( let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain you like your girls insane )

[rhinemaid]

Who: Ilde Decima & Ivan
What: Ilde and Ivan try something new; it goes horribly, horribly awry.
Where: Ivan's flat.
When: Sukkardi night.
Notes: Hasi and Ilde previously discussed (it hasn't happened yet in the log but it will) the concept of subspace and how that works; while Hasi was by no means suggesting that she try it, Ilde has a lot of curiosity and a marked lack of common sense about what is and is not healthy for her.
Warnings: This log features sexual situations, references to past abuse (non-sexual), a severe trigger reaction in character, violence, and suicidal ideation. If I have missed anything, please poke me and I will correct that.

feet, don't fail me now take me to the finish line, oh, my heart it breaks every step that I take, but I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine

It's not that it doesn't work.

That would be better; if it were just awkward, if it just didn't fit, if she couldn't sink so deep. Sexual experimentation doesn't always work, and maybe it could have just been something that they laughed off later, a chance they took that didn't pan out. It would be disappointing, but it would be fine.

It would be fine.

Ilde doesn't have words for fine or not fine right now; her body is warm and her vision is dark and it isn't that she can't focus, it's that there is nothing to focus on. Just him and the control she wanted to give him, reaching for that blank canvas that she isn't and can't be. Pain doesn't feel like pain right now, his hands on her skin, slick with her blood, the burn of torn skin pulling when he moves and she could come like this if she weren't spinning out of herself, this would work perfectly if it just wasn't what it is. It's only she's nothing and he's right there and she can't stand it, someone else in this empty space she's put herself. Someone else in control when she comes apart, no, that's too much; she doesn't remember her name and she doesn't know why that's so fucking important because if it were important then he would've given it to her already and she wants-- something. Not this.

This is clean smells and mouths making words that aren't for her because people have conversations and she isn't people, they were always very clear on that but not to her because there was never any need to dignify her with explanations. This is that quiet place she went in her own mind where no one could touch her; this is where she goes every time she smiles out at the world with human eyes and human mouth like a light coming on in a dark room, pretty and wrong and not hiding but controlling. This is too close to something that has never been, can never be pleasurable, something that Ivan is not allowed to see or to touch or to know.

He isn't really what she's seeing when her hand closes around his throat.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

Stepping out of the bath and into the towel, the thought of food is not the most immediately appealing one and she wrinkles her nose, curling her toes under against the bathroom tile. "I don't think so." She feels wretched, if not nauseous, and almost everything seems like far more effort than it could possibly be worth.

[deservesadaisy]

"Alright." He considers her a moment, then goes back out to strip the bloody sheets off the bed. He doesn't like this, but assumes she likes it even less. At least she can have some clean sheets, if she's staying.

[rhinemaid]

Something about Ivan making the bed is so incongruously domestic, so out of place with the impression of him that Ilde would probably laugh under any other circumstances. As it is, she watches him from the doorway for with a peculiar what do I make of this expression for a few useless moments before it occurs to her that she should be toweling dry and maybe unplugging the bath or-- something more useful than wondering where Ivan learned to tuck a sheet.

[deservesadaisy]

He looks back at her after a moment. He doesn't know what it is about her that makes him want to take all this trouble, but he does, and he isn't questioning it too closely. While she has some superficial characteristics that Mitchell could, sometime, point out were not unlike Daisy, Ilde is so intensely not Daisy in every way it matters that it would honestly never occur to Ivan without prompting.

He offers a small smile. "You thought I had maids in to do this sort of thing?"

[rhinemaid]

"I didn't think about it," she says, truthfully, clutching the towel around her like an ineffective toga. "You look like you just fall into place." She's watched him get dressed, she knows that's not actually true, it's still just odd to see him puttering around a flat. She wonders if it's more or less odd than seeing her-- this.

[deservesadaisy]

"If a man can't make a bed properly when he's my age, he deserves whatever happens to him." He straightens, as he finishes. "I like to be self-sufficient. Though I did live in a lot of hotels before here."

[rhinemaid]

"You think people deserve whatever happens to them as long as it entertains you," she says, reflexively, but it lacks even the false bite that it'd usually have; good attempt, but shaky on the dismount and more like rote than banter.

Her thigh is bleeding again, sluggishly, when she comes back toward him and has a look under her towel-- "Where did you put the kit?"

[deservesadaisy]

"On the chair, in the corner." He points. Since she was trying for banter, not a conversation, he doesn't pick up the point about what he believes people deserve.

"Do you need it bandaged more tightly?"

[rhinemaid]

Kit in hand, after a beat long hesitation she offers it out to him, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Yes." This is more consciously testing; how much does he care? What else will he do? Will he do it if she asks instead of if she just can't? Does she still matter when she's paying attention?

[deservesadaisy]

He nods and takes the kit. "I've bound a lot fewer wounds than made beds," he prefaces, before he kneels and begins the work of re-bandaging her leg.

[rhinemaid]

"Well, you put it there," she murmurs, reasonably, "it's the least you can do."

[deservesadaisy]

With a wry smile, though he doesn't look up, he comments, "Usually, I wouldn't care." Except, apparently, he does.

[rhinemaid]

"I know." She's less clear on why this isn't usual, but she's grasped at least that it is and in ways slightly more complicated than just 'good' or 'bad'. Life would be a lot more convenient if things would simplify more neatly for her, more often. "Hasi says I'm supposed to talk to you. That you have to do that. For people." The talking thing.

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles, and there's a small, inward and bitter edge to it. "I can get by without, if it's so unpleasant to you." Maybe it would be better if they talked, but it wouldn't be the first time he managed without it.

[rhinemaid]

"She says--" Hasi says, Hasi knows, Hasi is, there are lingering hints of adolescent idolization that are why even now it's more big-sister-little-sister and not so much a friendship of equals, but Ilde could use the former, "--that it's a necessary evil, and no one likes it. That I was myself a Chinese puzzle box."

(Hasi didn't say that, Anais Nin did.)

She doesn't start crying again, at least, but it's worryingly close when she says, "I'm trying." He's supposed to appreciate that; the thought is slightly more savage than plaintive.

[deservesadaisy]

He looks up at her, hands lingering her thigh. "I know that. I do know." He can see some of the effort it costs her.

[rhinemaid]

"Does the thought not count for anything?" She's not good at it, but she's trying, she's just not completely sure why or for what. It's so hard to tell what matters to him and what doesn't and right when she thinks she's got it, she loses her grip--

Now is really a terrible time for this.

[deservesadaisy]

"Of course it does." He lifts one of his hands, very lightly blood-smeared, to her cheek. "It's not the same, but of course it counts. Ilde, this doesn't change anything with us, unless you want it to. I'm not leaving."

[rhinemaid]

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing." Not knowing anything is hard, but that, particularly; there needs to be a direction, she thinks, she needs to have something to aim for that makes sense, and then she can mark her place by it. That's the idea, anyway, and instead she's just plaintive and uncertain and in no state yet for a conversation more complicated than go to sleep.

[deservesadaisy]

He presses a light kiss to her forehead. "Get some rest. I'll be here when you wake up."

[rhinemaid]

Whether she likes it or not, she needs the sleep. She doesn't like it, admittedly, dragging out her dubiousness as she gives serious thought to protesting-- but she doesn't know what else she'd be doing right now if not that, and she's exhausted.

"Okay," finally, pulling her feet up onto the bed. "Okay."

[deservesadaisy]

He touches his thumb lightly to the corner of her mouth. "Do you want me to lie down with you, or shall I leave you to it and go clean myself up a bit?"

[rhinemaid]

"Stay here." ...he should really go and make sure she hasn't damaged him, arguably, but she's not going to be awake for that much longer and in the meantime she's reluctant to let him go far on the off-chance he doesn't come back. (He can tell her he's staying all he likes; she doesn't trust it. People say things all the time.)

[deservesadaisy]

He nods, and gets in to bed with her - it slightly undoes the work of putting on clean sheets, but he gets the sense she's not going to be pick about that. Once she's asleep, he'll give Njoki a call, and he'll cancel her appointments, but for now, he can be present. That much he can do.