Separation – Moments with Sir

Sir settles onto the couch beside me. He doesn’t look at me right away, but he puts his hand on my leg, a warm pressure. He doesn’t look at the TV, either. His mind seems focused on other things. I can’t name a specific reason I think this, but I am sure of it as he settles beside me, and lays his hand on my leg.

The Walking Dead is on the TV. Screams, gunshots, and rasping groans fight to win my attention, but they were already weak contenders, and Sir’s presence easily overpowers them. I wait a breath, feeling my belly tighten. My doctor just talked to me yesterday about the stress of my profession. About the suicide, death, divorce, and substance abuse in fields with similar dynamics to my own.

He asked me how long I want to do this job. It had hurt. I want to do it forever, I just wish I were better at it. But, I didn’t tell him that. I realized before I said the words, that it was a selfish answer. That it was the answer that said that I would sacrifice Sir and SB and everyone who works so hard to hold me together, just to chase a pipe dream of ever being good enough at my job that it won’t consume me.

That conversation stayed in my head, and now, after two weeks of putting my family, friends, and medical team through hell. Now, I am sure that Sir is going to tell me he can’t do it anymore. Tell me that he and Sub Brother are moving out. Make the statistics true.

Much as I’d argue otherwise, I know Sir won’t let me be the one to leave. He’ll want me to stay in familiar surroundings. He’ll want to make the transition as easy as he can on me. He doesn’t want to hurt me, but… he has SB’s health to think of. He has his own health to think of.

I already feel tears rising in my eyes, and I fight them back. It isn’t fair to cry. It isn’t fair to cry when he has already put up with so much. It isn’t fair to make this harder on him than I’m sure it already is. Even if I don’t know why he still cares, I understand, somehow, that he does. Even if it is only that he doesn’t like to admit he failed, even at something as inconsequential as loving me. I fight to push the tears back, and I reach for the remote to turn off the TV.

Sir looks at my face as the TV goes black. “Are you finished watching?”

I nod. I don’t look at his face. I am trying to shove the knot of pain in my chest into a box that I can close and put away to deal with later. I am willing my tears to retreat into the box, my fear, my grief, smaller and tighter until I can close the lid. But it keeps oozing out between my fingers as I push it downward. Sir touches my jaw.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

I give a quick shake of my head. *Nothing* it says, but he knows it’s a lie. I can tell. “It seemed like you wanted to talk to me…?” I make it a question, almost, still avoiding his eyes.

“Does that make you sad?” he tries to catch my gaze, but I drop my face, letting my hair fall like a curtain, hoping to hide the exertion that shows on my face, the effort of pressing back the surge of emotion as my pain rallies and bursts out of the still-open box. Two tears drop from my eyes, onto my lap. I blink, hoping to clear the wetness from my lashes before Sir forces me to look up. Hoping he didn’t see them fall.

His fingers slide under my chin, and he gently tilts my face upward. I know my eyelashes still bear evidence of lapse of control, but I have mastered the rest of my face, again. I surrender the fight with the box, erecting a hasty wall instead. I can still fear the sadness on the other side, but it is muted enough to keep it off of my face. I try to smile.

Sir’s expression isn’t as controlled as mine. His eyebrows have drawn together slightly, muscles tighten around his mouth, pulling his lips into a slight frown. “What are you thinking about?”

I shake my head, *nothing*, again. I can feel the pain gnawing at the wall with sharp teeth. I silently will Sir to get it over with. To say what he needs to say. To reassure him that it’s okay.

He takes a breath and leans slightly back from me, his fingers are still under my chin, his thumb against my jaw, not firmly, but definitively. He’s not letting go.

“I’d like you to start writing again.”

I feel myself blink slowly. My mind feels empty for a moment, then thoughts coalesce as if forming out of mist. He thinks writing is therapeutic for me. He wants me to write to process the separation. He wants my therapists and doctor to have insight to my mental state once he is gone. The pain is still behind the wall, its gnawing goes temporarily still.

“Okay.”

He is still frowning, his eyes have narrowed, as if he is trying to see through me, into my head, into my heart, through my wall to the pain on the other side. I breathe. I pull my breath into the barrier, thickening the opacity until it is an impenetrable blankness inside of me.

“What are you thinking about?”

I look inside. My mind slides along the bank of clouds, thick, white, impenetrable. “Nothing.” I say it and it is true.

He sighs slightly. I feel a twinge from somewhere deep in the cloud bank. It is meaningless. Without context. Without connection. Just another ache to ignore.

“Okay,” he says finally, releasing my jaw, and gently tucking my hair behind my ear. “When you’re ready.” He reaches up with his other hand, and pushes the hair away from the left side of my face as well. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It feels like something just hit me in the sternum. I feel my muscles pull inward around the blow, my breath wheezes out of my lungs, and I am seized by a fit of coughing, hoping that it covers the pained expression I know I failed to mask.

Sir leans over and takes my water glass from the coffee table. He holds it patiently until I can draw an unsteady breath, then he presses it in my hands and waits for me to drink.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says again when I have settled.

I look at him, there is something calculating in his expression now. He knows. He’s testing my reaction. Another fit of coughing buys me a few more seconds, but I can’t take advantage of them as the primal instinct to breathe pushes higher thought from my brain.

“Not going anywhere,” he says once more as my chest stops heaving for the second time. “The worse for your ass if you don’t start taking better care of your body.”

I manage a feeble glare as I gulp down lungfuls of air, trying to get my breath back again. “Yes, Sir,” I mutter, and he grins at me. He puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him.

Shifting my weight flares the tenderness of my last punishment. It happened two days ago, but it is still painful enough to make me hiss and “ow” as I change position, the last dredges of my self-control already spent on the construction of my inner wall.

Sir kisses the top of my head, then he slides his hand down and past the curve of my hip, pulling me closer to him, pressing into all of the sore places that escaped the pressure of the couch. I squirm for a moment, seeking an escape, then whimper as he tightens his hold against my struggles. I draw a breath and it shudders. I let it out slowly and surrender, burrowing my face into the warmth of Sir’s chest. Pain and vulnerability and submission and safety… The wall remains impenetrable, but tendrils of pain, the pain of my misstep, the pain of Sir’s correction, the pain of our bond branded on my body and heart, grow like creeping vines across the blank façade. I take another breath and open myself to it. I allow this pain, this still tender wound, this somehow safe hurt, to soften, ever so slightly, the fear behind my wall.