Chapter 6 - Cool
anxiously looked back and forth between Peter and Elizabeth. I don't like ultimatums. No, that's not nearly emphatic enough. I hate ultimatums. In a perfect world, there would be no final decisions, no choices I absolutely had to make. There would be multitudes of choices, and I could choose at random and consequences would never affect my decisions. A perfect world would have no consequences.
All my philosophic thought didn't change the fact that Peter was standing in front of me, with that horrid paddle in his hand and a knowing gleam in his eye. I was backed into a corner, and he knew it. I'm not sure when Peter became so deviously clever (and evil), but I did not like it.
I tried to give them my signature charming smile. Elizabeth looked away. She had obviously sided with the enemy. Peter was unmoved, his mouth doing that line thing that I especially did not like because it promised nothing good.
I dropped the smile and moved onto my next attempt: the sad puppy look. I confess that I've practiced this in the mirror quite a bit: make my lips tremble a little, swallow hard, and look very worried and unhappy. I can even make myself cry on cue, getting the tears to well up and slide down my cheeks. People are so easily moved by emotions; this sad look was how I got protected in prison. Even the guards felt bad for me.
"Hurry up, Neal," Peter told me. "I don't have all day. Lean over the table."
"But it's not right," I objected, pushing my bottom lip out a little as I worked the distressed look to its extreme. "I said I was sorry."
"Do you want things to get back to the way they were before you went rogue? If so, get on with it."
"That's emotional blackmail."
"Then you should feel right at home."
"I've never blackmailed anyone."
"Good, then I don't have to worry about adding that to your rap sheet. Come on, you and I and El all know this will put the whole matter behind us. I'll smack you a few times, you'll be sorry, and then it's over and we can watch a movie."
Elizabeth suddenly smiled and I glared at her.
"Something funny?"
"Yes," she nodded, "that's how Peter and I always end our fights – with a movie. In fact, I remember movies by the fights we were having before we saw them. Braveheart – what color to paint the living room. Die Hard 4 – the fact he forgot my birthday for the second year in a row. Charlie's Angels – whether or not to get a maid."
"Really?" I glanced at Peter. "Movies?"
"It's a good way to end a fight," he insisted.
"And the rule is, whoever apologizes first gets to pick the movie," Elizabeth said. A shadow of understanding passed over her face. "Which, I guess, explains why we've seen so many action movies in the last ten years."
The smallest smirk crossed Peter's face, but it vanished quickly.
Elizabeth pursed her lips. "Is that why you're always so quick to apologize? You want to see your movies?"
"Maybe," Peter admitted. "But it ends the fight. Neal, hurry up."
"Oh, wonderful," I scowled. "You two apologize and watch movies together, and I get turned over the table and paddled like a child."
"Nonsense," Peter objected. "I would never use this on a child."
The man's logic is insufferable.
I searched myself to see how I felt. I can feel about twenty things at a time, but I accepted this long ago as the price I have to pay for being brilliant. Most people can barely process a complete feeling at once; I can deal with a dozen.
And at that moment, I felt frustration, resentment, guilt, and neediness. I like Peter and I like Elizabeth; I like working with Peter and I like being his equal in brains if not employment. After the idiotic prisoners in prison who couldn't articulate a coherent thought, Peter is a dream come true. I swear I'm twice as smart now after having someone challenge me every day.
They could have paired me up with some dumb suit, but Peter's the smartest person I know, and sometimes I want to match wits with him just to see which one of us will win. And life would have been perfect, expect for that damn paddle.
And this really was my decision. I could say no. I could walk out the front door and call Hughes and tell him Peter wanted to use corporal punishment on me, and that would be the end. Of course, I would probably go back to prison. Most days, I ignore that deep down feeling which whispers that Peter is the only person willing to take me on. No one else would step up to partner with me; no one else would be willing to monitor my whereabouts and behavior; to be perfectly frank, no one else wants me.
But Peter's spankings hurt. And they were embarrassing because I was an adult and adults don't get spanked. Adults . . . well, adults suffer much worse punishments like heavy fines or prison time. I had been punished as an adult, and I did not like it.
But I didn't like being spanked, either. I didn't want to be spanked and I didn't want to be punished as an adult. Of course, the logical answer to that was for me not to do things that were wrong, in the first place. But that would mean I'd have to act good the majority of the time, and that was not fun. The other answer would be to make sure I didn't get caught, which was no longer an option now that Peter was on to me all the time.
I had signed away my rights to be released into his custody. Someone should have knocked some sense to me in prison.
All of this endless reasoning flashed through my head in a second, and at the end of each argument, I came to the conclusion that I might be responsible for all the trouble that happened to me. I attracted trouble; I was cursed. I wondered if Peter would buy the whole born-under-a-bad-star argument.
He raised half an eyebrow at me.
Groaning out a long sigh from deep in my throat to show how displeased I was, I turned towards the table. I slapped my hands down in the middle, angling my body out like last time.
"You're a brute," I muttered.
"And you're a headache," Peter replied. "But you're my headache. Why am I going to punish you?"
"I'm not answering that," I braced myself for the first swat. It did not come.
"Neal, you have to answer the question."
"No I don't! You can paddle me, but you can't make me talk."
"Neal, answer him," Elizabeth urged. "Otherwise, we'll be here all day."
I would answer for Elizabeth, but never for Peter. "The case," I said under my breath.
"What was that?" Peter asked with evil politeness.
"The case," I said louder.
"And what about the case? What specifically did you do?"
One day I was going to set Peter up in a diabolical trap where he gets falsely accused of a crime and goes to prison and I watch with maniacal glee. They'll haul him off in chains and I'll laugh and laugh and –
"I went to the warehouse by myself."
"And?"
"I got beat up."
"And why did you get beat up?"
"Because they found me."
"And how did they find you when I told you to hide until the team got in place?"
And once Peter was in prison, I was going to send him pictures of me living in his house and enjoying all his things, except his suits which I would burn in a big bonfire.
"I went out and tried to talk to them."
The swats still did not come, and Peter kept questioning me.
"And then what happened after they hurt you?"
"I got in a semi truck and drove it through the wall and flipped it."
"Do you know how to drive a semi truck?"
"No, but I've read about driving one."
"Should you get behind the wheel of something you don't know how to operate?"
I was also going to visit him in prison every week and take gourmet European chocolate with me and eat it right in front of him. And he would sit there in the orange jumpsuit with his hands cuffed in front of him while I ate the candy and maybe imported wine and whatever his favorite food was, and he would suffer then.
"No, I shouldn't," I said.
"Next time are you going to follow FBI protocol?"
"Yes."
"And why are you going to follow protocol?"
I planned to marry his wife and adopt his dog and drive his car and take his job while he sat in prison, crying, because the amazing Neal Caffrey had outwitted him so devastatingly.
"Because you make me," I snapped.
"Neal."
"Because it keeps us safe," I sighed, giving the answer I knew he wanted to hear.
"That's right. You need to learn self-control, Neal."
I sensed Peter pulling his arm back, and then I heard the slam of the paddle against my ass a split second before I felt the sting. No, sting is too mild a word to describe the blaze that ignited my rear end. I hissed sharply, but rather than taking pity on a suffering human being, Peter swatted me again.
Last time he had lectured as he punished me, but now he stayed quiet as he put that evil paddle to work. He even got into a rhythm: right side, left side, right side, left side, middle, right side, left side, right, left, middle.
This was the second time I had been subjected to corporal punishment under his hand (not counting the few swats I got when I was sick), but I felt like I had undergone this horror enough to come to the following conclusion: the hardest thing about taking a spanking is the pain of course, but after that, it's making yourself stay still. Peter is a little bigger than I am, but I'm still a grown man, nearly six feet tall. If I really, really wanted to fight Peter, I probably could have put up a decent fight, maybe enough to get away. And I wasn't over his lap or anything mortifying like that, so nothing was holding my body in place except me.
I was holding myself in place, I was controlling myself. This whole awful business would have been easier to endure if I had been free to kick my legs or beat my fists against the table or squirm around, but leaning over the table, I had to force myself to stay still. If this was all part of the lesson Peter wanted to teach me about self-control, he was twice as evil as I thought him to be.
In a perfect world, there would be no self-control, either.
He broke the rhythm and landed a swat on the back of my left thigh, and I let out a cry of surprise.
"Pull yourself together," Peter told me. "We're not nearly done yet."
"Not fair," I hissed between my teeth. The pain was sharp now, and tears had swelled up in my eyes, this time not of my own choosing.
"Very fair," Peter replied.
"We should be done," I protested. "I said I was sorry. When have I ever admitted I was wrong before?"
"Not nearly enough," Peter agreed with me. But his agreement did not stop him from paddling me more.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling two hot tears trickle down my cheeks as I got thoroughly punished. In the midst of my agony, I felt something warm and soft fold over my hands, and I opened my eyes to see Elizabeth on the other side of the table, pressing her hands over mine.
I looked up at her, not knowing what to think.
"It's okay," she murmured softly. "We both love you and we're going to see you through this. You're not alone anymore."
Why did she have to choose this moment to be sweet and loving? If she had looked stern and cold, I could have held my emotions together better, but I can't stop myself when I'm hurting and someone goes out of their way to comfort me.
I started crying for real, not caring how I looked. I was sore and tired and I just wanted Peter to finish so we could get back to being friends. We could be Peter and Neal again, not Agent Burke and his troublesome, closely-monitored consultant.
"I guess that's good," Peter finished with an incredible wallop.
I didn't move. I was breathing hard to get myself under control and tears were streaming down my cheeks, but I didn't want to move my arms to swipe them away.
Strong hands pulled me straight up, and I expected to be relegated over to the corner to calm down, but instead, Peter pulled me in for a hug.
You know those awful moments when you want to be all cool and casual and much more collected than the bumbling FBI agent who caught you, put you in prison, and just then paddled your ass? You want to stand up straight and tell him you're fine, but then he offers a hug, and you're so distraught you fall into it and hug him back like you're drowning? And then you bury your face in his shoulder and sob like a little girl while promising that you'll be good?
You know you'll be looking at the moment as the weakest of your life, but at the time, you're so grateful for someone to comfort you that you never want to let go. And your FBI agent, who isn't half as cool as you are, doesn't let you go, but keeps saying things like "Good boy, it's okay. You're okay, you took that like a good boy." And you keep crying like your heart is breaking?
Well, none of those things happened to me. You might be a pathetic person who bawls at any sign of affection after a punishment, but I'm much more in control of myself and my emotions. Peter hugged me, but I didn't promise to be good. Instead, I sobbed into his chest, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry."
And he didn't say "Good boy." He said, "It's okay, Neal. You're okay, you took that really well."
And I certainly did not keep crying. My tears came for a few more minutes because my tear ducts had to empty properly, and once Peter let me go, Elizabeth hugged me, and it was only fair that I keep crying for her. If I had stopped crying, she would have thought I cared more about Peter's comfort than hers, and I had to keep the tears going to let her know she was loved, too.
By the time the waterworks had dried up, I wasn't much good for anything, and I watched Peter anxiously, wondering what to do next.
"El, you mind putting this up?" Peter picked up the paddle and handed it to her. "Why don't you put it in one of the kitchen drawers?"
"Okay," she took it from him and went to the kitchen.
I wondered if he wanted it in the drawer so I didn't have to see it when I went into the kitchen, which was nice of him. Or maybe he wanted to make sure it was only used from now on to paddle me, which was not nice of him at all. But I felt too tired to ask him, and he motioned to the side with his head.
"Go to the bathroom and wash your face. When you come back, we can watch a movie."
It was deja' vu in the bathroom all over again. And once again, I couldn't resist taking a peek at my rear in the mirror. Just like last time, my poor ass was dark pink, hot to the touch and very sore looking. I would have to come up with a plan of action for the next time I got in trouble; maybe sewing metal lining into my underwear to protect my bottom. Or replacing that piece of board with foam, leaving the wooden handle so Peter still thought it was all wood.
I splashed water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair, avoiding my reflection because I had no interest in seeing my face after I had been crying.
When I came out of the bathroom, I found Peter and Elizabeth discussing something in low, tense whispers.
"…is not fair at all," Peter hissed.
"Oh, yes, it is, and you know it," she whispered back fiercely.
I hesitated, hating that they were arguing with each other. As much as I grouse about Peter, I wanted him and Elizabeth to get along with each other. He deserved to be happy with his wife.
"We'll ask him and that's final," Elizabeth decided.
Peter put his hands on his hips and sighed as he gave her his martyred look. "You always take his side."
"Yes, but I married you," she kissed his cheek before turning to me. "Neal, since you apologized first, you get to pick the movie. We're going out to see it – we could all use some time out of the house. So what do you want to see?"
"Can we go to that old theater on Fifth Avenue where they show the classics?" I asked eagerly.
Peter made a face. "We got to spend twelve bucks a person to see some black and white movie that we could watch on TV for free?"
"Yes, and you're buying the popcorn, too," I gave him a broad smile.
"And I want the Junior Mints," Elizabeth went to grab their coats and mine. "And a Diet Coke."
"It costs a fortune for those snacks," Peter grumbled. "We might as well go out to dinner for half the price."
"Oh, dinner's a good idea, too," Elizabeth handed Peter his coat and then gave me mine. "We'll hit a matinee and then have a late lunch after that."
"This is coming out of your allowance," Peter told me.
My grin grew. "I seriously doubt that."
He scowled at me, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Fine, but I better not hear any complaining about sitting at the movies. And no getting up during the movie. I hate when people do that."
"You can handcuff me to the chair," I promised.
He drove up to the movies, Elizabeth in the front seat and me in the back. My bottom was fairly hot still, but not bad enough to ruin the afternoon.
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in the darkened theater, situated between Peter and Elizabeth with a bucket of popcorn on my lap and my drink in the cup holder at the end of my right armrest. I felt the smallest bit uncomfortable, but as long as I didn't squirm too much, I could ignore the sting for the most part.
As I took a sip of my drink, Peter gave me a look that said I better not have to get up during the movie. On the other side of Elizabeth, the seats were full so I couldn't get out easily that way.
For the duration of the movie, I was stuck between them. This time, I was completely trapped.
But on the whole, I didn't really mind at all.
The End
All my philosophic thought didn't change the fact that Peter was standing in front of me, with that horrid paddle in his hand and a knowing gleam in his eye. I was backed into a corner, and he knew it. I'm not sure when Peter became so deviously clever (and evil), but I did not like it.
I tried to give them my signature charming smile. Elizabeth looked away. She had obviously sided with the enemy. Peter was unmoved, his mouth doing that line thing that I especially did not like because it promised nothing good.
I dropped the smile and moved onto my next attempt: the sad puppy look. I confess that I've practiced this in the mirror quite a bit: make my lips tremble a little, swallow hard, and look very worried and unhappy. I can even make myself cry on cue, getting the tears to well up and slide down my cheeks. People are so easily moved by emotions; this sad look was how I got protected in prison. Even the guards felt bad for me.
"Hurry up, Neal," Peter told me. "I don't have all day. Lean over the table."
"But it's not right," I objected, pushing my bottom lip out a little as I worked the distressed look to its extreme. "I said I was sorry."
"Do you want things to get back to the way they were before you went rogue? If so, get on with it."
"That's emotional blackmail."
"Then you should feel right at home."
"I've never blackmailed anyone."
"Good, then I don't have to worry about adding that to your rap sheet. Come on, you and I and El all know this will put the whole matter behind us. I'll smack you a few times, you'll be sorry, and then it's over and we can watch a movie."
Elizabeth suddenly smiled and I glared at her.
"Something funny?"
"Yes," she nodded, "that's how Peter and I always end our fights – with a movie. In fact, I remember movies by the fights we were having before we saw them. Braveheart – what color to paint the living room. Die Hard 4 – the fact he forgot my birthday for the second year in a row. Charlie's Angels – whether or not to get a maid."
"Really?" I glanced at Peter. "Movies?"
"It's a good way to end a fight," he insisted.
"And the rule is, whoever apologizes first gets to pick the movie," Elizabeth said. A shadow of understanding passed over her face. "Which, I guess, explains why we've seen so many action movies in the last ten years."
The smallest smirk crossed Peter's face, but it vanished quickly.
Elizabeth pursed her lips. "Is that why you're always so quick to apologize? You want to see your movies?"
"Maybe," Peter admitted. "But it ends the fight. Neal, hurry up."
"Oh, wonderful," I scowled. "You two apologize and watch movies together, and I get turned over the table and paddled like a child."
"Nonsense," Peter objected. "I would never use this on a child."
The man's logic is insufferable.
I searched myself to see how I felt. I can feel about twenty things at a time, but I accepted this long ago as the price I have to pay for being brilliant. Most people can barely process a complete feeling at once; I can deal with a dozen.
And at that moment, I felt frustration, resentment, guilt, and neediness. I like Peter and I like Elizabeth; I like working with Peter and I like being his equal in brains if not employment. After the idiotic prisoners in prison who couldn't articulate a coherent thought, Peter is a dream come true. I swear I'm twice as smart now after having someone challenge me every day.
They could have paired me up with some dumb suit, but Peter's the smartest person I know, and sometimes I want to match wits with him just to see which one of us will win. And life would have been perfect, expect for that damn paddle.
And this really was my decision. I could say no. I could walk out the front door and call Hughes and tell him Peter wanted to use corporal punishment on me, and that would be the end. Of course, I would probably go back to prison. Most days, I ignore that deep down feeling which whispers that Peter is the only person willing to take me on. No one else would step up to partner with me; no one else would be willing to monitor my whereabouts and behavior; to be perfectly frank, no one else wants me.
But Peter's spankings hurt. And they were embarrassing because I was an adult and adults don't get spanked. Adults . . . well, adults suffer much worse punishments like heavy fines or prison time. I had been punished as an adult, and I did not like it.
But I didn't like being spanked, either. I didn't want to be spanked and I didn't want to be punished as an adult. Of course, the logical answer to that was for me not to do things that were wrong, in the first place. But that would mean I'd have to act good the majority of the time, and that was not fun. The other answer would be to make sure I didn't get caught, which was no longer an option now that Peter was on to me all the time.
I had signed away my rights to be released into his custody. Someone should have knocked some sense to me in prison.
All of this endless reasoning flashed through my head in a second, and at the end of each argument, I came to the conclusion that I might be responsible for all the trouble that happened to me. I attracted trouble; I was cursed. I wondered if Peter would buy the whole born-under-a-bad-star argument.
He raised half an eyebrow at me.
Groaning out a long sigh from deep in my throat to show how displeased I was, I turned towards the table. I slapped my hands down in the middle, angling my body out like last time.
"You're a brute," I muttered.
"And you're a headache," Peter replied. "But you're my headache. Why am I going to punish you?"
"I'm not answering that," I braced myself for the first swat. It did not come.
"Neal, you have to answer the question."
"No I don't! You can paddle me, but you can't make me talk."
"Neal, answer him," Elizabeth urged. "Otherwise, we'll be here all day."
I would answer for Elizabeth, but never for Peter. "The case," I said under my breath.
"What was that?" Peter asked with evil politeness.
"The case," I said louder.
"And what about the case? What specifically did you do?"
One day I was going to set Peter up in a diabolical trap where he gets falsely accused of a crime and goes to prison and I watch with maniacal glee. They'll haul him off in chains and I'll laugh and laugh and –
"I went to the warehouse by myself."
"And?"
"I got beat up."
"And why did you get beat up?"
"Because they found me."
"And how did they find you when I told you to hide until the team got in place?"
And once Peter was in prison, I was going to send him pictures of me living in his house and enjoying all his things, except his suits which I would burn in a big bonfire.
"I went out and tried to talk to them."
The swats still did not come, and Peter kept questioning me.
"And then what happened after they hurt you?"
"I got in a semi truck and drove it through the wall and flipped it."
"Do you know how to drive a semi truck?"
"No, but I've read about driving one."
"Should you get behind the wheel of something you don't know how to operate?"
I was also going to visit him in prison every week and take gourmet European chocolate with me and eat it right in front of him. And he would sit there in the orange jumpsuit with his hands cuffed in front of him while I ate the candy and maybe imported wine and whatever his favorite food was, and he would suffer then.
"No, I shouldn't," I said.
"Next time are you going to follow FBI protocol?"
"Yes."
"And why are you going to follow protocol?"
I planned to marry his wife and adopt his dog and drive his car and take his job while he sat in prison, crying, because the amazing Neal Caffrey had outwitted him so devastatingly.
"Because you make me," I snapped.
"Neal."
"Because it keeps us safe," I sighed, giving the answer I knew he wanted to hear.
"That's right. You need to learn self-control, Neal."
I sensed Peter pulling his arm back, and then I heard the slam of the paddle against my ass a split second before I felt the sting. No, sting is too mild a word to describe the blaze that ignited my rear end. I hissed sharply, but rather than taking pity on a suffering human being, Peter swatted me again.
Last time he had lectured as he punished me, but now he stayed quiet as he put that evil paddle to work. He even got into a rhythm: right side, left side, right side, left side, middle, right side, left side, right, left, middle.
This was the second time I had been subjected to corporal punishment under his hand (not counting the few swats I got when I was sick), but I felt like I had undergone this horror enough to come to the following conclusion: the hardest thing about taking a spanking is the pain of course, but after that, it's making yourself stay still. Peter is a little bigger than I am, but I'm still a grown man, nearly six feet tall. If I really, really wanted to fight Peter, I probably could have put up a decent fight, maybe enough to get away. And I wasn't over his lap or anything mortifying like that, so nothing was holding my body in place except me.
I was holding myself in place, I was controlling myself. This whole awful business would have been easier to endure if I had been free to kick my legs or beat my fists against the table or squirm around, but leaning over the table, I had to force myself to stay still. If this was all part of the lesson Peter wanted to teach me about self-control, he was twice as evil as I thought him to be.
In a perfect world, there would be no self-control, either.
He broke the rhythm and landed a swat on the back of my left thigh, and I let out a cry of surprise.
"Pull yourself together," Peter told me. "We're not nearly done yet."
"Not fair," I hissed between my teeth. The pain was sharp now, and tears had swelled up in my eyes, this time not of my own choosing.
"Very fair," Peter replied.
"We should be done," I protested. "I said I was sorry. When have I ever admitted I was wrong before?"
"Not nearly enough," Peter agreed with me. But his agreement did not stop him from paddling me more.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling two hot tears trickle down my cheeks as I got thoroughly punished. In the midst of my agony, I felt something warm and soft fold over my hands, and I opened my eyes to see Elizabeth on the other side of the table, pressing her hands over mine.
I looked up at her, not knowing what to think.
"It's okay," she murmured softly. "We both love you and we're going to see you through this. You're not alone anymore."
Why did she have to choose this moment to be sweet and loving? If she had looked stern and cold, I could have held my emotions together better, but I can't stop myself when I'm hurting and someone goes out of their way to comfort me.
I started crying for real, not caring how I looked. I was sore and tired and I just wanted Peter to finish so we could get back to being friends. We could be Peter and Neal again, not Agent Burke and his troublesome, closely-monitored consultant.
"I guess that's good," Peter finished with an incredible wallop.
I didn't move. I was breathing hard to get myself under control and tears were streaming down my cheeks, but I didn't want to move my arms to swipe them away.
Strong hands pulled me straight up, and I expected to be relegated over to the corner to calm down, but instead, Peter pulled me in for a hug.
You know those awful moments when you want to be all cool and casual and much more collected than the bumbling FBI agent who caught you, put you in prison, and just then paddled your ass? You want to stand up straight and tell him you're fine, but then he offers a hug, and you're so distraught you fall into it and hug him back like you're drowning? And then you bury your face in his shoulder and sob like a little girl while promising that you'll be good?
You know you'll be looking at the moment as the weakest of your life, but at the time, you're so grateful for someone to comfort you that you never want to let go. And your FBI agent, who isn't half as cool as you are, doesn't let you go, but keeps saying things like "Good boy, it's okay. You're okay, you took that like a good boy." And you keep crying like your heart is breaking?
Well, none of those things happened to me. You might be a pathetic person who bawls at any sign of affection after a punishment, but I'm much more in control of myself and my emotions. Peter hugged me, but I didn't promise to be good. Instead, I sobbed into his chest, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry."
And he didn't say "Good boy." He said, "It's okay, Neal. You're okay, you took that really well."
And I certainly did not keep crying. My tears came for a few more minutes because my tear ducts had to empty properly, and once Peter let me go, Elizabeth hugged me, and it was only fair that I keep crying for her. If I had stopped crying, she would have thought I cared more about Peter's comfort than hers, and I had to keep the tears going to let her know she was loved, too.
By the time the waterworks had dried up, I wasn't much good for anything, and I watched Peter anxiously, wondering what to do next.
"El, you mind putting this up?" Peter picked up the paddle and handed it to her. "Why don't you put it in one of the kitchen drawers?"
"Okay," she took it from him and went to the kitchen.
I wondered if he wanted it in the drawer so I didn't have to see it when I went into the kitchen, which was nice of him. Or maybe he wanted to make sure it was only used from now on to paddle me, which was not nice of him at all. But I felt too tired to ask him, and he motioned to the side with his head.
"Go to the bathroom and wash your face. When you come back, we can watch a movie."
It was deja' vu in the bathroom all over again. And once again, I couldn't resist taking a peek at my rear in the mirror. Just like last time, my poor ass was dark pink, hot to the touch and very sore looking. I would have to come up with a plan of action for the next time I got in trouble; maybe sewing metal lining into my underwear to protect my bottom. Or replacing that piece of board with foam, leaving the wooden handle so Peter still thought it was all wood.
I splashed water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair, avoiding my reflection because I had no interest in seeing my face after I had been crying.
When I came out of the bathroom, I found Peter and Elizabeth discussing something in low, tense whispers.
"…is not fair at all," Peter hissed.
"Oh, yes, it is, and you know it," she whispered back fiercely.
I hesitated, hating that they were arguing with each other. As much as I grouse about Peter, I wanted him and Elizabeth to get along with each other. He deserved to be happy with his wife.
"We'll ask him and that's final," Elizabeth decided.
Peter put his hands on his hips and sighed as he gave her his martyred look. "You always take his side."
"Yes, but I married you," she kissed his cheek before turning to me. "Neal, since you apologized first, you get to pick the movie. We're going out to see it – we could all use some time out of the house. So what do you want to see?"
"Can we go to that old theater on Fifth Avenue where they show the classics?" I asked eagerly.
Peter made a face. "We got to spend twelve bucks a person to see some black and white movie that we could watch on TV for free?"
"Yes, and you're buying the popcorn, too," I gave him a broad smile.
"And I want the Junior Mints," Elizabeth went to grab their coats and mine. "And a Diet Coke."
"It costs a fortune for those snacks," Peter grumbled. "We might as well go out to dinner for half the price."
"Oh, dinner's a good idea, too," Elizabeth handed Peter his coat and then gave me mine. "We'll hit a matinee and then have a late lunch after that."
"This is coming out of your allowance," Peter told me.
My grin grew. "I seriously doubt that."
He scowled at me, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Fine, but I better not hear any complaining about sitting at the movies. And no getting up during the movie. I hate when people do that."
"You can handcuff me to the chair," I promised.
He drove up to the movies, Elizabeth in the front seat and me in the back. My bottom was fairly hot still, but not bad enough to ruin the afternoon.
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in the darkened theater, situated between Peter and Elizabeth with a bucket of popcorn on my lap and my drink in the cup holder at the end of my right armrest. I felt the smallest bit uncomfortable, but as long as I didn't squirm too much, I could ignore the sting for the most part.
As I took a sip of my drink, Peter gave me a look that said I better not have to get up during the movie. On the other side of Elizabeth, the seats were full so I couldn't get out easily that way.
For the duration of the movie, I was stuck between them. This time, I was completely trapped.
But on the whole, I didn't really mind at all.
The End
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