Ruby

Oakley has been given an emergency housing transfer, and her status as a WCLK student is under official review. For the first time since I arrived on campus, I can lock my bedroom door and go to bed feeling safe.

I’m sure to be assigned a new roommate soon, but as Nathan keeps reminding me whenever I get nervous about it, they’re practically guaranteed to be a step up.

Our midterm project hasn’t officially been graded yet, but by the approval on Professor Chicory’s face when she calls on us in class, I’m hopeful we’re going to be happy with the results, at least for the first half.

It feels like an awful lot to live up to, as Nathan and I brainstorm ideas for the second half of the project. The half where I have to take the dominant position.

Nathan substantially improved my living situation with some really impressive possession magic on his turn. Meanwhile, most of my best ideas so far have involved conjuring bouquets of flowers for him.

“What do you wish for?” I ask, sitting in the study pod across from him. “What can I do for you that you really, really want?”

This is how he found the inspiration for the first half of the project, by asking me questions like that until he’d finally coaxed the truth about Oakley out of me. It was embarrassing as all infinite hells to admit how much my klepto roommate’s bullying was getting to me, but ultimately, it turned out to be a clear, fixable problem. Perfect for a project.

Nathan’s wishes seem to be a lot more nebulous. Or maybe I’m just not doing a good enough job at the coaxing part.

“I wish… I wish I could get into the flow of things,” he says.

“Uh, okay,” I say. “In what way?”

“I wish…” he sighs. “I wish stuff flowed through me the way it’s supposed to. You know, energy, magic… everything.”

There are definitely words trapped behind his tongue, words more useful and specific than “everything,” but I have no idea what they are.

My best guess is that he’s still beating himself up over freezing in the in-class exam and getting us switched over to the homework project option. But he isn’t always freezable. His magic worked just fine when he was possessing me and sending me all over town following Oakley.

Maybe he gets hung up on the flaws even when things are going great. I know what that’s like.

And I know what a relief it was to let someone else take responsibility for all that for a while. To feel myself live as a braver, more confident version of myself, puppeted by someone else.

“What if I could channel a firehose’s worth of magical energy through your body, while you just sit back and let it happen?” I ask. “Would you enjoy that?”

His face warms, and the corner of his lip pulls upward, still at a frustratingly secretive angle, like I’ve said something I don’t fully understand, and he isn’t going to explain it to me.

“That sounds amazing,” he says, “but you make it sound so simple.”

“Maybe it can be,” I say. “Maybe we’re overcomplicating this. What if we just go over to the combat range? I’ll turn you into a weapon, and make you shoot every kind of magical projectile we can think of out of every appendage you’ve got.”

I wish he’d tell me, or just let me see, what’s behind the three quick blinks and the nibble of his inner lip that precede his answer.

“Yeah,” he says. “Whatever you want.”

#

Miranda

“You have a serious problem,” I tell Nate, with my hands over my face, still trying to soak in the contents of his latest panicked spew of words.

“No shit, I have a problem!” he says. “I’m useless, okay? I’m a complete fraud who can’t do the simplest magic without your help.”

“That’s not true,” I sigh half-heartedly. He’s so talented, and I want to tell him so, but I know he’s trying to get me to tell him that he can do anything, and also that doesn’t have to do anything, because I’ll take care of it.

And why shouldn’t he expect me to? I always have before.

It was the easiest thing to do, when it was just one more test to pass, one more group assignment to hold up his end of, one more little nudge, and one more after that.

It wasn’t even technically cheating, most of the time. I was just being a good friend, a good study buddy. After all, there are no truly solo achievements at the College of Locks and Keys. All of our magic requires collaboration, so who cares if I just collaborate a little extra?

Well, I care, it turns out. Not for the sake of school rules or grades or any of that, but ever since Nate brought me to the table with Ruby, and made me watch the way the two of them look at each other — like so much more than temporary project partners — I’ve had this gross, guilty feeling gnawing at the back of my head.

It gets worse every time I think about helping him out behind the scenes, behind her back, again.

I’m almost certain I’m not doing either of them any favors.

But the sparks between them… that’s magic, plain and simple. I’d hate to watch it fizzle out if there’s something I could have done to save it.

And maybe there’s a tiny sliver of me that can’t get enough of being part of it.

“Please,” Nate is straddling the bench we’re sharing in the quad, wringing his hands together in front of him, the way he does. “I put her in this situation. I can’t let her down now.”

“You just have to play the sub this time,” I remind him. “That’s what you’re best at. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that’s what Ruby’s best at too,” he says. “She’s going to be out of her comfort zone, and she won’t have someone in her ear to keep her on track like I did.”

“Most people get by without one, you know,” I say.

“I know, I know, I just want to give her as much support as I can,” he says. “I want to make sure I react right to whatever she throws at me.”

“There’s not one ‘right’ way to react,” I tell him. “If you’re liking what she’s doing to you, that’s right. If you’re not, that’s important. She doesn’t need a canned laugh track, she needs accurate feedback she can use.”

“But what if she does everything perfectly?” Nate protests frantically. “What if she reads me just right, pushes my buttons as well as can be expected, what if she does stuff my mind genuinely wants to cooperate with, but my body, my defective fucking magic plumbing, won’t get with the program? She shouldn’t be penalized for that, right?”

He makes a compelling argument. As usual.

I picture Ruby’s fragile beginner practice at dom magic, her frustration with trying to predict a mind as convoluted and self-defeating as Nate’s, her inevitable and pointless fits of blaming herself for whatever pit he burrows his own way into.

I sigh again. “I’ll hang out in the background, just in case. But you’re going to forget I’m there and give Ruby absolutely every chance to handle you herself.”

“Deal!” Nate grabs my hand, kisses my knuckles, and springs to his feet. “Thank you thank you thank you you’re the best!”

#

Nathan

The Western College of Locks and Keys has stood on this spot for two hundred years, and was built in the style of its older sister schools in Europe, so the gym is a relic of a time when magic schools primarily turned out soldiers and mercenaries.

There are dance studios now, where people can jam out to their own homemade light shows, and some practice courses for actual useful things like flying and precision telekinesis, but the vast majority of the building is devoted to honing magic for a use that most of us will rarely if ever need it for in the real world: kicking ass.

Ruby leads me to one of the many magically reinforced shooting ranges and orders, or more like politely suggests, that I stow my clothes in one of the lockers so that they don’t get damaged.

The air, as usual, feels unnervingly brisk on my skin, but I know I’ll be sweating once we get started.

Ruby runs her fingers lightly from my left shoulder down to my wrist, making me shiver. She cradles my whole arm in both of hers, laces her fingers through mine from behind, and extends my palm forward.

“Ranged attacks are all about pressure,” she says softly in my ear. “Pressure on the nock of an arrow. Pressure in the chamber of a gun. Pressure is the source of all propulsion.”

She’s reciting from the textbook, not really charting any new territory, but she delivers it surprisingly well. Her voice is steady and smooth. I instantly want to please her, which is nothing new, but the flavor of the desire is slightly different. It’s less like wanting to hold her and make her comfortable, more like wanting to win the approval of a cool professor.

“There’s pressure inside you right now,” she whispers against my neck.

Oh boy, is there ever. A warm tingle of blood flow spreads down and outward from where her breath touches my skin, before gathering in my pelvis. The dormant pressure already lying there wakens and grows, and my cock presses against the hard downward curve of my chastity belt.

“But in order to be useful, pressure must be directed, channeled, to where you need it to go.”

Need is the word in the book, the word on her lips. Need, not want. Which is fitting, because in this particular instant, a good portion of me wants to forget about projectiles and settle for a nice, uncontrolled explosion.

But on the off chance I ever need to shoot someone with my bare hands, it’d be good to know what I’m doing before it comes up. I guess.

“We’re going to start with a spell that barely requires you to convert the form of the pressure at all. A water spout.”

Makes sense. The explosion I’m brewing is certainly liquid in nature.

“Drink,” Ruby instructs, nodding at the water bottle on the side table. “The whole thing. This will be dehydrating.”

I clumsily unscrew the cap with just my left hand and chug it down.

“Now focus on the target,” says Ruby. “You’re going to splatter that target. You might even split it in half with the amount of pressure you’ve got built up.”

That sounds… satisfying.

“I’m going to move the pressure you’re feeling to your hand now. Try not to resist.”

I feel the extra, different sort of pressure of a magical suggestion being pushed down the thread that connects me with Ruby, into my being. The pressure already gathered inside me shifts upward.

My instinct tells me to fight it. The prospect of taking power and sensation away from my cock triggers an irrational panic, but Ruby’s voice is soothing, and her hands on my body give the energy a reassuringly clear path to follow.

It rises and lurches to my chest, and then slides along my arm, coming to rest inside my stretched palm.

“Are you ready?” Ruby asks me.

Oh no, she’s giving me time to think. I immediately imagine this pressure rebelling and fizzling out, just like it so often does in my pelvis.

“Ready,” I tell Ruby hurriedly, before imagining the fizzle can cause it to happen. “I’m ready, do it now!”

“Three,” says Ruby. “Two… one… fire away.”

She squeezes my hand and bites my ear, and roiling white water spurts outward from my palm. I hit the old plywood target twenty feet down the range, dead center, thanks to Ruby’s steadily guiding grip.

My hand is buzzing with ecstatic power, twitching as smaller after-spurts of water follow the first one. It’s not an orgasm, nothing is an orgasm except an orgasm, but it’s something in the same ballpark. The rush in my chest and head is shockingly similar.

“Good job, babe,” says Ruby, releasing my hand and patting my back while we watch my seafoam-like magical ammunition drip down onto the floor.

The ‘babe’ part is definitely not in the book.

“Take a breath,” she says. “Let the pressure settle back down to where it normally sits, so that you can fully experience how unsatisfied you still are.”

A restless tingle trickles downward inside me at her words. It doesn’t take much for me to feel myself getting hard against tight magic steel again, harshly aware that I didn’t actually cum, whatever the lightness around my heart might say.

“We’ll try a fire spout in a little while,” Ruby whispers, putting her hands lightly on both my shoulders. “So, you might want to start thinking, just in the background, about how hot that pressure feels. But for now, I’m going to have you cast a shield. A short, powerful one, like what you’d use if you had to block a magic attack from someone else.”

I nod.

“Even before you cast it, you know that you’re safe. The external shield will only be a physical manifestation of that knowledge, the tip of an iceberg that extends deep into your bones.”

I’ve read the words she’s reciting plenty of times before, but her voice turns them from just words into an imperative truth.

“Your mind is already a maze of sturdy, protective walls,” she whispers. “You’ve been building them since the day you were born. Sometimes even you forget the way through them all.”

That’s for damn sure. Nobody can put up walls like I can. I sink deep into the security of knowing that this is something I’m actually good at for a change.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world to grab what protects you, and push it right out in front of you, so it can do its job.”

I find and savor the feeling of being protected, focus on the range before me, and push.

By the time I realize what I’m pushing, it’s too late to pull instead.

An image of Miranda, larger than life and crackling with power, leaps from my mind to the mat in front of me in a fighting stance, ready to protect me from the world.

“Shit, sorry!” I tell Ruby immediately. “I didn’t mean to make that.”

“Oh… it’s… it’s fine,” Ruby says, with a smile of understanding that’s simultaneously painful and sincere. “We can’t always control what our subconscious spits out, I know, believe me.”

I’m about to thank her, when it gets worse.

“What in all hells?” The image of Miranda turns away from the range, toward us, examining her own semitranslucent arms. “I gotta drop the telepathy, Nate, something’s wrong. I can see— She can see me,” Miranda finishes with a resigned sigh as her eyes meet Ruby’s. “Hi.”

She waves sheepishly.

Ruby takes several seconds to respond.

“This isn’t from your imagination, is it?” she asks.

My voice feels so tiny and distant in my throat that I don’t think she hears my “No,” so I shake my head.

“She’s been here the whole time,” says Ruby.

“Yeah,” Miranda admits before I have the chance to try again.

“Not for the first time,” Ruby realizes aloud. “This is why it sometimes seems like you’re switching between two totally different personalities, not just different modes.”

Miranda’s chin twitches down toward her chest with guilt. It’s a strange look on her.

Ruby swallows, angles her body toward just me, and asks in an effortfully steady tone, “Why?”

I open my mouth.

“Tell her what you told me,” Miranda advises. “Tell her—”

“I’d like to speak with my project partner alone, please,” Ruby raises her hand, and Miranda goes silent. Her image dissolves into thin air.

I feel a faint pop in my head, a line going dead, and then even Miranda’s silence is gone.

Reeling from the sudden loneliness inside my head, I cling to Miranda’s last instructions and try to explain myself. “She was a safety net. Just in case I got—”

“Bored?” Ruby guessed. “Scared? What exactly was it about working with me that you couldn’t face without backup?”

“I could never be bored with you!” I say. “And scared… sure, yeah, of course I get scared, I’ve got the world’s biggest crush on—”

“No, don’t you dare,” Ruby sharpens her raised hand to a single finger. “You’re not going to say something sweet and romantic that you only get to say once, and completely waste it by trying to use it to brush this off!”

I snap my jaw shut, awaiting further instructions.

Ruby just stands there, staring, breathing. Twice her breaths get so high and fast that I think she’s going to look away and cry into her hands, but she just takes a longer breath and starts the cycle over.

The seconds dilate. It’s excruciating.

Finally, Ruby swats a few escaping tears away with the back of a hand, and says, “I didn’t bring a safety net when I gave myself over to you.”

“I know,” I acknowledge.

The truth of this sinks into my chest like a knife.

“I was scared too,” she says. “Terrified, in fact.”

“I told you, you didn’t have to be,” I defend myself meekly.

“But I wanted to!” she yells. “I wanted to be there, with you. I wanted to feel it, all of it. And when it got to be too much, I told you. No one else. I trusted you to listen, to take care of me….”

She looks down and sighs.

“I’m… not entitled to your trust, I know,” she says. “If it’s not there, it’s not there, I just… you had me completely fooled. I was a complete fool.”

She slings her backpack over her shoulders and starts toward the exit.

“It’s nothing to do with not trusting you,” I try to explain. “I don’t trust me. My body, my mind, my magic, I couldn’t be sure it would all respond right.”

“And you assumed I’d be such an incompetent dom that I wouldn’t be able to handle working with a complicated, unpredictable human being who doesn’t always do exactly what I want.”

“I didn’t want you to have to handle—”

“My fair share of the project,” she finishes for me.

“Working with me isn’t a ‘fair’ anything,” I say. “I’m sorry, I thought it’d be better for both—”

“You’re the one who can’t handle not getting something perfect on the first try, Nathan,” she says, turning to fix me again with that time-altering disappointed gaze. “So don’t put that on me. And don’t ever take it upon yourself to cheat for me again. I may not be the most versatile student WCLK has ever seen, but I’m going to graduate, and when I do, it’s going to be because I learned enough to earn it.”

She yanks the gym door open and lets it fall closed right behind her. By the time I get it open again for myself, she’s gone.

#

Miranda

Ruby doesn’t know where I live. So, when I see a magical signal flare outside my window, I know she either took a lucky guess, or she’s been doing this outside of every student housing block on campus.

She can’t find me unless I let her. But I owe her that much.

I shove my window open and lean on the sill.

“How are you doing that without a partner?” I ask, as a purple shower of sparks bursts and falls to earth in front of me.

Ruby bites her own lips furiously and answers, “You are the partner. I opened a circuit. You just closed it.”

“So, if I weren’t going to answer, it never would have worked?” I ask.

I’ve never been great with temporal theory.

“I don’t know! You did answer!” Ruby says, exasperated. “Can I just come up?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Unit thirty-four.”

Less than a minute later, she’s pacing the floor of my dorm, silently raising the ambient temperature by at least a degree every few seconds, while I watch her from my desk chair.

“You and Nathan,” she finally speaks. “Are you…?”

“We’re best friends who fuck sometimes,” I explain, as plainly as I can. “It’s intimate, but it’s not exclusive.”

“Am I some kind of game you two play?” she asks.

I don’t throw out an automatic denial. She’s not as wrong as I’d like her to be.

“Nate really likes you,” I say. “He’s just a goof who can’t get out of his own way. And I’m…” I sigh and rub my hands over my face. “I’m a messy drama magnet who couldn’t resist getting roped in as a sneaky little matchmaker.”

Ruby looks down at her crossed arms and bobs on the balls of her feet as she assesses my take on the situation.

“So, how much of what I think I know of him is really you?” she asks, and looks up at me, her usually gentle eyes suddenly so probing that it’s hard to believe she’s not an A student at dom magic.

“N… nothing, it’s all him,” I stammer out before even thinking about what I’m going to say. “I just give him training wheels to keep him from freaking out. He’s the one steering.”

“Really?” asks Ruby, with her eyes still on me. “When he tried to give me an emotional shield that didn’t work, that was him steering. And when you proposed possessing me and guiding me through a whole problem-solving adventure, that was you steering. True?”

My pulse is elevated. How does she have me so completely on the back foot?

“That’s me… catching him by the handlebars. For like a second,” I say.

“You were sitting next to him, whispering in his ear the whole time he was whispering in mine,” she says. “True?”

“False!” I’m unreasonably relieved to point out. “That part where you dragged him into your head, that was just the two of you. On my end, he went into a fugue state where I couldn’t tell him anything. I stepped out for a snack and then watched him for a while, trying to figure out how long I was supposed to wait before calling someone.”

Ruby takes this in with a pained expression and chews her soft-looking lower lip again. I want to stop her.

“So, the only time I’ve had him all to myself was when I accidentally forced it,” she says. “And as soon as it was over, the first thing he did was tell you every detail.”

I can’t call “false” on that.

“All the fire and confidence I saw in him, that first time in the library,” she says. “That was you. The coaxing and creativity and reassurances during our project… it all came from you.”

She’s coming closer, step by step. I wish she’d just scream at me like I was expecting when she got here.

“That’s not quite fair,” I say, lifting a finger that feels dangerously flimsy between us.

“But it’s not quite unfair either,” Ruby guesses.

“Nate wants so badly to give you all of that,” I say.

“He wants to. You did,” she argues, placing one hand on my desk and leaning over me in my swivel chair. Her knees touch mine. She reaches out one trembling hand, to brush my cheek.

A tantalizing shiver starts from the spot where she makes contact and runs down my back, spreading out to envelope every inch of skin, all within the two seconds it takes for me to raise my hand to catch hers.

“I’m not doing this,” I say.

“Doing what?” Ruby asks, with forced playfulness that doesn’t cover the sadness in her voice.

“Yeah, no, sit the fuck down,” I tell her firmly, with a light shove and a nod toward my couch, more than an arm’s length away from the desk.

“Sure thing.” Ruby backs away and sits, according to my instructions. Her fingers toy with the neck of her blouse. “What should I do now?”

Her eyes would be sparkling right now, if they weren’t full of tears.

I sigh and sit for a moment, just trying to catch up with the energy of the room, which is swaying like the deck of a ship.

“You want me to hold your hand?” I ask, matching Ruby’s piercing gaze. “You want me to tell you what to do, and catch you when you fuck up?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” she asks.

“Fair enough,” I say. “But if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this.”

Ruby rolls her shoulders back and forth in anticipation. “That’s what I’m saying!”

“Here it comes, open your mouth.”

I’m not sure what’s she’s expecting this to lead to, what with this not being a Free Play Day, but I don’t think she cares. She’s following my instructions for instructions’ sake when she opens those soft, slightly frayed lips for me.

I grab a clean pair of socks from the dresser, shove them in, and hold them there with one hand over her mouth, the other at the nape of her neck.

“Bite down as hard as you want,” I tell her. “Pretend it’s Nate’s nuts if that helps. Just shut up and listen.”

I push her onto her back and straddle her on the couch. The enchanted steel of our chastity belts clashes unyieldingly together through our clothes.

“You’re mad at him right now, and you should be,” I say, leaning over her to hold the gag in. “You should be mad at me, too. We lied to you, and it was messed up, and I’m sorry. I totally get how fucking his best friend feels like an awesome idea right now.”

Ruby makes an exasperated whining sound through the fabric as she understands where this isn’t going.

“But listen, listen,” I hiss at her, getting in my say before she has time to tap out and disappear back out that door. “You might still want him back.”

She shakes her head under my hand.

“It doesn’t hurt to sleep on it,” I insist. “But if you’re right, if revenge is what you really want, I can’t help you.”

Her face falls, and her body goes icily still under me.

“Nate has dibs,” I say, feeling the same iciness in my own stomach, a sensation adjacent to regret.

Ruby rolls her eyes and tries to say something through the socks.

“I know, I know, you’re not the shotgun seat,” I say. “You’re not the last cookie on the plate. You’re a person, and what you want matters, and you have every right to say no to him. If that’s what you really want to do, you won’t hear me criticize you, I promise. But I can say no, too.”

This time, I can understand her well enough through the muffling fabric. “You don’t want to say no,” she says.

“He’s my friend,” I say. “He’s a fuckup sometimes, but I love him, and he’s had his heart set on you since before I understood why. I can supply the ice cream if he’s going to lose, but I can’t kick him while he’s down. I’d tell you the same if he were a woman, or if you weren’t, cross my fucking heart, I would.”

Tears of frustration escape from Ruby’s eyes and soak into the socks, dampening them against my palm. She nods her understanding.

“You want my advice?” I say. “Go home. Text someone who loves you and doesn’t give a fuck who Nate is beyond what he means to you. Eat something unhealthy, watch your favorite movie, cry, and get a good night’s sleep. And tomorrow morning, or even later, if you really want to milk the suspense, you’re going to do one of two things. You’re going to talk to Professor Chicory and ask for a reassignment, or you’re going to talk to Nate, and tell him exactly what it’s going to take to make this up to you.”

#

Ruby

I have always believed that the only thing I can control is myself.

Other people will do whatever they’re going to do. They’ll make their requests and suggestions, and I’ll either follow them or feel deeply awkward about not following them, but somehow, I never expect anyone else to feel any kind of way about ignoring my suggestions.

People like giving me things. I understand that. Sometimes I feel guilty about how often it happens. But it’s not like I have a registry. They give me things they think I should want, on their terms and their schedule, and then most of the time there’s an aftertaste, a bitter magic that digs into the back of my throat like a fishhook, tugging me toward doing something in return, though I don’t always know what.

It’s a little bit easier with other WCLK students, at least within the scope of a project, where I get to play the sub. They tell me what they want in exchange for what they give me.

Nathan has a hard time with that part, but he always gets around to it, and the chance to make him smile is worth the wait when it comes.

I mean, Miranda always gets around to it. Because that was always her.

When I get back to my now-solitary dorm, I curl up on my side and mentally replay every moment when Nathan suddenly tapped into a confidence that seemed to come from outside of himself. And I picture Miranda in his place.

The short time I’ve spent as Nathan’s exam partner doesn’t provide enough material to adequately feed my self-pity, so before I know it, I’ve lived an entire life with Miranda in my head.

We create a company that makes magic sports bras, and we have two kids and a golden retriever named Penny.

Sure, it’s a fantasy, with all the conflict left out. Sure, it’s probably nothing like what the reality of us would be. But what if we could have been a perfect fit? What if we’re good for each other in a way no one else could be, and just because Nathan decided to want me before I’d even had the chance to know either of them, we’ll never get to find out?

How is that fair?

It’s past midnight when my brain finally seems to tire of marching Miranda through what-if scenarios, and I find myself fixating on what she actually said today.

I can either get Nathan and me reassigned away from each other, or I can tell him how to make this up to me.

I hate to admit it, but it had honestly never occurred to me that the latter was an option.

Other people do what they do.

Nathan did what he did.

He apologized, but only when he got caught, and now he’s giving me nothing. Or he’s giving me space, I guess.

I thought that was all I get. All that I’m allowed to base my decision on, to forgive or not to forgive. Either I have to treat everything like it’s totally fine, even though it’s not, and end up feeling like a doormat, or I have to hold my ground and lose Nathan and Miranda and everything that’s been making me happy lately forever.

I didn’t realize there was room for negotiation.

I didn’t know I could propose my own Option C.

Is this always how it works? Do I not have a registry for the things people give me, just because I’ve never thought to make one?

I grab a notebook, turn to a blank page, and force myself to mar it with the ugliest mark I can.

I want payback, Nathan.

The words are dark and harsh and jagged on the page. I lean in and keep writing. No whole sentences, hit or miss punctuation, just a running, rambling list of every mean, hideous thought that crosses my mind, of what I’d like to do to him, or see done to him.

There’s a lot of ball kicking involved, a lot of skipped Free Play Days, a lot of his tongue making contact with various unclean surfaces. There’s also plenty of him watching me with Miranda, even though I know she wouldn’t let that happen if it bothered him.

It’s past one in the morning, now, and I feel disgusting, desperate for a shower, but still more powerful, less hopeless, than I did while contemplating that lose-lose A or B choice.

I turn a couple of pages and start with a fresh new one again. I hold the notebook to my chest, to where I can feel a hollowness growing inside me that I desperately want to fill.

My mind keeps wandering back to those minutes Nathan and I spent together in my imagination, the few minutes when we were really, truly alone together.

I liked that version of him, too. There’s no escaping from it.

I do like Nathan, and I want him back.

I want to find a way to feel good about him again.

My pen brushes the page a little more gently this time.

I want to be in on the joke, I write. I want to know what’s going on. I want to be able to trust you.

#

Nathan

Ruby summons me to the quad with a text, and no explanation.

I grab my backpack and arrive in two minutes. I’m crossing all my fingers that we can talk this out, but I’m well aware that I may just be in for a spectacularly public breakup.

I sit on the designated bench for about fifteen minutes before I catch sight of Ruby crossing the grass toward me.

She’s dressed in rumpled black clothes, without none of her usual glittery makeup, and looking unusually somber.

My stomach begins to armor itself against the inevitable end of my shining moment as someone Ruby knows.

“Hey,” she says, taking a seat next to me, and wedging her knees and a notebook in front of her, like a wall between us.

“Hey,” I say, and find myself compelled to adjust my hair. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You told me that.”

“Well, I am.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a silence, and I wonder if I’m supposed to say something different.

Ruby peels the notebook apart for a glimpse at one of the pages inside, and closes it again.

“Do you still want to be my partner for the other half of the project?” she asks.

“Yes!” I say immediately. “If you’ll have me, yes!”

“Okay,” she says. “Then I have an idea.”

“Great! Wonderful!” I say, turning my body further toward her. I’d rather talk about where we stand, but at the same time, I’m thrilled to have anything positive to talk with her about.

“I’ve come up with a curse I’d like to cast on you,” she says, glancing out of the corner of her eye at the notebook again. “I’m calling it the Pinocchio. What do you think?”

“I… uh….” My voice wavers as I catch up. “So, I’d be trapped as a doll, until I accomplish some task?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “We can keep your body just the way it is… until the next time you lie.”

“Oh,” the name of the curse clicks into place. “And then my nose would grow?”

Ruby shakes her head again, and I see her smile for the first time since Miranda appeared on that combat range. “Not your nose,” she says.

A high, breathy laugh bubbles up out of me as I catch her meaning. “What’s the catch?”

“Is that a yes?” Ruby asks, sweeping her legs to the side so that she can scoot closer and place her hand on my crotch.

“Right here, right now?” I ask, with a flutter in my chest, and lower flutters as well.

“Why wait?” Ruby asks, her smile gaining substance.

“I… can’t think of a reason,” I admit.

“Good answer,” says Ruby. “Record the beginning for me.”

I fumble my phone out of my pocket and try to get us both in frame. “Professor Chicory, this is part two, Nathan and Ruby, Ruby in the lead,” I introduce us.

“Breathe,” Ruby directs. “Meditate on those walls in your head, the ones we traced yesterday.”

I can feel warmth in my pelvis, where the thread of magic that connects us has settled between my cock and her palm, through my chastity belt.

After a few breaths of focus, I can also feel the walls.

“We’re not going to make a shield this time,” says Ruby. “You’re going to cut one of those walls down, and give it to me.”

I brace myself and envision an axe hovering inside that maze of walls, its sharp blade glinting in the light.

“Find the wall called ‘lies,’” Ruby directs.

The pressure of her voice guides me to a thick barricade of logs lashed together in a vertical row.

“Take it down, and pack it up in a little lockbox.”

I swing the axe and kick with my mind, breaking some logs, ripping others out of the ground, ignoring the way the rest of my mind’s defenses creak and complain about the loss of structural integrity.

The last log snaps. The wall falls. I shrink what’s left of it down until it fits inside an iron lockbox, and I shut the lid.

“Hand it over,” says Ruby. “I promise to keep it safe.”

I can feel my mind contracting around that box, trying to hold it, but I pry it free, and push it down the thread, from me into Ruby.

When the box crosses the threshold and is no longer within my reach, I feel the same way I feel when I’m naked outdoors. My thin t-shirt doesn’t seem to be doing anything to block the light breeze in the quad.

Ruby takes my hand and places it with hers on the tight, rigid tube of my chastity belt. Her fingers lace through mine.

“Repeat after me,” she says, and I do. “I designate my cock as the guarantor of my honesty. Until my curse is lifted, I vow not rebuild the wall of lies I have surrendered. If I raise a single fencepost in its place, may my cock reveal it for all to see.”

Ruby squeezes my fingers.

“Is it done?” I ask.

“Let’s give it a try,” she says. “What did you say to Miranda when you first asked her to tag along in your head for our study date?”

I struggle to remember.

“I told her I needed help, because I really liked you, and I—”

My cock responds forcefully and without warning. There’s a tingle of rushing blood as it expands against its steel casing. The head presses hard against the cap at the end of the tube, painfully hard, much harder than I’m used to from a normal attempted erection. After a few seconds, right when I start to worry that the spell might actually injure me, the enchanted chastity belt finally catches up and refits itself around me.

Through my pants, Ruby runs her finger over the steel tube’s extra half inch of length.

“I’d say it’s working,” she says. “And I’m still waiting for an answer to my question.”

I sigh and think back on that lunch break with Miranda. The memory comes easily, when I let go of the hope of finding diplomatic words for it.

“…I said I wanted to fuck you, but I didn’t know if I could,” I admit.

Ruby holds my gaze. “Rude,” she says, simply.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

My cock does not shift again at this.

Ruby gives a very small nod.

“The safeword is ‘Real Boy,’” she tells me. “In case you need to stop. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep you this way through Free Play Day.”

“Through?” I ask, having to swallow to moisten my throat. “Meaning, including Free Play Day? So, three days total?”

“It’s a nice, round, magical number,” says Ruby. “Besides, anyone can technically avoid lying for a little while. I need to see how you handle the curse during uptime and downtime and all sorts of situations. I want to memorize your face when you’re considering lying, and I want to hear days’ worth of truths.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?” She arches an eyebrow.

“Okay,” I confirm more emphatically.

“And when Free Play does come around….”

“You want to make sure I’m playing honestly,” I realize aloud, both intimidated and hopeful. “Does that mean… you want to play with me again this week?”

Ruby shrugs mysteriously. “That depends.”

“On what?”

She smiles. “On whether you can still fit by then.”

***

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