FIC: Mathematician, SGA, McKay/Sheppard, R
Title: Mathematician
Author: Tara Keezer
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Notes: Roughly 4,300 words; academic AU. This is a fusion with “Secretary” by Mary Gaitskill, and it relies more heavily on her short story than on the movie that was made a few years ago.
Warnings: Spanking; mild D/s
Summary: “I was packing up the last of my stuff when Kavanagh came by to tell me the news - my funding for the next six months had fallen through, so instead of moving to a new desk, I had to clear out completely.”
~*~*~
I was packing up the last of my stuff when Kavanagh came by to tell me the news - my funding for the next six months had fallen through, so instead of moving to a new desk, I had to clear out completely. The way he said it, the way he looked when he said it, made me think maybe he hadn’t tried too hard to push for it. I could tell he was waiting for me to react, but he was going to have a long wait ahead of him. My CO in Afghanistan had been more of an asshole than Kavanagh could ever dream of being, and I’d never given him a reaction either.
“Huh,” I said. “Too bad.” And then I went back to packing up. Kavanagh stood there another minute or two, and then his face went red before he stomped off. I’d won the battle, but I’d lost the war, and I couldn’t find it in me to give a damn one way or another. I’d been numb since getting out of the Air Force, and this was more of the same.
A half hour later, Dr. Zelenka stopped by my desk, just as I’d taped the last box shut, and he nodded toward his office. I didn’t have anything better to do - applying for dead-end jobs to keep myself going until May, when my fellowship at Stanford started, could be done at any time of the day or night thanks to the Internet - so I followed him in and shut the door when he asked me to.
“I’ve just had a most unhappy conversation with Dr. Kavanagh,” he said. “He tells me you didn’t apply for your funding.”
I don’t know how long I sat there staring at him. It felt like an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. “He told me three months ago that he was the one who had to submit the request.”
“Hmph.” Zelenka made a note on his legal pad then looked up at me again. “Unfortunately, I can do nothing about your position here. At best, I can promise that Dr. Kavanagh will find his own funding in jeopardy.”
He must have seen my surprise, because he said, “You are not the first to suffer this misfortune.”
“It happens.”
“What will you do until May?”
“I can always flip burgers,” I told him, shrugging a little. I didn’t actually need to work - I still had a trust fund I could tap into - but I liked keeping busy. If I was working at a fast-food joint or Kinko’s, I could play with equations in my head all day and still keep sharp.
Zelenka gave me a long look and started to speak a couple of times before he finally said, “I may have a different option.”
“Sure.” As long as it wasn’t janitorial, I could deal.
“You have heard of Rodney McKay?”
It was a stupid question. “Who hasn’t?”
“He is currently in town and has an office near North Campus, up on Plymouth Road.”
“I thought he was at MIT.”
“That was last year. Now he is here as a consultant to the university’s aerospace program. His contract is for a year, but he has already burned through three doctoral candidates.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” I said, frowning a little. The University of Michigan was worse than a small town when it came to gossip. News like that should have traveled fast, but I hadn’t even known McKay was in town.
“Perhaps because he has only been here for two weeks. Also, the candidates were in another program.” Zelenka grimaced. “I would not offer this, John, if I had a better solution for you.”
I was surprised by his reluctance and asked, “Is it me or is it because he’s bad as they say he is?”
“He is worse, actually, much worse.” He broke off into Czech for a few words then said, “And there may come a time when you curse my name for sending you to him. However, if you can survive the next six months under his tutelage, you will have the benefit of his name on your CV and possibly coauthorship of one or two papers.”
In other words, I could probably write my own ticket when he was done with me. It was a tempting offer, and considering my age and history, it wasn’t one I could easily turn down. If I didn’t last, however - “How obnoxious will he get if I can’t hack it?”
“Not at all,” Zelenka said. “I will explain to Rodney that he is not allowed to rip your career to shreds before it begins.”
“And he’ll listen to you?” I liked Zelenka, but I didn’t think he had it in him to go toe to toe with someone like McKay.
“Rodney and I have an understanding,” he said firmly.
I still wasn’t convinced, but Zelenka seemed to be. Since I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone, maybe more so, I said, “Okay. What’s his number?”
~*~*~
The Plymouth Building looked like it had been built in the late sixties or early seventies. I figured heavy drug use was the only thing that could possibly explain why the architect chose to use pillars to make the upper story look like it was floating over the parking spaces.
Once upstairs, I found his suite easily enough, but the reception area was empty. While grad students were easy enough to scare off - even doctoral candidates - academic secretaries were usually made of sterner stuff, and I was worried about the lack of office staff. I also wondered for the first time why the University was willing to pay rent when it probably had office space he could have used. The whole deal was starting to look very strange, and if Zelenka hadn’t set this up to try to help me, I probably would have taken off right then.
After a few minutes, when no one came to the front, I called out, “Dr. McKay?”
“Back here,” he yelled.
I found him sitting on the floor in the middle of a mess that was horrifying and kind of impressive, too, since he’d managed to create that level of clutter in less than a month. He had a piece of paper in his hand that was probably my CV, but I couldn’t be sure until he looked up at me and shook it in my direction.
“You’re old to be getting a PhD. Why’d you waste your time with the Air Force?”
Zelenka hadn’t been kidding about McKay being worse than his reputation suggested.
“It was my time to waste,” I said, falling back on a casual attitude that had never failed to piss off every single commanding officer I’d ever had.
It didn’t even seem to faze McKay. He snorted and then tore into my three published articles, asking why I’d gone this direction instead of following up in that direction; and was I born this stupid, or had the Air Force done it to me; and did I honestly think my dissertation was an original contribution to human knowledge, or was I just bullshitting him and the rest of the world. After a while, I figured out he didn’t want me to answer the questions as much as he wanted to hear himself talk, so I started wandering around and looking at his whiteboards.
Some of the math was straightforward, and some of it was so far out there that I had a hard time following it. I was looking at one set of equations and trying to reconcile them with what I thought I knew when McKay startled the hell out of me.
“Does that look right to you?”
I stared at the board for another minute then said, “No, it doesn’t, but I think it is.”
“Huh. You might have a brain after all.” McKay stepped away and headed back to his desk. “I suppose it’s too late to start you today. I’ll call Zelenka and have him get the paperwork moving on you. Be back here on Monday.”
With anyone else, I would have objected, but McKay had the kind of clout that would probably make the university roll over and beg, so I figured I would be gainfully employed when he said I would.
“What time do you want me here?”
“Eight. And bring coffee.”
~*~*~
The next three weeks were intense. McKay worked fast and talked faster, and god help me if I didn’t keep up with him. After a while, it got to the point where I thought I was holding my own, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like I might actually survive life without flying.
Then one morning, McKay stomped over to my desk and held a piece of paper in front of me. It was the work I’d done on a proof the day before, and there were three red circles on it. “Do you see this? Do you?”
“I- I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed by the mistakes that he’d circled. I knew better than that - hell, Kavanagh knew better than that - and my best guess was that I’d lost track of what I was doing when I typed it up.
And then he said, “This isn’t the first time.”
“What?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve found errors in your work. I expected better of someone trained by Radek.”
He knocked the wind out of my sails with that, and all I could think was that the last three weeks had been nothing but a lie on both our parts, especially mine. I’d been telling myself that it didn’t matter that I was older, I still could make a contribution to the field. I could keep up with one of the brightest minds out there. Now McKay was telling me that not only could I not make a contribution, I was screwing things up. In some ways, it was Afghanistan all over again, with me thinking I was doing the right thing then finding out I was completely off track.
“Go over to my desk,” he said.
I walked over in a haze, wondering if I should even bother thinking about Stanford in May. Hell, maybe it was time to give it up completely and call Dave about joining the family business. If nothing else, he’d probably jump at the chance to say, “I told you so.”
“Bend over so that you’re resting on your forearms.”
“What?”
McKay wasn’t making much sense, but I was rattled enough that it seemed about right to me. He wasn’t making sense, because the work I was doing for him didn’t make sense. It was filled with errors, and Jesus, I didn’t need to think about that. I’d lost a hell of a lot of confidence when the Air Force discharged me after Afghanistan, but since I started working with Zelenka and then McKay, I’d been gaining it back. Now, though, it was shot to hell again.
“Do it.”
I did what he wanted. I couldn’t think what else to do, especially since I was convinced I’d blown my chance to jumpstart my career. McKay put my work on the desk right in front of me and said, “I want you to read that out loud and keep reading until I tell you to stop.”
Five seconds into it, he started spanking me. It shocked the hell out of me, and it should have been enough to make me come up fighting, but I stayed put for one reason: McKay’s bright red circles and hard hand had brought unexpected color back into my life. I was starting to feel something for the first time in five years, and despite the pain and humiliation of my position, I wasn’t ready to give that up.
He spanked me for a good ten minutes, and I read through my equations six times, stuttering a little whenever I had to correct the mistakes. At the end of it, he said, “Retype that and for Christ sake, proofread the damn thing before you give it to me.”
“Right,” I mumbled. I got back to my desk and winced a little as I sat down. The high of the spanking was starting to wear off, and I was left mortified by what had just happened. I was two seconds from typing my letter of resignation when McKay stopped at my desk again.
“Oh, hey. The Journal of Applied Mathematics sent me your latest article for peer review. I told them I’d have to pass because you’re working for me now, but what I saw didn’t suck. In fact, it was almost interesting, which is better than I can say for most of the crap that passes for science these days.”
He wandered back to his whiteboards like nothing had happened, and I opened Mathematica to correct my mistakes from the day before.
~*~*~
Another couple of weeks passed before my next mistake, only that time, it was deliberate. I could feel myself going dull around the edges, and I wanted that crisp feeling back, the one I’d gotten when McKay spanked me. It was fucked up, but I didn’t know what else to do. McKay was the only one who’d managed to break through my depression, and I wasn’t inclined to mess with something that apparently worked.
It took him a grand total of three seconds to spot the error - I could tell when it happened by the flush that went straight up his face - and he finished going through the rest of it before he said, “Dr. Sheppard. My desk. Now.”
That was when I remembered just how hard he could hit, and I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking to provoke him like that. He stood up and pointed, and I assumed the same position I had before. And again, he made me read through my work while he spanked me.
The first time he’d done it, I’d been too embarrassed and shocked to think of anything but getting through the punishment. This time around, I was still embarrassed, only it was by my reaction to getting spanked. It never occurred to me that I could get aroused by something like this, yet there I was on my third read-through, with McKay showing no signs of slowing down and me fighting the urge to reach down and stroke myself off to the tempo of his hand. It was a hell of a thing to discover about myself this late in life.
A few minutes later, he stopped and put his hand in the small of my back to keep me in place. He was breathing heavily, and I ducked my head enough to be able to look back at him from under my arm. I couldn’t see his face, but I could sure as hell see his hard-on outlined in denim, and for a really long minute, I had to bite my tongue against saying something. The mood I was in, there was no telling what would come out of my mouth.
When he finally moved away, it was to face one of the whiteboards. He didn’t turn around when he said, “Go home. Get some sleep. When you come back tomorrow, make sure your head is out of your ass.”
I did what he told me to, but I stopped in the men’s room first. I thought about jerking off, and as soon as I started to undo my pants, I freaked out. Who the hell had I become that something like this could be a goddamned turn-on? Granted, I hadn’t had sex since before my discharge - hadn’t been interested - but this? This was something to bring my dick back to life?
The mirror didn’t have any answers for me, and when a man in a gray suit came into the restroom, I splashed cold water on my face and got out of there. Maybe a good night’s sleep would take care of it, maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, I needed space between me and McKay.
~*~*~
The next month went by without me making a single error. I checked everything five times over before I gave it to McKay, and while he bitched about my slowness, it was half-hearted at best. It made me think maybe he’d been as freaked out over the last time as I had, and he didn’t want a repeat.
As explanations went, it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t cover why he and I both got more and more irritated with each other as time went on. Little things - there wasn’t enough cream in his coffee; what the hell happened to his new red Sharpie; couldn’t I get a haircut that made me look like a grown-up - little things were pissing him off, and eventually, I started snapping back at him.
On a Friday night, six weeks after the second time he spanked me, it came to a head. I’d been typing up my work, and about eight o’clock that night, when I still wasn’t finished, I saved my document and told him I was heading out to get some food. He didn’t want anything - he had a stash of power bars in his desk and practically lived on the things - so I hit the McDonalds up the road. When I came back twenty minutes later, food in hand, it was to find McKay sitting at my desk and reading through the document on my computer.
“That isn’t ready yet,” I said.
“Of course it isn’t.” He was flushed when he pointed at the screen. “Do you have any idea how many errors I’ve found in this?”
“I told you -”
“My desk. Now.”
“Goddamn it, McKay!”
He pointed at his desk, but I didn’t go over there. Not immediately. I tried to stare him down, but the fight was over before it started. I didn’t want to be the kind of man who bent over like that. I wanted to be the kind of man who had a fucking spine, the kind of man who had enough of his own discipline that he didn’t need someone else to impose it for him. And I could want all I want, but the fact is that the memory of the release I’d found the last two times he’d spanked me was enough to make me give in. He’d gotten me out of my head, and that was something I’d never been able to do on my own.
I was about to bend over when he stopped me with, “Undo your slacks and pull them down.”
“What the hell?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t fuck you.” He looked like he was about to say something else, then he shook his head. “Just do it.”
I unbuckled my belt slowly then popped the button on my slacks and unzipped them. My ass is skinny enough that any other time, they would have fallen right off. But my dick was half hard, so I had to push them down.
In a deep, harsh voice, he said, “Your boxers, too.”
I swallowed against my suddenly tight throat. McKay’s pupils were blown, and I couldn’t tell if he was staring at my dick, which was at full mast by then, or if he was imagining what my ass looked like naked. Either way, it was a hell of a turn-on.
Once I pushed my boxers down, I stood there, waiting. Hell, I was posing, and I think we both knew it.
“Bend over, Dr. Sheppard.”
Christ, but that made my dick jump like nobody’s business. It occurred to me that I might never be able to hear anyone call me Dr. Sheppard again without getting a hard-on in response, and I kind of hated McKay for that.
He spanked me with five hard swats, and then he put his hand in the small of my back and said, “Stay there.”
Even aside from my bare ass, it was different from before. I wasn’t reading out loud, and he’d stopped far sooner than the other times. A moment later, I heard his zipper go down, and I went tense. My dick flagged a little, and he said, “I told you. I’m not going to fuck you.”
There was an unspoken, yet at the end of that statement, but I didn’t call him on it. I was too busy listening to the small noises he was making, the same kind of noises I’d heard in barracks all over the world. McKay was jerking off, and it made me harden right up again. It didn’t take him long, and as soon as the first drops hit my ass, I was coming too, without even a hand to help me.
He used my shirttail to clean himself up then walked over to one of the whiteboards. With his back to me, he said, “I think you should go home now. We’ll start again on Monday.”
I didn’t stand up right away. My dinner was still sitting on McKay’s desk, and I reached into the bag to grab the napkins so I could wipe off my ass. I didn’t bother to clean the front of McKay’s desk - I decided he could do it himself after I left.
When I got home, I took a long, hot bath, and I jerked off to the memory of McKay’s voice and the way his hand felt when he hit me. I found myself wondering why the hell he hadn’t fucked me, because it was clear we’d both wanted it, but he’d held back for some reason.
And then I started to think about Zelenka.
He knew.
He had to know about McKay; it was the only thing that made sense of what he’d said when he’d offered me this position. I got out of the tub and onto the Internet to pull up Zelenka’s CV and found what I was looking for. Ten years ago, he’d studied under McKay - a phrase that took on a whole new meaning for me right then and there - and the two of them had published groundbreaking work from that time period.
Zelenka went with it, and in the process, he built himself a nice reputation. It was more than that, though. He and McKay clearly had a good professional relationship. They respected each other, and Zelenka didn’t make any noise about McKay’s habits. It was going on midnight, but that didn’t stop me from calling Zelenka. I had to know what this was, and I didn’t think I’d get an answer out of McKay.
The phone rang three times before Zelenka picked up, and after he mumbled something in Czech, I said, “Tell me about McKay.”
There was a long silence before he said, “Do you wish me to find another position for you?”
“No,” I snapped. “I wish you to answer the goddamned question.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said on a sigh.
“Tell me his little fetish won’t fuck things up for me down the road.”
“It won’t,” he said firmly. “Rodney is very much aware of the lines he crosses when he - when he - does that.”
I didn’t say anything, so Zelenka continued, “I am surprised it took so long for him to take his hand to you.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “This was the third time.”
“Why didn’t you call me after the first time?”
Because he hadn’t made me hard that first time, because he hadn’t made me pull my pants down, because he hadn’t made me come, I wanted to say. I couldn’t choke any of those reasons out, so instead, I asked, “Is this why you thought I would curse you? Because he sexually assaults his assistants?”
“Sexual assault?” The surprise in his voice was genuine. “What happened tonight?”
It took him a while, because I wasn’t interested in rehashing the night, but eventually, he dragged the story out of me. When I was done talking, he said, “Stay there. I will come over, and then we will call the police.”
“What? No!”
“John, it is as you said - he sexually assaulted you. This cannot go unpunished.”
“It’s going to have to,” I said, suddenly irritated.
“Why?”
He sounded absolutely bewildered, and it took me a long time to say, “It wasn’t exactly non-consensual.”
“You say that because you are afraid of retribution.”
“I’m not.” And I wasn’t. McKay didn’t like to talk about it, and I honestly didn’t think he would have done anything to me if I’d walked out of there, which is what I told Zelenka. “I could have stopped it before it started,” I said.
“It is still wrong.” He sounded discouraged. “It was wrong ten years ago, and it is wrong now.”
“It’s most assuredly fucked up,” I said, and for some reason, that was enough to make both of us burst into laughter. After a few minutes, we calmed down long enough for me to say, “It’s okay, Dr. Zelenka. Really.”
“It’s not.”
“Maybe not for anyone else, but for me, for right now, it’s okay.”
“How can you say that?”
The answer bloomed clearly in my mind, and I told him, “Because I feel alive.”
~*~*~
I went back to the office the following Monday, clear-eyed and ready to work again. McKay gave me a long look when I got in, and whatever he saw must have been enough to reassure him. He nodded once and said, “I want to see your work no later than three o’clock this afternoon.”
“Sure thing,” I told him with a friendly smile. “And if there are any mistakes, I’ll count on you to point them out.”
He blinked a few times, and when my words sank in, his face softened into warmth and affection for a moment. He nodded once then started ranting about Samantha Carter’s most recent article. I let his words wash over me and found peace in his noise.
Author: Tara Keezer
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Notes: Roughly 4,300 words; academic AU. This is a fusion with “Secretary” by Mary Gaitskill, and it relies more heavily on her short story than on the movie that was made a few years ago.
Warnings: Spanking; mild D/s
Summary: “I was packing up the last of my stuff when Kavanagh came by to tell me the news - my funding for the next six months had fallen through, so instead of moving to a new desk, I had to clear out completely.”
~*~*~
I was packing up the last of my stuff when Kavanagh came by to tell me the news - my funding for the next six months had fallen through, so instead of moving to a new desk, I had to clear out completely. The way he said it, the way he looked when he said it, made me think maybe he hadn’t tried too hard to push for it. I could tell he was waiting for me to react, but he was going to have a long wait ahead of him. My CO in Afghanistan had been more of an asshole than Kavanagh could ever dream of being, and I’d never given him a reaction either.
“Huh,” I said. “Too bad.” And then I went back to packing up. Kavanagh stood there another minute or two, and then his face went red before he stomped off. I’d won the battle, but I’d lost the war, and I couldn’t find it in me to give a damn one way or another. I’d been numb since getting out of the Air Force, and this was more of the same.
A half hour later, Dr. Zelenka stopped by my desk, just as I’d taped the last box shut, and he nodded toward his office. I didn’t have anything better to do - applying for dead-end jobs to keep myself going until May, when my fellowship at Stanford started, could be done at any time of the day or night thanks to the Internet - so I followed him in and shut the door when he asked me to.
“I’ve just had a most unhappy conversation with Dr. Kavanagh,” he said. “He tells me you didn’t apply for your funding.”
I don’t know how long I sat there staring at him. It felt like an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. “He told me three months ago that he was the one who had to submit the request.”
“Hmph.” Zelenka made a note on his legal pad then looked up at me again. “Unfortunately, I can do nothing about your position here. At best, I can promise that Dr. Kavanagh will find his own funding in jeopardy.”
He must have seen my surprise, because he said, “You are not the first to suffer this misfortune.”
“It happens.”
“What will you do until May?”
“I can always flip burgers,” I told him, shrugging a little. I didn’t actually need to work - I still had a trust fund I could tap into - but I liked keeping busy. If I was working at a fast-food joint or Kinko’s, I could play with equations in my head all day and still keep sharp.
Zelenka gave me a long look and started to speak a couple of times before he finally said, “I may have a different option.”
“Sure.” As long as it wasn’t janitorial, I could deal.
“You have heard of Rodney McKay?”
It was a stupid question. “Who hasn’t?”
“He is currently in town and has an office near North Campus, up on Plymouth Road.”
“I thought he was at MIT.”
“That was last year. Now he is here as a consultant to the university’s aerospace program. His contract is for a year, but he has already burned through three doctoral candidates.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” I said, frowning a little. The University of Michigan was worse than a small town when it came to gossip. News like that should have traveled fast, but I hadn’t even known McKay was in town.
“Perhaps because he has only been here for two weeks. Also, the candidates were in another program.” Zelenka grimaced. “I would not offer this, John, if I had a better solution for you.”
I was surprised by his reluctance and asked, “Is it me or is it because he’s bad as they say he is?”
“He is worse, actually, much worse.” He broke off into Czech for a few words then said, “And there may come a time when you curse my name for sending you to him. However, if you can survive the next six months under his tutelage, you will have the benefit of his name on your CV and possibly coauthorship of one or two papers.”
In other words, I could probably write my own ticket when he was done with me. It was a tempting offer, and considering my age and history, it wasn’t one I could easily turn down. If I didn’t last, however - “How obnoxious will he get if I can’t hack it?”
“Not at all,” Zelenka said. “I will explain to Rodney that he is not allowed to rip your career to shreds before it begins.”
“And he’ll listen to you?” I liked Zelenka, but I didn’t think he had it in him to go toe to toe with someone like McKay.
“Rodney and I have an understanding,” he said firmly.
I still wasn’t convinced, but Zelenka seemed to be. Since I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone, maybe more so, I said, “Okay. What’s his number?”
~*~*~
The Plymouth Building looked like it had been built in the late sixties or early seventies. I figured heavy drug use was the only thing that could possibly explain why the architect chose to use pillars to make the upper story look like it was floating over the parking spaces.
Once upstairs, I found his suite easily enough, but the reception area was empty. While grad students were easy enough to scare off - even doctoral candidates - academic secretaries were usually made of sterner stuff, and I was worried about the lack of office staff. I also wondered for the first time why the University was willing to pay rent when it probably had office space he could have used. The whole deal was starting to look very strange, and if Zelenka hadn’t set this up to try to help me, I probably would have taken off right then.
After a few minutes, when no one came to the front, I called out, “Dr. McKay?”
“Back here,” he yelled.
I found him sitting on the floor in the middle of a mess that was horrifying and kind of impressive, too, since he’d managed to create that level of clutter in less than a month. He had a piece of paper in his hand that was probably my CV, but I couldn’t be sure until he looked up at me and shook it in my direction.
“You’re old to be getting a PhD. Why’d you waste your time with the Air Force?”
Zelenka hadn’t been kidding about McKay being worse than his reputation suggested.
“It was my time to waste,” I said, falling back on a casual attitude that had never failed to piss off every single commanding officer I’d ever had.
It didn’t even seem to faze McKay. He snorted and then tore into my three published articles, asking why I’d gone this direction instead of following up in that direction; and was I born this stupid, or had the Air Force done it to me; and did I honestly think my dissertation was an original contribution to human knowledge, or was I just bullshitting him and the rest of the world. After a while, I figured out he didn’t want me to answer the questions as much as he wanted to hear himself talk, so I started wandering around and looking at his whiteboards.
Some of the math was straightforward, and some of it was so far out there that I had a hard time following it. I was looking at one set of equations and trying to reconcile them with what I thought I knew when McKay startled the hell out of me.
“Does that look right to you?”
I stared at the board for another minute then said, “No, it doesn’t, but I think it is.”
“Huh. You might have a brain after all.” McKay stepped away and headed back to his desk. “I suppose it’s too late to start you today. I’ll call Zelenka and have him get the paperwork moving on you. Be back here on Monday.”
With anyone else, I would have objected, but McKay had the kind of clout that would probably make the university roll over and beg, so I figured I would be gainfully employed when he said I would.
“What time do you want me here?”
“Eight. And bring coffee.”
~*~*~
The next three weeks were intense. McKay worked fast and talked faster, and god help me if I didn’t keep up with him. After a while, it got to the point where I thought I was holding my own, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like I might actually survive life without flying.
Then one morning, McKay stomped over to my desk and held a piece of paper in front of me. It was the work I’d done on a proof the day before, and there were three red circles on it. “Do you see this? Do you?”
“I- I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed by the mistakes that he’d circled. I knew better than that - hell, Kavanagh knew better than that - and my best guess was that I’d lost track of what I was doing when I typed it up.
And then he said, “This isn’t the first time.”
“What?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve found errors in your work. I expected better of someone trained by Radek.”
He knocked the wind out of my sails with that, and all I could think was that the last three weeks had been nothing but a lie on both our parts, especially mine. I’d been telling myself that it didn’t matter that I was older, I still could make a contribution to the field. I could keep up with one of the brightest minds out there. Now McKay was telling me that not only could I not make a contribution, I was screwing things up. In some ways, it was Afghanistan all over again, with me thinking I was doing the right thing then finding out I was completely off track.
“Go over to my desk,” he said.
I walked over in a haze, wondering if I should even bother thinking about Stanford in May. Hell, maybe it was time to give it up completely and call Dave about joining the family business. If nothing else, he’d probably jump at the chance to say, “I told you so.”
“Bend over so that you’re resting on your forearms.”
“What?”
McKay wasn’t making much sense, but I was rattled enough that it seemed about right to me. He wasn’t making sense, because the work I was doing for him didn’t make sense. It was filled with errors, and Jesus, I didn’t need to think about that. I’d lost a hell of a lot of confidence when the Air Force discharged me after Afghanistan, but since I started working with Zelenka and then McKay, I’d been gaining it back. Now, though, it was shot to hell again.
“Do it.”
I did what he wanted. I couldn’t think what else to do, especially since I was convinced I’d blown my chance to jumpstart my career. McKay put my work on the desk right in front of me and said, “I want you to read that out loud and keep reading until I tell you to stop.”
Five seconds into it, he started spanking me. It shocked the hell out of me, and it should have been enough to make me come up fighting, but I stayed put for one reason: McKay’s bright red circles and hard hand had brought unexpected color back into my life. I was starting to feel something for the first time in five years, and despite the pain and humiliation of my position, I wasn’t ready to give that up.
He spanked me for a good ten minutes, and I read through my equations six times, stuttering a little whenever I had to correct the mistakes. At the end of it, he said, “Retype that and for Christ sake, proofread the damn thing before you give it to me.”
“Right,” I mumbled. I got back to my desk and winced a little as I sat down. The high of the spanking was starting to wear off, and I was left mortified by what had just happened. I was two seconds from typing my letter of resignation when McKay stopped at my desk again.
“Oh, hey. The Journal of Applied Mathematics sent me your latest article for peer review. I told them I’d have to pass because you’re working for me now, but what I saw didn’t suck. In fact, it was almost interesting, which is better than I can say for most of the crap that passes for science these days.”
He wandered back to his whiteboards like nothing had happened, and I opened Mathematica to correct my mistakes from the day before.
~*~*~
Another couple of weeks passed before my next mistake, only that time, it was deliberate. I could feel myself going dull around the edges, and I wanted that crisp feeling back, the one I’d gotten when McKay spanked me. It was fucked up, but I didn’t know what else to do. McKay was the only one who’d managed to break through my depression, and I wasn’t inclined to mess with something that apparently worked.
It took him a grand total of three seconds to spot the error - I could tell when it happened by the flush that went straight up his face - and he finished going through the rest of it before he said, “Dr. Sheppard. My desk. Now.”
That was when I remembered just how hard he could hit, and I wondered what the hell I’d been thinking to provoke him like that. He stood up and pointed, and I assumed the same position I had before. And again, he made me read through my work while he spanked me.
The first time he’d done it, I’d been too embarrassed and shocked to think of anything but getting through the punishment. This time around, I was still embarrassed, only it was by my reaction to getting spanked. It never occurred to me that I could get aroused by something like this, yet there I was on my third read-through, with McKay showing no signs of slowing down and me fighting the urge to reach down and stroke myself off to the tempo of his hand. It was a hell of a thing to discover about myself this late in life.
A few minutes later, he stopped and put his hand in the small of my back to keep me in place. He was breathing heavily, and I ducked my head enough to be able to look back at him from under my arm. I couldn’t see his face, but I could sure as hell see his hard-on outlined in denim, and for a really long minute, I had to bite my tongue against saying something. The mood I was in, there was no telling what would come out of my mouth.
When he finally moved away, it was to face one of the whiteboards. He didn’t turn around when he said, “Go home. Get some sleep. When you come back tomorrow, make sure your head is out of your ass.”
I did what he told me to, but I stopped in the men’s room first. I thought about jerking off, and as soon as I started to undo my pants, I freaked out. Who the hell had I become that something like this could be a goddamned turn-on? Granted, I hadn’t had sex since before my discharge - hadn’t been interested - but this? This was something to bring my dick back to life?
The mirror didn’t have any answers for me, and when a man in a gray suit came into the restroom, I splashed cold water on my face and got out of there. Maybe a good night’s sleep would take care of it, maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, I needed space between me and McKay.
~*~*~
The next month went by without me making a single error. I checked everything five times over before I gave it to McKay, and while he bitched about my slowness, it was half-hearted at best. It made me think maybe he’d been as freaked out over the last time as I had, and he didn’t want a repeat.
As explanations went, it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t cover why he and I both got more and more irritated with each other as time went on. Little things - there wasn’t enough cream in his coffee; what the hell happened to his new red Sharpie; couldn’t I get a haircut that made me look like a grown-up - little things were pissing him off, and eventually, I started snapping back at him.
On a Friday night, six weeks after the second time he spanked me, it came to a head. I’d been typing up my work, and about eight o’clock that night, when I still wasn’t finished, I saved my document and told him I was heading out to get some food. He didn’t want anything - he had a stash of power bars in his desk and practically lived on the things - so I hit the McDonalds up the road. When I came back twenty minutes later, food in hand, it was to find McKay sitting at my desk and reading through the document on my computer.
“That isn’t ready yet,” I said.
“Of course it isn’t.” He was flushed when he pointed at the screen. “Do you have any idea how many errors I’ve found in this?”
“I told you -”
“My desk. Now.”
“Goddamn it, McKay!”
He pointed at his desk, but I didn’t go over there. Not immediately. I tried to stare him down, but the fight was over before it started. I didn’t want to be the kind of man who bent over like that. I wanted to be the kind of man who had a fucking spine, the kind of man who had enough of his own discipline that he didn’t need someone else to impose it for him. And I could want all I want, but the fact is that the memory of the release I’d found the last two times he’d spanked me was enough to make me give in. He’d gotten me out of my head, and that was something I’d never been able to do on my own.
I was about to bend over when he stopped me with, “Undo your slacks and pull them down.”
“What the hell?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t fuck you.” He looked like he was about to say something else, then he shook his head. “Just do it.”
I unbuckled my belt slowly then popped the button on my slacks and unzipped them. My ass is skinny enough that any other time, they would have fallen right off. But my dick was half hard, so I had to push them down.
In a deep, harsh voice, he said, “Your boxers, too.”
I swallowed against my suddenly tight throat. McKay’s pupils were blown, and I couldn’t tell if he was staring at my dick, which was at full mast by then, or if he was imagining what my ass looked like naked. Either way, it was a hell of a turn-on.
Once I pushed my boxers down, I stood there, waiting. Hell, I was posing, and I think we both knew it.
“Bend over, Dr. Sheppard.”
Christ, but that made my dick jump like nobody’s business. It occurred to me that I might never be able to hear anyone call me Dr. Sheppard again without getting a hard-on in response, and I kind of hated McKay for that.
He spanked me with five hard swats, and then he put his hand in the small of my back and said, “Stay there.”
Even aside from my bare ass, it was different from before. I wasn’t reading out loud, and he’d stopped far sooner than the other times. A moment later, I heard his zipper go down, and I went tense. My dick flagged a little, and he said, “I told you. I’m not going to fuck you.”
There was an unspoken, yet at the end of that statement, but I didn’t call him on it. I was too busy listening to the small noises he was making, the same kind of noises I’d heard in barracks all over the world. McKay was jerking off, and it made me harden right up again. It didn’t take him long, and as soon as the first drops hit my ass, I was coming too, without even a hand to help me.
He used my shirttail to clean himself up then walked over to one of the whiteboards. With his back to me, he said, “I think you should go home now. We’ll start again on Monday.”
I didn’t stand up right away. My dinner was still sitting on McKay’s desk, and I reached into the bag to grab the napkins so I could wipe off my ass. I didn’t bother to clean the front of McKay’s desk - I decided he could do it himself after I left.
When I got home, I took a long, hot bath, and I jerked off to the memory of McKay’s voice and the way his hand felt when he hit me. I found myself wondering why the hell he hadn’t fucked me, because it was clear we’d both wanted it, but he’d held back for some reason.
And then I started to think about Zelenka.
He knew.
He had to know about McKay; it was the only thing that made sense of what he’d said when he’d offered me this position. I got out of the tub and onto the Internet to pull up Zelenka’s CV and found what I was looking for. Ten years ago, he’d studied under McKay - a phrase that took on a whole new meaning for me right then and there - and the two of them had published groundbreaking work from that time period.
Zelenka went with it, and in the process, he built himself a nice reputation. It was more than that, though. He and McKay clearly had a good professional relationship. They respected each other, and Zelenka didn’t make any noise about McKay’s habits. It was going on midnight, but that didn’t stop me from calling Zelenka. I had to know what this was, and I didn’t think I’d get an answer out of McKay.
The phone rang three times before Zelenka picked up, and after he mumbled something in Czech, I said, “Tell me about McKay.”
There was a long silence before he said, “Do you wish me to find another position for you?”
“No,” I snapped. “I wish you to answer the goddamned question.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said on a sigh.
“Tell me his little fetish won’t fuck things up for me down the road.”
“It won’t,” he said firmly. “Rodney is very much aware of the lines he crosses when he - when he - does that.”
I didn’t say anything, so Zelenka continued, “I am surprised it took so long for him to take his hand to you.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “This was the third time.”
“Why didn’t you call me after the first time?”
Because he hadn’t made me hard that first time, because he hadn’t made me pull my pants down, because he hadn’t made me come, I wanted to say. I couldn’t choke any of those reasons out, so instead, I asked, “Is this why you thought I would curse you? Because he sexually assaults his assistants?”
“Sexual assault?” The surprise in his voice was genuine. “What happened tonight?”
It took him a while, because I wasn’t interested in rehashing the night, but eventually, he dragged the story out of me. When I was done talking, he said, “Stay there. I will come over, and then we will call the police.”
“What? No!”
“John, it is as you said - he sexually assaulted you. This cannot go unpunished.”
“It’s going to have to,” I said, suddenly irritated.
“Why?”
He sounded absolutely bewildered, and it took me a long time to say, “It wasn’t exactly non-consensual.”
“You say that because you are afraid of retribution.”
“I’m not.” And I wasn’t. McKay didn’t like to talk about it, and I honestly didn’t think he would have done anything to me if I’d walked out of there, which is what I told Zelenka. “I could have stopped it before it started,” I said.
“It is still wrong.” He sounded discouraged. “It was wrong ten years ago, and it is wrong now.”
“It’s most assuredly fucked up,” I said, and for some reason, that was enough to make both of us burst into laughter. After a few minutes, we calmed down long enough for me to say, “It’s okay, Dr. Zelenka. Really.”
“It’s not.”
“Maybe not for anyone else, but for me, for right now, it’s okay.”
“How can you say that?”
The answer bloomed clearly in my mind, and I told him, “Because I feel alive.”
~*~*~
I went back to the office the following Monday, clear-eyed and ready to work again. McKay gave me a long look when I got in, and whatever he saw must have been enough to reassure him. He nodded once and said, “I want to see your work no later than three o’clock this afternoon.”
“Sure thing,” I told him with a friendly smile. “And if there are any mistakes, I’ll count on you to point them out.”
He blinked a few times, and when my words sank in, his face softened into warmth and affection for a moment. He nodded once then started ranting about Samantha Carter’s most recent article. I let his words wash over me and found peace in his noise.