Every Last Buckle

Melodie Mills had braided her hair that afternoon because her hands needed something to do. Two neat red braids, tied off at the ends. She had redone the left one twice.

Now she sat on the edge of the bed in a black bra, a garter belt and nylon stockings, and watched Rachel Adams unzip a big black bag.

The surprise was for her boyfriend. That much Melodie understood, and that much she had said yes to. The details were Rachel's department, and Rachel, it turned out, had brought the details in a bag. When she reached inside, the whole thing clinked. Leather came out in coils and folds, straps of every length, buckles winking under the lamp. Rachel held a handful up to the light, looked them over the way someone else might look over fruit at a market, and put half of them back.

"You're shaking," Rachel said.

"I'm not."

"Your braids are shaking."

Melodie laughed, a small nervous sound, and Rachel smiled at her like that was exactly the right answer.

*[Photo: Melodie on the edge of the bed in black bra, garter belt and stockings, Rachel's open bag of leather straps beside her]*

The blindfold came first, and after that the room was gone.

It was a strange thing, how fast it went. One second Melodie could see Rachel's hands, the bag, the bedspread, her own stockinged knees. The next there was only black and the faint pressure of the band across her eyes, and every other sense in her body leaned forward to make up the difference. She could hear Rachel breathing. She could hear the bag. She could feel the bed dip when Rachel shifted her weight beside her.

From then on, Melodie learned what was happening the way you learn a song in the dark. By sound, and by touch, and a half second too late.

Leather touched her cheek. A strap slid up over the top of her head, another came around under her chin, and Rachel's fingers were in her hair for a moment, careful of the braids, settling something at the back of her skull. Then a firm round shape pressed against her lips. Melodie knew what it was before it was in. She opened anyway. The ball seated behind her teeth, the straps drew snug on either side of her face, and the buckles closed somewhere behind her where she would never reach them.

*[Photo: Melodie blindfolded in the strappy head harness, red ballgag in place]*

It changed her breathing. She noticed that first. Everything went through her nose now, quick and a little loud, and when she tried to say something, anything, it came out as a soft rounded hum that didn't sound like her at all. The leather creaked when she swallowed. Rachel's hand rested on her shoulder for a moment, light, almost kind, and then it was gone, and the bag clinked again.

The next harness went around her body. Melodie felt it before she understood it: straps sliding across her chest and around her ribs, over the cups of her bra, crossing and meeting and getting pulled. Rachel worked methodically. Tug, buckle, tug, buckle, a fingertip run under each strap to check it, then on to the next. Melodie held still for it because there was nothing else to do, and because some part of her, the part that had said yes in the first place, had started to like how carefully it was being done.

Then Rachel took her arms.

She guided them behind Melodie's back and Melodie let her, and something long and close-fitting slid up over her hands and forearms, past her wrists. A black leather armbinder. She couldn't see it, but she could feel its shape, a single sleeve swallowing both arms at once. And then she felt the laces.

Rachel tightened it a little at a time, working her way up. Each pull drew the leather closer. Each pull took a little more of Melodie's hands away from her, until they were pinned together behind her and simply not hers to use anymore. She flexed her fingers once, testing. Nothing happened. She flexed them again, just to be sure. Nothing happened again.

A sound came out of her, soft, around the ball. Rachel didn't answer it.

*[Photo: Rachel lacing the black armbinder up Melodie's arms, torso harness crisscrossing her bra]*

Then came the part Melodie would remember most, later, when she tried to tell it.

Rachel went back to the bag. And she didn't hurry.

Melodie could hear her digging, the straps sliding and rustling against each other, buckles knocking metal on metal in a steady, rummaging rhythm. Rachel would pull one out. Pause. Put it back. Pull out another. Somewhere in that pause Melodie could feel herself being measured, ankles and calves considered against whatever Rachel had in her hand. She waited there, blind and gagged and armbound in her stockings, and listened to it go on and on, every clink another thing she couldn't see coming.

It's a particular kind of helplessness, waiting for someone to choose. Melodie found she couldn't think about much else.

At last the rummaging stopped. A strap went around Melodie's ankles and buckled tight. Another went around her calves, higher up, cinched down until her legs pressed together and stayed there. Melodie shifted her weight and felt how little room she had left, how her whole balance now belonged to someone else.

*[Photo: Rachel buckling straps around Melodie's ankles and calves]*

"Down," Rachel said quietly, and helped her.

Melodie went onto her knees, slowly, with Rachel's hands steadying her the whole way. She had no other way to get there. Once she was kneeling, Rachel fed one more strap around her legs and drew it up over her back, and when it buckled, it tied everything together. Legs to body. Body to arms. Every separate piece of leather suddenly part of one thing, and that one thing was Melodie.

She tested it, because she couldn't help herself. A small pull, a small twist. The leather answered everywhere at once, creaking and holding. She made a little noise around the ballgag, half question and half something else.

*[Photo: Melodie on her knees, fully strapped, the last strap running from her legs up over her back]*

Rachel stepped back. Melodie couldn't see her do it, but she felt it, the sudden absence of hands. For a long moment nobody touched her at all.

Then she was on the bed, curled up the only way the straps would let her, knees drawn in, arms locked behind her, a small tight bundle of black leather and red braids and nylon. She whimpered once, softly. Then again. It wasn't a complaint, exactly. It was just the sound that came out of her now.

Mission complete. Rachel's footsteps crossed the room, and then they were gone.

Melodie lay there in the dark of the blindfold, breathing around the ball, every buckle exactly where Rachel had put it. Somewhere out there, her boyfriend was on his way. She couldn't see the door. She couldn't do a single thing about it. All she could do was wait, wrapped up and ready, for whatever he wanted when he got there.