Chapter Text
It had started innocent. Well, as innocent as something like it could be.
“Cait? Hey, Cait, can you hear me?”
Caitlyn groaned, the world coming back into view slowly. She blinked rapidly against the gentle glow of the bedroom’s dimmed lights, trying to focus her eyes on something. Slowly, Vi’s pinched face and darting eyes swam into view. Vi was hovering, her hands next to Caitlyn but not on her.
“Caitlyn, c’mon; say something.” Vi’s words came out fast, her voice verging on frantic.
“Something,” Caitlyn mumbled, her mind not quite back online yet. “I can hear you, love.”
Vi sighed, some of her tension cut and a gentle smile coming back to her face. Caitlyn could see her partner’s eyes flickering over her face and body. Normally she would know exactly what that meant but now, when it felt like half of her brain was between her legs, she couldn’t quite put the dots together.
“I thought I broke you.” Vi chuckled, but it was dry, short. The lines of worry still hadn’t disappeared from her face.
“You could,” Caitlyn responded quietly, words she had meant to keep unsaid slipping out. Vi tilted her head, eyebrows furrowing. No turning back now. “Break me,” Caitlyn finished.
Vi chuckled that dry quick laugh again. Nervous, that’s what it was. Caitlyn’s mind was coming back online, even if she didn’t want it to. “I don’t know if you want that, Cupcake.” Vi looked away, “‘Just because you can doesn’t mean you should’.” It seemed like she was mimicking someone, although Caitlyn wasn’t quite sure who.
“I do,” Caitlyn responded quickly, grabbing Vi’s arm and drawing her attention again. “Want that. I do want that.”
Vi’s eyebrows furrowed again, looking over Caitlyn again. “I don’t--hm.” Vi paused, considering. Caitlyn pulled herself up into sitting, her leg muscles already aching from how hard they tensed during her orgasm. She moved her other hand to Vi’s cheek.
“I sprung this on you, I’m sorry.”
Vi turned to meet Caitlyn’s eyes and something between them clicked. Some sort of understanding, although Caitlyn was unable to name it.
“No, don’t. I just, well…hm.”
Caitlyn giggled at that, at the repetition. Vi chuckled in response, and soon the two were laughing as if Vi hadn’t just fucked every thought out of Caitlyn’s brain a few minutes ago.
“I’ll go run us a bath,” Caitlyn said when the laughter died down. It had been a part of their aftercare since the beginning, whether their sex was a proper scene or not.
Vi trailed behind her, holding on to her wrist. “We should talk, though. About what you said.”
“Can it wait?” The further Caitlyn came back to her actual self, the sharp-witted temporary Head of Surgery, the more embarrassed she became about what she had admitted. She never wanted to push Vi into anything her lover didn’t wholeheartedly also want.
“Cait-”
Caitlyn interjected. “At least until morning?” She couldn’t have the conversation now; she regretted having said anything at all, but it was too late to take the confession back.
Vi looked like she wanted to protest, her mouth about to open, but she just nodded. “Till morning.”
Caitlyn stared down into her tea, swirling the bag and ruminating on what she had admitted last night. She had discovered this kink of hers years ago, when she was trying to find new things to read as she…pleasured herself. It was hard to properly articulate to herself, and she knew it would be much harder to explain to Vi.
Caitlyn had always been defined by her mind. In her school days she was always at the top of the class; she would spend hours studying, and felt an immense reward when it paid off. When she graduated high school, she had to find something new to turn her attention to. Her mom wanted it to be politics, but she found a calling with medicine. They were both high-paying, well-respected fields, so it placated her mother enough. She loved the analysis of symptoms and vitals, which often felt like puzzle pieces with a blurry picture. But they would leave her exhausted, her mind often shifted into overdrive and unable to shut off even when she made liberal use of her notebook to try to get the analysis out of her mind and onto something physical.
Caitlyn tried, but she could never stop thinking. Which is why the idea of someone pulling the thoughts out of her head was so alluring, even if she knew it would never happen. It was too complex and that level of control and care was far, far too much to ask of anyone. Especially Vi, who had spent all of her life taking care of others. She could not bear to put a weight so heavy, the weight of completely taking care of and controlling Caitlyn, on Vi’s already worn-down shoulders.
Now that they were firmly rooted in each others’ lives, Caitlyn tried to take care of Vi in every way possible. Usually that included their bedroom too. No matter who was domming, Caitlyn always took care of Vi. Vi would sometimes physically control Caitlyn, pushing and pulling her into various positions, but Caitlyn doubted Vi would want to mentally control Caitlyn, and she would never force her to.
“Hey.” Caitlyn looked up from her mug to meet Vi’s eyes. Her girlfriend had a soft, close-mouthed smile. It would make Caitlyn think that this was any other morning if not for seeing Vi’s fingers running over the edge of her mug and feeling her leg tap repeatedly under the table.
“About last night,” Caitlyn began. “I’m sor-”
“I want to.”
“What?” Caitlyn was confused, taken aback. She trusted Vi wholeheartedly, but she didn’t trust this. There were people who enjoyed being on the dominant end, who loved having complete control, but she never thought Vi would be one of them. She figured Vi would want her control to stay purely physical. Her worry had suddenly shifted from ‘what if she thinks I’m a freak’ to ‘what if she’s lying about what she wants to please me.’
“I want to try it. I think.”
“You think?”
Vi smiled half-heartedly. “I don’t exactly know what ‘breaking you’ looks like.” She looked at Caitlyn, meeting her eyes, and suddenly Caitlyn found her tea a much more comfortable focus than her girlfriend’s eyes.
Caitlyn took a deep breath. “It’s…complicated. There’s not even an official name for it.”
“Official name?”
“Yes. There are a lot of specific names for different kinks--bondage, exhibitionism, impact play, et cetera.” Vi nodded along; they had discussed and played with some of these before, so the words were at least familiar. “This one doesn’t have one. Some people call it ‘mindfucking’, but that’s…not very specific.” Caitlyn trailed off a bit, hoping Vi would interrupt her. Instead the shorter woman looked at her with open eyes, motioning for Caitlyn to continue. “It’s hard to explain. I’m sorry.” Caitlyn began to stand up, walking away from the conversation she didn’t feel she could finish.
Vi stopped her with a hand on Caitlyn’s wrist. “You don’t have to explain the concept to me. Just tell me what you want.”
“Freedom.”
“Freedom? Free from what?”
“Thinking.” Caitlyn saw Vi open her mouth, about to interject, and rushed to get her explanation out before Vi could start asking more questions. “I want to be dumb. Mindless. I think so much, and,” Caitlyn took a deep breath in, trying to control her emotions; this was not a therapy session. “Sometimes I just want to stop.”
“Okay…” Vi began.
“I want you to make me stop thinking.”
“Like, right now?”
“No, not right now, it would take time and planning and I just-” Caitlyn took a deep breath. “This is all coming out wrong. Just…I’ll talk, I’ll try to explain, and then you can ask questions when I’m done, okay?”
Vi nodded. Caitlyn could feel her girlfriend’s leg moving faster.
“Aside from, well, stress relief, there is something very…” Caitlyn paused, trying to find a word that sounded better than ‘fucking hot’, “alluring about losing control, especially of my mind. Giving it up to someone. Having them take it from me.” Vi looked concerned, but didn’t interrupt. “We’d talk about it beforehand, agree on things. You wouldn’t actually be doing anything I didn’t want, but the fantasy of you taking it is…good. And then going a step further, the idea of you replacing my desires with your own is…”
“Fucking hot?” Vi supplied.
Caitlyn laughed softly. “Yes. Fucking hot. Do you have any questions? You don’t have to do this, it ought to be something we both want.”
“No, no, it is something that I want.” Caitlyn had a hard time believing that, but she would trust it for now. “The idea of being the one with that much control over you, it’s, how did you say, alluring.” Vi mimicked Caitlyn’s accent, and Caitlyn lightly kicked her under the table. “Hey!”
“Did that hurt?” Caitlyn put an over-the-top faux sympathy into her voice, frowning at Vi.
“It hit my soul, Cait,” Vi responded, equally as dramatic. The two laughed into their mugs. Caitlyn felt the tight coil of anxiety around her unwind, just a bit. Maybe this far-fetched fantasy could actually become something of a reality. “But I do have a question. Maybe a couple.”
Caitlyn nodded and spread her hand out, a silent ‘go ahead.’
“I know you said that I won’t be able to make you do anything that you don’t want to, but how do we know? The fantasy of you doing anything I tell you, no matter what you want, is hot, but I don’t want to actually force you into anything.”
Caitlyn nodded. “We’d talk about it beforehand, clearly lay out what we both want and what our limits are. And it’s just like hypnosis--that’s actually a subset of it--where you won’t be able to make me do anything I don’t already want to do. We’ll be honest with each other. And I trust you.”
“You sure? With this much?”
Caitlyn rolled her eyes slightly. “How many times have you saved my life?”
“This is different,” Vi tried to counter.
“Is it? Just as I trust you to watch my six, I trust you to fuck with my mind. In a way we both want. If that isn’t something you want, that’s okay.”
“No, it is, I just want to make sure that you want it and-”
Caitlyn knew a spiral when she saw one. She reached out and grabbed her girlfriend’s hand, grounding her. “Violet.”
Vi looked up, biting her lip as if to hold back words.
“I want to try this,” Caitlyn began. “Do you?”
Vi exhaled sharply. “Yeah.”
Caitlyn nodded, running her fingers over Vi’s hand. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“So, uh.” Vi shifted her legs, trying to find a comfortable position on the couch. She felt more like she was negotiating a job with a restaurant than talking to her girlfriend. “How does this work?” They had had sex many times before, occasionally bringing in ropes or degradation or edging, but this…this was almost entirely alien. They had never properly sat down and planned anything out, not without the intent to do it immediately after.
Caitlyn had brought a fucking notebook. She leafed through it, to whatever notes she had presumably taken. “Well, we’ve already talked about safe words…” Caitlyn hummed, moving her fingers down the page. Did she have a fucking checklist?
As Caitlyn continued muttering, Vi couldn’t stop herself from imagining the worst case scenario. From fucking it up here to the very end of the scene, she started to think of every way it could go wrong. Caitlyn’s humming and whispers made it worse, making her skin crawl. She had to stop it, or she might implode.
“Cait.” Her voice was harsher than she meant, but it got Caitlyn’s attention. She moved closer, shoulder to shoulder, placing her hand over Vi’s. The touch brought Vi down, back to her current self, and not some fuckup in a hypothetical future.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” Vi responded, near instantly. “It’s just…”
“Tell me, love.” Caitlyn ran her thumb over the top of Vi’s hand. “I don’t want to do this unless we’re fully honest with each other."
Okay. Honesty. Vi could do that. “I don’t know what I’m doing. And I know you said we’ll figure it out together, but when all I have to go off of is muttering and some admissions, it gets hard not to worry about the way everything might go wrong.”
Caitlyn nodded. “We’ll talk about what to do if everything goes wrong. But first,” she closed the notebook, for now at least, “tell me what you want. If everything goes perfectly right, tell me what it would look like for you.”
Vi shook her head. Caitlyn opened her mouth, probably to say something about trust and honesty again, but Vi cut her off. “You first. It’s your fantasy.”
“I-” Caitlyn blew a piece of hair out of her face. It fell back down, and Vi reached out and tucked it behind her ear. “Like I said, I’d like to be mindless. From what I’ve read, it will probably take a couple of months of conditioning to get to exactly what I want.” Caitlyn took another deep breath. Vi waited. “But in the end, I’d love for you to be able to just come in, push a couple of buttons you know exist deep inside me, and take my mind away. To the point where I don’t have any wants, or if I do, they’re only to please you. And then you…do whatever you want with me.” Caitlyn took a deep breath in. “Of course, we’d set an actual time and place, and talk about things that I’d want you to do to me, but that’s my goal, I guess.” She turned, meeting Vi’s eyes for the first time since the start of her monologue.
Vi blew a breath out. She had been holding it, she realized, entire body tensed up to see if what she wanted and what Caitlyn wanted matched. And it did. Her shoulders slumped back down to a normal height, and she stopped grinding her jaw.
“Sorry, if you think I’m a freak, we can leave it-”
Vi turned her hand around, wrapping her fingers in Caitlyn’s and cutting off her partner’s spiral before it got worse. “I don’t. That’s.” She paused. A rope of shame coiled around her, trying to silence her, but if Caitlyn could be that honest so could she.
“That’s exactly what I’d want. In the opposite way. You trusting me that much means a lot, so much. But also, having that level of control?” She was trying not to pause too much, to leave room for Caitlyn’s negative thoughts to ruminate, but it was hard to express much through the arousal now pumping in her veins. “That’s fucking hot. You, in theory, doing whatever I want? Getting to-” Honesty. “To do whatever I want to you? That’s so much power.”
“I know, but I trust you.” Caitlyn had that same concerned, determined look she had worn so often these past two days.
Vi chuckled. “I know you do. I wasn’t doubting it, Cupcake. I want it. I want to come home and, if I feel like you’re not doing anything worthwhile, take your mind and put you on your knees so you can do something useful.” Vi wasn’t quite sure where that came from, and she almost followed it with a swift and self-shaming apology, until she saw Caitlyn’s face.
Caitlyn’s eyes were fucking sparkling, the same way they did when she saw something she desperately wanted in a shop window or when she ran over to Vi beaming about how she had gotten her diagnosis right on the patient who had been in the hospital for weeks. Her mouth was slightly open, the same way it was when she was close to an orgasm and needed Vi to suck just a little more.
Caitlyn closed her mouth, then opened it, then closed it again. Vi just waited, the warmth of self-satisfaction running in her veins. “God, Vi, you can’t just say things like that.”
“Can’t I?”
Caitlyn shot her a withering look, but there wasn’t much power behind it. Vi wanted to reach out and touch Caitlyn, tease her a bit more and get that look of bliss back, but she held herself back. They were supposed to be talking, not fucking, no matter how much the throbbing in her core tried to convince her otherwise.
“Sorry, sorry,” Vi said, not very apologetic at all. She moved even closer and stretched her head over Caitlyn’s shoulder, getting a look at her notebook and its fucking checklist. She scanned her eyes down it while Caitlyn took a few deep breaths; she was almost certainly as worked up as Vi.
“So,” Vi began. Their eyes met, and Caitlyn was back to a…less horny version of herself. “Looks like we should talk about limits and titles next?”