Two Hundred Dollars

Kent busied himself unpacking all the boxes he'd moved in earlier in the morning. He had just about filled his low-rent, low budget basement apartment and had started re-organizing things once he'd returned the moving van. The timing on those things always ran tight and no way did a guy on his budget ever want to run overtime.

With a bit of time now available, he could unpack. His desk, which consisted of a piece of thick plywood he'd run a router and sander around the edge of, braced over a pair of three foot high speakers, had gone up first. The whiteboard, source of his organizing power, went up on the wall next to the door, so he could always see what he had on slate for the day on his way out. After that, he had only bed sheets, clothes and books to take care of.

In the middle of making some of the connections for his PC, Kent saw his housemate Bailey in pass by his door, hauling a box of her stuff to her room down the hallway to the right.

"Hey, Bailey," he called.

"Hey, Kent," she gasped as she lugged a large box.

"Need help?"

"Naw, my dad's here."

"We got it, son," an older man's voice echoed down the hall from the left, followed shortly thereafter by the old man himself, lugging another, larger box.

"Alright."

Considering it polite to do so, Kent didn't mention his issues with Bailey until she and her dad had finished moving their goods.

"I'll get the van turned around," her father called out.

"Okay," Bailey called back. "I just need to use the washroom."

Kent, by that point mostly unpacked, waited until Bailey came out of the washroom and was on her way out. He didn't want to mention money in the presence of her father. He really had no way of knowing how she handled that whole situation with her family.

When she came out of the washroom, directly across the hall from his room, he flagged her down.

"You know you still me owe me two hundred bucks from last semester, right?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"From when?" Bailey's eyes widened in surprise as she moved to his left toward the stairway.

"I paid the electrical and heating bills to the landlord in May?" he reminded her as he rolled his chair to threshold of his bedroom. "It was 940 for the four of us. Sam and Taylor already paid me their share, but you could only pay me thirty-five. It's just you -- and it's September?"

He stuck his head out into the hallway as she turned up the stairway.

She ducked her head back into the hall and said, "I don't have cash right now, but I can get it to you later, okay?"

"How much later? I've been waiting months, right?"

"Yeah, sure," she said, sweeping her short, red hair back past her ear. She disappeared up the stairs, calling back, "I just need to hit the bank."

Kent had never felt comfortable asking people for money, even when they owed him, and their other two housemates from the previous year had paid up promptly. Only Bailey had needed reminding.

When he thought about it later, however, he realized she had no need to visit a "bank". Bailey could easily email him the money instead of using cash. That didn't occur to him, however, until much, much later.

Two weeks passed before Kent felt comfortable mentioning it again. He left his bedroom door open that mid-September Friday night, knowing she'd come back in the evening before heading out to some party or other, and he could hit her up then. By the time he heard the exterior door to the basement stairway open, he'd started his second beer.

"Bailey?" he said as he heard her coming down.

"Yo?"

Kent stayed in his seat while he spoke, not wanting to be a prick about it and loom over her.

."I don't want to bug you too much, but can you start paying me back the money you owe me?"

"Oh, that," Bailey looked uncomfortable as she stopped and leaned a shoulder against his door frame. Her cheeks had gone rosy red, perhaps into her second or third drink. "Yeah. About that."

"Look," he prodded hesitantly, "If you can just pay me twenty back at a time or something, that's fine."

He hadn't chosen the number at random. Kent figured she had to have at least twenty on her, since she looked like she planned to go out -- the tight blue jeans and mid-riff baring black shirt suggested it.

"But I was going to use it -", she stammered to a stop and exhaled in frustration. "I only have twenty bucks until I get my next grant."

While Kent worked a summer co-op and did lawn care in the evenings to pay his way through school, not everyone did. When it came to grants, scholarships and student loans, a lot of organizations doled them out in small portions to make sure the less responsible students didn't blow it all at once.

Kent sighed as Bailey tried to look apologetic. She jogged her head side to side, as if trying to think of how to say something she didn't want to say.

"Okay," she spoke finally, "do you remember last year, when we were drinking and fighting over what to watch on Netflix on that big TV you brought?"

"Vaguely. It is my TV."

"I tried to grab the remote, right?"

He remembered the occasion pretty well, but he let her keep talking.

"Then you moved it away from me, near the TV, so I couldn't reach it," she went. "And we started kinda, wrestling? And I tried to lunge over top of you."

"And I caught you and picked you up, threw you back on the couch," he added.

"And I tried again," she pointed out. "And you picked me up again and..."

She trailed off.

"And I slapped you on the butt."

"You spanked me," she clarified, folding her arms.

There was a long pause as they looked at each other. Bailey held an expectant look in her eyes while Kent stared back, confused by this non sequitur.

Kent looked thoughtfully around the room, let a few seconds tick by, and finally asked, "So?"

"So," she paused for effect, probably, and then added, "Do you want to do it again?"

Bailey inhaled sharply, sucking in her lips and compressing them almost as if she wanted to take the words back.

"Spank you?"

"Yeah."

"Instead of... getting the money you owe me?"

Bailey shrugged, her lips so tightly closed that she couldn't speak. She just looked at the ceiling, then nodded.

Kent let his eyes widen. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Y'know," Bailey stammered. "If you want."

"Two hundred dollars is a lot of spanking," the sentence lurched out of Kent's mouth because he couldn't think what else to say.

"Not all at once," she said instantly. "Just a few every week through the year."

He tried to think clearly about this, even while his rebellious eyes wandered down her slim body. Bailey, seeing this and probably encouraging it, turned side on to him, resting her denim clad rear against the door frame.

"Wait," Kent's eyes came away from her body, given space for a sudden calculation to dawn on him. Arithmetic featured strongly in both their curricula, after all. "A few every week? You think you can do this on 200 spankings?"

"Well, yeah," she stood up indignantly.

"I don't think so," he felt his metaphorical foot coming down. "Maybe... maybe... and I'm not saying I'm doing this. But maybe it's worth five spankings for every dollar."

"Five?!" Bailey braced her fists on her hips.

"Yeah, come on," Kent said. "I'm not rich here and neither are you."

"But that would take -" Bailey started calculating then. She couldn't rate any worse in math than he did. "I'd have to do it almost every night."

"We have two semesters," he shrugged, then started laughing because there was no way in hell this conversation had actually started. Kent decided he had passed out from some illicit chemical accidentally added to his beer and some weird hallucinogenic dream had taken him in. He should clearly levy a lawsuit against a brewery somewhere on account of this head trip.

Bailey shook her head and folded her arms. "No way. That's a thousand times."

"Like you said," he pointed out, "spread it out from now until May."

"No way."

"Okay," Kent replied with a shrug. "Then you owe me two hundred bucks."

Bailey sighed with exasperation and put her hands on her hips again, but her indignant pose wasted itself as Kent had turned back to the work at his desk.

"You bastard."

He continued to ignore her.

She opened her wallet and looked inside. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the single twenty sitting inside it.

"Fine!" she announced and stepped into the room. "But I don't want to lose track of the... count."

"Hm," Kent responded. And, although he knew it for a stupid use of two hundred dollars, he said, "Alright."

Standing up, he went to the whiteboard on his wall and scrubbed clear the upper right corner. He blocked off a small box of space there and wrote "200" across the top of it, then drew a horizontal

underneath it, splitting the box in half.

Kent then offered the marker to Bailey, "You come into my room, you put a hash mark under the line for each dollar you want to pay off. When we're done, I'll change the number on top. If you want to just pay back the money you owe me, you can do that any time, too, in any amount."

Bailey took the marker, glared at him, exhaled sharply through her nose, and put one tick mark in the box. She came all the way into the room and closed the door. They had another housemate farther down the hallway past her room, and even the landlords might come down the stairs. She didn't want everyone -- or anyone -- seeing this.

"I'm going to turn the lights down, if you don't mind?" she declared, and turned the dimmer on the wall to its lowest setting.

"How do you want to do it?" Kent asked.

Bailey paused, thinking. She'd just been over his shoulder when he'd surprised her the only other time he'd spanked her, but she decided she probably wouldn't find that comfortable.

"Um, in your lap?"

"Like a bad schoolgirl?" he asked.

"Sure."

Kent moved to his bed and, with a deep breath, Bailey knelt on his right and laid across his lap.

With a breath, he decided he might as well press his luck at this point.

"Your pants?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady and confident.

She looked at him over her shoulder, "What?"

"Pull your pants down?"

Bailey bolted back up and sat on her heels, staring him in the face from inches away, "No way."

"Come on," he backed away just a little and waved at her lower body. "You're wearing jeans, for god's sake. That won't feel like anything."

"I'm not taking my pants off."

"Not off," he said, "Just pull them down."

"No."

"Alright," he said. "Then it's ten spankings for a dollar."

"I-" she stammered to a stop again.

"You won't even feel it through denim," he pointed out, "Ten on the pants or five underneath."

Bailey compressed her lips and exhaled through her nose again.

"Fine," she said. She took a deep breath and answered, "Ten on top."

Kent nodded in agreement as Bailey laid herself out again.

"You want to count?" Kent asked. "Or should I?"

"I will."

"You sure about this?"

"Go ahead."

With her laying across his lap from right to left, it made for a good angle with his right hand. The right cheek, farther away, looked easier to strike. He let her have a loud, sharp slap to the lower part of her cheek.

She let out a low "oof" of surprise as her body shook. "One," she said.

Kent laid his hand a little higher on her right cheek, pulled back and struck her again, a little harder.

"Hoo... two," she said.

He moved his hand outward and struck again.

"Three," she said, "You're trying to turn my whole cheek red, is that it?"

"Spreading it around," he said. "Seems cruel to hit the same spot."

"How sweet of you?" Bailey laced her voice with heavy sarcasm.

He moved even higher, then, away from the thickest part of her butt, toward her spine and lower back, and struck a fourth time.

"Four," she whispered.

The fifth one, he struck square in the middle of her cheek again.

"Five," she said. "Can you do the other side now?"

"Your call," Kent said as he slid himself backwards onto the bed and pushed Bailey's hips farther away from.

"Better?" she rolled her eyes as he laid his hand on her left cheek.

"Much. Ready?"

"Yep."

He decided to do this side differently, and struck her square in the centre of her butt cheek, right on the meatiest part of her bony butt.

"Six," she breathed.

He struck again at the same spot.

"Se-e-e-even."

Once more, he hit the same spot and let his hand rest there after striking. Maybe she'd stop with the sarcasm now.

"Eight," she panted.

"Sure you can handle ten?"

"I'm fine," she gasped as she spoke quickly. "Finish it."

"Alright."

Kent laid two more smacks, harder than all the ones before, dead on the centre of her cheek.

"Nine and ten!" Bailey announced and stood up immediately.

She blushed heavily when she looked at him and couldn't meet his eyes for more than moment. With her gaze locked on the floor, she pointed at the white board.

Kent walked over to the board and wiped the "200" and the tick mark off, replacing them immediately with "199".

"It's a long way to go," he said. "With Christmas break and all the weekends we're away, we'll have to do this every night we're both here."

Flushed with something between embarrassment and accomplishment, Bailey nodded, "I have to go... get ready now. Later."

She never met his eyes and disappeared into her bedroom. Kent closed the door behind her and called up some desperately needed porn in his browser. He had a sudden desire to watch something with spanking in it.

If Bailey went out drinking that night, he didn't hear her leave.

He went for a run Saturday before hitting the study hall with a few his friends trying to figure out their homework. For the night, he stayed in.

He wasn't surprised, having left the door to his bedroom open explicitly for this purpose, when Bailey came into in around midnight. She'd definitely been out drinking and grabbed one of the markers from the whiteboard.

She used it to make two tick marks in the little box and glared at him defiantly.

"Twenty?" he rotated his chair to look at her.

"That'll be good for the weekend, then, right?" she said.

"Alright. You sure you aren't too drunk for this?"

"How could I possibly be too drunk to get spanked?" Bailey raised a single eyebrow.

Kent considered this. "What I meant was, 'Do you know what you're doing?'"

"I'm paying off a debt," she said. "Here, watch me walk a straight line."

She then paced off, toe to heel, one foot after the other, a path from the door to his bed.

"Good enough?" she asked.

He shrugged and sat on the bed. She laid herself over his lap.

"Over top of the jeans?"

"Yep."

"Ten each side?"

"Yep."

He started spanking her, a bit harder than he had the day before, knowing that she couldn't feel it through the alcohol, but that she might just feel it the next morning -- or at least see it if she looked in the mirror. Kent wondered how long the redness persisted.

Bailey playfully counted along, making "oof" noises when he hit a good spot.

He switched to the left cheek and she mechanically shifted her hips away from him, without his prompting, so he'd have a better angle.

"Eleven!" she said as he began on that side. "Twelve."

"Ugh, Christ! Thirteen."

He started slapping her faster, hoping to get a sharper response.

"Jesus," she said. Then, "Sixteen."

At nineteen, she cursed his name. Then, finally, "Twenty."

Bailey stood up, rubbing her cheeks through her jeans.

"You bastard," she remarked and, this time, managed to look him in the eyes as she pointed to the white board.

"You can stop any time," he pointed out.

"I'm fine," Bailey's voice grew a hard edge.

"One ninety seven," Kent announced as he fixed the white board. "But the next time you come here, be sober."

All said, Kent found it pretty satisfying, and he hadn't put a dent in his new found fetish for spanking porn.

He saw her Sunday morning at breakfast, slightly hungover. Kent munched on a bowl of corn flakes at the little breakfast table when Bailey came out of her bedroom, quietly poured a cup of coffee from her automatic coffee maker, and sat across from him. She winced as her butt touched the chair and she lifted herself up, then sat down again more carefully. He didn't usually see her at breakfast on Sundays, since she slept in late, but she'd obviously set the coffee maker to go off earlier today. She must have had plans.

"How ya feeling?" he asked as she inhaled deeply over her mug.

"Fine," she said airily. "It's cool."

"Still going through with it?"

"Yeah," Bailey sipped her coffee. "It's worth it."

Kent continued munching on his corn flakes.

"I get a break today, though," she said. "Took two last night."

"Need a break?"

"Yeah," she said. "Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"About being sober."

"Yeah," he warned. "One or two drinks, max. Don't come like that again."

Bailey inhaled cool air across the surface of her coffee and took another hot gulp.

"Alright, I guess," she said, "I'd end up wasting all the money I'm saving anyway."

Kent nodded. "Yeah, that too."

He nodded to her and put his dishes in the dishwasher and left the house to hit the study hall again.

Late Sunday night, he came home and went to bed and closed his door, not expecting Bailey to drop by. At the earliest, he thought she might show up Monday night, but might be hesitant based on either the soreness in her flesh, or his rule about her being basically sober.

His first lecture rang him in at 8:30, which meant crawling out of bed pretty early, wolfing down a bowl of oatmeal, and heading out to class.

He saw nothing of Bailey that day nor that night, even though he left his door ajar for her. Tuesday passed and most of Wednesday went by. He passed her in the hall when he went to brush his teeth late Wednesday night, but she kept her eyes averted and slid past him without a word.

Thursday arrived and she slipped into his room around 6pm, just before he was about to make dinner.

"You're a bit behind," he remarked as she made a tick mark on the white board.

"I'll catch up later," Bailey spoke to the floor.

She crawled over his lap as before and lifted her hips so he could deliver her spankings for the night, five on each side of her denim covered cheeks.

After she'd counted out "Ten!", she stood back up.

"There," she declared, "I did it sober, alright? Now I'm going out for a drink."

But she turned right, not left, out of his bedroom, which meant she went to her bedroom, not outside.

Kent didn't feel the need to jerk off right then, so he left the door open after he adjusted the number on the white board. The apartment went silent for about half an hour before he heard Bailey's bedroom door open. As she went by his room, she glanced in and their eyes met. Although she looked determinedly sober, her face had run a flushed red. She was gone in a flash, visible only a moment through the doorway, but he'd seen the black jeans she'd switched into and the snug, red sweater.

He couldn't be sure of what had just happened, but he knew he'd missed something crucial. With a mental shrug, he returned to his video game.

His classes on Friday finished at noon, which meant he could head home then and take a short nap before preparing for his evening Chem lab. The autumn air blew gently through his room from the small, ceiling-level window, letting him drift off gently by about 1pm. He had learned to leave his door open on days like this because it let the air flow through from his window and out the other side of the basement apartment, where he had also opened the kitchen window.

Bailey found him like this, half sleeping, in the middle of the afternoon. He heard his door close and woke up blearily, just in time to see her make a tick mark on the white board.