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Beard hadn’t thought tonight's game was going to involve Ted. He’s lying naked, blind, and spread-eagle across the bed when he gets the first clue that he was wrong.
When Jane stripped him, tied him up, and blindfolded him, then left the room, he thought they might be about to play the “Beard has to guess what Jane is using to touch (or torture) him” game. Then, as time stretched on, he thought they were playing the “Beard is eventually rewarded for his patience” game. He’s been wondering for a while now if they’re playing the “Jane is mad at Beard and leaves him to examine his choices” game, and has started trying to figure out which of his recent choices most need examining, when she returns.
“That’s all settled,” she says with a smile so wide he can hear it. He doesn’t know what she means. “But we have a little time yet.” Interesting. He shivers before he can catch himself, whether from arousal or fear he can’t say. “So let’s revisit those questions from last week, shall we? Do you remember the ones I mean?”
As if they aren’t seared into his brain, haven’t been distracting him in nearly every waking moment (and some unwaking ones) since. He was a fool to think that Jane wouldn’t have some inkling; that this wouldn’t be a topic she’d return to immediately.
“I think so.” He tries to maintain as neutral a tone as possible. It’s important not to give information away. His cock starts to stiffen. Traitor.
One of Jane’s favorite games is pulling information out of him. The less he wants to share it, the more she enjoys tugging. The trick is to let go of enough information to satisfy her, but not too much.
She once asked him to tell her his top seventeen most embarrassing experiences. At the time, she was leafing idly through his collection of sports journalism, newspaper and magazine clippings he’d started saving during his teens. Whenever she suspected he was holding something back, she ate one of the pieces of paper while he watched.
It wounded him and also got him unbearably hot. After they fucked, Beard had asked, “What would you do if you learned all my secrets?”
“I suppose I’d be bored of you then.” She’d shrugged and grinned. Just the way of the world; couldn’t be helped.
So he always tries to keep some information back.
Now she asks, just like last week, “Are you attracted to Ted?” She toys with his balls as she asks.
“No.” He’s pleased with how calm he sounds. He’s spent much of the week mentally replaying and critiquing his answers from last week. He says the same words now, but his delivery is more convincing this time.
“Do you want to fuck Ted?” Literally tugging now for more information.
“No.” He squirms in discomfort, more than half hard.
Jane’s been jealous of Ted since the start. Early on, it was a frequent source of accusations screamed during fights. But that died down for several blissful years. Until last week.
“Have you ever thought about Ted while we're fucking?” She squeezes breathtakingly.
“Never,” he manages, barely.
“Hmm,” Jane says.
Somehow, Jane discovered before Beard did that Ted might be returning to the UK. Perhaps rumors were rampant but Roy and Rebecca were trying to protect Beard from them (because Ted might still not be returning). Or perhaps Jane has a truly excellent spy network.
Either way, ever since he found out, it’s all he can think about. The thoughts on rotation through his brain approximately every five seconds for the past week:
Ted.
Ted.
Ted.
Back?!
Call Ted.
Ask him to come back.
Or beg him not to come back.
Can’t believe Ted hasn’t called yet.
(It’s possible Ted has been calling; possible there are hours of voicemails that have been piling up over the past few years because it feels too hard to listen.)
Are you attracted to Ted? Do you want to fuck Ted? Have you ever thought about Ted while we're fucking?
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck so fucked
No. Don’t let the cycle start again now. Danger. His cock, which has gotten so stiff somewhere along the line, is positively bobbing.
Pay attention.
When Jane speaks again, he thinks she’s going to repeat the same questions. He thinks it’s going to be an evening of endurance, repetition, trying to make him break. But she’s released his balls, finally, and the questions have shifted.
“Are you attracted to men?”
He responds with a quick, firm, “No.” He doesn’t think about Calliope Brewster asking him the same question back in high school when he thought she’d been about to ask him out. Doesn’t think about her disappointed look at his answer, the way she’d said, Too bad, I know someone who has a crush on you. The way the missed opportunity and the mystery had obsessed him for years.
Jane grabs the head of his cock and squeezes hard. He bites his cheek, stays still. “Really,” she says flatly. She doesn’t believe him. Possibly he should have lied less in response to that question.
“Really,” he insists, trying not to squirm. She lets go, surprisingly.
“Have you ever fucked a man?” She presses the sharp tip of one fingernail into the tip of his cock. He tries not to hiss. His stupid dick gets even harder.
“No.” He tries to sound calm despite spiking fear. He doesn’t think about Hendrik and his slender, gorgeous hands, nor the anonymous men in clubs. Not that handjobs would necessarily register as fucking for Jane, but he’s certain she would want to know about it. Someday, perhaps, she’ll drag it out of him.
“Mm,” Jane is fucking his cock slit with the tip of her nail now, and it’s extraordinarily unpleasant. He’s struggling to breathe and leaking some pre-cum onto her, he’s pretty sure.
“Have you ever kissed a man?” It sounds like a throwaway line, an afterthought, but Beard is sure it’s a trap.
“Yes,” he grits out immediately. She wouldn’t believe him if he said otherwise. “Walter Chersky during a game of Spin the Bottle. Jake Ellison onstage, during a spoken word production of Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Her fingernail stills. “Did you like kissing them?”
“Both were performative. I was focused on the audience.”
“Hmm.” She still sounds skeptical, though there’s a lot of truth there. He remembers the appreciative gaze of his girlfriend as he locked lips with Walter.
He remembers kissing Jake on opening night, knowing that Ted was watching. He kissed the other actor like his life depended on it, hoping Ted would somehow perceive it as a message for him, or at least a provocation; praying Ted would bring it up later. They never talked about it.
Jane sounds calmer and remains still as she asks, “Who’s someone you’d like to kiss while I watch?”
“Nobody,” he says.
She twists her nail abruptly, and he hisses. “Not allowed. Try again.”
“Rita Hayworth,” he says, primarily because she’s dead and unlikely to provoke as much jealousy as someone who’s not.
“Mmm. Tell me what you’d do with Rita, if she were to join us now.” He’s surprised she doesn’t make him pick a man, but grateful.
This is safer ground. He can reuse ideas out of any of the fantasies that Jane has pulled out of him previously, or he can pluck memories from the handful of threesomes they’ve had with various women over the years. (Beard hasn’t known the names of most of those women, or even what some of them looked like. He is no good at pulling information out of Jane.)
“Want her to tease me with her tits hanging over my face, where I can’t quite reach them. Want to watch her go down on you.” It’s not a lie—he would enjoy that quite a lot, if Jane were into it. They’ve never played with another person in a way where Jane was enjoying fucking someone else just for the pleasure of it; she’s always fucked other people at Beard, or else forced Beard to do something with someone else and then punished him for it.
Jane listens to his obediently babbled fantasies and rewards the details she likes with touch, pleasant and painful; she punishes the ones she doesn’t with the absence of contact.
Jane is always playing a game—always playing multiple games, really. It’s one of the things Beard likes best about her.
Beard has a tendency to just lose himself and flow through moments without thinking. With drugs, music, sex—sometimes he can forget who he is and just respond instinctively. He always has to stay alert and present with Jane. If Beard isn’t focused the whole time he’s with her, he’ll lose everything. He’s never been so firmly in the world as when he’s with her.
Once when he was distracted, ruminating on the past, she tricked him into revealing which drug he ached for most. The one the doctors told him he can never take again. That weekend, she tied him down and snorted it off his chest, mocking him for being such a baby and not being able to control himself. She offered him some and he trembled and cried, and she laughed. He refused, then relented, then begged and sobbed. She grinned triumphantly and flushed it down the toilet while he screamed, before coming back to bed to grind down on him till he was shaking for multiple reasons.
“Now I know exactly how much you need it.“ She told him later.
“Are you going to keep using it to torture me?” he asked, a cold weight in his belly.
She bit her lip thoughtfully. “Mm, I don’t think so. Not much more to learn now, is there?” And she wandered off to find something more interesting.
He’s pulled out of the Rita Hayworth fantasy game by the sound of the doorbell. Jane takes a moment to squirm around and then shoves a gag into Beard’s mouth—wet panties—before she leaves him in the dark.
He didn't know there would be another participant tonight. but at least he knows how to play the threesome game. It’s just a matter of choosing Jane, over and over. He can’t shut down his body’s physical response to another woman who’s trying to elicit a reaction, but he can turn toward Jane, seeking her frantically with his whole body (even blindfolded, he can seek). He doesn’t think the other woman usually leaves satisfied, but he suspects Jane is paying most of them, which assuages his guilt some.
“We have a very special guest tonight,” Jane says, returning after what feels like a very long time. His name is Ed.”
Beard grunts, the kind of noise you make when you’ve been hit in the gut. Shit. His panic rises when Jane grabs his hand and with a, “Meet Ed,” raises Beard’s fingers up to feel a mustache.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Beard can feel his cock, which had gone limp, suddenly get very alert.
Fuck.
“Such a shame you aren’t interested in men,” Jane purrs. “You’ll do this for me, though, won’t you?”
He moans into the gag. He’s in so much trouble.
He feels a hand wrap around his cock, and he knows it’s not Jane’s. He tries to pull away, to turn toward Jane, but gets a slap across the cheek for it. This certainly isn’t the first man to touch his cock, but it’s the first while Beard’s sober. And he’s really good. Beard is instantly embarrassingly hard. He can’t get his brain to stop imagining that it’s actually Ted on the other side of the blindfold, tenderly but firmly handling his cock for the first time. Which is so obviously the point that it’s humiliating.
Jane coos from somewhere near Beard’s head, “Oh, Ed, you’re doing such a good job. It looks like you’re converting him. You’re such a good coach.” Beard hates how his cock jumps.
Jane isn’t even torturing his nipples; normally she would run interference on anything that might otherwise be enjoyable during a threesome. This time she seems to just observe and radiate triumph. He is so fucked.
“Now, Ed. I’d like you to use that mustachioed mouth of yours on his cock.”
Beard lets out a strangled noise. He starts shaking his head, scooting away with what little give the ropes allow. But Jane grabs his hair and holds his head tightly in place, lifted just a few inches off the bed. If he weren’t blindfolded, he would be in a perfect position to watch the blowjob.
He doesn’t want this. (He does want this, god, but he also doesn’t.) Scream.
He could scream. If he screamed against the gag, there’s at least an eighty percent chance Jane would end this.
He should scream.
He doesn’t want his first blowjob from a man to be from someone other than Ted. Which is idiotic for multiple reasons.
The main one being Ted’s apocalyptic normalcy. Ted is utterly straight, so far as Beard can tell, and very vanilla. Though the only information Beard’s ever gotten out of Ted about his preferences are very pink ears. It’s nearly certain that he and Beard are dramatically incompatible. They will never—probably should never—ever have sex.
There is a mustache tracing its way along his inner thigh, accompanied by soft lips. Scream!
But also, just for the sake of argument, say that they did. Beard wouldn’t want Ted to suck his cock, even in that hypothetical. Because Ted is always, always taking care of Beard. Just for once, if they ever have sex, Beard wants to reverse that.
Lips are brushing his glans. A tongue flickers. SCREAM!
He wants to grind himself into the dirt beneath Ted’s sneaker. Then he wants to crawl his way up between Ted’s legs, tenderly remove both his American and British pants, and be allowed finally to take care of Ted, with no reciprocation.
Of course, Ted would never allow any of that. No, if he and Ted somehow had sex, Ted would absolutely suck his cock in the gentle, caring way this person is doing it now. Fuck. Beard comes in Ed’s mouth.
“Well, that was humiliatingly brief,” Jane says with an audible smirk. Then she whips Beard’s blindfold off and yanks his gag out.
Beard trembles in the dim light and the daze of having been laid piteously bare. He strains to make out the face of the man who—oh.
A dark-haired young woman in a blue sweater and chinos sits on the bed, watching Jane for further instruction. The mustache is starting to peel off her face in one corner.
Beard feels relief so strong he strains to hold in a sob.
Jane shoves “Ed” toward Beard, pushing them into a kiss. Beard is too stunned to even resist. He numbly kisses her scratchy face, even though Jane usually goes into a fit of fury when he kisses anyone else, even when she’s the one making him (she’s always the one making him). Jane pulls her into a kiss next, eyes locked with Beard the whole time.
Then she abruptly waves the younger woman away. “Go.”
The woman doesn’t appear to care. She gets dressed and leaves the room; Jane doesn’t even bother to show her out.
Jane leans in over him, putting her face so close to his that his eyes can’t even focus properly on her. His whole world is Jane.
He is so overwhelmed that even now that his mouth is free, he doesn’t babble, doesn’t beg for forgiveness or for pain. He just watches.
She watches him back. She inhales his air, returns it. Her breathing slowly accelerates. He can hear her wetly touching herself, but she’s not even pressing up against him like she usually would, making sure he can feel what he can’t have.
“You think I don't know you,” she whispers. She sounds almost affectionate. Ice creeps through his core.
“I know you,” she says, and then it’s a chant. “I know you. I know you. I know—” She comes choking on the final you.
She collapses on top of him, then sighs into his neck fondly and snuggles gently against him, as if she always does that. (Jane has two normal modes, post-sex: standoffish cactus and fully engulfing fungus.) She tenderly unties his wrists so he can wrap his arms around her, and his breath catches. He cradles her and is afraid.