Chapter Text
“Hey guys! I know it’s been a few months, I’m sorry for the hiatus,” the slender, freckled young man spoke to his camera. The room behind him was nearly pitch black, save for moonlight bleeding in through the shattered windows. “It’s almost Halloween, I’m hoping to have this out in time for a - sort of surprise,” he smirked mischievously, his features illuminated by the blue glow of the camera's screen, flipped back to face the handler.
The freshman strolled around the dilapidated room, dirty and long forgotten, with old flipped furniture and garbage littering the space. “This is the remains of Paddlewhack Hall, a forgotten building on the Rosie Baugham University campus, lost to fire and mold but certainly not lost to history. These days, the building is known as a hookup spot, or somewhere to buy homework or weed. There’s been some conversation circulating that they'll be tearing Paddlewhack down next month, and I knew I had to take my chance to document the history of the place while I still could. Hope you guys enjoy the charm of this old place as much as I do.”
He cut the feed, using the light of the camera to guide his way toward the stairs. He liked to start in the basement during his explorations, so he could make sure he didn’t miss anything. Anything from forgotten patient files, to an entire car somehow left to rot in someone’s unfinished basement, there was more reason to look than to not. He just had to be mindful of the rotten floorboards giving way to a few holes near the stairs, where trespassers had fallen through. None of the holes were big enough for an entire person to fit though, so he was sure he could get by with some caution.
Pocketing the expensive camera, he pulled out his old broken iPhone and turned on the flashlight to better see the area in front of him. He eyed the broken glass lining the baseboards warily, mindful of the way he’d stupidly left his hoodie in his dorm, leaving him in a t-shirt and jeans. If Dane found out what he was up to, he was sure the whole campus would hear his screaming. He’d become a ghost story of his own. The freshman spanked to death by his own AP.
Starting in the farthest back room, freezing cold and pitch black, Jac switched his camera back on with shivering fingers, “So, the basement used to be used as bio labs. Very convenient with how close to the dorms Paddlewhack is, but as I’ll show you guys soon, there’s a good reason she’s out of commission.”
He took a breath, thinking back to the plan he’d made for the exploration - his mind accidentally wandering to the blatant lie he’d told Dane about where he’d be that night. There was no way he’d guess where the freshman was, there was no way anyone would guess, he had been careful about that. If anyone found out, he’d be liable to face the dean of discipline and - well, he’d rather avoid ever meeting her if at all possible. He was a good kid, honestly. He didn’t get in trouble much, but when he did…
Shaking the thoughts from his head, Jac popped into the hallway and turned the camera back on, “Paddlewhack has gone through a lot of uses over the years, but with these massive built-in tables, these basement rooms have always been biology or chemistry labs,” he showed the views into each room as he passed them, each slightly different from the one before, with all of the same big key items.
Wandering into the back bathroom, he pressed the door open, listening as the action slid more broken glass across the concrete floor. The bathroom was empty save for the glass and garbage littering the floor. An empty cinder block room, all of the stalls and toilets and sinks had been ripped out, with one remaining toilet smashed into pieces, still bolted to the floor.
The graffiti on this campus was already like none he had really seen much before. In place of giant spray paint dicks, there were colorful ass cheeks drawn on many of the walls. Some had stripes, or an impression of a glow to them, some were just the bare elements. Lines like ‘call here for a red ass’ followed by someone’s phone number written in sharpie, many, many renditions of ‘FAFO’ in various fonts and penmanships. Jac’s favorite happened to be on an expanse of brick close to the stairwell, someone had written “I will not write on the walls” in uniform lines, probably a hundred times, over and over, with a crude life-size outline of a person writing the lines spray painted to the right of it.
He stopped for a moment, centering a large art piece in the center hall in his frame. Full color flames, licking up either side of a traditional wooden paddle. It had to have taken hours. The raw emotion emanating off the piece made his heart lurch in his chest. Someone had clearly had an even harder time adjusting to the campus culture than he had.
Hiking back up the stairs, he made slow work of his steps, taking careful consideration to document everything he could. All the garbage, the needles, the graffiti, all of it were elements to the story the place was trying to tell him. He liked to think he had gotten good at listening.
“Depending on how familiar you are with the RBU campus, it may surprise you to find out a lot of the students here are on some sort of probation. They don’t wanna be here either, but like, it’s this or prison pretty much.” Jac found himself rambling to the camera, as he often did, as he panned over more graffiti along the lines of ‘resist tyranny’ and the initials of various different campus life houses. If he decided what he was saying was stupid later, he could always go back and delete it. One of the major perks to socializing via his YouTube versus trying to talk to people, in person, face to face with no delete button. The freshman had a lot on his mind, he just never knew what was right to share and what would earn him bewildered looks from his peers.
“There’s a lot of old artwork from - it looks like the 90s?” Jac mumbled, documenting the countless papers and flyers wallpapering the crumbling cork board. “‘Top Support Group’, 'Confederation of the Order of Switches’, just a bunch of old clubs. There’s one flyer here advertising a class that would’ve started the semester after the fire.”
He continued to stroll, sweeping the camera across either wall as he went. Many of the doors were locked, whatever was still open had been flipped or looted. As he climbed the building, the mess started to dissipate, and the walls quickly became covered in an ever-growing blanket of black spotting. He had no plans to linger, a quick in and out, so there would surely be little danger of contamination even though he didn’t bring a mask, “These upper rooms were extra dorm space by the time of the fire. Not every room was occupied, between five and seven students lived in the building at the time, depending on your source.”
Finally, he found the room he had been looking for. It was still taped off, with oddly pristine caution tape for being twenty years old. It was still yellow and legible, just coated in a layer of dust. He took the master key out of his pocket and carefully slipped it into the keyhole, coughing at the intense smell of smoke that was still burned into the wood of the room.
“I want to redact the name of the student, you can find it on Google if you look for the articles from the fire.” He took a steadying breath, thinking over the bullet points he’d loosely scripted the other night, “But, the student claimed he had been smoking in his dorm when the fire alarm went off, he panicked, and threw the joint away before going outside with the other students.”
The door creaked open, unused rusty hinges protested under the strain. The room was almost entirely charred black, with a burned bed frame in the opposite corner to the door, in front of a window with no glass. He could almost feel the heat of the fire if he stared long enough, feel the anguish and terror of that day when he touched his fingertips to the walls.
“A faculty member on campus claims otherwise, stating the student had just been sp-“ He hesitated. His subscribers could see what RBU was all about if they googled the school, but he didn’t have to outright say it, “stating the student had just been punished in class less than an hour before. She adamantly believed the fire had been started intentionally, even if it may have gotten bigger than the student intended.”
“Regardless of the reason, the fire was not the end of the chaos that day. Or the months that followed,” Jac sighed heavily, trying to release the stubborn weight on his chest. He stepped into the room, feeling the crackle of the char under his shoes, “Another student, in some attempt to - save the one responsible? No one is really sure why he did it - but he ran into the room just as the window had burst, engulfing the room in a sudden fireball.”
The freshman stepped in a slow circle, showing the entirety of the small traditional dorm room, “Nothing was the same after that, no one wanted to step foot in this building, so they never bothered to repair it. They never bothered to tear it down either, leaving it to rot for about a decade until a fresh wave of students with no connection to the tragedy took over the campus,”
Satisfied that he’d documented all there was to see, he took a seat in the ash on the floor, setting his backpack next to him. He pulled out a tripod for his camera, setting it up across from him while he positioned a tape recorder in the center of the frame, “Today, I’m hoping to speak with Travis Crane. I want to know more about that fateful day, possibly even provide solid answers as to why he went into the inferno to begin with.”
He pulled out a REM pod, a device alleged to light up when spirits came in contact with it, and set it next to the tape recorder. “This is session 1, take 1, location one of six-“ the heavy door slammed shut downstairs, the mechanism that prevented it from doing so having disintegrated long ago.
Jac's heart lurched into his throat. He was on the fourth floor; if anyone was coming to hang out, there was little chance they’d go past the second floor and no chance they’d go past the third. He crawled across the floor on his knees, quietly popping the door closed just to be safe. The side facing the hallway was pristine, with no indication as to what lay behind it other than the waves of smoke licking up from underneath the door, the inside however was charred black.
As the freshman made this realization, his knee broke through the burnt floor, trapping his leg up to his crotch in an awkward position beneath him, with the bottom of his shoe touching the seat of his pants. He braced his hands on the floorboards, as far as he could reach in an effort not to simply widen the hole and send him falling further down.
He pushed with all he had, barely lifting himself out of the hole at all. He dropped to his belly and tried to pull himself out as if he was stuck in the ice, but the tendons in his leg took instant and urgent protest of the motion, distracting him from using his full strength.
Breathing heavily, from both panic and exertion, he gave it one more shot and pushed himself straight up with all his might, until he was able to get his free leg under him and pull his damaged leg out. Collapsing onto the ground on his back, Jac let out a heavy, trembling breath. His leg was still screaming, but he was out of the hole.
He slid himself across the floor, careful of anymore dead spots in the wood as he made his way back to his bag. To say Dane was going to be pissed was putting it lightly, but he didn’t have a choice. He just hoped he wasn’t pulling the senior away from one of his cool parties, or his girlfriend.
With shaking hands, he pressed on Dane’s contact and let the phone ring. After a few beats, he realized he recognized the sound of a phone ringing somewhere on the floors below. Dane’s phone, to be specific. Fuck.
“Where are you?” Yeah, he sounded pretty pissed. Jac almost hung up.
“I'm uh, upstairs,” Jac whispered, adjusting himself on the floor, “In uh-“
“I know what building you’re in. Keep talking, I’m coming up,” the AP replied in a gruff voice. The freshman bit his tongue.
“I’m sorry.” Jac mumbled. He felt like such a jackass. He tried to stay out of trouble, but when his only real hobby required breaking and entering, it was unavoidable sometimes.
“Not as sorry as you’re gonna be.” Dane replied simply. Jac held his breath to keep from audibly whimpering. “Are you hurt?”
“A little,” He admitted, omitting the extent of his injuries. Nothing was broken, but he’d definitely pulled several somethings in his leg.
“What happened?” His AP’s voice came a little softer, still angry but with a stronger blend of concern.
“I-“ Jac hesitated, rolling his eyes as he braced himself for Dane's reaction, “Fell through the floor.” He didn’t know if the silence on the other end should be concerning or relieving, but it made his heart rate kick up a bit.
“For real? Like, through the floor?” Dane reiterated, fury bleeding back into his voice.
Jac swallowed, “Just my leg!”
“I’m spanking you with my belt,”
“Dane!”
“No- I told you! I told you to stop breaking into these buildings, to /stay away/ from Paddlewhack - and where did you go?” His AP’s voice crackled over the phone as he went deeper into the building.
Jac’s ass ached preemptively, tingling where he sat on the burned wood, “Dane, I’m sorry-“
“You better hope Patrick is gone, because I’m not kicking him out either,” the senior promised. Jac could faintly hear Dane approaching up the stairwell, his voice coming through the speakers on the phone on a slight delay, "I'm sure your roommate wouldn’t mind a little one-on-one top tutoring.”
Jac rolled his eyes, praying to anyone listening that Patrick wasn’t home.
“Let me guess, you’re in the room that’s caution taped off?” Dane was on the fourth floor now, just down the hall, “Maybe I need to have you moved into my dorm. You’re lucky TATL went off, or you’d be stuck here all night. My friends and I were supposed to be two towns over by nine.” The door creaked open, and Jac took in the giant form of his AP standing in the doorway. His features were barely recognizable in the dim light.
“Dane, I’m sorry,” Jac felt close to tears. Forget the fact he was about to have his ass blistered by the other student - Dane was mad at him. Jac had never come by friends easily, and he just wanted his AP to like him so badly. He was so cool, and everyone loved him. He had a massive friend group, and a girlfriend, and a tight-knit family that took yearly ski trips, and Jac was just - he was alone. Just like he always had been. College didn’t change anything. “I’m so sorry.”
The older boy ignored him, stepping into the room and offering a hand to him, “Can you stand?”
Jac shook his head, grabbing Dane’s forearm and using the leverage to pull himself to his feet, letting the senior wrap an arm around his back and under his far arm.
“Do you care if I pick you up?” Dane asked.
Jac felt so fucking stupid, “You don’t have to.”
“How else are you getting out of here?” The senior asked rhetorically, even as he scooped Jac’s legs up in his other arm, offering a quiet apology when the jostling shot daggers down the younger boys leg.
“I’m sorry,” Jac’s arms found their way around the senior’s neck, holding himself up against his AP’s chest.
“If you apologize again, I’m washing your mouth out, too.” Dane shook his head in a display of annoyance, “what’s done is done. You’re getting spanked, that’s that.”
“I’m not trying to get out of it,” a sob broke through his pleas. Did Dane really think he was being insincere? “I’m sorry you had to come get me, I’m sorry you’re missing out on time with your friends, I’m sorry I’m so much of an antisocial freak that you feel the need to cart me around with your friends like a foster dog-“
Dane dropped Jac’s feet to the floor and laid a short series of hard smacks across the dusty seat of his jeans, making sure to brace him with an arm across his chest so he didn’t lose balance, “I don’t want to hear it,” his AP scolded him, “You are worth it, okay? I don’t care about a trip - and you wanna know where my friends are? They’re in the car, outside, waiting for you-“ when Jac opened his mouth to apologize again, Dane put a finger up, “Because they wanted to know you were okay, too. Because they’re *your* friends too.”
Jac had goosebumps over his arms and neck, but Dane didn’t say anything, “You don’t need to pretend you want to hang out with me.” The freshman replied quietly.
“No one is pretending. What would we get out of that?”
“I don’t- I don’t know,” He faltered, “you’re my AP, you have to like me.”
“That’s definitely not true, I could’ve requested a new AP if I didn’t like you…” Dane thought for a minute, “If you don't like me, you could request one too. Just so you know.”
“I don’t want a new AP!” Jac interjected quickly.
Dane smirked, not unkindly, “Good. I don’t either.” He picked his AP back up and headed to the stairwell, “Let’s get you home. You can sleep at my dorm tonight.”
“Why?” Jac asked warily, “Wait! My stuff!”
“I’ll come back for it after I drop you in the car,” Dane’s smirk shifted into something else, “I think we’ll get you cleaned up tonight and start your day off right tomorrow.” Suddenly, the top gasped, nearly dropping Jac, “Do you want to come with us tomorrow?”
“After you belt me?” Jac replied in a small voice.
“I won’t belt you. I’m gonna paddle you for sure, but I won’t belt you this time.” Dane shook his head, approaching the front doors of the building and kicking them open, “If I catch you doing anything like this again, I’ll belt you *before* I take you home for a spanking.”
“That’s not fair-“ Jac started to argue.
“Zip it,” Dane dropped him on the hood of the car, “Abby, can you come look at his leg?”
Jac’s face went red as Abby, Dane’s high school sweetheart, climbed out of the front seat with a worried expression. She was only in her first year of the nursing program, but her family had all been doctors going back generations.
Jac shook his head, but Dane pinned him in place with a silent look, “no, it’s fine,” the freshman objected quietly.
“Kid, I’m taking you to the wellness center Monday. We just need to know if you need to go to the ER tomorrow.” Dane shook his head, putting a firm hand on his shoulder.
“It’s, like,” he gestured to the crease of his thigh and crotch, where his jeans were visibly shredded from the jagged wood and nails.
“It’s okay, she won’t care.” Dane assured him, “RBU isn’t exactly the place for modesty, we’ve all seen it,”
“Dane,” Jac begged quietly, pleading to his AP with wide eyes.
The senior watched him for a long moment, eventually gesturing to Abby to get back in the car, “Fine, but I’m looking at it when we get back. If I think it looks bad enough, I’m taking you in.” Dane picked him back up and took him around to the back seat, waiting for the senior’s two friends to scoot over before he was finally placed down on his feet, “Change of plans guys, movie night at my place. We’ll leave in the morning.”
— . — . —
“Get in the shower, I’ll leave some pajamas on the toilet seat for you.” Dane instructed, helping Jac limp to the bathroom, “Oh, give me your phone.”
With a wary look, he handed his phone over - gawking when the senior slipped it into his pocket, "This is mine for the rest of the night. You can have it back after your spanking in the morning. I’m taking your camera from your bag too.”
“That’s not fair!” Jac exclaimed, reaching for the AP’s hand, “You can’t take my stuff!”
Dane took a big step back, “Get in the shower, let me know when you’re done so I can come look at your leg.”
Jac shut the door a little harder than he intended to, silently cursing the top behind the closed door as he stripped his dirty clothes. The apartment dorm his AP shared with his friends was fancy, with two well lit private bathrooms in each unit. The front and back of his upper thigh was already purple and blue, bleeding out across his groin under the skin, with a clear half ring of red and blue around the top of his ankle. His knee was tender, but not visibly swollen or bruised. Maybe he was going to avoid a spanking after all, it looked about as bad as it felt.
Surprisingly, the skin didn’t appear broken, just a lot of internal damage. He’d had his tetanus booster before he came to school, but he was still glad he didn’t need stitches.
Jac tenderly climbed into the shower, letting the hot water run over him and turn black from grime as it rushed down the drain. He didn’t believe Dane, what the AP had said about genuinely liking him as a friend. He’d had friends before, of course, just, a long time ago. No one as charismatic as Dane, no one who’d had options. Especially not since high school.
The door popped open at some point during his shower, just long enough for Dane to throw some folded up pajamas and a towel onto the closed toilet seat lid.
With a heavy sigh, Jac twisted the water off and slipped into the senior’s pajamas after drying himself off. Everything smelled so much like Dane, it was bizarre. He was practically swimming in the athletes' clothes, a good few sizes larger than his own.
“Dane,” Jac opened the door and called out into the hallway, consciously too quiet for the group to hear, but miraculously the giant senior still thundered down the hallway and slipped into the bathroom with him.
“Alright, pants down,” Dane nodded his head to Jac’s crotch.
“You really don’t need to, no skin broke or anything-“
“I’m going to see it in the morning, so you might as well let me take a look now.” Dane leveled with him, offering the freshman a humorless smile.
With an eye roll, Jac looked to stare at the shower curtain as he pulled his waist band down to mid-thigh, letting Dane get a good eyeful.
“Definitely looks like you pulled something,” The senior sighed, “No broken skin though,” Dane thoughtlessly pressed his index fingers against Jac’s flesh, pulling the skin near his crotch taunt to see the extent of the damage down the crease of his thigh. The strain hurt, irritating the reddened flesh and pressing down into the bruised muscle. Neither of them acknowledged the way Jac’s dick twitched, threatening to stiffen under the senior's attentive gaze.
They both held for a moment, neither wanting to be the one to break the scene.
All at once, Dane sat up and coughed into his fist and Jac pulled his pants back up, “Go sit on the couch. Frank is threatening to put on The Avengers if we can’t find anything else.”