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Yolanda steps back and takes a moment to appreciate the stinging of her palm and the burn of well used muscles in her shoulder. A smug smile unfurls as she admires Trinity’s reddened cheeks and the pink handprints that decorate them. She’ll be thinking of Yolanda whenever she sits down for at least the next few days.
“How’s your ass feel?” she asks, just to rub it in.
“Hurts,” Trinity moans, clearly fucked out of her mind. She’s face-down in her pillow, so her voice comes out muffled. “You’re so mean to me.”
Yolanda laughs. “You like it.”
Trinity mumbles, “No, I don’t.” Even after multiple orgasms and a solid spanking, she’s still a brat.
“Yeah, you do.” Yolanda knows she does, but she still wants to hear Trinity admit it—and yeah, maybe it’s a bit of an ego thing; sue her, she’s a surgeon.
“Nah. I don’t like it,” Trinity mumbles, “I need it. ‘S different.”
Yolanda pauses. “What do you mean, you need it?”
“You know, like…” Trinity half rolls over and waves her hand in a vague gesture that could mean anything. “I gotta put in the work. You get to take your frustrations out on me, and then I get to feel good afterwards. I need to earn it, first.”
“ ‘Earn’ it,” Yolanda echoes. A mild wave of suspicion starts to roil in her gut, coalescing into pinpricks of nausea. It’s more a distant, creeping dread than immediate, sour disgust, but something tells her it won’t stay that way for long.
“Um, yeah?” The fucked-out drawl in Trinity’s voice starts to evaporate in favor of sharp, genuine confusion. “I let you touch me however you want, and then you make me come. Tit for tat or whatever. That’s how this works.”
“I think—I need to go,” Yolanda says dizzily, the taste of something bitter and acrid haunting the back of her throat. She’d been planning on staying for another round, but now she can’t bear to stay in this room another minute.
Trinity doesn’t argue, doesn’t attempt to cajole Yolanda into staying, just rolls fully onto her back to see her better. “Oh. Okay.” Her passive acceptance makes Yolanda’s bones itch. This isn’t the spitfire of a woman she loves to tame; she’s too…docile, too subdued. Where’s Trinity’s bark, her bite?
Yolanda dresses in a rush and escapes to the kitchen, where the sudden, harsh glare of the overhead light throws her into a new tailspin.
Fuck. What is she doing? She’d just spanked Trinity’s ass raw and now she’s running away while Trinity sits there without the bare minimum of aftercare, because god knows she won’t take care of herself—if Yolanda leaves now, Trinity will probably just try to muscle through the endorphin drop and ignore how tender her skin is.
Yolanda expects better from herself.
She fills a glass with ice water from the fridge and sips at it slowly, forcing her autonomic nervous system back into homeostasis through sheer force of will. The glass gets refilled and mechanically delivered to Trinity, alongside the calm, measured command “drink,” and then Yolanda disappears into the bathroom.
She returns with a warm damp cloth and some ointment for Trinity’s ass. She’s never forgetten the ointment before, but tonight, the looming guilt that she’s refusing to interrogate—right here and for now, anyway; she can think when she has peace and quiet and privacy—has been occupying the majority of her frontal cortex.
Trinity watches, quiet and nonresistant, as Yolanda wipes away the mess between her legs, and she rolls over obediently when Yolanda asks so that she can have the soothing cream spread over her reddened skin. Trinity tenses and inhales sharply at the first touch before slowly relaxing into it, just like she always does. Yolanda used to think that gasp was a noise of pleasure. She used to think that Trinity’s relaxation was unforced and involuntary—automatic. Natural.
She’s not so sure about that anymore.
An enormous bruise on Trinity’s shoulder blade catches Yolanda’s eye as she finishes up. There's nothing to be done for it; she hadn’t broken the skin, so it will just have to heal at its own pace. And since no amount of tending to Trinity’s other wounds will assuage Yolanda’s guilt over having left them in the first place, it’s time for her to leave.
“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” Yolanda says.
“See you,” Trinity echoes blankly.
+++
It only takes a few days for Trinity to text Yolanda and ask her to come over again.
They’d been…normal-ish at work. Still flirty, still mostly focused on the patient, still avoiding the topic of anything they do outside the hospital. Yolanda hadn’t reached out yet, because she was still chewing on the gristly revelation that Trinity apparently sees their relationship as purely transactional. Like—yes, obviously they’re just casual, but they’re still affectionate with each other (or at least, Yolanda tried to be. She’d thought she was succeeding), and Yolanda still cares about her as a fucking human being—one she’s had intimate, vulnerable contact with, no less. Yolanda just needed…space, for a little while, to try to process the fact that Trinity didn’t see them the same way.
(Key word there: try.)
The main thing that’s bothering her is that she can’t figure out if Trinity dislikes what they’ve been doing, or if she’s merely indifferent to it—how much is amiable tolerance, and how much is Trinity actively shoving down her discomfort? Yolanda still doesn’t completely understand where Trinity got the idea that she has to “earn it” (yes she does, she just doesn’t want to think about the implications), and the uncertainty is driving her insane.
But when Trinity is the one to re-initiate contact, Yolanda feels obligated to respond, and respond positively at that. She texts back a quick sure in the middle of the work day and promptly forgets about it, but before she knows it, her shift is over and she finds herself knocking on the front door of Trinity and Whitaker’s apartment.
Trinity opens the door and silently steps back, gives Yolanda the space to take off her shoes and hang up her bag. Then they stare at each other awkwardly. Usually whoever extends the invitation also dictates the pace—whether they eat first or after, drinks or no drinks, living room or bed. Trinity doesn’t move, just stands stiffly, the muscles in her jaw twitching like she wants to say something.
Yolanda doesn’t want to wait until Trinity musters up the courage to speak; she’s not sure she can bear to hear it. She breaks with tradition and wraps her hands around Trinity’s waist, pulling her in for a kiss. Thankfully, after a brief moment of hesitation, Trinity kisses back—first hesitantly, then heatedly, and then desperately.
Kissing, for Yolanda, is a declaration of intention, not a goal in and of itself. She doesn’t dislike it, per se; it just doesn’t do anything for her. But in the past, whenever she’s broken a kiss—usually in order to manhandle Trinity onto her knees, or position herself between Trinity’s spread thighs (neither of which has ever earned her any complaints)—Trinity always wastes a moment chasing after her lips before accepting the change in plans and moving on. Tonight, Yolanda decides, she’s going to follow Trinity’s lead and let herself be kissed until the other woman has gotten her fill.
That’s not to say Yolanda is completely—or even remotely—passive during her experiment. She guides them towards the couch and encourages Trinity to help her take off some of their clothes. Like their previous encounters, Trinity eagerly follows every nonverbal suggestion, moaning and shivering in the cold air and just generally being delightfully reactive. It might not be a bad idea to let Trinity have her way every once in a while, Yolanda thinks, not bad at all.
Eventually, Trinity breaks the kiss, not long after Yolanda usually would. “Do you…y’know, want to move to the bedroom?” she offers.
Yolanda just shrugs. Trinity’s going to have to be firmer if she wants something. “Maybe I just feel like making out with you on the couch tonight,” she says.
Trinity’s eyes briefly grow wide with surprise, then narrow with more permanent suspicion. Yolanda can practically see the internal calculus going on behind them. Trinity’s brow scrunches, and her lips part—maybe to argue, or to express her suspicions—but then her face smooths over, as she visibly decides that it probably isn’t a trick, and she’d rather not look a gift horse in the mouth.
When Trinity leans back in, she hesitates at the last second, gaze flickering between Yolanda’s eyes and lips like she’s worried the other woman is only teasing, like if she leans in those final few millimeters it’ll all be taken away.
Yolanda lets her own eyes flutter shut and closes the gap for her.
Trinity whimpers into Yolanda’s mouth almost immediately, pressing closer and writhing needily until Yolanda encourages Trinity to just crawl into her lap. As soon as she’s settled, Trinity twines her arms around Yolanda’s neck to get the leverage she needs to hump Yolanda’s thigh. Hearing the noises she makes as her hips grind—the regular, muffled grunts of exertion, the occasional high, gaspging cry when her clit catches on Yolanda’s jeans—is almost as good as an orgasm. Maybe Yolanda should let Trinity have what she wants more often.
Eventually, Trinity grows breathless, pulls her mouth away to hide in the curve of Yolanda’s neck. Yolanda traces mindless patterns on her back and kisses whatever she can reach—temple, shoulder, neck, ear—while Trinity shudders in her lap.
“You okay, baby?” Yolanda asks after a while.
Trinity mumbles something unintelligible.
“What was that?”
“I said, I almost came,” Trinity mutters a bit louder.
Oh. Well then.
“Wouldn’t have been a bad thing if you did,” Yolanda says through an earsplitting grin.
Trinity leans back at that, enough to see Yolanda’s smug look, and rolls her eyes.
“What next?” Yolanda prompts, hands resting on Trinity’s waist. “Tell me what you want, baby.”
Typically, Yolanda would just take control at this point, and assume that since Trinity would eventually get off on whatever she does, that they are both equally into it. And that’s still probably—hopefully—totally true. But Trinity had also never almost come untouched before, and Yolanda wants to see what else can happen when Trinity gets her way.
“Um.” Trinity’s eyes grow large, off-balance from being asked what she wants so early in the evening. “I mean, I’m fine with whatever you want to do to me. I just wanna get off.”
Externally, Yolanda maintains her smug smirk, but inside she cringes at the “to”. Normally she wouldn’t, because she does do a lot of things to Trinity, but that’s not what tonight is supposed to be about.
“How about I go down on you?” Yolanda suggests.
“Really? I mean—yeah, yeah that sounds great,” Trinity agrees eagerly.
“Bed?” Yolanda suggests, then kisses the corner of Trinity’s mouth. The younger woman practically goes limp in Yolanda’s arms before gathering herself and responding affirmatively to the question. God, how had she never noticed how much Trinity melts in the face of this kind of softness?
They shuffle into Trinity’s room and flop into place on her bed, removing their last few articles of clothing. Yolanda settles down in between Trinity’s thighs, enjoying the soft heat radiating from her skin. She doesn’t do this a lot with Trinity—not because she doesn’t like giving head (she does, very, very much) but because the position limits how she can torment the other woman. She usually saves something like this for the very end, after a great deal of teasing build up or harsh impact play. She rarely ends up spending much time between Trinity’s legs at once, because Trinity never lasts long after Yolanda has had her way with her.
At the first delicate, tentative lick, Trinity jolts. The second is firmer, but still slow, stretching from her already-dripping hole up to her clit, and it elicits a faint, breathy whimper. By the third, Trinity’s hips are rolling upwards to meet Yolanda’s wet, open mouth, even if her hands are firmly clenched around the pillow beneath her head instead of tangled in Yolanda’s hair.
That’s still good, Yolanda thinks, that’s progress. Baby steps. She’s glad Trinity is at least starting to reach out for what she wants.
Yolanda reaches up past Trinity’s waist to cradle one breast in her hand. Usually, she’d pinch and twist the nipple, or rake her short fingernails over sensitive skin, but today she just cups her breast and gently circles the nipple with her thumb. Trinity keens anyway at the delicate caress, and Yolanda considers the experiment a success.
They find a rhythm quickly, and Yolanda loses herself in the base sensations: Trinity's wetness dripping down her chin and neck, Trinity’s thighs tensing and tightening around Yolanda’s ears, the taste of Trinity’s arousal flooding her mouth.
“God, you taste so good,” Yolanda moans into the swollen pink pussy in front of her, and either the words themselves or the vibrations of Yolanda’s voice against Trinity’s cunt earns her a gasping, keening cry.
Because they haven’t done anything besides make out, Yolanda mentally prepares herself to spend a while going down on Trinity—not that she’s remotely upset about the prospect—but after only a few more strokes of her tongue against hot, swollen flesh, Trinity’s thighs squeeze Yolanda’s head harder than they have before and her back starts to arch off the mattress.
She comes hard and fast, a lightning strike to the nervous system, and her orgasm is over as fast as it had arrived. Yolanda works her through the aftershocks automatically, and all the while she grapples with the dawning realization that the pain hadn’t been getting Trinity off at all, hadn’t been helping to build her right up to and over edge, that Trinity is just…easy.
Yolanda keeps lapping gently at the delicate pink folds before her. She still wants to hear Trinity whimper—old habits die hard—so she decides to keep eating her out, to let Trinity come as much as she wants, as much as she can handle, and maybe even take her past the point of overstimulation unless she’s brave enough to say no.
Trinity doesn’t so much as hint at a complaint, just spreads her legs even further and lets out a moan from deep within her chest. Yolanda takes it as the obvious permission it is, buries her face in Trinity’s slick, swollen cunt, and gets to work.
Yolanda makes her come twice more in quick succession, adding her fingers into the mix sometime between orgasms number two and three. Trinity is so wet and relaxed that she doesn’t notice Yolanda’s index finger sliding between her folds, and it takes the inclusion of her middle and ring fingers before the stretch is enough to coax Trinity into begging for more, harder, please, squirming deliciously all the while.
Somewhere during the buildup to orgasm number four, Trinity begins to lose her mind.
Her begging turns incoherent, words interspersed with whines that are muffled by her own hands and bitten lips. Yolanda wishes she wouldn’t, wishes she felt confident enough to share every whimper and groan freely, but Yolanda’s own mouth is too occupied to say so, and her hands are too far away to be helpful.
“Please,” Trinity begs, the words slurred and indistinct, “Yolanda, please, I need you.” She tugs weakly at the wrist of the hand cupping her tit.
It sounds desperate—more desperate than usual—so Yolanda lifts her head from Trinity’s pussy just long enough to ask, “Need what, baby?”
“Just—you,” Trinity begs. “Closer, please.”
It’s not a particularly descriptive request, and Yolanda isn’t sure how much closer she can get than her face in Trinity’s cunt. Still, she fully replaces her mouth on Trinity’s clit with her fingers and crawls up the bed to smother Trinity’s cries with a filthy, bruising kiss. Trinity’s eyes fly open when their lips meet, like she’s having a hard time believing Yolanda would do such a thing without being asked explicitly.
As soon as Yolanda adds her tongue to the mix, however, Trinity’s eyes slip shut and she lets herself fall into the kiss eagerly. A hint of teeth, and Yolanda can feel Trinity clenching rhythmically, then explosively around her fingers. A gush of fluid runs down her wrist, but Yolanda still doesn’t stop thrusting and curling, searching for the next trick that will make Trinity wail.
“Please, no, wait—” Trinity begs wetly, tears starting to leak down her temples. “Yolanda, please—I can’t, not again, it’s too much—”
Yolanda studies her face and decides to relent. The implication that the first four orgasms weren’t too much is enough of a relief that she no longer feels the need to prove herself.
Yolanda pulls out gently and wipes her fingers on the sheets, then lies down next to Trinity and spoons her side while she recovers. She doesn’t usually spend the night—usually hates the sensation of another body pressed up against her while she’s trying to sleep, can’t stand waking up hot and sticky from another person’s sweat—but she’s so comfortable like this, and Trinity looks so pathetically, beautifully worn-out. It’s inspiring an unusually protective urge in Yolanda. Maybe she will spend the night, just this once.
“You uh…you haven’t left any marks on me yet,” Trinity observes, interrupting Yolanda’s train of thought. She’s managed to catch her breath without Yolanda noticing, and her tone is held carefully even.
Yolanda shrugs. “Maybe I felt like being sweet tonight.”
“Oh,” Trinity says oddly, her expression flickering too fast for Yolanda to get a read on her.
“If you want me to slap you around a little, all you have to do is ask,” Yolanda offers, a teasing mock-leer on her face.
Please, please ask, she prays silently. She would be ecstatic to have some confirmation that Trinity enjoys what they usually do.
“No, it’s fine,” Trinity says after a too-long pause. “I mean, I’m up for whatever you want, but I don’t need it if you don’t.”
Whatever you want.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“What I want is to make you feel good,” Yolanda says, some of the agitation she feels bleeding into her voice despite her best efforts. “But I need you to be honest with me about what you like, first.”
“I like everything,” Trinity dismisses, “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Trinity. I’m serious.”
Trinity squirms, but Yolanda doesn’t let up. “Trinity,” she warns.
“Ugh. Fine. I guess I’m not, like, super into pain, but I know you get off on biting me and spanking me or whatever, and I like knowing that you’re getting off on my reactions, so, you know…overall I’m good with it.”
Despite her best efforts, Yolanda’s face must flicker with something, because Trinity starts to shrink.
“It’s fine, Yolanda, seriously, I’m good with everything. I don’t need you to do anything differently, I’m like, so easy to please—”
“But you don’t like the actual, physical sensation of pain.” Something cold and hard and dense makes its home in Yolanda’s chest, crushing her organs to the side to make space for itself.
“I don’t dislike it, I just…”
“Trinity.”
The younger woman grimaces. “Fine. Not…really, I guess. Not like this.”
Not like this.
Well, fuck.
“But…you do like the marks it leaves behind?” Yolanda checks. God, please, let there be something about their encounters that Trinity enjoys for her own sake, and not just because she wants to please Yolanda, not just because she wants something that she thinks can only come afterwards.
“Yeah.”
Her answer is short and simple. Honest.
Thank God.
“Okay.” Yolanda studies Trinity’s face, her wide-eyed anxiety, the uncertain wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Okay. I can do that.”
Yolanda rolls Trinity into her back and nestles her hips between the apex of Trinity’s spread legs, and the younger woman is too surprised to do anything but let herself be manhandled into position.
Starting at her collarbones, Yolanda sucks a series of gentle hickies into Trinity’s breasts, her belly, the tops of her thighs, the sides of her ass—anywhere she can reach that will still be covered by scrubs tomorrow. Trinity’s breathing grows heavier with each one, but she’s quiet, doesn’t whimper or yelp like she normally does when Yolanda spanks her or bites down hard.
When Yolanda has worked her way back down far enough, she starts to eye the slicked-down curls at the apex of Trinity’s thighs. This close, she can smell her arousal, and her mouth waters at the thought of doing something about it.
“Can I get you off again?”
Trinity’s breath catches briefly in her chest, and then she’s nodding wildly. “Touch me.”
Yolanda barely suppresses a shiver. At long, long last: an actual, explicit, direct verbal request from Trinity that Yolanda can act upon. Even if it’s simple and unspecific, it’s something.
“Whatever you want, baby.”
It takes longer for Yolanda to guide Trinity to her orgasm than it did earlier, but at least Trinity is more of an active participant than last time, tangling her fingers in Yolanda’s curls and grinding her hips up hard into Yolanda’s mouth and nose as she comes.
God, she’s so beautiful like this, twisted up and half out of her mind with pleasure. She’s beautiful all the time, actually. Yolanda doesn’t understand how anyone so gorgeous can feel like they need to do anything to earn her attention.
“Want me to get you off?” Trinity pants.
Yolanda considers it for a long moment. Her clit is throbbing almost painfully, and selfishly, she’d love nothing more than an orgasm, particularly one at Trinity’s hand. But tonight is supposed to be about Trinity, and ‘Want me to get you off?’ Is nowhere near the same thing as ‘I want to get you off.’ Yolanda will just have to rub one out in the shower later.
“I’m okay, baby,” she says eventually, giving Trinity a quick kiss to try to take any possible sting out of her words. “Thank you for offering, though.”
The kiss isn’t enough, unfortunately, and Trinity recoils as soon Yolanda finishes speaking. “You didn’t have to say yes to coming over if you weren’t in the mood,” she snaps, scrambling to sit up and yanking at the top sheet to cover her breasts.
Yolanda tilts her head. “I wasn’t not in the mood,” she says slowly, observing Trinity’s discomfort with the concept that Yolanda is okay not getting anything tangible out of tonight. She wonders why the give and take between them only seems to go one way. “I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t want to have sex with you, Trinity.”
Trinity stares at her, long and hard, jaw clenched tightly against a grimace.
“I wanna go again,” she says abruptly, dropping the sheet. “I want you to fuck me with the strap.”
The sudden change in mood catches Yolanda off-guard briefly, but she manages to raise a mildly admonishing eyebrow at the demand. She knows Trinity is just reaching for a distraction, but she’s very pleased about the other woman finally being direct about her desires and wants to encourage it. Still, she would never have let Trinity get away with that tone of voice in bed before, and she’s not about to start now.
“I mean, will you fuck me with the strap?” Trinity amends. “Please?”
Yolanda hesitates instead of agreeing immediately, her eyes narrowing. It doesn’t necessarily happen every time, but she has come just from wearing the strap and grinding against the base, and she can’t help but suspect that’s what Trinity is angling for tonight. Not that she would be against the idea, normally, but it’ll interfere with her quest of putting Trinity’s wants first.
“Please?” Trinity says again.
Then again, this clearly is Trinity’s biggest want at the moment.
Yolanda exhales once, hard. “Yeah, okay. Where is it?”
Trinity opens the drawer that contains her sex toys and retrieves a simple black harness—the one she always has Yolanda borrow when they do this—and tonight’s choice in cock: slightly bigger than their default, but not as big as the monster they use when Yolanda really wants to make her feel the stretch.
Before Trinity shuts the drawer, Yolanda catches a glance of an older, more beat-up harness in the back of the drawer, clearly well-loved and well-used. She’s never seen it before. She’s never seen Trinity wear it before, and it seems impossible she ever has, except the evidence dictates that she must have. Yolanda’s mind snags on the idea of Trinity topping. They’d never broached the topic, because the first time Yolanda had brought a strap-on out Trinity had begged to be fucked with it so fervently that they’d never revisited the dynamic since.
Maybe they should.
All of this goes through Yolanda’s head in a fraction of a second, though, and Trinity slams the drawer shut when she notices Yolanda looking.
A conversation for later in the evening, then. Or next time.
Yolanda sets up the harness and gets to work. Trinity is loose and relaxed and slick from her earlier orgasms, and Yolanda notches the head of the dildo inside with hardly any effort. Sliding in deeper and starting a firm, steady pace is even easier.
“Is this good?” she checks after a few experimental thrusts.
“Yes,” Trinity pants.
Yolanda picks up the pace. “How good?”
“So good, Yolanda, fuck.”
Yolanda feels like playing with fire. “The best you’ve ever felt?”
“Yes.” There’s zero hesitation in Trinity’s response, and it eggs Yolanda on to the point of recklessness.
“Say it, then,” Yolanda demands. “Say I’m the best you’ve ever had.”
“You are,” Trinity moans. “Fuck, Yolanda, you’re the best, you’ve ruined me for anyone else.”
Yolanda slips a hand down to circle Trinity’s clit, and she comes with a sharp cry, hiding her face in Yolanda’s shoulder as she falls apart in the other woman’s arms.
Yolanda pulls away slowly once the shaking slows to an occasional tremor. Trinity’s face is red, but her eyes are reassuringly dry.
“Did you mean that?” Yolanda asks softly.
“Mean what?”
“That I’ve ruined you for anyone else?”
Trinity stiffens in Yolanda’s arms, then looks away and shrugs. “I already said this is the best sex I’ve ever had. I’m not expecting lighting to strike twice.”
“Oh? You already thinking about your next conquest?” Yolanda prods, pretending to be offended. Okay, maybe she’s a little bit legitimately offended. Whatever. She’s still mostly just teasing.
“This isn’t going to last forever,” Trinity says, voice matter-of-fact as she stares resolutely at the ceiling. “You’ll get tired of me eventually.”
The dry, unsentimental tone of her observation sends a chill through Yolanda, anxious goosebumps breaking out on her skin. This isn’t—it’s casual, sure, but has she ever given Trinity any indication that she wasn’t enjoying herself? That she found their time together boring, or that she wanted it to end?
Trinity’s eyes drift to the piloerection dusting Yolanda’s forearms and excuses herself to the bathroom. “I’m gonna go pee.”
Yolanda hears the sound of the toilet flushing after a short while, the sink running and turning off, and then…nothing. Just the silence of Trinity avoiding Yolanda.
Yolanda scoffs at herself; that’s a bit too melodramatic for her. Actually, what is Trinity doing in there?
Yolanda retrieves her underwear and t-shirt from the floor and dresses just enough to ward off the chill of the AC as she makes the trek to the bathroom.
“Trinity? Babe?”
The door creaks open under Yolanda’s fingertips, revealing Trinity staring at herself in the mirror, twisting and turning to see all the bruises blooming on her skin. She presses lightly on one over the crest of her hipbone and watches the skin change color, then presses down again, harder.
Yolanda doesn’t say anything, just leans on shoulder against the wall and waits for Trinity to be finished investigating whatever it is that she finds so intriguing. When Trinity finally meets her eyes in the mirror, Yolanda can’t help but let out a small exhale.
“What’re you up to in here?” she asks softly.
Trinity pokes another hickie, frowns when somehow that fails to produce the result she wants. “Trying to find one that hurts.”
Yolanda frowns. “What?”
“They usually hurt,” Trinity explains, like the concept of a bruise is the part Yolanda is struggling with. “They’re barely sore. This one doesn’t hurt… And this one doesn’t… Even this one barely hurts,” she says, referring to the giant bruise on her shoulder that Yolanda had left the last time they’d slept together. It's healing nicely, which—thank god it doesn’t hurt anymore; it’s not supposed to.
Yolanda frowns and moves closer, then puts her hands on Trinity’s waist and her chin on her shoulder. “Love bites aren’t supposed to hurt, babe.”
Trinity stiffens as soon as the word love leaves Yolanda’s lips and yanks herself out of the loose embrace. “Okay, what is this?” she demands. “What the fuck is going on with you today?”
Yolanda refuses to insult them both by playing dumb. “This is me trying to be less shitty of a kink partner,” she says simply.
Trinity turns away, shoulders hunched defensively, and yanks a bathrobe off a hook. “No, that’s not—this is casual.”
Yolanda rolls her eyes. “Casual doesn’t mean I don’t take your wants into account, Trinity, Jesus,” she scoffs.
Trinity belts the robe around her waist. “No, you just—you use my body however you want and then get me off after, and that’s it,” she spits.
“—After?” Yolanda’s voice is tight. “Trinity, are you—do you not enjoy what we’re doing at all? Are you just—putting up with it?” Putting up with me?
“No,” Trinity says, after a too-long pause. “I like it.”
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
“Maybe you need to get your ears checked.”
Yolanda’s teeth grind. “You know what I think?”
Trinity rolls her eyes. “What.”
Yolanda’s past partners—the ones who had overlapping kinks, anyway—had liked the surprise of pain, the stinging shock of it, the anticipation in between. They craved it. Trinity, Yolanda is finally beginning to realize, merely tolerates it, because she thinks it’s the only path to being wanted.
“I think you’re used to pain. I think you expect it, and you’ve learned how to dissociate while it’s happening.”
“No, I don’t.” The denial is immediate and flimsy.
“You’re not into it. It doesn’t turn you on, doesn’t make you…more present in your body, you just shut down until it’s over.”
“So? You like it.”
“No, I like making my partners feel good, Trinity, what the fuck. I like pushing you to your limits, not past them. I’m not—”
“I don’t have limits,” Trinity interrupts flatly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yolanda scoffs. “Everyone has limits.”
“Okay, well, then mine are being naked and being seen, and a broken limit is a broken limit, so it doesn’t matter how far you go.”
Yolanda blinks. It takes more than a moment to process. “What the fuck, Trinity.”
“What?”
“Are you—are you fucking serious right now?” Yolanda’s not sure what would be worse: Trinity deciding now is the perfect time for a joke, or Trinity meaning those words wholeheartedly.
“Yes. I don’t like feeling like I’m on display. Makes me viscerally uncomfortable, but it’s whatever.” Trinity shrugs. “It’s my problem to deal with, you don’t need to worry about it.”
Oh.
Oh no.
Sincerity is so much fucking worse than the possibility of a joke.
“Why would you…why do you even let me near you, if those are your limits?” Yolanda says incredulously.
“Because being naked is kind of a prerequisite for us fucking, Yolanda, and I want that bad enough that I’m fine with being a little uncomfortable.”
“A little uncomfortable?”
Trinity rolls her eyes. “A lot uncomfortable, whatever. Like I said, it’s my problem to deal with. Relax. It's not like feeling bad is gonna kill me.”
Fuck. Fuck. How does this keep getting worse?
“So you’re using this—using me—to self-harm?” Yolanda accuses.
“No.” Yolanda glares at the immediate denial. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know, does it even matter?”
“Of course it matters! Jesus, Trinity, of course how you’re feeling matters!”
“It shouldn’t,” Trinity says, still infuriatingly calm. “We’re casual. You just agreed with that. We don't have to do any of this…feelings shit.”
“It’s not about feelings, it’s about being safe!”
“Okay, well…I don’t need that from you either.”
Her words hang in the air between them, sucking out all the oxygen in the room. Trinity doesn’t try to take them back, just crosses her arms and looks away from Yolanda, staring resolutely at her reflection in the mirror.
Yolanda waits for a moment, desperately hoping against all logic that Trinity will take it back, that she’ll apologize and promise to treat herself better, and then stumbles out of the bathroom when no such words are forthcoming. Trinity follows silently—curiosity or masochism, Yolanda doesn’t know, and at this point, it doesn’t matter.
Yolanda stumbles into her pants and jams on her shoes, grabs her bag from the hook by the front door—her bra is still somewhere in Trinity’s room, she realizes. Well, fuck her bra. Trinity can keep it.
“I’m not letting you use me to punish yourself,” Yolanda says. “I deserve better than this.”
Trinity just watches. “Yeah, probably.”
Yolanda pauses with her hand on the knob of the front door, debating whether or not to say more. It’s not like Trinity will believe her, but she can’t bear leaving it unspoken.
“You deserve better than this, Trinity.”
Maybe someday, someone else will say it in a way that Trinity believes. But today is not that day, and Yolanda isn’t that person. She doesn’t know how to be them.
The door clicks shut.