In which Holden takes off his belt

[maculategiraffe]

As those of you on my friends list (and if you're not and would like to be, just friend me; I friend back!) are already aware, I am in the middle of reworking "Bran," which is actually way more fun than I would have expected. It's cool to go over old scenes and try to figure out what makes them work and how I can make them better. I am also working hard on the next chapter of "Lee," though, and in the meantime, would I leave you without one-offs? Why, I would not. drjohn has requested "a scene where Holden gets angry with Bran or with Yves....OK...Yes, I want some spanking." As I replied, "The problem with writing such sweet submissive characters as Bran is that it's very hard to write serious punishment and not have it be just... distressing." But I've had the idea for this scene before, and I thought it might fit the prompt. Hope this isn't too far from what you had in mind, drjohn. I guess I should warn for a bit of... darkness, including implied child abuse.

Takes place about six months after the conclusion of "Jesse." Bran is 20.








Holden felt slightly sick as he looked at the fifteen-year-old boy huddled at Alix's feet-- but Petyr was Alix's job, not his, and as she knelt down and spoke to him softly, Holden forced his attention back to the doorway and the man who'd just flung his son down so hard he'd cried out as he hit the ground by his mistress.

"You can't blame us, mister," the man said, his voice sounding as if he couldn't quite make up his mind between whine and bluster. "We brung him back the second he showed his face. Sold him to you fair and square, so it's not our fault if he escapes and comes ho-- comes to us thinking we'll shelter a runaway. You got no cause to complain."

He was right, of course, but far from sure of it; Holden and Alix weren't noble, but their money and the fact that they rubbed elbows with nobility put them squarely in the class of people this man was very afraid to fuck with. Holden was trying hard to keep his cool, but he hated the man, not for returning his son to slavery so much as for the genuine fury and revulsion with which he'd yanked the child's clinging hands from his arm and hurled him to the floor before the woman who, for all he knew, was about to take the boy to pieces in front of him.

"You're right," he said, his tone even, but the man looked afraid. Good. Holden wasn't actually yelling, but if the man chose to be scared anyway, Holden wasn't above taking a certain satisfaction in the fact. I'm being polite. You got no cause to complain. "Petyr is our responsibility now, and he should never have been allowed to escape. I understand he was anxious to see a younger sister? Can we expect to meet her when the time comes?"

"Signe?" The man's face softened a little, but not in a way Holden liked, before his eyes re-focused. "Yeah. When she turns fifteen, next year. Petyr don't need to worry about her, though. He knows Signe's my little girl."

"Thank you," said Holden, and shut the door rather more abruptly than the man was expecting, then turned around and punched the wall so hard flakes of paint went flying, adding, "you sick fuck, and I hope you die dipped in piss and tied to an anthill after rats eat your fucking testicles--"

"Seconded, darling," said Alix, who had Petyr upright with her arm firmly around his waist, "but Bran is still waiting for you to punish him. I wouldn't wait too long; you know how his imagination runs wild."

"He knows the punishment for lying to me," said Holden between his teeth, and turned away from the wall, only to have Petyr wrench desperately away from Alix and drop to his knees at Holden's feet, flinging his arms around his master's calves and staring up at him with enormous brown eyes in a round, chalk-white face.

"Don't hurt him," he begged, his voice almost nonexistent with terror. "Please, master, please, do anything you want to me but don't punish Bran, it wasn't his fault, I swear, I, I threatened him, I made him--"

Holden might have laughed at the idea of Petyr threatening Bran, if everything else about the situation hadn't driven laughter about as far from his lips as it ever strayed.

"Bran will be fine, Petyr," he said gently. "You can see him later and apologize to him for roping him into this. Go with your mistress, now; you two have some things to talk about."

Petyr only clung harder to his legs, and after a moment Alix came over and knelt by him, prying him off finger by finger and drawing him firmly to his feet. He began to cry as she put her arm back around him and guided him up the stairs in the direction of the training room.

Holden leaned against the wall he'd punched and closed his eyes for a few moments, then started up the stairs himself.

He found Bran kneeling in his own room as he'd been ordered, his form impeccable, his head bowed. Bran didn't look up when his master came in, but Holden could see him shiver.

"Look at me," said Holden, and Bran obeyed, his face white but composed. Holden deliberately unbuckled and removed his belt, and at the boy's expression, anything else Holden might have been feeling drowned in a flood of love and pity. It was a familiar sensation. He tried never to hit anyone in anger anyway, but with Bran he didn't have to try– it was actually impossible to stay angry with the kid for long enough, especially with the look he got when he knew Holden was displeased enough to punish him.

But he'd whipped Bran before, and he could do it again. And if there was one thing he really couldn't afford to let go unpunished, it was a deliberate, important lie.

"You don't get to lie to me, Bran," he said. "Not for any reason. You know that."

"Yes, master," Bran whispered.

"I know you wanted to protect Petyr, but you actually put him in a lot of danger. Just because you got lucky when you ran away doesn't mean there aren't a hell of a lot of unpleasant and dangerous things that can happen to a runaway slave, especially one as young and naive as Petyr."

"He wasn't--" Bran started to protest, shifting his position a little.

"He was running away, Bran," Holden snapped, and the tone of his voice shut Bran's mouth and jerked his body back into position. "He may have intended to come back once he'd seen his sister, but a slave who leaves his owner's house without permission is a runaway, and there's not much more vulnerable than a brand-new virgin sex slave who's deliberately put himself outside his owner's protection. Petyr was lucky no worse happened to him."

"Is--" Bran started, and stopped.

"You have permission to ask a question," said Holden wearily.

"Thank you, master." Bran took a breath. "Is Petyr okay?"

"He'll be fine," said Holden. "He's with Alix. He was more worried about you than about himself, I think. After your punishment, I think he'd like to see you."

"Yes, master," said Bran gratefully.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, master."

"Bend over the edge of the bed."

Bran rose-- still graceful, though his legs were trembling-- and obeyed, clasping his hands above his head, his feet slightly apart for balance on the floor, his ass and thighs upthrust. Holden leaned over him and pulled up his tunic, baring his ass, then laid his belt down carefully across the boy's buttocks and put a hand on the rigid, shivering back.

"I love you, Bran," he said steadily, stroking up to the nape of Bran's neck before he ran his fingers soothingly through Bran's hair; Bran breathed in sharply, out slowly, some of the tension leaving his body. "You fucked up, but you're still my good boy, my sweet Bran, and I love you so much. I'll always love you. That's right. Breathe deep. That's my boy. My darling boy."

Not until Bran had gone completely limp under his hand, his breathing even and quiet, did Holden pick up his belt again, wrap the buckle end around his hand, and begin.

With the first hard, merciless crack of leather on bare skin, Bran shuddered violently, then went limp again as he said between his teeth, "One." That he count the strokes aloud was a standing rule; though it meant nothing as far as Bran was concerned, since Holden refused to be held to a predetermined number of strokes, Holden needed to hear everything that each monosyllable, wrenched from Bran's expressive throat, managed to convey. Once he'd gotten past the first, simple misery at being punished, resentment flared, and on "four" and "five" a surge of distracted panic, probably that someone might walk in and see what was happening to him. At seven and eight, stubbornness, and a determination not to beg, born of the awareness that he was about to.

He got to eleven, and even then he didn't move or try to squirm away. Just added a pitiful "please" after "eleven."

"Please what?" Holden asked, pausing.

"Please– wait– just a s-second–"

Damn the boy's golden vocal cords. Holden wasn't sure he could physically manage to strike again immediately after that entreaty. But waiting was tricky business; if he let the kid hope the punishment was over, things could go to hell fast when he started up again.

"You're doing perfectly so far, love," he said firmly. "Be brave, now. I know how much you can take. Breathe deep for me, sweetheart."

He waited the length of two deep, shaky breaths before the next solid stroke to the backs of the thighs, and "twelve" held a quiet gratitude that stabbed at his heart.

On fifteen– Holden had estimated eighteen, but the kid always did think in multiples of five– it happened, thank the gods. That indefinable change that Holden had learned to watch for, had learned never to stop before reaching, came to Bran's body: a sudden spontaneous relaxation, as if the blows had become caresses, "sixteen" a whisper not of resignation or resentment or fear or entreaty, but of simple, trustful surrender. Holden could have gone higher, then, without really increasing the severity of the punishment, but he didn't want Bran any sorer tomorrow than he already would be; he stopped and put his belt back on, giving his own hands time to settle and Bran time to realize the beating had stopped, before he gathered the quivering body up in his arms. Bran clung around his neck as he drew the boy down onto his lap on the bed, holding him close.

And then it was Holden's turn to count– three hundred without rushing, silently. He wanted to talk, needed to talk, but Bran always needed time to process. Time to deal with what had happened to him and why, before he had to talk, or even listen. He couldn't really think during the punishment itself, he'd told Holden in their first month together: it was too loud, too intrusive, insistent on its own rhythms and sensations. It helped "peel him back" (such an odd way of talking the kid had sometimes-- though it usually seemed to make sense to the younger slaves), but the time afterwards, his head quiet, his master's arms tight around him, was when things came together.

Sometimes Holden thought Bran's first three panic-driven escape attempts had been nothing more or less than desperate bids for time to think. To process and understand why he was being hurt, over and over again, why he was always frightened and in pain, why his master was never pleased with him. If he could just feel safe enough, for long enough, to think, to figure out why. If, Holden thought, there was even a comprehensible reason behind Dunaev's appetites; if the man who'd taught Bran that trick of lowering his head to hide his beautiful translucent face had anything as human as motive, let alone purpose.

So he'd count to three hundred before he said anything, while Bran's breathing evened out, and when he did say something he'd be prepared for the quiet "please... wait" he had heard before, and for his own anxiety as he tried to figure out how high to count next. Too short a pause after the initial five minutes and Bran would feel rushed, too long and Holden would go out of his fucking mind trying to figure out what the kid was thinking. He tried to do math in his head to distract himself, but the sound of Bran's breathing kept intruding, its ragged edges raking at Holden's heart. For a definition of X as "has just whipped hell out of Y," prove X loves Y more than life itself. Show your work.

Two hundred and ninety-seven. Eight. Nine.

"Bran?" he said softly.

"Yes, master," Bran said, in a small, shaken voice. "I'm sorry for lying to you."

Holden took in a long, slow breath, then let it out as Bran added, "And for putting Petyr at risk. I just didn't think, master, I'm sorry. He was just so sad. I never-- never had a sister-- but if there were any way I could ever see my parents again-- even just for a second--"

"Oh, gods, Bran." Tears pricked at Holden's eyes. "I'd walk across broken glass to bring you to them if there were, kid. Don't you think I'd have tried to find some way to let Petyr see his sister if he needed that so badly? Especially if you asked me? Here you've got your master worshiping at your feet and it doesn't even occur to you to use me."

He felt Bran smile a little against his neck. "I will next time, master."

"You better," said Holden.

They were both silent for awhile, Bran bonelessly heavy in Holden's arms, Holden stroking his back and shoulders and neck and hair.

"You ready to go see Petyr?" Holden asked finally.

Bran hesitated. "Will we be interrupting the mistress?"

"I don't know exactly what she's saying to him," said Holden, "but I suspect you might make a good visual aid."

Bran blushed and burrowed against Holden for a moment before he said, "Okay, master. Will you-- will you hold me some more, after?"

Holden hugged him hard. "Just try and stop me."