Page 119 of Under His Heel

He spent the walk back thinking about it. If people who liked you didn’t make you do stuff you didn’t want to do, then there hadn’t been a single person in Alex’s life who had liked him. His mom made him do stuff he hated all the time. Her boyfriends weren’t much better. Nick was... yeah. Even Parsons.

Tracht—

But Tracht did a lot of stuff Alex liked too. He gave Alex nice food. He made Alex study and now Alex actually felt smart sometimes. They messed up other people together and that was a lot of fun. He’d helped Alex get revenge on Nick. And if Tracht was so terrible, why had he told Alex to go talk to Parsons? He had to know that Parsons didn’t like Tracht at all. He had to have known that Parsons would badmouth him.

Even Nick did nice things, sometimes. Parsons had done nice things all the time—not as nice as what Tracht did, but maybe better than Nick. So either all of them liked him or none of them liked him.

In the end, the visit left Alex more confused than ever. He went to the shopping center and bought himself those boots he’d wanted. Then he headed back to the ship and wasted time watching porn he couldn’t beat off to and, frankly, wouldn’t want to beat off to.

He was ignoring the screen in favor of browsing the net for definitions of ‘manipulation’ and ‘grooming’ when Tracht returned.

“Interesting choice of entertainment,” Tracht said as he sat down next to Alex on the couch. “The sub is a bit too skinny for my tastes these days, but I do enjoy this one for the sheer brutality of what they do to him.”

Helping Tracht with his boots was more of an automatic than conscious reaction these days, but it did make Alex feel a little calmer. He lay his head on Tracht’s thigh when he was done and tried to figure out what he wanted to say.

“How was your excursion today?” Tracht asked while he lowered the volume on the porn. He carded his hands through Alex’s hair, sometimes turning his fingers inwards to scratch viciously, other times keeping his touch light and soothing.

“Parsons said he felt bad about what he did. He said I was feeling bad about how we hurt him. Dunno.”

“Do you agree with his assessment?”

“I guess? I don’t like that he doesn’t want to talk to me ever again.” Alex looked up at Tracht. “You don’t ever feel bad for what you do to me or anybody.”

Tracht quirked a small smile at Alex. “No, but I have very little basic empathy, Alex. I suspect that if you had grown up in a different environment, you would have been quite the ordinary, boring person. You probably could have been friends with Parsons properly. Maybe you would have had many friends.”

Alex mulled over that for a moment. Would that have been a better life? But he didn’t want to suddenly care about more people. It was hard enough caring about just one.

“Parsons said you were… you were manipulating me. ‘Grooming’ me. I looked that up and I still don’t get it.”

Tracht suddenly tightened his grip on Alex’s hair and pulled back sharply. Alex grunted in pain, but forced himself to keep his eyes on Tracht.

“It means that everything I’ve done was to mold you into somebody that I want you to be.” Tracht let go and pushed Alex towards the ground. He placed his feet on Alex’s back. “And he’s right. I like you the way you are now, the way I’ve formed you.”

That was probably supposed to horrify Alex. Parsons would have been outraged. Alex tried to drum up some sort of anger, but all he wanted to do was curl around Tracht’s foot and kiss his toes.

“Why’d you tell me to see Parsons? Why’d you even let me hang out with Parsons? Wouldn’t he get in the way of… of whatever you’re doing with me?”

“No. He served exactly the purpose I wanted him to serve.” Tracht laughed a bit. “Honestly? I would have been happy to get rid of him on Atalanta. He was irritating me, and I couldn’t see him lasting much longer on the ship. But I’ve seen how servants who are denied outside contact act, and quite frankly, it’s boring. I don’t need you to be a broken mess who can’t form a single independent thought.”

Huh. Alex smiled and rolled onto his back, making sure not to dislodge Tracht’s feet completely. “You kept him around for me? That’s—that’s actually pretty nice, yeah?”

He saw Tracht grin in return. “It is one of the many, many indulgences I’ve granted you, Alex.” Then he moved his foot to sit on Alex’s throat. “But let me make something clear. I am invested in you now. I plan on keeping you around for the next five years. Depending on how things go, I might even want you to stay beyond that.

“If you stay loyal to me, I’ll continue to indulge you even while I hurt you. But if you do anything to betray me, anything to actively hurt me or my business—” Tracht suddenly pushed down on Alex’s throat, hard enough to make breathing difficult, “—I will absolutely keep you for the remainder of your five years. But I’m going to make those days a worse hell for you than you can ever imagine.”

If he’d tried, Alex probably could have gotten out from under Tracht’s foot. He didn’t try. He waited for Tracht to remove the foot by himself, and when Alex could finally breathe easily again, he got onto his knees and kissed that same foot that had just denied him air.

He felt Tracht’s hands on his scalp again, gently, roughly pulling him up. “Nothing to say?”

“You promise you’re not—you’re not using me just to screw me over?” Alex asked. He kept his eyes locked with Tracht’s. “Cus I—I don’t like that. But I can put up with your perverted stuff if it means that…”

He trailed off, not sure exactly what he wanted to say, but Tracht seemed to understand. He snorted a mild laugh and then kissed Alex soundly, biting at his lip and forcing his tongue into Alex’s mouth.

Alex ended up climbing onto the couch and somehow boxing Tracht in, Tracht’s arms wrapped around Alex’s back. The kiss seemed to steal even more of Alex’s breath than the choking had, which didn’t make any sense but Alex was getting too turned on to care.

When they broke apart, Alex rested his head on Tracht’s shoulder.

“Alex. You’re going to put up with my ‘perverted stuff’ whether you want to or not. But you can rest assured that I have no intention of doing anything that would cause your loyalty to me to waver.”

That sounded really, really good to Alex. He kissed the corner of Tracht’s jaw.

“I’m not gonna do anything really dumb. I just—I want to stay with you.”

“I know.” Tracht patted Alex’s thigh and stood up. “And now, the matter of your punishment for eating unauthorized food.”

So, yeah, Alex really didn’t want a repeat of the whole not-being-able-to-move experience, but shit, he loved the way Tracht was looking at him now. He could deal with the rest of it. He’d struggle through any of it as long as it meant Tracht would keep looking at him like that, like he thought Alex was hot, like he wanted Alex to stay around forever.

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