Page 13 of Under Control

“Use earphones,” Tracht said, but without even waiting for Alex to respond, he put in his own earbuds to cancel out the noise.

Alex turned the volume down anyway. The movie was boring without somebody to commentate on it with him, and he flipped back to the menu before even ten minutes had passed.

This time he picked a porn vid. One of the ones that Tracht liked and made Alex sick to his stomach. No need for volume here; the dialogue was pretty awful anyway. Alex focused his attention on the hotter of the two guys. The one who didn’t end up with his scrotum flayed. He’d probably be okay with a quick bar hookup with that guy. It’d be fun if he and Tracht cruised the bars together and got somebody into bed that they could mess up together.

Alex was actually getting turned on now, but of course his cock was in its cage and he had no way of relieving the pressure. He moved closer to Tracht and stretched his arm in a yawn, then brought it back down to rest on Tracht’s thigh.

When that didn’t get a reaction, Alex decided to be even more proactive. He cupped Tracht’s cock, ready to give him a nice hand job or blowjob, but Tracht pushed his hand away.

“I’m working, Alex. Stop being a pest.”

Whatever. Alex didn’t care anymore. He turned off the vid screen and looked around the room for something else to do. His stomach grumbled just as his eyes settled on the mini-fridge.

This was a bad idea. It was such a bad idea. But… Alex walked over to the mini-fridge and opened it, going for the leftovers he’d seen Tracht put in there. He sat down at the table to eat.

It actually took a while for Tracht to notice, which pissed Alex off even while he was glad to be stuffing himself full.

“What are you doing?” Tracht asked, his voice icy, as he took out his earbuds.

“Eating,” Alex answered. “You told me to ‘watch a movie or something.’ I got bored with the movies, so I went for ‘or something.’ You’d be starving too if you’d worked out like I did.”

Tracht made one of his exasperated noises, the ones he usually made after he’d been dealing with idiots. Alex tensed and waited for Tracht to lay out the punishment he was going to give, annoyed with himself for provoking Tracht but feeling slightly better anyway.

“I’m not in the mood for this,” Tracht said. “I have much more important things to deal with right now than your little temper tantrum.”

“It’s not a temper tantrum,” Alex growled. “I was hungry.”

“It’s a temper tantrum because you can’t handle not being the focus of my attention. I fully accept that I brought this on myself, but right now? Do whatever you want, Alex. Just be sure you can live with the consequences when the time comes.”

Crap. Alex looked down at the empty plate. It hadn’t been a huge portion. The consequences were probably fine. He didn’t think Tracht would starve him for more than maybe a day or two over it. Thinking about that made Alex nauseous though; he’d gotten kind of used to getting fed regularly.

Why did he always have to do something that would piss Tracht off? Alex had known it would. He’d done it on purpose. He maybe figured the punishment would be a caning or a whipping. Even a spanking would be okay. But when Tracht wasn’t in the mood for punishments, that usually led to Alex being denied food, or having to sleep in the cage, or getting leashed to the bed and not being allowed to leave their quarters. Watching Tracht put his own boots on and leave him behind made Alex feel really shitty.

“Sorry,” Alex said quietly. “Can I just… can I sit with you?”

“If you can manage not to squirm, you can sit by my feet,” Tracht said. “But that’s not going to get you out of being punished later.”

“’S fine.” Alex cleaned and packed away the plate, then settled himself in at Tracht’s feet. He let his head fall against Tracht’s thigh and closed his eyes.

Alex was still restless, although he made sure to keep himself absolutely still so as not to be accused of squirming. Only when Tracht put his hand on Alex’s head did Alex relax, his breathing evening out. See, this was all he wanted. For Tracht to be nice to him sometimes. That wasn’t too much to ask, right?

He didn’t care what the rest of the crew thought, just as long as he had Tracht.

His mind drifted for a bit, brought back to the present by Tracht’s fingers twisting around Alex’s hair and pulling. Alex blinked up at him sleepily. “Huh?”

Tracht wasn’t looking at Alex though. “How did she do it? Why can’t I see when…”

She? She who? Alex pulled away from Tracht. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem, Alex, is that Ms. Espinosa disobeyed my orders and broke into one of the containers. It has to be on the security footage, but I can’t find any evidence of her having done so.”

Alex stood and leaned over Tracht to look at the tablet. “Seriously? I thought Espinosa worshiped the ground you walk on. Why would she go against your orders?”

“Out of a misguided delusion that I would care.” Tracht tapped the screen and rewound the footage, which was of the cargo hold. The camera was pointed between two rows of containers.

Alex frowned as Espinosa walked across the screen and stopped in front of the blue container. She once again knocked at it from all sides, only this time she held a device in one of her hands.

“I saw her doing that once,” Alex said. “The knocking. It sounded the same to me.”

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