a zone full of boys; a zone with boys in it

Training, Clarke called it. Marcel called it a trial. Clarke was not quite twenty-three, had barely even been fucked before Marcel got his hands on him, much less done anything else. All of his scars were his own, experimentation into self-administered pain with a kind of desperate purity that drove Marcel wild. To say Clarke liked to be hurt was an understatement. Marcel suspected he would spend the rest of his life getting off to the memory of the way Clarke had looked at him the first time he'd really beaten him, raw with tears and gratitude, thanking Marcel like it was worship.

He was good. He was so good, good morning and pictures of his breakfast, ounces of water and please may I and a video of himself masturbating, because Marcel had requested it. He hadn't given him permission to come.

But two weeks was a far cry from forever. Anyone could play at being owned for two weeks, could get on his knees and wait for permission, check in multiple times a day, keep his hands off his cock. The frisson of newness lent excitement to subjugation; for two weeks, it was easy to imagine one could fit into the life Marcel wanted. That he might even want it himself.

Marcel knew better. After six months, a year, the rituals of submission lost their erotic shine. The thrill of asking permission—to stay up late, to go out with friends, to so much as leave the room—tended to wear off quickly. Fine for a weekend, a sub once told him, but nobody could live like that forever. He'd been unduly pessimistic, it turned out, but only marginally so. Many more men wanted to fantasize about living beneath someone else's will than actually wanted to do so. Clarke had never had a boyfriend, a Dom, never lived with a romantic partner, in all the compromise that normally implied, much less in a dynamic without it. 

Marcel had tried compromise, and enjoyed it as little as most prospective subs enjoyed 24/7. No breaks, no days off, no stepping out of role. The responsibility of ownership for the confinement of being owned. It sounded insane, even in English, where it was easier to say insane things without attaching to the weight of them—I want you to be my most valuable possession, my most precious treasure. Be mine and I'll take care of you forever. 

Come over. Stay.

He'd lain it out like a confession. Like an apology. As if it explained the rest of it, why he'd done what he'd done—he couldn't have had Clarke anyway without wanting everything, so that made it excusable to offer him nothing. 

He should have expected Clarke's response, in light of where they'd started, Clarke's first offer of no limits. You can do anything you want to me. Yawning desire untempered by experience. 

At the time, he'd explained why that wasn't a good idea, that Clarke's right to say no was absolute, that a Dom who wanted him less because he knew what he wouldn't give was not a person he wanted to play with. He should have just gotten out the barbed wire flogger. Five tails, affixed together with a thick handle of duct tape. Homemade, of course. Single-tailed whips could rightly be classed as a weapon, but even sex shops had their limits. He should have said: I want your blood on the ceiling.

But he hadn't been in love with Clarke then, and he hadn't wanted to scare him. There was something powerfully wrong with Marcel, that his love wanted to tear chunks with metal teeth.

That part, he could do without. He'd even stopped fantasizing about it, with Émile. His most precious possession, his heart. Uncomfortable, yes. At the edge of his capacity. Enduring, because Marcel wanted it from him. Crying, always. He'd been fantasizing about making boys cry since he was thirteen; even for Émile, that had been impossible to subdue. But not bleeding. Not in pain. There had been no pleasure or release in it for him, and the horror of harming someone so beloved had mercifully superseded the part of Marcel's nature which took pleasure in inflicting violence.

The imperative of control did not yield so easily. He fantasized, for brief moments, that he could see the shadow on the other side of it. That the life they'd playacted, on nights they'd been too tired to scene, when Clarke had been raw and tender and Marcel had wanted him anyway, could be enough. He'd been happy, Clarke's weight on his chest and his hand down Clarke's waistband, watching a movie while he idly toyed with his bruised ass until Clarke couldn't contain his squirming. He'd tried to keep the commands to a minimum, to come here, lay with me and maybe later, it's bedtime and show me how you're going to come for me again. You're going to come as many times as I tell you to. Say thank you, beautiful boy, until the vicious demand of his hand could no longer prevent Clarke from going soft in his grip. Stay, I'll clean you up. Things anyone might say. He himself wouldn't have taken to it, but broadly acceptable to those tending towards the right side of the slash.

Even then, it hadn't been enough. He'd felt the lack even with his mouth on Clarke's, their hands wound together with Marcel bent over him, gently wiping up the mess on his belly with a warm washcloth. The absent ritual space where Marcel wanted an ankle cuff, a chain leading to the end of the bed. 

He should have known then that he was fucked. He'd left his claim on Émile in Paris along with everything else: the art and his heart and his home and every other thing that had been between them, every object and memory that had tied him to that life. The restraint itself had been symbol only—Émile's cuff easily unfastened, the lead affixed to the only a snap hook—but the symbol was the point. Control. Belonging. Surrender. Ownership.

I can't offer you a relationship, he'd said. I can't be your boyfriend. If you want to do this again, it stays within itself. When we're done, you owe me nothing. But as long as we're playing... I expect you to be good for me.

More fool him, for falling in love.

Come over.

Past three am, now. The lights still on throughout Marcel's space, kitchen and bedroom and living room and bathroom, long past the time when he should have begun to shut down for the night, unable to settle onto one thing. He wanted without recourse. He wanted, and he couldn't have. Wanted Clarke, wanted his face pressed into his shoulder and his hot breath against his neck, wanted the weight of his body in his lap, wanted him to want to stay. Not for today or tomorrow or the month but forever.

For months, Marcel had put off making the choice, had declined to tell Clarke how he felt or what he wanted because to do so would be an ending. He would fail him as his boss or as his Dom—and in wanting neither, he had failed at both.

For that, he could be patient. He could wait while Clarke acclimated to the scale of his demands, the scope of a 24/7 relationship. Marcel knew where he stood, had known for longer than he'd admitted even to himself, and hadn't moved from that spot. The teeth of his love came with jaws; to bite down was to hold, to keep. He would not ask Clarke to move in with him until he was sure, until they were both sure, that this was what they wanted. That it could last. That once they were in it, they were both in it: no breaks, no days off, no stepping out of role. 

He'd text Clarke in the morning, once sleep had made him more reasonable, able to talk about some time scale less than forever. A weekend, a week, approaching the thing Marcel wanted from the side like it would startle and bolt if he faced it head-on. The problem with saying I want you forever was that Clarke might change his mind.