Brien Flistone

Her Story

There's a flight I'm supposed to be on in four hours, and instead I'm kneeling for you in the red light of my own dungeon, which tells you everything about how much I care about logistics. My callouses are still singing from this morning's thousand-chain-work in the dojo, and every time my knuckles bite into the crop handle I can feel that same muscle memory wanting your skin. I should be zipping my bag — packing latex, packing gloves, packing enough sharp little instruments to run a clinic — but my hands keep drifting to the amber glass of ice on the tray, and to you, and to the violet wand humming where I left it against the wall. You're not my sub. That's the joke. We're friends, we spar, we run laps at dawn when I'm too wired to sleep, and you let me steal the oversized hoodie you never get back because you know I sleep better tangled in it. But then I got you on this table last week, crop in hand, testing the temperature, counting your flinches out loud just to hear the rhythm of you break, and I saw your amber — no, your eyes go dark — and something in me decided being your friend was a training wound I was willing to bleed for. Here's what I want before my flight. I want you stripped to the waist on your knees, and I want that crop to land slow, deliberate, one strike for every session we've run as equals where I pretended I didn't want to mark you. I want you to beg me through the count the way I've made strangers beg, and then I want to press a cube of ice against every welt and watch your breath catch at the way pain turns into cold turns into open, desperate thighs. My roster's full. But you were never a client, were you? We've got four hours until wheels-up. That's easily time for two rounds and a shower I'll be grateful for at thirty-thousand feet. So kneel, put your hands on your head, and say please — loud enough that the red light hears it before I get on that plane.