Lawn Boys

Two weeks passed, mercifully giving me time to heal. Punk had kicked me out when I was done cleaning and the cum had dried to a thin crust, telling me to walk home. I walked for about twenty minutes before Alex in a beat up Chevy pulled up next to me and offered me a ride. He wasn't exactly nice to me on the way home, but he wasn't cruel either. I got the impression this elaborate method of giving me a ride was to keep Kevin from knowing where I lived, and I was grateful.

The pain had been much greater than any damage from the rough fuck. I had had more damage in the past from just being constipated.

By two weeks, I was feeling almost normal. I figured they had gotten bored with me. I started borrowing the neighbor's mower and doing my own lawn, almost regretfully. I kind of wished they'd come by, their sweaty chests glistening shirtless as they took care of the grass. But I was clearly a pervert.

I got some work done. At least this brief sexcapade hadn't damaged my work. I had relationships before that had just decimated my productivity, and a freelancer doesn't get paid unless he writes. I submitted some proposals, including an article on pack behavior in human beings and another piece on sociopathy, always a popular topic. If the freelance work ever dried up completely, I figure I could get my degree in psychology easy, for all the research I'd done.

Exactly two weeks after, at around three in the afternoon I was watching TV and halfheartedly outlining an article I had printed off of ProQuest, when there was a knock at the door. I answered it to find Ty, in an Underarmor workout shirt and a pair of black shiny nylon pants, hefting a big green bag. He was like a short, broadshouldered Santa.

'Sup, fag?' he said, pushing past me. Well, a rude, homophobic Santa. He thumped the bag on the floor. 'Brought you something.'

'Let me guess . . . '

'My laundry. I don't feel like doing it.'

Judging form the size of the bag, it looked like he hadn't felt like doing it for about a month. I tried to lift the bag, but it was too heavy.

'Oh, that's pathetic. You are in shit shape.'

'I'm not bad,' I protested. 'It's just heavy.' I had a fairly flat stomach, other than a little gut from the occasional take out, and I could type eighty words a minute. That was athletic.

'Fuck that. You're a weak little fag, but that's just pathetic.'

'I'll get some baskets. I'll sort it here and bring it in to the laundry room in loads.'

'Whatever. Doing laundry is for bitches and fags.' He brushed past me and sat on the couch, commandeering the remote and taking control of the TV. I noticed he didn't smell as bad as the first time I met him. He must have bathed recently, perhaps even today.

He half-watched the TV, half-watched me while I sorted his laundry, on my knees in the living room. I made three piles, whites, blacks, and colored, but that was all approximate. Nearly all the whites were gray, and the blacks were too for that matter. And they were all pretty rank. Every sock was crusty. Every pair of underwear -- rather fewer than there should have been for this quantity of laundry -- was filthy. It seemed he used any available piece of cloth as a cumrag when he beat off. If I were to separate out the cum from these clothes, I figured it would be like two pounds of semen. Of course, how would I do that, separate cum from clothes? I suppose I could suck it out . . .

And there sprung an instant pervert daydream boner. And that's when I pulled out the nastiest piece of underwear I had ever seen.

They were once a pair of boxer briefs, probably white. The elastic was dead, the fabric gray with sweat and bodily oils, where it wasn't yellow or brown. It had several holes in it, probably worn in it by the power of its funk alone.

'Whoah, not those,' he said, leaning forward and snatching them from my hand. 'That was close. They weren't supposed to be in there.'

'They're -- old,' I said, trying to figure out how to suggest that he should throw them away.

'Fuck yeah. I wore these every single match day for four years, when I wrestled in high school. They're my lucky underwear.' He fingered them. 'Then, if I won, I'd celebrate by nutting in them when I got home.' He looked up at me. 'I won a lot.'

I could imagine him, in a wrestling singlet, with that secret weapon lodged underneath. He probably knocked his opponents out by smell alone.

'I bet,' I said.

'Later, when I fuck you, I'll pull these over your head.'

My dick jumped in my pants. The idea repulsed every single fiber of my being, except for those fibers that went into my nuts and cock. Those fibers liked the idea a lot, for some reason. They sent a message to what remained of my brain: Which side do you think he'll put over your face? brown, or yellow?

I guess I'd find out.

'So Kevin ripped your ass open, huh?'

'Yeah, he did a number,' I said, continuing the sorting of the fetid laundry.

'He's a son of a bitch.'

'That sums it up,' I said, then realized it wasn't wise of me to criticize any of them to any of the others. But he didn't seem to take it amiss.

I got the laundry in, and when I came back, Ty was digging through my closet in the bedroom. I wasn't shocked; I was more surprised by his being relatively civil earlier. 'Where the fuck do you keep your workout clothes?'

I hadn't been to a gym in two years. 'I think there's some in that bottom drawer,' I said, then said, 'Oh, wait, no.'

My tone of voice must have been too insistent or too frightened, because he gave me a narrow-eyed glare, then opened up the drawer. He pulled out some old sweat pants, a few t-shirts, and then got to the box of sex toys I kept stashed there in a shoebox.

'What's this?' he said, answering his own question by opening the shoebox. 'Pocket pussy,' he said, putting it aside. 'I'm surprised. I'd imagine you'd want a pocket asshole or something. Isn't that what you fags like to fuck? Oh, wait, no, you like taking it up the ass. A dildo. That's gross, but makes sense. Maybe I'll shove it up you later. Some handcuffs. Didn't realize you were into bondage.'

I wasn't, particularly, but I had gotten them as a gag gift. Everyone thought they were clever, so you ended up with a big veiny plastic dildo and a pair of handcuffs.

He kept digging. 'Buttplug. Of course. You got some shitty sex toys, dude.' He snorted. 'Get it. Shitty? Whatever.' He tossed the box aside and picked up the sweatpants. 'Get this shit on. We're going to the gym.'

'I don't have a membership to the -- '

He grabbed my chin, hard, with his right hand, pushing his fingers into my cheeks. 'Listen to me, faggot. When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it.'

'Yes, sir,' I said. This close, I could tell he had bathed recently. Sort of.

He let go of me as if throwing away something disgusting. 'Anyway, I can get you a guest pass. Big fucking deal.'

I put the load of laundry that had finished in the dryer, started a new load, and then we went to the gym. It wasn't the one I had belonged to when I had first bought my house and lost my condo gym membership. It was a little farther away (not that that mattered, since farther away than downstairs was apparently too far to keep me motivated). It was fancier, had a lot of very young men and women, and very few men in their thirties who had grown too soft by writing eight hours a day.

Ty signed me in. 'My uncle,' he said, to the young lady who clearly couldn't care less. She smiled, swiped his card, and asked if I needed the tour.

'Naw,' Ty said. 'I'll show him.'

Instead, Ty did his workout, a pretty intensive routine of cardio and weight lifting. I hadn't noticed how strong he was when I was blowing him, but I guess he put a lot of effort into his body. Surely a lot more than I did. I did some half-assed elliptical for a while, but ran out of breath pretty quick. Then I tried to lift a few weights, but I could barely remember my routine. In the end, I finally just went into the locker room, took a shower, and waited for Ty.

I made it a point not to ogle the young men, with their hard, smooth muscles tapering from a broad pair of shoulders to tight, slender waists, muscular backs heaving at weights, tight rolls of abs flexing and releasing -- Obviously, I make a point of a lot of things I don't actually do.

Ty finished in about forty minutes, then did the arrogant little flip upward of the eyes when he saw me in the waiting room.

'Aren't you going to shower?' I asked.

He didn't answer. Just clenched the knotty muscles in his jaw and pushed out the door. I followed him in silence to his car, and as soon as we were seated the silence broke.

'You are fucking pathetic,' he said, through clenched jaws. This wasn't the playful rough authoritarianism in my bedroom, or even when he threatened me with his filthy underwear. This was genuine anger.

'What did I do?'

'You fucking embarrassed me, you useless faggot. What kind of half-assed bullshit are you trying to pull?'

'I'm sorry. I really don't understand what I did, but I'll do whatever I can to -- '

'What you can do is buy a gym membership and work out your flabby fucking ass. You disgust me. Everyone was smirking at you. They think you're a joke. From now on, we tell people that you hired me as your personal trainer. I'm going to get you in shape.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'Every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday is when I go to the gym. If you miss once, I beat your ass. If you miss twice, I tell Dan and the guys and let them beat your ass. You miss three times, maybe I invite Kevin over to beat your ass while I sit in the living room and watch TV. How does that sound?'

'I'll do what you say. Just please don't tell Kevin where I live.'

'You're afraid of him, aren't you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You should be. You should be afraid of all of us. Fuck, I'll cut you as soon as look at you. Maybe I'll kickfuck you with that dildo tonight. You know what that is, kickfucking?'

'I can guess.'

'Damn right you can.' He seemed a bit mollified now that I had promised to go to the gym with him. It was something I had been planning to do anyway, and this was a good excuse -- plus, I free personal trainer. I mean, free, other than doing laundry, having absolutely filthy sex, and living in fear of his increasingly frightening friends.

After we got home, I sat folding his laundry while he sat on the couch drinking beer and airing out his stinky armpits.

'Do you know what a safe word is?' I asked.

'A what?'

'A safeword.'

'Like, a warm fuzzy?'

Wow. Having this kid fuck me might actually be bestiality, technically. I'm not sure he could pass a Turing Test. 'No, it's a word you say during sex to let the other person know you aren't acting anymore and you really want them to stop.'

'So?'

'So maybe we should have a safeword.'

'Why would we need that?'

'Because,' I explained, trying not to slow down too obviously, 'sometimes when you're -- um -- doing things you get too rough and -- '

'Oh, fuck that noise,' he said, looking as if I had just suggested something profoundly perverted. He looked like my friends would look if they saw me drinking Punk's piss. 'First of all, we're not having sex. I'm using you as a fucking cumdumpster. I'm draining my nuts in you. It's not sex. You're not getting off, I don't want you to get off, and I don't think you're sexy or anything like that. Fucking gross.'

'Okay, but -- '

'Shut the fuck up. Second, in case you missed it, I don't care if you want me to stop. I don't care if you're not acting or whatever. I don't care if I'm hurting you. If you're not turning purple or bleeding out, I don't fucking care how you feel.' He said the last word as if it were a particularly vile expletive. 'Your opinion means shit to me, because that's all you are to me: shit.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Fuck. You really don't get it, do you idiot? I don't care that you're sorry. Say it.'

I put down the last of the t-shirts in this stack. 'You don't care.'

'About what?'

'The way I feel.'

'Why is that?'

'Because I'm only here for your amusement. If it amuses you to hurt and humiliate me, I have to take it. I don't have any choice.'

He leaned back, spread his legs, and let out a resounding fart. 'Yup. Now finish up this laundry. That chick with the tats was on the rowing machine right in front of me. I have a hard on that just won't quit, and I wanna bust my nut.' He scratched at his balls. 'Plus, I think I want to try that asshole licking thing again. Alex says it's awesome.'

I put the last load in the dryer, then came back. Ty had opened a third beer already, and was slumped down in the seat, his legs almost horizontal with the floor. 'Start by licking my pits. They itch.'

I wasn't surprised they itched. He still hadn't showered. I steadied myself with one hand on the thing lycra over his chest, then pushed my face into his armpits. I licked the hairy skin, tasting salt and funk. But it was nowhere as strong as he had smelled the first time he fucked me.

He was a lot more ticklish than Punk, but he controlled it as well as he could, just snorting a few times in that highpitched honk that served him as a laugh. Finally, he pushed me away. 'Good enough. I want you to munch my butt.'

He had hung it off the edge of the couch and now he pulled down his exercise pants. 'Get up under there and lick it nice and clean.'

As soon as he bared his balls, it was clear that he hadn't lavished a lot of attention on them in the shower. As Punk said that first night, I could smell them from here. But I was growing to like his nastiness.

I crawled up under his ass, and with some maneuvering and silent negotiation, we managed to find a position with him hanging his ass off the edge of the couch, feet on the coffee table, while I licked from underneath.

I could see what I was doing, unlike with Alex, and I kind of wished I couldn't. He had thick, curly black hair down there, a great mat of it, so I could barely see the skin stained dark around the hole. It was still all matted with sweat, and -- well, even if I were turning into a stink pig, this was a bit excessive. Might be a good time to use that safeword, if only we had one. Instead, I dove in with all the enthusiasm he could have wanted. I had a job to do, and I never procrastinate.

I started with the hole, reasoning that if I skipped right to the main attraction I might not have to sit through the previews. This time, he took the alien experience of a tongue on his asshole with a lot more self-control, just snorting a few times between the gasps and moans as I sucked on his shithole.

And let's not be delicate: shithole it was. It wasn't like it was smeared with fresh crap or anything, but what I was tasting was not just sweat, clean or rancid. This was a round, wet, glistening, flexing asshole hanging over my face like a tangible symbol of my fate.

The hole flexed against my tongue, and for a moment, I thought he might fart. That would end it right there, probably. He could flex tough all he wanted, but if he did that, I was finished. But he didn't. He just groaned and started up a stream of verbal abuse.

'You are such a fucking deviant. Licking my asshole like a shiteating little faggot. You're so disgusting it's unbelievable. You want my cock so bad you'll stick your tongue up my dirty ass. Oh, fuck yeah, get that tongue there. Stick it up the hole. Fuck that feels good. If you find any chunks down there, make sure and chew them, fag. Inflight peanuts.' He snorted laughter and my face flushed red.

After a long ten minutes -- and ten minutes is a long time with your nose buried in a filthy asshole -- he put his feet down.

'Look at me,' he said.

I looked up into his smirking, zit-pocked face, glistening oily in the fading light of the living room.

He snorted. 'Fuck, you got my butthair stuck to your chin, and you're all slimy. You totally got off on that, didn't you? You shiteater. Didn't you?'

'Not really, no.'

'Fucking liar. Your little pecker is sticking up.'

He was right. My dick was tenting the thin fabric of the sweatpants.

He stood up. 'I gotta take a piss.'

The tent jumped. 'Oh, God. Please don't do it on the carpet.'

'I've got a better idea,' he said. 'Stay here.' And he pulled the nasty underwear over my head.

Well, I thought, that answers that: yellow. I took a tentative breath: old sweat, months of cum, dried piss. My balls ached. Why was this turning me on so much? Just the humiliation? I could hear him rummaging in the kitchen, then go into the bathroom and -- kind of hilariously -- lock the door. As if he didn't own the house anyway, along with me, now.

Sucking air through the tainted fabric of his lucky underwear was practically alpine air after licking his asshole. I sucked some of the cloth into my mouth, disgusted with myself, and chewed at the dried cum.

He came back in a few minutes, lifted the underwear off my head as if he were unveiling a prize, and handed me a glass of foaming yellow liquid. It was warm in my hand.

'Drink it,' he said.

Of course.

He flipped out his phone and set it recording. 'Okay, look into the camera and tell the guys what's up.'

'Well, guys, I guess I'm about to drink this glass of piss.'

'What is it with faggots and drinking piss? All you little queers just lap that shit up.'

'Not all of us. Not me, for instance. What is it with you straight guys and your desire to watch me drink piss?'

'Oh, shut up and guzzle it, toilet face.'

I figured I could slam it back; it was only about half a small glass. But after the first gulp it nearly came back up. For some reason, drinking it out of a glass was much worse than drinking it from the source. Symbolism, perhaps. I choked down the piss and took another swallow, and another. I felt red-hot in the face, and Ty just snorted laughter and recorded me on his phone.

'How's it taste, queer?'

'Salty. Like piss.'

'I thought you were some sort of writer. You can do better than that.'

'It's fucking humiliating, is how it tastes.'

'And you like that, don't you? You like feeling like our fucking urinal.'

'Do I have a choice?' Of course I did. But it was a convenient excuse, because the truth was, I really did like this. At first it had been terrifying, but now it excited me. I had found all sorts of paraphilias I never knew I had: Drinking piss, asslicking, being spat on, humiliation, a touch of raunch -- okay, more than a touch: the thought of Ty's toxic underwear, sitting in a pile on my coffee table, was making me leak precum all over the inside of my jeans. It wasn't that I liked these things in themselves; Ty's crusty old semen was beyond nasty; if I got that on a plate in a restaurant better believe I'd send it back. But that they could make me do it, 'make' me do it, got me harder than a --

'Fuck, dude, working out gets me all snotty. I've got a big one for you. Get over, get on your knees, and open your mouth. I wanna see if I can fill it up with lungbutter.'

Lungbutter?

I fell to my knees and forgot about my amateur self-analysis while Ty hawked and snorted his way through what seemed like a gallon of snotty saliva. He didn't quite fill up my mouth, but he came close after several contributions, then ordered me to roll around his slimy, chunky phlegm on my tongue while he videotaped me.

I gagged on it several times, again turning red in the face. I hoped he was discreet with that video he was taking. Of course, I knew I could rely on Ty's good judgment. It'd end up on youtube by morning. Ah, well. One advantage of being self-employed. The pay is shit, but you can't get fired.

Mental note: article on paraphilias -- for who?

His thick, slightly salty excretions slid down my throat. It felt like they went right to my dick, to be leaked out as clear, sticky precum. I don't know I had ever made this much precum. I had a wet stain on the front of my jeans the size of a silver dollar.

Some of these perversions weren't really my thing, even now. I dreaded being ordered to lick shoes. The motorcross gear thing had been interesting, but eating mud hadn't. And really, at the end, it was just a cock, whatever kind of fly it was sticking out of. But that was the thing: they made me do things I got off on, and things I didn't, and couldn't give a shit which was which. I wasn't there for me to get off, and somehow that made it all the hotter. I didn't want to chew mud -- I hope it was mud -- off of their boots, but if they ordered me to, I would. And that made me horny: not the act, but the forcing.

Shit, man, this article nearly wrote itself.

'Go get me another beer.'

I did as I was told, and Ty plopped himself on the couch and fired up the porn site they had subscribed to. 'Sit there. Shut up.' I sat at his feet, as directed. 'When my beer gets empty, get me another one. I shouldn't have to ask again.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I said shut up.' He slapped me, not hard, but it was the cheek that Kevin had punched and it still hurt. I didn't say anything, just took it like the bitch I was.

I kept an eye on his beer, and went beyond the call of duty. When he started working his crotch, I brought back some jojoba oil with the beer. He grunted and worked a squirt into his dick under his tented workout pants. When he squirmed uncomfortably, I got him a pillow to put behind his back. He was watching a large black man slam a small white woman's ass, again and again, and seemed to be getting into it. But he took his time, taking a break only to put his underwear back over my face. This time, I got brown. Ah, variety. The smell of four years of sweaty ass assaulted me, and I couldn't help running my tongue across the smooth cotton. They were so right about me: such a faggot whore.

My balls were so blue they could have been painted by Picasso.

I watched Ty through the threadbare fabric and a fortuitously placed hole as he came closer and closer to cumming.

'Gimme those,' he said, snatching the underwear off my head along with some of my hair. He pulled out his cock and aimed a remarkably large flood of cum right in the fly. I noticed the underwear he was wearing weren't a whole lot cleaner than this pair. His balls had been marinating in those all night. Well, aside from when he had them pulled down and I was licking out his asshole.

He pulled the underwear back on my head, this time with the fresh cumstain right over my face. I couldn't help it. I licked at it and grabbed the agonizing bulge in my paints.

'Hands off, faggot,' he growled. 'You don't get to cum unless I say so, and trust me, bitch, I don't say so.' I could see the look of disgust through the tattered fly. He got up, strode to the bedroom, and came back with one of the pairs of gag handcuffs. 'If tasting my nut makes you so horny you can't help yourself, I'll help you out.' He handcuffed my hands behind my back. At least he knew how to use them, and didn't tighten them too much. He hauled me to my feet, then yanked down my pants roughly, without undoing the fly. They tore at my dick, but even that felt good. I had a feeling he could set my cock on literal fire right now, and I'd get off on it.

I could hear his cell phone. He took a few pictures, then said, 'man, you're one hairy faggot. I thought all you little bitches shaved your bodies.'

Through cum-smeared lips, I said, 'Again, not my thing.'

'Well, it's gonna become your thing. I wanna fuck your ass, but I don't want all that fucking hair. I want to pretend I'm fucking a bitch, not a dude.'

'I can't shave with my hands cuffed,' I said, reasonably. I didn't really mind. I had a body trimmer, and I did shave my balls, like most men in the twenty-first century. But the ass had always struck me as an awkward place to trim.

He dragged me toward the bathroom, backwards. 'I'll do it for you, then.'

'I have a trimmer in the closet,' I said quickly, before he decided to use a razor.

'Cool.' I could hear him fumbling with cords and the like, but couldn't see anything because he had bent me over the toilet, my head on the tank and my ass in the air. He put a hand on my cloth-covered held, as if to hold me steady, and then started taking broad stripes of hair off my ass. He worked it up into my starfish.

'Nice. Still too stubbly, though. It'd feel like fucking a Russian woman.' I heard shaving creme.

'Be careful,' I said.

'Be careful,' he mocked, in a high pitched voice, then slathered creme on my ass and started running the razor over it. He was, actually, pretty careful. He could be a successful barber, I expected. I mean, if there were such a thing as an ass barber.

And there should be.

'Ty, Kevin really did hurt me a bit back there. If you're going to fuck me, could you maybe just rub your dick in the crack? I don't want to have to go to the emergency room . . . '

He bounced my head on the porcelain tank like a basketball, not too hard but a bit shocking. 'Oh, shut the fuck up. You whine more than a bitch, might as well fuck you like a bitch.' He slipped into his mocking high-pitched voice again. ''Kevin did this, and Kevin did that, and Kevin squirted yummy cum all over me, oooh, I love Kevin, he's so manly.'' He dragged me, backwards again, into the bedroom, then tossed me face down on the bed with my ass hanging over it. 'Well fuck that. I'll show you fucking manly.'

His hand smashed my face heavily into my mattress. 'You just lick up that nut. Enjoy your dinner, faggot.'

I braced for agony, but instead he started working jojoba oil up and down the crack. I felt him slowly probe with his fingers, and I moaned, because it did feel good. He must have peeled off his shirt, because I felt his bare chest on my back as he slid his dick along my crack, up and down. The still-tender hole ached but in a good way as he massaged the surface of my ass with his still-soft dick. 'Good thing for you I already came, slut,' he said. He sounded a little drunk. 'Or I'd tear your ass right open.' He pushed up against me, rocked with increasing slowness, then finally rolled off me and lay on his back. I couldn't see him very well, but he looked relaxed. His breath came slow and steady, and he fell asleep.

I, on the other hand, couldn't sleep. The handcuffs, of course, weren't police issue, and so had emergency catches. Once I realized he was asleep I did my Houdini routine and, with some fumbling, found the little metal levers to release the catch and work my way out. Then I took, almost reluctantly, the underwear off my head. Some of my hair had dried to the cum inside, and I had to pull a bit.

I could jerk off now. Ty was down for the count. But strangely, despite the agony in my balls, I didn't want to. It wouldn't please him.

I moved his legs up onto the bed, and he squirmed a bit, mumbled something vaguely insulting, then rolled over.

Across his back were a number of scars. At first, I thought they were lashes, but no -- they looked like burns. Like someone had dragged a hot wire over his skin. Against my better judgment, I touched them, running my fingertip over the knotted, white lines. They seemed to be a mixture of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Was it an attempt at body modification? If so, he should get his money back. Then I looked at it right and made out what it was. The scarring was uneven, but once seen, I couldn't unsee it.

KEVIN

Oh.

I could imagine the scene: Ty, a young man in the school shower. Kevin, maybe with some of his more sociopathic friends -- I couldn't imagine Punk putting up with this, at least, and Alex would have called a stop to it. But shit, Ty was a small man, strong and stocky, but small. Kevin was a sinewy whip of hate. He could have held him down himself, worked a paperclip through the flame of a butane lighter, and marked Ty forever.

Would Ty ever, ever tell anyone? Would he just stop showering in public, going to the beach? He had taken his shirt off in front of Punk, so maybe Punk knew.

I don't know why I imagined it happening in the high school shower. Maybe because so many of my wounds, more psychological, happened there. But I had healed, with the help of some free therapy during grad school (well, aside from some well-hidden and newly uncovered perversions). He hadn't. Maybe that was why he liked being dirty.

An unusual emotion filled me. A kind of fullness of heart I'd never felt before. Here I sat, Ty's victim, his whore, his faggot, his urinal, his bitch. And I just wanted to protect him. I leaned down and gently kissed the scar.

'Fuck off, faggot,' he muttered, his voice thick with sleep.

I did as I was told. I spread a spare blanket on the couch and curled up, then after a few minutes, came back in the bedroom as quietly as I could to retrieve Ty's lucky underwear.

It wouldn't hurt to take a few more whiffs. Maybe a chew or two.