Page 47 of Disciplinary Action
“You carrying me everywhere,” Cal sighed, dropping his head to Gideon’s shoulder.
Gideon shook his head. “You are cum drunk.”
“Whose fault is that?” Cal asked.
“You won’t always get to come after punishment, you know,” Gideon said.
Cal hadn’t known. He didn’t really understand the rules. But he didn’t care. It wasn’t about the orgasms… Okay, it wasn’tjustabout the orgasms. “I don’t care about that. It’s not about that.”
Gideon smiled down at Cal like he’d passed some kind of test. He set Cal on the side of the tub, turning on the faucet and unbuttoning his shirt.
Cal stood. “May I, Daddy?”
Gideon’s hands dropped. “Yes, thank you.”
Cal stripped Gideon, placing kisses on the skin as it was bared to him. Once they were both naked, they slipped into the tub, Gideon sliding his arms around Cal from behind as they soaked. “Will every night be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Sex and punishment and games.”
Gideon ran a finger along Cal’s belly. “No, of course not. There are some days I’m so tired I have to force myself to brush my teeth before bed. There will be nights where you have to study or I have to grade papers. After dinner tonight, we’ll watch a movie and go to bed.”
That sounded so blissfully normal. It sounded like a relationship… It sounded like family. And Cal desperately wished that Gideon could be his family.
Thunder rumbled outside, rain pelting the windows of the balcony and the skylights above with enough force to create a sort of white noise effect that had lulled Gideon into a sleepy, relaxed state. Not dozing but close. He lay on the comforter, face half buried in his pillow, watching the flames jump in the fireplace beside the bed to ward off the uncharacteristic chill outside. Cal straddled Gideon’s hips in his underwear, tracing the scars that criss-crossed Gideon’s back.
“Will you tell me how you got these?” Cal asked, leaning down to kiss the scar closest to his shoulder.
Gideon sighed. He didn’t know if he wanted to open that can of worms. It had happened so long ago, it seemed almost like it had happened to somebody else. Gideon was a whole other person back then, somebody who was desperate to hurt, to punish himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to admit that out loud to anybody, especially Cal. He needed Gideon to be the strong one, needed to know he was capable of taking care of Cal when he couldn’t take care of himself. Vulnerability was weakness. The thought stopped Gideon in his tracks. That was something his father would have said…and Grant.
“If you tell me why you have that little bird tattooed on your shoulder,” Gideon countered, rattled by the thought still echoing in his head.
Cal sat back up, his finger changing from tracing the raised tissue along Gideon’s back to drawing indiscernible patterns on his skin. Cal’s touch was nice, just contact—comfort without expectation of anything more. Neither of them had any strength left for anything more. Cal was quiet for a long time, leaving Gideon to wonder if he’d struck a nerve.
Cal sighed. “It’s not a very interesting story. It’s for my mom. Her name was Aviana. It means bird. I got it to feel like she was still with me in some way, I guess,” he finally said, sadness seeping into his tone.
“Do you remember her?” Gideon asked. “You were six when she died, right?”
Cal’s finger froze. “Yeah. How did you know that?”
“The hag told me.”
“Of course, she did,” Cal muttered. “She’s the literal worst.”
Gideon agreed, but he didn’t want to talk about Abernathy. “How did she die? Your mom?” Gideon asked, unsure if it was best to pick at the scab of a wound that may not have healed.
Once more, Cal touched Gideon’s back, this time both hands working the muscles there, like he needed a distraction from the words, a way to distance himself from it. “Brain aneurysm. One minute, she was there, the next…gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said, reaching a hand back to stroke Cal’s knee. “That’s when you and your father returned from China.”
“Abernathy’s got a big mouth.”
“She was trying to convince me that you were too old to stay in our school. She said you were held back when you returned home to the States. She said you had trouble acclimating.”
“Yeah, my dad loved to tell people that I was struggling with speaking English full-time after speaking Chinese exclusively for so many years. It was all bullshit. I stopped speaking after my mom died. English and Chinese. I just shut down. My father took me to specialists in China who said it was the trauma of watching my mother die and that I needed time and a therapeutic outlet.”
“You watched your mother die?”
