bouncing with things locked inside them, eating salads at other tables, being weighed and measured and voiced. The redhead with the terror-flicker face. The wiry one with the haystack hair. Something moved in Derek's chest that was almost warm and was definitely stupid.

"What are they like, thirth?"

"Dumb and faggy." Wei Li didn't look up from the orange. "Like you. Skinny, smooth, wrecked voices, holes that push out on command. The redhead lisps worse than you do. The wiry one cries during modules. They're all ahead of schedule or behind it, and none of that is your business."

"They might be, um. Working together?" Derek heard himself ask it, small.

"Eventually. Cohorts get run in groups in the late phase." Wei Li finished the orange and folded the peel into a neat square. "Group sessions. Group conditioning. The machine room has six chairs."

The image arrived whole in Derek's head, six contoured chairs, six skinny white bodies strapped open in a row, six pistons, one wall of screens, and his hole clenched on the twelve inches so hard he had to breathe. "Oh," he said, high.

"And before you go any further with whatever's happening on your face right now," Wei Li said, and his voice didn't sharpen, which was worse, it just got level, "let's be clear about what those boys are to you. Nothing. You don't befriend assets. You don't chat with assets. You're not going to sit at lunch trading stories about your handlers like roommates." He leaned back and the jacket fell open and Derek's eyes went traitorously to the spread of his chest and he dragged them back down to the tray. "You'll be too busy serving Chinese alphas. And by the time you'd ever be in a room with them for anything social, you'll be too stupid for conversation. Both of those things are the goal. Do you understand?"

"Yeth, thirth." But Derek's face must have kept some of the warmth, because Wei Li studied him a moment, the mandarin peel square on the table.

"You're lonely," Wei Li said. It wasn't cruel. It was diagnostic.

"No, thirth, I'm"

"You are. It's fine. Loneliness is part of the design too." Wei Li folded his hands. "But it's making you think useless thoughts, and useless thoughts make you slower. So we'll clean them out right now, together, since I have twenty minutes." He nodded at Derek's jacket pocket. "Take out the new bottle."

Derek's hand was already moving. The dark glass came out warm from his body heat, bigger than the old one, and he held it on the table between them like something sacred.

"You've been pacing it. Good. Now stop pacing." Wei Li's voice went into coaching register, the warm even cadence that Derek's spine recognized from VR modules and sat up straight for. "Those thoughts about the other fags, friendships, what they're like, what their voices sound like. All of that is noise. Junk data. The only things that should be in your head are Chinese alphas and the dildo inside you. Poppers clear the junk. So we're going to huff until the junk is gone."

"Yeth, thirth."

"Bottle. Both nostrils. On my count." Wei Li glanced at the clock on the wall, then back, and Derek saw his eyes move over Derek's face with professional interest, the flush, the pupils. "Ten. Nine. Eight."

Derek thumbed the cap on eight. The fumes were stronger already, thicker, the new formula heavier in the nose, and his head started leaning forward on its own.

"Seven. Six. Five."

"Four. Three." Derek's hand shook a little. The dildo shifted as he rocked. "Two. One."

The hit went in on one, both nostrils, long, and the new batch came up like warm concrete, heavy, filling his skull floor to ceiling. The cafeteria smeared. The cooks behind the glass turned into gold smudges with beautiful arms. The businessmen's laughter went underwater and lovely.

"Good," Wei Li said. "Hold it. Let it sit." He let it sit. "Again on my count. Ten."

Derek's world had narrowed to the bottle and the voice and the huge seated length of silicone in him, and when the count came down again he huffed again, deeper, and his eyes watered and his mouth fell open and a thin line of drool started at the corner of his lip without him noticing, catching light on his chin, and he began to bounce. Not the small trained walk-bounce. An actual bounce, up off the bench a centimeter and down again, riding the base of the dildo, the flared root dragging his rim out and seating back in, that deep spot getting knocked on every landing, and he moaned, low and fluttering and lisping, a continuous stupid sound, "ah, thirth, ah," and Wei Li watched him do it and ate another section of orange.

"Third one. Ten. Nine."

Derek huffed on one and the third hit took his language away. Words left. What stayed was gold, all around him, the whole cafeteria gold, the cooks and the suits and the arms and the chests and the big cocks he knew were there under every fabric in the room, straight and heavy and perfect, and the silicone in him, and the shame, which was somehow warm now, a heat he could sit in. His hips rolled. Drool reached his chin and hung.

"That's it," Wei Li said quietly. "There he is. Stupid faggot. Right where the program wants you."

Derek's eyes had drifted, he would realize later, or maybe he never realized at all until it was said, drifted up across the table and fixed on Wei Li's open collar, on the wedge of gold chest visible between the shirt flaps, on the flat nipple in the shadow, and then lower, to the front of Wei Li's charcoal slacks, to the thick resting shape there, and he was staring, mouth open, drooling, bouncing on the dildo, staring at his handler's packaged cock with the naked undisguised want of a dog at a table.

Wei Li noticed. Of course Wei Li noticed.

"Hey." One word, mild, and it came down on Derek like a hand on the scruff. "Where are your eyes, derekreads?"

Derek surfaced an inch. The cafeteria assembled itself around him again, slow, out of warm fog. He felt the drool first, wiped his chin with the back of his wrist, and then followed Wei Li's gaze backward along his own eye line and understood exactly where he'd been looking and for how long, and his whole face went hot.

"I'm thorry," he said, high, mortified, the lisp making it worse, "thirth, I wathn't, I didn't mean to, I wath just." He stopped. There was nothing. He had been exactly doing the thing.

"You were staring at my cock." Wei Li said it with no anger at all, the way he'd note a temperature. "Through my pants. While drooling. In the cafeteria." He folded his arms and the forearms crossed and Derek's eyes fled to the tray. "Silly thing. Little faggot sitting there eyeballing a straight man's package like it's lunch."

"Silly," Derek agreed, tiny, wanting to fold into the tray. His ears were burning. The jell-o dish was empty and he was still holding the spoon like evidence.

Wei Li let him sit in it for a moment. Then he tilted his head, and something observational moved across the handsome face.

"You know what's interesting," Wei Li said. "Two months ago that would have destroyed you. You'd have gone red to the chest, apologized for ten minutes, maybe cried in the locker room." He unfolded his arms. "Look at you now. A little blush. A little sorry. And you're still bouncing."

Derek blinked and realized his heels were still going, up down, riding the base, tiny obscene bounce, and he stopped them, and they started again.

"I'm getting uthed to it, thirth," he said, and heard the honesty in it. "Being a thtupid fag. It'th, um. Normal now." He smiled a small crooked embarrassed smile. "I'm thorry. I know I thouldn't thay that."

"Why shouldn't you?" Wei Li picked up the peel square and put it on Derek's tray, tidying. "It's true. You're used to it. That's progress. That's conditioning doing its job." A pause. "But I want to correct one small thing in how you just said it, because the correction will help you."

"Yeth, thirth."

"Getting used to it and not being embarrassed are two different things, and you've merged them together." Wei Li's voice stayed level, patient, tutorial. "You can be completely used to being a stupid faggot and still be embarrassed every single day. You should be. It is embarrassing. Look at you. Twenty-five years old, sixty kilos, lisping, bouncing on a locked dildo in a corporate cafeteria with drool on your face, staring at a man's crotch over an empty jell-o dish." He said each item like a line from the file. "That's shameful, derekreads. Deeply, permanently shameful, and the fact that you've stopped dying of it doesn't make it not shameful. It makes you a faggot who is used to being shameful."

Derek's face went from hot to hotter. The blush crawled down his neck under the loose collar of the tee. "Yeth thirth," he said, and his voice cracked on it, and he felt bad, properly bad, small and red and squirming, the old shame coming back online, and beneath the shame, humming, his caged little dick ached dully and his hole squeezed the silicone.

"Oh," he said, noticing.

"That's it," Wei Li said, and now he was smiling slightly, the way he did when a module hit its target number. "You felt it. Embarrassment and arousal, same nerve." He leaned forward on his forearms and the shirt gaped and Derek looked at the table like his life depended on it, which made it worse, which made his cage ache more. "For a dumb faggot, shame isn't the opposite of pleasure. It's the fuel. A fag who's ashamed while he serves serves harder. The blush goes straight to his hole. He opens apologetically. A fist goes into an embarrassed faggot and he thanks the man with his whole body, because thankfulness is just shame turned inside out." He sat back. "So we're going to practice it."

"Practithe, thirth?"

"Stare at my crotch again." Wei Li said it flatly, an instruction, and Derek's stomach flipped. "Right now. On purpose. And this time stay embarrassed about it the whole time. Feel how stupid it is. Feel how straight I am and how little I want you looking. And huff while you do it. The shame plus the poppers, that's your new lunch formula."

Derek's hand found the bottle without being told. His face was burning so hard he could feel his pulse in his cheeks. He lifted his eyes, shaking, all the way up Wei Li's chest to the collar and down again, deliberately this time, and fixed them on the thick shape in the charcoal slacks, and it was unbearable and he held it, bouncing, blushing, his whole body ringing with the wrongness of it, the straightness of the man, the indifference, the fact that Wei Li was letting him do this only as an exercise, a drill, the way you'd let a dog stare at food to train it not to beg.

"Count of ten," Wei Li said. "Both nostrils. Stare the whole time."

"Nine. Eight. Seven." Derek's eyes watered and stayed where they were put. "Six. Five. Four." The fumes were climbing his throat. "Three. Two. One."

The hit went in and the shame and the rush arrived together in one wave, fused, indistinguishable, and Derek moaned out loud in the cafeteria, a long lisping faggy moan that nobody in the room turned around for, that nobody would ever turn around for, and his drool came back and his bounce came back and his eyes stayed glued to the fabric over Wei Li's heavy straight cock while his hole pushed out on twelve inches and his blush burned like a coal and it was all one feeling and the feeling was the program working.

"Good boy," Wei Li said, and picked up his water glass. "Fifth hit in ten minutes. We'll do one more before I go. Eyes down between sets, derekreads. Small. You know how."

Derek dropped his eyes to the empty tray, the red residue of the best thing he'd been given in weeks, the bottle warm and heavy in his fist, the shame sitting in his chest like a hand, useful now, load-bearing, and waited for the count with his heels already starting to bounce.

But the count didn't come.

Wei Li picked up his phone instead, thumbed something, and went back to his food. He'd ordered a noodle bowl from the line at some point, Derek realized, a big white carton of it, and he ate it with chopsticks in quick efficient lifts, lips barely opening, watching the screen between bites. He did not say ten. He did not say one. He did not look up.

So Derek bounced.

It started small, because everything in him started small now. Heels on the floor, up and down, a centimeter of travel, the dildo's flared base dragging at his rim on the way up and seating home on the way down. His eyes stayed on the tray. The red residue of the jell-o had dried at the corner of the dish into a stain like something clinical. He watched it and bounced and felt his face burn, because he knew what he looked like from the outside, he could see himself from the outside now, a skinny white guy in a tight threadbare tee perched at the end of a table bouncing like a bird on a perch with twelve inches of silicone strapped up his ass, and Kai's voice said, you are exactly what you look like, and the bounce kept going.

Nobody looked. That was the part that fed the shame best. Derek let his eyes flick up for half a second, one forbidden audit of the room, and the cafeteria went on eating him without noticing he existed. The noodle cook with the topknot had a sheen of sweat at his hairline now, the braid swinging as he worked the wok, forearm rolling, and Derek thought about the chest under the white coat, the broad flat planes of it, the nipples he'd never see, and the cock, big, Derek knew it was big the way he knew the sun was up, heavy between the legs of a man who flipped noodles for a living and had never once thought about the small thing at table nine. The six-footer with the open collar threw his head back again at something. That throat. That chest, the first heavy suggestion of it behind the white cotton, the big hands around the chopsticks. Straight. Busy. Laughing. Derek was a faint smell of solvent at the end of a table, and wanting them with everything he had was the only property he still owned.

The bounce grew.

He didn't decide it. The poppers sat in his skull like warm concrete and the shame sat on his chest like a hand and between them the bounce got bigger, an inch of travel, then two, his whole slim body leaving the bench and coming down, and on the landings the dildo knocked the deep spot and a sound came out of him, small lisping "ah, ah," timed to the drop. His hands gripped the edge of the table. His back arched without permission, the trained arch, chest pushed out under the tee, and he bounced harder, openly now, flamboyant, up and down with his whole ass and hips, trying to fuck himself on the thing strapped inside him, rising off it and dropping back onto its length as far as the harness allowed, which was almost nothing, a half inch of give, and he chased the half inch like it was a man.

He knew everyone could see. He knew and the knowing was gasoline. A straight man would die before bouncing like this in public. Derek could feel that boundary from the inside, the old Derek's boundary, coffee-shop Derek's, and he was on the wrong side of it, bouncing over an empty jell-o dish in a corporate cafeteria, lisping with every landing, and Kai's voice said, the embarrassment is arousal, the arousal is purpose, and his cage ached and his rim burned and he bounced harder.

Wei Li said nothing.

Wei Li ate his noodles and typed on his phone with one thumb, unhurried, two lines, send, another two lines. Once he tipped the carton and slurped the broth. His jaw worked. His collar gaped a little when he leaned over the carton and Derek, still bouncing, staring hard at the tray, held the memory of the wedge of gold chest and the flat nipple in shadow like a coal in his fist. He hated himself for the coal. He bounced on the coal. Ten minutes, he thought, watching the wall clock crawl, I've been doing this for actual minutes and nobody has stopped me, and the thought opened under him like depth, like the machine's full stroke, empty all the way down and hungry all the way down.

His rim had gone loose. He could feel it, a wide warm numb slackness around the base, the muscle too tired and too open to grip anymore, just hanging on the flare while he bounced, and the looseness felt like progress and the progress felt like filth and the filth felt good, and he was so turned on his vision pulsed at the edges.

The phone went face down on the table.

"Eyes up, derekreads." Wei Li picked up his water but didn't drink. "Crotch."

Derek's head came up out of the bounce like it was on a string. Up the flat front of the charcoal slacks, the thick resting shape of a straight man's package, heavy even soft, folded to one side in the fabric, and Derek fixed on it and his whole body rang. He was still bouncing. He couldn't stop bouncing. He stared at the bulge with his mouth open and his cheeks burning and rode the dildo up and down, up and down, shame and rush fused into one wave, and Wei Li watched him do it and drank his water.

"You've been at that bounce for ten minutes," Wei Li said. "Louder the whole time. Half the cafeteria could hear the bench." He set the glass down. "I let it run. Do you know why?"

Derek's answer came out between landings, high and lisping. "Becauthe I'm a thtupid fag, thirth."

"Because you're equipment," Wei Li said, "and equipment doesn't need permission to make noise." He let that land. "But there's a lesson in what just happened, and you're going to take it while you huff. Bottle. Both nostrils. Eyes stay right where they are. Count of ten."

The bottle was slick with Derek's sweat. He thumbed the cap one-handed, bounced through it, the new batch already thick in the nose before he even tipped it, and Wei Li counted him down, ten, nine, eight, even and unhurried, and on one Derek inhaled long and deep and the world dropped out from under his thoughts.

"There he is." Wei Li's voice came from far away and very close, warm, coaching register, the voice Derek's spine sat up for. "Now listen to me with whatever's left of your head, because this part matters. Look at what you're staring at."

Derek stared. The slacks. The shape. The heavy weight of it, the way the fabric moved when Wei Li shifted his weight, the sheer settled mass of a straight man's cock resting against his thigh.

"That's a real man's cock, derekreads. Sixty kilos of it walking around in tailored wool, attached to a man who runs a floor of this building, who signs things, who files reports, who has never in his life asked anyone's permission to exist." Wei Li's voice stayed level, patient, each sentence laid down like a tile. "Now look at what's holding it. Straight man. Six feet of him. Works out before his meetings. Sleeps with women who feel lucky about it." A pause. "And look at what's looking at it."

Derek looked down at himself without taking his eyes off the crotch, an inventory by feel. The bony knees bouncing over the bench. The thin arms, the wrists like a kid's. The tee hanging off ribs that were getting easier to count every week, sixty going to fifty-nine going to fifty-eight, skinnier and weaker and stupider, sir, thank you, sir. The cage under his waistband with its little locked ache. The lisp sitting in his throat permanently now, his own voice gone foreign to him.

"I'm nothing, thirth," he said, and it came out true, and the truth of it went straight to his hole.

"Now you're learning," Wei Li said. "Say it properly. What are you, looking at my crotch?"

Derek's face went from burning to molten. The words had to be said out loud, in the cafeteria, over the empty dish, while bouncing. "I'm a, a thkinny white faggot, thirth. Fifty-nine kiloth. Lisping. Bouncing on a locked dildo. Thtaring at a thtraight Chinese man'th cock through hith pants and, and wanting it, and knowing he'd never, never in hith life." His voice cracked on never and the crack went down his body and out through his rim, which pushed out on the twelve inches, wide and slack and grateful.

"And what am I to you?"

"Everything, thirth." It wasn't flattery. Derek was past flattery, past choice, the poppers had taken the floor out and this was just what was true at the bottom. "You're, Chinese men are everything, thirth. I'm, I'm furniture that got to look at you."

"Furniture that got to look," Wei Li repeated, and something in his voice approved, the module-hitting-its-number tone. "Good. Keep bouncing. I want to feel the bench from here."

Derek bounced. Bigger now, shameless, his whole body slapping down onto the seat and rising, chasing the half inch, riding the harness, moaning in time, and Wei Li watched him with the flat satisfied look of a man watching calibration, and Derek felt the watching itself like a hand, the first attention anyone had paid him all day and it was this, an audit of his humiliation, and it was better than the jell-o.

"Here's what's happening in your body right now, and I want you to feel it happening." Wei Li leaned back, arms crossed, forearms crossed, the steel watch catching light. "That ring of muscle around my firm's property has been gripping for two months. Squeezing, holding, scared. Every day it grips a little less. Today you bounced for ten minutes and it stopped gripping at all, didn't it. Just hung open."

Derek nodded, bouncing, tears starting at the corners of his eyes from the fumes or the shame or both.

"That's the whole program in one muscle. It's getting wider and weaker and stupider, same as the rest of you. And the loose it gets," Wei Li's voice dropped slightly, warm, "the more it wants. A tight hole resists and hates. A loose hole begs. Which one is yours?"

"Lothe, thirth." Derek's hips were rolling now on the down-stroke, grinding the flared root against his rim, trying to fuck the depth the harness wouldn't give him. "Lothe and, ah, wanting, thirth."

"Wanting what?"

"A fitht, thirth." It came out cracked and eager and loud enough that a man two tables over glanced up, once, without interest, and went back to his noodles, and even that glance went through Derek like the machine's deep stroke. "A realfit. Next week, thirth, Chen thaid."

"Chen said maybe." Wei Li picked up the phone again, glancing at something, then back. "Files say maybe. Holes say. And your hole is saying it right now in front of sixty people, loud and clear, bouncing and begging on a silicone twelve inches with drool coming back on your chin." He was right. Derek felt the drool, hot thread at the corner of his lip, and didn't wipe it. "Last hit. Make it count. Eyes on the package the whole time, and this time I want you to do the math out loud while you ride it."

"Bottle to your nose. Count of ten."

Derek's hand shook so hard he nearly dropped the cap. Ten, nine, eight, and he was already inhaling before one, greedy, the heavy new fumes climbing his sinuses like warm flood, and his head went light and gold and the crotch in front of him swelled to fill the whole world, charcoal wool, heavy straight cock, the man above it calm and expensive and completely uninterested.

"Math, derekreads. Go."

"That'th a real cock and I'll never touch it, thirth." Landing. Landing. "It belongth to a woman or to no one, never to me. I'm sixty kiloth going down. My hole ith loother today than yesthterday and it'll be loother tomorrow. Every day I get thkinnier and weaker and dumber and, and more open, and that'th the plan working, and I, ah." He lost the sentence on a landing that hit the deep spot and cried out, lisping, head back, and Wei Li waited, patient as furniture himself, until Derek pulled it back.

"And I'm grateful, thirth," Derek finished, sobbing a little now, bouncing, staring, blushing to the chest. "I'm tho grateful for the sh shameful part. Thank you for making me thtare, thirth."

"That's the lunch formula," Wei Li said. "Shame plus poppers, daily. You just ran a full set and your ring is hanging open like a grocery bag." He stood, buttoning nothing, straightening a cuff, and the motion put his whole door-wide body into outline above Derek, the chest, the jaw, the watch, and Derek bounced up at him from below like something small at a counter. "You're done eating. The dish is done. Take your tray up and stand small in the line and don't speak to anyone. Huo Xiao collects you at one."

He paused. Looked down at Derek one more time, at the bounce, the wet chin, the red-rimmed eyes, and Derek braced for a correction, a smallness, a last word.

"Your rim's sitting wider than it was Monday," Wei Li said instead. Clinical, pleased. "I'm noting it in the file. Keep the bounce exactly this stupid between now and one, derekreads. It's good conditioning, and the men walking past don't care, and not-caring is the gift."

He walked. The charcoal jacket moved across his back like a sail, the slacks took his stride, and Derek watched the whole exit with his mouth open, the heavy cock shifting with each step under the wool, and then the doors took him, and Derek was alone at the end of a long table with an empty red dish and a warm bottle and twelve inches seated in his loose, wide, grateful hole.

He bounced. Small again, obedient, heels up down on the tile, eyes on the tray. Kai's voice ran under the cafeteria noise like a bass line: embarrassed while he serves serves harder, and the blush goes straight to the hole. His rim was slack and humming and wider than Monday. It was one o'clock in nine minutes and his fist was coming and he was so ashamed, and the shame was load-bearing, and he bounced on it all the way to the tray line, in front of the noodle cook, in front of the laughing six-footer, small and red and stupid, the best thing the program had given him yet.

Huo Xiao was already there, standing at the end of the tray line with the tablet under his arm, waiting the way walls wait.

"Tray up," he said. "Then come."

Derek carried the dish the four steps to the return window, bouncing the whole way, and the salad attendant took it without looking at him, the shaved head bent to the next task, silver stubble glinting at his jaw. Derek's eyes did the catalogue on reflex. The big arms under the light blue scrubs, the chest under them, the heavy weight of what had to be swinging behind that fabric. Kai's voice said, want with everything, bother no one, and Derek wanted, and turned, and followed.

The elevator went down past the cafeteria floor, past the training floor, past numbers Derek had never seen lit. His heels bounced in the mirrored box and Huo Xiao watched the numbers and Derek watched, in the mirror, the shape under Huo Xiao's slacks, the settled heaviness of it, and blushed, and bounced, and Huo Xiao did not look down once.

The doors opened on a quiet hall, cream walls, one door with a brass plate and no name on it.

Inside there was an examination chair, but it was not like any chair at a clinic Derek had ever sat in. It was padded in dark leather, wide in the seat, with a split down the middle and two chrome stirrups rising from the foot of it, and beside it stood a rolling tray with instruments laid out in a neat row, and a monitor on an arm, screen dark.

The doctor stood at the counter writing. He was older, sixty at least, silver-haired and heavy through the middle, in a white coat over a grey cardigan, and he wore half-moon reading glasses low on his nose. When he turned he smiled, a warm professional smile, and came over with his hand out.

"Dr. Lu," he said, and shook Derek's hand with a dry, firm grip. "So you're the fifty-nine kilo. Very nice to meet you."

"Thank you, thirth," Derek lisped, and flushed at the sound of it in a room with a stirrup chair in it.

Dr. Lu had already turned away. "Clothes off. Everything. Fold them on the bench." He was speaking to Derek the way he might speak to a large dog, kind, unhurried, not expecting an answer, and he said to Huo Xiao, in the same breath, "How has he been eating?"

"Salad station only. No dressing. He had jell-o today."

"Mm. Good." Dr. Lu made a note.

Derek undressed. The tee went over his head and the jeans went down his thin legs and the harness came into the open air of the room, the black leather strapped around his hips, the flared base of the twelve inches visible between his cheeks, and the little cage swinging pale and small above it. He stood there naked and bouncing, arms hanging, and nobody looked at him for longer than a chart needs.

"Up," Dr. Lu said, patting the chair. "Feet in the stirrups. Slide down to the edge."

Derek climbed up. The leather was cool through his skin. He put his feet in the chrome and the stirrups swung his knees wide and up, and he slid his ass to the edge of the seat, and the position opened him completely, the way it had opened him in the training chair a hundred times, except this room smelled like antiseptic and had a diploma on the wall, and the diploma made it worse, not better. His rim hung on the flared base, slack, barely holding, and the holding showed in his face and nobody was watching his face.

The cannula came next. Dr. Lu fitted it himself, seating the soft tubes in both nostrils, adjusting the strap behind Derek's ears with two careful fingers, doctor's fingers, patient and precise, and Derek's chest went hot under the gaze of those reading glasses.

"Huff for me," Dr. Lu said. "Deep. This keeps you comfortable during the exam."

Derek breathed in. The gas hit faster than the bottle did, warmer, a heavy gold bloom that poured down through his skull and pooled in his pelvis, and his rim, which had been hanging, simply let go.

"Huo Xiao, the harness, please."

Huo Xiao set the tablet down. He stood between Derek's raised legs, close, the flat grey front of his slacks right there at the foot of the chair, and Derek stared at it, helpless, the thick resting shape of a real man's package inches from his own wrecked and gaping hole, and the shame came up his neck and the rush came down his spine and met somewhere in the middle and made him moan, one small lisping note, while Huo Xiao worked the buckle.

The strap at his taint came free. Then the hip straps. The harness leather slid out from under him, and then Huo Xiao gripped the flared base with one gloved hand and pulled, slow and steady, and the twelve inches came.

It left him like a tide going out. His rim gripped at nothing, then failed to grip, then bloomed wide around the last flare and closed on empty air, and the emptiness after it was enormous, a cool draftswept nothing where a warm weight had lived all day. Derek whined, high, faggy, grateful for the whine too, and bounced his heels in the stirrups, and his hole pushed out on nothing, visibly, hungrily, in front of the doctor, the handler, the tray of instruments.

"There's a good response," Dr. Lu said, writing.

He snapped on a pair of latex gloves. The snap went through Derek like a clap. Then the doctor's hands were on him, both of them, thumbs settling at the edges of his rim, and he pressed outward, gently, and then wider, and Derek's hole opened under the hands like it had been waiting for hands all day. It did not resist. Derek could feel it not resisting, feel the muscle just lying there, letting itself be folded open, and the doctor leaned in and looked.

"Well," Dr. Lu said, pleasantly. "Look at that."

He kept stretching. Thumbs and fingers, widening, holding, and Derek hung in the stirrups huffing the warm gas and watched, upside down between his own knees, the grey crown bent over his own opened body, and tried to clench. He sent the signal down. Nothing answered. The muscle received the order and lay still, and the nothing of it was the most sexual thing he had ever felt, wider and weaker and stupider, sir, thank you, sir.

Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.