#60
I looked at Donna. She only shrugged in response to the gravity of the situation.
She didn’t look like a woman being offered up. She looked like a willing accomplice—eyes bright, lips curved with a knowing smile, as if this were a private joke she and Rodrigo were sharing at everyone else’s expense. The unconventional nature of their relationship was laid bare in that moment, not cloaked in shame, but carried with cool, practical pride.
“So,” I said slowly, “you want her to get pregnant by another man?”
“We want it to be you,” Rodrigo replied.
Flat. Certain.
“Oh. I see… wait—what?”
The shock I put into my voice was half-hearted at best. In truth, I wasn’t surprised. Donna had mentioned this very thing yesterday, when we were fucking our brains out in the bathroom. I’d laughed it off then, assuming it was just one of her darker jokes.
Apparently, it wasn’t a joke.
Ally, however, looked genuinely blindsided.
“W-what are you talking about?” she demanded.
Rodrigo glanced at Donna, irritation flickering briefly across his otherwise calm expression. “I thought you already told him.”
“I did,” Donna said easily. Then she turned to me, head tilting in mild confusion. “Didn’t I?”
“I thought you were joking,” I replied with a wry smile. My hands were still resting on Ally’s hips, feeling the tension coiled beneath her skin.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was standing here, playing mediator, when every instinct in my body was screaming that I was already far too involved.
“I didn’t hear anything about this,” Ally said. Her voice was low, carefully controlled, but the tremor beneath it was unmistakable. She glared at Rodrigo and Donna. “I don’t care what kind of sick games you want to play, Rod. But don’t drag Alvin into this.”
Rodrigo’s smile didn’t falter. “We’re not playing games, Ally.”
“Serious?” Ally snapped. “You’re asking Alvin to impregnate Donna—who is already registered as your partner! Are you trying to throw him into the fire?”
“We know the consequences,” Rodrigo replied smoothly. “And we still want to try.”
Ally let out a sharp breath. “Why, Alvin? You could ask Mick. Or Lindon.”
“They won’t suffice.”
“Why?”
“Mick is only a D-rank donor. Lindon is a B-rank—adequate, on paper.” Rodrigo shrugged. “But I don’t trust him. And I don’t like him enough to tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” Ally pressed.
“That I’m gay,” Rodrigo said without hesitation. “And that I’m only an E-rank myself.”
“I don’t even have a rank yet,” I pointed out. My thumbs traced slow, absent circles against Ally’s hips, more for her comfort than mine. “If you really want a child, wouldn’t the Semen Donation Program be easier? Especially using your own donated material?”
Rodrigo shook his head. “Impossible. The system would demand an explanation. A partnered woman seeking outside assistance is flagged immediately. And using my donated semen…” His jaw tightened. “It would take too long for her to conceive.”
“Then anonymous donation—”
“Also impossible. Her registered partnership disqualifies her. The bureaucracy is designed to encourage natural production within established pairings.” His gaze hardened. “If they investigate and uncover my shortcomings, it will be the end of me.”
“…Okay,” I said at last, the word heavy on my tongue. “So how does this work? I just… have sex with her until she’s pregnant?”
Rodrigo nodded once. “Precisely. And I have no objection to continued relations afterward. My only condition is that she remains by my side. She will remain my claimed woman.”
He lifted his wine glass and gestured casually toward the silent figure beside him.
Tilly.
She was short, stunningly built, dark-eyed, and had said nothing until now—her expression calm, unreadable.
“The same terms apply to Tilly,” Rodrigo added.
My eyes widened. “You want me to impregnate her, too?”
Rodrigo took a slow sip of his drink, letting the silence stretch.
“Your choice.”
I turned to the women. “And you’re both okay with this?”
Tilly nodded, her cheeks coloring faintly. “I-I am. Though I’m not planning to get pregnant right away…”
Donna, on the other hand, was grinning.
“You should already know my answer,” she said. Then, without warning, she lunged forward and tackled me onto the bed.
“Donna—!” I gasped, turning my head as her lips chased my cheek, my jaw, my neck. “Donna, wait.”
“Wait for what?” she murmured, her voice thick with desire—and triumph. She shifted her weight deliberately, grinding her hips against mine in a way meant to erase any remaining hesitation.
“No need to hesitate, Alvin,” she whispered. “You were so excited about my body yesterday—”
She didn’t get to finish.
Ally grabbed her shoulders and yanked her off me with a force that startled everyone.
Her eyes—usually warm, forgiving—were hard as flint as they locked onto Donna.
“Get off him.”
Donna paused, bracing on my chest, breathing hard. A flicker of irritation crossed her blissed-out expression, like static across a perfect image.
“Ally,” she scoffed. “Don’t be tedious. You heard Rodrigo. This is the arrangement.”
“The arrangement,” Ally repeated, the words dripping with venomous control, “…was a discussion. It was not permission for you to maul him the second the words left his mouth.”
She stepped closer, each footfall deliberate. Her voice dropped, deadly quiet.
“You will unhand him. Now. Donna—while I’m still asking.”
Rodrigo watched the escalation with a quiet sigh. He had already foreseen this outcome. Anyone would have. The risks alone were enough to give pause—Alvin could face severe fines if the agency ever learned of this arrangement. And Ally, ever protective, was never going to accept this without resistance.
He lifted his hand slightly and gave Tilly a near-imperceptible nod.
Tilly, who had been lingering by the door, moved instantly. She crossed the room with practiced speed and wrapped her arms around Ally from behind, pinning her arms with firm precision.
“Tilly?” Ally roared, struggling immediately.
“Calm down, Ally,” Tilly murmured close to her ear, her grip steady but not cruel. “Let’s not make this a bigger mess than it already is.”
“Fuck you—let me go!”
“Ally, darling,” Rodrigo added gently, as if soothing a child, “stand down. You agreed to this arrangement.”
“I didn’t agree to anything!” Ally spat, muscles straining uselessly against Tilly’s hold.
Donna crossed her arms, irritation flashing across her face. “How is this any different from you doing it with me, or him doing it with the others? Why are you acting like this?”
“Fuck you!” Ally snapped back.
I sighed.
Then I moved.
With a practiced motion, I clamped my hands onto Donna’s shoulders and used her own momentum against her. I twisted sharply to the right, executing a clean, controlled pivot.
The rejection of her weight was abrupt.
One second, she was straddling me, breathless and insistent—the next, she was flat on her back against the plush duvet, the air knocked clean from her lungs.
I followed through, pinning her there with my weight. My hands closed around her wrists and pressed them firmly into the mattress beside her head. Not painful. But absolute.
Donna stared up at me, wide-eyed, confusion washing over the lingering heat in her gaze. Whatever dominance she’d assumed moments earlier evaporated under the sudden shift in control.
She gasped—a short, wounded sound.
“Okay,” I said, chest heaving as the adrenaline ebbed into something cold and sharp. “I’m with Ally here.”
Silence snapped into place.
“I didn’t say I was going to do it today.”
I looked over my shoulder at Rodrigo, holding his gaze.
“Rod. I agreed to help. But the timing and execution follow the terms we discussed. If Ally isn’t comfortable, I’m not doing anything.”
At my words, Ally stopped struggling.
She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes lifting to meet mine. Gratitude—raw and unguarded—flickered across her face.
“But Alvin—” Donna began, testing my grip weakly, her voice strained.
“Donna,” I cut in sharply. I eased my weight just enough to make the point without releasing her. “I’m not saying I don’t want to. I’m saying give me time.”
I exhaled slowly.
“You can’t just tell me, mid-coitus, to give you a child and expect me to say yes without thinking. I never imagined becoming a father this soon.”
My grip loosened. I released her wrists. Red marks bloomed against her pale skin, stark and undeniable. I rolled off immediately and sat up on the edge of the bed, the silk sheets suddenly cold against my skin.
“Besides,” I added, forcing levity I didn’t feel as I stood and grabbed a crumpled towel from the floor, “I really don’t have time right now. My sister’s on her way to pick me up. I need to shower and get dressed before she gets here.”
I wrapped the towel around my waist. It felt less like modesty and more like armor.
“And believe me,” I continued dryly, “…if she finds out what we were doing—or why—you’re not going to see me again for a very long time. And this deal is off.”
A choked laugh escaped Ally. She wiped at her eyes as Tilly released her, the tension finally cracking enough for breath to return to the room.
Tilly cleared her throat awkwardly, glancing between Donna and me. “So… we’re tabling this?”
“Yeah,” I said, slinging the towel over my shoulder. “Indefinitely.”
Donna sat up slowly, rubbing at her wrists where I’d held her. She looked like more than someone who’d been chastised—she looked humiliated. When she finally spoke, her voice was small.
“Alvin… I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Ally crossed her arms, a muscle in her jaw ticking. “You think?”
“Ally,” I said quietly, flicking her a look—don’t push this further. She scoffed and turned away, which only made me smile wryly.
I checked the clock on the nightstand. “Anyway, I’ve got maybe twenty minutes or probably less before my sister gets here. And I need at least half of that to pretend this wasn’t the weirdest afternoon of my life.”
Rodrigo, who had been uncharacteristically silent, finally rubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. Okay. We pushed too fast. That’s on me.” His gaze flicked briefly to Donna. “We all got ahead of ourselves.”
Donna nodded, still refusing to meet Ally’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
Ally’s expression softened—just a little—but her posture remained guarded.
A silence settled over the room. The kind that came after a storm, when everyone was still deciding whether it was safe to move.
I looked at all of them and let out a long, steady breath. This wasn’t just about having a child. It was about my refusal to drift along with the comfortable apathy expected of my gender.
I stepped back toward the bed and turned to Donna. Frustration and pleading warred on her face. I reached for her hands, lifting them to my lips and pressing a gentle kiss to her fingers.
“Donna, don’t feel bad,” I said softly. “I haven’t changed my mind about helping. You and Rod are my friends. If you need me, I’ll be there.”
“Alvin…”
“But,” I continued, tightening my grip just slightly, “having sex is easy. Creating a child isn’t. That’s not something I can treat lightly.”
I held her gaze. “A kid is forever. Whether I stay involved or not, that child is still a part of me—walking around the world, tied to us by blood. It changes my life just as much as it changes yours.”
“Alvin, it’s just a favor,” Donna insisted, gently pulling her hands back. “You’re overthinking it.”
“And what do you mean by overthinking?” I asked quietly. The firmness in my voice cut through the room.
Rodrigo opened his mouth, but I lifted a hand, stopping him.
“Rod. When you say that, you’re assuming that once Donna has a child, I’ll wash my hands of everything else. No responsibility. No involvement. Isn’t that what you’re counting on?”
I didn’t wait for his answer. I already knew it.
In this inverted world—where men’s comfort came first—it was normal for us to avoid anything that demanded effort. Childcare especially. Our role, culturally speaking, ended at impregnation. Everything after that belonged to the woman.
Women rarely expected men to stay. Even partners were only required to provide a government-mandated fraction of their income—five, maybe ten percent. A token amount. And yet most men treated even that as an unbearable burden, gladly forgetting the child existed at all.
That was our privilege.
And it was exactly what Rodrigo and Donna were relying on me to accept.
Rodrigo smiled at me, calm and reassuring. “Yes. You don’t need to worry about responsibility. As for—”
“Rod,” I cut in. But I won’t do that. Well, if I say that, I doubt they’ll agree immediately. It might even take a long time to make them understand my stance on this ‘arrangement’. So I said, “We’ll talk about that later.” I paused, then added more gently, “I appreciate that you trust me. And your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks, brother,” Rodrigo said, pushing himself upright.
Then he hugged me.
I stiffened as his chest pressed against mine, the sudden closeness knocking the breath from my lungs. His body was warm—too warm—and the heat seeped through fabric and skin alike. I became painfully aware of everything: his arms around my back, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the faint scent of sweat and metal clinging to him.
Too close.
My nerves jolted as his hip brushed mine, and then—there it was—the subtle, unmistakable pressure of his soft, unaroused length grazing my thigh. It wasn’t intentional. Somehow, that made it worse. The casual intimacy sent a quiet shock through me, my muscles locking on instinct.
Men in this world didn’t hesitate to touch each other. They embraced freely, shared space without restraint, as though physical closeness carried no weight at all.
To me, it felt overwhelming.
I’d never been comfortable touching another man like this—not in this life, not in my previous one. And yet my body betrayed me by registering everything anyway: the warmth, the weight, the inescapable proximity.
My arms stayed rigid for a beat longer. Then, forcing myself to move, I raised one hand and placed it awkwardly against his back. I gave a measured pat—light, hesitant—just enough to signal that I wasn’t rejecting him.
My breathing stayed shallow.
Knowing that Rodrigo liked men only sharpened my awareness, turning every second into a quiet test of endurance. Agh… I groaned inwardly, angling my head away, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tension in my shoulders.
I couldn’t pull away. Not without risking misunderstanding.
Here, refusing a man’s hug was seen as cold—almost cruel. Worse, after he’d trusted me with something so personal, avoiding his touch might look like disgust.
So I endured it.
I stood there, rigid, my hand resting briefly on his back as the warmth lingered between us, counting the seconds until he finally released me with a grateful pat on the shoulder.
Rodrigo looked relieved—lighter, already moving on.
And strangely enough, that made me feel relieved too.
Whether I should feel pity for him as his friend… I wasn’t sure.
But as long as he was happy, I supposed that—for now—that was enough.
