Austin's Diary Day 1

Day 1 The Beginning 

I think the shit has really hit the fan. Getting expelled from school and getting arrested in a seventy-two hour period was not the most brilliant thing I've ever done. Even Tilden, the Sweet, was furious, and Milton, the Angry, looked positively volcanic. I wasn't drunk enough to miss the anger when they came to pick me up at the police station. Yeah, I knew hanging in a group at the convenient mart with cans of beer would get me caught. This is a college town. The police are anal about underage drinking especially since a student died at some frat shindig a month ago.

My muttered, "My bad," did nothing to improve Milton's cheer when he hustled me into the car. He does have control, man. His eyebrow rose a fraction of a centimeter, and the sinews in his neck bulged, but he said nothing. He hates that expression. I'm sure it's a generational issue, but it makes him ballistic. Last time I used it I got a little kid grounding for two weeks. I'm seventeen now, and Milton and Tilden sent me to bed at nine o'clock and took away TV privileges. Woopty-doo. I was devastated--not.

Uh, Milton, the Volcanic, is standing over me. I guess knocking is out of fashion with the old guys. I've gotta go now.

****

I had to talk to Adam, their tame shrink, forever. He's not a bad guy, but today he kept manipulating the conversation around in directions I didn't understand. He kept asking me about Milton. Adam didn't seem to care about the beer or worse the pills Milton found in my backpack, not that I had taken any. Unknown prescription drugs are just not my thing, and I don't like swallowing pills. I got strep throat, and Tilden had to crush my pills in yogurt. 

Milton thinks I'm just a kid. It doesn't matter what I think of him. I can't have him; I'm too old to wish for the impossible. I don't believe in fairies and warlocks and happy endings. I've had some happy ending in my life.

Sometimes the old ones are stupid. They just had a rip roaring argument on the porch by my window. I opened the window a crack, and I could here everything. Stupid me. I obviously wasn't good at keeping my feelings for Milton at all secret. Adam just blasted away at Milton for "the kid" being in love with him.

"Milton," Adam said in a voice that was far more serious than the joking tone he'd used with me earlier, "you know what that boy needs."

"He's a child."

I'm not a child. I wanted to scream out the window. Instead, I kicked the wall. They were outside and couldn't hear the bang. Milton would've been on my ass if he'd heard. 

"Eighteen is not a magic age. Austin is young; we cannot deny that," Adam continued. "Will he be truly older in a few months when he becomes eighteen is a legalistic question, not a moralistic question? I'd feel very differently if he was fifteen or if he hadn't already lived in this household." Adam was leaning against the porch railing, half hidden by a bush. "He's lived here more than a year; he's not jumping into this blind. The question really is more are you willing to take him on, not whether it's appropriate. Can you personally have a submissive that young?"

Milton was silent, his hands jammed in his pockets, his shoes clicking on the porch floor as he paced. I ducked underneath the window, my arms wrapped around my knees. I didn't want to hear this; I already knew the answer. Only in my fucked up imagination would Milton ever want me. He had Sheldon with his amazing green eyes. I couldn't even fucking drink beer legally.

"I won't do what I did with Blade. It was too hard on everyone."

"You gave Blade a priceless gift."

That was Gordon. This was a major powwow. Gordon scared the shit out of me; he could look at you and make you feel no more significant than a pebble in a pile of rocks. I tried to stay out of his way as much as possible when he visited.

"And can we pull another Ryan out of the woodwork?" Milton asked, his tone beyond sarcastic.

"Austin isn't Blade. He isn't your partner's brother, and he's in love with you," Adam said.

Fuck! I'd said that much to Adam. This was my secret. I knew it couldn't go anywhere.

"He's a kid," Milton said.

"What is a child?” Gordon questioned in that tone of his that spoke of authority even as I crouched under the window, hugging my knees, hopeful and terrified at the same time. "It wasn't all that many years ago that boys Austin's age with Austin's temperament went off with the great explorers as cabin boys or drummer boys or as an extra lad to tote and carry. They came alone across the great oceans to America to find their fortune. Now they are coddled and swathed as if they were babies still existing on their mothers' milk. Austin is young. I will not argue that point with you, but he has been living in this household for over a year. No boy can truly understand what it means to be a submissive until he enters such an arrangement, but Austin knows more than many of those young lads we have had through our doors in Vermont." Gordon paused. I suspected he was staring at Milton with his intense and frightening eyes. "Are you willing to share yourself and is Sheldon?"

I couldn't hear the answer, or maybe Milton didn't answer.  He had stepped away from the window, and I heard a bang as he entered the house.

"That went well," a new voice from the porch said. Landon, Gordon's partner of more years than I could imagine, never refrained from speaking his mind.

"That boy always had a temper. I trust he and Tilden and Sheldon will be deep in discussion once he finds his equilibrium. It will be Tilden whom he will seek out in this situation. I only hope Tilden can look beyond his initial reaction. He is not a man who takes risk easily or ignores the letter of the law."

"He did appear on that reality television show. That was not a mundane or placid undertaking," Landon said.

"The one exception that proves the rule."

The voices faded out. I stayed on the floor, hugging my knees and swallowing back sissy tears. I couldn't have this. I couldn't hope for it. I was the pain in the ass child. Milton had to hate me now.