Break the Rules (Rough Love Book 7) Page 9

  “Yeah, that wouldn’t end well.” Xander chuckles and starts undressing for bed. “Did you guys talk about me?”

  “We talked some,” Ben says cautiously. “Elijah’s pretty protective of you.”

  “I know. It’s like he thinks I’m some naïf.”

  “Little does he know.”

  “They’re good to me, though. I’m lucky to have them.”

  Ben debates whether he should ask, but he’s too curious not to. “Do they know much about what you do? I mean, you know, the sex stuff?”

  Xander shakes his head. “I try not to bring it up too much. I have no desire to know what they’re doing in bed, so I figure they would prefer not to know about me either. I think they’ve guessed some stuff, but I try to keep things…separate.”

  “Compartmentalized.”

  “Yes. It’s better that way.”

  And Ben thinks that Xander is probably right. Keeping things in neat boxes seems to work best for Xander—if nothing else, the 24/7 trial has convinced Ben of that.

  Xander slides into bed next to him and pulls him close. “I’m dreading not having you here every day. I’m thinking about coming back again. To LA.”

  “It won’t be for long,” Ben says, but it’s unconvincing to his own ears. “Us being apart.”

  “Tell you what. I have an audition for a play coming up. If I don’t get the part, screw it, I’ll just come back to LA after the Hunter shoot ends. I’m tired of being away from you.”

  “But you love New York.”

  “New York doesn’t let me make it cry. Or fuck it in the ass; not regularly, anyway.”

  Ben smiles. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. I really want this part in the play, but I think…I think they’ll probably take one look at me, see Jasper Crane, and that’ll be that.” He doesn’t sound cut up about it, just very mildly irritated.

  “What’s the play?”

  “The Normal Heart. There’s a revival.”

  “Huh. That’s supposed to be a good one.”

  “It is. I’m not going for the lead of course, but there’s this really fascinating supporting character…I don’t know if they’ll like my take, though.”

  “I hope you get it,” Ben tells him, although he totally doesn’t. What he hopes for, selfishly, is that Xander will come back to LA and never leave again.

  And after that, Xander starts kissing him and touching him and tells him to be quiet, and things become a bit blurry. It’s only just before Ben falls asleep that he realizes—he went into subspace. So quickly and so easily that it was just like flicking a switch.

  Xander sighs I love you, I love you, over and over again into his hair as Ben slides into dreams.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the morning, after only a few hours of sleep, Ben wakes to Xander’s mouth on his cock. Xander says indistinctly, “You said I could,” around it when Ben makes a what the fuck noise, and then lifts his head up to clarify. “We agreed at the start, no waking up in pain, but you said I could do sex stuff.”

  Ben starts laughing. “I’m not complaining, I’m just surprised. Good surprised.” He gives an enormous yawn and then settles back to enjoy. Afterwards, Xander lies on top of him, wrapping around him like a comforter and holding Ben down by the wrists. He fucks into Ben slowly, looking into his face with intense concentration, until Ben can see that he’s close to orgasm.

  “Can I watch again?” Ben asks hopefully.

  But Xander shakes his head briefly. “Not this time, baby.” He bites instead, firmly, and Ben feels the disappointment flooding away, replaced with the sensation of blunt teeth forced determinedly into his shoulder.

  “There will never be anything that feels the same,” he murmurs, while Xander pants into his neck.

  Xander says something, muffled, and Ben has to ask him to repeat it.

  “I said, you’re free.”

  “Free?”

  “The trial is done. You’re free. Free of me.”

  “Mmm.” They’re done? Didn’t feel much different to normal by the end. “I don’t want to be free of you. Not so much.”

  “Really?” Xander perks up, and Ben bites his lip. “Because I was doing some thinking.” Ballard, learn to shut your mouth. “Some of the stuff we did wasn’t great. It wasn’t fun. But there was some stuff that I really liked, that I thought maybe, you know…”

  “Stuff like what?” Ben asks suspiciously. If the words soaked cane leave Xander’s lips, he’s safe-wording. Immediately.

  “You can’t guess?” Xander smiles a little. “The journaling. I love it. I feel like I’m seeing spaces inside you that I don’t get to see, not normally. Maybe they are just bits, but they’re still bits of you. That’s what counts.”

  “But what do you want me to journal about?”

  “Your fantasies. What you think about during the day. Me. You. Us.”

  “Every day?” It sounds like a lot of work, especially considering he’s going to be working hard on Blood Bond soon.

  “Not every day. A few times a week.” Xander looks so incredibly hopeful that it would be like kicking a puppy to say no, and it doesn’t make much difference to Ben really, so he nods.

  “Okay. If that’ll make you happy, I’ll do it. When are you going to read it, though?”

  “When I come over there, or you come back here,” Xander says blissfully. There are no problems as far as he’s concerned.

  “Anything else?”

  Xander shifts in the bed, and his nervous energy is catching. “I think we can safely say that 24/7 isn’t going to work for us. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “But maybe sometimes, just for a day or two, we could, well—”

  “24/2 it?” Ben suggests, grinning. Xander laughs. “Alright. Just for a day or two. But promise me you won’t send me looking for your phone again.”

  “I promise. That was pretty mean.”

  “Yeah, it was. But I forgive you.”

  Xander fidgets, and Ben waits for him to speak. “I have to tell you something,” Xander sighs. “I’m thinking of going back to therapy, just for a while. Just to work out some stuff.”

  “Oh.” Ben is taken aback. “Well, okay. If you think you should. Are you…” There’s no real way to end the sentence. “If you think you need to, that’s—that’s good.”

  “I just think it might help. I never really—” He breaks off, chewing on his fingernail in an anxious, childish gesture that makes Ben’s heart jump. “Okay: Honesty Policy. Therapy was never great for me before. I used to quit when things got too close. I used to get scared.”

  Ben keeps his mouth closed, although he wants to tease Xander about being scared of himself.

  “And sometimes the therapists, they got scared,” Xander says in a rush. “And that didn’t help much. I mean, they never said anything—well, except one—but I could see it in their faces, the fear.” If anyone could recognize fear, Ben thinks, it’s Xander. “And when I saw that, I had to stop. You know?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “But I feel like now that I have you, I won’t get so scared. I feel complete now.”

  “Complete?”

  “Yeah.” Xander smiles, almost shy. “I feel like I’m whole now. Before, I guess I felt like I wasn’t a full person.”

  “But Xander,” Ben says before he can stop himself, “you shouldn’t need another person to feel whole. That’s not what relationships are for.”

  Xander frowns. “What do you mean?”

  Careful, Ballard. He takes a few seconds to arrange his thoughts. “Really healthy relationships, good relationships, they can make you feel like more than you are. Like you can do anything. And that’s how you make me feel.” Xander begins to look a little happier. “But I think the best relationships are between people who already feel complete in themselves. Because if you need someone else to make you whole, it can get twisted. Dependent. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening with us,” he adds hur
riedly. “But being dependent isn’t a good thing. Just in general. It’s better if we’re both complete.” You started well and finished with a whimper. Bravo.

  “Well, that’s why I’m going to therapy,” Xander says stiffly.

  “Yeah, no, I get that. It’s good. It’s great!”

  “And I don’t agree, anyway. I’ve never felt better than I do with you. You make me feel…” Xander seems lost for words. “New,” he says eventually. “Full of potential. Like a sunrise. Fuck. It’s not coming out right.”

  “It’s coming out fine,” Ben says, and kisses him. “And actually, I decided I’m going to see a therapist too.”

  “Really?” Xander looks stunned, wary and neutral in quick succession. “Why?”

  “For Blood Bond,” Ben says with a shrug. “Just research, really. I want to see what I can add to the play and to the characters. I talked to my mom and she said she can recommend someone to talk to about the psychology of violence. And maybe of sadism and masochism.”

  “Psychoanalysis as a writing technique, huh?”

  Ben grins. “Jung was good for something.”

  The early morning runs out too quickly, like the sun has decided to sail its course in double time today, just to spite them. Ben writes out the rules again in bold black letters for Xander on a sheet of paper, and adds another to his own list.

  THE RULES

  1) Sharpie mark must be re-inked regularly and photographic evidence sent.

  2) Honesty Policy, despite not being sexy.

  3) Minimum 5 minute phone call daily (or voicemail). Take turns calling.

  4) Xander can withhold masturbation privileges from Ben, if he feels like it.

  5) Fucking yoga, 3 times a week.

  6) Ben will write in the journal for Xander several times weekly.

  Xander holds him down to re-mark the XR on Ben’s ass, and once it’s there Ben feels right again. Even, he dares to think, complete. “Maybe I’ll get it tattooed,” he says.

  “Not without permission, you won’t,” Xander says immediately. “If there are going to be any permanent marks on you, I get a say in it.”

  “You got a tattoo without discussing it!”

  “That’s completely different.”

  Ben doesn’t bother asking how. He knows. He knows how it’s different in Xander’s mind, at least.

  Just before he leaves, when the taxi is honking impatiently outside, Xander presses a folded piece of paper into his hand. “For the drop, if it comes.”

  Ben reads it in the taxi. It’s a list of things he can do to help with the drop, and it makes him smile even while his heart aches.

  Chocolate. Yoga. 80s pop music. Sleep. Call me, any time, any hour, if you need to, I don’t care if you wake me up. Chai.

  But Ben decides he’s going to give the chai a rest for a while. Xander has poured him so full of it here in New York that he could swear he smells spices wafting from his very pores.

  The weeks pass so quickly that for Ben, missing Xander becomes a constant background throb—always there, but not always consciously. When Xander calls, ecstatic, to say he’s won the part in The Normal Heart, it doesn’t hit Ben quite as hard as it might, to know that it means Xander is staying in New York. They’ll just have to visit. Often. But Ben is also caught up in his own play preparations for Blood Bond, with rehearsals and production discussions and director’s notes, and his research with the therapist his mom suggested, who specializes in violent and aggressive behaviors.

  Things are going well in therapy, both for understanding Fletcher and his blood-bonded, serial-killing family, and for Ben’s understanding of himself, although he hasn’t told the therapist anything much about his own experiences, and definitely not about the nature of his relationship with Xander. They focus on Fletcher, and violence, and a little on sadism, which also helps Ben understand more about Xander, by proxy.

  But in their fourth session, Ben realizes that the therapist, an Englishwoman whose soft accent makes the most gruesome concepts sound rational and understandable, thinks sadomasochism is a mental disorder. It’s like a slap in the face when she brings out a copy of a very official-looking book and shows him the entries.

  “They’ve removed it from the newer manuals,” she says. “But really, I think it’s best left in. That kind of behavior is abnormal, quite destructive, and these poor people should be treated for it, either by therapy or medication.”

  “Medication?”

  She shrugs. “Whatever works, Ben. You can’t imagine the sad, broken souls I’ve seen in my time. And you know, Freud made much of it in his development of psychoanalysis.” She takes another book down from the shelf to show him, and Ben reads as her finger drags under the lines.

  The most common and most significant of all the perversions—the desire to inflict pain upon the sexual object, and its reverse—received from Krafft-Ebbing the names of ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’ for its active and passive forms respectively.

  “But we’ve come a long way since Freud’s time, surely,” Ben says defensively. “Freud thought chicks envied dicks, and that being gay was a perversion too.”

  “That’s a large and varied topic,” the therapist says vaguely. “Best stick with the one at hand.”

  “What did Jung think about sadomasochism?”

  She smiles at the pot plant in the corner. “I believe our time is just about up for today.”

  “Actually, I think I’ve got all the information I need for the play,” Ben says coldly. “Thank you for all your help.”

  He rants about it to Xander later during their daily phone call, until he runs out of steam.

  “Maybe you should back off the therapy,” Xander says, sounding amused.

  “I intend to. Jesus. I’m so mad still.”

  “Yeah, I can hear that. Why are you putting so much research into this?”

  “Because I want to do it well. I want it to be good. I want it to be convincing.”

  “It’ll be great. Besides, I thought you decided to play up the comedy aspects in your direction?”

  “What is that supposed to mean? That comedy isn’t as difficult as drama? I shouldn’t put in any effort?”

  “Ballard, you’re mad at your therapist, remember, not at me,” Xander sighs. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  There’s a short silence, and then Ben apologizes. “I just kept thinking about what you would say if you’d been there, hearing that crap about it being a mental disorder. How it would make you feel. Hell, how it made me feel. Is that what your therapy is like?” he asks.

  “When I was younger…sometimes. Yes. But now I go to kink-friendly people only.”

  “Oh. That’s sensible.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Where do you find them?”

  “Recommendations, mostly,” Xander says briefly.

  “How’s it going this time round?”

  “Slowly. So, have you got that all out of your system, now? Because I’d like to hear you come for me.”

  It’s hard to argue with that. “Okay, but can I ask you some more questions later? About sadism and violence?”

  Xander sighs uncomfortably. “If you have to. Alright.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Xander can’t make it to LA for Ben’s birthday, which makes Ben angry and frustrated, although he doesn’t say anything. But Xander does manage to come almost two weeks later for a flying visit, in and out in a few days, and Ben jokes about feeling like a booty call.

  He jokes about it, but he half means it.

  Xander reads the journal entries Ben has made, and throws himself on top of Ben afterwards, pulling at his clothes and hair, reveling in the ows and fucks and ouches. “You hurt so beautifully,” he says. “With everything in you. It’s like little electric bursts when you make noises like that.”

  “You have to come again soon,” Ben says afterwards, when they’re lying in tangled sheets on his bed.

  “Ugh, give me more than a t
hree minute refractory period, baby.”

  “I mean here, to LA. Because Blood Bond starts in a couple of weeks and I don’t think I’ll be able to get away until after it’s done, and I want you to see it.”

  “I’ll have to see how I go. Comic-con’s coming up, and I’ll be there for The Hunter. I don’t know if I can get to your play though. We’ll be down in San Diego, so what with travel times, everything else…but at least maybe we could spend a night together.” He says it casually, lightly, and Ben knows immediately that Xander has been thinking about this for a long time and has chosen not to mention it.

  “Uh, what do you mean, you can’t see my play? You’re coming to my play.”

  “It’s just—”

  “No. You are coming. I don’t care if you have to pull out of something, you’re seeing this goddamn play and then afterwards you’re going to tell me how fantastic it was, and buy me dinner and get me moderately drunk and fuck me into a stupor.”

  Xander is quiet, but then he smiles. “You’ve got it all planned, huh?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. It might have to be towards the end of the run, though. Is that okay?”

  “I don’t care when you come see it, just that you do. I want—” Ben breaks off, embarrassed.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to be proud of me.”

  “Of course I’m proud of you,” Xander says in surprise. “I think you’re amazing.”

  You think I’m just riding your coat-tails, Ben wants to say, but Xander is kissing him, so he pushes the thought aside. They only have a few hours left together. It’s not the time to start anything.

  Ben continues to spend an excessive amount of time researching, and asking questions of Xander—or at least, this is what Xander tells him.

  “I know you think I ask too many questions, but this is important,” Ben insists. “Just tell me: when you threaten me, is it the actual threat that you enjoy, or the effect it has? Is it more about control, or about inducing fear?”