Chapter 2: Strictures and Syllabus

They passed the front desk which possessed a slender male receptionist dressed in a bowtie strung around his neck, a suit vest without shirt, and a swoon-inducing black thong which had a small upper window in the pouch, providing a peek of his manhood’s pink flesh. By all accounts, he would be considered a twink, bordering on femboy, but he carried himself with the attitude of a five-star concierge.

“Canterbury,” Argos said with a snap, again from an unknown hand, “Room Seven-Bravo needs medium diapers and a large mop.”

The cat navigated his screens with delicate keystrokes. “I’ll take care of this myself; it looks like our male housekeepers are all occupied. It appears they may request … deeper services; I am sure I am still clean.”

“Considering the diapers, that might be a disappointment!” returned Argos, his lidless eyes seeming to wink.

“Of course,” Canterbury said with a chuckle. “Perhaps then I send Julliard; their rainbow is only three-quarters colored.”

“It is a temple to all,” Argos said to his two guests. They reached the elevators and they opened for him.

Dorian gave Henry a bit of side-eye; he had watched the duck hover over the facility’s Diaper Lover package. Henry gave him an innocent shrug, both then and now.

As the elevator left its moorings with an effortless lift, the glass revealed a multitude of rooms, rectangular in nature but arranged more like a honeycomb. The interior of these rooms were in a spectrum of visibility. Some of them completely revealed their interiors and the sexual revelers therein contained. They saw a naked gay orgy in one and a dominatrix-and-baby-boy roleplay in another, all bodies in obvious degrees of lustful dance and arousal. There in the corner of another was an older male tiger with his arms bound behind his back with Japanese rope, while a younger coyote strutted about the place in assless chaps and a cowboy hat. The tiger had a chastity cage on and his sac was bunched under the restrictor tube, his erection clearly straining. A ring gag in his mouth allowed the coyote to level his penis at the aperture and freely urinate.

“All this is r-rather public; do they know?” asked Dorian.

Argos, sensing the concern in the quetzal’s voice, clapped his hands and the glass hazed over in gray smoke. “Perhaps I have given you too much of the chocolate factory,” he said, turning around. All his arms were folded behind his back, broadening his great black chest. His white leather pouch remained full between his legs, aided more in the volume of flesh than it was with corpora cavernosa. “Is it within your preference that you have a more personal training session? I can execute it myself, or there is even a premade interactive video on the room’s multiple televisions.”

“But what about your med students?” Henry asked. “I certainly don’t want to inconvenience them, or throw the whole schedule into disarray.”

“Are they just new hires,” Dorian asked, “or what is it about these ‘med’ students?”

“They are new hires,” said Argos, the elevator arriving at their determined floor, “a simple job shadow, but here in our temple of holistic health the dress code would have been a little different.”

Henry had worn khakis again; his crotch had a dark spot at the tip of its obvious pleat. “Go on?”

“Males in jock underwear and women in white bikinis,” Argos quipped. “And their student jackets, of course. And while it would certainly be counterproductive and unprofessional of them to pleasure themselves as they observe and learn, it would be against nature and common sense to censure and censor their signs of arousal.”

The image of stretched jock pouches and moist, cleft panties under clipboards being scribbled upon made Henry and Dorian blush. They squeezed each other’s hands and found them quite moist. They wiped their hands and interlocked them again.

“Y-yeah; I don’t think that’d be good for our first.”

They arrived at the lobby area of the current floor. The rooms closest to the area had geometric patterns over their viewing windows and even, what Henry could tell, some magnifying panes that brought great zoom to certain areas. By a trick of mirrors, almost looking like a TV screen, Henry and Dorian saw the under-view of one male penetrating another who was tied to a sawhorse. The receiver wore a metal chastity cage that drooled a long, clear strand toward the mirror, and the giver’s potent balls swung back and forth as his lubricated, pink shaft thrust repeatedly into the other’s anus.

Argos clapped again and the windows shaded.

“Is exhibitionism a specialty?” asked Dorian.

“The rooms are often requested,” said Argos. “Many share a one-way wall with another. Some like to watch, some like to be watched. Some love to put on a show; some love the sense of brotherhood as they revel in erotic joy.” He pressed a hidden button on his harness, which chirped and glowed red.

“Ceylon?” Argos asked.

“Yessir?” answered a voice.

“I know you’re on lunch right now, but could you take the students in Ocho-Delta? Canterbury should be getting a substitute group soon.”

There was a sigh over the radio, then the clanking of silverware and the gulp of food. “And I’m still jet-lagged from the ErosX symposium and didn’t take today off, but what’s sleep for. Teaching Assistant away!”

The button chirped and Argos smiled. “Poor man drives his brand-new Awoodi to his part-time passion project. Shall we?”

“Yes! Let’s,” said Henry.

“You’ll excuse me,” Argos said, and when he let them into the room he went into the bathroom and closed the door. There was the jingling of buckles, a few zippers, an appetizing thud when his briefs hit the floor, then more snaps and zips as, sadly, the buff and well-endowed spider put clothes back on. He emerged from the bathroom in a black and white harness and thong. There was a bit of an optical illusion with the coloration of his apparel; Henry and Dorian could not tell where his thigh ended and his bulge began.

Argos saw the disappointment in the males’ faces and grabbed both their erect groins, holding them like two handles. “Let us focus on you two, shall we?”

Dorian didn’t know about Henry, but he had a small fantasy in which Argos lifted him by the neck and ripped his pants and underwear off with one effortless tug.

He let them go as quickly as he’d grabbed them, giving their shafts a congenial shake. Their pants remained comedically bunched around their poles, and they followed him to the bedroom.

“The room is waterproof, of course, and the fixtures similarly so. Every room is washed after use; you can eat anything off the floor, including ass. The bathroom has a center floor drain for watersports and its carpets, similarly, are waterproof for kneeling comfort. Were you gentlemen interested in bathroom-play?”

“Yes,” said Henry.

“No,” said Dorian, then looked to Henry. “Y-yes. But not this time.”

“Very well. I was going to mention that the toilet can be stored in a closet with a time lock. But speaking of,” he said, clapping his six hands together and rubbing them, “Here is your clothing chest. It has a time lock and two emergency keys that must be turned at the same time. If a casual hookup turns criminal, then yes there’s a panic button, but obviously I’m not seeing that needed here. Please strip; everything off besides catheters and colostomy bags.”

Henry and Dorian looked at each other and then back at the six eyes on them.

Argos brought his watch up and then back down. He pressed a button on the wall and the room’s lights went full-bright. Wistful, cheery music played and the door to the hallway opened behind them. Henry recognized the song as “Closing Time;” every bar played it after last call.

“Door or drawers, my friends. You had all day to debate this decision.”

Dorian’s hands went over his tented pants and he looked at his husband. “Henry, I suppose—”

“Deal,” said Henry, who unbuckled his pants, dropped them to the ground, and then in realizing he’d not removed his shoes, duck-walked to the door and pushed it closed. “Let’s do this!” he exclaimed, flexing his existent muscles. His erection stood proudly in his briefs, stretching out the white pouch beyond the tails of his collared shirt. The peak of his medium mountain was topped in a cap of viscous, musky moisture.

“Princess, your knight cometh,” said Argos to Dorian, and before the quetzal could so much as check for his wallet and keys, a soft beak was kissing his neck and a rush of cold air braced his thighs.

“H-hey, let me get my shoes off, first!” Dorian protested. He felt his shirt rise and a hand stroke his fluffy, pearl-colored downy abdomen. The other hand was rimming the fabric of his bikini, pulling the band away from his pelvis and letting it gently snap back. The hand followed the curvature of his aroused loins, stroking to the apex of his stiff pouch and then down to his soft clothed sac.

“Enough!” Argos said with a snap of his fingers. Henry froze, and Dorian was frozen already. The bulge in his bikini brief had a surprising number of knuckles, and his shaft was wonderfully warm. “I told you to strip, not to chaotically carouse.”

“I-is there a wrong way to have sex?” asked Henry.

“Is there a wrong way to pour a drink?” asked Argos. His tone was the temperature of an unfired pistol: naturally cold.

A knot formed in Henry’s throat, feeling horribly scolded. He hugged Dorian, fearing how he must be feeling. “I’m sorry—”

“Preaching prints money. Practice smelts gold. Take your clothes off and put them in the bin.”

“Y-es, sir,” said Henry, then planted a small kiss on Dorian’s cheek. “You okay?” he whispered.

“More than I thought,” whispered Dorian, who was unbuttoning his shirt as they spoke.

They did not know what state of arousal Argos was in, but they felt they could not check. They did not feel worthy of looking him in any of his eyes; they just did as they were told as shamed children. Their shoes they kicked off under the awkward piles of their pants; off went their shirts and undershirts, the manacles of their trousers, socks; and finally they each hooked their thumbs around their underwear and peeled them down and off, revealing average-sized erections that were still fairly strong. Their anatomy bobbed and wiggled as they stepped out of their brief and bikini.

“Wallets and keys, phones?” Henry asked, folding his slacks and shirts into a haphazard stack.

“Are you ordering out?”

“I don’t plan to.”

“Then please emancipate yourself of your banal distractions.”

Two piles of clothing, and everything in their pockets, went into the red and black electronic chest. Henry closed the lid and paused when its small screen displayed an inquiry.

“An hour? No; it’d be forty-seven minutes,” he said, checking his phone screen.

“You’re not the first and you’re not the worst, my friend. Stage fright is built into the schedule. I don’t mean to be harsh; when worldly standards slip there is a great distance from the ‘status quo’ and ‘good.’ ‘Good’ never changes, regardless of how much the status quo would love to bootleg it as such. I could go into a whole rant of how ‘it’s a new era’ is not only a non-justification of changed standards, but is oftentimes a pedophile in clown’s clothing.”

Henry didn’t realize that his finger was on the confirmation button, and the time-lock was now on a duration of seventeen years. He cleared it and set it for an hour, then closed the lid.

“Hell, I’d love to buy you a beer sometime.”

“We can save the bribery for later,” said Argos, not hiding his smirk. “So!” he said with a clap of his hands, “You are both naked, and curious, and excited to embark upon a new expedition; capture an ancient Aztec artifact of erotic gold, an idol to your love. You should know plenty about that,” he asked the feathered serpent.

“Eh-heh,” said Dorian, with a bit of an effete laugh.

“So how do we do this?”

“How do we, teach’?” asked Henry. The mood was coming right back up: Henry felt a clean and clear connection between his mind and body. His chest was full of fresh air; his loins buzzed for interaction.

“Your uniforms, gentlemen,” Argos said. He pulled out a drawer which folded up into a display case. Before each assortment of gear was a handwritten card, in cursive, bearing each of their names.

Henry and Dorian walked to the display. Under “Henry Van Clove” was a cloth bikini brief whose pouch was affixed to the waist and loinstraps by metal snaps. There was a collar with a metal plate across the throat displaying the word, “Caretaker,” and a hooded cowl for his head.

“‘Caretaker?’” asked Henry.

“Your written inquiry for the appointment displayed a more sensitive disposition than the classic, horny crowd who, and I quote, ‘want to make their pet their slutty bitch.’ You are still the man of authority but I do not sense you call your husband ‘slut’ in the bedroom, even in the throes of your effusive emissions.”

“You’re certainly all-seeing,” said Henry. “Do you wear contacts?”

“I did, and yes it’s almost as easy as it is for a bi-limb. However, keeping track of the prescriptions was a bit of a shell game.”

“Awesome,” said Henry, snapping the collar around his neck. When he pulled on the bikini, he noticed that the front pouch fully clothed his anatomy, but it did not pull against it. He was just as erect as he was before, but now it was bright orange. Then the hood went on.

“How do I look?” he asked his husband.

The quetzal bit his lip. “I know of several ways to improperly do sex right now.”

“Fantastic. Dorian, the bus is leaving,” implored Argos. “Caretaker, please assist your pet.”

The quetzal had an array of implements laid before him, and Henry joined him in looking at all the implements. There were ankle and wrist and thigh cuffs with metal loops; these went on easily. The collar, charmingly, had a small dog tag hanging from it with the name “Dorian” laser-etched.

There was a chest harness that immediately brought a jolt to both their cocks when they saw the back of it: there was a ring in the mid-back clearly meant for a leash. Henry’s bikini darkened at the tip; Dorian’s exposed shaft crowned itself with a clear crystal. The hood was segmented with zippers, having removable eye flaps and muzzle. The end of the muzzle was open with a soft bite ring to keep his pet’s mouth open.

A fluffy leash was colored white, pink, and blue; Dorian’s natural colors because Henry had sent a photo of the two. Henry blushed; he realized his own hood, collar, and brief were hunter blaze orange.

“Isn’t this orange meant for deer hunting?” he asked Argos.

“Would you prefer camo?” the muscular spider returned.

Dorian was already shaking his head.

“Let’s continue.”

For Dorian’s groin, there was a similarly-colored jockstrap. Henry was about to put it on when he noticed a metal male chastity cage seated in a velvet box, displayed like jewelry.

Henry looked down at the quetzal’s cock. It was dark pink, almost furious red: angrily erect, with a tantalizing line of preseminal drool anointing the underside, all the way to his alert, white sac. “Oh dear.”

Argos, despite weighing almost one hundred pounds more than Henry, quietly padded over. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy. But! We have methods. Will you lead your pet to the table?”

Hesitantly, Henry clipped the leash to Dorian’s chest harness. Then a certain instinct kicked in. “Pet?” he shakily asked Dorian.

Argos cleared his throat.

“Dorian, get down,” ordered Henry.

A throaty gasp came from the quetzal: because his maw was permanently affixed open by the bite ring, he could not properly restrain it and sounded more ducklike than Henry. Dorian got to his hands and knees, his warm, dripping erection beating against both of his thighs as he did so.

Argos handed Henry two linkages and pointed at Dorian’s ankles. The duck nodded and knelt, then attached the quetzal’s ankles to the back of his thighs.

“Ahhrr…” Dorian moaned. His engorged shaft looked like it could be milked like an udder; three squeezes and white sustenance would pour right out.

Argos then gestured to a waist-high table in the middle of the room which had padded stairs leading up to its shiny, reflective surface.

Henry nodded and tugged the leash. “Go up, Dorian. Go on,” he added, feeling like he was training a show-dog. Dorian obeyed, crawling on his hands and knees, ending up just below eye level to his husband and their teacher.

The chastity cage gleamed in Argos’s fingers. “There are certain duties a caretaker owes to his pet. We restrain not because we torture, but because we guide.”

“Rrrr?” asked Dorian.

Henry took the ring and tube and held it under his pet’s groin. He awkwardly moved the ring up, and found that it barely fit around the penis itself.

“I, uhm,” Henry said. The ring hung in place around his pet’s shaft.

“Very comical,” said Argos, reaching over to pull the ring off and set it on the table. To Henry he gave an empty, circular, metal insulated bucket twice as wide as a champagne bottle.

“Oh, no,” said Henry, but the spider had already gone to a panel on the wall and operated its screen. The room’s front door opened.

Argos pointed to the hallway with the arm bearing his watch, then turned his watch to Henry, then pointed again.

“But my clothes!” protested the thin duck in the erect orange bikini.

“Confidence, Mr. Van Clove,” Argos said, “Everyone knows why everyone is here. You don’t see me sauntering about in a thawb. I’ll watch your pet while you go get some ice.”

“Arrrhh!” Dorian quacked.

Henry felt the weight of his hard-on bounce with every step. At a modest six inches, it felt six feet long the way it jutted out as the furthest part of his body, even longer than his bill. Argos had put it in bright orange as well, same as a hunter or construction cone, to make sure everyone could see it.

“I really don’t feel like an exhibitionist. I don’t think that’ll ever be one of my kiiiin… my proclivities.”

“Then put on a fucking towel and get some ice.”

Henry blushed, cold sweat running down his back, into the waistband above his tail feathers. “O-okay. I’m just going to get some ice.”

Argos leaned an elbow on the table and watched Henry leave. To Dorian he said, “Sometimes you have to push them out of the nest.”

“Rrrr.”

Henry’s cold sweat continued as the door shut behind him with a whoosh, but no slam. Out in the hallway, he was worse than naked, because his bright orange getup was sending signals all the way to space. Worse, his bikini was perfectly form-fitting, so his package wouldn’t even be a semi-modest baseball between his thighs, but rather a defined penis hanging over two testes.

“All in honesty, all in honesty,” he repeated to himself, his shaft somewhat going down as blood pumped through his legs. As prophesied, it indeed ended up as a round orange worm hanging out and down the front of his body like a second tail.

In retrospect, the underwear was perfect as showing off his body and some of its many prizes to his husband. But now he was semi-flashing the passers-by that inhabited the hallway.

Past the threshold of the central lobby, the entire building was clothing-optional, but Henry saw reminders on the wall for guests to keep their actions in the hallway at X-level, not XXX. The building was specially zoned to where those who wanted privacy for their loins and their eyes would get special rooms down special hallways. Henry figured that he’d just not selected the right option in the app when booking it.

The duck in the orange undies, harness, and mask got a few winking grins as he trod down the carpet. There was a submissive female kissing and nuzzling the gap in her dom’s crotchless panties; there were two erect and naked males giggling and grabbing at each other as they fumbled for the keycard about one’s lanyard. A younger male in an adult-sized stroller and baby clothes was wheeled to his room by his dom-parents. Henry caught a whiff as they passed; baby definitely needed changed.

The ice was at the other end of the hall. The duck filled the bucket; strangely comfortable now even though his clothed pecker hung like a glow-stick between his legs. He wasn’t being an exhibitionist; he was just being three-quarters naked on a quick errand.

He almost relented the absence of communal showers; a bunch of men gay and straight with their penises hanging out going for a ritual clean. Sure there’d be curious glances here and there, but public etiquette kept their hands to theirselves even when they couldn’t, by definition, keep it in their pants.

The walk back encountered more of the same, and this time Henry found himself greeting the people he passed with a series of “Hey, how are ya?” and even, “Working hard, I see!”

He had to turn one room key down. “Oh, no; I’m here with my husband. And our teacher. Ha-ha; not like that. No, no; hope you find your bull. You know what the twink duck said to the horse, right? Put it on my bill!”

Around the corner rounded a blue and white gryphon in a similarly colored jockstrap and a blazer coat with the hotel’s logo on the breast. Behind him followed males and females with clipboards and similarly limited underwear. The nervous looks on their eyes marked them clearly as students, and the majority were exhibiting the same sort of “first time scare-aroused” engorgement in their loins. The gryphon himself did not; in fact his jockstrap had a window near the top that showed the silver of a blushingly restrictive chastity cage.

“Ah, Mister V.C.!” Ceylon said with a cheery grin. “I hope your session is going well.”

“It’s going weird, but it’s much appreciated. Dr. Morrigan is a very fair man.”

The gryphon clucked his tongue. “I’d say he’s a very robust man.”

“Heh. Sorry to break you from your lunch!” Henry said. He had to keep moving; Argos would probably use the ice bucket on them if the hourglass was filled sooner than Dorian’s intimate hole.

“Oh, I do this to myself,” the gryphon nervously chuckled. “After all, what is sleep for when you can help out every Sensual Susan and Horny Henry out there? Ah! No offense… Harry. Because your name is similar. Ahem.”

Henry smirked. “Client confidentiality, eh?” he said with a wink, and before the gryphon could clear his throat, the duck nodded up. “Oh, hey Truman.”

A chamois goat looking no older than twenty-two, and sporting quite the triage unit in his jock, bleated and fumbled his clipboard. “Oh, hey Mr., um, Mr. Oh Fuck…” he said and then hid his face.

Truman’s father had recently hired Henry to do some carpentry around the house. And while Henry had found Truman’s butt plug and chastity cage in an upstairs closet, he’d not brought any of this to Truman’s father, since the boy was the age of majority.

“Your dad liking those cabinets?” Henry said with a blush, though he didn’t feel shame or embarrassment. About everybody here was two minutes from nudity and ten minutes from orgasm; it wasn’t like they’d walked into a Pendrael, Davis, & Co or Walter’s World rocking stiffies in barely-there underwear.

“Uhm,” Truman blushed, swatting at his male fellow student, an ocelot who began teasing him. “Y-yeah, he’s really liking the hardwood—”

Not the right term for this environment. Laughter burst free and even Ceylon had to quiet them down amidst his own giggles.

“That’s good!” said Henry. “Those doors required a little more varnish than usual; really had to put my back into it.”

The joke landed like a grenade in a foxhole, lacing everyone with the shrapnel of laughter.

“I’m always on call if he needs something else done,” said Henry, waving at them to disengage from the conversation.

“Hopefully not in that!” Truman whined.

“The only thing I’m finishing is the wood, m’kay?”

“Oh my God; stop!”

The duck’s posture had massively improved; finally he could be proud that his back and chest was as naturally erect and full as the cock liftinghis orange pouch. He noticed that the ocelot winked at him and held his hand up to his head like a phone; Henry smiled and shook his head, flashing his naked ring finger. He’d forgotten he’d stashed the band in the lockbox, and bashfully said, “Ah, there’s supposed to be a ring, there.”

The ocelot stuck his tongue out then got whacked in the chest by a clipboard.

“Are we finished with the Three Stooges act?” Ceylon asked his students, irritably drumming his talons on his own material. The females seemed to be behaving, but only just barely with whispers and giggles. The male students smelled Truman’s blood in the water.

“More boners here than a San Fran locker room,” whispered Henry as he reached the hotel door.