Archive of Our Own ^beta

In her case, a better definition might be "love is never having to explain." It's very handy that she can communicate telepathically with the man she loves. Sometimes they're so well entwined that she knows what he wants before he does. So when he stumbles in the door, spattered in blood without a scratch on him, so tense he's trembling, she doesn't say a word. She just points to the bedroom. 

She doesn't tell him to undress, just as he doesn't tell her what he needs. Without a word he sheds the coat. The hat. Starts in on the shirt. Margo waits in the doorway, watching.

It doesn't always come to this. Most nights, Lamont--The Shadow--can handle his own anxious thoughts, but lately he's begun to realize that he doesn't have to do it alone.

His thoughts are a chaotic blur, a nightmare spinning past so quickly she can only catch fragments. Red words on a wall in lipstick or blood--"for the love of god stop me"--rain so sharp it blinded the eye--burning fields and the smell of blood and a tightness to the chest and the fear of forever falling apart and above it all that laugh, always dancing on the edge between madness and lucidity. It's been a difficult night.

Poor Lamont, she thinks, clearly, so that he is certain to hear. He doesn't answer. He stands back against the wall, stripped down to his underclothes, and fixes his eyes on the floor.

"Hands," she says, and he hesitates only a moment before clenching them in fists behind his back. "Turn." That he does before the word is done ringing in the air, but that doesn't take back the hesitation. "I won't do this unless you're fully committed to it."

It's not that. His thoughts are a little more orderly now. When they first started doing this she used to think it was progress. Now she knows he's only walling his thoughts in, so deep that to find them would require her to violate his boundaries. Whatever happened--whatever is happening--he doesn't want her to know. A little slow tonight. Not firing on all cylinders.

The doubt doesn't go away, but she trusts him and he trusts her. None of this means anything without that trust. So she does what she usually does. She unwinds the silk scarf from around her neck and weaves it around his lower arms, pulling it tight and knotting it securely. The way it pins his arms back forces him to stand a little straighter. She allows herself the privilege of a quick kiss to the back of his neck.

What next? He rarely has specific wants when it comes to bondage, but having his hands restrained is never enough. He doesn't need to explain why. She can feel for herself that unvoiced fear of forever falling apart. He wants something to hold him together.

She takes their preferred hemp rope from the dresser and contemplates the expanse of his shoulders. Every scar has a story and she remembers every one as if it were her own. With enough work she can frame every one of them with the rope, but not tonight. Tonight she weaves it into a web around him, something safe and secure.

Something to hold you together, she thinks.

And he thinks back, thank you.

"And what will you tell me when you need to stop?" she asks out loud.

He shifts against the ropes and relaxes a bit when they don't give. His voice is faint. "Stars are out."

She leans in until her lips are touching his ears. "Good boy," she whispers, and he shivers.

He's holding back his thoughts but she can feel his anxiety, boiling away inside him and making her hands shake as they steer him toward the bed. He thinks, doesn't hurt.

Patience, she thinks back, and pushes him down onto the bed. She doesn't have to ask what he wants. She already knows, and when she opens the lowest drawer on the bedside table he shudders.

Slowly she draws out the cat o' nine tails.

It's a relic of a previous case--he never said what case, exactly, but she thought that the imaginative potential of what case could even include a cat o' nine tails far outweighed whatever amusement she might get from knowing for sure. To work?

Very slowly, he nods.

She starts by dragging it up his side and back down. He squirms a bit, and she cocks an eyebrow at him; that is, as it often is, enough to make him still. She can't quite make out his thoughts but she can pick up a buzz of anxiety--ready to get started in earnest, she supposes. Patience.

He gives her an irritated little pout that makes her laugh, but she doesn't stop stroking the tails of the whip over his chest and belly, down alongside one thigh, up to the pale, vulnerable length of his throat. In response he fixes his gaze on the ceiling, breathing grimly and steadily.

Good boy. Even as he tries to mask it she catches the briefest flash of pleasure. Despite the six months she's said it to him he still doesn't believe it, but he does love to hear her say it. She can't help but take a little pity on him. She gently whips the tips of the tails across his abdomen and listens to his strained exhale. You're doing just fine, Lamont. Just fine.

He swallows hard, jaw clenched tight.

Relax. You're alright. She goes back to stroking, waiting for him to follow her orders. He does the best he can. Though he consciously stops gritting his teeth, stretches his fingers beneath him, rolls his head to the side, she can still see the tension in him. "You're alright," she says again, out loud this time. "I can see how hard you're trying to be good for me, and you are doing very well, but you're still too tense."

Who's tense? A weak smile flickers on his face. I'm relaxed as rag doll.

She smiles and shakes her head. What do you need?

He chews at his lower lip and his eyes flick back toward the bedside table. Something in my mouth.

That's new. She lays the whip across his belly and lightly drags her fingers over his sweat-sheened skin as she opens the drawer again. The rod of rubber that she pulls out, with its leather straps and buckle, she knows where this one came from: a few nights undercover, pushing a broom around a sanitarium. They were used on patients who were receiving electroconvulsive therapy to prevent them from biting their tongues. Lamont hadn't told her exactly why he'd pocketed one, but she can remember the guilty thrill he'd felt as he showed it to her and do the math herself.

The gag's sat untouched since then--there'd never been a good time to break it out. "Are you sure? You haven't..."

"Yes," he interrupts. "Absolutely."

"But how are you going to use your safeword with a..."

He jerks his head, beckoning her in closer. When he nods at her she presses down her unease and slips the gag into his mouth. An emotion, too quick to identify, flashes across his face, and he says, in a voice that's garbled but intelligible, "Stars are out."

She feels a little bit better. Good boy.

He lifts his head up from the mattress so that she can fasten the buckle. When he lays back his bright blue eyes are fixed on hers.

They stay on hers as she pets his side with the handle of the whip, then the tails. It's not until she works her way back up to gently whipping it back and forth, the tips of the tails leaving the faintest red marks on his skin, that he finally closes his eyes and tips his head back against the bedcovers. His mind is still going, but she lets him have it a little bit harder.

Doing so well, Lamont.

He groans. Harder?

She knows why he wants this but she obliges.

I can take more than that.

She wishes there were a better way to help him and that they could just enjoy this for what it is. The stripes on his chest and belly are viciously red.

Margo, please...

Against her better judgement she obliges, and then two things happen.

First, his skin breaks. Then his walls follow suit.

Love, in Margo Lane's opinion, means saying you're sorry, explaining yourself, holding the other person accountable. So she says, "I'm so sorry." She holds him tightly. She tells him, "You have to tell me. Lamont, you have to tell me. I won't do this if you won't promise to tell me."

And Lamont, his face pressed to her shoulder, thinks, I wanted this.

No, you very clearly didn't. She can feel the tears. His face is too warm, he's shaking, he's this tsunami of emotion that she has to fight her way through so it can't drag her under too. Don't lie to me.

"I didn't, I..."

When she got the gag off him she threw it to some far corner of the room. Never again. It was too much for him; all of it was, and that was the end of that. She was never going to let him trick her into believing that he wanted--that he needed--more pain than he could handle.

"Please. Please." He shudders against her. Margo, please, you don't understand the kind of person I...

"Shut up." She pushes him back so she can see his face, and he tries so hard to quiet his thoughts for her that her heart aches. "No more of this. You understand me? No more of this... this... whatever this is. I'm tired of your excuses."

But I...

"You did things, bad things, and you can't take them back. You're scared you're gonna do them again. I get it, Lamont. I grasp that much. But I won't let you fall." She grabs his face and turns it up so he has to look at her. "Do you hear me? I won't. I'd kill you before I'd let that happen. But it's not going to happen."

He shakes his head as best as he can. I'm trying, I'm...

"Lamont." She says it so forcefully it's all he can think for a moment. "You can't hate yourself into being a better person."

For a moment there's silence, both physical and psychic.

"It won't work." She suddenly feels so tired. She lets him go. "I'm trying to help you, but I can't do this alone. You have to try. It won't work if you don't."

He looks at her with those sharp eyes that don't miss anything.

"I..." He pauses to clear his throat. "I don't deserve you." Before she could say that that was exactly what she was talking about he shook his head. "But I guess I can... try... to be the kind of person who does."

That's the most she's ever gotten out of him, and despite everything she's glad to hear it. "I suppose that'll work for now."

He gives her a tired smile and shifts closer. The avalanche of thoughts has calmed a little and she's able to tease out one need.

I can do that, she thinks to him, and she holds him until he's finally asleep.