#fusg

He still felt extremely self-conscious about this one. But he needed to tell someone about it, before it consumed him. And he trusted Chem. But still…

“It’s really, really, really fucked up, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s called Fucked Up Support Group for, um, for a reason, L. You can tell me. I won’t judge you.”

“It’s also… it’s a sex thing.”

Chem’s words carried the patient, reassuring tone of someone who knew what it felt like to offer opportunities to back out of the conversation, compulsively. Who knew how difficult it was not to. “I won’t judge you.”

“Okay.” A deep breath, before confession. “Y’know how we talked about waking up from dreams about them that weren’t just nightmares. I… I had one last night.” It had been tangled limbs and roaming mouths, and he’d woken up painfully hard, and so, so ashamed. “I was really fucked up about it afterwards, because it wouldn’t, uh, it wouldn’t go away on its own… I needed to go and take care of myself.”

“It was just, it was just a dream, though. It doesn’t mean you wanted it.” Another practiced sentence, spoken not just to Lev, but to the both of them. An affirmation. Chem was too good to him, really.

“Right. And I didn’t want it, not in real life. But, um, in my dreams… I think my dream self might have wanted it…? Does that make any sense, or am I just crazy?”

“You’re not, um, crazy, L. ‘The brain has weird ways of processing trauma.’ My therapist says that. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

Lev ran a hand through his hair. “I know. It’s just so hard to tell yourself that. Y’know? And I can’t tell Gra—I can’t tell Bond.”

Because how was he supposed to? ‘Remember the other night when you walked in on me jerking off—turns out it wasn’t you I was thinking about?”

“Yeah, it’s… it’s hard.”

They sat in companionable silence, hearing only background noises in their respective rooms, for a while. Then Chem spoke.

“Can I tell you something back?”

Lev leaned in closer with his headset, as if he could get closer to the man through the screen. “Of course you can, Chem.”

“Well… sometimes… sometimes my brain, or my body, I don’t know which… sometimes it really wants to please my, um, The Badass, my partner, the same way I did for him. Like I automatically put my tongue where he, um, where he liked it, and everything. And I feel like… sometimes, it’s just easier to give in to the voice that’s saying, um, ‘Go Down’. That’s how he told me to do it.” Chem’s laugh was hollow. “It’s so fucked up.”

“It is. But that’s not your fault.”

“It’s not.”

If there was one person in the world who truly understood, it was Chem. He had known it in his bones.

“Hey uh, it’s okay if you don’t wanna tell me yours, but… my name is Lev.”