Ash lay in bed next to her on his side, staring at the wall, and rehearsed exactly what he was going to say. He didn’t know why it was so hard. People did it all the time. Asked for what they wanted. Asked their partners to do something for them. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t done non-traditional things before. Not like they were some couple that only knew how to relate in missionary-style platitudes.
But he couldn’t ask.
He’d googled it, and found about a hundred different templates. Scripts for bringing up all sorts of desires, some vanilla and some not so much. Different ways of phrasing, of flagging. Signals he could leave, along with handy translations. He’d even written his own statement. Simple, to the point, a basic outline of what he wanted.
Then he’d torn it up and flushed it down the toilet.
He’d told himself he’d just do it. Just say something, put it out there, just tell her what he’d been thinking about. He’d just say it was something he’d been wanting to try, and that if she wasn’t into it, that was fine. No pressure. It wasn’t that big a deal. But maybe not tonight. It wasn’t that big a deal. So he shouldn’t bring it up. Make her feel obligated.
“Are you going to tell me or not? You’ve been not-sleeping for an hour.”
He hadn’t realized she was awake, but now that he knew, he could feel the way she was laying, even through his back. How she’d turned herself sharp, had her elbows out, as though keeping him at a distance.
“I’d just decided I wasn’t going to,” he told the wall in front of him
“What good,” she snapped from behind his back, “does that do either of us?”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
She growled, and he felt her roll over toward the wall herself.
Later, when her breathing had gone soft and regular, he turned over. Whispered it into her hair.
“I want you to cut me.”
He was short with her the whole next day. And the next. He could barely talk to her, much less look at her. It wasn’t her fault. That he wanted things he shouldn’t. That he was broken, still. After all her work. That he needed to feel it again. That he wanted it to be her, in control. To decide how deep.
It shouldn’t be like this. Not after all this time. He and Cat had been together for years. They were partners. True partners, in ways Ash had never been with anyone else. She was the only person he’d ever felt he could be himself with. His whole self, not the carefully curated versions he’d given other people. Cat, she didn’t need that. She just needed him, whole and unedited.
Except when it came to this.
By the third day, he decided he needed to just get over it and be normal, because she didn’t deserve to deal with the kind of asshole he was being. It wasn’t important. Not important enough to ruin things over. It wasn’t important this time, like it hadn’t been important all the other times. She met his needs, exceeded his needs, and that was worth so much more than something this petty. So he got up early. Made breakfast. When she came out, yawning and flattening her hair, he’d set the table, complete with flowers. Proper silverware.
She blinked at it, not even half awake. Sat down.
He smiled, filled her plate with bacon. Eggs. A cup of coffee. Waited for the chance to say he was sorry. When the first two cups of coffee were gone, and she was awake enough to think, he sat down across from her, the apology sitting on his tongue.
“What the hell is wrong with you right now,” she said, before he could get the words out.
“I want you to cut me.” Like it was what he’d meant to say all along.
“No.” Like it was what she’d expected.
Then she got up, and left the apartment.
“How do you want this to work.”
Ash jumped, choked on a scream. She’d been gone for nearly nine hours, and opened the door so quietly he hadn’t realized she was home.
She’d come back. Of course she had come back. That was how their relationship worked so well– she could leave, when she needed to. Come back, when she was ready. Walk away, when she got overwhelmed, got too much information, too deep in her head, needed to think and process. She left. Not Ash. Just the room. Or the apartment. Got whatever distance she needed, then. Thought. Processed. Came back. Talked to Ash. And they decided what to do.
But he was still almost surprised that she came back, this time. After what he’d said.
He took a deep breath, tried to slow down the racing of his heart. Then he listened. Actually heard what she’d said, and it sped up again. Got so loud he knew she must be able to hear it too.
She had an armful of books, which she set down on the coffee table. “How do you want it to work.”
It was the voice he loved. The one that made him shiver, made goosebumps rise on his arms, and his throat go tight. The voice she used when she was working through a problem. Setting down the details in her mind so she could find the solution and put it into practice. It was rough, came from deep inside her. Came slowly, like she didn’t know the words till a second before she said them.
His body went soft and slow, heavy and thick as liquid. “I. Don’t know.”
She sat next to him on the couch. Close. But not touching. He wanted to. To reach out and put his hand on her leg. Or her shoulder. Take her hand. Stroke her fingers. But, he waited. To see what she wanted. If she really meant it.
“It would be easy,” she said, and she was still studying the problem. “To hurt you. Actually hurt you. Really hurt, I mean.”
He found he couldn’t breathe. Or maybe he was breathing too much. He felt light-headed, a little dizzy.
“I don’t want to,” she continued. “But it’s possible to make mistakes. Cut too deep. The wrong thing.”
“I trust you.”
“You’re an idiot,” she snapped, and twisted her hand around in his. And she had his fingers, somehow, bent, over-extended, the joints screaming that it wasn’t how they were meant to bend.
He gasped, and just as suddenly as she’d taken them, she let go.
“An idiot,” she repeated. But then he saw her see him. Saw his rapid breathing, his flushed face and heavy-lidded eyes. And she smiled.
She was beautiful, always. But especially like that. When the angles of her pointed features, and the angles of her pointed limbs came together like a kaleidoscope. When sat straight, her attention too fixed on something else to be concerned about her height, too dedicated to what she was doing to remember to hunch in, bring her shoulders up, make herself smaller. When she absently shoved her straight, brown hair behind her ears with long, dextrous fingers so there was nothing to get in her way, obstruct her view of what had caught her fascination.
When she paid attention to something as though she wanted to learn everything about it, from the inside out. When she looked exactly like she was looking at him now.
“Yes,” he said, on an exhale. Her eyes, so sharp, so focused, were too much for him, and he had to let his own drop. To her hands, still on his fingers. He watched, hearing his breath loud in his ears, as she slowly took his middle finger. Carefully aligned her thumb just below the first knuckle. With her index finger, began to force the tip backward.
The joint locked. She continued to push. She was almost gentle. Precise. As she was with everything. This was a scientific experiment. A resistance test of his body, its capacity. He wasn’t breathing fast, then. In fact, the lovely, slow feeling had come over him again. He dragged his eyes back to hers, and watched her work through the equation in his features.
“I’m going to break your finger,” she said, matter of factly, and it did feel like she might. The joint strained, and he could feel it creak, but she was so controlled.
“You won’t,” he answered, and it caught on a whine in his throat.
“I might.”
The pain was steady now, red, and throbbing, and he thought about putting out his other hand to stop her. His eyes found hers again. Hers narrowed, looking through him.
She pushed harder. Abruptly. A jerky increasing jolt that made him yelp.
And she let go. Shoved his hand into his own lap. “You were going to let me.”
He shrugged, studying his hands, the warm flush of pleasure turning into embarrassment. Shame.
“If this is going to happen. You need to know when to stop. To stop me.”
He couldn’t look at her, because then she’d know he didn’t know how. That the reason he wanted her to do it was because he’d never learned. To stop others. To stop himself.
She took his chin in her hand, pulled his face around to her. He still couldn’t look at her, until she pulled his head up, back, long fingers pressed along either side of his face. Then he met her eyes, the shame hot inside him, but something else burning away at him equally.
“You need to be able to tell me to stop,” she said, the words falling directly through the core of him. “To be safe. To see how far we can go.”
“Not my arms,” he said. He’d had to get up. Sitting next to her, in reach of her, had become too much. So he’d walked around the room a few times, feeling her watching him, continuing to study. Then he’d settled on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table, cross-legged, elbows on knees, palms up.
“Ok.” She didn’t ask why, and he was glad of it.
Moving away from her hadn’t helped him get back under control. It was almost worse. The distance made him feel the evaluation. How she examined him. How her eyes measured the surface of him–his black hair, curls all out of order from his distracted tugging, gray eyes that couldn’t quite meet hers, his pale green shirt collar against his brown skin, the length of his arms and legs, when he moved away from her, sat himself down. And more than the surface. How they measured what was under it. What drove him to move away in the first place.
He could feel how it made his face hot, his hands cold and a little numb. How he wanted her to see every part of him, to crawl inside him and explore what he was made of. It made him want to lay himself bare for her, just to know what she could find. The things she could draw out that he couldn’t see.
Cat had stayed on the couch. Come forward a little, elbows on knees. Folded herself up like a blade folded into its handle. Ash noticed, a little distantly, that a button had come off the top of her plaid shirt. Reminded himself he’d need to sew that back on, because she’d never notice it was gone. Noticed a speck of lint on the carpet, and a line of dust on one of the bookshelves. That Cat’s chair had been moved a little to the right, leaving divots where its legs used to be.
But he had to try to think. To make rules they could follow. He wished she would do it, tell him how it would work. It was so much easier just to follow, to have the blind, stupid trust that had gotten him hurt so many times. But she didn’t deserve that kind of responsibility. Neither, he knew, should he put her on that kind of pedestal. It wasn’t fair.
And, he thought, seeing the way her eyes slid over him, the calculating light in them, it wasn’t entirely safe.
She was waiting for him to say something else. He wanted to give it to her, but he had no idea what else there was. What ways he could limit things, without limiting her.
“Say no,” she said, finally, when it became clear to both of them that he didn’t have anything else to give. “To stop. I need to know you can.”
He took a breath, held it. Looked straight into her eyes. “I promise.”
“I trust you,” she said, with a hint of a smile, a hint of other things.
“Idiot.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, as she slipped the doubled rope around his wrist. “If it’s too much. I don’t need it. Just the other part.”
“Ok,” she replied, but did the same to his other hand.
“Really,” he said, and tried to mean it. Tried not to shiver. Tried not to let his words come out tight, and tense, and thrilled.
“I know,” she said. “You already told me. Twice.”
They’d decided his back was the safest. Smartest. So they could see what happened. So she could learn how it worked, and there wasn’t much chance of something going wrong.
So he wouldn’t have to see her face.
He’d taken off his shirt, and the apartment felt cold. His shoulders bunched, and he could feel the goosebumps bloom down his ribs. He hadn’t stopped blushing, hadn’t been able to bring his eyes up from the ground. He wasn’t ashamed of what she’d see in his body. She’d seen it naked plenty of times before. She knew all of the scars he wore, how they traced white lines in his skin. She knew his thinness, the ways his ribs stuck out like staves when he bent wrong. The way his waist made a straight line to his hips, never able to hold pants in place without a belt. He knew she knew all that.
But it was different, somehow, for her to see it while she tied him over the back of the couch.
He’d wanted to back out, a thousand times. Been ready to say it. No. To let her off the hook. To tell her this didn’t matter, it wasn’t important.
But it did. And it was. And he didn’t want her to stop. He didn’t want her ever to stop.
The rope had surprised him though. It was new. The roughness, the fibers catching against his skin. It slid as he shifted, rubbed and chafed, a little uncomfortable. The thin, sharp feelings down his spine weren’t just the cold, or embarrassment. He wasn’t afraid, not really. How could he be afraid of her?
But she’d surprised him.
And he wasn’t sure entirely how he felt about it.
Except that he wanted to see what was going to happen.
He’d watched her, once he’d understood that she’d agreed, for real. Watched her think about what he’d asked, and how she was going to do it. Watched everything in her relax, her brown eyes glow like they did when she studied. When she worked on something that occupied all her thoughts. She shoved her sleeves up, and when her marvelous, efficient hands had begun to move as though she were already working, Ash couldn’t help but imagine what work they might be doing to him. On him.
But he hadn’t expected her to tie him up.
“I won’t move,” he said, softly, when she brought him up to his knees, when she put her palm between his shoulder blades, to press him face-down over the low back of their second-hand, thrift-shop couch.
She shrugged. “You’ll try not to. But if you’re startled.”
She looped one of the ropes around the leg of the couch. Pulled. The back of the couch caught him just at his collarbones, the rest of him supported by the cushions. He tested his arm a little. There was no give.
He wasn’t expecting it when she tightened the other wrist with a hard jerk. He didn’t quite yelp. Didn’t quite moan. She’d stretched both arms to their limit, his shoulders a clean, taught line. A canvas. Nothing to get in her way. Nothing to risk any damage she didn’t intend.
His breath caught in his throat. The pressure against his chest made it hard to fill his lungs. He realized, then, he hadn’t expected her to do it. Hadn’t thought she’d be willing. Hadn’t thought, if she was, she’d make him feel like this.
He’d thought it would be perfunctory. An act she carried out because she cared for him, loved him even, but not something she’d get anything out of. Certainly not something she’d treat with the same care and art that she treated her studies. Her practice.
He wanted to thank her, to tell her how much it meant, to feel like this. For it to be her, her hands. He tried, but the sounds that came out weren’t words, just an inarticulate sound. He hoped that was enough.
And when her hand touched him, traced his spine from neck to shoulders, to waist, he knew it was.
“I did some reading,” she said, and the sound of a zipper. Things being shuffled. Set on the coffee table. “Different. To cut without trying to open someone.”
She straddled him, her knees on either side of his hips, set something down on the back of the couch. He could just see it, if he turned his head as far as it would go. Far enough that it hurt.
A rectangular box. Pale blue plastic. Closed, but he didn’t need her to open it, to know what it was. Her lab tools. He couldn’t stop the shiver this time. Hard enough to realize how well she’d restrained him. How little he could move. She’d been right. It would be safer this way.
She saw him looking. Moved the tools back, out of his line of sight.
He wished she would talk to him, but was glad she didn’t. He didn’t know if he could stand it, hearing her voice, on top of everything. Didn’t want to break her concentration. Or the perfect, crystalline tension of the moment.
The sound of paper tearing, and the sharp smell of alcohol. He jumped again when the cold touched his back, and he knew he’d made a sound but couldn’t hear it over the blood in his head. Couldn’t hear anything, except his heartbeat.
He felt her move. Heard her open the case. Take something out. But he didn’t turn his head. Wanted to not see. Wanted to wait and want.
Then something was against his shoulder. Like a fingernail, at first. A line of pressure. Pressure, that became thin and hot and sharp.
It stopped, and he wanted it back. Whimpered. Felt her shift.
“Interesting.” But she wasn’t talking to him. “Less force than I thought.”
Another line traced into the meat of his shoulder blade, more surely, but over just as fast.
She shifted again, and reached just into his peripheral vision. This time he did turn his head, try to see. But of course she’d put things where it suited her best, which happened to be somewhere he couldn’t look at, given the range of motion he had available to him.
He’d set his teeth into his lip, but he let it go. Let the tension ease out of his shoulders.
When she cut him then, it felt different. Not the sharp, fingernail scratch. Quick, and easy to breathe through and ignore.
This feeling was dull. Flat. A longer blade, not pulled in a cut, but pressed down. The sensation of his skin actually splitting under it. Of an instrument moving into him. His hands tightened into fists, and he struggled to remember to breathe.
She made a sound, over him. An interested sound, like she’d been given something new to think about, and the cutting edge was removed. He was about to move, to shift slightly, when it was against his body again, in a different place.
This time, the flat blade rested under his scapula for a second, before tracing a clean, swooping line along his ribs, and he knew he’d whined again, lost somewhere inside the sensations. A second and third line joined the first, and he was panting, and his face felt wet but he knew he wasn’t crying.
Then she moved again. He heard the scalpel being replaced in the case. But she hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t asked her to.
When she touched him again, it was with her hand. Her fingertips. So very soft after the metal. Gently, against the scratches. Less gently, against the deeper pain. Then, with firm, steady pressure along the cuts.
There were noises coming from him. Noises, as he felt his skin shift. Felt the edges of the wound move against each other, against her hands. Noises, and light, dancing in front of his eyes.
When she reached for the tools again, he wanted to scream, but all he did was arch his back upward. Showing her how much more he wanted. How much he could take.
“It doesn’t bleed much,” she said, and he could feel her staring at his back.
“It doesn’t. When the knives are sharp.” He was amazed at how normal his voice sounded.
“Do you want it to bleed?” she asked, and he felt the tip of the pointed tool on the other side of his back. Against the meaty part. Where there was a lot of flesh to go through.
He wanted to say yes. But he shouldn’t say yes.
“Yes,” he said.
And she stabbed him, the blade of the scalpel sinking a full inch, straight in, through skin and fat and muscle. Stabbed him, gave the handle the slightest turn, and pulled it back out.
He felt the blood well up, spill, and run down his back.
And then he really did scream.
Instantly, she had a gauze pad over the wound, and was applying firm pressure. “Sorry!”
Her voice cut through the pain, that was so different from anything he’d ever had done to him before. Different than anything he’d done to himself.
“It’s-” he tried. Cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”
“I stabbed you.”
“Yeah.” He tried to clear his throat again, and moved against the couch, as far as his stretched arms would let him, and his side burned.
“Shit,” she said. “Hold still. You’re making the bleeding worse.”
He stopped moving, let the cushions under him take his weight. “I think that was the point.”
Her barking laugh made him smile, which made him try to turn his head to her, which made the puncture wound burn. She slapped the back of his head, gently. He grinned, but didn’t move again.
She stood up, and he missed the pressure over him, the heat on his back. “Aw,” he teased. “Tired of me already?”
“I fucking stabbed you.”
“Once!”
Then she was back, her hand on his neck, pushing his cheek into the edge of the couch. “That’s not enough?”
He whimpered, and his heart, that had so recently resumed its normal pace, cranked up again. Her hand slid around to his throat, and he could feel it beating against her palm. “Not enough,” he said, through the individual lines of her fingers. Through their tightening pressure. Through the desire to have no words at all.
“What do you want.” She said it into his hair, and he could feel her lips move. Chills shivered down his arms. His back spasmed involuntarily, and the puncture ached, like it went clear through him.
“I want more,” he said, low. Added, “Please.”
She wasn’t slow this time. It didn’t feel deliberate. She didn’t cut carefully, testing her tools. She swept the blade in long curves against the side she’d punctured. Three times. To match the other three strokes. He could imagine his back. Three red lines. Three white, slowly filling, beading to red themselves. Like wings.
He was flying.
She hadn’t stopped. He expected her to stop. He expected her to pause, to check in. To say something, anything to him. He flew higher.
She had moved her focus, back to the other side. To the meat under his ribcage, just above his waist. She was drawing vertical lines, parallel to his spine. Line after line, a row of them. Jerking the flat blade in short, abrupt strokes. He thought they felt deeper.
He was panting, not wanting to inhale too hard, while she worked. While she worked so fast.
She was panting too. He could hear it. Ragged, and deep, coming from somewhere very far inside her. Matching the rhythm of the lines she cut into his back. He wanted to keep hearing it, to make it louder. To draw it out and up and up until she made the sounds he felt inside himself. He wanted to hear her want, as much as he wanted her to feel his. Wanted to feel her want through her knives, like she felt it through his skin.
And still she cut. When she ran out of space on one side, moved to the other. The same short, jerky lines, feeling more like punctures than incisions. He couldn’t stay still. Couldn’t keep his body from twitching. Trying to pull itself away from what she was doing. He told himself to stay still. That he wanted this. That she was doing exactly what he wanted.
And she was.
But his body had begun to fight. Every time his lungs expanded, he felt the cuts spread. Close. His body tried. To get away. To pull his wrists free, or even just to arch, to curl up, to hide the vulnerable parts of himself that she’d found, and seen, and cut wide open.
And then he was lost. Somewhere in his own head. In his own body. Somewhere in and through the pain. In her hands. In the unhesitating fire she lay down on him. Put into him. There was nothing left in his head, except how it hurt. Her legs on his. The fact that she hadn’t stopped.
He was crying. Tears pouring down his face, and sobs choking in his throat, raw and aching, and as ragged as her breathing, or maybe his own breathing, or whatever sound filled his head.
Then, it wasn’t just his body. Trying to get away. Wanting it to stop.
“No,” he said. Thought he said.
And her arms were around him. Her body flat against his back. Holding him, and taking all the pain away.
He was flying.