True Devotion (I’ll Never Be)… (2-8)

Consent (The Ticket)

This piece is emotionally intense and written from the sub / little / slave side of the slash: devotion, surrender, and the crash that can follow when a dynamic ends and the “holy” feeling turns into grief.

If you’re raw from a breakup, a dynamic ending, or still in that I think I died a little inside phase, read this only if it feels supportive—not self-harm.

And if it starts to hit too close instead of helping you breathe, it’s okay to skim it, save it, or walk away halfway through if your body starts tightening up more than it opens.

— Zan

Scene (The Ride)

There’s a kind of heartbreak that almost never makes it into kink stories.

It doesn’t happen when a relationship ends.

It happens in the quiet after a scene, or a dynamic, or a “whatever we were” finally rips loose—and you realize you can’t undo what you’ve just given away.

The messages are read.

The toys are put away.

The space looks normal again.

You don’t.

You move around your day like a functioning person—eat something, answer a message, stare at a screen—but underneath, it feels like someone reached into your chest, unplugged a cable, and walked off with it.

You replay every second.

Every order you followed.

Every “yes, Sir,” “yes, Daddy,” “yes, Master” you gave.

Every time it stopped feeling like “a scene” and started feeling like your actual place in the universe. Every time your body leaned in like it recognized home while your brain was begging you to stop needing this.

And now that it’s gone—or they’re gone—you start telling yourself the story before anyone else can.

I’m too much.

I’m not enough.

I’m broken.

I’m sick.

You feel like something in you died. Not in some poetic, romantic way—just a dull, private funeral for the version of you that still believed you could ever be enough for anyone in a “normal” way.

You miss it.

You miss them.

You miss you in that space, even while you’re convinced that version of you is exactly why you’re unlovable.

The embarrassment comes next, quiet and mean. You don’t rage at them. You don’t scream, “What an asshole.” You turn it inward. You wonder if you begged too hard. You wonder if you wanted too much. You wonder if you handed over your whole nervous system to someone who only ever saw it as entertainment.

You eventually start deleting the messages that made you feel holy not that long ago, because now they just look like screenshots of how badly you needed to believe. You tuck the marks under clothes. You grab the softest thing within reach—a hoodie, a pillow, something you can hold too tight—and hope it remembers the version of you they just walked away from. You reach for the worn-out plush, the overwashed blanket, the mug or cup that only ever really felt right in their hand, and hope some part of you still knows how to feel small without feeling stupid.

You pull a passable smile over everything and call it “I’m fine.” You practice saying, “It was just a thing,” to anyone close enough to notice—or anyone you’d been brave enough to tell—even though your whole body knows it was closer to religion.

Because that’s what it felt like, didn’t it?

They weren’t just a partner. They were the one who named you, gave that name a role, and made it feel like your whole identity—the one person who made it safe to be small and soft in a world that keeps demanding you be big and fine. For some of you, that wasn’t metaphor. Your days moved on written rules, on protocols and rituals, on the quiet knowledge that if someone asked “who do you belong to?” you had an answer that lived in your bones, not just your mouth. They were the one who decided when you rose, when you fell, when you broke, when you were forgiven; the rules your days orbited like gravity.

They walked through your head and rearranged the furniture, and you let them—because that’s what devotion is.

So when it ends, it doesn’t feel like “I broke up with someone.” It feels like your god left the building and forgot to take this altar with them.

You’re not going back to the person you were before you knew you could kneel this deep, obey this hard, feel this much. It’s all too much, and some days you’d trade almost anything just to go back “home” to the version of you who didn’t know this part of you existed.

Submission is not a prop. It’s not a kink accessory. It’s not something you sprinkle on for content and rinse off in the shower. Submission is how you love. It’s the way your whole system says, I will burn my energy in your direction. I will rearrange myself around us. I will let you inside the part of me that decides who I am. 

Whether you call it sub, slave, property, or something softer, the engine is the same: you hand over the steering wheel of yourself and trust someone else not to crash you.

That’s not light. That’s not casual. That’s not “lol, we did a thing once.” When a dynamic ends, subs, littles, slaves don’t just feel sad. They lose oxygen. Not because they’re weak, or fragile, or needy, but because the way they’re wired is devotional. They attach through service, through obedience, through being seen in the least flattering angles of their soul and not being sent away. For some of you it was never “just play,” even on day one. There were rules that didn’t switch off when the scene ended, collars that didn’t come off just because the weekend was over, contracts in chats or in ink that said, in plain language, this is who owns me now.

Take that away carelessly and, yes—something inside them dies for a while. It grows back different. It grows back scarred. But the part that knows how to belong like that? It doesn’t stop existing just because someone treated it like a toy.

Wanting this doesn’t make you sick. Needing this doesn’t make you less. You’re not “crazy” because you can’t just slide back into small talk and hinge dates after someone has had their hand on your throat, your heart, and your history at the same time.

What it makes you is high voltage.

In the right hands, that’s devotion. In the wrong hands, that’s collateral damage.

You weren’t offering, “Sure, we can see where this goes.” You were offering, Here. This is where my meaning lives. I will let you plug yourself into it. You saw purpose in yourself through them. You let them be the mirror that said, You’re mine. You matter. You exist like this. 

Anybody who takes that and uses it like porn, like content, like a way to feel big for five minutes? That’s not a partner to you; that’s a hazard around you. And yeah, sometimes they’re not a cartoon villain. Sometimes they’re just too immature, too overwhelmed, too human to hold what you handed them. Sometimes a Dom, a Daddy, a Master has to walk away because their life is on fire, or their brain chemistry is losing the plot, or they suddenly realize they’re in deeper than they know how to be good in.

But if they can’t look you in the eye and say, this is about my limits, not your worth, if they can’t say, you are not wrong for needing what you needed from me, then the wound you’re carrying is not proof that you loved wrong. It’s just proof that they weren’t ready for the size of what you gave.

Aftercare is not optional. Aftercare is not clinginess. Aftercare is what happens when someone gets handed back the keys to their own mind and body after you’ve had them on loan.

Sometimes it’s soft: cuddles and snackies, warm pajamas, the cartoony comfort shows everyone else thinks you should have grown out of, a voice that drops into the one you only get to hear when you’re allowed to be little and safe. Sometimes it’s you slipping straight into your smallest self and being wrapped up like that’s the most natural thing in the world.

Sometimes it’s less cute. You rant about work. You empty out the parts of your brain that have nothing to do with sex and everything to do with why you needed the scene in the first place. You say, “I feel disgusting,” and need someone to say, “I know exactly what you did, and I still want you.” Sometimes it’s nothing but quiet and a hand on your back while your nervous system crawls its way back into your skin.

Sometimes it’s just somebody knowing which stuffed thing you’re going to reach for when the words won’t line up yet, and holding the rest of the world off until you come back.

Whatever your aftercare looks like, it’s yours. Not theirs to edit into a shape that’s easier on their schedule. Not theirs to downgrade because, “We only did XYZ, why are you this spun out?” You don’t get to decide how deep you went inside someone else. You only get to decide how responsible you’re going to be now that you’re there.

If you’re on the other side of the slash—if you’re the one holding the leash, the hand, the headspace—your duty is not to be perfect. But it is to be wakeful.

You don’t get to cash in on someone’s surrender and then disappear when the crash hits. You don’t get to demand, Trust me with everything, and then give them nothing once it’s over but silence and a read receipt. Being a Dom, a Daddy, a Master, whatever the word is in your mind, doesn’t mean, I get what I want and then log off. It means, I agree to be the one who stays steady when you start questioning if you’re a monster. 

You don’t have to have every answer. You do have to be able to say, You’re not bad because you needed this. You’re not ruined because it felt good. You are mine, and I know exactly what I asked of you. And if you can’t say that—if all you can think is, This is too much, this is annoying, this is drama—then what you’re doing isn’t a dynamic. It’s tourism.

I’m not saying any of this from a throne. I am a Dom, a Daddy, a Master who has gotten things wrong, said sorry, stayed in the room anyway. When I use words like mine or owner, I mean, I am volunteering for the work that comes after the scene as much as the scene itself. 

Here’s what I want for you, if you’re on the other end of this screen still shaking from something that ended wrong:

I want you to know your submission is not a discount bin item. It’s not a coupon for somebody’s half-baked god complex. It’s a gift that only becomes what it’s meant to be in the hands of someone who understands aftercare as deeply as they understand control.

You are allowed to require, Make me understand why this is good for me, not just why it turns you on. You are allowed to say, If you can’t hold me afterward, you don’t get to break me open. You are allowed to want someone who doesn’t flinch when you say, I think I’m too much, and answers, Good. I don’t want anything less. 

Everything is fucked. We live in a world that chews through soft people, labels devotion as “crazy,” and treats depth like a liability. But inside that, we still get to choose who we kneel for. We still get to choose who we hand our darkest, brightest parts to. We still get to hold each other and mean it.

You may never be anyone’s saint, anyone’s clean, untouchable fantasy of goodness. Good. That was never going to fit you anyway. You’re built for true devotion—messy, human, unreasonable, real. Find the ones who treat that like oxygen, not like a toy.

I’m not talking about everyone I play with when I say mine. I’m talking about the one who hands me the keys and says, I belong to you now, always. If I accept that, your submission stops being a kink and becomes my direct responsibility. You’re my property, in the agreed-upon way that makes you feel safest and most seen. I don’t get to vanish when it’s hard. I don’t get to shrug and say, “It was just a phase.”

I lead. You obey. I am accountable for the world we build out of that. Anything less isn’t a dynamic. It’s negligence.

That’s the only contract I’m interested in anymore: not just a list of rules for you, but a promise I’m willing to have held against me when the lights are back on and the high is gone.

I’m here for the real thing—the kind of devotion that marks us both, on purpose—and I’m here to stay long enough to prove it.

Companion track: “(I’ll Never Be) Maria Magdalena” – Sandra

Aftercare (The Comedown)

If this piece stirred that particular kind of devotion — the kind that feels like gravity, not flirting — let it count as recognition, not a verdict. Some people love through service, surrender, and being held in structure, and this is written in that language on purpose.

Nothing here is a promise, a contract, or a demand to give more than you meant to give. It’s a portrait of what the crash can look like when something ends, and a reminder that real power exchange only works when care exists after the high as much as during it.

So keep your softness close and your standards closer. If you ever offer this depth to someone, let it be where it’s met with steadiness, clarity, and follow-through — the kind that protects your dignity, not just their appetite. You’re allowed to want what you want, and you’re allowed to require that it be held like it matters. 

No matter the side of the slash you live on.

Cycle II – Coming of Age (The Hidden Life) · 08 (v1.00)

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