Falling Falling Stars

45 - Maturity

Notes: Let's just get to the good stuff *rubs hands together*

*

Efnisien was absently noting the details in Kadek's back garden to bury the panic that was blooming. Kadek had a really nice broad undercover deck area. The pot plants were everywhere, some of them two or three metres tall. He definitely had a gardener. The garden was large and had huge trees in it, and camellias, Crielle liked those. The deck itself was dark wood and there were huge heavy wind-chimes that gently knocked into each other, some made of metal, others made of wood, none of the chimes shorter than a metre in length. There was a huge stone buddha at the other end of the deck, surrounded by ferns, and it wasn't the kind that Efnisien was used to seeing. The buddha had a weird kind of bobbly hat on.

He wished that's what they were focusing on right now.

Arden shut the sliding door and paced quickly, then stopped and looked at Efnisien. He didn't look mad anymore, but really upset.

'This is going to be messy,' Arden said finally, his words flowing together fast. 'It's going to be messy, I get that, but I want you to know that. Because like, I'm... feeling a whole lot of things right now, and some of them are that I'm really fucking mad at myself for letting this happen in the first place.'

'But...' Efnisien fell silent, then folded his arms. 'I mean, it doesn't matter anymore, because I'm doing better today.'

'I get that I can't wave a wand and magically make you feel like you deserve stuff,' Arden said. 'But the purpose of you being truthful isn't so I can fix your thoughts. You tell me to be honest. You could've told me the truth and still felt that way. But at least I could've tried to be there for you. I bet you have days where you see Dr Gary even when you hate yourself and think you shouldn't go.'

Efnisien stared down at the decking. Damn it. Arden was using logic. Fucking logic. 'Maybe.'

'No, no 'maybe.' I want honesty. And I'm mad that I let myself shoot ahead with kink, against my better judgement, because I wanted it so badly, and you could've been really hurt because we didn't have something better in place. And not only that, but I'm kind of embarrassed right now that this fucking- Like, that's my mentor in there, and he got to see the exact moment my boyfriend was lying to me to hide subdrop or even just feeling terrible, and I have to wonder how many times you've done that in the past, and whether you've masked all of your misery successfully and if I've been doing things against your consent, or pushing you without realising, because-'

'No!' Efnisien said, the word bursting out of him, because he suddenly understood some of the anguish on Arden's face. 'No, it wasn't like that.'

'But how would I know!' Arden said, his voice desperate and loud. 'How the fuck am I gonna know? Did you just miraculously wake up feeling bad yesterday morning? Or did you start feeling bad on Sunday, with me? Be honest.'

Efnisien's mouth slammed together, his expression twisted. He didn't know what to say, and he had to turn away when Arden's expression crumpled.

'I asked you, repeatedly, if you were okay,' Arden said. 'I was there- I don't understand how I could have missed... God. Okay. Okay, first thing, a moratorium on all kink stuff for now. Just- For my own sanity.'

Efnisien felt a bolt of liquid terror move through him at those words.

'But-'

'No,' Arden said. 'Would you even know if I was violating your consent at this point? And would I? We have all these things in place – honesty and communication being the most two important things – because this stuff is complicated. Because it's so easy to violate consent. And even then, it still happens! But it's a lot easier to deal with when a person can be responsible enough to say, 'Hey, you violated a limit of mine.' And maybe I didn't violate a limit with you, and I get that you're in the dregs of subdrop and I get that you need comfort and maybe if you'd told me on Sunday I could've given that to you and all of this wouldn't have happened.'