Page 1 of Asher's Answer
Chapter One – Asher
What’s more humiliating than being kicked out of home by your already homophobic father because he opened your private delivery to discover the adult-sized diapers, onesies and pacifier you’d bought yourself on a drunken whim? Turning up to your boyfriend’s place with your rolling suitcase filled with the only possessions you could gather in ten minutes only to find him balls deep in someone else.
Someone with breasts and a vagina.
“So, Ash,” Cooper says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, as though I didn’t just drop my bags and loudly interrupt him mid-coitus, “this…thing…between you and me? Kind of more experimental than anything, y’know?”
No. No, I didn’t know. But I sure as shit do now.
I open my mouth to tell him that bisexuality -or pansexuality- is all part of the spectrum, but close it when I realize that, even so, I just caught the asshole cheating on me.
How’d I miss the signs?
“I…” I have no idea what I actually want to say. His new lover chooses this moment to saunter across the hallway behind him, from the bedroom into the bathroom. Buck naked. Objectively, I can see she’s hot, even if I’m not interested in women. All blonde hair to her waist and hourglass curves. Feminine in all the ways I’m masculine. I sigh and give up whatever fight was left in me. “Okay. Yeah. Whatever.”
That’s me, Asher Scanlon: pacifist, submissive and complete, utter coward.
Coop’s gray-blue eyes fill with relief.
Should it hurt more that we’re over? It probably should. Honestly, though, I’m more upset that he was my last option for a place to stay. Being an unemployed student with zero social life (because I’ve let Cooper dominate all aspects of my life for the last year) has left me without a backup plan. Somehow, I don’t think any of his buddies -who he’s spent months trying to convince me are totally my friends too, even though they barely acknowledge my existence- are going to let me couch surf at their places, either.
“You’re the best, Ash.” Cooper slugs me in the shoulder all bro-style.
That’s what the last year has been reduced to.Ugh.
Then he looks down at the suitcase and duffel I’d dropped when I’d walked in on him and…what was her name? Bethany? Bianca? Yeah, alright, her name doesn’t matter. I’m prevaricating to distract myself from the inevitable. Cooper’s reddish-brown eyebrows furrow as he looks at my meager possessions. “The hell?” He looks back up at me. “What’s with the bags?”
An hour ago, I would have fallen into his arms and sobbed out the whole sorry story, screw my embarrassment over my secret interests. But he’s not my person anymore, and even though my throat is tight with emotion, I manage to hold back my breakdown. “Dad kicked me out,” I tell him with a shrug. “I was planning to crash here, but-”
“Coop, are you going to fuck me properly or not?”
I can’t help snorting at the classy interruption. “For obvious reasons, I think that’s a bad idea.” I finish, gesturing towards the bathroom.
Cooper, at least, has the decency to appear apologetic. “Shit. Asher, I’m sorry.” He hesitates, then offers, “You can take the couch?”
“Honestly?” I bend down and pick up my bags, shaking my head. “I’d rather cut off my dick with a rusty spoon at this point.” With what little dignity I have left after my hellish afternoon, I straighten my shoulders and jut my chin towards the bathroom. “Good luck with that.”
Then I leave his place, haul my bags back into the trunk of my beaten-up old Corolla, and rest my head on my steering wheel.
“What the actual fuck do I do now?”
* * *
I wind up parking my car in one of the parking structures on the college campus. I’ve got two weeks left on my monthly parking permit, though I know Campus Security do frequent sweeps and if I’m caught living in my car that’ll only end badly. Instead, I grab the backpack I keep in the backseat and fill it with a few necessities from my hastily packed luggage, including my laptop and its charger, and make my way towards the library, recalling that it’s open twenty-four hours to cater for students’ random schedules.
It’s not the best plan in the world, but it’s the only one I’ve come up with. I can pretend to have fallen asleep studying if I get caught sleeping on one of the inviting giant beanbags in a reading nook. The stress of the day has my little side simmering just beneath the surface and I employ every trick in the book to keep Little Ash from making an appearance.
I’ve been able to keep this side of me well hidden -indulging in little play and regressing only when I’ve been completely alone- and I have no intention of slipping publicly. Hell, not even Cooper knows about my interest in the BDSM lifestyle, and I’m more relieved about that now than ever. Sometimes I worried that he might suspect some of my kinks -I might have slipped and called him Daddy in the bedroom a time or two- but he’s never said anything. He might be a cheater -and incredibly selfish- but he wasn’t a horrible person.
Or maybe I’m just that starved for affection.
Either way, it’s been too long since the last time I allowed myself to enter my little headspace and I’m terrified that, with the additional stress of suddenly being homeless and without any support, I’m going to snap and drop into it without meaning or wanting to. As much as I enjoy giving up control, I want to be able to manage when I do. It has to be on my terms. Unfortunately, when I’m particularly anxious, that’s not always possible.
“Suck it up, Scanlon,” I mutter to myself as I trudge towards the library’s reading nook, hoping that hearing the words out loud might trick me into believing they’re coming from a Daddy or a Dom. “Gotta be a big boy right now.”
It’s late in the evening and there’s nobody else around to hear my deranged murmurings, which is a good thing because I don’t know that I could fight off the embarrassment of anyone hearing that. Of them potentially working out my secret.
As I finally sink into the welcoming embrace of cotton covered polystyrene balls with my laptop perched on my thighs, I begin to relax. I’ve got a laundry list of things I need to work out. I need to find a place to live, which means finding a job, which means probably dropping out of college. I can’t afford it now anyway – Dad made that crystal clear when he told me I was out on my ass and cut off completely.
