Chapter 2
His and Darren's text chain has been a little stale for a few days, a never-ending loop of "hi, how are you?" and "good, you?" and "fine, good game" and "thanks, you too," and then again, "hi, how is your day going?".
Even the thumbs-up emojis Darren uses in reaction to the silly little memes and gifs he sends him don't feel the same.
Like he's sending them on autopilot instead of quietly smiling, or rolling his eyes with a kind of exasperated fondness, Kostya didn't realize was possible to do.
Kostya's too afraid to call, to make whatever this is, worse.
He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.
He barely knew what to do when Darren got so mad at the initial suggestion that he'd left Kostya's house and driven back home to Bayfield.
And now, he's supposedly "okay" with this?
What does "okay" even mean?
Okay, like
I understand what you're saying?
Okay, like,
thanks for telling me, but I won't do that
I will take your suggestion
In the end, Darren breaks the weird cycle of timid messages.
He texts a link with a simple message:
"at your earliest convenience," like they're coworkers in some boring office.
He clicks on the link, and a OmniCorp Form titled "
Establishment of Boundaries to Pursue Sexual Partners Outside of our Relationship
" pops up, and Kostya immediately clicks out.
What the fuck?
He tentatively goes back to his browser, hoping, praying, that his eyes are playing tricks on him, but they're not.
Darren had actually sent him a quiz to figure out what kinds of things he can and can't do if he were to hook up with someone else.
There are a dozen questions.
Each sexual act has additional follow-ups.
Kostya is going to kill himself right after he blows up the OmniCorp HQ.
Second base (ie, heavy petting, touching over clothes)
The images flash without his permission, hands bigger than his touching Darren, hands smaller and softer than his, feeling Darren over his clothes till they've memorized the outlines of his body.
Map out a journey Kostya's already discovered, practically founded.
Spent hours, days, years learning the beauty and intricacies of.
With love and care and worship.
How can anyone even attempt to—
He stumbles back to the edge of his bed, legs feeling weak, the weight of his discomfort too strong for his body to bear any longer.
Third base (genital stimulation)
Can they offer me oral sex?
Can I offer them oral sex?
No, no, they can't
They won't know what to do.
They don't know when you liked to be teased and when you need to be taken fully.
Won't know when you like to be used and when you like to do all the work until the other person is left to your mercy.
Won't know about that particular ridge that you like to have teased with the underside of my tongue—
He swipes his clammy hands against his bedsheet, feels them spasm like someone's sticking sharp pins in all the fleshy areas of his arm.
Home run (anal sex, full penetration)
Can they penetrate me?
Can I penetrate them?
Can they penetrate me with toys?
Can I prep myself, or are they allowed to finger me too?
Finger limit?
His stomach flips painfully, acid spilling over the rest of his organs till it burns and rots.
Bile climbs up his tract till it reaches his esophagus, and Kostya slams a hand against the base of his neck to stop it from moving any further.
Are there positions you don't want me in?
Can I kiss them?
Can I use tongue?
No. No!
They can't, they can't do any of this, I'll rip their arms right out of their—
Kostya feels his molars ache with how hard he's clenching his jaw, his eyes burn holes into his screen as he jams his fingers across his phone.
No, no, no
, he ticks next to all the questions.
His fingers are trembling by the time he gets to the last question, and his entire jaw drops somewhere in the pits of hell when he reads it.
Can we have sex without condoms if they show proof that they have no STDs?
Kostya is up and pacing, calling Darren before he can think better of it.
Darren picks up after the third ring, "Hello?"
Hello
, Kostya wants to mock, but instead he barks out, "Darren, what the fuck is this?
Is this a joke to you?"
There's silence on the other line before Darren answers back in an irritatingly calm voice, "You think I spent 2 hours making a
questionnaire
as a joke?"
Kostya barks out a humourless laugh.
"I said you could fuck other people, Whitfield, I don't need—"
"I need," Darren cuts in strongly, "I need to know the rules.
So neither of us is left feeling hurt at the end of this."
You're already hurting me
"And you were too afraid to talk on the phone?
You had to send a fucking exam paper on it—"
"Fine.
We can talk about it over the phone.
I thought maybe you'd need time to think it over." Darren tells him, his voice rising.
"Should we start with the first question?
Second base—"
"Stop," Kostya chokes out, trying to steady the trembling in his voice, "I don't—"
I don't want you to do this.
I don't want to share you.
"You don't..." Darren says cautiously, "Are you having second thoughts about this?"
, Kostya wants to scream into the phone.
Say it, just say you take everything back,
his heart begs.
"No," he lies again.
He hears Darren sigh after a moment.
He sounds almost disappointed when he finally says, "Okay." He hesitates before asking, "Do you want to fuck other people?"
"No," Kostya answers immediately, without a doubt, "No, I don't want anyone else.
This is—this is about you.
For you.
You have not been with many people."
"Yeah..." Darren says quietly, "For me."
The bile has crawled its way up to his throat now, no matter how hard he tried to push it back down; he can feel it eroding away at his tissues, at his ability to talk.
"Send back the form, filled out."
"Fine," Kostya grits out before he wrenches the phone away from his ears and tosses it somewhere behind him.
Hears it bounce, then clatter off the bed, landing with a loud thud that echoes across the room.
It isn't until he's smoked away half of his pack and his lungs are protesting at him to stop, that he finishes the stupid form and finally submits.
It feels like he signed his own death sentence, committed the crime and prosecuted himself.
Maybe he deserves it.
Yes, yes, yes
to everything for Darren to go out and do, even as it burned him inside to imagine.
There was only one question he stupidly answered
to on the form, and that was whether Kostya wanted to know about the people Darren would meet, details, names, and what they did.
He's not too sure whether the American saying "ignorance is bliss" applies to this.
He and Darren go back to their mindlessly-numb 'hi, hello, how are you?' texting loop, and Kostya fights the urge at every waking moment to ask:
Did you hook up with someone?