I am now officially judging. This feels wrong. This feels deeply, deeply fucked up.
“Cade, I’m not doing that right now. Are you kidding? It’s fucked up. Even the thought of having sex right now seems so wild, and even worse to do… that.”
“What? You were into it before. This is just how we fuck. Come on, I know you’re pissed at me. Let it out. I fucking deserve it, right?”
I sit up, all my internal alarms ringing at the line this conversation is taking.
“I’m not pissed at you. I’m fucking worried. You scared me. And even if I was pissed at you, I wouldn’t literally want to take it out on you through sex. That’s not right. I thought we were just doing that because it was hot. You know I don’t actually mean that shit when I say it, right? The degradation shit? It just seemed like it turned you on, so I went with it.”
“It does turn me on. I like seeing it all come out of you. And then after you’re always so sweet when you take care of me after you fuck me up.”
A feeling of horror sinks into me before I can fully process what he’s saying. In my mind, we were doing something kinky. Something fictional but fun, and then I made sure to take really good care of him, because I know that shit can be hard on your hormones and your body. I learned enough about BDSM and kink to understand that, because I wanted to know what I was doing, and that just makes sense.
He’s describing the exact same thing, but not in a way that sounds like kink and aftercare.
He makes it sound… gross. Manipulative.
My gut clenches and I wrench myself into a seated position, accidentally jostling him enough that he winces in the process.
“It’s supposed to be a game, Cade. I’m not actually angry with you when we do it. I’m not getting out some secret, pushed down anger that I hold for you. I don’t… I don’t hold any anger for you. Where the fuck is this coming from? How long have you secretly thought I was hate-fucking you?”
Cade looks up at me, wide-eyed and clearly confused.
“Silas, I—”
He trails off, and the whole thing continues to sink deeper and deeper into my consciousness.
“Oh, god,” I whisper to no one in particular, looking around in desperation like there’s an answer on one of the bedroom walls. “This is so fucked up.”
“Why are you upset? What’s happening?”
Words cannot express all the things I feel at this question. I’m not good at articulating my feelings at the best of times. Therapy has helped a lot with that, but still. And this is the most unhinged conversation I’ve ever had with my boyfriend who I now know thinks I, what? Secretly hate him?
I was always so impressed with how well Cade came out of his fucked-up childhood. He was barely raised, he was abused—even if he won’t call it that—he watched his mother trapped in anendless cycle of domestic violence, and he held it all together to do a damn good job of taking care of his sisters. He downplays how bad it was a lot, but I thought he was just trying to not make a big deal about it.
Now I think that maybe he never really accepted how bad it was, and absorbed more of his parents’ shitty dynamic than I realized.
I scrub one hand down my face while Cade continues to stare at me, confused as ever. He looks so tired. I don’t like that we’ve started this conversation when he’s all beat up and dazed, but I can’t exactly drop it now.
I sink to my knees at the side of the bed, because I hate towering over him like this, but I can’t bring myself to crawl back under the covers with him yet.
Leaning forward on the mattress, I take hold of Cade’s non-swollen hand, making his eyes widen even more.
“Cade, I need you to understand that that’s fucked up. I only ever want to hurt you during sex or call you names or anything else because you want it. Because it turns you on. Not because I have some kind of negative feelings toward you that I need to work through. That’s abuse. Hurting you because I’m angry at you would be abuse, even if it comes with an orgasm. That’s the difference.”
Cade shakes his head. “I don’t understand. Everybody gets angry sometimes. It’s intense when we fuck, because we love each other so much. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I’m not angry with you. Do you get that? And I’m sweet to you after because you deserve it, because I love you. Not because you earned it by what you took. You don’t have to… bribe me with sex to get fucking cuddled as reward. I always want to take care of you, you just won’t let me the rest of the time.”
Cade’s face scrunches up like he’s glitching.
“Please tell me you understand,” I say. “Tell me you know I’ll never fuck you to punish you for something I’m genuinely angry about.”
There’s a long pause, where I don’t feel like it’s really sinking in. But he nods, eventually.
“Okay, robot boy. I understand. I’m sorry, I’m being weird.”
The nickname makes me unclench a little. It makes Cade sound more like himself.
