Erotic short. Julius Penllwynog earns a punishment.
2.8k, rated E, M/M. Julius Penllwynog, who’s trying to figure himself out as a fighter, falls afoul of his commander and earns a punishment. Mildly dubious consent, age difference, spanking, humiliation, workplace dynamic, and D/s power exchange work!
He knew he was in trouble as soon as the door shut with a hard click. The captain never ordinarily closed the door — it was a habit of his, to leave it slightly ajar or even to leave it fully open with a stopper in the door. Captain Frost was obsessed with draughts and good clean air, having it circulate through his office and through the barracks and through anywhere he happened to be working — it didn’t half take the excitement out of eavesdropping, the way that he made it so easy.
Every single one of them went into his office knowing that Frost would be talking to them in a normal speaking voice, that he wouldn’t raise it for the most part, but that regardless, everyone would be able to hear it, if they tried to listen.
Frost was of a surprisingly even keel, for being a unit captain — he was thirty-nine and he had a sort of steel in his body and in his eyes, and a little steel colour cutting through his dark hair, too. He didn’t typically raise his voice. He had a way of making it go crisp and clear so that it carried further, but he could usually manage that without rising his voice.
Thus far, as part of the mercenary forces, Julius had served alongside a great many different men, under a fair few commanders — battle mages were typically shuffled around and used as flexible adjoining parts or stabilisers or catalysts within existing crews, and he didn’t mind. If he were in the lluoedd arfog, it wouldn’t be like that, there’d be more stability and a clearer chain of command and career path, but —
Well.
There was a reason he was in someone else’s company instead of working under Penllwynog holdings, and there was a reason he was working with a private company at all instead of the army.
He’d been stretching his legs a little bit, spreading his wings, playing with the boundaries.
Played a bit too far today, merely.
Captain Frost was pouring himself a glass of water, and Julius listened to it trickling into the glass, listened to the water splash and bubble, listened to the clink of the ice inside. He was straight-backed, and between his shoulders Julius didn’t see the lines of rage he’d grown up seeing in his mother or father — albeit always aimed at Cicero or Lucretia or Rhea, never at him — or in any teacher or coach he’d been taught by at school, nor any other commander.
“What the fuck,” said Frost, in his reasonable, even voice, no shouting and no crack in it, “is wrong with you, Penllwynog?”
Julius had never heard him curse before. It’s not as though he wasn’t used to cursing — all his family swore like the soldiers they were, and he’d been sworn at, too, by commanders in the field or off of it.
Never like this.
Never alone in a room like this, just him and his commanding officer who was turning to look at him with his eyes full of far more steel than usual, his jaw set, his expression strangely cold.
“I was only taking the piss, sir,” said Julius. “I really had no intention to — ”
“Shut up.”
Cool, cold, like a snap of frost — fitting, he supposed.
“I was just — ”
“Shut,” said Frost bitingly, “the fuck up.”
He’d been playing about today. He’d not been in the mood — all the unit men, who were a company of nine who didn’t want to have a teenage battle mage coordinating alongside them, being the difference between them living and dying when they went through fae lands and couldn’t navigate portals and dimensional rifts without getting themselves vivisected, had been hostile since he’d come along.
And he wasn’t good at handling them.
Most companies were hostile to battle mages, in one way or another — they knew that battle mages thought that they were rockstars, that they were above criticism, above anything and everything. They knew that when it came to an actual battle, battle mages were the most difficult to take down, that even if a unit was wiped out, their mage supports frequently survived.
Battle mages were there to protect the company while they were moving, while they were in formation, but no one took on a battle mage because they wanted their soldiers to be packed in wool — battle mages were there because of the amount of firepower they commanded, the devastation they could reckon.
Friendly fire was likely., no matter how hard they tried to avoid it. Distraction was inevitable.
Battle mages were the most obvious targets to aim for, and the most impossible to hit — and glancing blows would naturally glance in the direction of their closest comrades.
Julius knew all this, coming from a family of battle mages, had had it drilled into him almost since he was born, that the rank and file would naturally despise him, and that this was part of why he had to be the best on a field — the better you were, the more commanding officers would care enough to keep you, to protect you, to ensure you could wreak the devastation they needed.
Tacitus was good at it. Tacitus was cool and serious and haughty — everyone admired him as soon as they looked at him, because he was tall and handsome and more than slightly frightening. Soldiers called him sir as soon as they laid eyes on him — everyone would call him sir. Julius had seen lieutenants forget themselves and call him sir, and other ranking officers. Even when they hated him, once they were in a room with him, they forgot they hated him, because they were too intimidated.
Lucretia was good at it too — Lucretia laughed and was easy and impossibly, perfectly smooth. If soldiers insulted her, if they were cruel to her, she laughed and she was cruel back, but somehow she was cruel in a way that made them laugh too, so that they forgot they hated her, because they were too busy being charmed by her.
Vesta was cool and unaffected by it. She didn’t even reply, most of the time, but was sort of quiet and superior in a way that made them rethink what they thought of her and back down out of what they said — like Tacitus, she was almost statuesque, and no one felt quite right trying to hate a statue, because it felt pointless, and Rhea, Rhea fielded very insult laid at her like it was actually a compliment, and she did it so well that sometimes people seemed to think afterwards that they had been trying to compliment her, no matter what it was they were saying, and they forgot they hated her too.
And Cicero —
Well.
No, no one ever forgot that they hated Cicero.
But he was just so fucking good he made it so it didn’t matter — Cicero could blow someone’s army to smithereens and still maintain shielding over everyone on his side of the field, was frighteningly fast, had eyes in the back of his head, and he used magic with a snap of his fingers that most people couldn’t even wrap their brains around.
Julius didn’t know how exactly that worked with companies. Cicero was rarely a part of them yet, like the rest of them were, wasn’t a member of any mercenary force or the army or anything else, not while he was at university.
That was why he was a mercenary at the moment, and not within the family. This wasn’t even a proving ground — it was just more of a training ground, because he wasn’t even ready for the proving ground.
He wasn’t good at being cold and commanding and statuesque like Vesta and Tacitus were. He didn’t have the face for it, didn’t have their marble-stone features or their cold eyes or their even voices, didn’t have their perfect grace or their deliberate moments. No one admired him or was intimidated by him when they looked at him, because his eyes were too big and his face too babyish, his cheeks too plump, his hair too curly. He wasn’t good at what Rhea did either, because he wasn’t as good with words, couldn’t twist them like they did.
And what Cicero and Lucretia did was a combination of looks and presence and changing words around.
Part of why any of his siblings could do what they did was because they were beautiful, because they had sex appeal, and frankly, because they were very intelligent and smart and good at everything.
Julius was increasingly worried he wasn’t any of that.
In the first company he’d been a part of, he’d tried being immovable and unaffected, but he’d only come across as shy and everyone kept calling him pathetic and cowardly; in the second, he’d tried joking a bit while staying distant, but hadn’t been good at that, had joked too close or poked at sensitive spots; he’d tried being nasty and trading insults for insults, but he always got stumped when people called him ugly or young (it was true, and not easy to argue with), and he never knew how to reply when they insulted his family (he felt bad insulting them himself, but defending them just made him seem more like a child), and then when they insulted other things, that was hard.
He’d been trying flirtation, recently — it worked very well for Cicero, and Rhea and Lucretia were good at it too — but flirtation wasn’t something he was naturally good at, because people didn’t much wanted to be flirted with by someone who looked like him, and anyway, he had to try to balance it with the insults, and jokes, and…
Frost had already snapped at him twice this week, telling him to shut his mouth when he was playing with the lads, because he was distracting them, because he wasn’t paying attention and nor were they, because he was being obnoxious.
He’d been between three of them, trying to dance with Nutt and also to keep Chatterley and Went, and he’d known that Frost was giving orders and instructions, had been trying to listen, but they hadn’t stopped provoking him or playing back.
Went and Chatterley were plain as he was, but Nutt was handsome — he was twenty-five and muscular and he had dark eyes that shimmered in the light, and when he smiled his face dimpled, and when he called Julius “Julie”, it was embarrassing but it also made his skin burn warm, and he didn’t dislike it as much as he should have.
“This is the third time I’ve brought you into my office,” said Frost. “The seventh time I’ve had to have a word. What do I do with you, Penllwynog? Should I shout at you? Scream at you? I make you run laps, you fucking run them, and you come right back and keep talking. I tell you to shut the fuck up, you keep talking. You want to fuck every mercenary in this unit, lad, I don’t give a shit — but you interrupt a training drill one more time and I will…”
He’d never seen him so angry. Frost’s eyes were grey as a fucking storm, his lips curled back in a snarl, and although his voice was slightly louder than usual, he still wasn’t shouting.
“Put your hands on my desk,” said Frost.
“What?”
“Did I fucking tell you to say what, soldier?”
Julius swallowed, staring him in the eyes — he’d heard Cicero get told soldier like this before, when he’d been insolent or talked back to someone, and Cicero would always say in his silken way that he was under the impression that they were mercenaries.
Julius felt the weight of the stolen comeback on his tongue, tingling there, but Frost was staring at him so coldly that he didn’t dare, and instead, he walked forward, leaned, put his hands flat on Frost’s desk. His palms pressed to the wood, he immediately realised what the position connoted, what was about to happen — he hadn’t been beaten since he was fucking nine, still at school, and that was never across the arse, only a few swats across his palms.
“Is this what you need to be pulled in line?” asked Frost, and he grabbed the skirt of Julius’ robes and threw them over his back and hauled down his leggings. “Is this why you get bounced from crew to crew?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to breathe in, keep himself even, trying to explain it, “It’s not you, I’m just trying to — ”
The palm of his hand slapped down hard against his arse. It was a sharp, sudden slap of Frost’s big, muscled palm against Julius’ buttock, the sound of it cracking the air, snapping it in two, and Julius gasped in a hard breath. For a second, all he felt was the impact, and then the pain, sudden and striking and red-hot, and he didn’t have time to collect himself before the slap came down again on the other side.
Frost was a good man, he thought — he was good, was strong, knew his work inside-out, and he’d been in battle before, was a scarred and long-tested veteran. He had strong arms and he’d done this before — he hit Julius’ arse so hard he could feel his buttocks wobble with it, feel the whip-crack of the pain run up his spine, and he hated the way that the blood flushed downward, tension coiling below his cut, and blood —
His cock was half-hard by the time the eighth blow landed, and his cheeks were burning agonisingly hot, his eyes burning: Julius gasped and let out breathless, sharp noises as Frost kept bringing his hand down again and again.
“Are you fucking hard?” asked Frost quietly, and Julius heaved in a gasp, shaking his head. “Don’t fucking lie to me — are you fucking hard?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry — ”
Frost’s hand came down with a resounding smack, and Julius yelped at the way it landed, the way it made his cock and balls bob underneath him, aware that he was painfully hard and growing wet at the head of his prick. He was breathing heavily, sweat soaking his skin, his robes heavy on his lower back.
“You’re sorry,” Frost repeated. “All this bullshit, you realise you’re gonna get one of those lads fucking killed. You realise that? You realise what happens if we aren’t able to work as a group, to be cohesive, to know the fucking drills once we’re in the field?”
Julius choked out a noise, and Frost nudged his legs apart, began to slap the top of his thighs, just under his arse so that all the flesh moved with each blow, burning heat running up through his skin, and his cock was hot, hard, fucking —
It hurt. Yes, it hurt.
But it felt good.
The shame was so thick in his veins he couldn’t stand it, and he wanted to look back to see Frost’s face but he didn’t dare as Frost’s hand came down some more, again and again, and there were bruises on his arse, he knew it, on his thighs, his cock aching with how hard it was and how tight and heavy his balls felt.
There were tears burning in his eyes when Frost reached between his legs and grabbed hold of him, and Julius howled out a sharp, desperate noise that he unsuccessfully muffled into his shoulder: he came before he could even think about it, gasping and choking on the intake of breath, feeling himself break. He sobbed out a noise as Frost pulled him off through it, cock sputtering onto the ground, and when he pulled back, he tried not to cry as he stood up straight and looked to the captain.
“Fuck,” said Frost.
Julius took in a breath, every inch of his skin hot and tight, and he took a step forward, reaching for Frost’s belt — Frost grabbed him by the jaw and squeezed, making him yelp.
“No,” said Frost, staring at him. “You haven’t fucking earned that — you want to earn it, you do it in the field and in those goddamn drills, not by getting off when I’m trying to bring you in fucking line.”
“I don’t know how to get them to respect me,” said Julius, trying his best not to sniffle.
“Have you tried being good at your fucking job?” asked Frost.
Julius pressed his lips together, staring down at the floor.
“Clean that up,” said Frost, “and get the fuck out. You’ll be in here nine hundred Friday morning, and we’ll see if you’ve improved.”
“Yes, sir,” said Julius. “I — Thank… Thank you.”
Frost stared at him, then slowly nodded his head.
Julius all but ran out, and that evening, lying in his cot, he didn’t think about Nutt at all any longer — he thought about Frost, and muffled his grunts into the pillow as he touched himself.
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