Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Regina Mills was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence and had moved up there from her sunny beach house in Florida a year prior. She wasn’t a fan of the cold by any means but the proximity to New York City and her sister’s apartment was a plus. She was studying psychology and already knew she wanted to focus on sex therapy.
This semester she was taking a class that let her explore some subculture and required you to get immersed into the subculture to follow grasp the psychology behind it. There were way more sexual subcultures than she had anticipated and the list was starting to get overwhelming. So she took the list and went out to find her friends, maybe they could help her narrow something down.
Regina found Emma, Ruby, and Mary Margaret sitting on the grass near a tree and went over to sit with them.
“Hey Gina,” Emma said as she spotted the brunette.
“Hi guys,” Regina replied sitting down. “I need help.”
“With?” Mary Margaret said in passing, too engrossed in her book to lift her eyes.
“This project for my class, we’re supposed to pick a subculture and immerse ourselves into it to get the full psychology behind it or something. But there’s so many I don’t what to do, or where to find any of the people that participate in the subculture.” she explained pulling out the list from her bookbag.
Ruby perked up, “Is this a sex thing?”
Regina rolled her eyes, “Yes, that is what I’m studying.”
“Gimme.” Ruby said reaching for the paper. The other two girls had left what they were doing and started to look through it too.
“Oh there’s some weird shit on here.” Mary Margaret commented.
“Swingers sound fun.” Ruby said, “You could totally do that, or Polyamory.”
“Where would I possibly do this?”
Ruby scrunched up her nose, “Well you could find people around campus that would be willing to pretend. Who doesn’t want an orgy?”
“Ruby that’s not going to work, this needs to be authentic. I can’t find the psychology of swingers by using horny college students.”
Emma was scanning through the document and looked up, “BDSM.”
“Bondage? Seriously?” Regina said raising her eyebrow.
“No, listen. I know how you can get into the subculture. There’s this place in the city, The Forbidden Fortress, it’s like a sex club but not really. They train doms and subs. I’m sure if you go down there and talk to the woman that runs it she may be able to give you something to work with.”
“The Forbidden Fortress?” Regina repeated thinking about it, “Yeah maybe I’ll go talk to her. I might be able to interview her and some of the other people if they are willing to.”
“I can totally see you as a dominatrix, all in leather.” Ruby teased winking at Regina.
“Shut up. I’m not going to do anything.”
“Why not? I thought you were supposed to submerge into the subculture.” Ruby asked.
“I’m not into that… I’ll see what I can get out of the interviews and if I need to do something I’ll think about it.” Regina replied. She glanced over at Mary Margaret who hadn’t been paying attention and followed her gaze. “Mar, just go talk to him,” she commented when she noticed she had been staring at David again.
“No way. He doesn’t even know I exist.” Mary countered.
“And he never will if you don’t go over there.” Emma added.
“I don’t know…” Mary started.
Emma cut her off, “Look, Neal’s with him. Come on, he can introduce you.” They both got up and left leaving Ruby and Regina next to the tree.
“Can I come with you to the sex club?” Ruby asked hopefully.
Regina laughed, “You’re insatiable, you get the most sex out of any of us and you’re still thirsty?”
“But BDSM sounds cool.” Ruby whined.
“How so? Pain? Doesn’t sound appealing to me at all. This will be great research though, my professor said to push our comfort zones.”
“So why can’t I come?”
“Because I can’t focus and keep you on lock and key at the same time.” Regina teased. “I’ll leave a good referral for you though when I’m done.”
“Fine…” Ruby conceded. “When are you going to go?”
“I’ll call them up after my next class and see when they may have an opening for me to come down and talk.” she said, “I better run, I’m going to be late.” She got up and ran off in the direction of her class satisfied with at least having the topic for her research picked out.
An hour after her last class ended, Regina found herself on a train heading into the city to meet with Mistress Mal at The Forbidden Fortress. She was told that the building looked like a normal office building and she’d miss it if she wasn’t looking for it. That’s exactly what she found. She took the elevator up to the 7th floor and walked over to the front desk.
“Hi, how can I help you?” A perky blonde asked from the desk.
“Uhm hi, I’m Regina Mills. I have an appointment with, uhm, Mistress Mal.” she stuttered out, blushing slightly at what the implications behind her sentence may have meant to the girl she was looking at. Whatever she was thinking she didn’t show it. She just looked at her computer and smiled back at Regina.
“I’ll let her know you’re here. Please have a seat.”
For a sex club or whatever this was, the place looked oddly professional. It was more or less an office building. She didn’t have to wait long, the blonde walked over to her after only a few minutes.
“Ms. Mills, Mistress Mal is ready for you, please follow me.” she led her back through the double doors into a hallway that still looked more or less like an office building. Regina was starting to wonder if Emma had her sources right and this wasn’t just an accounting firm or something. She walked over to a door and stopped when the blonde turned around. “This is her office, you can go on in. I’ll see you at the front desk when you’re done.” She walked away, leaving Regina behind a closed door.
She wasn’t sure if she should just walk in or knock. She figured knocking was probably safer and lightly tapped on the door.
“Come on in, dear.” She heard a voice coming from the other side. She sounded sweet, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
Regina entered the room to find it was a lot darker than the rest of the office so far. Dark wood, dimmed lighting, this was more so what she had imagined. There was a dark executive desk towards the back and behind it sat a beautiful woman with long flowy blonde hair and deep blue eyes. She was dressed in a what looked like a blazer over a leather dress. “Uhm, hi I’m Regina…” Regina started to say, stuttering through her words.
Mal watched the young girl, timid, almost scared. She was young that much she knew but she hadn’t realized she was this inexperienced. She stood up from her chair walking around her desk and over to the girl. “Mills. Yes, I know who you are. I’m Maleficent, you can call me Mistress Mal. And no, that is not my real name that is the name I go by here. Please, have a seat.” she led her over to the couch in her office instead of her desk, figuring making her comfortable would make this easier on the girl. “Now tell me, Regina, what brings you here today?”
“Well, I’m a psychology student at Sarah Lawrence and I’m focusing on sex therapy. I was given an assignment to pick a subculture to submerge into and understand the psychology behind and I picked BDSM.” She explained, “A friend of mine mentioned this place so I was just wondering if I could maybe interview you and a couple other people for my project.”
“Interviews?” Mal questioned.
“Yes, they wouldn’t have to be too long, just enough so I can come up with a psych analysis of the subculture.” Regina nodded.
“I see.” Mal stated studying Regina for a minute, she had to admit the girl was stunning. “Sweetheart, how would that actually help you to submerge into the subculture as you need to for your project?”
Regina furrowed her brows a little, she hadn’t thought of that. “I, uhm well, I don’t know. I just I’m not really into this whole thing, so I don’t think I can do it.”
“Then why’d you pick BDSM?”
“I’m not sure.” Regina answered honestly, why did she pick this? Besides the fact that she had an outlet to actually get something.
There was a silence that filled the room as Mal watched Regina. Regina felt like she was scrutinized by the older woman and she squirmed a little in her seat. Mal’s lips turned upward slightly. “I’m all for people doing well in their studies and I want to help you out, but not solely interviews.” Mal stated.
“Okay.” Regina said, not sure where she was going with this.
“Here’s the deal, what we do here is fully legal, fully consensual, and it’s more or less training.”
“Training?”
“Yes, we train people to be dominants and submissives. For doms this is about 6 weeks of guided training before supervised sessions with a submissive that they’ve been paired with. Subs are usually trained for 4 weeks before being paired with a dom for supervised sessions.” She explained. “In order for you to get the full feel of the BDSM world, you need to be in it.”
“But..” Regina started to protest feeling her heart start to pound.
“I’m not done.” Mal said firmly, causing Regina to stop talking, “1 month, 3 times a week, an hour long session each time. We’ll go through the basic training everyone receives and at the end of it I’ll sit down for an interview with you so you have everything you need for your paper. Since this is school related I’ll wave the fee for the training so this will be free of charge. All you would need to do is provide your own transport.” She explained her proposition and watched Regina trying to get a feel of what she was thinking. “You’ll understand the psychology behind this much better if you actually try it out for a significant amount of time.”
Regina nodded slightly processing what she had just been offered. She was only coming in for an interview and now she was sitting here contemplating practicing BDSM. “What exactly would the training include?”
Mal smiled, she was curious, she could tell that the minute she walked in. Mal got up and walked over to her desk pulling out a binder and bringing it over to Regina. “Before starting out, we’ll go through all of this so you’re well aware of it, but basically the training is the same for the first four weeks for everyone. The students are subs regardless if you come out of this a dom or a sub; you are a sub during training. Now, your dom will be watching and analyzing if they see you have more dom tendencies the trainings will be altered to fit that better. We start off with obedience exercises, you’ll be asked to do mundane things, if you don’t you’ll be punished. Punishment includes and is not limited to spanking, flogging, standing in a corner, withholding orgasms, etc. Sex is included in the training.” She listed looking up at her, “Would you prefer a male dom? I was going to take you on myself seeing as this is probono, but if you would prefer a man that can be arranged.”
“Uhm…” Regina stared at her, this was way more information that she had originally thought she was going to get.
“You’re not a virgin are you? Because that may complicate things.”
“What? No... No, I’m not a virgin.” Regina spat out. She wasn’t sure if she should be appalled or just shocked at the bluntness from this woman. The same woman that more or less said she was going to have sex with her unless she preferred a man. She wasn’t even sure how to answer that. Sure she’d never actually had sex with a woman before but the thought of being a sub for a man she didn’t know wasn’t that appealing. Especially if the woman in question was sitting next to her.
“Good. Now would you prefer a man?”
Regina shook her head. “I’m not even sure I want to do this.”
“Of course sweetie, I’m just giving you information.” Mal responded reaching over and patting her cheek. “Now if you do choose to go through with this you will need to sign a good amount of paperwork, confidentiality agreements, consents, etc. and you’ll need a safeword. Do you know what a safeword is?”
Regina nodded slightly, “I think so.”
“Good, so you know that in a BDSM relationship, the sub ultimately carries all the power. For outsiders it seems like it’s the other way around but it’s really the sub that has the power. Make sure the safe word is something you’ll remember. Cities that mean something are popular options as is Red/Yellow/Green. It’s up to you to find something that will work for you.” Mal paused to watch Regina, “Is this something you’re interested in?”
“Can I think about it?” Regina asked.
“Of course, I do have a pretty jam packed schedule though, but I have an opening tomorrow at 2 PM. I’ll keep it open for you. And I’ll have Ella give you all the paperwork you need. If you decide to come in we’ll have a conversation about everything and then get right into the training. This is completely voluntary on your part, so you are free to stop whenever you want.”
“Okay,” Regina nodded, “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“The pleasure was all mine.” Mal smiled, “I hope to see you again, Regina.”
Regina nodded and headed out towards the front desk. The blonde behind her smiled and handed her a folder explaining that all the paperwork was inside and to bring it back with her when she came in for her session. Regina walked out holding the folder, dazed. That hadn’t gone nearly as she planned, but she was considering taking up Mal’s offer. She could try it for a day and then stop if she didn’t like it. That was what she said.
Regina got on a train and headed to her sister’s apartment deciding to see if she wanted to get dinner and see her niece before heading back to Sarah Lawrence and figuring out what she was going to do about this project.