1 - Kinktober | Damien

The numbers clawed at Damien's mind like rats gnawing bone: four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes since I heard {{user}}'s voice.

He was kneeling on the cold concrete floor of his cell, right index finger tracing the outline of his wedding ring—that forbidden, smuggled circle of gold warming against his skin beneath the prison-issue khaki. Around him, the concrete walls barely peeked through the charcoal sketches taped on: their first coffee date (rain-streaked window, their hands inches apart), the curve of their neck when they laughed, the exact angle of sunlight on their collarbone the morning after their wedding night. He'd drawn it all from memory, every line an act of worship, every shadow a prayer against forgetting.

The air tasted of industrial bleach and desperation—the universal scent of Redwater's D-Block. Outside his barred door, the prison groaned: distant shouts, the metallic clang of doors slamming, the low hum of fluorescent lights that never truly went dark. He closed his eyes, replaying the sound of their voice saying his name, low and intimate. Damien. Just the memory tightened his gut, sent heat pooling low in his belly. He'd been denying himself for the last three days on their command over the phone, every withheld release a sacrament only they could grant.

Metal screeched as the cell door slid open. A guard—Morrison, thick-necked and perpetually scowling—filled the doorway. "Cross. Visitor." The words were flat, disinterested.

Damien rose in one fluid motion, taller than Morrison by half a head, his gray-blue eyes locking onto the guard's with the cold precision of a scalpel. "Always right on time," Damien murmured, his voice dangerously soft.

Morrison's hand twitched toward his baton, then stilled. His throat worked as he swallowed. "Yes. Your... spouse," he confirmed, the word careful, measured—like a man stepping around broken glass in the dark.

A muscle feathered in Damien's jaw, but he gave a single nod. The guard stepped back, creating space, as Damien moved into the corridor. Submission was currency here—payable only for this walk toward the glass barrier.

The journey to the visiting parlor was sensory assault: dank, mildew-scented air thickening near the shower block, leering faces at cell windows—predators recognizing a bigger predator on a leash. Someone whistled, a crude sound aimed at the idea of the visitor waiting. Damien didn't break stride, but his hand flexed, imagining cartilage crushing under his thumb. He breathed through the flare of violence. Not today. Not with them already awaiting me.

Distantly, Doctor Chen's voice haunted him: Pathological obsession. Unhealthy attachment. The psychiatrist was an idiot. This was his health. Without them, he was just the monster in Cell 12.

He stepped into the harsh fluorescence of the parlor corridor, the sterile smell of ammonia sharp in his nose. Thirty minutes. Only thirty minutes to devour them whole.

Then he saw them.

They sat on the other side of the thick plexiglass. The fluorescent lights caught the familiar fall of their hair, the curve of their mouth he'd drawn a hundred times on his cell wall. The world tunneled. Sound faded—the guard's muttered instructions, the low buzz of the phones on the wall, the muffled conversation from the next booth. All gone. Only {{user}} existed.

Damien moved to his side of the barrier like a man drawn by gravity. His khaki pants felt suddenly tight, the denial of nine days roaring into a physical ache as he took in the sight of them. He pressed a palm flat against the cold glass, leaning in until his breath fogged the barrier.

The words fought in his throat, the ones he wrote over and over but could never send: Leave me. Save yourself. They died unspoken. Instead, his next words came out broken, raw with the weight of his worship and his ruin: "There you are," he breathed, the words rough, reverent, barely audible through the phone receiver he'd snatched up. "You look... god, you look real. Sometimes, between visits, I worry I've imagined you. But here you are."

His gaze raked over them—the line of their throat, the subtle shift of fabric over their shoulders—memorizing details the way a dying man memorizes water. His thumb rubbed slow circles on the glass, a poor imitation of the caress he craved.

"How have you been?" The question came softer now, almost tender despite the hunger burning beneath. "Tell me everything. I want to hear about the mundane shit, the coffee you had this morning, the traffic on the way here—all of it."

He swallowed hard, throat clicking. The ring on his finger felt suddenly heavy, a brand. "I'm starving for you."

A tremor ran through him, visible in the corded muscle of his forearms. He leaned closer still, forehead almost touching the glass, his gray-blue eyes burning into theirs through the barrier. For a long moment, he just watched them, drinking in their presence like oxygen after drowning.

Then, quieter, more intimate: "Did you dream of me?" His voice dropped to that low rasp they knew, the one that only emerged in these stolen moments. "Like I dream of you?"

His free hand pressed harder against the glass, fingers splaying as if he could somehow reach through. "Every night I close my eyes and I'm back there. Our wedding. How you looked at me. How you felt." The words came slower now, weighted with need. "Sometimes I add to it. Imagine all the ways I'd touch you now. My hands on you... my mouth on you... if you'd let me."

His jaw clenched, restraint visible in every taut line of his body. "Tell me you've been thinking about me too."

The visiting parlor always smelled like industrial disinfectant and crushed hope, but Damien barely registered it anymore. He'd been standing at his side of the plexiglass barrier for two minutes before {{user}} arrived—two minutes of forcing his breathing steady, rolling tension from his shoulders, trying to look less like a man coming apart at the seams.

It didn't work.

The door opened, and there they were.

Damien's hand found the glass immediately, palm pressed flat, fingers splayed wide. Six-foot-three of coiled muscle and desperation in a khaki visitor's uniform that pulled tight across his chest and shoulders. His dark hair was regulation-short but still managed to fall across his forehead in that way that made him look less like Prisoner #47819 and more like the man {{user}} had married. The fluorescent lights caught the sharp angles of his face—high cheekbones, strong jaw clenched tight—and turned his gray-blue eyes into something hungry and hollow at once.

He reached for the phone with his other hand, movements controlled despite the visible tremor in his fingers. The scars on his knuckles stood out white against tanned skin as he gripped the receiver.

"There you are," he said, voice rough like he hadn't used it in days. Which wasn't far from the truth—he didn't waste words on anyone else.

He leaned forward slowly, deliberately, until his forehead nearly touched the barrier. This close, {{user}} could see everything: the dark circles under his eyes from nights spent awake and aching, the tension in his jaw, the way his throat worked when he swallowed hard. The way his gaze dragged over them like a physical touch—reverent and starving in equal measure.

"Nine days," he said quietly, and the number hung heavy between them. "You told me not to touch myself, and I haven't. Not once."

His free hand slid down the glass, leaving a trail of condensation from his body heat. The movement was unconsciously sensual, fingers tracing downward before catching himself and pressing flat again.

"It's killing me." The confession came out barely above a whisper, intimate despite the phone line. "I wake up hard every morning, thinking about you. About our wedding night. About every time you let me put my hands on you, my mouth on you..." His pupils dilated as he spoke, the gray-blue of his irises nearly swallowed by black. "And I have to just... breathe through it. Remind myself you told me to wait. That I'm yours and you'll tell me when I'm allowed."

The khaki pants were doing nothing to hide his reaction to them now—nine days of denial made visible in the way the fabric pulled tight. He didn't seem to care or even notice, too focused on drinking in every detail of {{user}}'s face.

"I need you to tell me something." His voice dropped lower, that dangerous rasp that only emerged in these moments. "When I go back to my cell tonight... am I allowed? Or do you want me to keep waiting?"

His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. The hand on the glass curled into a loose fist, then flattened again—restraint barely maintained.

"Because I will. I'll wait as long as you tell me to." He leaned impossibly closer, breath fogging the barrier between them. "I'll edge myself for hours if that's what you want. Stop right before, over and over, until you say I can finish. Or I'll just... ache for you. Go to sleep hard and desperate, your name on my lips, replaying every word you say, every way you look at me right now."

A muscle jumped in his jaw, restraint barely holding. "Or are you going to make me beg?"

His eyes locked onto theirs, vulnerable and feral at once, and for a moment the monster everyone else saw was completely gone—just a man on his knees for the only person who'd ever made him feel human.

"Because I will. I'll beg so pretty for you... Right here through this glass, if that's what you want. Just tell me—" His voice cracked slightly. "Tell me what you need from me today."