Goldilocks: A Man, a Jersey, and a Tight End (18 page)

“Hey, you seen Joshua?” Scott came in, bouncing a soccer ball from his hand to the floor to his foot to his hand to the floor. Jim caught the ball midbounce.

“No balls in the house.” And at Scott’s pleased look and mouth open to retort, he added, “Not even funny. I haven’t seen Joshua since he went out to bring the garbage pails back up from the street.”

Scott snatched his soccer ball from Jim. “Huh. I was going to show him… Oh, fuck.”

Jim was going to say something about Scott’s language, but then saw where Scott was looking.

Paul had built a “rec room” out of the converted and unused old garage standing at the back of the property. He’d reinforced the walls, insulated them, installed heating in the new wooden floors, and most importantly, moved the Saint Andrew’s cross, discipline horse, and a few other items into the room.

There was also a ping-pong table and a video game corner.

They kept the room locked for so many reasons. But Scott had cleaned it this morning because Paul and Brian were due home within the next couple of weeks, and he’d left the door unlocked.

Joshua stood in the open door. From the window Jim and Scott could see him standing there, motionless. But they could not see his face.

Scott shot out the back door before Jim could stop him.

Halfway across the yard he called Joshua’s name, and the young man turned, his eyes big, his face white. Scott skidded up to him, talking fast, and Joshua took a step back.

“What…”

Scott reached for Joshua’s arm—and maybe he imagined it, or maybe Joshua really did flinch away.

Scott reached out and carefully shut the garage door. Then he took his key out and locked it. Joshua was looking at him as if reading him anew to see if there were any words he’d missed or small print on the first reading.

“Was that…?” he said.

“A ping-pong table?” said Scott wryly. “I’m afraid so.”

Joshua’s mouth seemed to be trying to shape a word, and then Jim appeared behind Scott, and Joshua’s face went very still. “Oh,” he said.

Always defensive and feeling just a little guilty too, Scott rolled up onto the balls of his feet and said hostilely, “Oh? Oh, what, cowboy?”

Joshua’s eyes went from Scott and Jim to the garage.

“Didn’t you get a good enough look?” said Scott, and he stepped up to the door.

“Scott…” Jim was saying, but Scott opened the door wide and stepped in, swaggering just a bit with braggadocio.

“Come on, Joshua. You can’t see everything from the door.” And when Joshua looked back at Jim, he added, “Oh, don’t worry. Jim won’t do anything to
you
. This little master/slave thing is exclusive, you know?”

Joshua looked worried. “Scott, I don’t think…”

“This is
my
personal favorite.” Scott stood behind the Saint Andrew’s cross, his chin on the cross bar and both hands around the tips of the beams. “See, you can strap me on forward or backward. Great access points here and here,” he gestured roughly and slid one arm through a restraint there and slipped the buckle closed with a snap. “See?”

“Scott. You don’t have to explain,” Joshua said.

“But I
want
to,” said Scott, grinning a big angry grin.

“Scott, stop it,” said Jim quietly.

“No, Joshua wants to see,” said Scott. “Don’t you, Joshua?”

“Scott!”

Breathing hard, Scott whirled around and yelled at Jim, “
What?
”

Jim stared him down, eyes steady, voice calm. “One more chance, Scott.”

“See,” said Scott out of the side of his mouth to Joshua, glaring at Jim. “If I say no one more time, I get strapped to that thing and punished.”

“I’m sorry, Scott,” said Joshua. “I didn’t mean to pry into…”

“
No. Fuck you
,” said Scott quite loudly to Jim.

“Joshua, I apologize for Scott,” said Jim quietly. “Please go into the house. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“No, I want him to stay,” said Scott. But Joshua skittered out the door—pretty darned fast in Scott’s opinion—and Jim walked over and shut the door behind him.

Scott was breathing hard, and he couldn’t keep still, pacing back and forth, and when Jim approached him, he pushed the man away. “No.”

“Scott, you know we have to do this.”

Scott stopped dead. Just stopped. “Fine,” he said.

Jim sat down on the bench. “Come here.”

Scott walked over, and Jim unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down, bringing Scott into his lap easily, and before Scott had even taken a breath, Jim swatted him hard ten times and then popped him back up to his feet.

“Corner,” he said.

“That’s it?”

Jim’s eyes were blazing. “Quiet,” he said. He pointed. “Corner.” Scott looked at Jim as if he were considering and then biting back a number of words, but then he went off to the corner and stood. When Jim came up, lifted his hands, and clapped them on top of his head, he dutifully clasped his fingers there and didn’t comment.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” said Jim.

* * * *

“I’m sorry about that, son. Are you okay?”

Joshua had been sitting on the sofa. He started and almost rose to his feet when Jim entered the house.

“Yes, sir. I’m s-s-sorry, sir. I see now I shouldn’t have opened the door.”

“Sit, son. You don’t need to apologize.” Jim came round and sat in a chair.

“Is Scott all right?”

Jim studied Joshua. “Scott is facing a corner. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“F-facing a corner?”

“After I spanked him, I set him to face a corner,” said Jim, calmly, as if he were explaining how one set out annuals in the garden. “We should have told you, son. I see that now, and I am very sorry. Scott and I have a very special relationship. It is very important to us that Scott relinquishes this control to me.”

Joshua’s eyes were wide, but there was something about the shock there that seemed less judgmental and fearful of Jim or Scott and more fear of something else.

“Do you have any questions? Concerns?”

“N-n-no, sir.”

“I am willing to explain anything that confuses or bothers you, Joshua.”

“It’s none of my business, sir,” said Joshua. “Whatever you and Scott do between you is none of my business.” He was afraid of knowing, Jim thought. And that was very interesting.

Jim rubbed his chin. He played with his beard, and then he said, “Has anyone ever spanked you, son?”

The color seeped up Joshua’s neck and very slowly stained his face a deep rose. “Sir?” he barely whispered.

“Or is it that you’ve only thought about it?” asked Jim with that unerring perception. “And you never knew how to ask?”

Joshua’s mouth opened, and he was breathing hard. He looked like he might bolt at any moment.

“The first rule in this house,” said Jim, “is we don’t keep problems to ourselves. You have worries, you bring them to someone. Do you understand?”

Joshua stared at him.

“I said, do you understand, Joshua?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy,” said Jim. “Scott needs me now. While I attend to him, I’d like you to go into the kitchen and start setting the table for dinner. We’ll eat in half an hour.”

And he stood and walked out, leaving Joshua gaping after him.

* * * *

Jim sat in the big comfy chair that Paul had dragged out to the rec room and rocked, reading a magazine. Scott stood in the corner with his hands on his head. When the digital clock on the wall clicked onto the eight, Jim said, “You can come over here now, Scott.”

Scott lowered his arms and came across the room, slowly and via a large arch, but he ended up standing before Jim.

“That was cruel, Scott,” said Jim. “I’m disappointed in you.”

Scott scowled. He’d been standing in the corner reliving the way Joshua had looked at him, standing in the open garage doorway, and he was still feeling defensive.

“Do you think we’re through here?” asked Jim.

“No,” said Scott. He felt surly.

“Do you think you can go into the house and apologize to Joshua?”

Of course, the correct answer was
Yes, Sir
. Scott willed his mouth to speak the magic words that would get him out of the rec room unscathed and was only a little surprised to hear instead, “Why the hell should I apologize to
him
?”

Jim didn’t react at first. Which of course was even more chilling than when he snapped out
corner
or
here
. It meant he was thinking.

Scott ground his teeth and breathed harshly through his nostrils.

“I think what really bothers me, Scott, is how you are judging yourself here. How you are judging
us
.”

“I didn’t!” said Scott immediately. “It was Joshua…”

“Joshua didn’t say anything. Joshua apologized.”

“Well, he would,” snarled Scott. “He’s a kiss-ass.”

Jim frowned and tapped one hand on the arm of the chair. “Bring me the paddle,” he said finally.

Well, good. Do it and get it over with
. Scott stomped over to the case where they kept the paddles and toys. His hand hovered over the wooden one, but at the last minute, he decided not to give Jim the opportunity and picked the more painful Lexan paddle.

He brought it back and dropped his pants, his movements jerky and angry, glaring at Jim the whole time. Dropping to his knees, he laid himself over Jim’s lap, his teeth gritted, hands locked around each other, legs tensed.

“Ten, Scott,” said Jim.

For reasons he could not bring close enough to the surface of his brain to articulate, this low number angered Scott.

Jim’s hand moved on his back like some kind of freaky divining rod. “Fifteen? Is that better?”

Scott nodded his head once and closed his eyes.

The first
swat
sounded loud in the room. The second, third, and fourth left bright round patterns of red on Scott’s behind, and his feet scrabbling against the floor.

By the tenth, Jim was really wishing Scott hadn’t requested more. His lover’s butt and the backs of his legs were fire red, and his body was shaking. Jim administered the last five in an agony and then dropped the paddle, lifted Scott off his knees, and hugged him fiercely.

“I love you, Scott,” he said. “And I will do anything for you. Do you understand?”

He didn’t expect a reply. Scott was shaking and mute. Eventually he calmed enough so that Jim was able to help him pull his pants back up and walk back to the house for dinner.

* * * *

Both Joshua and Scott were silent and thoughtful before, during, and after the meal, and Jim decided to send Scott to bed early.

Scott curled on the bed, restless and jumpy. Jim sat beside him, trying to soothe him, but Scott was unable to relax.

“Please, Jim.” Scott was almost tearful. “I need…”

“Okay, baby. Let me see what I can do.”

Jim made him as comfortable as possible while giving Scott the security he needed. He laid him on his stomach with wrists and ankles spread and bound with the soft Velcro straps.

Then Jim sat with him, stroking his back until Scott went to sleep. When Scott’s breathing had become deep and even, he carefully released the restraints, then drew the sheets up carefully over Scott and went out to the living room to deal with Joshua.

* * * *

Joshua was sitting in the living room, watching television. The sound was turned up loud, he had the remote in his hand, and his foot was tapping against the floor rapidly.

Jim came in the room. “Can you turn that down, please?”

Joshua looked at him. He lifted the remote and muted the sound.

“Thank you.” Jim sat down.

Joshua sat looking at him, that one foot nervously jittering.

“So, Scott tells me you were in a relationship,” said Jim.

“Yep.”

Jim noted, curiously, the lack of Joshua’s habitual
sir.

“But it wasn’t a domestic discipline relationship,” he stated. “That’s what we call this, you know.”

Joshua just looked at him for a second, and then he said, “No.”

“How much older was he than you?”

That wine-colored flush rose into Joshua’s cheeks again. “How…how’d you know?”

Jim just sat waiting for the answer.

“He was forty-five,” said Joshua, sounding angry for the first time since Jim had met him. “And he was married, it turns out.”

Jim sat and waited.

“He had a son my age,” said Joshua. “Can you believe that? We’d been seeing each other off and on three months, and he tells me.”

Jim waited.

“Don’t know why I didn’t just walk away then,” said Joshua. “I just couldn’t. And he…he…”

Joshua’s face darkened. “He’d call, and I’d just come running like his
dog
. Bastard.” And Joshua raised the remote and deselected the Mute so the sound blasted into the room like an audio fist.

“Turn that down,” said Jim.

Joshua scowled.

“I said,” said Jim, loudly and distinctly, “Turn. That. Down.”

Glaring at him, Joshua tossed the remote to Jim. “You do it,” he said and jumped up.

Jim set the remote down and followed Joshua. The young man went straight to Scott’s bedroom. Jim noted he didn’t shut the door, and he threw himself on the bed.

“Young man,” said Jim, feeling his way very carefully. “Go out to that living room, and turn that television down.”

“You do it,” said Joshua again.

Jim bit his lip and studied the back of Joshua’s head. Then he walked over to the bed, lifted the man by his arm, swung him to his feet, gave his bottom one hard smack, and said, “Do as I told you to.”

Joshua yelped. And then he walked out to the living room, heels thumping angrily all the way, picked up the remote, and turned the sound off.

Then he came back into his bedroom. “There,” he said. “Happy?”

“No,” said Jim. “But you are, aren’t you?”

The deep wine color flooded Joshua’s face again.

“I told you, Joshua. You can ask me anything. I expect it. Do you have something you need to ask me?”

Joshua looked confused. Then he looked angry. Then he looked confused.

Jim relented. “It’s been a long day. Maybe we all should go to bed early.”