It took them nine months to get there.

Nine months of slower scenes, of building trust in layers: first the small speculum, then the medium, then the slender disposable sigmoidoscope that only went six inches. Nine months of Alex learning that “pineapple” really did make everything stop instantly, that Nate’s hands never moved without permission, that after every scene she was held until she stopped shaking and then fed chocolate and water like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The idea of the full-length rigid sigmoidoscope (twenty-five centimeters of cold steel, the exact instrument that had once haunted her nightmares) first came up as a half-joke on a night when she was floaty and loose after three orgasms.

“I want the real one someday,” she mumbled into his chest. He’d gone very still. “You sure?” “Not yet,” she said. “But someday.”

Someday arrived on a Friday in early spring.

She texted him at noon: green. the long one. please.

He answered with a single thumbs-up emoji and the hotel address.

When she walked in, the room looked different. The portable table had been replaced with a proper medical plinth (borrowed from a colleague who asked no questions), complete with padded knee crutches and a movable light arm. On the tray sat the instrument she had both dreaded and dreamed about for years: twenty-five centimeters of polished stainless steel, the same diameter as the one that had removed her polyp, lying on a sterile blue towel like it was waiting for her.

Nate was already in scrubs, gloves on, expression calm but eyes dark with the knowledge of what she was asking.

“Color?” he asked the second the door clicked shut.

“Green,” she said, and her voice only shook a little.

They did the ritual slowly. Gown on. Table adjusted so her hips were at the perfect height. Knee crutches raised and spread wide, calves secured with soft Velcro straps (her idea; she wanted to feel held, not trapped). A thick pillow under her pelvis so the angle would be exactly right.

He let her touch the scope first (cold, heavy, impossibly real in her hands). She ran her fingers along its length, tracing the faint ridges, feeling the weight of every centimeter that would soon be inside her.

“Still green?” “Greener than ever.”

He warmed it under hot water, coated it so thickly with lube that it dripped in slow strings. Then he stood between her spread thighs and waited until she met his eyes.

“I’m going to narrate every millimeter,” he said. “You breathe, you say color, you say pineapple if you need it. Nothing else exists but your word.”

She nodded, tears already gathering.

The tip touched her entrance (cold, blunt, unmistakable). “Breathe out, sweetheart.”

She did, and the scope began its slow, relentless glide.

The first ten centimeters were familiar (pressure, stretch, the same intimate fullness she had learned to crave). Then came the next ten (deeper than anything she had ever taken consensually), a heavy, sliding weight that pressed against places inside her rectum that made her vision spark white at the edges. She moaned, low and broken, hips rocking involuntarily.

At twenty centimeters he paused, letting her feel the impossible depth, the cool metal kissing the sigmoid bend.

“Color?” His voice was rough now.

“Green,” she sobbed, “don’t stop.”

The final five centimeters went in on one long, controlled push. She felt the tip seat fully, the handle resting between her cheeks, her body stretched open and claimed in a way that short-circuited every remaining fragment of shame.

He left it there (perfectly still) while he reached for the light and angled it down the barrel. The glow inside her was soft, almost reverent.

“Look at you,” he whispered. “Twenty-five centimeters deep and you took every inch because you wanted it. You’re extraordinary.”

That was when the orgasm started (not from direct stimulation, but from the sheer overwhelming reality of being filled exactly the way she had once been terrified to be filled). It rolled through her like a wave, building and building until her entire body seized, thighs trembling in the crutches, a raw, guttural cry tearing out of her throat.

He watched her come apart, one gloved hand steady on the scope handle, the other resting lightly on her lower abdomen so he could feel the contractions ripple under his palm.

When the first wave passed, he began to move the scope (tiny, deliberate circles, no more than a centimeter in any direction), just enough to keep the pressure alive against every sensitive nerve. She came again almost immediately, harder, vision tunneling to black at the edges for three breathless seconds.

He caught her as she floated back, easing the long steel out inch by inch, slow enough that she felt every ridge leave her body. When the tip finally slipped free her anus fluttered closed around nothing and she collapsed forward, sobbing and laughing at the same time.

Nate stripped off his gloves, unfastened the straps, and lifted her into his arms like she weighed nothing. He carried her to the bed, wrapped her in blankets, and held her while the aftershocks rolled through her for twenty solid minutes.

Eventually she found her voice.

“I did it,” she whispered against his neck. “I took the thing that scared me most in the entire world and I made it mine.”

He kissed her temple, eyes shining. “You didn’t just take it, Alex. You turned it into something beautiful.”

She fell asleep still trembling, the ghost pressure of twenty-five centimeters lingering deep inside her like a promise finally kept.

When she woke hours later, the suite was dark and quiet, and Nate was tracing gentle circles on her back.

She smiled into his shoulder, sleepy and utterly unafraid.

“Next time,” she murmured, “I want to watch in the mirror.”

He laughed softly and pulled her closer.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart. Whatever you want.”