bedtime stories IV. luocha.
I honestly don't know how to tag this. This one kind of got away from me. There are a lot of darker undertones here and a lot of it is left ambiguous, for you to interpret and figure out. It's different from the really fluffy tone of the others.
Nighttime presses in on all sides, when it’s on the beach. The white sands go black with shade. The sea churns inky dark. The sky, tonight, is illuminated by a pale sliver of a moon, curved like a talon. You can taste the salt in the air.
This part of Sene Verde is empty of tourists. The jutting peaks at the center of the island cast it in near permanent shade, blocks the warm air from the other side. It’s colder here. More desolate.
The sea breeze is frigid. Goosebumps erupt along your arms. It cuts through the thin fabric of your sleep shirt. Looking out unto the tides, you feel a sense of calm wash over you. The chill shocks the panic frozen. Your breathing begins to steadily. Your pulse quiets. The cold, packed sand is making your toes number with each step you take back inland.
The merchant waits for you at the top of the rickety, wooden steps. His long, blonde hair tossed by the wind. The slight moonlight casts his white jacket in pale silver. His green eyes gleam, appraising you as you ascend. He gives nothing away, expression tempered and gentle. Eyelids hung low as the moon in the sky.
“Why did you run?” he asks, curious more than upset.
“I didn’t know you were coming. I panicked,” you say, sounding as ragged as you feel. Your eyes hurt. The wind whipped them dry as you threw open the door to your cabin and rushed down the slope, bits of shell and twig scraping the soles of your feet as you blindly fled towards the sea. The churning gales are brutal, this time of night, this time of year.
Luocha coos at you. “Why? I’ve never given you any cause to fear.”
“There’s something wrong with you. No sane salesman would come to this part of the island to peddle. Unless they were desperate, which—” you pointedly look him up and down, taking in the fine make of his clothes, the gleaming bits and silken sashes which emblazon his garments. “—you clearly aren’t.”
“I didn’t come to sell anything. I just wanted to see you.” he says, letting you walk past him. Your feet pad across the worn wooden planks. Wet and crusted with cold sand. There’s an underlying creep you’ve felt, all day. Like a horse sensing a storm which has yet to roll in. A buzzing rumble which had you pacing up and down the main hall of your hollowed home. All day, you’d insisted it was your own, petty anxiety getting to you—but you were right. You’re always right. These feelings, at the end of the day, are always right.
You’re more upset with yourself than him, you realize, pressing your fingers to the space between your brows, eyes crumpling shut as you cross the threshold into the living room. You press your back to the wall and tilt your head back, listening to Luocha’s boots scuff against the boards until he, too, is inside. He shuts the door. Tenderly clicks the lock shut.
“You look like you’ve had a rough day. Have you been sleeping?”
No, you haven’t.
“It’s none of your business,” you gripe. The feeling of the dried sand stuck to your skin grates you in all the wrong ways. It’s sudden, how quick the aggravation piles high. The entire walk back, you hardly paid it any note. But now—it makes you want to writhe out of your own skin.
You wipe them on the welcome mat to get the worst of it off. The bristled fabric grates on your soles. Luocha’s gaze weighs on you, unreadable yet heavy, but you do your best to ignore him and all the space he takes up. A few lightbulbs framed by rounded, hanging bowls of glass light up the hallway dim as you stumble off to the bathroom. The tide still rings in your ears. Your skin still prickles with the cold. Your eyes still hurt.
The downstairs bathroom has a rickety old chair set up against the wall, opposite the sink. It’s a decently-sized space. A line of dusty lights hangs above the old mirror. You make a beeline for the shower, twisting the knob to turn on the spray. The water pelts the tiled floor. You shed your sleeping gown. The flimsy white thing crumples to the floor in a heap of useless, thin cloth. You step underneath the spray without checking the temperature, and flinch as the searing water runs down your back.
You stand there for— well, you don’t really keep track. You shut your eyes and let the sound of the water lull you into a hazy stupor. The world outside seals itself off. There is nothing beyond the four walls of this room. Nothing besides the scald of the water, the steam that churns in the air and fogs the glass. Eventually, you wash off with trembling hands. You just took a shower this afternoon, but you lavish yourself in rose-scented soaps anyways. The smell is soft, grounding.
You remain even after the suds have long swirled down the drain.
A knock at the door pulls you from your piece. You blink blearily, and shut the water. The temperature drops immediately. A horrid shiver rolls down your spine and you stumble towards the door, legs shaking like a newborn fawn. Water drips onto the floor and puddles onto the pale blue tile. Your floor mats are still in the wash. By some manner of miracle, you manage not to slip. Your hand closes around the knob and you pull the door open, looking at the man on the other side with bleary eyes. Bare from head to toe. It somehow doesn’t bother you.
Nor does it phase him. Luocha takes in your state impassively. His gaze sweeps up and down your body, taking in fresh bruises and old wounds.
“You’ll catch a cold, like that,” he sighs. He walks past you, and you’re not sure why, but it feels like a rejection. It stings. You don’t want his attention, especially not like that, but it still stings. You shut your eyes. The outside air sweeps into the room and chills your skin in an instant, goosebumps crawling up your arms and legs. You keep dripping on the floor.
Warm cloth drapes around your shoulder. You stiffen, spine setting rigid. The cushiony cloth wicks away the moisture, swept across your cool skin by hands much too gentle. The beast at your back bundles you in newfound warmth, a hum low in his chest.
“Can you make it upstairs on your own?” he asks. He knows where your room is. Because he’s been in there before, but it still unsettles you.
“Yeah,” you mumble, clutching the ends of the towel together to your chest, fruitlessly attempting to preserve the modesty you have nothing left of. Awareness creeps back to you in slow stages, but you’re not sure if it’s even worth it to care, anymore. He’s seen all there is to see. Today and the last time he came. Whenever that was. It’s hard to keep track of the days.
“Then go,” he lays his hands upon your shoulders, gloved hands squeezing through the towel. His fingers rub small, soothing circles over your now-covered skin. And his voice, gentle as the seabreeze, coasts over the top of your ear. “And change. I’ll make you some tea.”
And the warmth at your back disappears. It’s jarring, because you hadn’t released how close he’d come in those fragile, few moments. You brush off the discomfort, the emptiness at your back—because you shouldn’t feel so comfortable with him.
The wooden steps creak underfoot as you ascend the first floor. The sound reverberates through the cavernous hall below. The gales beat against the side of the house. Vicious, this time of year.
A few minutes later sees you hobbling into the kitchen, clothed in a sleepshirt, shorts and a robe thrown atop of it, tied around your waist with a blue sash.
The kitchen is a small space with a window side table surrounded on either side by two wooden chairs. It’s a pitiful thing compared to the massive dining room it sits next to. More of a hall than a room, a great and cavernous space you hardly ever use. Large spaces frighten you, these days. It feels too empty, too cold. Empty spaces riddle you with a horrible sense of uncertainty. Long halls with high ceilings that distort in your field of vision, becoming endless tunnels unto forever. Just more nothing.
The kitchen is much better. Made smaller by the counters which box in what little walking space already existed. There’s room for two people to stand comfortably in front of the stove, three if you squeeze. Its dark wooden cabinets and counters are contrasted by the aged white refrigerator and microwave. None of the other appliances really match, either. They’re old, out of fashion things you picked up here or there. And the kettle—it’s a sorry, banged up thing that hardly sees any use.
Luocha looks laughably out of place in his crisp button-up and slacks. He’s draped his jacket over a chair. His gloves lay abandoned next to the sink, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. And a while you were gone, he tucked his boots by the door, right next to your sandals and sneakers.
“Made yourself comfortable right away, huh?” you say with a bit of bitter humor.
Luocha looks over his shoulder at you, not a shred of irony in his expression as he speaks. “This is home.” he says softly, before turning back to the counter. “I know where everything is, and I know what you like to eat. It would have been remiss of me to simply twiddle my thumbs and wait.” he reasons. The scent of something toasting wafts in the air, a familiar smell that softens you.
“We should bake a loaf or two later. The ones from last time froze well, didn’t they?” Luocha hums. The toaster pops. Two flat slices of Senerian rose loaf, tinged pink with deep brown crust. Luocha plucks them between thumb and forefinger, gently depositing them onto a ceramic seafoam plate. You purchased it from an artisan market on the other side of the island. It was the only purchase you made before getting overwhelmed by the crowds and the heat.
“I don’t have enough flour,” you murmur, hardly loud enough to hear. You hover in the doorway, cheek pressed to the cold, glazed wood.
“You’re running low on butter, too. Shall I bring you some tomorrow?” he turns from you to slather some onto the slices. Pale white smears across the crisped surface, immediately beginning to melt. He glides around your kitchen with an agitating ease. He knows where nearly everything is. Not that it’s too difficult. The layout has remained unchanged over the course of his many visits.
“That’s alright. I’ll go myself.” you insist.
“When?” he presses.
“Sometime this week,” you raise your chin, voice just a little sharper than you meant it, leveling him with a flinty stare. He seems to weigh your answer for a moment, which both unsettles and annoys you. For who is he to doubt you in your own home?
“Perhaps I’ll come with you when you do.” he muses, looking remarkably skeptical. You try not to let it bother you.
He gently places the plate atop your tiny table, squares of butter glistening under the dim kitchen light—little more than a bulb in a fishbowl hung from the ceiling. It flickers intermittently.
“Come and eat,” he beseeches, countenance softening. His lips worry into a slight from when you stay exactly where you are, numb gaze frozen on the plate. Hunger blisters deep in your gut, a familiar ache. It’s much too easy to forget when you’re lost in your work, or in your head, or in the shower staring at the drain.
He says your name cautiously, like you’re a cornered animal. You know, better than to believe that tender falsetto. He talks in warnings never in pleas. It kicks you into motion, ferries you across the threshold and into one of the rattan chairs, plucking one of the thick, cotton soft slices off the plate. Your reward is a pleased smile and a glass of cold water.
He doesn’t sit down with you. He bustles around the kitchen, pulling open cabinets and drawers with furrowed brows, obviously taking stock of what you’re missing. It pisses you off.
“Quit snooping,” you bark at him with a rotten glower.
“I’m just checking what else you may be low on, lest you come home from shopping only to realize you have to make a second trip,” he points out.
You lapse into silence, focusing on the taste of the loaf—sweet and rosy—a perfect juxtaposition to the salted butter. It’s a bit more fragrant than you’re used to, something earthy seeped into the grain.
“You’ve been taking wonderful care of the garden,” Luocha says—and he’s suddenly sat across from you, moved across the kitchen in a blink. Or had you simply not been paying attention? You look at him through bleary eyes, but his inscrutable gaze is fixed on your hand, gently cradled in his now. The tips of his long fingers slide across your palm, and fan out to tease the webbing between your own.
“Was I just supposed to let it die?” you scoff.
“You could have. It would have been well within your right,” Luocha hums, sounding a little amused. His palm comes to cradle the back of your own, and you would rather he just hold your hand than whatever he’s doing now—toying—playing with apart of you without asking just like the seeds he’d sown out back, nestled beneath the evergreens in your yard. Fragile little herbs and florets that would have easily withered during the darker months. Yet, you unearthed them, sheltered them within the sanctity of your home, uprooted them with your hands and sweat and saw to it that they grew—
“It’s not their fault that they were born.” you repl ycoolly.
“You’re so kind,” Luocha coos sympathetically. The rest of your time in the kitchen is spent in peaceable silence.
After your impromptu snack, you take care of the dishes, brushing off his lingering hands with a steely look and a wooden spatula in hand. He slithers upstairs, and you meet him only after the the dishes have been squared away and the counter cleared of any crumbs, and the entire room meticulously combed over to—to settle something within you. To make sure nothing had been moved or changed. The last reserves of your energy begin to sputter out, so you drift out the kitchen and down the hall. The wall is cool and coarse against your fingers.
You ascend the stairs, reach the second floor, a straight shot hall with several doors and branching, dead ends. Some rooms are connected. Some aren’t. You’ve long given up understanding why it had been built this way.
Luocha is in your bathroom. He’s climbed out of his day clothes, now clad in a black nightgown that reaches his knees, the waist cinched by a pale, purple sash. He’s applying some sort of cream, slender fingers coated in a milky white substance. He rubs it into the flat of his cheeks, moisture making his skin glisten beneath the dim lamplight. You hover in the doorway, feeling floaty and simple.
“Can I try?” you ask, for no reason at all.
Luocha blinks, as though he hadn’t realized you were there, but he doesn’t afford you the time to feel any trepidation or doubt.
“Of course, of course—come here,” he urges, and you huddle in the tiny space alongside him. “It’s a moisturizer. I picked it pu during my last trip to the Xianzhou. It’s gentle, with all natural ingredients. Nothing you’re allergic to—I checked.”
The cream is chilly and moist on your skin as he heaps it on, spreading it delicately across your cheeks with his middle and pointer fingers. Your nose wrinkles and your eyes flutter shut. It smells good. Subtle.
“Cold,” you mumble, and he laughs, tracing it across your forehead and over your temples, a steady and massaging rhythm that leaves you swaying. You are alone, in the near dark with a man you hate, preening beneath his ministrations like some domesticated creature. You’re too tired to care when his thumb brushes over your chin, teasing your bottom lip.
“All done,” he says softly. He leans down and presses a kiss to your pouting lips. It’s too firm to be chaste. His hand reaches up, like he’s going to cradle the back of your head, but he doesn’t. He steps away and smiles. “You’re so patient, now.”
“Not like I have another choice,” you murmur. He turns from you, plucking your toothbrush from its stand. Your eyes go glassy.
You blink, and he’s holding it in front of your face. A dollop of white and blue toothpaste sits on the pearly bristles. He stops just short of brushing them for you. Instead, he watches you do it, unreadable. It kind of pisses you off, as is typical with most things he does or says. Saying anything now would be meaningless. You’re too tired to argue for the sake of arguing, the most bitter of your demons quelled by the soft siren song of approaching sleep.
“You should come with me, tomorrow,” he says while you rinse out your mouth.
“To where?” you spit into the sink, watching the water swirl the drain.
“To the markets,” he reminds you. “It’s supposed to be clear skies all weekend with low humidity.”
You hum absentmindedly, pretending to give it thought as you bumble out of the bathroom. His footsteps are nearly inaudible as he tails you, quiet as a ghost. Silent to the undiscerning ear. Not to you, though, who has spent long enough in these halls to know their every sound and tone by heart.
“And the tourist season ended a week ago,” he comes to walk at your side, still wheedling. “The crowds will be thin.”
“Which means there’ll still be too many people,” you remind him sharply, shouldering past and into a room adjacent to your own, as though hoping to lose him. “I thought you hate it when I talk to other people. Make up your mind, already.”
“Never have I said such a thing,” he pesters you through the thin walls. The door to your bedroom opens and shuts. You can hear him fussing with something inside, pulling aside blankets and turning on the room’s standing fan, because you can’t sleep without the white noise.
Unable to stand the crowds, but uncomfortable in the peace of near silence, the distant crashing of the waves.
“It would be good for you to stretch your legs—and it’ll be much easier for me to buy everything you need if you’re there.”
“You already snooped through the whole kitchen, didn’t you? You should already know what I need,” you insist through the door. You do need groceries, but the idea of stepping foot outside familiar ground is more than frightening—it’s paralyzing.
“Ah, but I’m unfamiliar with the brands on this planet and which you prefer. If faced with a choice, I may just purchase every option available.” he teases, but the threat is very real. Having to eat twenty loafs of bread before the expiry date is not something one forgets.
“Fine, fine,” you nearly snarl as you shove the adjoining door open. The room is low lit. He’s already shimmied beneath the covers, cheek nestled in the cradle of his palm. He smiles at the sight of you, lips pulled into the sort of soft, sleepy grin most reserve for their lovers—which you are most decidedly not. His charity remains unwarranted and you will do your best to curb the amount of money he’s so keen to waste. No amount of bounty or tribute will earn what he is so determined to pry from you. “I’ll humor you. But I’m not paying you back for any of it.”
“Knowing you’ll have enough to eat while I’m away will be enough,” he says. “Now please, dear. Won’t you come to bed?” he asks, and his eyes are half-lidded, face gone soft with sleepiness. Blond hair furls in wisps around his face, knocked out of place by the bedding. No matter how many times he stays, the sight always disarms you—whisks you back to chilly nights on your family’s old farm.
Your parents let him sleep in the guest house, when he happened to come by—and you (black sheep, albatross)—jumped at the chance to avoid family dinners by bringing a helping to him instead, where you’d linger with him. Until the fireplace dimmed and its warm light caught on his low lashes, fighting sleep to speak with you just a moment longer.
Back then, you feared you had encroached on his space and time for your own selfish diversions. You fear nothing, now. You flop onto the mattress and wriggle beneath the sheets, like a particularly graceless mole. The sheets are cool, buttery soft where he hasn’t touched them. The fresh scent of something earthy hangs in the air. Wet charcoal, the outside after rain. Which is quite peculiar, as it hasn’t rained since last week. Something you would fret more over if the hour were not so late and you were not so tired, wrapped in the sudden melancholy of those far off memories.
“Luocha,” you mumble as you shuffle close, lingering a precious few inches away. A plush pillow is tucked against your chest, as though it would stop him if his intentions drifted towards something less than pure. He draws as close as he can, shimmying down to be at eye level with you.
A question lingers at the tip of your tongue. Or rather, a potential question—a vague idea of a question that your sleep addled self cannot quite put together. You almost feel guilty in the silence that settles. He looks so intent, so ready to listen. Like he would answer whatever inane query you posed to the best of his ability.
In the end, you're too fragmented to give him the pleasure of it.
“Thank you,” you say, and are almost astonished to find that you mean it.
“I’m only taking responsibility, and I’m happy to do it.” he hums. “Though, I would be happier if you accompanied me.” he tacks on. And there is surely something to be said about how easily he moves you, but the sanctity of your bedroom is no place to broach the subject. Despite the frustration, the fear, the resentment—you can’t help but want his approval. Frayed edges of you which long for outward approval. It’s all at war inside you, armies which claw and writhe for claim of what little mental space remains free. The last empty stable at the back of that dusty barn.
“I’ll think about it,” you murmur, and close your eyes.
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