On The Money

As if I'd ever want you working under me! You're the boss here.

[bths-eyes]

I'm so tired.

It's the kind of tired that seeps into the bones the way rainwater soaks a cheap suit. Slowly at first. Almost politely. There is always that initial deception, that first few minutes where the warmth remains, stolen from the body and trapped in the fabric, and for one brief humiliating moment you mistake being wet for a change in the breeze.

Exhaustion does the same thing. It arrives warm. Familiar. Magnetic. A hand at the back of the neck. A weight behind the eyes. Something soft and inevitable whispering, There. There it is. Lie down. You have done this before. You know how this ends.

Surely this time will be the same. Surely.

Then the heat runs out. The suit turns humid. The shirt sticks. The seams begin to bite. The rainwater no longer feels like anything borrowed from the body, only something foreign making itself at home against the skin. 

Sleepiness curdles the same way. Whatever gentle pull existed at the beginning snaps like cheap thread, and what remains is not rest, not even the promise of rest, but a dense, damp weight pressing through the skull.

Before you know it, you are muddy. You are groggy. You are standing in front of a door that is supposed to be yours, fumbling through a ring of keys with fingers that seem to belong to someone else. Brass teeth slipping against brass teeth. One wrong key. Another wrong key. Another goddamn wrong key. The lock is there. The door is there. The room is there. Everything necessary for entry exists in front of you, and still you cannot get inside.

That is the worst part. Not the fatigue. Not the hour. Not the stale light of the hallway making everything look jaundiced and cheap. The worst part is proximity. Being close enough to sleep to smell it, close enough to rest to hear it breathing on the other side of the door, and still being denied entry by some stupid, mechanical failure of the hand.

My leg hurts. That is not true. Something that is not there hurts. Something that is there hurts. The pressure. The gears. The weight. The old sinews. The imagined muscle. The absent calf. The false ankle. The place where the body ends and the argument begins.

I hate imprecision, but there is no clean ledger for this. No tidy column for pain that belongs to the body versus pain invented by the brain because the brain is a sentimental idiot that refuses to update its records. It remembers what was owed. It continues sending invoices.

My leg hurts. I think it should hurt. I expect it to hurt. Some nights that seems to be all it requires. An expectation. A memory that wants to bite. A signal sent to a closed office where no one has worked in years, and somehow the lights still turn on.

Does sleep work that way? If I think I should be tired, do I become tired? If I decide with sufficient conviction that my body has reached its limit, will it finally do the decent thing and collapse? Or is that too elegant? Too merciful? The body is rarely so cooperative. It prefers bureaucracy. It demands documentation. It requires the correct forms in triplicate before granting even the smallest release.

No. It's in the bones, remember?

A ridiculous phrase. Sentimental. Anatomically useless. Especially from me.

And yet. The tiredness is in the bones. The pain is in the missing bone. The ache is in the part that was taken and the part that was left behind to explain itself. It is in the polished shoe at the end of a leg that is only partially mine. It is in the careful walk. The measured pace. The refusal to limp where anyone can see it. It is in the endless performance of symmetry.

There are days when I think the clockwork is the honest part.

It does not pretend. It has no pride. It does what it was made to do until it cannot, and then it becomes obvious. A hinge catches. A strap fails. A gear sticks. It announces failure in ways even an idiot could diagnose.

The rest of me is less courteous. The rest of me keeps functioning out of spite.

I balance ledgers. I answer messages. I correct errors made by men twice my age and half as literate. I sit through conversations that should be classified as punitive labor. I stand when standing is expected. I walk when walking is required. I make every motion look deliberate enough that no one mistakes necessity for weakness.

And then, at some obscene hour, alone in a hallway that smells faintly of dust and old smoke, I cannot find the right key.

That is what undoes me. Not the pain. Not the leg. Not even the exhaustion. A lock. A door. A handful of keys. The absurdity of being defeated by something so small after surviving things far more dangerous.

I want to laugh. I think I do laugh. A pathetic, airless sound through my nose, more insult than amusement. The keys blur. My hand tightens around them until the teeth bite into my palm.

There. Pain with an address. Pain that can be verified. How refreshing.

I press my forehead to the door. The wood is cool. Not pleasantly cool. Not soothing. Just cool in the indifferent way of things that are not alive and therefore cannot be accused of cruelty.

Behind this door is a bed. Behind this door is darkness. Behind this door is the possibility of removing the leg, removing the shoe, removing the day piece by piece until I am only what remains when no one is watching.

That should frighten me more than it does. Perhaps it would, if I had the energy. The correct key finally slips into the lock. Of course it does. Eventually even incompetence stumbles into success. The broken clock can be right twice a day. The mechanism turns with a click so small it feels obscene after all that struggle. The door opens. The room waits.

Nothing dramatic happens. No collapse. No revelation. No merciful descent into sleep.

I step inside. I close the door behind me. I stand there in the dark, still holding the keys, still soaked through with exhaustion, still waiting for the body to understand that it has permission to stop.

My leg hurts. My bones hurt. The missing ones most of all.

I'm so tired.

[bths-eyes]

I had a dream. It was odd. I had a child. I was a father.

I never saw the child. They were always one room away. Always just out of sight. I did the same thing I always do. Working day in, day out. Just with less studying intermingled. I stared at screens and paperwork and dusty old men all while this child was a room away. I could hear them moving. Playing. Living.

Surely my livelihood was contributing to their well-being. One cannot live on play alone. But can one live on work alone? Does it matter if I've survived long enough doing precisely that?

Survived. What an ugly word to use in place of lived.

I remember the particular sound of the room, though the dream itself had no architecture I could recognize. The desk was mine, I think. The chair was mine. The lamp was mine. The arrangement of objects had that familiar, unbearable precision: pen aligned with paper, monitor angled correctly, glass placed far enough from the edge that no careless elbow could ruin anything irreplaceable. Even in sleep, apparently, I know how to prevent waste.

The door was to my left. Not open. Not closed. An irritating amount of ajar. Beyond it, there was light of some warmer variety than the one on my desk. I could hear the child laughing sometimes. Not loudly. Not obnoxiously. Just enough that the sound threaded itself through the room and caught on every ledger, every invoice, every contractual clause I pretended required my immediate attention.

I never looked up quickly enough to see them. A hand on the doorframe, once. Small fingers. There and gone. A shadow passing across the floor. A toy rolling into the room, stopping against the leg of my desk.

I stared at it for a very long time. It was nothing expensive. Some cheap painted thing with one chipped wheel and little stars on the side. In the dream, I remember being irritated that it had been left where I might step on it. I remember thinking that objects should have places. That chaos begins with small permissions. That if one allows toys underfoot, one allows disorder into the walls, and then into the accounts, and then into the self.

I picked it up. I meant to return it. I did not. I set it on the far side of the desk beside a stack of correspondence and went back to work. The child did not come in to retrieve it. 

That is the part I cannot stop thinking about. Not the child. Not the fatherhood. Not the absurd domesticity of it. The fact that something belonging to them entered my space, and I converted it into another object to manage. Another item held in reserve. Another small hostage of procedure. I told myself I was keeping it safe. There are cruelties that sound almost indistinguishable from responsibility when spoken in the right tone.

I do not know what the child looked like. I do not know whether they resembled me. I do not know if they had my eyes, my mouth, my hands. I do not know if they were mine by blood or law or accident. The dream gave me no useful information. Only the certainty that they existed, and that I was failing them in a manner so quiet no one would ever think to accuse me of it.

That is the most efficient kind of failure. The invisible kind.

No bruises. No shouting. No shattered glass. No accounts drained. No visible neglect, because food was provided. Shelter was provided. Education, surely, would have been provided. The correct physicians. The correct clothing. The correct name attached to every necessary document.

A child cannot invoice loneliness. Convenient.

I woke before I ever went into the other room. Of course I did. Even my subconscious has a talent for avoiding confrontation at the exact moment it might become useful.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, and for several seconds I could still hear them. A faint shuffle. A laugh caught behind a wall. Then the room settled back into itself, and it was only the ship again. Pipes. Distant footsteps. The faint mechanical complaints of a vessel old enough to have opinions. No child. No door. No toy.

Only me. Relieved, I think. Then disgusted by the relief. Then annoyed by the disgust, because what precisely was I supposed to do with it? Grief over a person who does not exist is melodramatic. Guilt over a dream is inefficient. And yet the sensation has sat in me all day like a coin swallowed by mistake, too small to kill me, too foreign to ignore.

I do not want children. That should be the simple answer. I do not have the temperament. I do not have the patience. I do not have the softness people insist is required, though I have seen enough soft people ruin their children through incompetence to know softness is a decorative virtue at best. I have money. Discipline. Standards. Endurance. A clear understanding of consequence.

None of that helped the child in the next room.

This is the offensive implication of the dream. Not that I secretly desire fatherhood. That would be pedestrian, and I refuse to be psychoanalyzed by my own sleeping mind with such crude instruments. No. The implication is worse.

It suggests there may be people close enough to hear me breathing who still experience me as absent. It suggests provision is not the same as presence. It suggests that being useful is not a substitute for being reachable.

I dislike all three conclusions. Especially because they are not wrong.

Taiga would laugh at this. Not because he would find it funny, necessarily, but because he laughs when he has found the bruise and intends to press his finger into it. He would say something vulgar about me being scared of a baby. He would bare those ridiculous teeth. He would call me Lulu in that tone designed to make homicide feel briefly reasonable. Then, worse, he would understand. He has an infuriating talent for understanding the parts of me I have not yet authorized for inspection. 

Perhaps that is why the dream has stayed with me. Not because of the child, but because of the door.

Always one room away.

How many people have I left there?

How many times have I heard someone moving just beyond my attention and decided that because I could hear them, I had not abandoned them?

I keep thinking of the toy. I keep thinking that I should have stood up immediately. That there was no document on that desk more urgent than a small object rolling across the threshold. That even if I had only walked to the door and said, "You left this," it would have been something. Proof that I had noticed. Proof that the room between us could be crossed.

Instead I kept it beside the ledgers.

There is a particular sinking feeling in realizing you may have mistaken control for care.

I have spent years becoming someone impossible to accuse. Precise. Necessary. Well-dressed. Untouchable in the ways that matter and intolerable in the ways that protect me. I have made a religion of competence because incompetence is expensive, and dependence is uglier, and need is the kind of debt no intelligent person signs without reading every line.

But a child does not read contracts. A child stands in the next room and waits to see whether you will come. And I did not.

No tragedy. No dramatic failure. No blood. No screaming. Just a door left ajar and a man who mistook the sound of life nearby for participation in it.

I do not know why I am writing this down. Perhaps because if I leave it unwritten, it will become sentimental. Sentiment is dangerous when it is allowed to remain vaporous. It expands. It fogs the glass. Better to pin it here, dissect it, make it behave.

The facts are these:

I dreamed I had a child. I provided for them. I never saw them. They played one room away. I heard them living. I continued working. And when something of theirs finally crossed into my room, I did not follow it back.

I put it on my desk. Like everything else.

[bths-eyes]

Someone was praying.

I heard it before I saw them. A low, tremulous muttering beneath the shuffle of cards, beneath the clink of glass, beneath the soft electric hum of Sinostra pretending not to be a floating den of appetite and insolvency.

At first I thought it was a dealer counting under his breath. Then I thought it was one of the guests trying to remember the rules of a game he had already lost twice. But no. It had cadence. Pathetic, familiar cadence. The kind people use when they believe humiliation becomes sacred if spoken quietly enough.

Please.

That was the word I caught first.

Please.

As though the universe is some tired nurse in a hallway. As though the universe can be summoned by bruising one's own dignity against the roof of one's mouth.

He was sitting at the far table with his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone pale. Not elegant hands. Not clean hands. Broad, bitten at the nails, creased with work or poor decisions. Possibly both. His chips were nearly gone. His spouse, or lover, or creditor, or some other equally expensive mistake, was nowhere to be seen.

He shut his eyes before the final card turned.

I almost laughed. Actually, no. That is dishonest. I did laugh.

Not loudly. I am not crude. But enough that the dealer looked up, and enough that the praying man opened one eye, as though even a god's attention could be interrupted by a superior's disgust.

I wanted to tell him there was no point. I wanted to tell him that if mercy existed, it would not be found at a velvet table under bad lighting with watered whiskey sweating beside his elbow. I wanted to tell him that no god worth invoking would bend over a card game. No saint would stoop to sort through chips. No angel would look at a man who had walked willingly into Sinostra and think, yes, this one. This one deserves intervention.

But he kept doing it. Even after the card turned. Even after he lost.

Even after the dealer drew the chips away from him with the same blank courtesy one uses to remove a corpse from a hallway.

His mouth kept moving.

Please. Please. Please.

Vulgar little word.

Not because it is weak. Weakness can be useful when identified correctly. Not because it is desperate. Desperation is merely honesty stripped of accessories.

No. It is vulgar because of what it assumes. It assumes someone is listening. It assumes the world can be appealed to. That suffering is an argument. That need has weight. That if one presses enough pain into a single syllable, something vast and faceless might turn its head.

How extraordinary. How obscene. I have never had that kind of nerve.

I have asked for many things in my life, but never mercy. Money, silence, competence, obedience, privacy. These are reasonable requests. They have mechanisms. They can be bought, enforced, extracted, or punished into existence.

Mercy has no mechanism. Mercy requires a belief that the hand raised over you might choose not to fall. I have never believed that.

When I was a child, I learned very quickly that asking did not soften anything. It merely clarified where to strike. A request exposed the tender place. A plea showed the blade where to enter. So I stopped making them. Simple. Efficient. One cannot be disappointed by a door one has not knocked on.

And yet. There he sat, ruined and sweating, whispering upward like an idiot with blood in his teeth.

The audacity of it. To lose everything and still expect an answer. To be stripped down to nothing and insist the universe owed him tenderness. I hated him for it.

Not because he was wrong. Because some part of me, some repulsive, vestigial thing I have not yet managed to cauterize, envied him.

There is a freedom in being ridiculous. In asking the impossible with one's whole ruined chest. In believing, even for a moment, that the world might be more than appetite and accounting. That a hand might reach down. That a voice might answer. That pain might be seen and not immediately monetized.

I watched him leave the table. No miracle occurred. No light split the ceiling. No debt vanished. No holy force intervened between him and consequence. He stood, swayed once, and walked away with the dull, stunned expression of a man realizing gods have house rules too.

Still, his mouth moved. Even then.

I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake the prayer out of him. I wanted to demand what precisely he thought would happen. I wanted to ask who taught him the world was kind enough to be petitioned and why, after all evidence to the contrary, he had continued believing them.

Instead, I adjusted my cufflinks and told the dealer to reset the table. There was work to do. There is always work to do. 

But for several minutes afterward, I could still hear it. That little rasping please. Like a coin dragged across bone.

And I wondered, briefly, grotesquely, what it would feel like to say it myself. Not loudly. Never loudly. Just once. In a room with no witnesses. To no one in particular.

Please.

Then I remembered myself. And swallowed it.

[bths-eyes]

Your computer audio is muted, you fucking idiot. Figure it the fuck out. And while you're at it, pull your microphone out of your mouth. I cannot fucking stand the sound of your mouth smacking. Maybe it wouldn't be such a vile house to your own tongue if you didn't smoke a pack and a half a day of cheap cigarettes masquerading as premium tobacco.

I did not say this.

I would like the record to reflect that I did not say this. I remained composed. I sat upright. I looked into the pinhole camera on my monitor with an expression of professional attentiveness, which is to say an expression I have spent years cultivating specifically to conceal the fact that I am considering violence.

Not immediate violence. Not actionable violence. Nothing egregious enough to require intervention. Only the clean, private fantasy of reaching through a screen and seizing a man by the jaw until his teeth click together and he learns, for the first time in his miserable life, the value of silence.

He was on mute for seven minutes.

Naturally, everyone else waited with that particular business patience that is not patience at all, but cowardice dressed in neutral lighting. Twelve adults with degrees (ostensibly), salaries, and supposedly functional nervous systems watched a man mime his way through a compliance report while producing no sound. Several nodded. One woman even wrote something down. What, exactly, I cannot fathom. Perhaps she was documenting the shape of his lips. Perhaps she had achieved enlightenment and was receiving the presentation directly through divine transmission.

Then he unmuted himself. This was worse.

I have often maintained that incompetence is less offensive than confidence. A fool who knows he is a fool can, under proper supervision, be arranged somewhere harmless. A fool with confidence becomes infrastructure. He becomes policy. He becomes a recurring meeting.

His voice arrived wet. Not simply hoarse. Not merely unpleasant. Wet. Every consonant had to fight its way through a swamp of saliva and nicotine. Every pause contained a small digestive event. He inhaled like damp paper being pulled through machinery. He said "synergy" three times and on the third occasion there was an audible click somewhere behind his molars that made my left eye twitch.

I am not unreasonable. Despite popular fiction, I do not require everyone around me to be polished. Polish can be learned. Decorum can be taught. Taste can be imposed if one has sufficient leverage. But there are baseline expectations. Turn on your microphone. Do not breathe directly into it. Do not do anything that would be a WOE; Do not eat, chew, smoke, gargle, or slowly perish during a financial call. If your mouth sounds like an animal trapped in a drainpipe, consider water. Consider medical attention. 

The worst part is that I had already reviewed the numbers.

His presentation was unnecessary. The attachments were bloated, mislabeled, and formatted by someone who evidently believes spreadsheets are decorative fields in which numbers may frolic freely. There were merged cells. There were three different fonts. One column used yen, another used dollars, and the summary tab contained totals rounded to the nearest "approximation," as though revenue were a guessing game.

I corrected the file before the meeting began. I sent it back with tracked changes. I included comments so clear a child could follow them, provided the child had not been educated by wolves.

He ignored all of them. Instead, he shared his screen and began reading from the original file.

I had a moment then. A brief one. Perhaps three seconds. My body became very calm. My hands stopped moving. I felt the precise placement of every object on my desk: pen aligned with notebook, phone facedown, water glass two inches from the coaster's edge, the little silver letter opener I do not use for letters. I imagined lifting it, not to harm anyone, but to make a point against the expensive surface of the desk. A clean strike. A bright sound. Something decisive enough to cut through the mucous orchestra coming from his headset.

I did not do it. I took a sip of water.

I said, "I believe you may be presenting from an outdated draft."

Very mild. Very controlled. Almost charitable.

He blinked at the screen and said, "Oh, really?"

Oh, really.

No. I fabricated an alternate spreadsheet during a dissociative break and emailed it to you for sport. Yes, really. The latest version is in the thread. The one with my name on it. The one sent forty-six minutes ago. The one titled FINAL_REVISED_ACTUAL_USE_THIS, because apparently professionals now require filenames written like hostage notes.

I said none of that either.

I said, "Yes."

There are days when I worry my restraint will kill me.

Not because anger is dangerous. Anger is useful. Anger clarifies. Anger sharpens the edges of things and reveals where pressure must be applied. No, what will kill me is the continuous act of swallowing it. One indignity after another, compressed behind my teeth until my jaw aches. People mistake composure for ease. They see the suit, the clean hands, the controlled tone, and assume the machine runs smoothly.

It does not. It grinds. It overheats. It requires maintenance no one is qualified to perform.

By the end of the call, he had blamed the wrong file on "version control," the audio issue on "the platform," and the formatting errors on "export limitations." Not once did he blame himself. There is fascinating sort of magic in that. To move through the world shedding responsibility like dandruff and still be invited to meetings. Still be given a title. Still be trusted with numbers.

When the call ended, I sat in silence for a full minute. Real silence. Blessed silence. The kind that does not chew, click, hiss, wheeze, or say "just to piggyback off that" with a mouth full of tar.

Then I opened the corrected file again.

I checked every formula. I verified every tab. I reviewed the summary. I did the work. Of course I did.

That is the entire sickness of it, really. The incompetent survive because someone competent follows behind them with a broom, a ledger, and a migraine. The whole world continues because people like me are too proud to let it collapse, even when collapse would be educational. Especially then. I should have let him present the wrong numbers. I should have watched the whole thing rot in public.

But the error would have reflected on Sinostra, and Sinostra reflects, at least in part, on me, and I refuse to be embarrassed by a man whose microphone hygiene suggests he was raised in a chimney.

So I fixed it. And tomorrow, when he thanks me with that damp little laugh, I will smile when I inform him that he is fired.

[bths-eyes]

If I close my eyes, I can so vividly picture tearing everything off this desk.

Shredding ledgers with my own hands, letting my fist slam against the glass of a monitor so the surface splinters and the wires snap. Digging my fingers into the keyboard until the caps pop out. Sweeping everything to the floor. Tearing everything off the walls. I think that breaking something. Everything. Might be therapeutic.

But it would be expensive.

Not to mention, I'd be left vulgar and sweating afterward, standing in the middle of my own office like some common brute who mistook volume for consequence. There is nothing elegant about a tantrum once the body has finished performing it. Only debris. Only breath. Only the shameful little pulse in the wrist, proving that one's blood has been involved.

I have never liked evidence. Especially not when it belongs to me.

So I do not break the desk. I do not break the monitor. I do not tear the ledgers in half. I keep my hands precisely where they are. One flat against the desk. One wrapped around a pen that has committed no crime beyond proximity.

Every column on the page has begun to look accusatory. Numbers are normally clean. Beautiful, even. They tell the truth when people refuse to. They do not posture. They do not flirt with danger because danger looked at them first. They do not bleed on upholstery and then have the audacity to look surprised when someone objects.

Numbers, at least, understand balance. People do not. He does not.

He has the remarkable talent of turning concern into something humiliating.

He does not ask to be worried over. That would imply manners. Instead, he simply exists in a state of perpetual injury-adjacent provocation until worry becomes the only rational response left. A cut on his mouth. A split knuckle. Blood dried at the edge of his sleeve. That reckless, awful grin, as though mortality is a private joke he has been kind enough not to explain.

And I am expected to continue operating ledgers.

I am expected to reconcile accounts while picturing the precise shape of his ribs beneath my hands. I am expected to initial reports while remembering the heat of his forearm under my fingers, the unacceptable relief of confirming he was still there, still breathing, still solid.

The worst part is not that I want to break something. The worst part is that I know exactly what I want to break, and it is not the desk.

It is the part of him that keeps offering himself up to the world as if he is cheap enough to replace. It is the part of him that laughs when he should sit still. The part that bares its teeth at pain and calls it appetite. The part that vanishes before I open my eyes because staying would apparently be the greater violence.

I would like to take that part between my hands and crush it until it learns. This is not an admirable impulse. I am aware. But awareness has never made me kinder. Only more precise.

My hand hurts. I had not noticed I was gripping the pen hard enough to leave an impression in my palm. There will be a mark. Temporary, fortunately. Nothing anyone else will see unless I allow it.

The reports remain on my desk. The monitor remains intact. The walls remain decorated with everything I have not permitted myself to destroy.

The pen, however, has cracked. A small mercy. A controlled loss. I will replace it in the morning.

[bths-eyes]

I can't take it. I can't take it. I'm genuinely at my limit.

This is the third migraine I've had this week. It's too much. It's all too much. And yet if I don't do everything myself, somehow that's worse. Because then, when I get back to it, I'll be doing everything I'm meant to be doing and doing damage control on top of it.

The ledgers are wrong again. Not catastrophically wrong, of course, because apparently I am the only person on this entire floating monument to fiscal idiocy who understands that "close enough" is not an accounting principle. But wrong enough. Wrong enough that I noticed. Wrong enough that it made the numbers blur at the edges until they stopped looking like numbers.

I stared at the same column for eleven minutes today. That is not an exaggeration. I know because I checked the time before and after, because apparently even while my skull is attempting to split itself open, I still have the presence of mind to document my own decline with precision.

There was a pulse behind my right eye like someone had tucked a lit match into the socket. Every sound on the casino floor sharpened until it felt designed for torture. Chips clicking. Cards sliding. Laughter. That disgusting little celebratory shriek people make when they win money they do not deserve. Someone dropped a glass near table six, and I nearly signed away an entire staff member's continued employment on reflex alone.

I did not. That should count for something. It will not, naturally, because restraint is invisible unless one is surrounded by people competent enough to recognize the alternative.

And that BTH...

He was impossible today. More impossible than usual, which is a considerable achievement considering his baseline state is already somewhere between feral casino mascot and litigation risk. He came in grinning, smelling like smoke and something I refuse to place, with blood on his sleeve that he claimed was "probably not his," as if that distinction was meant to soothe me.

I asked where he had been.

He said, "Out."

Out. As though we are married and he is testing the structural integrity of my self-control.

I told him to be specific. He leaned over my desk instead, close enough that I could see the cut at his lip reopening when he smiled, and said, "Missed me, Lulu?"

I should have had him removed. I should have thrown the nearest paperweight at his face. I should have done several things that would have been sensible, sanitary, and defensible under pressure.

Instead I told him he was dripping on a procurement report.

He laughed.

My head hurt so badly I wanted to close my eyes and keep them closed until everyone in this house either learned basic operational discipline or died trying to convince a carnivorous book to teach them.

But if I close my eyes, things happen.

That is the intolerable part. The moment I stop watching, the casino remembers it is being held together by nothing but my attention and several threats no one has been smart enough to call my bluff on. One dealer starts skimming because he thinks I will not notice. One supplier rounds up costs because he assumes Sinostra money is abstract. One guest with too much confidence and not enough fear decides the house can be tricked. One idiot in management approves a purchase order without checking whether we already own seventeen cases of the same godforsaken item.

And then they come to me. They always come to me.

Fico, the numbers are off.

Fico, there's a guest complaint.

Fico, The boss said—

Fico, can you—

Fico, we didn't know—

Of course you didn't know. Knowing requires attention. Attention requires effort. Effort requires a standard. And apparently standards are something I alone am cursed to possess.

My hands were shaking by noon. Not visibly, I don't think. I kept them folded under the desk when I could. I used my left hand to steady my right when I signed the vendor corrections. I took my medication too late because I was in the middle of reviewing the security incident reports and because, apparently, I would rather suffer neurological collapse than allow someone else to misclassify an avoidable expense.

That is the embarrassing part. Not the pain. Pain is boring. Pain can be compartmentalized if one is sufficiently practiced. The embarrassing part is that I wanted someone to notice.

Not the staff. God forbid. The thought of any of them looking at me with concern makes me want to peel off my skin. Concern from subordinates is just pity wearing a pressed shirt.

But I wanted—God. I wanted him to notice.

I wanted Taiga to stop being theatrical for five consecutive seconds and notice that I was one loud noise away from vomiting into the nearest waste bin. I wanted him to take one look at me and understand, without making me ask, that I needed the lights lower. That I needed quiet. That I needed him to stop bleeding on my paperwork and start behaving like something capable of care.

And the worst part is that he did notice. Of course he noticed. He is stupid about most things, but never about me. Never where it would be convenient for him to be oblivious.

He stopped laughing halfway through some idiotic sentence. His eyes fixed on my face, too sharp all at once, and the room changed. I hate when he does that. I hate when the grin drops and what is underneath looks almost lucid. Almost sober. Almost dangerous in the useful way.

He said, "Your head's bad." Not a question.

I told him to get out. He did not get out.

He moved around the desk, which no one with a healthy survival instinct would do, and crouched beside my chair like some overgrown alley cat pretending it had manners. I told him if he touched me, I would have him audited retroactively for every cash withdrawal he has made this quarter.

He put one hand on the armrest. Not on me.

"Lights," he said to no one in particular, and because he is captain, because the universe has a tasteless sense of humor, the lights actually dimmed.

The relief was immediate and humiliating. I hated him for it.

I wanted to thank him. I hated that more.

He told everyone to leave. He did not phrase it professionally. I will not be documenting it here. Several people left faster than I have ever seen them move, which means they are capable of efficiency when motivated by the correct kind of fear.

Then it was quiet. Not silent. Sinostra is never silent. The ship breathes. The walls hum. Somewhere, always, money is being lost by someone foolish enough to believe luck is a personality trait.

But it was quieter. Taiga stayed beside me.

I kept my eyes closed because opening them felt like inviting the migraine to resume negotiations. I heard him shifting, heard the soft scrape of his shoes against the floor, heard him rummage through one of my drawers with absolutely no permission.

I said, "Touch anything important and I'll break your fingers."

He said, "Your pills are important?"

I opened one eye. He was holding the bottle.

I had moved it there three weeks ago because the drawer near the bathroom had become too obvious and I did not want anyone keeping track. He found it in under thirty seconds.

I should be concerned by that. I am concerned by that. I am also, unfortunately, something else.

He got me water. He did not spill it. He did not make some obscene joke about putting his mouth on the rim first. He just handed it to me and watched until I swallowed.

Then he said, very quietly, "Lulu."

I hate when he uses that voice. The rough one. The one that sounds dragged out of him, like softness is something he has to pull through his teeth.

I told him not to.

He said, "You gotta sleep."

I laughed. It hurt.

Sleep. Wonderful suggestion. Revolutionary. Perhaps after that I'll sprout wings and delegate payroll to a trained pigeon.

I told him I had six hours of corrections left.

He looked at the reports on my desk. Then at me.

Then he picked up the entire stack.

For one pristine, clarifying second, I understood murder in the most intimate way a man can.

"Put those down."

"No."

"Taiga."

"Sleep first."

I said his name again, in the tone that makes dealers flinch and accountants resign themselves to unemployment.

He smiled. Not his usual smile. Not all teeth. Something smaller. Worse.

"You can yell later," he said. "When your eye stops doing that twitchy thing."

I do not have a twitchy thing.

I checked the mirror afterward.

I may have had a twitchy thing.

This is the part I cannot stand: he was right. That is always the most offensive thing about him. Not the recklessness, not the blood, not the way he leaves chaos in every room like a scent. It is that beneath all that absurdity, he sometimes lands precisely where I am weakest and presses one blunt, dirty thumb to the truth.

I am tired. Not elegantly. Not in the consumptive, poetic way people imagine when they see someone pale at a desk surrounded by expensive stationery.

I am ugly tired. I am tired in my teeth. In my hands. In the hinge of my jaw. I am tired of being necessary. I am tired of being correct. I am tired of knowing that if I lower my standards for one moment, the world will not become kinder. It will simply become messier, and then it will expect me to clean it.

I am tired of being the only thing between order and appetite.

And Taiga is appetite.

But today, appetite turned the lights down. Appetite found my medicine. Appetite sat on the floor beside my chair for forty minutes and threatened to bite anyone who knocked.

I did not sleep. Not really. Have you ever tried to sleep with an ice pick lodged in your temple? Didn't think so.

I rested my head against the back of the chair and closed my eyes. That is not the same thing as sleep. But it counts for something. Has to.

At some point, his hand brushed my ankle. Not held. Not grabbed. Just there, warm and callused against the bone, as if he needed to know I had not vanished while sitting directly beside him.

I let it stay.

And half an hour later, when I opened my eyes again, it was gone.

So was he.

The reports on my desk, however, had not disappeared. Unfortunately.

They had been sorted. Badly, by my standards. Correctly, by anyone else's. Incident reports together. Vendor statements separate. Internal corrections on top. A glass of water beside them, sweating onto a coaster I do not remember putting there.

The edge of the ice pick had dulled. Not beyond recognition, but enough.

Enough to read.

Enough to continue.

Enough to resent him for it.

I have too much to do.

[bths-eyes]

I want to love him again, but I don't know if I should. I keep going to him, to help the house, I think. To keep things afloat, but he's still there.

Can a moth love a flame?

Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the moth has always loved the light. Maybe it was never stupid for wanting warmth. Maybe it was only tragic because the light did not know how to be anything but burning.

I don't know how to separate the man from the fire.

There are days I remember his hands before I remember what they did. I remember his voice before it lost focus. I remember being foolish enough to believe that love was something you earned by being smart, useful, knowing. I remember wanting him to look at me and see something worth keeping.

And then I remember the heat.

I remember how quickly a room could change. How admiration could dissipate. How every soft thing had a hook in it. How he could make me feel like it was my fault for bleeding after he cut me.

So I go back, but not for him. That's what I tell myself.

I go back because someone else needs help. Because there are people there who did not start the fire, only learned to breathe smoke. Because leaving them feels too much like becoming him. Because some part of me still believes I can pull everyone out if I just hold my breath long enough.

But he's still there. At the center of it. Flickering. Waiting.

Sometimes warm enough to make me forget. And that is the worst part. Not that he was always terrible. Not that loving him is impossible. The worst part is that sometimes it is easy. Sometimes he says the right thing. Sometimes he laughs the way I remember. Sometimes he looks tired instead of dangerous, human instead of monstrous, and I feel something in me unfold before I can stop it. A wing opening near fire.

I hate that I still want a lover. I hate that wanting one makes me vulnerable. Because what am I supposed to do with all this leftover affection? Where does it go when the person it was made for cannot hold it safely?

Maybe a moth can love a flame. Maybe it always will. But love is not the same as flying into it.

Maybe the moth survives by learning distance. By circling from far enough away to keep its wings intact. By understanding that warmth is not proof of safety. By grieving the light it wanted without mistaking grief for an invitation.

I don't know if I should love him again. Maybe I never stopped. Maybe the real question is whether I can love myself enough not to burn for him anymore.

[eyes-on-sinostra]

CASE REPORT: THE MEDDLESOME PSYCHOLOGIST

Rank: A Status: Destroyed Subject: A-5677-49 "Dr. Mihara" (Type: Pathea) Investigators: Taiga Hoshibami, Romeo Scorpius Lucci Inspector: Dr. Lina Nakamura

I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Apparent Age: Late 20s – Mid 30s Observed Behavior: The subject maintained all outward human functions and social affect. Slept rarely, instead entering a nightly trancelike state within his office. Security records[1] confirm no exits between 2300–0500 hours for the entire duration of employment.

Subject displayed exemplary work ethic and emotional perceptiveness, which later proved symptomatic of feeding behavior. He never exhibited awareness of his anomalous status.

II. ORIGIN / MANIFESTATION

Evidence suggests an pathea-type[2] conversion: subject was once human, later transformed following prolonged parasitic interaction with a pre-existing pathea anomaly (designated Parent Anomaly A-5677-48). The transformation resulted in complete depletion of one emotional faculty—affection—leaving the subject incapable of experiencing or internally generating that affect.

The anomaly type colloquially debated as ψ-vampiric shares superficial characteristics with both Western psychic-feeding entities and jiangshi-adjacent alimentary spirits, but is herein classified under the provisional taxonomic label Pathea[3]. The name denotes entities defined by invoked emotion, specifically those who feed on affective resonance rather than blood, will, or ectoplasmic substrate.

While rarity has led many within the Institute to assume negligible population, recent internal review suggests Pathea-type organisms may occur with greater frequency than previously documented. Not as ubiquitous as post-mortem spectral phenomena, but markedly less exceptional than classical vampirism. In short: they are not legend, but ecology.

According to standard theory, the afflicted must thereafter seek the missing emotion in others to sustain life. The mechanism is not predation in a conscious sense but osmosis through proximity and fixation.

III. FEEDING PATTERN

The subject fed on emotive resonance, particularly affection, attachment, and intimacy[4].

Like a biological organism with dietary preferences, he found certain affective "flavors" more sustaining: Genuine affection (High - primary sustenance), Romantic fixation (Moderate-High), Hostility/Fear (Low), Indifference (None).

The subject's professional role at Darkwick Academy provided continuous access to emotionally vulnerable individuals, allowing him to feed undetected. He rationalized this hunger as "clinical curiosity."

IV. ANOMALOUS TRAITS

Does not require conventional sleep; enters trance resembling REM paralysis while upright at desk[5].

Vital signs slow to near stasis during trance, then return to baseline within seconds of external stimuli.

When deprived of emotional sustenance for > 72 hours, exhibited accelerated psychological deterioration: fixation, delusion, erosion of self-referential language.

V. TERMINATION EVENT

Following progressive behavioral contamination of patients Taiga Hoshibami and Romeo Scorpius Lucci, both parties displayed escalating mutual dependency. It is unclear whether this increased mutual dependency was as a result of anomalous interference or simply coincidental.

Evidence recovered from the scene—including biological residue and journal fragments—suggests the subject was consumed by Hoshibami (likely with Lucci's monitoring or consent)[6].

VI. ANALYSIS

It is hypothesized that the subject's initial fascination with the pair derived from unconscious recognition of their intense reciprocal affection—precisely the energy he lacked. His interference may have amplified the bond he sought to study, inadvertently creating the conditions for his own destruction.

VII. CONTAINMENT / RECOMMENDATIONS

No containment necessary; subject presumed neutralized.

Continued psychological monitoring of Hoshibami and Lucci recommended; possible secondary pathea-conversion cannot be ruled out, although it is unlikely considering the ghoul-status of both students[7].

Reinforce psychiatric screening protocols for all Institute clinicians. Professions involving prolonged empathic contact present elevated risk for Affection-Void manifestation.

⸻

References

[1] █████ █████ ████ ███ ██, █████ █████ ███ ███ ████. █████ █████ ███ ██████ ███ ██████ ███. █████ █████ ████ ███ ███, █████ █████ ███ ███████. █████ █████ ████ █ ███ ███ ████ ███.

[2] Encyclopedia of Anomalous Taxa & Parapsychological Entities, 4th Edition. Vol. XII — Psychological & Energetic Predation Classes — "Pathea: Emotion-Consuming Humanoids & Conversion Phenomena."

[3] Ibid. p. 8783 —derived from the plural vocative of pathos.

[4] See Enclosure 6.1-6.204 & Enclosure 7.1-7.19: Observational Logs 見原 ビル — Notes regarding Romeo Scorpius Lucci and Taiga Hoshibami will be recognizably more obsessive in tone than notes kept on Kaito Fuji.

[5] See Enclosure 8: Observations noted by Romeo Scorpius Lucci

[6] Ibid.

[7] ███ ████ ████ ███ ████.

⸻

[bths-eyes]

I have, at last, become aware of something deeply irritating.

Not Taiga—for once. Not the house. Not the casino's dreadful profit margins. Not even Benkei's inability to stock anything resembling a competent moisturizer.

No. It's that psychologist. The one Taiga's been seeing.

I had my suspicions before: his questions too pointed, his tone too knowing, his habit of tilting his head like he could see straight through a person's clothes and into the bone. I assumed it was the typical Darkwick brand of hubris—an overinflated sense of importance masquerading as medical insight.

He is meddling. In Taiga's business. In mine. Ours.

And he is not subtle. Not neutral. Certainly not professional. There are lines one does not cross, even in Darkwick, even in Sinostra, even in whatever obscure branch of anomalous psychiatry he crawled out of. He crossed every single one in a single bound.

Which brings me to the part I am loathe to admit aloud, but apparently able to scrawl onto paper where no one can weaponize it: Yes, what Taiga and I are doing is problematic. Dangerous. Counterproductive. Ill-advised on every conceivable level.

But it is ours. Our disaster. Our spiral. Our teeth and blood and unspoken things. And to have some intrusive academic scribbling his interpretations into the margins—misdiagnosing us like a pair of case studies in a lecture he can't wait to give—no. Absolutely not. We are quite capable of ruining ourselves without assistance.

We need to talk.

[lulus-eyes]

There's more to a conversation I can't remember.

I'm getting pieces. Slivers. Like glass stuck in my fingers. They hurt the more I think.

He said something like:

"Nothing happens to me."

That part's clear. Sharp. The tone in his voice was... cold? No. Not cold. Certain.

At first I thought he meant no one touches him. No one dares. But that's not it. It wasn't arrogance. Not exactly.

He meant he doesn't get swept up. Doesn't get acted on. Whatever happens to him, he lets it.

He chooses it. Willing participant. That's the idea that echoes.

He was talking about me, I think.

He was talking about the way I look at him. The way I grab him. The way I—Like I'll disappear if I stop moving.

He wanted me to know it's not force. It's not chaos. It's not the storm swallowing him whole. It's him. He walks into it.

He chooses me.

Even if I'm a mess. Even if I forget. Even if I wreck every goddamn thing I touch—He picks me.

And I wish I could remember what I said back.

God, I wish I knew what I said.

[bths-eyes]

You really are insufferable. You get one lucid thread of memory and you manage to pull the whole damn conversation back out of the grave—but only the part that makes me sound dramatic.

Which, fine. Accurate. But let me clarify before your imagination continues to turn it into something sentimental:

When I said "Nothing happens to me," I meant exactly that. Things don't just... befall me. They don't "happen" in the passive voice. Not affection. Not intimacy. Not violence. Not you. I decide. I have to. I participate. Willingly. Deliberately.

Even when you're all teeth and tremors and half a second from forgetting my name again, even when you pull me by the waist like gravity itself got impatient—it isn't force. It's not something that happens to me. It's something I step into.

You think you swallow me whole. You think you drag me. You think you overwhelm me into something I'm not. You don't. I walk to you. Every time. I choose it—the mess, the hunger, the volatility, the version of you that looks at me like I'm the only fixed point left in a collapsing world.

You wanted to know if you hurt me, if you pulled me under, if you ruined me. As for what you said back... it was... Quiet. Small. Barely audible.

You asked: "Then why do you stay?"

And I didn't answer you. Not verbally anyway. And apparently not in a way you could keep. So fine. Here it is again.

I stay because I want to. Because I'm not afraid of what you are. Because nothing you do is stronger than the choice I make to walk toward you instead of away. That's it.

It's not poetic, but it's not weak either. But I'll keep reminding you of the truth you always forget:

Nothing happens to me. I choose you.

[lulus-eyes]

He said to me the other day—

In one of those quiet moments. You know the kind. The air between us soft, sticky. Not quite afterglow. Not quite peace.

He said:

"You can't ruin me. You already have."

I think I said I was afraid.

Afraid I'd fuck him up. That I'd break something delicate in him. That all the wanting, all the haze, all the hunger I carry like rot in my bones would seep into him eventually and rot him too.

That tracks, right?

I was trying to be honest.

Trying to tell him I cared. In my own fucked up way.

But that answer, It haunts me. Not because it was cruel. Because it was true.

Because he didn't say it with anger. Or blame. Or pity. Just... quiet certainty. Like he's already made peace with it. Like I have ruined him.

Like I've done things I don't remember—can't remember—and he's living with them. Every day. With me. Beside me.

And I don't even know what they are. I don't know what I did to make him say it.

But I believe him. And I don't know if that's worse than hearing him lie.

[bths-eyes]

I hate when you remember the things I didn't mean for you to keep. You always forget the harmless things—dates, reports, your own name—but you keep that. Of course you do.

You think it means you hurt me. That you broke something delicate. That you seeped into the cracks and hollowed me out. You think you corrupted me with whatever feral, gnawing, half-starved ache coils behind your ribs.

You didn't. Truth is, I was already ruined before you ever touched me. Whether from Sinostra, or family, or maybe my own ambition did that, I can't say. The casino. The debts. The smiling violence of this entire wretched house. I don't know.

You? You didn't ruin me. You're just the first person I ever let see it. That's what I meant. Not that you broke something delicate—God, do you think I'm delicate? I'm not getting into that again. But you've seen the parts of me I spend an astounding amount of money, time, and self-control keeping behind glass and polish.

You saw them. And you didn't run. That's the ruin. Not damage. Not decay. Exposure. I said it quietly because it was the truth and I didn't want to look at you when it landed. And you interpreted it like you always do: as violence. As consequence. As a wound you inflicted. I don't know how to cure you of that.

It wasn't any of those. It was admission. And it scares me too. It scares me that you believe every awful thing about yourself but never once consider that maybe, I let myself be ruined because it meant you were real with me. You were honest in the only way you know how.

"Lulu, I'm afraid," you said. Of ruining me.

The irony is that the only thing that's ever been capable of breaking me—really breaking me—is losing whatever it is that happens to you between the forgetting and the remembering.

But I didn't say that. And I won't. But I guess I'll write it.

So here's your official statement: You didn't ruin me. You just stop me from pretending I was ever intact.

[lulus-eyes]

He was so soft.

No flint. No fire. No biting remark curled under his tongue.

Just silk.

His touch. His voice. The way he looked at me like I hadn't just broken a glass or broken him or broken me again.

Lulu's always silk.

Even when he's cruel. Even when he's sharp. Even when he's stitching venom into every word—there's still that sheen to him. To His eyes.

And when he's quiet like that—unguarded, unarmed, all satin and breath and slow blinks—I don't know what to do with myself.

I want to press my teeth into that softness and see if it stains. I want to drown in the luxury of it. Of him.

I don't deserve silk. But fuck, I keep reaching for it anyway.

[bths-eyes]

Soft. You call me soft.

You talk like I'm made of satin pillows and champagne foam, like I've never carved a man's dignity down to mere coins with a single sentence. Silk. Hah. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? No, of course you don't. You never do.

Wait... What's the date on this?

... Ah.

So it was that day. Of course it was. You continue to have the gall—the absolute, feral gall—to mistake restraint for softness.

That wasn't silk. That was stability. That was me choosing not to add kindling to a fire that was already licking your ribs.

You think softness is when I lower my voice? When I put a hand on your shoulder instead of shoving you out of my office? When I don't flay you alive for whatever spectacle you drag into my room after dinner?

That's not softness. It's.

I'm not made of satin. I'm not made of luxury fabrics for you to chew on. I'm—I'm not soft. I just—sometimes—don't want to hurt you when you're already hurting. That's not softness. That's... logic. Practicality. Good vice-captain behavior.

And if I ever looked at you without fire or flint or venom, it wasn't silk. It was me seeing you. Just you. Not the teeth. Not the hunger. Not the broken glass or broken memory. You.

I don't know why you think you don't deserve that. Or why you call it softness. But if you ever put your teeth on me to "see if it stains," I promise you—I will continue to show you exactly how not soft I can be.

[lulus-eyes]

I need to talk to him.

I know I've probably had this conversation with him before. Dozens of times. Maybe more. I don't remember.

But if that's true...

Then what's one more?

Is there some magic number? Some invisible tally where he finally gets fed up? Where he throws up his hands and says, "Enough, you BTH. I've already told you."

Or—

Or is he waiting for me to ask again?

Like he knows I need it. Like he's ready for the loop. The reset. The same damn words all over again.

Like he's already chosen to love me in repetition.

And if that's the case…

Then I have to ask. Even if I forget again.

Even if he sighs and tells me gently, patiently, "You've asked before."

Because maybe that's the only thing I can do. Keep asking.

And hope he keeps answering.

[bths-eyes]

Of course you "need to talk." You always need to talk. Usually at the worst possible moment, with blood on your collar and three missed deadlines shadowing you like lost puppies. I've grown accustomed to it.

But this is different. You think there's a number? A limit? A point where I'll snap, slam a door, and declare I'm done answering the same question you've asked a dozen different ways?

Maybe temporarily, but never permanently. Not for this. Not for you.

Do you have any idea how many times I've repeated myself already? How many mornings you've looked at me like you're meeting me for the first time? How many nights you've asked me things we settled days ago?

And do you know what I do each time? I answer you. Again. And again. And again.

Not because I'm patient—I'm not. Not because I enjoy repeating myself—God, I hate it. But because you ask. Because somewhere in that wrecked, missing, half-feral memory of yours, something in you reaches for me. And I'm not going to punish you for that.

If you ask me again, if you forget, if the slate wipes clean and I have to redraw the lines from scratch. I'll still answer. Every time. Not because you need it. But because for some fucking reason, I want to.

[lulus-eyes]

I have feelings about him.

Can't name them. Don't want to try.

They make my head spin. Make the ground tilt just enough to feel it in my gut.

Like being drunk. Or dizzy. Or caught mid-fall and not sure if you'll hit something soft or steel.

They're not soft feelings. Not sweet.

But they're real. And I want to see them.

Reflected back at me. In his eyes.

I want to know he feels them too—that thing without a name that grabs your ribs and twists when he walks into a room and doesn't look your way.

I want to see it. Just once. Flicker behind the magenta.

Not pity. Not tolerance. Not duty. I want—

Fuck.

I just want to be seen. Not looked at. Seen.

By him.

And sometimes I think I am.

But it's never long enough to believe it.

[bths-eyes]

It's relieving to hear you're capable of feeling. Outside of that it seems like you experience everything like a natural disaster. Why should I be exempt?

You are seen. I see you every goddamn day.

Not because you demand it—though you do. Not because you're loud or reckless or impossible—though you are. But because you walk into a room and there's something like gravity about you. I get pulled in every time.

I notice you. More than I should. More than I admit. More than is remotely comfortable. It is not pity. Or tolerance. Or duty. You act like I'm doing charity work just by looking at you. Charity work usually comes with a write-off. You most certainly do not.

I can't give you a name for it. Not because I don't know it—but because the second I name it, you'll turn it into a weapon or a joke or an excuse to bite me somewhere inconvenient.

And I'm not handing you that kind of ammunition. Not yet, at least. Not today. But don't pretend it's one-sided. Don't insult both of us like that.

You're seen. You've always been seen. The problem is that you never believe it until it hurts. Things don't feel real to you until they cause pain.

[lulus-eyes]

I had a dream he shot me. Right through the heart.

No hesitation. No drama. Just raised the rifle and—

Right there. Straight through the heart. Dead center.

I didn't run. Didn't flinch. Didn't even feel pain, really.

Just heat. Like something blooming in my chest. Like he'd carved out a part of me and left something of himself behind.

I woke up gasping. Not from fear. From something else.

He's the only one I'd ever let aim there.

And the only one I'd trust wouldn't miss.

[bths-eyes]

Am I going to dignify this with any level of analysis?

......

A dream where I shoot you in the heart? Through the heart? Of all the places you could fantasize about me putting a bullet, that's the one you choose?

You really are out of your goddamn mind. Putting credit to the name BTH. Composing a psychosexual novella in a journal.

This is terrifying, you know. The idea of you trusting me with that shot. You standing there in your dream, not running—looking at me like the bullet is a gift—Well. It wouldn't be the first time.

You have no idea what that does to a man.

[lulus-eyes]

I love watching him aim. It's not just about the shot. It's everything before it.

The stillness. The silence he wraps around himself like a fucking silk robe.

He closes one eye—always the same one, his left, my right—and everything in him just... stills.

Breath softens. Back straightens. Mouth parts.

Just enough to empty his lungs. Like letting go of something. Like offering the air itself to the bullet.

It's mesmerizing.

He's like a fucking model with a sniper rifle. Picture-perfect. Unreal.

Too clean to be this fucked-up. Too beautiful to be this dangerous.

He belongs on a glossy magazine cover and a wanted poster. And I know how deadly he is. I've seen what happens when he pulls the trigger.

But I don't think I've ever wanted to kiss him more than when he's in that stance. When he's calm. Composed. Lethal.

It's fucked up. But so am I. And he's the one holding the rifle.

[bths-eyes]

I genuinely don't know whether to be impressed, unnerved, or deeply unsettled that you've apparently memorized my entire firing sequence with the kind of reverence I've only seen from a man cataloguing holy scripture.

The way you describe it—the stillness, the quiet, the breath—you make it sound beautiful. Like it's something worth watching instead of something merely functional.

No else watches me like that. Not for the form. Not without flinching. Not without assuming I was about to shoot them. Though... you'd probably assume that too.

And for the record, I am not "too beautiful to be this dangerous." I can be both. Simultaneously. That's the point.

Your fixation, however—that is what's fucked up. You watching me take aim like it's foreplay. You wanting to kiss me when I'm seconds from firing. You musing like the calm is for you.

Unhinged. Absolutely unhinged.

And the worst part? The part I've refused to put into ink except I apparently am now—

I knew you were watching. Every time. And I didn't break stance. Didn't blink. Didn't tell you to leave. Because some sick, feral piece of me likes that the only time you go quiet is when I'm holding a weapon and deciding exactly where to put the bullet.

So no—you don't get to kiss me while I aim. But you do get to stand there. And stare. And want. And know I feel it every single time.

[lulus-eyes]

He was wearing that superior look again today.

You know the one.

The straight back. The jaw locked at that precise angle. That voice—clipped, not sharp, not cruel, just clean. Like a goddamn scalpel.

And that smile.

Not his real one. Not the smirk he throws me when he's annoyed or tired or two seconds from opening a new credit line just for skincare.

No. This one was Refined. Measured. Empty.

I watched him use it on a lackey. Or a professor? Or maybe it was one of those old donors with the handshake like a wet rag and too many rings.

Lulu didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Just slipped into that perfect posture like it never left him. Like Sinostra never touched him.

And for a second, I wanted to ruin it.

Wanted to sink my teeth into that cold porcelain mask and break it. Make him hiss. Make him feel.

Make him mine again.

But then he glanced my way. Not long. Not much. Just a flicker.

And the eyes were still his.

Still magenta. Still holding that thread of heat, even through the chill. He looked at me, and for a heartbeat, I forgot what I was mad about.

Still wanted to ruin him. But maybe slower this time. Maybe I'd earn the mess.

Maybe I'd make him beg to be pulled into this mess all over again.

[bths-eyes]

You're describing it like it's a crime scene, when really it's just called "basic etiquette," something you treat like an extinct language.

I wear it sometimes. It's calculated. It unnerves people who don't know what to do with decorum sharpened to a point.

But—you always read it wrong.

You call it superior. Cold. Refined. Polished to the point of murder. Which, fine. I'll allow it. But you seem to conveniently forget that I didn't pull that expression out of thin air.

I wasn't sculpted by Sinostra in a basement lined with velvet. I learned it before all this. Before the casino. Before the acronyms. Before you. And I use it because sometimes it keeps the world from swallowing me whole.

You wanting to "ruin it" is predictable. You wanting to bite it, even more so. You thinking that I'd "beg to be pulled into this mess again" is... Ridiculous. Presumptuous. NEW. (Not Entirely Wrong.)

But here's what you never seem to register even despite nearly 43 pages thus far of almost but not quite getting the point: You're the only one who breaks that look. Everyone else sees the demand. You see the fault lines. Everyone else obeys the posture. You ignore it.

Everyone else gets the mask. You get the moment I look away afterward and hate that I used it at all.

I need to know you're watching. I need you to cut through the performance before I drown in it. You won't find me begging for anything but you also won't find me looking away for long.