Disclaimer: I own nothing and profit none.
A/N: Rated M - Please read all the warnings in the first chapter! I've even added another one as I forgot a few things the first time around.
Thank you so very, very much you lovely reviewers - not a one of you called me crazy. Let's see if that keeps up after this chapter...
Will's first thought, once he was in the room and had a chance to look around, was that he had finally found the dungeon that came with the castle. The stone walls were unrelieved by any of the landscapes that Magnus liked to hang on the walls and – were those shackles? He turned to twit Magnus about the décor at the same time as she breezed past him into the room. Frowning, he studied what was behind him and, slightly panicked, moved to check the door. Locked. Where was the key?
He whirled around again and watched with trepidation as Magnus pulled a straight-backed chair into the center of the room before seating herself on it. Finally, she looked over at him and beckoned with one hand.
"Come here."
Will shook his head and turned to examine the lock once more. Maybe he could learn to pick locks in five seconds? He heard a sigh echo behind him and registered that it was sympathetic – but tinged with exasperation, which did not bode well for him at all.
"We both know you need this and, for whatever reason, you haven't sought it out for yourself. That's your prerogative," Magnus conceded and he let out a breath of his own, maybe he had misread the situation, "up until it begins to harm you and potentially others." Maybe not. "Then it becomes my responsibility. Now, come here."
This time, Will didn't even turn around. She had to have placed the key somewhere nearby. He began to scrutinize the stonework and shelves close at hand.
"If I have to come and get you, William, you will not like the consequences," he believed that dark tone, but he couldn't just walk to her like this was right. Why couldn't Abby have left well enough alone? He was sliding his hand over the nearest shelf, feeling for any abnormalities in the wood when he heard her rise behind him. His stomach sank and his throat went dry.
As he heard her footsteps near Will turned to place his back firmly against the wall. She stopped in front of him, but made no further moves. After a moment, he looked up at her.
"Will," Magnus said softly, reaching for him, "It's alright."
Confused at the sudden shift, he let her tug him away from the wall, uncertain if he should let his guard down. She embraced him closely and began running her hands over his back. Slowly relaxing, despite his still pounding headache and the old stories that were leaping at him from the stones, Will leaned into her and brought his arms up to loosely catch around her waist.
The lilac scent Magnus gave off brought to mind a million other thoughts and connections, almost distracting him from her first words when she began to speak. "It's too much right now, isn't it? Your senses are bringing you too much information and you can't begin to process it all. You're on edge and in pain and trying to work through it, right?"
All Will could do was nod against her shoulder. One day he would figure out how she always knew these things.
"I know you usually seek out help in the city, but you haven't," he tensed at that, before she softly shushed him and continued, "and you don't have to tell me why. But we both know that you need this," she brought one hand up from his back to run through his hair. Done, her hand settled firmly around the base of his neck. "Do you trust me to do this for you?"
Will didn't say anything for a moment. Magnus was too many other things to him, how could he give her yet another piece of himself? Yet he knew that he had been tempted since her first order in the office, when his body blindly obeyed against his will. As well as he could from beneath the seething data streaming across his brain, he tried to pick out how he felt about this. Scared, obviously. If this went wrong, it could damage everything they had, everything he needed. Fearful that her regard would change, that she would lose all respect for him. Beyond his surface concerns, however, he mainly felt – relief. Safety. If Magnus took charge in this, took charge of him, he didn't have a moment's doubt that she would not let him fall into the nightmare that his mind had become, nor would she seriously hurt him. He balanced those out for a moment in his head.
Ultimately, safety and his desperation to feel like himself again won out against the fear.
"Yes," he whispered into her shoulder, knowing that she would need to hear this answer, not just assume it from a nod.
"Okay," she stated softly. Will tensed, expecting something to change, but she continued to simply hold him. His tension eased after a long moment, which let his senses take over again and he began to fidget in her embrace against the knowledge of when the shackles were added to the walls and the obvious lines of pacing worn into the stones near the window. At his first twitches, Magnus pulled back and led him with a firm hand towards the chair. She let go of him when she moved to sit down.
"Knees," she snapped out and he carefully sank down, but shied away from her hands that reached out to him once more.
"Stay still," she ordered in her I-mean-it voice and Will froze. He belatedly tried to move away again when her hands descended to undo his jeans and shove them and his boxers to his knees, but by then Magnus had a hold on his ear and a hand under his chest. In a move that he couldn't follow, particularly given the pain in his ear that she was using to direct him forwards, she swiftly had him over her lap.
"Hands on the floor," came the next order and he blindly reached out to take some of the pressure off of his chest. He took a few deeper breaths, only to realize that his pants were now at his ankles and his shirts were being pushed upwards even as he wriggled slightly to adjust to being suddenly upended. Only the mounting pain in his head kept him from being completely mortified. What had he been thinking? This was his boss, he couldn't just let her strip him and… stuff like he was a child. This was a mistake.
Will tried to shift backwards off of her lap, but Magnus now had one of those stronger-than-expected arms over his back and wasn't inclined to let him go anywhere. Further wiggling was halted abruptly by a firm smack to his backside and clearly his jeans had been shielding him better than he knew, because that really hurt.
"I might have left the boxers, had you come when I first called," she informed him airily, before continuing. "Now this, I'll admit, isn't strictly decompressing. This is a bit of punishment, first," Magnus stated, sounding implausibly calm. Didn't she see that he was mostly naked here?
"Punishment?" he voice sounded annoyingly breathy from his awkward position, "For what?"
A sharp blow fell and he wheezed out harshly. When had she gotten a paddle?
"Why don't you tell me that, William?"
William. Yeah, that was definitely a sign that this was not boss-Magnus anymore. This was clearly her evil twin who really, really knew how to use that damn paddle, he concluded as she delivered another precisely placed spank. He should probably answer the question if he wanted to sit down in the near future.
"For Kate? And the argument? In your office?" he breathed out through gritted teeth. He was not going to cry out.
"That's a good place to start." Will almost whimpered at that. Start?
Then, the paddle began to fall methodically in time with a lecture he only caught the highlights of, mainly about appropriate behavior. His resolve about crying out gave out near the end. There was just something about yelling that just made it easier to bear.
"Do you understand?" At that particular moment, all he understood was that his posterior was quite possibly on fire and that the paddle had stopped for a moment. After he breathed for a minute, the paddle gave a soft warning tap, "William?"
"Yes, yes I understand," he blurted out swiftly, "I'll behave appropriately in the future. And apologize to Kate," he added in a burst of genius. Maybe that would help him.
"Good. Now, what else?"
Will combed his mind and could only come up with this horrible condition of his, "These past few weeks? I've been… mean," he admitted, ashamed of himself, "and not really very helpful."
He expected the smack that came next, but couldn't control his yell. Okay, he just wouldn't cry. That was a better goal. Unexpectedly, another blow didn't come.
"Yes, that's true, but I think that might fall under the category of appropriate behavior. Which I believe you just promised to amend?"
"Yes, Yes, I did," he practically stumbled over his tongue to get out. Could that possibly be all?
"Now, what else?"
"Uh," Will stuttered. What else had he done? Everything over the past few weeks had been included in his last statement. Did she want confessions from a year ago or something?
The paddle tapped him lightly. "If I have to say it, this will be twice as bad, William."
His mind abandoned his sensory intake for a moment to frantically comb through his memories. Did she consider his actions towards anyone in particular separate from the general behavior clause? Everything these past few weeks could be tied back to that: his nasty comments, his lax behavior, even missing the staff… uh-oh.
Magnus knew about the Great Infirmary Raid.
He squirmed on her lap before he asked, in a very small voice, "The drugs?"
The smack he received in response told him two things: one, Magnus indeed knew about his self-medication and two, somehow she had actually been holding back until now. This time the lecture was delivered with only the occasional spank. He was pretty sure that couldn't be a good sign.
"After over a week of erratic behavior, you fail to appear at the staff meeting, contact no one about it, and cannot be found. I, foolishly, assume that you were delayed in the city taking care of this."
Smack!
"What do I find instead upon coming here to lock this room down again, but signs that someone had been occupying the room next door and a stash of highly dangerous, mind-altering drugs shoved in a cupboard?"
Smack!
"Do you have any idea how it felt to realize that, given the levels of the bottles, you had taken enough alone of several different drugs to render you severely impaired if not catatonic and that you had the sheer idiocy to mix them? How terrifying it was to know that I might only find your body?"
Smack! If he hadn't been regretting his actions after the comedown from the drugs, he was certainly regretting them now.
"And then to comb the building only to find you in your room, unconscious, without having taken the slightest precaution against drug reaction?"
Smack! Will renewed his efforts to move away at the new edge to the biting stings. Definitely holding back before.
"Do you know what might have happened had I not found you? Not stabilized and monitored you?"
She punctuated each possibility with a spank.
"A coma. Drowning in your own vomit. Asphyxiation from an allergic reaction. A vegetative state."
Smack!
"You could have died, William."
"I just wanted it t-to stop," he gasped out, choking on his tears. Clearly his resolution not to cry hadn't fared well.
"You almost got your wish," Magnus stated flatly before proceeding to lay on with the paddle, uninterrupted.
By the time she stopped, Will was promising almost incoherently through his sobs that he would never take any drugs ever again. She let him stammer on until his sobs lessened before responding.
"If you ever take anything not prescribed by a doctor again, William, I will make this seem like nothing. Consider this," she smacked him lightly with her hand, which was enough pressure on the field of pain that his backside had become to force another sob out of him, "should the thought ever even cross your mind."
"It won't, I promise, I promise," he forced out, chest heaving with the effort.
"It better not." He braced himself for another round with the paddle, but the next blow didn't descend. Instead, her hand began to run over his back lightly as he tried to catch his breath and stop crying. As his breathing began to slow, Magnus stopped rubbing to reach down and remove his shoes, pants, socks, and boxers. Will tensed and his breathing took on a ragged edge once more, but she simply returned to stroking his back again. After a time, he thought to try and push his chest further off of her legs to take a deep breath. At the movement, Magnus pulled him upwards and slipped him off her lap to settle between her knees. Will carefully knelt to avoid putting pressure on anything sensitive and avoided looking at her face. His own must certainly be a mess.
Despite his efforts, Magnus took hold of his chin and pulled him to look up at her, "Better?"
He mutely nodded, taking a deep breath and trying not to sniff too loudly.
"Should we work on decompressing you, then?"
Will rejected the idea violently, shaking his head and wishing that he was brave enough now to move away from her.
"William," he stilled and looked up at her again, trying not to appear scared. He could see the hundreds of small signals that indicated her softening at his expression and decided that he had probably failed in his endeavor. "No more spanking, I promise. But you do need to be distracted and set whatever is trapped in that bright mind of yours free, you know that."
She was right, Will knew, but needing something was not the same as wanting it. Magnus was already better at this than anyone he had previously gone to, partly he suspected because she knew him so very well. He wouldn't be able to pull the same tricks to minimize what he said and what happened to him. He shifted closer to her, trying to recapture the certainty he'd had in the brief moments when he'd agreed to trust her with this… mess. With him.
