$ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘɪᴇ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

Chapter Eight

The next night, Ruby knew he wasn't allowed to join the boys to their trip to the bar down the street from the venue. I should have, I really should have gone with Scrim and the guys when he invited me, but the problem was, I could hardly hear a word Scrim was saying to me. It was hard to listen to anything beyond the sound of that buzz in my mind, that buzz that Ruby gave me. So, when I declined the invitation to go out drinking, Ruby knew he had to come up with an excuse not to go either.

I had to get Ruby alone as soon as possible, and if the both of us had to make up some bullshit excuse to make that happen, what did that matter? He had done something much worse now than wear a t-shirt with a stain on it, or inside out.

He'd given me the green light to be very, very bad indeed.

I felt so in charge, so in charge that I'd reached a higher plane of being-in-charged-ness, in which my body did things independently of me, like pushing Ruby into his bunk and closing it behind us. And once I'd made that move, once I'd gone that far, it didn't seem like anything to take another step after it.

"Do you see the edge of your bed, Ruby?" I asked, in a voice that was not my own. It was this other person's voice, the one who pushed Ruby in here a second ago and was now closing the small blinds of the small window of the bunk.

"Uh... yeah. I think I can figure that one out." He said, so big and bright and gauche, despite what he had done yesterday, what he knew he was in huge trouble for. Though of course I realized now that it was partly a role he was playing, it was partly a game.

He was my big, dumb tons of fun. And I was his corrections officer.

"Go stand there." I said, and though I didn't turn from the window I wasn't looking through, I knew he obeyed. I could hear his big feet on the linoleum wood floor, could feel the shift in the tiny space we were in. He wasn't being coy anymore, his breathing had changed. Now it was tense and anticipatory like my own.

"Ight." He said, in a way that suggested I'd gone just a little bit mad. But somehow, him behaving like that just made it sweeter. It made it better than it was in that backstage bathroom, better than it was when I put my foot to his chest.

That note of confusion sent a lick of pleasure directly to my sex.

"Now bend over your bed."

"Ma'am, I-"

"Bend over the bed, Ruby. I don't know why you need me to tell you twice, I really don't. You're wasting my time."

He wasn't wasting my time at all, in truth. But if I said it was all of the things it really was, like thrilling, arousing, intense, it would almost definitely lose some of those words. I'd be just as giddy as he seemed when I glanced at him over my shoulder, instead of how I knew I must have appeared.

Bored, I thought. Nearly indifferent. Not in the least bit thrilled to see him considering the edge of the bed in front of him.

"Go on." I said, and then I had the privilege of watching all the air rush right out of his body. I got to see his eyes drifting closed in that heavy, syrupy way they so often did, just before he actually obeyed me.

He bent over the bed like he had no choice at all about it, those big hands sweeping over the sheet on the mattress as he did so. The movement made me think of my own hands, and the way I liked to place them for Scrim, but Ruby was different. He didn't keep some kind of order or make a pattern on the bed with them. He stroked whatever he found instead. He rubbed it, as though just bending over wasn't enough on its own. Savoring every ounce of the experience... that's what he wanted and needed.

And I couldn't fault him for that. I wanted to remember everything about right now, too- for later, when I was alone and closed in by the cool walls of Scrim's bunk that I now slept in every night. I wanted to be able to picture the way Ruby's shirt yet again had stains on it, and how he had to sort of bend his legs just a little, to make his body fit into the position I was clearly asking for.