Chapter 4: A Voice Note and a Warning
The witching hour arrived at 5:15, and with it came the kind of boredom that made Ender's skin feel two sizes too small.
He had finished the chair. Well—he had finished a version of the chair. A decent version. A version that looked less like a melted candle and more like something a wealthy tech CEO might actually buy for their minimalist penthouse. The render had saved. The file was in the folder. The client would probably be satisfied, or at least not actively furious.
And Ender was still hard.
Still plugged.
Still dripping with the dried remains of Gene's release, which had gone from tacky to crusty sometime in the last hour, and which itched in a way that was starting to drive him genuinely insane. He wanted to shower. He wanted to come. He wanted to be allowed to do literally anything other than sit here in this chair, squirming like a worm on a hook, waiting for permission to exist.
The clock ticked. 5:16. 5:17.
Ender picked up his phone.
He knew he shouldn't. That was the whole point—he knew, with crystal clarity, exactly how bad an idea this was. Gene had been explicit. Complete the render. Don't touch yourself. Wait for six o'clock.
But Ender's brain had never been particularly good at following instructions. It was good at finding loopholes, at pushing edges, at asking "what's the worst that could happen" and then finding out firsthand.
He opened the group chat.
The last message was from Zenix, sent at 12:43: a photo of his lunch, some kind of elaborate sushi platter arranged on a slate board, with the caption "thinking of you both" and a winking emoji. Gene had responded with a thumbs up. Ender had responded with a string of increasingly unhinged heart emojis.
Now Ender's thumb hovered over the microphone button.
A voice note. Just a small one. Thirty seconds, maybe less. It wasn't touching. It wasn't violating the letter of the law. It was just—checking in. Keeping them updated. Being a good boyfriend, really.
He pressed the button.
For a moment, he didn't say anything. He just let the recording capture the ambient sound of his office: the hum of the monitors, the creak of his chair, the soft, unsteady rhythm of his breathing. Then he shifted his hips, deliberately, and let out a sound that was half sigh and half whimper—a small, helpless noise that he knew, from experience, would hit both of his boyfriends directly in the hindbrain.
He released the button and sent the message.
The caption took him a moment to compose. "Just checking in," he typed, because it was funny. Because it was exactly the opposite of what he was actually doing.
Then he sat back in his chair and waited.
The response came faster than he expected. Not a text—a call. Gene's name lit up the screen, accompanied by the generic ringtone that Ender had never bothered to customize. Ender stared at it for three seconds, his heart hammering against his ribs, before he answered.
"Hey," he said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere closer to breathless. "That was fast."
"Ender." Gene's voice was calm. Not angry-calm. Not the quiet-before-the-storm calm that Ender had learned to fear and crave in equal measure. Just—calm. Steady. The way he sounded when he was explaining a building code violation to a contractor who had fucked up. "What was that?"
"What was what?"
"The voice note."
"Oh, that?" Ender shifted in his chair, and the plug pressed against something that made his toes curl. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from gasping. "Just wanted to say hi. See how you're doing. You know. Checking in."
"Checking in."
"Yep."
"While you're supposed to be working."
"I finished the chair."
Silence. The kind of silence that made Ender's skin prickle with anticipation.
"You finished the chair," Gene repeated, and his voice had shifted now—still calm, but with an edge underneath it, a quiet promise of something that made Ender's stomach flip. "And you thought you'd celebrate by sending me a recording of yourself whimpering like a desperate little thing."
"I wasn't whimpering. I was—"
"You were moaning, Ender. Softly. On purpose. Into your phone." A pause. "While you have a plug inside you and orders not to touch yourself."
Ender's mouth went dry. "I was just—"
"I know exactly what you were doing." Gene's voice was almost gentle now, which was somehow worse. "You were bored. You were aching. You wanted attention. So you did something small. Something you could justify as not technically breaking the rules. Just a voice note. Just a little sound. Just enough to remind us that you're here, waiting, desperate for us to come home and take care of you."
Ender didn't say anything. His throat had closed up.
"But here's the thing, sweetheart." Gene's voice dropped, low and deliberate. "You did break the rules. And you knew you were breaking them. Which means you have exactly one chance to earn back your evening."
The words hung in the air. Ender's free hand clenched against his thigh, nails digging into his own skin.
"How?"
"Webcam," Gene said. "Right now. Turn it on."
Ender's blood ran cold and hot at the same time. "What?"
"You heard me. Turn on your webcam. You're going to finish that chair render—yes, I know you said it's done, but you're going to go over it again, check every line and every curve, and make sure it's perfect—and you're going to do it live while we watch."
"While you—"
"Zenix and I are in the parking garage. We've been here since five o'clock, waiting for you to do something exactly like this. We're in the car, Ender. We can see the building from here. And we're going to watch you work."
Ender looked at his monitor, at the little camera icon nestled at the top of his screen. His reflection was already there, faint and ghostly, waiting to be activated.
"You want me to—" He swallowed. "You want to watch me?"
"We want to watch you squirm." It was Zenix's voice, sudden and bright, cutting through the speaker. So they were on speakerphone. Of course they were. Gene had probably put his phone on the dash the moment Ender answered, so Zenix could hear every stutter and gasp. "We want to see your face while you try to concentrate with a plug up your ass and Gene's come drying on your back. We want to hear you bite down on every sound you want to make. And we want to know—exactly, precisely, without any deception—that you're being good."
"That's—" Ender's voice cracked. "That's insane."
"Is it?" Gene asked. "Or is it exactly what you wanted when you sent that voice note?"
Ender had no response to that. Because it was. It was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be watched, to be seen, to be the center of their attention even when they couldn't be in the room. He wanted them to know every humiliating detail of his struggle. He wanted to be held accountable.
He wanted to be owned.
"Webcam," Gene repeated. "Now. And if you're very good, if you keep your hands where we can see them and don't make a sound, we'll come home at six and give you what you've been aching for all afternoon."
"And if I'm not very good?" Ender asked, because he couldn't help himself.
"Then we come home at six and give you exactly what you deserve." Gene's voice was warm and dark, a promise wrapped in silk. "Your choice."
Ender's hand moved before his brain caught up. The webcam blinked on, and suddenly he was staring at his own face in the corner of the screen—flushed, wide-eyed, hair a disaster. He looked exactly like what he was: a messy, needy thing who had gotten himself in way over his head.
"Hello, beautiful," Zenix said, and Ender could hear the grin in his voice. "You look wrecked."
"I am wrecked."
"Good. Now open the chair file. Let's see what you've got."
Ender did as he was told. His hands shook as he navigated to the file, and when the 3D model appeared on screen, he heard a low whistle through the phone.
"That's actually pretty good," Zenix admitted. "I was expecting a disaster."
"It was a disaster. I fixed it."
"You fixed it while plugged and hard and aching?" Gene asked. "Impressive."
"I'm very talented."
"You're very motivated." A pause. "Now rotate the model. Slowly. I want to see every angle."
Ender's fingers found the mouse. He rotated the chair, his hips shifting involuntarily as he leaned forward to inspect the screen. The plug pressed deeper, and a sound escaped his throat before he could stop it—a tiny, high-pitched thing that made his face burn.
"Ah," Gene said. "There it is."
"I didn't—"
"You did. We heard it. Do it again."
"I can't do it on purpose."
"Then don't." Gene's voice was patient. Unhurried. "Just keep working. And let us hear every sound you can't hold back."
The next forty minutes were the longest of Ender's life.
He rotated the chair. He adjusted the lighting. He tweaked the texture on the armrests and changed the angle of the backrest and zoomed in on every detail until his eyes crossed. And the whole time, he could feel them watching—Zenix's occasional comments ("your hair's a mess," "is that sweat on your forehead," "you're doing so good, baby"), Gene's steady silence punctuated by soft hums of approval.
The worst part was the squirming.
It wasn't intentional. Ender wasn't trying to be provocative or coy. His body simply refused to stay still. Every few minutes, his hips would shift, or his thighs would clench, or his spine would arch in a way that pressed the plug against his prostate and sent sparks shooting through his nervous system. Each time, he would gasp or bite his lip or make some small, helpless noise, and each time, one of his boyfriends would acknowledge it.
"There," Gene said, after a particularly sharp intake of breath. "Right there. That's the sound."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"I hate you both."
"You love us," Zenix said. "You love us so much you can't stand it. That's why you're sitting there, shaking and flushed and dripping, letting us watch you fall apart over a chair."
Ender's eyes burned. Not with tears—not exactly—but with something close. The humiliation of it was real, sharp, cutting through every layer of his carefully constructed bravado. They could see him. They could see every twitch and every stutter and every desperate little gasp. They could see exactly how much he wanted them, how much he needed them, how completely he had surrendered to their game.
And they hadn't even touched him.
"Almost done," Gene said, and there was something softer in his voice now. "You're almost there, sweetheart. Just a few more minutes."
Ender saved the file for the tenth time. He checked the render parameters. He made one final adjustment—a slight curve to the backrest, because the client had mentioned organic shapes and he wanted it to be perfect, he wanted everything to be perfect, he wanted to be good.
"Done," he said, and his voice came out ragged. "It's done."
"Save it."
"I did."
"Good." A pause. "Now put your hands on the desk. Flat. Where we can see them."
Ender obeyed. His palms pressed against the cool wood, and he stared at his own reflection in the webcam window—sweaty, disheveled, eyes too bright.
"You did well," Gene said. "You struggled, and you wanted to touch yourself, and you didn't. You wanted to complain, and you didn't. You just worked, and you let us watch you, and you were good."
The praise hit Ender like a physical blow. His breath caught, and his eyes blurred, and for a moment he couldn't speak.
"Thank you," he managed.
"You're welcome." Another pause. "Stay exactly like that. Hands on the desk. Eyes on the webcam. We're coming home."
The line went dead.
Ender sat frozen, his hands flat against the wood, his heart pounding in his throat. The webcam was still on. The chair still rotated slowly on the monitor. And somewhere below him, in the parking garage, a car door closed.
The front door opened at 6:03.
Ender heard it—the key in the lock, the soft creak of the hinge, the footsteps in the hallway. He stayed exactly where he was, hands on the desk, eyes on the webcam, because Gene had told him to stay and he was going to stay, he was going to be good, he was going to show them that he could follow orders when it mattered.
The door to his office opened.
Gene walked in first. He was still wearing his coat—a dark wool thing that made his shoulders look even broader than usual—and his phone was in his hand, the screen still glowing. He held it up as he crossed the room, and Ender saw himself reflected in the dark glass: small, flushed, waiting.
"Hello, sweetheart," Gene said. "Let's review what you've been up to, shall we?"