Chapter 2

By Alex Reynolds

Student Schedule Worksheet

Just under a week after Marcus had first spanked him, Ethan was on his way to their first official conference meeting of the year. He had just finished the second meeting of his French class and had a half hour to get across campus to Marcus’s office, so he wasn’t in any rush. Even though he was walking uphill, he had more than enough time.

After leaving Marcus’s office on Wednesday last week, Ethan had gone to hang out with Dylan. Ethan knew that Dylan knew exactly what had happened to him. He had somehow known from the moment that Marcus asked him to stay after class. But he also knew that he only had this knowledge because he had been in this same position before. So, when Ethan came over, Dylan did him the biggest solid that he possibly could have: he didn’t say anything about it. He just got Ethan a beer from the fridge and offered him the spot on the sofa that he had been occupying before, which just so happened to be where all of the throw pillows were piled. Ethan has given him the most grateful smile that he could. Bless this kid.

He hung out there for a while: they ordered pizza and had just a couple of beers. At one point, Ethan had gotten up to go to the restroom, and when he did, he couldn’t help but take a peek at his butt in the full length mirror mounted on the back of the door. Even hours later, it was bright red, and he could clearly see a couple of wide stripes from the belt. It had been a long, long time since his butt had looked anything like this, and the visual made him feel young and embarrassed all over again.

It wasn’t just the visuals that lingered, either. Ethan was still feeling sore by the time that he went to bed that evening. The pain wasn’t that bad, but it kept his mind on the fact that he had been spanked that day, which he didn’t particularly want to be focusing on. As he went to bed that night he thought about the fact that he definitely didn’t want to be spanked again any time soon. He was going to hunker down and do the things that he was supposed to.

And so, he did, pretty much. Ethan’s academic life had been like nothing it had ever been before for the past week. He’d finished his homework the night it was assigned instead of the night before it was due—he was genuinely surprised that it seemed to take less time this way. He had brainstormed ideas for all three of his conference projects before heading into his initial meeting with each of his teachers. He hadn’t been late for a single section. When he had shown up to his writing course on Monday on time and with his assignment completed, Robin had seemed shocked.

“Turning over a new leaf, Mr. Dougherty?” she had said with a smile as he added his response journal to the pile on her desk.

On the one hand, it was a little embarrassing that people were impressed with him for managing to get through an entire week without fucking something up. But on the other, it was honestly impressive for Ethan. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this focused on school. He’d started every other year with the attitude of “It’s just the start of the year, it isn’t crunch time yet, let’s party.”

Of course, he had still partied a little bit. There was no time when there weren’t parties happening on campus, but the start of the year was a particularly busy social time. He’d spent most of his free time with what was already starting to feel like a core group of friends: Chris, Dylan, Becky, Megan, Dalia and Aiyanna. He spent a lot of time at the house where almost all these friends lived. They’d gone to a few other people’s parties on Thursday and Friday and Dalia had thrown a really great one herself on Saturday night.

Both of the new girls from his FH section had been there. The redheaded girl was named Meg—only slightly confusing, considering they already hung out with Megan. She was a Junior, and had just transferred from a community college in Georgia. The girl with the tawny complexion was named Dakota. She was a Sophomore who mostly worked in FP. She had only taken two other FH courses, and she didn’t really know most of the people in their department. Chris was crushing hard on Dakota and had gone out of his way to let Ethan, and Dylan, and really every guy that they knew, know about it. Honestly, Ethan had found Chris’s behavior a little gross: it was like he was being possessive towards this girl when none of them even really knew her. But whatever. Chris could be like that sometimes. It wasn’t worth worrying about.

In fact, Ethan had found that the thing Marcus had told him as he left his office the other day wasn’t entirely wrong. He had said that Ethan had, for the moment, nothing to worry about. And by keeping himself afloat academically and still having a good time with friends, he felt like maybe, for once in his life, this was true.

It still felt tenuous, of course, like one single misstep would send everything crashing down, but he was able to keep that out of his mind most of the time.

Ethan finally arrived at the art building and walked up the long, concrete walkway to the entrance. Meg was sitting on the lawn outside the door eating an oversized cookie as he came up. She had a cable knit cardigan spread on the grass like a miniature picnic blanket and was seated on it, obviously having positioned herself carefully to avoid letting her navy blue sundress ride up in any way. Her hair looked shiny in the afternoon sunlight. She waved to him a little reservedly. Ethan hadn’t spent much time around her, but he could tell that she was timid. She seemed sweet, though, and Ethan figured she would open up as she got used to things.

“Hey Meg,” Ethan said to her as he walked up. “What’s up?”

“Do you want one?” she asked in a voice that was hardly audible over the chatter on the breezeway. She held up a ziplock bag full of more cookies.

“Yeah I do, thanks!” Ethan said to her with a little smile.

She held the bag out to him and he pulled one out. He immediately took a bite. It was buttery, sugary and delicious. Meg had obviously made these herself.

“Oh my god, this is amazing,” he told her.

She looked pleased with herself, but still kept her subdued energy.

“What are you up to?” he asked as he kept eating. He sat down on the grass next to her. He figured he had a couple of minutes before he needed to be in conference and he knew it would be in his best interest to finish eating before he showed up there. He had gotten told off by Marcus approximately 80 times for eating in various places that he wasn’t supposed to in the art building, and that was before… well, that wasn’t this year.

Meg smiled up at Ethan, just slightly. “Oh, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I got out of advising early and I don’t have anywhere I need to be until our class with Dr. Turner…”

Ethan sort of half laughed.

“What?” Meg asked, crinkling her nose a little bit.

“Marcus,” he corrected her. “Literally no one calls their professors ‘Dr. Whatever’ here. You just call people their names.” He didn’t want to make it sound like he was criticizing her, but he figured she should know things like this if she was going to fit in.

Meg did the thing with her nose again. It was cute and a little silly. “Everyone keeps telling me that but it just feels so weird to me. That’s just…not the way I was brought up.”

“I mean they’re just normal people when you think about it,” Ethan suggested as if that might make Meg somehow more comfortable, even though Marcus had never felt like “just a normal person” and certainly didn’t now.

Meg shrugged. “I guess. But I still think it’s important to be respectful.”

“You do you,” Ethan said with a smile, finishing the cookie and brushing a few crumbs away. “Hey, speaking of, I didn’t ask you the other night, but are you in my cohort?” She had said she had just come from advising, so that was possible.

“I don’t know what that means” she said in an exaggerated whispered behind her hand, giggling a little bit as she did.

“Who is your advisor?” he asked.

“Dr. Turner,” she said with a sort of shy smile.

“Ok, me too, as of about a week ago anyway. This means that we’re in the same cohort…I guess it doesn’t really mean anything besides that, it’s just the word for it. Someone who does FH but isn’t in any of your classes is in your department, someone like…Megan, or Neil or …whoever else who is in class with you but has a different advisor is in your section. Dylan, Chris, Miems and I are in your cohort. You can just…say this to make it sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Ethan tried to explain, realizing as he did it how useless a lot of the specific language they used at school was. Really, none of that told anyone any particularly useful information. Oh well.

“I don’t know what I’m talking about though!” Meg laughed.

“You’ll figure it out. Anyway, I need to get to conference. I’ll see you in section later,” Ethan said.

“See you later!” Meg said with another wave. It was such a small motion, like she was overwhelmed by the idea moving her hand too much.

Ethan was thinking about Meg as he walked up the stairs to Marcus’s office. He decided that he liked her a lot.

*****

Marcus sat at his desk, quickly looking over his notes for his class meeting today as he waited for Ethan to arrive for conference. His meeting with Meg had gotten out early: there wasn’t much that Meg needed advising on during her first week of school. He had hoped she would have questions or concerns that he could address for her, but she had been quiet and shy through the entire meeting and had hardly said anything. Since he didn’t want to just ramble on, giving her information that may or may not be useful, he had ended the meeting early.

That wasn’t going to happen with Ethan’s conference. Marcus had a feeling that this meeting was not going to be quick.

Ethan was a good kid. Marcus had always liked him. He was a smart kid, too, and he had been excellent at reading films since he first entered one of Marcus’s classes years ago. But Ethan had gotten off track a long time ago, and once that had happened, he had spiraled out of control. It really was a miracle that he was still in school at all. He’d been scraping by on the skin of his teeth. He had always had just enough credits to be promoted to the next year, had withdrawn just early enough to avoid completely failing a semester, had convinced the Provost to let him back onto campus despite not *exactly* completing the terms of his academic probation.

Honestly, Marcus felt a little bit guilty about Ethan. He had slipped through the cracks, in a system that was supposedly very much designed to avoid letting that happen. And Marcus had seen it happening. He had seen Gil doing nothing to pull Ethan back to where he needed to be. There had been times when he had wondered if he should just step in. But Ethan had never acted like he wanted help, at least not until now, and he really didn’t have the authority to just insert himself in the situation.

Because of this, Marcus had been relieved that Ethan had come to him and asked him to be his advisor. He’d started feeling concerned about Ethan’s situation as soon as he had noticed that he was registered for his 300 level and therefore back at school after all. He needed to get himself straightened out and he needed to do it immediately. It was not impossible for Ethan to graduate, but his situation was tenuous at best.

There were students that were easy to advise. They could mostly manage themselves. They needed advice and someone they could turn to, and once in a while some of them needed a firm hand to keep them in the right direction. Some could be kept where they needed to be with just a few stern words every now and then. Others sometimes required a bit more than that, but not too often.

Ethan was not going to be like that. Ethan was stuck in a loop of desperately wanting approval but consistently behaving in a way that no one approved of. He was used to making bad choices, procrastinating, ignoring clear warning signs that something needed to be dealt with, and then, at the last minute, scrambling to catch up. He was always able to provide some excuse as to why it wasn’t his fault, and he truly wanted people to believe this. Half of his bad plans came from avoiding having to face consequences for his actions.

Marcus was going to have to break this cycle and teach Ethan a whole new set of habits when it came to school work and responsibility, and there was only one way that he knew how to do this. Ethan was going to wind up over his knee again and again until things clicked. He was going to spend very little of this semester sitting comfortably. In fact, he was headed for another spanking this very afternoon.

Marcus’s train of thought was interrupted by the boy in question appearing in his doorway. Ethan might have been older than nearly all other undergraduate students, but he was still very much a boy, both in the way he looked and the way he acted. He seemed a little shy as he peeked into the room, which was to be expected after their previous encounter.

“Come on in and take a seat, son,” Marcus told him, moving his notes to his work desk.

They began their conference with the normal conversation: what did young Mr. Dougherty want to work on this semester. Marcus was pleased to see that Ethan had brought a list of notes where he had begun to brainstorm: something he hadn’t even been told to do. This was a good sign.

They had debated back and forth about what Ethan should be working on, exactly. He had wanted to write exclusively about Villeneuve, which was both too easy and too difficult of a topic for what he wanted Ethan to be doing. A general study of a director with less than ten features wasn’t really 300 level work, but the lack of in-depth, dedicated criticism already in print about the director meant that he would have little to go off of and would have to do too much original writing to make it a reasonable goal for a single semester conference paper.

When they discussed what interested Ethan stylistically about Villeneuve, they had come to the concept of his use of a 360 degree pan and edits across a spherical plane, and when pressed for more places where he had seen this he came up with Ozu and Tarkovsky immediately. They talked briefly about the difference between crossing the axis and working in round space, which quickly became a good starting point for some research.

The actual work of the conference had finished in about a half hour. Now, it was onto the next conversation.

“How is the rest of your school work coming along?” he asked.

Ethan’s face lit up at this question. There was no nervous lip bite. This was a very good sign.

“It’s good! I’m keeping up with everything! I’m actually a little bit ahead. I’m getting stuff done way before it’s due. No problems,” Ethan said, sounding a little excited.

Marcus could see how badly Ethan wanted approval. It was all over his face.

“Well done, Ethan, I’m proud of you. Keep up the good work,” he told him.

Ethan smiled but looked down when he was praised. It was like he wanted that affirmation so badly, but then didn’t know what to do with it when he received it.

For a moment, Marcus considered leaving it there. Ethan was trying and, at least for now, he was succeeding. But he knew that he wasn’t going to do Ethan any favors if didn’t address every single one of his bad habits. Marcus had fully committed to this. Wiggle room wasn’t going to help Ethan.

“There is one other thing,” Marcus said finally. “Can you think of anything that you haven’t done that you were meant to this week?”

Ethan’s face became instantly worried. He thought for a long moment before he said “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I received an email from Rochelle on Monday, letting me know that some of my advisees did not have all of their registration paperwork turned in,” Marcus began.

Ethan’s expression grew indignant. “I turned everything in the same day that I first talked to you!” he said, not letting Marcus finish his sentence.

“Don’t interrupt me, son,” Marcus said firmly.

Ethan pouted. “I did, though,” he protested. “Obviously I did or else I wouldn’t be registered for my courses right now.”

“I gave you a number of forms to bring to the registrar’s office during our first meeting of the year. And you did turn in your change of advisor form and all of your drop/add paperwork. You did that right away, and I appreciate that. But, unless Rochelle is in the wrong, you did not turn in one other piece of paperwork which was required,” Marcus explained.

“I turned it all in!” Ethan insisted again, sounding very defensive. Marcus cut him a little slack: he was in a tough position. No one wants to be told they had made a mistake when they were very sure they hadn’t, and Ethan knew what the stakes of this conversation were now.

“Your Student Schedule Worksheet,” Marcus told him. “All students enrolled this semester were required to turn this in by the end of the day on Friday.”

Ethan’s mouth hung open. “That isn’t a real requirement, though!” he whined.

“It’s a requirement, and I told you that very clearly when I gave it to you. You should have gotten an email from the registrar’s office reminding you that it was required by the end of the week. You can’t claim that you didn’t know this,” Marcus said.

“I haven’t turned one of these in since Freshman year and nothing has ever happened. It’s a dumb form that doesn’t do anything,” Ethan continued to argue.

Marcus was starting to run out of patience. Ethan had been very passive last time he was scolded, but he had also been very aware that he was in the wrong. So it wasn’t shocking that he was putting up a bit of a fight today: this was something he hadn’t thought of as wrong. But Marcus was only going to take so much.

“Ethan, I do not mean this as an insult by any means, but you have made many choices and behaved in many ways in the past that were not ideal. The whole point of what we are trying to do here is to correct these things so you can graduate. So ‘I did it before’ is not a good justification for your choices. If you’re trying to tell me that you *got away* with it before, I’m not surprised. But you got away with too many things that you should not have, and which you are not going to any longer,” he told him.

Ethan looked pointedly unhappy.

“Where is your Student Schedule Worksheet?” Marcus asked him. “Did you lose it? Have you just not gotten around to bringing it to the office?”

Ethan chewed at his lip for a second before saying: “I just threw it away.”

Marcus sighed. “Alright, Ethan. I have more to say about this, but for now, I want you to stand up and prepare for a spanking.”

Ethan stood up immediately and didn’t say anything, but Marcus could see that the boy was only able to contain himself out of either embarrassment or fear. He stood there for a moment and did nothing, but it looked like he was barely keeping his emotions at bay.

“Do you remember what to do?” Marcus asked, coaxing him towards good behavior. This was a purely rhetorical question. There was no way that Ethan had forgotten any aspect of the spanking he had received a week ago.

Ethan drew his breath in sharply and then, in a very small voice said: “I’ll get a new form and fill it in. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you will. You can go do it after class today. But right now, you are going to go prepare for a spanking, or it is going to be worse for you.”

Ethan very hesitantly grabbed the chair that he had been seated in and carried it to the middle of the room. He positioned himself where he needed to be, and then he stopped, looking back at Marcus.

“That’s the first half of it,” he told his student.

Ethan looked petulant for a moment and then sort of huffed and undid his grey jeans and pulled them down, making sure they fell at his knees. He slowly moved to put his hands on his head and then stared forward, his expression a mixture of nervousness and moping.

Marcus left Ethan there for a moment. It was only about 30 seconds, but his face got increasingly pitiful the longer it lasted. Finally, he got up and crossed over to the chair and sat down. He didn’t bring anything with him. He assumed that he could take care of this issue with just his hand.

“Do you understand why you are about to get a spanking, Ethan?” Marcus asked. This, too, was usually a fairly rhetorical question, but in this case, he didn’t think that Ethan actually did.

“Because I didn’t turn in the form,” Ethan said quietly.

“You’re going to get a spanking because you were told that something was a requirement, by me and by the school, and you deliberately decided not to do it because you thought you could get away with it,” Marcus scolded.

Ethan bit his lip and looked down at the ground. He got it.

“Over my knee now,” Marcus instructed, and Ethan slowly lowered himself into position.

As he had last time he was spanked, Ethan tried to brace himself so he didn’t actually have to lay his weight on Marcus’s lap.

“Relax,” Marcus instructed.

Ethan loosened his body a tiny bit, but not enough to truly make any difference.

Marcus sighed. He grabbed Ethan’s boxers and pulled them down, taking a moment to push his jeans all the way down to his ankles with them. There was no difference in what spankable area he could access this way, but he wanted Ethan to feel that much more exposed and vulnerable. Ethan’s bottom had a few faint traces of speckled bruises still from his spanking last week. It was just lingering color, though. In the scale of things, he hadn’t spanked Ethan particularly hard last time, but if the boy hadn’t been spanked in almost ten years, well, yes, he was going to be marked.

Marcus continued to scold Ethan as he lay in position. “I’m sure that if you simplify this in your mind to ‘I’m getting a spanking for not turning in a form’ it sounds a little silly and excessive. But it’s the principle of the thing, Ethan. From now on, you turn everything in on time. You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t important. I understand that this form was not particularly important in the past,  but it does exist for a reason. This is the only way your complete schedule is on record. This is what allows me to get a copy of your schedule which includes all your conference times so I—“

Ethan cut in again “But I can just tell you, I’ll write it down…”

Marcus responded to this with a hard smack. It wasn’t a warm up.

Ethan jolted with surprise.

“If I have to tell you not to speak over me one more time, I’m going to get up and get something from my desk to spank you with,” he chided.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ethan said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. He was back to trying to be good.

“Yes, you could come up with an alternate solution to circumvent doing a very basic thing which you are required to do by the school and which you were instructed to do by me,” Marcus said. “Or, you could simply do as you’re told.”

As this conversation had continued, Ethan had started to slowly relax into the position that he was in. It had to feel both strange and embarrassing, but Ethan was going to have to get used to it. He’d be spending a lot of time here.

“I was mostly really good, though,” he muttered to the carpet.

Marcus sighed and then gently rubbed Ethan’s back. He let his tone soften. “Yes, you were. You worked really hard this week, and that matters a lot. I’m not trying to set a bar that you can’t reach and I’m not looking for things you’ve done wrong. I’m trying to teach you attitudes and behaviors that you need to have to succeed, and this means that I can’t let you get away with things like this. Right now, that doesn’t actually help you.”

Ethan didn’t say anything, but he sighed deeply and finally fully relaxed into his position, probably for no other reason than that it would have to be getting physically tiring to keep himself so rigid.

“Do you understand this?” Marcus asked

“Yes, sir,” Ethan said in a soft voice.

Marcus quickly unbuttoned his shirt cuff and pushed up his sleeve, not to make a big production out of it (which he admittedly sometimes did) but simply to give himself full range of motion. Then he began to give Ethan a spanking.

*****

Ethan bucked forward slightly as Marcus’s hand made contact with his bare and vulnerable bottom. He had started out feeling indignant about this. At first, being in trouble over his Student Schedule Worksheet seemed like the stupidest and most ridiculous thing that he had ever heard, but this attitude had quickly faded. Marcus’s explanation had seemed…well, it had seemed fair. He had thought that he knew better, and honestly, it was pretty disrespectful of him to just crumple it up and toss it in the trash.

Still, being willing to agree that his behavior had not been the best did little to make the spanking he was now receiving more bearable. Having had an entire conversation while he lay bare bottomed over Marcus’s lap had been agonizingly embarrassing. It felt like that could have been punishment enough in itself. But now Marcus’s hand was coming down hard, again and again and Ethan was, once again, struggling to keep control over himself.

He managed to keep himself relatively still, at least at first. He couldn’t help but whimper when a smack was particularly hard, or let out a little yelp when one caught him on the underside of his bottom, but he mostly managed to keep himself calm.

He couldn’t do it forever, though, and as the spanking continued, his breathing got a little bit ragged and he stopped being able to fully keep himself from struggling. He kicked his feet a little bit. And here, Ethan made a mistake. For a split second, he thought about how ridiculous he had to look, wiggling around and kicking in pain over Marcus’s knee as his bottom was surely turning redder and redder by the moment. Once he visualized this, he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. This would be shameful for a child, but at his age? He felt so embarrassed that he almost couldn’t breathe.

A pair of hard swats to the under curve of his bottom made Ethan cry out, sounding much less in control than he would have liked to. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Marcus’s hand landed on Ethan’s thigh, hard.

“No!” Ethan shrieked pathetically, not even realizing he had done it until the word was out of his mouth. The pain was white hot and agonizing.

There was another a second later. “Please!” he cried. This hurt far more than a similar swat did on his bottom. It hurt more than the belt had. In this moment, he was convinced that it hurt more than anything he had ever felt.

But there was another one, this time landing where he was already sore. Tears welled up in his eyes.

I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to… Ethan tried to steel himself, but there was a sudden flurry of smacks covering the back of his thighs and he despite his best efforts, he felt tears flowing onto his face.

“I’m sorry!” He wailed. When there was no response and the spanking continued he tried again. “Marcus, I’m sorry!”

“I know you are,” Marcus said, his voice sounded stern and unbending, which was really not what Ethan wanted right now. “I hope that you’ll remember this next time you question whether or not you actually have to do as you’re told.”

“I will! I will! I promise!” Ethan sobbed. He was starting to cry in earnest now. “I’ll do better!”

“Yes, you will,” Marcus assured him.

Finally, Marcus went back to punishing Ethan’s bottom instead of his thighs. Ethan was relieved, but it still hurt and now he felt frazzled and desperate for the spanking to be over. He twisted and struggled.

Marcus wrapped his left arm tightly around Ethan’s waist and pinned him into position. It made him feel strangely secure. He fought against his grip for a moment but eventually let himself be held in place. He continued to cry quietly, but with far less desperation.

When Marcus finally stopped, Ethan breathed a deep sigh of relief. This was quickly thwarted, though.

“Your spanking is not over, Ethan,” Marcus told him.

His hopes dashed, Ethan collapsed a little bit, letting his head hang glumly.

“Go ahead and tell me what you’re going to do differently in the future,” Marcus instructed, his arm still holding Ethan down tightly.

Ethan caught his breath for a second, then said “I’m just going to do as I’m told.” Speaking through his tears made his voice sound childish and pathetic, which was exactly the way that he felt at that moment.

“When it’s related to school, yes, that’s what you need to do right now. If you have a question or a concern about something I ask of you, just tell me and we’ll talk about it. But don’t decide that you know better than I do. Besides the fact that you’re getting a hard spanking and Rochelle is probably a little annoyed with you, no harm was done by not turning in your paperwork on time. I hope you learn this lesson now, when the only consequence is a sore bottom, and you don’t choose to do this again later when it could be very important.” Marcus’s tone was gentle and reassuring.

“Yes, sir,” Ethan affirmed quietly.

“Think about that while I finish spanking you,” Marcus instructed.

Then he resumed the punishment, spanking much harder and much faster than he had before. He covered Ethan’s bottom, sit spots and thighs with furious, biting smacks.

Ethan let out one long cry. It was impossible for him to think about what he had been told to because he couldn’t focus on anything but how sore he was. It only lasted for about thirty seconds, though, and when it was done, Marcus released his grip on Ethan and instead rubbed his back tenderly.

“Alright, we’re done. You took that well,” he said in the kind of voice you might use to soothe a child.

Ethan kept crying for another minute. He didn’t want to move. He had a strong suspicion that moving was going to hurt, and it felt good to be comforted.

Eventually, though, Marcus spoke. “I want you to get up and right yourself now, can you do that for me?” he asked.

Ethan nodded and unsteadily found his way to his feet. He turned away and quickly pulled up his underwear and jeans. He took a couple of deep breaths before turning back around.

Marcus then once again lead Ethan over to the sofa and sat him down. The discomfort that he felt upon sitting was made a little greater by the fact that his thighs were sore and tender. But Marcus put his arm around him and Ethan leaned into him, maybe feeling a little less hesitant to accept the affection this time.

“Shhhh,” he said. “You’re alright. I know that was hard.”

Ethan’s first spanking from Marcus last week had been such a big deal to him. He had cried so hard and for so long. In a certain way, this already felt a little bit routine. He knew what to expect. He still felt young and small, but much less like he was coming to pieces. It didn’t take him too long to get calmed down, but once he did, he made no movement to get up. He just let himself enjoy feeling safe and taken care of for a moment, as unexpected as it was that he felt that way.

He eventually needed a tissue though, and he had to get up to get himself sorted out. Trying to dry his eyes carefully to avoid losing a contact was a pain. He was going to have to go back to wearing glasses more often if he was going to keep getting in trouble.

The room was quiet and it was hard for Ethan to be the one to speak first, but he made himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He wanted to look Marcus in the eye when he said it, but that was more than he had in him at the moment, so he stared down at the rug instead.

“Thank you, Ethan,” Marcus said. “You really are doing well. Keep putting in the effort and you will get things right. I know you will.”

Ethan didn’t have that same level of confidence, but he was at least hopeful.

Marcus glanced at his watch.

“We have class in twenty minutes,” he said. “There’s a toilet down the hall so you can wash your face and straighten yourself up.”

Ethan took this to mean that he looked like a mess. The thought of going to class now was not appealing. He didn’t want to sit on the hard plastic chairs in 208 for an hour and a half and he really didn’t want anyone to notice him if he had trouble staying still. Especially not Meg. His only comfort came from the fact that he had had no idea that anyone in this entire school got spanked until the start of this semester.

Ethan’s face obviously wasn’t hiding his concerns.

“I expect you to be on time to class, Ethan,” Marcus added. “If you’re late, I will know that you had no excuse.”

“It’s just…” Ethan tried to explain but trailed off. He didn’t really know exactly what he wanted to say.

“I know,” Marcus said. “I sat uncomfortably in a classroom and tried to pretend I hadn’t just been crying plenty of times in my life. The good news is that you’ll survive.”

“Ok,” Ethan mumbled.

Marcus tussled his hair. “Go tidy up. I’ll see you down there.”

Ethan walked back to the desk to pack up his notes from their conference, which now seemed like it had been ages ago. Once he collected his stuff he headed for the door.

“Bye,” he said quietly as he left, mostly because he felt like he should say something but didn’t know what.

****

Ethan headed for the restroom and immediately washed his face. He did look pretty disheveled. He was trying to fix his hair with his fingers when the door opened. Ethan breathed a huge sigh of relief when he saw Dylan appear in the mirror behind him.

“Jesus Christ,” Dylan said when he saw Ethan. “Again? It’s been what, a week?”

Ethan just nodded miserably.

“I guess it makes sense. No offense, but you do kind of do everything the way you shouldn’t,” Dylan’s tone was lighthearted, but Ethan wouldn’t have been offended even if he was serious. What he was saying was undeniably true.

“I need to figure out how to stop doing that and quickly,” Ethan said, daring to rub his butt a little bit.

“I’m willing to bet you will,” Dylan said. “I’m gonna pee, don’t go anywhere,” he added. He set his messenger bag down on the counter and stepped into the cubicle.

Ethan fussed with his hair while Dylan was in the stall. He heard him flush, then his friend rejoined him at the counter.

“You don’t look that bad,” Dylan tried to reassure him as he washed his hands.

“Right, it took you all of five seconds to figure out what just happened,” Ethan quipped back.

“In the context of you standing in the bathroom nearest Marcus’s office trying to fix your hair, yeah. You’ll be fine when you come to class,” Dylan said nonchalantly. “If someone can figure it out it’s probably because they’ve been through it themselves, which is probably more people than you think.”

“How did I not know about this until a week and a half ago?” Ethan asked.

“Well, no one goes around talking about it and you didn’t come to class very often,” Dylan quipped.

“Fair,” Ethan said with a sigh. “Hey, can I ask you a question?” he added.

“Sure,” Dylan said. Ethan was envious of how collected he was while talking about this. Even with avoiding saying anything outright, he was getting really embarrassed.

“Do you…cry?” he finally asked. “Is that normal?”

“Yeah,” Dylan said after a second, his voice a little less jovial. “I can’t imagine how someone wouldn’t.”

“Every time?” Ethan wanted to know.

There was another pause.

“Well, not every single time. But mostly, yeah.”

“Does it…get easier?” Ethan asked.

Dylan shrugged. “It starts to feel less…scary,” he said. “And less overwhelming,” he added. “What have you gotten so far?” Dylan wanted to know.

Ethan really didn’t want to answer this question. He was in a weird place where he desperately wanted to know more about Dylan’s experiences without actually wanting to have to talk about any of this. There were only so many ways that he could dance around the word “spanking.”

“Today, just…not with anything, you know. But he got me all over my thighs and that killed me.”

Dylan cringed. “Yeah, I hate that.”

“Last time…part of it was with his belt.”

Dylan nodded. “Is that it?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said, “is there more than that?”

Dylan reached out and put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. He was being a little dramatic, but it was also obviously coming from a real place of concern. “I don’t mean to alarm you,” he said, “but things are going to get worse for you.”

“How?!” Ethan asked. He caught his own face in the mirror and saw that he had a real look of terror on it.

Just then, the bathroom door opened and Neil Morris walked in. He studied the two of them with a little bit of a sneer.

“Are you just hanging out in here? Having a heart to heart?” he asked derisively.

Ethan’s first impulse was to say “Fuck you, Neil,” but he wasn’t fifteen anymore and he was too old to be getting into fights in the school washroom.

“We were about to leave,” he said instead, trying to sound cool and collected.

“Why do you care what we were doing?” Dylan asked.

Neil shrugged. “I didn’t know this bathroom was the cool place to hang out these days, that’s all.”

Ethan pulled the door open. “See you in class,” he said.

Dylan followed him out and the two walked down the stairs to see if any of their friends were around.

“You know his name is actually Cornelius, right?” Dylan said as they walked.

Ethan laughed. “I am so goddamn grateful that you told me that. I am never calling him anything else for the rest of the year.”

They found Chris outside, as they always did. He had just flicked his cigarette butt away when Ethan and Dylan showed up.

“Neil Morris’ name is Cornelius,” was the first thing Ethan said to him.

“I know. How did you not know that?” Chris asked.

“Well, I guess there’s a lot of things about this department that I didn’t know until now,” Ethan said.

“I guess that’s what happens when you show up for school: you learn things,” Chris replied.

“Let’s go to class before we get late,” Dylan suggested.

The three boys wandered into the art building and made their way to 208. Ethan felt a little sore when he moved the wrong way, but he was feeling much better than he had. He was grateful that Chris hadn’t asked if he was okay. He wasn’t sure if it was a sign that he was looking okay or if Chris just had too much sense than to ask. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Chris could be like that.

Ethan had never gotten an answer from Dylan about how things “were going to get worse for him” but he did his best to put it out of his mind and focus on acting as normally as he could in class. Maybe he was just kidding. If he wasn’t, Ethan had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be too long before he found out.