FAFOP: A Keeperverse Anthology (complete 10/5)

[fyunch]

Very happy how the scene with Aisling came out.  Her husband was a loser and she deserved better.  Maybe he will end up as a pet too?

[kerry]

viii. Lindsey

The young woman in the first row hesitated for a moment before standing. This is what she’d come for, but it was easier in her mind than in real life, and it wasn’t easy at all in her mind. Still, she needed this. She needed to talk to someone. Anyone. The feelings in her mind were so odd, so twisted around. She needed someone else to hear them, to help her make sense of them. So, though she almost sat back down without fully rising, she forced herself to stand.

“I think we have someone new ready to speak,” Jim, the group leader, said. He was about 40 with soft eyes and a kind face. She felt safer with him here.

All eyes in the room were on her; it was physically painful. God she hated speaking in public. She’d rather do anything else, and she was sure death itself would be easier. All those eyes…

She didn’t start speaking right away. In fact, she stood silent for so long that a raven-haired woman near her said, sympathetically, “It’s all right. Saying it all out loud can be hard. Maybe next week?”

She looked at the seated woman; she had spoken earlier, a very sad story about how much she missed her best friend, who’d been taken from her. She had cried; hell, they all had cried. None of this was easy.

“No,” Lindsay said. “I’m OK. I have to do this.”

She turned toward the group, about thirty people of varying ages and backgrounds, many of whose stories she’d heard in the last few weeks. Now it was her turn. She thought perhaps she was going to be sick, but it passed.

In normal times, you couldn’t pay her enough to speak out at a meeting like this; she was simply too shy and too private. But these were not normal times; the Bond had seen to that. There would never be normal times again.

She began slowly and softly, stammering a little. “A f-few of you know some of my story, but I’ll t-tell it again for those who don’t.”

Those eyes kept looking at her, all interested, but they unnerved her. She decided to focus somewhere else and picked a spot on the far wall. Shaking off the pain in her mind, she continued.

“My name is Lindsey Jacobi, and my best friend was named Carly LoPresti. I say ‘was’ despite the fact that she’s still alive because...well, you all understand. She’s just Carly now, though I rarely get to see her.”

Someone in the third row unpacked some tissues; people here were always ready for tears. But her story would likely elicit a very different reaction.

“Carly and I met in first grade when we were assigned seats next to each other, and we just hit it off. We did everything together: hung out at recess, sat together in the cafeteria, spent loads of time at each other’s houses. We were like sisters. And unlike some friends who drifted apart over the years, we stayed that way. It helped that we enjoyed the same activities. We both played tennis, for example, and we played together often. In high school, we were both on the tennis team and the yearbook. We were so inseparable that there were rumors we were lesbians, but that’s high school for you.”

A few small laughs of recognition came from the crowd. She looked down at their eyes; everyone was watching with sympathetic expressions. The pain subsided as she went on.

“We were so afraid of losing each other after high school that we went to the same college. We even roomed together, though people advised us that we could jeopardize our relationship by doing that. Didn’t happen: we’d already spent so much time together—our families even vacationed together—that we knew each other’s habits before we got there. I knew she was a bit of a neat freak; she knew I was a fan of old music from the 80s. I may not have been as naturally neat as she was, but we went through college in pretty clean dorm rooms to a soundtrack of Journey and Bruce Springsteen. “

Heads nodded. This was familiar stuff to many of the people gathered there.

“And we were the rarest of friends: we even became roommates after college. Four years of living together had taught us that we just loved each other’s company. Even when we got into romantic relationships—me with a boy, her with a girl—we never considered moving out. Our lovers ended up good friends and we had many double dates together before the relationships fizzled.

“And until the Bond.”

Again, heads nodded all about the room. Everyone here had lost someone to the Bond. It was the entire raison d’etre for FAFOP: a place where you could come to commiserate and be assured that you were not alone. She knew that, just as she knew that she was different from all of them. And she suspected that they might be less receptive to the remainder of her tale. Still, she continued.

“Like all of the other stories I’ve heard here, it came with no warning. It was January; we were just finishing an hour of tennis at the club and we went into the locker room to change, and there she was. Audrey. Her name is Audrey LeBeau and it is accurate: she’s simply beautiful. Strikingly so. Long blonde hair, perfect tall athletic body. Carly stopped for just a moment to, I guess, appreciate her, and when Audrey looked up and their eyes met...they bonded. I knew in an instant: Carly and I were so close that the far-off look in her eyes told me everything. I had never seen it before, and she kept staring at Audrey, and, well, I knew what it was.

“My first reaction was the same as most of you: I wanted to deny it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to go back in time and never enter that locker room. But what I did instead was just stand there, frozen, unable to do anything.”

The woman next to her, the one who had spoken earlier, said, “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I know,” said Lindsey. “I know. But my best friend and a lot of future plans, like the cruise we had booked for the spring, were vanishing in front of my eyes. It was...hard to process. And then, Audrey spoke to her, calling her Pet and promising to take care of her, and it was like I had disappeared.”

She looked out to the listening crowd. “But I hadn’t disappeared. I was still right there. And I wasn’t screaming or crying because I think I was in shock. So I simply said, ‘What does this mean for us?’

“Audrey briefly glanced at me. God knows what she saw: a half-dressed woman with a stunned look on her face, I guess. But I asked again. ‘What does it mean for us, Carly?’ And Audrey reached out, took my best friend’s hand, and asked her who I was to her, never taking her eyes off of her new Pet. When Carly told her how important we had always been to each other, Audrey surprised me. I had never heard of a Keeper doing this, but she asked Carly if she wanted to hold onto the relationship. My heart stopped while Carly considered. She told me later that she only hesitated because she wondered if it would cause me pain, but she said yes. And Audrey finally turned directly to me:

“‘You know what a Keeper/Pet relationship means, right?’ I nodded. ‘Well, it’s usually extremely focused on the two of us, and I’m sure it will be, but I’m not going to insist on exclusivity. I don’t need to be the whole focus of her existence. I’m very happy to let my Pet have an old friend in her life if it is something you can handle.’”

“Wow,” someone said, and Lindsey responded.

“Yeah. I’d never heard of that either. It floored me for a moment. I thought about seeing Carly that way—as a Pet, in a diaper, maybe in a cage—and cringed. But I also thought about never seeing her again, and it hurt far worse. And the look in my best friend’s eyes begged me to agree, so I did.”

“You kept the friendship?” asked a man in the middle of the room.

Lindsey nodded. “Yes. At first it was very hard. Audrey and I argued about division of the things in the apartment. She wasn’t being greedy; she just wasn’t sure that she’d be able to keep Carly secure and happy without the money from her things. But we came to an agreement. I kept most of the stuff inside and she took our car to sell along with the things that clearly belonged to Carly. It was OK; I should have had my own car by then anyway.”

“But how does it work?” the man asked. “A friendship with a Pet? I can hardly look at my daughter now; I get so upset and angry at the world.”

Lindsey smiled for the first time. “I think that’s why it works,” she said. “I’m not angry. I’m disappointed, but not angry. I ended up taking my mother on the cruise; we had a great time. And when I got back I showed Carly all the pictures.”

“Didn’t that upset her?” asked someone.

“No, and I knew it wouldn’t. She just didn’t care about that sort of thing anymore. All she cared about was keeping Audrey happy...and the fact that I was willing to stay in her life.”

The woman next to Lindsey’s seat spoke again. “But...how could it work? How could you even stand being with her like that?”

“As I said, whatever pain I felt was less than the pain I’d have felt not seeing my very best friend ever again.”

“But what was it like?” the woman asked.

Lindsey contemplated. She was getting close to the part she was afraid to say, and she decided to tread carefully.

“At first,” she said, “it was horrible. I went to Audrey’s house for a visit and only lasted half an hour. Just...seeing Carly on the floor, in a collar and diaper, fawning at Audrey’s feet was so uncomfortable.”

“I’ll bet,” said the man in the middle of the room.

“Yeah,” Lindsey continued, “but I came back. And it got easier. She was still Carly even though she was a Pet. Take away all of the accoutrements and she was the same girl she always was, just with a strange new fixation on Audrey and a desperate need to be petted.”

“Don’t forget the sexual stuff,” the man said. “Pets and Keepers are supposed to have insatiable appetites.”

She looked out into the group, finally allowing her eyes to meet theirs. “They do, Carly tells me. And this is the thing I wanted to say. Carly says she is the happiest she has ever been. She has a relationship that she knows can never sour; she has all of the sex she wants, and she tells me it is awesome. She derives extreme pleasure from a simple stroke on her head or Audrey telling her that she’s a good girl. She has every one of her needs taken care of for her. She could have lived without the diaper and the incontinence, but she says it’s a small price to pay for all of the joy Audrey brings to her life. In fact, she has corroborated everything those other Pets said a few weeks ago. And I’m starting to think that…”

She paused, knowing how this would be taken.

“...maybe being a Pet isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe we ought to be envying them, not mourning them.”

Lindsey watched as the people in the room processed that statement. The first responses didn’t take long.

“Envy them?”

“They have lost their human rights; they are property!”

“Would you want to parade around naked in a diaper? Following someone on a leash?”

She let the comments come; she’d known that they would. Mourning was the thing that all of these people had in common. They didn’t know anything else. When the initial hubbub settled down, she spoke again.

“I know,” she said. “All that you’re saying is true. Nonetheless, the more I talk to Carly, the more I…”

Here it comes.

“...want to be someone’s Pet.”

The room erupted, people talking over each other, and Lindsey could tell by the volume and the things she could pick out that she had been right, but it was far worse than she’d imagined: this revelation went over about as well the crippled, burning Hindenburg. She felt that she herself was crashing, burning. She summoned up her strength as Jim silenced the crowd.

“Now, now,” he was saying. “We’re here to listen, not to judge.”

And as he continued to speak, they calmed down. She took a deep breath.

“I know you must think I’m some sort of traitor to the cause. I feel that way myself sometimes. But I know what I’ve seen and felt at Audrey’s house is genuine love. The Bond is deep and powerful: those two care for each other as I’ve never seen anyone do before. They can practically read each other’s minds, and it’s only been four months. Imagine what their connection will be like in a year, in ten. Can any of us truthfully say that we live for our significant others? Can any of us truly say that we actually can’t conceive of anything but a lifetime of even greater bliss? Can any of us even imagine a connection that deep and selfless?”

It was Jim himself who spoke next, his mind almost certainly on his daughter.

“How can the relationship be selfless when one partner exists to serve at the whim of the other? Isn’t that selfish?

Lindsey shook her head. “I’ve watched their dynamic, and as far as I know it’s the same for all Keepers and Pets. As much as Carly lives for Audrey, Audrey lives for her. If anything is wrong, Audrey hurts as much as Carly. I’ve seen her respond to Carly in moments of crisis. Like, we went for a walk one day. Some passerby—a member of one of those anti-Pet groups—made a nasty remark about Carly. I won’t repeat it here. But I watched as the words seared into both of their faces. And since Audrey was the one who could, she confronted the jerk. Understand, she’s tall but she’s not imposing, and he looked dangerous. Still, she got all in his face, yelling that his callous words had hurt them both and threatening to report him to the Keeper/Pet Defamation League...and you know how much those people want a test case for their hate crime initiative.

“Anyway, like most bullies, the idiot backed down. He was alone against at least three others; he must not have liked the odds. Tell me that doesn’t say something. Wouldn’t you fight for an SO who would stand up for you that way? Don’t you hope yours would? But you don’t know, do you?”

Married couples in the room glanced at each other, assessing these words.

Lindsey suddenly realized just how long she’d had their attention, and the old pain returned to her mind. She hadn’t spoken in front of a crowd in ages, let alone this long and saying things they didn’t want to hear. She looked at the faces in the room. Some were sympathetic still, but several had hardened. She knew this would be her last meeting for sure, just as she’d thought it would be.

“I’ll stop now,” she said. “But the bottom line is that, if I’m lucky enough to Bond, it really won’t matter to me which way it goes. Both sides win in that relationship, despite appearances.”

She sat back down as Jim returned to the podium and continued the meeting.

 

****    **** ****    **** ****

 

“I told them,” she said to Audrey and Carly the next day. “I doubt that I convinced anyone of anything, though.”

Audrey smiled from her seat next to Lindsey on the sofa. “That’s all right, Linds. I’m proud that you were able to do it at all; I know how scared you are of public speaking.”

Carly was curled up at her Mistress’s feet, sitting in what would surely have been an uncomfortable position for her a year ago.

“I can’t believe you did it!” she said. “Did you say how happy we are?”

“I said it all,” she said, reaching out to scritch her best friend’s head. Carly purred. She’d been doing that lately.

Audrey sat back. “And you actually told them you wouldn’t mind being a Pet?”

Lindsey nodded.

Audrey fixed her with her eyes. “Did you mean that?”

Lindsey was confused. “What are you asking me?”

Audrey smiled. “I can’t bond with you, Linds, but I could treat you as if I had, if you want.”

Carly perked up. “Really, Mistress? You’d do that for me? Oh, Linds, think of it: we could be together all the time again.”

Lindsey stroked her friend again. “It’s an...interesting proposition.”

Audrey raised her eyebrows. “‘Interesting’?”

“Yes,” Lindsey replied. “I mean, how would it even work? I’m not a Pet. I lack basic biological aspects and...instinctive responses. And I couldn’t have the same security that normal Pets do; it would be a pretense.”

“True,” Audrey said. “But you’re forgetting how much my darling Carly wants this. She’s the one who asked for it in the first place.”

“Really, Carly?”

“Oh yes,” the Pet said. “We’ve been talking about it for the last few weeks. I just didn’t think she was interested.”

“So you see,” continued Audrey, “that you would have security, since I’d do anything to make my Pet happy. Unless you feel that there is danger that the two of you won’t—”

“No danger there,” said Lindsey. “Our friendship survived the Bond; it can survive anything. No, I’m more concerned about logistics. Since I’m still human, how could I ever respond like a Pet? And I don’t have their body temperature; I’d need clothing. And I don’t need diapers, not that I want them. Nor could I sleep in a cage; my body doesn’t bend that way.”

Audrey shrugged. “There are some things we will just have to work out, but for the rest: I have a friend who does some wonderful things with hypnotic suggestions. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but then...you do want to do this. Don’t you, Sweet Girl?

It was the first time Audrey had ever used a Pet name on her, and Lindsey felt a thrill go through her. She considered the things that stood in her way. A dead-end job. A few friends but no one all that close. An apartment and car she had to pay for. What else? Her mother? No, her mother would totally understand. She knew that Lindsey had always had a submissive streak and she supported her daughter’s decisions. They’d even talked about it after Carly bonded: her mother was fine.

“Money issues?” she asked.

“Well,” said Audrey, “we don’t have the law providing for us, but that doesn’t mean you can’t just give me all of your belongings. They will go a long way toward helping us all live. And as for your apartment, well, it’s bigger than this one; Carly thinks we could all be more comfortable there. And our lease is up for renewal this month…”

“I can’t believe I’m actually considering this,” Lindsey said.

“You’re doing more than that, Little One. You’re doing it.”

There was that same thrill, and Lindsey knew that Audrey was right.

“OK, then,” she said. “Let’s try it. When can I meet your hypnotist?”

Carly squealed and jumped up to hug her friend; Audrey didn’t seem to mind. It was going to be a very, very interesting experiment, and the Keeper smiled at the prospect.

“I’ll give her a call,” she said.

Lindsey sat back and contemplated the magnitude of what she’d just agreed to. She knew there were PetPlay groups online; everyone did. She’d never been that interested in them, and now she was going to live what they only imagined and pretended.

“Um, Linds?” Audrey said.

“What?”

“Pets don’t sit on the furniture.”

It took a moment to register, and then, “Oh! Of course...Mistress.” She slid off of the sofa and sat next to her friend. “This is going to be all right, isn’t it, Carly?”

Carly hugged her close. “So all right,” she said. “So very all right.”

[SGTbaby]

Cool! 

[kerry]

ix. Penny

The Keeper sat comfortably on a chair, sipping a glass of wine. Her Pet, collared and diapered, sat below her on the rug, licking her hands. Neither looked all that interested in the other. But looks can be deceiving, and seconds after the Keeper downed the last of the wine, she addressed her Pet.

“I’ve had enough rest, Penny. Now I’m feeling all warm inside.”

She stroked her Pet’s long dark hair. “So soft,” she murmured. “So lovely.”

Penny turned to face her Keeper, trying to read her mind but not sure if she was correct. “What do you want me to do, Mistress?”

The Keeper smiled. “I want you to service me,” she said.

The Pet pushed her forehead in toward the Keeper’s thighs, nuzzling them as she came in contact. Then she slowly began working her way up the legs as the Keeper began to moan softly.

“It feels so good,” she said. “Keep going.”

Penny slid her head gently up the inner thighs, kissing them and licking them as she moved while her Keeper continued to moan.

“Do it!” the Keeper said. “I need you there now!.”

Reaching up to pull down panties that were already wet, the Pet brought herself into contact with her partner’s vulva and began licking, licking. Her seasoned tongue found its destination very quickly, and the Keeper arched her back at the touch, her moaning growing louder.

“More!” she ordered. “More! Oh Penny!”

The Keeper was breathing heavily by now, making much louder sounds, clearly not caring if anyone in an adjoining apartment heard. She reached out and grabbed Penny by the sides of the head and shoved her deeper into her warm, wet sex.

“Oh!” she cried out. “Oh my God!”

And she was suddenly convulsing in the throes of ecstasy, crying out again and again, tensing all of her muscles without letting go of the head pushed so firmly against her until the convulsions turned into shudders and then ceased altogether. Penny slipped down the legs again, resuming her seat on the rug, licking herself instead of her Mistress.

The Keeper’s breath was beginning to become more normal, and she sat back, stroking the top of her Pet’s head.

“Are you wet too, Pet?” she asked.

If Penny had any real hope that her Keeper meant that sexually, it was dashed the instant she felt a hand cup the crotch of her diaper. It didn’t rub against her; it didn’t run fingers over her. It just squeezed the absorbent material and withdrew.

“Yes, you are,” her Keeper announced, standing up. “Let’s get you changed.”

As she was trained to do, Penny followed at the end of her leash on all fours. She had knee pads on for protection as her hands navigated the floor on the way to the changing table. The table was located in the spare bedroom where her cage sat, and she blushed as she crawled past it. Once on the table, she found that, as usual, her Keeper was quick and businesslike with the diaper change. She’d heard that some other Keepers could make it almost as sexy an experience as going down was, but that wasn’t her Keeper’s style. She wished it was.

The change over, she followed her Keeper back out into the living room, where she stopped to put on her shoes.

“Why are you putting on shoes?” Penny asked.

“Because I’m going to take you out for a walk,” her Keeper answered.

The prospect of a walk always made her tingle. The notion of being seen in the neighborhood as a Pet, the sheer humiliation of that, was usually enough to get her juices flowing. Her Keeper did this every time and, like every time, she desperately wanted to do it. This time she got all the way to the door before pulling away and saying, “Red.”

“Oh come on, Penny, you want to and you know it,” said the Keeper.

“I know, Heather, I admit it. Just thinking about it makes me wet.”

Heather threw her arms out in frustration. “Why then? Why do we always get right to the brink before you stop things? If the idea of humiliation turns you on so much, wouldn’t the real thing be that much more delicious?”

Penny knew her girlfriend was right, but at the same time she knew she couldn’t handle what she fantasized about. It was one thing playing Pet in the privacy of their home; it was another to actually do it in public. Part of her longed to; most of her understood the perils inherent in such actions.

“It’s too likely I’ll see people who will recognize me,” she said. “And even if I don’t, I just —”

“Don’t look like a real Pet. I know, I know. You say that every time too.”

Penny shook her head as she rose, unfastening her collar. “Well it’s true. Humans can only mimic Pets so far; you know that. I can’t move like them.”

Heather smirked. “You can wet your diaper like them.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “That’s different. I was a DL before I ever was into P/K games.”

She picked up the leash and brought it into the room with the cage, crinkling as she went, and put them into the box to put back into the closet. Once it was put away, she turned her attention to the portable playpen they had bought to use as a “cage,” folding it quickly and shoving it, too, into the closet.

“I’m not even sure how I got into this,” she called out to Heather, who was pouring two more glasses of wine.

“You read about that convention thing on fetlife,” Heather called back.

Once she had removed the sheet from the changing table and reset the scanner and printer on top of it, she shut the light and left the playroom. She happily accepted the wine and sat on the couch next to her lover. “Someday I’m actually going to go to it,” she said.

“Sure you are,” Heather smiled.

“I will!” Penny insisted, and they both laughed. There was no way Penny Addington was ever going anywhere near such a place, no matter what she wanted. If the paparazzi somehow got wind of it… It was the price you paid for being famous, she thought. You do one crummy TV show—which happened to have won five Emmys this year, one of which was hers—and you’re suddenly hounded everywhere you go.

“I can imagine it,” Heather said. “Meryl from ‘Such Is Life’ at a fetish convention.”

Penny sipped her wine. “Right. Like that bitch would ever demean herself in any way at all.”

“You always talk about her that way.”

“Yeah, well, she may have made me a star, but I don’t need to like her. I just need to play her.”

Heather paused. “Don’t you have to like a character to, you know, inhabit her?”

Penny smiled. “Only when I’m playing her,” she said. “The rest of the time I can just be amazed at what terrible things she did this week. Like everyone else.”

“Speaking of…” Heather said, “I have the premiere recorded. Let’s watch it.”

“Oh God,” Penny said, “I don’t know why you always want to watch with me. I just whine about how I look and all of the line readings I screwed up.”

Pushing the button for the TV lift, Heather looked at Penny. “That’s what makes it so much fun,” she said.

 

***   *** ***   *** *** ***   ***

 

“OK,” said Jim Thibodeaux, “we have time tonight to talk about some of the Bonds you’ve heard about, but maybe don’t affect you personally.”

A bearded man in the second row stood up.

“Yes Kenneth,” said the group leader. “What’s on your mind?”

Kenneth shook his head. “I just don’t know how much worse this thing is going to get. Two partners at my firm bonded just this week. One’s a Pet; the other’s a Keeper. But it makes such a mess of things, and...I just don’t know.”

Jim nodded respectfully. “You’re right, of course. We all read the papers: the thing gets worse all the time.”

Kenneth stood still for a moment. Then he shook his head sadly. “Seems like pretty soon there won’t be nothing but Keepers and Pets,” he said as he sat down.

“We’re probably not that far gone yet,” Jim said. “Still, now that we think that there isn’t just one possible match for susceptible people…”

“Yeah,” said another man in the back. “What about that? I don’t want to believe it. Somehow it just seems...safer...to think you have to run into that one person. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“But what about the numbers?” a brunette woman in the front row asked. “If you stop to consider it, we’ve all seen numerous Keeper/Pet duos. We each have at least one in our lives. Hell, there have been a few that happened right here. If it needed to be that specific, it would be a needle in a haystack, and we’d hardly ever see it happen.”

‘Maggie’s right,” said a woman right behind her as she stood. “Just the famous cases alone would defy the odds. Like Wallingford. Or that bank president.”

“Or Penny Addington,” Maggie said. “How about her? One minute on top of the world and winning Emmy awards; the next minute someone’s Pet, undoubtedly living in a cage.”

There was a general buzz of agreement in the room, and one man said, “You know that she bonded with another actor just there to play a fireman or something.”

“A cop,” said Maggie. “He was playing a cop. There’s a video; have you seen it?”

A few had; most had not. Maggie said, “You can google it: Penny Addington Pet.”

Within a minute, most of the people in the room were watching their own or someone else’s cell phones as the elegant Meryl Hudson glided onto the screen. It was clearly rehearsal footage; she was holding a script. She said a few lines, and then there was a knock on the door.

“Ok, now,” the voice of the director was saying, “I want you annoyed at being bothered, OK?

“I can read the script, Bob,” said Penny Addington, laughing. “When she bites his head off at the door, I think that gives away her irritation.”

“Yeah, well there is that.”

Back in character, she moved toward the door, an angry look in her eyes. She reached the foyer, pushed the intercom, and snapped, “Who the hell is it?”

From the intercom, a man’s voice came: “It’s the police, Mrs. Hudson. Could we speak with you for a moment?”

Another surge of frustration passed over her, and she lifted her hand to the doorknob.

“Here it comes,” said Maggie to the two people looking on with her.

The door opened, and Meryl Hudson just stood there, staring at the two uniformed young men on the other side. After a few moments of awkward silence, the director’s voice came again. “Meryl?” he asked. “Penny? You have a line.”

One of the policemen had removed his hat and walked right up to Meryl Hudson.

“That’s not your blocking,” said the director, just before another voice was heard, saying, “Holy shit! They’ve bonded!”

“Oh, hell,” came the director’s voice. “Please let her be the Keeper.”

But she wasn’t. As every TV fan knew by now, her next words, captured on the overhead boom mic, were from A Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. You’ll take care of me, won’t you?”

“I love that!” said Maggie animatedly. “She somehow had the presence of mind in the middle of the Bond to quote Williams.”

The rest of the video played out just like the bondings they were all familiar with, but that one line set it apart. The camera captured the glazed looks in both of their eyes as well as him reaching out to her and gently touching her face before it cut out.

Jim had been watching and listening to twenty phones playing the same video, and when it was done, he said, “Miss Addington was apparently nothing like the character she played. Everything I’ve read says she was a really nice person. And there’s one factor in her bonding that I think needs to be pointed out: Miss Addington was a lesbian, yet she bonded with a man. That’s how strong the Bond is.”

The man who had spoken earlier, Kenneth, shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How could she not have seen this actor before?”

“He was a replacement,” Maggie said. “It was his first rehearsal.”

“Yes,” said Jim, “and this again highlights the fundamental unlikeliness of bonding, if there is only one match in the world. What are the odds that the one actor she could bond with would be hired as a replacement for one who came down with the flu? Not good. But if he was just one of a pool of possibilities, each of whom could bond with her given the chance…”

“Like sperm!” Several people laughed at the bizarre analogy. It was a woman’s voice, buried somewhere in the middle of the room. When she stood up, everyone could see that she was a petite, older woman wearing a loose cardigan over a Woman Power t-shirt.

“Like sperm,” she said again. “If you had only one, the egg would never be fertilized. You need millions of them, each of which has a chance to do it, for one to finally break through.”

“Right,” Jim said with a smile. “Exactly right. And while I doubt that there are millions of possible matches for every susceptible person, there could easily be tens...or hundreds...of thousands. It would certainly make the things we’ve seen more logical. OK, good meeting, folks. Let’s bring it to a close.”

 

***   *** ***   *** *** ***   ***

 

They had been all over each other for at least the fourth time today, and both Penny and her Keeper were exhausted. As they lingered on the couch, holding each other, him petting her beautiful hair, Penny thought about how odd life was.

There was no way she could have understood before what it truly meant to be a Pet, no matter how many role plays she did with Heather. Heather… It made her sad to think of her former girlfriend, but that life was over now. She belonged to Kevin. She’d known it the instant she had opened the door. Somehow she came up with the line she always used in role plays, that old chestnut from Streetcar. She wasn’t sure how she managed to find it through the haze of her mind in the moment, but she had. And now it was a youtube sensation.

Like I’m the only one ever to say something memorable in that moment, she thought.

Whatever the case, though, she had to figure she was at least the second most famous Pet in the world. There was that Supreme Court Justice. And she did so love being a Pet. It was far, far better than she ever imagined it could be. She had no worries at all, no work to go to, and Kevin took great care of her. He had sold her mansion in Beverly Hills and bought a very nice, smaller place in the Hollywood Hills. It was a bit more secluded, which made all the difference on nights like this.

“Fetch the leash, Penny,” he said lovingly. “We’re going for a walk.”

Penny Addington knew that, in his hands, she was perfectly safe. As he fashioned the leash onto her collar and did a quick check of her diaper, all she could think of was how much she loved him, how she would do anything at all for him.

It’s a great life, she thought as the door closed behind them.

[bbykimmy]

On 10/2/2018 at 4:02 PM, kerry said:

“I know,” she said. “All that you’re saying is true. Nonetheless, the more I talk to Carly, the more I…”

Here it comes.

“...want to be someone’s Pet.”

My heart was racing at this point!

On 10/2/2018 at 4:02 PM, kerry said:

Audrey shrugged. “There are some things we will just have to work out, but for the rest: I have a friend who does some wonderful things with hypnotic suggestions. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but then...you do want to do this. Don’t you, Sweet Girl?

And then hypnotic suggestions!

On 10/2/2018 at 4:02 PM, kerry said:

“I can’t believe I’m actually considering this,” Lindsey said.

“You’re doing more than that, Little One. You’re doing it.”

omfg!

YES!

We have our first official "pretend pet"!!

I love it <3

I love this story

[kerry]

bbykimmy said:

YES!

We have our first official "pretend pet"!!

I love it ❤️

 

I had such fun with this chapter. Definitely need to reprise this trio...

?

[Wannatripbaby]

Just read chapter 9.

Wow! That was HAWT! ? I didn't know you had it in you, Kerry!

[kerry]

I didn't either. ?

 

 

[kerry]

x. Bonnie and Clyde

Whenever they told anyone their names, people didn’t believe them, but Bonnie and Clyde Ralston actually loved the weird coincidence. It was the main thing that drew them together in the first place. Bonnie had been sitting in a Starbucks sipping a latte when she heard a barista call out that Clyde’s beverage was ready. Since she’d never before met a Clyde in her life, she had to meet this guy. As he walked past her, she caught his eye.

“Did she say your name is Clyde?” she asked.

He smiled and said that it was.

“Mine’s Bonnie.”

He didn’t believe her until she showed him her name written on the coffee cup. It turned out he’d never met a Bonnie either, and it seemed the least they could do to sit there and chat about having the names of two famous robbers. Three years and thousands of conversations later, they were married. Their friends threw them gangster-themed bachelor and bachelorette parties, and they dubbed their car the “getaway car” at the reception.

“Just please don’t shoot at us,” Clyde joked, and people laughed.

It was cool to have the names of the Barrows, and they milked it for what they could get. To celebrate their marriage, they put together a couple of very realistic Bonnie and Clyde costumes for Halloween which were a big hit at parties even when they wore them again a couple of years later. They stopped wearing them to greet children at the door, though, after the first year. Not only did the kids not get it, but sometimes they were afraid of the guns (though they were of course only toys). Still, the young couple actively celebrated their names. They even managed to get into a newspaper for a human interest piece, and after that they got a phone call from The Ellen Show about a guest appearance.

Filming the show was a blast. They loved meeting Ellen and her other guests, the former actress Penny Addington and her Keeper, actor Kevin Diamond. It was the first time either of them had met a Keeper/Pet couple, and they found it fascinating: all they had read about such couples had prepared them for a really unusual experience, but Kevin and Penny turned out to be very congenial and even normal, if that word had any meaning in a world with the Bond.

Penny, the Pet, was wearing a modest crop top along with her diaper; network standards forbade her being naked, so she put up with it for the day. She proved very friendly, making self-deprecating remarks about her current situation and her former life. And Kevin couldn’t have been nicer; far from treating her like property, as they sort of expected, he seemed actually very...deferential to her, constantly alert to anything that might be uncomfortable for his charge. When the filming was over, Bonnie and Clyde asked the Diamonds if they’d like to go out for a drink, and Kevin agreed.

Penny kept the crop top on so that they would be able to get into a club; most of the places in LA were Pet-friendly, but you never really knew. And Bonnie and Clyde found themselves in Totality, one of the hottest clubs in town, with their newfound companions.

“Being famous—even for bonding—has its perks,” Kevin said as the drinks were served, and Penny laughed. It hadn’t surprised  the Ralstons when Penny was not allowed to sit at the table with them; she had a “Pet seat” similar to the one she’d used on Ellen, but it surprised them that Penny’s drink was served in what Bonnie could only describe as a sippy cup.

She explained. “My metabolism as a Pet is so heated up that many of my finer motor functions have been compromised. I tend to drop things, as all Pets do; bars like this are prepared for it. It’s the same reason for the special chair; at this point if I sit upright on a regular chair I might slide off, so I really need the safety straps.”

“Don’t you feel, um, odd?” asked Bonnie. 

Penny laughed. “As if I’m not already odd enough.”

Kevin pulled her closer to him. “Penny, you know I don’t like it when you disparage yourself that way. Please refrain from doing so even in jest.”

She blushed, looking back at him. “Yes, Kevin,” she said.

Out of the artificial environment of the TV studio, Bonnie found their dynamic intriguing. The two of them were clearly very much in love; Kevin had pulled Penny’s seat close enough to the table that he could stroke her, and he did so unabashedly. At one point, Bonnie could have sworn she heard the Pet purring, but that wasn’t possible, was it? In any case, neither of them seemed unhappy. Quite the opposite, actually: this was one of the most glowingly happy couples she had ever met. Still, here it was very clear that Kevin was in charge. He ordered her drink for her—a virgin daiquiri—and when she asked him if it would be all right to order some Pet treats and he said it was too late at night, she didn’t argue.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Clyde said, “could you tell us more about how your lives have changed since you bonded? I mean, besides the obvious. It’s just that you’re the first Keeper/Pet couple I’ve actually talked with.”

Bonnie slapped him playfully. “Honey,” she said, “they probably don’t want to answer such personal questions from people they hardly know.”

“What can I say?” Clyde said with a smirk. “I shoot from the hip.”

“It’s all right, Bonnie,” Kevin said. “I’m an actor. Penny was before the Bond. We’re used to being in the limelight and having people ask questions. But the answer isn’t simple.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Clyde said.

Kevin took a sip from his mojito. “I mean I could say that Penny is responsive to anything and everything I say and that I’m just as keenly attuned to her, but that’s not really a full answer. I could say that my career has taken off or that I’m tired of the paparazzi, but that isn’t really a change for Penny. And besides, I suppose those are among the obvious things.”

He took another slow sip. “I suppose, though, that what would interest you most is the Connection.”

He was right. Clyde was aware, like most people, of the physical effects of the Bond on the Pet, though some things, such as the breakdown of fine motor control, were still being researched. But the Change was still obvious, whereas the Connection...well, even the scientists who studied it were still unable to understand it.

Clyde smiled. “If you don’t mind.”

“Pas du tout,” Kevin said. “Not at all.” Again he raised the glass to his lips; this time he drained it and asked the passing waiter for another.

“I can’t describe the Connection really. No one can as far as I know, or it would be better understood. It’s not like telepathy; we can’t read each other’s minds or anything. We just sense each other in a very deep way. We can read each other’s emotions even if they aren’t on display. Would you agree with that, Pet?”

Finally cued to speak, Penny smiled. “It’s even more than that,” she said. “I can feel your emotions. I don’t just see or hear or even sense them in some metaphysical way; I experience them. I mean not the way you do, obviously, but I know they are there. Isn’t that what it’s like for you?”

Kevin smiled. “Very well explained, my love.”

The praise was clearly a kind of catalyst for Penny, as her own smile broadened until it filled her face. He stroked her hair again, and this time the purring was actually audible.

“How does that happen?” Bonnie asked. “I mean the purring, not the Connection.”

Penny laughed, but her purring didn’t stop as Kevin kept his soft touches coming. “It’s another thing no one has been able to explain,” she said, “but it feels good. I suppose it’s a physical aspect of the Connection, maybe?”

She looked to her Keeper, who started to explain. “You’re probably aware of all of the changes Pets’ bodies go through after bonding. Some of them purr. Some of them develop a biting instinct for self-preservation. Most of them start finding regular sitting uncomfortable and prefer curling up. Some even find walking upright strenuous and end up on all fours everywhere. I’m sure you’ve seen them.”

Bonnie responded. “I guess I’ve always thought that was part of the dom/sub thing.”

Kevin laughed. “I suppose it is, for some who are naturally so inclined. I mean what could be a better example of that dynamic than Keeper/Pet? But actually, though the Pet always does what the Keeper says, most of us prefer a more loving bond to a domineering one.”

As he spoke, Kevin continued to stroke his Pet’s long hair and occasionally scritch the top of her head. When he did that, her eyes closed and her head tilted in a kind of reverie. Bonnie looked on in amazement and awe: that the Bond could bring so much pleasure was not a thing she’s ever considered.

She looked around. Scattered throughout the establishment were a number of Keeper/Pet couples, and every one of them looked thoroughly content. Something deep within her wondered, despite her close relationship to her husband, whether she’d like that kind of arrangement. Could she be happy as a Pet?

After they had said goodbye to their new friends, Bonnie and Clyde got into a cab to take them home.

“Well, that was...different,” Clyde said.

“I liked them,” his wife responded.

“Oh, I liked them too. But the Keeper/Pet dynamic is just so odd. It made me more grateful than ever to be Unbound. I mean, really, could you see me on either side of it?”

Bonnie, who’d been imagining exactly that, didn’t say a thing.
 

****    **** ****    **** ****

Over the next several days, Bonnie made an extra effort to observe Keeper/Pet couples. She watched them when she saw them on the street, in the grocery store, and whenever she came across them. She even went out of her way to go to a Pet Park to watch them happily playing together. And there were all sorts of different ways the couples had of relating to each other, but every one had the same thing in common: that look in their eyes. It was the same look that Kevin and Penny had shared, an expression that meant that the person wearing it was perfectly at peace.

Every time a Pet did something to please a Keeper, both of them would get the look simultaneously. If it was possible, she thought, the Pets displayed it even more noticeably than the Keepers. And Bonnie was struck by the revelation that it was the kind of expression she’d witnessed on lovestruck couples, the kind she herself had probably worn when she first started to fall in love with Clyde. And it wasn’t that her relationship was waning or anything, but they’d been married for several years now and that original spark had died down. When she thought back to her wedding now, she still smiled at all of the memories, but some things didn’t play as they had done back then. Clyde’s joke about the guns, for instance. At the time, it had seemed silly and kind of cute. Now she cringed at how out of place a joke about such a thing was at a wedding, and how tasteless it probably was anywhere. She still loved her husband, but she knew that she no longer worshipped him, and she longed for that feeling again.

Another thing she discovered, not by observation (heaven forbid) but by research: the sex lives of Keeper/Pet couples was nothing short of incredible! Something about the Bond made both partners want each other desperately. Studies had shown that such couples had sex an average of more than twice a day, with some couples going at it five, six or more times. And the average female Pet achieved multiple orgasms every single time. And she had thought her own sex life fulfilling, though she and Clyde were now having sex two to three times a week and multiples were only a fleeting imaginary thought.

She thought about that as she watched them in the Pet Park: some Keepers walking them on their leashes, some letting them run free. They were Pets, she thought. They were property. But she found herself thinking that their lives were more exciting than she had ever dreamed life could be. Imagine being able to feel that good because someone called you a “good girl.” Part of her felt it was demeaning, but the greater part saw the honest joy on their faces and wondered if a little bit of demeaning was all that bad. I should give up my feminist card just for thinking that, she thought. But it wasn’t even a sexist thing: most of the couples she saw were lesbians.

That was another thing: this Keeper/Pet thing absolutely didn’t care about gender. LGBT groups were among the first people to openly express their support for these new unions. Bonnie was not lesbian, but she’d read that prior orientation didn’t matter after the Bond. And as she watched these female couples at the Park, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like…

Clyde couldn’t help noticing his wife’s newfound fascination.

“Why does this interest you so much?” he’d asked her one night while she was doing computer research into the Bond.

“Did you know,” she asked, “that the CDC has officially determined that the Bond is partially the result of a virus? If both people are carriers, there is a chance that they will bond. What they don’t know is what triggers the virus to suddenly go nuts and take over the mind and body. They have a test to see if you’re a carrier, but they say it doesn’t matter much if you’re tested because you could still become a carrier at any time and never know it unless you were tested, like, every week.”

Clyde shook his head. “Yeah, well, that’s interesting and all, but—”

“I’m a carrier, Clyde,” she said.

He was silent for a moment. Then: “You had yourself tested?”

“I needed to know,” she said simply.

“Wh-what does that mean for us?”

She shrugged. “Nothing at all, I suppose, unless I bond with someone.”

“Doesn’t it mean that we’re not meant for each other? I mean we’d have bonded if we were, right? Isn’t that how it works?”

She put her laptop down and leaned into him, snuggling. “Don’t be silly. I just said no one knows the trigger. And besides, you might not even be a carrier.”

“I don’t think I could live without you,” he said.

“Same, honey.”

They sat there staring blankly at the TV show that he had been watching, and an ad for a new series came on. It was called “Keeperverse” and dealt with a world in which the Bond had *always* been present as a fact of life.

“That would be a better thing,” Bonnie said.

“In what way?”

“Think about it. If it had just been a part of life and society from the start, it wouldn’t be so scary.”

He looked at her gently, the beautiful woman leaning against him with her head on his chest.

“It doesn’t scare you,” he said.

She smiled. “I think I’m just weird.”

“I think you’re just sexy as hell,” he said, allowing his hands to slide under her top and fondle her breasts.

She shivered with the sensation she always felt: that electricity that jolted her every time. She felt him lying back and let him guide her and pull her on top of him as he lifted the top off.

I don’t need to be a Pet to find this wonderful, she thought as her body went into autopilot and animal urges took over. Or maybe it’s as close to being a Pet as I’ll ever get.

****    **** ****    **** ****

Clyde Ralston took his seat at the meeting, but he still had not decided if he was going to speak. After all, who would even believe him? But he had come nonetheless, not out of a sense of loss to be sure but a sense of duty. He owed her this much. He’d been meaning to come to one of these since his co-worker Jori had bonded, but he just hadn’t gotten around to it until now even though he had quite a story to tell. If he could bring himself to tell it.

The meeting began with several tearful people speaking lovingly of their wives, their sons, their good friends, and the pain they had felt and were still feeling at the wreckage the Bond had left in their lives. They were stories of panic, chaos and pain, just what he expected, just what he had experienced himself with Jori. Well maybe not exactly the same: he didn’t know Jori as well as these people knew the ones they had lost. That was bad enough, he thought. What if it had been someone I really loved, like…

The meeting went on and on. The leader, Karen, who he learned had lost two children to the Bond, was running out of people to call upon. And besides, the hour must be almost up. But before she called it a night, she took notice of this man she had never seen there before and addressed him.

“I see a few new faces in the crowd this evening,” she said. “I know it usually takes a few meetings to be comfortable speaking, but do any of you have anything you’d like to share with us tonight?”

Well, Clyde thought, it’s now or never. I may not even have the guts to come back next week.

Slowly, he stood up. Following the protocol he had observed, he walked up to the front of the room and then started with his name. “Hi, my name is Clyde.”

“Hi, Clyde,” came the automatic response from the gathering.

He looked around the room: so many faces waiting to hear from the newcomer. So many faces still red from the last stories they had heard. Well, his story would at least be different.

“I’ve felt everything that each of you has talked about, though not to that personal extreme. My loss was Jori, my good friend from work. When she bonded, well, let’s just say very little work got done in the office for a couple of days. She was popular, you know? And suddenly she was gone.”

There were murmurings of comprehension in the group.

“But I really didn’t come here to talk about Jori. I came to talk about my wife, Bonnie.”

“Wait,” someone said. “Bonnie and Clyde?”

He smiled. “Yeah. It was how we met, actually, our names. She was sitting in a coffee shop, all small and adorable, with “Bonnie” written on her cup. We hit it off right away.”

Some of the group smiled, either thinking about the names or about “small and adorable” Bonnie with tall, hunky Clyde. Others apparently realized that this all meant his wife had bonded, and remained quiet.

“Yeah, well, we had a wonderful marriage for seven years. But that’s changed now.”

“She bonded,” said someone from the front row. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Clyde said. “She bonded...with me.”

The group started talking all at once. How was that possible? This went against everything they thought they knew about the Bond. Karen had to quiet them down so Clyde could continue.

“Let me explain,” he said. “Bonnie knew she was a carrier and worried that she would bond with some random person on the street. Even though her own research had indicated that bonded couples were actually happy—”

Another hubbub. Again Karen wrestled back control.

“Yeah, I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s true. And we were very happy before, but now we’re even happier.”

“You’re the Keeper, I take it?” asked the man in the front row.

“Yes,” he said. “But my Pet is just out in the hallway, if you wish to meet her. I told her to wait there before the meeting.”

“What I want to know,” said someone else, “is how it is even possible. Is the virus mutating?”

Clyde smiled. “That’s a good question, and one I want to answer. But I honestly don’t know if the virus is mutating; I’m not a scientist. What I do know is that we bonded. I’m just guessing at the rest, but here it goes:

“After she tested positive, she asked me to get checked as well. I did, and I was negative. I was not a carrier. We talked about what to do, and all we could think of was just to go on with our lives, hoping she wouldn’t bond and rip us apart. As I said, I knew from her research that, if that happened, she’d be happy; she just wouldn’t be happy with me.

“A few weeks later, I had to go away on a business trip for a few days. We talked every day on the phone, both to hear each other’s voices and to know she was still there for me. When I arrived home, she had prepared a glorious meal, which was unusual because we usually ate out or ordered takeout. The salads were already sitting on the table when the door opened and I came in. She flew at me like in some old cartoon and leaped into my arms. Good thing I had the presence of mind to drop my briefcase! Anyway we hugged each other for several moments, and then I let her slip back to the ground.

“It was at that moment that our eyes met. And we both knew, though neither of us could explain it. I had to have been exposed to the virus in whatever way you catch it while I was in London. And now we were seeing each other for the first time since we both had become positive. That’s the only explanation I could come up with, and our doctors haven’t thought of a better one.”

Clyde stopped talking. Everyone was rapt in attention; he wished he could get this kind of cooperation at business meetings.

“The thing is, if we were happy before the Bond, we’re happy to the power of three now. All we exist for is each other. My job barely pays the bills, now that she isn’t working...but it doesn’t matter. We’ve found a renewed sense of passion unlike anything I can really describe. And though I am her Keeper now our relationship hasn’t changed all that much.”

“Would she say the same?” asked the guy in the front row. “Call her in; let’s hear it from her.”

There was general agreement, so Clyde went out into the hall and shortly returned with Bonnie, on a leash. She was wearing the same kind of crop top they had seen on Penny Diamond. Other than the collar and diaper, that was it. She seemed a bit nervous, staying very close to her Keeper, who put his arm around her and whispered in her ear.

“It’s all right, Love. No one here will hurt you.”

The man in the front row, close enough to hear that, said, “Has someone tried to hurt her?”

Clyde noticed right away that the man had addressed the question to him, as was appropriate. Even here at FAFOP, people understood the hierarchy.  

He responded, “We’ve run into a few anti-Pet types who have made her feel very uncomfortable, but I assured her you were not that sort of group, just one seeking to understand how all of this happened and why it happened to you.”

He turned his attention back to Bonnie. “Just tell them how life feels to you now, OK?”

Obediently, she nodded and turned to face the audience.

“I admit that I was sort of fascinated with Keepers and Pets even before the Bond. As my Keeper told you, my research had revealed that they were among the happiest couples anywhere. Everything I have experienced has proven this correct. Our lives now are rich and loving, and I am more fulfilled than I ever was. I know you feel that the loss of a loved one to the Bond is a tragedy, but I urge you to understand that they are in all likelihood as happy as it is possible to be.”

She turned to Clyde. “Was that good enough?” she asked. He nodded and put his arm around her, protectively.

Someone in the back of the room called out, “Does all of this mean we need to be concerned about the Bond even with people we know now?”

Clyde smiled. “For all I know, we may just be a unique permutation of the Bond. Or maybe we are indeed the forerunners of something that changes how it works. Whichever is the case, though, I hope you can see that it isn’t all that scary.”

“That may be true,” the man replied, “but it still means we’ve lost someone we loved and cared for. It’s good to know they may be happy, but that doesn’t really stop the pain.”

Clyde nodded. “No,” he said, “I suppose nothing will do that. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get my Pet home. She gets ornery if she doesn’t get her sleep.”

He picked up the leash that had been lying on the ground next to Bonnie and led her out the door.

“Well,” said Karen in their wake, “that certainly gives us food for thought. We’re really out of time tonight, though, so maybe we can discuss it next week after we’ve all had the chance to ponder it? Does that work for everyone?”

There was general agreement, and the meeting was adjourned.

In the back of the room, Matthew, the man who had made the final comment, remained seated, tears sliding down his face, while everyone else moved to the refreshments table. Karen approached him.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Not really,” he muttered.

“They may not have been right,” Karen said.

“No, that’s just it, Matthew replied. “I totally believe them. Now I know that my daughter Tina is most likely very happy, but I’m still miserable anyway. And the worst thing is that now I have to admit that I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

Karen sat down next to him. “Maybe there are times when that is perfectly acceptable,” she said. “If so, this is definitely one of them. For what it’s worth, I’m feeling exactly the same way.”

He looked up, failing in an attempt to smile, and sat quietly. Karen sat next to him as the crowd dispersed, and they both remained there, sitting silently, thinking about the past and the empty future to the smell of stale coffee, for a long, long time.

[Wannatripbaby]

Again, while I enjoyed the story, I didn't really like the resolution. You took a happy couple and made them happier by Bonding them because... reasons? Unless you're building up to something? Something that adequately explains why this happened and what it means?

[kerry]

1 hour ago, Wannatripbaby said:

Again, while I enjoyed the story, I didn't really like the resolution. You took a happy couple and made them happier by Bonding them because... reasons? Unless you're building up to something? Something that adequately explains why this happened and what it means?

TBH, I'm not crazy about the resolution of this chapter either. I started out with the cute "Bonnie and Clyde" bit and it just...grew from there. Unlike Kimmy's version of the Keeperverse, this one hasn't been in place all that long and people are still trying to figure out rules, but the more people want to control things the more out of control things get. I thought about breaking up B&C but decided it would be more interesting ultimately to keep them together and allow the virus to mutate b/c they simply wouldn't allow me to break them up. At this point, I have already started doubling back to some characters and will continue to do so. But I haven't gotten to a few permutations of coupling before and after the Bond that I'd like to. And not everyone can end up happy...

[Wannatripbaby]

4 hours ago, kerry said:

I thought about breaking up B&C but decided it would be more interesting ultimately to keep them together and allow the virus to mutate b/c they simply wouldn't allow me to break them up.

I know what you mean. Sometimes you set something up only to realize you have no desire to see it through or the characters just won't bend that way.

[Diaperingdaddy]

What a great story I hope you write more 

[CDfm]

I thought this bond between husband and wife was definitely different as far as this universe goes. To be honest I would much rather see husband and wife bond rather than two strangers bond and have it ruin others lives. Was there something that Bonnie did to make this bond happen? I know she wanted to be a pet and I am sure she realized how crushed Clyde would have been if she bonded with someone else. 

[kerry]

57 minutes ago, CDfm said:

I thought this bond between husband and wife was definitely different as far as this universe goes. To be honest I would much rather see husband and wife bond rather than two strangers bond and have it ruin others lives. Was there something that Bonnie did to make this bond happen? I know she wanted to be a pet and I am sure she realized how crushed Clyde would have been if she bonded with someone else. 

I think it was just the odd result of a new viral infection. Clyde was negative before his trip and positive after; it takes two positives to bond, and they clearly were a compatible couple. I don't think Bonnie did anything, but I wouldn't put it past her: girl wanted to be a pet. ?

[Sarah Penguin]

Hmm somewhere out there are a married couple bonded to each other who just applied for a divorce beforehand.

[kerry]

That would certainly bring a new dynamic to the whole thing. 

BTW, Sarah, thanks for reading my stories. I'm glad you're enjoying them.

[Sarah Penguin]

You're welcome fanks for posting stuff for me to read