Chapter Text

The streetlight outside my window is a pale moon against the starless sky. Last night's drizzle has faded into memory, but trails of raindrops linger on my windowpane, drawn by the fingers of the wind. Lines of frost spider up from the sill, forming a prism of ice that fractalizes the light. Crystalline symmetries spin and dance through the glass. What's the phrase-- maybe it was an album title? It stuck in my mind years ago. Oh, well.

It's four A.M., I'm in bed next to somebody whose name I still haven't forgotten, and my thoughts only form eyeroll-worthy poetry. I tug the blankets up past my knees, over my chest and around my shoulders. It's been an unseasonably warm November, only kissing freezing for long enough each night to keep the first snow from disappearing. The resulting banks of gray slush give up their luster to the gentle ignominy of each new day's melt, saved only by the nightly cold. Each morning, all that's visible from my apartment window is a decaying world slumbering under a quarter-inch of ice. Every day the pockmarks grow wider, deeper.

Damn Seattle rain.

Passion Leaves a Trace. That was it. Heh, 2007.

I can feel the dull heat radiating off your body, inches away from mine, buried in two comforters and rolled away from me to the wall. Usually, when I wake up at this hour, anybody spending the night has already crept out. But here you lay, facedown in my spare pillows. The sheets mound just where your tail lifts them, soft metronome wag a reminder of your presence on my bare leg. I thought your white, pointed ears would stay perked, but the tufts inside splay against the pillows as they droop on the bed. At their base, fluff gives way to curling mounds of hair massed up into the headboard to keep it out of your face while you sleep.

Your shoulderblades rise and fall with muted snores, soft curve of your neck moving with each breath and the twitch of your jaw. With two fingers, I touch my own neck searching for that spot, just where it meets the chin. It's tender, and probably still reddish from the marks you drove into it last night. I really asked you to do that, didn't I? And if I wanted it once, and you were willing to comply, grant my desires, well-- my shoulders shiver, and I rebury them in the sheets, easing back down to lay flat once more.

I urged my skin into your mouth. When you heard the sharp inhale that followed, you paused, drew back, and asked if it was too much; I told you that I loved it. I hope the little red lines still dance down my back where you dug your nails in, testing at first, then with enough pressure to finally shower the insides of my eyelids in sparks like a sword on a whetstone.

The way you ran your teeth down my breast, careful lips following across its pliant surface, was bound to fade quickly, even as it drove me to arch my back, sending the beads of sweat collected there racing down against bare flesh.

Even the ropemarks around my wrists are gone. I wondered, when I struggled during the rest of your careful torments, if when you slackened the knot holding my fists to the coil of rope, I'd be left to rub down smart red burns on my own.

But you remembered. You put a thumb to my palms at regular intervals, asked me if they were numb, or cold.

Nobody's ever checked if I was okay before.

Every time I tried this alone, I winced as the scratchy, fraying hemp-- the only kind available for impulse-purchase at the hardware store-- separated from my skin, and muttered that I’d never do that again. But I bet that in your hands even shackles would feel like silk scarves.

All that was left was a gentle string of dimples, barely darkened, to remind me of the way it hugged my hands together and bound me to your whims. So comfortable that I wondered how it hadn't been around them my whole life.

Each mark is a different thrill. Each sensation is drawn onto the body. They all fade, but I remember every one.

Your clothes are still piled in the low chair. What about that tight maxiskirt made me dream of this moment, when I saw you in the bar? Its black, gentle waves hugged every contour of your hips and ankles like rubber coils that shimmered and shifted with each broad step you took, purposeful, intended. Your movements were so precise that when it stretched taut across your knees, it seemed to store that energy, feed back into your stride and impel you forward.

I know nothing about you. Once we left the bar, we barely even spoke before you pressed your lips to mine, and nothing else mattered.

I keep turning you over in my mind like a coin, straining to fill in the gaps: I bet you season your own cast iron pans. I bet you know the way you best love to be kissed, and if we just had time I bet you would be happy to teach me. I bet you know the difference between perennials and annuals, and I bet you dream of a home in the countryside. I bet you have a sourdough starter, and that sourdough starter has a name that you gave it. I bet you're thinking about what color fence you'll need for that big yard where you'll keep all your huge dogs and what size Subaru they'll all fit in.

I bet you'll be gone when I wake up again.