Chapter 7: Dinner Party Humiliation
The dining room felt like a museum of judgment. The chandelier’s crystals shattered the light into a thousand icy points, scattering them over the remains of the meal—bone china smeared with reductions, empty bottles of burgundy. Junior stood by the sideboard, the starch of his lone apron rough against the sensitive, hairless skin of his chest and thighs. The waxing had left him feeling flayed, and now, under the gazes of Bryan’s three colleagues, he felt transparent.
“Refill, Thomas,” Bryan said, not looking up from swirling his brandy.
Junior moved, the smooth soles of his house shoes silent on the hardwood. He poured, his hands steady only through a tremendous effort of will. He could feel their eyes tracing the lines of his body, the unnatural smoothness Bryan had orchestrated in the marble bathroom.
“Still can’t get over it, Bry,” chuckled Mark, a bear of a man with thick, dark hair peeking from his unbuttoned collar. “You actually did it. Trained the stray.”
The laughter was a low, agreeing rumble. Glasses clinked.
“It was necessary,” Bryan said, his voice a calm, flat plane. “Potential was there. Just buried under a lot of childish nonsense. Aesthetic and otherwise.”
Junior flinched as a hand, large and heavy, clapped him on the lower back. It was Leo, his fingers digging in just above the apron’s tie. “Feels like a dolphin. Slippery. You lotion him up every day, Bryan? Like a prized show pony?”
“Hygiene is part of the regimen,” Bryan said, as if discussing a fitness plan.
The brandy did its work. The civility of the dinner course dissolved like sugar in the potent alcohol. The comments grew sharper, less veiled.
“Always knew he was a bottom,” Mark said, leaning back, his chair groaning. “Just took a real man to make him admit it. To strip all that pretense away. What’d you have to do, Bry? Take away his credit cards? His car keys? Hell, his pants?”
“Rights are for people who can handle responsibility,” Bryan said, finally looking at Junior. His gaze was possessive, pleased. “He’s happier without the burden.”
“Come here, Junior,” Bryan said, his tone leaving no room for anything else.
Junior walked over, the space between the table and Bryan’s chair feeling like a mile. Bryan pulled him down onto his lap, one strong arm encircling his waist. Junior stiffened, then melted, the solid heat of Bryan a terrifying refuge. Bryan nuzzled into his neck, then kissed him, slow and deep, a display of ownership that was also, undeniably, filled with a dark, adoring passion. He loved this. He loved the feel of Junior, pliant and smooth in his arms. He loved the men seeing it.
“Look at him,” Leo sneered, but there was a twisted envy in it. “Pretty little thing. He’s fallen so far, Bry. Remember when he tried to talk stocks with us? Pathetic.”
“He knows his place now,” Bryan murmured against Junior’s temple, his breath warm. “Don’t you, sweetheart? You call these men ‘sir’.”
Junior’s voice was a ghost. “Yes, sir.”
Mark leaned forward, his eyes bloodshot. “And you understand, if you tried to give me any of your old attitude, Bryan would turn you over his knee right here. Right at this table. We’d all watch. Bottoms don’t talk back to real men. You respect all of us. Every one.”
The words hung in the air, a collective truth. Junior shrank back into Bryan’s chest.
“He’s lucky you’re his keeper, Bryan,” Leo said, his voice dropping to a predatory gravel. “Honest to god. Because that body? What you’ve made him? It’s not sending an invitation, it’s screaming one. That smooth, hairless skin just begs for it. Screams ‘rape me’. We’re men. We smell it.” He thumped his own dense, hairy chest. “We sweat. We stink. We take. What are you, Junior?”
Junior trembled. A full-body quake that Bryan smoothed over with a broad hand on his belly.
“He’s not a man,” Bryan answered for him, quietly, definitively. “He’s mine.”
The finality of it, the sheer, terrifying safety of that statement, broke something. Junior’s careful composure, the distant place in his mind he’d retreated to, fractured. He turned his face into Bryan’s neck, his breath coming in hot, silent huffs against the crisp collar. He wasn’t hiding from the words anymore. He was hiding in the man who allowed them to be said. He leaned closer, his arms coming up to cling to the solid wall of Bryan’s suit jacket, fingers clutching the fabric. He made himself small, seeking protection from the very source of his annihilation.
The men watched, their cruel smiles softening into something like satisfied recognition. They had seen the final seal applied. They drank their brandy. They boasted of mergers and conquests, their voices fading into a blurry, hostile drone.
Junior didn’t hear them. He was listening to the steady, powerful heartbeat under his ear, the only rhythm left in his world, each beat a confirmation of his own erasure. And in the cold light of the chandelier, under the portraits of stern, unforgiving men, he held onto it like a lifeline.
And in the cold light of the chandelier, under the portraits of stern, unforgiving men, he held onto it like a lifeline.
The quiet that followed was worse than the laughter. It was a hungry silence. Mark set his glass down with a definitive clink. His eyes, glassy and focused, traveled over Junior’s form with a deliberate, assessing slowness. “You say he’s yours. You say he’s learned.” He leaned his elbows on the table. “Words are cheap, Bryan.”
Leo nodded, a slow, agreeing smirk spreading. “Exactly. My wife says she loves me. Then I check the credit card statement. Talk is talk.”
Bryan’s hand, which had been stroking Junior’s hip, went perfectly still. “What are you suggesting?”
“We’re suggesting,” Mark said, drawing out the words, “that we’ve all known guys who play at this. Weekend stuff. Costumes and safe words. It’s a game. Then Monday rolls around and the little bitch is back to ordering Uber Eats and leaving dishes in the sink.” He pointed a thick finger. “That one has ‘relapse’ written all over his pretty, vacant face.”
A cold knot tightened in Junior’s stomach. He pressed harder into Bryan.
“He doesn’t do those things anymore,” Bryan said, but his voice had changed. A thread of defensive heat ran through it. This was a challenge to his system, to his entire project.
“Prove it,” Leo said simply, spreading his hands. “You remade him, right? Show us the work. We want to see the product function. Not just sit there looking terrified.”
THE MEN DEMAND PROOF.
The phrase hung in the air, solid and unmovable. Bryan’s breath left his nose in a slow, controlled stream. Junior felt the calculation in that chest, the sudden shift from possessor to being assessed himself. His authority was being audited.
“Alright,” Bryan said, quietly. The word was a verdict.
He gripped Junior’s arms and firmly moved him off his lap, standing him beside the chair. Junior swayed, the room tilting. Bryan rose to his full height, straightening his cuffs, his gaze locking onto Junior’s. It wasn’t cruel now. It was urgent, instructional. “You will stand there. You will not cover yourself. You will answer their questions directly and without hesitation. You will show them the respect they are due as my guests, and as men. Do you understand?”
Junior’s mouth was parchment. He managed a nod.
“Use your words, Junior.”
“I understand,” he whispered.
“Louder.”
“I understand.” It was a thread of sound.
Bryan turned to the table, adopting a presenter’s stance. “Ask your questions.”
Mark grinned. “First question. What time did you wake up this morning?”
Junior blinked. “Six-thirty, sir.”
“Who set the alarm?”
“Bryan did, sir.”
“What was your first task?”
“I prepared the coffee and set out his vitamins and the newspaper by the study door, sir.” The answers were rote, drilled. A tiny flare of something—pride?—flickered in Bryan’s eyes.
Leo cut in, less interested in routine. “When was the last time you came without explicit permission?”
The air left the room. Junior’s face flushed a deep, mortifying red. He stared at the geometric pattern in the rug. “I… I don’t…”
“Answer him,” Bryan’s voice was a whip-crack.
“Thirteen days ago, sir.” The confession was a humiliation all its own.
“And the punishment?”
Junior’s hands twitched at his sides. He could still feel the sting of the leather strap on his thighs, the enforced silence that followed. “I was not allowed to speak for twenty-four hours, sir. And I… I cleaned the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush.”
Mark snorted, not unimpressed. “You shave his back, kid? His shoulders?”
“Every other day in the shower, sir. With a safety razor and his preferred gel.”
“What’s his coffee order?”
“A double espresso, one raw sugar, served at one hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit in the china cup, not the mug, sir.”
The questions came faster, a volley digging into the intimate machinery of their life. They asked about laundry starch brands, about Bryan’s shoe size, about the specific brand of the resin wax strips from the vanity. They asked what side of the bed Bryan slept on, what he’d said when he proposed, what Junior’s old credit card limit had been. Each answer, pulled from him in that trembling voice, was a brick laid in a wall between his present and his past. Each “sir” was a nail.
Finally, Mark sat back. He looked at Bryan, then at Junior’s naked, shivering submission. “Okay. I’m almost convinced.” He took a long sip of brandy. “Last one. Your old friends. The ones from your bachelor party. The guys you used to watch the game with. If one of them walked in that door right now, what would you do?”
Junior’s mind blanked. He saw their faces, heard their boisterous laughter, smelled beer and wings. He saw himself with them, slouched on a couch, shouting at a screen. A ghost of a person.
Bryan was silent. This answer had to be his alone.
Junior’s voice, when it came, was hollow. It carried a final, quiet truth that silenced the room more completely than any scream. “I would ask them to leave, sir. They wouldn’t understand the life I have. They wouldn’t understand him.” He paused, his eyes finding Bryan’s, seeking anchor. “I’d be embarrassed for them to see me.”
The proof was delivered. It hung in the air, palpable and ugly and complete.
Mark nodded slowly, a connoisseur accepting the quality of a vintage. Leo just smiled, lifting his glass in a silent toast to Bryan. The scrutiny dissipated, replaced by a thick, approving satisfaction.
Bryan stepped forward. He didn’t smile. He placed a heavy, warm hand on the back of Junior’s neck, his thumb stroking the trembling cord of muscle there. It was a reward. A brand. “Go upstairs. Draw my bath. Use the lavender salts. Wait for me there.”
The reprieve was a different kind of prison. Junior moved, his limbs operating on a remote signal. The gaze of the men followed him to the doorway, a physical weight on his wax-smooth skin. Their low conversation resumed behind him, a rumble of politics and portfolios, the normal world snapping back into place now that the exhibition was over.
He climbed the stairs, each step an automation. The master bathroom awaited, a chapel of marble and steam. He would pour the salts, test the water’s heat with his wrist, and kneel on the unforgiving floor. He would wait in the perfumed silence, the echoes of their laughter and his own hollow answers trapped in his skull, while downstairs, the man who owned him celebrated his conquest with other men.