PART 1
United Kingdom, Oxford University, Michaelmas Term, week five (early November).
Oxford isn’t one big campus; it’s thirty-nine separate, self-governing medieval colleges scattered across a small city, each with its own dining hall, library, chapel, bar, and centuries-old rivalries. Christ Church (Archie’s college) is the grandest: cathedral for a chapel, its own art gallery, meadows running down to the river, and a bell called Great Tom that tolls 101 times at 9:05 p.m. every night, five minutes later than elsewhere in Britain, in keeping with Oxford’s old solar-based "Oxford time" tradition.
Michaelmas is the autumn term: eight weeks of relentless grey skies, black gowns flapping over hoodies as students bike between lectures, sub-fusc (academic dress) required for exams, punts frozen on the Cherwell, and the constant smell of damp stone, bonfire smoke, and cheap cider from the college bars.
Week five is the halfway mark; freshers are no longer fresh, essays are late, rowing crews train at 5:30 a.m. in the dark on the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and the Turf Tavern is packed every night with people in tuxedos or rowing kit drinking £3 pints under heat lamps.
Archie Harrington-Whitmore is twenty-one, six-two, built like a statue someone forgot to finish in the important place. Christ Church rowing blue, signet rings clinking against every pint glass, voice that can slice through a crowded bar like a knife through butter. Everyone knows the script: he walks in, the room rearranges itself around him, someone buys him a drink before he’s even taken his coat off. He calls freshers “peasant” and they laugh because it’s Archie and that’s the game.
He has a finsta nobody’s supposed to know about: @archtakesLs. It’s mostly videos of him three bottles deep making some terrified first-year kneel to tie his Church’s brogues while his mates howl. Or the time he got the entire Magdalen rugby team to chant “Thank you, Archie” after he put a round of tequilas on Daddy’s black Amex. He thinks it’s hilarious. He thinks he’s untouchable.
He’s been untouchable his whole life.
Nannies weren’t allowed to say no. His mother still calls him "my perfect little lord" and kisses the top of his head like he’s seven. His father took him into the House of Lords when he was eight and said, quiet, like it was a secret: "One day they’ll all stand when you walk in." At school the teachers looked the other way when he made a younger kid carry his bags across the quad in the rain. Money, his smug attitude and cheekbones fixed everything.
It started early. Nursery in Kensington: the nannies (always Eastern European, always replaced if they lasted past six months) were drilled by his mother never to raise their voice. "Archie is sensitive, "she’d say, stroking his blond curls while he smashed a porcelain tea set because lunch was two minutes late. By four, he’d learned to point at the help and say “You’re sacked” in a piping voice that made them flinch. His father laughed it off over brandy: "Boy’s got spine." The Belarusian one, Katya, lasted nineteen days.Five-year-old Archie called her a "stupid peasant" when she told him he couldn’t have a third pudding. She slapped him once, sharp, across the cheek. That evening his mother rang the agency in tears. The agency rang the Home Office contact they kept for "difficult families." By nine the next morning Katya’s Tier-5 sponsor licence was pulled, her visa curtailed to seven days, and she was on the Ryanair red-eye to Minsk with a curt letter saying she’d breached the conditions of her stay.
Every tantrum was rewarded. Every sulk was soothed. Every comparison to “lesser” children (the ones who had to share, who were told no, who didn’t have their own pony) was delivered with a fond smile: “You’re simply better, darling. It’s in the blood.”
Fifteen hit and Archie became stupidly beautiful: six foot, white-blond, blue sensitive eyes concealing an internal malice. At Eton everyone (masters, fags, visiting girls) fell to their knees in worship, literally or close enough. He soaked it up and decided the world owed him forever.
The only thing money never fixed was the one thing he can’t show in changing rooms. Four inches hard on a good day (pretty, pink, and, in his mind, utterly useless).
So he doubled down everywhere else. Private coaches on retainer from the age of fourteen. A nutritionist who planned every mouthful like a military campaign. Breakfasts of fillet steak and egg whites that arrived by courier from Smithfield before he’d even woken up. Summers spent rowing until his palms split and bled, winters in the gym until his pecs swelled thick and square, arms heavy with new muscle, lats flaring
It worked. Mostly. People stared at the arms, the chest, the V that disappeared into cashmere joggers, and assumed the rest matched the advertising. He let them assume. He made damn sure they assumed.
But every so often, in the hiss of the showers after training, he’d feel the old panic flicker (quick, hot, shameful), and he’d angle his hips away from the room, wrap the towel a fraction earlier, laugh a fraction louder.
Because the one thing all the money, all the discipline, all the centuries of breeding couldn’t buy was an extra inch where it mattered to him most.
And Archie Harrington-Whitmore has never known how to live with something he can’t buy.
And all this worked. Until the night at the Turf.
He’s six pints in, loud, riding the usual high, when his eyes snag on Callum leaning against the wall across the courtyard (some quiet, state-school scholarship lad from up North who’s built like a brick shithouse, easily six-four and thick with real working muscle, dark hair, stupidly handsome in that rough, effortless way that makes Archie’s stomach do a weird flip he instantly blames on the lager). Archie decides it’ll be funny to make Callum give him a piggy-back to the kebab van. Everyone’s filming. Of course they are.
Callum just smiles, easy, and says, "Yeah, alright."
Ten steps down the alley Callum flips him. Not rough, not showy, just sudden. Archie lands on his back across a stack of crates, wind knocked out of him, chinos and monogrammed boxers halfway down his thighs before he even realises what’s happening.
The courtyard goes dead quiet.
Cold air hits skin that’s never seen daylight in public. Archie tries to laugh it off (old reflex) but the sound dies when he feels Callum’s trainer press between his shoulder blades. Not playful. Heavy. Real.
Fifty phones are up. Nobody’s breathing.
Callum leans down, voice low, South Yorkshire vowels soft as steel.
"Stay down, rich boy," Callum murmurs, mouth close enough that only Archie hears, "I saw it last week in the gym showers when you turned away sharpish and wrapped that towel like your life depended on it. You twitch and I swear everyone here sees exactly what you’ve been hiding."
Archie’s brain stalls. He pushes up anyway (instinct, pride, terror) and the foot presses harder until the edge of the crate bites his cheek. His arms start shaking. He looks sideways: his mates from school, the ones who’ve called him "king" since they were eleven, just stand there filming, eyes bright, mouths half-open in something that looks suspiciously like relief, almost glee, like they’ve been waiting years for someone to finally knock the crown off his head. Not one of them moves.
He hears his own voice come out small and cracked and nothing like his.
"Please… let me up."
It’s barely air. Callum doesn’t budge.
"Louder. Proper this time."
Archie’s throat locks. He tries again and it comes out a broken squeak, wetter this time, already half a sob. The tears hit fast (hot, shocking, sliding off his lashes onto the crate). He can feel them on his cheeks and hates himself for every single one.
"Please, sir…" His voice splinters on the word sir, climbing into something high and desperate." I’ll be good, please, sir, I’ll be good, don’t, please don’t make them see, I’m begging you"
The begging tumbles out of him like a confession he’s never rehearsed, raw and ugly and terrified. His whole body is shaking now, arms trembling under Callum’s weight, knees scraping the wood, breath hitching on every word. He’s never sounded this small in his life. He’s never felt this small.
He’s always been a coward underneath the money and the smirk; he just never had to admit it until right now, with fifty phones drinking in every tear.
"Please, sir… I’ll be good, please, sir…"
It’s barely a whisper, but the microphones catch it. Someone snorts. Then the laughter starts (sharp, shocked, nothing like the usual sycophantic braying).
Callum steps off, yanks Archie’s trousers to mid-thigh so he can’t even run, and walks away.
Archie scrambles upright, fingers useless on the belt, leather sliding through sweat and piss-slick hands. Someone from his house at Eton lifts his chin and mouths “small” with a slow, pitying smile before the phone disappears into a pocket.
He walks home alone. The front of his chinos is dark from crotch to mid-thigh, a huge, unmistakable wet patch that gleams under every streetlamp. It happened the instant Callum’s trainer pinned him: a hot, unstoppable flood of fear-provoked piss that burst straight through his boxers and down both legs. The alley light caught it, phones caught it, laughter caught it. Someone zoomed in. Someone shouted "he’s pissed himself!" and the laughter doubled, sharp and delighted. He can still hear it echoing off the old stone.
By morning the clip has two versions: one with the original audio, one slowed down so you can watch the exact moment the stain spreads like ink in water while his voice cracking on "please, sir" at the same time.
That night he sports his oak, yanks the curtains till the rings scream, and sits on the edge of the four-poster in nothing but the navy Bump Sups hoodie. The crest is stiff with old sweat and river water. He swears he’ll delete the video. Opens private browsing anyway. Twenty-three seconds on repeat.
The screen paints his face corpse-blue. He watches the dark patch bloom across his lap, watches his own mouth beg in that thin, needy voice he doesn’t recognise.
His hand slides under the hoodie slow, guilty. He never strokes the shaft; there’s not much worth stroking. Instead he peels the foreskin back with two thick, calloused fingers (the same fingers that grip an oar six hours a day, skin ridged and leathery from blades and blisters, the pads rough as sandstone, a half-healed split across the middle knuckle still sharp enough to sting).
Those big, boat-hardened fingertips land on the penis head like an insult. The little slick knob already wet and flushed dark pink, flinching at the first touch. He starts rubbing in tight, mean circles, the coarse skin dragging over the glossy, delicate surface. Every ridge of every callus scrapes; every scab catches and tugs. The friction is brutal, almost sandpaper on silk, and the head swells instantly, turning an angry, humiliated scarlet under the punishment.
He can feel the tiny split on his knuckle open again from the wet slide, a faint copper sting mixing with the salt of his own precum. The blisters that never quite heal rasp across the slit each time he passes over it, making the whole thing jerk and spit another helpless bead. It hurts in the exact way he hates and needs: raw, undignified, nothing like the smooth porn wanks he pretends he has. Just a posh boy with rower’s paws grinding his most pathetic spot until it throbs and leaks. He keeps going, rough and relentless, hating the little wet head more with every scrape, coming harder because of it.
By the sixth loop he’s panting, hips jerking, mouthing please, sir. On the ninth he comes just from tormenting the head, a short, brutal spurt that spatters the inside of the hoodie and leaves the tip raw and stinging.
He stays sitting there, phone still glowing, come cooling, piss-stink still rising off his skin. Doesn’t take long before the little red knob is twitching again, greedy for the next round.
Some nights he turns the sound up so he can hear the laughter right as the stain spreads, rubs that swollen head until his thighs shake and he’s begging the empty room for permission, comes twice as hard with his own teeth sunk in his pillow so the scout won’t hear in the morning.
Some nights he edges until three a.m., stopping himself every time he gets close, making himself say it out loud to the empty room when his roommate Freddie is not here: please, sir, may I?
He always waits for the exact frame where the trainer presses down and the last of Archie Harrington-Whitmore, future Earl of Wherever, future power-broker, future whatever, just… breaks.
That’s the frame that ruins him every time.
He comes crying, whispering thank you, sir.
He never deletes the video.
He is still rich.
He is still beautiful.
And when he’s alone, when the college is asleep and the portraits of his ancestors line down the silent halls, he locks the oak again, pulls the curtains again, opens the phone again.
Same twenty-three seconds
Same pleasures.
Thank you, sir. More, sir.
United Kingdom, Oxford University, Michaelmas Term, week five (early November).
Oxford isn’t one big campus; it’s thirty-nine separate, self-governing medieval colleges scattered across a small city, each with its own dining hall, library, chapel, bar, and centuries-old rivalries. Christ Church (Archie’s college) is the grandest: cathedral for a chapel, its own art gallery, meadows running down to the river, and a bell called Great Tom that tolls 101 times at 9:05 p.m. every night, five minutes later than elsewhere in Britain, in keeping with Oxford’s old solar-based "Oxford time" tradition.
Michaelmas is the autumn term: eight weeks of relentless grey skies, black gowns flapping over hoodies as students bike between lectures, sub-fusc (academic dress) required for exams, punts frozen on the Cherwell, and the constant smell of damp stone, bonfire smoke, and cheap cider from the college bars.
Week five is the halfway mark; freshers are no longer fresh, essays are late, rowing crews train at 5:30 a.m. in the dark on the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and the Turf Tavern is packed every night with people in tuxedos or rowing kit drinking £3 pints under heat lamps.
Archie Harrington-Whitmore is twenty-one, six-two, built like a statue someone forgot to finish in the important place. Christ Church rowing blue, signet rings clinking against every pint glass, voice that can slice through a crowded bar like a knife through butter. Everyone knows the script: he walks in, the room rearranges itself around him, someone buys him a drink before he’s even taken his coat off. He calls freshers “peasant” and they laugh because it’s Archie and that’s the game.
He has a finsta nobody’s supposed to know about: @archtakesLs. It’s mostly videos of him three bottles deep making some terrified first-year kneel to tie his Church’s brogues while his mates howl. Or the time he got the entire Magdalen rugby team to chant “Thank you, Archie” after he put a round of tequilas on Daddy’s black Amex. He thinks it’s hilarious. He thinks he’s untouchable.
He’s been untouchable his whole life.
Nannies weren’t allowed to say no. His mother still calls him "my perfect little lord" and kisses the top of his head like he’s seven. His father took him into the House of Lords when he was eight and said, quiet, like it was a secret: "One day they’ll all stand when you walk in." At school the teachers looked the other way when he made a younger kid carry his bags across the quad in the rain. Money, his smug attitude and cheekbones fixed everything.
It started early. Nursery in Kensington: the nannies (always Eastern European, always replaced if they lasted past six months) were drilled by his mother never to raise their voice. "Archie is sensitive, "she’d say, stroking his blond curls while he smashed a porcelain tea set because lunch was two minutes late. By four, he’d learned to point at the help and say “You’re sacked” in a piping voice that made them flinch. His father laughed it off over brandy: "Boy’s got spine." The Belarusian one, Katya, lasted nineteen days.Five-year-old Archie called her a "stupid peasant" when she told him he couldn’t have a third pudding. She slapped him once, sharp, across the cheek. That evening his mother rang the agency in tears. The agency rang the Home Office contact they kept for "difficult families." By nine the next morning Katya’s Tier-5 sponsor licence was pulled, her visa curtailed to seven days, and she was on the Ryanair red-eye to Minsk with a curt letter saying she’d breached the conditions of her stay.
Every tantrum was rewarded. Every sulk was soothed. Every comparison to “lesser” children (the ones who had to share, who were told no, who didn’t have their own pony) was delivered with a fond smile: “You’re simply better, darling. It’s in the blood.”
Fifteen hit and Archie became stupidly beautiful: six foot, white-blond, blue sensitive eyes concealing an internal malice. At Eton everyone (masters, fags, visiting girls) fell to their knees in worship, literally or close enough. He soaked it up and decided the world owed him forever.
The only thing money never fixed was the one thing he can’t show in changing rooms. Four inches hard on a good day (pretty, pink, and, in his mind, utterly useless).
So he doubled down everywhere else. Private coaches on retainer from the age of fourteen. A nutritionist who planned every mouthful like a military campaign. Breakfasts of fillet steak and egg whites that arrived by courier from Smithfield before he’d even woken up. Summers spent rowing until his palms split and bled, winters in the gym until his pecs swelled thick and square, arms heavy with new muscle, lats flaring
It worked. Mostly. People stared at the arms, the chest, the V that disappeared into cashmere joggers, and assumed the rest matched the advertising. He let them assume. He made damn sure they assumed.
But every so often, in the hiss of the showers after training, he’d feel the old panic flicker (quick, hot, shameful), and he’d angle his hips away from the room, wrap the towel a fraction earlier, laugh a fraction louder.
Because the one thing all the money, all the discipline, all the centuries of breeding couldn’t buy was an extra inch where it mattered to him most.
And Archie Harrington-Whitmore has never known how to live with something he can’t buy.
And all this worked. Until the night at the Turf.
He’s six pints in, loud, riding the usual high, when his eyes snag on Callum leaning against the wall across the courtyard (some quiet, state-school scholarship lad from up North who’s built like a brick shithouse, easily six-four and thick with real working muscle, dark hair, stupidly handsome in that rough, effortless way that makes Archie’s stomach do a weird flip he instantly blames on the lager). Archie decides it’ll be funny to make Callum give him a piggy-back to the kebab van. Everyone’s filming. Of course they are.
Callum just smiles, easy, and says, "Yeah, alright."
Ten steps down the alley Callum flips him. Not rough, not showy, just sudden. Archie lands on his back across a stack of crates, wind knocked out of him, chinos and monogrammed boxers halfway down his thighs before he even realises what’s happening.
The courtyard goes dead quiet.
Cold air hits skin that’s never seen daylight in public. Archie tries to laugh it off (old reflex) but the sound dies when he feels Callum’s trainer press between his shoulder blades. Not playful. Heavy. Real.
Fifty phones are up. Nobody’s breathing.
Callum leans down, voice low, South Yorkshire vowels soft as steel.
"Stay down, rich boy," Callum murmurs, mouth close enough that only Archie hears, "I saw it last week in the gym showers when you turned away sharpish and wrapped that towel like your life depended on it. You twitch and I swear everyone here sees exactly what you’ve been hiding."
Archie’s brain stalls. He pushes up anyway (instinct, pride, terror) and the foot presses harder until the edge of the crate bites his cheek. His arms start shaking. He looks sideways: his mates from school, the ones who’ve called him "king" since they were eleven, just stand there filming, eyes bright, mouths half-open in something that looks suspiciously like relief, almost glee, like they’ve been waiting years for someone to finally knock the crown off his head. Not one of them moves.
He hears his own voice come out small and cracked and nothing like his.
"Please… let me up."
It’s barely air. Callum doesn’t budge.
"Louder. Proper this time."
Archie’s throat locks. He tries again and it comes out a broken squeak, wetter this time, already half a sob. The tears hit fast (hot, shocking, sliding off his lashes onto the crate). He can feel them on his cheeks and hates himself for every single one.
"Please, sir…" His voice splinters on the word sir, climbing into something high and desperate." I’ll be good, please, sir, I’ll be good, don’t, please don’t make them see, I’m begging you"
The begging tumbles out of him like a confession he’s never rehearsed, raw and ugly and terrified. His whole body is shaking now, arms trembling under Callum’s weight, knees scraping the wood, breath hitching on every word. He’s never sounded this small in his life. He’s never felt this small.
He’s always been a coward underneath the money and the smirk; he just never had to admit it until right now, with fifty phones drinking in every tear.
"Please, sir… I’ll be good, please, sir…"
It’s barely a whisper, but the microphones catch it. Someone snorts. Then the laughter starts (sharp, shocked, nothing like the usual sycophantic braying).
Callum steps off, yanks Archie’s trousers to mid-thigh so he can’t even run, and walks away.
Archie scrambles upright, fingers useless on the belt, leather sliding through sweat and piss-slick hands. Someone from his house at Eton lifts his chin and mouths “small” with a slow, pitying smile before the phone disappears into a pocket.
He walks home alone. The front of his chinos is dark from crotch to mid-thigh, a huge, unmistakable wet patch that gleams under every streetlamp. It happened the instant Callum’s trainer pinned him: a hot, unstoppable flood of fear-provoked piss that burst straight through his boxers and down both legs. The alley light caught it, phones caught it, laughter caught it. Someone zoomed in. Someone shouted "he’s pissed himself!" and the laughter doubled, sharp and delighted. He can still hear it echoing off the old stone.
By morning the clip has two versions: one with the original audio, one slowed down so you can watch the exact moment the stain spreads like ink in water while his voice cracking on "please, sir" at the same time.
That night he sports his oak, yanks the curtains till the rings scream, and sits on the edge of the four-poster in nothing but the navy Bump Sups hoodie. The crest is stiff with old sweat and river water. He swears he’ll delete the video. Opens private browsing anyway. Twenty-three seconds on repeat.
The screen paints his face corpse-blue. He watches the dark patch bloom across his lap, watches his own mouth beg in that thin, needy voice he doesn’t recognise.
His hand slides under the hoodie slow, guilty. He never strokes the shaft; there’s not much worth stroking. Instead he peels the foreskin back with two thick, calloused fingers (the same fingers that grip an oar six hours a day, skin ridged and leathery from blades and blisters, the pads rough as sandstone, a half-healed split across the middle knuckle still sharp enough to sting).
Those big, boat-hardened fingertips land on the penis head like an insult. The little slick knob already wet and flushed dark pink, flinching at the first touch. He starts rubbing in tight, mean circles, the coarse skin dragging over the glossy, delicate surface. Every ridge of every callus scrapes; every scab catches and tugs. The friction is brutal, almost sandpaper on silk, and the head swells instantly, turning an angry, humiliated scarlet under the punishment.
He can feel the tiny split on his knuckle open again from the wet slide, a faint copper sting mixing with the salt of his own precum. The blisters that never quite heal rasp across the slit each time he passes over it, making the whole thing jerk and spit another helpless bead. It hurts in the exact way he hates and needs: raw, undignified, nothing like the smooth porn wanks he pretends he has. Just a posh boy with rower’s paws grinding his most pathetic spot until it throbs and leaks. He keeps going, rough and relentless, hating the little wet head more with every scrape, coming harder because of it.
By the sixth loop he’s panting, hips jerking, mouthing please, sir. On the ninth he comes just from tormenting the head, a short, brutal spurt that spatters the inside of the hoodie and leaves the tip raw and stinging.
He stays sitting there, phone still glowing, come cooling, piss-stink still rising off his skin. Doesn’t take long before the little red knob is twitching again, greedy for the next round.
Some nights he turns the sound up so he can hear the laughter right as the stain spreads, rubs that swollen head until his thighs shake and he’s begging the empty room for permission, comes twice as hard with his own teeth sunk in his pillow so the scout won’t hear in the morning.
Some nights he edges until three a.m., stopping himself every time he gets close, making himself say it out loud to the empty room when his roommate Freddie is not here: please, sir, may I?
He always waits for the exact frame where the trainer presses down and the last of Archie Harrington-Whitmore, future Earl of Wherever, future power-broker, future whatever, just… breaks.
That’s the frame that ruins him every time.
He comes crying, whispering thank you, sir.
He never deletes the video.
He is still rich.
He is still beautiful.
And when he’s alone, when the college is asleep and the portraits of his ancestors line down the silent halls, he locks the oak again, pulls the curtains again, opens the phone again.
Same twenty-three seconds
Same pleasures.
Thank you, sir. More, sir.
