Work Text:
I trace my fingers along her spine. She flashes gold under my touch, smooth and brown and beautiful. She is obedient and terrible. She’s quiet unless I pull sounds out of her, under the pretence of control (I am the one being undone).
If she could feel a fraction of what I do, she would come ablaze under me. If she knew, her power over me would be infinite. I would become a slave for her pleasure- I would toil for the softest of melodies, I would rest my fingers on the nape of her neck, I would be devotion manifest.
I’ve claimed her as mine a million times, sweaty hands gripping her as I pant out that last breath- but the truth is, it is I who belongs to her. She is an instrument of my destruction, tucked into the corner of the wall, grinning at me, never attentive, never knowing the monster I am. Never knowing that I’d kill for her joy, never knowing that I lust after her, achingly, constantly.
Would she want me?
I let go of her, prising my fingers from her pristine neck, straining my ears for the soft sound as she rests, restores herself to her usual state. Her solitude will never be absolute. My eyes are ever-trained on her curves, her smooth edges, her mere existence beckoning me.
I’ve longed for her all my life.
She is the culmination of all my ideals, more perfect than any woman could possibly be. Perhaps I was Theseus riddling through troubles for the sake of freedom- a hero, a man of the people- to be rewarded with something as fragile and precious as her in this life.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead and creep out into the silence of darkness to quench my thirst. Cold water in hand, fading t-shirt tangled around my hips, padding up the stairs as quietly as possible. I feel like a thief in the night. To take what’s mine and fulfil my desire- as simple as icy water sliding down my throat- is something intrinsically shameful in my mind. I squash my racing thoughts, shut the door, swallow my desire in one gulp and shut my eyes.
I wake up with a pounding headache. I glance at her as I slam the door behind me, late, scurrying. A skipped breakfast, a loose tie, a rolled down sock. I am all these things. Intrinsically wrong, naturally awkward. I am bunched up shirts and untied shoelaces and sweat stains and voice cracks.
I don’t enjoy thinking about these things. I do not want to be aware of my faults (there is little else to be aware of). I have been at the brink of realising the cause behind my terrible, all consuming, clawing wrongness. I feel it at the tip of my tongue, weighing it down, leaving me unable to enunciate. I know that I am undesirable in every form of the word- not hideous, not stupid, not impolite- but undesirable. That does not curb my own desire.
My want, my constant burning ache, my craving. I am insatiable and perverted. She is tangible and there and present, but she will never understand why I want her. She will never cling to me as I cling to her. She will never want me back.
I hold her in my arms when I return. Then I am consumed by this inexplicable frustration. I stench of teenage boy, of post-puberty, of sullen family dinners, of tattered comic books piled under my bed (“I’m too old for them now!”), but yet I cannot see myself in the mirror.
What I see is nothing but fear and discomfort and an uneven fringe. I picture her next to me, and that image transforms. I grow half a foot, my scars from acne and 13-year-old angst disappear, my face falls into symmetry, my spine turns straight, my teeth fill their gaps and I am finally whole. I am angry that I am incomplete and I know with devastating conviction that if she was truly mine, truly, I would be a man.
I fumble for my pants, unbutton them with a resigned kind of drive, the movements familiar. My fingers grab at her- desperation taking over tenderness. I fall into the push and pull of it again, her sounds igniting my red-hot flame. My strum is angry, but she is grace. She makes my longing, my fantasies of fucking her until she breaks apart, my boiling fury, into melody. This incenses me further. I let go of my reverence for her, I am harsh and unforgiving- doesn’t she know her existence is the greatest sin?
Finally she sounds strangled, almost sliding away from my grip (does she want to leave?) and I can finally let go. My heavy breaths, her complicated music, subside together. The air is suddenly fresh. My mind is clean- I am clean, I am pure, I am happy. I look at the tiny scratch on her smooth neck. My guitar, resting on my bare foot, unaware that she has been defiled- unwittingly all powerful.
She takes me as her slave all over again.