AN: I have emerged. Feel free to hate me.

EL James owns all. I just play make believe.

Never Know Pain – Chapter 6


APOV

I arrive home in a daze. My thoughts are a mixed-up mess of confusion and foreign emotions. While CIPA has made some aspects of my life difficult, it has weirdly simplified other areas for me. I don't have to worry about romantic relationships or if the right person thinks I'm cute or funny or alluring or whatever. It's not even a concern of mine because there's no true value in a romantic relationship for me. It's more just something to do to pass the time – to feel normal even though I feel like anything but. I stopped trying to feel those sorts of "happy" emotions a long time ago. When you actually understand the biology behind CIPA, it's pretty clearly spelled out that certain things are just not going to be an option for you. Pleasure, romantic love, sexual desire, extreme stress, soreness, exhaustion, fear – these are all hormonal responses to outside stimuli – and you respond to them in a physical way, if you're normal. I'm not. I accepted that a long time ago and have since tried to focus on the things about CIPA that are surprisingly helpful. I don't get stressed because I don't register the uncomfortable physical aspects of cortisol, I can work out and push my body past the mental & physical breaking point because I don't understand what feeling sore is like, and I don't get distracted from more important things, like school and family, by some stupid infatuation with a "totes hot" frat boy.

Grey may not be a frat boy but he's definitely "totes hot" and you know it.

I will my subconscious to shut the hell up and get out the car, reaching for my jacket in the passenger seat, but my hand comes up empty. I check the backseat and the trunk but my jacket is nowhere in sight. Where could it be? I take that jacket everywhere. I mean, it's not like I ever feel cold, but living in Washington and never wearing a jacket looks weird and isn't good for my health. Did I forget to take it with me? I must have. It's probably just in my room, I assure myself as I exit the car.

I make sure to check the mail as I enter the apartment complex, knowing Kate is waiting for a new book she ordered. I wonder how she's doing. Hopefully she's resting – that will buy me some time to figure out how to break it to her that I completely messed up the interview with Mr. Important CEO. I mean, I think I have a good reason, but I don't know if I want to explain it to her just yet. I don't even know how to explain it. What the hell happened in there? I will myself to squash all thoughts of gray eyes and sexy smiles as I walk into the apartment and find Kate lying on the couch half-awake. She looks up and gives me a sleepy smile.

"How are you doing Sicky?" I ask her.

"Much better now, thanks. I can't believe that happened. Stupid Jose," she huffs.

"What does Jose have to do with you being sick?" I ask. Jose is a mutual friend of ours. We've all know each other since we were freshmen. He came to WSUV to study photography but added an engineering major his sophomore year, so now he has to stay an extra year to finish his studies. It makes me sad that Kate and I won't see him as much next year while he's still in school, but he's hoping to get an internship for his senior project working with some construction company in Seattle that focuses on green construction and buildings.

Kate sighs, getting up to pour herself some tea, "We went to this new sushi restaurant he wanted to try. It looked super sketchy as we walked in. As in, it did not smell fresh in any sense of the word. But he was so excited because he was craving sushi so I just went with it and trusted him. Fat lot of good that did me. I hope he got sick too."

"I doubt it," I muse. "You know that kid has an iron stomach. I bet he could eat rocks and not even feel it." Kate nods in agreement. I ask if she's been able to eat anything since she's been awake. I had some soup heating up for her in a crockpot in case she got hungry, knowing she wouldn't feel up to making anything herself. She gets up and throws her arms around me.

"Yes I ate some of the soup you left for me. Seriously you're the sweetest friend ever, but you didn't need to do that for me. I mean, I really appreciate it but if you keep racking up all these friendship points in your favor, I'm gonna have to donate an organ or something to even the score," she says with a cheeky smirk.

"Well, I bet we'll be even once I tell you how the interview went," I say in a meek voice, shutting my eyes tight, as if it will make telling her I completely screwed up her big important interview any less awful. She releases me from the hug and holds me at arm's length, eyeing me suspiciously.

"What did you do, Steele?" she asks me with a wary tone.


"So you just felt it?" Kate asks me after I explain the whole situation at GEH. She's not even mad about the interview, saying she didn't expect to get anything exciting or new from him. He gives the same standard responses in all of his interviews and never deviates, which is why she didn't bother with new or inventive questions – she knew it wouldn't get her anywhere. What a robot.

What a super freaking attractive robot…

I roll my eyes at my subconscious and Kate gives me a weird look. I ignore her and just continue with my explanation of the confusing interaction between me and Grey.

"I don't even know what I felt, though. I have nothing to compare it to. The only wetness I've ever felt down there is from my period. And this felt NOTHING like that. I don't know what else it could be. But I also don't think I was attracted to him – I mean, he was attractive but everything else about him was so annoying and frustrating to me. He was this arrogant, cold, calculating dick. There's no way that this guy could spark an impossible sexual awakening in me. There's just no way!" I argue. Kate just sits there looking at me with an odd expression. It's like she feels bad for me, but she's also got this knowing look in her eyes that I'm not sure I'm a fan of at the moment. She's just sitting there staring at me. She starts to smile and before long it's a full on, shit eating grin.

"WHAT KATE?! Just spit it out! I'm dying over here!" I yell at her.

"Let me listen to the interview."

I completely forgot I had recorded it. I reach into my bag for my phone and email her the recording from earlier today.

"Why do you need to listen to the recording right now? It's not like we'll find the answer to my problem in there," I say as she gets up to grab her computer. She returns to the couch, headphones on, and pats the cushion next to her. I plop down beside her and wait in silence as she listens to the recording.

While she listens intently, my mind starts to wander back to a certain Christian Grey.

Those gray eyes. Those full lips. That sexy walk. That sexy EVERYTHING. The man is sex on legs – how does anyone around him get any work done? I know I wouldn't.

But then he opens his mouth and it's all arrogance – gross. Maybe that's not who he is though, maybe that's just his "CEO mode" persona?

Why did he affect me like that? How could our interaction have overridden the CIPA? I didn't think you even could override CIPA. It's not like I can just turn it off if I try hard enough, that's not how nervous system disorders work. And it's not like he was even into me – he was just trying to mess with my head, as if it was all a fun game. I'm probably just building it up in my mind to be more than it was…

"WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING HOLY SHIT WAS THAT?!" Kate screeches at the top of her lungs, effectively hurling me out of my thoughts and back to the present. I turn to her expecting to see a spider the size of our TV or something equally as terrifying. But no, she's just staring at her computer screen, mouth agape, eyes wide open.

"Kate, what the hell?! Are you ok? Did you see a goddamn monster? What gives?"

She disconnects her headphones, turns her computer speakers up all the way, and presses play. The alluring sound of Christian Grey fills the air.

"Control can be quite… satisfying, Anastasia."

Shit I forgot how hot he sounds. How am I ever going to figure out what is going on with my body if I keep getting distracted by the mere sound of a man I spent all of 10 minutes with?

10 completely glorious minutes.

"And so I will repeat myself. What. The. Motherfucking. Holy. Shit. Was. That?!" Kate says slowly, enunciating each word like I don't fully have a tight grasp on the English language. I'm dumbfounded. I don't know what that was all about! She's supposed to be the expert here! It's not like I'm going to know what's going on – I've never experienced anything remotely close to this in my entire life.

I hope I get to experience it again…

No! I will my harpy subconscious to shut up. I can't be hoping to see him again! And even if I did see him again, he's not going to be falling all over me – it was all just a game to him. I need to remember that and repeat it as many times as necessary to silence the inane wishful daydreams of my inner Christian Grey fangirl.

"He was just being some creepy petty asshole who likes to fuck with people's heads – or who likes to bed inexperienced young reporters for sport. I don't know Kate!" I say, getting up and walking around, just needing something to do while I try to figure this out.

"Ana, I know what sport flirting sounds like. THAT was not sport flirting. And then your response to him! Hot damn was that good! Gold medal goes to you! That was straight seduction. Like disintegrate-your-panties-on-the-spot seduction. Like come and get it sedu-"

Kate stops her verbose description to click on something on her computer. "What the hell? Are you serious? Holy shit!" I scoot over to her to see what could be so instantly captivating and find an email from the devil himself:


Miss Kavanagh,

Attached are the answers to your interview questions. I do hope they prove sufficient for your article. I also hope you are feeling better, as Miss Steele mentioned you were ill. Speaking of Miss Steele, she left her jacket in my office this morning. Perhaps you should give her this email address so that I may arrange its safe return.

Christian Grey

CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.


My jacket! I knew I took it with me today!

"Oh my god Ana, he's totally into you," Kate squeals. "There's no way he would've been so nice as to personally email me answers to my questions unless he's trying to get into your good graces." I can't even comprehend someone like him being remotely attracted to someone like me. I offer nothing to a relationship and I'd have nothing to offer him either. And that doesn't even matter because it's obvious he isn't into me at all. He just wants to give my jacket back. Probably disgusted that a non-designer jacket has even touched his precious office.

"I doubt that's what it is Kate. He's just covering his ass because I ran out of his office like my head was on fire and wants to make sure that doesn't affect how you write the article," I huff as I slump down onto our tattered oriental rug by the couch. "It doesn't mean anything," I murmur as I lay flat on my back and stare intently at the pock-marked stucco ceiling, trying desperately to ignore all the thoughts swimming around in my head.

You need to be honest with yourself Ana. This guy isn't interested in you as a person.

But what if…

NO! He was bored and you were the easy target. Nothing could ever happen between you two, and nothing ever will. You need to let it go.

Let it go.

Let him go.

It's just a fluke.

I repeat the mantra in my mind a few times, still staring at the ceiling like it will solve all my problems, while Kate taps away on her computer, too excited to let the stomach flu stop her from starting the article.

Let it go.

Let him go.

It's just a fluke.

The thought gives me a weird feeling in my chest – one I've never had before, and it doesn't feel right. It feels… bad. What the hell is happening to me?

"Kate?"

"Hmmm?" she hums in response, still typing. When I don't respond right away, she looks up from her screen and comes to sit next to me on the rug. I sit up and start inspecting the woven fabric, picking at a stray thread near the center of the golden swirling pattern.

"Ana? What's going on? You know you can talk to me about anything. AK for life, right?" She says as she rests her head on my shoulder. When Kate and I first moved in together, she went through a rough patch with a guy and then got into a big fight with her family. She felt extremely isolated so I came up with a saying, something we can say whenever we want the other to know that we're in this friendship for the long haul: AK for life. Anastasia and Kate, through thick and thin.

"AK for life," I sigh and she lifts her head, picking a piece of fuzz from my hair as I try to figure out how to put words to what I'm feeling. "How do I know what's going on if I have no frame of reference? There's so many things I've never felt, and I'm not sure how to describe it because I don't have that knowledge. How do I explain a feeling I've never felt before?"

"Huh, yea I see your point. That's gotta make you feel out of sorts," she murmurs. She gets up and starts walking around the room, stopping in the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. She brings it over to me but stops just shy of handing me the glass. She's frozen, eyes wide open, lips parted, face glazed over.

"Yoohoo, Kate? Anyone home in there?" I wave my hand in front of her face as I reach up to grab the wine glass from her hand. I take a welcome sip. Feeling tipsy is one of the few pleasures I still have. Alcohol affects the brain differently than emotions and physical sensations, so I still get to feel a tad normal when I've got a drink in my hand. It might not seem like much, but it's the little things that really make the biggest difference.

"I've got it!" Kate snaps out of whatever haze she was in and runs to the alcove near her room. It was too big to leave empty ("I cannot handle looking at a huge blank space every time I walk to my room. It ruins the whole aesthetic!" I remember Kate exclaiming when we first moved in) so we filled it with some storage furniture pieces full of crafting supplies for when Kate and I feel the need to get our Pintrest on. She pulls out some paper from the printer on top of the filing cabinet and a giant box of pastels from one of the drawers and comes over to me, grinning from ear to ear.

"This is how we'll figure it out. I want you to draw how you're feeling," she hands me the pastels and I stare at her like she's grown a third boob on her forehead. "Don't look at me like that! I know it sounds silly but I think it'll work. I'm not asking you to draw your favorite dinosaur for fuck's sake. Just use the colors to describe how you feel."

I don't think I'm going to get out of this so I take the paper from Kate the Therapist, drain my wine glass, and open the box of pastels with a huff. I close my eyes and try not to think about anything but the feelings inside of me; just focusing on those few minutes with him and the hours since I left his office.

How I felt when I first saw him.

How he stared at me as if he didn't think I was real.

How I felt his eyes on me when I wasn't looking at him.

How his tongue seemed to caress every syllable of my name.

I grab for the oxblood red and start shading in the top section of the paper with thick strokes.

How he resembled someone having a stroke right after I made a joke about my pain tolerance.

Why did he seem so shaken up by that comment? That was so bizarre. He didn't seem too concerned about my well-being. That's when everything took a hard left into hunter-prey zone.

I grab for a deep purple next and blend it together with the red, letting my strokes get lighter and thinner as I progress down the page.

I try to focus on that moment, when I noticed him coming over to sit next to me. But he didn't walk, he stalked. Like he was on the prowl for some fresh meat and I was a little doe caught in the headlights.

Except you didn't stay caught, did you? You decided to try and beat him at his own game. A game you've never played before. And you got schooled. Hard. You ran out of there completely freaked.

You weren't ready for it then.

You're not ready for it now.

You ruined whatever shot you had at that feeling the moment you dropped him like a used condom.

I grab an inky blue and the gray next and use them together to bleed out from the purple and continue to the bottom of the paper.

But he did email Kate personally about returning my jacket. And he answered her original interview questions. Which means he had to have looked through my jacket to find them in the inside pocket… What was he looking through my jacket for? What was he hoping to find? Why didn't he get his assistant to email about my jacket?

I continue shading in the picture with the blue and grey combo, blending in the colors absentmindedly.

Maybe he cares more than he lets on… maybe there's a heart beating under all that Armani and arrogance.

I smirk to myself as I think about how uncomfortable he'd be if I told him that to his face. I'd like to see that.

Lastly, I smush some golden yellow between my fingers and use my thumb to spread it haphazardly throughout the picture, lighting up random pieces and fragments without any real direction. Kate and I both look down at the finished product; a sunset on fire. I don't need her to tell me what it means.

I see emotions I'm well acquainted with: frustration, fear, anger, confusion, annoyance. But there are others that are foreign to me. I can't quite place them all, but I know one for sure.

Emotional pain.

I've never felt emotional pain before. I know emotions physically manifest themselves in a multitude of ways but I've never experienced it firsthand. On one hand, I'm delighted to feel anything at all, no matter what it is, but on the other hand, I'm frustrated that this feeling is so strong. It feels deep and long-lasting. It feels dense and hollow at the same time.

"Wow, this is really something Ana," Kate says as she takes the picture from me and holds it up, inspecting it like she's instantly gained the analyzing skills of a great art critic. But I don't care how she looks at it, as long as she tells me what emotions she sees. She might not be an art expert but emotions are something Kate is extremely well versed in.

After far too much squinting and numerous "hmmmms," Kate places the picture on the rug again and tackles me to the ground in a giant hug. "I'm sorry you feel like this Steele. It's obvious he's gotten under your skin," she says as she releases me. "But behind everything else, I do think you've got a lot of passion here. I'm not sure if it's a lot because that's how strongly you feel, or if it's because it's new, so you have no understanding of how to gauge its intensity. Whichever it is, I think you should explore it."

I stare at her, mouth agape, "You think I should explore it? Explore what? I might be new to these sensations but I saw a lot of emotional pain in that picture too. You must have confused that for passion. There's no passion! I don't even know him! I purposefully pissed him off in that interview because I didn't like him and you're reading that as passion?"

"Ana, remember that you've never felt this before. You have no idea what to do with these emotions and sensations. Yea there was some pain there, but the passion was way stronger. And might I remind you, that I have a shit ton more experience in this field than you do so maybe you should tell your insecure, pessimistic brain to shut the hell up and listen to the expert!" she says as she points at herself. "Also, going back to the whole, 'you don't know what you're doing' discussion, when kids like each other, they bully each other rather than send love notes. You wanna know why? Because they don't fucking know how to deal with the all the new emotions they're feeling! So they lash out! And I hate to break it to you Steele, but you're about as emotionally developed as a six-year-old when it comes to matters of the heart and I'd bet my new Gucci pumps that you antagonizing him during that interview was the Anastasia Steele version of pulling his pigtails on the playground," she grabs a chunk of my hair and lightly tugs on it, like it will magically make sense to me now that she's acted it out. I roll my eyes at her as she continues her monologue, "You wanna know what that lashing out evolves into when those kids grow up? What all those mean names, kicks to the shin, and pulled pigtails equates to? Yup, you guessed it: p-a-s-s-i-o-n," she sings to the tune of 'sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,' finishing her speech with her hands on her hips, confident as always.

I can only grunt in response to her explanation. Sure, it sounds nice. Passion, romance, physical attraction, lust, the whole lot. But if I start to agree with Kate on this, I'm going to start hoping that he feels the same way. Which he doesn't. Because he can't. Because we literally talked about his job for less than 10 minutes and then I ditched. Oh, and I also lack the neurological components to physically feel anything besides pressure. Doesn't seem like the perfect recipe for undying love and endless passion.


"Just think about it, ok Ana?" Kate pleads with me one last time as I head into my bedroom for the night.

I turn around and give her a hug, whispering, "You're the best friend I didn't even know I needed. AK for life," and head to bed.

I strip and fall into bed, dreaming of grey eyes and wicked lips.

But my restful slumber doesn't last for long.


AN: tell me what you think, alright? I can't fix something if I don't know it's broken.

xx