Moments with Sir – Ownership

This is something I wrote for the list I run… I don’t think I ever published it here.  I think I intended to, but just never felt motivated enough to “clean it up” and make it more neat and tidy for this posting.

Then I was talking with my friend S, and telling her about it and I realized I never had shared it here (and thus she hadn’t read it, obviously) and that… it actually illuminates a complicated to explain aspect of my relationship with Sir.  I don’t know if this will uncomplicate it, but it will, hopefully, demonstrate it… Or not…  Meh.  I’m not going to bother cleaning it up (other than removing names)…  So…  This is just copy/pasted straight from my email.  Written about a year ago.  Cheers!  🙂 
So…  I’ve been thinking about just posting some of the little moments between my Sir and me… my sub brother thinks I should do a comic strip, which would be an awesome idea if I could draw even so much as a stick figure… alas… I can’t.

Most of these are humorous, but it’s been a rough night in the house tonight. Not between us, just all of us had tough days, Sir most of all, so… that kind of sets the tone for the evening.

I’m not sure I have the energy to put this in a storytelling voice… I may just tell it… instead of storytell it (yes, there’s a difference… I don’t know what it is, but there is one…)

Tonight I got home first after a ridiculously long day. No kids today, but PD and sitting on my ass for hours which is somehow more exhausting… Plus our principal is retiring so I went to a meeting to discuss what we want in a new principal. So got home late, but still before the guys.

Sub Brother gets home about five minutes before Sir. I’m already in my running clothes, though I plan to run in the house instead of outside because it’s still chilly and I manage to get chilled when I run somehow. Too hot then chilled. Sir tells sub brother to get changed to run and does the same. He tells me I’m responsible for doing my very best without his supervision (weird… I usually do…) and he and D (sub brother) go out the door.

So I start my running routine. I’m in week 3 of Zombies, Run! 5K training. And fuck, they ramp it up abruptly. But I was trying very hard to do my best for Sir so I ran the whole time… I was sweaty and miserable and my calves were cramping 35 minutes later when Sir and D came back in the house… They were both dripping sweat and still out of breath which isn’t normal for them, they usually run at a pace that gets them sweaty but not dripping and not panting out of breath. Sir looks at me (also sweaty and out of breath) and tells me to go wait on the bed. He takes D into the bathroom with him to shower. I play Soda Crush on my phone (damn addictive game!)

Eventually D comes out of the bathroom in a towel and clean and says Sir wants me.

I say, “What? In the bathroom?”

He says, “In the shower. He said to strip off.”

Weird.

But whatever, I take off my sweaty clothes which are, by now, making me freezing (chills) and I go into the bathroom. The shower curtain is white and opaque but Sir isn’t anywhere else in the bathroom so I know he’s got to be in the shower. I poke my head around the curtain and he’s standing under the spray, staring blankly at the wall of the shower. His eyes shift to me and he motions me in.

He’s been in the shower with me, but usually he’s clothed, it’s some kind of a sensory emergency and he’s holding me (often also clothed) under cold spray to shut down my brain having a kind of a seizure.

He isn’t clothed this time. Neither am I. He sees me naked daily. I see him naked occasionally. He doesn’t make an effort to avoid being naked around me, but it is just incidental not intentional. This feels strange and for some reason I feel self-conscious about his nakedness, but the weariness and unhappiness on his face stops my spiral of thinking and I simply obey, stepping into the shower pan with him.

I stand a foot in front of him. The spray is mostly blocked by his body but mist dampens my legs and I hug myself for a moment, watching him. He isn’t aroused. That isn’t a surprise since my body doesn’t arouse him, but I somehow get the sense that D’s didn’t either this evening. Something is wrong, I’ve known it since he walked in the door tonight and didn’t kiss either of us in greeting. Since he and D came back looking as if they’d been running from ghosts. Since he brought me into the shower with him, sans brain emergency.

Now he reaches around the edge of the shower curtain and grabs a clean washcloth. Then he grasps my forearms, stepping close to me and turning us so that our positions reverse and I am suddenly beneath the warm spray of water.

He is almost close enough to me now for our skin to touch as he reaches around behind my head and pulls my ponytail loose then gently tilts my head under the water and smoothes my bangs off my forehead and into the stream.

Barely widening the distance between us, he takes the soap from the shelf behind my shoulder and lathers the washcloth then slowly, gently, begins to wash my right shoulder.

He has silently, thoroughly washed both arms, my neck, my chest, my breasts and is on to my belly before I ask, “What are you doing?”

His eyes meet mine and they are so haunted that for a moment it makes me flinch. Very quietly he speaks out loud, “You are my property. You were sweaty. I’m cleaning you.”

I don’t know what answer I was expecting, but that one was strangely unexpected in its obviousness. I instantly bow my head, not consciously, and murmur “Yes, Sir,” – the response that comes instinctively to my lips.

He washes the rest of my body, slowly and thoroughly. Despite the intimacy, somehow the tenderness of the act chases away any sexuality from it and as he rises from a crouch after washing my legs, I catch his gaze once more as he reaches behind me for the shampoo.

“Did someone die?” I ask.

He never talks about his work. Nothing. Not even in vague terms. I’ve never known if that is legality, professional ethics, or a personal boundary.

He says nothing as he grasps my shoulder and turns me away from him. He smoothes a palm full of shampoo into my hair and begins to work it slowly to a lather with his fingers.

Rather than turning me again to rinse my hair, he reaches above me and pulls down the extendable shower head, directing the streams carefully to keep the suds from running into my face.

After he reaches to replace the shower head, his body pressing lightly against mine, he doesn’t pull away again. Instead he wraps his arms around my stomach, pulling me more firmly against his body, and lowers his face to the curve between my neck and shoulder. I can feel all of him pressed against me, and yet still no sexual energy tingles within me. The embrace, strangely, feels intimate, tender. He kisses the skin beneath his lips and then lifts his head to speak into my ear.

“People die every day.”

There is terrible pain in the statement that he says with such steady detachment. Pain he can’t hide with a level voice. My stomach tightens abruptly, I feel my muscles shifting under his encircling arms, and tears suddenly spill down my already wet face.

“My dad will never see me run…”

I don’t know why I care. I don’t know why it suddenly matters. Part of me wonders if I just want an excuse to be sad.

Sir releases his embrace and turns me around to face him, the shower warming the sudden absence of his body heat.

“He would have been proud of me…” The tears become sobs and that distant part of me wonders at the randomness of grief. The abrupt appearance of pain in otherwise empty emotional space.

For a moment I think Sir is going to say something logical and rational. Something about it doesn’t matter if my Dad would be proud, I’m running for myself, not for my Dad… How I don’t need anyone’s validation. How that is old stories that I don’t need to tell myself anymore. Something wise and therapeutically sound.

He hesitates long enough that maybe he was considering it, but when he finally speaks he says only, “I’m proud of you.”

And that breaks everything I have left.

I fall into him, clinging to him. His arms instantly go firmly around my body, one hand comes up to cradle the back of my head as I tuck myself, now, into his shoulder.

Somehow the hot water doesn’t run out on us before I find my emotional neutral again. We get out of the shower and I stand still as Sir towels me dry, combs the tangles from my hair, and even blows it dry. He works with a kind of detached efficiency, his gaze intense on his task, never meeting my eyes, but not as if he’s avoiding my gaze, as if my gaze doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t… for the moment. For the moment we are in the rhythm of that little extra piece of our relationship that takes us beyond dominant and submissive, that makes us master and slave… owner and owned. It was as much my choice as it was his, maybe more initially.

It is this piece that sometimes feels the hardest to explain. The hardest to justify to those who question. But tonight, it feels the most comforting, the most beautiful. To it, I surrender.

Finally, my body cared for to his satisfaction, Sir lifts my collar, reaching around my neck to fasten it and letting it fall, cool, against the skin of my chest. I stand still, silent, naked before him, wearing nothing but his ownership.

He stares at me for a long moment, then he leans close and kisses my lips gently. I return the kiss as chastely as it is offered and when he leans back he whispers, his gaze firmly on mine, “I love you.”

I hold his gaze. “I love you, too.”

For another moment we stand in silent tableau. Then he turns and opens the door. “Put on your fuzzy pajamas. The blue ones.”

I nod. “Yes, Sir.”

The bedroom door is open and I can smell the soup D is heating for dinner.

“No bra.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He steps out of the doorway to let me pass, then I hear his voice behind me, “Shadow?” I turn.

“I don’t want to hurt you tonight…” Often telling me “no bra” is a prelude to sadistic nipple games that have become a new fascination for Sir. “But… I’d like to play with you.”

If he wasn’t gay it wouldn’t be a strange thing to hear him say. Even as it is, it doesn’t strike me as strange as it might. I am his. He may use me for his entertainment in whatever form that takes, but I nod my acquiescence, feeling my lips quirk upward slightly.

“Is that okay with you?”

I had been allowing my gaze to slide away from his, feeling my submission strongly as he gave commands, but now I bring it steadily to meet his.

“Yes, Sir,” I say, firmly. He doesn’t have to ask my permission. I gave him that right when he gave me his collar.

But sometimes he still does.

And that he still asks is what finally makes me tingle.