Author's note: This is -- by my standards -- a hard, rough BDSM scene between two people who understand each other deeply and intimately, and who have arrangements in place for the therapeutic use of what looks -- from the outside -- like dubious consent.
It is also a story about being neurodivergent and having the sort of meltdown that can happen to you.
So: trigger warnings for all of that.
#~#~#
I was curled up in bed when I heard the throaty growling of Merle's bike pulling into the driveway, and the crunching of gravel under its tyres. I did not move.
I heard, filtering up from under the other side of the house, the clank of his side stand going down, the hard sounds of his boots on the concrete, the snaps of his bag unclipping. Crunching of gravel. His boots thudding on the back stairs. The door opening.
A single serotonin receptor in my brain managed to fire, but it was swamped by whatever was responsible for shame.
"Hello!" Merle called out before the door clicked shut.
"Mph," I managed, not loudly enough to be heard even in the depth of night, let alone late afternoon.
I heard Merle's boots clump through the back of the house. A thump of his bag on its table. Creaking of the old chair he had restored. Buckles unsnapping. Boots thumping onto the ground as he took them off.
Velcro opening. Zips. More movement of fabric.
Then Merle's pantherine, soft steps as he came back through the house, up the corridor.
"Chrys, honey," he said softly from the doorway, in case I was asleep.
"Mph," I managed, again.
"Are you OK?"
"No."
"Are you sick?"
"No."
"Is it something I've done?"
"No."
The bed creaked and shifted as he moved onto it.
I smelled him before he touched me: nothing sour, but clean sweat, clean musty maleness, a faint odour of his riding pants -- even a faint trace that might be the woollen undershirt he wore which somehow stopped him smelling sour.
This time, enough serotonin receptors fired to make a difference. Unfortunately, I was not in the mood to be happy.
I burrowed my head into the pillow as he settled against my back and tucked his legs behind mine. He grasped my head firmly and lifted it so he could slide his lower arm under my neck, then gently lowered my head back down. I did not respond. On any better day, it would have made me giggle. It did not.
Merle nestled his upper arm over me.
"Did you do something wrong?" he asked, his voice vibrating against the back of my head as he cradled me.
"Everything," I muttered.
His arm over me wormed underneath the pillow I was hugging against me, up over my chest between my breasts. His other arm folded up over the pillow. Gently, but firmly enough to make me gasp, he squeezed.
If you know the phrase "crushing the soul back into my body", you know.
He held it until I almost had to gasp for air, then slowly relaxed but still held me tightly.
"What went wrong?" he asked, gently.
"Everything!"
"What went wrong?" he repeated, squeezing very slightly harder but with no change in the gentle, compassionate tone of his voice.
"I couldn't get anything finished, and I tried to make bread and it went all wrong, and I tried to get quotes for under the house and nobody answered and nobody has called me back and I'm stupid and..."
My sullen litany terminated in what was almost a squawk as he crushed me against him.
My hands opened reflexively and he ripped my pillow away.
"What do we do when we're feeling useless and stupid?" he asked, calmly.
"Give that back, fucker," I said, trying to reach for it. He held me too easily. I could have fought and could have given a good account of myself, but if I was in the right head space to do that, we would have been having a very different conversation.
"What do we do?" he repeated.
"Tell you to fuck off," I said, pushing the entire day's frustration and self-directed rage into five words.
He pulled his upper arm out and brought his hand down hard onto my thigh where it was exposed by the short nightie I was wearing, so it stung like a bitch.
"Fuck!" I screamed. I didn't move.
"What do we do?" he asked.
"Tell you to fuck off!"
"Roll over," he said.
"Fuck off."
He slapped my thigh again: Harder, this time.
"Fuck!" I wanted to tell him it stung like a bitch, but I was too sulky.
"Roll over."
"Fuck you."
"What's your safeword?"
OK. So he was serious. If I had enough energy to appreciate how much he cared about me, he wouldn't have had to ask. But the question shifted a track in my brain. Made me aware of what he was planning. Which was, in its own way, the start of therapy.
"...Hibiscus," I muttered.
"Roll over."
I didn't bother saying anything then, I just buried my face in the pillow under my head.
His other arm, which was still cradling me, moved so his hand could slide over my upper breast -- covered only by thin cotton -- and find my nipple. He pinched, hard.
"Ow, FUCK!"
"Roll over."
"Fuck off."
He pinched my nipple, grinding into it until I screamed and flailed away from him -- not to get away or to knock his hand away, but to obey.
He immediately let go and pulled his arm out from underneath me as I flopped onto my belly with my right nipple smarting and throbbing.
He pushed himself up onto his knees as I pushed my face sullenly into the pillow. I knew what was coming even before he pulled my nightie up off my butt.
When I had ripped off my clothes in a final tantrum in the afternoon, I had only put the nightie on because I hated myself and my body. So I was bare-arsed because I had been going to shower before I had lost my temper at the shower curtain and stormed out of the bathroom, screaming.
A second later, his hand landed on my arse.
I gritted my teeth.
Merle knows what he's doing. He starts gently unless he's making a point, working up to going hard, so the first few hurt but weren't bad.
He alternated one side to the other, as I ground my teeth together and shoved my face into the pillow and tried not to make any sound as the spanking settled into a steady rhythm.
Then he hit me with the leather paddle we keep hanging on the headboard.
I screamed "FUCK!" while trying to buck off the bed.
His hand slammed into the back of my neck, shoving me down onto the bed as he cracked the paddle down over my other buttock.
"MTHRFGHER!" I screamed, muffled by the pillow.
He struck again, and again, as I started trying to writhe out of the way. My arse was on fire, each blow sending pain exploding through me as I thrashed around without actually trying to escape.
When he stopped, it took me a few seconds to realise.
He grabbed my wavy hair, twisted it into a rope, and pulled my head up.
"Are we feeling better, now?"
Better? Not yet. I was feeling more alive, though. I was feeling like I was able to want something more than oblivion. There was enough adrenaline in my veins for that, now, even if it wasn't enough to make me feel worthy enough to ask for help. Or anything else.
"Get fucked," I said, my voice strained by the angle my neck was at.
He dropped my head, so my face slammed back into the pillow.
"Ow," I said, muffled.
He slapped my thigh -- lightly. "Up."
I made a half-hearted thrashing with my legs, but didn't move meaningfully. If I don't have the mental energy to move properly, I need assistance.
He slapped my arse again, so it stung. "Up!"
"Fuck!"
The burning, stinging pain of the blow gave me enough energy to scrabble my legs up the bed, reach between them and grab the backs of my knees from the insides. Which lifted my arse to the right height, while serving as a reasonably effective spreader bar because a comfortable grab has my knees at shoulder-width apart.