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Your boyfriend hides things from you. You don’t mind it. Everyone has secrets, old aches and wounds from the past that they would rather not reopen. Dex has more than most. You would never push him to reveal them to you, never pressure him to speak about anything that causes too much pain. When he wants to talk about them — if he ever wants to — you’ll be there.

His emotional issues and the strain they’ve put on your relationship stem from a past he hasn’t been willing to describe, although you’ve gathered over your time together that it began when he was very young. When those issues arise, you talk it over with him in a gentle tone.

“Baby, I know you’re anxious, but we talked about this. I promised my friend I’d go out with her tonight.”

“Dex, honey, I just need some space. Relax—just breathe, ok? I’m not leaving, I’ll just be in the other room.”

To his credit, he tries. Tries to breathe through the anxiety. To trust that you still love him, even when his thoughts are loud and grating. To not be too much. There are good days and bad, but you try to keep him grounded through all of it, praising him for his progress and thanking him for all the work he’s done to be better for you.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you for trying. I know this isn’t easy.”

And maybe you should be worried about all of it. About how dependent he’s become on you for support and stability. How he looks to you for validation always, his eyes watching your face for any sign of disapproval. How the slightest sense that you’re pulling away can send him spiraling.

You should worry, maybe, about how much you enjoy it. Dex needs an anchor; you’re it. The only thing keeping him grounded and steady through the storms of his emotions.

What Dex needs is patience, and someone willing to listen whenever — if ever — he decides to open up.

So when he asks you to get rough with him in the bedroom, you don’t pry. Dex likes it when you push him around. When you bite and scratch just a little too hard. When you tease him for his clinginess, his neediness. It’s fun to be a little mean during sex. Playful. You don’t think anything of it.

For Dex, it isn’t quite enough. He asks you to be rougher. Meaner. He brings it up while you’re on top of him with a hand wrapped firmly around his neck. Not enough to hurt, but enough to feel the pressure. The tensing and bobbing of his throat as he swallows beneath the pads of your fingertips. The request is breathless and desperate.

“Harder. Please, harder.”

You tighten your fingers where they rest around his throat, feeling the muscle and tendons underneath his skin. The hitch of his breath as that pressure increases. Dex groans and rolls his hips, rutting up into you. His face twists in frustration.

“Harder,” he repeats.

Your grip tightens again, and now his breath really is strained. Rasping underneath the heat of your palm where it presses against his airway. His hips roll underneath you again and the movement is tense, irritated. He grits his teeth, muscles clenching at his jaw, and you’re about to slow down, to ask him what’s wrong, when his hand flies up to cover yours and squeezes.

He clamps down on his throat with his own calloused fingers, forcing you into a grip more powerful than you’re comfortable with. In the beginning it was fun. Now it’s starting to feel violent.

You try to pull your hand away but he holds firm, locking you into place with ease.

“Dex,” you say. “That’s—this is too much. Relax.”

The skin of his face is blooming red all over, brows pinched, mouth slack as his hips drive up, up into you. His grip around your hand is almost painful, fingers locked over yours, and you can feel his throat clench and spasm under your palm as he tries and fails to suck in a breath. He’s strangling himself, actually strangling, and he’s making you do it.

“Enough. That’s enough,” you say with another futile tug at your hand. This is not fun anymore. Something cold and heavy is pooling in your gut, and for the first time since you’ve been together, Dex is making you feel scared. You plant your other hand on his chest and pull hard at your arm. This needs to stop now.

Beneath you, Dex’s mouth pulls into a snarl. His other hand snaps to your arm where it’s braced against his chest and he locks you into place with it, like he can’t hear you at all, like he’s not going to let you go. Panic skitters up your spine.

“Dex, stop!”

Something inside him breaks back to the surface at the fear in your voice. His eyes snap open, face going slack with shock, and when his fingers release you snatch both of your hands away from him. He’s sucking in hungry breaths and looking at you like you’ve just struck him. For one charged moment, you think you could. Rear back and slap him for what he just put you through. You curl your fingers into fists and resist the ugly urge.

“What–what is wrong with you?” you say, and immediately regret it. You never speak to Dex like that. Never insult him or degrade him or imply that he’s broken, like he so deeply believes he is. You shift on top of him, to slide off of his member and end this session that got far, far out of hand, but Dex’s hands snap to your hips before you can leave and he sits up, chest pressing against yours and eliminating any distance you put between him.

“No!” he says, panicked. He seems to realize that he’s forcing you to do something you don’t want again, and his hands ease and slide up and down your waist in soothing, shaky strokes. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But it’s always been there. I was born wrong and I—I need you—I want you to hurt me.”

His eyes are almost manic as he stares up at you. You stare back, nerves still wrecked, as you struggle to form a response to his frantic rambling.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dex,” you say slowly. He sniffles and you realize he’s got tears welling up in his eyes, red around the rims.

“I want you to hurt me,” he says. “I want you to hit me. I—I deserve it, right? For scaring you? You can hit me. You can hurt me for it. I deserve it. I’m sorry. I deserve it.” During his babbling, he’s pressed his face into your body, his mouth hot and wet against your skin.

In your mind, a thought is forming. A vague understanding of where this outburst has come from. The old wounds he’s been picking at, aches that he’s never spoken but that you’ve seen the lingering evidence of. Through your anger a dull ache begins to thrum in your heart, and you drop a hand to the top of Dex’s head. The action isn’t quite comforting. Your fingers are tense with your agitation, still simmering under your skin.

“You don’t deserve to be hurt,” you say slowly. “You just need to calm down.”

“I do,” he argues into your body. “I do. I deserve it. I didn’t listen, I didn’t—I wasn’t good. I deserve it.”

His hips roll again, a stilted little movement that has him hiccuping into you. Against the skin of your chest you feel a damp warmth where Dex has finally begun to cry, his tears catching between his face and your body. His shoulders shake with ragged breaths, and despite their broad width he feels small below you. As if he’s shrinking in on himself.

He ruts into you until he’s trembling, fingers clenching against your hips, voice catching mid-babble as he pulses inside of you.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—nngh.”

He spills inside of you as you watch in numb silence, your hand a weight against the back of his sweaty head. You sit, unmoving, as he sucks in breaths. Eyes on the wall. White. Empty.

When he’s slipped out of you without meeting your eyes, head bowed like a dog caught chewing the furniture, you slump against the headboard without speaking. Dex is panting where you’ve left him, a clarity returning to his eyes as he comes down from whatever manic space he’d sunk into. His fingers fidget with the sheets. From the corner of your eye, you can see him watching you, gauging your expression for how upset you are.

He crawls up the bed to lay beside you, his hand reaching for yours and stopping just short, as if he’s afraid you’ll pull away. The sound of both of you breathing is the only noise in the dim room.

In the time you’ve been together, nothing like this has happened. Dex has his issues, but he’s always been sweet to you. At times even excessively so. Eager to please. He’s never ignored you like this, and he’s never forced you into something you asked him not to. Especially not during sex. You swallow the thought down, bitter in the back of your mouth.

“You’re mad at me,” Dex says. His voice has leveled out again, tired and anxious but not frenetic. “I—I messed up, didn’t I?”

You take in a deep breath, letting it out in a slow exhale. “Yeah. You did.”

Dex shifts next to you and you feel his fingers clench in the sheet next to your hands. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, you’re not,” you say. “You’re upset that I’m mad at you.” You don’t know if he’s ever been sorry for anything in his life. Sorry isn’t something Dex feels. Guilt is not an emotion he’s familiar with. Anxiety, yes. Fear of being left. Fear of not being good enough. But not sorry.

“That can’t ever happen again,” you say.

“It won’t,” Dex answers quickly. “It won’t. I swear. I won’t scare you again. I won’t make you do anything you don’t like.”

“If you want to try something new in bed, something . . . intense,” you begin. “You have to ask me first. We have to talk about it.”

“I will,” he says. “I promise.”

A silence stretches between the two of you. Even in the dark you feel Dex’s eyes on you, watching and assessing. Always studying for your mood. Outside, in the streets below the window, a siren wails and rushes past, the sound dull and muffled. Dex extends a finger towards your hands, linking his pinky tentatively with yours.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asks.

You sigh. A moment passes, and you consider letting the silence hang, leaving him to stew in his anxiety. But you’ve never been very good at denying him. You curl your pinky around his and he sighs at the contact, relief softening his features as he drags your hand to his mouth, greedy for your touch. He presses the back of your hand to his lips, breath hot against your fingers.

You suppose you should shower. Brush your teeth and go to bed. Probably have another conversation about this in the morning, just to make sure Dex understands that it can’t ever, ever happen again. Before you can rise you feel his mouth move against you.

“If we do talk about it,” he starts, voice small. “If I tell you what I want first, you’ll do it?”

You sigh and grit your teeth. Squeeze his hand and stand from the bed.

“We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

———

Days later you stand in the hall bathroom in a t-shirt and underwear, staring yourself down in the pristine mirror. Not a speck mars its perfect finish — Dex and his compulsive cleanliness keeps the apartment as spotless as a showroom. You try to help where you can, sweeping, wiping down counters, scrubbing dishes. Dex inevitably follows behind you and repeats the work you’ve just done. It isn’t just about the cleanliness. It’s about the ritual. The routine of sterilizing the space himself.

Dex loves his routines. Loves order. Loves rules. You’d given him a lot of those after he told you what he wanted from you. A very long conversation and a few tears from him followed.

“Why do you want this, Dex?” you had asked him. He stared at you with an emotion you couldnt quiet place behind his eyes, heavy and intense.

“Because I trust you,” he said. “Because—because I trust you not to hurt me.”

Hurt as in mentally. Emotionally. The kind that would leave lasting scars on his already damaged psyche. The physical pain, he very much wanted.

And somewhere underneath his voice, quiet but sure, you thought you heard the words unspoken.

Because I trust you not to hurt me like they did.

Dex didn’t want a safeword. Didn’t want to hear you explain the stoplight system — green for continue, yellow for slow down, red for stop immediately. You made him learn it anyway and repeat it back to you, to his chagrin.

You know that behind the bedroom door Dex is laying right where you left him, bare-bodied and handcuffed to the headboard. You had cinched the cuffs around his wrists with a gentleness few others would offer to a killer. But this was your Dex. You can’t help but be soft with him. At least, until it’s time to begin.

In the mirror, your lips are still flushed lightly from when you had kissed him slow and deep, before leaving him with a soft “I love you” and a reminder to use his safe words. He huffed into your mouth. You stood and shut the door behind you.

That was ten minutes ago. It’s time for you to go back in.

Dex wouldn’t tell you where this request had come from. Wouldn’t explain his reason for wanting you to do everything he had asked of you. But you could infer. Dex wanted you to help him, in his own damaged way. Wanted you to soothe an ache he had lived with long before meeting you. And helping Dex was what you did; what you would always do. As you made your way back into the hallway and outside of the bedroom door, a part of you hesitated to do what came next, to play your role in this performance, but another part was thrumming with anticipation.

Dex wanted you to make him feel worse, and then better. No one in the world knew how to make Dex feel better than you.

You push open the door. At the other end of the room, Dex lies on the bed, naked except for his sock-covered feet and looking at you with the weariness of a caged animal. You take a long moment to rake your eyes over him, the strong muscles of his body, the red marks on his wrists where he’s pulled at the cuffs while you were gone, his cock lying soft against his leg. You move across the room in languid strides, coming around to stare down at him from the side of the bed. His chest rises and falls in barely-controlled breaths, the tension in his body betraying that he’s already worked himself up into fear.

“Don’t look so scared,” you say, your voice a perfect mask of indifference. “We both know you’ll enjoy this.”

The line of Dex’s mouth presses flat. He doesn’t respond. You bend and tug open a drawer in the nightstand by the bed, rummaging in it for one special item. Your hand closes around it and you take a moment to feel its weight, the smooth silicone of the shaft, the soft leather of the harness. When you stand and dangle the strap from your hand, displaying it like a threat to the man in front of you, his nostrils flare at the sight of it — and his cock twitches. The corner of your mouth tugs up.

“See?” you simper. “If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have pissed me off.” You step into the harness smoothly, cinching the straps around your thighs and hips. The weight of the dildo is familiar, and you trace a finger from the tip to the base, watching it bob between your hips. Dex’s eyes are fixed on it, pupils blown wide.

“You know what happens when you disobey,” you say conversationally. “So I don’t want to hear you bitching and crying when you take it.”

You swing a leg onto the bed, climbing between his thighs and he flinches like he’s going to resist. You swat him on the ass — hard.

“Uh-uh,” you chide him, voice low. “I can make this a lot worse for you, sweetheart.” You snatch his ankle in one hand and heft the leg up into the air, swinging underneath it and positioning yourself between his hips. His body is tense and flushed before you, sweat already beginning to dot his chest and neck. You lower the leg to rest on your shoulder, tracing a finger down the outer length of his muscled thigh. He shivers and tries to pull away, but you pin him against your shoulder and graze his calf with your teeth. Tasting the salt on his skin, already dotted with nervous perspiration.

“Look at you,” you sigh against his skin. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty. I guess it’s the only thing you’re good for anymore.”

From where it’s pressed into his calf, you let a hand trace down the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, drifting nearly to the crease where it meets his pelvis and sending more shivers across the muscle while you continue sucking and nipping at him. Between his hips his cock kicks again, and you laugh, dragging your fingertip to skirt around the edge of his member.

“See?” you say. “You’re already acting like a slut for it.”

A rustling from the handcuffs has you looking up just in time to see Dex spit at you, the glob of saliva landing on the front of your shirt. For a moment, you’re frozen, eyes stuck on the dark spot in the fabric. When you lift your gaze to meet his, he’s staring back at you with whatever defiance he can muster. It’s less than you know he’s capable of, in different circumstances. When he isn’t naked and restrained.

“Fuck you,” he says, but his voice lacks the fight you would expect. Instead he sounds . . . resigned. Like he already knows what’s coming, and that he can’t stop it.

Your mouth breaks into a grin that doesn’t reach your eyes. You laugh once, clipped. “Oh no, sweetheart. I’m not the one who’s about the get fucked.”

You pitch forward and slap him. The impact lands with a crack that bounces off the walls and sends shocks through your palm. Dex gasps and you freeze, a pang of worry shooting through you that almost has you breaking the performance. You want to cup his stinging cheek in your hand, to press your mouth to his face and say you’re sorry, you’re sorry, everything’s ok — and then you see his dick beneath you, stiffening into an angry erection.

He likes it. He wanted this. He asked you for this.

You take a breath and settle.

“You must really want me to make it hurt,” you say. You shove his legs up to his chest and line up the tip of your strap with his hole. “And you know what, baby? I’ll give it to you exactly how you want it.”

You push inside of him in one fluid thrust. A strangled sound punches out of Dex from his gut and his entire body pulls tight, arching and curling against the bed. You would be struck with worry again, if you hadn’t stretched him out with a finger and lube just minutes before. Not enough to fully prepare him, but enough to blunt the pain. You place your hands on his thighs and press them into his chest as he takes deep, ragged breaths, eyes scrunched shut and face screwed up.

“There’s my pretty whore,” you coo. “Always desperate to get fucked. Is this why you’re always being so fuckin’ difficult? You just want my attention? Want my cock inside of you?”

Dex takes a sharp breath. “I—I’m not a whore,” he says weakly.

“No?” you reply. “But you take it so ___well.” You punctuate the sentence with a slam of your hips, punching into him with force. “You like being used. You like getting fucked. You’d let me take you whenever I want, wouldn’t you?”

The pace you set has Dex groaning, choked and raspy. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, no, I don’t. I don’t.”

You hit him again, a sharp slap against his already red cheek.

“What did I say about crying?” you say, voice low. “If you can’t stay quiet maybe you should roll over and whine into the pillow. Ass up.”

You pull out of him at once and Dex jerks as the head slides out of him with a wet pop. With clumsy movements he scrambles to turn over, the chain of the cuffs twisting, burying his face in the pillow and presenting himself exactly as you ordered, hips up and waiting. You smooth a hand over the curve of his ass. The muscle trembles under your palm.

“See? You do know how to listen.” When you line up the dildo with his hole again, you take a moment to linger, tracing the tip around his opening as he tenses up underneath you. He clenches around nothing, his body practically vibrating with nerves. From here, you have a perfect view of the jagged scar that follows the length of his spine. Another permanent reminder of the abuse his body has taken.

When you press inside him again he groans low into the pillow, the sound muffled into the soft fabric. You curl your fingers into his hair and wrench his head back, and he rewards you with another pitiful noise. You just told him to be quiet, but fuck it. You want to hear him when he moans.

You set a brutal pace again, hips snapping against his ass as he cries.

“You love it,” you say with effort, you breath becoming heavy with exertion. “You were practically begging me to fuck you.”

“I wasn’t,” he cries. “I don’t! I don’t like it.”

“No?” you ask, releasing his hair and letting his forehead drop to the bed beneath him. “You know what happens. If you don’t want it,” you say, punctuating your next words with unforgiving punches of your hips. “Then why do you always—piss me—off?”

Dex wails into the bed. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to,” he cries. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t want it!”

Dex cries into the bed with earnest. That ache in your heart starts up again, thrumming beneath the surface.

“I never—never wanted it. I didn’t want it then, and I didn’t want it when — when they put me in — they told me I wouldn’t be there, they said I would be in solitary.”

Your pace stutters. Something hot is building behind your eyes, and Dex’s shoulders are wracking with sobs as he babbles into the sheets.

“Dex,” you say, your voice a touch too soft to be in character. “What’s your color?”

“Green,” he gasps. “Green. I’m green.”

You continue pounding into him, sweat beading on your skin as Dex sobs underneath you. A thought creeps into your mind then. Would Dex even tell you if he needed you to slow down? If he needed you to stop? Or is he so far gone that he would let you do anything to him? At some point this could have moved from catharsis into self-flagellation, and Dex would grit his teeth and bare it because he believes he deserves it. Because he’s only ever known love through pain.

You make a decision. It’s time to tone things down. This needs to end soon.

Your hips slow into a softer grind and Dex pants into the sheets, now wet with snot and tears.

“Look at you. My pretty boy, taking my strap so well.” Dex shivers under your hands.

“You don’t like this? You don’t want it?” you coo at him.

“No,” he rambles. “No, no, no, no—“

“Shh, I know. I hear you,” you say. “Roll over for me.”

His legs shake as he turns over for you again, wincing as he rolls without losing the strap inside of him. When he slumps against the bed you settle his legs around your hips, rubbing your hands up and down the shaking muscles of his thighs.

His face is red and wet with tears, snot smeared under his nose, mouth trembling. He is absolutely wrecked. Pathetic and broken beneath you.

“Oh, baby,” you say, swiping away the snot on his face with your hand. “My poor baby. You look just pathetic.”

Dex sniffles, fresh tears sliding down his cheeks. His limbs are limp, the fight drained out of his body and mind.

“Not pathetic,” he argues weakly.

You cup his wet cheek in your palm. “Hmm,” you say, as if you’re thinking. “You don’t like it when I fuck you? You don’t like this?” You drag the tip of your strap over that spot you know makes him melt, and a moan tears from his lips. Dex jolts underneath you, his cock bouncing with the movement. His erection looks painful, red and leaking at the tip. He hasn’t been touched since you began, and you know him well enough to understand that he needs to come, soon.

You swat at his ass again, just hard enough to get his attention. “Answer me when I ask you a question, baby.”

“No,” he moans. “No, I don’t want it. I don’t —ohhh,” his voice breaks off into a keen as you stroke that spot again, rocking into him with steady movements.

“Right,” you say, leaning over him. “You don’t like it. What else does my baby not like?”

The muscles of his abdomen tense up, and you know that heat is pooling in his belly, the beginning of the slow build-up of his orgasm.

He huffs, a frustrated little breath as he tries to gather himself enough to speak. “I don’t — I don’t like it when you fuck me. Don’t like it when you touch me. When you call me — call me baby. When you, when you . . .” his eyes drift down to your mouth. “When you kiss me.”

“Oh, baby. You want a kiss?” you fold over him, taking his face in your hand and catching his mouth in a tear-damp kiss. He moans into you, panting against your mouth. Your lips work against his steady and firm, and you feel the hard length of him twitch where he’s pinned beneath your belly.

As if remembering that he doesn’t like this, not at all, he tries to turn away from you, snapping his mouth shut. You follow him, fingers grasping his chin and mouth hovering over his.

“Where you going? You don’t want anymore? You want something else?”

Your hand skims down his chest to the sensitive skin of his belly, where his cock lies hard and waiting. He jumps when you wrap your fingers around it, not stroking, but holding its weight in the warmth of your palm. Your hips are still grinding in little back-and-forth motions over that sensitive spot, and the twist of his face tells you that he’s fighting a losing battle. Tipping closer and closer over that edge.

“Is it time to come, honey? Hm? Are you ready?” His exhaustion is wearing him thin, the emotional drain of the role play breaking him down into someone small and weak below you. This is your baby. Your baby, protesting with half-hearted nonono’s as you slide your hand up his shaft and his legs begin to shake around your hips. You know what he needs. You always know what Dex needs.

Your hand moves in steady strokes, pumping him firmly as your strap works over his prostate in rhythm. His body pulls tight with the rising pressure of his climax, legs curling up into his chest, toes flexing in his socks. His lips part around an agonized “ah, ah, ah.” The strong shape of him splayed out in front of you, desperate and needy and perfect.

“There you go,” you say. “Give it to me. Let me see that pretty face.”

His orgasm spreads through him slow and thick like honey. Every inch of him reacts as it thrums under his skin, from his feet that flex and curl, thighs shaking, to the taut flex of his belly and the anxious scrunch of his brows. His cock kicks as he spurts onto the soft skin of his belly, the plane of his chest. Dex comes like it hurts, like every part of him is buzzing with a heat that overwhelms. No one else knows how to break him down like this. No one else gets to see Bullseye, big and vicious and terrifying, open up the softest and most vulnerable parts of himself.

His voice pitches up into a pained keen. “Ughnn, ughn!” Cheeks blotchy and wet. Lips pink and bitten.

“There it is,” you breathe. “There’s that pretty face.”

With one last little twitch, his cock spends the rest of his cum onto his tummy. His body stays locked up, muscles tensed and rigid, panting through his teeth as the last remnants of his climax fizzle out. You spread your palms over his thighs and rub soothing strokes up and down them, encouraging him to relax, “shh”ing him as he whimpers.

His body wracks with fine tremors, exhausted and spent. Taking mind of your own body, you realize how tired you are as well. Aching, sweaty.

That ache in your heart persists as you remember Dex’s ramblings. His mindless begging and pleas. The implications behind all of them. Dex has hurt people; you know this. But he never, ever deserved anything like that.

His voice cracks as he calls your name, quietly bringing your attention back to the present. Looking up at him you see his hands tugging at the cuffs.

“Ok, ok baby,” you say, and slide out of him. He winces as the head pulls free and you hurry to loosen the straps around your hips, tossing the strap away and crawling over him to remove the cuffs. Finally freed, he slumps into the bed and pulls his arms to his chest where you take his wrists gently in your hands, rubbing at his stiff muscles, taking care not to irritate the angry red marks where the metal bit into his skin.

He reaches for you and you collapse into him instantly. Pull him into your arms, cradle his head against your chest. He curls into you without hesitation.

“It’s ok. It’s ok, honey,” you say as his shoulders begin to shake. Fresh tears spill down his face and into the soft fabric of your shirt, the cotton muffling his weepy breaths. His crying brings heat to your own eyes, and you blink the tears back before they can fall.

“I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” he rambles into your chest.

“I know. I know, baby.” You stroke his back with a warm hand. “You’re safe.”

“I didn’t want it. I didn’t mean — didn’t mean to — to mess up again.”

“Dex,” you say. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. You didn’t mess up.”

His hands fist into your shirt as his sobs go dry. Like his tears have been spent. Like his voice has gone hoarse from all of his protesting. You hold him through it, let him listen to your heartbeat and the steady rate of your breathing.

“Just breathe, baby,” you say. “Breathe with me.”

His chest stutters as he tries to match your breathing, deep and slow and controlled. It’s an exercise you’ve done many times before, when he’s lost in a spiral he can’t end on his own. The media calls him cold and the internet calls him heartless, an unfeeling psychopath with a glaring hole where his heart should be. But you know the truth. Dex feels everything in overwhelming intensity, and never learned how to bring himself back from the highs and lows of his moods.

“There you go,” you say as his breathing begins to slow. “It’ll pass. The feeling will pass.”

Minutes pass with his head tucked into your shoulder and your hands rubbing soothing circles across his back. When he at last pulls away to look at you, his eyes are still red and weary but the panic has faded. His mind is back, the clarity in his eyes returned. You comb your fingers through his sweat-damp hair, brushing sticky strands away from his forehead.

“You want to talk about it?” you ask.

He looks away. “No.”

You won’t press him to speak. You never do.

“Ok,” you answer, and press a kiss to his brow. His skin is hot and flushed beneath your lips. Tacky with drying sweat and tears.

The room falls into silence for a moment before he speaks again, and there’s a scraped-raw quality to his voice that tugs at the strings of your heart.

“Thank you,” he begins. “For doing that for me.”

“Did it help?” you ask. “I mean, do you feel any better?”

He takes a moment to consider, brows furrowing slightly. “I think so. It feels like . . . like picking at a scab.”

Picking at a scab, or clawing into an old wound? you want to say. Instead, you say, “I want you to tell me if it’s worse. If I did anything you didn’t like.”

“You didn’t,” he says quickly. “I wanted it. I trust you.”

A part of you is anxious, fearful of the possibility that you hurt him in any way that would linger. That he would ask you to do it again.

“I don’t ever want you to use me to hurt yourself. Ok?” you say quietly.

His eyes dart away again, fixing on a spot somewhere on your shoulder. “Ok.”

The response doesn’t assure you, but the slump of his shoulders and the weight of him cuddled up against you quiets any argument building under your tongue. That conversation can happen later. Right now, there’s a stickiness coating your skin where sweat is drying down, the fabric of your shirt and the sheets underneath you clinging uncomfortably to your body. What you need is a bath and a long drink of water, for you and for the man lying limp beside you. You start to rise but he stops you with a hand around your wrist and a noise of protest scraping from the back of his throat.

“Stay,” he says.

“We’re tired. And dirty,” you say gently. “Let me run a bath for us.”

“Later,” he says. “Just stay with me. Please?”

And because you’re still no good at denying him, you simply smile and say, “ok.”

When you let him tug you back down to the bed with a hand pressed into your hair, he stares up at you with tired eyes. “Kiss?” he asks.

You press a soft kiss against his lips, warm and lingering. And then again. And again. When you both fall back into the blankets, he curls into the heat of your body again. The room is quiet, the air cool against your sticky skin. You curl your fingers through Dex’s hair again and he turns into your palm with a pleased hum.

“I love you,” he says, muffled into your shirt.

“I love you,” you answer, your lips pressed to his hair.

He falls asleep to the beat of your heart, steady and constant beside him. You lie awake for minutes after. Counting his breaths, soothing him when he jerks and twitches in his sleep. When he wakes later in the night, you’ll slip out of bed as he paws at you again, return with a warm cloth and wipe away the sweat and spend on his body. He’ll tug you back into bed and you’ll cover him with a blanket before he returns to his refuge in the crook of your neck.