"Who puts a desk at an angle?" Carter grumbled, tripping over his feet slightly as he moved to stand by the furniture in question. "Nevermind, I know who. My Dad. Because he's an asshole, and he knew moving my furniture would bug me juuust enough to where I couldn't leave it!"
He looked over to where Lexi was standing, making a face at his TA. "Lexi...That's my problem...I love a whole bunch of assholes," he stated, more blatant than if he had been completely sober. "Okay...Three...And I'm only in love with one asshole..."
His plan of one drink with Andy had turned into dinner, along with two more drinks apiece. Carter wasn't drunk, but he was in that pleasantly buzzed stage that made him lose any sort of filter he had. He'd probably regret that in the morning, but for now he felt great.
"I sent Seb a nipple pic, earlier," he said, switching subjects without any regards to how conversations normally worked. "Only one of the four, though. I'm gonna send him another one later. Who puts a desk at an angle, Lexiiiii?!"
Carter made his way to Sebastian's office slowly. Sure, it was eating into the time they had to talk, but he needed to get his thoughts and feelings in line first. It was part of why he had wanted a weekend away, but between Sebastian's persistence and Nico's encouragement, Carter had decided to get the talk over with before he left.
He paced in front of Sebastian's office door for a few minutes, finally deciding that he was ready and knocking on the door.
"It's Carter," he said after a second. Wouldn't want Sebastian to mistake him for one of his hookups, after all. "Can I come in?"
"Please tell me you're naked already," Carter called, stumbling his way in the door to their suite and slamming it behind him. Not waiting for an answer, the sub tugged off the blazer he had thrown on, tossing it onto the couch without a second thought. "Because I swear, if you aren't, I'm ripping whatever you have on," he warned, making his way back to the bedroom.
He'd left his office at a near run, deciding that it was easier just to lock everything inside and come back for it later. He could usually handle Seb's teasing, but something about the Dom wanting to be called 'Master' had gotten under his skin immediately. However, now that he was in their suite, his Dom was nowhere to be found, and Carter was tempted to start without him.
The second Carter's eyes opened, he was on a mission. Well, technically, he was back on a mission, considering he had laid everything out before bed the night before, but his point still stood. He was on a mission, and the clock had started ticking down.
Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he rolled over slightly, giving a still-sleeping Sebastian a kiss on cheek before sliding out of bed. Grabbing the clothes he had set out the night before (one of Sebastian's shirts and a skimpy pair of underwear), he ducked into the bathroom for a shower.
Coming back out once he was done, hair wrapped in a towel on the top of his head, he snuck a quick glance at Sebastian. Once he was sure the other man was still asleep, he moved on to the kitchen. He wasn't sure how long he would have until Sebastian woke up, so he weighed his options for a moment, then started to cook. He was no Collette Smythe, and this was by no means something he did often enough to be fantastic at it, but he could make a decent breakfast when he put his mind to it.
Thirty minutes and a few singed (and bandaged) fingers later, Carter was carrying a tray of French toast and coffee into the bedroom. Putting the tray down on the floor on his side of the bed, he then pulled his hair out of the towel and climbed back under the covers, cuddling up to Sebastian happily. He was tempted to wake his boyfriend up, but he was almost 100% certain the smell of coffee would do it for him.
[Text>>Mom] Can you meet me outside? I'm not really sure I'm welcome under the current pod person regime...
Carter sat back in his car after he sent the text to Leah, looking at the doorway to the cottage with the same kind of focus he used on photo shoots. He looked at the different angles, the different textures, the way the light reflected off of the door handle...He studied it as intently as he could, from a distance that he refused to cross. Nico had made his choice in how to handle things, and Carter could see his reasoning. That didn't mean he had to go along with it, or act like everything was okay between them.
He did want to see Leah, though. He had no doubt that she was being looked after, by his fathers and her friends alike, but part of him needed to see that with his own two eyes. Besides, he wanted to find out what had happened without Sebastian editorializing about how terrible Leah was every two seconds. As several minutes went by without the door opening, Carter sighed, picking his phone up from the cup holder he had stuck it in, sending another text.
[Text>>Mom] If you're busy or don't want to hang out, that's fine. I should have called first.
Carter had probably never been more ready to leave a party in his life. While he had by no means expected to be the last one at the holiday ball, he and Sebastian were leaving quite a bit later than he had expected. Whether it was because Sebastian was truly enjoying himself, or because of the Dom’s nerves about what they had planned to happen after, Carter couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that they had finally left the hall, and the music from the party was fading in to the background with every step they took, leaving a vaguely awkward silence in it’s wake.
Taking a breath, Carter reached out and took Sebastian’s hand, lacing their fingers together gently. “Thanks for being my unofficial date,” he said, his voice echoing softly in the empty hallway. “We were obviously the best looking duo there,” he added. Sebastian had expressed many reservations about the suit he had chosen to wear, but Carter loved it. There was something exciting in knowing he had stood out from the crowd, and yet still complimented Sebastian’s own look perfectly.
“Though, that was mostly thanks to you,” he added. Glancing around to make sure they were still alone in the hallway, the sub pressed a kiss to Sebastian’s cheek, smiling as he pulled away.. “I don’t know if I told you, but you look phenomenal, Seb.”
Who: Carter Wells Kinsley
Where: Hansen household/Yale Campus
What: Things happen, with interesting results. (Literally the best I can come up with without spoiling it, I swear. I’m sorry!) OH, WAIT!! You find out Carter’s middle name. And he eats sausage (NOT A METAPHOR).
Oh, also? This thing feels like a beast. Sorry if it actually is one.
[Earlier Friday evening]
“Aaand, that’s time,” Professor Hansen said, looking at his watch as the device beeped, then looking next to him where Carter was sitting on the floor, his hands bound behind his back. “Congratulations, you made it to a full hour,” he added as he reached over, pulling on the cord that would release the sub’s hands.
“Yeah, after four restarts because I freaked out,” Carter said, frowning as he shrugged off the rope, holding his wrists out in front of him for inspection without being told. “It would have been five, but I got distracted,” he added as the older man checked his wrist for bruising or chaffing. Once he was given the nod of approval, he stood up, stretching his legs out slowly. “I actually spent the whole hour trying to figure out how Bruce Banner keeps from constantly turning in to the Hulk if he’s always angry like he says he is,” he admitted, quietly.
“Remember: The goal isn’t to avoid needing to restart. The goal is just to make it to the time limit,” the Dom said ruefully, standing up from his chair and ruffling the sub’s hair gently. “You did a good job today, Carter, no matter what you think.” He made his way to the stairs, planning on getting ready for bed. “You can read for half an hour, then lights out...Oh, and wear some actual pjs tonight, not just boxers...And I’d make sure you have your hair pulled up,” he added, winking at the sub before leaving the room.
“...Yeah, because that wasn’t creepy or ominous at all!” Carter called after him, shaking his head as he heard the older man laugh. “I swear, the Hansen family gets off on being weird as hell,” the sub mumbled to himself, making his way over to the bookshelf. He’d listen to the instructions, of course, but it didn’t mean he had to act like he understood them.
----------------
“RISE AND SHINE, PRINCESS!”
Carter sat up with a jolt, blinking wildly as his door was slammed open, trying to climb further up the bed to get away from the masked figures advancing towards him. There was nowhere else to go, however, and he was quickly grabbed and yanked from the bed. “What the actual fu--PROFESSOR!” Carter screamed, struggling to get free, until a familiar voice coming from the doorway stopped him.
---------------
[Earlier in the week]
“Carter? Carter Kinsley?”
The submissive looked around in confusion, unaware that anyone on campus knew who he was enough to call him out by name. The confusion didn’t clear even when he realized who was speaking, the tall man in front of him completely unknown to him. “Um...Yeah, that’s me,” he said, waving slightly. “Can I help you?”
The man smile, reaching out to shake Carter’s hand immediately. “Actually. I’m here to help you,” he said. “I’m Ryan Grimshaw...Professor Hansen asked me to um...Basically to mentor you,” he said with a shrug. “I, um...I haven’t been exactly in your shoes, but he thinks we have enough in common that I can help with your...issues.”
Carter scoffed before he could help himself, biting his lip slightly. “Sorry, I just...I don’t know how much he told you, but...Let’s just say that there’s literally nothing in me that feels the need to submit, and that’s unlikely to change.”
Ryan nodded, chuckling softly. “I don’t know it in terms of submission, but I know that feeling. Give me a chance to prove you wrong, huh?” he tilted his head at Carter, pouting playfully. “Come on. One week. I give you basic instructions, you follow them. At the end of the week, you tell me whether anything feels different or not, and we’ll go from there. Please?” he asked, his eyes hopeful.
“...Fine, I’ll try it for a week,” Carter said, laughing at the other man’s antics. He was here to try and learn about his submissive nature, after all. It wouldn’t be a good idea to refuse the first help offered to him. “Where do we start?”
Ryan smiled, standing up straight before continuing. “Your first rule,” he said, his voice taking on a rolling quality, like a thunderstorm in the distance. “Is that, from this moment forward, you will refer to me as Big Brother Grim Reaper. Your second rule is that you do any and every thing I ask of you, no matter what time, no matter what you were doing already. The only person who can override what I tell you to do is Professor Hansen. Or, you know, your parents, if they’re on campus, I guess,” he said, his voice going back to normal for a second before taking on it’s ominous tone again. “Your third and final rule...for the moment, at least...Is that if at any point you are in pain, or are asked to do something that goes against one of your limits--hard or soft--you will say the word ‘Walter’ three times in a row. Do you understand the rules as I have explained them to you?”
Carter nodded, though he looked at Ryan confusedly. “Yes? I mean, yes....Big Brother Grim Reaper,” he said, adding on the name at Ryan’s encouraging nod. “So, what happens now?”
Ryan smirked, looking around them for a few seconds before pointing at a nearby coffeehouse. “Go in there, tell whoever is at the counter that you’re here to pick up Grimmy’s usual, then sing the first verse of ‘Party in the USA’ at the top of your lungs.”
Carter blinked slightly, looking at Ryan for a second. “This is submitting?” he questioned, tilting his head in confusion. “Because it feels like Truth or Dare,” he added.
“Of course not,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “This is just me testing a theory. However, since you forgot to call me by the proper name? Add some dance moves.” He looked at his watch, faking a sigh. “Hurry it up, Kinsley. If I end up with cold coffee, you’re going to do it all again in Spanish.”
Carter nodded, confusion still all over his face, though he was already turning towards the coffee shop. “Going, Big Brother Grim Reaper...”
---
“Submissive Pledge Carter Matthew Kinsley, you have been deemed worthy to join the True Gentlemen of the Chi Psi fraternity, having proven yourself to Big Brother Grim Reaper. You will be accepted to Chi Psi, providing that you complete one final challenge.” Ryan said, his voice sounding thunderous in the suddenly quiet room. “Do you accept this challenge, knowing that if you fail, you will not be considered again?” The Dom stepped away from the other men stationed in the doorway, getting directly in Carter’s face. “It won’t be easy, especially for you in comparison to everyone else,” he said, his voice low enough where no one else would hear him. “But if I didn’t think you could do it, we wouldn’t even be here,” he added, winking at Carter slightly.
Carter swallowed nervously, looking around at the figures still holding on to his arms. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he looked back to the door, relaxing slightly as he saw Professor Hansen. He raised an eyebrow at the Dom, trusting his judgement more than anyone else in the room. The older man nodded, giving the sub a subtle thumbs up and a completely unsubtle wink.
The sub nodded, shifting his focus back to Ryan. “Yeah...I accept the challenge,” he said, his voice steady, even though his hands were shaking. Well...At least I’m in my good pjs with my hair out of my face, he thought, just as the blindfold was placed over his eyes.
----
The next thing Carter knew, he was in the back of a van in between three other people, and they had been instructed not to talk. As Carter heard shuffling from the front of the van, he soon understood the instruction.
“Listen up, Pledges, because I’m only going to say this once,” a voice that wasn’t Ryan’s said, the words short and to the point in a way that reminded Carter of Hunter, as odd as it seemed. He’s probably some kind of ROTC guy, his brain supplied. Not the guy to be a smartass with, got it, he thought before realizing that he needed to be paying attention to what the man was saying. Luckily for him, he hadn’t missed anything.
“Like I was saying, before Danson over here decided to get smart with me,” the voice was saying. “You will be brought to an undisclosed location. Once there, your hands will be bound, and you will be expected to kneel in silence until you are instructed otherwise. If you fall asleep, you will be removed. If you so much as think of saying a word to anyone that is not the safeword, you will be removed. If you stand up at any point aside from our designated checkpoints without permission, you will be removed. If anyone speaks to you, you must first ask your personal Big Brother for permission to answer. Failure to do so means that you will be removed. And, just in case it isn’t clear to you, yet -- Anyone who is removed has lost their chance to be considered a Chi Psi. There are fifteen of you here tonight, I’ll be amazed if any of you make it through.”
Carter nodded to himself as he heard the rules, mentally shrugging slightly. Those aren’t that bad, he thought, it’s basically just submitti--Oh. Oh fuck my motherfucking, cockgobbling, sparkly purple ball sack, that is such bullshit. I might as well give up now. There’s no way I can do this, Ryan doesn’t know what he’s talking about...I should just leave n--
His thoughts are brought to a screeching halt when the van he’s in does the same, jostling him against two of the other (allegedly) fifteen boys in the back with him. As the back door opened, he sighed, allowing himself to be pulled out without complaint. If I don’t try, then this whole week was for nothing. At least if I can’t handle it and tap out, I tried.
“Submissive Pledge Kinsley, do you have anything to say before you begin the final challenge?” Ryan’s voice asked, suddenly right in front of Carter and making him jump. Carter heard the older boy chuckling as he got his nerves under control again, and gave him a slight grin in return.
“This is a hell of a way to test a theory, Big Brother Grimm Reaper,” he said, sarcastically. He heard Ryan chuckle again as he seemed to move away, causing Carter to relax. He jumped (again) a moment later, as (he assumed) Ryan moved behind him to tie his wrists. Carter felt his breath hitch, his heart rate automatically spiking. He had yet to have more than one sense removed at a time, and he knew that Ryan knew that (how else would Professor Hansen have known to alternate between sight and touch as the two senses to remove during their time together, or that Carter was going to be abducted tonight).
He felt the Dom’s thumb slide across the inside of his wrist gently, just enough of a connection to help him get his breathing under control. “You’ve got this,” Ryan said softly, low enough that the other pledges wouldn’t hear him giving Carter extra encouragement. “Trust me.”
Carter nodded as the Dom stepped away, speaking up to be heard. “Theory’s already been tested, Pledge. This is the practical application. Now...Kneel,” he said, a hand coming to Carter’s shoulder to guide him to the ground. The sub took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and lowering his head.
Here goes nothing.
----
The first hour is the most difficult, as it mainly consists of Carter trying to keep his breathing under control, the loss of his sense of touch combined with his inability to see making him anxious in a way that he couldn’t remember having felt in a long time, if ever.
The second hour was only notable because it was when the first of his fellow pledges was removed for forgetting to ask permission to answer a question.
The third and fourth hour saw four more pledges removed, but Carter wasn’t completely aware of who, or when. Just that one had said ‘Bless you’ when one of the Big Brothers had faked a sneeze, one Dom finally decided that he was ‘too good to be treated like a submissive’, and the other two fell asleep.
Hour five, he would later learn, was what took out another 6 of his fellow pledges, exhaustion making them forget to ask permission to move or speak, or causing them to fall asleep completely. Carter wasn’t aware of it in the moment, his thoughts and awareness having blurred around the edges, leaving him with nothing but the knowledge that every few minutes, one of the Big Brothers came by to check that he was awake and to question him.
When Ryan finally took the blindfold off at the end of hour six, he was one of the two pledges who had made it through the night, both of them submissives.
Half an hour later, when Carter had finally come out of subspace to do more than answer questions and follow instructions, he made grabby hands until Ryan gave him his phone, pulling up his Facebook and slowly typing out a message:
“#ChiPsi #TrueGentleman #OnlytheBeginning”
---
“So, what happens now that we know I can submit?” Carter asked later, after his official initiation and swearing in to the fraternity. It was just past six am, and he was sitting across from Ryan in the local diner, a huge breakfast in front of him. “I mean, I don’t even know how I got to that headspace, dude...I don’t know if I can get back to it,” he admitted, frowning deeply.
“We keep trying different things to figure out what caused it,” Ryan said, shrugging slightly and reaching over to steal a piece of Carter’s bacon. “Big Brother rights, suck it up and deal. O’Malley will take a piece for each time you complain,” he said to the sub’s cry of outrage. “But seriously, we just keep trying. If I can’t help you, we’ll ask one of the other brothers. If none of them can help you, we’ll ask one of the other frats. If they can’t help you, we--”
“I get it, Grimmy,” Carter said, stabbing one of Ryan’s sausage links for his own. “I’m not as lost of a lost cause as I would have once thought. Good to know...” He trailed off slightly as he took in his Big and their surroundings. Everything from the Chi Psi pin on Ryan’s lapel, to the pledge rule book next to Carter’s own coffee, to the pickle spear on his plate, and ending at the partially eaten doughnut between them.
His eyes made the circuit again....Pin to book, book to pickle, pickle to doughnut. Pin, book, pickle, doughnut. Pin, book, pickle, doughnut, on and until the images had blurred in to one single thought in his mind.
“Hey, Grimmy...Where’s the best tattoo parlor around here?”
