You fix yourself a bowl of cereal, watching your girlfriend sip coffee and scroll the morning news, sleeves rolled to her elbows, lounging against the counter.
You’d been one of the staring, giggling girls, not so long ago, nights out in a pack of your own, normal girls, down at the fur bars for a tourist gawp and maybe a daring dance with a catgirl that everyone would bring up in hushed impressed-squeamish whispers for years. There had been a few sheepgirls in, that night, and Roz had been hammered and “joking” — haha only joking — about herds and followers and the bimbos of the animal world, and then she’d been there, looming behind your chairs, a mountain, looking down (and distinctly looking down) at your little huddle, light gleaming on huge curled horns.
“Oh, brainless little herd animals will follow a leader anywhere,” she said, gravel and danger, and reached out to hook a finger in the neck of your blouse, eyes locked on Roz, and exerted — barely a suggestion of a tug, really, and you were wide-eyed and dry-mouthed and halfway across the room before you knew it. She held you against the bar with a large, strong hand on your hip, almost bruisingly hard.
“What are you drinking?” she’d said, bought you one, leaned down to obviously smell your hair. Put her tongue in your mouth. Towed you out of the door with that same hooked and trivially escapable finger, not giving the girls you came with even another glance — and neither, truthfully, did you.
“You can hang onto the horns, love,” she’d almost sneered — sneered at you, and god — “neither of us is under any illusion it puts you in charge.”
(“Thought I’d be packing you off in an Uber in the morning without bothering to get your name,” she admits freely, grin wryly crooked.)
You watch the morning sun gilding her horns now, the ridges your fingers know. (You are not under any illusion it ever puts you in charge.)
“Too hot,” she says, rolling one shoulder in her sleeveless vest. She jogs, in the mornings; grimacing at the prospect, now. “About time for the clippers, I think.”
Your fingers know clutching at her fleece, too; but it’ll grow; and underneath it, skin and muscle that you could get a little closer to, put your mouth against. You swallow.
“Are there—” and you hesitate over what’s clearly the latest of many, many stupid questions— “special…barbers? For that?”
She favours you with a quirked grin and a scoff. “Yeah, if you want to pay a fortune. I’ve got a set in the bathroom.”
You vividly picture, for just a moment, the svelte, nameless femme ewe in her few old print photos — my ex, in a clipped no-questions voice; shearing handpiece in hand, carefully running it—
Your body does something complex and bilious, jealous and electric. Your mouth is wet. Your cunt is wet.
You swear she can read your mind. She smirks across the rim of her coffee.
“You don’t have anywhere to be, this morning, do you?” she says, pulls the vest off over her head, drops it on the kitchen floor as if with total casual disregard.
(Pick that up and put it in the laundry basket! her oft-repeated bark of command to you echoes in your mind. You squirm. You stare at her breasts.)
“Are you drooling,” she mocks, and so you find yourself trailing her to the bathroom, clippers shoved into your hands, face red enough to give yourself sunburn. She throws herself back on the bed, relaxed. Imperial. Challenging.
Your hands are shaking.
“Scared?” she says, voice gentle, then laughs at your nod. Only a little; and not meanly. Just a condescending headpat of a laugh, for the kind of amusing mishaps a puppy gets itself into and wails about. “What are you scared of? A little haircut?”
“What if I…cut you?” you say, as the least lying placeholder for the stomach-churning I don’t want to do a bad job but I’ve never done it before so of course I’ll fuck it up and I bet your ex did it perfectly—
She stretches like a tiger. “Well, I’m planning to get the riding crop out later,” she says. “And I’m in charge of whether you have a good bad time or a bad good one, so just do a good job.”
You swear. Reads your mind.
“Look at me.”
You look at her.
“You’ll do fine,” she says gently, and firms back up, flexes, a threatening sea of face-burying tummy and wool and growl. “Get on with it.”
The click of the switch to set the clippers buzzing feels like taking the safety off a weapon. You bring your hands to her, and set out to revere her with every shaky, hesitant, visibly-fucking-it-up stroke.
