#dominances

Quietus

Her friends said that the measure of a good relationship, when all things were through, where the conversations, how they would wander and meander, lengthen before loping over a broad range of topics. A man to spend your life with was a man you could have a conversation with. 

Respectfully, because she was that sort of girl, she disagreed. A men to spend your life with wasn’t a man you could have a conversation with; anyone could fill the world with noise, train themselves into energetic discourse and witty banter. No, for her a man to spend her life with was someone you could occupy a silence with. 

Comfortable silence. A mutual observation of nothing, neither of them moving, speaking, touching, or anything. Just lying there, perhaps staring into each other’s eyes, or just at the ceiling  Out the window. Eyes closed. Feeling out the lack of sound as if it made them blind, one sense lost, four more having to pick up the slack. A silence to think in.

Because that was it, really. It was becoming comfortable enough with something to let them into those most private of moments, when you let your mind wander free and allow thoughts to roam with utter autonomy. To have someone who could happily create that space with you, and then live in it for minutes, hours on end. Cultivate a silence and then just fucking enjoy it. 

Perhaps that was the fundamental difference between her and her friends, but she had more than enough noise in her life. She didn’t want to fill it up with more words, more space in her mind taken up with stuff that she didn’t want and didn’t need. She wanted a little peace and quiet, and someone to enjoy it with.

Bits and pieces of her life seeped into one another, like watercolours. She couldn’t keep it all separate, as much as she wanted to, as much as she tried. The bits and pieces she kept in their boxes would spill out, and she’d be faced with the truth of who she was then, when she was trying to be who she was now. 

The ribbons were the worst, if only because they leant themselves so well to both worlds, the vanilla, and the submissive. They were a conduit, a thoroughfare between the two versions of herself, so it only made sense that they’d be where the bleed happened most. Bits and pieces spilling over.

She always wore ribbons. Had done ever since she was a little girl. In her hair, on her clothes, around her wrists. Where other girls had bracelets and charms, she had ribbons and bits of string. Looking back, it made a certain perverted sense, but at the time it had been innocent enough. But it was a habit, and one that had carried on to adulthood.

And so she still wore those ribbons on her wrists, and she still played with them idly, when she was waiting, or daydreaming, or just plain dreaming. And, increasingly, she found herself wrapping  both wrists together, an impromptu handcuff, and she’d feel the thrill of that restriction, the loose bondage. 

She’d blush, and look away, her thoughts instantly descending into the depths of her depravity. Once or twice her friends had asked her what was wrong, and she’d mumbled something incoherent. Driven to distraction, and by her ribbons, no less. 

Was nothing sacred any more?

Rhymes

To a skeptic, there’s a perpetual worry that little things that have been taken for granted are based more in superstition and folklore than anything as concrete as sound scientific theory. He’d spent no small part of his life reinforcing his beliefs, examining the structures upon which they stood, and making sure he was very much the solid ground type, rather than those who favoured the beachfront.

The light bled across the floor before swirling up to fill the room with a lurid red haze. Morning had arrived before he had, and by the time his eyes creaked open the room was lost to the light. The night had been hectic and event filled to sufficiently narrow his focus so that he had seen only bed. No teeth cleaning, barely time to shed his clothes before hitting the duvet, and certainly no opportunity to close the curtains. 

She was still asleep beside him, the steady rate of her breathing marking her as a lost cause, mired in sleep for a good while yet. He didn’t have the heart to wake her. He barely had the heart to continue trudging his way towards consciousness, out of the warmth and into the day. The duvet slid off his body with all the reluctance he felt, and he stood. 

The cold was always first felt against his softness, that one vulnerable member shivering at the feel of it, a loud complaint he chose to ignore. The light had intrigued him, and his curiosity had always run ahead of his own personal comfort. It was why he was here, rather than anywhere else. Why she was in his bed, instead of someone who was more interested in babies than orgasms. 

He stood at the window, and despite the ochre of the dawn he was somehow desaturated, a pale figure against a wash of scarlet. It was as if he was catching up to the morning, still slipping from the treacled embrace of the night. 

Outside that room, London was a bloodbath. Terraced houses painted sanguine, parks the muddy brown of a healing cut as the greens dirtied the red, fought against it. The sky was devastating. 

The rhyme bobbed to the surface of his consciousness, what little of it had woken up. It was his mother’s voice, but there was no rhythm to it, little melody. It was spoken like a warning.

Red sky at night, Shepard's delight. Red sky in the morning, Shepard's warning.

It was a vestige of superstition, and he doubted even his mother had believed it. But it had sounded about right, and despite himself he could feel an ominous dread skitter at the back of his awareness. 

He glanced over his shoulder, looked at the way the light merged with the gold in her hair, burnished it, made it warmer. It felt unnatural, made her look like someone else. 

He stood there, outlined against the blood sky, until the sun shrugged off the drama and the colour palette returned to normal, all the red drained from the sky. He waited until she returned to normal, and the world with her.