Sinead, Very Unhappy

“Marc, what the fuck was he doing here?” Sinead hissed as she entered his office and shut the door behind her.

Marc sighed. He was fairly certain that he’d told Sinead that they would connect after work on Monday, but their brief conversation had been right before things kicked off with Felicity and Astrid and it had been a busy weekend afterwards. Then, Barisha showed up that morning with hard copies of documents he didn’t want getting emailed around - which very obviously meant they contained things he didn’t want a digital paper trail on. But dealing with Barisha in person was as frustrating as usual. The man was obtuse even in his rough charms.

And now Sinead came in hot-headed.

“Bonjour, Detective,” Marc said evenly. “Please, come in. It’s so nice of you to drop by my office once more, making demands and accusations. It truly is becoming a highlight of the gossip around the water cooler.”

“Cut the smarmy attitude,” Sinead said, her face grim and she stood in front of Marc’s desk and placed her hands on it. “What the fuck?”

Marc took a beat, re-evaluating. Sinead was more aggressive than usual. Either something had happened with Barisha, though Jillian had assured him via text that it hadn’t, or something had happened over the weekend or that morning. Something had changed since she’d made overtures on Saturday to- Ah. She was feeling spurned.

“Are you appropriately dressed for this conversation, Sinead?” Marc asked quietly.

“What?” Sinead practically spat.

“Je n'aime pas me répéter. Are you appropriately accessorised today, Detective?” Marc asked.

Sinead’s jaw clenched and she reached into her inner suit jacket pocket, pulling out the silver buttplug he’d given her. She practically slammed it on the desk. “You mean this accessory, Marc?”

Again, Marc had to take another beat to re-evaluate. The fact that she’d brought it meant that she was thinking about it, but she wasn’t embarrassed by presenting it. She was still just angry.

He’d been walking a knife’s edge with her, he’d known that from the beginning. Push her too hard, and she’d refuse to play. Don’t push her hard enough, and she would think she could walk all over him. Her reaching out had changed the dynamic, but with his focus on Felicity, he hadn’t appropriately shifted his own stance. The game they were playing wasn’t unlike sparring in any martial art - control, leverage, experience and muscle memory were all just as important to being a Dom as they were in a fight. He had gotten distracted, hadn’t adjusted to the new tempo, and now the duel was turning into a brawl.

He needed to regain control but however well it had gone last time, putting Sinead in her place through playful punishment… that wasn’t a lever he could pull this time. Not here in the office, and likely not with the emotional state she was in.

“Sit, Sinead,” Marc said, gesturing to the chair that Victor hadn’t been using prior. She sat, crossing her arms over her chest and crossing one knee over the other as she leaned back and narrowed her eyes. She was taking the aggressive power position in the conversation, trying to **** him to account for himself, but she was also revealing that she was feeling **** through her body language. Crossing her arms and legs to protect vital points. Leaning back to create space.

Marc took another breath. “Obviously we need to discuss some things,” he said, his voice low and soft. “First, how is your bottom? I assume the massage helped soothe things afterwards, but the strike with the cane can leave a lingering sting.”

“We’re not talking about my ass, Marc,” Sinead said. “But sure, we can start with how you sexually abu-”

“Don’t,” Marc held up a finger, his voice dropping as he cut her off. “Don’t you dare attempt to call our play from the other night ****, Detective. We talked about consent, and you consented. As I said then, we have a larger conversation in our near future about general consent, but you specifically agreed to what happened that night.”

Sinead ground her teeth in a decidedly unattractive way for a moment before letting out her breath. “Fine,” she grunted. “It wasn’t ****. It was still demeaning, and disgusting. You have no right to punish me, whether I piss you off with my words or anything else. You’re not my boss, you’re not my Dad, you’re not an authority figure for me. Calling me a brat, treating me like you can just demand how I act, or how I feel… Fuck you for that.”

Marc breathed in and let it out slowly. “Fine,” he said. “If you would like to stop our game, then we can stop. I’ll even help you, as you asked, with some of the details in the latest batch of information so you have some clear next steps in your case. But, if you feel like I haven’t earned your respect and that you really are done with the game, then that’s it. You can walk away, Sinead. I haven’t been blackmailing you, or leveraging you in some way - you hold the actual power in this game, letting it go on. When you say stop, we stop. That’s how BDSM games work. When someone says stop, it stops. I’ll fire Victor as a client so that I’m no longer associating myself with someone like him, and I’ll let Detective Xu know that I will no longer be helping with the case. We both go back to our lives.”

“Good,” Sinead said, but then obviously hesitated.

“Stop means stop,” Marc repeated himself. “But once that happens, it’s difficult to start things again. Not when the trust is so weak.”

Sinead’s jaw clenched and unclenched rapidly as she glared daggers at him. “What was he doing here?” she changed the subject, not giving Marc an answer.

“He gave me hard copies of records,” Marc said, pointing to a stack of files at the corner of his desk. “To go along with the digital files he sent me over the weekend. I haven’t had a chance to look through them, but some of them seem to be notated by hand.”

“Meaning they weren’t in the files you already got me,” Sinead said, staring at the files now.

“Correct,” Marc said.

“Fuck,” Sinead grunted and looked back at Marc.

“Do you want to stop?” Marc asked. “Ignore the case, Sinead. Ignore the files, and the numbers, and the chase. Do you, as a woman, want to stop the game?”

Sinead swallowed.

“Let me take you to lunch,” Marc said, glancing at his watch. “It’s a little early, but that means we should have our privacy. We can have that broader talk about consent so you are more fully informed.”

“Who is Felicity?” Sinead asked.

Marc blinked.

<U>Translations</U>
- Je n'aime pas me répéter. = I don’t like to repeat myself.

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