The steady hum of the engine was soothing. The car cut through the deepening dusk, carrying them farther and farther from campus; beyond the windows, the city thinned out, stretched, and dissolved into the first strips of suburbia.
For the first few minutes, Jacob still tried to talk — about the coach, the game schedule, the stock phrases people use to fill an awkward silence. Simon answered in monosyllables, and the words ran out on their own. The silence that settled over them seemed to weigh on Jacob: he fiddled with the heater controls and drummed a finger on the steering wheel. Simon was perfectly content with it. He did not need words. He needed this hour — an entire hour beside him, with impunity. He had never had anything like it before, and he intended to live every second of this hour, down to the final minute.
Simon put the bag at his feet. Jacob nodded toward the back seat, but Simon ignored him: without a word, he lowered it beneath his knees and pulled it close. Through the thick fabric, through the blanket wrapped around the links, his shin could feel the cold, motionless weight. The steel rode with them in silence.
The cabin was a little world for two. Warm air from the heater, the dim glow of the dashboard, no radio, no words — only the engine and the rustle of tires.
Whenever Jacob shifted gears, his hand came within inches of Simon's knee — and Simon felt every movement against his skin, through his jeans, the way one feels fire drawing near. The gearshift, a brief exertion — and the hand returned to the wheel. He caught himself waiting for the next shift.
— Want me to turn up the heat? — Jacob asked without turning his head. In the enclosed darkness, his voice sounded lower than usual — deep and close; it traveled through Simon from the nape of his neck to the small of his back.
— It's fine, — Simon replied. One word. He would not have dared say more just then: his voice might have betrayed him.
Jacob turned it up anyway — one notch, for himself. The cabin grew warmer still and somehow tighter.
And the smell. His smell — the same one that had made Simon's head swim for years: heated skin and something pungent, unmistakably masculine. In the hallways, Simon caught it on the fly, in fragments, a second before the blow. Here it saturated the air, and there was no escaping it, and Simon breathed it in — slowly, deeply, the way one breathes something forbidden.
He sat with his shoulder pressed to the door — as far away as the cramped space allowed — and studied Jacob's profile.
Never had he seen him this close for this long. Always in secret, with a sidelong glance, ready to look away before he was caught. But now he could stare openly, with impunity: a driver watches the road. The soft dashboard light flowed across Jacob's face — over his cheekbone, along the hard line of his jaw. His Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, and that simple movement made Simon's mouth go dry. The seat belt crossed his chest diagonally, pulling his T-shirt taut across his shoulder; beneath the fabric, a muscle shifted with every turn of the wheel, and Simon watched it move the way one watches a fire. Rolled-up sleeves. Heavy forearms threaded with prominent veins. And his hands resting calmly on the wheel — large and relaxed.
Simon knew those hands better than his own. He knew their weight — against his ribs and the back of his head. He knew how those fingers closed around his throat, not quite all the way, gauging, and how roughly they gripped his chin and forced his face upward.
For years, those hands had hurt him — and had never touched him any other way. Never rested casually on his shoulder, never straightened a hood that had slipped out of place. And yet the mere sight of them — peaceful like this, lying lazily on the steering wheel less than two feet from his knee — sent the familiar dark heat rising inside him.
Staring openly for too long was dangerous after all, so Simon found a way: the side window. In the dark reflection, Jacob floated beside the shoulder, translucent, superimposed on the lights streaming past — and Simon could look at this reflected Jacob as long as he liked. And he did, hungrily, storing the sight away. He allowed himself only brief glances at the real, unreflected Jacob: .
His face remained calm in the half-light. Beneath his skin, a rapid, muffled pulse hammered. The pulse of absolute madness, now utterly beyond control.
His tragedy was not that Jacob was destroying him.
The tragedy was that Simon needed it. Every act of aggression, every bruise, every humiliation paradoxically worked as a perverse catalyst: hatred and pain intertwined with raw, primal desire and turned into a thick poison — and . Swallow by swallow. For years. His mind simply could not withstand that kind of pressure — but it did not break.
It mutated.
His gaze clung once more to the hands on the wheel — and Simon began to fall.
The trance rose from below, a heavy, hot wave that climbed from his belly and spread through his chest, neck, and ears. The cabin swam, and in that heat those hands finally ceased to be instruments of pain. They became instruments of something else — something older and inexorable.
There they were, seizing him by the chest and slamming him against the wall so hard the air burst from his lungs. Not in anger. By right. The cold tile dug into his shoulder blades through the thin fabric, while from the front a hot, heavy body pressed flush against him, leaving no space between them, and Simon felt every muscle, every movement of the ribs, every beat of another man's heart. One hand caught both his wrists and lifted them above his head — easily, almost carelessly, as though his resistance were not resistance at all but a matter already settled. The other hand came to rest on his throat. It did not squeeze. It simply lay there. A thumb moved slowly, almost tenderly, over the throbbing vein, and there was no threat in the motion. Only a declaration: you no longer belong to yourself.
A knee pushed between his legs and spread them with unceremonious confidence. Breath scorched his neck. Teeth found the place at the base of his shoulder and closed — not hard enough to draw blood, but deeply enough to leave a mark visible even beneath his clothes. A brand. A claim. In this fantasy, Simon did not stifle the sound — he moaned openly, because here, in this space, he was allowed to. And at once a low, hoarse, almost satisfied voice sounded right beside his ear:
"Mine."
Simon did not answer at once. The word lodged somewhere in his chest, but when it finally emerged, it sounded effortless, almost grateful:
"Yours. All of me."
Here he could beg. Here every "please" was not punished but accepted. The hand slid lower — beneath the edge of his clothes, onto the bare skin of his stomach — and that touch alone made Simon arch. He dissolved. Bared his throat. Ready to give everything, if only that hand would not move away.
But in this fantasy, the hands went further. They shackled his wrists in cold metal. The click of the handcuffs rang through his mind, clear and final. His body became powerless. His will — unnecessary. Jacob did not hurry. He acted calmly, almost methodically. With one hand, he held Simon's bound wrists above his head; with the other, he slowly traced his chest, ribs, and stomach — not caressing, but examining, the way one examines an object that already belongs to you. Fingers undid his belt and pushed the fabric down. Simon felt himself being undressed — without haste, but without needless tenderness either. They simply took what was theirs now.
Jacob turned him to face the wall. His shackled hands remained raised. The knee came between his legs again, forcing them farther apart. One hand settled on the back of his head and pressed him against the cold tile. The other moved lower — and now there was no barrier left. Fingers found the most sensitive place and entered sharply, without preparation, without warning. Simon's whole body jerked, but he did not pull away. He pushed backward, begging for more. The fingers moved confidently, deeply, stretching him, preparing him. Every thrust of those fingers was an assertion of control. Every time Simon tried to move on his own, the hand at the back of his head pressed him harder against the wall.
Then the fingers withdrew. And something larger took their place — hot, heavy, inexorable. Jacob entered him in one long, commanding stroke, giving him no time to adjust. Simon cried out — not from pain, but from the overwhelming sensation of being filled and losing the last of his boundaries. Hands at the back of his head and on his hip held him firmly. Every movement that followed was deep, rhythmic, merciless. Jacob fucked him the way a man takes what belongs to him by right: calmly, thoroughly, fully aware that Simon no longer could — or wanted to — resist.
His shackled wrists ached from the strain. His body was pinned to the wall. Every thrust reverberated through his chest, his throat, the deepest part of his belly. Simon no longer tried to control the sounds. He moaned, breathing in ragged gasps, and every "please" escaped on its own. Jacob did not answer with words. He simply quickened the rhythm, pressed him harder against the wall, and kept taking him — until Simon began to tremble with fine, unstoppable shudders. The orgasm swept over him heavily, almost by force, without a touch to his cock — brought on solely by that rhythm, that helplessness, and the knowledge that he belonged completely and irrevocably.
Jacob came deep inside him with a low, satisfied sound and remained there for several long seconds, as though asserting one final right of ownership. Only then did he slowly pull out and run his palm over the red mark left by his own bite on Simon's shoulder.
In this fantasy, Simon lay pinned to the wall, shackled, used, marked — and felt a strange, dark, almost blissful emptiness.
How long it lasted — a minute, ten — he did not know. The pines beyond the window had long since merged into one solid, dark wall.
His real body was betraying him — here, awake, in the passenger seat. Heat pooled lower down, heavy and aching; his cheeks burned so fiercely they seemed to glow in the dark. He had to ration the air in small breaths through his nose so his breathing would not break into something audible. His fingers dug into his knees until the knuckles whitened. He started to shift in his seat — and froze halfway through the movement when Jacob flicked a glance at him in the rearview mirror. One second. His gaze returned to the road. Simon exhaled slowly and soundlessly and pressed his temple to the cold glass. The glass helped a little. Jacob drove on, seeing nothing — and in that blindness lay the final mercy of the evening.
Then the illusion shattered — with a deafening, soundless peal.
Memory mercilessly threw up the cold tile of the locker room. Simon physically, in his very skin, relived that moment: palms slamming into his chest; the metallic boom of lockers behind his back; and the face — not even mocking, worse: sincerely, disgustedly repulsed. "What the fuck are you doing?! You fucking faggot, did you really just try to kiss me?!"
The heat died instantly — like a match extinguished in water. An icy stream ran between his shoulder blades; a body that had been melting a second ago chilled to the bone in two heartbeats.
That shout, that revolted rejection, had become the blade that finally severed the thread connecting Simon to reality. Jacob had refused to take control of him. He had been offered everything — Simon's entire self, held out on open palms — and he had pushed it away, wiped his hands, and spat the word through his lips.
Simon sat motionless, staring straight ahead, and waited for the turmoil inside him to subside. His face did not twitch once: it had long since begun living separately from everything else.
Simon's gaze slowly dropped to the dark bag at his feet. Through the fabric, his shin could still feel the steel's even coldness. Inside lay his answer to that rejection.
If Jacob would not shackle him himself, the script would be rewritten. The perfect, untouchable king of campus would end up in chains all the same. Only the roles in this scene would be reversed: now he would be the one begging. And — strangely enough — the image did not burn the way the first one had. It settled inside him smoothly and coolly, like the final piece falling into place. That first fantasy had been taken from him — by hurling him into the lockers and spitting out that word. This one was his own. No one could take it away.
The dashboard's soft light picked Jacob's face out of the darkness. The former tyrant looked uncharacteristically peaceful: shoulders relaxed, finger tapping lazily on the steering wheel to some inner rhythm. Believing the lie about a country house and beer, he was driving toward a conversation he knew nothing about — calmly, without a single suspicion. Over the course of the drive, he had nearly calmed down himself: beer and a man-to-man talk were things he understood; the problem he was going to sort out already seemed sortable. And deeper, beneath that calm, yesterday's unacknowledged thought glowed warmly: alone together. He did not look in that direction. He simply drove and felt — strangely enough — almost good.
He turned his head — and met the passenger's long, frozen stare. He smirked — warmly, almost like a friend:
— Hey, man, where'd you drift off to?
Simon blinked slowly. His eyes — deathly cold and motionless — reflected nothing: neither the heat nor the storm that had just torn him apart from within.
— I'm just thinking that it's long past time we had a talk, — he replied quietly.
Jacob grunted and turned his gaze back to the road. The headlights picked the lane markings and roadside posts out of the darkness. The city was over. Ahead, beyond the edge of the light, the forest rose.
The screen fades to black.
To be continued in the next episode.