Polaris Skies

Chapter 31

NSFW - EROTICA, BDSM play

Yeller drew in a muffled gasp, almost dropping the rope in his hand. "This won't be a good thing, Nat," he protested, trying to return the equipment. Nat took the bundle, his heart fluttering. Maybe it had been too much to ask after all this time. Yeller pulled him back into a hug. "Why?" Yeller's voice cracked in his ear.

Nat rested his forehead against Yeller's sternum. His voice echoed coarse and hard in his reply, "I want it burned out of me. I need for there to be something good from what Cashia and Tereza's relationship is based on. I can't take running and hiding forever. It's exhausting, and I don't like it conquering me. I need to know I can be a good host for her. I need this for myself. I've tried to come out so many times in the many weeks that have gone by, and every time I've thought I could do it, flashes of memories bore down on me, and I froze.

"He has interrupted my life. My skin, my bones are no longer my own. My heart and my lungs obey his rhythm, and I feel like I'm drowning. My spirit is tethered and strangled. I can't let that bird rule my body anymore. I can't let him direct my every action like a puppet. I need the stench burned off of my flesh and scrubbed out of my mouth. I need help. Show me this can be good."

Yeller swallowed at the admission. Cashia? he asked, needing guidance. He was caught in two directions. One was that he did not want to hurt Nat again by exposing him to Cashia's version of courtship with his mate. The other was that he did not want to hurt Nat by telling him no.

"We don't have to. I should have known this would be too much," Nat apologised, extracting himself from Yeller's hold to put the rope back in the pack.

Yeller stood back and watched as Nat shoved the hardware back in the bag hurriedly. Should I? Cashia asked Yeller. He had not expected that level of honesty from Nat, or to find him begging, let alone demanding something like this.

I don't know. I don't know, Cashia. That PTSD flashback practically broke him last time. We haven't seen him in a month. We may never see him again if we push him over the edge. Yeller watched Nat fidget as his own heart slowly sped up. Sven said 'fix'. Will this shatter him? Yeller pressed a hand against his chest, trying to still the pain in his ribs as his heart throbbed.

Nat...I think he wants us to break him, like when a broken bone has set wrong, and it has to be broken again to set it proper. If it's set wrong, it is interruptive and painful, and there's no forgetting how bad and wrong it is. You can't straighten out a bad set by bending the bone most times. This time we aren't going to strain and bend him, hoping for everything to be rosy. If we break him, we have to make sure we set him in a good way. Cashia pinned Nat with a steady gaze.

I'm not sure it works that way, Cashia. Yeller tensed.

This isn't something I've ever approached like this. You may be right, and this is all wrong, Cashia admitted. He was not familiar with how to treat PTSD. It was a new term to him, let alone psychology in any form of modern understanding.

He had watched men return from battlefields, scarred and terrified. Their eyes would glass over at sudden noises, things that they saw, things that they felt. Small triggers or large. Dogs, blades, the shift of a horse, the smell of the butchered chicken their wives were plucking. Gunpowder, the cacophony of a church bell, cannons, a broom falling over in a corner. Some would scream and run; others would hide. There were those who attacked violently in unseeing retaliation. Sleep evaded them. They lived a split life, between the now and the then. Some learned to hide it, few overcame it, and most suffered through flashbacks. There were those who exposed themselves over and over again to stimulation to become numb to the constriction that an episode would cause. Some drowned it out and took to floating. There were those that made it through and those that took a more permanent path out. He could not answer Yeller honestly about what type Nat would be at the end of this.