Page 93 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 5-8
Ten miles in, Matthew took their pace down to a jog and shortened his stride. The track was mostly clear of others.
. “So—” Matthew let the unsaid question hang in the air. They’d sorted out many of their life decisions together, running by the lake for hours at a time or on long cool-down walks afterward. It wasn’t like he could fool Matthew. The man knew.
Damian groaned.
Matthew chuckled. “You didn’t call me out to a whole new gym just because you’re stir-crazy. Your life isn’t boring enough.”
Damian laughed ruefully. Matthew had his number. Probably all of his numbers. And his tells. After all, they’d submitted to Richard side by side for years.
He spilled. The trip to Seoul. The multiple filed and potential court cases. The stalled-out request for investigation into Bak and his partners in human trafficking. Matthew listened with all the acute sense of detail he brought to situations as an engineer who observed both physical form and human behavior.
“Have you made a contract yet?” Matthew asked at the end, referring to Jun.
Damian shook his head. “No. It’s all been too fast. As much as we both feel the pull, I don’t think he knows enough about D/s or protocol or anything else.”
“He doesn’t need to, not to play with you. Not if you both need an outlet. He only needs to know you.” Matthew shot Damian a pointed glance. “You’re not bringing him to a dungeon or even one of Richard’s play parties. You’re not going up to hang out with Jackson’s crowd. He’s not jumping into a community; he’s your partner. And you’re his. You need each other right now. Things are going to get messy and murky. You have a quiet space, at least it seems like, for a few days. If you’re already playing, if he’s already sassing and bratting for you, then you need boundaries. There’s enough going on that’s confusing.”
Damian gave a ragged huff. “That’s the total opposite of how Richard and I did things. He made me wait for years.”
“You were a kid.”
Damian snorted. “It still feels rushed. I planned to introduce him to all of this by degrees. What if he looks back later and decides I used my power over him to push him into something he wasn’t ready for? Think about the power imbalance. I control his housing, his food, everything.”
Matthew waved Damian off to the side where there was water. They both took a quick look around, but they were once again in a secluded area. The largest crowd was in the elliptical section with secondary groups in the classrooms doing a hot yoga session and in the weight section, both behind glass walls. “There’s always going to be power imbalance. When I first submitted to Richard, technically, I had more social standing than he did. My parents would have flipped if they knew I was involved with a man who worked with his hands. And when Richard took you on, the power difference was very much on his side. People could have said he groomed you.”
“He didn’t.”
“No, but it could have looked like that from the outside. What if he had refused to take you on just because of the optics?”
“I would have hated him. And been crushed.”
“Do you think Jun is someone who knows his own mind?”
The question required a moment's consideration. Generally, yes, Jun certainly did seem to know himself, but he was also currently acting from a place of survival. That wasn’t how they’d started, not that first night when he’d first asked Damian to be intimate in that hotel room two years ago. Damian had been something he’d kept for himself, a bright, fierce secret, his greatest act of rebellion against a life that had been slowly crushing him.
“He chose me.” Damian spoke slowly, still thinking. “I’m not the only person advocating for him, unlike two weeks ago. Yohei would take him back to Japan if necessary. He can leave me. He might not have the money to fight the legal cases, but he could claim his US citizenship and try to stay here without me or Richard. I’m just not sure he knows or believes that.”
“Then make it clear. For your own conscience, if nothing else. You’ve both been reacting and surviving. And that’s where you’ve needed to be. But you can’t keep doing that. Even if the plan gets mucked up, you both need one.”
Damian dropped his eyes, nodding. Trust Matthew to deliver the truth straight out and with no fluff.
“What about introducing him into The Residency?”
Matthew shook his head. “You can’t force that. That can’t be the price of a relationship with you. As much as all of you might want fully integrated relationships, he either will or won’t reach that point, the same for Richard, Émeric, and Collin. It sounds like Jun has started something with Richard and with Collin. You didn’t mention really anything between him and Émeric.
“There are a lot of ways you could orchestrate your lives. Jun could keep living with his bandmates, and you two could visit and do sleepovers. You could have a separate third place that’s just the two of yours. You could move him straight in and let things develop.”
“There’s inherent danger in both ends of how you handle this. If you overprotect him, he won’t have the chance to develop relationships with everyone else. If you toss him at them so hard he feels he has to be okay with jumping straight in, then he could run or agree to something he doesn’t want.”
Damian groaned. “This was not in the handbook.”
Matthew laughed. “You’re not the only one making decisions either. Tell Jun what the dangers are and acknowledge them. Talk to Richard, talk to Émeric. For goodness’ sake, talk to Collin. He did all of this the most recently, and he was even better at it than all of you.”
Damian
Back at his desk, despite the late hour, Damian put his head down and pushed through another set of papers, marking as he went so that one of his associates could update the filing and move forward on the case in the morning. He added notes on reference cases for the associate to read so they would be better informed the next time, then left himself a memo to make sure he rescheduled the mentoring lunch he’d missed the day before. A soft rap at the door broke his focus. He looked up, blinking. Even the hallway lights were out.
Émeric pushed through the door, holding two Japanese-style lunch boxes stacked on top of each other. “Matthew said you were going back to work. Did you even eat?”
