Page 19 of Learning to Change

Goldfish mouth.

Blink.

“Do you have an imaginary bathtime friend that I need to take into consideration?” My question startled him into life again.

Shaking his head, he managed a normal breath. “No. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Good because I don’t know how to share the shower with an invisible person or what the etiquette is for that.” Joel would definitely be the type of person to have rules for us to follow.

Dean’s eyes went wide again. “We’re going to have to share with his invisible friend?”

Telling myself that at least he wasn’t worried about sharing the shower with Joel, I shrugged. “I think we can make a reasonable limit that only visible people can share the shower with us. It’s probably some kind of safety hazard.”

“Good.” As I reached for his shirt, Dean was so lost in thought that he just raised his arms without thinking. “I…oh…”

His brain skidded to a halt way too fast.

“Do you remember the safewords we agreed on?” His nod didn’t give me a lot of confidence. “The stoplight ones, right?”

He must’ve realized the problem because he swallowed and forced out audible responses. “Yes, stoplight colors. Red stops everything and yellow means we slow down and regroup.”

“That’s right.” Joel had wanted to be creative and pick out fun ones but with everyone else in the building using stoplight colors, I didn’t see why we needed to be that unique.

Besides, we were easily fucking distractable.

“Alright, you’ve got three options.” Really, he had one, but we were going to pretend he had more than that. “One is that I get in with you and wash you since you’re my sub at this point.”

And we were back to goldfish imitations…hmm, scrambling his brains was kind of sexy.

But I wasn’t going to let that distract me and goldfish lips weren’t a safeword, so I just pushed his pants down and kept going. “Two is going to be, I just wait outside the shower and supervise while we talk shit out.”

He hated that idea.

His head automatically started to shake and he frowned. I was having a hard time keeping my laughter in check, but I did my best. “Three is that I get to pick because the decision is too hard.”

Oh, he wanted to pick three…I could see it in his eyes.

Not having any responsibility in the choice would’ve made him incredibly happy, but he kept coming back to the talking option. He was smart to worry because making him talk would be my goal either way, but his brain was a bit too linear at the moment to have figured that out.

“One.” Swallowing, his eyes got wide again when he realized what he’d said. “As…as long as you don’t mind? I mean, you have limits too?”

I couldn’t decide if it was all genuine worry for possibly overstepping or just a fun new way of trying to get around having to make a decision, but I shook my head. “No, I don’t mind.”

I really didn’t mind touching him, but I wanted to make sure we didn’t have that worry for every scene. “The assumption going forward is that if I give you options then I don’t mind either one. I will not give you the option to do something that will make me upset in any way without making sure you know that first.”

I was an asshole, but not that big of an asshole.

Licking his lips, Dean seemed stuck in his own head as I pulled down his boxer briefs. “You…you know that Joel isn’t going to have the same limits…I mean, they’re going to be…he’s…”

Yeah, I wasn’t sure what the polite way to describe Joel would be either.

“How about we say that his limits are going to be interesting?” And nothing like Dean’s for a while at least. “But he’s going to be fine with you needing different ones.”

That was one thing I was sure of as I steered Dean into the shower.

He was still overthinking the situation so much he hadn’t realized he was naked yet. “I don’t want to hold him back, though. I can be flexible and…and he’s…he’s very excited.”

Oh yeah.

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