He’s also insecure and will waste a lot of time trying to figure out how he’s at fault when he isn’t at fault to begin with.
I have to chase him toward what he needs—what I need too—and the best way to do that is to vanish.
He needs, for a while, to be lonely.
So I leave The Axis and I leave him a message. I tell him that something came up. I give him a little busy work, but mostly he’s to enjoy the hotel. He has full access to every restaurant and every amenity.
I, meanwhile, withdraw to my converted warehouse apartment a few blocks away. I usually stay here. I’ve only been staying at The Axis because Elias is there.
Usually, it’s a relief to be here instead of at the hotel, but I’m pretty disconnected from my surroundings over the next several days. My mind is fragmented. Mostly, I’m watching Elias, but I also work out several times a day. I start learning Greek. I study anatomy and decomposition and some other weird shit that has nothing to do with Elias but keeps rolling around somewhere in my brain.
I don’t like when I get like this. It happens, though, when I don’t have a role to play. My brain doesn’t know what to do.
Elias doesn’t know what to do either. He wanders around the hotel like he’s getting his bearings. Then he goes back to his apartment. He starts going to the gym, jogging on a treadmill. He runs for a long time. He never notices the people who watch him. Jesus, he really does think he’s invisible.
He acts like it a lot of the time, so quiet and self contained. Then, one night, out of nowhere, he throws a glass in the kitchen. Even that is half controlled because he throws it into the sink, where it shatters but doesn’t damage anything. Still, I’m riveted to the screen as the glass shards explode everywhere. Ilook away from that to focus on Elias’s twisted-up face. He was so silent and non-expressive a second ago and now he’s shaking. A sob breaks from him. He hugs himself. He drops to the floor.
I can’t see him now, and it pisses me off, but I listen to his awful, broken sobs.
“Oh, baby,” I whisper. I don’t quite understand why my cock stiffens, but it does. Relief washes through me, maybe at the arousal, maybe at Elias’s emotion. I start shuddering.
I worry about him when he starts cleaning up. He’s sniffing, upset, not paying enough attention. He steps on a shard of glass and cuts his foot. I growl, upset with him. I only want him in pain when it’s deliberate. Fuck, that’s not even true. I only want him in pain when I’m the one controlling it.
But he gets the cut cleaned up.
After, he goes to bed but not to sleep. I just keep watching. Then, at three a.m., he gets up and retrieves his laptop from the kitchen and returns to bed. I can’t see what he’s looking at. I can’t see what he’s typing. I could switch to my laptop and track where he goes, but I don’t need to. I already know what he’s doing.
I fucking know.
***
I don’t, however, hear from Wes, and the debit card isn’t charged. It’s Sunday, so I give it a few hours, then I call Wes.
“Andre,” he answers warily.
“If you even think about giving his fantasy to anyone but me, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Wes is silent for a long time, then I hear a deep breath. “How do you know he submitted another fantasy?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“It is actually.”
“Fuck you, Wes. He’s mine.”
“You’re obsessed with him.”
I grit my teeth as I pace through my converted warehouse. My spyware allows me to track Elias’s activity but not his keystrokes. I don’t know exactly what he submitted.
“Send me his fantasy,” I demand. “I’ll fulfill it.”
There’s another long silence.
“Wes.”
He says, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter if it’s a good idea. You will send me his request, or I will rip it from your website.”
