Tannery.
A place where animal hides are tanned; the workshop of a tanner.
That didn't help.
Tanning.
The art or process by which a hide is tanned; a sound spanking.
What?
An article -
Tanning (Leather)
Spanking and leather.
I felt like everything I found out about Levi just complicated things and made him harder to understand. I was waist-deep in research about his store and yet it was still as much an enigma to me as he was. It didn't really help that I didn't know where to look or, indeed, what to look for. I felt like the answer was staring me in the face and I just couldn't see it.
Over the next week, Levi and I took to texting. He didn't always answer my questions in a straightforward way, but we spoke about mundane things - the places we'd both been and liked, favorite movies, favorite foods - Levi told me about a Thai place nearby he wanted to visit with me. We exchanged music tastes. He sent me the playlist he'd made for a concert he went to; it wasn't the sort of thing I usually listened to, but I liked it.
Wholly absent from our chats, I noticed, was Levi's provocative behavior and the language he flustered me with. Since that day, he hadn't said a thing to suggest he thought of me as anything but a friend. He'd done exactly as he said - I said no, and he stopped. It was an unusual feeling. I didn't remember a time that anyone had so easily acquiesced to my wishes, had respected my feelings so thoroughly without even a word against it.
But with that came the strange sensation that I was missing something.
And the wanting it left frightened me.
‡
Sunday rolled back around eventually. I told Levi I'd pick him up at his apartment instead of the street corner, since I now knew where it was. He didn't argue this time.
There was a soft snow flurry laying a quiet cloud over town when I left to go get Levi. I gave myself extra time just in case the snow slowed me down, but it was barely sticking to the roads. I ended up at Levi's twenty minutes ahead of time. I texted him and let him know I was outside. With time to kill, I pulled my coat tight around myself and wandered onto the sidewalk to take a closer look at his storefront.
The mannequin in the window held no further answers, and the display behind her was awfully plain besides. There was a wall separating it from the rest of the store so you couldn't see inside, covered with some kind of patterned black silk.
I moved over to the glass-paneled door, hoping to get a better view, but it was pretty heavily obstructed on its own. There were stickers for whatever licenses and permits Levi needed, but most of the window was taken up by a small "Closed" sign with a movable clock face, and a larger sign in aluminum with big, blocky letters:
NOTICE
You must be 18 or older to enter.
Patrons will be carded.
What would you have to card people for? I'd never seen a sign like this anywhere. Right next to it was a sticker that said service animals were allowed. Animals, but not kids, apparently.
As I was trying to peer into the darkness between the window decorations, the door directly to my right opened and Levi stepped onto the sidewalk, turning to lock the door behind him. He gave me a look, but smiled all the same. "You're being nosy again. Ready to go?"
I glanced back at the door. "Well, we're kind of early..."
"Ash," Levi warned, "I told you I don't want you in there."
"Come on, man," I smirked. "You can't keep me out forever. Should I come back during business hours? Say... what, five o'clock?" I added, consulting the plastic hands on the "closed" sign.
"I never change the time on that thing." He sighed and slumped his shoulders. "Aren't we going to church?"
"We have a couple minutes," I needled him.
Levi rolled not just his eyes, but his whole head back, groaning under his breath. At last he walked over and shouldered me gently aside, fiddling with his keys. "You are a tease, you know that?" The door unlocked and he pulled it open, a bell sounding somewhere inside. "Go ahead. But I have a feeling you're going to need more than a couple minutes."
I grinned at him and stepped inside, but there wasn't much to see - even by the muted light from the doorway, it was too dark to make out anything but the counter up front. Levi walked in behind me and shut the door. A shiver ran up my back as I heard the lock click.
"Ash, I need you to understand something," said Levi's voice over my shoulder. "You are completely out of your element here, and you're going to have a lot of questions I can't easily answer. I need you to keep an open mind, and be calm."
Be calm... Be calm? Why? Did he expect me to freak out? As Levi made his way past me and around the counter I could barely see, I inhaled gently - and a strangely familiar scent soaked my lungs. Something warm, earthy, with a sharp tang that seemed to linger in my mouth...
Levi flicked the overhead lights on, row by row.
I really wasn't sure what I was looking at. Whatever it was, there was... a lot of it.
There were walls and standing shelves and glass cases, all displaying a different variety of things. There was one wall full of objects that seemed to all be made of leather - straps and rings and buckles in different configurations, and in colors I never thought leather could be. Dog collars like the one on the mannequin, decorated or completely plain... Small pairs of straps like bracelets, zip-tied together by the steel rings they hung on... And some things whose makeup I could only guess at...
Further down the wall was an assortment of things that looked at once familiar and strange to me . Some looked like riding crops, others like whips out of Indiana Jones, and others unlike anything I'd ever seen before... One was like a leather horse tail with a handle. I reached out and touched it. The "tail" turned out to be made of a multitude of thin leather strips, and I wondered at its use.
"Do you know what any of this is, Ash?" asked Levi.
I was startled, almost forgetting he was there. "I... don't know." I looked over the riding crop things, thinking. "Horse riding stuff?"
"Not quite," he said slowly. He unzipped and shed his jacket, tossing it onto the counter behind him, and came across the shop to where I stood. His boots were heavy and his gait was careful, but I didn't feel anger or annoyance from him... that put me at ease somehow.
Come to think of it, a lot of things here reminded me somewhat of horses... Some of the stuff on the one side of the wall looked like horse bridles or bits. None of it seemed to be made to fit a horse, though. And as I watched Levi pull one of those weird pairs of bracelets off the wall, my stomach turned in realization, knowing what he was going to say before he said it.
"They're for humans."
I looked from him to the leather cuffs he held - cuffs... they were
cuffs!
"What do you... use them for?" I asked cautiously.
Levi smiled sympathetically. "For fun," he said simply, turning the cuffs in his hands. "And for sex."
My thoughts were a blur. I couldn't take my eyes off the cuffs in Levi's hands. The work was clean, the edges smoothed and shiny, the insides finished . The large rings on them were linked to triangular metal fixtures sewn into the belting, and it all jangled cheerily whenever they moved, though they were zip-tied loosely together like the rest.
"You... Levi, did you make all this?" I said slowly, gaping at the wall.
Levi smirked proudly. "Almost all of it," he said. "Most of everything that's made of leather or wood. The metal, I order in... Pretty much everything else is wholesale."
I began to wander. Things jumped out and caught my eye... A spiked purple dog collar. A spool of scarlet rope. A shelf of clear bottles with brightly colored labels, though none of them looked like drinks. I didn't actually see anything made of wood until I reached the glasstop counter, which seemed to double as a display case; inside were several curvy, strangely shaped things, some of polished wood, some in shimmering steel. Alongside these were more leather cuffs and collars, these with gorgeous and intricate patterns tooled into them. One that caught my eye, a wide cylinder with curves at its top and bottom rim, had a pattern of roses and thorns in sharp relief against the warm brown leather.
