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.