by Sidney Bell
“You’re—you’re not checking your email now? I—I am bewildered by this behavior. You’ve completely... I think you should see Dr. Thornton.”
Tobias laughed, but it was a shocked, choked laugh. “What? I’m not—I’m not depressed, Papa. I’m—”
The itch wanted him to say I’m finally living, but the part of him that’d screwed up this morning told him to keep his mouth shut.
“You’re behaving erratically. You should come home. I’ll set up an appointment with Dr. Thornton. We can get you a new prescription, and—”
“No!” Tobias shouted, making Sullivan jump where he stood halfway across the room, leaning against the table and shamelessly eavesdropping. “I’m not sick! The problem is not that I’m sick again. It’s that you’re not listening. You don’t listen, and then you’re shocked when I resent you for it. I don’t—Bondye, it’s—I don’t know how to talk to you, because no matter what I say, you don’t care. You just...you try to wrap me back up in this box that I don’t want to live in.”
“You will not speak to me like this—”
“I dropped out of school! I dropped out. I’m not going to medical school. I’m not coming home. I’m not sick. I’m just tired of putting everything I want last, and it’s been fucking me up for years and I’m not doing it anymore, do you hear me? I’m not—”
There was no sound in his ear. No sound at all. Tobias pulled the phone away and the screen was flashing numbers—7:04, the duration of the call.
Because his father had hung up.
“God,” Tobias whispered. “Oh, God, what did I do?”
“You stood up to him,” Sullivan said, gently prying the phone out of his clenched hand. “In a fairly destructive manner, yeah, but I’ll bet it got the job well and truly done. So good work there, I guess. Breathe.”
“I can’t. God, I can’t breathe.”
“Well, you are, since you’re talking, but I meant something deeper and slower. You’re going to hyperventilate if you don’t get it together.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I could’ve gotten you killed today.”
“Breathe, Tobias.”
“I can’t. I don’t—I can’t.”
Sullivan clamped a hand over his mouth, forcing him to breathe through his nose, and that helped a little, since no one could hyperventilate through their nose as easily. When he’d gotten some breath back, Sullivan peeled his hand away and kissed his forehead, but Tobias had almost gotten Sullivan and Ghost hurt, and damaged the case, and he—that phone call—God, what had he done?
He jerked back.
Sullivan’s brow was creased, his gaze concerned, and Tobias didn’t deserve any of it. “Don’t do that. Don’t—you can’t.”
“It’s going to be all right,” Sullivan said. “Maybe it feels like the end of the world right now, but it isn’t.”
Sullivan’s voice had lost that diamond edge. It was soft and easy as cotton balls now, and it was too late. It made Tobias sick, because he hadn’t earned it. Sullivan had been mad, he’d had good reason to be mad, and Tobias hadn’t paid for it yet. His heart rate kept climbing. His pulse had gone loose and thin in his chest. He became aware that Sullivan was prodding him gently to the sofa.
“I think I might be sick.” Which wasn’t exactly true—or at least not physically. But he felt that same terrible, shaky feeling that came with being sick, that sensation of being utterly out of control and unable to stop a process that was already well underway.
Sullivan crouched in front of him and stroked a thumb along the side of his face. Tobias slapped his hand away without thinking.
Sullivan sat back, his face going blank. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Tobias snapped, because that careful expression made him want to kick something. Tobias was the one who was a mess, the one who couldn’t decide if he was furious or a horrible person, the one who kept saying and doing things that were wrecking everything, and now Sullivan was just taking it, just letting Tobias be a dick.
That pissed him off maybe more than anything else. “Don’t do that. Don’t be soft like that.”
Sullivan’s eyes narrowed. “You want some time alone? Want me out of your hair?”
Tobias lunged forward, his hand flashing out to catch Sullivan’s sleeve. “Don’t, don’t—I, no—that’s not—”
“Okay, okay, easy, I’m not going anywhere if you don’t tell me to.”
Again with that soft voice. What was Tobias supposed to do with that? He still wasn’t thinking, clearly, because now he was reaching out and shoving Sullivan.
Not hard, barely enough to rock him. He wasn’t trying to hurt Sullivan. He wasn’t trying to do anything except get Sullivan to stop taking it, to stop letting Tobias treat him like this, to stop Tobias cold.
Please, God, let Sullivan be able to stop this.
* * *
Yeah, Sullivan had seen this coming from a mile away.
Tobias was a hot mess right now, and everything in his life was falling apart, and he needed an outlet. Everyone did, from time to time. Some people worked out, some people drank, some people played golf. Tobias had admitted to stress baking, but Sullivan suspected that soft little hobby wasn’t going to cut it here.
No, what Tobias needed was a complete disengagement. An escape into a calmer headspace. No decisions, no responsibilities, no ambiguities. Just an expectation of obedience and a clear system of punishment or reward depending on whether that expectation was met. Sullivan would’ve expected Tobias to prefer a reward-based system until roughly thirty seconds ago, because liking pain wasn’t the same thing as wanting to be taken down hard, but that shove, combined with the don’t leave, was a pretty blatant signal.
Sullivan had never met a sub who’d fought back like this when they didn’t want it. They safe-worded or they left. The broken ones, the ones who’d been abused, they just buckled. The only ones who fought, who said don’t leave but picked a fight, they wanted to be reassured that the world had rules and that there was safety within them. The only way to trust those rules was to be made to conform to them. They wanted the punishment because it meant order existed.
In the past, a nasty takedown wouldn’t have fazed Sullivan. He had to be in the mood, but he didn’t mind a sub who needed something a little more violent to go under. He didn’t have a weak stomach for that sort of thing generally, but he’d only ever gone there with subs he knew well, subs who weren’t in the middle of a major personal crisis. And it’d been well before Nick.
He’d had a little more confidence about his ability to handle the cruelty back then.
Every line of Tobias’s body was confrontational. His hands were in fists at his sides.
“Do you have the first clue what you’re asking me for?” Sullivan asked.
Tobias shoved him again, harder than before, but still nothing to write home about. He meant to provoke, not harm, and the urge to push back, to push harder, flooded through Sullivan’s whole body. He exhaled slowly.
He was already getting hard.
“You don’t know how ugly this sort of thing can get,” Sullivan warned him. “If there’s a kind of scene that’s more prone to going wrong, it’s one like this. The fun scenes where you push and we both think it’s a little funny that you’re being naughty, that’s one thing. I don’t know how I feel about this, to be honest—”
Tobias shoved him a third time, hard enough that he had to take a step to keep his balance, and Sullivan knocked his hands away, grabbing him by the jaw and shoving him back. Then he kept shoving, even as Tobias stumbled, all the way until Tobias hit the wall with enough force to lose his breath.
“You do that again, and you aren’t going to like what happens next,” Sullivan said, and had the pleasure of watching Tobias’s eyes go hazy. “I’m not saying I won’t fuck you up, because I will, if that’s what you want,
I’ll tear you into tiny pieces, but not until we talk about this, so slow your roll and keep your hands at your sides until I tell you that you can move.”
He could see it in Tobias’s expression, that he was tempted to rebel further, so he tightened his grip on Tobias’s jaw so hard that Tobias winced.
“We are talking about this,” Sullivan said. “That is nonnegotiable. You will say either don’t you dare or you can try.”
Tobias mouthed the words, learning them, brow furrowing.
“I’m going to restrain you however I want. You’ll be exposed and humiliated and available to be used however I want.”
Understanding snapped into place in those big blue eyes, and challenge dripped from every word as he snapped, “You can try.”
“I’m going to hurt you badly. I’m going to take a paddle to your ass until you beg me to stop, and I still won’t. I’m going to make you cry.”
Tobias’s lips curved into a furious, almost wild smile. “You can try.”
“I’m going to fuck you until you can’t do anything but take it.”
“You can try.”
“I’m going to be so sweet to you—”
“Don’t you dare patronize me, you fucking—”
Sullivan squeezed Tobias’s jaw until he writhed, a low pain noise coming from his mouth. Sullivan spoke over that sound even as it made him harder. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
After, then. There’d be room for sweetness when Tobias had gotten this out of his system and he could let himself grieve and refortify for whatever consequences his choices had stuck him with. Then Tobias would be receptive, probably in need of comfort and support, and in all honesty, if this got as rough as he was expecting it to, Sullivan might be in need of some, too, so yeah, he could see a lot of cuddling in their future.
But first he needed to fuck Tobias up. And then just fuck him.
* * *
His jaw ached.
Long after Sullivan released his face in order to take his arm and drag him up the stairs, the bone throbbed, and Tobias focused on that as he struggled, as he made Sullivan work for it. He made Sullivan put his back into it all the way down the hall into the bedroom, where Sullivan threw him bodily onto the bed. By the time the world righted, Sullivan was pulling a trunk out of the closet and shoving the lid open. Tobias slid off the bed slowly, wondering what Sullivan would do if he ran for it. He thought Sullivan would come after him and haul him back, but he wasn’t entirely sure, so he stayed put.
He didn’t want to get away.
Sullivan pulled out a mess of black leather and silver chain, tossing it on the bed, then took off his T-shirt. His tattoos stood out stark against his skin in the afternoon sunlight coming through the window, and his face was rigid with aggression. He was visibly hard in his jeans, and Tobias wanted to touch him. He wanted to lick him and touch him and fight.
“List the colors,” Sullivan ordered.
Tobias didn’t—God, he didn’t want all of this crap. These limits—they were the opposite of what he wanted. But he could see from Sullivan’s expression that he wasn’t getting around this one, so he said through his teeth, “Green means I want more, yellow means I’m close to my limit, and red means stop now.”
“Good. You can throw as much of a temper tantrum as you like, but if you try to kick me, you won’t like the consequences.”
“I’m not throwing a tantrum.” He watched as Sullivan turned the mass of leather into two wrist cuffs with silver buckles and a short chain.
“Turn around,” Sullivan said.
“No.”
“If I have to make you, you aren’t coming tonight.”
Tobias’s breath caught. He—he was so angry already, and the idea of having to go along with it chafed, but his blood was on fire. He turned around.
Sullivan wrapped a cuff around each of Tobias’s wrists, then used the chain to bind the cuffs together at the small of his back. He gave it a few seconds before touching Tobias’s fingers. “How’s that feel? No numbness or tingling or anything?”
“Are you going to pull this babysitting crap all night?”
“I’m going to do whatever the fuck I feel like.” Sullivan went back to the trunk and this time came up with a piece of wood roughly the size and shape of a large, square hairbrush, albeit without the bristles. A dozen holes had been drilled into it except on the narrow strip that would function as a handle.
A paddle.
He tossed the paddle onto the mattress, and sat down on the bed, perched on the edge as he had the night before. Nothing else was the same though, not the hum in the air or the way Sullivan wrenched Tobias down and over his legs. It wasn’t a comfortable position by any stretch—he felt a bit like he might fall, at least until Sullivan’s left hand wrapped around his wrist, centering him.
“Spread your legs,” Sullivan ordered, using one foot to nudge at his calves, leaving Tobias both more exposed and more stable with the wider stance.
Sullivan spanked him with his bare hand. Once, twice, three times. The blows kept coming, and Tobias’s frustration grew. His chest tightened. His urge to sit up and quit the whole process became impossible to ignore. His head was heavy and he was just—he didn’t like it. It didn’t feel like last night, when it’d been fun and he hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t felt on the verge of shattering. He didn’t like it at all and now he was mad at Sullivan for not making this work on top of everything else. He didn’t want to do it like this—no, he didn’t want to do any of this at all, didn’t want to be on his belly like this, like some low, subservient thing, spanked like a child, like he couldn’t manage his own adulthood, his own life or choices. His whole body vibrated with unspoken denial and the blows kept coming, stoking the fire and it hurt, it just hurt, there was nothing arousing or fun or dirty about it, he wanted to yell and fight and...and...
“For a sub on the verge of throwing a fit, you’re pretty fucking hard,” Sullivan said, sounding calm and amused and so smug, and Tobias had somehow, weirdly, sort of forgotten that Sullivan was there, that he was the one committing these spanks. This wasn’t something that was happening to him, this was something that Sullivan was doing to him, that Tobias had asked for, if not in so many words. Tobias was suddenly aware of two competing realities, realities that somehow existed at the same time without contradicting each other. First, he was aware that Sullivan wasn’t wrong—he was about to throw a fit, and he was very hard. Painfully hard, which struck him as odd because he didn’t feel turned on in any other way. The second reality was that Sullivan was also fundamentally wrong, because in that moment Tobias didn’t feel submissive at all; he was livid and edged and feeling every bit of his own power and he wanted to smash all of that anger and power directly into Sullivan’s face.
Make me, he wanted to shout, not caring that it was a complete non-sequitur. Just try and make me.
“Oh, I will,” Sullivan said, low and unafraid and firm, and Tobias realized he’d actually said the words, actually yelled them. He’d refused, he’d raised his voice, and Sullivan... Sullivan wasn’t backing down. He wasn’t letting Tobias go.
He hit Tobias again, harder, and Tobias yelled again, louder. No words this time, just fury. He couldn’t stay still, kept yanking at the cuffs, kept shouting, kept thinking that he wouldn’t yield, he wouldn’t submit, not this time, not ever, that he hated this, hated every moment of it, hated his whole life and everyone in it, and he’d never wanted to destroy anything so much as he wanted to destroy the world right then.
“Color,” Sullivan said grimly, and Tobias wanted to laugh, wanted to say fuck you, and you can’t make me and stop it right now—
And his mouth opened and said, “Green.”
“I thought so,” Sullivan muttered, and the spanks paused for a heartbeat, a stutter of a heartbeat, long enough for all of Tobias’s loaded fury to pause, shocked at his an
swer, because he’d meant to say “red,” and then another blow landed, different and louder and impossibly, brilliantly painful. The paddle. It lit up every nerve from head to toe, and he howled at the bright, crimson burn.
“Fuck you,” he gasped, and Sullivan laughed. He laughed, the bastard, and the paddle fell again and again, moving to his thighs now, and the blows weren’t as hard there, not nearly, but it didn’t take as much to register the same level of pain in that place, and he coughed out a furious sob. It was electricity and fire and burning, and it didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.
He was dimly aware of Sullivan saying, “Color,” and of his own voice saying, “Green.”
But seconds or ages later, he was pulled out of it by the sensation of fingers in his hair. “What...” he mumbled. “What...”
“Breathe, sweetheart.” Sullivan didn’t sound angry. “Come on. Take a breath for me.”
Tobias did, and only then did the lightheadedness start to dissipate. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, and Sullivan stayed beside him, rubbing his back and saying over and over, “Breathe. That’s it. Keep going.”
“I can’t,” Tobias whispered, and he didn’t mean the paddle, although that wasn’t inconsiderable. He meant that yawning, terrible feeling from downstairs that had backed off briefly with Sullivan here beside him, but which hovered in the distance. It wasn’t gone. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No more.” He might’ve been crying. The part of him that had watched a lot of TV and movies told him that crying during sex was bad, but it didn’t feel bad to him. And it was sex, somehow. He was still hard. Hard to the point of dripping. He was pretty sure he’d been rubbing against the bed.
“You can take a lot more than this,” Sullivan said, not unkindly. “And you will.”
“Sullivan, please.”
“Color?”
Tobias sobbed once. “Green. God, green.”
“Take a breath.”
Tobias did.
“Another.”
He did that too. Sullivan leveraged him to his feet, then pushed him down on the mattress on his belly, easing his feet wide so that he was exposed.