Falling Falling Stars

46 - Giving

Efnisien's palms were soft and waxy. He had a bar of beeswax in his left hand and was running the jute rope along it with his right, and after the first two or three lengths of rope, it was easier, he'd finally gotten the hang of it. His job was to oil the first batch of ropes with jojoba oil, and now he was working on the second batch with wax. It did make the rope feel pretty silky, but it was still jute, and running the ropes through his hand was a weird experience. They weren't really soft, they weren't really smooth, they had what Kadek referred to as 'tooth' and 'friction.'

Arden had the way cooler job, though he didn't seem as pumped to be running a rope just over the flames of a gas burner while all the little hairs burned off. He had to make sure he didn't burn the rope at the same time. Efnisien watched in fascination at first, getting distracted by the singeing and the smell and the open flame, and then Arden had given him a look, and Efnisien had gone back to what he was doing.

Kadek was cooking. The smells in the house made Efnisien think he was going to eat even though his stomach still hurt. Kadek moved deftly. He chopped food so swiftly that Efnisien wondered if he'd had some kind of training, but he hadn't mentioned it among the other things he'd done. Maybe he just really loved cooking.

Efnisien still felt shaken by the knowledge that he and Arden weren't going to be doing scenes again any time soon, but he also understood why Arden needed to pull back. He'd seen the panic on Arden's face, he hated that he'd made him so afraid, so hurt. While he didn't fully understand why anyone would care so much about him having a bad day, he did get that Arden hated it, and he didn't want to do anything that Arden hated.

It had been easy at first to think that Arden was doing it to him, pulling back on those scenes. But even as Efnisien felt like he was drowning, it became clear that Arden was doing it for them both. Something altered now, so it would be safer when they returned later.

Efnisien pursed his lips at the rope and still felt sulky either way. But he was pretty sure Arden wasn't happy about it either, which was weird. It was so weird that Arden wanted to do scenes with him, that he enjoyed them.

'How are you going with all of this?' Arden said quietly. When Efnisien looked up, Arden nodded his head down to the bundles of rope.

'I dunno. It's strange,' Efnisien said. 'Like- Seeing it makes me think of... I can't not think of like BTK, or even Berdella. But doing this- I don't think any of them ever did this, or cared about their ropes this much. Maybe they made sure they were strong, and wouldn't break. But why would they have conditioned them for their victims? I can't imagine them doing that. And then it gets easier to do this.'

'I don't think they would have conditioned their ropes either,' Arden said quietly, focusing on what he was doing again.

'I still think of them,' Efnisien said. 'In the background. I don't know if that's gonna go away.'

He was trying to be honest. He hated it in theory. In practice it felt weirdly neutral around Arden.

'If that ever gets to you in a scene in the future, I want you to safeword and tell me before it gets too bad,' Arden said firmly. 'Yellow or blue, it doesn't matter. Tell me you're thinking about it.'

'But sometimes I think about it and it doesn't do anything,' Efnisien said. 'I get all these flashes, I can't tell everyone about all of them, most of them don't result in anything. It's why I'm only supposed to put tallies on the board if something stays with me, five minutes or longer.'

'I don't mean if you just think about it,' Arden said, eyes flicking up. 'I said if it gets to you. If you're starting to feel really affected by it. And I know what you mean. I probably think of Laurie like a hundred times a day. Or I think about things connected to him. I think most of those thoughts would disturb other people, but I'm used to them and they don't actually like...stop me from enjoying myself or getting on with my life in the moment, you know? There's a difference between something passing through like a ship in the night, and something about to crash on a rock. And I guess in that shitty metaphor, you have to be the lighthouse that notices when that's about to happen, and let me know.'