These characters are my own, which is unusual for me because when I write, it's usually fanfiction. You can find doodles of them in my earlier blog posts.
Rating: T
Pairing: Emma Brisbois/Dev Kaplan, platonic
Spanking: F/F
Words: 5,300+
***
Vienna Waits For You
I wish I could just find something that could get through to this girl, Emma thought, but she wasn’t holding her breath. She was looking at Dev after she’d gone through the breakfast line in the cafeteria, her once good mood crashing straight through the floor. Dev was sitting in the same spot Emma had left her last night, poring over a bunch of books and papers which were threatening to spill off the table at any moment. Emma might have given her the benefit of the doubt, might have thought she'd just woken up early to study, if she didn't have a tall stack of used paper coffee cups sitting across from her. When she walked closer, the bags under Dev's eyes and the harried look as she scrawled notes only confirmed her suspicions.
Dev Kaplan had come crashing into her life like a bull in a china shop over four months ago, and Emma had been stuck with her ever since. It started simply enough - Emma had found Dev one morning, delirious with sleeplessness and laying about on one of the footpaths on campus, and ushered the Sophomore back to her dorm room and ordered her to sleep. Emma was just making sure she didn't cause trouble for any other students, but Dev had spent the next few days incessantly hounding her, wanting to get inside her head and wanting to know most of all why Emma was so straightlaced and why in the world didn't she ever have any fun?
Dev was everything Emma was not: Loud, boisterous, and chaotic. That made her fairly popular around school, another trait she did not share with Emma. After Emma's Freshman year at Oregon City Institute of the Arts, she mostly kept to herself and slowly found everyone around her pulling away. She wouldn't call herself lonely, though. She enjoyed solitude. Dev, on the other hand, was a people person to the first degree and seemingly collected people wherever she went, just on the merits of existing in that space and being herself. They flocked to her as naturally as birds did to trees. Emma didn't understand it and she suspected she never would.
Perhaps the only trait Dev and Emma did share was perfectionism. It was almost a must for their school, which was considerably difficult to get into, no matter your area of study. Emma controlled her perfectionism, harnessing it into self-discipline strictly applied to every area of her life. She slept at precisely the same time each night, studied hard in all of her academics classes, and practiced alone during studio time until her feet were numb. Dev's perfectionism presented in much the same way all of her other personality traits did: obnoxiously and eccentrically. She would stay up for three days, barely feeding herself, to focus on a single painting. She would buy endless books with money she didn't really have, to study arts principles she was already taking classes in. She turned in late nearly every single assignment she was given, not because it was difficult for her but because she would obsessively check over her work to make sure it was exactly right.
It was this total lack of self preservation that made Emma agree to Dev's proposal when they were first getting to know each other. Dev was determined to teach Emma how to have fun, and Emma would in return advise Dev on how to take care of herself. Dev agreed readily to that, not having any idea how seriously Emma would take her task. Dev mostly expected for Emma to tell her what to do and leave it at that, but Emma got fully into her business and either made her do the things she asked of her, or taught her how to do them. Dev was an extra project and, really, a friend that Emma found herself enjoying a lot.
Emma set her tray down on a stack of Dev’s papers, considering there was no clear spot on the table. Dev looked up to protest, but her gripe was cut short when she saw the look in Emma's eyes. Emma could sure be stern when she wanted to be, and it cowed Dev a little. She held up one hand.
"I know what you're going to say," she started, talking a bit slower than usual with obvious exhaustion. "But Em, it's midterms. Midterms are coming up and I have all this math to do," she said, gesturing at the table. Emma picked up papers randomly, quirking an eyebrow.
"Oh really? I guess you also have all this english to do, and all this science and all this history." She cut a sharp look at Dev, taking in once more her wild curly hair, spilling out of a ponytail after probably having run her hands through it all night. "None of these papers are even finished, Kaplan."
"I know that," Dev said irritably. "What do you think I'm doing here?"
"I think you've spent the night racing to do all this studying which you could have done just fine today, during your free time. I think you've been up all night starting papers, fizzling out on them because you're too tired to be doing this, and going on to the next one. This isn't good studying and you're not even going to retain any of this. On top of that, you're going to eventually get some sleep, read over these, and realize they're terrible because you did them when you were like this." Emma gestured at Dev for effect.
Dev snatched the few papers out of Emma's hands and slapped them back onto a pile somewhere on the left side of the table.
"You don't even need to cram like this, Kaplan," Emma sighed, leaning over and gently closing the heavy textbook resting just in front of Dev. "You study just fine for your academics classes, you nearly always get As on tests, and when you manage to turn things in on time you get good marks on those, too. I don't understand all of this."
"But I do have to cram," Dev insisted. "It's midterms. I have midterms for all of these classes in the next two days," Dev said, a whine creeping into her voice.
"That's not how that works when you study regularly. That's what the rest of these yahoos do because they ignore their academics in favor of their arts classes," Emma said, gesturing to the greater cafeteria where a disproportionate amount of students were also reading or scribbling on papers and ignoring their breakfasts. "The only thing that's going to make you do badly is if you keep pulling all-nighters and you're too tired to think by the time the tests roll around."
Emma cut into her egg white omelet, which had gone cold over the course of their arguing, and took the first bite to give herself a moment to think while she chewed.
In the moment of quiet afforded to her, Dev had reopened her history textbook and was scanning the pages in a haze. Emma really doubted she was reading any of it at all.
"I'm going to finish my breakfast," Emma said finally. "And I suggest you go get something to eat as well. When we're done, you're going back to your dorm and going to sleep," she said, her tone entirely non-negotiable. "And no, I really don't care that sleeping now would make you miss your oils class, so don't even try to argue with me."
Dev looked up at her, scowling. It was half-hearted and that only made her look entirely more burnt out.
"Well?" Emma prompted. "What are you waiting for? Go get something to eat," she ordered, pointing at the breakfast line with her fork. Dev shot up angrily, a mess of papers falling to the floor as she turned and stalked off to do what she was told. Emma sat at the table, waiting for Dev and running her hand over her hair, smoothing what was already perfectly in place in her severe bun.
Both Emma's parents were military, with high-ranking and successful careers, and she knew how either one of them would have dealt with her or her three brothers behaving in such a way. Sometimes, Emma felt like Dev's friend: a normal friend, who hung out and chatted with her. But sometimes Emma felt responsible for her, and it almost worried Emma how often she found herself wondering how her parents would handle a girl like Dev Kaplan. Even growing up on army bases all over the place, Emma noticed that her parents were stricter than most. Her and her brothers would never have dreamt of doing something as stupid as staying up when they weren't supposed to, or turning in school assignments late - but when the rare snotty attitude cropped up, someone usually found themselves bent over the back of the couch getting their backside tanned.
Maybe that was the right course. Emma certainly cared about Dev, that much was for sure. She didn't like watching the girl needlessly self destruct, and, Emma being a senior, she wouldn't be here next year to help Dev take care of herself. That worried her more than anything.
Dev sat back down, a tray of pancakes in hand, and did a very good impression of a five-year-old sulking while she ate. She pointedly ignored Emma's eyes boring into her. Dev was very used to Emma studying her by now.
"We're not going out tonight," Emma finally said after a pregnant pause. "I want you to come to my room tonight instead."
The first half of her sentence infuriated Dev. They had an agreement, and Fridays and Saturdays were her nights to finally get to boss Emma around and get her to open up a little. However, she could think of plenty of fun things to do alone in Emma's room, and wondered if Emma was coming on to her. Her interest was piqued.
"Oh?" was all she answered, and Emma nodded.
"Yes. You and I need to talk. You've been slacking off on taking care of yourself a lot lately, and you're breaking our agreement, so I'm breaking it, too. We're not going to have fun tonight, we're going to have a heart-to-heart."
Well. That idea was squashed, and Dev was in a bad mood again. The girls finished their breakfasts and Emma bussed their trays while Dev collected her things, feeling very sour about the whole situation.
***
The walk back to the Sophomore dorm seemed interminable to Dev. Her feet dragged, her breathing was slow, and her rucksack was full of books and assignments that suddenly seemed to weigh as much as boulders to her. She entertained the idea that maybe she was really as tired as Emma told her she was, but never would she admit such a thing.
Emma, for her part, was simply glad to find Dev’s roommate gone when she opened the door. The last thing she wanted to deal with was Lauren. That girl was bad-tempered on her best days, and even more so when Emma woke her up by dragging Dev in early in the mornings.
Dev seemed to melt into her desk chair, and her bag slumped from her arm to the floor in a great heap.
“Up,” Emma ordered shortly, snapping her fingers at Dev. “Pajamas, then bed.”
Dev didn’t even have the energy to look angry, and Emma watched as she changed and then wilted like a week-old flower onto her bunk. Emma pulled the covers up over her.
“If you wake up before three, just go right back to sleep,” Emma instructed, her voice softening a little in the wake of Dev’s ever more obvious exhaustion. “Got it, Kaplan?”
Dev nodded, and Emma was satisfied enough to leave the room and turn the lights out. She had to go get ready for her own classes, and after that she had a little planning to do.
***
Dev blearily blinked her eyes open and breathed deeply. She looked around, feeling very disoriented. She felt like she was meant to be doing something… Studying? Or sleeping? She couldn’t even tell anymore.
She threw off her blankets, which felt damp and clingy after sleeping in them in the stale air of college dorm heaters. After sitting up and staring at her alarm clock a while, her faculties had returned enough for her to start remembering last night and this morning. She groaned, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
Emma was so ticked off at her! Dev hated upsetting Emma. It had taken her quite a bit of finagling to get into her good graces in the first place, which was wholly unsurprising. Emma was a senior, a very aloof and private girl who had always seemed very sophisticated and unforgiving in Dev’s eyes. When they’d struck up an agreement to help each other, Dev had been ecstatic. It was one thing to get some kids in her classes to like her and hang out with her, they were all forced to be together all the time - it was entirely another to get someone like Emma to voluntarily spend time with her. She wasn’t sure why Emma seemed so keen on getting her to take care of herself, because Dev figured that was her own business, but if that was the price she paid? So be it.
Well, the price was a lot worse than she’d expected when she let Emma down. She’d been subjected to lectures the likes of which she had really never experienced before, both her parents having been bohemian types who tended to let Dev do whatever she liked. It was unusual and uncomfortable having anyone hold her really accountable, and care about how she was doing in that regard.
The door to Dev’s dorm opened, and she fully expected it to be Lauren. When Emma walked in, Dev bit the inside of her cheek.
“Hey,” she mumbled, reaching up to run her hand through her hair. It snagged on her hair tie, which was on its last legs, and Dev tugged it out of the curls.
“Hey, Kaplan,” Emma sighed. She watched Dev fidget with her hair for a moment more, then picked up her rucksack where it had landed on the floor earlier that day and had not been moved since. She threw it over her free shoulder, the other one being occupied by her own gym bag, and she nodded at the door. “Get some shoes on and don’t bother to change. We’re going to my room now.”
Dev seriously considered arguing. She had plenty of better things to do than go and get yelled at for a while. But the last thing she wanted to do was disappoint Emma any further, or continue to break their agreement.
She shoved her feet into her Vans and pulled on the hoodie that had been slung over the back of her desk chair, then followed Emma out of the room. ‘
“Why are you bringing my stuff?” she asked after a moment of silent walking.
“Because you’ll be staying over in my room tonight,” Emma answered simply. Dev didn’t remember agreeing to that, but she wasn’t about to contest it. She wanted to simply let Emma be angry, get through it as quickly as possible, and get things back to normal.
Sunset was just creeping up on them as they walked through campus grounds, avoiding deep puddles and muddy patches of grass from what was obviously a heavy rain earlier. Winter here didn’t usually afford snow, but the rain was cold and plentiful. It smelled lovely to Dev, and she wished she could stay outside just a little longer, but Emma was not quite so fond of the Oregon weather and she ushered Dev through to her dorm at a fast pace.
Dev was quick to remove her shoes once in the confines of Emma’s room. Emma was very neat and orderly and would have been quite incensed if she walked through the room in wet shoes, though Dev did that in her own room all the time.
Emma went about putting things away wordlessly. She was a little more nervous than she cared to let on to Dev, and when she was nervous she cleaned. Ballet shoes got put into her closet and sweat-soaked towels and leotards into her hamper. When her bag was hung on its hook on the back side of her door, she turned and looked at Dev, who was fidgeting and restless, herself.
“Okay.” Emma’s voice was a knife, cutting through the palpable tension in the room. “Kaplan, I’m not going to yell at you. Not today,” she said, and Dev looked at her with considerable confusion, her brow crinkling.
“You’re not?” she asked, not quite convinced.
“No, I’m not,” Emma confirmed, smoothing her already wrinkle-free skirt over her thighs. “Talking, yelling, planning, advising… None of it has quite worked yet. Not on your most prevalent problems. That’s why I want to try something different, and a little unorthodox,” she said, adopting a more serious tone.
Dev looked at her blankly, wondering what else there was supposed to be. Emma’s arsenal of ways to get her to take care of herself already seemed intimidating enough to her.
Emma closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“What I’m trying to say, Kaplan, is that I think you would benefit from more structure. I’ve been trying to help you as a friend, mostly hands off--” she was interrupted by Dev scoffing. Emma’s meddling didn’t feel so ‘hands off’ to her at all. Emma went on as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “--But I think it’s time to step it up a level. I’m going to give you a choice, Kaplan. One, you can either take a punishment from me, which will include a spanking with my hand and a hairbrush; or two, we can terminate our agreement and be more like regular friends. I’m leaving this entirely up to you. All I know is, I can’t help you with what I’m doing currently, and you can’t help yourself if you don’t take me seriously.”
Dev's heart was beating fast after Emma wrapped up her speech, and she entertained the idea that Emma looked a little nervous. It was nothing compared to what Dev was going through. She really couldn’t believe Emma’s suggestion was serious. To her, the idea of spanking was something seen in old movies or comic books, not exactly anything to do with real life. But Emma was very serious. Emma was always serious, it was simply her nature.
She considered the other option, and found that one even less pleasant. While she didn’t enjoy Emma nagging her every five minutes and telling her what to do all the time, she did enjoy getting Emma out of her comfort zone and getting her out a little more. She enjoyed Emma, period. And she felt if they ended their agreement, Emma would have less reason to seek her out quite so often. They would probably be a lot less close, and Dev didn’t want that at all, even if ‘close’ meant ‘irritating’ sometimes.
“Will it hurt a lot?” Dev asked finally, lifting her eyes to meet Emma’s.
Emma let go of the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding, and nodded. “Yes, it will hurt a lot. You’ll very likely still feel sore tomorrow when you’re sitting. You’ll probably cry.” Emma was trying to be as candid and blunt as possible. She knew the nature of Dev’s hippie parents and wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting into, as much as she possibly could know without having experienced it.
Dev’s eyes darted to her rucksack, then back to Emma. “What about after?”
“Let me walk you through this,” Emma said, getting more into her element as a guide to Dev. She had been for a while now, and it was a comfortable role to her. She sat down on the bed and patted the spot beside her, and Dev didn’t hesitate to sit next to her. At least she wasn’t scared of her, Emma was very glad of that.
“If you agree, you’ll lay over my knee. I’ll spank you with my hand first--”
“What about my clothes?” Dev interrupted, biting her lip.
“I’ll pull down your pajama bottoms and your underwear,” Emma answered immediately. “I’m not about to spank you without seeing what I’m doing.”
Dev’s face heated up considerably. The idea embarrassed her, but she guessed she could see the point to that. She nodded for Emma to go on.
“I’ll start with my hand,” she reiterated. “And once I’m satisfied, I’ll use the hairbrush to end things as a deterrent to you staying up so late next time.”
“Once you’re satisfied?” Dev asked, shaking her head. “What does that mean?”
Emma shrugged. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she knew from her own experience that there was a point in a spanking where you were done, when you’d gotten the point and you’d given up. But she wasn’t sure how to articulate that. Emma wasn’t the best with feelings, that was Dev’s territory.
“You’ll just have to see,” was the best answer she could give. “After I’ve spanked you, you and I can talk about it, and about how you can avoid it happening again in the future - or if it’s even something we think we should consider for the future.”
Dev weighed her options, falling silent for once. It wasn’t a state Emma saw her in very often, and she could see the cogs turning in Dev’s head.
“Fine,” Dev said, nodding. “I’ll do it. I trust you.”
Those three little words alleviated a lot of Emma’s nerves. She had been so worried Dev would see her as some kind of sadist who just wanted to hurt her for her own pleasure, or an abuser who would look for any little reason to hit her. But Dev trusted her, and Emma would treat that trust like the solemn privilege she knew it was.
Emma sat up straight and squared her shoulders, and Dev felt rather small and childish even sitting next to her tall and elegant friend when she looked so imposing.
“Alright, then. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it. My hairbrush is on the righthand side of my desk, in the middle drawer. Bring it to me.”
It was almost surreal, Dev thought, to hear those words from Emma and know she was going to be spanked. A sheen of sweat surfaced down her back, and she walked over as if in a haze. Then she was once again standing before Emma, and Emma took the implement from her and set it behind herself to use later.
To make things a little easier on Dev, she simply pulled the girl over her knee. Emma didn’t waste any time making a big show out of disrobing her, instead pulling down her flannel pajama pants and her lacy underwear matter-of-factly.
As quick as the whole process was, It still had an effect on Dev. She could feel Emma’s strong thighs beneath her tummy, and her bottom was suddenly bare… When did Emma’s room get so cold? Her heart thundered in her ears so loudly she almost didn’t hear the first sharp slap hit her skin. She sure felt it, though.
Emma faltered a little when Dev whimpered at the first swat, but she reminded herself that there was definitely going to be more of that to come. She was doing this to help Dev, and she had to be strong about it.
She smacked Dev’s left cheek first, then her right, in approximately the same spot. Then she kept going in a rhythm just like that, swatting the very middle of Dev’s cheeks for a while before moving a little lower.
Dev was already squirming a little, and whimpering, but most of it was just out of pure shock that this was happening at all. She moved a little harder and protested a little louder when it really started to sting, though, and she found it much harder to stay at all composed when Emma swatted the same place over and over again. Her skin was really starting to sting and she wriggled more than she really intended to.
Emma was expecting that, though, and she secured her free arm around Dev’s waist, angling herself to get a better aim. Her own hand was feeling the burn, so she was sure Dev was having a much rougher time of things.
Dev grunted, scrambling for purchase and finally coming to rest with one hand grabbing Emma’s ankle and the other fisted in the bedspread.
“Em,” she said, voice finally breaking through the jarring sound of the smacking echoing off the walls in the room. “Em, please, don’t you think this is enough?” she asked.
“No,” Emma said, shaking her head. “I decide when we’re through here, Kaplan, and we’re not even halfway done."
Dev was filled with a new sense of dread, and she stared at the carpet and tried to block out the stinging pain in her rear, which was slowly morphing into a steady burn even in the spots were Emma wasn’t currently swatting.
Emma covered her territory thoroughly, reddening every inch of Dev’s cheeks and dipping down onto her lower thighs as well. It was harder work than she had expected it to be, and she had a new appreciation for the times her father had threatened her and her brothers that he would ‘wear his arm out’ spanking them.
Dev’s eyes started to water a little, and she blinked back tears as they threatened to fall. Her legs kicked seemingly of their own volition, as she was hardly aware of them. Suddenly, Emma stopped swatting altogether and Dev heaved a sigh of relief. It was short lived.
“I’m going to use the hairbrush now,” Emma warned her, and Dev didn’t try to fight it anymore. She let her head drop and she let the tears fall. This spanking was totally endless to her and it felt as if Emma would never let up on setting her bottom alight.
Emma was a bit distraught over Dev’s sudden opening of the floodgates, but she supposed it was all part of the process. She adjusted Dev’s position once more and started with medium force swats, paying special attention to Dev’s sit spots. She was well warmed up, so now it was time to instill a little more long-lasting discipline. It was during these that the talkative girl Emma was so familiar with seemed to emerge, and she babbled over and over again about how sorry she was and how much she wished Emma would stop.
By the time it was over, Dev was a kicking, crying, disheveled mess over Emma’s knee, and Emma felt a good deal of sympathy for her. She laid the hairbrush aside and gently rubbed Dev’s brilliantly red skin.
“It’s over?” Dev asked, her throat thick with emotion and tears.
“Yeah, Kaplan, it’s over,” Emma said, her voice gentler than Dev had heard it all day. Dev’s tense muscles finally released somewhat, and she let Emma guide her onto the bed on her tummy. She hugged Emma’s pillow with one arm, crying into it, and used her free hand to rub her behind. It didn’t seem to help much at first.
Emma went ahead and laid down beside her, snuggling close rubbing her back. That calmed Dev somewhat.
“Do you know why I get so frustrated with you?” she asked after a moment, sighing.
Dev shook her head into the pillow.
“It’s because I really want you to be kind to yourself. You deserve it,” Emma said seriously. “And as much as I’d like to say I will be here for you forever, that’s not true. We both know that. I’m a senior, and I’ll be trying to get my career off the ground in less than a year. You have to learn how to help yourself. I’m really not yelling at you and bossing you around for my own amusement, I promise.”
“Will you still come see me, though?” Dev asked, dismayed and upset all over again at the thought of her friend disappearing so soon. Dev didn’t like to think about it, but Emma was right. She’d known all along that they wouldn’t have much time together here.
“Of course,” Emma said, nodding. “You know better than anyone that I really don’t have a copacetic relationship with much of my family. I’d love to use my breaks to come see you.” She moved on from Dev’s back and carded her hand through her hair, her fingers catching in a few knotted curls here and there. “But just because I’m going to come back here and see you, and maybe knock some sense into you if you need it, that doesn’t mean I enjoy or approve of watching you self destruct, for absolutely no reason,” she said, her tone stern once more.
Dev heaved a shuddering breath and nodded. She could understand that, much as she didn’t wish to admit it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to worry you. I just want to get As on my midterms.”
“Dev,” Emma said, her first name spilling from her lips as a frustrated breath. “You don’t need to run yourself ragged to do that. You’re smart and you already study hard. I’ve seen your reports, and you know what? You can do really, really well. You know that. When have your student reports been the most outstanding?” she asked, expectantly awaiting an answer.
“When I’m doing what you tell me?” Dev answered, sniffling through her words.
“Right. And since we’ve known each other, sometimes those reports look pretty awful. They’re the aftermath of the days when you didn’t sleep for three days straight, or got so drunk that you were too hungover to go to any of your classes, or not sleeping. We’ve talked about this one a lot, haven’t we?” she asked.
Dev frowned sullenly into the pillow. But she nodded.
“I guess we have. I didn’t realize.” She let her eyes drift closed and Emma noticed her breathing slowing. “I’ll try harder,” Dev sighed finally, her speech a little slurred with sleep deprivation. “I really will. I’ve been trying to do what you tell me to do, because of our agreement and just because I don’t like it when you’re angry at me. But I’ll start trying for real, so you don’t have to worry about me when you’re gone.”
“It’s not really about me,” Emma reminded her in low tones, reaching up and brushing a few stray tears off Dev’s freckled cheeks. “It’s about you, doing what’s best for yourself. That’s all. Okay? I don’t want you to be more concerned with worrying me or making me angry than you are with taking care of yourself. I want that to be your primary concern.”
Dev was already mostly asleep and Emma knew she wasn’t getting an answer out of her at the moment, but this was a conversation that could easily be had tomorrow morning instead.
She got up and got into pajamas, herself, then turned out the lights and climbed into bed beside Dev.
Emma really did care about Dev a lot, and that scared her a fair bit. She was used to being alone and only having to look out for her own interests, so this was uncharted territory for her. But she thought it was probably good territory to explore, anyway. ‘
She whispered goodnight, and was answered only with soft breaths. The events of the day seemed to sweep over her like a wave, and before she knew it, she was deeply in sleep right alongside Dev. As taxing as it had been on both of them, Emma had found a way to make her wish come true.
