Chapter Text
When all of this is over,
I'll take shelter under the orange tree
that sits in the shadow of the old oak tree
cloaked under the sky, wide and black.
I can trust and believe,
despite the sorrow stored in my skin,
joy is a steady stream
in the depths of my soul,
and the midnight sky a balm
for my sundried arms.
I am not who I was,
I do not have to run anymore,
I have hope,
this day is still brimming with a thousand stories.
And my story is one of many.
Under the orange tree,
under the oak tree,
my words
unassembled
within me
I peel back this orange
layer by layer
to tell its story.
And I peel another one,
and another.
I taste their sweet and sour cacophonies,
each piece of fruit in its own season.
Leaning against the brown tree trunk,
I weep,
finally.
Under all these shredded layers,
I am finally
free to rest.
-How Far You Have Come (Excerpt from "Mississippi")
By: Morgan Harper Nichols
The world spins around him. The floor lurching under his feet. Tiredness pulls at his mind. Everything is too much. Everything is crowding around him. The floor too cold. The air too stale. His skin too clammy. The lights too bright and the dark too dark. His mind is unsettled. His balance is shaking as he grabs the countertop to keep himself standing.
Seungmin knew it was coming. He could feel it at work today when Jeongin and him were assigned a project and he couldn't keep his mind focused on the details. He could feel the tiredness during the previous week uping itself. He was falling asleep as early as 7 pm and sleeping straight through to his alarm at 6 am. Waking up and staying up was hard. It was like being stuck in tar. It clung to his skin as he pulled himself out of bed. The sleep wasn't a relief, though. He woke up every 2 hours, after each REM cycle. He knew it. He could tell you the time in the middle of the night just based on when he woke up.
He has work tomorrow. He has that stupid project to get done by Thursday and tomorrow is Tuesday. He can't call out. What he needs is for this drop to happen and happen fast. He drops to his hands and knees and crawls to his bedroom lest he fall and hit his head. Eating dinner is no longer an option tonight. What he needs to do is get in his bed and surround himself in comfort.
The bad drops are almost monthly for him. Sometimes stress will bring them faster and sometimes, if he's really lucky, he will get 2 months free of drops. He's learned to deal with it. To him, this is just life. It's the better option. It is his option. His choice.
He shoves open his door and makes his way to his bed, which he crawls up and on to like a child. He strips out of his work clothes and tosses them in the direction of the hamper. He left his pajamas on his bed, so it's easy to pull them on. Everything is so overwhelming. He wants to cry. He will cry, soon.
Seungmin reaches over to his alarm clock to set it for tomorrow. He also sets a couple of alarms on his phone just in case. In case this drop is worse. In case he's out for a while.
The alarms are set and he's pulling his blanket tightly around him as the tears start to spring. As the pain in his head becomes so overwhelming that all he can focus on is the thumping in it.
Thump
Thump
Thump
The pain is bad, but it's bearable. He can live with it. He has learned to live with it. He has to live with it. The drops are regular at this point. The tiredness, the pain, the scratching of his mind, that's all normal. It's chronic. It's only when he drops badly, when it flares up, that he struggles. Come tomorrow, he will be back in the same place he has been for the past year, until next month. Seungmin has small drops, the kind where he needs to shut himself in a silent and dark room for about an hour until he's good again. Those are weekly. He can live with those too.
"F-fuck." He groans out as the thumping drowns out any other noise that might have seeped through the walls. The pain is horrible, but it will pass. It always does. The tears begin to fall silently as he rocks back and forth in the bed, trying to dull it—help it.
Seungmin wasn't always like this. These constant drops didn't happen. He knows what could fix it. He knows that this pain is a choice that he willingly put himself into. It keeps him safe. It is his protection.
Seungmin was classified as a sub at the age of 20. Subs have a need to be put into a headspace, usually referred to as subspace, somewhat regularly to keep these drops from happening. To keep them healthy. Seungmin now chooses not to be put into subspace. Not anymore. Not since her.
He had a dom, once upon a time. Seungmin knows he is broken. Subs like pain. Pain is very helpful for them to turn off their brain and enter that subspace. He hates pain. He would go far as to say he has a strong fear of it, even from before her. Subs are supposed to want to be dommed. They want to be owned, to have their life dictated. There's nothing wrong with that, Seungmin knows it. That's what he sees everywhere. He doesn't want that. He wanted to try at some point. He wanted to be like everyone else.
She tried to fix him. She dommed him how he should be dommed. He hated it so much. Now he knows she was in the wrong, but it took years to realise that. It took so long for him to understand that she used him as an excuse. She used his failure to go under as a reason to be more extreme—use more pain. That the way she showed that she owned him was wrong on so many levels.
The relationship between doms and subs tends to go beyond platonic. Lots of them seep into the bedroom, into the typical dom and sub environment. Even switches and neutrals play into the environment in the bedroom, but not everyone. Some have perfectly normal bedroom lives without bringing that in, which is perfectly fine.
She wanted that environment.
Seungmin can feel the tears wetting his cheeks. The rocking has done nothing to help, so he moans in pain on the bed. Everything feels too loud, even though he is the only one making noise. He locks his fingers together behind his head. He used to hit his head with his fists when it got really bad, but he knows that that isn't okay. That can cause more damage, so he lays his head over his interlaced fingers, trapping them.
He wished he were classified as a neutral. Not even a dom or a switch. He doubts he could ever be a dom and cause pain to another being, even if they enjoyed it greatly. He feels sick at the idea. Switches just have the worst of both worlds, needing to dom or be dommed. Neutrals have managed to avoid all of it. They are basic. They are the most common classification. There are countless studies and theories as to why either neutrals or others have evolved and yet no one has the answer. No one knows why they exist either way. No one even knows which came first.
A car horn honks outside his window and he lets out a small scream. The noise is like a dagger to his brain. He just wants it to stop. He needs it to stop. It hurts too much.
If he were allowing a dom to put him in subspace, he wouldn't have to deal with this pain, but this is pain he has control over. He is inflicting this on himself. He knows what to expect. He knows what it does to him. He would rather this control than that fear.
He's lucky he isn't required to have a dom. Some countries require that subs have doms to claim them or they essentially get put in foster care, but for subs to doms. Then he would be matched with a stranger, some random dom that wants— not needs a sub. Maybe their tenth sub, but the government doesn't care. They simply want control over those they deemed desirable. Seungmin is very lucky that there are laws protecting him and other subs. Subs just like him who have no desire to belong to another person. Subs who want to be free.
He places his hands over his ears to block out everything—really, it's just his own breathing at this point, but it's too much. He can feel the tiredness pulling at him, at his mind, but he can't seem to follow it. He's stuck in this pain.
She was kind at the beginning, a freshly classified dom herself. He knew her from school. He gave her a shot. The first session should have been blaring, but they were both new, both still learning. So he gave her another chance and another and another. Soon, he was two years deep in their situation. She had crossed the line over and over again. He should have walked away earlier. He should have fought back.
He's spiralling as thoughts fill his mind. Thoughts that aren't kind to him. He entertains each one, giving them reasons and allowing the tears to spill anew down his face as he beats himself up internally. He's too tired to fight them. Too mentally drained and unsettled to understand that they are lies.
She owned him. She controlled him. He was too scared to leave it. Too scared to tell people why he had no dom if he did. He had friends back then. Friends he confined in—questioned her actions, her motives. They didn't believe him. They told him it was impossible for a dom to be wrong. Doms always knew what the sub needed, so he had to trust her. It wasn't possible for her to have gone too far, simply because he wanted it, right? He needed it.
Seungmin has no one to call when the drops happen. He's so alone, but he allows it. He lets the loneliness creep in because it is safer. It's safer than allowing someone to have enough persuasion over him to keep him with her for another year after. He can go through the pain on his own. It's better than going through pain with her—with anyone.
The tiredness that has settled into his bones finally pulls at his mind enough and he drifts into an unsettled sleep. A sleep that he knows he won't feel rested from after he wakes up. The nightmare and pain follows him into it. He won't be free from it. Not when he chooses it.