Acceptance

Hey everyone -- This story is really long, so I'll keep this intro short. This is a story I did for Lit's 2024 Crime and Punishment Challenge, which is why it's all in one piece here instead of chapters. This story references my earlier series, "Lady Mielikki's Amulet," and it takes place in the same fictional world (Atalantahna) as all my stories; this one just takes place about 1,000 years after the Amulet stories. And yes, I did do kind of a nod to Tolkien with the riddle toward the end.

Atalantahna is a fictional world, of course, but as I wrote it, I found this story had some stuff to say about the American criminal legal system, so there's some commentary in there. But of course, it's mostly erotica, everyone is older than 18, and it's fantasy...so let's hope it's filthy fucking hot fantasy.

***

Cosima wanted to meet at Dive's, just across from the Acceptance Lounge and Gallery. It lived up to its name: Dive's was nothing more than a tiny room with a bar and a few sticky, wobbly tables, the floor a mix between filthy carpet and filthy cement. You couldn't smoke inside in Acidalia anymore -- hadn't been able to for years -- but the smell of stale cigarettes hung over everything, and the crowd here reminded Digby of the people he'd known in prison.

Actually, the whole place reminded Digby of prison. There was the same reliance on cement and steel and stone; the same lack of natural light; the same air of desperation and disregard for any sort of future in general, the way only people who had been raised to live without hope could disregard it.

People all across Atalantahna hailed Acidalia as a marvel of a modern city -- all gleaming glass and crisp chrome and lush green parks and a river walk to write home about -- but they usually left out a solid chunk of the city in those assessments. Digby and Cosima's Acidalia never seemed to make it into the tourist guides.

He caught sight of her in a corner of the bar, alone, a drink on the metal table before her. The bright neon glass of the Acceptance Lounge and Gallery across the street painted the dim corner in fuzzy reds and blues and greens, and Digby realized that maybe not so much had changed since those trailer park and under-the-highway-overpass days; maybe the closest they were ever going to get to the light and laughter of the rest of the city was standing in its neon backwash.

Or at least, unless Cosima's plan worked.

She smiled at him as he approached, and he slid into the booth's torn seat across from her.

"Digby," she said. "God, it's so good to see you."

He forced a smile, hoped she wouldn't noticed the tooth he'd lost just before they let him out of prison.

"Good to see you too, Zima," he said, slipping back into using her old neighborhood name without thinking about it.

She stabbed at the drink in front of her with her straw, bubbles shooting up between the ice cubes, and tossed a dark lock of curly hair over one shoulder.

"Get you a drink?" She asked.

"Not anymore," Digby said.

"Oh, right," she said, and blinked. "I...I'm so sorry. It's been, what, six months?"

"Closer to eight," Digby said.

"Right," Cosima said again, and a slight blush coloring her cheeks. "Sorry Digby, I...I forgot."

"No worries," he said, hailing a passing bartender and asking for a glass of water.

"It's not just because you're on parole, right?" Cosima asked.

"Nah," Digby said. "I just got tired of it. Thirty-something years and all, and it wasn't really doing me any favors."

Cosima nodded. The first time he'd gotten drunk had been with her. It was one of the first notable thefts they'd pulled off, Digby remembered now. Valentine's Downtown Liquor; Cosima had flirted with the store owner long enough for Digby to sneak out a handle of vodka.

They'd met up with Bowen and Addy and Kit and snuck down to the landfill that night and gotten wasted down by a septic, exhausted section of the Bootstrap River.

Cosima took another sip from her drink, cocked her head and narrowed her gaze to give him a truly serious, appraising look.

"How are you?" She asked. "You sure you want to do this?"

Digby sighed. "Bored. Sick of parole. Sick of not being able to do anything."

Cosima nodded. "You got a job?"

"They send you back if you don't have one," Digby said, and rolled his eyes, but forced a smile. "So, yeah, I'm a janitor at the drywall plant out east. But it's shit work and half of what I make goes toward court costs and restitution anyway."

Cosima blinked.

"I'm sorry, Digby," she said. "I wish I'd been there to help with that Acidalia Museum of Natural History job. You shouldn't have had to do that alone."

Now Digby did laugh. "It had nothing to do with you, Zima."

"It kind of did," she said. "I could have been there, if I'd wanted to."

This thought had occurred to Digby while he'd been in prison -- that maybe with Cosima's help he'd never have gotten arrested and spent the last five years locked up -- but lots of thoughts had occurred to him in prison.

"Didn't you have that piece of shit contract of yours you had to work your way out of back then?" He asked. "I don't think you *could* have helped even if you wanted to."

She flashed him a wicked smile then, one of the ones he remembered well from their childhood. One of the ones that said they might be breaking the law before the next 24 hours were up.

"Since when have I ever really been bound by a contract?" She asked, then gave a dismissive wave. "That's over now."

"It is," Digby said, not wanting to go much further down this road than he had to. "Look, let's talk about this Acceptance Lounge and Gallery thing you want to do."

He rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt; Cosima's eyes darted to the labyrinth of tattoos across his forearms. Some of them were prison pieces -- blotchy and faded already -- but he'd paid good money for others, just before he'd gotten arrested again.

She locked eyes with him again, as if embarrassed to have let her gaze wander.

"Well," she said. "How much do you know about the Acceptance?"

"I think it opened right before I got locked up," Digby said.

Cosima nodded. "BDSM-themed lounge that doubles as an art gallery. They're open to the public most nights -- if you can foot the cover charge -- but they also have a lot of private parties. Which is what they'll be doing on Saturday night."

"The night of the job," Digby said.

"Yeah," Cosima said. "OK, so here's the thing. The Acceptance actually has a number of artifacts that aren't for sale. Really priceless stuff from forever ago. A lot of it is from Ancient Atalantahna."

Digby's eyes narrowed. "So it'd be like 1,000 years old, or more?"

"Or more," Cosima said. "A lot of that really intricate ancient art from the Ancient Atalantahnan days. Were they excavating the Ancient Hela City site when you went to prison?"

"Just starting to," Digby said. "But I took some classes in prison to finish up my high school diploma and then some college stuff too, and one of them was on Ancient Atalantahna, so they talked about it a bit there."

"We'll get to that," Cosima said, her face lit up by the first carefree smile Digby had seen since he'd met up with her tonight. "OK, so they discovered the site of Hela City -- the capital of Ancient Atalantahna -- about 60 miles southeast of here. And there's been a ton of stuff for sale flying around in the last few years. You can get it legally or illegally. Bowen and Addy and Kit and I just finished up a job not too long ago where we pawned off all these gold anklets to some rich asshole in Confluence. It's been kind of like the wild west out here."

She sipped the drink. Digby pursed his lips, waited for Cosima to get to what she needed him for.

"But on Saturday night the Acceptance is having its private party," she said. "And they'll be showing some new artifacts and stuff. One of them is an amulet that belonged to one of the warrior-princess-scholars in Ancient Atalantahna, a woman named Lady Mielikki. And that piece in particular is supposed to be worth a cool $15 million or so, if Bowen's sources are right."

Digby let out a low whistle.

"Just one piece of jewelry?" He asked.

"They can't figure out what it's made of," Cosima said. "The Ancient Atalantahnans had those stones made by witches, supposedly, and used them as a means of control -- usually wives would use them to control their husbands' minds and bend them to their will, if you believe the legends. Which I don't, but I *do* believe the Atalantahnan women were onto some serious shit. And that they knew how to make a really pretty rock. Anyway, the only thing that really matters is that people will fork over a fuck-ton of cash for this thing. And it's going to be on display at the Acceptance on Saturday night. So we're going to swipe it. And if you want to do this math, that's --"

"Three million bucks for each of us," Digby said in a low voice, the thought of it not really real to him in the moment.

He could undo a lot with three million bucks. He could wipe out an entire childhood spent in all the worst parts of Acidalia, an entire adulthood spent in courtrooms and prison cells and the offices of parole officers.

"Exactly," Cosima said. "But this is where I need your help."

She dropped her eyes again to his left forearm, and pursed her lips in a way Digby tried -- and failed -- to deny was incredibly cute.

(Don't do this, he thought, we are *not* noticing Cosima is cute. That's always been the rule).

But somewhere deep in his gut, something stirred, and he suppressed a frown, knowing he physically would never be able to feel any pleasure lower down than that.

Cosima reached out and ran a hand across one of the more professional tattoos on his forearm, then yanked her hand back as if his skin were boiling to the touch.

"I...I'm sorry, Digby," she said. "I...I forgot you don't like to be touched."

Digby swallowed hard. He hadn't expected her to remember that rule from before prison. He hadn't seen her in five years, and certainly hadn't touched her since then.

It didn't necessarily feel right, but being out in the world at this point didn't necessarily feel right either.

"No," he said, and shrugged. "It's OK."

She held his gaze for a moment longer -- her big, dark eyes staring into his cold blue ones -- then glanced down again and ran a light touch over the tattoo there.

"This tattoo is an Ancient Atalantahnan word," she said.

He nodded.

"You mentioned offhand that you can read and write the language, right?" Cosima asked.

Digby forced another smile at that and looked away, embarrassed, at the gleaming cursive neon decorating the Acceptance Lounge and Gallery across the filthy street.

"It's something I kind of taught myself in prison," Digby said. "I was bored as shit though. And I mean, you know --"

"Guys aren't supposed to learn it, yeah," Cosima said, and rolled her eyes. "I even heard guys *can't* learn it, that only women can. Or at least...only some guys can."

She wasn't hinting at anything here, Digby thought. Or at least he didn't think so. Learning Ancient Atalantahnan in a men's prison really would get you in trouble with the rest of the crowd, and that's because Cosima was right -- supposedly only some men could learn the language. Supposedly only submissive men, the kind of men the Ancient Atalantahnan women kept as husbands and servants.

Digby had tried hard to deny the fact -- even to himself -- that the words made sense to him, and pretty much had from day one.

"The reason that's important, though, is because the code to get at the amulet -- the password we need to release its locks and disable its alarm -- is in Ancient Atalantahnan," Cosima said. "It's a security measure the archaeologists and the government have used to protect the artifacts coming out of Ancient Hela City. They figure since so few people know the language -- except for the archaeologists themselves -- it's a good way to restrict access to the pieces. So we need you as close to the amulet as possible on Saturday night."

Digby nodded. "I see."

Cosima took a breath, held it, and let it out. "Easier said than done, but we have some help. Bowen got a job at the Acceptance as a bartender, so we have someone kind of on the inside. I have Kit and Addy working at a fictional heating and air conditioning business, and that's going to come into play too. I'm pretty much done with surveillance -- and mapping the building out -- but I'm keeping an eye on things. There's just...there's one other thing I need from you if we're going to do this."

"You mean, more than just reading the Ancient Atalantahnan stuff and putting in the right password?" Digby asked.

"Yeah," Cosima said. "We have to get close enough to the amulet in the first place."

Digby nodded.

"The event on Saturday night is a competition," Cosima said, and looked up, made sure they weren't being overheard. "And it's a femdom-themed competition. The stage at the Acceptance is kind of like a pyramid -- there are three levels and the ground-floor one is the widest. The other two levels are smaller. What's going to happen is that people -- or, I guess, couples -- are going to perform their femdom-themed routines and a set of judges are going to send them up to the next story stages if they're good enough. That very top stage is where the amulet is that we're going to steal."

"So we have to make it up there," Digby said.

Cosima nodded. "Yeah."

"And we have to do it by having some sort of femdom dance routine thing," he said.

Cosima nodded again. "Yeah. We do. It doesn't have to be perfectly mapped out -- and from my understanding, it's not like people go one at a time; we all kind of are on the floor at once. And they don't stop the dancing when they send people up; it's just like a constant state of movement."

Digby nodded. "OK..."

There was a pause; rough laughter from the cave of the crowded bar rolled between them.

"How do they know who won?" Digby asked.

"Whoever spends the most time at the top level," Cosima said. "But that doesn't matter as much for us, because as soon as we get to the top level, we're going to steal Lady Mielikki's amulet. It's not really about winning the competition for us."

Digby nodded. "Sure. So what are you thinking for this...routine?"

Was that a ghost of a smile playing on Cosima's lips? It wasn't, he told himself; he'd been gone too long. He looked down, into his glass of water.

"Each level has a theme," Cosima said.

"Helpful," Digby said.

"And this is -- again -- where I kind of need your help, since I think you know more about Ancient Atalantahna than I do."

"What are the themes?" Digby asked.

"The first level is 'Devotion,'" Cosima said.

Digby shifted in his seat again, glad the neon glow filtering through the window was scarlet. He hoped it hid his blush from Cosima.

God, he was glad he couldn't see her feet just now.

"That's easy," he said, after a pause that lasted longer than it should have. "It...it would need to be some sort of foot worship routine or something. The Ancient Atalantahnans put a lot of emphasis on that."

He'd never touched Cosima's feet. Fuck, he'd never been honest about how incredibly much he'd always, *always* wanted to touch her feet either.

(We are *not* playing this game, he reminded himself. We are *not* finding Cosima hot. She's a friend, one of your best, and more than that -- an accomplice, a partner on a job. Stop it).

Cosima nodded. "I figured it would be something like that. Is that...I don't know...historically accurate?"

"I...yeah," Digby said, and sighed. "That's the short answer. Especially for the warrior-princess-scholar class. They were pretty big on that."

Cosima nodded.

"All right," she said. "I...I'm getting an ankle leash. Are you familiar with those?"

Digby had seen pictures in the textbook they'd used in the class on Ancient Atalantahna in prison. The ankle leash was exactly what it sounded like -- it was an anklet attached to a leash that hooked around a collar the man wore around his neck. The effect was to pin the man in a position of constantly crawling after the wearer's feet.

Digby forced himself to make eye contact with her across the table. "Yeah, I...I know what those are."

"You'd be willing to do something with that?" She asked.

(Willing?)

"Yeah, Zima, we can do that," he said, and then, because he realized it sounded too heavy, hanging there between them, "I think that's actually a pretty good routine, if they're looking for historical accuracy. I know the Ancient Atalantahnans used ankle leashes at parties and stuff, as sort of a novelty."

Cosima nodded. "Good. OK."

"What's the next level's theme?" Digby asked, eager to move on from the deliciously-torturous thought of her feet. It made things stir in his groin, in the place where he'd never be able to feel any real pleasure ever again.

"Punishment," Cosima told him.

"Of course it is," Digby said, and rolled his eyes.

"What was their preferred method of punishment?" Cosima asked. "I feel like the stereotype is always whips and stuff..."

"Whips were pretty common, at least for conservative Atalantahnan women who kept their husbands as submissives," Digby said. "At least from what I've read. That and just, like, over-the-knee hand-spanking and stuff. It always centered on striking the submissive's buttocks, whatever it was."

Cosima nodded, ran a tongue over her teeth in thought. Just a mindless habit of hers -- something she'd been doing for years -- but it seemed incredibly hot just now.

Digby had been away too long, he knew. That's all this was.

"How do you feel about a whip?" She asked. "We can do something else if...if not. And I won't...I mean...I won't be, like, going super hard with it or anything."

Digby blinked. "I mean...for three million bucks, I think I can handle it."

He paused, unsure if he should tell her this or not.

Historical accuracy and all.

"You know they used a special whipping technique, right?" Digby asked. "They called it the triple-dragon."

Cosima blinked, big dark eyes gleaming in the neon. "I don't think so."

Digby nodded. "Yeah. So every third blow with the whip would land on the submissive's high thigh -- like just below the buttocks."

Cosima winced, scrunched her eyes shut. "That sounds painful."

"I agree," Digby said. "But if they're looking for historical accuracy it might...make us stand out."

(Us).

Cosima thought about it, nodded.

"I don't know if I could do that to you, Digby," she said. "I was kind of thinking this was going to have to be our weak spot. I don't know that I'm...mean enough."

Somehow her saying that -- and knowing that she was going to be whipping him anyway -- was incredibly hot.

Digby felt tired. He didn't want to have to try to untangle this. Things with Cosima were never supposed to be this complicated. Things with *him* were never supposed to be this complicated.

He'd never been submissive in his life, no sir, fuck that. Never mind that he could read Ancient Atalantahnan -- that he didn't even have to learn -- or that now he couldn't stop thinking about Cosima's feet, or that the thought of getting whipped by her was uncomfortably hot.

Nope.

He'd just spent five years in prison. Just the fact that he was sitting within arm's length of a flesh-and-blood woman was all it took. This was nothing more than that, he told himself.

He forced a shrug now.

"It can't be any worse than any of the shit that happened to me in prison, if that helps," Digby said. "What's the third level?"

"Ecstasy," Cosima said, and for the first time he thought he could catch a hint of a blush on her cheeks.

"Three guesses as to what that means," Digby said, and sighed.

"I mean, just based on the way the Ancient Atalantahnans did things, I figured it would mean...the submissive going down on the dominant, right?" Cosima asked, as if she hoped he'd tell her no.