I had laid out Marius’s clothes on the bed, some clothes I had bought at the mall for him. He didn’t have many clothes, he didn’t need them. Last winter had been tough, I’d bought him a plush onesie but he still rarely wore it, preferring to be naked under a pile of blankets or curled up in my arms. The outfit was cute, I thought. Fishnets that went up to his waist and tiny jean shorts, a crop top of a band I’d never heard of but had a cool logo when I saw it at Hot Topic. 

He was already deep in a trance, falling into the sound of my voice like I’d ordered him to. He was sitting on the bed, his back against my stomach. My wrists were cramping from the position but the pain didn’t bother me. My hand was on his hard dick, occasionally dipping down to stick my fingers in his wet cunt to gather lubrication. 

“We have a very big night ahead of us,” I said. He whimpered, getting close again. I could feel his dick twitch and throb under my fingertips. I stopped rubbing but kept my fingers on his hot flesh. “I’m going to take you out with me. Are you excited?”

“Yes, Master,” he said, like he was sleeptalking, his voice barely more than a pleasured moan.

“Your trance will stay deep,” I said. “You will do everything I tell you without question. You are my slave in my home and you are my slave in the rest of the world too. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

I started rubbing his dick again. 

“We’re going to a concert. It’s going to be loud and the music will put you deeper into a trance. You’ll feel it course through you, down to your core, down to your essence. You will not be able to hear your thoughts, you will have none.” I had to be careful with this. Even after a year of trancing him he still found loopholes to my words, ways to rebel and fight back. He’d been such a good boy lately, I thought he could stand a night out of the house with me. “You will only know to obey me, my words, my body.”

“Yes, Master,” he said.

“You will act normally, as if nothing was wrong, but the truth is that you’ll be in a very deep trance, obeying only me and only my voice. If anyone were to see us, they would think you are my partner and that you love me.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Do you want to cum?” I asked. He was already close again, moaning and writhing against me. 

“Please, Master, please, I want to cum.” He could barely speak, his words slurring together with need.

“When you climax, all of what I’ve told you will settle inside of your mind, solidify as fact, that you must obey me, that everything will appear as normal. Do you understand?”

He let out a desperate keen.

“Good slave, cum for me.”

And he did, squirting all over the sheets and my hand and I thought, what a mess, but it was a small price to pay to have such a perfect slave. I rubbed him through it, until he was sensitive and trying to push me off, then I stopped and let him lick the mess from my hands. He did not come up from his trance. My hands spitty and sticky, I dressed him without cleaning him, his thighs wet and gleaming and reeking of sex.

===

In the car, I blasted the radio to a classic rock station, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir was playing which was nice because it was a long song and I was familiar with it. It was about an hour’s drive to Portland. We were almost there when I turned on the radio, sitting in silence before that. Marius would try to speak sometimes but I ignored him, not interested in small talk.

The music had the desired effects. Marius squirmed in his seat at first, feeling the arousal he associated with a trance but slowly stilled and stared out the window, his mouth open as he breathed and squeezed his legs together. I still said nothing, just watching. When we parked outside the venue, a gay bar downtown having a hardcore night, I put my hand on Marius’s shoulder and waited for him to look at me.

“Are you still in a deep trance?” I asked.

Marius nodded.

“Your arousal will be less obvious. No one knows what’s happening to your body as you drip for me.”

“Yes, Master,” Marius said.

I got him out of the car and bought our tickets, Marius hanging on my arm the entire time. It was nice to be out with him, have people looking at us and seeing us as lovers. I wasn’t sure if I would consider us such, our relationship ran much deeper and broader than simply romantic partners. 

The bar was darkly lit but Marius still stood out with his bright blond hair and all the pale skin he was showing. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and jeans, boots fit for a construction worker. I felt hot, confident. 

The lights went low and the band started playing. I was enjoying the music even though all this thrasher shit sounds the same to me. But I was also busy watching Marius, seeing his eyes glaze over and his mouth open slightly. I wiped drool from his chin with my hand and leaned in to say, loud over the music, “Be careful, darling.” Before, the only time I had referred to Marius that way was to demean him but something in my tone sounded like I meant it and I surprised even myself.

“Yes, Ma-” he caught himself, the trance deepening as he remembered his orders. “Sure, Frederick.” There was a lull as the song ended and Marius demanded in a bratty voice that I didn’t often allow him to use, “Buy me a drink.”

I smiled to myself, annoyed with his tone but not letting myself show how deeply it enraged me that he made demands in public. I would remember it for later, our debriefing back home. I had already started to plan it, getting itchy. I wished I could have bent him over my knee and spanked him right there sitting on a barstool but that was simply unacceptable.

“Stay here,” I said. Then, in a more possessive tone, “Don’t let any bad boys feel you up while I’m gone, okay?”

He chuckled and rolled his eyes, waved me off. My smile widened, hiding my anger, and I wondered if it showed in my eyes. If he noticed it, he said nothing. I went to get him a drink, just a cheap beer and brought it back to him. He made a face when he saw it was beer but took it and took a sip anyway. 

"This tastes like piss," he whined. He went to wipe the foam away from his upper lip but I stopped him, instead leaning down to suck it off. His lips caught mine in a kiss and he splashed beer on my shirt as the deeply ingrained programming made him nearly go limp.

“Careful,” I said, a warning not only about the beer.

“Yes, Frederick,” he said with a tone that I knew indicated he knew his place. He looked into the distance, seemingly at the stage, drooling slightly. I put my arm around him and held him close, watching the musicians bang their heads and whip their long hair around.

“Hey, hey, hey,” the vocalist said and held up a hand for the band to stop playing. I rolled my eyes at the sudden interruption but when I looked up, he was looking right at me. I froze, suddenly panicking, the attention of the crowd on us as he pointed at us making my worst fears of recognition realized. 

“You guys like horror movies?” the vocalist asked. He was a tall, skinny thing with long blond hair and sunken eyes. I could tell he was stoned from the dark circles under his eyes, how glassy his eyes were. He probably reeked too. 

The crowd cheered.

“You guys like shitty horror movies?” he called. 

“Hey!” Marius said, looking to me for backup. I didn’t know what to say.

The crowd cheered.

“I make art,” Marius went on, on top of the vocalist. “It’s not my fault I’m stifled by scripts like the ones I was given. I gave it my all, why don’t people see that?”

“Marius Laurent is in the house tonight, folks, give it up!” he shouted finally over the top of Marius’s rant.

I felt the blood drain from my face. My mouth went dry. Quickly, I grabbed Marius by the wrist and he tried to fight me off, of all things. I turned to hit him, force him to submit to me, but before I raised my hand, I felt the eyes of the crowd on us, smiling and cheering and grabbing for Marius.

“Get up here, man!” 

The crowd cheered.

Marius looked at me for approval and I shook my head, grabbing his hand possessively. I was looking at the door, preparing to shove people out of the way to get there but there was a sudden tug on Marius and someone was dragging him away from me. My heart was pounding in my chest. They’re going to take him away from me. The police are going to show up at my door and they’re going to take him away and he’s going to cry that I hurt him when he loved it and he loves me they can’t take him.

But he was gone. Out of my grip, being siphoned through the crowd to the stage. He looked back at me one last time before smiling and taking the vocalist’s hand, stepping up onto the stage. He stared into the crowd, searching for me I hoped. 

The vocalist said, “Hey, Marius, long time no see. You remember me?”

Marius giggled, obviously loving all the attention he was getting. Finally, he found me and his gaze met mine. There was fear in his eyes, suddenly, something only I may have noticed but he spoke plainly like nothing was wrong.

“Of course I do, Mikey! You have the lowest hanging balls in all of Oregon.”

The crowd ‘ooh’d. I felt sick. 

Then I remembered him crying the night I finally took him away. His body was almost ruined, his cunt stretched and dripping wet, his eyes mad with lust and despair. I had told him I was the only one that was able to make him orgasm, that he would crave orgasm the way an addict craves dope, that he would do anything for cock. He even slept with Abado, he told me, that’s how desperate he was. Apparently he slept with this guy too.

Just my fucking luck. The first time I take him out with me in a year and he runs into some fucking guy he slept with.

“C’mon, are you still as big of a slut as you were when we worked on that movie together?”

Marius laughed loudly, something I recognized from the sparse amount of interviews he’d done. He’s acting. He’s putting on a show. He never laughed like that for me.

“You don’t even know,” he said.

“Prove it, then,” Mikey said. 

Marius forced himself to look away and reached for the hem of his shirt. I lurched forward, running to the stage.

“No!” I shouted but it was too late. He lifted his shirt and revealed his tits for the whole audience to see. I couldn’t bear to look at him degrade himself for the audience. I made it to the stage and leapt up onto it. Marius saw me and lowered his shirt.

“Who’s this?” Mikey asked, eying me up and down. I wanted to shout at him, I’m his Master, get your fucking hands off my property but I knew better.

“It’s time to go,” I said, with the voice I use to command him while in trance. Seeing me now, through his shame of giving himself in any way to someone other than me, I watched his eyes glaze over. 

“Frederick’s right,” Marius said. “I have to get out of here.”

Why did you tell them my name? I wanted to scream. Now everyone was going to know who it was that stole Marius away from the world.

“Is this your kidnapper, then? Everyone’s been wondering where you’ve been,” Mikey teased. 

I almost blacked out.

“He’s not my kidnapper he’s my…” his mind calibrated, searching for an appropriate word to replace ‘master’. “He’s my partner. I love him.” He looked to me and said, with feeling, “He’s my world.”

I wondered if he was saying that because he was sorry for coming up here. It wasn’t enough. I was furious. 

The crowd went ‘aww’.

I turned to them, having forgotten I was being observed, and stared out, my eyes flashing over unfamiliar faces jeering at me from the dark. 

“Marius, we’re going home,” I said, the hidden message of ‘slave’ behind his name was clear to him and he looked down, submissive, his whole body changed. He walked away from Mikey and towards me, wrapped his arms around me like he was a lost child and daddy finally found him. I was at a loss at first, still unused to how Marius demanded physical affection, but I wrapped an arm around him awkwardly.

“Man, what’s your deal? We were having fun,” Mikey whined.

“He didn’t like it,” I said.

Marius looked up to me to object, a dim fire behind his eyes.

I said, “You didn’t like it.”

Marius froze, the fire going out. He buried his face in my chest.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Mikey said. He turned to the audience, “Don’t you think this is weird?”

I was ready to shove Marius aside, cross the stage and deck him but the audience was silent and their reluctance to judge gave me strength. I led Marius to the edge of the stage and gave Mikey one last look. The crowd parted and let us through to the door.

“Fuck this,” I heard Mikey say as we exited. A few lights turned on as they did in between sets behind us. I didn’t say a word to Marius but he looked at me with worry, walking all the way back to my truck.

===

“Are you mad at me?” Marius asked as we pulled into the driveway. I hadn’t said anything to him the entire car ride home, only the sound of the engine and the occasional car passing us on the road. I didn’t look at him. I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car.

I walked around the car and opened the door. I undid Marius’s seatbelt, wrapped my arms around his waist and dragged him out of my car, balanced on my shoulder like a sack of flour. He was surprisingly limp. I carried him straight to the basement and finally, I spoke to him.

“All semblance of your former self is dropping away, now, and you’re becoming simply my slave again. I own you, body, mind, and soul, and I own you completely. There isn’t an atom inside of your spirit that I haven’t touched and turned into my slave.”

Slowly, he went limp.

“The trance you are in is deep, pulsing with your heartbeat and spreading through you every time you breathe. Who owns you, slave?”

“You do, Master,” he said, his voice the quiet drone I recognized and craved to hear.

I dropped him on the bed and stripped him, accidentally tearing the fishnets as I roughly tugged them off his body. I left the clothes in a pile on the ground. I only undid my pants enough to pull my cock out, jerk myself until I was hard. I knew he was ready for me, the trance made him drip even if he hadn’t been touched and I could see the wetness between his legs.

“I’m very angry with you, slave,” I said. “I can’t trust you at all. I can barely trust you inside my home, how could I ever think I could trust you in public? You’re nothing but a slut.” At that, I shoved my cock inside of him, groaning at his heat. I started to fuck him immediately, taking all of my rage out on his body. I had nothing else to say other than to growl and snarl animalistically with rage.

His eyes rolled back in his head at one point and stayed there, meeting my noises with screams and moans of his own. I was glad that I’d decided to sound proof the basement, we probably sounded like a hardcore porno down here and the thought of someone hearing me ruin my beloved after he had so freely given his body away made me fuck Marius harder at the imagined scenario. 

“When I cum inside of you,” I groaned between erratic thrusts. “You will cum with me. Your orgasm will clear your mind and you will be completely blank inside. I will be free to program you. There will be nothing keeping you from being mine.” I paused to breathe. “Do you understand, slave?”

“Yes, Master,” he whimpered, grinding his hips up onto me as a way to beg me to keep going.

And I did. I came hard and deep inside of him, my hot cum triggering the programming in his mind. He shook and twitched in the aftershocks of his orgasm and stared at me blankly, mouth open, drooling. I stayed inside of him until the friction hurt and I propped myself up on my elbow next to him, looking at him.

“I don’t think you’re going to see the outside world again,” I said. The sadness and rage I expected wasn’t there, only his glassy stare looking at me through a film of hypnosis. “I can’t risk anyone taking you away from me. What you did tonight was irresponsible and dangerous. Your punishment will begin tomorrow. Do you understand?”

Weakly, he said, “Yes, Master.”

I brushed hair out of his face and wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. 

“But you want to stay with me, don’t you? I treat you so well, give you food and a home and orgasms.”

Marius whined and said, “I don’t ever want to leave you, Master.”

I sighed, unconvinced. He’d have to earn my forgiveness. At least the blind panicky rage I had felt earlier was gone, left only with the thrumming of adrenaline pounding in my veins. 

“Tell me you’re sorry,” I said after a long time. I thought he had fallen asleep but he answered me quickly.

“I’m sorry, Master. I’m so sorry. I never meant to expose myself, to expose you.”

I rolled over and pulled him close to me, spooning him naked in an intimacy we rarely shared, one I didn’t let us share. I didn’t want to admit to myself how scared he had made me so I didn’t. I reached over him and turned off the lamp, laying awake and fully clothed, him nude and curled against me.