Page 27 of Yours on the Canvas

“Because I need to feel something, Finn!” He shouts, voice cracking, the confession tearing out of him jagged and raw.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like? To wake up every day and feel like a ghost? The only time my heart beats, the only time I’m real, is when someone is trying to put me through a wall. Pain is the only thing that cuts through the numbness.”

Finn moves on instinct, a step forward, his hand reaching out to grab Jack, to anchor him, to pull him back from the edge.

Jack flinched violently, jerking away as if Finns’ touch is fire. “Don’t.”

Finn tries again. “Jack, let me…”

“I said don’t touch me!” Jack snarls, his legs hitting the edge of the couch, leaving him nowhere left to run. His whole body shaking now, chest heaving, arms wrapped tight around his body as I watch the panic start to wash over him. I take a small step forward.

“You know I can’t stand it,” he chokes out. “You know why touch makes my skin crawl. It’s too soft, too fucking gentle, and I don’t deserve gentle.”

Finn freezes, his hand hovering uselessly in the air. “That’s not true. You don’t have to punish yourself like this.”

“Yes, I do,” Jack whispers, voice trembling, eyes swimming with a lifetime of poison he never asked for. “You of all people know how I was raised, pain was drilled into me from the time I was a kid. It’s all over my bones. I’m only worthy of the bruising, of the hurt. If I’m touched as if I matter, it breaks something in me, Finn, because we both know I. Don’t. Fucking. Matter.”

A rage burns though me at my boys words. The fact he thinks he doesn’t matter sits like glass in my stomach. And I’ve had enough.

I step forward and put my hand on Finn’s shoulder. He looks at me, and I motion for him to move. He steps back, and stand quietly beside Deck, watching as I take a small step toward my broken little dove.

* * *

Jack and I don’t have a label, and we aren’t in a relationship, but I know there are times when the crushing weight of Jacks mind becomes too much.

And this is one of those times.

He once described it as if he were drowning, like his thoughts fill his lungs, and as if every breath is a fight he’s already too tired to win.

He’s asked me a few times to step in when it becomes to much. To take control when he’s too exhausted to carry it, so he can breathe again.

So, what we have is an arrangement that is born of survival. His survival, and I’ve spent enough time in dark rooms and private clubs, learning the Dom/Sub dynamic he needs to keep himself from breaking apart.

Even before I met Jack, I visited them frequently, finding subs to play with, training, learning how to read people, how to ground them with just a word, to pull them back from the edge without ever pushing them over it.

Jack taught me what works for him; what steadies him, what calms him, what pulls him out of the spiral when his mind starts to cave in on itself.

So, when I watch my boy fold in on himself in front of me, his shoulders tight, breath shallow, eyes unfocused and burning with that familiar panic, I step up to him.

My body is close, but not touching, yet I know he feels me there. That I’m close enough to know I’m ready to take the weight if he needs me too.

He needs to choose to give me the control, because that is one thing I will never do.

I will never just take it.

And right now, watching him shake, watching him fight his own mind, try to stand upright under the crushing pressure of everything he has just confessed, I know exactly what he needs.

Then he chooses.

His body sways slightly toward me, he’s still staring at his feet, arms wrapped tight around himself. Every line of him screams protection mode; shoulders curved inward, spine bowed, chin tucked, like he’s trying to make himself smaller, trying to disappear into the space between his own ribs.

Well, that stops. Now.

“Jack,” I say, my voice firm, leaving no room for argument.

Jack snaps a little straighter, eyes still glued to the floor.

“Jack,” my tone now sharp with authority, and Jacks’ body flickers between defiance and submission, and I shift my weight, moving ever so slightly until my chest touches his arms.