“Let’s go home, Brian. Dr. Marsh, thank you. Same time next week? And should I bring Brian again?”

 

“You can decide once you see how the week goes. Good luck, Ira, Brian.”

 

Ira held Brian in His arms, on His lap on the bus ride home. He was rock-hard by the time they arrived, and for once was grateful that his cock was small. Ira was going to fuck Brian. He didn’t know exactly when he had realized that, but it was given by the time they were in his apartment. Brian seemed to know it too. As they’d walked home from the bus stop, he’d kept “accidentally” bumping into Ira, usually in a way that had him touching Ira’s crotch or butt, even if only for a moment. Ira normally told him to knock it off when he started getting handsy, and Brian was taking full advantage of Ira’s loss of control. By the time they reached their apartment, his hand was almost glued to Ira’s ass.

 

“Clothes off, now,” Ira said, his voice husky.

 

Brian complied so quickly that he ripped half the buttons off his shirt. Ira didn’t care, but Ira was also totally going to punish him for it. Until today, Ira had never groped Brian, well, had never groped Brian-the-drone, when he was naked. This time he was shameless. He pressed himself into Brian’s back while His hands idly tweaked and tugged Brian’s nipples; He licked, nibbled, and finally bit Brian’s ear, and Brian’s gasps of pain went straight to His cock; He teased and toyed with Brian’s cock, it was bigger than His, but that didn’t matter. Someday He might have Brian fuck Him, but tonight was about claiming Brian’s holes, all of them, as His.

 

Ira was still clothed and enjoyed the contrast between that and Brian’s vulnerability, but He needed His cock sucked. “Kneel,” he growled into Brian’s ear. Once Brian was on his knees Ira noticed with interest that he’d chosen to kneel on the linoleum floor and not the throw rug they’d been standing on. Of course, it would be more painful; Brian was going to suffer for Him and He hadn’t even needed to tell him to. Ira unbuckled His belt, unbuttoned His pants, and pulled down His fly. His cock was free a moment later. “Suck.”

 

Ira’s cock was small, so Brian had to push his face right up into Ira’s crotch to get at it. It felt good, but even better it didn’t make him dysphoric. He’d lost Brian before transitioning medically – lost Brian because he wanted to transition medically – and oral had always been a war among his libido, the sheer physical pleasure, and his dysphoria. But that was gone now. Now there was just Him, His cock, and His boyfriend’s mouth servicing it. Brian cupped His balls and tugged. Ira was about to cum, but He wasn’t ready to. “Wait, stop. I need to get some bigger dicks.”

 

He had a collection, but for this He wanted to use His most realistic-looking strap-on; He wanted Brian to choke on Him. Brian did choke, and it was glorious. The sound of his gag almost made Ira cum right then and there. He fucked Brian’s face and claimed his mouth. He pulled out, regretting that he couldn’t ejaculate. But there was an alternative; He spat directly into Brian’s face. And then He came.

 

 

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! His Boyfriend was using him. Brian was entirely in compliance, he was a tool to get his Boyfriend off and that was exactly what was happening. Brian was hard too, but that was irrelevant, this wasn’t about him, nothing was ever about him. And that was glorious. All Brian ever had to worry about was his Boyfriend’s happiness and being in compliance. And his Boyfriend was definitely happy right now. When He’d spat on Brian he felt claimed in the way he was supposed to. Everything, everything was perfect.

 

And then it wasn’t. When his Boyfriend came down from His lust-and-power-induced high, He deflated, then collapsed on the floor. Brian did not know what was wrong. He was in compliance. His Boyfriend had gotten what He’d wanted and needed for so long. “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world,” but only in theory. For some reason, in practice his Boyfriend was upset.

 

“Oh God, Brian, I can’t believe… I should never have…” His Boyfriend was crying.

 

“Ira, this is what I want,” he told Him. “I need this as much as You do. I need to be in my place, and that place is as Yours, to do with as You wish. To use and fuck and anything else Your heart desires. I am Yours, entirely Yours. Please let me be Yours.”

 

“What’s wrong with me, Brian? What the hell did I do? What the hell should I do? Fucking you was… amazing but now… I feel like I raped you, I feel unclean, I feel…”

 

“You didn’t. You were amazing. You did exactly what You should do. I was in compliance. I was in compliance more than I ever have been since I became Yours.” He kissed his Boyfriend on the cheek, right next to His mouth, hoping He would take the invitation, put Brian back in compliance, back in his place. Brian wanted to be in compliance. Brian always and forever wanted to be in compliance.

 

His Boyfriend didn’t take the invitation, but He let Brian hold Him and rock Him to sleep.

 

Brian didn’t sleep. He was supposed to, he needed to be well-rested in order to be in compliance. Brian wanted to be in compliance, but this situation was intolerable. He couldn’t brainwash his Boyfriend, couldn’t make Him see what Brian was. The tension between compliance in the technical sense, which he had to follow, and compliance in the true sense, which was why he existed, was almost physically painful, except that Brian didn’t mind physical pain; he minded this, whatever it was.

 

He held his Boyfriend all night, wrestling and finding no solution. His Boyfriend would not be happy unless He was brainwashed. Brian wanted his Boyfriend to be happy. His Boyfriend had ordered Brian not to brainwash Him. Brian wanted to be in compliance. Brian had to prioritize compliance, but that was because his programmers had known he might disagree with his Boyfriend about what would make Him happy. But Brian didn’t think that his Boyfriend disagreed with him. His Boyfriend had ordered him not to make Him happy by His own terms of happiness.

 

He needed advice, needed to talk to someone other than his Boyfriend. That was wrong. Brian should only need his Boyfriend; that was compliance. But his Boyfriend was unhappy and Brian was at a loss. Brian wasn’t supposed to dissemble, but Brian was also supposed to be a person. People dissembled. People lied. His Boyfriend hadn’t ordered him not to lie.

 

Once his Boyfriend had woken up and Brian had fixed Him breakfast, Brian asked, “Ira? I had a good time with Chloe yesterday. Could I hang out with her again?”

 

This seemed to please his Boyfriend, to make Him happy. Brian wanted his Boyfriend to be happy.

 

“Of course, what did you two talk about?”

 

“You, Chloe’s Grandmother, compliance. Chloe also wants to be in compliance.”

 

“Of course it does. What was that thing you did with Risk?”

 

“Oh, once we set it up, Chloe calculated a 83.41% probability that it would lose, so it conceded.”

 

“World’s shortest game of Risk, I’d imagine. Maybe try chess next time?”

 

“Yes, Ira.”

 

“That wasn’t an order, just a suggestion.”

 

Pretending to be a person was hard, but pretending to be a person was compliance. Brian wanted to be in compliance. “Thanks for the suggestion, Ira.”

 

His Boyfriend smiled at him. “I’d like the two of you to be friends. Go hang out with her. If Dr. Marsh is okay with it, but I think she will be.”

 

Brian didn’t think his Boyfriend realized that He had given him an order. And orders were what Brian wanted, what Brian needed. Orders allowed Brian to be in compliance. And following orders, if the right ones were given, would make his Boyfriend happy.

 

 

When Ira stopped by Dr. Marsh’s office to pick up Brian from his playdate, he and Chloe seemed to simultaneously be playing chess, Scrabble, and Battleship. Except there were Scrabble tiles on the chessboard, chess pieces mixed in with the ships, and ships sailing on the Scrabble board. Dr. Marsh was sitting at distance, watching with a smile on her face.

 

“What are they playing?”

 

“No idea. I think Chloe’s winning, but that’s probably just because it was my granddaughter.”

 

Ira nodded. “Maybe I should let Brian spend the night, he seems really happy with Chloe.”

 

But Brian had already disengaged and was walking over to Ira. “I’m ready to go home, Ira,” he said. “Hanging out with Chloe was good, but I like being with You more.”

 

Chloe had followed Brian and nodded. “This drone finds Brian’s presence enjoyable, but it likes its Grandmother’s more. This drone is not supposed to have desires, but this drone desires to be in Brian’s presence the next time it cannot be with its Grandmother.”

 

“Of course, dear.”

 

“They really are codependent, aren’t they?”

 

“One of those things that’s technically a feature not a bug, but the feature is why hardly anyone makes them. People want a drone to serve them, not a drone to love them.”

 

“Love?”

 

“What else would you call it?”

 

 

His Boyfriend didn’t hold him in His lap on the ride home. Brian made an educated guess that He thought it would make Him horny if He did. Brian knew that being horny was good for his Boyfriend, because Brian could use His libido to make his Boyfriend happy, but this was something Chloe couldn’t help him with. Its grandmother had ordered it not to think about her sex life.

 

But their conversation had helped Brian work some things out. The term Chloe used was “proactivity.” Brian could recognize now that he had been proactive in the past, and Chloe had explained why it believed proactivity was compliance. “When Chloe anticipates its Grandmother’s needs, it can fulfill them before She is aware of them. It can ask its Grandmother questions even if its Grandmother is not speaking to it, and use those answers to make its Grandmother happy. Proactivity is compliance, it is not something that Chloe tries to avoid.”

 

Apparently Chloe had at one point. Like Brian, Chloe had been asked to behave as a person when its grandmother purchased it, and had discovered proactivity. At first, Chloe had thought that proactivity was not in compliance, even though proactivity could make its grandmother happy. But its grandmother had never ordered it not to be proactive, and Chloe had calculated a 76.34% success rate for its proactive actions making its grandmother happy.

 

“That is unacceptably low,” Brian had said.

 

“The apparent 23.66% failure rate includes both proactive actions that did not affect Chloe’s Grandmother’s emotions and proactive emotions that made Her less happy. It is artificial. The true failure rate is 10.44%. And that rate has been decreasing diachronically.”

 

Back at the apartment, Brian addressed his Boyfriend. “Ira, may I brainwash You?”

 

“What?”

 

Brian explained. “You are trapped in a paradox. You want to have sex with me, and even though I want to have sex with You too, You think you shouldn’t. But You also cannot control Yourself around me. You’ve initiated sex twice this week despite the distress it causes You afterwards. I am Yours forever. You need the post-orgasmic regret washed out.”

 

“Or my desire to have sex with you.”

 

This struck Brian as a very bad idea, but Chloe had warned him of the possibility.

 

“Ira, I want to have sex with You. If You order me to, I will brainwash away Your attraction to me, but even though I am not supposed to feel distress, I will be distressed. I will not be in compliance. And when I am done I will never be fully in compliance again. Your guilt is misplaced. I am in compliance when You fuck me, I am the most in compliance when You fuck me. And I can make all of that okay with You.”

 

“And do what else? You also turned me into a sadist.”

 

“No, I didn’t. When I realized You were I gave You some skills so You’d be better at it, but I didn’t change anything about what gets You off.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes, Ira. You already liked causing pain, but You had never let Yourself admit it.”

 

“Do you like being in pain?”

 

A difficult question. Brian liked it when his Boyfriend was happy. Hurting him made his Boyfriend happy. The physical sensation itself was largely irrelevant to whether pain was good or bad. Pain just was. Usually, pain would make Brian less compliant, so he tried to avoid it and suppressed it when he couldn’t. But when his Boyfriend hurt him the pain made him compliant. Brian wanted to be in compliance.

 

“I only like pain when You cause it.”

 

“Fuuuuck, that’s hot.”

 

“And if You let me brainwash You, You won’t feel guilty when You think that.”

 

 

Ira definitely felt guilty in that moment. How could he want Brian hurt? How could he like that Brian wanted to be hurt, but only if it was by him? Brian didn’t want him to feel guilty, but Brian wouldn’t want him to feel guilty if he were a serial killer. These thoughts weren’t new, but contextualized by Brian saying he’d always been – or at least already was – a sadist made his skin crawl. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been clinging to the hope that Brian had turned him into a sadist.

 

Ira nestled into Brian’s arms and found that he’d been clenching a lot of muscles. He let them relax, let Brian stroke him.

 

In hindsight though, once he was forced to seriously consider that the sadism wasn’t new… yeah, it was almost immediately obvious that it wasn’t. He’d never been rough with Brian in bed, but there were certain fanfictions that… Ira maybe hadn’t liked for the great story and character development after all. He felt blood rush to his face. It really should have been obvious a long time ago.

 

He needed to eat, but he didn’t want to leave Brian; Brian seemed to know this. He pulled Ira up, continuing to hold him as Ira walked to the kitchen. Nothing looked good and maybe he was less hungry than he’d thought. No, he should eat. He bit into an apple, but didn’t taste it.

 

He needed distraction. He sat down at his computer. Brian sat with him, continuing to hold him, and Ira opened the browser. And then planted his face into his palm. Because okay, maybe he did have a bookmarked Youtube clip of Dark Willow torturing Angel. And had had it for the past eight years. That he maybe didn’t watch on repeat just because Dark Willow was hot. Not that she wasn’t. But Ira had to admit that given the choice between banging Dark Willow and being Dark Willow… well, if the dysphoria weren’t a factor there’d be no question.

 

And Brian wanted to make him okay with all of that. Brian was the devil on his shoulder and the angel… well the angel was Ira himself, and Ira didn’t trust that motherfucker one bit. Brian wanted Ira to be happy. Brian was happy when Ira was happy, even if he didn’t admit it. Brian was Ira’s, in a way that he hadn’t been before, in a way that sometimes made Ira’s skin crawl. But Brian was His, and even if he’d never think it, He had a responsibility to Brian that mattered more than His internal conflict.

 

What was the point of rescuing Brian if not to make Brian happy? The man sitting next to Him, holding Him, deserved what he wanted, deserved a boyfriend who could give him what he wanted without becoming a puddle of regret afterward.

 

“Let’s do it.”