Chelsea in makeup is trying to blind me. I lock my fingers in my lap and let my eyes water freely. She'll have to repair the damage, but that's what she gets for not knowing how to do eyeliner the subtle way.

You'd think after a month, she'd learn, but she hasn't. I texted Patti, my makeup artist on Queen of Hearts, a joking complaint last week, and she sent back: Babe, you know those baby blues are my favorite canvas. Don't make me fly out there to protect them.

Julia perches on the counter in front of me, cuddled into one of her chunky knitted sweaters. She dresses like an Eskimo, but then the second we're filming, she's like steel. Hours of next to naked filming and she will never ask for a warm-up break.

"Are you enjoying this?" I ask her through my tears.

"Karma's a bitch," she says with a wide grin. "I had to come in a half hour early so they could powder every bit of me into perfection."

"Ah, that can't have taken longer than ten minutes."

"Yeah, but it took the other twenty minutes to feed me enough coffee that they could come close without an animal control officer on hand."

I smile and Chelsea looks annoyed at how it crinkles my eyes. I relax obediently, but Julia makes faces to try and make me smile until I give her the finger behind Chelsea's back.

Julia laughs and flips me off right back, then hops down from the counter. "Well, I'd best be off to wardrobe."

"You should have left more time. How are you going to choose which birthday suit to wear?"

"That's easy. I like the one with the fuzzy ears."

I chuckle and now Chelsea looks close to tears. I'm glad for the distraction. If there's anything harder than getting in the mood for BDSM, it's doing it at five o'clock in the morning.

Chelsea finally finishes, bursting with apologies.

"No worries," I say with a wink and a grin.

I check my phone on the way out of the room. Nothing. Mom is scheduled for her tests today, which she absolutely refused to let me fly down for. After that, we still have to wait for the lab results. She still claims that she feels fine, but I can't decide if I should believe her or not.

Either way, I can't go think about it right now. I've got to work.

"Do you want me to do this?" I breathe, cradling Julia's face.

"Are you going to hit me?" Her lovely eyes reproach me.

"Yes, but not to hurt you. You haven't earned a punishment today."

She licks her lips hesitantly, her breathing ragged.

These scenes are so easy, the sexual tension between us humming effortlessly. I kiss her, angling our faces just right for the lighting, all lips and no tongue because it's for the audience's enjoyment, not mine. Her hands flutter up toward my face before she pretends to remember she's not supposed to touch me and fists them next to her sides. I pull away, my eyes hot. She wordlessly nods her consent.

I take her to the door of the Red Room and stand behind her as she looks inside, her eyes caught by all the unfamiliar bondage equipment. I pull her dress up over her head, so slowly that I can watch gooseflesh break out across her skin as I expose more and more of it.

I drop the dress in a puddle of satin and skim my fingertips up her arms. My head is bent to hers, so that even standing behind her, I can see her pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat. She's either acting really well, or she's letting herself get into it a little bit.

I touch the outer rim of her ear with my lips and unhook her bra, unhurriedly drawing the straps down her arms. I'm standing close enough to feel the heat of her skin.

I gather her hair in my hands and gently braid it away from her face.

I used to braid my sister's hair when we were really little. We'd play this game where we were explorers on the Amazon and if I braided long pieces of grass into her hair, it gave her the power to wrestle the alligators away from our raft. I always wished I had long hair, because without the grass, I couldn't wrestle the alligators.

It's a nice contrast, this moment, so I milk it a little bit before I grab the braid and tip her head back so I can look at her when I order her onto her knees.

She obeys, folding to the ground a little clumsily. She's gloriously almost naked, but still looks like a very young girl far out of her element. I crush my twinge of guilt, letting Christian run the show for me.

He's excited to have her in his playroom, and he's ecstatic as he glides over to his chest of toys and chooses a brown leather riding crop.

Lucy cuts right then so that Hair and Makeup can redo the braid I put in Julia's hair into something more attractive.

The crop should feel natural in my hand. I've ridden horses my whole life, and I know perfectly well that you can use this as a tool very effectively without causing any pain. It's all about the rider and knowing how to apply cues as communication instead of cruelty. But you hold it differently when you're riding a horse.

I shift the whip a few times, trying for a position that feels like it fits my hand.

"I don't know, David, I think Hair and Makeup should hire you," Julia calls to me. "How are you with a speed-herringbone?"

"Depends," I say, letting a little backwoods southern into my tone. "You talkin' about gutting a fish or doing up your hair?"

She grins and I pretend like I don't know exactly what she's doing.

Lucy calls the cameras back on.

I watch Julia from across the room as she kneels, eyes turned submissively to the floor. I lay the whip conspicuously on a padded bench and pull Julia to her feet. This new braid allows just a few hairs free to soften her face, but leaves her reactions exposed for the world to see.

"Give me your hand."

My voice deepens with inexorable command. I planned on changing my voice for the Red Room scenes when I was preparing for the role originally, but once I saw the set I did it without even thinking about it.

Julia holds out her palm. I slap the riding crop against it, and she flinches, though I didn't do it hard enough to sting.

"Did that hurt?"

Her brow creases, and she hesitates before answering. "No."

"This isn't going to hurt," I tell her. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," she says, but her eyes say no. They are filled with apprehension and more than a little fear.

I give her no further reassurance, just pull her arms over her head and secure them with leather cuffs. I yank her legs apart and cuff them too, being a little rough so the close-ups of my hands will be more dramatic. I wonder if the boom mike will catch the changes in Julia's breathing, because the sounds she's making are subtle but they're driving me insane. I'm hoping they will turn on an audience.

I have no idea what she is doing to me. Nothing I want done, that's for damn sure.

Sophie slept through her run this morning, and I woke nuzzled into her neck, her soft breast cupped in my hand. I want to stay in that memory, but then I realize that is not the headspace I'm supposed to be going for right now. I release the image reluctantly.

I stroke the whip over Julia's skin and her lips part with reluctant excitement. Jesus, she's good at this. If it wasn't a huge professional faux pas, I'd ask her if these scenes really turn her on.

I flick the whip against her and she gasps.

"How does that feel?"

"Um, okay?"

I stripe the whip across her ass. This is easier to fake with a riding crop. It looks so much more vicious than it is. Even so, the sound when it slaps her skin punches me in the throat.

My brain is playing the sound of the belt hitting that vinyl cushion that couldn't have been thick enough, couldn't have been enough to protect her. The sound is so loud in my memory that it takes me a second too long to realize I've missed my cue. I turn on my heel and look at Julia, making the pause look deliberate.

"Okay, what?"

She looks puzzled. I am supposed to hit her again. Fuck, fuck, fuck. My hand tingles and goes weirdly numb. Am I having a heart attack? No, it's my right arm, not my left. It's your left arm for a heart attack, isn't it?

I'm missing my goddamn cue again. The realization makes me move too quickly and I stop the arc of the whip at the last second. I think I stopped it early enough so that it couldn't hurt, but her whole body flinches away from it, so I can't be sure.

She's supposed to react like this and she's a crazy-tough actress so she's not going to even say anything if I'm hurting her. With these camera angles, we can't use the cushion and everyone's counting on me to make it look real without it being real.

No one should be counting on me for anything. My thoughts are jumbling, screaming together until I can't make out anything that's happening inside me. I just know that it is loud, loud, fucking deafening.

"Okay, Sir," she says.

I stop in front of Julia. Christian is piloting my body; moving it smoothly, confidently around while my brain eats itself alive.

He tips her chin up with the crop, his eyes bright with excitement. The tip of the crop traces the line of her throat, quivering with her uneven breathing, over her delicate collarbones and to her breasts. Apparently an R-rating will allow us to show her topless, and I'm sure the male half of America is going to be very happy about that, because the sight is pretty inspiring.

Right now, all I can think as the plaited leather touches her nipple is that breasts are beautiful. Soft, nurturing.

My mother's might be killing her right now.

I'm supposed to be hitting Julia's breasts with this whip.

The riding crop is shaking. Christian has apparently lost control of my right hand. The leather rises as if to strike and my throat seizes as I gag harshly. I double over, coughing explosively. The whip drops to the floor but I can feel the line of it burned into my palm.

I need to get the fuck out of here before I cough up an internal organ, but I can't leave Julia cuffed helplessly naked in front of all these people, stuck until someone thinks to take her down.

I turn my mouth against my shoulder so I won't cough on her face, but I can't stop gagging. I rip her cuffs free and then I'm gone, shoving blindly through crew members.

My dressing room door slams behind me, but I still can't stop coughing. It's like I'm trying to choke up my soul but it's staying put, poisoning me from the inside.

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me, so I just prop my elbows on my knees and convulse with the force of the attack.

Lucy is pounding on my door, and I'm sure she's going to let herself in. I don't have enough breath to tell her to fuck off. If she tries to give me the Heimlich, I'm not going to be responsible for my actions.

There are voices outside my door but I can't hear what they're saying. I clamp my mouth shut and my esophagus convulses as I try to get myself under control. I'm not choking on anything, but if I don't stop this, I'm going to break something.

I grab the trash can and spit weakly into it. Tears are running unchecked down my face and I really hope they are just from coughing.

Finally, I manage a breath and it tastes great. Another. Another.

Lucy is gone. The tension leaves my muscles until I'm barely sitting upright.

I make myself get up and find a water bottle, taking careful sips to sooth my throat. Reality is starting to sink back in. I'm in a dressing room, in a studio. I'm halfway through the filming of a movie and I actually cannot finish it.

I run through the remaining scenes. The belt scene is the worst. I didn't get through all of it the day we filmed- they are supposed to have a fight and all this stuff after the beating. It's pivotal, but Lucy said we could cut it together later. She didn't ask for another take, but she didn't call wrap, either. She didn't ask me why I didn't finish.

I sit back down. I don't think I can do it. I don't even really know why, but I just know that if I try to raise a hand to Julia again, no matter how phony, I will come apart at the seams. This is so far past absurd I don't even know what to think.

I've played serial killers, bad guys of all different stripes. I've never played a rapist or a child molester, but that's it. I actually love to play criminals, though I usually get cast as the love interest because I'm a little too pretty for most villain casting.

I'm perfectly capable of coming in and out of character at will and I've never, never had trouble telling the difference before.

There's a knock on my door. It's not who I want to see, so I don't even lift my head.

"David?" It's Julia's voice, quiet but firm. "I'm coming in."

I revise my opinion. There's at least one person I want to see even less than Lucy. I scrape a hand over my face tiredly.

The door opens. I stand up, putting the trash can back under my dressing table.

"Hey, sorry about that. I must have swallowed wrong or something," I clear my throat and smile apologetically. "Super sexy, huh?"

She's wearing a floor length robe with bare feet, her braid a little rumpled. She looks like the kind of girl you wish you'd find having coffee in your kitchen in the morning. I want her to go away.

Julia's eyes are kind. "Don't bullshit me, David."

She closes the door behind her and spies my iPod hooked up to my tiny speakers. She walks over and hits the button without looking to see what it will play, then drops the speakers in front of the door.

I narrow my eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Giving us some privacy." Her lips quirk into an ironic little smile. "For once."

"I don't think we need privacy," I say, and glory hallelujah, twenty years of acting is actually getting me somewhere, pretty fucking belatedly. I give her a puzzled look that's about 25% scorn, 5% condescension.

"I think I need a Halls mentholated and you need to not be in my room in an outfit that begs an 'on-set-source' to spill his guts to Star about our secret affair."

She sits on the old loveseat in the corner and cocks her head at me. "I'm sorry we don't really know each other very well. If we did, maybe I would have said something earlier." She pauses, touching her hand as if searching for a ring she's used to wearing. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"Look, Julia…" My voice sounds like I have early-stage emphysema. I really did a number on my throat.

"I appreciate the concern and I don't want to be a dick cause maybe it's different at HBO, but where I'm from you don't hang out in your co-star's dressing room in a thong and a robe unless you're hoping to take them off, and that's not happening here. So if you want to have a heart to heart, let's do it somewhere that won't start quite so many interesting rumors, hey?" I am being a dick. Absolutely, and I can be more of a dick if it will make her get the hell out of my room and stop looking at me with those treacherously sympathetic eyes.

Julia crosses her arms. "Do you really want an audience while we talk about the fact that something's been wrong with you in every single Red Room scene we've done?"

"Yeah, something is wrong with me. I'm playing a sadistic, emotionally unavailable trauma victim, which probably, newsflash!, makes me come off like ass. Next problem? Oh, should I turn the speakers onto some Barry Manilow while we have this chat? How about a tie on the doorknob?"

Julia's looking at me like my diary is written all over my face and she can't stop reading. My hands twitch in my lap. I realize my fingers have curled into fists and deliberately relax them.

"You're afraid of hurting me, aren't you?" she whispers. "You hate this. Your face the other day after we did that scene with the belt… but then a second later you seemed fine, so I thought it was just part of the scene."

She reaches for me and I flinch. It is the first nail in my coffin because she is never going to goddamn leave now.

Julia slides off the couch and kneels down next to my chair.

"David, you didn't hurt me." She tries to take my hands and I turn away but she won't let me. "You never hurt me."

I rip my hands out of her grasp and stalk across the room to the door, peering out as if I'm checking for eavesdroppers. I couldn't give a shit if there was a brass band in the hallway, I just can't let her touch me.

You cried, I want to scream at her. But of course she cried, she was acting. She is supposed to cry and every part of me knows that except my gut, which is twisting itself into a whole zoo-full of origami animals.

She lays a hand on my back and I slam the door shut to cover my reaction, stomping away and flinging myself back into my chair.

"What do you want from me?" I hiss. In my new, gravelly voice, this comes off sounding even more harsh than I intended it to.

"Oh, David," she whispers, and then she's hugging me, practically in my lap.

"Um."

I don't touch her. We're alone, and she's not exactly dressed and that never leads to anything good. I wasn't actually that worried about rumors before, but now I am. Sophie trusts me but if somebody walks in now and sees Julia wrapped around me like a vine, Sophie'd be pretty justified in being pissed.

"Please. Let me help. I can tell you're upset." Julia will not let go of me.

I pat her back a couple times, hoping that will satisfy her. But then I feel her spine under the robe. I can see the line of it in my memory, her kneeling naked before me on that padded bench.

I shudder deep down as the pat turns into a caress that is pure apology and then my arms are going around her, pulling her down into my lap. She hugs me tightly and my hands are running all down her arms and her back as if I can erase all the blows I have laid on her in the past month.

She knows. Dammit, she knows exactly what I'm thinking.

"Hey, it's okay. You don't have anything to be sorry for." She's cradling my head against her breasts. That is a bad idea, really not what I want anybody to see and not what I want to be doing. But I can't help myself because her tiny, breakable body is haunting me.

I take her arms and carefully push her away, getting her out of my lap. I shake my head, wishing I could be a little more coherent right now.

"Okay, I have a girlfriend that I love very much, and I probably shouldn't have done that, so please don't get the wrong idea. I-," I look up at my co-star.

I don't know her that well, and I'm not all about spilling my soul to people but the gig is up here. Sarcasm isn't going to cover up anything when they ask me to walk onto the Red Room set again and I won't.

"It's not working for me," I tell her, and the relief is dizzying.

She nods. "I know."

We're silent for a minute, because that is all I have to say. She seems to get it somehow. Again.

"Look, your voice is destroyed. You can't film today anyway," Julia says practically. "I'll deal with Lucy. There are some Katherine/Ana scenes we can do, and the visit to Ana's mom, if the sets are ready. Why don't you go home, or wherever you need to go to figure this out." She pauses and I can tell she's trying to decide if she wants to say something.

"We're too late into the movie to swap actors," she says baldly.

I glance away, because I know. Obviously, I know. It will wreck the budget and you don't wreck the budget of a high profile project like this, or any project, if you want to work in the business again.

She touches my chin and I don't flinch this time.

"But more than that, David. I don't want to do this movie with someone else. You are perfect for the part and-," she shrugs, her eyelashes flickering. "I trust you."

My heart squeezes at her words. I don't look at her.

Julia steps back, finally giving me some space. "So do what you need to do, but for what it's worth, I want you to come back. I'll help in whatever way you'll let me."

I manage a jerky nod and she lets herself out.

Author's Note: I'd love to hear what people think about this chapter! This was the idea the whole fic was built around.