I nodded miserably. “That makes sense. Am I making a mistake?”
“Not what I said at all,” Ahri said firmly. “Change is scary. Always is. But sometimes it’s by far the best thing you could have done.” She looked back and forth between Shen and me. “Good news is you have sources of comfort available. It would be better not to fall too hard on old patterns, but taking solace in the love and trust available to you is a good idea, I think.”
“Yeah, fair,” I said. “Maybe I do need, like, a metaphorical security blanket for a bit. Or like a real one? Just, like, something to make me feel safe, and like everything’s not changing disastrously around me.”
Shen looked down at his drink. “Is that not what booze is?”
“The booze is nice,” I assured him. “Very nice. But, like, did you ever just want to be wrapped up tight and feel like nothing could hurt you anymore?”
Shen cocked his head curiously. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think I ever felt that particular thing.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I said, blushing and looking down at my hands cradling the last half of my current drink.
“I don’t know about that,” Shen said. “I think maybe I just feel adrift more so than I feel like I need to be protected. Something like that.”
“… well that’s annoying,” I said.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Shen said. “I was being vulnerable. I think.”
“Not that. Just, like, now I think maybe I feel adrift too, now that you’ve put a name to it.”
“Oh.”
Ahri, temporarily lost in thought, though I hadn’t initially noticed, stirred again. “I think,” she declared solemnly, “that I might have a very bad idea.”
I blinked at her. “Congratulations?” I hazarded.
“It might be helpful,” she said.
“That sounds like a good idea then,” I said.
“Is it therapizing?” Shen asked.
“It in fact very much isn’t,” Ahri said. “Although I am using some elements of psychology in my assessment of the situation in order to tailor a solution to–”
“Boooo!” Shen and I hissed together.
“No overexplaining,” I decreed. “What’s the idea?”
“You sure you want to hear it?” Ahri asked.
“More sure every time you stall,” I said. “And I think you darn well know it.”
“I think,” Ahri said slowly, drawing out the reveal, “that I should tie you up.”
For a long moment I couldn’t think of a response to the suggestion. “What?” I finally replied as intelligently as I could.
“Tie you up,” Ahri repeated. “Kind of like a bondage thing, but hopefully without some of the usual connotations.”
“… like with rope?” I asked.
“That’s the idea.” Ahri shifted her weight. “See, there’s this thing of taking comfort in an embrace. Even an inanimate one. Such as swaddling babies, or sleeping with a weighted blanket. My last girlfriend, as we discovered, felt being tied up was surprisingly peaceful, and–”
She was interrupted by Shen bursting out laughing. Not just a short laugh of derision, but fully belly laughing, uncontrollably, tears eventually rolling down his cheeks.
Ahri let him go on a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Are you quite finished?”
But Shen was not, in fact finished. He was laughing hard enough that I joined him involuntarily. There was, perhaps, some genuine humour in Ahri’s suggestion, but it was more so the pure joy and comedy he found in the situation that was insidiously taking me over as well.
Even Ahri eventually giggled along with us, though in that kind of annoyed way where she didn’t want to laugh and was yelling at us to stop, but we couldn’t take her seriously because she was laughing right along with us.
“You guys are assholes,” Ahri said, still snickering uncontrollably.
“Well it’s funny,” Shen said as he stretched himself out across the floor. “I truly didn’t expect something like that from you. I thought it was gonna be some super secret therapist technique. Then it was just bondage.”
“Not in a weird way!” Ahri insisted.
“How could it not be in a weird way?” Shen asked.
“Because it’s just for a comfort thing,” Ahri said. “Like I already explained, except you weren’t listening.”
“Right. Just a comfort thing,” Shen said. “So you and your ex never did anything sexual when you tied her up, I take it. It was all just happy platonic fun.”
Ahri was blushing. “Well yes when I tied her up it was sexual. Sometimes. Actually sometimes it really was just so she could feel more peaceful. That’s all I’m talking about here. Obviously.”
I fell inward to my thoughts as my siblings bickered. I didn’t know what to make of the offer exactly, and I wasn’t in a state to intelligently process my options or my emotions regarding them.
The thing was, weirdly enough, that I kind of wanted to try it. I’d never been tied up before, neither for sex or just for fun. I didn’t like a lot of the associations bondage tended to gather in porn. I definitely didn’t want that kind of experience, but something safe between me and my brother and sister was a whole different thing. Like Ahri said, it was only just for the comfort of it.
“I want to try it,” I said.
Ahri and Shen stopped mid-argument and both turned toward me at the same time.
“What?” Shen said.
“I want to try it,” I repeated, trying and failing to sound confident.
Ahri cocked her head. “Really?”
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I think it might be comforting right now. Like you say.”
Ahri nodded slowly. “Alright.” She hopped to her feet, a little unsteady from her drinking. “Alright! Let me get my ropes.”
I had a few moments alone with Shen while Ahri padded off to gather her equipment.
“You sure?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But what’s the harm in trying? If I don’t like it, we stop, right?”
“That’s true,” he said. “I don’t think I get the comfort thing though. I’ve always seen it in, you know, horny contexts.”
I giggled with mild embarrassment. “Same, I guess. But it doesn’t have to be, I don’t think. I know we’re all not gonna be horny about it.”
Shen was quiet just a little too long. “Yeah. Yeah right.”
I frowned at him. “We’re not, are we?”
“No, of course not.”
“You had to think about it.”
“I did not,” he said, somewhat flustered now.
“You did,” I said. “You thought about it.”
“It was only from other things I’ve seen,” he said. “I just had to process the discrepancy.”
I drained the last of my cocoa as Ahri flounced back, ropes in hand. “Uh huh,” I said.
We returned to the living room, the three of us collectively a tipsy, giggly mess. Ahri had to keep growling at me to hold still as she started looping her ropes around my body and tugging just the right amount of snug. I was doing my best, but my arms were pretty quickly pinned down helplessly, which made my tenuous sense of balance all the more fragile.
As much as I was struggling with simply trying to hold still and be good while Ahri tied me up, I was already feeling the effects of it. It was strange at first, being restricted this way, but it also warmed me and made my troubles feel less pressing or real. I thought at first it might be a danger response, and that I might panic soon due to being as helpless as I was, but that didn’t manifest.
Ahri just kept wrapping ropes round and round me, and somehow it made me feel safe. I was surrendering myself to my sister’s expertise, and perhaps that was all it took to make me stop worrying about the rest of my life. It was an immediate, visceral kind of experience that pushed everything else to the background.
“Do you have to frame her tits quite so much?” Shen asked, startling me slightly back to reality.
I blushed as I realized just how prominent Ahri’s rope manipulation was making my chest. She was indeed going over, under, and betwixt my breasts. I’d been focused on my arms, not so much on that part of me.
“I do, you perv,” Ahri said. “I could full wrap them, but that’s trickier to get right. This gets the job done, and under usual circumstances would conveniently leave them available for play.”
“I knew this was a horny thing,” Shen said.
“Usually, I said,” Ahri argued. “This is different. Gwen’s fully clothed. It’s not a big deal.”
I was fully clothed still, it was true. I hadn’t, however, ever been in quite such a position of feeling more exposed than if I were topless. Now that Shen had brought my attention to my chest, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my boobs were being presented to him and Ahri, should they choose to look.
But it was fine, or so I told myself. It was a practical necessity of the situation. Ropes had to go around me, and I didn’t want them digging into my breasts. I wanted the comfort of the situation, not a constant, irritating pain.
It was, however, making me blush the way Shen wouldn’t stop flicking his gaze to my chest, and even Ahri seemed to spend more time studying that area of me than the rest of my body.
That difficulty aside, I was eventually fully tied up from shoulders to ankles. I had some range of motion remaining, but it was extremely limited, and in fact any attempts at shifting myself mostly resulted in me nearly toppling to the ground. Ahri had to save me couple times just from me trying to maneuver myself toward a place to sit down.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Um… good?” I said hesitantly. “I’d definitely tied up.”
“You definitely are,” Shen agreed.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?” he asked, blushing slightly and turning his attention away from me.
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