– July –

The clouds hovering in the high afternoon were so dark as to almost belong to the night. Carl, feeling restless, was in the living room looking out the window at the thunderstorm building overhead, annoyed that the cloud cover wasn’t actually cooling down the house at all, and the humidity was making everything feel even stickier than usual. He reached behind him and gave his damp asscrack a deep scratch and belched a bit, before taking another drag off his cigar which he had resting in an ashtray on the windowsill.

Around the fourth, the summer monsoons had started just in time to dampen all of the firework displays in the area, and the refreshing rain after two months dry was quickly displaced by fears of flash floods and lightning strikes. This summer, it seems, was not one for anything done halfway. Carl gave his cock a rub, reaching under his gut to reach it, but he wasn’t even horny. He felt…he felt like he had forgotten something, misplaced it, but he’d misplaced it so long ago now that he couldn’t even remember what it was, only that it was important. When Bud was around, he never really had a chance to do much about the feeling, because Bud usually kept him occupied with food, booze or sex, not that he minded, but when he was alone for these brief moments, when Bud ran to the store or out for take out, Carl would feel uneasy on the couch, and end up wandering the living room or the rest of the house, unsure of what he was doing.

He walked into the kitchen, wondering if he should just eat something. Food had become his filler over the past month–if he had nothing else to do, he could always eat, and he loved it. His gut had gone from what he’d thought of as huge at the beginning into a true apron. Two weeks ago was the last time he could remember being able to see his cock, and over the last few days in particular it was becoming a bit too much effort to jack off even, and he usually had to beg Bud to play with his cock for him when they were fucking, something Bud mocked him for ceaselessly, but he’d usually do it if he pleaded enough. Still, he wasn’t hungry, and he foraged through the fridge and pantry, grazing a few chips and some bits of candy here and there, but he wasn’t satisfied.

He walked back into the living room and as he did he passed by the staircase, and came up short. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d gone upstairs. He and Bud had fucked in his bedroom once or twice a while back, but…but hell, he hadn’t slept in his own bed in almost a month. In fact, it felt more like that was Bud’s room, to him now, but that wasn’t right. It was his house after all, not Bud’s, but he was having a hard time suddenly imagining what it might be like living alone. He was uncertain when exactly Bud had moved into his house, but unofficially he was Carl’s roommate–well, his boyfriend really, he might as well just admit it.. First he was just staying over on occasion, bringing in more and more of his things as he did, slowly filling up the house, and then he simply never left again one day, sleeping in Carl’s old master bedroom while Carl slept on the couch most nights, passing out after drinking buckets of cheap beer, and usually after several hours of Bud using him however he wanted.

Carl grabbed the banister and started hauling himself upstairs, but it ended up taking more effort than he’d expected. How heavy was he now, anyway? He can’t remember the last time he’d weighed himself, but at his last doctor visit, he’d been 180 pounds or so. He certainly wasn’t that small anymore, and if he had to guess, he’d put himself around 250 or so, right? The truth was that he simply didn’t know. He was just bigger. He knew there was a scale in the bathroom, under the sink, and as he rested halfway up the flight of stairs, listening to another grumble of thunder outside, he started to feel anxious, and he had to fight off a full scale panic. He had no idea what had triggered it, but he took deep inhales off his cigar for a minute to calm down, and then resumed his climb to the second floor, finally reaching the top in several minutes, when it used to take him ten seconds flat.

The hallway was littered with Bud’s clothes, and Carl took a moment to smell the stale, humid air, feeling his cock shiver at the musk. It smelled like home, it smelled like him even. He lifted his arm up and took a deep smell of himself, and realized his passing thought was true–he and Bud did smell the same, that same scent of heavy musk and stale beer which had so attracted him to him at first…hadn’t it? Or had he thought it was disgusting? It seemed so fuzzy now, and it didn’t really matter. Still, he should probably get some clothes of his own, because he’d simply been wearing all of Bud’s cast offs and none of them were in particularly good shape, and he was so fat that many didn’t even fit. He was wearing a pair of clammy, jersey boxers stretched tight over his thighs and ass, and the wifebeater he had was stained with cigar ash, food and sweat, with one hole in the breast large enough that his moob tended to hang out of it if he did nothing.

He went into the upstairs bathroom, and the place was filthy, and stank of piss and shit. The shower was still in pieces, but he found it hard to care. If he’d already gone this long without a shower, what harm was there in going even longer? he obviously didn’t need them. He paused at the sink and looked himself over in the mirror, a bit disgusted by himself. His hairline had receded back past the crown of his head, and the majority of his hair was now grey. He looked older than Bud now even, and the mustache didn’t really help. At Bud’s insistence he had started growing out a horseshoe around his mouth, and the white hairs on his lip were already staining yellow with smoke. He looked old, and he looked tired. What had gone so wrong? Shaking his head, he dug around under the sink and found the scale, turned it on and stepped on it. He couldn’t read the number past his gut, so he had to step back off it quickly before the number disappeared, and he couldn’t believe his eyes the first time, so he did it again, and then again.

“Three hundred and sixty-nine?” he said to himself. “Three hundred and sixty nine pounds?”

He managed to get the scale up off the floor, figuring it had to be calibrated wrong, or measuring kilograms, or something. That couldn’t be right, it just couldn’t be. He threw the scale back under the sink and left the bathroom, sucking on his cigar nervously, but rather than go back downstairs, he went down the hall towards Bud’s room, but as he did he passed by a room he hadn’t used in weeks. He couldn’t even remember what it was for, actually. He opened the door, and felt it coming back to him–it was his office.

About a month ago, Bud had told him he was going to paint it over a few days, and suggested Carl just take a brief vacation from work. Carl hadn’t really protested, because it had been really hard for him to get much of anything done, but he’d completely forgotten about it, and it looked like Bud had too. The furniture was all shoved into the middle of the room, arranged so he couldn’t even get to the computer, which was unplugged, and while tarp was laid out and the walls taped, nothing had been painted, aside for one wall of primer. But his work, his job, his clients–he’d been awol for almost an entire month. He’d had deadlines, consultations…what had he done? What had he been doing?

He felt like he was going to throw up, and the panic which had hammered into him suddenly on the stairs minutes before rammed into him again. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. He was fucked–just absolutely fucked. All of his credibility, all of his customer base–if it hadn’t evaporated yet, he would never be able to salvage this. A computer meltdown? An illness? He didn’t have an excuse, he couldn’t think of anything to even say, and all he wanted to do was gorge and drink himself into a stupor, and beg Bud to fuck him when he got home. That wasn’t a solution though, that was the problem. This had all started with these damn renovations, this had all started with Bud. The anger that hit next was so unexpected, that when he punched the wall and his hand disappeared into the plaster, he just stared at it for a moment, and then pulled it out of the hole he’d made, and stared at his bloody knuckles, and then punched the wall again, and then he marched into Bud’s room, and started hurling the things he’d brought with him out the window and onto the front lawn, where it had just started to rain.

“You fucker!” he shouted into the storm, “You ruined my fucking life!”

Bud drove up in his truck and parked on the sidewalk, just in time to see a heap of clothes fly from the bedroom window and fall with the rain onto the walk and the lawn, and he got out and walked up underneath the window, and shouted up, “Carl, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Fuck you!” Carl shouted down, “Fucking–fuck!” He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t even look at him, and he grabbed a glass ashtray and chucked it at Bud’s head. He dodged to the side, and the ashtray struck the lawn and stuck in the ground, like a coin on it’s side, the wet, sludgy ash clumping on the grass. “Fuck!”

Bud went up to the front door, and Carl realized he could get into the house, and he knew he had to get down there and lock the door, but this fucking body, this shitty fat fucking body couldn’t do anything. He got to the top of the stairs as Bud got to the bottom, and they started at each other for a moment, Carl huffing and red in the face. “Carl, what the fuck are you doing,” Bud asked.

“You…I don’t…” Carl said, trying to unravel the bundle of emotions and humiliation in his chest enough to force out the words he suddenly couldn’t formulate. “You…you did something. You fucked up my whole life!” Carl shouted. “What the fuck did you do to me? I weigh…I weight, three hundred and seventy pounds, Bud. I weighed one hundred and eighty when I hired you. Where in the fuck…how in the fuck did I gain three hundred pounds in two months? How in the fuck Bud?”

“A hundred eighty? Are you fucking with my Carl?” Bud said, “You’ve been a fucking fatass since the day we met! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Carl just stared at him. He’d expected denial, he’d expected…he didn’t know what he’d expected, but not that.

Bud pressed the silence, “Get out there, and pick up my fucking clothes, you fucking nutter.”

“No,” Carl said, “I want you out. I want you out of my fucking house. I want you out of my room, I want you to leave and never fucking come back, I never want to see you again.”

“You don’t fucking mean–”

“Yes I fucking mean it! Don’t fucking try and tell me what I fucking think!” Carl shouted, spit flying down the stairs, and then he was crying, and he couldn’t stop. He’d run out of anger, and he just collapsed into the top step, and when Bud tried to pull him close, he lashed out, hitting at him, but Bud just shoved his arms down to his sides, and then his head was against Bud’s familiar chest and he was sobbing, and he didn’t even know why anymore, he couldn’t even remember.

Bud didn’t let go, he just held him close as Carl sobbed, letting it out, and waited it out, waited for him to exhaust himself, and then he asked him what had happened, and Carl told him what he’d done, and how he’d been feeling. The restlessness, the forgetful feeling that had been haunting him, the anxiety and panic. How he’s weighed himself, and the unbelievable result, his office, his work neglected, and when he finished his story, Bud just pulled him closer, and said, “God, you’re such a fuckup.”

Carl had bared his heart to Bud for a moment, and that single phrase was enough to cut him even deeper than he could immediately grasp. He couldn’t even speak.

“You’ve always been a fuckup Carl, you know that. You should have never tried to do all of this without me. Running a business, are you fucking with me? Of course it was going to turn out like this, you just aren’t capable, Carl.”

“I…I was doing fine before…before…”

“No you weren’t,” Bud said, “This house was falling apart. Hell, I’ve just barely been able to get it put back together, but you were living in a fucking sty, bro. You were a mess! You can’t even work a computer, much less run a business.”

“I did to have a business! It was…it was…” Carl said, but he couldn’t quite figure out what he had been doing, “It was design…design something.”

“Don’t lie to me Carl.”

“No, no it–”

“Carl,” Bud said, pulling away so he could look him in the eye, “You’re my brother Carl, you’re my brother, and I love you, but you gotta stop this. You have to stop living in these fucking fantasies. You have to face the fact that you’re in way over your head. You have to trust me, and you have to let me help you.”

“But…but my work…my fucking life…” Carl said.

“You don’t have a fucking life, Carl. You fucking live on my couch!”

“It’s my fucking couch! This is my fucking house, and I fucking want you out!”

Carl started beating Bud back, and frustrated, Bud grabbed Carl around the neck and pushed him down, shoving him against the hallway floor, looming over him. “Not anymore, you fucked this all up Carl, you fucked it up–you. You ruined yourself, you did all of this. You fucking need me, you fucking pig, you’re fucking worthless.”

Carl still fought him, and Bud released him, and thought for a moment, and then got up and went into the office. Carl saw where he was going, and fought himself back up to standing, and hurried after him, pushing through the doorway in time to see Bud grab the desktop monitor, and hurl out the open window and into the back yard, where he heard it smash to bits in the rain. “No!” Carl said, but while he tried to stop him, Bud shoved him back against the wall, grabbed the computer tower, and chucked that out too, and Carl just slumped to the carpet and sobbed.

“You made me do that, Carl!” Bud said, standing over him, “You made me do that, you fucking piece of shit, you made me smash my own fucking computer!”

“You’re…you’re a…” Carl started to say, but he just sobbed, not at all certain what to believe, and Carl knelt down and wiped his tears from a cheek, Carl flinching away, and when Bud kissed him he didn’t resist, and when Bud started kneading his heavy, sweaty moobs, he moaned and thrust his chest up, closer to him, his cock hard against the bottom of his fat. He let Carl fuck his face against the wall, let him ram his cock hard against him, slamming the back of his head into the wall roughly, neither of them speaking, but the horniness was overwhelming him again, and when Bud grabbed him by the hand and pushed him down the hall into the bedroom, Carl went, discarding Bud’s used boxers as he walked, bending over the side of the bed like Bud liked, spreading his legs apart, giving him his ass, and Bud took it, he took it raw, and it hurt like that first time, but Carl, for some reason, he knew he deserved it, and he heard himself say as Bud fucking him, “I’m sorry, Bud, I’m sorry…” over and over, but Bud didn’t say anything back.

He finished with a grunt and pulled out of Carl’s and then said, “Get out–fucking get out of my room, you fat piece of shit,” and Carl did. He left, suddenly certain that he had been in the wrong in all of this, but not entirely sure why he felt that way. Crying, he went downstairs, and with his hands shaking, lit a cigar and chugged a beer. Bud had done so much for him, hadn’t he? And…and he’d just…what had he done? He started out in horror at the piles of crap he’d thrown into the yard, and rushed out, picking up everything that the high wind hadn’t swept off down the street. He wanted to dry the wet clothes, but the washer and dryer had been broken for weeks now, and so he hung them up around the living room and kitchen, and the he looked out the sliding glass door at the shattered computer, and couldn’t even recall why it had been so important to him, and drank himself to sleep on the couch.

He woke up with a hangover more severe than usual, but he wasn’t sure if that was because he could still clearly recall the argument from the night before in all of its detail, but when he thought about it now, he couldn’t believe what he’d done. What in the world had possessed him to behave like that in front of Bud? He sat up on the couch, and spotted an unopened beer on the coffee table, and chugged it back, trying to chase the feeling of horror away, and it was only after he’d chucked the empty can away across the room that he noticed the tattoos, and he just stared down at his arms and gawked for a moment.

They were both covered in full sleeves, and getting a closer look at them, he saw that his left arm was done in a smoke motif, littered with cigars and ashtrays, and his right arm looked more like some sort of liquid pouring down all the way to the top of his wrist, and he saw that on his shoulder he had a huge beer can pouring it down his entire arm, and he didn’t even know how to feel about it. On one level, shouldn’t he feel ashamed? But why? He did love cigars, and he did love beer, right? On his gut he saw something else written in thick, black letters, and he got up and went to the mirror, and saw written in bold lettering, “FAT, DUMB, LAZY and PROUD.”

He laughed, looking at it, but it was true–he was proud of it, wasn’t he? He rubbed his gut, feeling how big it was, and he really did love it. Why had he been so freaked out by the weight last night? There was nothing wrong with being this big, why should he fucking worry about what other people might think, so long as he liked it? Well, he did care what Bud thought–he cared what Bud thought about him a lot, he realized, and the shame of how he’d acted threatened to overwhelm him again. He had to do something to make up for how he’d acted, he had to…he didn’t know.

He lit his first cigar of the day and thought about getting something to eat, but he really wasn’t hungry. Instead he went around the room and checked on Bud’s stuff that he’d recovered the night before, seeing how it was coming along. The clothes were still pretty wet, but nothing had been broken or destroyed at least. He finished his inspection, and then tried to figure out what to do next, when he realized what he should do–he should make Bud breakfast. That would show him that he was sorry, and that he’d been wrong the night before, and that he just wanted everything to go back to normal.

He dug around in the pantry and found some pancake mix, and then in the fridge, finding some eggs, but then had to spend five or ten minutes trying to figure out the directions on the back of the package. He couldn’t really seem to focus, and it was like as soon as he read a sentence, he would forget what he’d read in the last one, and reading was hard. The words swam in front of him, and he couldn’t quite piece some of the words together, trying to sound some of them out, but he was flummoxed. He ended up just pouring some of the mix in a mostly clean bowl with some eggs, milk and oil, but the result seemed way too runny to be right. Still, he pressed on, and found a frying pan, but he kept forgetting to check the pancakes, and before long he just had a stack of burnt, thin cakes piling up on a dirty plate, and he heard footsteps upstairs, and Bud call down, “Is something burning? Fuck CJ, what the fuck have you done this time?”

Carl didn’t know what to do, and so he just stepped back from the stove and when Bud came into the kitchen, he stammered, “Bud I…I jus’ wanted tah make ya breakfast, bro. Look, I’m sorry ‘bout last night, man, I don’ know what I was doin’ it was jus’ a mess man.”

Carl listened to himself, and he sounded like a bumbling idiot, slurring some of the words, his voice deep and raspy from the smoke, and he just felt this huge wave of shame well up over him, and he tried not to start crying in front of Bud, who just looked from Carl to the stove, at the lumpy, runny pancake mix, and the black stack next to the stove, and he sighed. “CJ…”

“God, I know, I’m a fuck up, alright?” Carl said, “I know, I can’ even make ya a fuckin’ batch a pancakes right. I’m just a fuckin’ piece a shit.”

Bud walked over and pulled him into a tight hug, and Carl let him, “Look, I’m here for you CJ, I’m your brother–I’ll always be here for you, but you just gotta…you gotta stop trying so hard. You just aren’t what you thought you were, you know? You’re just a fat loser, living on his brother’s couch, no job, an alcoholic, and when you accept that, when you realize that, it’ll be better, alright?” and then he chuckled, “and maybe leave the cooking to me? You know, someone who can read a recipe?”

“I can read a recipe!” Carl insisted, “That one was just confusing.”

“CJ, you dropped out of school in the eighth grade, you can’t even read a fucking book.”

“I didn’t, I mean, I went to college, I was…I…” Carl said, but while he thought he was telling the truth, he couldn’t actually scrounge up any facts to back up what he was claiming. He couldn’t remember the name of the college, hell, he couldn’t even remember the name of his high school. “Well, you didn’t do much better, you dropped out at sixteen,” he added defensively, not entirely sure how he knew that about Bud, but he knew it was the truth.

“Ha, well, you have me there. Still, why don’t we start over with pancakes, eh? I don’t really want those.”

Carl nodded, and helped Bud clean up, and then sat down at the table, watching his brother make these perfect pancakes, just a bit amazed at him. He was the big brother after all, he should be the one in charge, but he was just hopeless most of the time. Even that didn’t seem right to him–Bud wasn’t his brother. But he could remember them growing up together, he could remember the first time he’d begged Bud to fuck him, when he was in his twenties and Bud was just seventeen. Carl stood up suddenly from the table, in the middle of one of his panic attacks, feeling like he’d suddenly realized he was in a cage a bit too small for him, and Bud hurried over, shouting the name CJ at him a few times before slapping him across the face, bringing Carl around to him.

“Why the fuck are you calling me CJ?” Carl shouted, “My name is Carl, man, why…”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve always gone by CJ.”

“But…but my last name doesn’t even start with ‘J’…”

“We have the same last name, bro, Johnson. We’re brothers.”

“No…no, I…that’s not.”

“CJ!” Bud shouted at him, and slapped him again, “Fucking stop it! Quit it with this fucking fantasy you fucking insist on trying to live! You don’t own this house, you don’t have a fucking job, you don’t have a fucking life! Fucking shut the fuck up, and quit playing these fucking games!” He shoved CJ back into the chair, and went over to the stove, cussing, “You made me fucking burn one, you piece of shit…”

“Sorry…sorry…” Carl muttered, and just stayed silent, looking down at his arms and gut, at his tattoos that he’d had for years, even though he couldn’t remember having them last night. Looking over at his brother cooking breakfast for him that he’d completely forgotten about, and wondered what was wrong with him. What had he been doing? It felt like he’d been in the most beautiful dream–he’d been thin, successful, ambitious, everything he should have been, and he was slowly waking up into a reality which was none of those things, and somehow the dream felt more real to him than his actual life, and he wanted to fall back asleep, he just wanted to go back to the dream, but now that he knew it wasn’t real, now that he knew it was a lie, he couldn’t even get there.

The two of them ate breakfast, mostly in silence, Carl trying to think about what was happening, and about what was real, and he couldn’t even imagine what Bud was thinking about. After breakfast, Bud said he was going out for a bit, and Carl settled onto the couch, watching TV and masturbating, discovering he had a PA like his brother’s through his cock now. It was disturbing finding it, because again, he couldn’t remember getting it, but it felt like it had been there forever, and it was…it was hot, having it, and he came two or three times, fantasizing about his brother, like he always had, all of his life, and as another storm developed in the afternoon, he started to wonder where Bud had gone, and part of him even started to worry that he might have been abandoned. He was so relieved when Bud’s truck pulled up, that a knot of worry he hadn’t even noticed building up in him immediately released, and he didn’t know what he would do without him. What would he do? He was just a hopeless loser.

Bud came in the house with a small bag, and he told Carl that they needed to have a talk, and so Carl plopped down on the couch, and Bud thought for a moment, before he spoke. “CJ…I need to know that what happened last night will never happen again.”

“It won’t,” Carl said immediately, “It won’t I promise it won’t, I swear.”

“I can’t trust you CJ, I can’t trust you if you won’t listen to me. If you keep insisting on these fantasies, if you keep trying to lie to me.”

“I’m not…I’m not lying…”

“That’s what I mean, I can’t have you here, CJ, I can’t have you say things like that, and still keep you here.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Carl said, “Are…are you throwing me out? Please, please Bud, I’m sorry, I’ll do my best, I will. I can’t…I can’t live without you, I need you, I’m fuckin’ hopeless on my own, I can’t even get a job, I have nowhere tah go…”

“But I can’t have you fucking up my life, and fucking up my stuff.”

“I don’t know what came over me Bud, I don’t. But it won’t happen again, I promise.”

“How can I believe you CJ? How can I believe you, when you try to tell me we aren’t brothers? When you can’t even remember that you haven’t ever, not once in your life, ever asked to be called Carl. I mean, I feel like I don’t even know who you are sometimes, like you’re a completely different person.”

“I…I feel like that too…sometimes.”

“That’s a problem CJ. That’s a really big problem. Look, I know you aren’t always happy with who you are, but where’s the brother I remember man? Where’s the brother who loved life, and loved drinking and smoking? He was so fun man, what the fuck happened to him?”

“I don’ know! I don’ even remember, I don’ know…”

Bud just sighed, and then pulled something out of the bag, a two inch wide strip of leather which Carl saw was a collar, and he was confused. “I need you to trust me Bud. I need you to trust me more than you trust yourself. I need you to believe what I say, more than what your own head says. I need you to do that. I need you to do that, or I can’t let you stay here.”

“I…I don’t…”

“I need you to remember all of it CJ, I need to remember what you promised me. I need you to trust me like you used to, before all of this bullshit happened, before you went fucking crazy.”

“I’m not crazy.”

Bud just stared at him, and Carl looked away from him, sheepishly. He had been pretty crazy last night, even he could admit that. Still, he’d had a good reason, right? Even if he couldn’t quite remember what it was…

“Bud…I’m sorry, I don’t know, I’m just so confused.”

“Do you remember that first time, when you came into my room? Dad was passed out on the couch, and you were living with us, do you remember what you asked me to do?”

“I asked you to fuck me.”

“No, you asked me for more than a fuck, I didn’t even know how to react. You asked me…you asked me to own you, CJ. You told me you wanted to be my slave, that you wanted me to collar you, and fuck you, and you were so drunk man. I fucked you, and it was awesome, I know, but I wasn’t…I didn’t know about all the rest, and you never mentioned it again. You were back on the road, or Dad kicked you out, and I didn’t see you again for a while.”

“I don’t…I don’t remember that, but I was…pretty drunk that night,” he said, blushing.

“Do you still want it?”

Carl just stared at his brother, not sure how to answer. He hadn’t…he hadn’t thought about it, he didn’t know what to say, but…but looking at that collar hanging in Bud’s hand, he gulped and felt his cock start to harden. “I don’t know.”

“You’d be my slave, CJ. I would fucking own you. You’d do what I say, when I say it. You’d believe what I tell you, even if you think otherwise. If I say something is wrong, you trust me first, and your own head second. I’ll keep you safe, CJ. I will, I swear, but sometimes you scare me, when you get lost in these fantasies. I feel like I should have just said yes all those years ago, but I didn’t but here I am, I’ll be your master CJ, do you still want it?”

“If I say no, do I have to leave?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s…it’s not really a choice is it? I mean…I mean, where else would I go, Bud?”

“I don’t know, but this is my offer. You wanted this, this was your idea CJ. I’m just trying to give you what you want, I’m trying to be the best brother I can be, but do you trust me? Do you really want to be with me?”

“Yes! Yes, I do, but…but I…”

“Don’t do this to me CJ, don’t make me throw you out.”

“I’m not…”

“You’d be homeless, you’d probably just end up sucking cock in some alley behind a gay bar, is that what you want?”

Carl was crying now. He didn’t know what to say, and his cock was completely hard now, and he couldn’t look away from the collar, imagining what it might feel like around his fat neck, “Can…can I try it on?” he said, “Just…just try it, see what it feels like.”

“No. If it goes on, it stays on,” Bud said, and pulled out a small padlock, “It stays on, and only I can decide if it ever comes off.”

Carl felt the panic in him start rising up like bile. He wanted to scream, he wanted to throw something, he wanted to beg, he wanted to get fucked harder than Bud had ever fucked him before, he wanted his dream back, his fantasy, his old life, but it would never come back, this was what he had to deal with, this was his life, and he couldn’t be on his own, he couldn’t be alone again, and the word fell out of his mouth, “Yes, yes, please Bud, be my master, please. I trust you, I do, more than I trust myself. I can’t…I can’t take this, please, just do it.”

Bud walked around the coffee table, and Carl was shaking where he sat, but he lifted up his chin, allowing Bud to wrap the leather around his neck, and he shivered as Bud pulled it tight–a bit too tight for him to ever forget he was wearing it, and then padlocked it on, and with that click, it felt both like he had been trapped and freed from a prison at the same time, and he leaned into Bud’s gut while his brother rubbed his head. He’d made the right choice, he knew he had, but it still scared him to death.

Bud grabbed his collar in both hands and pulled Carl’s face down, where he found his brother’s hard, dribbling cock, and he opened wide for it, letting his brother face fuck him on the couch, listening as Bud talked about what he was going to do to him, and how happy he was.

“You don’t have to worry anymore, CJ. I’ll take care of you. You won’t have to worry about fucking up your life anymore.”

“Gonna have to get you some leather gear, eh? Dress you up like some tough biker and then parade you around on a leash. Gotta get you some dildos too, keep that hole of yours filled all the time.”

“I know you’re scared, but it’s gonna be like second nature to a loser like you. Just let me do all the thinking, make all decisions. You’ll be your happy-go-lucky self again before you know it.”

He was going to be happy wasn’t he? Carl felt the panic start to slowly unknot itself, and this time he actively willed it away. It wasn’t important, what had all of that panic and anger gotten him? He’d almost lost Bud, he’d almost ruined his life even more than he had already. Why couldn’t he just he happy? Why couldn’t he just be thankful for what he had? He looked up at Bud from where he was, watching the smoke curl away from the end of his brother’s cigar, the little brother who had always been better at living than he was, and he realized that all he wanted was to be like him. As carefree as him, as happy as him. He couldn’t be as smart as he was, but maybe that was ok. Bud was smart enough to think for both of them now–all Carl needed to worry about was making sure his brother was happy, and obeying his every command. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but because it would make them both happy.

Bud, apparently tired of his mouth, pulled his cock out, and yanked Carl up by the collar, spun him around, and then shoved him forward so he bent over, his ass ready for Bud’s cock, and Carl whimpered as the shaft ran up and down his sweaty ass crack, and he heard a low rumble of thunder from outside. “Do you want me to fuck your hole, slave?”

“Ye–Yes…” Bud said, but let out a sharp cry as Bud smacked his ass cheek hard.

“That is not how you address me pig, try again.”

“Yes sir, please…please fuck me sir.”

“You want me to fuck you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then repeat after me. ‘I am a giant fuck up.’”

Carl gulped, his mouth dry, and he replied, “I am a giant fuckup,” and whimpered as the head of his brother’s cock slipped into his ass and stayed there. He tried to push back, but Bud retreated, keeping just the head in.

“I am a giant fuck up, and I owe my brother everything for being kind enough to rule me and control my life.”

Carl felt a tear roll down, but he said the phrase back to Bud, “I am a giant…a giant fuck up, and I owe my brother everything–everything for being kind enough to rule me and control my life.” He was rewarded with another inch of his cock into his ass.

“I am an illiterate, filthy dumbass–an obese, cigar smoking, alcoholic slob, and I love it. It’s the only way I want to live.”

Bud drove his cock in a little deeper, and reached around to fondle Carl’s balls. “I am an ill–illiterate, filthy dumbass–an obese, cigar smokin’, alcoholic slob, and I love it, sir. I love it, it’s the only way I wanna live.”

“My name is CJ Johnson. My brother Bud is my keeper and my owner. I’m his slave, his whore, and his pig.”

Bud’s cock was all the way in now, “My name is CJ…My name…” he said, but couldn’t get the rest of it out, and Bud reached around him, grabbed his nipples and gave them a sharp twist, making Carl cry out.

“Say it you fucker, say it, or I take my cock out and you leave right now, naked.”

“My name…My name is CJ Johnson. My…My brother Bud is my keeper. I’m his slave,” Bud started thrusting his cock, “his whore,” too late, Carl felt what was coming, he could feel his ball churning. He tried to hold it off, “his…his…fuck!” He was cumming, his cock was pumping cum all over the couch, “I’m sorry Bud, I’m sorry sir, I–”

“You fucking–god damn it, you’re fucking hopeless, you fucking piece of shit!” Bud said, smacking Carl’s ass as he started fucking him harder, “Don’t think you won’t pay for that, don’t think you won’t fucking regret that.”

“I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry…” Carl said, but Bud shoved his head down, muffling him in the couch cushions and fucked him fast, pounding it in with a few final jerks as he came, and then he pulled out his still leaking cock and started pounding Carl’s ass with his hand, making him cry out in pain with each spank. Bud made him count them out, and when he started crying from the pain, Bud told him he was adding twenty more for being a pussy.

“Man the fuck up and take it pig!”

“I can’t fucking hear you. Fucking count! You can count right, or are you so stupid you didn’t learn that either?”

“You did this! You fucking made me do this, you son of a bitch, so quit your blubbering and take it.”

When he finished, he let Carl stand up, and then pulled him into a hug, Carl not sure what to feel anymore, but what finally came through, in his chest where that knot of anger and fear and panic had been, was love. This overwhelming love for his brother, and he hated that he’d disappointed him yet again. “I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry–it won’t happen again, I swear, I promise bro–sir. I promise.”

“I can’t do this for you CJ, I can’t fix you up if you don’t let me help you, if you don’t do what I say.”

“I will, I promise, I will.”

Bud kissed him, and Carl kissed him back, and then Bud grabbed his hand and pulled him upstairs, where they fucked again on his bed, and when Carl woke up, he was still there, his brother’s cock still in his ass, and he stayed still, not wanting to wake him up, and not wanting the moment to end. However, Bud was awake behind him, and smiling, looking at his brother’s back, where a new tattoo had appeared overnight:

~My Brother is My Keeper~

CJ gave a whimper and pushed closer to Bud, and he pulled his brother tighter to him, as tightly as he could, and didn’t let go for a long while.