Bonus Chapter

First Winter

from Rent Due, Daddy — by Jace Wilder

Set between Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen — the Friday before Christmas.

Eli

The first snow of the winter came on a Friday in the third week of December, and it came in the middle of the afternoon while I was down in the studio measuring for the counter, and I did not see it start.

I was on my hands and knees on the hardwood with a tape measure and a pencil, marking out where the front edge of the reception desk was going to sit, and Ronan was at the brick wall with a level and a cordless drill, installing the first of the brass picture hooks I had bought off Etsy in November for hanging the framed flash sheets, and neither of us had looked up in about forty minutes, because we had been doing the thing we had been doing since the end of October, which was working on the studio in companionable silence for two-hour blocks, and it was my favorite way to spend an afternoon.

Ronan saw it first.

“Eli.”

“Mm.”

“Look up, boy.”

I looked up.

Snow.

The plate-glass window I had stripped of butcher paper in November was showing me a slow white curtain of it, coming down in big lazy flakes, sticking to the sidewalk already in a thin even layer that hadn’t been there when I had gone down on my knees with the tape measure forty minutes ago. It was almost four. The light was low and gray and winter-gold all at once. The radiator on the back wall was ticking pleasantly. And outside on the sidewalk, Sal was already out with his rock salt, salting the stretch of concrete in front of our building and the stretch in front of his own place on the opposite side of the street, because Sal was Sal.

I sat back on my heels.

I said, “It’s coming down.”

Ronan set the drill on the little folding workbench. He walked over to where I was kneeling on the floor, and he put his hand — warm, warm even through the leather of his work glove — on the crown of my head.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s call it. Upstairs.”

“Ronan, I still have to mark the—”

“Counter can wait till Monday, kid.”

“I want to—”

“Eli. Snow.”

I looked up at him. He was smiling. Small. Real. He had snow in his hair already somehow. He was in the flannel. The gray one. The one I’d started calling, privately in my head and occasionally out loud to Tomás, the snow flannel, because it was the specific soft gray of a snow sky.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, Fox.”

“That’s my boy.”

We walked up to the apartment with snow on our shoulders. He let me go in first. He closed the door. He locked the deadbolt — that specific little click I had started, at some point in November, to physically react to, low in my stomach, for no reason I could articulate except Pavlov — and he walked past me to the kitchen and he put on the kettle.

I peeled off my boots in the foyer. I peeled off my coat.

I stood in the kitchen in my socks and my jeans and the cream cable-knit sweater that had long since stopped being his and long since started being ours, and I watched him measure out cocoa into a saucepan with the little red scoop, and he said, without looking at me:

“Boy.”

“Mm.”

“Come here for a second.”

I came there. He set the scoop down. He turned and he put his hands on my jaw — warm from the stove, smelling a little like the cocoa powder, his thumbs at the corners of my mouth — and he looked down at me, and he said, quietly:

“I’ve been thinking about something for a couple weeks.”

“Okay.”

“I want to ask you about it.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to say yes.”

“Okay.”

“Eli.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s — it’s a kink thing, boy. Fair warning. I’m bringing it up in my kitchen at four p.m. on a Friday because I don’t want to ambush you with it in bed. I want you to have a real second to think about it, and then I want to know, and then if it’s a yes, tonight is the night. And if it’s a no, I won’t mention it again, and we’re gonna drink this cocoa and put on a movie and I’m going to make you the worst grilled cheese of your life.”

I laughed against his hands.

“Ronan.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

He told me. He told me in his kitchen, at four p.m., in the middle of a snowstorm, with the kettle starting to whistle behind him — and he had to pause to turn the kettle off, which broke some of the tension in a way I was grateful for — and then he came back to me and he told me the rest, and I stood with my back against the butcher block and I listened to him explain it, and my face went hot about thirty seconds in, and by the end I had my hand on his wrist and I was nodding before he’d even finished asking.

“Eli.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not done asking.”

“I know you’re not but yes, Ronan, yes, I—”

“Eli.”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to think about it for fifteen minutes.”

“Why.”

“Because you say yes too fast, boy.”

“Ronan—”

“Because I know you. You say yes too fast and then you sit with it later and you decide you didn’t mean it and you don’t tell me. I’m not going to do that tonight. Not with this one. Not this. I want you to go sit in the leather chair for fifteen minutes and I want you to drink this cocoa I’m about to make you and I want you to think about it, and then at four-thirty I want you to come back in the kitchen and tell me what your answer is, and I want you to take that seriously. Okay?”

“Oh my God.”

“Eli.”

“Yes, Ronan. Okay. Fifteen minutes.”

“Good boy.”

He finished the cocoa. He poured it into the white diner mug. He handed it to me. He turned me by the shoulders and he walked me across the living room and he sat me down in the leather chair. He pulled the wool blanket off the back and he put it over my lap.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Fifteen minutes.”

“I’m going to fold the laundry in the bedroom. I’m not coming out here until four-thirty.”

“Okay.”

“Drink the cocoa.”

“Okay, Ronan.”

He went into the bedroom. He closed the door. I heard him not fold laundry. I heard him open a drawer I was pretty sure was the drawer where he had put the thing we were talking about, and I heard him stand there with it for a while, and I heard him shut the drawer.

I sat in the leather chair. I drank the cocoa. I thought about it for fifteen minutes.

At four-twenty-nine I got up and I walked across the living room in my socks and I knocked on the bedroom door — gently, twice — and he said, “Boy.”

“Yes.”

“Open the door.”

I opened the door. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands on his thighs and a small box beside him on the quilt, and he was looking at me, and he said:

“Tell me.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You sure.”

“Yes.”

“Eli.”

“Yes, Fox. I’ve been sitting with it for fifteen minutes. I want it. I — I want to try it. I want to see what it’s like. I want — I want you to put it on me.”

“Okay, boy.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight.”

“When.”

“After dinner.”

“After dinner?”

“Eli. I’m not rushing this, kid. I’m gonna feed you. I’m gonna let the snow get deep. I’m gonna build a fire. Then I’m gonna put it on you. You’re gonna wear it. We’re gonna take it slow.”

“Okay.”

“Come here.”

I came there. He pulled me down into his lap — he was strong, he had always been strong, he picked me up like it was nothing — and he kissed me, slow, on the mouth, with his hand at the back of my head, and he said, against my lips:

“Good boy.”

“Fox—”

“That’s mine to say tonight, too. That word. More than usual.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

He cooked dinner. Pork chops with apples, mashed potatoes, a little green salad with the vinegar dressing he made from memory. I sat at the butcher block on the stool I now considered my stool and I watched him cook with the snow coming down outside the kitchen window, and I had, in my chest, the specific slow fullness that I had been having more and more lately.

We ate at six-fifteen. He made me eat all of the pork chop. He said, “I want you well-fed for this, boy,” and I said, “Ronan,” and he said, “I mean it,” and I ate all of the pork chop.

At seven-oh-four Ronan dried his hands on the kitchen towel. He said, “Go get in the shower, boy. Long one. Hot. Use the cedar soap. Take your time. I’m gonna build the fire.”

“Okay.”

“Eli.”

“Yeah.”

“Safeword tonight.”

“Cocoa.”

“Yellow for slow.”

“Yellow for slow.”

“Good boy. Go.”

I went.

I showered for a long time. I used the cedar soap. I washed my hair with his shampoo. I stood under the hot water with my forehead against the tile and I breathed, and I let myself actually feel the nervousness — a low shaky flutter in my sternum, not a bad one, the specific kind of nervous that is half anticipation and half vulnerability.

I got out. I dried off. I toweled my hair. I did not put on clothes.

I walked out of the bathroom with the towel around my hips and my hair damp, and the living room was dark except for the fire. He had cranked it up and the blue-white flames were lapping behind the glass, and the rug in front of the fireplace had been pulled forward by about a foot and a half, and on the rug he had laid out a thick folded quilt — the blue one from the foot of the bed, the heaviest one — and the lamp by the leather chair was on, dim, and every other light was off, and the snow was still coming down past the windows and lighting the apartment in a soft reflected white, and Ronan was sitting on the couch in jeans and a Henley — the dark green one, the cocoa-night Henley — with his elbows on his knees and the little box next to him.

He looked up when I came in. He looked at me in the towel, in the firelight, with my hair wet, and his eyes went — hot, in the specific quiet way his eyes went hot, and he stood up.

“Come here, boy.”

I came there. I stood in front of him in the middle of the rug. He took the towel. He took the towel off me slowly, with one hand, and he tossed it over the arm of the leather chair, and he stood in front of me — clothed, me naked, which was its own thing, which was its own very specific little engine of want — and he put both his hands on my jaw, and he looked at me, and he said:

“Eli.”

“Yes.”

“Color.”

“Green.”

“Good boy. Down.”

He guided me down to my knees on the quilt. The quilt was soft. The firelight was warm on the left side of my face. He sat back down on the couch in front of me — he was maybe eighteen inches away, his knees on either side of mine, my face level with his sternum from down here — and he picked up the little box.

He opened it.

I had not gotten a good look at it earlier.

I looked now.

It was a collar. It was a real collar, but it was not — it was not a loud one. He had picked it out careful. It was soft black leather, about three-quarters of an inch wide, with a small simple silver buckle, and a little silver ring at the front where a leash could clip, and that was it. No studs. No padlock. No hardware I was going to bump into in a turtleneck. A thing that would look like a choker if anyone saw it, which nobody but us was going to.

It was supple. It had been oiled.

I saw him hold it in his hands and I realized — because I was Eli and I noticed things — that it was not new. I mean, it was new-new, it had never been worn, but it had been out of a wrapper for a while. He had had it for weeks. Maybe since October. Maybe longer. He had been oiling it. He had been preparing the leather to be soft on me before he had ever asked me about it.

My throat went.

“Ronan.”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you had this.”

“Six weeks.”

“You’ve been—”

“I’ve been softening the leather, kid.”

“Oh my God.”

“Don’t make it weird, boy.”

“Oh my God.”

“Eli.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about putting this on you for six weeks. Tonight’s the night. Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“Eyes on me.”

I put my eyes on him.

He leaned forward. He held the collar open in both his hands, and he put it around my throat, and he fitted the ends together at the back of my neck, and I could feel his thumbs against the nape of my neck, warm, and he buckled it — slow, one hole at a time, finding the right one — and he made sure it was not tight and not loose. He ran a finger between the leather and my skin to test the gap. He adjusted it one hole tighter. He tested again.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Color.”

“Green.”

“Good boy.”

He sat back. He looked at me. His eyes went — I do not have a word. His pupils went black. His mouth parted a little. He sat back on the couch with his hands on his own thighs and he looked at me kneeling on the quilt with the fire on my left and the leather at my throat and nothing on, and he said — low, rough, not a whisper — “Jesus, Eli.”

“Ronan.”

“Mine.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“Yours, Fox.”

“Good boy.”

I made a small sound.

He heard it. He smiled — tight, at the corner of his mouth — and he said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s gonna be the word tonight, boy. A lot of it. You okay with that.”

“Yes.”

“Touch the collar.”

I touched the collar. I brought my hand up — my left, the one with the wave, the one with the Milky Way under it — and I touched the soft leather at the front of my throat. I pressed my fingertip into it, against my own pulse, and I felt my own heart under my finger through the leather, and I took a breath.

Ronan watched me do it. He watched my own finger on the collar with his eyes hooded and his mouth open slightly, and after a second he said, “Hands at your sides, boy.”

I put my hands at my sides.

“Good.”

“Ronan.”

“Mm.”

“What — what are we doing.”

He smiled. “We’re not doing much, Eli. Tonight is about the wearing. Not about — not about me doing things to you. It’s about you kneeling. It’s about you wearing the collar. It’s about you getting used to how it feels on you. And then, maybe, in a little while, I’m going to — I’m going to use my mouth on you, and you’re going to come with it on, and then we’re going to sit on the couch and watch the snow, and you’re going to wear it until bed. Okay?”

“Oh.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Edge first.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

He spread his knees. I shuffled forward on the quilt until I was between them, my face close to his lap, and he put his hand in my hair — not tight, just resting — and he looked down at me, and he said:

“I’m gonna edge you. With my mouth, with my hand, a little of both. For a while. You’re gonna be good and you’re gonna stay on your knees and you’re not gonna come until I tell you. Sometime later. Maybe a lot later. And then you’re gonna come, and we’re gonna stop, and we’re gonna sit on the couch. Clear?”

“How long is a while.”

“As long as I decide.”

“Oh.”

“Color.”

“Green.”

“Good boy.”

He started with his hand.

He did not rush. He did not do anything I was not ready for. He leaned forward on the couch with his elbows on his thighs and he reached between us and he wrapped his hand, warm and dry, around me, and I was already hard — I had been half-hard since he’d buckled the collar — and he stroked me slow, just once, base to tip, watching my face.

I made a sound. He watched the sound. He did it again.

The third time I made a sound he said, “Good, Eli,” and the collar around my throat pulsed with my own heartbeat and something in my chest went soft at the edges, and I shifted on my knees, and he said, “Easy.”

“Easy,” I repeated.

“Stay put.”

“Okay.”

He worked me like that for a while. Not fast. Not trying to get me there. Just — his hand, and his voice, and his knee at my hip, and the fire on one side of my face, and the collar, and every time my hips started to move he pressed his other hand flat against my stomach and held me still, and every time my breath caught he slowed down, and every time I tried to rock into his hand he said, “No, boy,” and I stopped.

At about the ten-minute mark I had tears on my face.

Not from anything hurting. Just — the accumulated being-held of it. The slow unhurried deliberate focus of it, a forty-eight-year-old man on his couch giving me his full attention and nothing else, no rush, no agenda except me, and the collar on my throat reminding me with every breath that I was his, and I breathed through it, and he said — quiet, thumb brushing under my eye — “I know, baby. I know. Stay with me.”

“Yes.”

“Color.”

“Green.”

“Good boy.”

He put his mouth on me at about the twenty-minute mark.

He slid off the couch and he was in front of me on his knees on the rug beside the quilt, and he kissed me first, on the mouth, for a while, and then he bent down, and he put his mouth on me, and I made a sound that was just air, and he said, low, without lifting off, a vibration — “Good boy, Eli.”

I don’t know how long he did it.

I lost the time. I lost the time because it was slow, and it was slow on purpose, and he was using me — using me to test what I could take, what I could hold, what I could be denied — and every time I was about to come he would stop, and he would pull off slow, and he would lean his forehead against my hip, and he would stroke his hand up and down the outside of my thigh, and he would say, quietly, “Not yet, baby. Breathe. Breathe. Not yet,” and I would breathe, and he would start again.

Four times.

I think. Four times he brought me to the edge and he pulled back. By the fourth time I was — I was crying, a little, quietly, and the collar was warm on my throat, and my hands were fisted at my sides on the quilt like he had told me to keep them, and every muscle in my body was shaking, and when he pulled off for the fourth time I made a sound that was not a word and he leaned his forehead against my hip and he said, “Good boy. God, Eli. Good boy.”

“Ronan—”

“I know.”

“Ronan, please—”

“Color.”

“Green.”

“You sure.”

“Green. Green, Fox.”

“One more.”

“What?”

“One more, Eli. One more edge and then I’ll let you.”

“Ronan.”

“One more and then you can have it.”

“Please.”

“Hold on for me, baby.”

I held on. I held on for one more — his mouth, his hand, the flat of his tongue, the specific drag of it he knew worked on me — and I was right there, I was sobbing in small quiet gasps, and he pulled off.

He sat back on his heels on the rug. He looked up at me. His mouth was wet. His pupils were black. His hair was falling forward. He was forty-eight years old and on his knees in his Henley and he had edged me for what I later learned was thirty-seven minutes, and he said — low, steady, undone — “Look at you, boy.”

I looked at him. I could not speak.

He reached up. He touched the collar. He hooked one finger into the little silver ring at the front of it and he gave it one small tug — not pulling me, just — reminding me, a weight there, a reminder of what I was wearing — and he said:

“Come on, baby.”

“Ronan—”

“Now.”

He bent his head again. I made one high thin sound and I came.

I came with his mouth on me and his finger in the ring of the collar and my hands fisted in the quilt, and I came — I came hard, harder than I had come in weeks, a release so pulled-out and held-back that it came in stripes and not in one wave, and I cried through it in small hiccuping sounds, and I said his name, and the collar around my throat moved with my pulse and my breath, and he took all of it.

He took all of it with his mouth and he did not come up until I was shaking and pushing his head away, and then he came up and he caught my hand — the one that was pushing at him — and he pressed it against his cheek, and he sat back and he looked at me.

I fell forward. I fell forward onto him. I fell forward off my knees onto his chest and he caught me, wrapped me up, and I curled against his Henley and he sat on the rug with me in his arms, and he rocked me a little — the slow unconscious sway he did — and he said against the top of my head, “Good boy. Good boy, baby. So good. You did so good.”

I was crying, quiet. Not sobbing. Just water.

He did not shush me. He let me cry.

He ran his hand up and down my back, and the collar on my throat was warm from my own skin now, and the fire popped once behind the glass, and I made a small sound against his chest that was half a laugh and half something else, and I said, “Fox.”

“Right here.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know, boy.”

“Is this — is it always — is it gonna—”

“Not always this hard. But yeah, Eli. Yeah. When we do it like this. Yeah.”

“Oh my God.”

“Sit up when you can. I’m gonna clean you up.”

“Okay.”

“Take your time.”

I took my time.

He cleaned me up with a warm washcloth. He did not take the collar off.

He carried me to the couch — he carried me, I did not object, my legs were not going to work for a few minutes and we both knew it — and he laid me down on the couch and he pulled the wool blanket off the back and he covered me up to my chin with it, and he sat down on the couch beside me with my head in his lap, and he put his hand on the side of my neck — his thumb on the leather, his palm on my skin — and he watched the fire for a long time, and he did not say anything, because I was doing the after-thing where I didn’t speak for a while.

After about twenty minutes I opened my eyes.

“Fox.”

“Mm.”

“I’m wearing it.”

“You are, boy.”

“I’m still wearing it.”

“You are.”

“I don’t want to take it off.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Not tonight.”

“Not tonight, baby.”

“Okay.”

A long silence. Then, very small, against his thigh: “Fox.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I wear it tomorrow too.”

I looked down at him. His face was tucked into the blanket. His cheek was red from crying. His hair was a disaster. He was in — he was in that specific post-scene softness, the thing I had been learning about him, the thing where his face went a little younger and his voice went a little smaller and all the armor he had built as a foster kid just — wasn’t there.

“You want to wear it tomorrow too,” I said, quietly.

“Mm-hm.”

“Like — like under your sweater?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Out to Mrs. Adler’s for Christmas lunch on Sunday?”

“Mrs. Adler’s is Sunday?”

“Mrs. Adler’s is Sunday, boy.”

“Oh. Yes.”

I pressed my mouth into his hair. “Yes, boy,” I said. “You can wear it to Mrs. Adler’s on Sunday. It’s — it’s subtle, nobody’s gonna see it under the collar of that turtleneck you bought. If anybody sees it they’re gonna think it’s a choker. Wear it as long as you want.”

“Okay.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You want to wear it to Christmas morning next week.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Fox.”

“Mm.”

“I want to wear it every day.”

“Eli.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Is that — is that okay.”

“Yes, boy.”

“Like — like not always always, but — I want it to be a thing.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to know it’s on me when I’m in the studio.”

“Christ.”

“I want to — I want to work on somebody’s arm, tomorrow, and I want it to be under my collar, and I want nobody in the world to know it’s there except us.”

“Eli, baby, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Is that okay.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes, boy. Whatever you want.”

“Okay.”

He pressed his mouth against my thigh through the jeans. Not sexual. Just — a small kiss, an acknowledgment, a thank you for this. He closed his eyes again.

I kept my hand at his throat, my thumb on the leather, and I watched the fire.

I slept in the collar that night.

He had asked me, before bed, very carefully, if I wanted him to take it off for sleeping. I had said no. He had said — okay, boy, but if it bothers you at two in the morning I’m taking it off, and I am not asking your permission, and I had said, okay, Fox.

It did not bother me at two in the morning. I slept straight through, against his chest, for nine and a half hours, and when I woke up on Saturday morning with the snow drifting past the bedroom window in big fat flakes and Ronan’s arm heavy around my waist, the leather was warm from me, and I pressed my fingers against it under my jaw, and I smiled up at the ceiling.

I wore it all day Saturday.

I wore it to Mrs. Adler’s Sunday Christmas lunch — in a turtleneck, like he had said, nobody could tell — and I wore it to Jayden’s piano recital at Keisha’s on Tuesday evening, and I wore it to the studio every afternoon all week when we were finishing the back-room setup, and on Christmas morning, when Ronan came into the bedroom with a mug of cocoa at nine-fifteen and sat on the edge of the bed and handed it to me, he leaned down and he kissed my throat above the collar, and he said:

“Merry Christmas, boy.”

“Merry Christmas, Fox.”

“You still wearing it.”

“I’m still wearing it.”

“Good.”

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