Games Boys Play (17 page)

You up?
said the text on his screen.

He reached into the blankets and shifted the bottle a little. The cold was starting to burn through his chill pants.

Kind of
, he typed.

Grab something to eat later?
Dylan asked.

Brian dropped onto his back, the phone on his chest. His gaze explored the ceiling, all its bumps and shadows. He lifted the phone and typed.
As long as you don’t mind waiting. Little tied up at the moment.

No prob. Shoot me a text when you’re free.

K

No more messages came. He set the phone down. The least he could do at this point was look at how Dylan had attached the other end of the chain, see if there was any chance of getting it off without waiting for the key. The chain clinked against itself as he stepped down to the floor. He settled cross-legged at the foot of the bed, the water bottle in his lap. The chain went around the bed’s leg and frame both, so it wasn’t going to be as simple as lifting up that corner of the bed and sliding the chain off, which was too bad. He fingered the screws holding the frame together. If he could find something to stick in the slot, he could probably turn them. He crawled back up the bed, enjoying the aches that each movement highlighted: the soreness across the fronts of his shoulders, a bruise on his wrist, another on his thigh. And best of all, he was still stuck. As long as he didn’t find something thin and sturdy enough to use as a screwdriver, he was
still stuck.

His cock stirred.

Fishing through the drawer at one side of the bed, he came up with a quarter and a plastic comb that might be thin enough to fit in the screw slot. The other drawer gave him an expired credit card he should probably cut up, and the plastic battery cover off of a remote.

He took his bottle and his MacGyver gear back to the end of the bed.

The comb, quarter, and remote didn’t fit. He didn’t mind abusing the credit card, since it was trash anyway, but all he managed to do was crack it and skin his knuckles on the bed frame.

Pushing the failures aside, he crawled to the closet. The chain pulled tight when his knees reached the door, which frustrated him—not because it brought him up short but because from that spot he could still reach a lot of crap in the closet, which meant a lot of crap to sift through and a lot of potential screwdriver stand-ins to try. He wished he could just flop on the bed and wait for his bottle to melt, but as long as there was the chance of getting out, he wasn’t truly stuck, and he couldn’t rest as long as the possibility existed that he wasn’t truly stuck.

He had an itch to text Dylan and tell him that next time he either needed to superglue down any hardware—like screws—that could be removed for escape, or he needed to make sure there was
nothing
in reach.

He got to his feet and quickly patted down the pockets of any jackets hanging from the bar. Then he crouched and looked through the boxes on the floor, setting aside a crappy CD he wouldn’t miss if he cracked it getting free. Nothing else was thin enough to even be considered. In the duffel bag, the only things that might work were the keys to the padlocks and handcuffs, but if he fucked those up, he’d have to throw out the locks or cuffs—he had a rule about never using a lock he didn’t have a spare key for.

He zipped the bag up and stuffed it back in his closet. On his feet again, he nudged the boxes on the closet shelf. No, nothing that would be in there; it was mostly clothes he wasn’t wearing anymore that he’d packed up just to get them out of the way.

Good.

He just needed to see if the CD worked, and then he’d be done.

The CD was too thick. He forced it anyway, and it snapped.

That was that.

He hooked the water bottle with two fingers and climbed back onto the bed.

Truly and actually stuck—for now—he uncapped the bottle and sucked out another swallow of cold water.

Of course…he could drag the bed toward the dresser and poke around in there. He could probably get it over to the bedroom door and see what he could reach from there—not the kitchen junk drawer, but maybe the nearest bathroom drawer.

Goddamn it.

He turned and stretched on his stomach, arms thrown out to either side, chin propped on a pillow. If Dylan had done a better job… If he had been
really
stuck…

He pushed his forehead down into the pillow.
God-fucking
-damn
it
. He slid his arms until his hands were under the pillows, raised his foot until the chain pulled at his ankle…and then he tugged some more, the resistance of the chain getting him hard again.

If he were chained to a support beam in an empty basement—completely empty, with the windows both unreachable and blacked out…

He probably wouldn’t be lying on a comfortable bed in that case.

Unless that was the only thing in the basement, an old metal bed, its mattress bare and smelling slightly of mildew.

He stretched his arms to the corners of his bed. Pretending his wrists were chained, he shifted his hips slowly against the mattress, filling in the details of his confinement: He had no idea when—if—anyone was coming back for him, and he didn’t know which was worse: being left there or having them come back. He didn’t know why he was there or what they planned to do with him. He gripped the bedposts. His hips worked against the mattress. He wanted to reach down and push his pants to his thighs—but how could he if his wrists were chained to the head of the bed? He pushed his face in the pillow, mouth open, breathing in his own hot air.

The skin on the back of his neck prickled.

He paused and turned his head, looking toward the bedroom door.

Still shut.

He watched it, imagining it opening, imagining Dylan walking in and finding him fucking the mattress.

Openmouthed and panting, he kept at it until he couldn’t take it anymore.

He rolled onto his side, still watching the door, and jacked off with sharp, quick jerks, just half a dozen before it became impossible to keep his eyes open. One last image flashed behind his lids: Dylan dragging his arm away so he couldn’t finish. His body shuddered, heat spilling over his fingers.

Lying on his back, his sticky hand trapped at the wrist by the waistband of his pajama pants, he caught his breath, swallowing to wet his dry throat—and knew he was still stuck, chained by the ankle to his bed. The bottle with the key in it lay on the sheets. He’d been too into his cock to think of putting it underneath him. He should have fucked against it—missed opportunities. He pulled the bottle to him and shook it. Another swallow’s worth had melted. Jesus, this was taking for-fucking-ever. He closed his eyes again as he sucked at the neck of the bottle, hoping for another drop. And there was Dylan again:
Need some help? Give it here. I’ll get you some water while this melts.

He used his sheet and the condensation off the side of the bottle to clean his hand.

He had to piss.

If he could find something waterproof to put the bottle in, he could piss on it and solve two problems at once.

All he had were boots, cardboard boxes, and the drawers of his nightstand, none of which he wanted full of piss.

He got back on the floor, tucked the bottle under his thigh, and examined the bed frame again.

Grabbing two sections of it, he pulled. Twisted. Pulled some more.

He dropped his head on the mattress.
Goddamn it.

The minutes collected into an hour. He sat on the floor playing Angry Birds on his phone. He took another drink, the ice small enough to clunk inside the bottle. He leaned his head back. Damp splotches marked the places on his pants where the bottle had lain. He still had to piss. He rolled the bottle between his palms, back and forth, listening to the chunk of ice clatter against the plastic walls. Dylan had to have known it would take ages for the key to melt free; he was probably home, watching TV, eating.
Sleeping
. Whatever.

Eventually the fucking key dropped to the bottom of the bottle. He drank the last of the water with his teeth pressed against the opening to keep from swallowing it—that would be the last fucking thing he needed—then dumped the key into the palm of his hand. Two seconds, that’s all it took to push the key into the lock and turn it. Two seconds. The shank popped up, and he was out.

First a piss. Then a text to Dylan letting him know he just needed a shower.

Parked outside when you’re ready.

Brian lifted an eyebrow. All this time?

And he
was
outside when Brian came through the front doors, sitting parked in his car with the windows rolled down.

A cigarette butt arced from the window as Brian approached.

It was that dead time of the dark morning hours when the early-shifters were just starting to shuffle around, trying to get themselves awake enough to face the day.

He slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. “Have you been out here the whole time?”

Dylan turned the ignition. “Yep. Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Brian stretched and leaned back. “Hungry, though. Shit. If I’d known, I’d have called you two hours ago and told you to come run that fucking bottle under hot water for me.”

With that small twist of a smile, Dylan said, “I’m not sure I would have been down here then.”

“Of course.”

As they passed under a streetlamp, Brian took a quick glance around the car. No mask, no backpack, no hoodie, not that he could see. They’d be in the trunk, of course. Dylan wouldn’t have left them lying out, giving him away.

Settling back, he said, “I can’t believe you fucking hit me.”

There was a pause. “Yeah.” Another pause. “Was that okay?” Dylan looked over.

“Yeah, it was fine.” Brian stretched again, flattening his palms against the roof of the car. Heat tingled on his face as he recalled the slaps. The backhands. The crack of knuckles against his face.

“You sure?”

“Yep.” He hoped his voice wasn’t as hoarse as it sounded in his ears.

“Everything else okay?”

“Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I like how you did my wrists. Not the zip ties—I mean, that was fine, but stretching my arms back, on the chair?” After another few seconds, he added, “There’s something about that. I always liked that.” He drummed his fingers on his knee, watching shadows slide over the back of his hand as the car passed under and away from streetlamps. “Sometimes, by myself, I force them up behind me,” he added, talking to his knees. “Like, um…strappado?” The word almost asked his mouth to move too much. It was the first time he’d ever spoken it out loud.

He hadn’t realized how much its syllables required a mouth to move.

He said, “I use a rope ratchet.” As if that explained everything. Anything.

Dylan glided into the parking area next to a place that served breakfast all day and night, big platters of eggs, bacon, and toast. He turned the engine off. “A rope ratchet,” he said, echoing Brian. Instead of pushing his door open, he hooked his arm over the back of the driver’s seat. “What do you mean? How do you set it up?”

And so he had to force more words out of his mouth, his hand roaming his face, scratching his cheek, rubbing his chin as words he’d said before, separately, in completely unrelated conversations but never assembled together in one place this way, came out. Counterweight, for instance. Slipknot. Rings. Slack.

“Sometimes,” he said, in the dark confessional of the car, looking at the plate-glass window and the warm light inside the diner, “I think about setting it up so I start out sitting or standing up, you know, fairly comfortable, my arms down behind me, but with some compelling reason to have to bend forward. Every little bit I bend forward brings my hands up higher, and the weight on the rope coming out of the ratchet takes up the slack, so however high my hands went, that’s where they’re stuck. I can’t lower them again. All I can do is make them go even higher. The more I bend over, the higher my arms get stuck.” He pushed his hands between his knees, palms squeezed together, looking down while Dylan watched him talk. Hyperaware that Dylan was watching him say all this. “You know, until I can’t straighten back up at all, and I’m hanging there by my arms. I mean, not completely hanging—I don’t want to dislocate my shoulders. But I can’t bring my hands back down until the ice melts enough for the ratchet to drop. Like the key ring.”

He hoped he was making any kind of sense. But he couldn’t stop talking—it seemed more awkward, stopping, than it was to just keep fucking going. “The way I’ve done it so far, if I bend forward or raise my wrists, it’s just because I
want
to. Which is fun; it’s like being a sadist with yourself. As you lift your hands and the slack clicks through the ratchet, you think, ‘Shit. This is going to get uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have done that…but maybe I’ll do it a little more,’ and the ratchet clicks again, and your hands are stuck higher.” His mouth was dry. His throat was dry. He’d shoved his hands under his thighs, arms pushed straight, head bent. He stared at his knees as he spoke, his face prickling with embarrassment. “I’ve been meaning to try setting it up so I almost
have
to bend over. Or at least so it’s uncomfortable to
not
bend over, so I have to make a choice: either be uncomfortable this way, or alleviate that discomfort and be uncomfortable the other way.”

“Any ideas on that?” Dylan asked.

He swallowed. “Uh. One way I thought of—and I’m not sure I like it, really—but I thought I could put a bowl of water on the floor in front of my knees. I’d be kneeling with my ankles tied to my waist so I couldn’t just stand up and push the button on the ratchet to release the rope, right? So, a bowl of water in front of me, and then just before I tie my wrists, I’d eat something salty, like a bunch of crackers, or something I just didn’t like the taste of, you know—a bunch of green olives or whatever. So I’d have incentive to bend over and drink the water, you know?”

Dylan nodded.

“So then I can either suffer being thirsty or having a bad taste in my mouth, or I can bend down to the bowl, which makes my arms go up.” After a beat, he added, “Or it could be a bucket instead of a bowl, full to the top but with a small leak in it, so if I quench my thirst early, I don’t have to bend over so far, and I’m not as uncomfortable as I could have been, but if I wait—maybe I’m worried that if I drink I’ll have to take a leak, especially if I go ahead and drink plenty of water before starting. If I wait, I might have to bend really far over—or maybe I wait too long, and the water’s gone, and I’m stuck wishing I’d bent over and drank while I had the chance.”