Chapter Text
when henry asks you if you can be a good boy, you’re filled with a fierce, overwhelming yes that threatens to spill over into the careful space he’s molded for you in the oak-garcia bedroom. it’s too much. you can’t say it. you want to say it. you think he already knows.
you nod, once, twice, into the darkness behind your eyes and mercedes, to the left of your shoulder, sets her hand gently at your throat from behind and squeezes. a reminder. yes.
yes, you mouth. “yes.”
the next breath that leaves you is swallowed by a mouth, hand curving its way around your neck until she’s repositioned herself in your lap. she rubs herself on your thighs, and tugs you down into a kiss, one hand a steady anchor and the other running lines through your hair.
you want to make it good for her. she deserves more than your thighs. she deserves so much more than you. mercedes kisses you and kisses you and kisses you like she loves you, like she loves you like henry, nails scraping lightly over your skull and sending tingles down your spine, soft and warm, and you let slip a moan that she catches on your lower lip.
you try to reach for her before you remember the rules, your hands uncrossing from behind your back, and you bite back the whine that whistles out from between your teeth as her weight leaves you.
you want to follow her. you can’t follow her.
her absence leaves you cold.
you try not to fidget, to be good, but without mercedes’ steady weight to anchor you, you're floating behind your blindfold. the edges are fuzzy and blurred, and you try to center yourself on the rules they laid out, bright and solid where the rest of your mind is not.
thirty seconds of break every time you touch. thirty seconds alone.
you can do thirty seconds.
you breathe out steadily through your nose, counting.
one.
two.
three. four-
there’s movement around you, the rustling of fabric. a zipper? is henry joining you? did he watch you fail? your heart catches in your throat as you strain your ears for him, head dipping to the side, but then your foot is jostled by something hard-
“out loud, darling, we want to hear you.”
-mercedes’ boot. a gentle reprimand on the edge of the fog.
you take a slow breath in, turn it over in your head. it didn’t sound disappointed - you’re not deep enough to squash the flare of shame for forgetting, for getting it wrong, but mercedes just sounds like she usually does, just giving you a verbal cue, just to knock you back into yourself before you start to panic.
“nine. ten. eleven,” you exhale.
everything around you resumes, settling down on top of your steady count to thirty.
you can hear yourself, but also you can’t - the words fall from your lips like honey, a slow and heavy drip-drip-drip of twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen that coat your tongue as your mind drifts up again into the space above your body. your mouth moves and you watch it tick back at the corners around the sounds as you breathe into the consonants.
“sixteen.”
in.
“seventeen.”
out.
“eighteen.”
in.
“nineteen.”
out.
“twenty.”
twenty. ten from thirty - you have ten seconds left, you note distantly. you can feel their eyes on you as your chest rises and falls and the back of your neck prickles with the attention, but not, you think, in a bad way. the way it heats brings your focus to your body again, tiny hairs standing up like a lightning rod and funneling your attention to your limbs.
your limbs - you are aware you have limbs again. your knees are pressed together and you press them together harder, more, bone against bone. ten seconds - ten seconds. you clench your thighs to keep them from dropping open in anticipation. it’s only ten seconds. you can be good. you can.
you track your awareness outwards from there - to your feet, flat on the floor, flexed; to the nerves in your gut, that coil tighter and tighter; to the hardness of your nipples, to the catch in your throat. to the feel of the chair against your looped arms, to your wrists, still crossed, still good, to your blindfold, shifting up and down as you blink, blink, blink.
oh.
it’s wet.
when did you start crying?
just when your composure begins to fray and you think you have tracked every part of your too-still body and your eyelashes clump with tears and you will surely tremble out of your skin if you don’t move-
-a body, settling behind you. fingers, smoothing their way across your clavicle and settling at the sternum. fingers, rubbing a circle, then pressing slowly down.
you tense, then relax - a reminder. of course.
you are here. you are safe. you are mine.
another set of fingers join you as your tongue curls around your final count, tracing the number across your chest with their nails. henry’s? no - henry’s voice is at your back, a rumble against your spine matching the same vibrations in your throat.
thirty.
“thirty.”
mercedes picks up right where she left off, swinging her legs over yours and hands fisting again in your hair and you know, this time, with complete certainty, that henry is here with you. henry is watching her. henry is watching you . henry is watching mercedes who pulls your head back into her hands like a cradle and kisses you like she loves you, and henry is moving your head to meet her.
and between the kisses, from somewhere in the dark, you hear him say around a smile:
“good boy.”