A Small Lesson

More guilt. But I gave him his chance. He didn't take it. Not my problem. I reached out and flipped the switch, sending the living room and kitchen into darkness, lit only by the barely-present glow from the city lights coming through the huge tinted windows. "COREY!" came his final bellow.

I continued through the hallway and into my room, turning off the hall light and closing my door as I went, shutting out the yells of fury and hollow pounding of tiny fists on glass.

-

The next morning, I stumbled sleepily into the kitchen for my morning coffee. I stopped short upon seeing the vase sitting on the side table, having completely forgotten about Ian. He was sprawled on his back in the center of the vase, his head just far enough away from the dried piss spot on the floor to not be at risk. Clearly he'd given up trying to be any pickier than that, as his legs were stretched out and bent against the wall, his feet resting in the piss spot there.

By far the thing that caught my attention most, however, was the massive morning wood he was sporting—well... maybe not massive, given that it was still just a hair over two thirds of an inch, but you know. Comparatively massive. It stood directly up from his body, lightly pulsing with his heartbeat. The shaft had a very slight upwards curve to it, and was thicker just past the base before tapering up to his glistening cock head. It poked out of his perfect foreskin, which stretched attractively around the lower middle of his glans.

Ugh. Why is he this hot?

I could hear light snoring coming from the vase, weirdly amplified by the cylinder of glass. Stepping lightly across the polished concrete floor, I snuck into the kitchen and retrieved a very small baster from a drawer. I ran a tiny bit of water into the sink, which I sucked up with the baster.

I snuck my way back to the vase and pushed away another twinge of guilt with the memory of how he'd talked to me the night before after I bared my heart to him. I lifted the baster to the edge of the vase and squeezed.

Unfortunately, I hadn't realized how sensitive the bulb was to compression, and the water exploded out of the end of it like a water shotgun, spraying mist and droplets all over the inside of the vase. Ian's eyes sprang open, and he immediately began coughing and rolling, clearly completely disoriented and confused. I couldn't help but be darkly amused as he rolled into the rehydrated piss stain.

"Morning, sunshine."

I could see the exact moment when his brain woke up enough to orient him, as he suddenly stilled, his hands over his face. One quickly dropped down to attempt covering his still raging erection, and now I could see his face, eyes scrunched tightly and jaw locked in anger.

"Morning," he ground out, without further insult or vitriol. My face made a brief, involuntary shocked expression before I could regain control. Well, that's a change of pace.

I turned and walked away toward the kitchen, saying nothing. "Hey! Corey, I..." came a call from the vase. My pulse quickened, as I knew I was finally getting somewhere with him, but I also didn't want to extinguish the tiny spark with excitement before it could flame. I pointedly continued, pretending to ignore him, and busied myself with cooking myself breakfast, pulling eggs and bacon out of the fridge and hunting for cheese to put on my eggs.

"Corey?" he called. I peeked my head over the fridge door and glanced at him. He was standing now, looking bedraggled and wet, one hand still clamped stubbornly in front of him. Even in his disheveled state, he was ridiculously attractive. I dipped back down into the fridge and rummaged as I said, "What?"

He was silent for a couple seconds before saying, "Can you come talk to me?"

I snorted. "You can yell. I'm busy." I desperately wanted to peek over the door again to see his reaction, but quelled the urge, instead imagining it as best I could as I heard him growl in frustration.

He tried starting again, "Well, I... UGH, can you just come the fuck over here?!" I shook my head in disappointed amusement. Stiiiill trying to have all the power and control, I see. Ain't happening.

"Nope."

When I came back up, clutching my bag of cheese victoriously, I glanced back over. He was sitting again, but facing me, and shooting daggers from his eyes. I continued ignoring him as I turned on the gas range and started my food. Every minute or so I found a reason to turn or look over my shoulder, but he never moved from that position.

When my food was done, I shimmied it onto a plate and traipsed back to the couch, trying my best to not have a visible spring in my step and grabbing some hot sauce from the fridge as I went. I plopped onto the couch next to him and gave the steam an appreciative sniff. The scent of hot bacon grease, eggs, swiss cheese, and fresh tarragon filled my nose, causing my stomach to gurgle in anticipation. I looked over at Ian as I smelled, pointedly watching for his reaction.

He stared at me in a deadpan look. "I can't smell anything over the piss. So don't bother."

My conscience prodded me again, and more forcefully than previously. I knew I had crossed lines in the way I treated him, but it was so hard to divorce myself from the thought that he deserved it. I sighed a little as my gaze zoned out on the floor past my plate, two sides of my mind warring over what to do. I twiddled the fork idly.

"Alright. Talk," I said, shoving a spoonful of cheesy, herby eggs into my mouth. Nnng, so good.

Ian seemed to zone out briefly as well, clearly thinking. "I'm sorry."

I immediately choked on my eggs, bits of yellow getting coughed into my fist. Through my scrunched eyes and coughing, I could see Ian's look of disgust. I shot him a withering glare after the coughing had subsided and I'd swigged a mouthful of water from my water bottle on the coffee table.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" I croaked out before clearing my throat roughly.

Ian sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry." But I could hear the ego in his voice this time, different from the first. I raised an eyebrow in judgment and stared pointedly at him.

Ian blinked quickly, clearly trying to control his impulse to lash out in response. He tried again, "I mean... I'm sorry. Actually." This one was said with more resignation and sincerity, and a tense breath I didn't know I'd been holding released from my mouth as my shoulders suddenly relaxed.

Annoyingly, I could feel the urge to tear up coming again, and I gulped it down. "Yeah? For what?" I chewed slowly, specifically looking away from him.

Ian sat, thinking for a minute as I slowly ate my breakfast. "For..."—a brief sigh of resignation—"For everything, I guess. I'm just... sorry." His explanation had come across ridiculously lame, but I could hear in his voice that he wasn't doing it intentionally.

"...Yeah?" I prompted.

He sighed again. "For torturing you. When you didn't deserve it."

I tried squeezing my eyes shut this time, but not even that stopped me from misting up, and a hot tear slid out of the corner of my eye, closest to him. I swiped it away angrily, knowing that there was no way he hadn't seen it. I tearily spooned another bite of eggs into my mouth, which somehow tasted of sand instead of food.

My response was long in the making, as I waited for my emotions to settle. "...Thank you. That was a long-overdue acknowledgment." He grunted in response. "I wasn't actually planning on leaving you in there, you know. Not until you started screaming at me and acting like a selfish dickbag again."

He tensed, but seemed to hold control this time. "Yeah... that was..." He rubbed his forehead with his free hand and continued, "...shit. And I know it. And I know you know it," he finished, his voice sounding infinitely more contrite than I'd ever heard him before.

I nodded and chewed. Swallowing finally, I said almost flatly, "Well, one more time then. Why?"

He rolled his eyes again, but not unkindly, and I let it slide. His head shook idly before he replied, "I mean, what I said last night was technically true. I just... I'm not really a good person." I barely caught the 'what else is new?' snort that threated to burst from me, and then he continued, "Which... you know already. My parents have been overbearing assholes my entire life. I've never had a moment to... shape my own destiny, I guess. And I was so ready to be out from under their thumbs that I just... It made me so fucking mad that they couldn't give me even one iota of trust."

I looked down at my plate. I'd finished eating, but my stupid, sentimental brain had shoved a tiny pile of eggs and a bit of bacon to one side. For him. I had a moment of temptation from the vindictive side of my mind, but it passed quickly.

"And none of that excuses anything," he continued flatly. "Everything you said yesterday was—was right. All of it. I'm selfish, I'm narcissistic, and I'm just..." His voice thickened at the end, and I looked up in time to see the anguish painted across his face. "Broken," the last word was a whisper of shame before his head sagged into his hands and I heard a muffled sob.

"Oh, Ian... Jesus, dude." I managed, my own tears forming. "Here, I'm so sorry, this is terrible. I shouldn't have..." I trailed off as I leaned over to the vase. I evaluated the state of the liquid inside and decided against tipping him out, instead reaching a hand in. "You probably don't want to have to slide through that water," I said, offering to pick him up by his waist.

Ian looked back at me with concerned reticence, sniffing hard and wiping the last bit of moisture from his red eyes. But eventually he stood and lifted his arms, giving me room to pick him up between my finger and thumb and lift him out. As I set him down on the side table, he suddenly reached up and punched my finger, somewhere between a friendly smack and an actual punch. "Jerk. Smell in that vase for a second." I looked at him in amusement, and he suddenly had a moment of self consciousness, dropping his hand back in front of his hooded dick.

I rolled my eyes lightly and leaned over to sniff the vase. It wasn't... as bad as I thought, persay. It was extremely pungent, don't get me wrong; the smell of a sweaty unwashed man lying in piss for twelve hours wasn't going to be subtle. But something about it... I felt the familiar twinge in my dick that told me what the "something" was. How could that possibly turn me on? My brain understood the absurdity of the situation, even if my dick did not.

I coughed and set the vase down, blinking and shaking my head in a show of being overwhelmed by disgust. "Jesus christ, dude."

"Yeah," Ian said, the proverbial 'duh' saturating his tone. "That was aaaaall night for me."

I figured I owed him the grace of looking at least a little cowed, and I replied, "Ah... Yeah. I'm sorry for that. I still think you kinda deserved—well, maybe not that, but I really had no other ideas for how to get through to you, you know?"

I could tell Ian was fighting with his ego still. His jaw tightened, and he broke eye contact while I was speaking. He was looking straight down by the end, at which point he sighed, and his shoulders drooped slightly. "I know. You're right, honestly. I probably deserve worse, if anything."

I could sense things getting a bit too dark again and tried to lighten the mood slightly by saying, "Hey, everyone deserves the right to basic human decency. Even shitty people. No one deserves to sleep in their own waste," I said, giving him a pointed look. "I am sorry for taking my anger out on you."

Ian shrugged noncommittally and stayed silent, still looking away. I waited.

He finally sighed and looked up at me. "How—how do you do that so easily? See the tiny fault in yourself while... swimming in the results of someone else's bad actions." His free hand lifted to his face and used his fingers to scrunch the top of his nose in consternation.

I smiled sadly. "Who said anything about easy? Did I manage it last night?"

"I mean... no, I guess."

My look was one of 'well, there you go,' but I didn't respond verbally at first. Finally, I said, "Finding your own shortcomings and dealing with them is a part of life, and shouldn't be tied to anyone else's shortcomings. There isn't a pool of other people's bad actions and I'm just swimming in it; everything is a pool, and there's just a lot of people... well, pissing in it." I punctuated that last line with a whispered laugh through my nose.

I continued, despite Ian side eyeing my referential joke, "You gotta learn to swim away from those people... focus on treading water and not ruining the pool yourself."

I looked at him, and he nodded sadly after a moment of thought. "I can't believe what a piece of shit I've become."

I blanched slightly. "You're not... well. Let's just say, you're not actually a piece of shit. You just act—acted? like one," I managed, after tinging my interjection with a bit of hope. Maybe he'll be open to changing?

Ian nodded at me knowingly, non-verbally accepting my softening of the blow while also communicating his passive disagreement with my assessment.

"I'm, uh... I'm sorry," came his quiet voice. "For everything." I could tell he desperately wanted to continue, but that he was also barely holding onto his emotions as he made a relatively gigantic leap for himself. I looked at him as he stood there forlornly, and reached out a hand.

"Apology accepted. I'd offer a hug, but..." I trailed off as my hand awkwardly stopped at the edge of the table. Ian took a moment of what looked like indecision before stepping forward and moving to sit on my palm, his bare ass nestling into the cup of my hand.

I took that as the go-ahead and lifted him up to my chest, where we embraced awkwardly, his arms stretched across my upper pectoral area, and my hand flat against his bare back and ass. It took a lot of self-control to not rub the perfect, muscled globes that were pressed against the underside of my knuckles. I could also feel the press of his cock up against my shirt. My own dick started to stir again in response, and I loosened my hand and cleared my throat. He sat back into my palm, covering himself again with his other hand, but not before I saw the head of his dick poking out of his foreskin, which was usually fully covered. Must have chubbed a bit from the friction with my shirt.

I set him back on the table, and gave him a slight smile, which he returned before saying, "Hey, I really need to go again, by the way." He gave his cock a hard tug and shifted his weight from one side to the other.

My immediate thought was, 'Oh, of course, let me take you to the bathroom,' but my brain hesitated, running a couple of scenarios through my head. Ian's eyebrow lifted as he waited. I finally said, "Well, you're still in friend jail currently."

Ian's eyes snapped open, and he started backing toward the edge of the table. "What?! I am not going back in that vase."

I quickly held out my hand in peace. "Oh, no no. Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Ian's relief was immediate, and I continued, "The vase is going away permanently. But you're staying on that table for the rest of the weekend." Ian looked both skeptical and aggravated by this as he checked over the edge of the table and looked back at me.

"You know I can just..." he started, but trailed off and looked at the drop again. It was a little over two feet to the ground, which meant it was equivalent to him jumping from a twenty-five foot cliff at his normal size. He frowned. "Actually... probably not..."

"And there aren't any legs for you to climb down, unless you can spider walk your way to the center of the underside," I said, pointing at the single central leg. The table was a modern, round design that was built similarly to a bar stool. "And don't think about jumping to a chair or couch either," I said, heading off his next investigation. I grabbed the end of the couch and pulled it a few more inches away from the table just for good measure, sticking my foot out and doing the same to the chair on the other side.

"Dude. I said I was sorry," Ian said, clearly affronted.

"Mmhm. And I accepted your apology. But some actions still have consequences, even after we've reconciled. And you made a lot of actions." I saw anger flash across Ian's face as he once again warred against his own egotistical need to lash out in retort. I was honestly proud of how hard he was working.

Finally he seemed to calm slightly, and he shrugged his shoulders in a show of indifference that even the most gullible of humans would never believe. I rolled my eyes, and he said, "Fine. Whatever. I can't use any of my shit anyway, so I might as well watch TV." He yanked on his dick again, this time gripping his foreskin, which revealed the thick base of his cock and the top of his scrotum to me. "Now please? Do I just pee off the edge, or what?"

I shook my head. "No, I'll grab you something." I stood up and went into the kitchen. I grabbed a plastic soda bottle cap I found in the junk drawer and brought it back to the side table, plunking it upside down in front of Ian. "Go for it."

He gave me a look before starting to drag the cap around to the far side, but I interrupted his movement. "Nope. Right there. You have 30 seconds before I take it away, so you might want to push," I said pointedly.

Ian took half a second to check if I was joking before hurriedly stepping behind it and grabbing his dick, this time not bothering to hide it. He skinned back his foreskin and started to piss a tiny, but fast stream into the bottle cap. I could tell that if he wasn't so small, the stream would have been splashing everywhere as the cap filled, but the liquid's surface tension was too high at that size to splash much.

As he peed in front of me, he looked up. "So you finally got me to crack and apologize, and now you're going to torture me even more?" he asked, sharpness edging his voice.

I raised both eyebrows in a sort of unsurprised-surprise, and said "No. I'm not going to torture you. If you really, really want to leave... I will put you down." His head jerked up from watching the swiftly-filling bottle cap and searched my face as I continued, "But we won't be friends anymore. I don't mean to be harsh, but I have no guarantee that you aren't just lying right now and trying to manipulate me until you can figure out how you got shrunk and reverse it. You really, really hurt me. That feeling is a lot of months of hatred on my part, and it's still going to take time to heal that. If you really want to show me that you're trying to change and that you do value our friendship—if you can call it that—, then I need you to do some things. Staying on the table for the weekend is one of those." His eyes narrowed, but only briefly. "Plus, if you decide you'd rather not, you're sure as hell not going to get any help from me in figuring out what the fuck happened to you," I said, my own eyes narrowing.

He abruptly cut off his stream of piss, and I saw that it was because the cap was full, even overflowing slightly onto the table. "Fuck," he said, looking at the mess. He then looked up at me. "Ok."

I gave him a prompting look. "Ok?"

His hands in fists, he ground out, "Yes. I'll do it. I really am sorry, and I really do want to fix this. Even if I still think you're a..." I cleared my throat. "...a uh, great guy." Ian finished lamely. I rolled my eyes and turned toward the kitchen. "Where are you going?" he called.

I ignored his question and grabbed a small jar with lid and a paper napkin before walking back to him. I set the jar on the table first, and the lid next to it. "Empty the cap," was my only command.