nonvoting | [ gp / inbox ]

That's the other strange part about it. I know rationally it's vulnerability, but I remember feeling...safe.

At the same time, it wasn't from confidence. This wasn't putting my arm up knowing a helicopter strut would be there to support me. I'm not sure I can connect what I felt to that sense of safety. Why safety would've come from any of that.

[ 🤨 ]

You were safe. Your body knew that, even if your mind wasn't consciously thinking of it.

[ you are always safe with me, tseng doesn't say. rufus is going to have to put the pieces together on this one for himself. ]

[And he does, in fact, start to put those pieces together. It starts with typing of course I know that and deleting it again because that's not productive. Starts with typing it out again but really just looking at it glowing on the screen for a while, until it starts to seem bigger than just the five words it is. Until "safe" stops being something that dredges up thoughts of black suits and firearms and high walls and bravado, and starts resonating more with a waiting plate of eggy bread at a chair that's his despite no one ever naming it so, and with sleeping in as late as he wants, and with being led through a snowstorm by fingers laced through his own.

After a while, "safe" starts to look like a word that could be traded out for "happy", and the latter would fit just as neatly. Or maybe like one that wouldn't have to be traded out at all. Like maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive, and never were.]

There's something I'd like to try. Will you indulge me?

Of course.

[ as ever, the fact that rufus' eventual response is not a direct answer to tseng's last message indicates that there are cogs turning in that beautiful mind of his. ]

I like you, Tseng.

[How very strange, for just these few seconds, to feel like he's seventeen again with a gun in his hand, grinning from the pleasure of a secret.]

I like that you're mine. But I'd like you even if you weren't. It's just you. You're what I like.

[ this is—not the text he thought he was going to get, and so tseng gets to experience the frisson of pleasure up his spine at so frank a confession from someone so usually disinclined towards being honest with his feelings. ]

I like you too, Rufus. And I would still like you even if I wasn't yours.

I think I like this experiment. We should do this more often.

[ specifically the part where rufus says "i like you" :) ]

[It's at the sight of his name, rendered casually in text, that it occurs to him that Tseng hasn't called him sir even once this whole conversation. And for all that the text is an echo of his own words — or a mirror, maybe, by design — it still makes a delicious sensation crawl over his skin, the kind that makes him draw his shoulders in and curl a touch as if to better hold it inside himself.

And it solidifies something about the thoughts he'd been mulling over, doesn't it? Because this is safe, too. Because this is safety like a first tentative step onto ice, gauging whether it will suffice to hold his weight. Because it's not so much that he ever thought he wasn't safe with Tseng, as just that he wasn't seeing the whole bounds of what that encompasses, always focused on how far it could take him but never so much on how deep.

Safe. Yes, he is. Wanted. Yes, bizarrely enough, he's that too.]

We should. Lucky thing I still have a few more questions.

Did you mean it when you said I was a gorgeous little slut?

[It's an invitation, by implication. His own way of conveying that there's safety for Tseng, too. That it goes both ways. That yes is an answer he can give to a question like that at all.]

[ it's not as easy for tseng to read rufus in text as it is in person, but he thinks he knows rufus well enough by now to understand that the question is an opening, not a trap. ]

Oh, wholeheartedly.

Did you like hearing that?

[An opening, indeed — and maybe a little bit of bait, too, giving him his own opportunity to answer in kind.]

Yes. All of it, every part.

Although...

[He prompts, clearly wanting the subject pressed further.]

Although...?

I don't think I really acted like much of one.

At least, not as much as I could have.

Is that so. Would you like an opportunity to rectify that?

[A "yes" would be easy. A demand would be expected. But this? This is as much an almost thoughtful experiment as anything that came before it.]

Can I?

Are you asking if you can, or asking if you may?

[Oh.]

You're right. I did mean "may".

[And, well. He's in it this far, he might as well go all in.]

I'm sorry I misspoke. Don't be mad.

[ sweet shiva, rufus is going to be the end of him. tseng exhales slowly, steadying. ]

You're forgiven, this time. Are you going to behave?

[They've played this game before, in variations — usually when the House has brought Tseng's suit into play, or driven passions high in some other manner. This one is a new and compelling twist: doing it just because they feel like it, when the authority in Tseng's words is so familiar but his own decisions about balancing pushing back and giving way are novel ones.]

Do you want me to? Or would you like it better if I didn't?

I think you know the answer to that.

Then I think it's both.

You do want me to behave. And you do like it better when I don't.

[ the fact that tseng doesn't directly respond should signal to rufus that he's absolutely right. ]

Where are you?

Just in my suite.

I wish I was in yours.

And what exactly would you like to do in mine?

Exactly?

In detail.

[It's always easier to type things out than it is to muster the words to say them, particularly when they're ones that make him vulnerable. Writing can be revised and second-guessed and deleted in haste. Writing gives a level of plausible deniability if ever he needed one.

But it's safe. This is safe. And even if it's not, Tseng will make it so for him anyway. So maybe writing this out is just another permutation of what he's already been learning to do, letting things slip and be seen without having to think about fifty layers of ramifications.]

I would like to sit you down on one of those pristine couches of yours, fully dressed. I'd fix you a drink. I'd even bring a napkin so it wouldn't leave condensation marks on your tabletops. And then I'd ask if I'd been good enough to have my own seat in your lap. I hope you'd let me.

I'd like to talk while you finished your drink. I'd say how you know so many things I like but I know so little about yours in return. I'd say maybe you're just better at guessing than I am. I'd ask if you'd let me try to guess, and tell me if I got it right.

I'd wait while you sipped at your drink. I'd take it from you and sip it myself, and kiss you so you could drink from my mouth instead. I'd ask you if it tasted better that way. When we'd finished it together, I'd set it aside.

Then I'd ask you about what you'd called me, "gorgeous little slut". I'd ask which part of it turned you on the most. You could have all the little sluts you wanted, so am I just the most gorgeous? Or do you have plenty of gorgeous sluts, but I'm your favorite to be bigger than. Or is it just that you like that I'm a slut, and nobody else knows it but you.

If you said it was that I was a slut, then I'd be one for you, I'd rub on your lap until you were hard and then I'd take you out and sit back while I stroked you to finish, to see if when you came all over me you did it hard enough to get all the way up to my face. And if you said it was that I was gorgeous maybe I'd touch myself instead, right there on top of you, so you could look at my pretty face and know I was doing it for you.

And if you said it was that I was little, then maybe I'd call you daddy and like it.

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