#pomade

He gave me a choice. That’s the worst part. That’s the cruelty wrapped in civility. He let me choose.

It was just a week ago, and yet it already feels like it happened years back, in another body. We sat in the study, him in his chair, the one shaped like a coffin and just as soft. The chandelier overhead gleamed like teeth, crystal and sharp, biting the air with its glow. He poured a drink. Not for me. Just for him. And when he smiled, it was that particular, deliberate kind of smile—slow, dangerous, and final, the kind that doesn’t start a conversation but ends one before it even breathes.

His voice, always soft, was a scalpel dressed in velvet. No volume. Just edge.

“Zachary, my boy. One last game. One roll,” he said, his words floating on the smoke that curled up from the collar of his suit like it belonged there. “If you win, you walk. Everything’s yours—your world, your music, your denim jackets and cursing and laziness and girls who call you baby. But if you lose…”

He leaned in then, not far, just close enough to let the whiskey and tobacco settle between us like a promise.

“…then you are mine. Not in passing. Not in theory. Completely.”

I nodded. I don’t know why.

Maybe I wanted to test him.

Maybe I wanted to test me.

Either way, I lost.

And now here I am, stranded in the silence of this bathroom that feels more like a cell, facing a goddamn mirror, a pair of shears resting beside a bowl of water gone lukewarm, and that jar of pomade releasing its silent sermon into the room like it’s waiting to be obeyed.

I’m sweating already, and I haven’t even started.

My skin is clammy, slick in places I didn’t expect, and my jaw is clenched so tight I can feel the beginnings of a headache behind my eyes. The light above exposes everything—every stubble on my chin, every blemish I thought might have faded, every drop of sweat glistening along my neck like shame. The collar of my undershirt sags, wet and stretched, tugged loose from all the versions of me that didn’t want to be here.

I look like someone waiting to be punished.

But that’s not what this is.

This is something worse.

This is obedience. And I have to be the one to do it.

I reach for the shirt first. It’s heavier than it looks. The cotton is fine, expensive, woven tight and made stiff with starch. When I slide my arms into it, the fabric rasps against my skin, catching the hairs along my forearms and dragging a shiver up my back. It doesn't give, doesn’t flow—it resists, like it doesn’t want to belong to someone soft. The collar folds up like a verdict, sharp and high, pressing lightly against the base of my neck. It doesn’t need to squeeze to make its presence known.

I leave it unbuttoned. Not yet. That’s one of the rules. One of the lessons he’s taught me.

Preparation must be deliberate.

Next, the comb. I pick it up from the counter.

It’s not plastic. It’s metal. Solid. Unforgiving. Still cold, even after sitting here for who knows how long. The teeth are tight, close together in a way that speaks of precision and severity. I drag it against the flesh of my palm. It bites, even there. Not enough to cut. Just enough to remind me of its purpose.

He gave it to me the morning after I lost. Wrapped in plain paper, like a gift and a warning. No note. No explanation. Just an object and the weight behind it.

I lift it to my hair.

I didn’t wash it today. I knew better. It’s still oily from sleep and yesterday’s rebellion, and the comb doesn’t glide—it snags. It drags through the longer strands, pulling hard enough to make me wince. Each pass through my hair feels like a tiny betrayal, a silent undoing of all the nights I let it grow, let it curl, let it fall in my eyes.

This is the hair girls used to play with. The hair I let blow loose in the wind. The hair that used to brush my lashes when I laughed, when I smirked, when I said no to him.

Now it’s being tamed.

I part it. Harshly. Left side. Not my choice.

The line cuts deep. A scar carved into my scalp with the comb’s silver teeth, splitting me down the middle. I comb it again. And again. Until the resistance is lessened. Until my hair stops fighting back.

Then I pick up the scissors.

They tremble slightly in my grip. My hands are slick. I almost drop them. There’s a smaller mirror inside the cabinet door, and I swing it open, needing both angles—front and side—to see all of what I’m about to dismantle. The scissors are ornate, weighty, more like surgical tools than something you’d find in a drawer. I can see my own face, stretched and warped, in one of the blades. I look hollow. Already half-erased.

I start with the sides. That’s what he wants. Tighter. Cleaner. Less youth. More precision. More discipline.

The blades close with a sound so soft it hurts.

Snip.

Snip.

Each strand that falls feels like a sentence ending. A chapter closed. A breath I won’t take again. My hair lands on the marble like ash. Like something burned away.

I feel naked. I feel exposed. Shame creeps in like a chill.

But behind the shame, something else lurks.

Heat.

It starts at the base of my skull and moves downward, slow and uninvited, threading through my spine like a shiver in reverse. A flush crawls up from inside. I pretend it’s just the air. Just the light. Just my nerves.

But it isn’t.

Still, I keep going.

I keep obeying.

I stare straight into the mirror, unblinking, as if looking long enough will give me permission to stop—to scream—to rip the shirt back off and run, barefoot and breathless, through this marble house and all its watching rooms, all its locked drawers, all its rules.

But the mirror offers nothing. Just him. Just me. And not me.

The part is too straight now. Too rigid. It no longer resembles anything free. The sides are shorter, but not enough. Still too soft around the temples, curling slightly like an afterthought. Too casual. Too much mine.

I remember what he said. How calmly he said it. No anger. No drama. Just truth:

“If you want to keep the softness, Zachary, then you must be content remaining a child. But children don’t get freedom. Men do.”

So I stand here, scissors in hand, surrounded by silence, and I begin to become.

I don’t know how long I’ve been staring.

The scissors grow heavier the longer I hold them, like guilt with a handle. My grip tightens and slips again. I lift the blades to my right temple and freeze.

My reflection copies me, of course. But my eyes—his eyes—they look afraid.

Are you really going to do it? they seem to ask.

Are you really going to destroy what’s left?

And the sickest part, the part that makes something squirm inside my gut, the part I don’t want to name or feel or even allow—

The part I’m afraid to say out loud, even inside my own skull?

I want to.

I close the blades, a breath caught in the space between hesitation and surrender, and the scissors, in their cold finality, bite through the thick strand with a sound that is somehow louder inside me than in the room itself—just a soft snip, but it lands like a verdict. The curl falls in a slow arc, brushing my cheek like a goodbye whispered too gently to be stopped, and then, weightless, it disappears into the white sink below, where it lies like a broken part of something living, now silent. It makes no sound when it lands—but my ears ring anyway, loud and hot and sick, as if I’ve been slapped by my own reflection.

My stomach clenches, folds in on itself, a tight, nauseous fist that turns my insides against me, and for a brief second my knees nearly give. I catch myself, but only barely. The act was so small—just a snip, just one curl—but it feels like something deeper, more vicious, something irreversible. It feels like I just severed a nerve. Like I’ve cut through a vein of memory.

Because I did.

That curl was mine—my softness, my freedom, my youth, the shadow of a version of myself who lived outside this mirror, who wore his hair long and let girls touch it and didn’t flinch under the weight of a shirt collar. That was a boy’s strand. And it’s gone.

The next cut comes easier, sliding through with a fluidity that almost feels like consent. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be easier. But it is.

Snip.

Snip.

Two more curls fall, joining the first in the basin like discarded birds, black and bent at the neck, feathered shapes gathering in the porcelain like a nest built from silence and steam. My hand doesn’t shake anymore. It’s steady. My jaw, though, is clenched tight—teeth pressed hard enough to ache—and a sheen of sweat slides down the side of my face, curling under my jaw, trailing into the collar of the shirt that still hangs open like an unfinished sentence.

I exhale in short, sharp puffs, each breath barely leaving me before the next takes its place, almost angry in its rhythm. It’s not just hair. Not anymore. It’s the end of rebellion, the soft defiance that once lived in every strand that flopped carelessly over my forehead, the permission to slouch, to stay up too late, to not care. Each snip now is a confession. A surrender. A sin being stripped away from me, not by someone else, but by my own trembling hands.

And that’s the part that makes it unbearable.

Because I’m the one doing it.

By the time I reach the back of my head, I’ve bent forward in a way that feels almost like bowing—chin tucked down, arms twisted awkwardly as I angle the scissors by feel and by the limited reflection I catch in the double mirrors. It’s hot. My neck slick. My shoulders tense. The blades are damp now, slick with hair and sweat and whatever product was left over from yesterday’s attempts to look like I wasn’t breaking. My knuckles ache from gripping too hard, the white pressure of my fingers stark against the polished steel.

This isn’t grooming anymore.

This is penance.

Each new cut exposes the round shape of my skull more clearly, erasing the familiar volume, the curl, the softness. The crown is flatter than I thought. The hairline sharper. I’m not just removing hair—I’m revealing a head that was never shaped for kindness, but for control. I’m shaping someone else. Someone who belongs to him. Someone who could never belong to me again.

There are moments, flickers in the mirror or maybe in my chest, where the tears rise too fast, too hot—but they don’t spill. I won’t let them. I can’t.

Instead, I shiver—not from cold, but from something else. Something more dangerous. The deeper I cut, the more exact the lines become, and the more something unexpected stirs at the base of my spine, low and slow, a heat that doesn’t belong. It’s not pride. It’s not satisfaction. It’s not even arousal, not yet. It’s something like pleasure, but shamed and aching. Like hunger inverted.

It’s in the repetition. The ritual. The slow carving away of what I used to be. It’s in the transformation—the power of taking a mirror and using it not to see yourself, but to erase yourself. The more hair I remove, the closer I get to something I don’t understand. Something I once found repulsive in others, but now feel pulling at me like gravity.

I try to breathe through my nose, steady, slow, but my body is burning. My collar’s still open, the tie still waiting, but the heat pulses under my arms, rolls in waves down my back, sinks under the waistband of trousers I haven’t even put on yet. My spine tingles. My scalp tingles.

I raise my eyes again.

I look at myself.

The sides are neat now. Too neat. High and tight, stripped of every defiant curl. The top still holds length, a last remnant—but not for long. Not for much longer.

I raise the scissors to the front, my breath catching. This is the face. This is the fringe. The part that moves. The part that made me look young.

This is the hardest cut—not because it requires more skill, or more precision, or more time than the others, but because it is the cut that carries weight, the one tied not just to appearance but to identity, the cut that doesn't only change how the world sees me but alters how I see myself. This is the fringe—the part that moves, that falls, that softens the angles of my face and lets a bit of boy linger around the edges, the part that still feels alive, still feels mine. I press the blades together slowly, not with force, but with inevitability, and when they finally close with a quiet, intimate snip, the sound barely audible yet impossibly loud in the stillness of the room, a thick lock of hair, soft and dark and somehow dignified, drops from the blades and floats down past my cheek like a condemned petal, brushing my skin in the process, whispering goodbye as it lands in the basin below, weightless, soundless, final.

But though the hair falls without sound, my body hears it; my ears ring as though I’ve been struck, and in my stomach something tightens—a twist, a clutching sensation like a fist curling in the pit of my gut—and my knees, just for a moment, lose their strength. It’s absurd, how much power was bound up in something so small, how a single curl could carry the burden of a person I used to be. Yet I feel it—the loss of that strand like the loss of something vital, something tender, something mine. That hair belonged to another version of me. A gentler one. A freer one. A boy’s softness now erased.

And somehow, the next cut comes easier.

It shouldn’t.

It absolutely shouldn’t.

But my hand moves more fluidly, the scissors obey more willingly, and the next snip feels less like tragedy and more like momentum. I cut again. Another strand releases, tumbles. Then again. Snip. More hair falls into the sink where the pile is growing—dark, tangled, a scattered collection of softness and defiance reduced now to debris, little black birds felled and neck-bent, forming a nest of memory and steam at the base of the porcelain.

My hand no longer shakes, not the way it did when I began. My grip is firm. My jaw is set. My body has accepted the rhythm. I feel a heat gathering in my cheeks, in the hollow of my spine, a slickness beneath my arms and across my collarbone. Sweat is sliding steadily down the side of my face now, carving a path from temple to jaw and disappearing into the damp cotton stretched across my clavicle. Each breath I take is short, shallow, a soundless exhale that catches halfway down my chest like it doesn’t want to go any deeper. I’m panting, not from exertion, but from the sharpness of what’s happening. This isn’t hair. Not anymore. It’s rebellion stripped away. It’s freedom severed. It’s the erasure of laziness, the denial of softness, the execution of the boy who stayed up too late, who laughed too loud, who never tucked in his shirt. I’m cutting him out of me. Piece by piece. And the horror of it—the thing that makes my fingers feel cold even while my skin burns—is that I’m the one doing it. No one else. Just me.

By the time I reach the back, the posture I’ve taken has bent me forward in a way that doesn’t feel natural anymore—it feels like submission. Chin dropped toward my chest, arms reaching awkwardly behind my head, the scissors now damp and slippery with product, while the tension in my knuckles is bright white, a silent scream pressing through my joints. The mirror guides me, barely. I’m working blind, carving by instinct. And I know—I know this is no longer grooming. This is no longer maintenance. This is punishment.

Each snip reveals more of the scalp, more of the true shape of the head that once hid under curls and mess and charm. The crown is flatter than I remembered. The hairline sharper, more geometric. The skull beneath is exposed now, and I am sculpting—not grooming, but creating, crafting something cold and clean and compliant. Something that will fit the rules, will pass the test, will never again be mistaken for a boy.

There are flashes—small, quiet moments where I feel the pressure of tears gathering behind my eyes, heat swelling, but I refuse them. I swallow them. I close the door.

Instead, I shiver.

Not from cold—there is none—but from the strange and terrifying realization that the more precise I become, the more deeply I cut, the more completely I obey… the more pleasure begins to stir in me. Not loud. Not proud. Not even clear. But there’s something there. A tightness. A hunger. A sensation like reverse-hunger, like an ache that doesn’t demand food or water but more of this.

It’s in the motion. The ritual. The clean repetition of blades through hair. The discipline of it. The transformation. And it whispers to something inside me I didn’t know could be tempted—something that now leans forward every time I cut, drawn toward the sharp, silent promise that if I go further, I’ll become something I can’t name, something I always claimed to hate, and yet… now… it calls to me.

I try to center myself with breath—inhale through the nose, slow—but my body doesn’t cooperate. My skin is too hot. The collar of my shirt is still open, but the heat has pooled under it anyway, steaming in the hollow of my spine, along the base of my neck, sliding down to the waistband of the trousers I haven’t even stepped into yet. It’s unbearable. And I want more of it.

I glance up. Catch myself in the mirror. The sides are done now. Neat. Tight. Not a trace of curl remains. Not a hint of casualness. The top still holds length, but not for much longer. Not with my hand lifting the scissors once again.

This is the top. The crown. The most visible part. The one that defines the man, shapes the silhouette, controls how the light hits the face. This is the hair that frames the expression. That allows it movement, flair, humanity.

I bring the blades in with a grip that’s steadier now, not because I feel calm—God no—but because something inside me has surrendered to the act, as if the motion has bypassed doubt entirely and found its way into muscle memory, into some deeper part of my nervous system where consent no longer requires thought. This is the place where the final defense lives, where the last piece of softness remains, where the hair still moves when I tilt my head, still falls slightly when I lean forward, still resists the idea of belonging to someone else. But it falls. Of course it falls. The first cut across the top is not simply another shearing of strands—it is the end of a disguise, the quiet obliteration of the story I once told with my hair, the version of me that was allowed to look casual, to look careless, to move in wind and light and time. This cut doesn't just change my shape—it exposes it, reveals the order beneath the chaos, the pale scalp previously hidden, now laid bare, suddenly geometric, obedient, a grid of skin beneath a style that can no longer hide my intention or his. I drag the comb through what remains, tugging it back, flattening the remnants, and then I go again—snip, a clean slice that rings sharper than it should, then again, and again, each motion carving deeper into the top until nothing remains that could curl, nothing that could fall, nothing that could say: I’m still me.

Every slice is crueler than the last, not because they hurt, but because they don’t—because my hand no longer hesitates, because the act has lost its violence and become instead a kind of sacred precision, a cold ritual where the knife becomes a brush and the boy becomes the canvas, blank and waiting. What’s left isn’t volume. Isn’t softness. Isn’t individuality. It’s surface—flat, tight, directionless except for the one it’s told to follow. It’s a slate. A template. Not a hairstyle, but the silhouette of control, the shape of a man who has rules pressed into the follicles of his skull. It’s his shape. The one he modeled for me. The one I mocked. The one I swore I would never accept. And now it’s here. Now it’s mine. And even as I sit in stunned, sweating silence, I can’t stop reaching up to touch it.

The scissors fall from my hand—not dropped, but laid down carefully, placed on the counter like a weapon being surrendered after battle. The tension in my fingers lingers even after I’ve released the handle; they tremble subtly in the absence of steel. My face, flushed and burning, holds heat that creeps from ear to cheek to neck like embarrassment, but hotter. Deeper. The heat of crossing a threshold you can’t uncross. I look at myself. And he is there.

The stranger in the mirror—my stranger, the one I summoned with each cut—is fully present now, fully formed. The part is cut high and hard, combed straight and sharp across the crown, already gleaming faintly from the oil my hands and sweat have pressed into it. The scalp is visible where it wasn’t before, pale and precise. The sides are shorn into obedient flatness, exposing skin that hasn't seen daylight in years, skin that glows faintly under the cold bathroom light. The jaw beneath is clean, the shirt still crisp despite the sweat, and the face—that face, that mask—is unnervingly still, emptied of all the playfulness and softness that once hid behind longer hair. It’s a face with no argument left. A face with rules.

It isn’t mine.

And I love it.

God help me.

I love it.

The scissors rest now, silent and satisfied, and the shape they have left me in continues to radiate through the mirror, back at me, back through me, like a verdict passed by my own hand. My breath comes shallow, not because I’m gasping, but because I can’t seem to find enough room inside my chest to pull it in fully. My lungs are small now. Folded. My throat, dry and tight, tries to swallow, but nothing moves. My back is soaked. The shirt that once hung loose is now clinging to me, every inch of cotton slick and pressed to my spine, sticking under my arms, pooling in the waistband like guilt congealed into sweat. I am not trembling from fear anymore. Not exactly. My fingers twitch because something has changed—not in the room, not in the mirror, but inside the chest of the man sitting here, inside the cooling collar of a shirt that’s begun to chafe. I can’t tell, not fully, whether I am revolted by what I see… or deeply, dangerously aroused. Because I’m both. Entirely both.

The reflection—the stranger—stares back, but not in judgment. In acknowledgment. The haircut has become more than hair. It’s a message written in flesh, a flag of surrender raised on a scalp that used to hide under curls. The sides are shaved high now, the top stripped to bare efficiency, not styled, not yet, but waiting. The room is full of steam and silence and the scent of oil and sweat. My hair is ready. Ready to be pressed further. Flattened. Finished.

But I can’t do that yet.

Not until I’m proper.

He would never allow it otherwise.

The tie is already waiting, of course, because it always was, because nothing in this room is unintentional. It rests like a sealed edict across the counter, folded into thirds, the silk deep navy but nearly black under the clinical white light of the bathroom, without pattern or texture, lifeless in its elegance, obedient in its stillness. It doesn’t suggest style. It demands submission.

It isn’t clothing.

It’s a law.

And I stare at it too long. I can feel the rawness on my cheeks, the sting of the razor still ghosting over my skin, and the air against my face has turned electric, every pore opened, every follicle hyper-alert, and nothing is left on me now—not sleep, not rebellion, not even heat. Just this hum. This sense of clean, stripped readiness. This hum of surrender.

But I don’t put it on.

Not yet.

The shirt is still open. The collar still flared at the neck. The fabric stiff with starch, heavy and thick, a garment that holds its shape whether I want it to or not. It drapes across my chest like a curtain waiting to fall, but underneath, my skin is still damp and cooling. The collar brushes gently against my jaw when I turn my head—just a whisper at first, but already I feel the promise of how hard it will become once it's sealed.

I begin to close it.

One button at a time, starting at the base of my stomach and rising slowly, each one slipping through its hole with a quiet resistance that feels more sensual than it should. The cloth drags faintly across my skin, which flinches with every pass. It’s too clean now, too exposed, too new. The shirt doesn’t settle. It fastens. It claims. And when I reach the final button, just beneath my throat, I hesitate—but only for a breath.

Then I press it through, the final button sliding home with a soundless click, and the collar, already stiff from starch and expectation, lifts into place against the sides of my neck, its wings closing in like twin jaws that don’t bite—but hold. The fabric presses in even before the silk touches it, as if anticipating what’s coming, eager to serve as the frame for the noose I’m about to knot beneath my chin. It is already becoming something more than a collar, more than structure—it is becoming a border, a boundary, the hard white line that separates what I used to be from what I’ve now agreed to become.

And then, finally, I reach for the tie.

The silk greets my fingertips with a temperature that startles me—not warm from the room, not softened by the air, but cold, unnaturally cold, like it has been waiting in stillness, untouched and patient, quietly absorbing the chill of its purpose. It moves like liquid as I lift it, but not like water, no—not soft, not passive. It glides through my hands with a grace that feels deliberate, as though it’s aware of itself, slick with a kind of sentience, sliding not toward comfort, but toward control. It feels alive. It feels like memory. It feels like the hands I once swore I’d never let touch me, the ones that now feel inevitable, the ones I’m about to recreate with this ribbon of silk tied firm across my throat.

I drape it around my neck.

And of course, it lands perfectly—of course it does—falling with the weight and precision of something custom-fit not just for my frame, but for my compliance. There’s no awkwardness. No need to adjust. It rests like it’s been here before. And that’s the part I hate most of all—that everything he gives me, everything I swore I’d resist, fits. Not approximately. Not eventually. Immediately. And without resistance.

In the curved chrome of the faucet below, I catch the ghost of myself—reflected in warped metal, refracted, doubled, bent. One face above, one below. Both mine. Neither mine.

I begin the knot.

My fingers don’t hesitate. There is no stumbling, no confusion, no pause. I don’t need a mirror. I don’t need a diagram. The act is already inside me, as though learned without instruction, as though muscle remembers what the mind still wants to forget. Half-Windsor. Strong. Balanced. Clean. The knot of a man with no excuses left, no masks to hide behind, no room for softness. The silk loops with terrifying elegance, folding itself across my chest, crossing and tucking and slipping into shape with a kind of mechanical grace that feels less like dressing and more like sentencing.

And then the dimple takes its place beneath the knot—sharp, centered, precise.

Just as he told me it must be.

I pull.

And the world tightens.

The collar, already close, becomes a force. The fabric digs inward, stiffened by starch, hardened by ritual, and now the knot rises into my throat like a verdict made manifest—not choking, not cruel, but immovable. It isn’t pain, not yet. It’s something colder. Something final. A claim staked in cloth.

I try to breathe—not freely, not as I used to, but with a kind of negotiated restraint, a testing of limits that confirms just how tightly the collar now fits, how completely the knot beneath my throat has taken up residence inside my windpipe, reminding me with every fractional inhale that the air moving into my chest is no longer an instinct but a concession, a slow and measured privilege granted only when I stay perfectly still, perfectly aligned, perfectly silent beneath the grip of silk and starch and expectation.

My fingers move with quiet finality, guiding the narrow tail through the keeper loop on the back of the tie, flattening it with a care that feels less like grooming and more like sealing an envelope whose contents are too dangerous to speak aloud, as though with this last motion, I’ve not just completed the knot but locked in whatever part of me still believed this could be undone.

And that’s it—done, finished, enclosed.

But I don’t move, not yet, not even a little, because even in stillness the presence of the tie has begun to grow, not in shape or weight but in significance, in the way it asserts itself across my body like a claim, a signature, a warning; with every beat of my heart it seems to tighten slightly, not through friction or pressure but through awareness, through the knowledge that something has shifted inside the hollow of my neck, something quiet but unyielding, and now even my pulse has to work harder to push past the silk that guards my throat like a sentinel carved from cloth.

It doesn’t hurt—not really—but neither does it release; there’s no sense of tolerance here, no easing, no adjustment; the tie is not something worn, it’s something endured, a fixture now embedded into the very structure of how I carry myself, how I breathe, how I speak, if I speak at all.

It isn’t comfort.

It’s command.

And the collar, stiff and clean and pressed so sharply that its wings could draw blood if they moved, stands like a wall behind either side of my jaw, angling up toward the edge of my cheekbones, forcing my head into an alignment that’s not exactly unnatural, but not mine either—somewhere between posture and discipline, somewhere between pride and punishment, somewhere between mannequin and man.

The knot beneath it does not sit; it asserts, pushing upward into the hollow of my throat like the flat heel of a gloved hand, silent and firm, controlling without words, present without motion, a reminder that the shirt isn’t just buttoned—it’s sealed, and in doing so, it has transformed from garment to boundary, from uniform to instruction, and beneath it, my skin, still tender from the razor, sings faintly with the ache of contact, with the electric sensation of cotton rubbing rawness, of fabric claiming flesh that no longer belongs to me.

I am clean. I am groomed. I am dressed.

And my mouth is dry.

I reach for the glass of water sitting on the counter—placed there with precision, as always, in the same spot every morning, crystal-clear, filled just enough, room temperature, not too cold, not too warm, calibrated like everything else in this house to erase the idea of spontaneity—and when I lift it to my lips and drink, swallowing in three deep gulps, the relief should be immediate, should cool my throat and soothe the sting rising behind my jaw, but it doesn’t, not really, because the tie tightens with each swallow, pushing back with silent, gloved insistence, as though reminding me with every mouthful that this isn’t ease, this isn’t comfort, this isn’t thirst being quenched—this is ceremony, and ceremony never forgets its boundaries.

I lower the glass, still parched, my tongue dry against the roof of my mouth, and turn my attention to the cuffs, those stiff, immovable white French cuffs at the ends of sleeves that have been so heavily starched they feel like pressed paper, crisp and absolute, ending precisely—impossibly—at the bones of my wrists as though tailored for someone engineered, not born, and when I slide the plain silver cufflinks through, flat-faced, cold, unadorned, their minimalism makes them feel even more controlling, more unforgiving, because they offer nothing decorative, nothing expressive, just presence—quiet dominance worn like punctuation at the edges of a sentence I didn’t get to write.

Click.

Click.

The sound, soft but surgical, echoes through the bathroom like gunshots in a church, and for a moment I hate how practiced it is, how certain my fingers move, how easy it is to align the cuffs and lock them into place with that mechanical grace that shouldn’t be mine, that should belong to someone older, stricter, colder, someone who believes in posture more than emotion—and I adjust the sleeves automatically, pulling the lines straight, smoothing the creases, aligning myself until the mirror starts to respond, showing me not a young man in transformation, but something taller, something thinner, something paler, something... corrected.

And still, I hesitate—not physically, not obviously, but inside, deep in the chest where breath lives and drowns—because I know what moment this is, I’ve known it since before I stepped barefoot across the marble, since before I touched the comb or the scissors or the starched cotton, because this, right here, is the part he always watches for, the part he never says aloud but waits for with that expressionless patience of his, the final check, the presentation, the unveiling not just of appearance, but of outcome, of conquest, of whether or not I’ve finally turned into the thing he promised I’d become.

I look again—fully now, not in fragments, not in passing—into the mirror’s vast, punishing reflection, and I study everything: the parted hair, the gleam already present even without product, the bare jaw, the collar standing high and locked, the tie sitting like a seal pressed to parchment, and I don’t blink, I don’t allow myself that mercy, because blinking might break the illusion, might offer softness, and right now, everything has to hold—has to remain still, composed, bound.

Everything is in place.

And I should feel something like relief, something like satisfaction, like I’ve completed a task, fulfilled a ritual, climbed the mountain and rung the bell—but I don’t, I can’t, because instead of victory, what rises up from the base of my spine is a thick, heavy nausea, a slow, dragging sickness that feels like gravity turned sideways, because in that sudden, inescapable flash of clarity, I realize—not because of what I’ve done, not because I obeyed—but because I don’t want to take it off.

Not the shirt.

Not the collar.

Not the tie.

Because somewhere in the burn of the cotton, in the choke of the silk, in the ruthless symmetry of the reflection, I see something that doesn’t feel like defeat—it feels like arrival, like something inevitable, like destiny in disguise—and I don’t know who that makes me anymore, don’t know whether I’ve found myself or lost what was left.

My body shifts slightly, and that’s all it takes—just a breath deeper than allowed, just a movement outside the lines—and the tie responds, pulling, reminding, scraping the underside of my throat as the collar digs in with clean violence, soft but sharp, wordless but punishing, and somehow, impossibly, that tiny friction against the skin at my neck makes my fingers twitch in a way I know isn’t innocent, isn’t purely discomfort, because it isn’t protest, it’s craving.

I lean closer to the mirror, and the pressure increases with terrifying intimacy—the tie presses up beneath my chin, the collar tightens along the width of my neck, the entire construction of fabric and expectation locks around me like armor that was tailored not just to my body but to my soul—and in that moment, a single bead of sweat betrays me, sliding from the corner of my temple, down along my hairline, creeping beneath the sharp edge of the collar where it disappears into darkness, into heat, into submission.

The sensation is maddening.

I can feel the sweat pooling in places it shouldn’t—beneath my arms, along my ribs, down my back where the shirt sticks like wet parchment to the curve of my spine, held there not by comfort but by pressure, by fabric too stiff to yield and too arrogant to absorb—and my skin, my poor skin, it wants to breathe, wants to gasp open like a window in summer, but it can’t, because I’ve sealed it shut, locked it in beneath starch and silk and ritual.

And yet… I’m not done.

Because there is one last piece.

The hair.

It’s the only thing left untouched by product, the only part that still whispers of softness, of before, the way it clings lightly around the ears, the way the fringe sits just a little too uneven at the temples, the way the strands fall with defiance toward my forehead like they haven’t yet learned discipline—and I know, standing here in this skin that doesn’t quite belong to me anymore, that they don’t belong here, not with the knot in place, not with the shirt closed to the bone, not with a reflection already half-machine.

My throat tightens in sympathy, as if the knot senses my hesitation, as if it too is growing impatient for completion, and I raise both hands, slow and deliberate, to the buttons once more—not to undo them, but to feel their consequence—my fingertips brushing over each one from sternum to collar, confirming the closure, the fit, the cage, and when I reach the top, I press against it, firm, pushing it inward, feeling the way the collar tightens again, clicks into place like a manacle fitted with purpose.

And there it is, not just a sensation but a fact—the cinching, the subtle but relentless compression that isn’t violence but certainty, the second breath that doesn’t fully reach the chest, that hovers somewhere tight and shallow just below the collarbone, a breath shaped by limitation, a breath permitted rather than granted, and that permission hangs in the air around my throat like law written in cotton and silk and old money, a slow, deliberate reminder that freedom isn’t mine anymore, not here, not now, not with this knot secured and pressing into the soft hollow of my neck, not with this collar framing my jaw like an architectural detail in some forgotten chapel of discipline.

And that’s when it begins—not loudly, not suddenly, but with the quiet, treacherous certainty of something waking up inside me, something buried deep and low and uninvited, something that doesn’t care whether it belongs here, something shameful, electric, undeniable, crawling up from my stomach like a pulse with nowhere to go except outward into the trembling edges of my spine and downward into the parts of me I wish I could shut off, something that doesn’t come from pleasure, not exactly, but from containment, from the exquisite knowledge of being sealed, perfected, corrected, as if every rule enforced upon my body has sent out an echo into my nerves and found a place willing to respond.

And I don’t know why it feels good—but it does.

And I don’t know why the pressure feels like attention—but it does.

And I don’t know why the loss of comfort feels like the gaining of something deeper, harder, heavier—but it does.

No.

No, don’t think that.

I blink, sharp and fast, trying to cut the thought clean out of me before it roots, before it flowers, and my chest stutters with a single, helpless rise like a boy on the edge of something too big to hold in his lungs, something that might become sobbing or panting or screaming, but it doesn’t come, I don’t let it, because I can’t, because this is what I asked for, what I bargained for, what I lost into—this was the game, and I rolled the dice, and now this is what I rolled into.

And that’s when my hand, not entirely under my control, moves toward the final implement of this transformation, the one that has been waiting quietly, patiently, as if it knew its moment would come—the black glass jar that hasn’t spoken a word but has demanded everything, the pomade, round and cold and absolute, already half-filled with legacy before it ever touches my skin.

The jar feels heavier than its size should allow, the lid matte and smooth under my palm, lifting with a soft resistance like a vault not meant to be opened lightly, and inside, the surface is perfect—unbroken, glistening under the fluorescent light like oil on a dark sea, slick and still and knowing, as if it’s been waiting for the right moment to make itself part of someone new.

The scent unfurls the second I crack the seal, rising up into the room with deliberate force, thick and spiced and unapologetically male, built from clove and musk but undercut with something sharper, something edged and mechanical, something that smells like gasoline filtered through cologne, the kind of scent that doesn’t whisper or flirt or fade, but embeds, saturates, announces, and it hits me not as something unfamiliar, but as something I’ve always known—because this is what my stepfather wears, not like a choice, not like an accessory, but like an identity.

And now, it’s mine.

There’s no label inside the lid, no instructions, no delicate suggestion of use, but I don’t need them, because the rules are already inside me, planted like seeds in a season I didn’t know had come—no light touch, no playing around, no minimalist dab of wax for definition.

Pomade isn’t styling.

It’s structure.

It’s armor.

Hair must not move. Not when walking. Not when sweating. Not when bending to orders or stiffening under fear.

“You apply it until you can see yourself in it,” he said once, like it was a proverb passed through bloodlines.

“If it doesn’t glisten, it’s not finished.”

So I dip my fingers in.

The surface gives slowly, resisting like skin, but then yielding with thick, molten intent, and the wax wraps around my fingertips like something living, coating me in a way that feels less like product and more like commitment, its consistency somewhere between oil and glue, elastic and slow, pulling from jar to hand in threads that shimmer under the light like connective tissue.

And I raise my hand to my scalp.

The contact is a jolt—the cold of the product meeting the warm of my skin, the sudden understanding that this is the last step, the final crossing, and I press it in, not like a touch but like a claim, and immediately, I feel not just the application but the resistance, not from the pomade, but from my hair itself, as if it remembers being free, as if it still believes there’s a chance to rebel.

But there isn’t.

I press harder.

Both hands now.

Scoop. Warm. Press.

The sides first, because they are the easiest to tame, already short, already compliant, but I don’t take that for granted—I rake the product through with an almost punishing intensity, smoothing down every last strand as though covering evidence, wiping away fingerprints, removing traces of someone who lived here before.

The heat from my palms begins to melt the wax into a layer that gleams like varnish, and still it’s not enough, so I reach again, deeper, bringing up more than I need, more than I should, because too much is the point—because the excess isn’t a flaw, it’s the rule.

My fingers shine now, glistening under the harsh light with a lacquered sheen that no amount of wiping will remove, the remnants of pomade clinging to my skin like something consecrated, like oil from a ritual that cannot be undone, and beneath those fingers, my scalp no longer feels like skin and hair—it feels sealed, covered, wrapped in something meant to preserve or present, not comfort, as though I’ve poured resin over my head and am now waiting for it to harden, to cure into permanence.

The top resists—not because it’s stronger or thicker, but because it remembers itself, because it dares to think it can still be hair, still fall forward when I lean, still move with wind or thought or whim, because it still holds some identity, still wants to believe it is part of a person—but I don’t give it that luxury. I drag my fingers back through the length, flattening it into submission, forcing it into ridges shaped by the hardness of my hand and the weight of the wax, until the surface starts to feel less like something grown and more like something forged, something crafted from materials meant for precision, for shine, for message—not expression.

And then comes the comb.

It arrives in my hand like a tool summoned by instinct, not decision—its body solid, its teeth cold, sharp, close together in a way that signals intent, a comb not for grooming but for sculpting, for control—and I draw it through the crown with slow, deliberate pressure, and it bites, oh it bites, not just into the pomade but into the illusion of softness itself, dragging through resistance with a satisfying scrape that sends a thrill up my neck and down my spine, and that bite—that exact, unmistakable bite—is the sound of cost, of compliance, of a toll being taken from whatever part of me thought this wouldn’t change everything.

So I do it again.

I drag the teeth through the top, then again, and again, carving the part into place with a cruelty that feels necessary, positioning it far to the left, deeper than instinct, more surgical than stylish, a part not chosen but assigned, not aligned with nature but cut against it, a correction, a declaration, a wound in the scalp that announces something irreversible has occurred.

And in that moment, the truth lands with the weight of something final, something inevitable.

This isn’t a style.

It’s a sentence.

I continue to smooth, to press, to flatten every remaining whisper of motion or personality, every innocent ripple that suggests sleep or rebellion or youth, until the shape of my head becomes a mask of intention, a helmet of polish and compliance, until there is nothing left that resembles freedom, nothing left that resembles me.

My hands are useless now—sticky, slick, their prints erased by the gloss of submission—and I should be recoiling from them, should be desperate to wash this off, to reclaim the texture of skin, but I don’t. I can’t. Because even as the disgust should rise, it doesn’t. Because I am still looking. Still watching. Still admiring what is taking form before me in the mirror.

Because the more I stare, the more I see something approaching—no, not beauty, but clarity. Perfection. The glint that curls over the arc of my crown, the deep trench of the part that catches the light like a blade, the faint, flesh-toned shimmer of exposed scalp underneath the weight of control—it’s not accidental. It’s designed. It’s intended. It’s what he wanted.

I don’t look styled.

I look engineered.

Not shaped by whim or fashion, but drawn from schematics, as if someone drafted my silhouette with tools meant for architecture, not aesthetics. As if I am less man now, and more machine. Groomed by industry. Assembled.

And still the collar holds, tall and rigid, cupping the underside of my jaw like a frame, like a brace, unyielding in its starch, while the knot, now hot with sweat and tension, pushes back against my throat, a pressure so constant it no longer feels like fabric, but presence, like an invisible thumb pressing upward to remind me of its control.

And I don’t care.

Because when I look at the mirror now—truly look, not just glance or measure—I see nothing hesitant. I see no trace of the boy who once stood here half-dressed and afraid. I see nothing partial. Nothing undone. What stares back from behind the sheen and the polish and the collar and the tie is no longer wondering who he is.

Because he knows.

He’s product.

And the sickest part?

He’s beautiful.

I reach for the towel, but it’s pointless. The fibers catch nothing. The pomade has already claimed my skin, clung to the folds between my fingers, buried itself beneath my nails. There is no wiping it off. It’s in me now. And the scent—the same spiced, musky scent that coats his office, his shirts, his gloves—already rises from my body like a brand, like a story I will carry into every room.

He will smell it on me.

He will know.

And he will be pleased.

And in the mirror, my hair isn’t hair anymore.

It’s armor.

It doesn’t move.

It gleams.

It commands.

I lean in, too close, too hungry to pretend it’s just about checking the final result, and the lights above catch every glint, every glossed ridge, every perfect stroke of comb and hand. I turn my head and see it—the profile that no longer suggests hesitation, the jawline now framed like a sculpture, the part sharp enough to slice, the silhouette honed like a weapon.

Weaponized.

I swallow.

And the tie answers.

I am trapped.

I am finished.

And I am aroused.

I turn the tap and let the water run until steam begins to rise, curling upward like a veil over the mirror, thickening the already too-warm air of the room until it clings to my skin, mixes with the sweat already collecting at the small of my back and beneath my arms, soaking into the thin cotton of the shirt until it feels like a second skin sealed by starch and moisture and heat. My body is coated now, not just in fabric and routine but in layers of ritual that don’t breathe. I lean forward, cupping hot water in my hands, splashing it against my face—not to clean, not really, but to shock myself into alertness, to jolt whatever part of me is still resisting this new form into consciousness—but all it does is sharpen the contrast, make the damp pores of my cheek feel even more exposed against the sleek, unyielding gloss of my scalp, the old skin meeting the new surface like a wound pressed to wax. I look down into the basin and see them—those first few snipped strands, slick with pomade, curled like dead insects against the porcelain, a crime scene in miniature, evidence of something that can't be undone.

I haven’t even reached the razor yet.

It’s waiting for me, lying beside the bowl like an artifact too proud to flinch—long, silver, glinting under the unforgiving bathroom light, its polished ebony handle a quiet monument to tradition and control. There’s something ecclesiastical about it, something surgical too, as though it might belong in the kit of a Victorian barber or a priest preparing a sacrament—or maybe in a drawer labeled punishment, its blade meant not only to shave but to strip away the last defense of the self. I dip my fingers into the water, heat biting into my skin for an instant before surrendering into warmth, the kind that seeps in, that claims rather than comforts, and I reach for the brush—badger bristle, of course, never synthetic, because details matter, because antique rituals demand antique tools—and begin to whip the soap into foam. The lather rises quickly, thick and white and medicinal, its scent a sharp blend of menthol and austerity, the kind of cleanliness that doesn’t soothe but commands. I bring it to my face and begin to apply it—not gently, not like a balm, but with rough, methodical strokes that make the bristles scrape faintly at the fine hairs on my jaw, not enough to hurt, but enough to wake the nerves and remind me that softness is over, that each inch of skin still carrying resistance will now be claimed by ceremony.

The contrast is unbearable. The room is a furnace. My body, wrapped in cotton and silk and sheen, radiates heat from beneath layers that trap rather than release, and the moment the cool foam touches my skin, it’s like ice settling into a fever—it shocks, it stings, it clarifies. I cover every inch that matters: the neck, the cheeks, the jawline, the slope of my chin. I leave nothing undone. Because that’s not permitted. Because perfection isn’t a reward. It’s a requirement. I know I don’t need to shave—there’s hardly any growth, a day’s worth at most, fine and fair—but that’s never mattered. This isn’t about grooming. This is about obedience. “A gentleman shaves even when he doesn’t need to,” he told me, voice steady and cold, the morning after I lost, standing behind me in this very room, his hand on my shoulder like a yoke, his tone like a promise carved in frost. “You’ll wake at six. You’ll groom by six-fifteen. You’ll wear what I’ve selected. And you’ll learn to see the mirror not as a window to yourself—but as a door you walk through every day. Into the man you are now required to be.”

I pick up the razor.

It’s heavier than it looks. Heavier than it has any right to be. I test its edge—not directly, just close enough to feel that whisper of danger, that gleam of threat hiding behind tradition—and I bring it to my cheek, careful, deliberate, mindful of angle, because you can’t go flat or you’ll scrape, and you can’t go steep or you’ll bleed. You have to find the perfect line. The obedient one. The first stroke glides clean. I hear it, soft but undeniable—the sound of the blade removing not just foam, but stubble, ritual, resistance. I wipe the razor. Begin again. The second stroke. The third. My face begins to chill with every pass, the rawness of the air touching skin that no longer has a shield, and I hold my expression blank even as my chest starts to panic, because this is it, this is the last of me being stripped away, and still, beneath the dread, beneath the shame, something else stirs—tightens low in my abdomen, pulses faint and treacherous between my thighs. It’s pride. It’s arousal. It’s hunger, and I don’t know how to bury it.

I finish the shave and rinse the blade, then my face. The water is scalding this time, and it bites, but I don’t flinch, because I’ve learned now that pain can be part of the process. I pat my skin dry. In the mirror, the man I see is no longer in transition. He is no longer preparing. He is sealed. The jaw is pale and gleaming, the cheeks bare and punished. My hair doesn’t resemble hair anymore—it reflects the overhead light like oil on polished stone. It’s not soft. It’s not warm. It’s a helmet, molded to my skull, trapping heat and thought and breath beneath its lacquered surface, sealing everything in until even the sweat has nowhere to go. I test it—turning my head slowly, side to side, careful not to strain the collar or knot—and it doesn’t move. Not one strand. Not one tremor. It’s solid. It’s absolute. There’s no humanity in it anymore.

I raise my hand, almost against my will, and touch the surface. My fingertips glide across it like glass. There’s friction, yes, but no give. The pomade has set like concrete. The hair holds its shape like a sculpture cast in wax. The sides reveal my skull in ways that feel anatomical—each curve, each indentation above the ear, each plane behind the temple now on full display. It doesn’t feel like grooming. It feels like autopsy. Exposure. A reveal of something meant to be hidden. I am no longer casual. No longer capable of pretending ease or softness or selfhood.

I press harder. The surface crackles faintly, not in protest, but in resistance, like something old and firm asserting its permanence. I pull my hand away, and again, I see the residue—the shine, the weight, the scent already leaking into my skin. I bring my fingers to my nose before I even realize I’ve moved.

And the smell—clove, musk, heat, oil—hits me like a slap to the soul.

It smells like him.

And I hate myself, deeply and with venom, because the scent floods through me with a force I can’t block, and it doesn’t stop at memory. It travels downward. To my throat. My chest. My stomach. My groin.

It’s not fear.

It’s not shame.

It’s something deeper.

And it’s dangerous.

I step back—not far, not even a full pace, just a half-step, just enough to draw the entire image into frame, to see not the components but the sum, the architecture of the self I’ve been slowly assembling piece by piece like a ritual sculpture, and now, finally, it stands. The tie, pulled so tight that its knot has become less a fashion and more a presence, sits proud and firm against my throat, still pressing inward with that calm, cruel pressure, not suffocating but unmistakable, a constant reminder of structure, of rule. The shirt is a sheath now, wrinkleless, vacuum-sealed to my chest and arms by starch and by submission, its form so fitted that it feels less like fabric and more like containment, the prison of a man sculpted from cotton. And the collar—oh, the collar—rises with imperial resolve, high and hard, encircling my neck with all the grace of a vice wrapped in cloth, and it does not move, it does not bend, and it does not forgive. But it’s the hair—God, the hair—that gleams like wet iron beneath the light, that catches the reflection of every fluorescent edge and throws it back in a high-gloss sheen of control, of perfection, of something designed to last. Nothing is out of place. Nothing dares to be out of place. I blink, just once, and the mirror, that silent, merciless judge, does not blink back.

And it’s in this moment—this tight, trembling moment suspended between breath and awareness—that something inside me slips, not loudly, not violently, but with the quiet gravity of tectonic plates shifting beneath centuries of silence. I feel it—not in the body, not in the blood, but deeper, buried somewhere behind the bones and beneath the name I used to answer to—a slow, guttural recognition, like the opening of a vault long sealed shut. A part of me, old and wordless, finally exhales. Not in comfort. Not in joy. But in something darker. In knowing. It whispers, low and direct and without hesitation: There you are. And I flinch—not outwardly, not visibly, but within—because I do not know if it’s speaking to me… or through me… or of him.

My hand moves again, automatic, like a ritual already memorized, reaching for the comb I had set aside as though the ritual were done, as though I had arrived, as though anything is ever truly finished. It lies across the sink, silent and innocent, and yet it calls to me like a relic, a tool of confirmation. I should be finished. My hair has already hardened into place, every strand frozen by oil and obedience, but still—my fingers curl around the comb’s cold spine. I lift it. I angle it. I place the teeth precisely at the part. And I trace it—once, only once, slow and deliberate, not to fix but to feel, to remind myself that I can still touch this form and not undo it. That what I’ve created, what I’ve allowed to happen to myself, is no longer temporary. It’s been set. Sealed. Seared into permanence. The teeth move like a scalpel through a healed scar, slicing no skin but cutting something deeper. And when I draw it back, smooth and reverent across the slick crown of my head, no hairs move. Not one. The part is perfect. It was perfect. But now, it’s also mine. And not mine. And that’s why I needed to touch it.

The mirror holds me there. Watches. Waits. As if it knows that this—this is the moment of surrender, the moment I stop pretending there’s anything left to protect, anything left to salvage. The pomade has dried now. Hardened completely. My hair is no longer a style. It’s a casing. A shell. My thoughts feel sealed under it, vacuum-packed beneath the slick. I can feel my scalp tingling faintly, itching somewhere under the gloss, but I will not scratch. I will not break the surface. Not after everything. Not after what I’ve done to become this.

The tie hasn’t moved. The collar still clamps tight. I am groomed, but not dressed. Not fully. Not yet. I turn—slowly, so the seams don’t strain—and face it. The suit. Waiting there in silence, hanging on its brass stand like a relic of another century, a relic from the world he built. It’s not just a jacket. It’s not just clothing. It’s a verdict. A commandment. The fabric is deep navy—so dark it swallows light—cut in a herringbone weave that only becomes visible when you’re close enough to feel its weight, a texture you don’t notice until it’s already on you, already pressing down. The lining is red. Not just red, but blood-red. Hidden under the folds like a secret. Like a threat. I haven’t even touched it yet, but I can already feel what it wants from me—discipline, posture, stillness. Authority.

So I begin.

The socks come first. Knee-length. Wool. Charcoal gray and thick with intent. They don’t slip on—they climb, rising inch by inch over damp legs, clinging to flattened hair and hot skin, constricting without cruelty but with absolute certainty. I sit on the cold marble counter, the chill biting through the fabric beneath me, and I pull the first sock up, slowly, slowly, watching the wool consume the leg like shadow. It ends just shy of my thigh. The second follows—same rhythm, same compression. And once both are on, I stand. The socks stretch tight. Seamless. Silent. And I feel something shift just below the waist—a whisper of submission where my body begins to yield.

But I’m not finished.

Shirt garters next. Thin black elastic. Cold metal clips. He insists. One end clamps to the hem of the shirt, the other to the top of the sock, and the moment I fasten the first, I feel it—the tug. The draw. The mechanical correction of posture. My back straightens. My shoulders align. The shirt tightens downward with silent precision. No more movement. No more rumpling. Just authority. I fasten the others. Snap. Snap. Snap. Each one a lock. Each one a law. Now, the shirt is a second skin, fitted tighter than flesh. There is no wrinkling. No misalignment. Only containment.

Sleeve garters. Thin silver bands, polished to a dull shine. I slide them up my forearms and lock them just beneath the elbows, gathering the excess fabric into smooth, perfect folds. Decorative, yes. Obsolete, maybe. But here, in this house, tradition is command. Elegance is not a suggestion. It’s enforced.

Then the trousers.

Except they aren’t trousers.

They’re shorts.

Wool. Tailored. High-waisted. Ending just above the knee. Not modern. Not boyish. Not accidental. Designed to humiliate and define. They are precise in their cruelty—cut to deny dignity but demand posture. The waistband rises above the navel. I step into them slowly, watching the mirror, watching the boy with bare thighs pull them up over the garters, watching the shift as skin disappears beneath tailored wool. The moment they close around my thighs, I feel it—the seal. The grip. They don’t give. They don’t forgive. The fabric presses into my skin like an oath. And below the hem, that narrow, deliberate strip of exposed thigh. Two inches of skin, framed between the bottom of the shorts and the top of the socks. Not childlike. Not adult. Just visible. Just wrong.

I feel the air brush that strip of thigh. It chills me. Reminds me. Those inches are intentional. They are not forgotten. They are part of the uniform. Not a mistake. A design.

There is no belt.

There are suspenders.

Navy blue with red piping, leather ends, fastened by hand. I find them draped where he left them, and I pull them over my shoulders with reverence. Fasten the front. Snap. The waistband lifts. I reach behind, twisting slightly, and secure the rear. Snap. Snap. The braces draw everything upward. They finish what the garters began. My spine straightens again. My chest expands—not with pride, but pressure. The shirt is pulled taut across my torso. The shorts are now fixed. My body is a pillar.

I cannot slouch.

I cannot hide.

I cannot breathe without permission.

I glance again in the mirror—just a glance, brief, but somehow it strikes deeper than the last, because this time the frame is full, and I see it all—the shirt drawn skin-tight across my chest, the tie knot perched like a stone at the base of my throat, the shorts cutting off my dignity mid-thigh with brutal precision. And the effect of it—of seeing myself like this, dressed not by taste or style or even punishment, but by decree—it’s unbearable. But it’s also arousing. Because the look is not boyish. It’s not youthful. It’s not playful. It’s controlled. Corrected. Composed. The kind of look that erases choice. That denies comfort. That replaces freedom with ritual. But the shorts—God, the shorts—they rob me of any illusion I might still cling to, any pretense of autonomy, any fantasy of adult rebellion, because I know, and he knows, and the mirror—always the mirror—knows, that I am too old to be wearing this. And that’s exactly why it works.

So I stand there—just for a moment longer—hands hovering awkwardly at my sides, breath slowing into something shallow and regulated, every inch of me pulled and pressed and cinched into place by the unholy trinity of silk, starch, wool, and command. I feel it. The coolness of the air brushing against my thighs where they’re still exposed. The compression of the waistcoat wrapping like a second ribcage around my torso. The bite of the braces holding everything too high. The collar locked into my neck like a chain with buttons instead of links. And there it is again—that unmistakable sensation: I am suffocated. And I am thrillingly small.

The waistcoat waits. Double-breasted. Same navy wool as the shorts, same cold authority stitched into every seam. The buttons are flat and dark, disappearing into the fabric like they don’t want to be seen, as if their only job is to disappear while they do the work of making me disappear too. The cut is high. Deliberately so. It shows the knot of the tie perfectly, frames it with narrow lapels that rise like punctuation, quotation marks that encase silence, that point upward toward my face and say: this is the center now. I lift it. Slide it on. And the second it settles across my shoulders, I feel the trap spring shut. Not cold. Not immediate. But inevitable. The wool wraps around me like heat from a fire you can’t back away from, closing in from both sides until the space between me and the fabric is gone.

I button it slowly. From the bottom upward. Each one a new compression, a new subtraction of space. I feel the garment pull inward as I work up the line, until the final button—the highest, the cruelest—slips into place and presses into the softest part of my gut. I try to inhale. I try to breathe with any depth. I can’t. The waistcoat has taken that option away. I’m not comforted. I’m not protected. I’m compressed. Trimmed. Sculpted into someone else’s version of control. The lining brushes against my shirt. My shirt strains to obey. The tension is everywhere now—in my ribs, in my arms, in my neck. The sleeves draw perfectly to the wrist, the cuffs now sitting in flawless formation just below the edge of the jacket-to-come. The French cuffs, pure white against dark blue wool, sit like punctuation. And the cufflinks—those flat silver circles—shine with a kind of mute precision. They don’t sparkle. They don’t draw attention. They enforce. I flex my hands once. The cuffs don’t shift. They never do.

And below it all, still visible from mid-thigh down, the shorts remain. A rebellion against formality. A contradiction too deliberate to be accidental. They reveal the pale bands of my upper legs, the skin that doesn’t belong in this ensemble, and yet insists on staying, and the chill on that exposed strip of thigh is a constant whisper that I’m not in control. The contrast sharpens everything. The dignity of the jacket. The humiliation of the shorts. The fusion makes me feel not incomplete—but punished. Finished. And yet, deliberately reduced.

Then comes the jacket.

It hangs waiting, like a final sentence, single-breasted, three-button, peak lapels that flare not gently but sharply, aggressively, like blades cut to draw the eye and cut away whatever softness remains. I take it from the hanger and immediately the weight surprises me. Not metaphorically. Physically. The wool is dense. Structured. It pulls down with its own gravity, as if it knows what it is and won’t let me forget. I slide it on.

And it lands.

It doesn’t settle. It lands—on my shoulders, over the waistcoat, across the shirt and the braces and the guilt and the heat. It’s not a garment. It’s a verdict. The silk lining brushes the wool below it with a sound like a warning. Red against red. Blood against order. It hisses as I pull it into place, and I feel the sleeves fall precisely, almost militaristically, just short of the sleeve garters still hugging my arms beneath.

The cuffs of the shirt emerge, white and clean, showing exactly the right amount of contrast. The jacket ends just where it should. The shorts, of course, still betray me—framing the lower half of my body in disgrace. But the top… the top is perfection. I fasten the middle button.

And that’s when the silhouette emerges.

My chest flattens. My waist narrows. My shoulders square. The collar presses harder against the base of my skull. The tie presses upward with renewed intensity. My torso becomes geometry. My form no longer human but uniform. The shorts beneath are almost irrelevant. Almost. But they remain. They frame my thighs like a joke the tailor didn’t bother to explain.

The wool grips me like a second skin. No, not a skin. A casing. A mold. A sculpture of submission. The garters pull downward. The braces pull upward. My spine has been dictated to. My limbs aligned. I cannot shift. I cannot twist. I cannot slouch. The suit has made those decisions for me.

I reach for the pocket square.

Red. Always red. The same hue as the lining, the same red that lives in warnings and branding irons. Not puffed. Not flamboyant. Folded. Clean. Four corners up, pressed into a line so perfect it doesn’t look inserted—it looks embedded. Sewn in. Claimed. I place it in the left breast pocket. The jacket resists for half a second. Then it gives. The square vanishes into place like it belongs there. I smooth it once. One trembling hand. One final adjustment.

Then I look up.

And there I am.

Waistcoat. Jacket. Tie. Cufflinks. Shorts. Socks. Garters. Skin. Every line exact. Every color planned. The pale thigh beneath the hem of the shorts stings under the fluorescent lights. My arms hang straight, like I’ve been ordered to present. My lips are dry. My collar is choking. My groin aches.

I am humiliated. I am terrified.

And I am aroused.

Only the shoes remain. And after that—there will be nothing left to dress.

They sit on the low stool by the counter like punctuation marks to the sentence my body has become—polished black Oxfords with cap toes so bright they reflect the bathroom lights in miniature, every line sharpened by layers of wax and the kind of attention that doesn’t suggest care, but scrutiny. They gleam not with vanity, but with enforcement. Not shoes, but the final installment of a uniform. I lower myself slowly, carefully, my knees already stiff beneath the wool of the shorts, the brace of the waistcoat making the simple motion feel ceremonial. My thighs press against the edge of the vanity as I bend, the tight hem of the shorts digging slightly into skin that’s already oversensitive from exposure. My spine stays erect even as I crouch—because it must, because the braces allow nothing else—and I reach for the first shoe with both hands. The leather opens just enough to admit my foot, the heel sliding into place with the quietest pop, as if the shoe were taking a breath and choosing to hold it.

Then the second.

It resists for a moment, the angle off, the pomade on my hands making the leather slip, and I feel a flicker of panic as the lace slips through my grasp, a pulse of shame bright and sudden. I grip harder, harder than I need to, and thread the laces with trembling fingers, slick with product and sweat and something else I won’t name. I knot. I pull. I bow. And the laces draw tight—not comfort-tight, not firm-but-forgiving—tight like a grip, like a verdict, like they don’t just fasten but fasten me.

I rise.

And the soles speak before I do.

They are hard, unyielding, clicking once against the marble as I settle my weight. There’s no softness. No tread. No compromise. They announce each step as if delivering a statement, and my feet now feel farther from the floor than they did seconds ago—not because the shoes raise me, but because they separate me, elevate me into a posture that was never mine until now. The braces pull from above. The collar grips from beneath. The waistcoat compresses my torso. The socks cinch my calves. The shirt garters dig their unseen command into the tops of my thighs. There is no freedom of motion. There is only structure. I am laced, strapped, buttoned, closed, drawn, and shaped.

I turn toward the mirror.

And what greets me is no longer a man midway through dressing. No longer a boy halfway into punishment.

What greets me is a result.

The reflection stands still, impossibly composed, every edge locked into form—no creases, no sag, no slack in the line from collar to toe. The hair gleams like lacquered wood, the part sliced clean and sharp across the scalp, the style hardened into permanence. The face beneath it is pale from heat, red around the jawline, still raw from the razor, but composed. The shirt is flat against my chest, drawn into place with mechanical pull from beneath, the tie biting into my throat with an elegance that no longer feels delicate, only inescapable. The shorts—my God, the shorts—mock the dignity of the rest, their juvenile hem hovering inches above the socks, revealing skin that feels both overexposed and branded. They do not allow me to pretend. They do not let me perform maturity. They expose the lie. The shoes below frame it all with finality, black mirrors at my feet that reflect a person I no longer understand.

And that’s the horror of it.

Because what I see is not unmade. Not awkward. Not in transition.

He is complete.

Finished.

The thing in the mirror is taller than me—not in measurement, but in posture. Straighter. Shoulders squared, chest tight, arms held close like a soldier at rest, eyes too calm to belong to someone just dressed. His presence feels cooled, sealed, resolved. There is no rebellion left in him. Not in the tilt of the head. Not in the glint of the eye. Not in the line of the mouth. He wears the uniform like a skin. Like it grew from him, not around him.

There is no softness in that figure.

No hesitance.

No noise.

Just clean, symmetrical silence.

And beneath the symmetry, there is no trace of the boy who came into this bathroom barefoot, half-awake, mouth dry, smirking still in some half-forgotten memory of freedom. He is gone. He’s been trimmed away. Shaved. Sealed. Combed back. Buttoned under. Forced down. Packed into wool and starch and silk and shine. And what’s worse—worse than all of it—is the part of me that still stands behind the glass, blinking, chest burning, collar biting, knowing this isn’t who I am - and also knowing that I look better than I ever have.

God help me.

I look good.

My stomach knots violently, a twist that feels less like nerves and more like something deeper turning inside out—tight, acidic, a surge of hot shame that crawls up my chest until it coils beneath my ribs like a swallowed scream, and I want—God, I want—to tear at the tie, to rip the jacket from my arms, to drag both hands through the gelled shell of my hair until the part is ruined, the shine destroyed, the obedience shattered, until I’m disheveled and wrong and human again—but I don’t move. I just stare. Paralyzed. Held not by the clothing, not by the collar or the shoes or the braces, but by the reflection itself—its judgment, its finality—and I feel it.

The arousal.

It rises slow, brutal, traitorous, not in a rush but in a seep, like something dark and long-contained emerging from beneath the floorboards of my gut, like heat from a furnace that’s been burning quietly for years. It pulses low—once, twice—just below my navel, unmistakable, unavoidable, twisted between the garters at my thighs and the socks climbing up my calves and the wool pressed tight around everything else, and I feel it—not abstract, not metaphorical—but real, heavy, physical, alive in the most shameful part of me, swollen against the uniform that forbids it.

I suck in a breath—sharp, desperate—but the tie doesn’t allow it, not fully, not easily; it tightens in return, a silk noose that reminds me I am sealed, I am bound, I am not allowed to feel this, and yet here it is.

No. No. No.

This can’t be happening. Not now. Not here. But it is. My body reacts. My mind rebels. My reflection watches—all of it—and does nothing, offers no rescue, no mercy, only the silent company of another me who already knew this would come. I shift, or try to. I try to relieve the pressure, to adjust, to hide it—but the trousers are too tight, the suspenders too firm, the fabric too thick, and the uniform too complete. There is no space left for movement. Not even that kind.

And then—like a bell tolling inside my chest—I remember his voice. Low, cold, final.

“If you cannot behave, Zachary... if you disgrace the uniform... you will know chastity. You will live with the consequences of unearned pleasure. Forever.”

Forever.

I tremble—not from cold, not from fear alone, but from the compound weight of it all—fear and shame and the wretched spark of desire. From the unbearable truth that I am standing here, erect in every sense, while dressed in the exact image of what he wanted me to be. And my heart is pounding in my ears now, my pulse booming against the base of the collar, my jaw clenched, my breath ragged but shallow, and I cannot bear it—

But I cannot look away.

Because it isn’t just control anymore. This is submission turned erotic. This is the body admitting what the mind still denies.

My throat clicks as I try to swallow again, but the tie is waiting—it always is—and it presses up under my Adam’s apple with cool silence, as if saying: you chose this. Now wear it. The pomade has dried into its final form. I can feel it hardening like lacquer across my scalp, holding every thought beneath a shell of shine, and the scent hasn’t faded—it lingers in the heat, wrapping around me, clove and musk and discipline, a scent too intimate to be clothing, too masculine to be safe. I can smell it in my breath. On my skin. Inside me.

And the suit—

God, the suit.

It doesn’t wear like fabric. It holds like iron. It doesn’t breathe. It seals. The waistcoat compresses my core like a binding; the trousers pinch at the hips, hugging me tight; the suspenders lift and stretch and keep me pulled upright; the socks climb and the garters yank downward; every layer applies a new law. There is no comfort, no warmth but the kind that suffocates, no give, no flex. Just heat. Just pressure. Just silence.

My mouth is dry.

I inhale again—forced, shallow—and straighten without thinking. My back locks into posture. My hands fall, fingers resting just beside the seams of my trousers. The jacket shifts around me, not with grace, but with control. The cuffs brush against my wrists like cool reminders that even my arms are not mine anymore. The shoes grip the tile like clamps.

I hear his voice again, as if it's still inside my head, not memory but prophecy, smooth and sharp like glass under pressure, quiet enough to sound like reason but firm enough to override it: “Before you enter, you bow.” And my body tightens, not because I want it to, but because everything in me still functioning beneath the layers of heat and wool and ritual knows that he means it—that this is not ceremony, not politeness, not grace, but a command carved into habit, one that has waited silently for this exact moment. My stomach twists violently in protest, in panic, in shame, because bowing now—bowing dressed like this, groomed like this, sealed like this—feels like the final surrender, the one I’ve managed to delay by the friction of hesitation. But there’s no delay now. Because this isn’t about instinct. This isn’t about resistance. This isn’t even about dignity.

So I bow.

Not deep. Not a plea. Just the angle I’ve been trained to produce—the precise dip of the head, the slight incline of the spine, the lowering of the chin until the collar, stiff and starched and punishing, crushes up against the underside of my jaw, until the knot of the tie pushes back like a hard finger of silk, until the jacket tightens along the shoulders and across the waistcoat with the unmistakable resistance of wool built for control, not motion. I rise slowly—measured, upright, flawless—because that’s how I’ve been taught to rise. And as my eyes return to the mirror, my reflection is already waiting—unmoved, unimpressed, unchanged—his eyes meet mine with a stare that does not forgive and does not need to. He nods.

Barely.

A gesture so small it barely registers, but the meaning lands like iron. Not approval. Not affection. Just recognition. A mirror acknowledging that its occupant is now properly shaped. A soldier saluting the moment of his own submission. A man admitting he has been claimed.

I turn.

The jacket shifts, heavy as ever, unmoved by grace, unwilling to forget that it was designed to resist. The trousers tug slightly at the back of my legs, the braces pulling taut across my spine like reins. I walk. One step. Then another. The hallway waits.

It stretches ahead like a corridor of consequence, long and narrow and quiet, its polished wooden floors so perfectly waxed that they reflect the trim of my shoes and the cuffs of my socks in shallow echoes beneath me, like ghosts of movement. A Persian runner softens the steps, dulls the echo but not the weight. The walls are lined with oil portraits of men—old men, grim and silent, rendered in rich, dark tones beneath gilded frames. All of them in suits. All of them watching. Their painted eyes seem to fix on my chest—not my face, not my hands, but the very center of me where the tie lies flat and the waistcoat cuts tight. They are not welcoming eyes. They do not smile. They watch.

The air here is cooler. I know this. But I don’t feel it. The heat trapped inside the suit has become my climate, my prison, my sweat-slick world. Every step is friction. The wool shorts chafe against the bare skin of my thighs. The tucked and stretched hem of my shirt rubs beneath my waistcoat with the tight motion of fabric that no longer flows but binds. The suspenders ride with every breath. And the shoes—God, the shoes—they don’t offer comfort, only presence. Their soles land with a precision I cannot mute.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The hallway amplifies each step like a judgment. Every click is louder than it should be. Every click is a confession. And with each confession, the arousal returns—not gentle now, not passing. It burns low, pulsing behind the wool and the restraint and the pressure. The waistband presses too high, the braces pull too hard, and every square inch of fabric seems to know what it’s doing, seems to join in the effort of keeping me bound. I’m no longer just dressed. I’m occupied. Contained. Encased.

The pomade in my hair has dried fully now. The part is so rigid it feels like a second skull. My scalp has forgotten motion. My neck, pressed by the collar, held by the knot, has no liberty. The pocket square gleams in my vision, red like a flag raised in warning. I have become what he demanded. And something inside me wants to suffer for it.

The door is there now—half-open, never wide, never closed—always that calculated fraction that sits precisely between invitation and refusal, between entry and exile, between obedience and punishment, a sliver of space that signals more than it permits, and as I approach, my chest tightens not from the walk, not from the wool, not from the tie pressing into my throat, but from the simple inevitability of this moment. I step inside.

He’s already there, of course—he always is—anchored behind the vast slab of oak he calls a desk, his posture unshakable, hands folded with the kind of stillness that implies power has nowhere to go, that it does not need to move to dominate. His suit is grey today—darker than mine but cut the same—his hair combed and parted with the same ruthless discipline, glistening under the brass lamp with the exact same hardened finish I now carry on my scalp like a badge or a seal. He doesn’t rise. He doesn’t speak. He simply looks.

And that look—God, that look—it isn’t a glance or an inspection, it’s a process, a slow blade drawn from bottom to top, shearing away pretense as it climbs. His eyes begin at the shoes, where the polish mirrors the floor and the ceiling in equal measure, then up to the socks pulled tight and symmetrical, and further to the bareness of my thighs where the shorts end too early, revealing more than they should, but exactly as he’s designed them to. His gaze lingers at the waistband, takes in the tug of the braces, the cinch of the waistcoat, then climbs again—past the lapels, over the flat line of my chest, pausing again at the tie. And then higher. To the collar. To the jawline it traps. And finally, inevitably, to the hair—sculpted, gleaming, parted with surgical severity. The part. The gloss. The glint.

He nods.

Once.

There is no praise in that nod. No approval. No warmth. It is not recognition of achievement, but of compliance—pure, wordless acknowledgment that the work is done, that the uniform has been accepted, that the resistance has been flattened beneath protocol and starch and tailored wool. And in that silence—so total, so choking—I want to scream. Not speak. Not cry. Scream. Tear the collar from my throat, rip the sleeves from my arms, ruin the part in my hair with both hands and drag my nails down the lining of the waistcoat until I feel something like skin again. But I don’t. I can’t.

I stand.

Spine erect. Arms at my sides. Chest rising in small, shallow breaths that don’t reach the bottom of my lungs. Shoulders squared. Chin slightly lifted—not with pride, but because the collar leaves no other option. And the ache in my groin, that shameful heat I thought I could ignore, flares again beneath the weight of everything I wear. The desire isn’t gone. It’s worse now. Hardened into something unbearable, something that pulses behind layers of fabric and control and silence, something that feels like a sin I can’t name.

His voice cuts through the silence—not loud, not harsh, but low and immovable, the kind of voice that doesn’t request but commands, that doesn’t rise but sinks deep enough to carry weight: “Turn.”

And I do, not in haste or hesitation, but in that practiced, perfect motion he’s trained into me over weeks of instruction and weeks more of silent, implicit correction—slowly, precisely, every muscle responding as if my spine were marked with a ruler and my heels set on tracks, pivoting with mechanical efficiency, my chin remaining fixed not by pride but by the collar that will not permit it to fall, my arms held motionless at my sides not by thought but by form, by conditioning, by the architecture of the suit that cages me. I don’t glance at him. I don’t seek his face. I know better. I know I am not permitted that.

He studies me again.

There is no urgency in the examination, no impatience, no wasted breath. He has all the time in the world, and I have none, because I belong to this moment, to his inspection, to this cold scrutiny that doesn’t need words to hurt, only silence. The pause stretches, grows fat with stillness, with held breath, with the weight of wool on my shoulders and sweat beneath my shirt, until it becomes not simply a gap between statements but a wall, a chamber, a verdict.

Then, finally—calm, precise, irrevocable: “You’ll remain like this. Until further notice.”

There is no explanation offered. No gesture of reassurance or cruelty. No elaboration that might soften or sharpen what it means. Just a flat declaration of permanence. A suspension of identity. A freezing of self. And I know what those words carry, how long they stretch. I know what “further notice” can mean in this house, in this system, in this design. I know it could be hours. Days. Weeks. I know that it isn’t the command that matters now—but the silence that will follow it.

The wool seems to grow heavier in that moment, as though every thread has absorbed the decree and decided to cling more tightly to my shoulders. The collar feels higher, stiffer, a millimeter tighter against the back of my neck and beneath my jaw, so that even breath—already shallow—must fight harder for passage. My lungs begin to treat air like rationed currency, measured and taxed, no longer mine to take. I can’t draw deeply. I don’t dare try.

But I don’t resist. I don’t protest. I don’t move.

Because this—this stillness, this structure, this suffocating calm—is what I’ve become. Not accidentally. Not through coercion. Through process. Through choice.

He lifts his glass, not toward me, not as a salute, not even with the faint theatricality of dismissal, but with total, unshakable indifference—his attention already drifting back to the papers on his desk, the numbers and signatures and matters of control that now matter more than I do. Because I have become something finished. Something static. Something that no longer requires his energy.

I am not dismissed. There is no motion, no hand waved, no verbal cue—no final acknowledgment that I am free to go, because I am not. I am simply no longer present. Not in his world, not in his focus, not in the weight of his attention. He’s already returned to the papers on his desk, to the neat lines of ink and order, to the logic of numbers and names that matter more than the boy—or the man—who just completed transformation before his eyes. I am not dismissed. Because dismissal would mean I’m still a variable. I’m not. I am solved. Filed. Finished.

Not because I failed.

But because I am complete.

Complete in a way that leaves nothing loose, nothing soft, nothing undefined. Complete in the way glass is complete, or steel. There are no more edges to sand down, no fibers to tuck, no posture to correct. There are no more commands to give. No more corners to straighten. No more disobedience left to correct. Because there is nothing left of me that hasn’t been shaped by him. Nothing of me that hasn’t been folded and stitched and sculpted and sealed into place—nothing that can move freely anymore, not breath, not thought, not desire, unless it is first authorized by the architecture of the uniform, the code of the silhouette, the outline of his expectations made manifest in wool and steel and silence.

The design is finished.

And like any finished object, I no longer require attention. I am not his ward. I am not his worry. I am the result. The artifact. The echo of a boy smoothed into silence.

I turn again—this time without command, but not without permission—because I no longer need instructions to know what comes next. Even that motion, that pivot of the body, that subtle shift in the line of the shoulder and spine, is part of the system now. It is already built into me, pre-programmed into my posture, stitched into the braces, aligned with the jacket seams. The creak of the garters is soft beneath the waistcoat. The shoes whisper once against the thick Persian rug, the soles recognizing the floor with that obedient hush of polished submission.

And then—

Click.

Click.

Click.

I leave the study in silence.

The corridor feels longer now. Brighter. Harsher. Every light gleams too cleanly off polished tile, every window pane reflects too much, and my footsteps—silent though they are in those polished Oxfords—feel like violations in a museum. My reflection flickers in the high-gloss cabinetry as I pass: little fragments of myself in full uniform, disconnected glimpses of a figure that should not exist and yet somehow now must—hair like a sculpted helmet, suit like a vault, collar cinched like a vice. I am sweating beneath it all. My skin is soaked and sticking, the fabric too tight, too close, too sealed. But there is no escape. The wool traps it. The garters hold me. The braces lift me. The tie binds me. The part in my hair slices across my scalp like a surgical line of submission, glinting with dried pomade under artificial light. And so I walk. Slow. Straight-backed. Into the living room.

The room is massive—soaring ceilings, silent windows, the city held at a distance like a painting. Wall-to-wall glass reveals a skyline I no longer feel part of, twenty-eight floors above the world I once called mine, when I wore hoodies, and sneakers, and let my hair curl wild, let my voice swear when it wanted, let my mouth move without permission. Back when I thought freedom was real. Now, there is only this silence. This shine. This weight. I move toward the couch, a broad slab of leather the color of dried blood, dark and cold and polished to reflect. It doesn’t welcome me. It waits. And I don’t collapse into it—can’t collapse. That would be impossible. Not in this armor. Not in this skin.

Instead, I lower myself. Slowly. Precisely. Like lowering a statue into a glass case. Like a museum exhibit finally placed where it belongs. The trousers pull tight across my thighs as I sit. The waistcoat presses harder into my ribs, reminding me that breath is not owned, only leased. The braces tug from behind, lifting me even in surrender. The socks slide taut and silent against my calves. My back stays straight. It has no choice. My spine won’t let me. My collar won’t allow it. I place my hands on my thighs, palms down, fingers together, as instructed. Perfect posture. Just like I was taught.

And then it happens.

There’s no sound. No moan. No grunt of pleasure or gasp of release. Just a shift. A slow, terrible release that creeps upward through my stomach like nausea reversed into arousal. I feel it build as I sit—everything my body has been holding since I buttoned the shirt, since I tied the knot, since I greased my hair and fastened every rule to my body like a chain. The arousal, the pressure, the ache that’s lived between my legs since the first stroke of the comb—it finds no outlet, no permission, no granted expression. So it chooses for me. And so it releases itself. A warm pulse. A twitch. Then stillness.

Shame floods me immediately. A cold, crawling shame that sours the heat already pooling under every layer. My armpits are drenched. My back is a river. My thighs are sticky beneath the wool. Everything is wet. But nothing shows. Because the suit hides it. Because the uniform doesn’t care. Because the point was never comfort.

I can’t move. I sit frozen, still upright, still bound in place by cloth and collar and conditioning, by invisible laws that reach deeper than the garments themselves. I can feel it now—the truth of how I’m stuck. Trapped not just in fabric, but in function. In identity. In the ritual of submission I chose and can no longer escape. I let it happen. I let it all happen. And now, I sit in silence, panting quietly, unable to even loosen my tie or undo a single button without permission that will never come.

Outside the window, the city breathes. Free. Fast. Ungroomed. Its people run and laugh and kiss without protocol. Its air is hot and full of wind. But inside this penthouse—this glass box of order—I sit like a doll. Hair sculpted. Face shaved. Suit sealed. Posture perfect. And I mourn. I mourn everything I used to be. I mourn the laughter, the recklessness, the curl of my hair in the wind, the way my sneakers scuffed pavement, the voice that said “fuck this” whenever it needed to. All gone. All cut away. All polished.

And now I am his.

A dressed, silent, obedient puppy.

To be displayed. To be shown off. To be owned.