Arsen spent the next several minutes explaining the conversation with as much detail as possible, trying to pinpoint exactly where he went wrong, knowing full well Felix was about to tell him. Felix was great at exposing people’s flaws in great detail, with literally no thought for their feelings.
At all.
“So, he asked you innocently about sex and kinks—topics you brought up, BTW—and you shamed him for it and yelled at him?” Felix said. “Wow. That’s…a choice.”
“I didn’tshamehim or yell at him,” Arsen said in a heated whisper. “I…panicked.”
“Panicked?” Felix echoed, then asked, “And why are you whispering?”
“Because I can’t yell,” Arsen said. “And yes. Panicked. Have you seen Ever?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Was Felix blind? Crazy? Stupid? Arsen’s hand flailed as he tried to voice his thoughts in a language he found perplexing. “He’s so beautiful that he doesn’t seem real. Do you know what it’s like to hear words likekinkandsexcoming out of that perfect face? Especially when that perfect face is so close to my face that I can still smell his toothpaste which is also my toothpaste?”
There was a long pause before Felix said, “What?”
Arsen shook his head. “We are not even three days in and he’s in my clothes, in my bed, smelling like me and looking at me like I’m way more important than I am. I am already losing. I was not prepared to talk about sex things while cuddling him in sweatpants. They hide nothing.”
“He lets you cuddle him?” Felix asked. “Interesting.”
“Is it?” Arsen snapped. “Isit interesting?”
“You don’t have to be snippy,” Felix said. “And yes, it is interesting. It seems like you want him to be more traumatized than he is.”
Arsen froze. “What? No, I don’t.”
“Are you sure?” Felix pushed.
Arsen made a noise of frustration. “Focus.”
Felix sighed. “Okay, so, you’re in lust. I get it. But you could have literally said a hundred other things.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Oh, well. It’s too late for that now, though.” Almost as an aside, he asked, “Why are you calling me about kink anyway? I’m hardly the resident expert.”
Now that Arsen had been shamed for accidentally shaming Ever, he was asking himself the same thing. “You have a sex dungeon in your house.”
There was a sound like a laugh or an exhale. “Okay, yeah, but it’s notmysex dungeon. It’s Asa’s. And it’s technically a sex attic.”
Asa was Felix’s brother-in-law, and Arsen certainly wasn’t callinghimto talk about sex or kink. He liked to chew on his husband. For fun. “You use the sex attic.”
“Of course, weusethe sex dungeon. Who wouldn’t use a perfectly good sex attic?”
Arsen felt like he was losing his mind. “So, you use sex attic but you know nothing about kink?”
Felix gave a delicate sniff like he was offended. “Do you assume everyone who’s ever used a kitchen is a chef? There are layers, dude. You need someone who knows more about this than me.”
Arsen’s eyes went wide. “Zane?”
Zane was Asa’s chew toy. Er, husband.
Felix snickered. “Too far. That’s like asking for cooking advice from Hannibal Lector instead of Gordon Ramsey. Maybe we back it up a little.”
What was with Felix and his cooking metaphors? “There’s very much room between Gordon Ramsey and Hannibal Lector. Who are you talking about?”
“Noah, obviously. Nobody knows more about kink and trauma than him. He’s practically a therapist at this point. He’d be a good start.”
“Oh. Right.”
Noah was also Felix’s brother-in-law. All told, he had nine brother-in-laws. No, that wasn’t right. Brothers-in-law. Was that how they said it in America? American grammar was stupid and confusing and often gave Arsen a headache even after fifteen years.
