I was captured.

He held me to him, gripping me and pulling me close like a child with a teddy bear. The position I was in was uncomfortable. I’d been lying down too long and my right leg was starting to hurt, the dull ache of inactivity.

He pulled me closer, pressing my stomach into my bladder in a supremely uncomfortable way.

“I need to get up,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to jar him out of his sleep. He needed to be eased out of it, or he’d be cranky for the next hour.

“No,” he said, still mostly asleep. “Stay.”

He pushed his nose into my hair and took a deep breath, a long inhale. “Smells good.”

He hugged me closer.

Groggy with sleep as he was, he probably didn’t realize how uncomfortable this was. He probably didn’t realize how much I needed to get up. He probably thought this was a nice morning. No need to get up. No alarm clock. Lovers lying together, lounging the morning away.

Usually, I would have no problem with this. I would lie here, content in knowing I was wrapped in the secure blanket of my closest friend. Content in knowing someone I loved, loved me back.

But this morning was different. The position was almost unbearable. I’d woken ten minutes earlier with the insistent pressure of my bladder, telling me it couldn’t hold out any longer. I had been wide awake within seconds, knowing I couldn’t stay in that position much longer without bursting. It ruined the whole dynamic.

I didn’t want to be here. I needed to get up, to move, to do something. But every attempt to adjust caused him to hold me tighter, wrap me up, until I was a prisoner in his loving arms, staring at the ceiling as he unknowingly held me against my will, a captive in my own bed.