bff there’s a video going around on måtwt of damiano saying "i know you can do it sweetheart" and it’s making my praise kink go wiiiiillllllllddddd 🤤 can we get an extra dose of praise kink in the next stained sheets pretty please? 🙏
oh. oh my. what a blessing of a video to be brought to me. it is causing so many thoughts while also totally emptying my brain, wild!
immediately yes. with the scene i've got them playing out, she can have lots& lots of praise. i had a glance back at what i had written earlier this week& found the perfect spot for that exact phrase(well not exact cos sweetheart isnt a preferred sexy nickname for me)
& i'll make sure as im writing more i will keep the praise up for you bestie
Operating on autopilot, you brush your teeth while a sense of existential dread settles just under your sternum. It's heavy, asphyxiating. Today was gonna be hard. Largely because you weren’t allowed to have a hard day since it’d been Damiano that had a crisis: relapse. He needed your support and you’re pondering the extent of this responsibility when the drug test on the back of the toilet catches your eye. Somehow, you’d forgotten about it.
Negative for everything. Except marijuana, which Dami had already disclosed. Overwhelmed, you slide down to the floor with your back against the wall. You didn’t feel anything. Not relief, nor anger. Not even disappointment. Stranger than numbness was the urge to cry when your eyes won’t even tear up. Standing upright then spitting out the foamy toothpaste, you stare at your reflection. Cry. If you’re gonna do it, do it. Because after this you need to be strong. So cry. Fucking cry. The tears don’t come. Your dry eyes burn, and despite sleeping relatively well, you look drained of life force.
In the name of coping mechanisms, you devote an extra five minutes to a makeup look that always makes you feel put together and pretty. Today it comes off as clownish. The blush is too intense and the eye shadow garish. There isn’t enough time to take it off and start again so you avoid looking in the mirror and shift focus to getting dressed. One thing at a time. Pairing this mantra with caffeine will likely be the only force propelling you through today. One thing at a time still feels like more than you could handle, but not functioning wasn’t an option, either. Your chest tightens.
“Hey, goodmorning.” Damiano’s voice startles you. He typically got up around when you left for work.
“Shit! What time is it?”
“It’s 8:07, don’t worry.” Dami harshly clears his throat twice, trying to get rid of his gravelly morning voice. It's almost an accurate replication of normalcy, except he won’t look at you. Damiano begins making espresso and his eyes briefly dart in your direction.
“What do you want for breakfast?” The moment’s cognitive dissonance is truly formidable.
“I –” Obviously he was trying to make last night up to you. Should you accept? Do you even want to?
“I – no! No. You – we’re not just gonna skip to this part.” He looks so fucking wounded, a kind of woundedness that can only be achieved when you’re not expecting the pain. Only visible for a second, then he hides it. Still, you’re in agony.
“You – I need…I – don’t do that! Don’t make that fucking face at me. It’s been less than 12 hours and we were sleeping most of them. How can you reasonably expect me to have processed last night in less than 12 hours?”
“You’re right, it's not fair. I guess that I –”
“If you know it's not fair then why are you so fucking destroyed over it!? I can’t –” You stare out the window, thanking whatever cosmic entity may be that you can’t cry right now.
“I’m sorry.”
“No!” Your voice comes out high pitched and guttural in anguish. “No, don’t –” You stamp your foot. It was a childhood habit that you loathed, but still made an appearance in moments of emotionally charged exasperation.
“I’m sorry. I was just, I was just…” He trails off, staring at the floor. You stomp across the apartment and briefly strangle him in a hug. Dami is so surprised that by the time he embraces in return, you’re pulling away, keeping your gaze fixed on the chipped corner of the kitchen cabinets. Because meeting his eyes up close, even for a millisecond, might be more than you can bear. With a large step back, you attempt verbal communication.
“Don’t apologize for having an emotional reaction.”
“I’m sorry for relapsing.”
“That you can apologize for.” Next you stare at the catch all basket by the door and feel your face heat up. “I just can’t take you looking so devastated over me not wanting to play house right now.” Had you not demanded last night that he disclose the hardship of Substance Abuse Disorder to you? This morning he does so for all of two nanoseconds and you react like this.
“No, I’m sorry. I take it back.” Of what you can see out of the corner of your eye, Dami’s expression is perplexed.
“You take what back?”
“That reaction. I want to know what you’re genuinely feeling right now. I want to support you through this.” You steel yourself before meeting his eyes, but Dami is, again, intent on staring at the ground. He presses his lips together while rapidly shaking his head.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t be, ugh…” Damiano sighs heavily. In the background, the water boils audibly. He returns to his task of making espresso while crafting a sentence. One hand is braced against the counter. It's the same hand that caressed the bare skin of your stomach last night. What the fuck had you been thinking? Even while disparaging yourself, you can feel how sturdy and reassuring and loving Damiano’s body was as it lay behind you. He couldn’t have pulled you any closer without undressing. And it felt so natural.
“You shouldn’t be consoling me. I’m the only one that should be apologizing, even if you’re angry, if you yell at me, whatever. And you don’t, ugh…” Dami uses the hand not bracing to gesticulate. “Supporting me through relapse doesn’t mean not being pissed at me. I – that reaction,“ he points towards the bathroom, “was perfectly fine. It was fine. I just wasn’t sure how to acknowledge what happened and be like ‘oh, hey! Sorry I relapsed. Can I make you breakfast? Not in I’m-making-amends-through-this-gesture-and-if-you-accept-I-will-expect-it-to-count-towards-my-forgiveness kinda way, but in a I’m-up-and-want-to-do-something-nice- for-you kind of way.” You take a beat to think and settle on meeting him in the middle.
“I will take an omelet and a double, please.”
“Okay.” He sighs in relief and sort of smiles. Also inhaling deeply for the first time since probably yesterday, you return your focus to getting ready. When selecting a pair of shoes, the safe at the bottom of the closet is a reminder to give Dami back his phone and keys. The memory of the night before comes crashing down; his suicidal ideation, how tortured he was by self-hatred. You end up on all fours, studying the scratched floor of your closet while weathering this rat’s nest of emotions.
You’d let Dami back into your life knowing relapse was inevitable and deciding it was an inevitability you were prepared for. However, he’d been so even keel since coming home that it made yesterday jarring as a reality check.
“Hey, um,” he knocks on your bedroom door, tone uncertain.
“Come in.” You don’t feel short of breath until your voice comes out as such. Dami slowly opens the door, holding your plate and espresso.
“You okay?”
“Just getting your stuff out of the safe.”
“Oh.” Awkwardly, he steps out of the room and turns his back. You’re so caught up that, on the first try, you enter in the wrong code. The safe beeps abrasively and a small light at the top of the keypad flashes red. On the second try you make a point not to be frantic and get it right.
“Okay, here you go.” The metal door of the safe slams shut. Your nervous system is so fried that you jump, heartbeat skipping.
“Right.” Damiano swivels, both hands occupied with your breakfast just as both of your own hands are occupied with his belongings. In disjointed gestures you try to exchange the items before realizing it's physically impossible.
“Let's set it on the dining room table.”
“Right, yes. Good idea.” You cringe at the silence following Damiano putting the dishes down. “Um…okay, so now you will be late if you don’t leave soon, actually,” he calls from the kitchen.
“Shit!” You pull on your most well-worn pair of boots. Even scurrying around the apartment, they omit a sophisticated click each time the sole collides with the flooring. Upon making it to the door, you look back to see Dami sitting at the table and eating. In front of your empty chair is the untouched omelet and full cup of espresso he’d so tenderly made for you. The scene was reminiscent of a date night. As if he’d cooked dinner for two, then been stood up. So Damiano was left to eventually eat his meal all alone, after accepting you wouldn’t show. Cold food and wondering what he’d done wrong.
Dami isn’t reading into the moment at all. His down-turned eyes are preoccupied with his phone, but his words from last night are still fresher than a wound needing stitches. The phrase “do you a favor and throw myself off the roof” is running through your head on repeat, even when you try to direct your thoughts elsewhere. In fact, Damiano was standing almost exactly where you are now when he’d said it.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Your voice comes out frail and shaking, so much so that Dami’s head snaps up.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I’ll be fine.” Sweetheart. He misses the slip-up because he’s preoccupied by concern, setting his fork down to examine you. “I’m just gonna treat it like any other day: eat this, work out, go to treatment.” Unable to feel your face, but aware that this is an appropriate time to nod, you consciously perform the gesture. “I mean, obviously, I don’t feel good right now, but I’ll be okay. A lot of rehab was focused on getting back on the wagon, so to speak.”
“‘Kay.”
“Like, I hate myself right now, but I’m not gonna throw my sobriety away and go on a bender or something. Because I know that ultimately I’ll end up feeling so much shittier. Try not to worry.” He smiles in good humor: knowing, gentle, calm. “I’m sure you will anyways, but you don’t need to.” The difference in Damiano’s temperament since devoting himself to treatment is suddenly so evident. His chest isn’t puffed out with bravado, speaking from the perspective that he’s less fallible than your typical mortal. He’s not manic, you realize.
“You’re sure?” Dami’s conciliatory expression is brimming with empathy.
“Yes, my love,” he placates, then catches himself. “Erm – y/n, sorry. Basically, I…I’ve examined my behavior a lot. Not just in the sense of hurting people, but also – I’m totally springing this on you, so I’ll skip to the point. As a person, I am done behaving that way, okay? So you’ll go to work; I’ll go to therapy where they’ll probably treat me like a pipe bomb. Then we’ll complain about how shitty our days were while eating takeout.” After the alarming way he’d spoken last night, it was a relief to hear Damiano genuinely sound like himself. The steady, resilient version of himself that predated addiction and the omnipresent hysteria.
You’d been holding out for it, gazing into the sky every night as if searching for the Northern Lights. Damiano acting like the man you fell in love with again – despite the incognizance with which he did so – was worthy of exactly this display. Opulent shades of violet and greens so electric they become yellow hurtling across a midnight canvas with the abandon of a child first learning to dance.
“Are you okay?” You’re about to say yes, out of habit, then realize that you could choose honesty over politeness and admit that the answer is no. But what’s the result? Being late for work and, in the process, interrupting Damiano’s routine. He needed the control and predictability his schedule offered, now more than ever. Allowing him to expend even an ounce of this precious resilience on comforting you was downright irresponsible. Dangerous, even, because you had no idea how much tranquility the day’s events would require.
But it wasn’t that simple. Concealing your emotions had previously fueled communication failures which contributed to breaking up. Logically, mending things meant doing the opposite. Damiano’s simple question left you to choose between his sobriety and your relationship. The choice was obvious. You’d made it before. It was the exact choice presented to you at the time of the breakup. An event from which you feel so far removed, that it might have happened in a past life. Simultaneously, in this moment, the pain is fresh enough to sting, as if it was merely yesterday that your heart was mercilessly cleaved in two. You want to scream, out loud, how the fuck did we end up here again?
“Y/n?” He cocks his head then his eyebrows furrow. You remind yourself that Damiao is not your boyfriend. You cannot expect him to provide the level of comfort and support a primary partner would. If you needed it, then too fucking bad, you’d have to get it elsewhere. This was a decision you made, a boundary you’d set. Because a stronger version of the fragile girl quivering by the front door knew that Damiano solely focusing on his own wellbeing was necessary for his sobriety. So you try to pull it together and decide on reaching out to Sam during lunch break. They had the wisdom of someone twice their age with the inner serenity to match.
“Hey.” Damiano stands upright, rounding the corner of the table. The sound of the chair legs against the floor makes you flinch, breaking your train of thought. Holding a hand out, you stop Dami from approaching.
“I feel guilty for not having time to eat the breakfast that you made me. I really don’t want to start out today with you feeling rejected or lonely and end up reaching for substances to cope.”
“I don’t feel rejected and just the thought of liquor makes me nauseous, right now.”
“Liquor…you know liquor isn’t the only thing I’m worried about.”
“Well, frankly, the other stuff is a lot harder to get, especially if you’re not willing to poison yourself. It's also fucking expensive in Rome, so I’d have to be carrying around a fuck ton of cash and look." Damiano picks his wallet up from the table and opens it. The only currency that falls out are some coins and a two dollar bill Victoria gave him for good luck. “The fuck am I gonna get with this?” He holds it up, almost grinning until he examines your features and realizes that this has been the opposite of reassuring. Dami immediately picks up on turmoil brewing beneath the surface, but little does he know that it’s more like a cataclysm.
“You’re thinking about it.” It's a struggle to force the words out, like your body doesn’t want them to be true.
“Last night I was, yeah.” He admits it quietly, but his whole demeanor changes. Dami felt triumphant a moment ago, for not using drugs, not giving himself the means to acquire drugs. Instead of validating his achievement, you’d disregarded his triumph and replaced it with a profound feeling of defeat. It was quite literally the worst thing you could have done.
“And I know it – that I, um…” Dami sighs, nervously switching his weight back forth. “God damn it. So last night was one of my lowest moments and I really, really fucking wish you weren’t there to see it because it's not representative of who I am or how I feel. What I – baby, those were just thoughts. They were just thoughts, I promise.” His voice is so fond that your heart hurts. “I don’t ever plan on acting on them. I’m not gonna hurt myself. I know I really scared you when I said –”
“Mm mm!” You gesture for him to stop talking while squeezing your eyes shut and turning away. The urge to cry creates pressure in your throat, but the tears won’t come. So it feels like you might choke or be sick.
“Take a deep breath,” Damiano coaches after falling silent for a moment. You comply, grounding yourself via powerful inhales through your nose, exhaling out of your mouth. It was adjacent to a breathing technique you’d learned in yoga. The feeling mostly passes.
“Okay. I can’t talk about this right now.”
“Of course.”
“I want to talk about it. I will talk about it. I just need…”
“Time to process.” He finishes your thought after observing several seconds of you staring at the ceiling, searching for the right words.
“Yes. All I want in the entire world right now is for you to focus on yourself. Get stable, do things that make you happy. Don’t worry about me.”
“...okay.” Damiano scrunches his nose up while slowly turning away, as if he’s biting back the words he’d like to say.
“Okay.” You pick up your keys and double check that you haven’t forgotten your phone. “So, I’ll see you –”
“I am worried. About you, I am worried.” The silence hangs over your heads like a noose. “You’ve got so much going on internally that I can’t read you. We’ve been together for so long that it’s really unsettling.” You’re at a loss for how to respond. “You used to be so forthright with me. Like absolutely transparent until…until things started going downhill.” Dami shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders raised in a defensive gesture. “And I want to take things at your speed. I want to fucking – to be transparent with you. But you, you…” He sighs heavily and relaxes, turning his gaze towards the window where morning light is seeping in.
“What?”
“I know we said we would wait until things weren’t so in flux, which –” he laughs bitterly.. “Which, god damn, I somehow made worse last night.” Damiano’s eyes return to the floor, where the big toe of his right foot is nervously tracing the seams. “I think, for my sanity, we need to look at the R.A.S. again and really talk.” R.A.S. is an abbreviation for what has been dubbed the Relationship Anarchist Smorgosboard – essentially a map of all possible relationship components. Often, polyamorous folks – yourselves included – used it as a tool to precisely define everyone’s desires and expectations. For you and Dami, the topic of non-monogamy actually resulted from discussions about relationship anarchy. So the request isn’t the issue. It's productive and healthy, even considering the metric ton of emotional labor. The strain with which Dami says “for my sanity” however, makes you nervous.
“Yeah, okay, uh…”
“Fuck me,” he groans, rubbing his face harshly. “Maybe I don’t wanna do this now. After yesterday I – you’re not gonna – I just destroyed all fucking progress!”
“I, I…I don’t know how I feel, Damia. But, obviously we don’t have to have this big heavy talk if you’re not ready for it.”
“That's not what I’m saying,” he snaps. Your left hand starts to shake at the agitation in his voice. If he gets upset, it’ll interrupt the routine keeping him intact. What will he use to deescalate then?
“Have you taken your meds?”
“Y/n, I –” Dami’s tone is venomous and biting, but he stops himself from lashing out mid-sentence. He goes into the bathroom and takes his lithium, hands gripping onto the edge of the counter as he swallows painfully. He takes a second to manage his anger, meaning that exactly what you were trying to avoid is happening. He’s burning through that precious resilience for your sake. Each second that you watch the sharp outline of his clenched jaw, you wonder if this was the moment that Damiano dips into reserves that he needed for later in the day.
What if he drinks again? Or worse, uses coke? Heroin? What if he goes on a bender then we don’t talk again for three months? What if he OD’s and permanently damages himself? What if he dies? It will be my fault. What if the resilience that could have prevented it is being used up this very second, right before my eyes? What if I’m signing his death sentence with my mere presence?
“The reason I want to renegotiate isn’t really because I need to renegotiate.” Damiano speaks while still standing in the bathroom. Out of something adjacent to survival instincts, your mind has plunged you into disassociation. He may sound steadfast, but his voice barely cuts through the mental fog.
“It’s more that I want to clarify exactly where the boundaries are. So I know what I can ask because…” Dami pauses to rinse his face. The sound of water landing on the porcelain is eerily distorted from the disassociation. “Sometimes we are so connected. Like last night, not just when we were cuddling, but when you were genuinely pissed at me. I could feel your anger. You let me feel it, but then this morning you’re so far away. I don’t know what planet you’re on and we were never like that before, ever. Even at the very end, you were more present than you sometimes are now. I’m not trying to criticize you, I’m really not, but…” You force your eyes to focus when Dami goes quiet. He’s just brushing his teeth. He’s okay.
“But I just want you to let me in and I don’t know if I can ask that as a nesting partner. Even when you’re submitting, there's like 15% you’re holding back. And I get that it's a trust issue, but when we were on the bed,” the faucet is running again. The sound is still detached from reality. “With just a vibrator between us, you let me in completely and it was amazing. Not just because of the sex! There’s other moments where we’re intimate emotionally and then this wall just comes up. It's so sudden that I don’t think you’re doing it intentionally. But I don’t know, you tell me.” Silence. Your chest hurts. “Sorry that I’m making you late for work.” Work? The anxiety of obligation yanks from inside your ribcage. Work!
You try to get a grip on reality, but have to compromise for a grip on the countertop. As soon as you begin coming back into your body, the necessity for air is overwhelming. But you can’t breathe and you’re so fucking dizzy that you can’t even focus on sustaining the most basic of bodily functions. So you try to grab the countertop again and miss again.
“Y/n?” He knows you wouldn’t just leave, unannounced. So Dami pauses his morning routine to check if you’re out of ear shot or giving him the silent treatment. Upon seeing your blanched face and restricted breathing, he feels like a dumbass for not considering the obvious third option: panic attack.
“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay, baby.” Damiano throws distinctions between boyfriend and nesting partner to the wind while taking you into his embrace. “You’re gonna be fine, piccola mia. Come here. C’mere, baby.” He hugs you loosely, but the arms around your middle are snug as Dami pulls you onto his lap, perched on the edge of the couch. For a few seconds the dissociation lingers and you don’t have control of your limbs. What follows is much worse. There's deep, intrusive stabbing pains in your chest as you fight for air.
“You can breathe, baby. You can breathe, your body just forgot how for a second.” His tone is so calm and even, having perfected this skill over the years.
“Can’t.” Your ironclad grip on your purse finally fails and the sound of its contents hitting the floor then scattering is so that loud you shudder. “Can’t!”
“Yes, you can, piccola mia.” Finally, you regain control of your limbs, wrapping your arms around Dami while pressing your face against his shoulder. This isn’t close enough, so you turn chest to chest and wrap your legs around him too. He gives you just enough space to readjust, no communication necessary since Dami predicted this reaction. Panic attacks made you clingy when they made others claustrophobic.
“My little koala bear,” he coos. For a moment, it feels like someone’s lodged a dagger in your lungs and you cry out, intending to say his name. But, for days, you were forced to constantly implement life or death boundaries when doing so is in direct conflict with your very nature. The resulting strain morphed into blinding fear that, in holding power, you’d destroy what you loved most. What you needed as an animal, amongst a world constantly delivering over-stimulating levels of novel information. So the name – or more accurately the plea – that comes out, at 8:31 AM, is his honorific.
“Did you say ‘Daddy?’” He barely misses a beat. You nod, all the color returning to your cheeks as a blush. “Awe, do you need Daddy to help you calm down? Well, I’m right here, topolina.” He runs a hand up your spine and under your hair to firmly grasp the back of your neck. It wasn’t restricting anything, the gesture was about control. Specifically, to indicate that you had none.
“Listen to me.” His tone of voice makes you shiver. It’s just as firm as the grasp of his warm, muscular hand. “No, keep breathing. I didn’t tell you to hold your breath.” You gasp for air, hyperventilating. Damiano tsks, tucking your hair back so he can put his mouth directly to the shell of your ear. “Piccola mia, listen to me.” He dips into a baritone while whispering, breath fluttering against your eardrum. “Feel this?” Dami squeezes the back of your neck. “Mine. I decide how you breathe.”
Oxygen. It's the first and last thing most humans have control of and he just rips that away, wholesale. Your mind is so relieved that it finally lets you cry, feel. Dami softens, slowly rocking back and forth, the same way you soothe a cholicky baby.
“Daddy’s here. Daddy’s here.” He repeats the phrase in a sing-song voice between counting the pace of your breath out loud. “We’re gonna start with four. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.”
“Daddy,” you croak, twisting the fabric of his shirt around your fingers. It's an ugly sound, revealing just how desperate you feel. Desperate to do right by him. Desperate to keep him sober, even though you know that, ultimately, it was out of your control. But it couldn’t be out of control because you couldn’t lose him again now that you’d remembered how much you needed him. Now that you stopped subsisting on scraps in the form of memories. During the split, it had been heartbreaking to recall the dysfunctionality. Even more heartbreaking, however, were reminders of a joy more potent than you’d ever felt in your adult life.
“Daddy, I…” need you. I’m ready to admit that you are an essential piece to the ever changing puzzle that is my life. But you can’t get the words out before the urge to sob takes over, so end up omitting a wounded whine, like when you trip over an excited dog and accidentally step on its tail.
“Oh, piccolo mia,” he laments. Apparently the noise was just as painful to hear as it was to make. You tighten your legs around Dami’s hips, knowing full well it's probably too much. He throws caution to the wind and pulls up the back of your blouse, untucking it from your pants. His hand is clammy from nerves when it touches your back.
“I’m right here. Daddy is right here, giving you all his attention. And the only thing you need to do is breathe with me.” With the movement of Dami’s hand on your skin, you begin falling into his rhythm. There's no penalty when you choke up or make a mistake. Damiano rubs circles on your back at the exact same pace with which he counts. You’re grateful that he knows not to set it on your butt or flank today. Once you’re calmer, he moves up to six counts, then eight.
“I love you.” It’s the first thing you say when the eight counts feel manageable. “I – I need you.”
“You need me?” Dami is so pleased that his voice sounds like a warm blanket. He readjusts the position so your eyes can meet. Realizing this moment has to end, you begin clawing your way to the surface. The further you are out of subspace, the less his leaving will hurt. Damiano’s face visibly falls.
“There. You just did it. You were totally present with me then you put a wall up.”
“Don’t let go of my neck!” The words are so rushed they’re barely discernible.
“Topolina, I will never discipline you like that.” Your bottom lip trembles, but you keep your eyes on him because it's grounding. “I will never ever be callous with my sweetest Little Girl.” His words and the earnestness which accompanies them unlock a vault in your mind. It’s so well concealed that you’d hidden it from yourself, and for good reason, apparently. Every notable memory of submission to Dami comes rushing back, all at once. The hand on your neck shifts, almost negligible.
“Not ready!”
“And I’m not letting go,” he responds in his softest voice, overflowing with affection. “I’m just kissing your forehead, silly goose.” Damiano uses his grip to pull you a couple centimeters closer and tilt your head down. “Mwah! Mwah, mwah. See?” He makes theatrical noises as his lips meet your skin. It's an effort to make this stressful moment lighthearted, but your hands continue clenching the fabric of his t-shirt. When Dami moves to kiss your cheeks, he ends up wiping a couple stray tears away. You hadn’t felt them fall.
“Undo your fists. I’m not going anywhere.” Uncurling your hands takes some effort. You splay them across Damiano’s back to feel his heartbeat. Again, you’re stuck between states: being Little and functional adulthood. Correction: calling what you could reasonably achieve today “functional” was probably too generous.
“I can see you fighting it so hard, topolina. You don’t have to. I’m right here.” He thinks you’re battling subspace because of all the times you’d coped with sub-drop alone during the breakup. It’s certainly a factor, but more worrying is the fact that your brain is sabotaging both your mornings. It didn’t feel like a safe time to slip into submission.
“I – work! Gotta, gotta…” You couldn’t afford to become non-verbal.
“No.” Both his tone and expression were stern. “What you’re going to do is allow yourself to be 100% present with me for a few more minutes. Non-negotiable.”
“I can breathe though.”
“You’re so afraid you’re trembling,” he deadpans. Even with faltering interoception, you can sense that it’s true.
“Why’d my brain just, just…”
“It's adrenaline.” What you’d intended to ask is why in the fresh hell did my brain launch me into headspace. Damiano wraps an arm around your lower back and pulls you flush against his body, so close your noses are touching. “I need you to feel how steady I am.” For a second, the shaking gets worse as your emotions intensify, but then it lessens. With your entire being, you wanted to believe that Dami was steady, that today’s events couldn’t compromise his sobriety. His gaze is so intense that you’re both drawn in and fighting the urge to look away.
“I am okay. You are okay. Our relationship is okay. And you can get back to reality without putting five football fields of space between us. That’s what I’ve been doing a piss poor job of communicating all morning.” Embarrassed for reacting so drastically, you nod, then try to avert your eyes. Damiano doesn’t allow that. He grabs your chin and uses it to turn your face back in his direction. For a second, the urge to fawn almost takes over completely.
“Now there she is,” he coos. “There’s my perfect Little Girl.” Your cunt throbs so you collapse forward with a dramatic groan.
“Why you gotta say the sexiest shit when I’m trying to pull myself together?!” Damiano breaks character and laughs right in your ear, so loud that it organically brings you to the surface.
“Okay, okay. Scene over?”
“Mhm.” He begins taking his hand away which earns an agonized whine. Dami freezes.
“Scene not over?”
“No, it’s just…sudden.” You sit up which turns out to be a horrible idea because your gaze falls to Dami’s lips. Your logical mind knows not to kiss him right now. But your submissive side wants to give him everything you have and more, especially since a hand on the back of your neck is exactly the gesture he’d use to pull you in for a makeout. So you stare at his lips again before consciously tearing your eyes away.
“This is doing wonders for my ego, watching you fight the urge to kiss me.” That earns him an eye roll. “Oh, the sass is back! So we’re feeling better then.”
“Yeah.” You look at the floor and this time he doesn’t stop you.
“Okay, I’m actually gonna take my hand away.” You brace for it, but the air is still cold and bitter against your neck. Plus, what feels like the weight of the world resumes its resting place on your shoulders. Damiano moves his hand up a few inches, onto the back of your head instead of taking it away from the area entirely. He watches for subdrop, eyes pained after seeing how crestfallen you are. Needing a respite from the intensity of this unexpected moment, you decide to let work know that you’re going to be late. The tears in your voice are recent enough to pull off a very convincing performance about your sick grandfather being in the hospital with a mystery illness.
The veteran secretary who answers the phone finds your project manager right away. She offers to give you the whole morning off, visibly piquing Dami’s interest. Based on his expression, he expects you to take it, and if not for coinciding with his treatment schedule, you would. Instead, you promise to be there within an hour.
“You didn’t want the morning off?”
“I think that we’ll both do better keeping our schedules today.” He considers this for a moment then accepts it. Dami sets both palms on your mid-thigh to indicate that this was now an adult interaction between equals.
“We need to have a tough conversation or two…or five.” He tries to make you smile, but your stomach flips instead. “Obviously not right this moment, but we both need to find space in the next couple days. It’s time.”
“You’re right. I know it, I’m just, well, scared, as per usual.”
“Yeah, me too.” You look up in surprise. Damiano was the most courageous person you knew. He was the one to call it, even though it was obvious to both of you that avoiding a discussion for any longer would be counterproductive.
“Scared about what?” He looks at you wide-eyed and sputters while gesturing to the door. “Damia, I told you not to promise me perfection because I knew it wasn’t realistic. My expectation is that you try your absolute best to stay sober and when relapse happens, you fight like hell. And I don’t want to impede your ability to do that by making you spend all your inner resources on me.” Anxiety concealed as exasperation creeps into your voice. “Which is why I didn’t take the morning off. Because I didn’t want to interrupt your routine, when that routine helps you be sober. I didn’t want to create a demand for emotional labor, when –”
“What, by having emotions?” he interrupts sharply.
“I – yeah. You’re used to having these peaceful quiet mornings and I just…”
“Existed? Experienced things? Was a human being with needs?”
“Yes, but I – I mean, yeah because I – You, you’re still at risk of like, like…It's more important! Your sobriety is more important.”
“Than your emotions?” He narrows his eyes as if that's an unhinged beleif.
“Yes! It's more important than my emotions. It's more important than me. It's more important than everything!”
“No!”
“Yes!” You push his hands away and stand up, pacing to the other side of the living room.
“I am the only one that can prioritize my sobriety above all else, and I do! Despite last night, I fucking do! My sobriety can’t be your priority.”
“Why?” you snap and whip around, shooting daggers with your eyes.
“Because it's my life.”
“Ditto. I can prioritize whatever I want.”
“You have to prioritize yourself. You can’t live for somebody else!”
“Prioritizing your sobriety is living for myself because I would never be okay if you died from an overdose and you fucking know that. So I’m not sure why we’re fighting about this.”
“Because only I can keep myself sober,” he implores.
“I fucking know that!!” you screech through gritted teeth. It's a fact that haunts all my waking hours and several of my slumbering ones. “I don’t live in some fairytale land where I control your decisions. Nor do I want to, whatsoever. But I can make your sobriety easier, so I’m damn well going, too. Today of all days!”
“It's not your responsibility!” He stands up and gestures in frustration.
“Did I say it was!?” Doubt starts to creep in as to why Damiano is hellbent on whatever point he’s making.
“You’re –”
“Am I annoying you when I try to help with your sobriety? Is that what it is?”
“Wha – no. No.” His tone changes completely, all the wind gone from his sails.
“Fuck,” you sigh and bite the inside of your lip. “Sorry, I just did that thing where I get insecure and you have to be nice to me instead of having your feelings.”
“That’s not what just happened.”
“Seems…” You’re about to say that it seems like Damiano has to bottle up his feelings instead of getting to resolve them. And that it felt like he started to avoid fights with you pre-breakup, since you’d get all pathetic like this. Dami was so empathetic and didn’t want to deal with your occasional bouts of middle school level self-confidence, which became more numerous as things fell apart. It was the only bit of jealousy, in terms of his other partners, that had staying power: confidence. Glowing, radiant, unshakable, sexy confidence. The opposite of your insecurity, which was so powerful that it could totally warp your sense of reality, as it probably was now.
“There! That! Tell me, just fucking tell me.” Damiano’s pointing at you, so you look down at yourself, startled. “It started with you hiding your anger from me, but it's become this. Like you won’t take a single step without considering how it might impact my sobriety. You edit out everything that could possibly trigger...I don’t even know what! Like, I’ve started playing a guessing game where I try to think of anything you could plausibly say in a situation that would jeopardize my sobriety. And besides that last night, there was never anything I couldn’t handle.”
“I…” your brain feels like sludge. “A second ago was just classic insecurity, but generally…yeah. Yeah, I’ve been walking on eggshells a lot, if I’m honest.” Dami sighs in relief and approaches.
“You hold me down. You keep me sane. Not just sunshine you, but scatterbrained, insecure, anxious you. Keeps-an-extra-pair-of-pants-in-her-car-since-she-always-spills-her-coffee-driving you. Veterinarian in a past life, too competitive for board game nights, can’t stick to the grocery list, maker of near disaster via spontaneous hugs in the kitchen at the least opportune moment you. Scowls at men, but smiles at every child, and they always smile back. Picks the restaurant, but can’t pick what to order, then insists on tipping too much at bad service. All music is dancing music, borderline delusional optimist, empathy for the socially invisible, never finishes a book before starting another because she hates endings. Believes in love instead of god because she can find something to love in everyone she meets. Everyone has beauty and purpose and fascinating complexity.”
“Dami…”
“Calls me out on my bullshit when all the others are too intimidated. Remembers who I am when I forget. Understands my art when the public doesn’t, but believes that anyone can be an artist. Believes that the world is full of magic, in the form of human possible connection.” Damiano backs you against a wall, bodies barely brushing. “I could keep going,” he whispers. “You don’t have to try. Just be.”
“But I want to be sure that I’m not jeopardizing your sobriety.”
“On the off chance that moment ever comes, I will tell you. I won’t let you compromise my sobriety.” Some of that weight lifts. “The way things were when we broke up, they’re never going to be that way again. I am prioritizing my sobriety and I've got a small army of physicians helping me. You don’t need to prioritize my sobriety anymore.” He sets a hand on your ribcage, still speaking in a whisper. The moment is extremely intimate. “It's taken care of, my love. It's time for you to be taken care of. And I know we’re gonna have this same conversation again and that's okay.”
You loosely wrap your arms around Dami, to keep him close and extend the moment. Just based on your body language, he can tell that you’ve finally internalized what he’s been trying to say.
“I’ve been anxious about coming home and you’re gone.”
“Not going to happen. No surprises, no disappearing acts.”
“Okay.” You cast your eyes anywhere by his face. Damiano takes your jaw in his hand, coaxing you to look at him, but not demanding it as he did minutes ago. You take a couple seconds to corral your emotions first, since you can’t gauge if your reaction is gonna be more tears, hyperventilating, smiles, giddiness, or feeling lovesick. He sees this effort and presses your body into the wall using his own.
“Let me in,” he demands. You stop intentionally directing your features into an expression and wait for thoughts to come up organically. Except they don’t, so you try to recall how this worked when transparency was your first instinct with Damiano. Unfortunately, the only thing discernable is your sense of smell informing you that Dami is delicious. You’d braced for the stench of booze coming from his pores this morning, but it's not because he barely drank. So he still smells like home, plus a tiny bit sweaty from getting too hot in his sleep. That was only perceptible up close though. His skin would be salty if you licked it. You can also tell that he brushed his teeth while you were getting dressed, but that should be obvious. He wouldn’t have gotten in your space like this otherwise.
So the urge to kiss him returns with a vengeance. You attempt to see around the obstacle to identify something of your innermost thoughts. What do I feel? How do I feel? Horny, obviously, which wasn’t exactly news. More like your resting state. It’s as if your mind is a shaken snow globe. So you’re squinting your eyes to see the miniature winter wonderland below. But all you can perceive is the mental permafrost that is wanting to ride Damiano until you collapse and this fucking blizzard obscuring your vision.
“Y/n –”
“I genuinely can’t figure out what I’m thinking. I’m trying, I swear.”
“Can I take a guess?” he smiles. “You’re horny.” After the initial embarrassment, you get flustered, consider hiding it, decide not to, and end up aroused. Damiano’s gaze devouring your blush certainly inspires confidence, as well.
“Actually it was way more specific than that, but sure.” You can see the progression of Dami’s emotions: aroused, realizing your transparency, excitement, even more aroused.
“Why do you torture me?” He boxes you in with his arms and uses his pelvis to keep you pinned against the wall. When his cock twitches you smirk and raise an eyebrow, but a more serious answer crosses your mind. “Tell me, tell me,” Damiano chants.
“I don’t want to jerk you around, with the physicality stuff. Because on a couple days it’s been…I wake up feeling really steady and so do you. Then I come home and you’re reading a book on the couch and you’ve done all the laundry and I just want to fucking…slip my panties off and grind on the crotch of your jeans while we makeout until I’m sore. And then maybe you – anyways, then some –
“No, no. Finish that thought first.”.
“Your tongue can be really, really gentle,” you admit, feeling a tiny bit perverse. “Soft, soothing, so when I’m sore it's – it's, um, nice.”
“What’s my tongue doing?” He leans down and speaks directly into your ear again.
“You go down on me.” Your voice starts to climb in pitch from the anticipation.
“Right there on the couch?”
“Mhm.”
“We don’t even make it to the bedroom?”
“I, um – It’s just in my head.”
“But just in your head, we don’t make it off the couch.” His lips barely brush your neck. Was it an accident?
“No.”
“Why? Cause you’re too desperate?”
“Hng, I –” He boldly nips at the base of your neck.
“This okay?” he murmurs. As Dami speaks, his breath hits the spot of saliva his mouth left on your skin and you’re so keyed up that it evokes a full body shiver.
“Mhm!”
“So are you desperate because you need to cum? Or desperate because you got carried humping me since you were too horny to stop yourself?” Somehow, one of the arms that had been around Dami’s waist is now clutching his shoulders as he licks your neck. You don’t remember it happening.
“What…was I just talking, um –” Thankfully, Dami raises face to look at you which makes thinking easier.
“Anyways, then some.”
“Huh?”
“That's how your next thought started: ‘anyways, then some.’”
“Oh, um…then, I don’t know, maybe I have a bad anxiety day or I talk to my therapist or something reminds me of a painful memory and I don’t want sexual touch.”
“But do you always want physical touch of some kind, like cuddling?”
“Well, I came climbing into bed with you last night, didn’t I?” He smiles wide and looks over the couch for a moment.
“Yeah, that's true…and very good to know. If all days are good physical touch days, you are about to get very sick of me.” Now you’re both smiling like fools and the gravitational pull of chemistry has your noses nearly brushing while Dami slips an arm between the wall and the small of your back. It occurs to you that this is the same move he made in the shower, when encouraging you to grind against his leg.
“I just don’t want you to feel rejected or misled if you touch me in a certain way and I’m not into it, even though I was yesterday. Because it's so momentous since we were broken up for a while.”
“Well, you can just tell me that and I’ll understand.” You nod, but the fact that it isn’t so simple occurs to you. Damiano sees it and raises an eyebrow.
“Okay, I forgot how fucking inconvenient this mind reading thing is but –” he bursts into joyful laughter, head thrown back. You rest your other arm on Dami’s shoulder as well. In return, he pulls you body to body, resting his other hand on the top of your ass with a watchful expression. It’s exactly the point you were making.
“Obviously, I wasn’t feeling like jumping your bones today. The way you placed your hands over there,” you nod towards the couch, “I really appreciated, because it was exactly the right thing. Like it was so conscientious and considerate and nurturing,” even saying the word made your pussy throb, “that I’m pretty sure it turned me on. So fuck if I know how this works!” Again, Dami is filled with boisterous laughter that's infectious. As you giggle along, you wonder if he was right about just letting your organic connection do its thing. “My brain was like ‘Wow. He’s so nuanced about doing this in exactly the way I need. He’s so respectful about the fact that this is totally non-sexual for me that it's making me wet. Oh, wait.’”
“Okay. So sex is never a –”
“Sexual contact,” you clarify. “I still don’t feel ready for proper love making, I’m sorry.” Dami’s face is the most offended it's been all morning.
“Sorry? What do you mean ‘sorry?’”
“I know, I know,” you brush him off with an eye roll.
“For fucks sake, don’t apologize. Why would –”
“Stop, you’re so dramatic!” You jostle Damiano while speaking and he almost delivers a retort before changing course in an effort to make you laugh. Effusive, he gasps and brings a hand to his sternum in scandal.
“Who, me? Dramatic?? Never!” You’re filled with a yearning that originates in your mind, but starts in your cunt. This time you don’t fight it off as it travels upwards to envelope you. “I would –”
“Kiss me,” you interrupt, so giddy that you’re bouncing on the balls of your feet. Caught off guard, Dami stops speaking. “Kiss me, kiss mmm –”
Notes: It's a good one! Thank you for waiting for this update and for reading this fic. I hope the holiday season is at least bearable for y'all. And if its not, me and my Masterlist are here for you!
-XOXO Eden
✧ The Sun is the Center of Everything Table of Contents
You have no idea how much this chapter means to me. I cried. I cried till my pillow was well past wet. I literally love you and I swear you can hear my inner most thoughts and ease the pain they cause. My favorite chapter and I can’t wait for the big #2-0!
TW: This chapter contains mentions of suicidal ideation. I've put the paragraphs containing that content in red.
His footsteps sound sober, but he immediately brushes his teeth before doing anything else which sparks suspicion. You won’t be able to smell it on his breath now. Concerned, you open your door just wide enough to lean against the frame and watch him. Damiano breathalyzes himself, rubs his face roughly, and crouches down on the floor in distress. Once he lowers his hands from his face, you can see how distraught he is and your stomach drops.
You walk into the bathroom to check if Dami had done a drug test. It was set in the normal place, on the lid of the toilet. So far everything was negative, which didn’t mean shit. It took heroin several hours to show up. You couldn’t afford to stay up half the night with work in the morning. Of course that didn’t matter, since you wouldn’t be able to sleep without the certainty that he hadn’t used.
“If you took something we need to go to the hospital right now.”
“I didn’t take anything,” he responds, sounding utterly defeated.
“Even if you tested your drugs, you can’t be sure. I’m not comfortable watching you. I want someone with a medical degree doing that and they can take blood to get more information.”
“I didn’t take anything!” he shouts.
“Do not yell at me,” you snap. “Don’t you fucking dare yell at me right now.” He hangs his head in shame. You check the breathalyzer for the most recent results. The screen reads 0.073. Driving in Italy with a blood alcohol greater than 0.05 was illegal.
“You could have been arrested.”
“Barely.”
“This is no ‘barely’ with being arrested. Either you get booked in and have your mugshot on the front page of the tabloids in the morning or you don’t. It is an either/or situation. Tell me what you took.”
“Fucking nothing! The only thing that's gonna come up positive on that test is marijuana and we already agreed that was fine. I swear on my mother’s grave that I didn’t do heroin or coke or anything else. Just booze!” Everything in you wanted to trust him and everything in you knew never to believe an addict. But he had taken the drug test. He wasn’t trying to conceal anything after all.
“I guess we’ll know in the morning.” Damiano scoffs and shakes his head, which nearly makes you lose it. “What the hell happened?”
“I – the weed was pretty strong and everyone kept saying how high they were and I was just like…” He stares at the ceiling. “How is this enough for all of you? I felt so alone and I just fucking craving something stronger. Being at a party without drugs and alcohol for the first time in forever was way more triggering and impossible than I thought it would be. It was too soon.”
“Where's your phone?”
“Take it.” He pulls his iPhone from his pocket and hands it over. “You can have my keys, too. I don’t want any temptation.” Based on his messages, it doesn’t look like Damiano contacted a dealer, but he could have deleted those texts. You put both in the safe for the night and try to calm down.
“I’ll leave them on the table when I go to work. If there's an emergency just come use my phone. Now you’re sure you didn’t use because –”
“I promised I’d tell you and I’m keeping that promise. I know you don’t believe me now, but you will when that drug test comes back.” He stands up and gets a sparkling water from the fridge. “I’m such a piece of shit. Should just do you a favor and throw myself off the roof.” Damiano mutters the second sentence under his breath, but you still hear. Time stops.
“Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
“How could you say something like that!?”
“Because I’m a piece of shit.”
“You had a setback.”
“Because I’m a fucking piece of shit.” His eyes water.
“Because you’re a fallible human being and an alcoholic.” Damiano sets his jaw and refuses to meet your eyes. “Tell me what happened.”
“I…had a beer so I’d stop craving the harder stuff. Seth and I got into a really ugly fight about it. Pretty sure he almost took a swing at me.” He shakes his head and takes a swig of the sparkling water. “He stormed out and then I did some shots with a couple guys I don't really know. The taste of the liquor was just…” Dami nearly gags then scowls in disgust. “It brought back so many horrible, messed up memories that I just regretted the whole thing. I got it out of my system so I wouldn’t feel buzzed and left before I did something even stupider. That's why I brushed my teeth. I wasn’t trying to hide anything.”
“I appreciate your honesty more than you know.” He’s completely drowning in self-loathing and you’re not sure what to do about it. Should you do anything about it? Maybe this was a natural consequence that would deter him from drinking in the future. Or maybe it would drive him to use more harmful coping mechanisms.
“I don't know where to go from here,” you admit.
“Can I still sleep here tonight?”
“Yes, of course! This is still your home. I –” Damiano squeezes his eyes shut and a few tears fall. “I’m disappointed, but I love you.” He goes back to shaking his head, this time so hard you worry about his neck.
“Don’t deserve that.”
“Fine. You want anger?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you leave the minute you started craving hard drugs? Why didn’t you tell Seth? Call me? Call an Uber? Something else!? Clearly, you were looking for an excuse to drink.”
“Fine, I was!”
“So is that how you operate? Are you going to go through life, looking for an excuse to relapse, and take it whenever you can? Because that is not sobriety!”
“Maybe I’m not strong enough!”
“Well, tough shit, you have to be if you want me.”
“I wish I didn’t!” That one stings.
“What, so you could just do drugs in peace? Overdose and join the 27 club of tragic rock stars with endless potential who were too tortured to exist. If you’re still idealizing that, then maybe you are a fucking stupid as you say. Maybe you are as selfish as you’re afraid of being because I am not the only person that loves you.”
“I am a selfish piece of shit!”
“Yeah and you’re a lot of other things, too! Is none of that as good as the drugs?”
“I don’t know! I’m exhausted with waking up everyday, wanting to do coke, and feeling like I can’t tell you because you’ll get scared.”
“Of you ending up in a coma? Yeah, thats fucking terrifying and I get to be traumatized. You should be scared, too!”
“I am! I’m scared shitless that the cravings are never gonna stop!”
“And you really thought I couldn’t understand being tortured by your own mind? Of obsessing over something until you feel sick? You really thought that wasn’t within my capacity? Huh?” Damiano falls silent with wide eyes. “You said you would tell me! You said you weren’t afraid of my emotions!”
“I’m not afraid of your emotions.”
“Okay, then what the fuck? Because in a shocking turn of events, undermining the severity of your addiction has made you feel so isolated that you end up drinking. Not like that's ever happened before. Oh, wait, yes it has!”
“Congratulations on being right about me.”
“‘Congratulations?’ How about condolences? You said you would really try to stay sober. You said you would be open with me. Those are my –”
“– Conditions, yes I know,” he groans and harshly rubs his face again.
“So are you done trying?” Your hands shake so violently that you ball them into fists.
“No! I want our life.”
“But you wish you didn’t?”
“I’m a fucking addict, y/n.” He stares at you harshly. “Of course I want to drown my sorrows in drugs without being disturbed by my conscience. Because that's easy! If I try to have a life then, yeah, the happiness is more profound, but I also risk hurting people I really love. So yes, sometimes I wish the only thing I loved was drugs so I didn’t have to feel this.” He gestures between your bodies then claws at his throat.
“Too fucking bad. Tell me what the cravings were like tonight.”
“I was afraid I was gonna hit someone on the way home because I couldn’t think about anything but getting high, even while driving. Then I hoped that I would get in a car crash because they’d give me morphine at the hospital. And if I was permanently injured, no one could get mad at me for taking pain meds. I’d have a built in excuse. I fantasized about being permanently disabled so I could get high and, for a moment, I even considered driving into a street light to achieve that. Happy?” The initial reaction is fear so chilling it turns your blood to ice water. Could Dami be trusted to drive himself places?
“Tell me the worst of it,” you persevere with gritted teeth.
“Worse than fantasizing about causing a traffic accident to get drugs? Fine. I went to see my grandmother just to steal the pain meds for her hip surgery from her bathroom cabinet. When she told the pharmacy she’d lost them, they wouldn’t give her new ones and I kept them anyway, knowing she’d be in excruciating pain. My own grandmother. She took so much ibuprofen it gave her a stomach ulcer and I actually googled what kind of pain meds they prescribe for stomach ulcers.” You’d read a similar story by a former heroin addict online. The family had assumed the grandfather had memory problems and had him evaluated for dementia.
“Okay.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Not at all.” You take a deep breath.
“Why not?” he spits venomously.
“Because what you do as an addict is not representative of who you are.”
“But I am selfish and stupid?” He tries to turn those words back around to make you the villain in this circumstance.
“Right now? Yes, absolutely and if you’re feeling suicidal you need to tell me that as well. Like, right the fuck now.”
“I’m not going to kill myself over a beer and a couple shots of whiskey, y/n.” The way he rolls his eyes and dismisses you is bordering on an attitude Damiano swore never to take again.
“You say that like relapse isn’t a valid reason to be suicidal. I don’t care whether or not you think it's enough to warrant whatever you're feeling.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
“It means that if you don’t want to live, there isn’t a reason small enough that I wouldn’t take that seriously! If you feel like being alive isn’t worth it then…we need to do something about it.”
“I'm fine.” He brushes you off and turns away.
“Because I will not lose you! If that means inpatient psych treatment then –”
“I am fucking done with inpatient!”
“Then I will drag into treatment by your ear. I will sleep in a hospital chair outside the door. I will find people and things that will make you feel okay again.” Dami clears his throat and wipes away tears, not quite subtle enough. Finally, something had given him pause.
“I hate myself, but I am not suicidal. I swear.”
“Okay.” Without rage or hypervigilance to keep you upright, you end up sliding down the wall, onto the floor.
“I’m sorry. This won’t happen again. I’m gonna…I’m gonna talk to my medical team. I have treatment tomorrow.”
“Okay, good.” Your voice cracks and you stare at a wilting basil leaf that had ended up under the counter while Dami was cooking dinner last night. Yesterday was a lifetime away. It was a familiar sensation, when he had a mood swing and you’d fight over something stupid. His moods had been better, you realize.
“I just wanna sleep. It took every molecule of my energy to leave that party and get home.”
“Thank you for coming home.” For the first time, your eyes meet without either party operating on bravado. The pain is so acute that it feels nearly lethal. This was just a reminder of how powerless you were when it came to Dami’s sobriety. He turns away and cuts a chunk of bread from the loaf on the counter. You decide to leave him to make his snack. Nothing was getting resolved tonight, you were both wounded.
Sitting in the bedroom, you read the same two sentences about a dozen times without ever grasping their content while listening to Dami. Everything sounds normal, even though it isn’t. He eats, gets ready for bed, gives Princess a treat. Cheeto recognizes the noisy, plastic bag being opened and looks up expectantly. You listen to each sound, weary of moving too much, since the rustle of the bed sheets might obscure something. If not for his confession, you may have never guessed that he’d relapsed alcohol-wise. Even though it took probably every ounce of his mental fortitude, Damiano had been honest and you’d punished him.
On one hand, telling you was the bare minimum. Why should he be rewarded for the bare minimum? On the other, doing the right thing didn’t make the right thing easy. You spend some time on the emotional support websites for spouses of addicts, trying to discern if you’d reacted appropriately. At an exponential rate, you run out of patience. Empathy, forgiveness, kindness, understanding, none of it was enough for Damiano. He wanted anger just so he had an excuse to be bitter right back. It was reminiscent of the end of your relationship, when you either blamed yourself for everything and wallowed in self-hatred or blamed Damiano for everything and resented the hell out of him.
Addicts prayed for a partner like you, someone who’d done the research and loved them unconditionally. Did Dami beg for forgiveness? No. In fact, you couldn’t even remember if he apologized. All his complaining about how he’d never be enough to the face of a woman who was made to feel the same damn way. You’d never have the right reaction, the right thing to say when it came to his vices. Poor, tortured Damiano was the one who had apparently put all this distance between him and his life partner. When all she desperately, deeply wanted to understand him and the plights of addiction. But no. You couldn’t possibly be capable. It was insulting to your intelligence.
This self-righteous rumination is interrupted by a sound you don’t recognize. Dami was in bed with the lights off. The sound is somewhere between speech and whimpering, so muffled you wonder if you’re hearing it at all. If Princess wanted something she would be louder. You stand up and press your ear to the door. He was crying, which felt like a knife to the heart, but wasn’t necessarily your business. It made sense that he was upset and deserved the space to process that emotion.
Feeling sick, you try to resume reading when the sound becomes louder. So much so that you can hear it from across the bedroom, through the wall, and across the living room. According to what was once Damiano’s bedside clock, it’d been four minutes of sobbing. That kind of hysterical crying was only cathartic for a limited amount of time and productive for even less. Around the six minute mark you get both your anger and ego in check, inserting a bookmark. He was absolutely miserable and you ached to do something about it.
“Fuck all,” you mutter, switching off the bedside lamp on your way out of the bedroom. The two nightlights in the living room provide enough visibility for you to climb in bed behind Damiano. You scoot in close and spoon him, an arm across his chest.
“Hey, you are not falling. I’ve got you, okay?” He stops muffling the noise in the pillow and threads his fingers between yours.
“Feels like it,” Dami forces out between sobs.
“I know, but I am not letting you fall. I’ve got you. You are not flailing all the way to epic disaster. I fucking love you and I see that you’re trying and I am not letting you fall.”
“Okay,” he chokes with a painful gasp. “Okay, I’m gonna stop with the waterworks.”
“By my calculations you have at the very least another 20 minutes ugly crying and eating your own snot, babe.”
“You haven’t called me that in forever.” At first he’s smug but that quickly becomes heartbroken. “Fuck. What the fuck!?”
“Let me get you something to blow your nose.”
“Wait, no! Come back!” Dami sounds so childlike again. It’s the same way he spoke hours before you’d checked him into rehab.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” You reassure him while returning with a box of tissues. He blows his nose as he waits for you to lay back down. Before you can turn sideways, Damiano tucks his head against your neck and tangles your legs together. You wrap your arms around him and just let him sob, laid on your chest.
“Not falling,” you whisper against his greasy hair. “You are not falling. Your control freak of a girlfriend has an ironclad grip and will stab anyway that tells her to let go.” He nods through the tears which is good. “Stabby, stabby. No more falling.” You squeeze him hard enough to hurt and Dami groans.
“Oof. Girlfriend? Not nesting partner?” You huff in exacerbation, more towards yourself than Dami.
“Fruedean slip. Speaking of Frued, focus on my titties. Those should make you feel better.” He scoots down several inches to be closer to the asset in question.
“You’re right, they’re wonderful,” Dami sighs and nuzzles enthusiastically. The tears mostly stop, then something makes them start up again. It's what you expected, for the self-loathing and grief to come in waves. It's preferable to hearing him drown in it. Just holding Damiano is also really nice and kinda therapeutic. You can feel your own fear response to this evening’s news become mangable. The fatigue from before he came home returns and you decide not to fight it.
“How bad is it gonna fuck with your head if I fall asleep right now? Being in the same bed is just –” You’re interrupted with a yawn. “Weirdly calming despite the, y’know, crying.”
“I’d love for you to sleep here tonight even though I don’t deserve –”
“No, sleepy,” you whine.
“I can’t have a self-hatred crisis, you’re too tired?” Some adamant nodding makes Damiano outright laugh. “Fair enough. How about you be the little spoon and I’ll hold you?”
“Mm, yes please.” Without opening your eyes, you reposition, sighing deeply as scoots in snuggly. “We need to cuddle more.”
“I didn’t know that this was an option.” Something tugs at the edge of your consciousness.
“Wait, are you okay? Because this went from me comforting you to me falling asleep inappropriately.”
“I’m sleepy, too,” hums. Still, something bothers you. There's an insistent voice saying this might be a bad idea, but you decide to tell it to shut up. It felt so right to you and Damiano, both. That was a good reason. It didn’t all have to be intellectualized to hell and back.
“I thought platonic cuddling would be more platonic.” You let out a pretend gasp.
“Is your dick in me and I just don’t feel it?” Dami clutches you close while he snickers.
“No I just mean –”
“Just because you want to fuck me in this position, doesn’t make it non-platonic to cuddle.”
“Okay, well when you put it like that.” He fusses affectionately: playing with your hair, pulling up the blanket, adjusting the sleeve of your t-shirt. “Thank you for coming out here. Sometimes my emotions are like getting a rib tattoo. I know it’s gonna hurt so bad and for so long that I might not be able to handle it. So I just never start, because I’m too intimidated.” You nod while Dami caresses your ribcage. His heavy, warm hand ends up on your lower stomach and he pulls you back against him.
“But you got an entire dragon tattoo from armpit to hip bone in one sitting.”
“Which tells you how terrifying my emotions are. I just spent a lot of months only crying when I couldn’t contain it anymore, which was pretty often, and I was just alone and hating myself.”
“Baby, no,” you coo, aching with empathy.
“It's alright, now. I want to be alright.”
“Damia, that type of anguish leaves a scar. Substance Abuse Disorder is traumatic for the addict, too.”
“I’m going to therapy literally every day, y/n, you don’t need to worry about me processing emotions. Fuck sake, I’m kinda exhausted with examining myself.”
“Been there.”
“Yeah.” He speaks kindly and kisses the back of your head. “I know.”
“Right. Because you probably had to talk me through that panic attack.”
“And you had to talk me through my mood swings.”
“You know, if we didn’t have mental illnesses, we would be unstoppable.” He laughs again and it ruffles your hair. “That’s probably why we’re both so fucked in the head.”
“Yeah, without debilitating mental illness we’d be too powerful.”
“That’s the spirit.” He nuzzles and lets out a content hum, hand venturing under your pajama top to rest on your bare stomach.
“Woah there, cowboy.”
“Isn’t this my shirt?”
“And that's your excuse for getting fresh?”
“Mhm.”
“Explain that logic to me.”
“No, thanks.” This time you’re the one laughing. Dami kisses the back of your head again and a few moments later, lets out a relaxed sigh. The hand on your stomach pulls you closer, fingertips rough with the beginning of calluses. Thomas was teaching him guitar again. Damiano’s body heat seeps through his clothes almost immediately and he feels so solid behind you. You’re glad it's dark, so he can’t see you blush.
“I’m in love with you,” he whispers. It takes your breath away. “Sorry if this is the wrong time to remind you of that. Fuck, it is absolutely the wrong time. God damn it.” You smile and you know he can feel it, because he starts smiling too. “Out of curiosity, which other types of crisis would compel you to hop into bed with me?” You click your tongue in disapproval and lift Dami’s hand while pulling your shirt down, so the embrace is no longer skin on skin. He makes a sound of objection.
“Hush, you.”
“Okay, I’ll be quiet.” You fall asleep quickly after that. Eventually, a slumbering Dami gets too hot and turns onto his back. Forgetting there's someone sharing his bed, he kicks the covers off. All the movement after months of sleeping alone brings you about a third of the way to consciousness. One eye fluttering open briefly, you recognize Damiano and follow him instinctively. Both bodies adjust so you can lay comfortably on his chest. This is where you wake, when the bright light of morning rouses you. Dami is used to it and stays asleep, allowing you a few precious minutes to watch him. The harsh slopes of his face, his long, chestnut-brown eye lashes. Months of hard partying and lacking self-care had given him the beginnings of wrinkles on his forehead, but not between his eyebrows. Propped up on an elbow, you run your pointer finger down the bridge of his nose.
“I’m in love with you, also.”
Notes: Aw, yes. Some more light reading with FilthForFriends. Sorry if you weren't prepared for such a heavy chapter, but I'm kinda proud of this one.
-XOXO Eden
✧ The Sun is the Center of Everything Table of Contents
Note to self: boundaries are miserable. Toweling yourself dry two feet away from Dami was miserable. Watching Netflix while holding hands, leaning together, was entirely inadequate. But you wake up the next morning, before the alarm, nightmare free, feeling like a whole person. Opening the bedroom door to find him sleeping on the couch, as per your request, is miserable all over again. This cycle repeats itself as you tiptoe around the apartment.
The sound of Dami’s snores make your heart clench with joy. He’s home and you’re so thrilled he’s home that it hurts a little like when he left. Deep, stabbing pain that makes your eyes water, the same way they watered when your grandmother’s tests came back cancer free. Are you elated beyond what your system can contain or crestfallen?
“I feel so much for you.” That's how you begin your letter to Damiano. “It's like I’m remembering how much I missed you and how much I love you all at once. Feels like I’m getting hit by a bus (mostly in a good way).
I wanted to explain what I meant while crying (the first time) last night. I was (am) happy because I felt safe to stop bracing for your loss. This is a horrible message to wake up to, but honestly a small part of me has been expecting – for months – that you’re gonna O.D. and…I can’t even write it. I knew bracing for it would result in more parts of me surviving the giant black hole your absence would tear through my life. But yesterday I let that wall down, hence the tears. I trust that you’re gonna be in my life forever. And I love that “forever” doesn’t scare you. I love that you brought it up before me. I love that all my friends would call me bat shit crazy for using that word right now, but it won’t startle you one bit. I love that we speak each other’s language like no one else does. I love you.
Yesterday was exactly what we needed and I don’t regret any of it. I feel reassured and grounded, like a new, more capable person. I needed to feel like we were back in step, if that makes sense. But that won’t be our norm outside of Little/Dom (as I’m sure you know). (And no doubt also knew I was gonna say that this morning). I have no idea how often I’ll want to use power dynamics. Platonic cuddling may prove integral to survival in the meantime. Or maybe something else to that effect.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I forgot I could just tell you that. I wish things were simple, but I’m happy to do complicated with you. That last sentence is so fucking cheesy I would have erased it, but I’m using pen so oh well.
Good luck today. Happy 61st.“
You leave him two shots of espresso and check his alarm. Dami’s phone passcode is still the first day you kissed backwards, sentimental bastard. It makes you wonder if he ever changed it or when he changed it back. He sleeps like the dead so you’re almost out of the door when you drop your keys on the hardwood about a foot from his ear. Of course he startles awake with a gasp and immediately you’re kissing his scalp, rubbing his shoulder, trying to be of some comfort after such a moronic mistake.
“Ssh, I’m sorry Damia, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I'm so sorry.” He stops craning his neck and relaxes against the pillow, still breathing heavily.
“Wha…What's…”
“Baby, I just dropped my keys on the way out the door. You’re home, in our apartment. Shit, I forget to feed the cats.”
“I’ll do it,” he croaks, trying to look around in confusion but squinting from the daylight pouring into the living room. He sighs and you sit on the edge of the couch, rubbing his bare back for a minute.
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Just for a second. I’m okay.” He sits halfway up, propped on an elbow, and rubs his eyes.
“No, no, go back to sleep. It’s only like 8:20.”
“I’ll work out before going to outpatient instead of after. That’ll give me time to do something fancy for dinner.” With a gravelly voice and sleepy expression, Dami has no goddamn business being so attractive first thing in the morning.
“You’re an excellent trophy wife.” He grins and you want to kiss him. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”
“Oh, it's fine,” he groans. “I was having a crappy dream anyways. This is much better.” Damiano briefly strokes your face before scooting up to rest his back on the cushions. “Don’t be late for work. I’ll make some espresso and be good as new.”
“I actually already made you espresso.” You get up and add creamer to the tea cup, then bring it to Dami. He smiles even wider, gazing up at you lovingly. A year ago would have climbed on his lap and been very late for work indeed.
“What more could I want than this?” Me, riding your cock with my dress wrinkled up around my waist, tights ripped, hair falling out of its updo. Grinding so hard that I sweat, as if I don’t have an office to look presentable at.
“Well, besides that,” he reads your mind with a smirk.
“Okay, uh…Enjoy your espresso, I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta – fuck is there constrauction today? Why didn’t I look, god damn it.” You frantically search for your purse, dropped somewhere on the living room floor.
“Come here.” Damiano sets his coffee down and pulls you nearly onto his lap. “Take four deep breaths with me.” He maintains eye contact as you do so. “Your keys and purse are right by the door. Don’t start your day in a panic, there's no need.” You sigh and feel goosebumps raise along your arms. This used to be a regular part of managing your anxiety, but you’d forgotten about it in Damiano’s absence.
“Right, okay. Everything’s good.” You stand up and grab your belongings. He resumes thoughtfully drinking espresso. “Have a good day in therapy, feel free to invite the band over to practice if you can’t find some place to rent.”.
“Thomas owns a house now, so…”
“Right.” The awkwardness is back and you want to slam your head against the wall.
“Thank you for this,” he raises the cup towards you, as if in a toast.
“You're welcome. I’m gonna go now. Um, the cats –”
“Need to be fed, yes. Take a deep breath, all is well. You’ll probably make it on time if you leave now.”
“Oh, shit, yeah! Love you, bye.” You blurt it out nervously, accidentally slamming the door in Dami’s face before he can say it back. By the time the elevator reaches the parking garage, you’re still wincing at the word choice. Love you? Might as well have added “bro” to the end of the phrase. A rushed phone call was one thing, but when have you ever said that in person? Never. And that's as it should be.
“God damn it,” you mutter, accidentally launching the chapstick out of your purse while digging for your phone. It rolls under the car and you debate getting down on the asphalt to retrieve it. Buying a new one would be less hassle.
“Fuck all.” You end up texting Dami a reminder to take his meds after finishing your first task of the day.
Y: Half of “we” have taken their daily happy pills this morning.
D: Fuck I forgot to take them yesterday, thanks.
D: Wow, I just found your note. <3
D: Since we’re being cheesy, I’ll best you. You can tell me anything and I will always try to accept and understand. I want to permanently be on your side, by your side.
D: I’m sure you know that already, but I wanted to remind you since it's probably been a year since I said it properly. There's a lot of extremely important things I let fall to the wayside in the last 11ish months.
Y: Both of us are guilty of that.
Y: Let's not live in regret when the present is a cornucopia.
D: Damn. Permission to use that in a song?
Y: Let me know what rhymes with cornucopia when you figure it out.
He sends you a Spongbob time card that says “One Eternity Later” and a coworker gives you a judgy look for laughing. The rest of the room spoke in hushed voices to avoid disturbing anyone before lunch. After some of the office had their afternoon glass of red wine, things were much merrier. Unfortunately, you could never go back to a time where that was funny instead of causing your stomach to sink.
D: Zootopia HAH
Y: Send the demo over as soon as Tom finishes his 14th take.
D: Will do lol
D: Finally Ethan has an opportunity to use polyrhythms. He’ll be thrilled.
Y: Great first opportunity for a brand deal. Alert Sony.
D: Maneskin x Zootopia coming 2024
D: With their hit new single Honey (Are You A Talking Animal?)
D: That wasn’t even funny, I just couldn’t think of anything better.
Y: No, that was funny! Honey (Are You Selling Out to Zootopia?)
D: Honey (Are You Coming To the Funeral of Maneskin’s Credibility?)
Y: Honey (Are You Aware of a Song Called Supermodel?)
D: HAHA okay time to get my head shrinked.
D: Maybe they’ll have some more gems of wisdom like yesterday’s “Are you aware that you project the appearance of impenetrable confidence?”
Y: GROUNDBREAKING
Y: *shock and awe*
D: *audible gasp*
“Getting lots of work done I see,” one of your colleagues commented while walking by the table.
“Haha, yeah, sorry,” you cringe. Even with the same job title, most people here felt like your seniors since you were the latest hire. This one in particular was a balding man in his 40s with a creepy smile and a mustache that did him no favors. It's always appalling when some man technically old enough to be your father didn’t feel the need to hide that he was sexually attracted to you. Immediately, you regret apologizing since he might interpret that as the kind of subservience he expected from women.
On the way back from lunch your phone vibrates in your purse again. This time you're careful not to spill its contents on the floor. Fully expecting it to be Dami, you’re surprised to find Ajax’s name on your screen. A couple years ago he was your most regular sexual partner, but you hadn’t fucked in months. Not for a lack of Damiano, but for a lack of passion that he was too docile to reignite.
A: Hey, I wanted to check in. I hope things are going better with Dam.
The phrase “checking in” makes your snort, as does the expression Damiano would make upon knowing that Ajax was referring to him as “Dam.”
Y: Yeah, things are better! Thanks for asking. How’ve you been?
A: Better as well. I finally got that job at the art gallery I’ve been talking about forever.
Y: Congratulations! That's huge!
A: I was gonna offer to take you out to celebrate, but it seems like there's a lot of eyes on you guys right now.
You lean against a wall and stare at the conversation for a minute. It was way past time to rip the bandaid off. Since agreeing to continue being polyamorous, but deciding not to sleep with Dami, you hadn’t actually done the deed with anyone. Somehow, it’d been over a month. Ajax was dependable, you were horny, but skittish. He was a pure intentioned person who’s familiarity was comforting. The math made sense.
Y: The attention is suffocating, honestly.
Y: I’d still like to hang out though.
A: Great, I’ve been missing you a lot.
There's a twinge of discomfort in your gut. Ajax had always been romantically invested in a way you weren’t. You and Dami hadn’t opened the relationship with the intention of falling in love with other people. He knew the limits and probably thought he was effectively hiding his emotions. So you felt a little guilty. Which could be completely unjustified, since the relationship with Ajax was platonic friendship. Friends missing friends was harmless and the way your stomach turned felt exactly like another bout of self-sabotaging anxiety.
Y: Should we meet up at your place like usual?
A: I actually live two buildings down from the gallery so you could just sneak out the back and meet me. Are you free friday?
You’d wanted to spend Friday evening doing domesticity with Damiano…and also all of Saturday and Sunday. Plus tonight and tomorrow night. However, five evenings of cuddling on the couch with no escalation sounded tortuous, albeit deliciously so. Having a sexual outlet was a necessity. No doubt, Ajax would be thrilled at the prospect.
A: I could also do this weekend.
Y: Let me get back to you on that.
You preemptively dread jumping through hoops to avoid being photographed and videoed meeting a man privately. Post public breakup, the media should have lost interest in your romantic life once it was no longer tied to Damiano. However, his sexcapades made people curious about your promiscuity. Was sex with Ajax worth the effort it would take not to get outed? Even asking yourself the question felt mean-spirited after he’d been so loyal. Mind-numbingly predictable, but loyal nonetheless.
Y: Friday sounds great. I assume you still remember the terms of the NDA?
A: Yup! I got tested last week!! Herpes included!! I’d never ever compromise your privacy!
The five exclamation marks make you scoff. He was thrilled at the prospect of getting laid and you needed the return to normalcy, for everyone’s sake. It was past time to fully engage with life again, to stop perpetually holding your breath. For months you’d felt frail, like if you relaxed enough to be truly vulnerable, you might shatter completely. This was the healthy thing to do and Ajax was a great starting place. But you dearly wished for feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, even desperation. You wanted to burn for someone the way you burned for Damiano.
Y: I really do appreciate that. My tests are up to date as well so lets work out a time.
You stare at the most recent message from Dami. “Audible gasp” was a little too fitting. It’d be easier to text him than to say it in person, but telling him shouldn't be challenging at all. It’d been far too long since you practiced polyamory together and society’s ideals about the sanctity of exclusivity were creeping in as a result.
You spend the next 20 minutes with your stomach it knots, mostly over how dysfunctional the desire to conceal Ajax’s presence is. There's a nagging fear which you know to be irrational that any small trigger will prompt Damiano to scramble for coping mechanisms he might not have. Then he’ll turn to substances and relapse, even though spending time with another companion wasn’t upsetting information. The lasting, intense love you shared wasn’t measured by exclusivity, but by mutual reverence. You’d mutually freely given educated consent to this lifestyle, both initially and just a month ago.
Y: I just got all in my head about something and wanted to avoid mentioning it. But you used to always say that feeling is a sign I should tell you right away so I’m not sitting with the anxiety.
D: What's on your mind, sweetheart?
You half expect an apology and correction to something less affectionate to be forthcoming. It’s not and you’re grinning like a fool.
Y: I was thinking about making plans to see Ajax on Friday.
Y: Because in my head we’re hanging out tonight, Thursday night, Saturday, and Sunday which is totally delusional now that I type it out. You have an entire community that wants to see you, but apparently the world revolves around me.
It's the type of comment that you’d nervously interject when out with friends to negate any perceived narcissism. Disparaging yourself as an insurance policy. Damiano tries to call you and you jump out of your skin as a result, even with your phone on silent. It buzzes twice before appearing as a missed call, meaning he hung up.
D: Sorry, calling you over that is way too intense for a nesting partner. I need to work on boundaries and not act like your boyfriend.
D: I just hate when you disparage yourself like that. Your brain deserves to hear all the wonderful things about you in your self-talk. It makes me feel protective of you.
D: Protective of your self-image confidence wise! Not protective of you like don’t go see Ajax on Friday!
D: Not smooth. Really not smooth.
D: Fuck I just realized you’re at work and I've spammed you with texts like a psycho.
Y: I’m smiling at my phone like an idiot, don’t worry.
Y: And blushing
Y: Shouldn’t have said that last part
D: No, please tell me how you’re feeling. Especially like this.
Y: “This” as in how my body reacts to you?
D: Actually I meant especially when you’re anxious and it's hard to tell me. But ABSOLUTELY the other thing too!!!!
Rather than a faint warmness, your cheeks are so hot that it starts to give you a headache. You flip your phone over and stare at the title of an email, reading it about 20 times without ever internalizing the information. Since you don’t have the faculties to respond, you go through your inbox, deleting and archiving emails. Normally you’d wash your face with cold water, but someone would likely make a comment on your way to the bathroom. Unable to stop the compulsion, you turn your phone back over and see a text Dam had sent six minutes ago.
D: Do you want to keep telling me what I do to your body, sweetheart?
You were going to have a stroke. Damiano was going to end you via some letters on a fucking screen. He’d done it before. You weren’t above sexting a work either, but the difference was the ability to race home and ride his cock. That is, until Dami got tired of the control that position lacks and bent you over a countertop by the back of your neck, thrusting so forcefully that it drove you forward until your toes barely brushed the floor. He’d keep prompting you to be vocal and nonsensical babbling wasn’t enough. He wanted the ugly, open-mouthed grunts that left saliva on the counter. Moan for me. Moan for me or I’ll stop. He never made good on that threat, though.
Y: No sexting. Just my memories alone are making it impossible for me to focus right now.
D: Heard, I’ll respect that. Let’s talk more tonight (if you feel up for it).
Memories of him incentivizing you this way weren’t in short supply, either. After opening up the relationship, you kept your sexual responses controlled with new partners out of self-consciousness. Sometimes you did it accidentally with Damiano, who assumed you weren’t enjoying his technique anymore. Insecure that a new partner had instantaneously mastered your pleasure, he adopted this laser focus. Administering all your favorite kinds of touch with a feverish intensity, he pressed you for instructions, unaware that you were already teetering on the edge of orgasm. It was comical in hindsight, but at the time you could barely make discernable pleas at him to just keep going.
After catching your breath came a significantly louder round two. Dami was more vocal as well, matching this shift in your energy that confused but thrilled him. What…what the fuck? A tangled lock of his long, wild hair still caught in your mouth as he panted the words post-coitus. What came to light in the following discussion is there's nothing he needs to fix, per say, but there was something you missed. The intimacy of feeling Damiano’s orgasam just as he does. The connectedness of no barriers between your forms, not even latex. You end up confessing how profoundly you’ve missed fluid bonding while staring at your hands. He brings them to his face and kisses every finger, left hand first, then the right.
Turns out fluid bonding while polyamorous involves logistics, but is entirely plausible. This revelation was followed by a lull since you both had to communicate with your other partners before changing safe sex practices. Even broaching the subject with them evoked a feeling of such intense shame that it affected your sexual confidence. So two days later, you’re in the exact same place and Damiano wasn’t having it. He slowed his thrusts, getting down onto his forearms, faces nearly brushing. You’re doing it again. You whimpered an apology, but Dami shook his head, not satisfied. Make noise. Make noise and I’ll take the condom off. He began grinding up and down against your clit. You begged, body on fire, but that wasn’t enough. Moan for me and I’ll take the condom off. The series of desperate, hysterical sounds that followed weren’t moans, but they were authentic noises of pleasure.
Damiano was pleased, folding his hand in yours and building momentum. You need me to fuck you raw? Earn it. Your heavy breathing became gasps which finally became moans. The urge to lock your ankles over Dami’s tailbone was in conflict with the desire for him to pull out and take the condom off. You gonna let me go so I can cum inside you? He glances to where your hand is strangling his. It's counterintuitive to release Damiano in the throes of passion, but you force yourself to do it. After ripping the condom off, he lines up his cock like it’s the very first thrust inside and not as if you’ve already been fucking for 20 minutes. You release a guttural sound of impatience from the back of your throat and claw at his hips. Damiano glances up in surprise, enthralled.
He thrusts forward and clambers back up the bed, slipping and falling in the process. Your bodies collide, but neither pays any mind. Even after getting his bearings, Damiano continues resting some of his weight on you, grinding when he’d undoubtedly prefer thrusting. It was his first time feeling you without a condom in months, too, but he prioritizes your pleasure. It wasn’t just your cunt receiving friction, but your nipples too, rubbing against his sweaty, hairy chest. Dami puts his lips at the shell of your ear so you can hear all the grunts, moans, and whimpers your body evokes. Want me to cum inside you, baby? You wrap your legs around Dami so he doesn’t have an option and mindlessly beg. Do you even remember how deep I can get? He’d –
“Y/n? Y/n? Hey!” A coworker with overpowering perfume snaps her fingers in front of your face. Thalia. Her acrylics matched her berry-colored blouse.
“Yes! Yes? Sorry, I, um…”
“Was distracted.”
“Yes, apologies. I was just actually…” Your eyes focus on the screen and you skim the email. It doesn’t make sense.
“Reading an email from four months ago?” You check the date and sigh heavily. Being ripped out of your fantasy world was disorienting to say the least. Not to mention, you’d spent so long avoiding fantasies of Dami because it broke your heart. But now the memories were no longer tinged with melancholy, since he was back in your life and you could have intimacy with him whenever you wanted. He’s back in my life. And I can have intimacy with him. Whenever I want. Oh, fucking hell.
“You look feverish. Do you feel okay? You’re not gonna be getting anyone sick right?” Wearing a reproachful expression, Thalia takes a step back.
“No! No, of course not. I wouldn’t come to work sick, especially now.”
“Right? Exactly! It’s really just common decency at this point.” Hand on her hip, you can tell that Thalia is ready to gossip about one of the self-important senior employees who lacked regard for anyone below their station. You’d never desired to work somewhere so corporate, but the job was an objectively good choice. If you could just stick it out long enough to add it to your resume, that is.
As Thalia rants, your phone’s screen lights up in your peripheral vision. After a heart beat skip, you realize it's not Dami’s contact, just an email. Not that he would be texting you in the middle of therapy. Get a fucking grip.
On the way home, you turn the music up too loud so your brain will have something to do. The way Damiano made your libido spike didn’t change the fact that you weren’t ready to resume certain aspects of your relationship. But using an established partner to enact those fantasies wasn't fair to them. This person who was totally present with you and your pleasure deserved the same in return.
So you end up browsing new additions to the world of solo use, female sex toys while sitting in the parking garage. Even your dildos with attachments to stimulate the clit didn’t allow for you to grind freely like you could against another body. And your grinding vibrators didn’t offer penetration. You settle on shopping for humping toys that do have some sort of penetrative component, of which the options are very limited. Figuring out what to type in the search bar makes you giggle since the resulting keywords are so obscene that they could be used as a deadly weapon against an elderly Catholic if simply read aloud.
Shopping for this new desire evoked a bout of tingling excitement. Sure, just outright fucking Dami would be preferable. However, in the meantime you got to explore externalizing this delicious sexual tension you hadn’t felt since age 18. Back then you didn’t have the toys to do it justice or the reassurance that Damiano would be at your beckon call. It’s been so long since you could lounge in fantasies about him without the baggage of grief weighing you down.
After making a purchase with express shipping, you multitask climbing out of the car and checking the time. You’d been sitting in the parking garage for almost 40 minutes. Oops.
“Hey! I was wondering where you were! I was about to text you.” Damiano’s voice is part of a wonderful cacophony as you step into the apartment. There's music playing, steam coming from a pot on the stove, and Princess meowing underfoot.
“Shit, I forgot you were cooking. I just got distracted, I’m sorry.”
“Ah, it's okay. This won’t be done for a while anyways.” You set your purse on the counter and take off your shoes. It’d been so long since you had someone to come home to and the routine of living by yourself for the past seven months is still in place. What would you normally do right now, if it was Damiano’s first day back after a long stint on tour? Probably walk right over and kiss him, at the very least.
Unsure how to navigate this moment, you keep busy setting your boots on the shoe rack, then organizing it. When you straighten up, Dami is standing one pace away, looking just as awkward as you feel.
“Hug?” He extends his arms out and you immediately fall into them.
“Absolutely. Oop!” You nearly step on Princess' tail as she paces around your ankles, demanding you greet her first. For a moment, Dami pauses, making sure the noise of surprise wasn’t directed at him. Upon looking down and seeing the insistent little personality demanding your undivided attention, he shakes his head affectionately.
“Sassy Pants.” Princess stares back at Dam and meows pointedly. “So demanding,” he complains, gently shooing her away with his socked foot. You reach your arms around his ribcage and, in return, Damiano pulls you snuggly against his chest. After both taking a breath, the embrace tightens. His lips press to the crown of your head. Your hands splay out, rubbing his back. Another breath, this time a sigh of relaxation.
“How was your day?”
“Hm, better now.”
“Mine too.” Dami’s shirt is made of soft cotton and you rub your face against it. Just as Princess no doubt has, judging by the cat hair stuck to the front.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this before.”
“What? The shirt?” You nod against his chest which shifts the position of your ear so it’s pressed right over his racing heart. He’s nervous. Or excited, maybe. It's such a precious reaction to this innocent embrace that you squeeze Dami around his waist, externalizing something adjacent to cuteness aggression. He smells really good. You inhale deeply and Dami mirrors you. Yeah, he smells very, unnecessarily good.
“This shirt, I got it uh…Well, there's this little brand in London that I discovered a couple months – well, I guess, a few months ago. Boujee as hell, but they use this really high quality cotton and cashmere in their clothes. So fucking soft.” You hum in acknowledgement while Damiano kisses your head. “Are we still hugging?” he teases, slipping his hands an inch closer to where they’d usually rest. (One on the top of your ass and the other under your blouse).
“Is something gonna burn?”
“Um…” He cranes his neck, glancing at the stove top. “Nope.”
“Then we’re still hugging. You smell amazing.” It's a complaint, the sexual frustration manifesting as actual frustration in your tone.
“Fuck, I knew I forgot something. I – did you say amazing?” The knowledge that Damiano wanted to shower and is subsequently a little sweatier than he’d like to be, makes your cunt throb. It’s probably also a contributing factor to his unbearably delicious scent. Or maybe that was because he’s always smelled great, or because he smells like him, or because he smells like home. Investigating, you turn your head so your nose is right next to his armpit and breath in. All of the above. Now, if you could lick him that’d be even better.
“Y/n?”
“Yes, you smell good,” you grumble with an annoyed huff.
“My apologies?” He may be feigning confusion, but you can feel Dami’s wide smile against your scalp. His hands venture an inch lower.
“You should be.” Your grumpiness is also a facade. You unwrap your arms from his waist just so you can put them around his neck instead. For a moment, Damiano thinks the embrace is ending and begins loosening his arms. But when he realizes you just want to get closer and holds you with the intimacy of yesterday’s kiss. Body to body. Something twitches against your quad, making you wonder if that's the reason Dam was nervous.
“I really need to get back to cooking,” he admits reluctantly.
“Like right now or?” He chuckles and you can feel him gaining some confidence. It then manifests in a very tangible sense, when he slides his hand under the hem of your blouse and onto your bare lower back. His palm is heavy and so warm. Knowing the hug has to end, you give yourself a little gift. Closing your eyes, you focus on only the sensory input from Dami. Not just his smell, but the soft skin of his neck against the corner of your mouth and the rougher touch of his hand. The erection that he was almost successful at hiding, the softness of his shirt. The way he was sturdy, even with you leaning your body weight against him.
“Okay.” You whisper a barely audible concession, taking a final deep breath. You pull away and are filled with the same urge that made you lick Dam while visiting him in rehab. “God damn it, you smell really good,” you groan in anguish. Taking a step back as well, he almost pats your butt without thinking. His hand stops just short, pinky brushing your bare lower back as your blouse falls back into place. Out of all the touches, that brief, accidental meeting of skin feels like a zap of electricity. Maybe because you thought the physicality was done with.
As Dami returns to the stove, he’s smirking and staring at the floor. Initially, you assume it's because he’s failed to conceal his erection, but his pants don't give anything away. He glances at you out of the corner of his eyes and almost audibly chuckles.
“What?” You look down at yourself, clothing a bit rumpled, but nothing far out of place. “What’d I do?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Damiano clears his throat to conceal the real reaction to whatever he finds so amusing. He checks the oven timer unnecessarily.
“What?”
“Okay, okay. You’re, uh…” The sides of his mouth threaten to turn upwards. Dami attempts biting his lip to stop it, but gives up and instead wears a full, toothy smile. “It’s not what you want –”
“Just tell me!” Damiano turns his body away from the stove and towards you, leaning his hip against the counter. His hands begin speaking first, gesturing between your bodies.
“I can feel the horniness radiating off of you. It’s like Chernobyl.”
“Oh, fuck you, it’s not like Chernobyl!” He finally breaks down into gleeful laughter.
Notes: Making the most of Tumblr's font options with this chapter lol. Thank you to everyone who's been interacting with these updates. It's really encouraging. <3 An extra thanks to @harryssshouseee for their help with this fic.
Thank you for the awesome insight to your process!!! It’s so interesting. I was always too shy to ask and then someone did. I think it could be very cool if we ever got a Dami pov chapter. I know you’re almost finished but the chapter in SITCOE right at the end from both of them when they are all happy and back together and good 😊 a girl can dream 😏😏😏😏😏
Also reading about your approach to writing smut is SO COOL and I love that you love that we eat it all up. I truly think that second to your unmatched and astounding dialogue and descriptions of your characters emotions, the thing that you are the absolute best writer that I know at is that raw humanity in your smut.
Sometimes it feels like there is literal crack hiding in your stories so I decided to end this with a list of scenes you wrote that live rent free in my head:
(I don’t know what’s up with me and lists atm)
1. Damiano coming home drenched from the rain and the breakthrough that happens in their relationship and communication (You can’t own me)
2. The first time Damiano and y/n share his sweatshirt (Guardian Angel)
3. Damiano and y/n showering together (Guardian Angel)
4. Y/n being territorial while making out with Damiano against the car (Guardian Angel)
5. Sharing the wine glass (Dilfiano)
6. The call when she is scared and Damiano kind of sounding like himself again (The Sun is the Center of Everything)
7. The first knot that didn’t hurt alpha Damiano (Guardian Angel)
8. The horny flirting and Damiano struggling a little but as he gets his mojo back (The Sun is the Center of Everything)
9. THAT phonecall (The Sun is the Center of Everything)
10. The first time y/n goes little again (The Sun is the Center of Everything)
11. Offering Damiano to come home after rehab (The Sun is the Center of Everything)
There are more but I should maybe stop….. You know I love you but I get that it’s also nice to hear or in this case read it sometimes.
You deserve every bit of props and recognition and praise and you are awesome. I absolutely understand how that voice in your head sucks. Just know that what you do is incredible work. Take your time when you need and know that we are always there to praise you all you want when you need it ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Love 💧
Excuse me while I sob ♥️
Also I wish I was almost done with The Sun Is the Center of Everything at 17 chapters but unfortunately it looks like it’s gonna go into the mid-20s. But yes, there will be a happy ending.
Suddenly you’re in the dark, being jostled to consciousness. It takes a couple seconds to remember how opening your eyes works. Your lids are heavy and mind sluggish with the sensation that time has passed.
“You fell asleep, baby. I wasn’t sure if you meant to, so it's only been 30 minutes. Look who decided to join us,” he whispers. Princess is passed out next to you with Cheeto sitting on the farthest corner, watching. Eyes sensitive to the daylight, you turn around and are thrilled to get a face full of chest hair.
“Don’t shave this,” you groan.
“But my tattoos –”
“But my libido.” You press long kisses to his skin, loving how full his pectorals looked when Damiano lay relaxed, on his side.
“Okay, well if you’re more likely to fuck me –”
“Hmm, some of these tattoos were a bold choice.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it,” he grumbles, partially sarcastic.
“Okay, fair.” With a final kiss to his sternum, you shimmy upwards while trying to figure out if you feel groggy or subby. Dami appears to be struggling with the same discernment. You close your eyes and focus on your body’s signals. Almost overwhelming is the tugging sensation from your stomach that demands proximity with Damiano.
“Wanna keep napping?”
“Mm-mm. Stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere. topolina,” he whispers, voice husky. “I watched you sleep for half an hour and didn’t want to be anywhere else.” His gaze is so intense that you open your eyes to meet it. There's a storm of emotions behind those eyes. You press your noses together so he knows you aren’t afraid of it.
“Signore?” That doesn’t quite get the response you were hoping for. Dami’s gaze softens, but there's still a lot of distance. So you decide to risk it and get as intimate as possible.
“Daddy?” you whisper.
“Yes, piccola mia?” He responds in an equally hushed tone.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.” His bottom lip wobbles so he bites it. “It’s okay. I don’t need you to be invincible. I don’t want it.” He finally lets a tear fall, then leans forward and kisses your forehead. First for a few seconds, then half a dozen pecks in as much time. If someone were to count all the times Damiano kissed you today, it might be in the triple digits. Every touch was like he couldn’t believe his fortune, and while that was very flattering, it wasn’t sustainable. He hadn’t found his way back because you were charitable. He’d fought and suffered with his whole soul.
“Whew, I needed this. I really, really needed this.” He sniffs forcefully, shaking his head as if he can shake off emotions.
“Daddy, you aren’t lucky. You earned this.”
“I earned my little girl back?” He tears stream down his cheeks as he cups yours.
“Yes.”
“And now I’m gonna earn y/n back.” He tries taking a deep breath to move on, but you can see that the conversation has barely scratched the surface. Instead of talking about him, you try talking about yourself.
“I never tried to find another dom, because I didn’t think anyone would want me the way you did.”
“That's crazy,” he scoffs. “I mean, that's how I feel. Like, I don’t understand why you still want me but – but thats fucking insane.” Dami roughly wipes the side of his face with the heel of his hand. “You’re an incredible submissive. Anyone would be fucking privledged to earn your submission.”
“That’s how I feel about you. Like I’m just lucky to be the center of your world as a dom.”
“You are the sun. Of course you’re at the center of everything.” For at least 10 seconds your mind goes blank.
“I…I, um…The reason I don’t have another dom isn’t because I’m insecure.” Damiano’s eyebrows furrow. “I know that’s in my head. It’s just that you’re the only person that makes me feel seen when I’m submitting. If I’m alone or with someone else, I get insecure and feel so stupid –”
“No –” His expression is sickened.
“That I just want it to be over, but with my daddy I feel…weightless. Unencumbered. Only you do that for me.” Dami’s tears stain the bedsheet where they land. “I don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone with my mind like I trust you.” He sits up, pulling you onto his lap. Even as he wanted a breather to process his emotions, Dami prioritized your well being as a submissive and kept you close.
“See, even now I know you just want to be alone. I know you want to sort through these feelings and move on, but you promised you’d stay by my side, so you’re doing that instead. How can you call yourself inadequate?”
“I don’t want to be alone, piccola mia. I want to get sick of you. I want to feel suffocated.” You force your legs and arms between Dami’s torso and the couch pillows. Once thoroughly coiled around him your squeeze.
“Oof!”
“Mission accomplished?”
“Not even close.” You giggle and he loves the sound, encouraging it. “Oh no! Not the love of my life, totally naked and wrapped around me with her boobs pushed up to my chin! Please god, not a face full of glorious, pillowy tits with the world’s more lickable nipples!” He falls over sideways while speaking, taking your body with him. Damiano does, in fact, end up with a face full of your boobs. “Whatever will I do? Perhaps cum in my pants like a 13-year-old!” Getting a stroke of inspiration, you grab the lube and messily squirt some onto your hand. It’d been so long since love making had been spontaneous. It sent a shiver up your spine and made you feel more alive.
Damiano was much too preoccupied with your boobs to expect the hand in his boxers. He yelps in surprise and then his head lulls back.
“Tell me how you want it.”
“I – I…yes.” You tighten your index finger and thumb extra when passing over the ridge of his shaft, then massage the head for a few seconds extra. After that you stoke halfway down and back a couple times, finally rubbing your thumb in his slit. This earns a rush of pre-cum and an open mouthed moan. The head glistens with milky-white drops, which you know to be both salty and musky to the taste. His cock is throbbing, no doubt you’d be able to feel it on your tongue. The largest vein up along the side of Dami’s shaft is bulging out. Amongst his dark and wiry pubic thicket, naturally grown to its full glowy, his dick is begging to be licked.
You turn around, sitting on Dami’s chest so the curve of his shaft was going with the curve of your esophagus, and take it all the way back. He’s confused where your tits have gone and is then howling in pleasure.
“Topolina, topolina, topolina,” he chants, nails clawing down the back of your thighs. It occurs to you that this is not normal behavior for Little headspace. You should have asked first. Clearly you were out of practice for submitting properly, but the familiar pressure of Dami’s cock in your throat and the taste of his pre-cum was satiating. If homecoming sex had a flavor, this was it.
He whines and says something about “embarrassing,” before whining again. Daminao’s hips quiver, then raise, pushing his cock just a little further down your throat, which you accept with care.
“Gonna cum. Fuck! Gonna…” Another whine. It hadn’t even been two minutes, but after spending so much time erect, his balls must be heavy with seed. “Topolina, cumming,” he warns. “Cumming, cum – uhh,” Dami groans. His hips twitch then shoot ropes of hot jizz down your throat. You focus on the action of swallowing, first raising your tongue then tightening your esophagus. You make it most of the way through his orgasm before some of his semen nearly brushes your gag reflex, causing you to pull off while you’re ahead. There's only about five seconds of getting him to the end of climax before Dami feebly pushes your hand away from his exhausted cock.
You turn back around to see the bedsheet and blanket gathered into fists, eyes still fluttering from the stimulation. You kiss all the parts of his torso that have hair before checking in again.
“Well hey Miss Initiative.” Hiding your face against his neck seems like the best course of action considering you’ve been bad.
“Sorry,” you groan, tangling your limbs together. “You needed to cum. I wanted to make you.”
“Usually, you’re more of a listener than a doer in headspace.”
“Sorry.”
“We can practice.”
“Sorry.”
“Shh, stop apologizing. You know I have a rule about that and any other time I’d penalize you for breaking it.” Cue another noise of mortification. “I did need to cum and that was fucking incredible, but we didn’t negotiate getting me off.” This time the sound you make is more like a wail, face turning red and heart sinking. You couldn’t just keep your hands to yourself when he was so damn delectable and tempting. Dami rubs your back comfortingly.
“To be fair, we also didn’t negotiate kissing either and that's gone pretty well, too. Maybe we both need to practice our roles, hmm?” When this doesn’t prompt you to stop hunkering down, he tries being even nicer, cooing instead of speaking. “That makes sense, though. I haven’t gotten to play with my little girl for months. Both of us need to remember our places a little better. Nothing bad happened. No one got hurt in any capacity. I’d say today has been successful, hmm?” Rather than sit upright, you shift just enough to grab the corner of the blanket and pull it over your head. Damiano laughs and does the same, so you're in a tiny world apart, together.
“Are you really not coming out?” This talking to that’s probably been too gentle to call discipline has you slipping into subspace. However, it feels like you’re falling backwards and subsequently hanging onto Dami in hope that sensation will go away. Unfortunately It’s only worsening due to sensitivity so heightened that looking at a candle from across the room would probably give your hand third degree burns.
“Piccola mia?”
“I feel…wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Off. Falling.”
“Falling into subspace or out of it?”
“Between. Brain…can’t decide. Guide me.” He pulls the blanket out of the way and repositions while you blink hard. You land on your back, with Dami resting against you. He’s using the position for close observation and aches with empathy at your discomfort.
“Which way do you want to go?”
“Mm-mm.”
“You don’t know? Well, I don’t wanna bring you out of it before you’re ready, love.” The weight of Damiano’s body and his pointed attention – whatever it meant to move towards these things – that's what you wanted. His shoulder muscles rippled underneath your hands, which traced the boxy shape of his waist, down to his rounded hip bones.
“Feels same.”
“Well, I would hope so.” You pull him in for a brief kiss, kept chaste by the dominant party. Once your mouths separate, you try pulling Dami in for more. At first he heeds your request, then retreats once you’ve gone completely pliant.
“Tell me what you want.” Whining is your first instinct. “Words, little one.” Shaking your head also doesn’t deter him from this newfound goal. “Try to use your words. Right now.”
“Mm-mm, feels…no.” You watch Dami make a decision.
“Okay, well since you can’t put together a basic sentence, let's do bath time.”
“Together.”
“Together? Alright. Step one is gonna be me getting off of you.” That earns some objections which make Dami smile with his teeth. Not so secretly, he loves being needed by you. “I have to stand up. I can’t just be your incredibly sexy weighted blanket.” On the word “sexy” you lick the hair on his sternum and nip his pec. He sits upright and swings his feet onto the floor. You crawl across the bed after him and yank down his boxers.
“Excuse me!?” You swat at his cute butt, which thankfully didn’t have any surprise tattoos. “Hey!” He pretends to jump out of range, only to look over his shoulder, making sure you’re following. After climbing off the couch, you try to pinch him, but Dami is too fast, squirming out of the way and high-tailing it to the bathroom. This is not how you anticipated your first proper game of chase going.
The water is already running by the time you catch up and jump on his back. Damiano isn’t expecting to give you a piggyback ride, but he adapts quickly. You take the opportunity to smell his head while it’s still dirty then run your lips along the shell of his ear.
“Bath together or shower together?”
“Bath.”
“Bubble bath?” You nod as the white-mittened cat darts into the bathroom, alarmed.
“Cheetoooo,” you sing.
“What are you doing with mom?” Dami impersonates in a funny voice. She actually meows in response. “Meow. I thought you didn’t talk.” Cheeto vocalizes again, much to your surprise. “Meow.” Of course she’d start talking for Damiano. Princess took a couple days to find her voice, but hadn’t shut up since. What was so special about Dami that even felines responded to his speech? You knew the answer of course, even if you were unable to put an exact name to it.
“I’m gonna set you down so you don’t scare her,” he says quietly, squatting. The cat takes a couple careful steps back to the edge of the bathroom. “I’m sorry I don’t have treats this time.” Cheeto looks behind her, sits in the doorway, and begins cleaning herself. It’s typical behavior. Damiano refocuses attention to you, running a hand from the crease where thigh meets glute, over your ass, parallel to your spine, and ending in your hair.
“Look,” he murmurs, wrapping both arms around you. Dami is gazing in the mirror, so you stare over your shoulder and lean into him. “I wish I could take a picture of this.”
“My back?”
“No, silly…I want to take a picture of this moment.” You sign in annoyance and nod, glancing at the tub to make sure the water wasn’t on the verge of overflowing.
“Really? Okay? Okay!” Now Dami is the one with childish joy as he skips into the living room to locate his phone. He re-enters with a digital camera whose lens extends several centimeters out when he turns it on.
“Higher quality images and I take better care of the SD card than my drugs.” You falter while wrapping your arms around him and Dami makes a face in return. “Ignore that, just do that thing you were before.” You set your cheek against his chest and look up in confusion. Meanwhile, Damiano is focused on the camera screen, so totally distracted that you whine.
“Oh, piccola mia, I’m not ignoring you,” he coos. The shutter snaps and you pull at his free arm. Immediately, he wraps that around your mid-back, hand resting on the top of your ass. Feeling more content, you relax against him and look in the mirror. Dami is holding the camera partially in front of his face, expression contorted with focus. He takes two more pictures and you kiss his chest in between.
“Oops! Sorry, just let me…perfect. Thank you, you’re perfect.” He sets the camera down, putting the lens cap back on. “Someday I’m gonna frame those photos.” Damiano then responds to your shaking head with, “oh, no, I’m gonna do it. It's gonna make all our house guests super uncomfortable and I’m gonna turn the dirtiest ones into magnets for the fridge.” Realizing he’s at least mostly joking, you allow laughter at the mental image. “Actually, that's a lie. I’m gonna turn the dirtiest ones into Christmas ornaments!”
“No!”
“Yes and coffee mugs! Now, there's a way to start the morning right.”
“Pop-socket.” He spins around. “Keychain."
“Incorrigible, this one.”
“Phone case.”
“For free? No way. Oh shit.” Damiano turns off the faucet before the tub gets too full and bends down, searching for the bubble bath container.
“Not gonna work,” you pout. Hearing the change in tone, Damiano whips around to check on your expression.
“Piccola mia, what’s not gonna work? Hmm? What’s wrong?” You’d forgotten how god damn healing his attentiveness was. Your parents had never done bubble baths or bath toys. They claimed not to have time. Getting clean was always utilitarian. Once you told Dami he was horrified that you’d missed out on an apparently integral part of childhood.
“Faucet.” He looks at the bathtub faucet then back at the purple bottle below the sink.
“Oh, the water needs to be running, duh.” As he rectifies the situation and pours the soap in, you resist the urge to climb him as a koala does a eucalyptus tree. Instead, you move to pinch his ass again, but Dami catches your wrist without looking. He tsks while turning around, holding your other wrist.
“Do I need to cuff you again?” He must have taken them off in your sleep. Surprised, you look down at your wrists, then shrug amicably. “Awe, you take the cuffs so well, topolina, but do you really want them, right now?” Trying to wash yourself then Dami in handcuffs sounds complicated, so you shake your head decisively. “See, that's what I thought. So stop pinching my ass.”
“So cute.”
“My butt is cute?” He opens and closes his pointer finger and thumb theatrically, like a lobster claw. Then Dami ducks his head down with his eyebrows raised in a nefarious expression. He chases you around the bathroom while you shriek, trying to avoid his naughty intentions. Of course he’s faster and you end up backed into a corner, squealing as he pinches your ass and thighs, snapping his jaw in your ear.
“Gotcha!”
“Eek!”
“Bath time!” He drags you across the bathroom by your waist. Cheeto has long since darted around the corner, but Princess is used to these antics and decided to lay in the sink and judge.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Damiano releases you to avoid splashing water everywhere as you both climb in. A bigger bathtub had been on the top of the list when searching for this apartment, however it still felt too small. He minimizes the kvetching on this occasion because Dami missed squeezing into this tub together. By spilling more than a few drops of water on the floor, he’s able to reach the basket of bath toys under the sink. Once, Ethan’s boyfriend found them while searching for makeup remover and Dami made up a story about using them while bathing Princess. He didn’t miss a beat, meanwhile, your heart had stopped entirely.
“What pleases you on this fine day, m’lady?” You pick out a simple set of rubber boats, each a different color. It is just so you can string them together and watch the rainbow weave in and out of the bubbles. Dami uses a pitcher to wet your hair. You’d washed it last night, but the roots were likely already greasy with stress sweat. He takes the time to massage your scalp, resulting in a moan or five, then a giggle when his cock twitches against your lower back.
“Ignore that.” When he begins to rinse the shampoo you whimper in protest, so he runs his blunt fingernails along your head a bit more. “It's just gonna get tangled now, piccola mia.” Damiano switches to conditioner, making sure to saturate the ends of your hair, before putting it all up in a clip. With your head tilted to the side, it was easy to relax back, as he rubbed a bar of soap between his palms. Washcloth forgotten, Dami runs his hands along your skin, sudsing it up, before rinsing off with the same pitcher. He moves on to himself, but you still his hands with your own.
“Let me.” It's a bit of a task, turning around and retrieving the washcloth. Both your tailbones are resting towards the center of the bathtub, knees bent out of the water, chest to chest.
“Why don’t you just sit where I was?” he suggests. This repositioning is equally as arduous, but having Damiano lay between your legs does inarguably feel more natural. He even retrieves the many pieces of the marble run out of the basket: a collection of ramps and gears that suctioned to the wall.
“This toy really helped me learn to trust you. Isn’t that funny?”
“Really? Mmm,” he moans as you run your nails along his scalp.
“When we first got it, you tried to build as many tiles high as possible. I felt so fucking self-conciousess and stupid for trying out the toys and its like…you taught me not to feel all that animosity for myself. You weren’t above any of it as a dominant.” He scoffs and looks back. You carefully wipe shampoo from his forehead so it doesn't burn his eyes.
“They’re just bath toys. They’re fun. Used to be my favorite part of the day. I wanted you to have a little more joy and…something that helped with headspace.”
“I know. Tilt,” you instruct warmly, washing the shampoo away. Dami raises his chin and screws his eyes shut. “But it wasn’t that simple for me and you made it simple. You made being a dom about making positive feelings more accessible to me.”
“Mmm, well I’m pretty sure that's the whole point of it. Christ, that feels good," he groans pornographically. It's immensely distracting.
“I’m not sure that's true for every dynamic. Some of them seem more symbiotic, where their kinks compliment each other. It's not about joy and reverence.”
“Or love,” he adds, lacing your fingers together.
“Yeah…but that's kind of a given without joy and reverence.”
“I know, I just wanted to say it.”
“I know,” you whisper. “I love you, too.”
“Fuck, I needed this so bad.” He lays his head back on your chest. “I feel like I can actually inhale all the way, you know? Having some control and autonomy back…it feels like my brain is producing its own serotonin.” You run a hand over Dami’s wet hair and kiss his temple, earning a glorious smile. “Hmm, god this is perfect.” His head lulls to the side as he gazes at you.
“How do you feel now?”
“Good. Great. Stable.” You force yourself not to choke up, again. “Thank you for being sober, coming back to me, being my daddy, or dom, or signore, or whatever. I know you don’t always like it when I call you that.”
“Baby, it's just the name that gives me the ick sometimes. And thats not your fault, its because I’ve become so god damn hypersexualized by fucking 14-year-olds who leanred about kink on Twitter. Like I get that we all had a sexual awakening, but they say that shit directly to my face and it's weird.” You try not to snicker. Most of them were just kids who didn’t realize they were sabotaging their own sexual maturation. Maybe their parents didn’t give quite enough of a fuck, which you could more than relate to.
“I remember wearing this offensively bright blue, sequined turtleneck to the Jonas Brothers as a kid, thinking that Joe was gonna notice my practically prepubescent ass and be stunned by such impeccable taste.” Dami chuckles and it jostles you. “I scream-sang like a possessed banshee that whole night and lost my voice for three days.”
“Oh, so like when you first started coming to Maneskin gigs?” You splash him in retribution.
“No, like when we saw Metallica. The VIP box? Security had to ask me to quiet down, because I was ruining the concert for the billionaires and their vapid teenage sons.” That earns a cackle, Dami clapping his hands together without thinking sprays water droplets so far that Princess yowls in protest.
“Sorry, babygirl. I’m sorry,” he wheezes, the corners of his eyes crinkled. “God, that was so much fun."
"Then they finally got so sick of it that security put us in front of the barricade, but I thought we were being kicked. I felt so bad!"
"Hah! I forgot that part because we got so many dirty looks from the scary biker metalheads during Nothing Else Matters. They were all crying for the first time since childhood and apparently us dancing like maniacs was running the vibe."
“We were the problem that night.” Because we were drunk, is what you don't say.
“Oh, 100%. I just thought the fame was gonna last 15 minutes and was trying to get through my concert bucket list as fast as possible while they’d still let us in VIP. You know, I actually met Kirk at a festival and he commented that I looked familiar.” You gasp out loud.
“No! What did you say?”
“I don’t even fucking remember. I was high so…pretty sure he didn’t want to be around me. Actually, I probably burned bridges with a lot of sober artists. Big ones.”
“I think they’ll be forgiving. They’re only sober because they spent a good chunk of time destroying their lives in active addiction.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles.
“I mean, wouldn’t you be? If you were a rock elder and some kid who was obviously using made a social blunder, but you saw him a year later and he was clean. Wouldn’t you be forgiving? Encouraging?” He raises his eyebrows in thought and nods slowly.
“Yeah. I would, but I’m not, like…” Dami searches for an example besides Metallica, but you interrupt his tangent preemptively.
“Real people aren’t gonna hold this against you like you’re bracing for, Damia. We all have shit. The press is basically a representation of the worst things sociopathic assholes on the internet find amusing. It's the shittiest shit.”
“‘The shittest shit’” he almost smiles.
“You’ve survived people saying the shittiest shit they can possibly think about you. You’ve survived hard drug addiction. You’ve survived a schedule so inhuman that it violated labor laws. You survived our breakup and the scorn of your family, the disapproval of your friends. It can only suck less.”
“It can only suck less,” he nods. “I like that. No more positive attitude, manifestation, good energy, self-help bullshit. That always made me roll my eyes. It can only suck less.” You shift around, sore from sitting on the hard porcelain in the exact same position. Damiano thoughtfully strokes your leg as you wash his chest, then arms, shoulders, and torso.
“It's just the name I don’t like, sometimes. The role of being a daddy, the behavior and responsibility, all of that I love. I really do, I love our dynamic, the way we do it. I’m sorry there isn’t a perfect name for it.”
“Doesn’t need to be.” You rinse Dami off with palm fulls of water.
“I know, but you’re my little girl. That – when you’re submitting I know it, feel it so clearly. It must be hard not having an Honorific in return.”
“It’s really not that big a deal,” you shrug, bracing for what you need to say next. “I loved what we had before so much, but I just had to set myself free. The you came back to me.” He turns around, cups your jaw, and kisses you. Internally, you know it's gonna be the last kiss for a while and maybe he does too.
“I overthink everything, but today my body knew it could trust you. I didn’t feel any unease. That sensation of quietude is all that matters, not the Honorific.” He nods, emotional and carefully crafting his words. Dami steals one more kiss. With the way he cups the back of your head and quivers, the desperation is palatable and it confirms your earlier suspicion. It's heartbreaking for the person you’re in love with to touch you like they’re starving. Especially when you're so preoccupied trying to nourish yourself that you don't have the capacity to nourish them just yet.
“Damia…”
“It’s fine.”
“I just…I want –”
“You don’t have to explain yourself. Don’t give me what I haven’t earned.”
“I hate being the gatekeeper of our relationship. I want to throw caution to the wind and just pray I don’t regret it.”
“But you will. This was – I’m thrilled and" he searches for a word. "Beyond gratified that today was what…but I won’t take anything further.” He takes a deep breath and stands. “So it's time to get out. The water’s getting cold and I don’t want you shivering.”
Notes: It's here and it's angstier than you bargained for. The fact that a few of you were heavily anticipating this chapter has been so encouraging. <3 Reminder that I will be taking next week off so chapter 16 will be posted on the 28th. By then I'll most likely have set up the option to tip me for my writing. No pressure, but if you're able and feel compelled to, it'd really help with the bills.
@letkeepitbetweenus3 @zahra10999 I am still unable to tag you, unfortunately. Double check that you've disabled the hide blog from search results option. If that doesn't help, there could be a glitch which prevents people from tagging your blog. It's happened to me before and I resolved it by contacting Tumblr Help.
THE LONG AWAITED BATH TIME CHAPTER HAS ARRIVED!!! I’m so in love with all of @filthforfriends’ writing as everyone knows, but this chapter might just be favorite! So so comforting and dreamy, I’ll read it over and over again 🫧 🛁❤️
A timer goes off and Damiano maneuvers everything into one pot. He carefully coats the pasta in sauce with tongs.
“You can put me in gentle cuffs now.”
“Okay, good. I think that’ll be good for – oh my god, why are you crying?” You don’t feel tears, but your nose is a little runny. “Sorry, that wasn’t…I overreacted, crying is normal.” If there was any headspace where emotions were going to surface and demand processing, it was Little headspace. He folds you into a hug, not using his right hand since he somehow got amatriciana sauce on it.
“You can cry if you need to. That's fine.” His permission opens the floodgates. Despite his assurances, you can still feel Damiano wince when you sob. In under a minute, you’re ready to move on, since you’re not even sad, but the tears don’t stop.
“I’m not upset,” you try to explain, wiping your face. “I’m not sad.”
“Okay.” He keeps you supplied with paper towels, wearing a worried expression.
“I’m not. I’m literally not! I was thinking how ha – hap – appy – fuck, happy I –I…” You choke on the word, leading to a sob that takes both parties by surprise. “What the fuck?!”
“Emotions are bound to come up,” he tries.
“I’m happy.”
“I believe you, topolina.”
“I want to stop crying.”
“Okay.” He pulls back and you kiss Damiano with a hand on his cheek. This way he can feel what your body won’t properly communicate. And also because you’ll probably end up intellectualizing your desires and ruining the ease of this moment by tomorrow.
“Mm, wow.” He slides a hand over your ass, freezes, then quickly sets it back on your waist. You nip at his bottom lip, only to be yanked onto your tiptoes. Using the power this position affords, Dami pushes his tongue into your mouth, pulling at the corner of your lips with his thumb. Suddenly things feel overwhelming, so you take a step back. Instinctively, Damiano tries to bring you closer, but then catches himself for the upteenth time tonight and lets go.
“Holy fuck,” he pants.”I didn’t expect you to kiss me today, but especially not like that. God damn.” He looks down and groans at the prominent bulge in his trousers. Wiping your face, it's clear that making out greatly diminished – if not outright stopped – the tears, but without the distraction you’re fighting not to choke up again. You offer your wrists. Dami folds both in one hand and pulls you into the bedroom.
“Kneel. Eyes straight ahead.” You can hear him locating the right set of cuffs in a box shoved to the back of the closet. For a moment you consider peaking. He wouldn’t punish you today, but taking advantage of that felt disrespectful, so you keep your eyes forward.
“Good girl.” Damiano sits in front of you, velcro handcuffs on the bed beside him. You could get yourself out of these by yanking hard enough. It was about the idea of restraints. He wrapped them around your wrists individually, then clipped the cuffs together. In the beginning, when you were both learning about BDSM, he’d skip that step, so you’d get used to the feeling of being bound. As a result, you felt really comfortable being in cuffs. He was so proud of that.
Damiano does something extra this time. He takes your right hand first, and uses both thumbs to massage your palm. It felt amazing, which wasn’t strange considering our hands probably endure more tension than anywhere else on the body. Then he massages each finger and kisses halfway up your wrist. By the time Dami begins the treatment on the left hand, you’re resting your forehead on his knee caps, trying not to moan.
It’s like you’d forgotten the importance of human contact. About how badly you needed to be touched, just to feel decent. Of course you’d been struggling to cum, a touch-oriented person subsisting on platonic hugs. It was your own damn fault too. There were partners, friends, but you’d fixated on this one man. Of course, what he could give was more familiar and satiating than all of them combined. That didn’t make the fixation healthy, though.
When he finally clips both sides together, your shoulders are sore from hands extended forward. However, offering yourself to Damiano has actually regulated your breathing. Your nose is stuffy from the occasional tear, but things feel in control.
“Take a couple deep breaths with me.” He inhales deeply and you follow his actions, initially counting, trying to predict whether it’d be four, six, or eight seconds. It was the way you calmed down from an anxiety attack. After the first exhale however, you let go of that, and simply mirror him. Your focus narrows to a single point: breath, his breath.
“Good job, little one. Really good job.” He lifts your chin in his hand. “Sit back.” You’d been gravitating towards Dami, giving him your weight without realizing. With a hold on your arms, he guides you into a standing position. The first thing you try to do is hug him, which obviously doesn’t work. The thoughtful way your eyebrows knit together in confusion does earn an adoring chuckle though.
“Brain off?” You nod and he holds you sideways for a few seconds, smelling your head. “Are we doing sentences?” You shake your head after a moment. “Mkay, that's what I thought. Let me feed you lunch, piccola, before it gets cold.” He is being totally literal. Dami has you sit on his lap securely, and feeds you each bite of delicious amatriciana. He eats his own lunch too, with the same fork.
Things start to get really quiet in your head. Not having to feed yourself, or even sit upright autonomously eliminated the need for decision making. The taste was familiar and chewing, automatic. You could feel your eyes threatening to close, not out of sleepiness, but as you entered the meditative state of subspace.
“Piccola?” Head resting against his chest, you try to focus your vision. “Are you still hungry?” A shrug is the closest you can get to an answer. I don’t know. Weren’t you keeping track of that too? He clicks his tongue and gazes at you in adoration. Dami traces your face with his pointer finger as your cuffed hands rest limply in your lap.
“So submissive,” he compliments. “You make these eyes at me sometimes, when you’re deep in subspace…or entering it quickly. Like a puppy, it's the sweetest thing. So trusting.”
“Trust…Dom,” you manage, speaking in your Little Voice. His eyebrows crumple for a moment, but quickly Damiano recovers that expression of absolute adoration.
“Time for snuggles.” He sets you upright gradually, never truly letting you stand on your own. Dami guides you over to the couch and readjusts your cuffs.
“Let me change into some shorts, okay? And you can take off as much as you want.” Damiano turns his back before he can see you pout and ask why. I want you to take my clothes off. You wait for him to return, which is less than a minute away. He looks confused upon returning.
“You want to keep all your clothes on?” You shake your head. He’s wearing some ratty old basketball shorts and nothing else, beautiful chest on display. His body hair has almost grown back to its full glory and that probably makes you wet through the yoga pants.
“Did you want me to take your clothes off?” Nod. His cock visibly twitches. “Okay,” Dami responds breathlessly. “Arms up.” You raise both hands, wrists overlapping, and wait to be uncuffed so he can remove your shirt. “Topolina, look at your hands,” he chuckles, beforeing pulling your shirt off. You glance up and see that he’d already unclipped the cuffs from each other. When had that happened? For a second the confusion is disorienting, but when Damiano pulls off your pants, everything else is forgotten. Its hands on bare skin immediately. His breath hitches as it's revealed you’re not wearing underwear. Since it feels unbalanced, you unclip your bra too.
Dami crouches down and simply oggles for a minute, hand briefly covering his mouth in awe. You part your legs until the widest parts of your thighs are barely brushing. It's quite flattering to be looked at like the recently discovered statue of some ancient and fabled goddess. However being held is what your heart aches for, so you gesture towards him. Still in disbelief, Damiano lays down and pulls you onto his chest. Immediately you’re protesting the synthetic fabric of the shorts, pushing them down with a pout. Breath hitching, your Dom heeds the request, now in only his boxers.
“Piccola just…just – ah don’t put your leg there, okay. Okay, that's good…What are –?” Since your nose is in the perfect place, you take a deep breath of Dami’s body odor. Then you move on to nuzzling his chest hair, trying to get infinitesimally closer. Something about the way you're resting is so tempting that he recites the full serenity prayer under his breath.
“...moment at a time, taking this world as it is and not as I would have it.” You press your face into his neck and just feel, trying to absorb the moment through your pores. The first emotion that comes up is panic, that this will end while you’re still starving for touch.
“Stay.”
“Of course, for as long as you like.” Damiano has the intuition to put a hand on your back and feel your heart. Sensing how quick it's beating, he hushes you like a cholicky baby. The anxiety washes away, and that's part of why subspace is so wonderful. You can experience intense emotions without hanging on to them. It's like the ebb and flow of the ocean instead of being foolish enough to attempt catching the tide in a bottle then examining it.
But your chest still aches for intimacy. You shift closer, cling harder. Dami runs a hand from your tailbone to the nape of your neck and makes a fist in the hair at the base of your skull. It pulls without stinging and you moan against his neck. His opposite palm is warm where it cups the curve of your glute. Then its nails gently scratch from lower to mid back. Your body unfurls, relaxes, arches into Damiano’s. You feel pressure in your throat and finally realize you’ve been mewling just below his ear. If you were to open your eyes and look down, there's no doubt what you’d find.
“How’s that feel?” he whispers after some time.
“Mmm.” You climb on top of him entirely, fitting your face into the other side of his neck. Dami loosens his grip enough to let you shift, then goes back to stroking your skin. With your left knee bent, he can now caress your thigh.
“Warm enough?” You nod and shift your hips. “Am I a good heat rock?” he jokes. You repeat the action, but this time Damiano’s breath hitches. His hand is so close to brushing the hinge of your thigh, that you raise your knee in an effort to get it there. Finally, you realize that you’ve been subconsciously readjusting to bring Dami’s hand closer to your pussy, which is against his bare stomach, so wet he can feel it. The epiphany makes you blush in embarrassment and attempt to position differently.
While moving your pelvis down onto the fabric of Dami’s boxers, you slip and end up with your pussy pressed to his flank. The inhibition of subspace results in a moan you don’t have the presence of mind to stop and you grind against him, finally feeling how engorged your cunt had become.
“Piccola, I need 10 seconds.” You shake your head and clutch his thigh between your own. “You can count them. I forgot to plan ahead, it's my fault. I’m out of practice taking care of my little girl.”
“No.” Dami wouldn’t pry you off of him, and you know this. Instead, he holds you still enough to stop the grinding.
“Fine, but you don’t get to hump me.” You whine loudly in objection. “But if you give me 10 seconds, I’ll help you get off.” It's not as if you really had a choice. The need for orgasam was stifling, impossible to ignore. So with an angry harumph, you roll off of Dami, being sure to pout while giving him a dirty look. He pats your thigh before walking into the bedroom. You can hear him get something from a sex toy box in the closet, grab lube, and the grinding pad you’d tucked away. To call your interest piqued would be an understatement.
“Come sit on my lap, little one.” You crawl across the bed and straddle him. Dami tries to keep a hand on your back as much as possible while securing the grinding pad to his thigh. Next to him was your most powerful bullet vibrator. So much so, that you didn’t even use it. Before tightening the straps down, he turns it all the way up and slides it under the hump of the grinding pad, then generously applies lube.
“I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you how this works.” You swing one leg over, trembling with nerves. Before you can overthink things, Damiano pushes you hips down to sit on the pad and pulls you in for a kiss. The vibrations are so powerful that you yip and sit back. He loosens a strap and turns the vibrator to its lowest setting instead, before coaxing you forward again.
“Let's try that.” When you sit down, things are back to underwhelming, but having your Dom more than makes up for it. Still, he reads your body language like a book and turns it up to the third of four settings, then fastens the toy down. It's on the verge of too much and you begin trembling with anticipation again. How did you not think of putting a vibrator under the grinding pad?
Distracting you from nerves again, Damiano puts his lips to your shoulder and bites where the mark won’t show. His arm acts like the buzz bar on a rollercoaster around your lower back, clit forced to feel the vibrations. It prompts you to begin moving immediately. And after a couple seconds, you don’t have to think about it, slipping back into the earlier depth of sub-space. Eyes falling closed, your hips start on the flat part of the grinding pad, throbbing cunt stimulated by the bumpy texture and the help of gravity. Dami very gradually brings you closer, towards the most stimulating part of the toy. When your clit first makes contact with the front of the toy, the pleasure requires a bit of bravery. But then you can’t get enough, riding higher and higher on the hump at the front of the grinding pad, until your entire pussy is rubbing against it.
“Good girl. My little one is doing such a good job, gonna make herself cum so hard.” You nod, feeling a bead of sweat drip down your temple.
“Soon.”
“You’re gonna cum soon?” He begins playing with your nipples, even bowing his head to pull the left one into his mouth. He resumes that hold on your lower back and initially you think it's to help you grind.
“Mmm almost…almost, almost no!” He yanks you forward, away from the texture, away from the vibration. “No!!” Your hips buck against nothing.
“Breath, you’re gonna thank me.”
“No!!”
“You need this, topolina. You’ve never had the discipline to edge yourself.”
“No,” you wail in frustration.
“Take a deep breath.” You wrench your pelvis backwards, trying to return to the stimulation. “Deep breath first.” You do as he asks, and he finally releases you. At first you’re angry, but the desperation has you humping the toy like you’d be too self-conscious to any other time. Dami adds more lube. He’d grabbed the cooling one and its heaven. You forget that you’re angry, sagging forward as your legs tremble with exhaustion.
“Don’t…again.”
“I won’t. You can cum this time.” You grunt in frustration, head resting on Dami’s shoulder. He holds it there by making a fist in your hair again. Then he also rakes his fingernails down your back with the other hand. It's just a little bit of pain, but enough for your brain to confuse it with pleasure. Things climb and climb, not cresting in orgasam like you predict, but instead intensifying as the pleasure does. You begin whining at the mounting pressure and Dami, knowing you're seconds away, begins speaking encouragement in your ear.
“Almost there, almost there. Don’t panic, piccola, I’ve got you. Keep going. You’re alright. You’re alright and you’re almost there.” Feeling light headed, you consider stopping, but find that pinnacle a moment later. As you cum, that light-headedness turns into seeing stars and you worry about passing out. So you stop moving and hold onto Dami like an anchor.
“Lay down?” You manage something like a nod and he holds you with both arms while becoming horizontal. Then one hand turns off the vibrator and removes the grinding pad. Both fall on the floor with a thud.
“You’re really warm, topolina.” He shifts your body onto the couch, placing a hand on your back. “Uhh…I’m staying right here, don’t worry.” Damiano improvises and pulls the case off of a pillow, dipping the corner into a glass of water on the coffee table. He runs that down your spine, smiling as you shiver with a blissed out expression. For a while he repeats this action everywhere, helping you cool down post-orgasam.
“That was an intense one, huh?” You nod, eyes closed. “I remember how good it felt when you did this. Soothing.” A memory pulls at your consciousness, but you’re far too content with the present. Dami starts stroking your head, tucking the short pieces of hair back.
“The comment Saber made today… I guess I did talk about you. One of the exercises…we had to make a wish list, for when we got out. Stuff we wanted to do besides getting high so we wouldn’t just relapse day one. I always wanted to spend the day with you, but this has fully been a wet dream. You’re so fucking beautiful when you cum.” His eyes are misty. “I used to make myself so miserable over the fact I didn’t deserve you. Like, I’d just cry in group. It was fucking embaressing.” Your chest clenches out of empathy. “But then this grandma, she’d gotten addicted to her pain meds after hip surgery, said that meant I got to earn you. Maybe I never would, but I could act like the man you deserve, and I’d be a better person because of it. She said real love makes us good people.”
“You…are enough…already.” He freezes and stares for a couple seconds. Slowly, Dami’s hand resumes playing with your hair. You quickly turn to kiss it, then lay back down with an impish smile. Normally, that’d lighten the mood, but he's still visibly processing. He was more than entitled to. Today has been all about your emotions thus far.
“Cuddle?” That earns something close to a grin and you settle into spooning, Dami as the big spoon, of course. With more doting, his energy shifts for the better. You close your eyes and relax, simply appreciating all these touches that made you feel cherished and whole.
Notes: Now didn't I tell you all the angst would be worth it? I'm taking next week off, so you'll still be getting your Friday update (the much anticipated Bath Time chapter). I just need a breather, two chapters a week is a lot y'all. Also apologies for being way behind on answering notifications. If you've sent an ask, reblogged, and/or commented but I haven't interacted, that is not a reflection of how much I value your support and thoughts.
- XOXO Eden
P.S. I never watched Gossip Girl, so I thought "xoxo" was just an old way of communicating affection at the end of a letter lol.
This chapter is sooooo perfectly smutty and healing and wonderful and enchanting… every time i read it i get lost in this dreamy moment that jumps off the page and wraps itself around my mind and heart. The love & care Dom Dami gives in this fic is exactly what littles dream of. This helps my heart heal so much Eden thank you I luv u ❤️
This would be easier if Damiano was’t saying all the right things all at once. A minute in between, or even a warning, would make the turn in conversation more bearable.
“There was a point, a couple months in, where I would have traded a lobe of my poor liver for you to be all clingy and needy in Little headspace. I miss being your Dom so fucking much, so fucking much.” He’s putting such emphasis into his words that it slightly strains his voice. “With your anxiety, having your Dom basically disappear…and we’d spent years building the dynamic into something that was both pleasurable and therapeutic. All that trust and I…the head fuck, I can’t imagine. I don’t want you to think that it wasn’t the most special thing in the world to me.” The sobs are coming so fast that you can’t inhale in between and end up literally choking on your own misery. It's the way a toddler with no self-regulation skills cried.
“I know, at points, I’ve done power play with other partners.” He’s wincing as he speaks, which is totally unnecessary. You just didn’t get the inclination to submit to anyone else.
“But I’ve just been stuck on the thought that you might have felt replaceable.” You shake your head and try to gather the air to speak. Instead of just embracing, an hand snakes under your blouse provides pressure through calming, even strokes along your back
“Felt impor – ortan –ant,” you manage, face tucked snuggly against his neck. Damiano sighs in relief.
“Good. Thank god.”
“Knew I mattered.” Although all the syllables come out right, the next phrase is such a struggle that it's almost indiscernible. “Knew…loved, not – not a…burden.” It was the way your well-intentioned, but often unequipped parents made you feel: like more than they signed up for. It's hard to articulate negatively about a good childhood. They bought roses for your middle school graduation, but you’d rather sit on the bathroom floor with the flu alone than endure your frantic mother or patronizing father. How could a kid they very much intended to have be emotionally over-demanding? Must be something wrong with the kid.
Except nothing made you feel more right than Dami kneeling on the side of a bubble bath, contentedly washing you with a baby-pink washcloth. He used lavender scented soap and smiled adoringly at how quickly you became non-verbal.
“Feel floaty, little one?” he’d coo, asking if you’d entered headspace just from this intimate act of service. No pain. No sex. The dynamic had reached a point where just his presence and intention was enough since Damiano, himself, was completely tranquil. It created a euphoric energy exchange, always nurturing. He enjoyed it, you blossomed, but that all came to a grinding halt as soon as the trust wore thin.
“Selfishly, I miss feeling in control, too. I tried to sublimate, but I couldn’t wait for the scenes to me over. It felt manufactured with new partners and just…wrong. Gross, even. Fuck, why am I saying this?” he groans. “I just wanted something to click so badly and it didn’t.
“S’okay.”
“I know this is asking for a lot. Really, I shouldn’t be asking for anything at all, considering living together is more than I realistically hoped for. You know what? I’m gonna shut up.” You shake your head, drying your wet face on the cotton of Dam’s shirt, only for it to be full of tears again. “Okay, I wish that — I want there to be a way that I earn your trust again, dynamic wise. I miss my little girl.”
That one physically hurts, like a side cramp from running after drinking too much water. The stabbing pain emanates deep into your torso because “yeaning” doesn’t begin to describe your emotions. You literally ached to be curled up in Dami’s lap while he hit his weed vape during The Little Mermaid. Of course, half an hour in, he was humming the melodies into your ear. Sometimes he even did voices or rocked back and forth to the beat of the songs, the soft pajamas he’s dressed you in pleasantly brushing your skin.
“I miss holding you and feeling the pure joy at convincing me to watch one of those Disney movies that are intolerable except for the music. You try to hide how excited you get and I try to act like I wasn’t gonna say yes to anything you picked.”
“Damia…” You ball your hands into fists, fingernails biting into the soft flesh. It's a bad habit, but an effective one. The little bit of pain keeps you present when you’d like to fawn. This wasn’t the place: rehab facility, in a previously sterile, closet–size room. The couple times you’d accidentally slipped into subspace semi-publicly had been scary. If you were meeting him on tour, Damiano was extremely intentional about creating a controlled environment, and if he didn’t feel confident, you wouldn't play.
Perhaps, without realizing it, the hand under your shirt is stoking at the same pace as an even breath. When one body was upset, the other subconsciously moved to calm it. All you needed was to breathe in time with his hand against your back, and allow yourself to fall into submission. Every cell in your being had been screaming for this, waiting months for Dami’s reassuring touch, but you couldn’t allow yourself to enjoy it. Hell, you shouldn't be allowing it whatsoever because based on recent history you’d end up hurt. Worse still, you’d feel helpless, which was an emotion you’d clawed your way out of with cut up hands and bleeding fingernails.
“I need to stand up,” you decide, clambering off his lap. It takes Dami by surprise and he hangs onto your wrists while you struggle to get your feet right. He can tell something is awry.
“Okay, you're standing. What now?” he asks in his gentlest voice. Speak. Fucking speak. Maybe you could go home and fall back into memory, pretend it wasn’t a temporary fix that would ultimately deepen the wound.
“Look at me.” You can’t stop your face from turning, so you squeeze your eyes closed and feel a rush of tears. “Look at me.” You pout your lip and shake your head, whimpering in distress. The lip pout was a dead giveaway, so you bite it instead and taste blood. The palms of your hands hurt, your lip hurt, your heart hurt. How was a person supposed to contain this much hurt and be unaffected?
“When we split you didn’t have another dom. How long did it take you to find one, y/n?” He caught on too easily. Your left leg begins shaking, quivering at the knee like it's about to give out. Your body tries to contain nervous energy. It’s too much. The sobs are so frequent you struggle to breath, coughing on snot.
“Did some piece of shit hurt you, piccola mia? What did they do wrong?” You choke on your own spit at the tone of his voice, covered in goosebumps. Damiano probably didn’t realize how dominant he sounded. His little girl making a mistake within a new dynamic wasn’t even a possibility to him. Had to be the dom’s fault because you were perfection.
“When you’re ready we can redo the scene and it’ll go exactly how you want. I’ll be so careful to replace that bad memory with a good one. Hmm?” You shake your head. There had been no bad substitute dom, because there’d been no other dom at all.
“Open your eyes,” he commands, tightening the grip on your wrists. Dami sits forward and pulls you between his spread legs. You stare at your left shoe. One of Princess’s hairs was on the bland, gray carpet, nearly camouflaged.
“I haven't submitted to anyone,” you whisper so quietly that not even crying can distort the words.
“Look at me.” It's another command, more forceful. His grip on your wrists aches, just enough to draw attention. Keeping the kicked puppy expression off of your face became impossible ten minutes ago, so when Dami looks, he sees. He’s absolutely devastated, then kicking himself for not putting two and two together.
“You’re going to be Little for a while. Sit on my lap.” Now that the decisions made, you’re so awash in relief that your oxygenation gets even more fucked up.
“Can’t breathe.” He makes the decision physically, too, and pulls you down to him. You go completely pliant, so sitting on his lap becomes laying on his chest. Dami turns both your bodies to fit semi-comfortably along the tiny bed. You peel off your shirt to reveal just a sports bra, worn to keep the boobage under control. Now all that matters was his warm hands on your bare skin. The shirt falls to the floor and Princess sniffs it out of curiosity.
“Let me change into a tank top,” he murmurs. It's a sign of respect, since he’d go shiftless any other time. “Loosen your grip. I’m just getting something from my dresser, you're okay, topolina.” Subconsciously, you’d wrapped your arms around Dami and established a vice hold, so he’d have to pry your arms apart to get away. It was a desperate move.
“Sorry.”
“You’re not allowed to apologize unless I ask, surely you remember that.”
“I remember,” you slip into Little Voice and watch Damiano’s from out under your lashes. It’d be so much quicker to get out of bed, but instead he props himself on his left elbow and reaches to open the drawer with his right hand. As a result you get to stay on his chest and listen to his heartbeat through the cotton.
Every movement is done together. Sitting up with a firm arm around your waist is done together. You even help him pull off the baggy t-shirt and unnecessarily smooth over the straps of his tank top. He’s gained muscle fast. Already you can see the difference in Damiano’s biceps and shoulders. It’d still be nice to see a healthy layer of body fat. Right now he’s a bit sinewy.
“They have a gym here.”
“You noticed,” he beams. Rather than answer his gaze, you stare at where your thighs touch and feel yourself get wet.
“Mm, you forget that I can feel what you’re thinking when you’re on my lap, michetta.” Why in god’s name did you wear cheap trousers and thin underwear? Even your ear’s burn with embarrassment.
“Awe, now did I say you were allowed to blush that pretty?” He takes the hair tie from your wrist and pulls your hair back, so he can see your face from all angels. “Does this feel nice?” Dami fingers combs your locks, stropping whenever there's a tangle until the full ponytail is clutched in his first. Then he pulls from the base of your skull. You're too braindead to provide resistance. Rather than pull your hair, Damiano ends up tilting your whole head back. You freeze, afraid it's your mistake.
Initially, all Dami does is breathe, and you can feel the air hitting your stretched neck. He just sits there, with your head craned back, enjoying the view of all your exposed skin, like a predator before butchering its meal. Just allowing this stance is an act of submission by you. His eyes fall to the notch at the base of your neck, across your clavicles, along the flat expanse of your breast bone, and landing on the line of your cleavage.
“Notice your breathing.” For the first time in several minutes, your awareness turns inward, away from your dominant. Was the pattern of your inhale-exhale normal? No. But was it panicked? Also no. You were panting, aroused by the knowledge of Dami’s eyes on your neck. It was a ridiculous reaction.
“‘S better.”
“Mhm.” The hand around your middle slowly rises to your throat. Damiano simply sets the bottom knuckles against your trachea, not applying any force, intricately observing your reaction. Then he folds the entirety of his warm palm around your neck, keeping tension with your hair. Finally he wraps his fingers around the column of your neck, leaving you in rapture. At any moment, he’ll apply force, restricting blood flow and subsequently flooding you in endorphins when his grip releases. Dami’s thumb tenderly rubs behind your ear lobe, the gentle sensation a precursor to some brutality that never comes.
“You are okay.” Using both hands, Damiano brings your head upright. As soon as he lets go you feel the weight of the world and yearn for his guiding touch.
“Signore?” you say his chosen Honorific in confusion. His careful hands are back, tucking your face securely between his shoulder and neck. One resumes the delicious tension with your hair and the other cups your cheek as he lays back down.
“So good at keeping your eyes closed, piccola. Remember I had to train you to do that? Now, you give in without me even asking. Such a perfect pet.” He kisses your forehead and rubs your bare back while administering the occasional validation. “Curled up just right, topolina. You are my sweetest little girl when you’re snuggly.” Just when you’re prepared to swan dive into subspace for the foreseeable future, Dami jostles your shoulder. “I need you to stay verbal.” You groan in protest, feeling disoriented as you search for words. They’re unreachable objects, floating around in your submissive mental fog.
“Ssh, shh. I didn’t want you to startle. That's my fault and I’m sorry,” he coos, stroking your hair with gentle pressure that coaxes you to lay down. “Take a deep breath. Mhm, that's just how I asked, piccola mia. You’re doing a really good job.”
“Brain off,” you groan. Damiano chuckles, but keeps his hand at the same pace. He’s good at that. As a dominant partner, his physicality often had a hypnotic quality.
“I’m sorry that I have to keep you at the surface. I wish it was different, that I could be a better Dom.”
“You…good Dom.”
“Three whole words? I’m impressed. I’ve seen you go non-verbal for so long I wondered if you’d talk the next morning.”
“Mm…nice.”
“Yeah, I bet that sounds nice right now. Maybe we’ll do that when I get home. This can be non-sexual for a while.” The bastard properly yanks your hair for the first time as punctuation, just enough for a violent full-body shiver and a little sting at the nape of the neck. It was your favorite.
“Fuck you.” Simultaneously, you stretch like Princess in the sun, coiling yourself tighter around Dami. “Fuck you and the way you smell.” Your nose was nudging against the back of his head, where all the sweat collected.
“I’m one day past needing a shower. Sorry, I know you only like that when you’re ovulating and feral.” And right now. He smelled grubby in a way you wanted to taste too. Would he notice if you licked him? With inhibitions compromised, you lick the nape of his neck, feeling the short hairs at the top with your tongue. Damiano startles and pulls away, shocked.
“Did you just lick me?” It's such a harsh reaction that you immediately regret it. Now that the cuddles have stopped, you feel uneasy with self consciousness. What kind of invasive, tone deaf pervert does what you just did? And here you’d lectured about boundaries.
Damiano’s face dissolves from shock into pity into regret. He cups your cheek, thumb brushing back and forth. Were you crying again? You couldn’t feel your face, or anywhere else on your body. He hasn’t given you permission to apologize. Even so, the words are almost bursting forth.
“You surprised me,” he explains slowly, speaking like you’re a confused child. It’s healing, to be talked down to, but not demeaned, in a world where your senses are in a constant state of being assaulted by information.
“Good surprise. I shouldn’t have jumped. I’m sorry, pet.” It was the second time he’s said ‘I’m sorry,’ while you weren’t allowed. “It’s been so long since I had the privilege of our dynamic and…” Dami looks out the window again, and sighs in thought. He pulls you close again and rolls over so he’s resting on top this time. With his familiar weight pushing you into the mattress, not wrapping your legs around his hips becomes a very conscious choice.
“You are uninhibited by shame in the expression of your submission.” A single finger on your chin brings your eyes to his and Damiano’s gaze is the only thing necessary to own your attention. “So strictly platonic might not work for us, because I will never put limits on your sexual expression.” The moment is so intense that you mentally beg for Dami to release it, but he grasps it with an iron-clad fist, willfully. “So things are going to be partially experimental, at your discretion, because hard boundaries are not comfortable for you. They are not where you thrive.”
You’re nodding along in wide-eyed agreement, dreading when this moment ends and you have to have an entire thought on your own. Dami is holding himself very still, rather than relaxing against you as is normal. It's undoubtedly because he’s hard. Wanting to feel that validation you begin to raise your knees, intending to wrap your legs over his hips and bring him close enough to eliminate any secrets. With a firm hand on your thigh, he stops the gesture, legs returning to the bed.
“Breathe,” he reminds, caressing your ribcage.
“I wanna apologize,” you whimper, embarrassed at your own horny behavior.
“No. Breathe into my hand.” Each inhale, you focus on the sensation of Dami’s skin against yours and his weight on your left side. “I will not allow you to apologize for organically acting out your desires. I am here to regulate your behavior. I don’t expect you to do it.” Damiano’s face begins to blur as you slip deeper into submission and try to claw your way towards the surface.
He resituates your bodies to lay facing each other. One hand is cupping your ribcage, the other rests at the base of your neck. The immediate adrenaline rush makes you more cognizant. Curious about all the movement, Princess hops on the bed, meowing a complaint that there is not enough room to lay between your torsos.
“I'm busy, babygirl,” he tells her. She meows again and turns her head away, as if she understands.
“Okay, brain turning on.”
“Just keep breathing. That’s all you have to do and you’re listening so well.” He rubs circles on your chest and in response your nipples get hard, even though the bra’s padding. “I love it when you touch me like this,” he muses. Gathering all your focus, you slip a hand under Dami’s tanktop and lay it on his sternum.
“Piccola mia, look at me.” He only has to ask once. “You are okay. I know this was just the beginning of what you needed.” Instead of crying as a response to everything, you access that little well of calm inside you, and find that there's steadiness to be had. “If we were to do a scene, you might not feel safe here, or you might feel uneasy afterwards. Also you need to drive home.”
“I understand.” You strain to kiss Dami’s nose.
“Breathe. You are okay.”
“I am okay,” you repeat back, automatically.
“You are okay.”
“I am okay.” You finally consider the words and nod in understanding. “I’m okay. I’m not actively trying to keep it together anymore. Holy shit, I actually feel alright,” you exclaim in surprise. He hums in agreement, and pulls you onto his chest. Being constantly reminded to breathe steadily has manually calmed your nervous system down. Your body physically knew that it wasn’t in a state of distress anymore, panic gone.
“Fiveish minute warning,” Damiano announces, like a nanny at a playground.
“No,” you grumble, getting a more secure grip and nuzzling.
“When you feel like you’re gonna turn into a sinkhole from all the pressure life is applying, find this feeling again. It’ll still be there. You don’t have to use it or owe it to anybody. Just have some peace and know I believe in your capabilities unconditionally.”
“I believe in you unconditionally.” Dami scoffs and pats the mattress.
“This bed we’re laying on, is in a rehab facility that I didn’t even get myself into. My brilliant, persuasive girlfriend tricked the entire Italian healthcare system and babysat me on the way here.”
“Technically I committed a crime, so don’t put me too high on a pedestal.” He frowns with just the right side of his mouth, eyes darting back and forth on the textured ceiling. “Hey…” You fold both hands on his chest to prop up your chin.
“Hey.”
“You’re missing the point.” He cocks an eyebrow. “We’re laying in a bed in a rehab facility that I tricked my way into together.” This earns a full smile and a suggestive lip bite. It's humanizing to view Dami from an angle that gives him a double chin, as he gazes down in adoration.
“That is a good point.” His eyes scan your face, repeatedly darting down to your lips. It is a very intimate position.
“Okay, so this is a question, not a statement.”
“Mhm.”
“Are you trying to get me to kiss you right now? Because I can’t tell.” You blush and break eye contact, laying a cheek to the cotton of Dami’s tank top. “Ah, fuck me. That’s a no. Fuck.”
“Not yet,” you whisper, tracing the lines of a cat tattoo on the inside of his bicep.
“I’m not trying to pressure you.”
“I know. It doesn’t come off that way.”
“Good because I don’t…I’m really happy with where we’re at and I don’t want to do anything to damage it.”
“You’re not, Damia and I don’t wanna…freak out and get snot all over you.”
“Are you kidding? That’s the first normal reaction you’ve had to all this. I’m relieved. Anger and tears are reactions I can understand.”
“I’ll be sure to yell at you next time.”
“You say that as a joke but it’d be nice to get it out of the way.” That comment rubs you the wrong way and you sit up.
“Do you think I’m just harboring secret rage, waiting for a moment where I can cause optimal damage to unleash it?”
“Wha – no. No, I don’t think that.”
“I haven’t held back on our phone calls or when we split up. I walked out of the hospital and I blocked all ways for you to contact me.”
“I know, I just feel like I deserve…more. More punishment.”
“That sounds like some shit you need to figure out with a therapist, not put on me.” Damn, subbyness gone.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ugh!” You splay out on his chest once more, missing the simplicity of the previous moment.
“I ruined it.”
“You can’t be constantly debilitated by self-loathing because staying sober and putting our relationship back together isn’t gonna work with that weight. I don’t resent you the way you’re bracing for.”
“Why?” he presses.
“Because you are not the person I broke up with! Become that person again, and you will feel the wrath of a thousand hell demons. But this person –” you poke the middle of his chest with your pointer finger. “I fell in love with at 18 and continue to love. I know you didn’t act maliciously, or as your true self. Anger is just…so simple. Too simple.” He softens and traces his fingertips up and down your spine. “I will be an absolute prison warden about drug testing though.”
“Good, that’ll make me feel better. And I’m glad that you’re acknowledging the hurt I caused, even if it wasn’t my intent. Intent doesn’t heal the wounds.”
“Well, except…“knowing you didn’t mean to hurt someone takes away a lot of the betrayal, so it does matter.” You shift and sign in contentment. God, he really smelled unreasonably delicious. “Plus I’m a big girl, I can work through my emotions.” His fingertips massage your scalp in a way that damn near makes your eyes roll back. Instead, you shiver while he gathers your hair in a fist.
“My turn.”
“Huh?” Damiano flips you on your back again, but instead of keeping his head level, he lowers his face to your chest. You still don’t understand what's going on until his tongue licks between your cleavage, up to your collar bones. From there he kisses along your neck with tongue, pulling your hair to make the area more accessible to his mouth.
“Hnngg mm, Damia. Ahh, okay.” His tongue runs along the shell of your ear, making every body hair stand on end from the stimulation. “Huuuh, fuck. Not fair. Mm-mmm, not…not fair.” His chuckle is ridiculously sexy and he takes his time pulling away. “Not fair.” Damiano wears a self-satisfied smile, knowing he’s bested you, in addition to turning you on. Perhaps two orgasams before visiting wasn’t enough, because you actually consider lunging forward and kissing him hard. Maybe that's what he wants, to bait you into action without implicating himself. It's a challenge that he doesn’t mean to pose. Regardless, you take it.
“Princess?” You make a couple high-pitched trills and she jumps on your chest. Dami is surprised to have the focus pivoted away from him. Ever the attention whore, Princess rubs her cheek against his before settling down.
“Do you think she misses me?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Cause clearly, you miss me.” Sitting up, you brush the cat hair off your shirt and pull it on. Damiano makes a wounded noise in protest.
“Looks like you’ll have to lick something else now,” you quip. By that you mean an arm or the fabric of your top, not the lightning fast comeback Dami delivers.
“I would lick something else. Now, if you’d like. Happily.” He gestures to his bed and your cunt burns, despite cunnilingus not even being an option.
“You’re funny.”
“I couldn’t be more serious.”
“Pretty sure intercourse is against the rules. Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I’m pretty sure that's what they think we’re doing right now,” he grins. Horrified, you yank the door open while Dami cackles. Luckily, he manages to catch Princess before she makes a run for it. Her short leash hangs on the bedpost closest to you. In a whisper, he repeats an earlier phrase while reaching for it.
“Did I say you were allowed to blush that pretty?” For a moment you’re speechless and sweaty. He sets Princess down and holds out the leash. Your mind is too preoccupied to realize that he’s offering it to you. Dami smirks as he steps out into the hallway. You try to think of some little gesture or a phrase that will do to him what he’s done to you. Everything that comes to mind is either not good enough, or too public. You’re fumbling and he loves to watch you lust for him.
“You want to have some gelato outside?”
“If you promise to be civil.” He wiggles his eyebrows in a way that does not suggest compliance. You decide to be crude rather than clever, pinching his ass right before he steps into the hallway. Damiano yelps and jumps half a foot in the air, as does Princess.
“Oops.” You skirt around him before he gets the chance to return the favor, skipping towards the stairs. The building was grand, with a high, intricately carved ceiling. Behind you, Dami was speed walking, Princess struggling to keep up. He ends up having to stop and scoop her off the floor, by which time you’re waiting at the end of the hall with a devilish smile. Maybe you were destined to play games of chase like this, until you trusted things enough to be caught.
His eyes scan the surroundings twice before growling, “c’mere.” You shake your head and hop down the steps as soon as he nears touching distance. It's not like Dami could grope you in the common areas where everyone gathered between meals and therapies, but this space was empty. You look over your shoulder, undecided if you’ll let him catch you, and he can see that indecision. Suddenly, it feels like a not so innocent game of prey and predator. Your focus oscillates between Dami and your feet walking backwards down the steps.
“Y/n, behind you!” You freeze and see a frail woman who could be anywhere from 40-70 years old with an amused expression. She was climbing up the stairs, minding her business, like a normal person.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Uh…sorry,” you cringe. First you flatten yourself against the railing, then realize she might need the railing. Already the woman has silently moved to the opposite side of the staircase. Dami’s nose is scrunched up in embarrassment, too.
“Lovely cat,” she murmurs so quietly only Dami realizes she's spoken.
“Oh, thank you!” His normal voice booms through the foyer in comparison. Damiano glances at Princess, as if noticing her for the first time, then sets her down. She meows just before her splayed paws hit carpet and looks up in apparent disappointment.
“Come on, Miss Sassy Pants.” Once he’s in lock step, you lean over and whisper, “do you know that lady?”
“Mm-mm, she’s new.” His tightly controlled expressions indicate the obvious, that notoriety is a taboo subject in the facility.
“Have people given you any trouble?”
“Thank god, no. The other patients have been in their own worlds for a while. Plus, no internet access, remember? Lord knows what they’re saying about me.”
“Really nice, genuine, complimentary things,” you deadpan.
“Oh, really? That's a relief.” The paparazzi were publishing every sallow picture after a night out they could get their hands on, and even better if there was a model in the frame. Alot of the pictures were with women he’d never slept with, and while simply hung-over, not high. Of course that didn't matter. The more they had to recycle material, the more preposterous the claims got.
“Last week they said you’ve been away managing a secret sex cult, not in rehab.” He scoffs as you walk towards the kitchen.
“Could be worse, I guess. Or less interesting.”
“Yeah…until the claims that it was mostly 16-year-olds started up.” Damiano stops in his tracks with an expression like he’s drunk sour milk. “But it got disproved in like a day! Fans started leaving horrendous reviews on the tabloid sites. Some of them were actually really funny…” You trial off, because Damiano is visibly seething. “Hey, literally no one believed it, Dam.”
“But the fact that they even thought it was acceptable to publish that, with absolutely no evidence, like it was news makes me sick. We always consciously avoided the groupie narrative and now…” He throws his hands up in frustration.
“Pop culture doesn’t differentiate between a womanizer and a predator because it's normalized that sex be coerced. That's on society, not you.”
“Maybe I’ll say something to that effect as part of my great rebranding. God it's just…” he stares at the carpet and scowls, mulling it over. “I don’t want to be angry, right now, while you’re visiting, this just really, really pisses me off.” After personally giving dubious and questionable consent in his mid-teens, the subject was a sore spot for Dami. He was very intentional about never doing that to someone else.
“Maybe you can sue them for character deformation? Use the publicity to bolster releasing an In Nome Del Padre type single?”
“Now there's an idea,” he allows a sliver of a smile.
“It would sure suck if paparazzi started harassing the journalist who wrote the article after seeing them in court.”
“Now that would be a great tragedy.”
“Perhaps there would even be a support group, for the fellow grievers.”
“I think that’s called a party.”
“I’ll bring the balloons if you bring the cake?”
“Deal,” he finally grins. “Christ,I can’t even…” Damiano shakes his head and sighs heavily. “Maybe I don’t miss the internet.”
“Porn.”
“Good point…But mostly I miss my camera roll.” You try not to turn red.
“Certain pictures on your phone make me very nervous.”
“They are very safe.” According to many technological precautions you didn’t understand, Damiano’s camera roll was highly secure. But more so you trusted that, as a Dom, he’d never let images of you being Little be viewed by anyone. Yes you were happily non-monogamous, but as dominant, Damiano fucking lived for the fact that he didn’t share your submission. The polyamory was completely separate from your personal daddy/sub dynamic.
What he got off on most of all wasn’t the nudes, or necessarily kink, but pictures he’d carefully orchestrated of you having sex together. After getting consent, he’d set up the phone camera with a random timer. Not knowing when the picture was going to be taken meant you couldn’t pose. Rather than his usual rhythm, Dami gave you as much stimulation as possible right out the gate, so you’d forget the camera by the time he found a slow groove. Then he’d rev the sex back up with tantric work, toys, dirty talk, and considerate angles.
The result were images of you sweaty, flushed, gasping, half cognizant, and blissed out. Either captured at a moment of tension, or the release right after. They were not pretty. If you were kissing it could be downright ugly. Damiano always looked just as fucked out, but he wore it like a sex god. Sometimes, the full body shots of you on top felt beautiful, but he never preferred those. Dami loved the gaping mouth, furrowed brow face you made when rubbing your clit against him the exact right way. He’d excitedly point out the crescent-shaped nail marks on his chest you left when dragging your slick pussy along his pubic bone for the sake of orgasmic friction. In real life, or in the pictures.
“You didn’t delete them?” Dami stops in his tracks, face revealing that he hadn’t thought about this until now.
“Should I have?” he says slowly.
“I guess not. I didn’t set up a contingency, so it wasn’t violating anything. I just thought since we were – are, that you wouldn’t want…I mean you had access to all – wait did you take pictures with other people?” Exchanging and creating sexual images with other partners wasn’t even a conversation because of the fame. Now your voice comes out wounded and accusatory at the thought of him sharing this practice during your time apart.
“Not…” He guides you towards the empty kitchen to finish the conversation, as you wear an expression of shock. Intimate photography had only existed between you two out of necessity, not because you forbade it with other partners. It wasn’t until he mentioned it that you realized this closed practice had created territorialism. You’d fallen right into the trap of monogamy – of wanting exclusive rights to Damiano’s sexual autonomy – at the first opportunity possible. The hum of the refrigerator and Dami’s hand on your mid-back bring you to the present. Princess is meowing persistently, probably because this is where her food is stored.
“You know what, it's almost dinner time. I’ll just feed her now so she’ll stop bothering us.”
“If it's almost dinner then I should go. Our time is up. I –”
“Y/n.” He holds you by the shoulders with intimidatingly intense eye contact. “I was not using sex in a healthy way. I was using it like drugs, okay? It was mostly inebriated and mediocre. Yes, I did photograph it on the rare occasion I was sober-ish and gave a fuck, but those photos never made it onto my phone. Pictures preserve memories. There was nothing about that time I wanted to remember, especially how I acted.” He crouches down to pet Princess, self-soothing, and you hop up on the counter for something to do. Dami pulls a little metal dish from under the fridge and her meows only intensify.
“I know, I know. It's happening. I’m getting your fancy dinner, babygirl.” He pulls open the door and the cool air hits your skin. “So I’ve been thinking about how our relationship is at a point where it's gonna evolve a lot.”
“Agreed.” Dami grabs ground, raw meat and a couple of plastic pump bottles out of the refrigerator.
“So even if we were to take a couple hours and hash our relationship all the way out,” he uses a measuring cup to transfer the meat to the bowl, “a week from now it might be…a totally different um, thing.”
“Right, and what’s that stuff?”
“Beef?” Damiano looks over his shoulder while washing his hands and raises an eyebrow.
“No, the bottles.”
“Oh! It’s fish oil, plus vitamins and supplements for her coat, her bones, her eyesight.”
“Princess, the immortal, spoiled feline.”
“That's the idea, yeah.” She circles Dami’s legs, meowing incessantly, until he sets her bowl down.
“But, I agree about how fast our relationship will be evolving. I guess, ideally we’d sit down each time it felt like something had shifted, but that sounds…”
“Like a lot?”
“Exhausting. Doing the full negotiation while you’re still in the early days of recovery sounds emotionally overwhelming to be honest. And I’d like to say, ‘can’t we just agree to love each other with dignity and reverence,’ but that seems naive.” Damiano thinks for a few seconds, putting things back in the fridge.
“I’m,” he gestures with his hands “sort of doing a reset towards my – well, our fundamental principles. Because I really wasn’t conducting myself in a way I was proud of for several months there. And I want to talk about it.” He takes the gelato container from the refrigerator and retrieves a spoon. “Or rather I’m willing to talk about it” Dami grumbles while fighting with the lid. He finally manages to remove it, revealing the creamy, light green color.
“Okay, this is gonna sound so cheesy, but I couldn’t eat gelato while we were broken up.” Using some grip strength, he digs the first spoonful out.
“Oh my gosh, Damia.” It’d been so long since you’d last felt butterflies. (Which you’d never outright attribute partially to him speaking in the past tense). Technically you were still broken up, but it didn’t feel like it. This was some uncomfortable in between, a limbo. However, Damiano didn’t call you broken up to his band mates, even though that label had definitely been put on your relationship in a mutual decision.
“What's that face?” he passes you a spoonful. The handle is warm from his grip.
“You didn’t tell anyone we were broken up, did you?” He can see from your smile that you aren’t upset, which just makes him bashful. It's a rare occurrence to see Damiano David bashful. “Hah! You’re adorable.” He stares at his shoes while you enjoy the first taste of gelato. “Mister megastardom is blushing.”
“No, I’m not blushing. Shut up,” he grins. “And I may have, possibly…um, avoided using that particular label as much as possible. So yeah, I have said it, but I’ve also avoided it, to be honest. Vic has gotten good at hiding the visible pity in her expression, but Thomas especially has a ways to go.” You pry a spoonful out of the container and feed it to Dami. He stands between your legs, hands resting just above your knees.
“I propose that we are officially not broken up.”
“So then we are…”
“Not broken up.”
“Okay…” His tone is unsure, but he allows one of those precious smiles that reveal his gums and offers another up more gelato. “So are we friends?” As it melts in your mouth, you contemplate the requirements for friendship. It became too painful to continue relationships with a couple of my friends who were super into the club scene and bordering on substance abuse. But Dami was sober.
“Or no? Needing to allocate all my focus to staying sober and repairing my mistakes may not make me a very good friend.” He’s self aware and gracious which makes the decision harder. You scoop the gelato with so much gusto that it nearly ends on the floor.
“But consciousness about substance misuse and commitment to repairing relationships are really vital to my friendships right now.” You raise another spoonful to his lips. This time it takes Damiano a second to accept it. “So I don’t know, but it's really important that I do know.”
“Hey.” In a comforting gesture, Dami slides his hands up your thighs and leans in to make more meaningful eye contact. “I don’t want to exhaust you with this, sweetheart. I –” his self-awareness kicks in and he takes a step back, hands purposefully occupying themselves with the spoon and container. “We are roommates and you’ve already told me, in detail, your boundaries on that.”
“On your sobriety! There aren’t supposed to be hard rules in relationships!” You're exasperated and Damiano isn’t offended. Instead, he taps your lip with the spoon as a reminder to open your mouth.
“We are intentionally repairing our bond to work towards a relationship.” You nod and take a deep breath, feeling calmer. The gelato is beginning to melt, runny around the edges. If it overflows the container will never get un-sticky.
“You should put that in the freezer.” He sighs and stops meeting your eyes. The top of the container is stiff. Damiano carelessly tosses the shared spoon into the sink and the metallic sound is so loud that it makes you jump. He spins around right away with an anxious expression.
“Sorry, sorry! That wasn’t intentional, I’m just not used to having a metal sink. It’s basically always filled with water for doing dishes. I wasn’t tryna be intimidating or some bullshit. I’m sorry. I –” whispering to himself, Dami says “what the fuck is wrong with you” He clips Princess back onto her leash and loops it over the knob on a cupboard.
“That wasn’t me trying to change the subject, Damia. I got yelled at so many times for letting the gelato melt that it's like a Pavlovian response.”
“Okay.” He relaxes his shoulders, resuming his previous stance.
“Okay,” you repeat with a small smile.
“We know how to do right by each other and we’re on the same page. You’ve updated your boundaries. As far as I know, mine are the same. I’m sure shit will come up, but we’re good at communicating.” Unexpectedly, serenity washes over you at once again reaching cohesion. It was a familiar sensation with Dami, to be grounded in the presence of each other. He takes a deep breath in as well.
“Nesting partners. It’s a label I’ve learned, but I know you’re not big into terminology.”
“No, tell me what it means.”
“It's the companion you live with. Not necessarily your primary.”
“Sounds like something from a documentary about birds.”
“It does,” you laugh. “Anyways, if you wanted a word for us, that’d be it.”
“Are you asking me to be your nesting partner?” Subconsciously, he leans forward out of excitement, hands sliding halfway up your thighs.
“And you’re willing to have David Attenborough narrate your every shit for National Geographic broadcasting?”
“Totally.” You suppress the urge to kiss Dami and instead pointedly look down at his hands, now creeping towards your hips.
“Well, then…”
“Shit, sorry. Sorry.” He stands upright, tries to put his hands in his pockets, then realizes these pants don’t actually have pockets. “I wasn’t trying to make a move or – I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it. I’m just really used to touching you.” Cue heartbeat skip.
“Trust me, I get it. Like when –”
The moment is interrupted by movement just outside of the kitchen. You push Damiano back by a hand in the center of his chest so things weren’t so intimate.
“Ah, there you are! Hiding from me!”
“I wasn’t hiding,” Dami defends, in a way you recognize as bluffing. A staff member, this time dressed in slacks and a wrinkled, blue button-up, walks into the kitchen. He’s amused, not frustrated, which is a small mercy. Maybe Dami doesn’t realize how close your bodies are, maybe he likes it, but you can’t get off the counter without running into him.
“Sorry, I’ll go.” You push him back again, and this time he finally heeds your request.
“Don’t worry about it. It's just behavioral therapy,” he murmurs, as you adjust your trousers self-consciously.
“Sounds pretty fucking important for an addict.”
“I would have to agree with y/n. I’m Dr. Rossi. I haven’t spoken with you personally, but I’ve heard so much about you from everyone.” He clasps his hands and looks at Dami expectantly.
“Right, so they’ll have my purse and stuff at the front desk. So I’ll just –”
“How late am I?”
“13 minutes,” he replies, looking at his expensive watch with a flourish.
“Eh, damage is done. Let me walk you out.” Dr. Rossi nods curtly, gesturing at you to go forth first. Ignoring this, Dami takes his time grabbing Princess’ leash in one hand and yours in the other.
“What do you mean ‘damage done?’”.
“They write me up if I’m more than 5 minutes late. Then there’s a worse penalty at 10 minutes. At 20 it doesn’t count and I get billed for a missed session. Plus they scowl at me for a couple days.”
“Damia,” you groan. He shrugs and nods hello to someone else walking a snow white cat on a neon green leash.
“That's Yeti. He’s a dog inside a feline’s body, plays fetch.”
“Okay, well thats fucking adorable, but you’re not gonna distract me from blowing off your therapist.” He sighs heavily as you reach the doors.
“It's one appointment. Everything here is scheduled. I get the purpose, but I feel claustrophobic. You make me feel the opposite of that. Plus, even with visitor privileges, I’m only guaranteed one half hour slot every two weeks.”
“Oh, your parents.”
“Uh, no. My mom can adequately berate me over the phone. I just fucking miss you and your energy.”
“But your dad…”
“She has him by the balls.” Damiano tries to shove his hands in his pockets again and looks at the floor. Sensing his stress, Princess sits on his shoe and gazes upwards. Only one of them feels like a caged animal and ironically it's not the one on the leash.
“Maybe I can talk to them?” He shakes his head, looking off to the side now instead of meeting your eyes. It was such an obvious tell.
“I don’t want you to spend your time doing that. In a way, I was the golden boy until this. I don’t know how she’s gonna react and I don’t want your feelings hurt on my account.” You momentarily consider proposing speaking to Damiano’s father, then realize that might feel like a betrayal to Andrea.
“It’s just a matter of time?”
“Yeah,” he agrees softly, pursing his lips.
“She’ll change her mind once you’ve been sober for a while,” you reassure, not knowing if it's true. He finally meets your gaze, cocking his head to the side, seeing straight through your empty platitude. Lost for words, you hug Dami, careful not to step on Princess’ paws. She seems content at the sight of her parents embracing. Or maybe you’re just deflecting your own emotions.
Three months ago you’d have called bullshit at anyone claiming Damiano would be setting a sobriety record, that being wrapped in his arms would feel so right and organic. You savor his smell and relax with an exhale as his hug tightens. For some reason the intrusive thoughts always bubbled up at greetings and farewells. The day's emotion, however positive, would probably result in nightmares tonight.
“I’m alive. I’m okay. I’m in love with you,” he murmurs, as if reading your mind.
“Ditto.”
“You don’t need to be okay.” Finally, amidst all the terror around Dami’s health, you ask yourself the question. Am I okay? Nightmares, severe and occasionally uncontrollable anxiety, mental stress from lacking a dom, general stress because of Damiano. A job that was supposed to be fulfilling, but made you too feel like a polar bear in a gray, plastic enclosure.
“What is it,” he murmurs.
“Shit, I don’t know if I’m okay,” you choke. The wave of emotion is so unexpected that it feels like getting jumped.
“I’m going to take care of you. It's a relief to have the opportunity to take care of you.” The inner peace from earlier is harder to access than you like. Maybe you’d have to ration it.
“I’m gonna leave before I turn into a mess again,” you speak into the fabric of his tank top. Princess cocks her head to the side, and you miss her persistent little presence with a pang in your gut. You pull away and squat down to bid her farewell, stroking between her ears.
“I’ll see you soon, Sassy Pants.” As you straighten up, it's obvious Damiano is deeply conflicted. “I don’t want to let you leave like this. I want to make it all better.”
“It is better. It’s not perfect.” You stroke his face, then his hair. It’s at awkward length, spiking up at random angles. This touch prompts Dami to rub his head self-consciously.
“It looks like shit.”
“It looks fine. You look good.” That, at least, earns a smile. It’s a better note to end on, so you decide to make your exit. Nervously slipping out was certainly easier than a ceremonious goodbye like this.
“I’m gonna go before you get a missed appointment fee.”
“Fuck the fee,” he responds ardently. You can feel the mood swing coming, but the volatility of his emotions makes them hard to read. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Damia,” you whine, heart clenching.
“Sorry, that was unnecessary. Drive safe.” He bows his head to avoid your eyes. Wanting to make the leaving a little sweeter, you peck his cheek.
“Bye Princess.” Less than a month and you won’t have to fight the urge to look back, because you’ll be walking out together. No more Orpheus and Eurydice. This is what ultimately sustains you as the heavy maple door falls shut. The sky – clear when you entered the building – is now plagued with clouds.
Notes: Whew! The longest chapter yet and we sure covered a lot of ground with these two. Cutting it pretty close posting this late in the day, but I made it. I got distracted by giving my taglist a makeover and quite probably making it worse. Oh well.
*@zahra10999 I can't tag you! Double check that your Tumblr isn't hidden from search results. If it's not, contact the Tumblr Help Center so they can fix this glitch.
Edit: This chapter was updated 11/3/23 (a day after posting) to fix a minor but glaringly obvious plot hole. Thank you to @multi-fandomperson for catching it.
“Treats. Cheeto.” You dig the bag out of your purse and Princess, recognizing the sound, begins meowing. “Here, I’ll carry the crate.” Damiano opens the door and Cheeto, hearing that it's not just you, hides amongst the legs of the dining table and chairs. As soon as the door shuts you call to her, crouching on the floor to let Princess out. She is more than happy to sit at Dami’s feet for stinky salmon treats.
Crouching down to mirror you, he whispers, “where is she?”
“Under the table. Cheeto, baby, come say hi to dad.” You make a couple trills and her tail swishes in interest.
“Oh my god, I can see her mittens,” he squeaks.
“I know, she’s adorable. Cheeto, do you want a treat? Hmm?” She thinks about it, then darts across the room and hides behind a plant. “Well, there's your answer. Maybe put the giant scary suitcase away.”
“Probably should have done that first.” He stands upright with a grunt and seals up the bag, setting it on the countertop. Rather than following him into the bedroom, Princess sits directly below the treats and meows demandingly. The other cat ventures halfway out to watch Damiano unpack his suitcase into the drawers.
“Hey, you undid a bunch of the boxes!”
“Mhm…She’s very curious.” He leans his head around the door frame and grins at the little creature stalking towards him. “Hi, Cheeto,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you have such an awful name.” The cat tilts her head to the side, as if considering his comment. Dam turned his head the opposite way. You’d been worried for nothing. The two of them were clearly gonna be pals.
“Have you tried washing her?”
“Yes, she's perpetually greasy. I even took her to the groomers. She just looks like that, it's one of the reasons I call her a garbage gremlin.”
“What a funny cat,” he murmurs. As soon as he bends down and refocuses on sorting out his clothing, Cheeto runs across the room in his direction. She watches Dami very carefully from around the corner. Seeing that someone else is paying attention to her master, Princess trots over and climbs in his suitcase. You stack her crate in the corner, and turn around to find Dami holding your newest sex toy.
“What's this?” His eyebrows knit together as he examines the grinding pad, textured with evenly spaced bumps. You’d purchased it after a certain phone call, but the lack of vibration was disappointing. After failing to help you orgasam on multiple occasions, you tucked it next to the stack of books on the shelf of your nightstand. Turned sideways, with the straps wrapped around the silicone pad, it couldn’t have been more innocuous. You’d even forgotten about it.
“How the hell did you – do you have sonar or something? Sex toy spidey senses?”
“So it is a sex toy!” He unwraps the straps and turns it over a few times. “There's no motor.”
“Sadly, no.” He runs his hand along the hump at the front of the pad, made specifically for clitoral stimulation.
“I, um…” Dami trails off, blushes, and shakes his head. “I’m reading into things again, but uh…did you get this to use with me?” A hot flash turns your cheeks red as well. Did he want to watch? Mutual masturbation didn’t technically break any rules.
“Uh, no.” He sighs in embarrassment and ducks his head.
“Right, right, obviously. Why would you hide it from me?” He tucks the grinding pad back where he found it and hangs up a shirt with a thoughtful expression. A fantasy about Dami pulling your hair and chanting encouragement as you got off has you frozen in place.
“But you ride it though, right?” He’s clearly stuck on a thought, too.
“Yeah it's, it's like a grinding pad.” You splash cold water on your face in the bathroom.
“Okay, but…if you don’t attach to someone's thigh, then how the hell do you use it?” A chair, a towel, a pillow had all been pictured on the site, since the toy was advertised for solo use. You hadn’t considered what he was suggesting until now.
“Damia,” you whine, subjected to the sexual explicitness of your own imagination. “You, you – I use – used a rolled-up towel and I…ugh! It's not as fun as it looks. It's just a piece of plastic with straps.”
“Denim feels better?” He leans in the doorway, oh so casual.
“No…”
“Because I’ve watched that be more than enough.” You cover your face so Damiano can’t see you turning the color of a tomato. “Aw, you’re so flustered.” He wraps his hands around your waist from behind. “You’re such a good cat mom that you slipped out of Little headspace, but Cheeto and Princess are both sitting in my suitcase. So let go of the stress.” He hums a melody against your ear, so close you can feel the vibrations. Dami takes your balled fists, resting against the counter top, and unfurls them, right then left.
“Don’t dig your fingernails into your palm. I decide when you feel pain.” You groan and turn around in his arms, face pressed to his sturdy chest. Damiano rocks back and forth, slowly gathering your hair in his hands. Once he gets a ponytail in his fist, he twists it around his hand to create tension. This time you resist, keeping your face against his warm shirt. That's what made the denim different: body heat, humanness.
Play time almost exclusively happened at night. Your internal clock kept annoying you with an uneasy sensation. So you try to hold on until the context feels perfect, uncomplicated.
“Want help with lunch?” He pulls your hair, earning a moan. “Open your hands.” Without realizing, you’d balled up your fists again.
“S –”
“No.” He cuts off your apology. “Can I put you in gentle cuffs later?” Had you really fucked up already? Your first time submitting in nine months? There's a lump in your throat so you stare at the tile.
“Woah.” He releases the ponytail, instead running a hand through your hair. “Not as a punishment, topolina. The opposite, as an encouragement.” You bury your face in his chest again, breathing deeply, and nod. “Really? Because that reaction was a hard no.”
“My answer is yes.”
“You’re my sweetest girl.” Temple kiss. “My sweetest little girl.” Head kiss. “So stop fighting it,” he whispers. “I’m home, everything is organized, the cats are good, you don’t work today. So let go.” You sigh heavily, understanding the reason for the cuffs. “I’m okay,” he tries. “Actually, I feel good, grounded.” You tighten the embrace, eyes falling closed.
Dami backs you against the counter, hands on your waist to help you hop up. From there he gets a firm grasp on your thighs and hauls you upwards. You wrap all four limbs around him as he holds you like a child, swaying. It so soothing your eyes water. All the memories of being held like this by your parents are anxiety-ridden. They only picked you up when you were injured or inconveniently upset, typically rapidly speaking to someone else. The moments were full of nervous energy, and from a very young age you began reassuring them, just so the tension would stop. Even after that, their attention was split elsewhere.
Damiano held you just for the sake of it, because he enjoyed the intimacy, enjoyed your company. He’d sing lullabies. A restlessness deep inside you was soothed. He was the calm, a place without chaos, and you never ever wanted the embrace to end.
“Your breathing just got a lot better, my love.”
“Mhm.”
“Are we not doing sentences anymore?’
“We can…we can do sentences.”
“Oh, yeah?” You sit up and find Damiano beaming. “I’m gonna set you on the counter while I make us lunch.” He carries you into the kitchen, arms no doubt tired, but he doesn’t let on. Dami places you by the stove, and throws the doors to the refrigerator open wide.
“Aye, you got everything I asked for! Good girl.” You try to ignore the way those two words shoot down your spine. Princess pads back into the kitchen, sniffing the air. Cheeto continues to stare from her spot inside the suitcase.
“Hey Sassy Pants,” you whisper. She walks around Damiano’s feet as he unwraps the guanciale. He chuckles and is careful not to step on her tail while transferring to the cutting board.
“She wasn’t allowed in the kitchen at rehab, so I guess watching me cook has enough novelty to make it interesting again.”
“When she was a kitten…” you trail off.
“Oh, yeah. Baby Princess was my tiny sous chef. Always, always, always watching,” he chants. She loses interest before he finishes dicing, but Cheeto is still staring from across the apartment. The cat gracelessly climbs out of the suitcase and stands frozen in the doorway, mittens ready to trot forward. Dami follows your line of sight and huffs.
“Funny cat. I’m gonna try a couple end pieces.” Princess makes a U-turn, vocalizing loudly at the sight of guanciale being dangled over the floor. “No, this isn’t for you, babygirl.” He sits cross legged and gives a piece to her anyways. Princess climbs into his lap and seems nearly satisfied with all Dami’s attention on her.
“She loves you so.” He looks over his shoulder.
“Having her really, really helped. She’s a wonderful emotional support cat.” As soon as he scratches between her ears, Princess begins purring. “I know, I like being home, too.” Cheeto prances across the living room and sits at the edge of the kitchen, always tepid. “You gonna come say hi?” Dami extends a bit of pork fat and Cheeto leans forward. However, something spooks her and she runs under the table again.
“Well that's progress.” He stands up and washes his hands before continuing. “I was thinking a big lunch, light dinner and a movie, then go to bed? They had us on a strict schedule, so I’m used to going to bed earlier. Plus I start outpatient tomorrow.” Dami freezes and grimaces. “Well that's what I was thinking of doing. You can go to bed whenever you want obviously, since we sleep separately.” He tries to focus on cutting, but clears his throat forcefully out of nerves. “Which I am totally happy – well, fine with because I want to respect your boundaries…but if you wanted to sleep in the same bed because you were still in Little headspace – or for any reason – just ask. But no pressure.”
For a few seconds he seems satisfied with that, pulls a pan from the bottom cupboard and heats it with oil. Like a dance, Damiano scrapes the pork in and rapidly covers it with a splatter screen. Under it the fatty meat sizzles violently.
“Because I want you to feel safe and I wouldn’t take it as an indication for how things will work in the future. Like, I wouldn’t then have an expectation or – shut the fuck up, Damiano,” he mutters to himself.
“Keep talking Damiano,” you whisper, and stroke the side of his face. This earns a smile, close lipped but with rounded cheeks because he’s trying to control it.
“You’ve never fallen asleep in Little headspace not in the same bed as me, so…I just wanted to make that an option.” He quickly dices two cloves of garlic and adds those in along with the pepper flakes. Then he reaches for the white wine out of habit before freezing
“Fuck, I – do we have chicken broth or something?”
“Uhh…” Before you can put a thought together, Dami yanks open the fridge doors and finds the vegetable stock you’d made a couple days ago.
“This’ll work, I guess.” He tenses his jaw, clearly miffed. Damiano adds the broth without a measuring cup and puts a pot of water on to boil. Luckily, cooking requires too much focus for him to dwell on all the other small and gargantuan ways his addictions had changed your lives. He’s careful to only ever stir the pan with the screen angled to protect you from burns. The pork spits hot oil at Damiano and he hisses, yanking his hand back.
At your worried expression, he explains, “They only ever served lean meat and before that I wasn’t cooking for a while so…I’m fine, just a dumbass.” Apparently your face doesn’t change so he softens his approach. “I’m fine, topolina.” He glances at the pot on the way to stand between your legs. His hands rest mid-thigh and you miss when they wrap around your flank. Dami’s eyes fall to your lips automatically. He leans forward, then corrects himself. Instead of debating what feels right to the point of emotional crisis, you pull him into a kiss. Because you really, really want to and in Little headspace that's a damn good reason.
“Damia.” Simultaneously leaning forward and extending your arms behind his head, the kiss comes organically. This act hadn’t been negotiated, but secretly Damiano had already expended about 90% of his self control. You initiated and there wasn’t a molecule within him that wanted to say no. So his hands do what they’re supposed to, running up the outside of your thigh, over your ass, and onto your back. It’s so much better than on the plane, because you’re relaxing into him, allowing your mouth to be pushed open by his tongue.
It doesn’t start with a peck. Your lips immediately find a languide, sensual pace. He cups the base of your skull and traces the tip of his tongue just inside your parted top lip, where it was wet and smooth. It's as he remembered. Allowing your mouth to be accessed the same way, so receptive to his force that you tilt backwards and nearly hit the back of your head on the cupboard door knob. Normally, he’d give a verbal warning, but Damiano doesn’t want to risk this ending because it absolutely has to, so he uses his hold and guides you towards him.
You lean forward, and his warm palm on your hip pulls you to the edge of the counter, so torso is pressed to torso. He’s being greedy. You like that, get a hand into his hair and cross your heels behind him. Dami moans because all he’s wanted for months is to be trapped by your embrace. Unfortunately the pot boils over and the hiss of water droplets hitting the burner startles you.
“Shit.” He gingerly lifts the splatter screen and looks relieved, stirring before flipping the burner off. “All is not lost, okay.” He takes the tomatoes from the fridge, places them in the sink, and returns to his stance between your legs. “Where were we?”
“You were making me lunch.” He throws his head back, sighs heavily, and agrees.
“You’re right, I was. Amatriciana, by the way.” He pats your butt and refocuses on washing the produce, clearly erect. You can’t help but giggle at Dami pretending his dick wasn’t sticking out a 90 degree angle.
“Boop.” You poke the shaft with a sound effect. “Boop, boop.” He turns bright red and – finding the whole thing absolutely hilarious – you cackle. “Boop.”
“Uh, fuck I can’t help it,” he groans, resituating his erection so it wouldn’t knock something off of the counter.
“Boop.” It twitches that poke, inducing another gigging fit. Quite visibly, Dami can’t decide between being annoyed or appreciating your joy. He seems to be leaning towards the latter as one side of his mouth threatens to turn upwards.
“Stop booping my dick.” That was an objectively hilarious sentence. “Stop laughing at me!” He protests while beginning to laugh, himself.
“Be right back.” You dance into the bedroom, which Damiano accepts because it grants a moment to collect himself. Little does he know you’re switching into a much more revealing outfit under the guise of being “cozy.” Yoga pants with no underwear because laundry had fallen to the wayside with everything else to consider. The only option was granny panties with elastic around the leg. Also whether or not Dami noticed would measure how hard he was staring. On top you go with a low-cut, slightly see through cotton t-shirt, deciding to keep the bra on for mercy’s sake.
“You not closing the door while changing is fucking malicious, just so you know,” he calls. “I wasn’t looking, but it did take everything inside me so don’t expect – for fuck’s sake.” The attention when you walk into the living room was more pointed than you bargained for. Feeling sheepish, you stare at the floor, then decide to find Cheeto. She is sitting under the dining chair closest to Damiano. When you get down next to her, she climbs into your lap. Unlike Princess, her tail is fluffy and mostly stays near the ground, getting cat hair on the charcoal colored fabric of your yoga pants.
The cat gazes up at you, just like when you found her amongst her kittens, but now with less melancholy. She was the sweetest creature, knocking stuff over perpetually because Cheeto didn’t quite understand how house cats were supposed to move. The sound of her own chaos always sent her darting under the nearest piece of furniture. She really did try to slip around objects with Princess’ ease, but failed.
“That cat is in love with you,” Dami comments.
“Silly girl,” you coo, stroking under the chin. “I love you too, silly girl.”
“You want the tomatoes blended or crushed.” You shrug, scooting closer so you could lean against Damiano’s leg while he cooked. “Crushed then.” Cheeto looks nervous being in the vicinity of a new person, but you pet her with a steady hand. “See, daddy’s safe. Don’t need to be scared. Hmm?” After mixing the tomatoes in, he simmers the sauce and sits behind you. Any non-cat lover would find these lengths aggravatingly extensive.
“Hey, Cheeto,” he whispers, chin set on your shoulder. Your chest feels warm from the gesture, even though he was likely looking down your cleavage. Cheeto allows a very slowly moving hand to touch her back, since the other is delivering a salmon treat. Then she stands and stares at Dami for a few seconds. They do the head tilt bit again. He tries getting her to meow back like Princess does.
“Does she make much noise?”
“Mm-mm,” you shake your head. “Quiet, silly, sweet girl.”
“Not a bad combination, but I like my silly, sweet girls opinionated. Unless they’re non-verbal, of course.” He pecks your cheek loudly and stands to stir the sauce. The sudden movement causes the cat to run off, but positive introductions have been made. You scramble upright as well, to wrap your arms around Dami from behind and press your face to his back while he cooks. Collectively, you’ve probably spent hours in the position, without a single thought in your head. He adds the spaghetti into the pot and turns on the timer.
“You know, when we worked in the kitchen, there was this one guy that insisted on breaking his pasta.”
“Sacrilege.”
“I know. Actually, I’m not sure how I even got the gig in the kitchen.”
“Maybe…me.”
“Oh, yeah? Whose ear did you whisper in?”
“Greta’s. The day I brought you Princess.”
“Oh?” He rubs your hands where they’re clasped around his middle.
“Didn’t want you to be sad.” Damiano pauses and you can feel him thinking, reaching for the right platitude. Except, there isn’t one, because depression is a typical reaction to drug withdrawal.
“I’m also taking a medication called citalopram. It helps with anxiety and depression. There's a lot to talk about, just not right now. It's time for you to be Little. So no stress.” He lifts his left arm so you can lean into his side. Damiano is endlessly doting, kissing everywhere from the top of your head to the summer freckles on your cheek. His hand smooths your hair, rubs your arm and side, squeezing in enthusiasm as he tells fun stories about cooking in rehab. None of a patient attempting to steal a knife to commit suicide, even though those were no doubt just as common as teaching someone that there was a difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon.
“Mm, does that smell good or a little longer?” Dami needed no input when cooking amatriciana. He could probably do it without measurements, just by taste, but was so thrilled to be home that he was almost overflowing. You shrug and nuzzle into his side, basking in his energy. Unfortunately, nowadays savoring Damiano’s presence often haunts you. There's that voice, insistently reminding you that he could be dead, leaving you sitting on this very kitchen floor, crying so hard you threw up coffee cause you’d been too sad to eat breakfast. But he’s not. He’s fucking not. He’s making me lunch and singing possible melodies for the new album with a little hip shimmy. He’s alive, loving me so hard that it's nearly stifling. And he’s not gonna die either. He’s gonna be a wrinkly old rockstar talking about how he was lucky to get sober in his twenties. At certain points he’s gonna relapse and I’m gonna get him through it and he’s gonna get sober and we’re gonna have a god damn beautiful life together because he is not going to die. He is not going to die! He is mine, he belongs in this life with me, fuck alternate timelines.
Notes: Yes, this scene continues next chapter. And now I just gotta grab my noise canceling headphones so I'm ready for y'all to start yelling at me.
“I had the most interesting conversation today.” It's the first thing Dami sees when you walk into the lobby.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was hashing out the billing with Sony U.S.-Italia attache and he mentioned I’d be responsible for all the fees, ‘but it looks like I’ve already taken care of that.’” You know exactly where this is going and don’t really feel up to bluffing.
“Very interesting.”
“It is because I haven’t paid any fees.” Dami extends his arm out and wraps it around your waist casually. It’s nice that he’s being well humored about this since you couldn’t bear animosity. He wears a barely observable wry smile with his right eyebrow cocked.
“So I commented that they must not have billed me yet and he laughed. Apparently they wouldn’t have held my place or admitted me without a huge intake fee. You know, like the kind that I’d remember, even then?”
“Sounds like you got lucky.” He was heartily enjoying the theatrics of this delivery and you weren’t about to ruin his fun.
“At first, I did consider that. Maybe it was someone else on my team or my parents, but then I started hearing about these application fees.”
“Can we sit down? Your anecdote is taking a long time.” Without missing a beat, Dami guides you to a bench.
“And there was only one person doing my application fees and –” he ducks down and cups both hands around his mouth. “It wasn’t me,” Dami hisses, taking a seat beside you. “So I ask this attache for an estimate, since I can’t do math, and I know, you don’t have anything like that in discretionary income. I’m gonna be honest, I was trying not to shit my pants at the thought you took out a loan and never told me about it.”
“I actually didn’t pay for it. Because it wasn’t my money. Technically, you did pay for it.” You can’t help the self-satisfied smirk, evening biting your lip in an effort to hide it. The gesture just pulls Damiano in.
“A loophole I figured out after 10 minutes. Stop smiling like you’re proud of yourself. That was rent money!”
“That you had no right to just leave for me! It was an obscene amount of money. What if I moved out the day after and used it to buy a house in Iceland?”
“Then you’d have enough for a good coat, too.” You roll your eyes and he finally breaks character. Damiano isn’t actually upset at all, he’s gratified. He looks good too, and subtleties reveal that he knows it. Wearing a shirt who’s short sleeves stretched around his well developed bicep was no accident.
“I wanted to keep you safe and comfortable. Which you now are, since, by the way, the next person I called was our emotionally blackmailed landlord. When were you gonna tell me?” Damiano implores.
“I don’t know that I ever planned to, I guess. I figured I’d move out, find a much cheaper place.” He throws his head back and groans, like it's the most irrational thing he’s ever heard.
“You were supposed to do whatever you wanted with that money. It’s yours.”
“This is what I wanted to do with it. So stop bitching and say thank you.” Dami wraps a hand around the back of your neck and presses his forehead to your own.
“Thank you.” He only looks at your lips once. Dami isn’t going to kiss you, forcing himself not to think about kissing out of respect. Instead he holds your gaze, able to control where his eyes land, but unable to conceal that he’s absolutely famished. Two months free from hedonism. No speed, no opioids, no alcohol, no hallucinogens, no weed, no parties, no clubs. No loud music, no all nighters, no beautiful strangers, no bars, no spontaneity, no exhilaration. No gigs, no rabid fans, no social media, no lavish clothes, no Maneskin, no instant validation, no hysteria. No five course dinners, no pool-side nudity, no vacation villas, no sensuality, no porn, no fucking, no ego.
It's abundantly clear that out of all these vices, you're the one he wants to binge on. Or perhaps he wants to taste your flavor in each. Reacting in surprise to Damiano’s intensity makes him visibly self-conscious, then unsure. The body has its very tangible ways of expressing overwhelm. With your left leg bouncing uncontrollably and palms moist, you give away too much. Mercifully, Dr. Greta interrupts the moment.
“Y/n! Of course you’ll be picking Damiano up today.” His hand abandons your neck, leaving behind its mark in sweat. He was nervous too, and you need him to know he doesn’t have to be.
“Uh, yeah, hey! Is there anything else that needs to be signed?”
“She’s not the one that deals with all that,” Dami explains gently. You flush even redder so he sets a hand on your knee to be comforting.
“Of course! Sorry, sorry, that's obvious.”
“Well, we try to have discharges processed on time, as a policy. So you’re probably good to go, I’d just check with reception.” Greta is clearly not miffed by your social blunder. “I just came to wish you good luck. We’re here, if you ever need us again, Damiano.” He stands and gingerly wraps her in a hug. With a surprised expression, the doctor briefly embraces him back. He wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, but Dami also got nervous about properly verbalizing his gratitude.
“You’re stronger than you realize.” It's delivered as an equal parts statement and reassurance. He bows his head, offers thanks, and Dr. Greta is off to see other patients. Turning back around, his eyes fall to Princess in her carrier. Damiano is avoiding reading your expression out of self-consciousness.
“Did you realize you were gonna do that?”
“No, he answers, wide-eyed in perplexity. “No clue where that came from.” A patient with faded face tattoos and a unique jaunt stares as he passes. His walk slows to a halt and Dami curses under his breath.
“So this is the not girlfriend people have been talking about?”
“People have been talking about me?” you whisper in horror.
“Him most of all.”
“What happens in group stays in group,” Damiano warns. This character of a man throws his hands up.
“I wasn’t even talking about group, actually.” He cranes his neck forward, speech revealing some unnaturally white teeth that were obviously dentures.
“I literally don’t talk about her that much,” Dami snaps.
“The old timers kept saying that they’d kill Dam if he fucked this up.”
“Saber, don’t harass our visitors.” The receptionist behind the front desk calls, leans her head out to speak.
“Well, they were right. Don’t fuck up. Most of our ex-girlfriends would slap us across the face if they had the chance. And, uh, well respectfully, none of ‘em are that pretty.”
“Saber!”
“I’m going!” He slouches away, picking up his feet with some extra pep.
“See the fucking people I deal with?” Damiano groans in embarrassment, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. He reminds you of a juvenile caged leopard you once saw at the zoo.
“I thought he seemed perfectly nice.”
“One of the most annoying personalities I’ve ever met. Let's go before anyone else tries to say goodbye.”
“Jealous someone called me pretty?” you tease.
“Oh, they’ll say more than that to you. Miss Giadia, am I discharged?” The receptionist leans her head back out the window with a special smile. She was almost three times Dami’s age, but clearly had a crush. Who could blame her? He looked fantastic, still a little too lean, but youthful and statuesque.
“You’ve got to sign yourself out, honey.” Princess meows as soon as he walks over to the desk. She's scared after being by his side almost every minute of the past 27 days in this foreign place.
“It's okay, Sassy Pants.” You rub between her ears through the crate door and watch a shadow of a person trying to coax their giant, orange cat down the stairs. Whoever thought up this program deserved an award. Under the guise of assisting the humane society, patients accidentally became invested in living again.
“I brought treats for you to give Cheeto.”
“Cool,” Damiano responds absentmindedly, writing his signature on an electric notepad. He squints and leans down.
“You need to wear your glasses.”
“No I don’t.”
“It's generally a good idea to see what you’re signing.”
“Says who?” You roll your eyes while Miss Giadia clicks through some things on her computer.
“Alright, you are officially discharged.” Dami extends his arms up in celebration. “Just swing by the pharmacy window and you’ll be free to go.” His arms drop and he groans in annoyance.
“Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back,” he says to you. “Miss Giada, please make sure no one bothers her.”
“I can fend for myself, thank you very much,” you call after him. Damia turns the corner, out of sight, and Princess meows again. You scratch under her chin and her eyes fall closed, nose pointing upwards.
“He’ll be right back, don’t worry Princess.” She turns in frantic circles, looking out the small, rectangular windows in the sides of her carrier. “I know it's confusing, but we’re going home now,” you say, as if she could understand.
“Is that Princess?” asks a passerby with weathered skin and a collapsed nose. Another few months of cocaine use and Damiano would have permanently compromised the structural integrity of his sinuses too. You couldn’t imagine him without that beautiful Roman nose.
“Yeah, it is.”
“How is she?”
“Anxious, but she’ll be fine.”
“I had a dog with separation anxiety when I was 17.” It's hard to determine most of the patients' ages, since the drinking destroyed their skin and methamphetamines their teeth.
“Oh no.” You’re struggling to find the right things to say in this stilted conversation, but your counterpart just seemed happy to talk to someone.
“Was part terrier, part blue heeler. I named her Dizzy since she was always running around.”
“Move along Alberto,” calls Miss Giada. He raises his hand and bows his head, as if tilting a cap in formal farewell. The gesture is classic, old-timey, even. Damiano comes back into view, walking quickly with a small white paper bag in hand. He looks back and forth between you and Alberto, so you put on a pleasant smile to communicate that you’re unbothered. It still visibly ticks him off.
“Okay let's get the fuck out of here.” You pick up Princess’ carrier and she begins meowing again. “Can I drive? I miss driving.”
“As long as you remember how.” Damiano props the door open with one hand and hauls his suitcase with the other. You almost trip on a parking curb, digging in your purse.
“Careful, careful.”
“Here are the keys and there is my car.” You point across the lot.
“Did you scrape your bumper?” He makes a face of offense.
“How the hell can you see that, but not your own damn signature?”
“Selective attention. Should I check your oil before we leave?”
“Not unless you want me to leave without you.”
“Let’s just hope the check engine light doesn’t come on.”
“It won’t! I take care of my car.” He raises his eyebrows, but remains silent. After loading everything in, Dami turns to you with a shit-eating grin.
“But have you gotten your oil changed since my brother did it like, eight months ago?”
“I didn’t want to get ripped off!” He snickers and turns the ignition. Dami gasps and pulls back suddenly. Reflexively you do the same.
“What!?”
“I was worried the engine was gonna explode for a sec.”
“Bastard!” You throw a packet of tissues at him, then an empty lipstick tube. He bursts out into boisterous laughter and you can’t help but mirror him once again. More than anything else, it's respite from recent, omnipresent stress. Bickering with Damiano over your car was not so secretly enjoyable in its familiarity. Occasionally, people accuse you of acting like an old married couple.
“Pain in my ass,” you pretend to whisper to yourself.
“Want me to kiss it better?”
“I wish I wore walking shoes.”
“So you could walk home?”
“Or kick you, whichever came first.”
“Aha! Okay, okay, I’m going.” Princess recognizes the sound of her parents bantering and pipes up to join. Dami makes kissy noises at her while looking over his shoulder to pull out of the parking spot. Both gate attendants visibly struggle to place him. He definitely hadn’t come in as a visitor today nor was he staff. However Damiano also didn’t look like someone checked into rehab recently. They wave an awkward goodbye, eyes following the car until its occupants leave their field of vision.
“Did you know both those guards carry a taser?”
“Really?”
“I was hoping some paps might try to break in, but no such luck.” You snort, thinking about a couple guys with camera bags that loitered across from your apartment's security gate like clockwork.
“Christ, I really hope they don’t get a picture of us going in.”
“Try not to stress about it.” He goes to pat your thigh, but freezes and moves his hand several inches down to your knee.
“Very platonic.” Playful, Dami slides his hand up until you swat it away, embarrassingly aroused by a plethora of memories. When you were young, stupid, and not internationally famous, he’d fingered you in this car. Not particularly effectively, but just the sensation of his digits penetrating you would be worth it right now. Two would be just enough stretch to make your legs quiver. He’d let you position his thumb against your clit and buck into his hand. His strong, warm, commanding hand that maintained as much contact against your vulva as possible. That constant pressure was orgasmic.
“So do we have everything we need at home?”
“For what?” Was he asking about condoms or lube? Obviously you kept the dresser drawer stocked with both. The condoms hadn’t been used in months though. How long did it take for those to expire?
“Lunch…”
“Oh, yeah! I swung by the bakery as well.”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“When?” You turn on the A/C full blast.
“Just now.”
“Just now, what?” Your cheeks feel warm which means the blush is visible. Dami glances at you out of the corner of his eye repeatedly.
“Nevermind, michetta.” Okay, there had to be a rule created against that nickname next time the relationship was negotiated. For the rest of the ride he does most of the talking and you do most of the staring. Dami is paler than normal for the time of year and his hair looks absolutely hilarious. The pieces in the front resemble micro-bangs. But his forearms are muscular and you like how his hands grip the steering wheel, like the way his mouth just barely opens when he checks behind before a lane change.
He’s always done that, back when he grew out his facial hair. You’d never been with a man that looked so adult, so masculine. Damiano had to relearn how to kiss so he didn’t give you carpet burn with his beard. It was always fun when he shaved it, getting to be mindlessly feral. Now you dearly missed the days of his lazily maintained goatee. Coming home from America for the first time with a naked chest had been horrifying.
“Oh my god, what – they mutilated you!”
“Oh, come on.” He was still smiling, not realizing that him being naked chested made Dami negligibly less attractive to you.
“They took your manhood!”
“It’ll grow back,” he brushed it off. “I actually like it!”
“No!!” You howled in horror, looking upwards to curse whatever god took your grown partner across the ocean and returned him a mere boyfriend. “No, your stomach hair was so sexy too. Why did you let them shave you, Dam?”
“Wait, you actually don’t like it? But you can see my tattoos.”
“Please tell me you have pubic hair.”
“Well, yeah. We just shaved the top down so it doesn’t look messy peeking out of the waistband of my boxers.” Your groan turns into a guttural cry.
“But I liked that!”
“Y/n, it's fine, it’ll grow back soon.” He pulls you forward with a loose hold on your forearms. “They hate body hair in America and we had two red carpets. Some of the L.A. celebrities shave their arms, or even their legs.”
“Legs would be preferable to this.” Depending on the outfit for a shoot, the boys used to remove their leg hair with Nair. That had ended in near chemical burn disaster more than once when FIFA became a distraction.
“Okay, well lucky for you I’m only shaving my torso, so…” You continue to pout as he guides you in. For a moment, everything else is forgotten in a kiss, but then your bare midriff collides with stubble instead of being tickled by hair. You whimper in grief again and he takes you seriously.
“Did you actually find my body hair that attractive? Like am I less hot now?”
“Yes!”
“Oh.” Damaino’s expression changes and he takes a step back, rethinking. “Sorry? I didn’t really have body hair when we started dating, so I figured it didn’t matter.”
“Well, I didn’t really have an ass either, but don’t you appreciate it now?”
“Excellent point.” He looks over your shoulder. “Excellent…point. Yeah. Okay, heard.” Tragically, he did shave his chest and stomach while traveling for work constantly. It was only on the occasional vacation or stint in Italy that it grew out to its full glory. Last visit, the shirt was off and on too quickly for you to get a proper look. Now you couldn’t stop wondering if he’d avoided shaving his torso as well as his head.
Damiano’s dark armpit hair peeks out from under his t-shirt with hands resting at ten and two. It creates a tingling gravitational pull that you reinterpret as a warning. The only times you found that specific location of body hair sexually arousing was with dangerously high libido. You’d had three orgasams this morning, but they felt a lifetime away. All this power you held after setting out boundaries and expectations was suffocating. He would outright ignore any instinct towards carnal desire since you’d staked the whole future on it.
“Are you glaring at me intentionally?”
“What? No. No, I’m sorry. Just lost in my own head,” you sigh. Again he goes to pat your thigh and redirects to your knee. This time it makes you a little melancholy. Dami feels your energy shift and glances over repeatedly, about to tweak his neck.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“About what?”
“Actually, I do. I very intensely want you and I can’t decide if that's gonna be my demise or release.” You curl into a ball, knees held tightly in place by your arms cupping the opposite elbow. It was a gesture of immaturity that you only did in front of him and a couple friends.
“Baby…” He rubs your back at a stop light.
“One version of me sets all these boundaries and then another absolutely dreads a reality where you follow them. I don’t know how you do this so easily, creating structure. Also the way you negotiate, I think I would liquify. Who the fuck am I to make rules?”
“A beautiful person who’s trying their best. Holding me accountable is helpful to my recovery, but I know it's not…it's not helpful for you. Or it's not intuitive, I should say.”
“No, it is helpful for me. It makes me feel safe. It keeps you safe. I don’t know, Damia.”
“Regulating me feels better because I’ve made myself undependable.”
“I’m not trying to control –”
“I didn’t say you were,” he speaks in his gentlest, least intimidating voice. It's disarming the way surrender is. It's the opposite of an accusation.
“Topolina, this feeling is temporary.” He pauses between clauses, going with the tide. “You are way, way out of balance. 24 hours from now, you won’t be such a fatalist.”
“I’m not a fatalist,” you bristle.
“I know, topolina, I know.” It’s like taking bullets out of a gun. “We’re almost home. Why don’t you play some music to keep your mind occupied until I can turn my full attention to you?”
“If I’m gonna be…”
“Little.”
“Mhm.” His muscular forearms cross each other as he takes a hard right onto a narrow street. It allows you to see the softer, inside of his arm, just as commanding. Your finger itches to run along that skin and raise goosebumps.
“What were you saying? ‘If I’m gonna be…’”
“Oh. I, uh…if it's your domain, then maybe it should be at your discretion.”
“Hmm.” He thinks for a minute, then punches in the gate code. You have to idle the car in place so no one can slip in behind while doors are still open. “I appreciate your trust, but I’d like to go through some yes/no’s.” You nod, not considering that all movements are in his peripheral vision. “Penetrative sex.” That makes your chest tighten with anxiety.
“No.”
“Are there any circumstances where bringing you to orgasam would be good?”
“Yes.”
“Fingering?” Your cunt burns.
“Mm, uh, yes.”
“So we’ll play that one by ear. Toys?”
“Yes.”
“Friction?” You simply whine at that.
“I’ve been your Dom long enough to interpret that as a horny yes,” he chuckles. Dami parks the car, but doesn’t get out. Instead he turns to you.
“We’re gonna finish the list here because I think your brain might shut off as soon as we get inside. Nudity.”
“Yes. Yes, please.” Right now, skin to skin contact sounded like the drug to heal all ailments.
“So polite.” He taps your nose with his finger and beams. You lean forward until the parking brake gets in the way. “Bath time?”
“Mhm!”
“Massage?” He stretches the word out to heighten your anticipation. That’d never been an option before.
“Okay.”
“Both sleeping in our bed?”
“...no.”
“Oral?”
“Um…” You’re reminded of the man with the collapsed nose. Could that happen if you put too much pressure on Dami’s face?
“Receiving, I think no. Giving, I…”
“You don’t have to worry about that. Anything else?” The parking garage is dark, so you can’t tell if he’s hard. He’d have to be though, right? You stare at Dami’s groin as he patiently waits for your answer. Instead of wondering, you decide to find out, reaching a hand over and setting it on the seat of his trousers.
“Woah!” He grabs your wrist. “So you’re definitely in headspace, huh little one?” You don’t understand what the issue is, until the fading voice of reason in your head pipes up. Grabbing Dami’s cock, in public, in the midst of scandal, while not in a relationship was not the rational thing to do. After blinking hard a couple times you find your voice.
“‘M sorry.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he coos, running the back of his pointer finger down your cheek. “No apologies remember? We’re gonna go upstairs now.” He seemingly gets out of the car and undoes his seatbelt in one rapid motion. With a lot of focus, you manage to click the buckle by the time Dami opens your door. He places his hand on the top of your head so you don’t slam it against the car while getting out. Then you barely have the presence of mind to grab your purse and close the door. Meanwhile, Damiano unloads Princess’ crate and his suitcase. He locks the car and carries both, nodding his head in the direction of the elevator.
Naturally, he becomes the force you gravitate towards, but you can’t cuddle against him with so many belongings. Instead you stand normally, or what you think is normal.
“Are you in time out?” Dami chuckles. “All the way over in the corner, c’mere.” He sets Princess on his suitcase and wraps an arm around you. It takes every ounce of awareness you’ve got to not push your face into his armpit, hands under his shirt, and tune out. The ding of the elevator is abrasive as it arrives on floor three. Home.
Notes: I see you shiver with an-tici...pation.😈 Shout out to @harryssshouseee for being especially helpful this chapter. I am so grateful for all the feedback I've been getting.
*@zahra10999 & @letkeepitbetweenus3 I can't tag you, unfortunately! Double check that your blog isn't hidden from search results. If so, you can contact Tumblr Help for tagging problems.
