Chapter Text
His leg warms you through several layers of clothing. From toe to knee, the latter of which your chin perches fondly, you maintain contact and hold onto the spindly column with a subdued sort of reverence for the man to which it is attached. He prefers you that way, unobtrusive when he’s occupied. This is both a challenge and a reward in itself, much like the trials he directs; he’s testing your capacity for equanimity, because he knows you would prefer to be grinding against the loafer on which you’re seated. He allows this on the condition of your good behavior, and he will allow more, you are sure, since he is notably chipper this evening. This assumption is evidenced by how he sits at his desk at an angle, so that you aren’t crammed underneath. You take this spatial liberty as a promise for further liberties, but Dr. Easterman is notoriously capricious. If he suspects you’re becoming too familiar or that you’re taking his generosity for granted, he’s liable to revoke the privileges he’s permitted and send you away. This challenge excites you, and so does the instability of the entire interaction, which could fall through at any given instant. It’s like a dance.
His dominant hand writes continuously. He’s not ignoring you, because you aren’t insisting upon your presence. You’re co-inhabiting a section of his office and nothing more, parallel and connected physically. You are like still air, in this way. A former self would have sighed and griped, absent of the guidance he has provided and overcome by your greed for more, but you are receptive to the therapy and the subtleties of his mood. His recessive hand—a term that once earned you an endeared sneer from him, which you internalized with pride—miraculously lifts and settles on your cheek. You stifle your breathing. His thumb caresses in an idle fashion, clockwise against your skin. He must feel the flush of your face, the rise in your temperature, but he doesn’t comment on it. You aren’t rigid, but you don’t lean into him. The static of your being reaches out for you as he idly excites the nerves of your face, magnetized toward him but incorporeal, imaginary in its exertion into his palm. His gesture is absent-minded, but you know this new position is not of a body at rest, and this humbles you; he must strain bone and muscle, sinew and thought, to pet you.
You inwardly preen as this contact continues for a few cherished minutes. Occasionally, his thumb will stop and press to your cheek as he ponders something important in his work, but eventually the circles coincide again with the renewed scratch of his pencil. You are always apprehensive of a paused pencil: were you too distracting? Even if you have done nothing at all and are as motionless as a cadaver, the idea of you will at times interrupt his processes. He has reprimanded you in the past for this, and the consequence is a manner similar to that which you’ve received for an avoidable, conscious offense. His high spirits mean that inspiration is abundant, and so the pauses are few and far between. You are thankful for this, not simply because you are spared an unpleasant correction, but because his work fascinates you. He is an important man, and you are his satellite.
The specifics of his research are foreign to you. Yes, you are intimately familiar with the surface-level nature of the Sinyala facility, and you know he has the final say in every aspect therein. However, the confines of his mind are where he truly operates, and you’ve never been able to successfully pierce that membrane, just as you have respected the confidentiality stamp on several enticing manila folders. You are half-informed and content in this; while science greatly interests you, bureaucracy does not. You are sure he spares you the mundane details, and you accept that he likewise spares you from secrets that would please you immensely to be savvy of, regardless of if the knowledge would be to your detriment. He curates your awareness as an act of love. He knows what would overwhelm you.
Dr. Easterman lifts his heel against your sex. His ankle presses against you briefly, separated by the natural fibers of his tall sock and your own clothing. Being made of cotton and therefore lacking the function of elastic, his socks are clipped to his calves by garters. It’s as good as lingerie to you, though sensually masculine and hidden away underneath his trousers. You’ve always wanted to see him wearing only his socks. You would never request it.
His intimate gesture wasn’t done incidentally, as he is a man of purpose. It was a call to action and permission to move, like a gun at the start of a race. There are infinite choices for you in interpreting his desire. You decide to close your eyes to savor it, secure your hands more snugly around his calf for leverage, and gently rock your hips to chase that lingering contact. Your movements are isolated to a small rotation; he wants to feel your gratitude, but not to the extent of becoming overzealous. You pretend not to be a zealot for him. Your sex snags at the tongue of his loafers with each downward brush of your hips, strumming yourself on the edge. It’s everything and not nearly enough. You mourn that these shoes don’t have laces like the others he has, neglecting you of friction. You mourn the fabric of your clothing that softens the impact of the ridge of polished leather.
His pencil is quiet again, for how long it has been this way you are unsure when you notice, and you cease your grinding to gauge the sway of his temperament. He’s displeased by this, and he lifts his hand from your cheek to deploy a corrective flick to your browbone. It stings, and he juts his ankle between your legs, commanding you to continue. You do so readily, enduring the pain because it is the condition by which these sessions are held. Discipline is an indicator of his love, and if he didn’t love you, he would not tolerate your hovering around him at unconventional hours. You are disposable. He could get contact comfort and devotion from a dog, sexual stimulation from himself, and passive company from his colleagues, but he chooses to host you in his office regardless. You’re a favorite whim of his. This, then, makes you special, just as it makes you aware of your inevitable expiration date. He verbally reiterates this lesson to you at times, often after he’s caught his breath and gazes down at your messied face in contempt. You are nothing. You are convenient.
The eraser end of his pencil taps restlessly upon his desk. He is growing agitated, and this is when things are the most precarious. Just as he wants, you do not stop dry-humping against him. His hand abandons you to join the other atop his desk, and indistinct rustling ensues shortly thereafter. He bends at the waist, casting you into his shadow and brushing his button-up along your scalp (his tie against your ear, where it tickles), and then you hear a prolonged snort followed by a few diminishing sniffles. He shivers and makes a hybrid sound of disgust and relief. Above you, a lighter clicks, and then the familiar scent of his cigarettes descends to your altitude. A heavy hand finds purchase on the top of your head, fingers burrowing and scratching into your hair with a reckless sort of affection.
“Daddy’s little pick-me-up,” he muses, referring to you rather than the assortment of drugs circulating in his system. With some readjusting, your cheek is pressing to his upper inner thigh, but his shoe is still acting as your seat, so your torso must contort slightly. In this new position, your fingers splay flat on the floor, your shoulders between his knees.
The both of you lock eyes and mirror twin smiles for the recognition you find in them. His eyes are dilated so that the color of his irises is indiscernible at this distance, giving him the appearance of a cat about to spring. The planes of Dr. Easterman’s face are soft and have melted southwardly by the devices of gravity and age. His jawline is similarly of a soft construction, and in looking down at you, creates a charming pad of flesh on which his chin sits. It would be unflattering on anyone else, perhaps. On him, it makes you want to kiss the entirety of his head (if he would tolerate it), if only to measure the buoyancy of his skin and the hollows of his cheekbones with your lips. You often forget you’re capable of speaking when he has you like this, but if he breaks the silence first, it usually means you are free to reply in turn. It’s a bit more of an expectation of you than a freedom, if you’re being honest. You settle for the conversational, “Are you taking a break?”
“A breather,” he amends, sighing. He hates when you remind him of his responsibilities, but you can’t help but be hopeful for his undivided attention. You so rarely get it. “I need this revised and transcribed to print by tomorrow. Grueling bitch-work, but I can’t trust anyone to do it right. I’m in need of a motivator.”
Another thing Dr. Easterman notoriously despises is being asked if someone could be of help to him, and so you refrain. He provides the tools for success and prefers to avoid coddling people by giving them all the answers. Opportunity is not a hand-out. He wants initiative and competence, and he assesses through a lens of love; someone who truly loves him would know what course to take without relentless needling. His task must be awfully boring if cocaine isn’t enough to suffer through it, you sympathize. You watch as he smokes, wishing he would blow it in your direction.
“Let me help motivate you.” Your response is proactive—passivity is distasteful—and you demonstrate your willingness by nosing his inseam. This is the part where he decides if your efforts are annoying to his current mood.
“My pick-me-up and whisk-me-away.” His words give you immediate satisfaction, causing deep twists in your gut. “You’re beautiful like this.”
His lap is clean and smells of laundered suits and the accumulated must of a sedentary man, but regardless of how enticing it is, you steal this indulgence in secret. Reverence is a thin line from perversion, which he typically abhors. Pathologizing your behavior takes him out of the heat of the moment. You instead breathe normally and press kisses to his crotch, mapping through tactile efforts the outline of his sex. Braille via bisous. You notice the plush, spongy flesh stiffen against your ministrations, rising as if to kiss you back. Dr. Easterman’s voice sounds its most youthful, its most tender, when he gasps and whimpers in the throes of his pleasure, though he does his best to extinguish the mellifluous notes before they escape. There is nothing more addicting, and it carries you away in search of more. It carries you to the straining underside of his cockhead, which you adorn with open-mouthed ornamentation. Here, in this beloved present, you fabricate your future. You are his motivator, and therefore crucial to his success. Your love expands on itself in its attempt to meet even a fraction of his love for you. Fingers coax forward against your scalp and encourage you to submit to him. He, who rolls forward the altar by which you worship, the idol-phallus both the auspicious foreshadowing as well as its fulfillment.
The fingers twist around a lock of your hair and section it off, proceeding to wrap the smaller portion around his index in multiple loops. He pulls. A dozen strands are uprooted at once, ripped for an excruciating instant and causing your eyes to sting and water. You make an involuntary, and truthfully confused, squeak of discomfort as it happens (he has never done this before). You finally look up at him to watch him flick the strands away and retrieve his pencil. He’s sufficiently motivated, it seems. You feel a pang of emptiness in the aftermath of this exchange, and you want him to comfort you. He doesn’t. The pencil scratches to paper.