The one where Y/N and Harry are neighbors in an apartment complex, he's got a bunny called Snuggles, he makes softcore porn spanking people (it's a REALLY LOUD HOBBY), and Y/N has definitely called the police for a domestic disturbance next door.
HI this is part eight! Heat is ON. Check out the other parts first if you haven't already! Reblogs/feedback always super appreciated. If you like a fic, sharing the work with the reblog button and leaving a comment/sending an anon keeps writers motivated to keep posting on this platform for free! (ꈍ◡ꈍ)
FETISH masterlist : MAIN masterlist
CONTENT/WARNINGS: ssssspppppaaaanking, smutty insinuations (if you squint)
WC: 14K!
When Y/N was a little girl, she used to believe she could make herself invisible. The process was fairly simple and only involved one, singular requirement: existing in absolute stillness within whatever position she wanted to evaporate from.
Believe is, perhaps, a strong term, and the entire premise wasn’t really a game so much as a private, internal theory. Also, it was one that (in full frontal-lobe-developed retrospect) had been, at the time, entirely as ridiculous as it sounds today. For the sake of context, though, Y/N will divulge that it went something like this: if she were to press her back flat against the wall in her childhood bedroom, or curl up behind the couch during a grown-up conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear, or sink low enough in the back seat when her parents were arguing in the front, she could disappear. Or rather, at the very least, she could shrink herself down into a shape that wouldn’t draw attention, which the girl had deemed to be— in the most sloppily haphazard parameters— close enough to the cause. This motionless, unblinking version of herself quietly sedated suspicion and in turn, made her feel as though the very fibers of her being were fading off into obscurity.
Y/N is well aware that, from a logical perspective, it had never actually worked. The creak into the hollowed, soft spot along the back of the couch gave her away just as much as the brush of her shirt along the plaster, or the top of her head in the rearview mirror. Even when she held her breath and slumped low, teachers would call on her to read the answer from the worksheet between her lily-white knuckles, her mother would still find her coiled up under the vanity in the bedroom with a book and tell her to set the table, her friends still noticed when she shrunk out of the conversation during a sleepover. It was always a futile effort, given the way she never truly became invisible, even if she herself felt it in that moment. And as effective as the technique had seemed in her jejunely idealistic childhood years, Y/N had abandoned it based on one simple principle— as an adult, it was a useless coping mechanism. Whatever issue she was facing wouldn’t resolve itself through her rigid muscles, or her wide-eyed lull. Even as long as she managed to hold her breath, she didn’t magically dissipate into nothingness.
So it entirely surprises her when that exact stillness just so happens to sift into her like a long-forgotten muscle memory. This nervous response, of course, is only the entirely appropriate route to the last words out of Harry’s mouth.
Have you ever watched any of my videos?
In that moment, Y/N is aware of three things— one being the actual answer. Yes, in fact, many. Numerous times, if entire candor is required. The sheer mention momentarily causes the girl’s vision to flicker to his large hands; they’re uncharacteristically naked of his usual collection of hefty statement rings, and they’re clasped loosely in the valley of his splayed thighs. Even only briefly capturing a glimpse launches a sordid array of mental images, pinpointed back to his virtual catalogue— she remembers all the times she’s watched those hands land palm-flat, or grip onto a hip to resituate the person over his lap. Visuals of his fingers wrapped over the handle of an implement plague her, alongside the imaginative reel involving him twisting his rings along his knuckles to face inward. The latter act is usually tailed by a deviously mirthy hum, or a quiet snicker once he’s planted a particularly harsh smack, the stinging sensation only heightened by the ridges of the jewelry. And the sounds he makes, although not outright explicit, are enough to contend the typical slew of what’s audibly caught by actual pornography. Every cheeky comment that tumbles from his pink mouth (while not visible to the lens), and every scolding draped in sternness, is a brand of its own dirty talk. Where words don’t take shape, his noises fill the spaces— pleased hums bloom into the silence, or the ones with an edge of disapproval congealing in his tone when he gets firm. So, in short, yes, Y/N has watched his videos, and the mental spiral she’s encountering at the moment is a testament to that.
The second thought— a kind of disgruntling paradox, given her first realization— is that she cannot, under any circumstances, disclose this truth in actual, complete transparency. Sharing this information would be a radical disservice to her dignity; it would probably land onto Harry just as uncomfortably as it sits in her own skull, and given general behavioral etiquette, the confession could possibly guarantee at least some degree of social exile on her behalf. It’s this thought and these implications that cause the girl to stifle and grow rigid. While it isn’t outwardly prohibited to cyber-stalk her softcore pornstar neighbor, it’s certainly… some sort of violation, at least in regards to basic societal decorum. Truthfully, she knows the hypothetical consequences are probably merely a byproduct of her delicately wired nature. Y/N is prone to overthinking and is emotionally anticipatory; while she wouldn’t deem herself to be a pessimist, she finds herself (more often than not) inherently expecting the worst-case scenario. In reality, her confession would probably cause the edges of his lips to bristle lightheartedly. To be more specific, the way that sharing this information would inevitably cause her to squirm over the cream cushion would buckle the corners of his mouth— while only truly acquainted with Harry for a short time, she’s already deduced that something about her nervousness amuses him. He’d probably tease her over it; considering that he uploads this content for the general public to watch, she supposes her own eyes aren’t exactly barred as an outlier from the rest of his target audience. She imagines those words— naughty girl— and although the daydream has an inflection saturated by lighthearted mirth, the words themselves hit so close to the fantasy she’s been nursing that she feels her tummy begin to churn at the thought alone. He’d probably laugh, cupid’s twinning divots winking alive to frame his open-mouthed smile. Ask her which ones. Or, alternatively, he’d ask the same question with that expressionlessly open demeanor he’s worn for the duration of the conversation. The probability of Y/N’s fears coming true are, in the context of probability and general reasoning, fairly slim. But while the latter possibilities are far more likely, the young woman can’t stop her mind from clinging onto the most damaging outcome.
Her third revelation— as if she needs to juggle anything else— is that she is currently behaving in a manner that’s, frankly, very awkward. More specifically, Y/N wordlessly blinks back at the curly-haired brunette, who only stares back just as quietly. His features are neutral in that receptive way that suggests he’s not going to judge whatever spills off her tongue, and the longer she contemplates the approach she should take to the inquiry, the more unsettling the stretch of silence becomes.
This particular question, Harry observes, quakes the very fragile foundation he’d begun to build in soothing her concerns. She wasn’t entirely open and relaxed to begin with, no, but something about this inquiry causes the inquisitive stance she’d taken on to shrivel out, and the girl in front of him almost seems to retreat into herself at the implication. Truth be told, it’s not ideal.
But it unintentionally gives him the answer, because the shy, little way she closes off suggests enough.
Inwardly, a smug sense of satisfaction blooms, despite the way he keeps his features vacantly untelling— the most probable conclusion (according to basic evidence— context clues have never led him astray) is that she’s watched enough to feel ashamed admitting it. Which, once again, is not optimal— honestly, he finds it flattering when people are able to enjoy his blog; he dedicates a lot of effort to its maintenance and its entire purpose is to provide connection in a fairly niche community. Moreover, her refusal to be honest— which becomes the increasingly likely scenario the longer she takes to acknowledge what’s meant to be a fairly simple yes or no question— throws a wrench into weeding out and discovering her true interests. If she watched his content, she'd probably been able to pick out what intrigues her, even if she’s not entirely sure why. As he observes the young woman and mulls over these thoughts, the hesitant indifference (a futile effort, really, Harry thinks pitifully— she’s a mediocre liar at best) slathering her tone only furthers his suspicions.
“I’ve… looked.”
“You’ve looked?” Harry’s brows creep up a smidge as he shifts on the couch cushion. Her sudden insistence on picking at her cuticles works little in her favor. Although the urge to manually stop the anxious habit itches at him— a byproduct of the headspace he’s unintentionally begun to slip into like a second skin— he bottles that and patiently waits for her to expand.
Y/N bobs her head in agreement, shoulders swelling on her inhale while she casts her eyes to the coffee table, “Yes, I… glanced.” On the tail end of her statement, Y/N meets his gaze with a dedication that suggests she’s attempting to strong-arm him into believing her with eye-contact, “Briefly. I was curious.”
Sustained focus aside, her tone is undeniably defensive and brittle. Knowingly, Harry cocks his head, “Just took a polite peek, then?”
Molten heat rises steadily to the girl’s cheeks, until her face feels like it’s boiling under the pressure of his obvious condescension. It’s too easy for him, Y/N thinks; he’s hardly spoken a word or moved a muscle since she replied, but it feels like he’s chipping at the fib with his jade gaze alone.
Forcing as much nonchalance as she can muster into her voice, Y/N deadpans, “That sounds about right.”
“Well,” Harry braces his forearm against the arm of the couch, leaning into it, “I’m glad you've clarified. ‘Glanced’ suggests an entirely different category of behavior than, say…” innocently, he pauses, “‘Repeated viewing with intent.’”
Y/N swallows dryly. The action is so thick with her apparent skittishness— on account of Harry attempting to sniff her out under the illusion of being covert (and patronizing in the process)— that the curly-haired brunette can practically see the column of her throat flex with it. It’s mildly invigorating, and he wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it. At least not to the extent Y/N would be confessing the truth in regards to her familiarity with his blog. And as much as watching her squirm once more amuses him (he doesn’t necessarily feel bad over this mirth; she’s lying, and he’d usually deter that kind of habit in a different, far more hands-on manner, so Harry reasons that he’s being quite nice, all things considered), for the sake of moving things along, he breaks the obvious tension with some logic.
“The reason I ask is,” Harry sits up, raking a hand back through his loosely coiled tendrils. The motion inadvertently brings a curl out over his forehead for a moment, before he brushes that back, too, “If you’ve watched anything, we might be able to narrow down what you’re looking for based on whether or not anything struck a nerve. Or chord.”
“Struck a chord.”
“Sure,” he gestures out with his hand, palm up, “If you saw anything in particular and went ‘I like this,' or ‘I want this.’ Physiologically speaking, some part of you might have gone,” symbolically, the man snaps and points his forefinger into her direction, “‘Ah. That’s the one.’”
The response to these words, however, is one that Harry doesn’t entirely anticipate. It’s so immediate and bluntly reactive, in fact, that his own impulsive reaction is unfiltered amusement that he can’t quite muscle down.
“It’s not a sex thing,” Y/N contends hotly, the volume of her reflexive defense peaking while her face prickles with uneasy warmth. As the words tumble off her tongue, she knows that the unnerved resistance lacing them is far too telling to be ignored, and she wants to kick herself over her lack of smoothness navigating the accusation.
Harry blinks. Once more, his eyebrows climb up his forehead, chiseling little ruckles in the usually smooth skin, as if her touchy reaction has only stunned him into a gleeful form of momentary silence.
“Of course not,” the man teases eventually, and he rattles his head in a small motion sardonically, “There’s nothing remotely erotic about adult disciplinary dynamics. Who among us hasn’t done a bit of curious clicking and landed on filmed, consensual corporal punishment? It’s educational, really.”
“Right.”
Splaying a hand over his chest, Harry atones, “I’d never assume. You obviously happened across my pornography and thought ‘how fascinating— what an interesting little niche of cinematography.’”
Y/N, while knowing that her web of lies is currently unraveling by the flimsy capture threads, is increasingly finding herself cornered. Truthfully, she knows her wary behavior gives her away more and more the longer she digs herself in, but despite this, there are things the young woman can never admit looking him in the eye. Watching his videos is, perhaps, one thing; even admitting to a handful can be chalked up to curiosity, or a research-based, scholarly standpoint. The admission of these viewings linking back to the way her fingertips unfailingly crept up under the hem of her soaked panties, however, is an entirely different realm of self-reporting. Conceding that she’s touched herself to the thought of him, that his blog had not only been a catalyst for this fantasy seedling, but that he’d unwittingly become the object of her desirous ideations— that’s a scenario the girl is entirely unwilling to entertain. Because of this, with the mortifying slideshow of potential consequences swirling rampantly in her mind, Y/N doubles down.
For a moment, her face hardens. Then, her lids slip shut, as if the insinuation alone is too immorally salacious to acknowledge with cracked eyes, “Maybe it’s sexual for some people. But not for me.”
Harry purses his lips. Any productive information surfacing from the conversation is becoming unlikely, and he’s well aware his patronization is playing a part. Her insistence on sticking to this obvious fabrication is one he doesn’t entirely understand, simply given how normal this genre of kink has become to him. In a way, he’s become desensitized— and he doesn’t mean that negatively. Honesty, openness, and the normalization in the community he’d discovered years prior (the sheer sense of community, as well, really) has allowed him far more clarity, comfort, and freedom than he’d ever experienced prior. Frankly speaking, Harry is well aware what kind of attention his content garners; at least the majority. When it comes down to it, detail-oriented color corrections and camera angles aside, what he creates is pornography; it feeds a fetish for the larger portion of those who visit his blog. Personally, he likes to believe it’s a bit more of a tasteful format than the typical homepage-promoted gutter filth he’d sealed his fist over his cock to years ago, but he knows the genre of entertainment he’s providing. It’s a no-brainer, really. And given that Harry has no shame in creating this type of content and the fact that he’s aware of his viewers motives, he struggles to grasp why the girl in front of him is so embarrassed to be part of the crowd Harry caters to.
He supposes he understands her apprehension from the standpoint of admitting attraction, especially when she doesn’t know how he would respond to that kind of implication. People are often held back by the fear of rejection, and this concern often fosters avoidance. While he basks in how flustered she becomes from a surface-level perspective, he also knows that if she doesn’t begin openly communicating, at least on some level, he won’t be able to help her dissect this. Which— if he’s being asked to actively participate— is fairly important. Curbing his amusement for earnestness to leak in instead, Harry rubs his fingers over his cushiony lips and clears his throat.
“Right. I’m just teasing, yeah? It doesn’t have to be sexual,” he remedies calmly, gesturing out with his hand again as he clarifies his initial point, “Liking something just means you responded to something favorably, in any shape or form. That could mean you’re inclined for a release, or that you’re interested in the structured dynamic.” Pointedly, Harry casts his green gaze to meet her own, subtly relishing in the way she’s looking at him once more, which is already an improvement to the bashfully indignant demeanor she’d taken on with his playful riling, “But we’ve already ruled out that latter one. So you don’t need to be adjusted, it’s not a sex thing.” As the curly-haired brunette lists the options, he pauses as if contemplating. In reality, he’s about ninety percent sure of Y/N’s true motives, but he’d like her to openly acknowledge them herself, so in the interest of furthering the conversation fruitfully, he feigns unsureness, “Are you just looking to unwind then? trying to regulate something… any sort of pressure you’re under?”
With the threat of him poking at the ribald skeletons in her closet averted, Y/N is able to relax significantly, and this shows in her body language. Lifting one shoulder sheepishly, she shakes her head uncertainly, “I’m not sure.”
“Not sure but curious. Not sexual, but watching,” Harry nods with a distant look that suggests deep pondering. Then, he looks back up at her, wagging his index as he points, “I feel like we’re building up quite the case study.”
The dryness of her response is— ironically enough— a relief to Harry; it means she’s more open to jesting rather than the guarded, collapse-mode alternative he’s encountered thus far, “What was it that you called it? A polite peek?”
“Entirely observational, of course,” Harry motions flatly with his palms down, as if to indicate scientific indifference. Despite his inclinations to behave, he can’t stop the playful dig as he waves his hand (or the twitch to his mouth on the tail-end), “Practically like birdwatching, only with… belts and other stingy things.”
Y/N swallows thickly, chewing into the smooth lining along the inside of her cheek. The sensation is grounding in a way— it’s not comfortable, but it takes her mind off of the worries beginning to shudder along the forefront of her mind and quells the urge to launch into another poorly-executed string of denials. This is ironic— months down the line, the young woman will contemplate the parallel (a detail only she herself was ever aware of), once every piece of the puzzle has finally clicked its even edges together seamlessly, and she’ll wonder how it all hadn’t made sense in that moment, right then and there. But as unfortunate as all latent hindsight tends to be, the nuanced connection misses her, and in the present moment, she only drums her fingertips over her bare knees quietly. Harry’s voice is what snaps her from the introspective episode— or rather, its lack thereof, given the way her mind has conveniently blanked into an empty slate.
“Was it just the one video, then?” the curly-haired brunette muses. The mock-innocent note to his cadence says enough when her eyes flash up to his ridiculously attractive face, but the taunting way he taps the pads of two digits (his pointer and his middle) against his lower lip pensively, causes the pace of her heartbeat to amplify, “Or did you dabble? Get a bit of a sample platter going?”
It’s at this moment that Y/N finally allows the façade to slip, even if only a minor fraction. With the amount of comments Harry has made on the matter and the sheer force it takes to maintain the artificial truth she’s scaffolded up, the young woman knows it’s a dying attempt. And, truth be told, with a far more horrifying truth taking precedent as the focal point of her effort to hide, she supposes sharing at least this honesty with him will skew some suspicion.
Begrudgingly, Y/N grazes her finger along a paper-thin scrape over her knee. It’s maybe a couple of centimeters long, and she’s not sure where she’d acquired the minor injury, “I watched a …handful, or so.”
As nonchalant as Y/N’s mention is, Harry’s response is not.
“So we did do a bit of window shopping, then,” Harry says, an exaggerated sense of interest coloring his voice. His tone causes her eyes to snap up, before she quickly diverts them back to a fragment of skin in feigned casualness. Crossing his muscly arms over his firm chest, Harry relaxes against the backrest of the couch, a loose smile molding his mouth, “See, I like the honesty. That’s helpful. Now we’ve got something to go on. One honest answer and suddenly we’re making actual progress.” In the brief beat of silence that follows, Y/N is ashamed to admit she’s hopeful over relief. It’s only normal— she’ll come to find over time— that Harry shatters that kind of hope in its incipient stage. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head in faux disappointment, “But you know, we’ve run into a bit of a snag here, unfortunately.”
The girl spares him a glance, “What’s that?”
One of his shoulders climbs offhandedly, “Now I don’t know what to believe. You’ve set a precedent, and I’m wondering how many other lies you’ve told with that same, little voice.”
The comment is so unanticipated and disarming that it instantly causes anxiety to peel apart between the rungs of her ribcage, effectively tensing up in her chest and wresting a high, loud, nervous bark of laughter from the back of her throat.
“I’m not— what—? What could I,” Y/N shakes her head tightly, as if the maneuver could dispel the artificial concern slathering his tone, “possibly be lying about?”
Over the residual, apprehensive peal of giggles bubbling out of her, the couch creaks beneath him as the man postures forward, bracing his elbows back against the tops of his thighs. It’s a flimsy couch, all things considered. Ratty, peeling leather from poor care, cushions flattened soft from its original state. When he redistributes his weight, its skeleton practically wobbles beneath him— after years of use, whether delicate or careless, time has ultimately worn its quality thin. But even still, Harry can’t help imagining the way the same unsightly piece of furniture would groan under the pace of him fucking into her from behind. How it’d rattle up against the plaster as he snapped his hips. He wonders if he’d pump into her harshly enough— if his pelvis slapped against her backside with a merciless thunk, over, and over, and over— whether the frame would just …give out altogether and fold in on itself. Shepherding this vast array of filthy mental images to the back of his mind, Harry folds his hands together loosely and considers her with a brief, almost musing gaze.
“…We’ll see, I suppose.”
The lightheartedly cautionary phrase alerts Y/N of the sear along the crests of her cheekbones, and as much as the statement causes nervousness to fizz in her chest, the way her counterpart suddenly shifts from the somewhat ominous comment into different territory altogether is stark enough to nearly give her whiplash. A shallow dimple burrows beside the edge of his lopsided smile, but it dissipates as quickly as it had surfaced.
Harry clears his throat, meeting her eye with a sudden staining of earnest seriousness. “I need to talk to you about something important now, if you’re actually interested.”
When Harry only patiently regards her, rather than continuing, it takes a moment for Y/N to recognize that he’s waiting for her to acknowledge his words. Jerkily, she bobs her head in agreement; she’s still a little stupefied by his prior remark, and slightly worried that her vocal cords will wobble into a stutter if she gives them the permission to work.
Upon receiving her quiet nod, Harry begins covering what may be the most important category yet— safety precautions are of the utmost importance to him, and he wouldn’t be comfortable proceeding without touching on them, “Any kind of impact play only works if there’s trust. That means boundaries and open communication. You don’t ever, ever let someone hit you and blindly hope for the best. On that note— safewords. Some people like to say stop, because it’s knee-jerk,” he pauses, a lax smile painting over his mouth as he shakes his head at her, “And they don’t actually mean stop.”
A little furrow works in between his brows as he attempts to describe the gravity of these verbal cues. He knows that what he’s saying possibly sounds contradictory, and he’s sure that if she’s never encountered a dynamic that had called for the system— which is looking to be the most likely probability (it’s not a negative observation, and there’s no shame in trying something for the first time, Harry wants to assure her)— the concept of the negotiated vocabulary would probably be a foreign one. And he needs her to understand the intention, especially because it is so crucial the type of practice she’s interested in exploring.
“Safewords are like a …safety net. They work as a little code that lets someone know limits are being pushed too far, and it’s the most clear way to go about stopping, especially when you’re playing around with rougher dynamics, even if it’s just roleplay. That’s when the word stop unintentionally likes to come out most, like I mentioned. I prefer the red-yellow-green system.”
As he speaks, he motions subtly with his hands. They raise just slightly as he sits back up a touch, and Y/N can’t stop her gaze from following them as they move. The tip of his pink tongue peeks out from between his lips as he wets them before it disappears back. When she goes to mimic the motion, the young woman finds that her own set is slightly chapped.
“Like stoplights.”
Pleased to see her interacting, Harry lets a warm grin unfurl over his pillowy lips and he nudges his chin down in agreement, “Precisely. S’easy to remember, because it follows the same pattern. Red means that everything needs to stop. Yellow means you’re getting close to that limit— you don’t quite want to stop everything altogether, but there needs to be a pause to change something. Whether things are going too fast, too hard, anything like that.” Pausing, he reshapes his tone into a questioning one as he attempts to encourage her into engaging further, “And what do you think green means?”
As if unsure of her answer, Y/N hesitates, “Just… keep going?”
“Brilliant. You’re already an expert,” Harry leans against the armrest, dimples etching into his cheeks while the warmth of his praise saturates his cadence,
“Do you have any questions about that?”
“Can I ask…” a fold forms between her eyebrows as she tries to delicately weed through her words, “what’s the value of green if red and yellow exist? Is green not the default? Like, is that meant to be some sort of… announcement?”
On the last word of her inquiry, as if the hypothesis sounds ridiculous to her own ears, Y/N’s face creases up. The expression causes crinkles to set along the bridge of her nose, and Harry finds that the small facial detail is nearly as cute as her question. All things considered however, it’s a reasonable assumption given the logic behind the system.
Mildly amused, Harry drags his fingers along his lips to hide the beam threatening to curl over (meeting her eye and making sure to assure her; her involvement is a satisfying turnaround, and he wants to encourage that type of participation as much as he can), “Not quite. But that’s entirely a fair question. It’s more of a… check in. If things are new and limits aren’t quite understood yet, or if things are a little rough, I like to ask for a color just to make sure everything is smooth sailing, if that makes sense.”
As he mentions it, a parallel buoys to the forefront of her mind— in one of the videos Y/N had watched, she remembers Harry had done just that. It was the one with the belt and the girl folded over the foot of the mattress (puppy, as he had so sweetly called her— the cloying petname dislodging something within Y/N when it was contrasted against the harshness of his actions), and the memory is so crisp she can still nearly see every wrinkle in the cream sheets beneath the faceless woman. Before one of the strikes, she remembers Harry had paused; she’d noted the minute apprehension to the start of his swing, the sound of the leather dragging against skin as he’d ran the folded edge through his hand, rocking back on the heel of his foot. The way it tapped against the heel of his palm a couple of times as he waited on her to reply.
“What’s your color, puppy?”
“Sometimes,” Harry’s voice snaps her from the daze of the mental snapshot, and Y/N blinks as she recognizes her face has begun to pool with a new layer of heat, “I won’t check in as much if I’ve worked with the person before, or if the impact play session is really short, because I know the person will use red or yellow if need be.”
With this explanation, a new question floats up through her head, and Y/N licks her lips again and asks, “What about for… discipline. Like the ones you were talking about where someone breaks a rule, or something. Are the safewords there, too?”
“Absolutely. Always, in every scenario.”
The grave sense of seriousness to his tone— particularly in response to this topic— is intense enough to keep Y/N’s gaze glued onto him; the lighthearted shifts to his features have melted off into something flat and sincere. And truthfully, his answer comes out drenched in more intensity than Harry intends to channel. In the past, he’s encountered a common misconception— or rather, stumbled upon isolated incidents of outright bad practice, through word of mouth mostly, given the niche— where some people in the community tend to believe that because something is meant to be a punishment, the traditional safeword system shouldn’t stand. In Harry’s opinion, that type of mindset is a gross neglect of trust and etiquette, and unravels the consent that the very foundation the practice is built upon. If consent is not emphasized constantly, at all angles, then it never exists in the first place; failing to take the proper precautions is not only an overstep, but it can lead to a recklessly tragic outcome that is entirely preventable. Usually, the people who share this distorted mindset either lack understanding, or are partaking for the wrong reasons, and nothing frustrates him more than bad etiquette in the kink community. Dialing his tone into something a little more gentle— although just as sincere— Harry runs his palms over the tops of his thighs.
“This type of power exchange is built entirely on trust and communication. Consent is the most important aspect, and consent can be revoked at any time, even if it’s given prior. This isn’t any sort of one-and-done— if you’re consenting to start something and you’re suddenly uncomfortable, whether that’s mentally or physically, or if anything feels off, you are entirely within your right to stop at any time. It’s about pushing limits. Not breaking them,” as he notes the way she absorbs the importance of the explanation, Harry carefully prods, “D’you have any other questions about that?”
Hearing him talk about this, this world and its attributes, like it’s something entirely sacred, is such a stark turnaround from the impression Y/N had carried for so many weeks. Realistically, she knows that it’s all water under the bridge now, but she can’t fathom that she’d ever misjudged the curly-haired brunette in front of her and this hobby she had simply chalked up to as being indecorously loud, depraved, and— perhaps the most ignorantly misguided fallacy— a form of abuse. The details he describes are a sheer contradiction to that. And hearing him now, the reminder of her misconceptions makes her feel, for a lack of better term, a bit bad. This was a world Y/N had not ever stepped close enough to witness, and frankly, she’s ashamed she’d ever misjudged something so rashly by its metaphorical cover.
And even still, with all of her mistaken beliefs, and flawed ideas, and unsound reactions, Y/N thinks— like the time she had deployed a police unit to knock on his door, which would be a comedic instance, if she wasn’t so ashamed at the sudden memory— Harry doesn’t turn her away. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t call her on the sudden change of heart. The only thing Harry does, Y/N acknowledges as she looks over his open facial expression, is invite her to trace the parameters of this realm she’s never known.
Swallowing the sudden bout of regret down, Y/N shakes her head, clearing her throat to ward off the sudden, dull lump festering in it, “No. I don’t think so. Um, actually. Well, this isn’t about safewords or consent, really, but. Are the videos, like, a …requirement?”
Just as bashfully as Y/N had delivered her previous inquiry, this one comes in the same manner. Her rounded eyes stick to him docilely, and the color of her irises, stained with diffidence, slips behind her lids a couple of times. Although this time, the question is shy from a personal place of uncertainty, rather than because she feels her words may humor him.
A good-natured smile prickles at his lips, and he expels a huff through his nostrils that sounds like a lazy laugh before he grants her an answer. “No. The videos are just a fun little project I like to do in my spare time. Not everyone wants to be on camera and uploaded onto the internet, and I completely respect that. Some people like to take the videos to watch them back later on their own, and some people are show-offs and want to be featured on the blog,” despite the playful jest along the latter of the statement and the way he rolls his eyes, he says this fondly; the girls that want to flaunt their marks are always so much fun (more specifically, the process of achieving those marks is usually exceptionally entertaining).
On a more serious note, his face shifts into something unguarded as he seems to divulge something a touch more personal. “Sharing that content has allowed me to cultivate a broad space in an otherwise tight niche, and it’s given me the opportunity to connect with a lot of people in the community I wouldn’t have found otherwise.”
While a surge of relief flows through the girl at his explanation, she can’t help but cling to the honesty behind his statement in awe. “Wow, that… sounds rewarding.”
“It is,” Harry nods, “The sense of community really is unparalleled.” Raising a brow expectantly, he asks, “Would you like to learn about the types of implements there are?”
Y/N licks her lips. Her tummy somersaults at the prospect, and she nods her head in a small motion to indicate her interest in a way she hopes isn’t too eager. “Okay.”
“You’re going to have two categories of sensation. Thuddy and stingy,” the curly-haired brunette raises his hands, creating a loose fist (with his thumb untucked) and pressing the heel of his palm and the flats of his knuckles to the opposite open hand symbolically. “Thuddy is going to be a dull feeling in comparison. It’s broad, so the impact spreads over a wide area. Whereas stingy,” the fist becomes replaced by the horizontal length of a digit as he sticks his forefinger out and taps it against the skin, “is going to be sharper— that feeling is caused by a smaller area of impact, and the physics behind it cause a stinging, more immediate pain, because the force is more concentrated. Thuddy implements are going to be the wider ones— some paddles, hands can be thuddy or stingy depending on different factors like positioning or the type of strike. Stingy is going to be your lighter, narrower toys: canes, crops, belts, smaller tools like wooden spoons, hairbrushes, rulers, and so on. Does that make sense?” When the girl nods, Harry shifts on the couch. In another attempt to coax engagement, he asks, “D’you know what a flogger is?”
She thinks back— a particular instance at the dimly-lit back of a Spencer’s in a mall scrapes at the forefront of her mind. The goal, at the time, was arranging preparations for a bachelorette party; she remembers the way Tate’s lips had twisted slyly as she fingered through cheap, confectionary thongs and the airy giggle that had spilled out of Portia as her gaze had roved over the assortment of phallic-themed party supplies. The back wall, however, is the focal point of the memory. She can still see the vast array of toys— catered towards the adult entertainment industry, to be more specific— and the way the duo beside her had juvenilely fawned over what looked to be a multi-headed faux-leather whip, going as far as to retrieve one of the varieties and smack one another for “testing purposes.” The entire immature exchange had reaped an eye roll from Y/N at the time (along with a subsequent string of hisses seeping through the cracks of her teeth to knock it off).
“I think so. Yeah.”
“It’s got a handle,” Harry motions, describing the same visual Y/N has referenced, fanning his fingers out over the makeshift stem of his curled fist (and wiggling the digits at the top playfully), “and then loads of tails along the top. Do you think that’s going to be thuddy or stingy?”
Chewing into her lower lip, Y/N contemplates her answer. “Stingy, maybe?”
“Sometimes,” Harry nods, “But it’s usually pretty thuddy, actually. It depends on the material and the amount of tails, but because they’re all bundled together as they land, they cause a thuddier sensation.”
Y/N nods once more, her brows furrowing against as she picks through a bit of the fuzzy texture on the seat, “I think I understand. I do have another question.”
“I’ve hopefully got an answer,” Harry nudges his chin.
It’s probably just as silly as her first question had been surrounding the color system Harry had so thoroughly described. She knows he’s not going to laugh at her, given the way he’s treated every one of her inquiries as delicately as the last, but the mention wheedles at the same thought she’s had since the moment she saw something similar in one of his videos, all those weeks ago. Reasoning with herself that he won’t make her feel as silly as she feels over this, Y/N forces the question to come out without stumbling over her words and entertaining the word vomit that sits along the back of her tongue.
“I’ve seen…” she licks her lips, pausing as if contemplating her words once more. This time, rather than coaxing herself through by disengaging the eye contact and swirling her finger through the fuzz along the beanbag, Y/N meets his eye, “in some videos, you use …household objects. I was just wondering, if there’s so many different types of implements, why do you resort to those?”
“That’s a bit of a personal preference,” Harry folds his toned arms over his chest again loosely, a glint shimmering in his eye at the unwittingly sordid nature behind the question, “For one— accessibility,” He sticks his hand out to raise a neatly-polished finger, “I might not have a paddle around me but something like a belt? Universal. A hairbrush off the nightstand has a psychological edge, because it feels spontaneous. And it can be a little embarrassing— think about it, you know this object wasn’t bought to be used for that, but it is being used for that.”
A heavy knurl settles deep in the pit of her tummy as she weighs his words, only to find them justified as she thinks back to the way her face had heated in response to the very twisted use of an otherwise unassuming kitchen staple. When that had occurred, she was only viewing a replay of a scene she had never taken part in. It is embarrassing, Y/N supposes— all of it. There’s nothing especially dignified about being pulled over a knee and smacked under the premise of behavioral adjustment, but the misuse of an otherwise unsuspecting object inarguably adds another layer to that.
And even still (she considers this is the uncomfortable juxtaposition she’s been battling within herself throughout this all), the girl can’t help the way something warm pools low in her abdomen at the thought, or the little hitch that mars the space before her words (resorting to grazing her finger back over that little textured scrape) before she asks, “So, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy? Like… something someone already owns could… technically do the job?”
Y/N has lost track over the amount of times Harry has said something and caused her eyes to snap up to him at attention. She hasn’t been keeping count, and the curly-haired man seems to have a knack for throwing her out of her element, especially with the given topic. Even with this knowledge, he seems to have no issues reinstigating her flustered haze, and he seems to find a new way to encourage this, each and every time.
“Tell you what, darling— why don’t you look through your own kitchen drawers sometime? We’ll make it a proper experiment.”
When Y/N blinks up at him, almost as if he’s grown a second head, she discovers that he’s entirely, contrastingly relaxed. He’s propped against the back of the couch, his muscly arms still crossed over his chest, and his brows jump teasingly, just a smidge, when she finally gets around to reinstating eye contact.
And unlike Harry anticipates, she doesn’t immediately flush with a heat and melt into a stream of apprehensive giggles at the somewhat brazen insinuation— honestly, he thinks, they’ve reached a threshold that he’s grown rather tired to tiptoe around— and instead, she fixes him with a flat look and sardonically mumbles, “Oh, sure, I’ll just… pack a few kitchen utensils in my handbag. Totally normal.”
Harry raises one shoulder, shaking his head cloyingly, “Wouldn’t need more than one. I’d carry it home for you after. Gentleman and all.”
“How chivalrous of you. I’ll be sure to monogram the handle in your honor.”
“That’s sweet. D’you want me to autograph it after, or?”
This time, Y/N does release a bark of laughter, but it’s quick to die down as she drags her hands over her lap and shifts her gaze from the pair to his face, her voice soft, “Are we… actually talking about doing this right now?”
“If we’re not,” a boyish, lighthearted smirk decorates his mouth, “you’re putting an awful lot of effort into hypothetical kitchenware logistics.”
A weak smile crooks at her own lips. It’s not that everything is moving too fast. Or, maybe it is. Y/N just can’t really fathom any of it. That she’s sitting here, finally being entirely too honest— more than she had ever thought she would be, all too sure this peculiar interest would become locked into a box at the back of her head, only to be shelved and covered with a layer of dust as she refused to acknowledge it. That Harry hasn’t snidely laughed her off, rejected her inquiries, ridiculed her, or outright told her off for the type of behavior that essentially falls under the scope of cyber-stalking. She can’t fathom that he’s even entertained this conversation, and the little, jesting comments insinuating that he’d actually entertain this, that he’d actually do this, leaves her tummy frothing with nervous anticipation and her head spinning on its own sense of rationality.
Meekly, she draws a line through the tufted space along her armrest, her gaze cast back down to her feet, “Is this how it usually goes?”
“More or less,” Harry bobs his head and drums his lacquered fingertips over his bicep, “It’s usually a combination of curiosity, blushing… denial, every now and again. You’re on the right track.” For a moment, Harry pauses. His next words come out slowly, and he makes sure to emphasize that they’re an invitation she could easily bat off, rather than any sort of obligation. “But if you’re really curious,” his top teeth lodge into his lower lip lightly, “I could just give you a sample. Hand only, no utensils required.”
Sharply, her eyes snap up. In the suspended beat of lull that follows, the pair only looks at each other. Searching his handsome countenance for any inklings of that ridicule that young woman so wholeheartedly expects, or any sort of hint that he’s entirely jesting
this time around, Y/N only finds herself coming up short to whatever she intends to find. Her lashes bat over her deer-in-headlight-like eyes, like two, gooey spokes of shell-shock framed in arsenic white.
This time, she can’t help the apprehensive twinge of laughter slathering her tone as she speaks, “What, like, now—?”
“Well,” Harry shrugs offhandedly over her breathy laughter, “I’m assuming there’s at least three more rounds of deflection to be had.”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t assume,” Y/N deadpans.
“This is purely pattern recognition. Entirely backed by scientific data.”
“Is it?”
“Completely,” Harry assures, nodding in mock-seriousness.
As the ping-pong of their banter dies down, Y/N finds herself doing something she hasn’t done in a long time. For the first time in what feels like forever, she takes a step back and reassesses the approach she’s taken. So many times, for the sake of adhering to her overly-sensitive risk-assessment, or from the standpoint of fear, whether that’s being judged, or something else entirely, the young woman has pocketed what she wants to do, and done only what either her offset moral compass has advised, or what her flawed set of inhibitions have barred her from. When she was a little girl, she had refused to put her skis on during a family trip to Alberta— strapping the lengthy beams to the soles of her feet had become something to avoid solely out of fear, and she had spent the duration of the outing picking through a pile of snow on a nearby bench. When she was in high school, she had internally refused to acknowledge her crush on a boy in the grade above her, all for the sake of avoiding what she ultimately deemed was inevitable humiliation. In college, she didn’t go to that party. She hadn’t signed up for that field study in Ireland over the summer. When Y/N contemplates this— really, truly contemplates this— she finds that the only thing holding her back, evidently, seems to be herself. She wants to do this, she thinks— she’s wanted to do this for weeks, and the opportunity has very conveniently— or rather, through a series that has felt a bit like pulling her own teeth— landed into her lap (or rather, given her the occasion to stretch across someone else's, she considers sardonically).
It’s this quiet train of thought that coaxes her into lifting her head and dismantling Harry’s entire theory. Instead of furthering his suspicions, Y/N tells him, “I’d like to try it.”
In turn, Harry’s own chest teems with satisfaction at the sudden shift in her apparent demeanor. The answer hadn’t been one he was expecting, and it shows on his face for the briefest moment. Then, his lips prickle teasingly, and he unfolds one hand to tap the tip of his pointer against the armrest. “Ooh, sincerity. That creates an unprecedented anomaly, that.”
“Okay— nevermind.”
Sitting up as he laughs to combat the way she crosses her own arms and twists her chin away, Harry shakes his head, “I’m just messing.” Then, with his lids slipping to a sultry half-mast, and his thick thighs splaying just a smidge wider as he shifts, settling himself back against the backrest in an exhibition of pure languidness while his arms settle laxly at his sides (one propping over the armrest), Harry reiterates, “Would you like to?”
Slowly, Y/N turns back to face him. She can only swallow thickly at the view in front of her. The sheer sight of this man, taking up so much space on her couch, patiently waiting for her to respond, has her worrying her lip under her teeth. It’s a little unfair, just how easily he can grant her a look, or say an otherwise unassuming set of words, and entirely engage her nervous system in something alarmingly eager. What he says is a question, but the drawl, saturated in his low tone, existing in a gray area that can be taken as sole inherent sex appeal, is undeniably a bait. He’s not trying to skew her over with any sort of sensual magnetism; he’s only existing, practically, because everything about the man has a particularly alluring gravity, Y/N thinks. But this siren-like quality, whether intended or not, has its effect.
“…Yes.”
A pleased little twitch accentuates his pillowy pink mouth before he turns his wrist up (the arm that is situated onto the armrest in such a lazily attractive manner), and coaxes her into his direction with an easy, two-finger come hither, “Why don’t you come over here, then?”
Over the course of the exchange, Y/N has found herself leaning into him; her shoulders have tilted forward, her feet have shifted to face his direction entirely, and the rapid pace of her pulse only thunders a touch harder in her throat when she stands on wobbly legs. She fixes the way her shorts have hitched as she veers upright by picking at the hems with her fingers and shuffling them back into place, smearing her clammy palms against the fronts of her thighs in hopes that the motion will curb some of the nervous moisture, and acknowledging the way her heart is pumping so heavily that it feels as though her entire ribcage is rattling. She feels like a walking pulsepoint; everything in her body is vibrating with excitement, and the sensation leaves her feeling a little lightheaded. Apprehensively taking a step closer, her feet stutter forward when Harry dips his chin— wordlessly, symbolically— to gesture for her to slot between his thighs. As the young woman steps in between his own parted feet, she can practically steep his body heat through to her bare legs with the proximity, and he sits up a bit as she presses closer.
“So…” another huff of laughter spills from the back of her throat, and another brittle smile jolts along her mouth before it dissipates, “how did this usually start?”
Testingly, Harry shifts his arm to his lap, holding his hand out towards her thigh as jade flickers from the expanse of skin to her face while he tips his chin up to look at her fully; it’s a wordless request for permission. He’s going to be touching her, but he needs her to acknowledge this and consent. Concerned words will fail her, the girl bobs her head in a jerky motion with her bottom lip trapped beneath her teeth. In turn, Harry cups his hand over her thigh and smooths over it with the intention of soothing her, but Y/N finds the motion is anything but. In comparison to her somewhat chilled skin, his touch is warm, and for all the time she’s taken imagining that same skin-on-skin against her, it takes every fiber of her being to curb fluttering her lashes and melting into it.
Rather than acknowledging her question outright, his cushiony mouth curls lopsidedly and he responds with an inquiry of his own. “You’re a bit of a nervous laugher. Why are you nervous again? I thought we worked through this, hm?”
“You’re going to …hit me,” Y/N says weakly, an incredulous wobble to her voice before he rolls her eyes and sarcastically quips (although the statement doesn’t come off nearly as flatly smooth as she intends it to, courtesy of her haywire nervous system at the moment), “That’s definitely a usual …Sunday activity every girl gets to look forward to.”
A pleat works between his eyebrows as her shoulders swell on a shaky inhale. This time, instead of lobbing anything joking at her evident apprehension, Harry only taps the back of her hand with the tip of his forefinger— it’s a maneuver to get her attention, and he squeezes at the plush flesh under his opposite fingertips for emphasis. “Y/N.”
When she meets his eye, there’s a seriousness etched into his face, and his irises are stained with the same sentiment under the canopy of his dark eyelashes, “Do you want to do this? It’s alright if you’ve changed your mind. Just because you said you wanted to try it, doesn’t mean you have to go through with it if you’re not comfortable or you don’t want to anymore. You can always change your mind. I’m not going to judge you or get frustrated.”
In truth, the young woman isn’t scared. Or rather, she’s not scared entirely. She’s nervous, of course, yes, as any sane person would be in her current position; she’s trying something new, something entirely strange according to everything she’s grown up to know, and something that, until very, very recently— practically within the last few minutes or so— had existed under the perception of a filthy taboo in her mind. But she doesn’t believe that Harry is going to hurt her, or anything like that— the true root of her vibrating bones is the rush of anticipation. She’s excited, and she’s still not quite able to wrap her mind around it. That this is actually happening.
The genuineness to his tone and the care with which he considers her state, however, only seals the metaphorical nail into the coffin. And when she pipes up, her cadence has more determination in it than ever before.
“No. I do,” Y/N assures, shaking her head up and down in a way she hopes conveys how interested she still is, “I want to try it.”
Tugging his lower lip beneath his teeth and letting it roll back pensively, Harry squeezes at her thigh once more. “And you’ll tell me if anything changes, yes? M’not going to hurt you. I promise.”
“Yes,” Y/N nods again, muscling down the instinct to press closer against him. This is all so magnetic that his touch only amplifies the admixture of sensations she’s feeling, and it makes her feel as though she’s nearly touch-starved altogether.
A pleased, shiny beam chisels dimples into his cheeks and shows his pearly teeth, and the warmth of his praise drenches the girl from her head to her toes. “Attagirl.” Carefully inching her back with a hand against her waist, Harry utilizes the new space to shuffle his thighs closer together and pats at his lap encouragingly. Then, he gives her a statement that’s probably the most contradictory set of words she’s ever encountered in her life. “Let’s start simple. Bend over my lap.”
Despite the boiling simmer nipping at the apple of her cheeks and the warbling urge to back out altogether (not because of fear, or uncertainty, or anything else like that— but because it stems from a grating, residual voice Y/N is inevitably forced to cram to the back of her mind), Y/N takes a deep breath and lets him guide her over, keeping her balanced with his arm as she settles. Her stomach presses to the firm muscle of his thighs, making it only that much harder to take a deep breath, despite the way her chest isn’t constrained at all. She lets him reposition her as he sees fit, grasping her by the hips and hitching her along until she’s in whatever state is evidently optimal for him, doing so as if she weighs as much as a toy. The unintended manhandling only serves to exacerbate the warmth coursing through her body, making her feel as though every route her bloodstream takes is molten. Her lashes dust over the crests of her cheekbones as she lets her lids slip shut, focusing on evening her breathing over the racket of her heartbeat pumping against her eardrums. Once she’s settled where he’d like her to be, Harry seems to finger the hem of her oversized tee a tad higher, exposing the full extent of her shorts. They’re stripey; white and blue decorating the fabric in a vertical pattern, and they hug her ass in a way that he can only deem divine.
“There we are,” the curly-haired brunette places one arm along her side, splaying his large palm over her outer hip and keeping her steady, and trailing the other hand up along the back of her thigh comfortingly, “Is that comfortable?”
The position effectively forces her to tip down— given the way he has her propped over his lap, she’s forced to brace her fingertips against the carpet, and she lifts her head to nod in concurring acknowledgement.
“If I can’t see your face,” Harry pets his palm along the back of her thigh in a handful of repetitive up-down motions, twisting his chin towards the back of her head as he speaks, “I’d like you to use your words, please.”
Although the words hold no true edge and are said lightly enough to not entirely register as a command, Y/N swallows thickly before she obediently complies, a sticky kind of heat rushing between her thighs (that she refuses to acknowledge for the time being). “Yes.”
As she’d gotten so lost in her own head, the girl had failed to realize her feet had come up in response to his gentle caresses, and Y/N only registers this fact when his palm presses down on the backs of her calves instead, softly coaxing them down.
“Try to keep your feet down,” Harry advises, amusement lacing his tone.
To amend the action, Y/N curls her toes and crosses her ankles, unable to stop the sheepishness welling into her voice, “Oh— sorry.”
The embarrassed note in her tone causes his lips to prickle in an endeared fashion. He gnaws back a humorous comment on the tail end of his statement (a related thought that buoys to the surface of his mind), detailing the way that other girls wouldn’t usually be as apologetic over the minor infraction— at least not at first, he contemplates wryly. “You’re alright, darling.” Exhaling in lieu, Harry focuses his next point on a rather important topic, squeezing her thigh in his grasp in hopes of maintaining her attention, “I’d like to practice the safeword system we talked about. Do you remember what those are and what they mean?”
For a moment, Y/N contemplates the question. Safeword system. In the mushy mess of her mind, tangled by the way every square inch of her body is zappling alive with nerves, thawed by the intoxicant of his voice, and overall misted by the haze of being folded over his lap, Y/N is struggling to string together a single coherent thought, at the moment. It’s almost impossible to do so, she finds, when she’s perched over Harry’s lap, with the inevitable thought that Harry is going to be spanking her, especially when her brain is still reeling over the fact that any of this is actually happening. Even still, the young woman forces herself to focus and think back to what he had told her, taking a moment before she’s able to prod her vocal cords into executing a comprehensible statement.
With a pleat between her brows, Y/N drags her fingers through the shaggy carpet and tells him, “Green is go— that, um, everything is okay. Yellow is to take a pause or change something. And red is stop.”
Satisfied by her obvious attentiveness, Harry can’t help the warmth of the praise that seeps into his voice, a simper peeling his lips apart as he speaks, “That’s right. Look at that, picking up right away. Smart girl.”
For the second time, the praising pet name surges through her system, making her feel as though she’s glowing.
“I’m going to check in with you a couple of times and ask for a color, make sure you’re still feeling comfortable. But if anything starts to feel off, even if I haven’t asked, I’d like you to use yellow or red.” Stretching arm out and briefly rolling his wrist, Harry pats at the back of her thigh, “This is just going to be a little sample, so we’ll do ten with my hand, and we’ll call it there. How does that sound?”
“That sounds good,” remembering the way Harry had instructed her to verbally respond, Y/N does just so. Upon further pondering, she tacks on the honorific she’s seen utilized so often in his videos before, hoping it pleases him. “Sir.”
While not entirely out of the ordinary given the circumstances, this word lands onto Harry almost in the same manner it had all those years ago, when he was only a broke undergrad indulging an ex-girlfriends fantasy in an overly-priced, under-maintained shoebox apartment. It’s unexpected, and while it doesn’t cause his chest to teem with something ravenous and unknown like it had in that instance, it does cause his caress to stop short over her thigh for the briefest moment, before his a sly edge trickles in to the smirk that paints its way over his mouth.
“Sir. Isn’t that sweet,” the curly-haired brunette coos, sighing as he hitches her just a smidge over across his lap while he tries to stifle down how pleased her naturally docile inclinations already are to him; she’s practically a natural, and so inherently submissive that it makes him ache in the best way. Despite the way his counterpart can’t exactly see him given the angle, he wags his head at the back of her skull and assures, “You don’t have to call me Sir.”
There’s an undeniable layer of patronization to the way he speaks, and it causes the young woman to fluster. Although, nothing quite contends the next comment he makes, or the way his hand shifts just a tad higher as he delivers it, effectively causing her breath to clot in her lungs. “But it does sound quite pretty coming from your mouth. Are you ready to start?”
“Yes, but— wait—“
Harry pauses, all traces of amusement melting off as he prioritizes her sudden wave of apprehension. When the girl lifts her head and twists her chin to nervously cast her gaze over her shoulder, he meets her eye with only an open sentiment shading his facial expression, “What’s the matter?”
“Where do I—“ confusion stains her voice, and her words seem to melt off as she flusters in the uncertainty. “I don’t know where to put my hands…”
Letting himself relax as he hears out her concerns and recognizes that they’re nothing too serious, Harry grins lightheartedly, “That’s up to you. You can… put them down in front of you, like you have. You can hold on to my leg, if you’d like, or I could hold one. What feels natural?”
“Can you… hold it?” Y/N gnaws into her lower lip, shooting him a glimpse waterlogged in bashfulness. The gentle smile Harry graces her with in response disbands some of the apprehension that’d begun to sit in her stomach like a stone when she’d first contemplated asking.
“Of course. Give me your hand, then. Back here,” Harry instructs, patting at her lower back and fusing his fingers into the gaps between her own when she blindly reaches back. With the new position, he shifts her a bit so he can pivot his shoulder into a comfortable range, and his arm stays steadying over her back as he keeps their palms pressed together. His right hand, however, stays free and accessible, with enough range for the given task. “Is that comfortable?”
“Yes.”
All the thoughts crowding her skull seem to dissipate as Harry gives the back of her thigh one last sweeping caress in finality.
“Alright, pet. You just stay right there. Let’s give you what you came for.”
When the first smack lands, it doesn’t hurt in the way Y/N had anticipated. It’s not entirely soft, and it lands with a sharp sound that has her eyes screwing out of sheer shock. It feels… grounding, almost. He’s hit her, and it smarts, but the sensation soars up her spine like a bout of electricity, taking a moment to bloom out under her skin. And what’s most delicious about it, perhaps— the most revolutionary revelation Y/N discovers yet— is the way it intertwines so perfectly with an aching, deep-seated wad of pleasure coiling out from the pit of her tummy; the same one she’d refused to acknowledge earlier, which pulses between her thighs at the ready almost instantaneously.
Over the fog suddenly clogging up her head, she hears Harry as he smooths his touch over the same area he’d smacked. “How’s that? That’s not too bad, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Would you like another?”
“Yes,” the young woman clears her throat, bobbing her head to accompany the words. She’d do anything to feel that kind of spark again, in that moment, “Yes, please.”
Delighted by the way she asks, Harry hums, letting his hand sweep back down until it rests just along the area over the back of her knee. “You’ve got lovely manners. Very polite.”
With each blow he plants against her, Harry stays mindful of the way he fans his fingers and the way he lands the strike, optimizing a push technique with the heel of his palm; he doesn’t want it to land in that stingy way he had described to her, and while her shorts serve as a layer between the typical skin-on-skin that causes the signature sharpness, he minds the amount of strength he puts in just as much. Instead, he builds this up— rather than starting her off with a smack harsh enough to cause her fingers to tighten around his own, he starts off fairly light and goes slow, smoothing his palm over the area after each bruising kiss of his handprint. While one of his favorite activities is relishing in the soft sounds he’s able to coax, given the purpose and the way he’s working her, Y/N is fairly quiet, and the only sounds that decorate the room are their interweaved, soft breaths, punctuated by the occasional thud of his hand falling against her. The fifth smack he delivers— as far as they’ve gotten— is certainly the harshest with the way he’s been pouring a little more strength into each one; it’s the loudest, and her fingers squeeze over his own a smidge as it lands, and he remedies this by squeezing back and gently sweeping his hand over the injured area. That last hit also marks the halfway point on the itinerary he’d set, and Harry puts a tad more pressure into the way he pets at her cheek, pressing in and lifting his chin to cast his gaze at the back of her downturned head.
“What’s your color?”
With the way his arm is slung over her back, he can feel the way her breaths are even and deep, swelling apart her shoulder blades. The answer comes almost immediately.
“Green.”
“Wonderful. Five more, then.”
What Y/N finds, as Harry spanks her, is that it’s not at all what she had expected. Not in the negative way, at least. Any sense of embarrassment she’d felt feels like it’s being chipped away at by every fall of his hand, and a pleasant ache unfurls out under his hand, swelling along her nerve endings and causing her face to sear as much as the skin beneath the cotton fabric. But alongside the heat pooling under the soft bruises, the desirous bow in her tummy only tightens. She crosses her ankles together, lets her eyes slip shut, focuses on anything else that would distract her from the ache forming between her thighs. But none of it works. As he channels more strength into every motion, her breath hitches at the back of her throat, and with every soft touch he grants her, the contrasting blow fuels the fire licking along her bloodstream and the panging, all too familiar tension between her legs. It’s a vicious cycle, and she’s got her short, blunt nails curled tightly against the back of his palm to sedate the sheer pleasure by the time his voice breaks the spell, cautioning her, “Last two.”
These are the hardest, yet. They land in quick succession, one on either side, with no alleviating touches in between like he’d granted her for the other eight. On the ninth, her breath catches in her throat, and the tenth dislodges a quiet, almost imperceptible sound. By the end, her calves are straining from the way she’s ventured to cross her ankles and keep her thighs clasped together, and the bubbling want in her tummy is so hot it’s become impossible to ignore.
“That’s it, then,” Harry drawls, sniffing as he soothes the ache with a pair of comforting caresses and accompanying squeezes, before he plants a little tap onto the back of her thigh, signifying that the session is over. “We’re finished. Come on up.”
By the time the young woman stands on shaky legs, the apples of her cheeks scorched with heat, the only thing she can focus on is the way she’ll undeniably find a wet spot in her panties when she peels the set off, later. Steadied by the way Harry helps her up, she finds she doesn’t even have it in her to form an indignant retort when he teases, ducking his chin and raising his eyebrows as a simper molds his attractive lips, “Still alive? Legs still working?”
She muscles down the urge to stretch them despite her awkward motions, shaking her head down at herself as she fixes her shorts back into place and tugs the hem of her tee down, “They’re… fine.”
As the girl obviously winds down from the— entry-level, he’ll admit— first-time experience (he’d practically walked her through on training wheels, really), Harry splays his meaty thighs a little wider and encourages her to fill into the space, just as she’d done prior. Cradling her hips more openly, now, the curly-haired brunette prods, “Thoughts? Feelings, comments?”
Worrying her lower lip and twisting her fingers ahead in front of her as she contemplates her answer, Y/N revels in the touch against her hips and tries to ignore the way it feels like it’s poking at the tightly-wadded bow of arousal still seated in her stomach, “I thought it would be a little… more.”
“More…?” the man raises a brow expectantly and smooths his hands up and down the sides of her thighs slowly.
“I don’t know,” Y/N shrugs, finally meeting his eye, “Intense.”
The answer causes the edges of his lips to buckle up, and he tips his head back knowingly, patting at her skin as his own response keeps his grin open-mouthed. “Well. That was the tasting menu. You didn’t think I’d serve the full course on your first go, did you?”
“No,” the young woman shakes her head, a little simper curving her own lips as she contemplates his goofy answer, “I guess not.”
“Pacing is key,” Harry assures, “You work up to unbearable.”
“Right. Okay.”
In the silence that follows, Y/N blinks down at her hands and tries to distract herself from the awkwardness of internally acknowledging her own arousal. More specifically, she doesn’t want any hints of that to show in her counterpart’s presence. Harry is the one to break the silence, dragging his hands along one last time in finality before settling back against the backrest, as he’s done so many times prior over the course of the conversation-turned-demonstration.
“That about concludes the demonstration. Would you say that…” he places his hands together over his split thighs. There’s something so delectable in the way she’s still so flustered, and it only serves to further his initial suspicions on her motives. “Satisfied your curiosity?”
Y/N rocks forward onto her toes and purses her lips. Her eyes list off to the side, and by the time she casts them back onto the man, she finds that he’s obviously biting back a grin. She confesses, quietly, “I think I need a larger sample size.”
Harry can’t help the chuckle that the comment peels out of him; her eagerness, even while she tries to hide it, is something that practically lights him up from the inside. He nudges his chin down in agreement, grinning cheekily, “That can be arranged.”
This time, with no apparent response and the growing stretch of silence between them, Y/N resorts to fidgeting once more, picking at her cuticles absentmindedly. Momentarily, his eyes flash to the motion as he appraises her.
“What, um. What usually happens next?”
“Typically? Hydration, praise, an optional cuddle. Not necessarily in that order,” Harry sits back up, placing his hands back onto her thighs in hope that the touch alleviates her from the destructive habit. In that moment, it does. “Some people want space, or quiet,” Harry lists, tipping his chin up to look at her, “Some people want touch. What do you think you need?”
Chewing into the smooth, gummy lining on the inside of her cheek, Y/N weighs the options he’s given her. Right now, by some unexplained development, it only feels the most natural to want to crawl into the man’s lap. She had just been pinned over it, after all, and seeking a reversed format, for some reason or another, feels normal. It sounds ridiculous, however. Awkward, and overly forward. Strangling the strange urge down, she shakes her head and confesses, “I’m not sure.”
Assessing her carefully for a moment with a ruckle in between his sculpted brows, Harry weighs her demeanor. He knows, from a logical perspective, that given how short the impromptu session was, how it didn’t necessarily carry the same weight that something like a more intense, more coordinated dynamic would, and how carefully he had navigated the entire situation, that Y/N shouldn’t be too stuck in her head. Not in the same way other girls get during particularly rough sessions; usually, something with a more firm undertone or a little more (a lot more, really) than ten, well-spaced, beginner-friendly smacks with his palm would coax the brand of touchy, cradled over his lap aftercare that he’s become so accustomed to. And this is an observation he makes with no complaints— he had never felt uncomfortable when someone needed to seek refuge by twisting their fingers into the fabric of his shirt and nuzzling close, because it always all felt like a package-deal to the delicate state of the power exchange. He was going to hit someone, and they were going to cry into his shoulder after and seek out that he very gently pet their back in the process. It was all very normal in the anomalous sort of way that all things attached to kink were.
And while sobs weren’t inherently some sort of baseline to that gentle process, he evaluates the girl in front of him not because he doesn’t want to coax her into that same soft position, but because he doesn’t want to overstep himself. Granted, he did just smack her ass and basically grope her to sedate the burgeoning ache, but if she isn’t in the mindset to seek out that sort of care, it may feel strange and uncomfortable to her if he were to offer it upfront— especially when the pair had already tried so many new things in such an unanticipated time frame. With these thoughts, Harry settles somewhere on a happy medium, patting the seat beside him on the couch and pressing at her hip to incline her to follow his directions.
“Here. Why don’t you have a seat, I’ll grab you a water.”
Wordlessly, Y/N nods, and as she sits back in the spot Harry had motioned to, he himself stands and busies himself with ambling to her kitchen and grabbing said beverage. Given that he has no true idea of her kitchen layout, he manages to retrieve a cup and fish some water from the standalone filter in her fridge within a fairly reasonable timeframe (it only takes three cabinet pulls and a long, hard look around the kitchen for him to recognize that he needs to retrieve the purified pitcher). By the time he hands the cup over to her— their fingers brushing in the process— and sits down, inching close enough for their thighs to graze, Y/N is still entirely focused on ignoring the longing pang between her thighs. The earnest simper he graces her with once she blinks up at him from the lip of the cup, however, garners her attention span with a touch more persuasion. He’s so close that it feels as though she’s leaching his body heat, and she’s already so wrought with something molten from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, that it makes her feel fuzzy; it’s stifling in such an unexplainably welcome way. His scent folds around her; from a rational standpoint, the young woman is aware that he’s probably not wearing any cologne during a lazy day in, but the intoxicating essence of his clean, musky body wash and the undeniable note of sweetness she can pick out leads it to create the kind of aroma that Y/N, as incredibly forward as it sounds, thinks she could become so comfortable with.
“You did very well,” the genuine praise slots into the soft spot of her chest between her ribs, and for the second (third? fourth?) time (in truth, Y/N has entirely lost track of this, too), the encouraging approval makes her feel as though she’s melting off like a runny egg yolk from the inside out, “Did anything stick out to you? Anything you would have liked to do differently?”
Upon this question, Y/N takes another sip of the cool liquid— honestly, a good call on his part to soothe her residual nerves, although she hadn’t recognized it when he’d first suggested it— before she cradles the cup between her two hands and sets those against her lap. A pensive wrinkle forms between her brows as she casts her gaze onto the coffee table ahead of them. Harry watches the way her lashes dust over her cheekbones as she does so, manually dampening down the urge to reach forward to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. It’s not a yearning that comes from any sort of weighted sentiment; it’s the same maneuver he’s made tens if not hundreds of times before during the fragile care process, and it’s practically a muscle memory kicking into gear that he’s forced to stifle out for the same reasons he hadn’t invited her onto his lap.
“I… well the only thing is,” the young woman’s tongue peeks out from her lips as she wets them, before she meets his eye, “my head started to feel a little light, I think from being upside down.”
Taking this information into account, the curly-haired brunette juts his chin in a motion of acknowledgement. “Noted. There’s workarounds for that.”
The girl’s list of things to ignore, at the current moment, is becoming increasingly long, she finds, when she tries to ignore the way his words insinuate that this will happen again, too.
By the time Y/N has slowly nursed her water to completion and sat in the suspended silence with Harry to the point where it feels comfortable, as opposed to awkward, she sets the cup onto the table with a soft clink, right beside the unfinished puzzle, and regards him with bashfulness seeping back into her gaze. It’s not the same sense of timid nerves Harry had evaluated at the start of their conversation, however, and this symbolizes something positive for him as the exchange begins to slip into what he recognizes is his typical close. He tries to ignore the anguished pang that rises within him at her blatant lack of coaster-use.
“Thank you… for that,” her eyes follow him as he stands, stretching his limbs out and directing a cheeky smile into her direction.
“My pleasure,” Harry beams, ducking down to procure a piece of the puzzle from beneath the coffee table. He sets the piece down onto the surface beside the rest, and the maneuver is so unanticipated that it amplifies the stupefaction that surfaces within her at his cheeky words, “Should I send a receipt?”
When he pivots towards the doorway, obviously subtly inclining towards his exit, Y/N stands to follow him to the doorway, and they make it to the entryway before she manages a retort with her brows pinched, “Shouldn’t I receive compensation for… damages?”
“Well,” Harry wags his head, shoulders swelling as he takes in a deep breath. The inclination to lean a tad closer and bask in his scent a little while longer is one that Y/N swallows down, “I provide a service. Every package comes fully equipped with basic repairs and generous verbally rectifying protocol.”
“Is complimentary smugness an unspoken benefit?” Y/N deadpans.
Raising his eyebrows, Harry holds his hand out ahead of his, fingers wedged together as he casts his gaze to it as if to mime a makeshift invoice on a clipboard, “S’right there in the fine print. Under ‘emotional ruin and varying side effects,’” jade eyes flip back onto her as he blinks blankly, then lets his features crease goofily, “I’m a qualified handler, but I’m not immune.”
Y/N snorts. As she lets herself wade out from the effects of his silly jest, she swallows and her amusement melts off into another timid simper. Now, sincerity laces into her tone as she regards him from beneath her lashes, bobbing her head. “Seriously. Thank you. I… wasn’t sure what to expect, but… I think I’d like to try that again.”
Flashing her another pearly beam, dimples chisel deeper into his cheeks as he weighs the young woman’s confession. In all honesty, Harry wouldn’t mind doing this again, himself. “You’re welcome.” His brows climb his forehead as he tips forward just a tad, milking the ongoing joke of his business and coaxing another snort out of her in the process, “If you enjoyed the starter kit, our home branch has extended hours, more equipment, and very committed staff. We’re currently accepting new appointments.”
Although the statement is made in a goofily theatrical way, there’s obvious insinuation there. He’s inviting her to come over, to do this again. Y/N tries not to let her reaction show too heavily on her face, but the apples of her cheeks heat traitorously and she nods as she attempts to force some nonchalance into her tone. “Ah, that’s very generous, in that case, letting me sample the mobile unit, and all.”
“I travel light,” Harry shrugs offhandedly, one hand settling on the doorknob. The other sways lightly in front of his tummy in a brazen motion that’s obviously meant to mime the exact activities the duo had gotten up to, “Still manage to make an impact.” Y/N chews into her cheek. Harry cocks his head, a knowing twinkle glimmering in the shaded jade. “Not bad I’d say, all things considered.”
brat taming scene in which every time the brat starts to fold a little, their dom embarrasses them by reminding them how easy they're breaking. in which the brat squirms and tries to steel themself when their owner starts trying to encourage them, knowing that even their words of encouragement are a trick to make them fail quicker.
"what, done talking back already? don't give up yet, sweetheart. i thought you were going to make this a challenge for me? you don't want to lose this quickly, do you? what an easy brat to break. get back up. let's try again, darling."
i can’t believe this mf stopped wearing floral suits like that was my brand… floral suits and glitter bulges COME ON (i know he stopped a while ago… but still…)
Heyyy who are u a fan of these days? Hope ur doing well <3
omg good question… haim always bc duh. i’ve kinda gotten back into hockey. most of my time is spent on academics rn tbh. manifesting a hot rich man in my life who likes to be called daddy (how am i 21 now and still haven’t dated.. i feel like i’ve missed out on so much lol rip) thank u for the well wishes bby hope ur doing well too
I can imagine hearing it on the radio! Or in a shop, but idk if it’s one I’d personally play just to listen by myself, I’m just happy to get new music tbh idc what it is 😭
lol for me the instrumental and vocal melody just don’t match up very well so it’s bothering me bc of that. also his lyrics are a lot less vague than usual which is interesting!!
