January By the Numbers Ninteen: Tendril (ficlet)

January by the numbers continues (still three days off…)!
From [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt “tendril;” a ficlet.

🌱

She was sitting on the floor, leaning against his legs while they watched TV. She liked sitting there, and he liked the feeling it gave him – security, being taller than her, bigger than her.

He was a very insecure man, although nobody would say that to his face and those who knew him only casually wouldn’t guess it. He liked being in charge – but he was good at it, and so nobody questioned it. He liked being intimidating – but he was 6’6″ tall and broad-shouldered, muscular, and so he didn’t have to work at it.

She sat against his leg because she knew that it made him comfortable, the same reason she wore his collar.

She knew who was really in charge and, somewhere in the back of his mind, so did he, but they danced the dance anyway, and she did what he said, and sat at his feet.

He kept her safe. Not just because he was big, and strong, and intimidating, but because he offered protective coloration, camouflage. She could look different, be different, but some people could always find her. Belonging to someone else, that made her someone else entirely. And since it was something nobody who knew her would ever expect, it hid her all the better.

She leaned against him, her hair twisting around his legs on its own. It did that, her hair, the tendrils sliding around whatever they could reach. She pulled herself up that way, like a squash plant, rising higher on what her tendrils grabbed.

And they slid into him. Not in a way he could feel – not that he could feel much, so defensive, so closed off, that he never noticed things that close to him – but they slid into his psyche. He liked being in charge… but she liked running him.

Want More?

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