Decoding Desires

*Hey y'all, I promise that there are more Ben and D'Metrius chapters on the way soon. I have two more chapters of Cody's story that I'm currently editing first.

This chapter contains consenting gay male BDSM including spanking and restraint.

Hope you enjoy.

Penny***

"It's not that I don't," Lee hedges. I'm on my lunch break and Lee's just gotten off his shift for the week. "But, I'm..."

"If you don't wanna go, just say it. Is it cause of, I mean, are you, um. Like, do you have other plans? Or, cause of my family or something?"

He sighs. I'm feeling like shit. Somehow Jon-no-h is still on the freaking jobsite, but he's not my 'apprentice' anymore or I'd be hitting the internet hard with my resume. Still, just him being here on site is pissing me off, and now Lee is being weird about swimming on Saturday, which I thought was a solid plan.

Until it wasn't. "No, not your family. I'm, it's me."

"Do you not know how to swim? There's a shallow end. Or, you don't have to get in the pool. Carrie wants to have a small party's all. She's got a really nice patio set and a brand new pool, and she wants to show it off."

"No, I can swim," Lee says, sounding upset. "I just, ah, not a fan."

"You don't have to-"

"I know," he says, sounding irritated. "I just don't... Can we just drop it?"

"Sorry," I say, unnecessarily, but I don't know what else to say. "What'd I do?"

"Huh?" Lee asks, kind enough to sound legitimately confused.

"What'd I do, to make you not wanna go anymore?" I'm already actively disappointed in myself for unknown reasons, but I've got enough low self esteem I can find several things it could be.

"What?" he barks, and I cringe. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"You didn't seem like, you know, it felt like you wanted to go last night, but now you're all weird, so it must be something I did." It sounds pissy and I hate myself for it, but it's so freaking hot today and I'm dying, sweating like a pig. Combine that with Jon-no-h, and whatever I did to make Lee upset, and I'm unable to keep from snapping. He doesn't deserve it, so I try to reign it in a bit. "Like, I'm sorry if I did something-"

"Stop, Cody. It's not you." He sighs again, heavy and drawn out.

A tap on my car window scares the shit out of me and I jump, slamming my head against the window as I try to stick my head out the door like an idiot. Bill looks at me, a little startled by my stupidity, but not more startled than me. "Fuck!"

"Oi, Cody!"

I roll down the window. "What?" I snap at Bill. I look at the clock, I still have five minutes of lunch left. The ninety one degrees with seventy five percent humidity practically licks me in the face and I'm all sorts of pissy.

"Cool your jets, Myers," Bill snaps back. "Donnie needs a hand with some faulty wiring."

"I'm on break," I growl, ready to roll the window back up. His hand over my car door stops me, though.

"You gonna be okay if she electrocutes herself cause you were on break when she asked you for help?"

Fuck him, he knows how to press my buttons. I'm sure Donnie wouldn't mind waiting for five minutes, but Bill's still irritated at me for the whole 'I'll quit if your loser nephew is my apprentice' thing, so he's been making sure to let me know he's not over it. It's not my fault he got saddled with his brother's inability to pull out in time.

I'm so hot right now from not saying any of that that I'm surprised that I haven't already spontaneously combusted. "Fine," I growl. I shut the car off and jump out, leaving my window down as I slam my car door shut.

"Mind your manners, Myers," Bill barks at me.

"Fuck you," I snap back. It's too fucking hot for this.

"Whatever, asshole. Just do your fucking job," Bill replies. "Too fucking hot for this." It's like he's reading my mind.

I watch him leave for a second then stomp over to Donnie. She at least has the consideration to look apologetic when I get there, and honestly it's a good thing she asked for me, cause she was definitely going to electrocute herself. The site we're on is fucked to hell, a 'too good to be true' project sold to a naive city official. I'm gonna guess that the dude who hired the goons before us hadn't even looked the company up first.

I did. There's a ton of terrible contractors who take jobs, require payment in advance, put in a few days of work, usually shitty work at that, then bail with the money never to be seen again. Rinse and repeat.

We shut off power to the whole side of the building because the breaker box is so poorly wired that we can't figure out where the power is coming from. Eventually we rip out all of the original wiring, which wasn't even what I was supposed to be doing on site, but nothing can get done in this part of the building until it's fixed.

It's about two and a half hours into this little fiasco that I realize I never ended the call with Lee. Fuck. He probably thought I was mad at him, which I wasn't, if anything I was just disappointed in whatever I did to upset him, but it probably seemed like I hung up on him or something, and then I was so upset I actually left my phone in the car.

In retrospect it was probably good that I left the window down or my phone probably would've caught on fire, too.

Just fuck. I wanted to take a break and check my phone, but I couldn't handle it if Lee broke up with me in a text or something, so I didn't. I just trudged through, sweating and covered in sawdust and bits of rubber shavings from wiring, until the half of the building Donnie was working in was ready to actually be worked. To be fair, Donnie helped me pull wire, which was super nice of her, union rules are pretty clear that she could've just watched me until I was done.

I'm too afraid to check my phone when I get to the car, feeling like Schrodinger's cat. If I never check my messages I'll never know how he broke up with me. I hurt myself by rethinking everything I said to him last night on the phone, trying to figure out how I offended him, but I can't find anything truly egregious. Maybe I teased him too hard? I'd wanted to egg him on a bit so I'd played up being his Brat, but he seemed distracted and hadn't taken the bait, so I let it go. That's the only thing I can think of, but it doesn't feel right.

The sky is boiling above me as I'm driving home, the clouds a particular purple grey color that threatens a good summer thunderstorm. I see a purple-white streak flash across the sky so close to my car I actually hit the breaks. It stains my vision for a few seconds with the after image. A second later it's followed by a peal of thunder so loud it shakes my car.

The sky opens up. One second it's not raining, and the next second it's like I'm driving my car through the carwash, just a solid wall of water slamming into my car so hard it's almost deafening. I can't hear the radio at all over the sound of the rain. I pull over and put my car in park, but there's no way I'm turning it off when it's this fucking hot. I seriously just got my balls to stop sweat-sticking to my leg, having made a poor choice in wearing boxers to work today.

The display on my dash changes, catching my attention, since I can't hear it. It's my phone. Lee's calling. My hand hovers over the accept button, but I don't answer it. I'd like to pretend that it's just because it's too loud and I wouldn't be able to hear him, but I'm also a coward. Eventually the call ends and the display goes back to the radio. My heart is hammering, but it's still drowned out by the noise-cancelling rain.

I pull out my phone, feeling insanely guilty. If Lee's calling me he probably didn't break up with me in text. Four text messages. I'm terrified to read them, but I suck it up cause I'm a grown-ass adult who can handle shit. Sometimes.

'Sorry if I got you in trouble at work. I'll call you later.' That was right after I got out of the car. An hour and a half later, according to the time stamp: 'Not upset with you, sorry if I made you feel like it'. I should've been off at four today, the next text from him is marked 4:04. 'Sorry again. Call me?' The last one just came over right after his call. 'Figuring you had to work late. Call me when you get some time'.

Of course I ended up getting out late, but I hadn't had a reason to get out fast, either. Lee was having dinner with one of his friends from high school, apparently they reconnected a few years ago over the internet and they met up once a month or something. I wasn't jealous. Much. Maybe I'd said something that let on how jealous I was last night and that's what upset him? I mean, I'm not jealous of her, I'm just jealous of his time.

I rolled my eyes at myself, he just said in these texts that he wasn't mad at me, but I couldn't let it go. Thunder rumbled overhead, chased by another wicked lightning branch across the sky. The rain pulled back to a nice steady rain, the decibels dropping enough that I could hear the ringing in my ears better.

I watched the lightning light up the sky for a while longer, well after the rain had let up into a gentle pattering on my windshield that my wipers could easily clear away. I'd always been fascinated by lightning, ever since I was a little kid. It calmed me. I leaned back and hit redial, then waited.

"Cody?" Lee asked. He sounded amazing, as usual, but also a little concerned. It made me feel a weird mix of emotions that I might be the cause of his concern. "You there?"

"Yeah," I say after watching another flash branch across the clouds until it found the ground. The boom of a thundercloud drowned out my next words.

"Hey, I can't hear you, are you outside in this?"

He did sound worried, and I felt like an asshole for feeling special. "Nah, in the car. Just sitting on the side of the road until the waterworks let up. Heading home now."

"Yeah. Okay. So, um..."

"Aren't you supposed to be at dinner with Kristin right now?"

"I am, but, um, I wanted to catch you right after work. We didn't finish talking, and I was worried you'd think I was mad at you, which I'm not."

I don't know what to say. "Sorry I hung up on you. Or, um, forgot to hang up. Not on you, I mean, yeah. Just, sorry. It was a day."

He chuckles, but it's more of a reflex response than an actual response. "No worries, I hope you didn't get in trouble cause of me."

I snort. "I'm not in trouble at all, not even sure why you'd think that."

"You told your boss, I assume that was your boss, you said 'fuck you' to him."

I blink a few times in surprise, then laugh. "I'd have been fired my second day on the job if that was the case. Shit, Lee, that's mild compared to some of the shit that's said on a job site."

Lee exhales audibly. "Shit. I totally thought you were upset with me and got in trouble for snapping at your boss."

I'm nodding, amused, but he can't see me. "That kinda shit talking happens all the time when you don't have to worry about the public."

"I guess so." He still sounds worried. "You're off tomorrow?"

"Not anymore, but I've only got a few hours, tops, of work to finish up."

"Oh," he says, sounding disappointed.

"I mean, I can do it whenever," I say, though that's a lie. "I mean, it won't take that long, I'll have it done by eleven, tops. If you wanted to meet up later or something."

There's a pause wide enough to park a bus between us. "Yeah. Okay. Eleven works, I guess."

"Did you, did I fuck up? Did we have plans tomorrow?"

"No, I mean, I just, I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding about Saturday."

"Okay," I reply, mildly confused.

"I just wanted, if you were off, I was gonna see if I could come over tonight."

Fuck the me in the morning who would be tired as fuck. Lee wanted to come over tonight? Like I was gonna pass on that, no matter how exhausted I was in the morning. "You can come over tonight."

"But you have to get up-"

"Lee, please come over whenever you want to, like, I'll make you a key." Too forward, dial it back Cody. "I'm kidding, but seriously, even if you don't want a key I'd love to see you tonight." Fuck, still too forward, but I still haven't invented a time machine to take back stupid shit I've said, which at this point is just lazy of me.

"Are you sure?"

One million percent. This time, though, I think it instead of say it. "Yeah, sure. Whenever you get done you can drop by." Do I sound too eager? I sound too eager. "I mean, whatever." Yeah, that's better.

It's not. Jesus, why couldn't I hold my shit together with Lee?

"No, no, nevermind. You have work. Don't worry about it, we'll, I'll call you later, okay?"

My heart sinks and there's no doubt in my mind I did something, I just can't think of what. Jace's messy kiss and subsequent tantrum on my front lawn from the weekend flashes into my mind. Even after Lee made cleansing love to me, maybe it wasn't enough? Maybe I messed up?

My little man perks up at the memory of how sweet and gentle Lee was with me our first time. I rub myself over my pants, then stop because reasons.

"Lee, seriously, I don't mind."

"Well, I do. I'll call you later, okay?"

I hold back a whimper, my heart is twisting, but I can't let him know, don't want him to think I'm clingy. "Yeah, sure. I'll talk to you later then. Bye."

"Cody," he says, sounding exhausted. For the first time ever, I hate how he says my name, like it takes effort. "I didn't-"

I don't hear what he didn't do, I already hung up. I'm feeling fragile again. Remembering Jace on my lawn. Remembering all the things he said, all the things he called me. Wondering how true they are. Terrified to find out, terrified that sooner or later I'll be right where I was with him barely three months ago now, ass up and pride gone.

My phone vibrates and I can't bear it, I don't look at it. It vibrates two more times, so instead of giving in and checking it, I clean out the spare bedroom, playing the album When The Kite String Pops by Acid Bath over my Google home loud enough that I can't hear anything else. It makes me think about Lee nonstop, which isn't helping, but it's also a fantastic album, so whatever.

I plug my phone in as I'm getting ready for bed. I stayed up way too late, but the spare room, which had a bunch of crap in boxes I'd never unpacked from my many moves before buying this house, was now box free. My trash can was overflowing, but it felt somehow freeing, to be rid of a weird trail of my life that followed me for years, obscured by cardboard.

I refuse to look at the display as I plug it in. I know the alarm is set, I set it when I knew I'd have to go in tomorrow before I left work today. I don't want to see if Lee's texted me or not.

Dammit, we aren't even dating. I don't know what we are. When we're together it's amazing. It's spectacular. I feel like Lee really likes me, like he wants me. Like he gets me. But the times between are pure torture. I'm dead tired, but I also can't sleep. My brain keeps replaying things in my mind. Jace's kiss. The terrible things he said, and how true they feel now. How much I hate how Lee said my name on the phone tonight.

I start overthinking every encounter with him. When we made love he seemed weird for a second. I overanalyze it, trying to parse out what I did, but other than the pre-sex tantrum I threw and me off my meds, I can't think of anything for that particular instance.

I'm back on my meds now, too, but it's been so long since I took them I had to get a televisit with my doctor to get my prescription renewed, so I just started them last night. They usually make me sleepy, and I'm pissed at them for not working tonight. I can't shut my brain off.

I think about all the panic attacks, of how high maintenance I must be. I'm surprised I've even made it this far with Lee. I'm going to reign it in and be on my best behavior around him for the rest of how ever long he's around.

Mind made up, I roll over, but my brain isn't done with me yet. I keep hearing Lee's tone on the phone tonight, the way he sounded exasperated, how it sounded like work when he said my name. I wonder what he was going to say when I hung up.

I'm almost asleep, finally, but then my phone rings. It scares the shit out of me and I'm instantly awake, ready to run, but also feeling kinda nauseous. I'm so disoriented I answer it without looking.

"Cooo-deeee!" My blood runs cold. "Howzz my favorite lil bitch?" I'm frozen in place, I can't hang up, I can't do anything, all I want to do is puke all over everything.

"Fuck."

"Therez my lil bitch," Jace drawls. "You fucking your new piece right now?" He's drunk. I have a sudden craving for a shot and I know it's his fault.

"I'm fucking sleeping, you poorly aborted fetus," I snap, nausea and exhaustion making me super pissy. "I blocked your number."

"I love it when you insult me. Also, Shauna's high as fuck and I stole her phone."

"Bitch, I told you to call him," I hear her yell in the background. They both giggle and I know they are both stoned, too. I remember a time when I would be there with them, high and drunk, loving it all while hating myself at the same time. It seemed fun then, but it makes me feel ill now.

"You both need to grow up," I growl. "It's fucking..." I check the phone, noticing the missed call and text message icons at the top when I do, "two am. I have to work tomorrow, assholes. It's fucking Wednesday night!'

"Thursday morning, if it's after two," Shauna corrects. Fuck this shit. I hang up.

My phone rings again, it's Shauna. I decline it and then set my phone to do not disturb, but I'm wide awake, regretting every decision in my life.

My alarm is jarring, mostly because I don't remember falling asleep, and also I'm tired as fuck. I get up and go through the routine, then head to work. We're behind because this project site was so fucked over by the last contractor that it would have been easier to have just started over than what we were doing by fixing mistakes.

Jon-no-h wanders into my general area and I let loose on him for a super petty infraction. Bill gets all up in my face about my attitude, and I'm suddenly too hot to let it go. We get into a yelling match, then I stomp away and finish my work, simmering in anger. It takes every bit of self restraint I have not to deck Jon-no-h when he wanders into my general area and makes a jackass comment loud enough for me to hear.

He's trying to provoke me, I know it. I don't know why he hates me, other than I wouldn't put up with his bullshit, but I can't let him get to me because I actually like this job most days. But, fuck, he's making it hard. He says something else and I realize he's talking on the phone, a blinking bluetooth earbud, but he's talking about me. He wants me to hear him and we both know it.

I want to beat the babyface off of him. My hands hurt with how hard I'm clenching my fists, and I know he's just being a punk ass, and that my anger isn't all for him, so I try to ignore it. He catches me looking at him and I'm embarrassed, which turns into anger as well, and I'm standing up before I know it.

Donnie is there, somehow, like a freaking guardian angel. Maybe she felt like she owed me from yesterday, which she totally doesn't, but she swoops in and touches Jon-no-h on the forearm and turns on the charm.

I don't know how she's made it this far in construction and stayed as nice as she is, this is a very unforgiving environment for minorities in general, women in specific. Most men treat her like our construction site token lady, and she's pretty enough that no one's complaining about having her around, at least to her face.

It's all shit, because she's a fucking amazing worker. She's smart, good at deadlines, has a good eye for potential problems, and works three times as hard as most men on the site. I'd take Donnie in my corner over most of the guys here any day.