Work Text:
It was dark and silent as Ian Rider and Martin Wilby pulled up to the location their Russian contact had chosen as the meeting point—some sort of abandoned warehouse, by the looks of it. From the second he eased his door open and set his feet on the pavement, Ian’s senses were screaming at him: this isn’t normal; something is wrong.
He tamped them down. In his line of work, this was far from his first encounter with a paranoid informant who wanted to maximize secrecy. And if something was wrong, well…the two of them would just have to be prepared for it, that was all.
“We’re not expecting any trouble, are we?” Martin asked as Ian opened the trunk and unlatched the gun case.
“No,” Ian replied, hefting his weapon. “But unexpected trouble’s always the worst kind.”
As if the universe had timed it perfectly, that was when Ian’s phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and saw a name he never refused to answer. Lifting the phone to his ear, he asked, “Alan?” Peripherally, he saw Martin cast a sharp glance over at him.
“Evening, Ian,” his boss’s voice replied. “Don’t be alarmed, but—it’s about your nephew.”
“Alex?” Ian asked, his heart jumping despite the instruction. In the agency, he was known as a cool, calm, collected sort of operative. His line of work meant he’d been all around the world, faced down the worst sorts of danger, risked his life countless times—and none of it had ever made him panic quite like parenting. “He’s at home, he’s—”
Before he could say grounded, Alan finished his sentence for him: “—been arrested.”
That little punk, Ian thought, although a hint of relief threaded through his anger. Arrested wasn’t kidnapped, arrested wasn’t hurt, arrested wasn’t dead.
“Well, detained, anyway,” Alan continued. “Got himself rounded up with a group of other teens for underage drinking at some party. I got wind of it before they booked him and pulled a couple strings. But you’ll need to pick him up. He’s at the station.”
Kid would be dead, though, once Ian got his hands on him. “Got it,” he said, his jaw clenching. “Appreciate it, Alan. I’ll take it from here.”
He ended the call. Set the gun back in its case. Latched it. Turned to Martin, who was looking…Ian couldn’t quite tell how he was looking. A little nervous, maybe?
Made sense, given where they were. Creepy place, all right.
“That was Blunt?” Martin asked, and there was something odd about his voice, too—like he was trying to sound casual. “What’s up?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ian answered, “Like I was just saying. Unexpected trouble.”
Grimacing, Martin asked, “Is it the kind you can deal with later?”
“My nephew’s been arrested,” Ian told him. “And he’s apparently drunk and waiting for me at the station right now. So, no, it can’t wait. We’re going to have to reschedule.” He took another look around. “Maybe somewhere different next time.”
Martin massaged his forehead, frustrated. “Ian, we’re already here, and we need to hear what this guy has to say about Point Blanc. This is important. And it might be good for the kid to cool his heels for a while, right? He’s safe.”
“I know, Martin. I’m well aware the meeting is important.” Ian shook his head. “But this is Alex we’re talking about. I’m the only family he’s got. So if it’s a choice between being there for my kid or here? Then our friend from Moscow can cool his heels until tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Martin said, and for the life of him, Ian couldn’t figure out why it looked like a flash of guilt crossed his face. “You’re right. Your family comes first.”
Ian jerked his thumb toward the car. “You coming?”
His partner hesitated one more time, then walked around to the passenger door. “Drop me back at my car, yeah? You can get your kid sorted and we’ll figure things out with our friend later.”
Oh, he’d be getting Alex sorted, all right, Ian thought grimly as he started the car and pulled away. His eyes flicked back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror, and his shoulders remained tense until the warehouse had faded in the darkness and he couldn’t see any headlights other than his own.
When he arrived to the police station—alone now—he took a second to compose himself in the car before getting out and heading inside to collect his miscreant. Standing straight and tall, he approached the desk sergeant and offered his ID without being asked. “Ian Rider,” he said, his voice calm and clipped. “I’m here to pick up my boy. Alexander.”
The man briefly examined his license, then lifted his chin to indicate the row of hard metal benches along the wall behind them. Ian spotted the teenager’s slumped form just as it straightened at the sound of his voice. Alex had his hoodie flipped up and had been fiddling at the cuffs, but stopped and stilled when their eyes met.
Ian took a few steps toward him, then stopped and just jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Let’s go.”
Looking sheepish, Alex stood up from the bench, pushing his hoodie back and running a hand through his blond hair. “Uncle Ian, I—” he started.
But Ian held up a finger. “Not a word, young man.” He glanced at the officer behind the main desk, who’d been lazily watching the exchange. “Anything I have to sign for him?”
The sergeant shook his head. “Just kids being kids. Released to parental custody.”
“Appreciate it,” Ian said, and turned toward the exit, snapping his fingers behind him when Alex briefly hesitated.
The boy followed.
Neither of them spoke until they were in the parking lot. When they’d reached the car, Ian stopped and turned to face his nephew. “How drunk are you?” he asked tersely, looking the kid up and down.
“I’m not drunk, Uncle Ian,” Alex protested. “Party got busted maybe twenty minutes after I got there. I only had, like, one.”
Ian folded his arms. “One what?”
At that, Alex hesitated to answer. “One…ah…one beer-vodka-whiskey?” His mouth half-quirked in that hopeful expression he made when he was in trouble, the one he’d been perfecting since he learned how to speak, the one that said, maybe if I can convince you this is funny, you won’t be mad?
When the kid had been six and his crimes had been more along the lines of hiding Ian’s car keys and threatening to flush them if he didn’t get an extra cookie after dinner, the look—and the extortion—had occasionally worked.
Today, Ian’s stern expression didn’t so much as twitch. “Hell of a combo. Enjoy yourself?”
Alex grimaced. “I mean, it was pretty nasty, but… Does the trick, right?”
“You sound like a forty-year-old alcoholic,” Ian commented. “‘Does the trick,’ indeed.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and hit the button to unlock the car. “All right. In.”
The boy dragged himself to the passenger side and flopped into the seat where Martin had been fifteen minutes ago.
“You know, I’m getting a bit of déjà vu,” Ian mused as he pulled out of the parking lot and glanced over at the sulking teenager in the passenger seat. “Almost as if it was barely a few hours ago that I had to pick you up from a different sort of trouble.”
Alex chewed his lip and slumped deeper into the seat.
“Ah, the good old days of half three this afternoon,” Ian continued dryly. “When it was just school I was collecting you from, not the bloody police station. Makes me a bit nostalgic, really.”
That finally tipped the teen over the edge. “All right!” he burst out, sitting up suddenly and thunking his head back against the headrest in frustration. “All right, Uncle Ian, just give it a rest, please!”
“I most certainly will not give it a rest,” Ian said, casting a sharper look at the lad who was a son to him in every way but the biological technicalities. “I haven’t even begun to harp on the fact that this is all happening while you’re supposed to be grounded.”
Alex blew out a huff of air, and Ian could smell the sour tang of alcohol still on his breath. “Fine. Harp to your heart’s content. Captive audience.”
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind,” Ian tossed back. “I will give it a rest, until we’re home. This way, you can just sit there and stew while I think about what the hell to do with you.”
“Sounds boring,” Alex replied, and reached for the glove compartment. “Tom’s phone still in here? Bet he’s got some games on it.”
Ian reached over to smack the boy’s hand away. “Don’t even think about it.”
“God, I was kidding,” Alex groused, rolling his eyes and rubbing at his hand.
“Glad to hear it,” Ian replied. “Now zip it. And maybe…bold idea here…use the time to think about what you’ve done?”
Alex saluted. “I’ll get right on that.”
What’s that sound? Ian wondered. Oh. Right. Just his teeth, grinding again.
Bloody teenagers.
When they got home, Ian sent Alex straight to his room with instructions to change and swish a bit of mouthwash so they could talk without drenching the air they breathed in the alcohol-scented stench of teenaged bad decisions. Meanwhile, he lingered in the kitchen, just to take a proper moment alone before he followed. He considered having a quick sip of whiskey himself, to take the edge off his irritation, but decided it would feel too hypocritical.
Instead, he brewed a cup of tea, sat at the table, and calmed down a bit more so his head was clear enough to ask himself if he was really going to do what his first instinct had been to do. Jack was out for the night, so they had the place to themselves. That was one barrier removed, at least.
Ian breathed in the soothing aroma of the peppermint tea as he took a sip and wondered: was all this a cry for attention? Alex was normally a good kid, but fifteen was smack dab in the middle of that age. Teens wanted to assert their independence, experiment with the world, take risks…and test their guardians to see just how much guarding they’d do.
Maybe Ian had been slacking a bit on that front.
By the time the tea was half gone, he was ninety percent confident in his decision, and he stood up and headed for the stairs. Sometimes teens also needed to feel the sting of their poor decisions, and Alex had certainly racked up enough of those today.
If the boy had wanted Ian’s attention, he was about to get it now.
Upstairs, he rapped on Alex’s door out of habit to announce himself before he entered. At least the lad had made the sensible decision of not trying to lock it.
When he walked into the room, Alex was sporting a fresh hoodie and had swapped his trousers for trackies. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and when he looked up at his uncle, his attention snagged on the doubled-over belt in Ian’s hand. His eyes immediately widened as his gaze snapped upwards to the man’s stern face. “You’re not serious,” he said, but his voice sounded unsure.
“Well, I can’t very well ground you for this one, can I?” Ian asked rhetorically. “I don’t think I could bear the irony.”
“But—” Alex stammered, “you don’t…it’s been…”
“A year or two at most,” Ian finished for him. He’d never spanked the kid often while raising him, but sometimes it was just the best way to get through to a boy. Now that he was a teenager, Ian had thought perhaps his nephew had outgrown the need for a literal firm hand, but…well, parenting didn’t come with a manual, did it? “Maybe that’s been me dropping the ball,” he added. “Easy way out, isn’t it? To just tell you you’re grounded and disappear on you instead of taking the time to see to your discipline properly.”
“Easy way’s fine with me,” Alex said, eyes darting back down to the belt as he scooted backward on his bed. “No objections.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t have this coming,” Ian told him. “Let’s review your day, shall we?” He started counting on his fingers. “Broke into school. Stole back your friend’s rightfully confiscated phone. Decided your grounding was optional and snuck out to a party. Drank some sort of unholy alcoholic concoction that was probably ladled out for you by a total stranger, with no meaningful knowledge of its actual contents…” He flipped out his final finger. “And, as your grand finale, got arrested when the party got out of hand enough for some neighbor to call it in.”
“Just detained,” Alex corrected, but didn’t meet Ian’s eyes. “You heard the cop. No charges.”
“No charges doesn’t mean no consequences,” Ian said, and decided that was enough preamble. “Bend over the bed, Alex.”
The boy swallowed nervously. “Uncle Ian, can’t we—”
“Talk about this?” Ian asked. “That’s what we’ve been doing. If you want to talk more, I’d suggest what you say is yes, sir, and you say it while you’re doing as you’re told.”
He did have to hand it to the kid: even when he was being stubborn as hell, he always found his way to obedience in the end, with Ian. It was clear that the boy respected him at least that much—at least while his guardian was right there and watching. Alex made a noise that conveyed equal parts drama and reluctance, but he slowly slid himself back to the edge of the bed and turned over.
“Won’t be needing your joggers for this, lad,” Ian informed him, and Alex made the noise again but compliantly shimmied his trackpants down before burying his head in his arms.
Ian looked down at the young man draped over the side of the bed and felt a sudden flood of fatherly affection, tinged with nostalgia. It hadn’t been so many years, really, since Ian had been a reckless teenager himself, facing his own father for a dose of comeuppance after some mischief gone awry. And Alex was more like his uncle than either of them probably cared to admit.
That thought, more than anything, put any of Ian’s remaining hesitations to rest. He’d wager that a healthy fear of his father’s strap had often been the only thing curbing his riskiest youthful impulses—keeping him alive until he was old enough to make a career out of them. Now his parkouring, surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking boy was old enough to start taking the sorts of risks that could get him into some real trouble, and it was Ian’s job to draw that line.
But the kid didn’t need to hear about his trip down memory lane, and he didn’t need his guardian to shrug this off with a “Well, champ, who among us hasn’t snuck out of a grounding to go to a rager in our day?”
No. Right now, the kid needed to hear the kinds of things a father said to a son he cared about enough to correct.
“I’m disappointed in your behavior today, Alex,” he reprimanded the boy. “I expect better from you. Do you hear me?”
The words alone were enough to make his nephew wince. He swallowed and murmured a, “Yes, sir.”
Ian nodded once, then lined up his belt with its boxer-clad target and whipped it forward just hard enough to earn a second wince and a grunt from the target’s owner. Then he aimed a little lower and repeated it, with the same result. By the time he’d snapped the strap down for the fifth time, just above the boy’s thighs, he’d heard his first muffled “Ow!”
Good, Ian thought, although he felt a twinge of sympathy too. It was never pleasant to get your arse handed to you. But that was why it worked. He lifted the belt again, intending to start over from the top.
“Uncle Ian?” Alex piped up, twisting his head to look back at his disciplinarian before he could follow through.
Ian raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“This bloody hurts.”
“You don’t say,” his uncle replied dryly. “Point being?”
“Point being…that I’ve learned my lesson? And we can be done now?” There was that crooked, hopeful look on the teen’s face again.
“Good try,” Ian said, with a spin of his finger gesturing for the boy to turn back around. “You’re fifteen now. You’re not getting out of this with a few love taps.”
“Love ta—” Alex started, sounding offended, but the end of the word turned into an “ah!” when Ian put a bit more force behind the belt for the next stroke. The boy pressed his forehead back into the bed, gripping fistfuls of his comforter as he absorbed the harsher sting. His uncle didn’t give him long to do it before layering more punishing smacks across the kid’s backside. Alex yelped, his knuckles whitening and socked feet flexing against the floor as he felt them.
“So,” Ian said conversationally as he continued to discipline the young would-be juvenile delinquent. “Think it was a good idea to sneak out tonight?”
He saw Alex’s blond head shake quickly against the bedcovers. “No, sir—bad—ow—bad idea, very bad idea.”
Ian remembered that all too well, too: how quickly the bite of leather against a young bottom could activate contrition. “How about that mixed drink of yours?” he asked. “Good idea?”
His nephew writhed as the belt burned his arse hard, twice in a row. “Shit!” he hissed.
“Swear at me again and you can lose the boxers,” Ian warned him. “And stay still.”
“Sorry,” Alex gasped, and Ian could see how difficult it was for him to obey, but the next time the strap fell, he only twitched a little, sucking air between his teeth. “Drinking, worse idea,” he circled back to answer his uncle’s question. “Never drinking ever again.”
Ian snorted. “I’m not stupid, Alex. Teenagers drink. I know that. All I’m going to ask is that you aren’t stupid when you do.”
“Never drinking stupidly again,” the lad adapted his promise.
“Hell, I’d even say you’re old enough to have a couple with me and Jack now and then when we’re home,” Ian told him. “Start learning what’s worth it, learning your tolerance. I don’t want alcohol to be some forbidden fruit that turns you into one of those kids who chugs whatever swill in a solo cup a stranger puts in their hand.”
Alex glanced back at him again, looking surprised to have been given such reasonable extensions of the rules while he was actively getting his butt thrashed for breaking them. “Really? That sounds…fair…”
“And if you do wind up drunk at a party or ever feel like you’re in over your head, you call me,” Ian instructed. “Rather come get you there than from the police station or hospital.”
The kid blew out a breath. “Yeahhh…”
Ian lifted the belt again. “All right. Gonna give you something to help you remember this talk at least through tomorrow, and then we’ll be done.”
A pained look flitted across the blond boy’s face, but he didn’t argue. Just swiveled his head front again and seemed to steel himself.
Ian did the same before delivering a volley of blistering strokes that had Alex crying out and clutching at the blankets, but he stayed in position and didn’t try to dodge or fight. He really was a good lad, Ian thought. A good lad making the normal kinds of bad decisions that were practically a rite of passage for kids his age. Just like it was a rite of passage to have your dad kick your arse for your stupidity when he caught you.
He ended the whipping with a couple of hard licks where the boy would feel it when he sat tomorrow, then leaned down and patted Alex’s back. “All done. Up when you’re ready.”
Alex was ready now, apparently, wasting no time in getting to his feet and yanking up his joggers. As if by instinct, his hand snaked back to rub at his freshly belted bottom, and Ian almost had to smile at the way the motion made him look younger than his years.
“Now, if you want to retain the privilege of only being grounded when I have to punish you, I suggest you respect it,” Ian told him. “Keep your butt where I leave it or you won’t enjoy the alternative any more than you did tonight.”
Alex went a bit red, but he nodded. “Yes, sir. Next time I’m grounded, no parties. I swear. Strict house arrest.”
Ian shook his head. “Next time? You’re still grounded now.”
Groaning, Alex flopped back onto his bed, then quickly regretted it and turned over onto his stomach. “Getting my arse beat didn’t, like, wipe the slate clean or whatever?”
“You were grounded for breaking into school and stealing the phone back,” Ian replied nonchalantly. “This?” He shook the belt, and the buckle jangled. “This was for everything since then. The original grounding stands.”
“Fine, fine,” Alex muttered, eyeing the belt warily. “Just, like…put it back on, though.”
No sense in torturing the kid any further. Ian threaded the belt back through its loops, returning it to its preferred function. “Come on,” he said, tilting his head to the door. “I believe there’s a footy match on. And since both of us are free for the rest of the night now…”
Alex immediately scrambled to his feet, and it made Ian feel a bit guilty to see how eager the lad was to spend a couple hours of quality time together, even as fresh off a good hiding as he was. He really had been neglecting him, hadn’t he?
“Sorry you had to leave work for me,” the boy said, underscoring his uncle’s thoughts.
“Don’t be,” Ian reassured him, slinging an arm around his shoulder and guiding him into the hall. “If I’m being honest, the office felt sort of creepy tonight. Too quiet. I was glad to leave.”
“So with the new system and all, reckon I can have a beer while we watch?” Alex asked in the kitchen, bending to peer at Ian’s stash of Guinness bottles in the fridge, before jumping right back up at the smack he caught for the audacity.
“Don’t push it, kid,” his guardian replied, messing up his hair. “If you ask nicely, you can have a lemon in your glass of water.”
Alex shot him a wounded look, but handed his uncle a beer and grabbed the pitcher of water and an apple for himself.
Although he intended to be fully present for his nephew for the rest of the night—it was the least he could do—Ian couldn’t help but think back to the evening’s beginning as he sat down on the couch. The dark, silent warehouse. Martin’s strange behavior.
Ian Rider turned on the TV, fondly watched as his boy sat very carefully next to him, and wondered just how big of a bullet he’d dodged.