Page 19 of Designation: Null

Then he takes off his clothes and does a self-tie with the cheapest, scratchiest rope he has so his arms are behind his back and his shoulders are screaming at him. He crawls on his knees and falls to his chest, banging his chin as he goes down. No grace at all as he picks up the buttons with his lips and drops them into the jar. The rice is sharp, will leave marks and cause so much more pain than one would think.

Surely, he can handle that much? It isn’t that bad. And the result is that he gets his life back. He’ll be null. Hank won’t ruin his life.

This is what he deserves. He fucked it all up and he needs to be punished. He’s so pathetic. Crawling around on rice and picking up some buttons is such a small punishment when his life is in the balance.

He should go out and let Dominants fuck him. Isn’t that what Daniel did? Made a whore of himself, couldn’t be trusted around any Dominant. Maybe it would serve Logan right to find a seedy bar and just bend over, let anyone and everyone wreck him. That’s the sort of thing he deserves. And he’d probably feel amazing afterward.

Which is the final insult.

Logan could go out into the night and do something that would make him hate himself and he’d feel better afterward.

It’s such fucking bullshit.

He won’t. He couldn’t do that to himself. Can never, ever punish himself like he should. His nipples go from chafed to close to bleeding much too quickly. His knees are tough and they just get red and stinging, each movement on the wooden floor making him whimper.

He needs to break down. And he’ll release. The tears will flow. And maybe he’ll find some calm in the exhaustion and in the physical and emotional depletion. He’ll be filled up with so much pain and self-loathing that he can’t feel anything else.

That is the path to peace. That’s how he becomes null.

Logan doesn’t get all the buttons. Of course he doesn’t. He’s too pathetic. He leaves the living room a mess of rice and buttons and goes to his bedroom, lies down, and lets the little pieces of rice poke him as he tries to relax. He takes his hands out of the self-tie.

This wasn’t good enough. There’s no release, no exhaustion.

Time passes.

Tomorrow, he gets to go to dinner with Robert and meet Robert’s family. Doesn’t he want to have a friend? Be normal? It’s thinking of Robert that gives him the strength to get up and get his flogger. Then he gets a vampire glove, leather studded with tiny needle-sharp pins on the palm, and brings out the wooden stool he purchased to punish himself with. The glove is placed against his balls and perineum. His legs are spread obscenely as he sits down on the hard wood. He can’t see in the mirror that he’s drowning with every dark emotion, but it feels like itshouldbe visible. Screaming red from his head to his feet.

He watches himself in the mirror as he works himself over.

He’s wet. But it’s blood instead of release. Isn’t that another form of release? Despite what the doctors say, isn’t blood just as good?

Maybe even more pure? He loses time to his own harm, or at least tries to. Just a little more and maybe he can get there, walk through that hidden door in his mind and body, and reach submission.

And then he’ll sleep.

Won’t he?

7

When Logan wakes up, he’s in bed and he can’t remember how he got there or when. There’s rice all over, the sheets are stuck to his back, and he’s bruised black in intimate places.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll be healed in no time. Always too damn quickly.

He looks and feels like shit. He’s exhausted and it shows. He aches all over and has to use a sick day because he is in no position to deal with people.

Logan can’t bring himself to cancel on Robert, though.

He’s not strong enough to deny himself Robert’s company. He’ll see him once. Just one more time and then maybe he can put in for a transfer or something, find some mission to volunteer for that will be far away for several weeks. Long enough for his filthy desire to fade.

He gets Robert’s number from the personnel list and they come up with a place to meet. He does it over text, unable to talk to Robert when he’s so fragile, because who knows what he’d say or do.

What if he accidentally invited Robert over? Had to show him the rice and blood, the pain he needs? Robert wouldn’t like it. He’d be disappointed.

Logan spends the day isolated. He eats food and tries to drink electrolytes, but he isn’t thirsty or hungry and he’s afraid it’s going to come back up.

The rice and buttons stay on the floor. His bloody flogger and the bloody vampire glove get shoved into the corner instead of cleaned up and put away.

He trips over the fucking wooden stool.

---