Three days, and Alex was getting kind of twitchy with how easy-going Tracht was being. Tracht was still making him kiss his boots and help him dress, and Alex hadn’t had an orgasm in ages. And okay, Tracht had Alex kneeling and keeping his cock warmed and fucking Alex brutally at night and—
But Alex was getting to eat more regularly, and Tracht hadn’t threatened him with violence in a while. That had to count for something, right? He was kind of suspicious of it, but he knew he had to take the good stuff while it lasted. He and Nick had learned that lesson really quickly.
Alex did the work Tracht asked of him with as little complaint as possible. Taking notes with Tracht constantly breathing down his neck was one thing, but he didn’t really enjoy wandering the halls of the ship by himself to the laundry room, where a crew member was always around with their own stuff to wash. One evening, Tracht had sent Alex to the canteen alone to pick up their food, and the room had fallen silent for the entire painful duration of Alex’s errand.
Now Tracht was distracted enough by work that he told Alex to go to the gym by himself. Didn’t even force Alex to wear the skimpy outfit. “There’s no point if I’m not there to see it,” Tracht said, and went back to whatever it was that stole his attention.
For some reason that pissed Alex off more. What in the world was so important that Tracht was ignoring Alex?
Alex walked himself to the gym in a huff. He glared at everybody who crossed his path, even growled “fuck off” to one crew member and tensed in horror. But he somehow doubted the crew member was going to run to Tracht about Alex’s rudeness, so he was probably safe.
Working out wasn’t as exhausting now that he’d had proper meals (from Tracht’s fingers) and good sleep (in Tracht’s bed), so he lifted weights for a while before moving on to cardio exercises. He might as well have been a regular guy; nobody else in the gym gave him a second glance with him dressed properly. A few of the crew chatted with each other about the asteroid collision and the small party Strobel was organizing, completely ignoring Alex.
It was kind of nice.
And then, of course, Parsons walked in.
Alex increased the setting on the treadmill and concentrated on his running. He wished he had some sort of music player so he could block out sound.
Yet for some f—frickin’ reason, Parsons was waiting for Alex when he got off the treadmill. He even held out a water bottle at Alex.
“Here. Uh, it looks like you don’t have your own.”
Alex looked at it. He was pretty thirsty. But he wasn’t sure if it was allowed. Besides, what would Parsons want in return for the water? He glared and shook his head. “No thanks.”
Then he turned to leave, because no way was he sticking around to let Parsons judge him some more.
Parsons moved to block his path. “Hey! I just wanted to say—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Alex purposefully knocked against Parsons’ shoulder as he walked past, taking small satisfaction from the way Parsons stumbled backwards.
“Stop! I’ll—I’ll tell the Captain!”
Alex froze. F—fuck. Fuck. He could not have Parsons ruining Tracht’s good mood. He snarled and turned to face him. “What do you want?”
Parsons held out his hand. “We got off on a really wrong foot. Hello. My name is Jeremy Parsons. You can call me Jeremy.”
A handshake? Alex stared at the hand, but he didn’t know what Parsons was planning to tattle to Tracht, so he took the offered hand. “Alex Stone.”
Parsons smiled awkwardly and shook Alex’s hand lightly. “Great. So, um, I just wanted to say that I don’t blame you for what happened. It’s—well, no, it’s not okay, but at least I got a bonus out of it?”
Fucking hell, Parsons had come here to brag about his good fortune? Alex pulled his hand away. “Good for you. Can I go now or is there anything else? Need me to spot you while weight lifting? Want me to suck your cock? Gonna punch my face in?”
Parsons frowned. “No, uh, why...?”
“You want to tell Tracht anything else I did or didn’t do for you, huh?” Fucking hell but Alex could feel himself getting more pissed off than he’d been in a while. Parsons gaped at him like some stupid fish, and then he straightened his shoulders.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I’m not going to tell the Captain anything. I just wanted to talk with you.”
“So you threaten me? Nice.” Alex stepped around him and towards the door. “Leave me alone.”
He left, hoping to hell that Parsons wasn’t actually going to report any of this to Tracht.
===
Tracht was still working when Alex got back to the room. He waved Alex towards the bathroom, and after Alex had cleaned himself off he made Alex sit on the floor by his feet. Alex closed his eyes and stewed over the encounter in the gym. Who the heck did Parsons think he was? Threatening to snitch? Alex almost wished he’d given Parsons a harder beating.
He must have dozed a bit because he woke to Tracht pulling on his hair.
“Alex. I’m in the mood for a movie.” Tracht made Alex heat up popcorn and bring it back to the couch. Tracht took the bowl of popcorn into his own lap, and had Alex sit on the floor between Tracht’s legs.
The movie was one of Tracht’s porn vids.
“This is one of my favorites,” Tracht said while he pushed some popcorn into Alex’s lips. Alex took it and chewed. “The boy’s reactions are beautiful.”
The “boy” in the movie was a beefy guy with dark skin and short-cropped hair. He got randomly kidnapped by some guys, and then strung up against a large wooden cross. The kidnappers spent a lot of time whipping the guy’s back, and the camera zoomed in on his tears.
Alex watched in horror as the first drops of blood appeared on the guy’s back. “That’s fake, right?”
Tracht fed him another piece of popcorn. “Hmm?”
“The blood. That’s fake. It’s gotta be fake.” Alex twisted his head back and wasn’t surprised to see Tracht hard and stroking himself through his pants.
Tracht shrugged. “Does it matter? I prefer to believe that it’s real, but there are certainly enough computer tricks to generate realistic looking blood. The tears are more important, anyway.”
Yeah, Alex remembered how much Tracht liked his tears. “How close are we to comm-space?”
Tracht’s hand came forward to rub Alex’s jaw. “Why? Are you worried I’ll decide to flay your skin open?”
Yes, exactly that. Alex couldn’t tear his eyes away from the guy’s open wounds. The kidnappers stuffed his hole with a massive dildo, they slapped his ass, they came all over him, but throughout all of it he was bleeding freely. That would scar. It had to be fake, right, because porn stars had to be able to do more work later.
Tracht ran his nails across Alex’s scalp. “I don’t need to make you bleed to make you cry for me, Alex.”
Alex moved away, realizing his mistake half a second later. Sh-shoot. To cover up it, Alex kissed the closest part of Tracht he could reach—his knee. Oh, that could work. Alex lowered himself further to kiss along Tracht’s leg, all the way down to his bare foot.
Tracht groaned loudly. “Keep going.”
See, it wasn’t that hard to trick Tracht. Alex tried to ignore the pained cries from the porn vid and kept kissing Tracht’s foot. He lifted it up so he could kiss the arch, Tracht’s toes curling. Alex turned his attention to the other foot and noted Tracht’s breathing growing heavier. He felt Tracht’s fingers pulling his hair, drawing him upward towards his now exposed cock.
Alex wrapped his lips around the tip of his cock and sucked gently. Tracht pushed his head down further, which Alex took as encouragement, so he started pulling out all the tricks he knew. Granted, he hadn’t ever really sucked cock for its own sake, but he knew what he liked and dudes were all mostly the same. If he could get Tracht to come now, while the vid was still playing in the background, then maybe Tracht wouldn’t have the energy to do anything worse to Alex.
But no matter what he did—not even when he used his hands to play with Tracht’s hairy balls—he couldn’t seem to elicit more than a few groans and sighs from Tracht. The few times he looked up he saw Tracht watching the vid screen. Tracht alternated between controlling Alex’s pace and letting him do what he wanted, and he kept eating popcorn throughout all of it.
Alex kept trying anyway, right up until the porno ended. Even when Tracht grabbed his hair to pull him off, Alex tried to suck an orgasm out of him.
Tracht pushed Alex over so he was lying on the floor, and brought his feet to rest on Alex’s chest. Tracht was breathing heavily, at least, so Alex knew he wasn’t completely unaffected. His cock stood obscenely, glistening with Alex’s spit.
“Nice,” Tracht said, “But don’t think you can manipulate me. I think I do want to see your tears tonight, Alex.”
Alex’s breath stuck in his throat. “You can’t—you can’t whip me like that though. That’s a body mod. That won’t heal fast enough!”
Tracht rolled his eyes and moved his feet off Alex. “I assure you that I have a very high-tech medical facility, and Dr. Singh is superb at her job. I have utmost faith that she would be able to heal you up nicely with no additional scarring. But no, I’ll have your tears without damaging a single hair on you.”
He extended his hand for Alex to take; Alex growled and got up by himself. Tracht grinned, not at all put out. Alex should have known that resisting wouldn’t do anything but please Tracht.
“All right. I think I’ll tie you up. Yes, get on the bed, on your back.”
The mild way in which Tracht issued his orders was so counter to his underlying sadism. If Alex didn’t know him, he’d assume that Tracht was harmless. He had assumed that, hadn’t he, back when they’d first met.
The first problem was when Tracht asked Alex to raise his arms. For some reason Alex couldn’t stop remembering the epilator and how it had attacked his armpits. But Tracht said, “It’ll be a lot worse if you make me do it, Alex,” and Alex knew that it definitely could get worse. So he very reluctantly raised his arms, exposing his bare armpits.
The only consolation was that Tracht didn’t have epilator anywhere in the room, as far as Alex could tell.
Tracht used a smooth rope to tie Alex’s arms to the headboard. Then he tied rope around Alex’s thighs and tied that to the headboard in such a way that Alex was splayed open with his legs hanging in the air.
“Just—you aren’t gonna whip me, right?” Alex keened.
“In this position? No, of course not. I won’t even cane you,” Tracht said, but that didn’t reassure Alex at all. “You’re missing something though...” Tracht pulled more rope out from his storage chest. This time he looped some of the rope around Alex’s big toes, and then around his balls. Alex realized that if he moved his feet at all, he’d feel it immediately.
“Now, try to hold still.”
Holding still was not actually possible, because Tracht brought his hands up to Alex’s armpits and tickled.
Alex’s body convulsed involuntarily, and he half laughed, half gasped.
“Stop! Stop!” he shouted, all in vain. With each new assault, Alex convulsed more. He could barely catch his breath, and he desperately wanted to keep his feet still because the sharp tugs on his sac were blinding him with pain, but it was impossible.
It was tickling. Just tickling. He and Nick used to tickle each other all the time as kids, as a way to get the upper hand when wrestling. But this was worse—he had no escape, no hope of mitigating the onslaught. Tears started leaking out of Alex’s eyes.
And right when he thought Tracht was done, he started all over again, this time at his feet.
It was a blessing in that Tracht held one foot steady so that it couldn’t move, but his other foot seemed to convulse twice as much. Despite the way he couldn’t breathe, despite the pain in his balls, he felt his cock trying to grow hard. Alex was torn between being glad for the cock cage preventing him from embarrassing himself, and hating it for the frustration it was causing. He sobbed and was horrified to find himself begging Tracht to stop. “Please, please, stop,” tumbled out if his mouth in between childish giggles.
Tracht smiled cruelly the entire time.
He didn’t know how long it went on, but he was completely out of breath when Tracht’s hands finally came to a standstill. Alex was covered in sweat, tears streamed out of his eyes. He didn’t have any energy to resist when Tracht kissed his tears. His mouth stayed slack when Tracht brought their lips together and plundered his mouth.
“Beautiful,” Tracht said when he pulled away. He gently stroked Alex’s face. His hard cock rubbed against Alex’s side. Alex twisted his face away and wished he could lower his arms. He felt so goddamn exposed. It was just tickling. It shouldn’t have made him cry like this.
“No more,” Alex cried when Tracht’s hands trailed up Alex’s sides again. “Please. I’m sorry. Please.” He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for.
“You see?” Tracht murmured. “I don’t need whips to make you beg and cry. Your body does what I want it to.” He sat back and undid the ropes on Alex’s legs and feet, then maneuvered himself between them.
Alex closed his eyes and attempted not to flinch while Tracht slicked him up with lube. Tracht pushed Alex’s legs up so that Alex was folded almost in half, and then he started thrusting hard into Alex. Alex was too exhausted to do more than take it.
“Open your eyes, Alex,” Tracht demanded, punctuating the command with a particularly hard thrust.
Alex cried out and did as ordered. Tracht was grinning down at him. Their eyes met, and Alex was caught in a strange mix of emotions. He suddenly wanted an orgasm so damn bad that he almost broke down, and he hated Nick for putting him in this position so much that he was sure the first thing he’d do if he ever saw his brother again was attempt to kill him.
He couldn’t do anything about Nick, but maybe the other one— “I need to come,” Alex begged. “Please. Please—it hurts so f—so much. Please.”
Tracht paused, his breathing heavy. “Really? Why should I care about that?”
“Please! I’ve been good! Please!” Alex was ashamed at how pathetic he was.
“If I give you an orgasm, then no breakfast,” Tracht said. “You got popcorn anyway.”
What? Alex shook his head and pulled against his restraints. “No! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” No no no. It wasn’t fair. “Food. I want food!”
Tracht laughed and resumed his thrusting. “That’s—that’s what I thought.” He slipped one hand down Alex’s thigh and stroked Alex’s tender balls. “Don’t worry. I think these can get a bit fuller yet.”
Alex averted his gaze and tried to distract himself. He focused his thoughts on Nick, to how much he wanted to see his brother again and break his nose. It didn’t stop the haze of arousal though. Even after Tracht was done with him, come dripping messily out of Alex’s hole, Alex kept hoping he’d get to orgasm. But of course not. Tracht undid Alex’s restraints and wiped him down, licking the tears away.
“Sweet dreams, Alex.”