SO many thanks to Nattiebroskette, who let me grump my way through this entire chapter (I swear, Randy's arms are just as uncooperative as Randy's shirt!) and probably learned WAY more than she wanted to about the mechanics of Opera Sleeves.
To alllllll of my readers and reviewers, I love love LOVE you.
(While there'll be more hotness in the future, consider this inspired by Valentine's Day - and a good way to get some things out in the open. How did that one REM song go? It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fiiiiiiiiine...)
They boarded the shuttle as a group – an aromatic, sweat-coated, irritable and cagey group, but a group all the same. At the hotel, they walked each other to their rooms, Meg and Randy being the last to go up, as Randy had again reserved an upper suite for them. He opened the door for Meg, but grabbed her by the wrist before she made it more than a few steps into the room.
"So, listen..."
"Look, Ran...I don't know what that was. I think everyone was just making me edgy. Honestly, I feel fine."
"Come with me to the fundraiser next week?"
'Well, that's a hell of a topic change.' "I...uh...what? What were we just talking about? I feel like I missed something."
"No, you didn't. I want you there with me."
"I'm gonna wear knee high black leather boots to a formal gala...dress-up...thing...Ran, I don't even own a dress like that."
"I was thinking regular shoes. Er, whatever those are, when you go to a fundraiser. And we'll get you a dress. And...just say yes, Meg. Please?" 'Something else I can set right. It's not about parading you around, it's about making you feel important. Included. That I'm not hiding you away and you don't have to pick between the back of the house and the front of the house.'
"Of course, Randy. Of course! I just..." 'I want to make you happy, but I want you to be with...I don't want to hear how you don't belong with me. I don't want the world to blow up with how ugly I am, how much better you can do, rumors about how I cut myself, people digging into my past, any of it. How do you find a dress that hides your legs and your arms, high heels that you can walk in when you can't walk...Oh, right. You wear a burlap sack and go in a wheelchair.'
"Hm?" Randy pulled her in against him, leaning back against the door to the room.
"Wouldn't you rather take someone...who..." Meg struggled with how to say it. 'Someone who can walk normal? Can look pretty in fancy shoes and an evening gown? Can dance with you?'
"Nope. You. If you don't want to, that's fine. I'll tell them I'm skipping it. There's probably something else going on we can do instead."
"Now you're planning a just-in-case date?"
"Yup. I'm going out and doing something with you one way or another. Whatever you want."
Meg smiled and tipped her head back against him. "Right now, I want what you want."
Randy smiled. 'Gotcha.' "Promise?"
"Of course."
"Then you're going to go run us a hot shower while I get some wine sent up, and then you're going to show me where you hid the ribbons."
"No, we agreed that wasn't safe and your shoulder was-"
"No. You just promised. Shower. Ribbons. Go. This is about showing you there's nothing wrong tonight. Whatever that bullshit was at the arena, it's done. You've trusted me like this so many times..." He kissed the top of her head, then leaned down to whisper to her, buried in her hair, all roses and, strangely, warmth. "I trust you."
"Okay, but – first time, right?" Meg tilted her head up, but hadn't looked directly at him, trying to sound gentle and encouraging.
"First time letting someone do it to me, yeah." Randy's voice was still a whisper, he was still drowning in her scent. 'Trust and control, Meg. Same dance, different steps. You lead.'
Their shower was delicate; Meg wanted him as loose, as comfortable as she could get him before they moved to the bed. She worked his lower back under a rich lather of his soap until he was so relaxed he wasn't sure he could walk but was nearly positive he could float, then moved up to his shoulders, taking all the panic out of the stop-maneuver he'd pulled with the doorframe earlier.
Wines, most chilled, all sweet, flowery, fruity, courtesy of Meg's friendly bellhop, had been placed inside near the door, and while Randy traced his fingers along the surface of the bottles after their shower, towel around his waist, not knowing where to start, Meg grabbed a towel of her own, slid into one of his shirts and began to dry the beaded water from his back, having tossed the ridiculously long coil of braided red and grey ribbon on their bed. She'd hidden it in a drawer in the bathroom, and the steam had warmed it through.
"Shirt versus towel? Doesn't seem fair, Meg."
"They won't be on either of us for long, Ran. Don't worry."
After one bottle – or was it two, he couldn't remember – conversation meandering, pleasant, Randy realized he was tracing the fingers of his left hand along the inside of his right wrist, trying to understand how the satiny braid had arrived there, looped around, over, under, so many times, playing with the rounded edges, enjoying the tension against his skin, the way her fingers would dart in and out around his if she thought he was trying to loosen her knots, and then just as suddenly, his left wrist was bound firmly to his right. He still had a decent range of motion; could roll his wrists back and forth, just not separate them, palms together. Trying to reach over Meg, to loop her in his arms, she merely ducked low and back, serpentine, and pushed his hands down. Pliant – or was it compliant? - from the wine, he leaned back against the pillows with his hands in his lap, waiting, legs outstretched.
"Comfortable?"
"Thinking." There was a slight slur to his words; Meg passed him his wine glass, adjusting it between his palms, determined to keep him right on the edge of thinking too much and thinking not enough.
"We're not going to do anything too different from what you've done with me." She smiled and pulled his wine away, even though he wasn't quite finished. "Make sense?" 'I don't want you so sloshed that I'm taking advantage. I will not be that person. You said yes sober; I still want you sober enough to say no, too. Nice and slow. Everything nice and slow.'
He reached for her again, but she pushed his hands down, harder, and rolled some of the remaining ribbon around her left hand, her right hand occupied with her own wine. "What I learned from you – what you have to understand about this is – it's the anticipation. You can't make it happen. You can want, you can need, but you have to trust that it's going to happen. That I'm gonna understand you. The only thing that's different is, I get your hands. Okay? If you get angry with it, jump over it, then it doesn't work. If it frustrates you, if it doesn't feel good, tell me to stop."
Meg slid further up in his lap, over his hands, and started rolling her hips in low circles, trying to get him to cooperate with her motions. "Like...here." She was working to talk and move at the same time, to hold her wine, hold the ribbon down to keep him in place. "You could just push me back and take over." Meg worked her hips harder, alternating between circles, strokes, angles, anything she could think of, over and on his fingers and knuckles, watching his arms start to shake from the effort of holding still, smiling when she realized he didn't know where to look, biting down on his shoulder and nearly dropping her wine, pulling up hard on his hands when she couldn't will her need down any longer.
"But if you don't," she panted, returning to her wine as though nothing had happened, as though Randy couldn't feel the heat between her legs, the ice of her thighs, his fingers slick and more, all confusing his hands and his mind, how he had and hadn't done that with her, "If you don't take over, it's that much better at the end." She dropped the ribbon, guiding his face toward hers, trying to read his eyes. "I need you to tell me, Ran, where are you in all this right now?" Meg placed her suddenly empty wine glass on the bedside table and began to gently rub Randy's wrists, making sure she hadn't pulled too hard, trying to gauge his breathing, trying to ease him back from his mental ledge just a bit. She knew enough about what to do from watching him and the times they'd played together, knew even a little more from the reading she'd done on her own, but now had to know from him that he wanted it. 'I always thought I'd like this...Jackson ruined it, and you made it safe again. Now I want it to be good for you.'
"Very fucking there." 'This is what she feels like when I do this with her? Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, she lets me do this to her? Wants me to – trusts me to – I had her in a chair and we – holy shit. And she keeps letting me do this to her? This is what I always want it to feel like. Holy shit. And this is 'not too different,' so what else...what's more different like?...oh my God. Just...I just...holy shit.'
"Very nice. More wine?"
He nodded, pupils blown and mind reeling, and she refilled his glass and watched as he reached for it with both hands, letting him come close before she smiled and pushed his wrists back down to the bed. Gently, Meg held his wine glass to his lips, then sipped at what she didn't let him finish.
"Relax and let me take care of you. And keep your hands down."
"Why are mine in front, but you always let me do yours in back?" 'Stupid questions 101? Maybe you should ask her to tie a big pretty bow, too.'
"More control for you. Easier on your shoulders." Meg winked, and teased his lips with his wine glass. "Really, because I want you to see what I'm doing and know what's coming."
"You were." Randy smirked, and Meg thinned her lips, the vaguest hint of a dark look crossing her face. 'I just started something...what did I do?...' It took her seconds – minutes – he wasn't sure, he would have watched her for a lifetime, but suddenly he had far less movement in his arms, braided ribbon crossing up the length of his forearms, around and back, up to his elbows, tied where he would call "underneath" but what he supposed was all relative, the room spinning, a dizzy smile crossing his face. He closed his eyes and waited, not realizing he was holding his breath.
"Still very fucking there?" Randy chanced looking at her and nodded; she held up his wine and he carefully leaned for it. She let him have what he wanted, almost over-generous, and then kissed the taste from his lips. "Good. We're going on a trip."
She pulled him forward by the wrists, tilting him over his chest. "Keep your arms under you. Up on your elbows. Trust me when I say you won't be able to stretch them up easy – but you can try if you want." He realized he couldn't roll his arms as he lay, couldn't move them apart – just had to breathe and try to go with the position as much as he could, his shoulders and his common sense telling him not to, that he wouldn't want to brace himself up on his arms that long, and his mind telling him to let go of it all. "Tell me if you're not okay, Ran. Promise me." She sat next to him on the bed, working her hands deeply into his shoulders all over again, drawing moans from him the longer she stayed with him, touching him, pushing him further out of himself.
"This is so...and I'm so...Meg, it's good." 'Whole words and phrases, dumbass...try making sense...'
"Still feeling like you're there?" She'd pulled the ribbon out from under him and was trailing the braided end along the tattoo crossing his shoulders, watching each tic and flex follow her path, leaning in to kiss a trail down his spine, stopping just as she reached the start of the towel at his waist.
"God, yes, Meg." 'Only other place I want to be is doing this to you...you gonna let me trade, later?'
"Turn over." She slid back just enough to let him roll, watching him relax into the bed, his arms now resting on his chest, her shirt gone, his towel following her shirt as he moved.
He tried to bring his arms around her, and frustration rolled through his body like liquid fire when he realized he couldn't move the way he wanted – needed – and it felt like it would kill him. He knew where it would pool in him, and so did she, but she was more intent on watching the scene play out on his face, resting her hands on his arms so he knew where she was, that he wasn't untethered and she wouldn't leave him. 'Run through it, Randy. You forgot what you asked for. There's the need, and the confusion, anger, fear...let that go, Randy, or else we're done with this game...there. Now we're back to need, but you need something else and you believe you'll find it. There you are.'
"I didn't think you could look any more...you're just..." Meg slowly lifted his arms over his head, cautious against moving him too quickly. "Red and grey suit you." She straddled him, first tracing the ribbons on his arms with her fingers, kissing the vacant spaces between each braid, then trailed her fingernails down his chest, deeper and harder as she slid lower, stopping just at the crests of his hips, watching the tiny spasms that wracked his stomach as her fingers moved. She kissed her way back up the red lines she'd created, then hovered over his lips before nipping at them, her hands sliding up to his arms, still above his head, starting to gently rub them before she eased them back down to his chest.
He was so focused on his arms, watching the ribbons and his tattoos and Meg's hands float past his eyes as the world moved down toward the plane of his chest that he wasn't thinking at all about Meg's shift in weight. Instead, he was considering asking how she felt about another bottle of wine, asking if she could talk about her wrists, if she felt safe with him. When she pressed his arms down into his chest, somewhere in the eye of his hurricane of thought, she also dropped back on to him in one fluid motion, and the pooled fire that was destroying him earlier flared again, twice as violently. Randy flew up in front of her, keeping his hands between them, keeping her in his lap, on him, together, but writhing, his eyes wild, his fingers and palms trying to grab at any part of her they could although his wrists were still locked in place.
'Panic? It's not panic, it's something else he wasn't ready for. Something happened that he wasn't expecting.' "Breathe, Ran. Breathe. We can stop. Take a couple breaths and then tell me if we need to stop." Meg's hands, cold, reassuring, on his shoulders, then sliding down his arms, resting at his elbows, holding him, keeping them both still and joined where it would center him the most, but ready to let him go, play a different game, agree that it was beautifully too much.
"Y-yes. No! No. I don't know. I don't know." His head dropped to her shoulder, and she could feel him alternately straining against the ribbons, then calm, then pulling again, breathing erratic. 'Jesus. Jesus Christ, I need to hold her. This isn't enough. I want to kill him. I saw her wrists. Why do I – I still can, she's right there – I just can't move my hands. That's all. She's still here. Calm down. I'm touching her. I am touching her. She's safe. I want this and she's safe.' As though Meg could hear the internal struggle, she slipped one arm behind him, pulling him against her as tightly as she could; the other she pressed against his arms between them. Locking her legs around his waist, a slow rise and fall in her hips, she gave him every reassurance she could.
"You're in control. Tell me what you want, Randy."
From his position on her shoulder, looking down, bathed in roses, able to see their fingers knotting together, the rise and fall of her chest matching his, feeling every inch of her cold skin against him, every bit of her depth as pooled in fire as he'd been, he pressed his eyes closed, desperately grabbing for a center and wheeling further out into nothing instead. 'Trust her. You've tied her tighter, longer, done more, given less, and you just have to trust her. See what it feels like to let go. She's not going to hurt you, she's been hurt, you're not going to hurt her, he's gone, you're here.'
"Keep going, Magdalena. Please? I trust you."
As slowly as either of them could stand it, Meg rolled her hips over him, a series of deep swirls and short hitches, figure eights that started from above and ended in bottomless waves, all leaving staticky crackles at the edges of his field of vision, trying to time herself with their breathing, with the motions he allowed himself. He felt his arms push upward, his fingers closing around her throat, holding her face up to his, making their eyes meet. 'What am I doing? And why isn't she afraid of it?' He couldn't find the words, the answers, before he was finished and she was following, their eyes never leaving each other, her arms never having moved from where she'd arranged them; one around his back, one tangled through his, though now lower down because of his grip on her throat, his fingers still tense where he'd raised them around her neck. Her breathing sounded tight, but nothing in her face belied fear.
Slowly, sated, she worked the knots and braids loose, rubbing his arms, working her way toward his wrists, untying everything she'd put in place. Gently, he moved his hands away from her throat and down to her shoulders, pulling her forward, over him, trying to understand what he'd just done and had done to him.
"Too much?" Meg stroked the side of his face, her voice suddenly unsure.
"No! No. I was worried I screwed up." He brushed the back of his hand against her neck. "It felt...I don't even know, Meg. Good. So good. Everything. It felt like everything. I'm sorry I...your neck..." 'Can you talk? Make sense?'
"No, it was perfect. Your way of telling me what you needed." She rubbed at his shoulders, stretching herself down the length of his lap, trying to make sure he was all still real, still underneath her. "Besides...you trusted me." He felt her smile curl against the inside of his neck, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, his eyes taking in the rumpled scene they'd created, until he saw the pile of braided ribbon, now half-hanging off the bed.
Suddenly feeling ill, like something had been upended and befouled in his mind, he grabbed Meg's wrists, turning them back and forth, looking at the thin silver scars banding around them, all noted in her hospital records from Louisiana. Meg tipped her head up off of Randy just enough to understand what he was looking at. "Oh my God, Randy...you think I did this with him." Meg felt ill herself, and tried to wrest her arms from Randy's grip, but the harder she pulled, the tighter he held. "Randy...no." She could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and suddenly felt very small against him. "You're...you...want to know, don't you? What I know?"
"You remember when you took me to dinner at the bay, right? How you did it to make up for that night that Jackson fucked up? I thought...when you talked about the ribbons, when we tried it...it was because you'd done it before, and because you knew about my wrists. Like you were trying to..." Meg shifted, uncomfortably. "I never did any of this with Jackson. When he...what happened to my wrists..." Meg felt Randy's grip on her tighten, and was afraid to look up to see if his expression was protective or loathsome. "Jackson thought I would run. He took the plastic drawstring out of trash bags. That shit gets so stiff, so thin...it just cuts. I couldn't tear it. I dislocated a shoulder trying. It was summer; you remember how hot it was. The room I was in was above a bar; there wasn't any air conditioning – there was barely a window – and he stretched the plastic until it was as thin as it would go, then just started...wrapping...it around me. He beat me, he hung me off the bed...across it...and I couldn't get my feet under me, I couldn't get back up, I just kept pulling and pulling...it was so hot I was just gone. I just knew I wasn't gonna get back up on that bed with him."
Meg realized Randy was holding his breath, and she tried to hurry through the story. "He...I don't think Jackson figured I would keep trying to pull. I dragged the bed half across the room with me, and by the time he came back there was blood everywhere. The plastic just kept cutting." Her tone stayed quietly flat, hoping Randy was just running on the sort of confused emotions and endorphins that vulnerability could bring to the surface. "I remember trying to get to the window...that somehow, I was gonna get to the window and then..."
Randy realized, about ten seconds too late, what he'd done, and moved to let go of Meg's wrists and put her back in his arms. 'Why did you do that? Why did you even fucking start? You told her nothing in those records mattered, and now in bed it matters. Now you put Jackson right back in bed with her and made her remember it and tell you.'
Meg pushed him back, hard, and decided her lack of a shirt didn't matter – she had to go. 'I just have to move, anywhere.' The bathroom was the only available option, directly ahead of her, so with momentum on her side she aimed for the door – and found herself caught around the waist by Randy's arms, the redness on the skin around his wrists nauseating to her. 'I didn't want him to, Randy. I'd never... You just said it was good...what is this? I do this with you because it's you and I love you and I trust you. You could tie a Christmas bow on my ass and I'd still get off.'
Randy pulled her back to the bed, pulling sheets and blankets over them, his apologies coming fast and blurred, nothing making sense to either one of them, fear beginning to overwhelm him. Meg finally dove over him, trying to wrap herself around him, grabbing the ribbon as she went, trying to force Randy to look at her.
"Stop. Stop it right now. You did not do that to me. Do you see this?"
"Meg, I had my hands on your throat, I was panicking, I was-"
"Do you see this?" Meg pressed the ribbon closer to his face, nearly rubbing it against his skin, trying to force him to touch it, feel what had held both of them apart and together.
"Meg, stop it...please...I don't want-"
"You did want it. And you liked it, and you liked doing it to me, and you liked it when I did it to you, and that's fucking terrifying, because now you understand how fast it can get evil if you don't really love the person you're with. If you don't really trust them. So shut the fuck up with that 'I don't want' shit. You wanted it. You asked me for it. And I asked you for it. And I want to ask you for it again, because I trust you and I love you, and I am not afraid of you."
Downcast, Randy's eyes were small storms under furrowed brows. Meg let the ribbon slide from her fingers, dipped her face underneath his, kissed him until he rose back to vertical, and gently traced her fingertips across his face, every crest and contour, even though she knew them all by memory. "I will always trust you, Randy. You've never shown me it's misplaced. I don't think you ever could. You were my help outside the window. You make this safe. You make me safe. Jackson never touched me like that. Neither did Joe."
"But I wasn't there. And I liked this...but this hurt you...Meg, the shit he did to you was-"
"Stop." Digging in to his face, Meg's fingers suddenly felt sharp, harsh, like icicles cutting him nearly to his bones and again she could feel Jackson's rotting breath course across the back of her neck. "Stop doing this to yourself. I mean it."
"I can't do anything about it, Meg!" Finally, the dam broke. Taking away his control, or controlling him, building walls or breaking them down, whatever they had done to each other that night, Randy could no longer be the only one who had looked into Pandora's box. "I can't undo what he did, I can't keep knowing what he did, I can't – can't –"
"You already did undo it, Ran. You found me, you forgave me, you kept me. I don't need anything else. The rest, you have to let yourself forget. Please. It's the only thing I'm ever going to ask you for."
Randy was silent for an inordinately long amount of time before he spoke again, mulling over possible options and responses in his mind. "Okay...but I'm gonna ask you for something, too."
"What's that?"
"Can we try it again? Like I do to you, arms in back?"
Meg's face registered shock, and Randy scrambled to save the moment. "I really...really...liked it. I was just thinking too much, and now I know...it's something that's just for us. Next time – if you want to try it again, I mean – I won't be so...I mean, I'm not gonna..." He sighed. "It's hard to explain. I trust you, Meg. And I get what you mean about letting go. When I did let go, it was amazing. And..." He kissed the inside of her wrists, holding both of them in one hand, "Like you said, I can't fix some things, but I can make them better. Different."
Slowly, Meg nestled her way into the space between Randy's body and arm. "Get some rest. Sneak tactics."
"Oh, shit." Randy's smile was easy, devilish, and completely unconcerned with whatever predicament he might find himself in later, as long as Meg was driving it.
"You started it."
Randy pulled Meg up over him, brushing her hair back out of her face, and she giggled at the sudden adjustment, the same way she did any time he picked her up and moved her. He pushed her back onto him as though she weighed less than nothing, enjoying the depth of surprised sound from her that followed the spontaneity of his idea. "And I'm going to start this, too." He reached for the ribbon that had been half-under Meg and draped it over them both before gently closing his hands over her hips and starting his own series of slow movements underneath her. He let go of her only once, when she started to lean forward over him, and he drew his hands from her hips up to her shoulders to guide her back upright.
"Let me watch, Meg. Please?"
Unable to deny him anything, but also having no idea what to do with herself, Meg froze, perplexed. 'So...where do I put my hands? Where do I look? This feels new, but it shouldn't.' He smiled up at her, knowing she wasn't going to be posing for him or throwing herself into anything wild, not this night, not with confessions and plastic ties and years-old bayou air in the room with them. "Just look at me, Meggie. Stay with me." He let go of her long enough to press her hands under his, on her hips, hooking his thumbs under the length of the ribbon he had draped over them, barely lifting it up and waiting for her to understand.
And when she did, it was glorious.