There was no response since he’d ensured the audio was only one way. He could hear everything that took place in that room, but Bay couldn’t hear him. Poor guy had no clue he was been watched, that someone other than himself now knew how badly he wanted to take it up the ass.
The corner of Sila’s mouth tipped ever so slightly. Of course Bay’s day had been bad. He’d ensured it would be, after all.
Bay’s hovercar hadn’t started this morning and he’d been almost twenty minutes late to work because of it. All of the staff at the university were required for a meeting about the upcoming semester, so his boss had been in the room when he’d arrived late. Then the repair guys had told him they were swamped and it would take them a full day and a half just to take a look. He’d had to get a rental over the lunch break, which had only soured his mood further because Bay didn’t like using anything that he hadn’t specifically chosen himself.
He was rigid and particular, monotonous. At least on the outside. Sila had wondered for a while over whether or not his outer appearance was a mask, the same way his was, but he’d come to the realization that it wasn’t.
Bay lived his life studiously and had created a reputation for himself as an attractive, yet strict and aloof professor. He never got close to any of his students or fellow staff members and only seemed to have two friends. When people were looking, he was rigid, brow always slightly furrowed, full lips typically pressed in a straight line.
When no one was around, he was still much the same, only there was more to it. That was when his true feelings slipped through the cracks, almost as though he was unable to keep up the act when alone but still desperately tried.
He came off emotionless, cold, two things Sila could relate to, however he’d discovered the professor’s secret in that regard as well.
Bay Delmar wasn’t lacking emotion. He was drowning in it. And while Sila had never experienced it himself, he was pretty sure he’d managed to correctly place which emotion it was that kept the professor so down.
Grief.
It’d done something odd though, if Sila wasn’t mistaken—and he’d been closely watching the professor for long enough now he was certain his theory was correct.
Bay was drowning in grief and nothing else. Unless he was here, holed up in this room violently screwing himself, or on the racetrack, he was nothing but a shell of a person. Dead yet unable to rest.
Like a zombie.
The corner of Sila’s mouth tipped up ever so slightly. He’d never met anyone quite like Bay. Someone so empty, yet overflowing at the same time. Sila understood what it felt like not to feel, but then, he’d always been this way. He wondered how it was for Bay, someone who’d once experienced the full range of emotion possible, yet had lost his connection to it.
Did he miss it?
Was that why he was here, getting himself off to the sounds of one man screaming as another cut him and fucked him well past completion?
Even Sila hadn’t known about half the kinky shit Bay seemed to be into, and he admittedly found the video selections every bit as enthralling as the man who chose them.
Bay was so cut off in every other setting it was impossible to reach him, which was why Sila had figured eventually he would need to come up with a way to pull this version out during the light of day. It wouldn’t be any fun if he wasn’t able to. Wouldn’t be entertaining if he only got this wild, messy, twisted version of the professor in a movie theater. He needed to find ways to push him to his limits, to slowly break down those unfeeling walls so emotion could trickle back in.
The process might take a while, but then Sila was nothing if not patient and for the right prize…Waiting could be worth it. His attempts had started off small for this very reason. After making enough money to afford it, he’d orchestrated more and more races at the rocks between Bay and other skilled racers. It was an investment, and it seemed to be working.
The professor had gone from racing maybe once or twice a month to having at least one every week. Since it was summer break this was possible, though Sila was a little worried Bay would turn offers down once the school year began, citing he was too busy to participate. He’d cross that bridge if and when they came to it.
Constant exposure to sensation had knocked a bit of that dazed state of being loose, as Sila had hoped. Bay might not have noticed the change yet, but Sila saw it. Things that the professor would have overlooked before now irritated him more easily. Hatred and love were supposedly the two most powerful emotions, not that Sila had much experience—or any—with either. Whether that was true or not, Bay certainly seemed to be more susceptible to the first.
Sila’s brother was like that as well. Quick to anger. Sometimes, that anger could grip him so tightly he lost control and gave into it. That’s what Sila was hoping for with Bay.
Which was why he’d known from the start that a broken car and scolding from his boss wouldn’t be nearly enough to back Bay into the corner Sila wanted him in.
Sila had also paid a student signing up for classes last minute to run into Bay in the hallway. He’d just returned from his break with his shitty car and the student had spilled their iced mocha latte down the front of his crisp white shirt, which was why he’d arrived to the theater wearing all black—in the spare shirt Sila had left in the teacher’s lounge, unbeknownst to Bay.
Sila had assumed Bay’s trips to the theater took place after he’d become desperate enough to give in to the need to chase after an emotion other than grief. The only times he’d managed to catch Bayfeelinganything real had been before or after a race or when he was in here touching himself to the sound of aggressive fucking and Inspire posts of Sila.
The first time they’d done this, he’d thought perhaps the man would come in and sit down prim and properly, maybe put on a softcore porn movie—a straight one, despite his obvious obsession with the Varuns—and then go home.
He’d had no idea the man was going to fuck himself with such a harried passion, like his life was on the line and if he didn’t come he’d die.
It was…fascinating.
The fact he’d done so to a picture he’d taken of Sila on campus? The icing on the cake.
“You don’t feel and yet you feel too much,” Sila mussed, rolling the concept around in his mind. It was almost as though Bay was the combination of both him and his brother, which was hard to wrap his head around. How could one experience too much of something and yet none of it at all?
Yes, grief was technically an emotion, but it was clear it’d beaten the professor so far down that the despair had morphed into something more akin to detachment. The rest of the world seemed to think he was simply aloof.
