Work Text:
There's a puddle underfoot. Damp sinking through your shoe, and a man with a cigarette leaning against the wall. The smoke flows through his teeth, asking "will you come with me?"
Acrid and miserable, the sweet stench of rot and revulsion. He's really asking if you're miserable enough to give it up. What up? You're not sure but it's the hollow place in your chest where lungs should be. The smart choice says no and you've always been smart. Do you look like the sort of person who'd say yes?
He lets out a breath, waiting on you to answer.
Your room, his room, his hands on your waist, your hips, your shoulders, grinning lips pressed somewhere against your neck. He’s saying your name: purred and pleasant, breathy plosives lost in pleasure.
Tonight you’re playing happy couple, been together long to know exactly what gets you you off. Half-light, just the strips of LED illuminating.
He pulls out out of you, and pulls out a cigarette as the illusion falls apart, taking nothing in but the beat of your fans and the city below.
A week later and a there’s a leather-clad leg kicking through your screen: floor, glass, face.
Skin tacky with sweat, air rich with perfume and sex. The lights are off, and it’s good. Not because you’re good or in love but because it’s a fucking job. He’s got wet-wipes on hand to clean the fluids off. Clinical, precise, the cameras rolling until somebody says cut.
There’s a moan echoing in the hollow silences where you don’t know what to say. “Thanks,” or maybe “I’ll see you on Monday,” or maybe “Is this all we get in life?”
He opens a window, the stuffy air of the room doing nothing but cooling the remnants of the wipe.
The lights are on, the musics low. He’s watching you like he’s wondering what you’ll do, sitting on the edge of the bed, not looking at him, just cataloguing the wallpaper, peeling with the water damage. Make a move, do something.
You’re a mess: jacket folded over a chair, lump in your throat, three degrees of separation-desperation even with him sitting right there. There’s nothing to show there was ever anything at all-- the tentacles all gone.
You’re going to leave because there’s nothing to say, despite the way that words flow between you.
Is it everything you ever wanted?