Chapter 9: Post-Drive Worship
The car engine’s silence was a sudden, ringing void after the hum of the road. Travis sat in the driver’s seat, his hands still on the wheel, the residual warmth from the engine barely cutting the evening chill seeping through the glass. The grocery bags whispered plastic in the back seat. The weight in his left jacket pocket was still, a tiny, patient anchor.
He could feel Mavis pressed against the denim, a faint, living heat. The memory of Don’s dismissive scowl, the oily feeling of the “typo” excuse, churned in his gut. But overlaying that was the sharper, more immediate memory from just minutes ago: Mavis’s tongue, a tiny, wicked point of warmth, tracing him through the fabric of his jeans in the dimming light of the driveway before he’d cut the engine. A secret celebration. A distraction. A claim.
“You’re thinking too loud,” came a muffled voice from the pocket. “The vibrations are unpleasant.”
Travis smiled faintly. He unzipped the pocket slowly. Mavis’s head emerged, his hair rumpled, his eyes adjusting to the low light inside the car. He looked up at Travis, studying his face.
“Your large boss,” Mavis stated, climbing out to sit on the edge of the pocket, his legs dangling into the jacket’s interior. “He lingers in your atmosphere. A bad smell.”
“It’s just work stuff,” Travis said, but the denial sounded hollow even to him. He turned his head, looking at the darkened windows of his house. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Everything that tightens your shoulders matters,” Mavis replied simply. He hopped down from the pocket onto Travis’s thigh, a small, sure-footed landing. He placed a tiny hand on the faded denim over Travis’s knee. “The numbers were wrong. He knew. You knew he knew. This is a fact.” His fingers tapped once, a minute punctuation mark.
Travis sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet car. He reached down, his finger hovering beside Mavis, not touching him, just offering the proximity. “It’s not my problem. I pointed it out. My job’s done.”
Mavis tilted his head, a bird-like gesture of skepticism. “Is that how your world works? You see a crack in the foundation, you point, you walk away, and hope the roof does not fall on you later?” He shook his head. “In the walls, a crack is either repaired or it is watched. Always.”
The analogy was unnervingly apt. Travis let his head fall back against the headrest, staring at the car’s ceiling. The fabric was stained with old water marks, a constellation of neglect. “What am I supposed to do? Hack the company server? Follow Don home?”
Mavis was silent for a moment. He began to walk in a small circle on Travis’s thigh, a tiny figure pacing a confined stage. “Data,” he said finally. “You require more data. The man Hank. The vendor code. The delivery manifests you mentioned. These are threads. You pulled one. It resisted. You must find the loose end and pull again, from a different angle.”
Travis looked down at him. In the half-light, Mavis looked like some ancient, miniature strategist, plotting a siege. “You’re serious.”
“I am always serious about structural integrity.” Mavis stopped pacing and looked up, his eyes catching a sliver of light from a distant streetlamp. “Also, I am bored. And your digital world is a vault I have never picked.”
A laugh escaped Travis, short and surprised. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. “You want to help me commit corporate espionage.”
“I want to understand the ecosystem,” Mavis corrected, climbing up Travis’s shirtfront with quick, agile pulls. He settled on his familiar perch on Travis’s shoulder, leaning close to his ear. “And I wish to see the look on your face when we find the thing your boss hides. It will be a superior look to the one you wear now.”
Travis couldn’t argue with that. He gathered the groceries, Mavis riding his shoulder like a tiny pirate commander surveying the transport of supplies. The house welcomed them with a sigh of still, warm air. They unpacked in the kitchen, Travis putting away the milk and eggs, Mavis wrestling a single sugar pearl from the vial he’d been guarding, rolling it across the counter like a giant’s marble.
The normalcy of it, the shared quiet chore, settled the last of Travis’s unease. Here, in this room, with the hum of the refrigerator and Mavis’s tiny concentration, the outside world and its dubious invoices felt distant, manageable.
Later, in the soft dark of the bedroom, the dynamic shifted again. Travis lay on his back, the day’ fatigue a weight on his bones. Mavis was a restless silhouette against the moonlight filtering through the blinds, moving from the pillow to the valley between Travis’s arm and his side.
“Your thoughts are still loud,” Mavis declared, his voice a soft scrape in the quiet.
“Can’t help it,” Travis murmured.
Mavis huffed. Then Travis felt the mattress dip as Mavis walked down the length of his torso, a tiny, deliberate procession. He stopped at the waistband of Travis’s sweatpants.
Travis held his breath.
Small hands hooked into the fabric. With a determined tug, Mavis pulled the elastic down an inch, then another, creating a gap. A cool whisper of air touched Travis’s skin. Then Mavis slipped inside, his small body a shocking, warm presence against Travis’s lower abdomen.
Travis gasped, a sharp intake that echoed in the room. “Mavis—”
“Quiet,” Mavis whispered, his voice muffled by fabric and flesh. “The thinking part of you is too loud. The feeling part is quieter. I prefer the quiet.”
Travis could only nod into the darkness, his hands fisting in the sheets. Mavis nuzzled against him, a gentle, seeking pressure. Then his tongue flicked out, a hot, damp point of contact on Travis’s half-hard cock.
Travis jerked, his hips lifting off the mattress involuntarily. “Christ.”
Mavis didn’t stop. He explored with a leisurely, focused curiosity, as if rediscovering a familiar landscape. His tongue traced veins, circled the head, dipped into the slit. His whole body pressed close, skin to skin, a warm, weighty intimacy that was completely foreign and devastatingly direct. There were no tools here, no plastic or metal barriers. Just Mavis’s own body offering a tactile absolution.
“You’re almost as nice a cuddle toy,” Mavis murmured, his breath hot, “as you are a tickle toy.” He licked a slow, flat stripe from root to tip.
Travis groaned, the sound torn from deep in his chest. His hands came up, not to push Mavis away, but to cradle his own head, fingers threading through his wild hair. He was arching, trembling, utterly surrendered to the minute, world-consuming sensations.
Mavis hummed, the vibration traveling through Travis’s sensitized flesh. “Let’s see how good you are at being both at once.”
He shifted then, wrapping his small arms as far as they would go around Travis’s girth, and began to move. It wasn’t a thrust, not with his size. It was a full-bodied embrace, a slow, worshipping slide of his chest and stomach against Travis’s rigid length. He moved in slow, concentric circles, a dedicated polisher on a cherished monument.
The dual sensation was overwhelming: the soft, firm pressure of his body, the occasional wet, hot touch of his mouth. Travis was dissolving, the numbers, the invoices, Don’s face—all of it melting away under this concentrated, miniature attention. This was no tease. This was a claiming, a communion.
When Travis came, it was with a choked-off cry, his body seizing, back bowing off the bed. It was less an orgasm and more a full-system release, every worried thought and tense muscle relinquishing its hold at once.
In the aftershock, he lay boneless, drenched in sweat, his breathing ragged. Mavis slowly extracted himself, crawling back up his body. He collapsed on Travis’s heaving chest, a damp, panting heap.
For a long time, the only sounds were their breathing syncing, slowing. Travis lifted a heavy hand, bringing a finger to rest gently on Mavis’s back. He could feel the rapid flutter of a tiny heartbeat against his skin.
“Data,” Travis finally whispered into the dark, his voice rough.
Mavis stirred. “Hmm?”
“Tomorrow,” Travis said, clarity washing through him in the spent calm. “We look at the files. Hank. The vendor. All of it.”
A tiny hand patted his sternum. “Good,” Mavis sighed, snuggling closer. “Now you are thinking useful thoughts.”
Travis smiled, his eyes closing. The last thing he felt before sleep took him was the infinitesimal weight on his chest, a sentinel against the cracks in the world, already dreaming of digital vaults and loose threads waiting to be pulled.