Chapter Text
Prologue…
Brendon Park has never known a life without luxury. The finest schools, the finest clothes, cars, it all came standard to him. He's not ashamed to say he requires it out of life, now making his own money and his own choices about what luxury looks like to him.
It follows that the desire followed him into the kink world, cordoning off a space for it in his massive empty house and filling it with the best crafted toys that money could buy. Pittsburgh wasn't exactly his first choice for residency, but he had grown fond of it. The steel mills had once made the city rich, and even though that wealth had left, much of the beauty had not.
What the city did not have was a consistent pool of rope partners, the supply constantly waxing and waning as people paired off, or moved, or just lost their taste for it. During the lean times, he’s been known to look online to get a quick fix, watching livestreams or videos of self-tiers. He tried watching partner sessions before, but he often got so frustrated by the choices the top is making he exits out of the video a quarter of the way through. When it's just a person and the ropes, it's a whole different ball game. He can leave little suggestions of what to add, how to add it, how tight.
Brendon pays them handsomely for their receptivity.
There’s one camboy in particular he can’t get enough of. Young, scrawny, pale skinned, and something in his eyes, simultaneously naive and open, and weathered and worn. The contradiction drew him in but the emotions constantly reflected in them is what keeps him coming back. Contentedness, devotion, surrender. As if all he knows is the peace of it. He rarely speaks during videos or streaming, just nods and follows suggestions. As beautiful as the rope looks squeezing around his skin, Brendon can't stop staring at the way his eyelashes flutter, his adam's apple bobbing, watching him sink.
The boy always keeps briefs on when he ties and Brendon doesn’t mind. He often ties his own subs that way to help them endure longer. What he does mind is the lower quality rope the boy ties himself with, he can tell it’s uncomfortable and not in an intentional way, leaving red irritation all across his skin that Brendon wants to fix.
Pretty thing like him deserves something higher quality.
He ups his subscription tier a few times hoping eventually, the next occasion he sees that gaunt frame come up on screen, it’ll be wrapped up in something more befitting, but it doesn’t happen.
About 6 months in to this… fascination, Brendon's watching the boy's livestream when he hears it in the background. The unmistakeable sound of a steamboat's calliope. His ear catches on it like it did the first time Brendon arrived in Pittsburgh, all the notes just a step too flat because the instruments are near impossible to tune. The exact same amount of flat, Brendon is sure of it. As certain as the boy is wrapped up in cheap ropes, he's also wrapped up in the off tuned melody of Pittsburgh's old style river paddleboat, the Carnegie Queen.
He's local, the boy is local?!
He does wonder how in the hell he hasn't stumbled across this kid, the community is small after all....
Meanwhile, across the river and down in the city, Dennis is trying to get through med school with his soul as intact as it can be.
He isn't willing to sell his body, not fully, but when the subject of the somatic nervous system came up in his classes, about how to manage anxiety through his body more than his mind, it tugged at him. As did the picture of a young man tying himself up with rope. It was cheap enough to acquire and his stress levels were high enough for him to try anything, so he did.
Dennis can't quite explain, even to himself, how or why he loves it so much, but he also knew it could be the ticket out of crushing debt he'd been looking for. There were rules, and he followed them. He never got all the way naked, he made as little noise as possible, as if the act's sound is what made it sinful, and as long as he did that, he could half convince himself the people giving him money hand over fist were just in it for the meditative properties too.
Even his roommates thought he was just some yoga freak, requiring silence and privacy at odd hours but they were respectful. He had made the right choice in rooming with a few other students who, like him had come to med school late.
The other important rule is he flatly ignores all blatantly sexual requests, doesn't engage with them ever but it doesn't stop them from coming. But it doesn't stop his bank account from filling either so he grins and bears it.
There's even some messengers he likes to hear from. Ones that help his rope technique or show him new stretches that help him last longer on the stream. The best advice has always come from Shark1982. He anticipates Dennis like no one else and Dennis feels… touched, every time he hears from him.
The fact that the guy has probably paid a quarter term of tuition by now doesn't hurt either.
That was the other rule. He could never use the money on himself, only his studies, or rent if things really got tight. God would have to forgive the lust, if it served the greater purpose of healing his children someday.