Next time, we’ll start with other tools.Right now, we’re in a restaurant bathroom and he’s about five minutes away from a full dissociation event.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” I ask quietly. “You’re asking because it helps you, not because you think it’s all you’re good for?”
The question hits hard enough that his eyes flinch. He doesn’t look away. “I want it,” he says. Steady, now. “I want you. I want this. If you don’t… if it’s too much, I can white-knuckle it. But right now?” His knee bounces once. “Right now, I need to be in your mouth or you inside me, because if something intense doesn’t anchor me, my head is going to run laps around that table until I puke.”
Okay.
That, at least, is honest.
“Say stop if you need to,” I tell him. “At any point. I mean it.”
“I know,” he says.
I kiss him first because if we’re doing this, it’s not going to be some clinical exchange of favors. His mouth is soft and shaky under mine, the exhale mingling with mine in the too-small stall. My hands slide up to frame his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.
“You’re not disgusting,” I murmur against his lips. “You’re not a problem. You’re mine.”
His breath hitches. “Miggy…”
“I’ve got you,” I say.
I drop to my knees on the cold tile.
What happens next is quick, quiet, and entirely for him. I don’t make it a show. I don’t drag it out and I don’t push for more than he’s offering. He asked to get out of his head so I give him something else to live in. Sensation. Heat. The knowledge that even here, in a shitty stall with its bad fluorescent lighting, he is wanted.
Chosen.
Caleb bites down on his fist to keep from making noise. His other hand is in my hair, not yanking, just anchoring. When he comes, it’s with a sharp, muffled sound and a tremor that runs all the way through him.
He slumps back against the tank, panting, eyes closed.
I stand, knees protesting, and exit the stall to rinse a paper towel to wipe his face, his neck, and the places where panic left a sheen of sweat. Then I wet another and hand it to him.
“Okay?” I ask softly.
He nods, eyes still closed. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah. Fuck. I… needed that.”
I kiss his forehead. “Next time we’re trying breathing and ice cubes first,” I murmur.
That makes him huff out a wet little laugh. “Deal.”
We sit there like that for another minute, him on the closed lid, me crouched in front of him, forehead resting against his shoulder, both of us listening to the faint buzz of the overhead light and the beating of our hearts finally slowing.
“I don’t want to go back out there,” he says eventually.
“I don’t either,” I admit.
The difference between me at eighteen and me now is that I don’t immediately frame that as a failure. There’s a limit. We hit it. Pushing past it to make the night more comfortable for someone who just told us to disappear would be an act of self-harm, not courtesy.
“Okay,” I say. “So we don’t go back.”
He looks up, startled. “We… can do that?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “We’re adults, Caleb. We can leave dinners that hurt us.”
He swallows. “He’ll be pissed.”
“Probably,” I say. “He can be pissed and we can be safe. Both things get to be true.”
