Green Pastures 7

Green Pastures 7

Luke leaned back in his chair and let his gaze drift downward to the decorative fountain in the middle of the quad. It had been a decade since he and Mike had fallen in that fountain, and an irate and worried Tilden had come marching out of this very building.

Tilden’s office was still in this building. He still taught in the same classroom with its carpets of an indecipherable color and radiators that gurgled and banged like something out of an English novel. Most of the campus had drifted into the high comforts of modernism that seemed to be required by today’s college students, but the language hall slept languidly on, waiting for the next Sputnik to reignite an interest. Russian wasn’t exactly a booming major here. The twenty-five first year students trickled down to less than a handful by the time they hit fourth year. The college didn’t even offer fourth year; Tilden and Luke offered it as independent study. They had three brave souls in that class, one a heritage speaker, one already accepted into a graduate program in Slavic languages, and one who hopelessly wished that Tilden would change his spots and like girls.

Sad really, she didn’t have a chance. He didn’t have a chance, not with Chinggis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great all rolled into one and sleeping under the same roof. Tilden’s eyes always went to Milton, even after what had happened yesterday evening. Luke had seen the marks: the bruised skin, the abrasions starting to scab, the livid lines all overlapping into a sea of damaged flesh. Luke hadn’t been able to speak. He’d felt the tears well in his own eyes and fled, not wanting to hear Tilden’s words. Tilden would defend Milton; he always did. He always had an excuse or an explanation for what Milton did.

Luke’s eyes flickered over the colorful collage of candy bar wrappers and the framed Soviet poster from the twenties that filled the remaining tiny empty wall space. Landon and Gordon had found the poster somewhere. It was an original and worth more money than Luke wanted to contemplate. They’d found two of them. Tilden had one which hung in his office at home. Luke’s was marred with a slight water stain in the corner and fading of the colors from too much sun exposure, but it was still fabulous and striking with its avant-garde modernism. He didn’t care that it wasn’t museum quality. He loved it.

The collage of candy bar wrappers wasn’t valuable, but it held the other place of honor. Milton had given it to him as an office warming present. Luke had no idea how long he’d been collecting the wrappers from Russian chocolate bars or that he’d even known that Luke bought the candy from the import store in Boston, not for the chocolate, but for the colorful wrappers of the great landmarks of Russia. It had been a sweet and heartfelt gift from a man who Luke could never wrap his feelings around. He could be so terribly kind and fiercely protective that it sent shivers down Luke’s spine, but he could also be brutal and terrorizing. It was Milton with an assist from Gordon who had put an end to Luke’s father’s odd array of threats. It was Milton who had kept Mike’s taunts and thoughtless cruelty to a minimum. Luke liked Mike, had enjoyed Mike in his sunny moods, but Luke wasn’t thick skinned. Mike had hurt him more than once, and it was Milton who always knew and always dealt with it. Tilden wasn’t confrontational; he’d hope for it to blow over. Milton always gave Mike something else to worry about, horrible things—cock cages, bound wrists, large butt plugs. Luke remembered Milton’s words once when he’d questioned Milton more than he’d meant with his eyes.

“Mike’s not in trouble with me. I’m just giving him a distraction, so he doesn’t torture you for sport. He loves you, even if he does sometimes fail at showing it.”

Luke didn’t believe the latter anymore. He wasn’t sure now if he should ever have believed it. He didn’t hate Mike, didn’t even dislike him, but they were just totally incompatible. Mike pushed and had to be in the middle of everything. Luke was an introvert, comfortable blending in with the paint, a silent follower. Submissive. Milton used that word. Raised his eyebrow and invited Luke to identify himself as such. He suggested all sorts of other awful things that Luke didn’t want to consider. He didn’t want to check the boxes that Milton found so important. He didn’t revel in his warped sexuality and sense of self the way Mike did or Sheldon or Austin. Even Tilden seemed to get it in ways that made Luke want to run and hide under the bed. Milton would drag him out from under the bed and thrash him if he ever heard Luke call himself warped. He’d had a few of those conversations with Milton, terrifying and reassuring at the same time. He wasn’t having another. The man looked through him like he was x-raying Luke’s soul with his eyes. 

“Privet. Pora domoy. Poshli.”

Milton! The man never knocked. He was standing in front of Luke’s desk, taking up too much space to ignore. 

“I’m working.”

“You’re angry, and you’re hiding. Anger’s fine. Hiding’s not.” Milton took the book out of Luke’s hand and put it in the satchel that Luke had tossed onto the one visitor chair. He gathered the scattered papers and several textbooks for the introductory courses and hoisted Luke from his chair. He dressed Luke in his jacket with an efficiency of someone used to handling hordes of small children and searched his pockets for the keys. “Shall we go?” Milton asked with a politeness that grated on Luke’s ears.

“Do I have a choice?” Luke heard the whine in his own voice and wished desperately that he could make firm eye contact and sound like a reasonable and competent adult. He was failing at reasonable and competent in a spectacular way. He was getting an A in repentant schoolboy. 

“Tell me in a serious and honest way that you have a need to be here, and I’ll be gone. Otherwise no choice.”

Luke shook his head. He couldn’t even voice the word no.

“All right,” Milton said in a softer voice, leaning forward to push the hair from Luke’s forehead and reveal his eyes. “I’ve failed you, Luke. I apologize for that, but I can’t change our history. I can only change our future and that starts now, my little boy.” Milton’s fingers tightened in Luke’s hair. “Tilden belongs to me,” Milton said, each word a separate breath of air that struck Luke’s face as harsh as any slap. “You belong to me. Don’t you ever doubt either of those two facts. You want Tilden. You love Tilden. You are a submissive. You are in my household. Ergo you are my submissive, and you will behave like one with all the privileges and restrictions that go with such a status. This isn’t a la carte where you get to pick and choose what you like. It’s the blue plate special. You take it all or you leave it all. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” The words formed and left Luke’s mouth before he could swallow them away and protest that he wasn’t this, that he wasn’t into Milton’s style of dominance.

“Good.”

The kiss was brutal, branding, not a gentle sharing of lovers, but the possession of his mouth. He ran his tongue over his lip, feeling where Milton’s teeth had marked the surface.

“We’re getting your hair cut. I want to see your eyes. I need to know what you’re thinking.”

Luke had let his hair grow out until the golden curls brushed his shoulders and hung in a disorganized mop over his face with a swish of his head. He liked the softness. He liked that it was different from before, not the conservative and correct look that he’d worn as an undergraduate.

“I like it.”

“Tough. I don’t. You told me once that you wanted someone to organize you, dress you, get your act together. I refused at the time because I feared moving beyond something that is understood submission, but I’ve got it now, boy. This is your submission. I was going to offer you a choice to offer me submission in other ways, but that choice was to make me happy, not you. I know you. You don’t want your cock in a cage. You don’t want to kneel at my feet. You want this, someone to push and shove his way into your life and make things right. I can do that, kid. It makes me half nauseous about what I’m going to take without you begging for more, but I love Tilden. He loves you, and I’m not failing him, and I’m not failing you. You belong in this family, and you’re going to know that. I will tattoo it on your soul if I have to. Now move. Your only option is your own power or mine, walking or dragging.”

“I’ll take walking.”

“Good boy.”

Milton’s hands were on Luke’s shoulders. He pushed Luke forward, not fast, but in a way that couldn’t be ignored. Luke remembered those hands on him before when he’d first gone home with Tilden and the world had been spinning around him in confusion, when he’d been waiting to take his oral exam for his PhD and he thought he was going to run to the bathroom and never come out. Tilden had been there both times, but it had been Milton who had held him down and not let him fly away in the wind. Milton had him now. The fingers digging into his shoulders made that clear, the pace, which was almost a run for his shorter legs, jarred that into his soul. 

“Thank you,” Luke whispered into the wind, half hoping that Milton wouldn’t hear him.

“I know, kid. I’ve got you now.”

Their pace slowed as they crossed the quadrangle and started down the path to the town below. Luke had walked the path thousands of times. He knew where each grove of pine trees provided a hiding spot for a secret tryst, he knew where the daisy and coneflowers crowded the summer beds, and where the benches clustered around statues of past luminaries. It was all familiar, and today he saw all those spots through the continual knowledge that Milton’s hands were still on him. He was controlling the pace and the cadence, not letting this feel like a headlong rush in some random direction.

“I’ve been neglecting you.”

“No,” Luke said quickly.

“Luke, I know you’ve never found a comfort level with me. Ten years and you still make a good effort to melt into the nearest wall when I’m around. I’ve given you space, in retrospect more space than I should have. I left you in a gray zone, not a submissive and not vanilla, and I paraded around as an obvious dominant. It’s no wonder you ran for cover—all those mixed signals.”

“I’m not sure…” Luke listened to their feet on the asphalt path. “I…” he started again. He hated this. He hated that Milton always left him tongue-tied with his heart thumping in his chest and sweat breaking out on his brow.

“You’re not much sure you like me as a dominant. We’ve been down this trail before. You know, Luke, I don’t think my dominance is as much of a problem as that I wanted you to identify yourself in ways that you simply can’t. I wanted your submission to be easy and comfortable for me, and not in this damn gray area that gives me an ulcer. I’ve been trying to have adult and rational conversations with you in the way me might discuss literature or history. You’re not going to have those conversations with me, at least not without pressure, and I wasn’t applying the pressure. I was so busy trying not to coerce you that I made you feel left out instead. Are you following me so far?”

Luke nodded. Milton words were close enough, or at least not so far off that he felt he needed to protest.

“I have a houseful of submissives who demand my attention in ways that I understand. Instead you tell me that you’re unsure you want to identify as a submissive, that you’re not sure you want any relationship with me, not as a lover, not as a kind uncle, only as two colleagues who live under the same roof and love the same man. Awkward. It felt like something out of those crazy Russian novels you and Tilden like so well. The only problem is that you respond to me as a submissive every damn time I interacted with you. I avoided you more, and we have this, an avalanche of misunderstandings. I am going to quit trying to be a correct and proper dominant with all my I’s dotted on a contract and all my T’s crossed. You are going to play by my rules. You will have a contract and a safeword, and I refuse to call it anything but dominance and submission, but I know you’re not into heavy pain or into the sexual side of it. I’m going to let you have your submission wrapped up in the cloak of good clean living. I’ll call you on your real world behavior: your tendency to fade into the woodwork, your lost in space moments, your anti-social behavior with our friends, anything I think is inappropriate, but I’ll also just enforce rules because I can. You are a submissive, not terminally incompetent or permanently a child incapable of managing his own affairs. You will believe this. I will make you believe this. And don’t ever doubt as your dominant I could make you believe that the grass was blue and the sky was green. I enjoy power, boy, and you’ve given me plenty of room to wield it.”

Hear him roar, Luke thought. Why wasn’t he running away? Why was he letting him steer him into the barber shop with the old fashioned striped pole and the barber with a comb over across his bald scalp. 

“Tell him, or I will,” Milton said with no sympathy as he pushed Luke toward an empty chair.

“Shorter. Out of my eyes and off my collar,” Luke managed as the barber tossed the cloth over his chest.

Milton nodded the slightest smile crossing his face for an instant.

“Anything for you, sir?” the other barber asked Milton.

He was thin with black curls and skinny jeans. The old guy’s son, Luke guessed. There was some resemblances across the eyes and mouth.

“Shave it off,” Milton said, running his hand over his beard.

“Sir?”

“I’ve had it since you were a little kid playing on the floor with your toy trucks. It’s starting to make me look like Santa Claus.”

“It looks distinguished.”

“I see you taught your son to flatter the customers.”

“Yes, yes, he’s good with the men,” the older barber said. “Jaime has a way with them. He always has good advice for men to look their best.”

Milton choked back a bark of protest. 

“You’ve been coming here almost twenty years,” the barber said to the background of his scissors slicing through Luke’s hair, “often enough with a beautiful young man. It’s the modern world. You need to look handsome for your boys. This one’s exquisite. I’m happily married for thirty years, but it doesn’t mean I can’t notice. Lovely, beautiful hair.”

Luke didn’t want to know what color his face was. He would have fled, but that would have caused more of a scene.

“He’s harmless, Luke. Just talks a lot,” Milton said easily, taking a seat in the other chair. “I’ve known Marvin since I started teaching here. He’s never cut my nose off yet.”

“That’s a comfort,” Luke said between gritted teeth. “I’m not planning to live in a Gogol story.”

“Does that look good? Still long enough to show off those golden curls without hanging like a mop in his face.” Marvin spun the barber chair, so Milton could have a look all the way around.

“If he’s satisfied?” Milton asked.

“It’s fine. What do I owe you?” Luke had seen the prices posted outside of the blackboard, but he hadn’t taken much notice.

“He usually pays,” Marvin said with a flick of his head toward Milton. “I assume it’s the same today.”

“Yes,” Milton said serenely.

Luke was going to kill Milton, strangle him with the cord of the clippers or drown him in a basin of water. No, he wasn’t, not for real. He didn’t do the dramatic. He stalked over to the bench that served as the tiny waiting area and grabbed a three year old issue of a car magazine. He engrossed himself in the chart of stopping distances for sedans, not that he cared a damn, but it was better than looking at that barber’s laughing eyes.

Milton was standing over the bench, seeming to cast his own shadow. “Lollipop?”  He was holding out a cherry flavored lollipop.

“No.”

“An extra for me.” Milton smiled and pocketed the treat. His smile looked different now, not half hidden in the beard. His entire face was different, his chin and cheeks sharper, his lips curving over his teeth. “Do you like it?” Milton ran his hand over his smooth cheeks. “I’ll hear from Sheldon for not telling him I was going to do it. He won’t believe it was spontaneous.”

Luke shrugged and tossed his magazine back onto the stack. Milton’s facial hair was his business. He didn’t have an opinion, he told himself with determination.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Milton called in a cheery voice and pushed Luke out the door and into the street. “What is all the stomping and pouting about?” 

“I’m not stomping and pouting.” Luke sidestepped and quickened his pace to put space between them. “You humiliated me.”

“I treated you like my younger lover which you are. You acted like a spoiled child.”

“He asked you if the length was OK. You paid for it.” 

“Yes.”

Milton’s voice was more distant. He wasn’t hurrying after Luke’s steps but had slowed. He was leaning against the lamppost, waiting.

“I’m not having this conversation to your back at a shout.”

“I’m not having it period,” Luke wheeled around and shouted.

“Very well, there are less pleasant ways to do this.”

He wouldn’t, not in public, not on a street where one of their students might walk by. This wasn’t a crowded street, but still he could see a group of students on the corner. They were engrossed in their own conversation, girls, two with shopping bags from the boutiques that catered to students, one with a fancy coffee in her hand. She was too far to tell the flavor, but Luke knew the cups.

“Luke, come here.”

He could run. He was twenty feet ahead, Yeah, and Milton would chase him. He’d seen it happen with Sheldon. He’d seen Milton disappear behind a parked car or a corner of a building and reappear with Sheldon sniffling and eyes glistening with tears. Milton would do it. He had no shame.

Luke wanted to call it good judgment, but it was more likely cowardice. He turned and walked back toward Milton.

“Thank you.”

Milton’s hand felt heavy on the back of Luke’s neck. This was Milton’s game. Luke would play by the rules; that was the measure of the weight and strength that gripped Luke’s neck. The hand wasn’t there for camaraderie, but for ownership. 

“It’s not uncommon for lovers or even friends to consult each other on their haircuts. You’re the only one who needed to know it was more. You could have taken me paying for a haircut as a nice treat, you didn’t.” Milton’s voice was soft, almost kind, if Luke didn’t know the bite of control that hid under that quiet tone.

“They knew. They were laughing at me.”

“They guessed, but you wrote it in capital letters with glow in the dark ink. If you don’t want people to know, don’t flash it in front of them. You control that. You are my submissive. I will not pretend otherwise. Now let’s go home before you display our relationship to everyone on the street. I don’t mind in the barber shop. I do mind here, and I will make your life very unpleasant if you have a submissive hissy-fit in the middle of the road.”

“Hissy-fit?”

“Looked like one to me,” Milton said with a slight twist of his lips. 

“You—“ Luke couldn’t say anything. He was too angry. Milton had started it and now he was saying it was all Luke’s fault.

“Luke, I was dominating you in public. I didn’t deny that, but I was doing it in such a way that you could both submit and hide it or at least play it down. We are in this relationship. I have a right. Think about it.”

Think about it. Bastard!

“Home.”