"You forgot to fill out this box," she says, handing his back his new hire paperwork.
Diego thought he knew what he was doing. He sweet talked his way into a hot and a cot in a gym, he did odd jobs in the neighborhood for cash, he nailed his job interview at the precinct and he had been sure he had his life figured out.
"I did?" he says, taking it back and scanning it over. "Where?" Name, sex, address, medical history all looked right. He skipped the middle name section and the medical conditions sections. Maybe he was supposed to write down that he's fine? That or alive.
Sgt. Santiago taps on the box next to sex. "You forgot to circle your dynamic."
Diego looks to where she's pointing.
DYNAMIC circle one Dom Sub Switch
He has no idea what it means. He circles the first option and hands it back. "Sorry, I didn't think it was important."
The sargent visibly softens at that. "It shouldn't be."
Fuck, Diego thinks. That was probably important.
He keeps it on the back of his mind as they start going through the motions at the Academy. He can tell that the other cadet's aren't used to morning training. He's careful to run in the middle of the pack at first, when they run laps, until he remembers that he doesn't have to worry about Luthor's crippling insecurity or Klaus trying to sabotage anyone running ahead of him - he can just run. So Diego pushes himself and runs so far ahead of the other cadet's that he can't help himself from laughing at something that feels so good.
He wonders if it's just as obvious to everyone else that he has no idea what to do in an academic setting. Most of their learning was done through memorization and sometimes there were clipboards? Mom made everyone sit behind weird table-chair hybrids. He knows that the way they were raised was dysfunctional at best, but every day since he left he's felt like he's walking through an alien landscape.
Diego learns to keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself. Even the hand to hand training is different. Dad trained them to kill. Minimize civilian injury and damage is new and foreign. He hasn't felt like this in years.
Between his classes and his interactions with his classmates, he manages to get some recon on the weird paperwork thing. Dom meant someone who protected and cared for subs who were people who needed it. At least, that's what Diego thinks he's figured out. Sometimes the instructors would give them instructions on how to handle "panicked subs" only to quickly change the language to "panicked civilians," or tips on domestic violence situations where the instructors make similar slips. He wasn't completely sure what subs were, but from the general gist he picked up, they sounded like Mom. If Doms were the ones who protected people like Mom, then he definitely was one of the people who protect them.
At least, that's what he thought until he was out drinking with the cadets and Patch says, "C'mon Beaman, I heard you have a sweetheart."
Beaman blushes and says, "It's new. I don't want to jinx anything. We haven't scened yet."
Diego doesn't know what that means. "You haven't scened?" He says, because he learned a long time ago that he can fake knowing what people are talking about by repeating the confusing part as a question. It usually works.
Patch and Yamaguchi both start to crow. "Have you gagged her?" Yamaguchi asks.
Diego looks at Yamaguchi oddly. That's a weird question.
"No," Beaman says, "C'mon guys, I don't tie and tell."
"You tied her up?" Patch says, half delighted disbelief. When Beaman blushes, she quickly adds, "You did? Did you tie her down? You did! You totally did."
The other cadets start giving Beaming tips that sound increasingly, more and more alarming, until he tells them to stop because he knows "how to dom a submissive right, okay guys?"
Diego drops his beer.
He calls Allison the first time he gets twenty minutes to himself. "Did you know about the submissive and dominance stuff that keeps coming up?" He says quickly. It took him a while to get access to the land line without anyone around.
"Hi Diego," she huffs into the phone. "What ever happened to 'Hello, Allison, did you know about subs and doms.'"
"Hello Allison, did you know about it?" He snaps, and then looks down the hall to see if anyone in the dorms had noticed.
Her voice is bitter when she replies, "No. Mom and Dad didn't tell us shit. I found out about it by reading casting scripts. I feel like I need a therapist to figure out if all times Dad gagged me was incest."
"Gagging is a sex thing?" Diego jolts, "Wait - does that mean all times we were tied up when we were kidnapped was a dating thing?"
"I've been trying not to think about that. It explains why the Tectonic Twins were obsessed with kidnapping Ben and tying him up. Creeps," Allison groans. "I have an audition in the morning. I do not need to be doing this right now."
Diego scoffs, "What are you worried about? Aren't you just going to Rumor them into giving you the part?" A horrible clattering sound comes through the line before he hears the dial tone. She hung up.
He has no idea why she did that. Allison could be so weird.
Diego sighed. Back to recon.