Negotiations for the New Year
“Milton, I see you must have talked to Sheldon,” Landon said as he reached for his coffee cup. Landon was in the solarium, his usual area of quiet morning retreat and where Milton had expected to find him. Gordon hated the plants, insisting that jungles belonged outside and in a different climate. Landon’s fondness for the room might be exactly because Gordon wouldn’t follow him into it. This was Landon’s space and Landon’s kingdom.
“You knew. How long have you known?” Milton knew there was too much snap in his voice as Landon drew his brows together and turned his full stare on Milton. This was a Landon well away from his submissive side, a Landon who could have a blistering tongue.
“Yes, I knew,” Landon said distinctly and calmly. “I have no obligation to tell you Sheldon’s confidences, especially as he was planning to tell you himself.”
“You encouraged this.”
“I neither encouraged it or discouraged it,” Landon said, taking another sip of coffee. “We talked, unlike what you are doing with me.”
Milton heard the reprimand in Landon’s voice. He didn’t need to hear the specific words. Don’t try to bully me. I’m Gordon’s submissive, not yours. I’ll submit to him even when he’s being a bastard; I won’t with you, and you’re being a bastard right now.
Milton raked his fingers through his hair and leaned against the glass wall. He could feel the outside cold through his sweater, and he forced his mind to settle. He didn’t fight with Landon. It wasn’t productive, and he loved Landon.
“Sorry,” Milton murmured.
Landon smiled gently, his eyes taking on the incredible kindness that always tore straight through Milton’s soul. “You’re a master, Milton. I know it’s hard, and I know it will never sit easily on your soul. It is for this reason you’re a good master. If you didn’t question, if you didn’t fear, if you didn’t sometimes see your worst nightmare in front of your eyes, you’d be a cruel and abusive bastard. You aren’t. I bend my knee to you because you are worthy of my respect and my submission.”
“I’ll have everything.”
“Sheldon wants you to have everything. It’s your responsibility as master to take it. He’s safe with you. Trust yourself.”
“I love him,” Milton said, his voice almost breaking with the strain. “I don’t want him less of a man.” Milton slowly slid down the glass wall. He’d sat on this floor many times as a boy, the warm tiles against often heated flesh, the comforting smell of peat moss in the air. It wasn’t the smell of cattle and fresh hay, but it had been closer to home than the Oriental rugs and expensive paintings. The world had been so different at seventeen. Milton had been afraid of Landon and Gordon; there was no other way to put it. He’d met both men as his grandfather’s friends from the city, but suddenly alone under Gordon’s demanding stare and even more demanding voice in a world Milton didn’t understand and hadn’t even imagined had left Milton stunned and unprepared for the first time he could remember.
Surely as a tiny child, Milton had been surprised or unable to fathom the desires of the mysterious tall people known as adults. As a teenager, Milton had thought he’d found his way. He’d been tops in his class at everything. He’d known where he was going, or at least in his teenage mind he’d known. That first night he’d sat on his bunk, swinging his long legs idly as Gordon talked. Skiing all winter and helping with the lift operation hadn’t seemed like a bad gig, but it didn’t need an hour’s worth of explanation.
“What?” Milton could still remember the shock in his voice as his hand moved to rub his stinging thigh. Gordon had been carrying some decorative stick like thing, and he’d just hit Milton.
“It’s a cane, boy, and I will use it, my young dominant.” Gordon had pointed with the damn stick to a pile papers and hand bound books on a small student’s desk. “Read and learn. We will start for real tomorrow.”
From the beginning, Milton had wanted the challenge. The world inside those sometimes laboriously hand typed sheets was a world he could hardly imagine at seventeen, but a world that he instantly recognized as his. Now as he contemplated his power over a man who he loved more than himself, Milton almost wished he’d never devoured those words, that he hadn’t faithfully spent hours at the feet of that man with the stick like thing.
“You cannot deny who you are,” Landon said softly as if he was seeing Milton’s thoughts as they battled inside Milton’s head. “This belongs to you.” Landon reached into his pants and pulled out a small box. “Open it.”
Inside the velvet box was a ring, a gold band that looked no different than thousands of other wedding rings. Milton looked down at his own hand. “I already have a ring.”
“This is a master’s ring. Read the inscription.”
Man and Master--Green Mountain Boys
“We saved it for you. Gordon headed the Green Mountain Boys, but he is not a master. He has too much temper and too little self-sacrifice. You have a bounty of self-sacrifice, and you rule your emotions with a brutal and unyielding discipline. You are a master. It belongs to you. Take it.”
Milton’s finger touched the smooth gold surface. “Why not Gordon?”
“Gordon is a dominant. He is not a master. You are.”
Milton knew his eyes asked the unspoken words. Why was he different than Gordon? What made Milton worthy of this small gold band?
“I would never have survived a master. We would have killed each other long ago,” Landon said with a faint smile.
“There’s more to it than that,” Milton said, his voice gruff with emotion he didn’t understand.
“Yes,” Landon said slowly and ran his hand down the seam of his wool pants. “I don’t need to tell you the reasons. You’re a master; you’ve had a chance to see for yourself.”
“Sheldon isn’t you.”
“Don’t miss the point,” Landon said sharply. Landon rested his blue eyes on Milton’s face, eyes which spoke of knowledge and kindness and a depth of understanding that could be frightening. “You embrace the self-sacrifice. You give of yourself entirely. That is not Gordon. He can be capricious; he can be self-serving.”
“I’m not a saint.” Milton wrapped a hand around one knee, the ring under that hand, and studied the wear on his pants. Gordon would be hassling him to go shopping again, or he’d find a box on his doorstep with ten crisp pairs of khakis matched with beautiful oxford shirts. “I take my pleasures.”
“You’d better, or I’ll make Gordon’s beatings look like a beach outing,” Landon growled.
“OK.” Milton gave Landon a small smile. “I don’t want to be on your bad side.”
“Wise choice. Now do I have to spell out the other?”
Milton shook his head. He knew the other. He knew as master that he was as tightly bound by the slave contract as Sheldon. He was responsible for his slave’s health, happiness, and well-being. There was pleasure in a slave, but there were responsibilities. Milton wouldn’t call them burdens; Sheldon was never a burden.
“You’ll grant Sheldon his wish?”
“Yes,” Milton said more to himself than to Landon. “My slave always and everywhere.” He opened his hand and studied the ring that balanced on his knee.
“Wear it. Your grandfather would expect it.”
Milton fingered the fine gold band and slid it on his finger.
“All right one down. Now for number two,” Landon said with a way too bright of smile.
“Everything else is fine,” Milton protested quickly, knowing Landon’s smile meant everything was far from fine. “Mike hasn’t even picked a fight with anyone in a week.”
“Mike is easy. He just needs bruises half the days of the year, and he’s happy. Luke baffles me, but his wisps of a smile look genuine enough to me. Austin will have occasional growing pains, but he has what he wanted and needed, and if you don’t spoil him beyond reason, he’ll be a happy boy.”
“Tilden?” Milton questioned, having mentally ticked off the names. “Tilden’s fine; you just don’t get along with him.”
“It’s New Years. You need to negotiate with Tilden.”
“He’s not my submissive,” Milton answered automatically.
“He is,” Landon said in a quiet voice that bore the marks of a man used to authority in his public life. There was no wavering or hesitation and no immediate retraction.
Milton let his eyes rest on Landon in that quiet determined gaze that made most men lower their head or shuffle papers on their desk. Landon stared back, blue eyes meeting brown.
“He’s not a dominant. Let’s start there. It’s the easier part,” Landon finally said, his eyes still unwavering.
“He’s not a submissive,” Milton countered.
“So we agree he’s not a dominant?”
“Landon, it’s not your business. He just doesn’t like this stuff. He tolerates it for me. I can’t ask more of him.”
“How many years have you let him suffer under the delusion he’s a dominant?”
Milton stood up, squared his shoulders, and crossed his arms. “I invited your input on Sheldon; I did not invite you to analyze my relationship with a man who you barely tolerate. I’ve had enough.” Milton turned and moved toward the door.
“How long have you been denying the truth?” Landon asked gently, knowing his words would carry and Milton would be listening even as he ostensibly walked out. “You’re way too good not to have known. How long?”
Milton hesitated and faced Landon again. Maybe it was the memories of all those worries he’d poured out long ago to Landon that made him stop. Milton didn’t want to analyze himself. All he knew was that his feet had stopped moving. Landon’s expression was the same open kindness he’d shown Milton all those years ago. Landon and Gordon were both sharks in the world of finance, and Landon had a fire in his personality that sometimes engulfed both him and Gordon, but he had also comforted Milton with gentle fingers and a warm soul when Milton had wanted to run away and never speak the word dominant or submissive again. It had been the submissives, Landon and Uncle Doug, who had always reassured Milton at his darkest points.
“Milton, how long?” Landon asked again.
“I’ve been suspicious for years. I kept trying to convince myself that he just didn’t understand the pleasure he gave his submissives and that was the problem. He’s a gentle man; he had huge and nearly unshakable taboos about the use of force. He was so natural in the other parts.”
“He’s not an attention seeker; he wasn’t going to look like Sheldon. He wasn’t going to do something idiotic every five minutes. Sheldon might have tipped your viewpoint to seeing submissives as young and crazy, but adult, capable, and to all the world as ordinary as your beautiful violet-eyed college professor can also be a submissive.”
Milton leaned against the glass and blew out a long breath until the pane lost its transparency. He traced his finger through the mist he’d created, the fog that still clouded his mind when he thought of Tilden.
“He never did anything idiotic. He never suggested he wanted to try or that he ever had any interest in me touching him that way. Yes, I knew we were playing at only being friends. I’d wanted him forever. He’s so beautiful and kind and perfect. I wanted him.”
“And you told him no all those years ago because he wasn’t a submissive.”
Milton nodded and wiped the tear that slowly trickled down his cheek. “He was always a submissive.”
“I would think so, but Tilden didn’t know either. Tilden didn’t fit his own definition of submissive. His frame of reference was mostly Sheldon who as a young man saw anyone who didn’t indulge in lunacy as a dominant. Even Mace, who is quiet, indulged in dramatics as a young man if the stories are accurate.”
Milton nodded. There hadn’t been a frame of reference for Tilden. As a young man, Milton didn’t see his calm and organized friend as a submissive. He’d cajoled Tilden through some stressful moments of graduate school, but the favor had been returned as often by Tilden. Once Sheldon had arrived, Milton had seen submissives as young and impulsive, and bratty. He should have known better. He’d been trained by Gordon and Landon. Landon had never shown the impulsive ingenuity of Sheldon. Landon could play at being a brat, but Milton had seen behind the curtain at the magic show. When Landon bratted it was a calculated act either to annoy the hell out of Gordon or to relax a young and frightened submissive. But Landon has always shown his love of pain. It was easy to spot a submissive who enjoyed pain.
“Tilden’s not a masochist.”
“He’s not a masochist, and he’s not a lunatic, but he’s still a submissive,” Landon said. “It’s not a one size fits all world, but Tilden didn’t know that. He saw you with Sheldon, who is also far from a masochist, and knew he wasn’t in that box. Sheldon put him in your box; you put him in your box, so he assumed he must be a dominant.
“He knew he was horrible in that role,” Milton spat. “I knew he was fighting it within himself. I convinced myself it was societal expectations about not hitting those whom you love. He’s not aroused or excited by dominating. He’s an organizer; he’s a care taker; he’s steady and hard to anger. He’s a brilliant linguist, and none of those things makes him a dominant. He can do the part in bed, not easily but halfway, and somehow he managed to hold Luke and Mike together. It must have been torture, but he’s a family man, and he believes in living up to his responsibilities. He was such a good student; he never once turned to me and said all this you’re telling me you feel is a steaming pile of cow shit because all I feel is as guilty as hell and sick to my stomach.”
“Tilden’s a very good student. He copied and memorized your actions, and he hadn’t felt the other. Remember you weren’t touching him sexually. His submissiveness shows when you touch him.”
“It was like a dialogue in a damn language textbook. He parroted the right words. He leaned the exact intonation pattern, but it was still a foreign language.”
“A foreign language that he spoke very well. Milton, we all missed it.”
“You weren’t in love with him.” Milton raked his fingers through his hair. “How much more can I mess this up?”
Landon moved from the wicker chair and stood behind Milton. “Do I need to get Gordon?”
Milton spun around and focused on Landon’s sharp blue eyes. Age hadn’t mellowed their gleam or their intensity. The threat wasn’t idle words.
“No taking on the guilt of the world, I know.” Milton opened his hands in a gesture of acquiescence and made an attempt at a smile.
“Milton, I know you.” The growl was familiar, reassuring and frightening at the same time.
“Landon, when you’re like this no one would ever believe you’re a submissive.” Milton’s smile was more genuine this time. “I’ll be good.”
“Better.” Landon kissed Milton’s cheek, a gesture of solidarity and friendship. “Tilden enjoys being the submissive. I’ve seen the marks peeking out from under his shirt collar. They wouldn’t be there if he didn’t enjoy it.”
“He’s so alive.” Milton could see the images: Tilden face up on the bed with his knees pulled wide and spread, the sheets rumpled and Tilden sprawled loosed limbed and sated, Tilden’s voice rich with pleasure as he begged in a tangle of languages as Milton teased him mercilessly.
“Go negotiate with your submissive.”
Milton nodded, but he didn’t move from the window. In the large pine tree a blue jay squawked and flapped, his ire seemingly directed at Milton. “Idiot. Fool. Idiot,” the bird screamed repeatedly.
“Milton,” Landon finally said as Milton continued to watch the jay, “you’ll have to make the first move here. Most submissives I would have approached, but I can’t with Tilden. He’s not an ordinary submissive; he’s your submissive. He comes into this relationship as your friend and your lover. That will not change. He’s your equal in all things that don’t involve what you do as lovers. Don’t deny his submission because he’s so different than your other boys.”
“I don’t know what he wants.”
“You talk to him like any of your other boys. Now go.” Landon patted Milton on the rump and gave him a push.
****
“Tilden?”
Tilden raised his head from the book on his knee and looked toward the open door. As always his hair was scattered across his forehead in a slight muss from the large cowlicks in the middle. He smiled his usual gentle, warm greeting.
“Up early.”
“I could say the same for you. I know you toasted in the New Year with at least one glass of vodka.”
“One,” Tilden said, shutting the book on his knees and setting it on a nearby table. “With Austin…”
“He’s not of age, and he understands that. You don’t have to be a teetotaler.”
“I saw you with Sprite.”
Milton smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. “No one ever said that I was the life of the party.”
“Is there something you need?” Tilden asked, his eyes watching Milton. “Um...you’re hovering.”
Milton forced himself from the doorway and closed the short distance between the two of them. He brushed back the stray lock of hair on Tilden’s forehead and gently kissed those soft lips. “It’s New Year’s.”
“Yes?” Tilden asked, not catching the implication.
“I negotiate with my submissives on New Year’s.”
“Everything go OK?”
Milton smiled and snorted softly. “Sheldon wants to quit work, and I’ll grant it, not that I love it, but I don’t have much choice. I talked with Austin yesterday, and Mike grunted something along the lines of do what I want which will take an evening with the heavy artillery to sort out with him. I haven’t approached Luke yet. I need to talk to you first.”
“Is there a problem?” Tilden’s expressive face clouded with worry.
“Not with Luke. I might wish that he didn’t hide from me so much, but I might also wish for more rain in August and less in April. That’s Luke, and I accept it.” Milton took a deep breath and leaned over Tilden, letting his arm drape over Tilden’s chest. “What about with you? Do we need to negotiate?”
The response was quick, too instantaneous, too prepackaged. “I’m not your submissive.”
“Tilden.” Milton moved around the front of Tilden and trapped Tilden’s face in his hands. “Tell me that with conviction, not with the quality of a rehearsed line.”
“I like you to top in bed; that’s all.” Tilden’s eyes searched out Milton’s, their usual calm gone. He jerked from Milton’s hands, sat back in the chair, and crossed his legs. Milton could almost see the barriers coming down.
“Make me believe you.” Milton moved back to the door and kicked it closed with his foot. “The door’s shut. It’s only the two of us. Tell me what you want to tell me.”
“I’m not your submissive. I’m your lover. We did figure out that not everyone has to be your sub,” Tilden said glibly, but his eyes were above Milton’s shoulder, staring at some vague spot on the wall. The speech pattern wasn’t right. Milton had listened to Tilden for years. This speech was too quick, almost singsong, a rehearsed quality.
“Lying to your dominant doesn’t have a good outcome.” Milton reached for the buckle of his belt, knowing that Tilden had lived enough in their household to exactly understand the threat. “Do we need to do it that way? I’m more than capable of doing it.” And Gordon would have to work overtime to put Milton back together if it went in that direction. Milton had never laid a stripe across Tilden, and he didn’t want to start now.
Tilden’s eyes went wide, and Milton could see him processing the implications, weighing the chance it might be a bluff. “We don’t do this.”
Not, you crazy asshole, don’t you dare threaten me because I’m not even faintly submissive. Not a you must be kidding look, but a quiet swallow and very wide eyes.
“We haven’t yet.” Milton placed the emphasis on the yet, knowing Tilden wouldn’t miss that slight change in intonation pattern.
“The others.”
“Hypothetical, no others, are you my submissive?” Milton asked, softening his voice to a tone of broad reassurance, the tone he used with new and intimidated submissives.
“It’s not hypothetical.” Tilden’s voice lifted a fraction, a blunt indication of his stress and indecision.
“Play this game with me,” Milton said soothingly. “There are no others. It’s just the two of us. Do you enjoy dominating?”
“No.” No hesitation. No wavering.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t...I...I just…”
“Come on, Tilden. You’re fluent in more languages than I can count on one hand. You can do better than that.”
Tilden swore long and hard in several languages and then spat out something in a garble of consonants that Milton recognized as not Russian, but otherwise left him baffled.
“English or Russian if that’s easier. Whatever that was is not in my repertoire.”
“Uzbek. It’s been designated a critical language. You might at least learn to recognize it.”
“I manage Russian and some truly dreadful French. More I’ll leave in yours and Luke’s capable hands.”
“Milton, this is a waste of time. We have better things to do than play parlor games.”
“You have nothing better to do than play parlor games with me,” Milton said slowly, deliberately, and menacingly. He stalked toward Tilden, each step measured, each swing of his arm calculated to project dominance. “My submissive obeys my will.”
“Hypothetical submissive.”
“I can live with that,” Milton said, softening his voice and posture. “What happens when my hypothetical submissive dominates?”
“I feel like a fraud. I grit my teeth and do it. I’m not...I’m not wired that way,” Tilden said very softly.
“Tilden.” Milton wrapped his arms around Tilden and pulled him hard to his chest. “It’s supposed to be pleasure, not pain.”
“I didn’t...I didn’t…”
“You had no comparison until you became my lover. I know that. I’m the biggest idiot on the planet, but I know that now. Landon pointed it out with his usual gentle tongue.” Milton laughed ruefully. “Submissives don’t all look like Sheldon was the gentlest part. You’re an organized, capable, fabulously smart person who would rather die than brat, but none of those characteristics prohibit you from being a submissive.”
“It’s fine to talk about it in the hypothetical, but it won’t change anything.”
“Tilden!”
“Don’t. They depend on us. I can’t turn their lives upside down again.”
“You can’t keep pretending to be what you aren’t. It’s shattering your soul.”
“Leave the soul and all its permutations to the Russian poets. We live in a spiderweb of relationships. I can’t just announce I’ve crossed to the opposite bank and pretend all is going to be well. We have a twenty-year-old in this relationship. He needs stability. I brought Luke into this relationship. You’re not his dream dominant, and you know it. Hypothetical world with no one else outside of those doors, I’d be at your feet, but that’s not where we live. We have to deal with today, tomorrow, and the following day. My being a submissive is just not in the cards.”
“I won’t let you be a dominant.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Tilden jerked to his feet and shoved his hands in his pocket. His eyes met Milton’s, flashes of dark angry violet. “I don’t live in Fantasyland. This ship sailed long ago when you didn’t take me as your submissive. I know you read me wrong; I know I read myself wrong, but you had the knowledge and you never let me try. You never let me find my place. You slotted me as a dominant because I could get to class with both my socks the same color and didn’t throw food in restaurants. I wasn’t a flaming lunatic, but I was a submissive. Oh, God! What did I just say to you?” Tilden’s arm was around Milton’s shoulders. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“Shh.” Milton pulled them both down into a tangled heap onto the floor, arms and legs mixed together in a scattered jumble. “I deserved that. Now how do we fix it?”
“You didn’t deserve me yelling at you because I was too naive to recognize my own orientation.”
“You weren’t yelling. You were only being forceful, and you won’t get that chance for free again.”
“We can’t--”
“We can’t go on like this.” Milton rolled into a sitting position, bringing Tilden with him. “Continuing to pretend is not an option.” Milton traced his finger down Tilden’s sharp cheekbones. “I’m sure Sheldon knows. That only leaves three. Mike already looks to me to dominate him as does Austin, and Luke and I will work harder to come to an understanding. I’ll take care of him. I’ll make sure he’s not left out.”
“He finds you hard.”
“I know. I’m far more dominant than he wants, but he does occasionally need a dominant, and he has started not to completely hide when he’s having one of those rare moments when he wants to be a submissive. He’s learning that I don’t beat everyone with the entire contents of my study drawer.”
“Milton!”
Milton kissed Tilden’s nose and finger combed his hair back into place. “I’m not planning to beat you with most of that stuff either unless I’m totally missing your secret desires. I’ve been a bit slow lately.”
“No,” Tilden said with a shaky smile. “I like your hand.”
“I know you do, and that’s fine.”
“I like...I like the bites.” Tilden flushed a deep red. “I like feeling them rub under my shirt. I like knowing your mark is on me.”
Milton pulled Tilden close. Tilden’s neck was bare and unmarked, a pristine white above his dark green Henley. Milton kissed the soft skin and slowly sank his teeth into the white flesh. Tilden hissed and his body stiffened.
“Good boy.” Milton licked the red flesh. “Very pretty.”
“Very noticeable.”
“Do you have a problem with that, boy?” Milton heard the sharp intake of breath and saw the bob of the slender neck as Tilden swallowed. He saw the flush and the indecision.
“No, sir.”
“Good boy.” Milton kissed Tilden hard, feeling the surrender as Tilden’s mouth fell open and he yielded to the sweep of Milton’s tongue. “You are so beautiful.” Milton kissed the shut eyes and tickled the smooth chin with his beard. “We have to get to breakfast.”
Tilden’s eyes shot open. “I’m not ready.”
“We’re having breakfast, not a public scene. You eat your eggs and drink your juice.”
“And call you sir and let you put the food on my plate,” Tilden mumbled.
“Do you want that?”
Tilden licked his lips and rubbed a hand against the bite mark on his neck. “I have this.”
“Wild sex--it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“But it does.”
“To us. “
“There are four others.”
“We don’t need to announce it over the public address system at the airport.”
Tilden looked straight at Milton and stared. “I believe you tell your boys to be proud. I want to be proud.”
“Let’s do it.” Milton stood and pulled Tilden to his feet. He placed his hand on the back of Tilden’s neck and steered them both toward the dining room. “I’ve got it from here on out. Just follow my lead.”
“I’ve been doing that for years. I trust you.” Tilden’s half smile was beautiful and trademark Tilden. Milton mussed Tilden’s hair once more and kissed his forehead.
“Game face, my friend.” Milton smiled. “It’s my right to protect you now, so if any battering takes place it’s going to be directed at me, and I’ll deal with it. You get to enjoy breakfast.”
“Submissive, not incapable.”
“Dominant and overprotective. Live with it. That doesn’t change even for you.”
Tilden’s half smile was enigmatic, and his eyes sparkled. “Tak.”
Challenge, Milton thought and smiled. Tilden had been sitting under the wrong flag, but he hadn’t been oblivious to the game. They’d make it work, and Tilden would fight with every tool allowed to a proper submissive, and he would be a proper submissive; that was Tilden’s way.
