by Chloe Cox
“Um, I’m here to see Cedric?”
There is a long moment of silence. I’m about to start pressing madly at buttons, struck by the irrational concern that I somehow broke or reset the intercom or something, and the voice is really giving me important information and of course I’m messing it all up because I did something wrong, again, when I hear the telltale buzz.
The gate buzzes again, as though a gate could be impatient. Gently I put my naked hand on the wrought iron and push, almost expecting it to resist. Of course it swings open. It’s just a freaking door.
The front courtyard is just as I remember it, all neogothic drama and curling green ivy. The front door opens with the same audible creak, the foyer has the same soft light. No note waiting for me in the vestibule this time – I’ve caught him off guard. The notion both pleases and frightens me a little. I walk into the chilly reception area, I guess on automatic or something, but when I get there and see the cold, impersonal furniture, the expensive couch that’s seated so many women like me...I suddenly know I’m not going to do what’s expected of me, tonight, and maybe not ever again.
I’m going to explore, instead.
I turn up the collar of my coat against the perpetual, nipple-hardening chill, and push past the inner door, the one that leads away from the reception area and into the house proper. This was the first place I saw him, standing silently in the doorway, strong and dignified in that crisp white shirt, watching me with those blue eyes. I’d followed him in without even thinking about it.
The door opens onto a classic entrance hall, full of marble floors and high ceilings and that sweeping circular staircase I remember so well. Last time he’d lead me to the back of the house, and down a hidden set of stairs, to his secret office. I know what’s there – the exam room.
I have to stop and steady myself on the curling banister, remembering that exam. Remembering his hands inside me, remembering the swing, remembering his eyes, watching me the whole time.
That was a very good day.
But the thought of all that pleasure pulls on me, and I have to stop. What if what I’m doing right now, prying into his life, costs me...everything? Above me I can see a less formal decor, the suggestion of rooms that are actually lived in, that reflect the Doctor’s real life as Cedric. Or maybe it’s the Doctor that’s more real to him; it’s hard to know. I like thinking that I might be one of the only people who care to know both sides of him. And I want to know Cedric, the man.
I’m just afraid I’ll lose the Doctor in the process. Whatever he has planned for me tonight, it’s likely to be amazing. Transforming, even.
Can I risk all that?
I look up again, and the warm light on the landing, illuminating a heavy wooden door that stands slightly ajar, tugs me forward. That’s where he really lives. Up there. That’s where I’ll find him.
I march up the stairs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m freaking nervous. But my legs are moving. My heart is beating. And I’m fairly sure my tongue will start working again by the time I find him, and I’ll be able to explain myself.
The landing on the second floor is a little less grand than the first floor, but only slightly so. The fraying carpet and dusty sconces don’t hide the classical design underneath. This place has good bones, but it’s kind of a mess. I pause for a moment, taking it all in. It doesn’t seem like a place the Doctor could occupy, not a little bit. The Doctor is controlled, and precise, and wouldn’t abide shabby furnishings. He’d make me clean them, or something. Which, thinking about the woman I saw the first day I was here, on her knees, in that costume, sweeping the floor inch by inch, gives me those shivers I’m starting to associate exclusively with the Doctor.
I try to take a deep breath, and the corset presses on my nipples, giving me yet another thrill. The Doctor put some thought into this. He always does.
But it’s Cedric who lives here. Cedric who treads on this threadbare carpet, who abides this dull lighting. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into, exactly, but the door to the left, the one just visible from the bottom of the stairs, is slightly ajar.
God, it’s like it’s begging me to just...
I do. I tread as lightly as I can in these fuck-me pumps, and slip inside the unknown room before I have a chance to stop myself.
It’s dark in this unknown room, what I’ve been assuming is some sort of secret lair or something. As I grope blindly for a light switch, wondering why I so furtively shut the door behind me, I realize it might just be, like, a tv room or something. It’s not necessarily...
Oh.
The light switch that I find illuminates what I think is an antique chandelier, which is kind of a ridiculous lighting choice for what looks like a man’s study. Library? I’m not sure what rich people call it, but it’s his. Leather chairs, books, a desk strewn with papers. This is a room where he lives. Where he does things pertinent to his real life.
No animal heads on the walls, thank God. There is lots of wood paneling, though. And a bar. The thought of the Doctor drunk is just mind-bending. I have no idea what that would look like.
And I’m also trying to distract myself from what very much looks like a bunch of personal papers and photos on that desk. The guilt is starting to creep up on me; this is obviously wrong.
But it might be my only chance.
And dammit, someone let me in early for a reason. The Doctor doesn’t make mistakes.
I run over to the desk like I’m on a deadline, and when I get there I realize I’ve been holding my breath. They are personal papers. Letters. Old letters, worn at the edges from frequent handling. I have a letter like that; it’s the only love letter I ever got, from Danny Mitchells in the sixth grade, and I would read it in middle school whenever I got bullied to remind myself that someone liked me, once. I know what a well-worn letter looks like.
And there’s a photo, too. It’s the man I know as the Doctor, smiling, his arms around a pretty woman who smiles back at the camera, brown bangs brushing against her face, brown eyes full of happiness. The Doctor – Cedric here, I guess – doesn’t even look at the camera. He only looks at the woman.
It’s heart-warming, heart-breaking, and crushing all at the same time. He is a real man, with a real past, and with someone he loves. Loved. It must be his dead wife. And it makes me realize that I don’t know him at all. This man I thought I was beginning to love...who I thought might love me...
I sit down heavily in the Doctor’s comfy desk chair. I don’t know what else I expected to find. I knew he’d been married. That he was a widower. I knew...I don’t know what I thought I knew. But my own selfish desires, my own fantasies, seem pathetically childish now. Not only is the Doctor a real man, he has real grief.
I feel like such a jerk.
I pick up a letter, the one lying at the top of the pile, crinkled and creased and with fingerprint smudges along the edges.
Love,
You know I worry for you, and your tendency to fall prey to the worst of your doubts. I know where I believe that tendency comes from, and I believe you do too. It’s not your fault. But I confess it makes me angry, too, that you could hate yourself for something that makes me feel so good.
I have never felt so alive as when you dominate me.
And that is about where my brain short circuits.
I look away and flinch instinctively, the way you do when you see an unhappy couple fight, or when you see a man you don’t know well cry. I just...feel wrong, looking at it. Having read it. At the same time, there’s this gnawing hunger to know more. I mean, that is a tantalizing piece of information. Also probably an unforgivable violation of privacy, but –
The door creaks open.
The door. To the room where I am. To the room where I’m not supposed to be, where I’ve come to rifle through the Doctor’s things, where I’m reading his dead wife’s secret sexy love letters.
I’m like a frozen prey animal. I just cannot bring myself to look at the door,
to move, to even drop the letter from my hot, guilty hands. My mind races down each and every possible avenue, searching for some plausible series of events that will excuse what I’m doing, even though I know it’s useless. I’m caught. There’s nothing that excuses this. I close my eyes, and try to formulate an apology.
“You must be Claire.”
It’s not the Doctor. It’s not the Doctor! It is, however, whoever it was on the intercom system. My eyes fly open, and I do my best to look accusatory. Incredibly, I’m feeling like I somehow have a right to be pissed.
The man closing the door behind him is dressed in surprisingly casual fare, though it’s more rich-guy-pretending-to-be-working-class than anything else. He has a pea coat, like he works on the docks or something, and jeans. But they fit too well, and are artfully distressed. They probably cost a fortune. He has an even stubble over his admittedly chiseled chin, like he has an electric shaver set to “five o’clock shadow.” The care that I suspect he puts into his appearance is confirmed by his hair – blonde, carefully tussled. There’s product in there. He’s got rakish good looks. And he’s grinning at me.
This can’t possibly be good.
I just remind myself: the Doctor does not make mistakes. Maybe Cedric does, but not the Doctor. There must be a purpose to this.
“Yes, I’m Claire,” I say, casually dropping the letter back onto the desk, and rising to my best nonchalant lean-against-a-desk pose. I just want to distract him – whoever this sandy-haired man is – from what I was doing. “And who are you?”
I try to arch an eyebrow, but I can tell it hasn’t quite worked. He still looks amused.
“Whoever I am, I have a right to be here. I don’t think you do, Claire.”
He strolls over to the desk, and plants a hip on the corner, close to me. He leans in, startling me, and I get a whiff of his cologne. It reminds me of sea salt; it goes with the overall maritime theme. He pulls his hand back, deliberately slow, prolonging his nearness, and I can see he’s picked up a silver letter opener. He tosses it lightly in the air, catching it with ease, and arches his own eyebrow.
So he noticed the letter, then.
“My name is Gerald.”
Now he’s drawing little patterns on the desk with the tip of the letter opener. It gives me something to concentrate on other than him and my obvious, obvious guilt. I’m grateful, in a small, desperate way.
“I know what you’ve been doing in here, you know.”
I bite my lip, and wish, not for the last time, that I was a practiced liar. I can’t think of anything to say, so I just silently beg the universe to have this somehow work out in my favor.
“There’s only so many reasons to go through a guy’s private things, Claire. To go through his letters. Are those Julia’s letters?” he asks, as though suddenly realizing that this might be even worse than it seems, and grabs the one I’d held in my hot little hand. The eyebrow goes up again. “Jesus.”
“Look, I didn’t mean –”
“Of course you did. You’re poking around because you want to know more about him, because you think you’re close. You don’t think you’re the first, do you?”
I’m humiliated to realize that I did. I did think I was the first to get close to him, or to want to, or...I did. I thought I was special, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to.
Gerald, the rich faux-mariner, plants his large hand on the desk, and leans in close, closer than before. His solid body is only inches from mine, his breath hot on my neck. I’m ashamed to feel the adrenaline that’s pumping in my blood begin to pool in a tight, burning knot around my pussy, but I do not move. Still like a prey animal, I am preternaturally still.
“Let me give you some advice, Claire,” he whispers. And his voice sounds kind, somehow, so close to my earlobe. “Do not pry. Do not get attached just because you think he’s a challenge. If you push at him, if you tell him it’s more than just the treatment...”
My whole body flinches, and I wonder how much Gerald knows about my particular treatment. I can hear him smile.
“He’s the most guarded man in the world, Claire. He’s my best friend, and he’s shut off. If you push, he’ll push back. You’ll be out, gone, done. Finito.”
He pulls back slightly, enough to look into my eyes, but still in my space. Still close. His eyes are a deceptively calm gray.
“In fact,” he continues, “if he finds out about this...”
“So don’t tell him.” I’m shocked to hear my own voice. Even more shocked that it’s not shaking.
Gerald laughs, genuinely.
“Right. So simple.”
I do not find this reassuring.
“Claire,” he says, letting his thumb drift over my hand. “He doesn’t let anyone in.”
“He let her in.” I stun myself for the second time. And Gerald, too. At this point all I can do is push forward, like a kamikaze, just...keep going.
“Was she his first?” I ask.
Gerald lets a slow smile spread across his face. He really is a very good looking man.
“Wow, you are just full of surprises.”
“Was she? His first submissive?”
I perch on this moment, holding my breath. It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged, out loud, to anyone else, what my relationship with the Doctor is about. What the Doctor is about. What I’m about. I hadn’t realized how much the prospect scared me until the words were already out, and yet I feel relieved.
Gerald seems to know that this is a big deal. Both eyebrows are raised now, and he wears a delighted smile, looking up at me with the light skin beneath his eyes heightening his look of surprise.
“Well, I can’t comment on their private life, Claire. But I gotta tell you,” he says, pushing off the desk and turning towards me, penning me in against the side of the Doctor’s desk, “there are quite a few words I’d use to describe Julia, but submissive is not the first to come to mind.”
Huh.
I don’t have much time to ponder that, though, because Gerald is playing with the sash holding my trench coat closed, running his hand up and down its length, toying with the knot at my waist. I feel his tug as though the sash were connected to that ball of fire in my groin, the one that just roared back to life.
“You ask a lot of questions, you know that?” he says, not unkindly, his eyes fixed on the knot holding my coat closed. His fingers deftly untie it and pull the sash free, tearing the coat open, exposing my unusual corset, my pale skin peeking through the crisscrossing cords that keep my breasts barely contained. I catch my breath, my flesh spilling over the top of the garment, a rush of moisture dampening my panties under this very tight skirt. He raises a hand and lightly grabs my chin, tilting my face up. He’s grinning again, and it’s hard to think of him as malevolent.
“What are you willing to do for some answers?”
My head is swimming. My skin is on fire, my breasts ache, my pussy has begun to pound in all the familiar ways, and yet this is not the Doctor. There is something about it that is...I don’t know. But the Doctor does not make mistakes. Each appointment has been a challenge, each has tested my boundaries. I’m physically turned on, and apparently I’m not supposed to admit that I actually care for the Doctor.
Gerald lowers his fingers to my neck, and begins to trace a delicate, slow line, down to my clavicle, to the hollow where the bones meet, and then, oh God, further down, into the deep valley between my bound breasts...
“Tell me something about him,” I say.
“What?”
“Something...big.” Gerald’s fingers dance lightly across the top of my left breast, and my eyelids flicker. “Something I’m not supposed to know.”
“Something...big...” His hand drops down, to the hem of my skirt. He works his fingers underneath and slowly, slowly pushes the hem up my leg, his fingers gripping against my hot skin, kneading my flesh. He leans over me now, enjoying the sight of me, panting below him, flushing bright red because of his touch.
He has me pinned against the desk, and I don’t mind. His touch is not the Doctor’s, but it has its own pull. There are too many conflicting things warring for attention in my brain. My desire to know about the Doctor, my desire to come, and my desire to come with the Doctor.
I’m almost on the verge of stopping Gerald when he speaks.
“How about this?” he says, whispering into the side of my neck, setting off a new rush of static fire down the length of my body. “She didn’t die of a heart condition, like they said.”
“What?” I’m struggling to rein in my mind, my body, just enough to focus on the conversation.
“She killed herself.”
I’m sucked out of that muddy mess of desire instantaneously, my focus razor sharp. I push Gerald away at the chest, and stumble away from the desk. She killed herself. What does that mean? His first submissive, his wife, killed herself, and now he, what, tries to make up for it with his “practice”? I don’t want to be part of some sick re-enactment of his relationship with his dead wife, I’m not some sort of doll, some twisted stand-in, so that he can try to make peace with his dead wife. I mean, if that’s all I am...
My chest heaves against the corset in sudden panic. Or grief. Maybe it’s closer to grief.
“Claire?”
“Shut up.”
But that’s not the Doctor I know. The Doctor I know is all about being aware of yourself and your desires, and accepting them, and...and being healthy. And happy. He’s done all these things to help show me how to be happy.
He must have felt so perfectly unlovable.
He must have felt like a failure.
God, that poor woman.
If I thought I knew grief before, the thought of the Doctor living a lonely life all this time, doing his best to help women like me overcome their own sadness and embrace who they are, and yet always feeling he had failed...it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I can’t know if he really cares for me, or if I’m just part of his penance.
“Claire?”
I turn around, doing my best to compose myself. Gerald actually looks concerned, and a little guilty, in a boyish way.