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Stewy steps behind the spanking bench before he pulls out his pocket square. He doesn’t want the kid he has strapped to the padded leather seeing him dab the sweat from his forehead.
Though, maybe the kid wouldn’t have noticed. He’s pretty gone, fingers clenching into fists convulsively, hips humping against the bench with what little slack the cuffs on his wrists and ankles allow for.
Stewy gives the kid’s burning red ass another smack with the paddle. “Stop moving. This isn’t about you getting off.” He pauses, trying to remember the kid’s name. It’s not actually important, but it is basic good manners.
Plus, it’ll make it easier for Stewy to request him again. If he ends up wanting that.
Brayden, he thinks. He’s ninety-percent sure, at least, and that amount of confidence has gotten Stewy where he is today, so he’ll go with it.
Stewy comes back around to Brayden’s eye line. He’s stopped rubbing off on the bench, and he’s shaking a little with the effort of holding himself still.
Yeah, that’s—that’s fucking nice.
It should be. Brayden’s time comes at a rate of five hundred dollars an hour. Stewy could go downstairs to the main public space of the club and find someone who’d kill to be in this position for free, but Stewy has more money than he has bandwidth for the emotional labor sceneing with a non-professional would entail.
Brayden’s eyes are still lowered, painting a perfect albeit boring picture of submission, but he makes a needy noise through the gag he’s wearing.
Stewy runs a hand through Brayden’s sweaty hair, cups his cheek. “Shh. Look at me.”
Glassy eyes raise to meet Stewy’s.
It’s that expression, all dazed and fucked out and mindless with it, that really does it for Stewy. That reminds him why he’s into this.
Sophomore year, undergrad, was the first time Stewy hit Kendall.
Kendall was in some shit because he’d failed to turn in a paper, effectively torpedoing his GPA, and his usual solutions (cheating, leaning on the family name) hadn’t worked out yet. Stewy came home from class to find him high, but not stoned.
“What the fuck did you take?” he asked as he mixed himself a protein shake.
Kendall gave him that slow dopey grin, and whatever was coursing through his system made it spread across his face in slow motion. “The good shit, man.”
Whatever that meant. Stewy rolled his eyes and decided he’d rather just wait out the high—or maybe get a high of his own going—than indulge Ken’s drama of the week.
He went into his room and lit up before cracking open his econ book, but before he got more than two sentences in, Kendall stumbled into the room.
“Hey Stew,” he said. He dropped onto the bed, pressed all up next to Stewy, the kind of personal space violation they usually only participated in when they were both brown out drunk enough that they wouldn’t have to talk about it the next day.
“Fuck off, Ken,” Stewy said without heat. He fixed his eyes on the text in front of him, refusing to look away even though he wasn’t processing a single word.
“I’m gonna fuck off. Gonna fuck off out of this shithole.”
“Good. Having a roommate is so freshman year.”
“Not this apartment. This fuckin’—fuckin’ Ivy League bullshit.”
That got Stewy’s attention, but he tried not to let it show. “You’re just fucked up, you’re not going to drop out.”
“I am,” Kendall insisted. “Fuck your books.” He flipped the cover of Stewy’s textbook shut, losing Stewy’s place. Not that it really mattered, but it was the principle of the thing.
Kendall was Stewy’s best friend, but sometimes Stewy hated him just a little. It was the way he had everything but still acted like the world was out to get him, when he wasn’t in one of his manic “I’m the motherfucking king” moods.
“Fuck you,” Stewy said, and hit his ass with the book.
The angle was weird, and Stewy wasn’t actually trying to hurt Kendall, but the way Kendall went all still and wide-eyed made Stewy wonder if he’d underestimated his own strength.
“Um,” Kendall said.
Something clicked in Stewy’s brain, and he laughed. “Fuck, dude. This what you need? A good, old-fashioned spanking to get you back in the straight and narrow?”
Stewy was prepared for Kendall to roll his eyes, to tell him to go fuck himself, to huff and storm off.
He wasn’t prepared for him to say, so softly that Stewy could barely hear it, “Yeah.”
Kendall rolled all the way over onto his stomach then, face smushed in the pillow, and Stewy stared.
He thought about it for all of thirty seconds before he hit Kendall with the book again.
That time, it landed right on the peak of Kendall’s ass, and Stewy actually put some muscle behind it. He did it again, and again, until finally he got annoyed with how awkward it was to use the book and started using his hand instead. A few minutes into that, he worked Kendall’s Gucci jeans and boxers down to his thighs. Kendall didn’t protest, even lifted his hips to help, so Stewy didn’t think twice about slapping his bare ass.
He still felt a little awkward—like he should say something, maybe, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t think he could call Ken a naughty, dirty boy or any shit like that with a straight face, and all the things he really wanted to say felt too deep.
He settled for hitting Kendall until his right hand was stinging about as much as Kendall’s ass had to be, then he switched to his left, and by the time Stewy felt like he’d exhausted his ability to spank his best friend, Kendall’s ass was a deep, bruised red.
Stewy sat back on his heels, admiring his handiwork and wondering what exactly came next.
Eventually, Kendall squirmed until he was on his back. His pants were still pushed down around his thighs, and he was hard and leaking, looking up at Stewy with wet eyes.
Stewy, at some point in the proceedings, had gotten hard too, and he was debating whether to use his hand or his mouth to get Kendall off when he remembered that Kendall usually cried after, and he was not high enough for that shit.
Instead, Stewy reached over to his nightstand, where the protein shake he made earlier rested, undrank.
“Here. Pull up your pants, drink this, and sleep off whatever shit you took.”
Kendall blinked, then he tugged his pants up, took the shake from Stewy, and drank without bitching about the taste. Stewy watched him the whole time, mostly because he wasn’t sure how he was just supposed to go back to studying for econ after that.
When Kendall drained the last bit of shake, he handed the bottle back to Stewy. “Can I sleep here?” he asked, and he still had that needy look in his eyes. Stewy had always had a hard time saying no to it, and right now there was something extra open about Kendall’s face, so he nodded.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, even though he knew Kendall would inevitably stink up his sheets as he sweated out the drugs working their way through his system.
Kendall gave him a smile that would have been angelic if it hadn’t been for the redness of his eyes. “Thanks, Stew,” he said, and he crawled underneath the covers as Stewy pretended to resume his reading.
Minutes later, Stewy could tell from the little snuffles coming from the other side of the bed that Kendall was asleep.
He got a B in econ that semester because he couldn’t open his book without popping a boner.
Having paddled a week’s worth of bruises into Brayden’s ass and followed that up with a bit of caning, Stewy determines his time with Brayden is at its close He’d like to fuck the kid, from behind, right here on the bench, and he thinks Brayden would probably let him, even though it’s against the rules for any of the paid staff to engage in outright sexual contact like that. Stewy doesn’t want to get his ass banned, though, so he undoes the cuffs on Brayden’s wrists and ankles.
Brayden’s limbs flop like noodles. Stewy helps him over to the bed shoved into the corner and arranges him on his side. Then unbuckles the gag and works the bit from between Brayden’s teeth, wishing he could keep it in, not because he particularly cares for the aesthetic, but because it discourages talking.
In a perfect world, Stewy would clear out right now anyway, but he knows that if word gets back to club management that he’s skimping on aftercare, it’d be the end of his membership.
Brayden seems pretty easy so far, though, so that’s a point in his favor. Stewy goes to minifridge and comes back with a bottle of water that he holds to Brayden’s lips while he drinks it greedily.
“Need a snack?” Stewy asks as he recaps the empty bottle.
Brayden shakes his head. His eyes are still glazed over.
Stewy accepts that at face value and moves on to working ointment into the mess he made of Brayden’s back.
“Anything feel…off?” Stewy asks. He rubs the cream over a particularly brutal welt on Brayden’s thigh, and Brayden doesn’t even flinch at the touch.
“No, sir,” Brayden says, and it’s the first time Stewy’s heard him speak since they went over rules, limits, safewords. He has a nice voice. Stwey bets he begs all breathy and pretty, bets other people probably like to hear it.
People who are normal, that is, and not hung up on Kendall fucking Roy.
They didn’t talk about the spanking. Kendall managed to figure something out with the paper, and semester ended, and they got shithammered and jerked each other off in the back of Kendall’s Mercedes, and they didn’t talk about that either.
It happened again, though, both the spanking and the hooking up. The spanking was always separate—it started feeling like Stewy couldn’t link that particular activity to the other shit they did, like any of it was some sort of sacred tradition—and the more it happened, the more it became more than just spanking.
A few times, Stewy slapped Kendall’s face. Other times, he had him get naked and kneel, either in front of Stewy while he worked on problem sets or next to him on the floor while he watched TV. He’d make Kendall wait for long minutes until Kendall cracked and started begging, and that never failed to get Stewy hard enough to pound nails.
“Uh. Stewy,” it always began, Kendall shaky and unsure.
“What?” Stewy asked, playing at being bored, which was easy enough, since he either was bored or acting like it most of the time.
“Can you—will you—”
Stewy would wait until Kendall stopped stammering, and then push him a little further. “Will I what, Ken?”
“Will you hit me,” Kendall would say, always in a rush, always full of that naked desperation that he got on his face every time he found himself on the outskirts of a party or came home from visiting his dad.
Stewy always did, always gave Kendall what he wanted, or at least, what he thought Kendall wanted, but the truth was that he had no idea what the fuck he was even doing. He tried looking shit up online, but all the sites he found looked like they were run by the weird goth kids he knew back in high school and it was too off-putting for him to spend much time on them.
By the time he found his way to the club and started to actually figure some shit out, they’d finished post-grad, and Kendall was engaged to Rava.
It wasn’t like Stewy and Kendall stopped being friends. They hung out all the time, but there were no more drunk makeouts, no more amateur scenes, just business lunches and cocktail parties and fundraisers and lots of coke, save for Kendall’s stints in rehab and intermittent experiments with sobriety.
One night, after weeks of radio silence and unanswered texts, Kendall showed up at Stewy’s at nine-thirty on a Tuesday.
“I’m getting sober,” he announced as he beelined to Stewy’s bar and started fixing himself a drink.
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry, that’s non-alcoholic top shelf vodka.” Irritation prickled behind Stewy’s eyes. Kendall’s on-the-wagon, off-the-wagon routine was so fucking boring, and Stewy actually had some work to he was trying to finish. Classic Kendall, walking in and thinking his shit was more important.
“Fuck you,” Kendall muttered. He took a sip and sank down on Stewy’s couch. “Rava says she wants a divorce. Says—says if I can’t get clean, she’s going to try to get full custody of Sophie and Iverson.”
To Stewy, that sounded ideal. “So check into rehab. Again.”
“I’m going to. I’m going to. I just.”
“I have an eight a.m. board meeting tomorrow, Ken, I can’t go out and get fucked up with you tonight. And no, I don’t have any coke.”
“That’s. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then what is it, Ken? Want me to give the wife a call, put in a good word?” They both knew Rava hated his fucking guts.
“No, I…” Kendall trailed off. He slammed the rest of his drink, then something shifted in his face as he stood and made his way across the room. He came to stand before Stewy’s armchair and then he sank to his knees.
Something twisted in Stewy’s gut.
Kendall stared up at him with that familiar, sad gaze. “Will you.” Stewy watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “Will you hit me? Or something?”
“Or something,” Stewy repeated flatly.
“Like—like you used to.”
“You think getting smacked around by your college roomie is going to help your custody case?”
At that, Kendall looked a little like Stewy had hit him. It was, Stewy thought, because he was used to getting what he wanted the second he asked.
“What, what the fuck does that have to do with it? Are you gonna call the fucking Post and tell them all about it?”
He wasn’t, he wouldn’t, and of course Kendall knew that. Stewy sighed and shut his laptop. He looked at Kendall, kneeling in front of him, and he thought about the people he’d played with since, about all the things he’d done that he hadn’t known to do when they were in college.
“Fine. I’ll hit you, or something,” he said. “What are you going to say if you want me to stop?”
Kendall let out his weird nervous laugh. “What, like a safeword?”
“Yeah, pretty much exactly that,” Stewy snapped. He was already annoyed at Kendall for blowing him off then showing up unannounced at a shitty time, at his yo-yo sobriety and his broken home sob story. Now he was acting like Stewy was the stupid one for trying to beat his ass in a safe and consensual manner.
Kendall blinked. “Um. Harvard?”
“Okay. Noted.” Stewy leaned back, thinking. On another night, another time, he would have taken Kendall to his bedroom and just fucking gone to town, given him everything he didn’t know he needed.
A part of Stewy still wanted to do that, but he was too pissed off.
“Get naked and bend over the couch.” He stood up and headed for the bedroom.
Kendall frowned at him. “Where are you going?”
“Did I say you could talk?” He allowed himself a second to enjoy Kendall’s indignant expression, but took off down the hallway before he could say anything else.
Stewy considered the contents of the chest in his closet. It was weird to decide in the moment; he exclusively scened at the club and packed his shit up beforehand because using the stuff the club provided grossed him out.
He grabbed the strap, because he had, on one prior occasion, used his belt to great effect, though it was pretty much down to luck that he didn’t accidentally hit Kendall with the buckle.
When he came back into the living room, Kendall was stripped down, but only to his boxers and t-shirt, and he wasn’t bent over the couch so much as standing behind it.
“Why aren’t you ready for me?” Stewy demanded.
“I, uh. Wasn’t sure when you were coming back.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Stewy said. “I gave you an order and I expect to be obeyed.”
Kendall looked at him blankly.
“Fucking get naked and bend over, or get the fuck out.”
“Jesus.” Kendall gave him a mutinous sort of look, but he pulled off his shirt and pushed down his underwear.
“Now bend over. I told you I don’t have all night.” Some part of Stewy knew that it was a bad idea to go into a scene like this, that he’d never set foot in the club in this type of mood, but it was Kendall, the root of every bad decision he’d ever made.
Kendall got into position and Stewy stepped into place behind him. Kendall craned his head to look back at Stewy, and Stewy slapped his face.
“Keep facing forward,” he said, and he pretended not to notice the tense set of Kendall’s shoulders. He ran the strap down Kendall’s spine. “Ask for what you want.”
For a long, heavy moment, the only sound in the room was Kendall’s breathing. Then, finally: “I want you to hit me.”
“Why do you want that?”
“I. I just want that, okay? I don’t know, why the fuck does anyone want anything, money or drugs or booze or sex—”
Stewy hit him with the strap, and Kendall made a noise, some weird hiccuping shout.
“When I ask you a question, I want an honest answer. Not some coked-up ranting bullshit.”
Kendall didn’t respond to that, and Strewy hit him again, then twice more. Kendall had broken a sweat, and he was breathing harder now.
“Why did you come here, Ken?” Stewy asked again.
Kendall shifted his weight between his feet.
“Answer, or put your clothes on and go.”
“It made me feel good. Before.”
“Congratulations. Once again, you get what you wanted.” Stewy landed five more hits, putting everything he had behind him. By the third, Kendall was squirming, which was new. Maybe he’d misremembered, but every time Stewy got off thinking about spanking Kendall in their college apartment, Kendall took whatever he dished out pretty stoically.
Though, back then Stewy didn’t really know how to dish it out.
“Why do you deserve this?” The question surprised Stewy as much as it clearly did Kendall, who threw Stewy a confused look over his bare shoulder.
Stewy gave him another stinging slap. “Face forward. Answer me. Why do you deserve this?”
He didn’t know what kind of answer he was expecting, but it wasn’t Kendall’s hands fisting in the Italian leather of his couch before straightening.
“Fuck this,” Kendall said. “I’m not—this isn’t—I’m getting sober.”
Stewy stared. “So you’ve said.”
“You’re, you’re a toxic person. You’re a liability to my recovery.”
“You’re calling me a bad influence?”
“Yeah, I fucking am.”
“What are you, sixteen?”
“Fuck you.”
Kendall started dressing himself in quick, jerky movements, and it occurred to Stewy that since he hadn’t actually safeworded, they weren’t technically out of the scene. He considered pushing Kendall back against the couch and beating him until he cried or safeworded, whichever came first. He would have done as much to anyone he was playing with at the club who mouthed off to him like Kendall had.
But while Kendall was a lot of things to Stewy, he wasn’t actually his scene partner. He was a lot more, and that—that was the problem.
Kendall stalked out the door, and Stewy didn’t hear from him for another three months.
Stewy’s officially old and depressing, because it’s Friday night and he’s home alone, not doing anything more exciting than nursing a beer and reviewing some portfolios Sandi sent over.
Nothing exciting at all, until his phone lights up with an incoming call from Kendall.
The Roy family drama has been particularly exhausting lately, with the cruises fiasco and the possible GoJo merger and ticking time bomb that is Ken himself.
Stewy considers letting it go to voicemail, but once again, Kendall gets his way.
“What is it, Ken?” he asks when he answers the call.
“The GoJo deal. We have to shut it down,” Kendall says.
Stewy frowns. “The merger?”
“Not the merger. The acquisition.”
None of it makes sense. “Waystar’s acquiring GoJo? Bullshit.”
“No, Stew.” There’s an urgency in Kendall’s voice that sets Stewy’s nerves on edge, but part of him is happy to see any sign of life from Ken. “GoJo is acquiring Waystar.”
“What the fuck.” Stewy puts Kendall on speakerphone so he can start typing out a text to Sandi. “Are you fucking with me?”
“No, I’m not fucking with you.”
“You’re—you’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking sure. Our dad fucked us, and so did our mom. We just got into the city.”
“Come over,” Stewy says without thinking about it. “Come over and tell me everything.”
The last time Stewy was anything approaching intimate with Kendall, it was after Kendall backed out of the bear hug and sided with his dad. His call came two days after he met with Stewy and Sandy at Herr Roy’s bidding, and for the first minute of the call Kendall didn’t say anything, just breathed into the phone like some sort of weird fucking perv.
“Kendall—” Stewy finally tried.
“I wanna play the friend card,” Kendall said in a rush.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
There was another long pause. Even heavier breathing.
“Please,” Kendall said.
As coincidence or fate or whatever bullshit would have it, Stewy was already on his way to the club. He gave Kendall the address, told him to meet him there and say he was with Stewy.
Stewy waited for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before Kendall appeared. He looked around the room with a wide-eyed blankness, and Stewy crossed his arms as he leaned against the spanking bench, feeling strangely, preemptively defensive.
“What.” Kendall laughed, dry and nervous and without an ounce of actual humor. “What the fuck is this.”
“Come on, Ken, we’re not twenty. I’m not slapping you around my apartment. Grow up.”
Kendall did the thing where he shrank in on himself, shoulders hunching up around his ears like a fucking turtle. “I came here, didn’t I,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. And what is it you actually want? You want someone to kick you around, why not just ask your dad?”
Something flickered in Kendall’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
Stewy knew he’d struck a nerve. Roy Senior had always been Kendall’s boogeyman, even though Ken would have insisted the word was “idol,” but it wasn’t until then that Stewy actually wondered if he’d cracked Kendall’s code, that he started drawing an obvious conclusion.
“You want to call me daddy?” he asked.
Kendall’s face went ghastly white. His breaths started coming fast and shallow, and Stewy realized how badly he’d miscalculated that one.
“Fuck. Ken—come here.”
Kendall’s muscles stayed locked and tense, not that Stewy really expected otherwise. Stewy stepped in and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him close, holding him like he hadn’t done in fuck knows how many years, and Kendall stayed stiff for an excruciating minute until he started crying, terrible gasping sobs that sounded like someone drowning.
Stewy held him like that until it got too weird and he started gently steering Kendall in the direction of the bed.
“Here.” Stewy knelt and tugged Kendall’s pretentious thousand-dollar sneakers off, then grabbed the throw from the foot of the bed and tucked it around him.
Holding Kendall while he cried his eyes out in the bed wasn’t any less weird than holding him while he did it in the middle of the room, but at least it was more comfortable. Eventually his hiccuping sobs died down, though he still clung to Stewy like some sort of lichen on a tree and he made a pathetic snuffling sound when Stewy made to get up.
“Chill, dude,” Stewy muttered. He walked across the room to grab a bottle of water and one of the granola bars the room was always stocked with.
Stewy unwrapped the granola bar and held it under Kendall’s nose. “Here.”
“I’m not. I’m not really hungry.”
“Just eat it, okay, Ken?”
Kendall did, though he nibbled at it so slowly that he probably set some sort of record. Stewy swapped him the empty wrapper for the bottle of water. Kendall started drinking without being told.
“Good,” Stewy said absentmindedly.
Kendall paused, eyes darting up to Stewy’s face. There was something hopeful gleaming in them. Approval, that’s what it always came back to. Ken wanted his daddy’s, and if he couldn’t get that, Stewy’s would do.
“Drink it all,” Stewy said, trying to ignore the tangled feeling of his insides.
Kendall did, and Stewy took the bottle and tossed it. He came back to the bed and debated for just a moment before he sat back down next to Kendall, who was still just looking at him with that pitiful hangdog gaze.
Begrudgingly, Stewy held him.
Kendall has apparently shaved his head. It’s not a good look. Very Britney circa 2007, with the dark circles and crazy eyes to match.
“You’ve looked better,” he deadpans.
“Well, my dad’s selling the fucking company and there’s nothing me, Rome, and Shiv can do about it. So. Yeah. It’s been fucking shitty.”
“Sit down. Tell me about the deal.” Stewy goes over to the bar and hesitates. “Are you—”
“Yeah,” Kendall says, a little too quickly.
Stewy pours him a drink anyway.
He hands Kendall the glass and sits down opposite him and listens to the whole saga—the Roy siblings, finally united, finally standing up to dad, only to be thwarted by mom. A new twist on a Greek tragedy.
“I don’t know what, what we’re gonna do,” Kendall says. His glass is empty, but Stewy pointedly avoids offering him a refill.
“I could maybe—maybe—talk to Sandi,” Stewy begins slowly. “But. It’s a good deal. For us.” He watches Kendall’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “You’re fucked,” he adds, not that it’s necessary.
Kendall crumples forward, forehead pressing into the heels of his hands. “Yeah. Yeah.” He looks up after a long minute. “Can…”
There’s something meaningful in the way he trails off, but even though he thinks he knows, Stewy still raises his eyebrows. “What?”
Kendall straightens and stares down at his knees. “Can we. You know.”
Stewy snorts. “Yeah, that went really well last time. And the time before that.”
Kendall’s shoulders hunch up.
“Maybe it was just a college thing,” Stewy offers, softer.
“No,” Kendall says, eyes flitting to meet Stewy’s, and Stewy gets a little jolt when he sees a sign of life there that’s been missing since at least the bear hug, maybe even since the vote of no confidence failed.
Kendall slides off the couch, on to his knees. “Please, Stew,” he says, and it takes Stewy back twenty years, back to smoking shitty weed and Red Bull-fueled all nighters and dark corner makeouts and bathroom stall blowjobs and spanking Kendall until they were both hard and panting.
Stewy still wants it, as lame as that is.
He stands up, steps around the coffee table. There’s no hair for him to grab, which is another reason to hate Kendall’s buzzcut, outside of it being ugly as fuck. He runs a hand over it insead, then smacks Kendall across the face.
It probably hurts less than it used to, now that Stewy actually knows what he’s doing, but Kendall still hisses, maybe more from surprise than anything.
“This is what you want?” Stewy prompts.
Kendall swallows. Nods.
“Tell me your safeword.” He waits, prepared to call this whole thing off if Kendall tries any of his usual bullshit, but then—
“Harvard.”
Stewy nods and slaps him again to buy himself some time. Tell me what you want is a fun game, and tell me what you need is a good variation, but Kendall has always been, historically, shit at that kind of thing. Emotional honesty, not exactly a Roy family value.
Maybe Stewy can beat it into him.
“Turn around,” he says. “Stay on your knees.”
Kendall shuffles into position awkwardly but without comment, and Stewy presses down on his back, bends him so that he’s facedown on the couch seat.
“Stay,” Stewy tells him. He reaches around for Kendall’s belt, his fly, and works his pants and boxers down his knees. It doesn’t escape his notice that Kendall’s rock hard already, and it doesn’t surprise him, either.
Kendall’s ass was nothing special when they were undergrads. It’s not much different now—maybe just a little flabbier, like all the parts of them. Seeing it bare and exposed and his is still turning Stewy on, though, because maybe deep down he’s just as pathetic as Ken, a grown-ass man with a fucked-up, twenty-year crush on his best friend.
Stewy makes himself stop thinking about that and focuses on turning Kendall’s ass red.
Around the fifth slap, something tight in the set of Kendall’s shoulders unwinds. Stewy knows that if he could see Kendall’s face, it’d be all lax and glassy-eyed.
Stewy can’t help himself. “This what you wanted, Ken?”
“Yeah,” Kendall gasps into the couch, breath stuttering around another hit.
After ten, Stewy doesn’t bother trying to keep count. When his hand starts to hurt, he pauses.
“You need more?”
Just a nod this time. Not good enough.
“Tell me.”
“I need more.” Kendall mutters, but he doesn’t hesitate.
Stewy slides Kendall’s belt out from his pants and doubles it in his grip. The jingle of the buckle has to clue Kendall in to what’s about to happen, but his whole body still jerks at the first blow.
“Like that?” Stewy presses.
“Yeah,” Kendall says, pained.
The memory of the last time they did this, here, tugs at every thread of thought Stewy has. He hits Kendall again and searches for the right words, even though he’s not sure exactly what he wants to ask.
Why this why me are you trying to punish yourself is this what you really want or just what you think you deserve why do you like this what does this do for you is this about your dad what are you here for—
Kendall grunts at the next hit.
“How many can you take?” Stewy asks.
A long pause. “I. I don’t. Know.”
Stewy wants to scream. “Fine,” he manages. “Guess we’ll find out.”
He brings the belt down again and pushes out everything besides a rhythm and a count, predictable but punishing. He’s gotten good at causing methodical pain, and maybe that’s what Kendall wants, maybe it’s not, but it’s what he’s going to get unless he tells Stewy otherwise.
Lucky strike seven—that’s when Kendall starts crying. He doesn’t safeword, doesn’t say stop, doesn’t give any sign that he’s done so Stewy keeps powering through. It’s a terrible decision, but he’s fucking over being the only one here willing to communicate.
Kendall’s sobs peak around number thirteen, and by twenty he’s just sniffling. Stewy pauses and takes in the mess he’s made of Kendall’s ass and thighs—raised welts, dark red spots that’ll definitely bruise.
Stewy puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’re done,” he says, and Kendall shakes a little under his touch. “You were good, Ken,” he adds.
The shaking intensifies, the only warning Stewy gets before Kendall starts sobbing hard again.
Stewy drops to kneel behind Kendall and tugs him up so he can wrap his arms around Kendall’s front. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Stewy murmurs into his ear.
Kendall’s hands clutch at Stewy’s wrist, his forearm. It’s symbiotic, whatever there is between them. Stewy doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand what Kendall gets from it and he doesn’t really know what it does for him, either, but here they are. Again.
The thought that Stewy might be fucking around with Kendall goddamn Roy like this until he dies is not something he can cope with sober, so he plans his next moves instead. Make Kendall drink some water. Put some cream on Kendall’s welts and bruises. Get Kendall something to eat. Wait until he either fucks off or is ready to strategize next steps with the acquisition.
Easy enough.
Then Kendall shifts in his arms and kisses him, wet and snotty and awkwardly angled.
Fuck, Stewy thinks, and kisses him back.