cw: D/s and honorifics including ‘daddy,’ impact play, allusions to medical situations

Update to this post: My partner now uses they/them pronouns.

I’m still afraid to touch her, sometimes, and far too afraid to ask her to do things. The surgeon said she can’t lift more than five pounds. I can handle everything, I tell her. I don’t handle it well. I grow a little distant, I forget to call her ‘ma’am’ or ‘Daddy’ or the other names I use to honor her. I love her, and I tell myself I’m her submissive, but I’m too afraid to submit. Surely my submission is a burden, and it must weigh far more than five pounds.

She confronts me about it, finally. I cry, and she holds me. Her arms around me lift nothing, and my pain doesn’t hurt her. She explains to me that she needs my help, and that means to share my burdens and fears with her, to not draw away when we both need each other, that she can’t be my caring dominant if I won’t let her care and dominate.

The gap closes, again, and my heart aches from my own mistakes.

Later, she helps me clear the table, because I’ve let it pile up while I was overwhelmed. She can stand with no problem, and none of the mess except the pack of Gatorade weighs more than five pounds. And as we work together, we flirt—after seven years, we flirt more than we did when we started out. After seven years, we’ve turned flirting into an art form, because we know each other so much better.

“I need you to wipe that table,” she says. She doesn’t demand, but it’s still an order, and I still obey. “It’s been a while, so go crazy. Pummel that table.”

“Lucky table,” I joke.

“Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get pummeled,” she teases me with a smirk.

“I wish,” I say, looking under the sink at the array of cleaners. “But I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing you can’t do for a few more weeks.”

“The riding crop takes hardly any work,” she says with a shrug. “I’ll go get it.”

“For after the table?” I emerge victorious with some all-surface Windex.

“No,” she says over her shoulder, leaving the kitchen, “and don’t start spraying yet.”

She comes out of the bedroom, crop in hand. I’m not dressed for a spanking. I’m in the same Eeyore pajama pants I’ve been wearing for days, and my hair is a mess. She doesn’t care.

“Start cleaning,” she says, and with a slight movement of her arm, she delivers a brilliant sting to one cheek, a little too high but still perfect.

I do as she says, but not well. I spray the table, follow that with a paper towel, but my mind is on the arhythmic movements of her arm, the sharp blows from the crop as I move around the table. It’s the first spanking we’ve done in weeks, and it’s new, different. Our sessions are usually planned in advance, with me kneeling, or leaning, or otherwise motionless, while she builds a rhythm with each strike. Now she strikes when she wants to, following me around the table, slapping hard when I bend or when I straighten up, or doing nothing at all while I anticipate a blow that never comes. It takes no real effort from her, and even my soft, fuzzy pajamas aren’t a barrier, like they often are with the paddle or her hand.

With impact toys, I prefer a surface a stinging sensation to a thud—not the sting of a snapping rubber band, but the sting of your hands after applause. It feels like a kiss to my skin, leaving warmth that lingers for minutes, and a rosy pinkness, without a bruise. The crop is perfect, biting through my pants. I feel each blow as sharply as I would with nothing on, each starburst of pain.

“Is this good?” she asks as she delivers another blow.

“Yes,” I say, half-giggling, from her chasing me around the table and from the giddiness of being spanked, of her laying affection down like this, healing the gap I’d tried to force between us. “I’m going to need to safeword soon, though.” She wants to know these things. She wants my pain to be pleasure.

“I’ll do one more,” she says. Pushing me, but just a little. Making sure I know that she’s in charge, but that she’ll never push that to where I can’t handle it.

She spanks me one more time, and it’s good.

I finish cleaning the table. I feel centered, and warm, and hers. “Thank you, Daddy,” I say to her.

She gives me a smirk, and a hug. “No problem, Pommy,” she says, and goes to put away the crop.

We put the placemats on the table, and sit down, talking about mundane things again, because that’s how it goes in a 24/7 dynamic. Kink bleeds into everyday life, and everyday life bleeds into kink.

I’ve been afraid to touch her, but despite the cleared table, I sit at her feet, and wrap my arms around her leg, my chin on her knee.

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