Pain can be a part of that nebulous concept of “experience,” of course. But it can also lead to shitty art, tear-smudged pages, and unfinished work because the artist is too busy gazing soulfully into the distance from a rain-soaked balcony while subtitles scroll across their pretentious black-and-white life.
In my own life, the greatest quantity—though maybe not quality—of art often came not from pain but from the avoidance of pain. Boundless Fate had been conceived in a four-day haze just after a friend from college had been killed in a motorcycle accident, when the only way to turn my brain off was to come up with the most ridiculous collection of concepts I could imagine, and try to find some way to weave them together into a cohesive narrative. Years later, I had a successful comic about time-traveling wizards, sentient rocks, space goats, medieval boy bands, and demons waging endless war over a colony of rabbits.
It all made sense in context, I swear.
A knock at my door jarred my out of my trance, and I realized I’d completely lost track of time and still needed to shower, shave, and change my clothes before we went out. I jumped up and let Mariah and Tea in, apologizing profusely the second I opened the door.
“River, honey,” Mariah interrupted as she looked me over. “You look like you got hit by a truck. I don’t think a shower is going to help.”
“Thank you for your kind words,” I said with a sigh, shutting the door behind them.
“She’s right,” Tea said, toeing off their shoes. “Like you got hit by a garbage truck, and then spent the night in a dumpster.”
“I just haven’t been sleeping well,” I said, rubbing at my still-swollen eyes.
“Are you coming down with something?” Tea leaned down to make sure the shoes were all straight on the rack, and I kind of loved them for it.
“Just a crippling case of the feels.” I flopped down on my couch with a sigh, figuring as long as I had an audience, I might as well take advantage of this opportunity to drape myself artfully over something. Too bad I didn’t have a chaise longue.
Mariah took a couple steps into the room and stopped, looking down with a frown. “Is this grit I feel under my feet? How long since you’ve swept your floors?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a distracted shrug. “A couple days?”
“Oh, baby,” Mariah said, her voice all soft with concern. She threw herself onto the couch next to me and flung her arms around my waist, squeezing me close. “You wanna talk about it?”
I wanted to argue with her—wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that only a crazy person would be so rigidly set in their ways that not sweeping for a couple of days was a sign of deep depression. But unfortunately she was right.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I dragged my hands down my face with a groan. “Things are just weird with Ellison.”
“Weird how?” Tea said, settling down on the other end of the couch. “Besides in the whole ‘whips and chains’ sort of way.”
“That’s not weird,” Mariah and I said in unison, and that, at least, broke the tension. I laughed, rubbing at my forehead and trying to find my words.
“We had a—a scene, I guess, that went badly. And I told him I knew about the books. And then we had another…thing go badly. And now I don’t know where we stand or where I even want us to stand.” I shook my head. “No, that’s a lie. I know exactly where I want us to stand, and I don’t know if we’re ever going to stand there.”
“What happened?” Mariah asked, snuggling a little closer. It was a little shocking how nice it felt.
“I don’t want to, uh, go into too much detail,” I said, gesturing vaguely at Tea.
Tea dismissed me with a wave. “Consider this a one-time voucher for all-you-can-eat kink discussion with Tea. Actually, would you like me to make you some tea to drink while we talk?”
“You don’t have to take care of me,” I grumbled. “I’m not sick or anything.”
“Of course we do, honey,” Mariah said, giving me a slightly patronizing pat on the cheek. “We’re your friends and we love you.”
Tea wasn’t familiar with my kitchen, and Mariah got up to help them find the teas and the kettle. I watched them from my moping position on the couch, my brow furrowed. I hadn’t really known Tea that long, and it surprised me that I wasn’t freaking out to see them rummaging in my cupboards for mugs and supplies. It was strange, sure, but not unsettling.
Maybe this was one of those personal growth things. That would be pretty cool.
It seemed pretty likely that my time with Ellison exploring and analyzing every facet of my boundaries and motivations had had some lasting effect. Not a huge one, obviously—it was plain to see I was still a gigantic mess—but it might be something worth exploring.
Of course, maybe it was just a sign I was depressed and really wanted some tea.
A few minutes later, steaming mugs in hand, we sat down to discuss my sordid sex life. You know, as friends do.
“On Thursday, I asked Ellison to tie me up,” I said into my mug, bracing myself for the inevitable flood of Mariah’s handcrafted artisanal scolding.
“Now why in the name of Godzilla’s giant scaly ass crack would you do that?”
“Because I…”
She glared at me, stern and unrelenting, and I kind of wished she didn’t know so much about all my issues. Friendship could be incredibly inconvenient when you wanted to just slink away and hide forever.
“Because he likes it,” I admitted. “I wanted to…god, I don’t even know. I’m just always so scared he’s going to get bored with me, or frustrated, or something. And yes, I know he keeps saying he won’t, but it’s not like that shuts the worry up, you know? He just…”
I pinched at the bridge of my nose, my eyes feeling hot even though I had no tears left at all. Everything had poured out of me already, leaving a great yawning chasm of dissatisfaction with nothing around to fill it.
“When I saw him at that party with Kayla, the look on his face was just…indescribable. I don’t know if he’s ever looked at me quite like that. He says it’s not a requirement, but it’s still something that gives him joy, and I can’t give that to him. I tried, and I can’t.” I let out a long, shaking sigh into my mug. “I just can’t.”
Mariah carefully worked the mug out of my hand and set it aside, then wrapped her arms around me again while Tea patted me on the knee. “I’m sorry you’re in such a tough place right now, baby.”
I let out a weak laugh. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m being an idiot and I need to get over my dumb worries?”
“Would you listen?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I’ll save my breath.” She squeezed me a little tighter and sighed. “Your emotions are real and valid, okay? They may not be an accurate reflection of the world, but they feel real to you, so they’re real. I’ve been in similar situations, and yeah, it really fucking sucks. The only thing you can really do is try not to stress about it too much, and hope it works out. And I know that’s not much reassurance, but it’s what I’ve got.”
“Has Ellison ever told you he wishes he could tie you up?” Tea asked, their face kind of crinkling like the words felt strange on their tongue.
“No,” I said with a sigh. “He’s never mentioned it at all, but that’s almost worse. I feel like he’s dancing around it, or he doesn’t want to mention it because he’s afraid of scaring me off.”
“Or,” Tea said pointedly, “he could just care about you enough to try not to bring up something he knows you’d be uncomfortable with. Like you and Mariah do with me and BDSM.”
“Maybe,” I huffed indignantly.
“Okay,” Mariah said, shifting position a little as Tea cuddled up to me too, “so what ended up happening, then? Did he actually tie you up?”
“Just my wrists. And I…well, I guess I was probably having a panic attack,” I admitted, dragging a hand through my hair. “So we stopped. I couldn’t have had the rope on me for more than a minute or
two.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re upset because you had to safeword out of something. We talked about this. It’s perfectly—”
“I didn’t,” I said, my voice cracking. “He did.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mariah whispered, kissing my forehead. “He did the right thing. He was keeping you safe, just like he was supposed to.”
“I could have taken it. I could have kept going.”
“Yeah, but at what cost?” Tea said, jabbing me in the side. “Last I heard, most of the mental health community was in agreement that forcing your way through a panic attack isn’t healthy.”
“I could have, though.”
“Okay, this is where I tell you you’re being an idiot,” Mariah said. “River, you’re being an idiot.”
I couldn’t help a small smile. “Thanks, I knew you’d be here for me.”
“She’s right, though.” Tea said. “You shouldn’t be beating yourself up for having a tough time, and you shouldn’t be angry at him for stopping when you were panicking. Consent goes both ways, and if he was uncomfortable, he had a right to stop.”
“I know, I know. I just…” I pinched my eyes shut, my voice dropping off nearly to a whisper. “It’s just such a small thing. Vanilla couples do it. I should be able to do it.”
“Oh, stop with the ‘should,’” Mariah said, and I could practically hear her eyes rolling in their sockets. “There’s no such thing as ‘should.’ There’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.”
“The line is ‘do or do not; there is no try,’” Tea stage-whispered.
“Please don’t get her started on Yoda impressions,” I groaned.
“Advise you I will, mmm.” Mariah’s Yoda impression was terrible.
“Kill me now.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop—but only because this is important. You’re all torn up because you see Ellison making a sacrifice for you, but that’s just what relationships are. You make sacrifices for the people you love, and if Ellison says he’s willing to sacrifice bondage for you, you’ve got to trust that he means it.”
“Maybe I don’t trust him.”
Tea scowled. “If you don’t trust him, maybe you shouldn’t be letting him hit you with stuff.”
“No, I trust him not to—I just—” I made an incoherent sound, flailing a hand in the air. “Feelings are different.”
“Ah, got it.”
“And anyway,” I said with a sigh, “I care about him. I love him. I don’t want him to have to sacrifice this for me.”
“Bear with me for a minute here,” Mariah said, wriggling out of the cuddle pile and leaning back to put her feet in my lap. I took the hint and started rubbing her arches. “So, I’m having this little problem with Stephen.”
“Who’s Stephen?”
“Worm,” she said. “Sorry, I guess I never mentioned his actual name. I didn’t even ask for it until a few weeks ago when things started getting serious.”
“Things are serious?” She hadn’t mentioned that either.
“It’s looking that way,” she said. “We get along really well, even when I’m not threatening to crush his worthless balls in a vise. I think I might even be ready to use the L-word.”
“You don’t actually do that, do you?” Tea said with a horrified stare.
Mariah looked offended. “I know I’m slutty and fickle, but I do have feelings. I just take things slow.”
“I think they meant the ball-crushing,” I said, flicking her toe.
“Oh, right!” She waved a dismissive hand. “No, of course not—grievous bodily harm stays purely in the realm of fantasy. But we both get off on the idea, so I can threaten all I want.”
“I am…so out of my element,” Tea said quietly.
“Anyway,” Mariah continued, “there’s this little hitch. Stephen doesn’t switch—like, at all. I don’t think he’s even capable of it. And as much as I love tormenting the poor boy night after night, every once in a while, I really, really want someone to just…have their way with me. Stephen is fine with me seeing someone else in theory, but both of us are afraid that it’ll harm our dynamic. Like, if he knows I’m out there submitting to someone else, maybe he’ll have a harder time seeing me as the cruel tyrant he knows and loves.
“So we sat down and tried to work out how I might be able to get that need satisfied without ruining the amazing thing we have together. Eventually we came up with the idea of approaching it from the angle of another fetish—turning it into a sort of cuckold thing. He’s seriously into being cuckolded, so I can go out and get my subby-sub on, and then come back to him and tell him how worthless he is for not being able to satisfy me the way I want. And voilà: everyone gets what they need.”
“I don’t see any way of that working for us,” I said with a shake of my head. “I just can’t handle thinking about him with someone else. I wish I could—it would make this so much easier.”
“No, no—I wasn’t suggesting that. My point is that there’s always another way to look at things. For instance, there are other ways to do bondage besides cuffs and ropes. You two have only scratched the surface, and if this is something he really needs in order to be happy, there are dozens of other ways you might be able to scratch that itch for him without ignoring your own hard limits.”
What she was saying made a certain sort of sense, but… “It wouldn’t really be the same. We’d both know it was a substitute.”
“But a substitute might be just as good as far as he’s concerned,” Tea said with a shrug. “I mean, if nothing else, trying out new things shows you care about him, and that alone counts for a lot. I’d be thrilled if someone worked that hard to show me they cared.”
“I guess,” I sighed, suddenly overwhelmingly exhausted by…everything. Just…the sheer enormity of the human experience. And damn it, I still had to take a shower. “Um…I didn’t mean to take up all this time. If you let me up, I’ll get ready to go to the art museum.”
Mariah kept her feet right where they were, and Tea glanced at their watch. “I think by the time you finish getting ready, we won’t have much time. Why don’t we just hang out for a while?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t apologize, dumbass,” Mariah said, poking me affectionately with her toe. “The art will still be there in a couple of days.”
Tea rubbed their chin thoughtfully. “Unless one of us happens to be a dashingly handsome international art thief, just waiting for their time to strike. On an unrelated note, do either of you have a black turtleneck I can borrow?”
My phone buzzed against the coffee table while we were laughing, and I nearly didn’t pick it up—I was comfortable here, wrapped up in the love of my friends, all warm and cared for. But Mariah shifted to give me a little space, so I leaned forward and checked the notifications.
My eyes popped wide open. “Oh my god.”
> ELLISON: I should have told you I love you.
“What?” Mariah sat straight up. “Are aliens landing? Did Timmy fall down the well?”
“It’s Ellison,” I said, my voice soft with wonder.
Mariah leaned in excitedly to look over my shoulder, using every ounce of her usual consideration for privacy. She let out an ear-piercing squeal when she read the text. “Oh my god, look at that!”
“I’m going to not look at that, and let River tell me if he wants me to know what it is,” Tea said pointedly.
“It’s…” I swallowed, rereading the text again to make sure I hadn’t misread it or anything. “Ellison says he loves me.”
Tea clapped their hands together joyfully. “That’s wonderful! That is wonderful, right? I’m a little confused on where we’re at, what with all the spanking and balls in vises.”
“It’s…good,” I said, hesitant. “It’s…well, maybe it would be better if it wasn’t a text, but it’s good.”
“Oh my god, what are you going to say?” Mariah rested her chin on my shoulder, reaching eagerly for the phone in
my hand. “Can we help you compose a reply? ‘Dear Ellison, my love for you is like a red, red bruise…’”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, holding the phone out of her reach without much effort. “I don’t…how am I supposed to respond to this?”
“You know,” Tea said sagely, “in ancient times, that device in your hand could be used for another purpose. I think they had a name for it—coal? Kale? I think that’s it—you could kale him.”
“I…yes, thank you,” I said with a smile. “I might just try that.”
Mariah let out a labored sigh. “I guess you’re going to want some privacy or something, huh?” I nodded, and she sighed again, even heavier, as she pushed herself off the couch and made her way to the shoe rack. “Selfish.”
“That’s River for you,” Tea said, ruffling my hair as they stood up. “Nothing but take, take, take.”
A moment later they were gone, and the room felt emptier than I could ever remember. I stared at the text a little longer, trying to see if there were any more meanings, any other interpretations to the words, but they all seemed to be just as they appeared.
He loved me.
I dialed his number and slowly brought the phone to my ear, my hand shaking. When he answered, his voice was beautiful as a song. “Hello, River.”
“Do you mean that?”
There was a minuscule pause—hardly anything, really, but enough for my heart to thump in a resurgence of panic. But then he spoke again, and his voice was so firm, so decisive, that I couldn’t possibly doubt him. “I do.”
Truth By His Hand Page 31
