[Can’t Opt Out]

Levi felt like he had been trapped, not just by the man’s arm around his waist, holding him close, but by those eyes of his. They flickered between his own, Levi feeling spayed open and vulnerable—broken apart and dissected in a way he generally only experienced during sex.

He liked sex—enjoyed the push and pull of power, enjoyed the feel of another body sliding against his own, enjoyed the rush of knowing he was the one who had brought the other person pleasure. It was a fleeting thing, however—a momentary surge of hormones through his system that gave him a taste of normalcy, a short burst of feeling like he actually knew what the fuck was happening inside him.

Arousal and attraction were easy things to feel—simple. Likely, this was only because he had never felt love for another person, however—not in a head over heels, the stars are falling way. Levi loved Darrian and Emilia, but it wasn’t a romantic love, even if he knew Darrian would easily fall into romantic love with him, if Levi offered to try being more than friends.

Levi wouldn’t offer—he loved Darrian too much to risk whatever the fuck had happened between Rafe and Emilia happening to the two of them. Maybe it would be easy to let his friendship with Darrian consume them in a raging inferno of romance. Maybe it would break their friendship, and Levi wouldn’t risk it.

Still… a part of him wanted that—wanted an unwavering love where he could fully lean into being himself. Would being himself also come with the perk that he could more fully enjoy the parts of sex that he loved and rarely got to experience? Definitely! What was the point of loving someone if they couldn’t give him that splayed open feeling?

The sense of falling through time and space as a man used him, the emotions he so often struggled to feel as more than fleeting fragments instead an open book of tumbling thoughts as he was held within the awareness that the person pulling him apart would keep him safe—would put him back together with tender care.

The sense of being broken apart over and over again as he was denied release, each ruined orgasm another slice through him until he was shattering into a man’s arms, their fingers brushing through his hair and telling him he was good—he was perfect.

The overwhelm of being forced to experience nervous-system crashes a thousand, million, billion times, each orgasm breaking through him until he was sobbing and begging for it to stop, his body coming soft and brutal as he fell apart.

The knowledge that he was wrapped in a safety so large and all consuming that he could push and push and push even more because he knew—knew down to his marrow—that the other person would push back and bring him to his knees and still love him at the end.

Levi didn’t know what romantic love was like, but it felt as though, on those rare occasions that he trusted someone to fuck him so well he fell to pieces, he could almost taste what it would be liked, to add fathomless love into the mix.

“I mean… I know why I’m a brat,” Emilia had laughed once, the two of them lying naked by the treehouse, the pond sparkling beside them as a warm summer wind blew through the trees, sending chimes that someone—who knew who—had hung around the treehouse’s patio.

Under them, the ground had rippled with heat as the sun bore down on them. They’d barely been teenagers then—fourteen or fifteen, without their Censors to properly record the moment for them, and still free in their nudity with one another and some of their other friends. Some of them were still comfortable with lounging naked beside each other, a sauna having been installed at the treehouse a few years back which more than a few of them had hooked up in… and that more than a few of them had wandered into, hoping to have a steam only to find it occupied by friends having sex.

They had spent decades seeing one another naked—learning the curves and changes of each other’s bodies better than even their own. They filled out at different rates. Their hair spread in different places at different times, each of them deciding what to shave and wax and leave wild and natural at yet more stages of their lives as puberty and what was considered fashionable took them.

Some of them weren’t shy; others were infinitely shy, and even at their fourteen or fifteen years, only a few of them would actively strip down with one another. Some of them weren’t shy if someone happened across them changing or burst in while they were showering, but they wouldn’t actively encourage others to see their bodies bare. Many members of their friend group had since realized that some of those who had begun hiding their bodies early—most notably the triplet—hadn’t ever been shy so much as known they couldn’t keep their dicks soft while some of them were around.

It didn’t matter, really. Levi was always comfortable naked. There was an openness to it. It was a stripping away of everything, and it was easier to say and hear the truth in those moments of vulnerability. Granted, as a black knot, Levi was generally pretty okay with hearing the truth, and he was almost always okay with saying the truth.

Regardless, it had been easy with Emilia that day to talk about sex and their mutual brattiness. Emilia was still a virgin at that point, but Levi had been sharing whispers and giggles about his escapades since he had hooked up with an older boy from another school a few months after his fourteenth birthday. It hadn’t taken long for Levi to realize he not only liked older men the most—a definite problem given his age and Baalphoria’s consent laws—and had submissive tendencies, but also possessed a bratty streak.

Young and inexperienced as he had been, Levi had, of course, turned to Emilia to help him research the things he was figuring out about himself. In the process, they had realized they were quite similar in the things they wanted in bed. So, virgin or not, Emilia had still known that her chaos and propensity for breaking and pushing against the rules would translate into bed just as much as his own similar personality traits had.

Levi hadn’t really understood the why of it, though. Outside of bed, he definitely didn’t want to be punished for breaking rules, but inside…

“Why are you a brat?” Levi had asked that day, his feet tangling with Emilia’s as they pressed close, his friend lying on her back. A hand was flung over her forehead, blocking out the sunlight that had already turned her tan too dark for that early in the summer, her other arm slipped under his waist and pulling him close. She’d still been smooth then, no hair running down her from her bellybutton or pressing into a vee over her pubic bone.

Emilia had still been smooth years later, and Levi had laughed at her more than once for her anger over this issue of her body hair refusing to come in. While his friend had managed to make use of her youthful appearance to trap creepy men for The Black Knot to take out, it was a serious issue that she perpetually seemed to look too young, and the lack of body hair hadn’t helped, but her outright rage at the fact that every other one of their friends had body hair and she still had only the lightest of hair even on her legs still made Levi giggle when he thought about it.

When Emilia had finally started sprouting hair, a few of them had celebrated… then realized that she still looked ridiculously youth and people—mostly men—were terrible fuckers. Quite a few creepy fuckers had been vanished by The Black Knot since that silly celebration, although the frequency that Emilia was approached by people who thought her a teenager or child had thankfully gone done over the last decade.

Even Levi knew that, regardless of whether Emilia had managed to find something positive in constantly being approached by predators, it had to be annoying and upsetting, if only because it was a reminder that not everyone was as protected as she was, and even she had been violated by Warren.

“I’m a brat,” Emilia had replied, sadness racing through her voice, “because I want confirmation I’m loved. That’s sad, I know, but I want to push and push and push more and more and more until any reasonable person would toss me out. My parents should have tossed me out—given me back to the orphanage. I’m so much work, and I know it, but they keep loving me. They forgive me, no matter what I do and I don’t deserve that love but…”

The girl had trailed off, leaving Levi to drag his finger over the soft curve of her stomach, finger brushing under the non-existent curve of the breasts that hadn’t come in yet. Even now, when she was laying flat on her back, Levi knew Emilia’s breasts all but vanished. They didn’t quite disappear completely, but it was close.

Eventually, Emilia had concluded in a tight voice that her parents showing her that sort of undying, unwavering love was addicting. “I like being reminded that no matter what I do, I’ll still be loved. When we were looking through all that sex stuff for you… that same thing can end up in sex, you know? You push at pre-agreed-upon boundaries, and yet, it’s a game of sorts. To be with someone who enjoys how much their partner is always pushing at things that upset them, agreed upon or not, all so they can be punished and then loved? That’s nice… I think.”

Emilia had burst into laughter, Andre—who had been sleeping in the grass a little ways away—startling awake. The youngest Laprise boy had bolted upright, blinking wildly into the summer heat, before glaring at them and asking if he could join their snuggle puddle—he could.

“I’ll always love you, even when you’re a nuisance,” Andre had yawned as he settled into Emilia’s other side.

They had given him the not-so-sexual version of what they were talking about. Even at thirty, Andre was so hilariously asexual that Levi wasn’t convinced he had even known his older twin had spent several years regularly sneaking out of their house to fuck Emilia. The poor guy was just so obvious to anything sexual, and Levi was certain he would need to be explicitly told someone was having sex—or walk in on them in the act—to know sex was occurring. It was endearing, especially considering how hypersexual a few members of their friend group were.

Quickly, Andre—also naked because without sex in the mix, who cares about nudity?—had passed back into the land of dreams, and Levi had asked what Emilia thought of his own desire to be a brat in bed. Her answer had been so immediate that, at the time, Levi had wondered if she had thought about it before. If she’d thought about her own desires in so clinical a manner as to have come up with a thorough answer, perhaps she had. It could also have been her pre-D-Level testing non-dev brain doing non-dev things, however.

If he remembered—if he survived this kidnapping—Levi would have to ask Emilia.

“Because your dads are rarely around. That’s probably why you like older men as well: you want a father figure.”

The fact that Emilia had said it without any judgment had helped, Levi thought. Black knot or not, if Emilia—one of the few people he loved, and therefore cared about the opinion of—had laughed or cringed, Levi might have flinched away from his desires. Instead, Emilia was what she was: a silverstrain who would rarely judge people for their desires, as long as they weren’t hurting someone.

His friend would never judge him for wanting to fill the void that was his fathers with an older man who would love him both because of and in spite of his chaos. It was an odd thing to know Emilia was right—to know that he definitely had orgies at home simply because he actually wanted his fathers to care about what he and Samina got up to—but to also not really be aware of why he was doing this or that.

Yes, he logically knew he did those things so his fathers might find out and care. No, he didn’t feel the emotions attached to that desire, slippery as most of his emotions were.

Yes, he logically knew he wanted an older partner who would be firm with him the way his fathers never had been. No, he didn’t actively feel as though something were missing when he fucked people who neither fit his preferred type of person, nor were capable of matching his brattiness with dominance and punishment.

There was a void within him, and yes, he knew it existed, but at the same time, he was impossibly unaware of its existence because his connection to his emotions was wrong and fragmented. Emilia, Coral, and Darrian were always right when they told him this or that about his emotions and his reasons for doing things, but even after hearing their words, his mind remained disconnected for his emotions, and it was frustrating—it was why he loved those moments of physical connection where he could actually feel properly, rare as they were.

Fingers brushed over Levi’s cheek, sending a shudder through him—and seriously! He needed to get a grip! This was a potentially life-and-death situation! Did this beautiful man have all the daddy vibes he had ever dreamed a potential partner would have? Yes. Was he breathtaking, with his eyes and body and those soft wrinkles that suited his face? Yes—fuck yes. Even the strands of grey pulling through the man’s hair suited him—made him look just a little more imperfect in that way that drew the eye more than perfection ever would.

“Such a wild mind,” the man said, and what an odd thing to say—

Except it wasn’t, the aether already pulling Levi’s attention to the brush of the man’s abilities over him. They had been there for a long time, Levi realized—since before he’d even wound up in the man’s arms. They were a soft, tentative touch over his mind and soul, so similar to Coral’s abilities but not quite the same.

Another Dyad, at the very least, and more than likely another with Excess Empathy. Well, that was… not exactly a problem. If anything, as long as Levi kept him mind from verging into a place where the man would think him liable to reach out and attack him, the guy maybe wouldn’t see him as a threat and kill him? It also explained how the man had so immediately stepped into capturing him: he’d already known he was there.

At the same time… there was a good chance that the man had been silent for so many minutes simply because he was reading Levi’s mystery emotions. What would he have even felt? Arousal? Love for his friends? Amusement at Emilia’s antics? Frustration with his fathers? If Levi could feel embarrassed, he knew this was the sort of situation where he would have felt such things… maybe.

Oddly enough, he wasn’t sure he would have been embarrassed, if only because the man was looking at him like he had seen everything Levi contained within himself and saw no reason to judge him for it. If anything, every time the man had spoken to him, he had sounded intrigued—interested in a way Levi’s fathers rarely were and fuck.

He so didn’t need another thing adding to his ridiculous crush on this man he had just met and knew nothing about!

Seriously, what a terrible time to have what was his first crush on someone—something that was impossibly dangerous, given black knots crushing on people usually ended in an obsessive and unbending love, and great.

Just. Fucking. Great.