The Gentle Giant

Title

He frowns sympathetically. "I get it. I hate it when me and my submissive fight."

"We aren't really fighting we just... I don't even know really what happened. I was making breakfast and she went to ask me something, but she called me by name... I wasn't curt or anything, I just corrected her. She like completely shut down with me. I mean is that weird? Do you think she took my tone wrong?"

"Corrected her liked punished her?" He asks me.

"No, no. I just reminded her that she calls me Master... not Axel. That's all. I didn't threaten or anything," I sigh in frustration. Why are women so complicated?

"...There's... there's nothing wrong with that.... I think you just may have caught her off guard," he says carefully.

"Caught her off guard? So like it slipped?"

"I mean... she probably wasn't expecting you to correct her," he says, being very careful with his explanation.

"Why wouldn't I correct her?" She's my sub? Subs don't call their master's by name.

"...Not everyone is intimate with their submissives. I mean I guess she probably thought—" he starts to say.

"Woah, woah, woah. What does this have to do with sex?"

"Intimacy goes far beyond just sex," he corrects and I pause. Of course it did, but I'm not understanding where he's going with this. "You can't be intimate with something and have a line drawn in the sand at the same time." I look at him like he's lost his mind. "You drew a line in the sand by correcting her and making her address you with your title instead of by name."

"Submissives address dominants with respect." That's just how it was. Hazel knew that. I'm sure her slip of the mouth was an accident.

"Yeah, I know. I was just saying she probably thought things were different," he says.

"Hazel knows her place," I say.

"I'm sure she does. I only meant that she was probably under the impression that you two were intimate... beyond just a playtime kind of pairing."

"We are. What makes you think we aren't?" This past week me and Hazel have spent almost every second that I've had out of work together.

We haven't played again since the first time, so we are far more than just playtime partners. She's my sub.

"Axel, you can't be intimate with someone, but not respect them enough to let them use your name," Evan says as if I'm stupid.

Respect?

I respect her.

"This has nothing to do with respect. I respect Hazel just fine. The name thing has to do with her showing me respect. I'm her dominant, I have a title to her. This isn't about me respecting her."

He shakes his head and sighs. "Listen man, I'm not trying to fight. Sorry if I offended you. You're probably right. She called you by name on accident and it probably had nothing to do with the fact that she thought you might one day treat her as your equal." I can catch a small sarcastic tone, but his words hit me hard enough that I don't get angry over them.

"You let you sub address you by name?" I ask him.

"Every damn day," he says, finishing off his timesheet and putting it into his folder. "She my submissive, my partner. Why would I ever make her feel like she was any less by showing her I didn't think she was worthy of using my name?"

"So she doesn't ever call you Master?" I ask him, completely flabbergasted.

"She calls me Master all the time, but I let her address me however she wants. She respects me enough that she calls me Master in playtime and various other times just because she feels like it. She knows she is allowed to call me by name though. Listen, I got to head home. You have a good weekend. Good luck with the sub." He turns to leave before I can even process everything.