Page 83 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

But he didn’t.

So he lay there. Useless. Letting Kenny fuss.

As if he was some spoiled prince on a velvet throne. A sloth prince. Crooked crown, drool down his chin, twitching like a broken toy.

“How you feeling?”

Aaron exhaled. He could have lied. Laughed it off. He didn’t. Not to Kenny. Not afterthat.

“...Like you rewired my brain.” A beat. He tried to shift, gave up, fell back into Kenny as if he was his personal pillow. “Like if you let go, I’ll fall a-fucking-part.”

“Then I won’t let go.” Kenny held a drink to Aaron’s lips.

Aaron drank. Clumsily. The sticky liquid dribbling down his chin and onto his chest. Jesus, he was a fuckingstate. But Kenny wiped him clean as if it was nothing. As if this wasnormal.

He took a sip himself, then adjusted Aaron to lay flat against his chest, him propped up by the headboard, pulling Aaron in tighter to his chest, tucking his legs either side of Aaron’s. More upright, more grounded. And maybe it was the daze, the aftershocks still buzzing through his limbs, or the way Kenny’s body felt so steady around him, but Aaron let the thought loose, anyway.

“What the fuck was that?” His voice didn’t sound like his. Nothing did right then. “Before. After I came. I couldn’t… I dunno. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. Thought I was dying or floating off or some shit. Like my skin didn’t fit. Couldn’t tell where I ended.” He let out a laugh snagged halfway up his throat, ugly and broken. “Felt high. Off my tits. That normal? Or did you break me?”

Kenny didn’t laugh. Of course he didn’t. He kissed Aaron’s temple instead, then smoothed a hand over his damp hair.

“Somatic release. A full-body response to emotional and physical overload. Happens when your nervous system finally gets permission to stop surviving.”

Aaron blinked. “So what? You edged me into a therapy session?”

“No.” Kenny didn’t rise to the bait. “I held you through one. Big difference.”

Aaron stilled. His body wasn’t done buzzing, as if strung with wires. Some places numb, others raw and oversensitive. His thighs twitched every few seconds. His hands didn’t even feel like they belonged to him.

And yet… he didn’t hate it. He folded into it. Let it happen. As if this was where he was meant to be. As if safe didn’t need to be earned.

“It felt like I left,” he said finally. Quiet. “Like I was gone. And then I came back and it was…fuck. Too much. Good. But fucking scary. Didn’t know I could come that hard and feel… everything.”

“That was your body letting go. You’ve been holding yourself in pieces for so long you forgot what soft feels like.” Kenny kissed the side of Aaron’s head. “You let yourself feel without filtering it.”

Aaron shut his eyes. A stupid little lump sat in his throatand he swallowed it down how he’d been taught to swallow everything else. Of course Kenny had the words. Of course he’d know how to make Aaron feel seen and small and safe all at once, which pissed him off and made him want to cry in equal measure.

“It felt like dying.” He shivered. “I’m not being fucking dramatic. It felt like dying.”

Kenny tightened his hold, chin heavy on the crown of his head. “That’s because it was. But only the part of you that thought you had to survive everything alone.”

That line hit different. Something crumbled in Aaron that wasn’t really about sex or pain. A softer, older part he’d wrapped in barbed wire. He felt it give way, and with it came a clarity making his chest hurt.

“You…have all this power over me.” The words were raw and stupid and true. Not like power as in control—though yes, Kenny did that too—but power that could split him open and put him back together, same hands, same face. He hated how grateful that made him.

Kenny stilled. Waited. Of course he did. He always gave space before he spoke, searching for the right words, the meaning tucked underneath. That was Kenny’s magic. His mind-fucking superpower. He could dissect a person down to their soul with a single sentence.

“I don’ttakeit from you.”

“I know. You get me to hand it over.”

“Because you want to.”

“Yeah.”

Kenny leaned down, lips at Aaron’s ear. “But, in truth,youhave the power. You give it to me. You control how much you can take, how far you want me to go. You control me. You have the word to make me stop.”

A breath. “Yeah. Which is…weird.”