Morning Glory

+21 Fandomless multi-muse blog, penned by Kaz.

[kazveria]

Character Database

[kazveria]

Max did not answer, not at first. The background of the room was melting, curling at the edges as if the projector bulb had started to cook its own celluloid.

He felt himself dividing, one part gawking at the pageant of the dream while another folded in deeper, refusing the shimmer, focusing on the pain in his knees, the cut on his thumb, the way Sasha’s cuff couldn’t quite contain the narrow flash of wrist. He guessed that was the point of all this, the reason memory got so ornate: some details you keep, some details keep.

The knife was there, all right—he could feel it. A prop, maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it had always been there, and he’d simply been too tired to remember the danger.

He didn’t flinch. That was the thing. He wanted to; old muscle memory said freeze, or acquiesce, or some other dog-trick. But the bones inside him were wrong; the dream wouldn’t let him cower.

“I know what I want,” Max said. “That was never the problem.” It cost something to say it—he felt the weight shift in the room, Sasha’s shadow growing heavier, denser, coiling itself around the exposed parts of his mind. “What I want is for you to be the person I needed. The one you almost were. The one who said sorry and meant it, even if it was for show, even if you didn’t mean the words, because maybe that would have been enough.”

The air coagulated, thickening like quicksand. The blurred crowd in the wings—curators, lovers, indifferent strangers—vanished, leaving only the two of them in the dimly-lit void.

A damp, animal noise filled the space. Max realized it was his own breath.

Max's voice cracked. "I love you. I need you." His hands trembled at his sides, fingers curling into fists then releasing, over and over.

[writtenindarkness]

"I couldn't give you what you wanted before. What makes you think I'm in any way capable of it now?" It wouldn't bring him peace to ask, that much was clear. But Cal had some hopes of providing the dreamer with peace. With closure. It was hard to do around a voice that wasn't his own.

"What could have even brought me back? Is the best thing for you clinging to these shadows, begging for them to be whole again?" That was when it finally formed. The assessment Cal had been seeking. An aura of the dreamer.

The dreamer was Judgement, Reversed. Stuck in his cycle. Dreaming the same dream. Clinging to a past despite the harm it caused. Failing to learn the lessons of the past and of the dream. A part of him was eternally that child because of a blockage he'd put in place for himself and refused to overcome, even when he put on a mask of it.

His essence folded into the card easily enough once Cal identified it. The Marigold Tarot. The two arrows that held him back: the agony of his heart, and the agony of the soul. The Reaper holding to his wrist, in this case, holding him back. But Sasha was not the Reaper. The memory of him was.

[kazveria]

"I don't know what would have brought you back," Max said, the words raw in his throat. "Maybe that's why I keep dreaming you. Because in real life, there's no answer. There's no resolution."

The light in the museum dimmed further, shadows pooling in the corners like spilled ink. He watched Sasha's face, searching for some flicker of the man he'd known—or thought he'd known. The face remained impassive, a perfect mask.

"I know what you're trying to tell me," Max said. His voice sounded distant to his own ears, like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "That I'm trapped. That I've built this... shrine to keep you alive. That I should move on."

He held Sasha's gaze, feeling a strange calm settle over him, like the eye of a hurricane. The truth hung between them, almost tangible in the dimming light.

"But what if I can't?" Max asked, and the question was a confession. "What if I've tried and it doesn't work?"

The museum's shadows deepened further, creeping across the herringbone floor like an incoming tide. Max could feel his younger self slipping away, the unscarred hands becoming more weathered with each passing moment.

"You keep telling me to let go," he said, "but you never told me how. Help me."

[kazveria]

Emil watched as Maya got up, tattoos warping along her skin. The languor in her movements drew a line of heat down his spine. He squeezed her hand, thumb wrapping around her knuckles, then led her toward the bathroom. The air in the suite hung heavy with the musk of sex and sweat, the dying topnote of incense barely covering the sharper notes—a tangle of bodies, friction, salt.

In the bathroom, porcelain tiles checkered black and off-white, where Emil guided Maya toward the shower. "Let me," he murmured, reaching past her to start the water. He watched her face as steam began to rise, his attention never leaving her even as he adjusted the temperature.

His lips curved slightly upward. "I was only joking earlier," he clarified, voice softening. "About the addresses and burner phones."

The truth was, Emil wanted nothing more than to take Maya out on an earnest, old-world date—one in which he’d have the privacy to study her under better lighting, watch her finger the menu and make her little delighted huff when the server poured the wine wrong. He wanted her number. Not saved under some encrypted emoji code, not in a vanishing direct message, but with her actual name and a picture of her eating noodles. He wanted to text her first thing in the morning and last thing at night, wanted to know when she was free for him, when he could claim a slice of her day that wasn’t owed to the rest of the city.

But what would he even say to her, after a week, a month? “Hey, let’s check out that tiny Burmese spot in Berkeley, and also, by the way, I may or may not be analyzing synthetic pheromone compounds for a secretive research wing buried deep within a sprawling underground complex.” There wasn’t a non-deranged way to phrase it, not now, not with how much of his workday was devoted to lying, sometimes so exquisitely that he couldn’t tell which parts of himself were the mask and which were the man. Even when he wasn’t on the clock, the habit tugged at him, sneakier than self-preservation, a low hum of “what am I forgetting to hide.”

But he wanted to try. Just for a minute.

Emil reached for Maya’s face—her makeup his problem now, her mouth his territory. He tilted her chin with his thumb, kissing her with none of the previous hunger; this was gentle, exploratory, a press of lips and the faintest scrape of his teeth, tasting her smile along the seam.

He untangled their mouths only to brush his nose along the line of her jaw, then rested his forehead against the temple of hers. The steam carried her scent—salt and white musk, the aftersmoke of burnt vanilla. He inhaled, feeling his own shoulders loosen, the tension in his hands replaced by something softer. He didn’t know how to articulate it beyond holding her there: the simple rightness of their skin sliding together, of her arms twined at the small of his back, of her chest tight to his and anything outside the radius of her body rendered entirely irrelevant.

[writtenindarkness]

The sudden press of water down on her stole a brief squeak and then a laugh, her head ducking down briefly as though she were a turtle with a shell that could shield her. She recovered soon enough, tilting her head back to let the water soak through her hair. She didn't open her eyes as she smiled.

"A slight shame, Mister Mystery. If you move so often it wouldn't be such a hard thing to ask you to move a little closer, would it?" Maya chuckled, before finally tilting her head up again to look at him. "But it's good to know I can send you salacious pictures," she grinned playfully, "since you haven't objected in the slightest to that. I'll have to give you my number once we get out of the shower...?"

He was handsome enough to begin with, but the way the water in his hair made it fall into his face was especially charming, and she moved up onto her toes to meet him in a kiss, perfectly happy for it. Without her shoes and the bed and sitting managing to obfuscate their height difference, it was pretty plainly obvious just how much taller he was. She'd dated taller guys, of course, but most people were taller than she was.

Still, it made her feel safe and comfortable to be held in his arms. She didn't feel small exactly, but safe was a nice feeling, and a strange one to feel after knowing a guy for only a few hours. It was nice.

[kazveria]

Emil's chest constricted at her words. Closer. He'd never thought of his nomadic life as anything other than necessary, a habit formed from years of moving for school and work and safety. But now, with Maya's skin warm against his, the idea of proximity—of being near enough to touch without planning—felt like a luxury he hadn't known to want.

"I'd like that," he said, voice nearly lost in the rush of water. "Your number. And sending you pictures." He ran his hands down her sides, feeling the curve of her waist, the subtle shift of muscle beneath skin. "Though I'm not sure how salacious I'd be. I've been told I look like a nervous librarian in selfies."

The steam enveloped them both, and Emil found himself cataloging the differences between them: her height, the softness of her curves against his angles, the way her tattoos made a living canvas against his pale skin, how her hair stayed somehow wild despite the water. He dragged his fingers through it, gathering the weight of it in his palm, mesmerized by how it slipped between his knuckles like dark silk. Everything about her felt both familiar and foreign—he knew the shape of her now, but each new angle, each shift of light across her face revealed something he hadn't noticed before.

He reached for the hotel shampoo, squeezing a dollop into his palm before working it through Maya's hair, massaging her scalp with careful fingers, and he spoke softly, the warmth of his voice wrapping around her like the steam in the air.

Emil's fingertips lingered at the nape of her neck, pausing just for a heartbeat. "I'm curious," he murmured playfully against her temple, his voice soft and teasing, barely audible above the shower's hiss. "Do all your event dates end like this, or have I somehow earned special consideration?"

The slight smirk on his lips and the glimmer in his eyes made it clear he was joking, enjoying the intimacy of the moment while still keeping the atmosphere light. His playful challenge added an element of flirtation, inviting her to respond with a smile of her own.

[kazveria]

He took the glass from her without breaking eye contact, ran his lips along the rim, and drank. It snapped clean and sharp in his mouth—a taste that reminded him of winter ballfields, or maybe the first fight he hadn’t lost. Lorena’s leg was warm across his thigh, a deliberate weight, and Rome caught himself pressing into it, greedy. He tried to play it cool, but his body kept giving him away, restless as a shut-in hound.

“Wanderer,” he muttered, savoring the burn as it slid down. “Any conquering was purely accidental.” He let his hand rest on the inside of her knee, casual enough to pretend it wasn’t the only thing he’d wanted to do since the second she let him into the room. Her skin was cool from the stone floor but heating quickly in the fire’s glow. He traced the seam of her calf, thumb gentle, appreciative. “I used to think the world was bigger than it was. Then I got stuck in a room like this and realized, maybe I was just running in circles.” Rome’s fingertips lingered a breath higher, the insistent line of muscle up her thigh. He pressed a little further, tracing a lazy arc just above the crease of her knee.

“Baroness is something else. I don’t think I’ve ever been that completely dismissed and wanted to thank someone for it after.” He grinned, lips wet from the bourbon, and watched the way Lorena’s hair rippled in the firelight—a buttery corona, not quite gold, not quite real. For a second he pictured them both, the Baroness poised in her throne, Lorena half-feral and grinning, and him in the middle, a cut of meat laid out for display. The perversity of it made his pulse lurch; he sipped again, slower this time.

[writtenindarkness]

Settling into his lap with a little laugh, Lorena curled her arms around his neck, cocking her head to let him in against her neck. "Wrangler? Oh I'm just a very bored housemaid, I'm afraid. It's the Baroness holding your leash. I'm here to feed you and pet you and call you a good boy—at least, if you're good for me," she teased quietly. "And nights around here are a very dangerous time to wander. Haven't you learned that already...?"

Her painted lips grazed his ear in turn, her teeth catching his earlobe briefly. "Prove you're worth doting on and that could be your fate. Shouldn't be hard, should it? I haven't had anything to take care of me without batteries in two years... And surely you can perform better than a toy?"

[kazveria]

He shifted her closer with both hands, greedy as a mutt who’d never been allowed scraps off the table. The warmth of Lorena’s thighs pressed hard to either side of his hips, and Rome’s body registered that pressure as both a threat and a promise. He found himself grinning into her neck, the firelight painting her skin in bands of gold and shadow. He flattened a palm at her back, the other kneading slowly along the curve just south of her skirt’s hemline, tracing the seam between fabric and thigh.

Two years was a hell of a dry spell, and if she expected him to do better than an overworked battery, he was doomed to disappoint. But failure had never stopped him from acting like he’d already won, and he let the cocky smile stay on his face as he hooked his chin over Lorena’s shoulder.

Rome let his breath fog warm against her bare skin. “You know, in my country, they say the best way to tame a wild animal is with food and gentle hands.” He angled his head, lips at the hollow under her jaw, and grazed them upward, tasting the salty-sweet rush of pulse beneath. “But you look like you’ve got fangs. Are you the kind of girl who bites?”

His hands drifted higher, thumbs pressing into the muscle at the base of her spine, hungry for any twitch or flinch that would give him a roadmap forward. It was an old habit, reading people before they could turn it around on him, but with Lorena, he got mostly invitation and laughter, like poking at the mouth of a bright-lit cave and knowing damn well it led somewhere deep. Rome tilted her further into his chest, the scent of her filling up the tight space between them, fire and perfume and skin.

The hunger in his veins became too much, and then… Rome abandoned all pretense, surging forward to capture her mouth with his. Her lips were soft, pliant beneath the demanding press of his, tasting faintly of something sweet that made him dizzy. He tangled one hand in her hair, cradling the back of her head as he deepened the kiss, his other palm sliding up her back to find the intricate lacing there.

His fingers fumbled with the crisscrossed pattern, tracing the path where fabric met skin. The dress was secured by a complex web of laces running down her spine, the halter tie at her neck merely decorative. Rome groaned against her mouth when he felt the slight give of the fabric as he tugged experimentally at the lacing.

[kazveria]

He took the glass from her without breaking eye contact, ran his lips along the rim, and drank. It snapped clean and sharp in his mouth—a taste that reminded him of winter ballfields, or maybe the first fight he hadn’t lost. Lorena’s leg was warm across his thigh, a deliberate weight, and Rome caught himself pressing into it, greedy. He tried to play it cool, but his body kept giving him away, restless as a shut-in hound.

“Wanderer,” he muttered, savoring the burn as it slid down. “Any conquering was purely accidental.” He let his hand rest on the inside of her knee, casual enough to pretend it wasn’t the only thing he’d wanted to do since the second she let him into the room. Her skin was cool from the stone floor but heating quickly in the fire’s glow. He traced the seam of her calf, thumb gentle, appreciative. “I used to think the world was bigger than it was. Then I got stuck in a room like this and realized, maybe I was just running in circles.” Rome’s fingertips lingered a breath higher, the insistent line of muscle up her thigh. He pressed a little further, tracing a lazy arc just above the crease of her knee.

“Baroness is something else. I don’t think I’ve ever been that completely dismissed and wanted to thank someone for it after.” He grinned, lips wet from the bourbon, and watched the way Lorena’s hair rippled in the firelight—a buttery corona, not quite gold, not quite real. For a second he pictured them both, the Baroness poised in her throne, Lorena half-feral and grinning, and him in the middle, a cut of meat laid out for display. The perversity of it made his pulse lurch; he sipped again, slower this time.

[writtenindarkness]

"Hmm? Maybe you'd live a more fulfilling life as a pet than a wanderer," she suggested with a sly smile. "Kept in a pretty kennel, hand-fed by doting women... it could be a very easy life, you know. A lot of lonely, single women here who would be more than happy to keep you fed," she teased further, letting her skirt ride up further along with his touches.

She laughed at the comment on the Baroness, tilting her head back. "Oh she's absolutely something else," Lorena agreed, fairly relaxed in her spot as she gave him the time to drink his drink. "And she took it easy on you. She even let you take your clothes with you," she chuckled at that. "I'm afraid scoundrels aren't as much her taste as mine, though, Rome. You don't win nobility over by dressing like... this," she plucked at his shirt with a wry smile.

"Then again, maybe you can win her over on your knees like earlier. Supplication might work for her."

[kazveria]

Rome snorted, a bright, involuntary laugh—she’d caged him with nothing but the curve of her foot and her mockery, and it felt better than he wanted to admit. He set the bourbon on the desk edge with a deliberate clack, making sure it wouldn’t spill on some priceless rug, and let both hands slide up Lorena’s calves to her thighs, taking the invitation for exactly what it was. He palmed the back of her leg, pulling her forward in a single decisive motion, so she landed straddling him, skirt riding hitch after hitch up her thighs.

He wound an arm around her waist, thick and possessive, but held the rest of his body perfectly still—waiting, just to see if she’d let herself settle. Her hair feathered across his face, static catching along his jaw, and Rome set his hand on her ass, possessive and casual at the same time.

“If I’m a pet, does that make you the wrangler?” His mouth was close enough that his words tickled across her throat just below her ear. “So this is the game? You're going to dance me around?, or do I get to run the streets at night?” His voice croaked on the last word, frayed around the edges, like the idea of being kept contained both revolted and delighted him.

He kept his hands gripped on her, thumbs riding just inside the edge of her skirt, the fabric soft but static-prickled. “Not gonna lie, ‘hand-fed by doting women’ isn’t the worst fate I’ve been threatened with.” He said it in a murmur, low and playful, nuzzling his nose into the hollow below her ear.

[kazveria]

He rolled the idea around in his mouth like a stolen cherry. It didn’t taste quite like home, but she’d offered it clean and honest, which was more than he usually got out of people. Her legs were bare from the knee down, and he let his gaze linger a little too long, then swept it up to her face. “Rome,” he offered, like it might burn her tongue to hear it. “Most people just call me Rome.” The last name could wait until dawn, if he was even still here. “I’m a bourbon man, but I’ll take whatever you pour.”

He tried a more polite smile, but it snagged on the hook of her suggestion and went crooked almost immediately. “Bed-warming’s a lost art. If you’re volunteering, I’d be a fool to refuse.” He pressed his shoulder blades into the chair’s backrest, letting himself enjoy how the wood flexed with his weight. The fire’s heat made his skin prick and twitch. He wondered if Eastern Europe always did this to a man—left him stripped of his tools, then offered to tuck him in like a child with a fever.

He snorted and let his eyes close, just a second, letting his hand drift along the worn chair arm, thumb tracing out a nervous rhythm. “You always this nice to prisoners, or am I special?” He cracked one eye at her, half-expecting a punchline hidden in her expression. Rome considered standing, but the ache in his knees said no. So he stayed folded into the chair, feeling oddly content to watch her, the way her body floated in the firelight, the way the shadows pooled in her collarbones and along her thighs. She wasn’t subtle, but she didn’t have to be.

He wondered what she was waiting for, his pulse hammering against his throat. A performance? A confession? His body tensed with anticipation, every nerve ending raw and exposed. Whatever game she was playing, he was already burning in it, already drowning.

Or maybe it was just that Rome's body had been running on empty since Bucharest, a month of nights with nothing but his own company.

[writtenindarkness]

"Rome," she echoed easily, her accent light over it. She got to her feet in a slow, easy motion, making her way to the side to open a small cabinet before she poured him a glass of bourbon. "An interesting name. A conqueror, or a wanderer?"

Making her way back over to him, she offered the bourbon with a little smile. "I think perhaps not the first one," Lorena teased lightly, perching on the arm of his chair, "not when the Baroness got you all hot and bothered but you ended up here."

Stretching a leg across his lap, Lorena smiled playfully. "Are you a leg man? Is that why you've been looking at my legs like you've never had a drink in your life...?"

Leaning against the back of his chair, she tossed aside his cap to run sharp nails along his scalp. "I'm just bored and you happen to be lucky enough to be here. You're not special. Yet. You have to work on things like that."

[kazveria]

He took the glass from her without breaking eye contact, ran his lips along the rim, and drank. It snapped clean and sharp in his mouth—a taste that reminded him of winter ballfields, or maybe the first fight he hadn’t lost. Lorena’s leg was warm across his thigh, a deliberate weight, and Rome caught himself pressing into it, greedy. He tried to play it cool, but his body kept giving him away, restless as a shut-in hound.

“Wanderer,” he muttered, savoring the burn as it slid down. “Any conquering was purely accidental.” He let his hand rest on the inside of her knee, casual enough to pretend it wasn’t the only thing he’d wanted to do since the second she let him into the room. Her skin was cool from the stone floor but heating quickly in the fire’s glow. He traced the seam of her calf, thumb gentle, appreciative. “I used to think the world was bigger than it was. Then I got stuck in a room like this and realized, maybe I was just running in circles.” Rome’s fingertips lingered a breath higher, the insistent line of muscle up her thigh. He pressed a little further, tracing a lazy arc just above the crease of her knee.

“Baroness is something else. I don’t think I’ve ever been that completely dismissed and wanted to thank someone for it after.” He grinned, lips wet from the bourbon, and watched the way Lorena’s hair rippled in the firelight—a buttery corona, not quite gold, not quite real. For a second he pictured them both, the Baroness poised in her throne, Lorena half-feral and grinning, and him in the middle, a cut of meat laid out for display. The perversity of it made his pulse lurch; he sipped again, slower this time.

[kazveria]

The bed looked like the sort of thing you needed a running start to conquer. He almost cracked a joke about it but reconsidered, measuring Lorena’s composure: she looked focused on the fire, feeding it a small log that sent a fresh whiff of resin into the air and made his throat itch. He tried to picture her in the morning, eyes bleary, stoking embers with the same calm that now felt more like a warning than an invitation. The kind of person who preferred the world orderly and hot and predictable, but ended up stuck as a glorified prison guard to a stranger in a borrowed jacket.

Rome traced his finger along the edge of the writing desk, surprised by the absence of dust. Someone put in effort to keep the place up for a guest who might not last the week, if he’d read the Mistress right. He let his hand drift to the bricked-in window. The mortar was precise, fresh at the seams. It hadn’t been there long enough to gather even the faintest spiderwebs, and he wondered what—or who—had made that particular upgrade necessary.

Then he ran his fingertip over the brickwork—rough, chalky. He wanted to ask about it, the fresh window-cauterization, but couldn’t think of a way to word it that wasn’t deeply pathetic. And anyway, Lorena was already dusting her hands off, turning to face him. He read the question in her stance. What do you want, little man?

Rome dropped his hat on the desk and let out a slow, deliberate exhale. “Guess you’re my jailer, then?” he prompted, voice shaped for banter, but softer than before. He hoped it fell somewhere between charming and lightly desperate, which was honest—starved for novelty, starved for connection, actually just starved in several registers at once.

“You realize,” he said, retrieving his cap from the nightstand and spinning it on his finger, “most people would’ve let the fire go out. You could’ve left me here to freeze as punishment. But you’re a soft touch, under the uniform.” He watched her reaction, chasing after any crack in the armor. “If I promise to be a model prisoner, will you fetch me a warm milk at bedtime? Or is that strictly against the rules?”

He waited, breath held in his smile, to see if she’d join him in the bit or undercut it.

[writtenindarkness]

Watching his finger along the window, Lorena hummed softly. "I'm told that the former Baron met his end out that window," she mused, as if reading his mind. "People say he threw himself from it in grief at the death of their child. The Baroness doesn't speak of it, but she ordered the window sealed after."

Draping herself across one of the chairs, her legs hooked up over one arm of it, Lorena watched him as he explored the room, before a bright laugh left her. "Jailor? Oh no, definitely not. The Baroness is. I'm just here to make sure you get plenty to eat and don't want for anything. For the time being, you're a guest and the Baroness cares deeply about hospitality."

Blonde hair draped back over her shoulder as she rested her head against the back of the chair, watching him with amusement. "If you're going to die, you'll either have done a grave wrong again, or you'll be informed. So at least try to relax and have fun? Isn't it the dream of most boys to be the only one in a castle full of women?"

Her ankles crossed absently as she watched him, looking him over slowly and giving a sly little smile in return. "Do you want to play the part of a prisoner? I feel as though we could have more fun than that."

[kazveria]

Rome smirked, drifting to the edge of the platform beside the canopied bed, feeling the grain of the post under his nail. He glanced back at Lorena, lounging upside-down in the chair with all the composure of a bored aristocrat’s cat. The fire cast a gold blush across her shins, and for a second he thought maybe she was testing him the way security always did: leave the mark just enough rope, see what he’d do with it. 

He stretched his arms overhead, spine popping, then folded himself into the chair opposite her, boots planted wide and elbows riding his knees. “Honestly,” he said, “I don’t think most boys dream about this scenario. They’d be too busy picturing you and the Baroness in matching leather or something. This place, though,” he added, tilting his chin toward the bricked window and the heavy rugs, “you could do a lot worse. If I’m stuck, I’m stuck here.” He looked her up and down with an insolent, hungry little smile. “Especially if I get a good keeper.”

Rome made a show of relaxing—a careful sprawl designed to display surrender while giving him the leverage to spring. He sank lower in the chair, hooked one hand behind his head, and let the other rest open on his thigh. He watched her without blinking, daring her to make the first move. He leaned back slightly, letting his body melt in the chair, flashing her a grin that was both inviting and mischievous. “I could get used to having a beautiful woman at my beck and call. Maybe you could teach me a thing or two about hospitality.”

He tilted his head, studying her with a mix of curiosity and admiration. “I bet you’re full of surprises. What else do you keep hidden behind that charming smile?”

[writtenindarkness]

"She's not much of a leather person. Hey riding boots and gloves are the only leather I've ever seen her in, and I've known her a long time," Lorena hummed thoughtfully. "She's much more silk and satin and lace. I could be persuaded to leather if the situation called for it, though, I suppose. But only the good quality stuff, none of that plastic shit."

Watching him relax, she tilted her head slightly. "But I'm not here to keep you. I can fetch you dinner. Have your clothing cleaned and your bed made. I can draw you a bath and get a fire started to make sure you're warm. Might be convinced to help make sure your bed is nice and warm, too. For hospitality's sake."

Her foot bounced absently in its spot as she thought, chuckling to herself. "But you haven't even told me your name, or whether you prefer bourbon or brandy. I can't just give you all my secrets."

[kazveria]

He rolled the idea around in his mouth like a stolen cherry. It didn’t taste quite like home, but she’d offered it clean and honest, which was more than he usually got out of people. Her legs were bare from the knee down, and he let his gaze linger a little too long, then swept it up to her face. “Rome,” he offered, like it might burn her tongue to hear it. “Most people just call me Rome.” The last name could wait until dawn, if he was even still here. “I’m a bourbon man, but I’ll take whatever you pour.”

He tried a more polite smile, but it snagged on the hook of her suggestion and went crooked almost immediately. “Bed-warming’s a lost art. If you’re volunteering, I’d be a fool to refuse.” He pressed his shoulder blades into the chair’s backrest, letting himself enjoy how the wood flexed with his weight. The fire’s heat made his skin prick and twitch. He wondered if Eastern Europe always did this to a man—left him stripped of his tools, then offered to tuck him in like a child with a fever.

He snorted and let his eyes close, just a second, letting his hand drift along the worn chair arm, thumb tracing out a nervous rhythm. “You always this nice to prisoners, or am I special?” He cracked one eye at her, half-expecting a punchline hidden in her expression. Rome considered standing, but the ache in his knees said no. So he stayed folded into the chair, feeling oddly content to watch her, the way her body floated in the firelight, the way the shadows pooled in her collarbones and along her thighs. She wasn’t subtle, but she didn’t have to be.

He wondered what she was waiting for, his pulse hammering against his throat. A performance? A confession? His body tensed with anticipation, every nerve ending raw and exposed. Whatever game she was playing, he was already burning in it, already drowning.

Or maybe it was just that Rome's body had been running on empty since Bucharest, a month of nights with nothing but his own company.

[kazveria]

The bed looked like the sort of thing you needed a running start to conquer. He almost cracked a joke about it but reconsidered, measuring Lorena’s composure: she looked focused on the fire, feeding it a small log that sent a fresh whiff of resin into the air and made his throat itch. He tried to picture her in the morning, eyes bleary, stoking embers with the same calm that now felt more like a warning than an invitation. The kind of person who preferred the world orderly and hot and predictable, but ended up stuck as a glorified prison guard to a stranger in a borrowed jacket.

Rome traced his finger along the edge of the writing desk, surprised by the absence of dust. Someone put in effort to keep the place up for a guest who might not last the week, if he’d read the Mistress right. He let his hand drift to the bricked-in window. The mortar was precise, fresh at the seams. It hadn’t been there long enough to gather even the faintest spiderwebs, and he wondered what—or who—had made that particular upgrade necessary.

Then he ran his fingertip over the brickwork—rough, chalky. He wanted to ask about it, the fresh window-cauterization, but couldn’t think of a way to word it that wasn’t deeply pathetic. And anyway, Lorena was already dusting her hands off, turning to face him. He read the question in her stance. What do you want, little man?

Rome dropped his hat on the desk and let out a slow, deliberate exhale. “Guess you’re my jailer, then?” he prompted, voice shaped for banter, but softer than before. He hoped it fell somewhere between charming and lightly desperate, which was honest—starved for novelty, starved for connection, actually just starved in several registers at once.

“You realize,” he said, retrieving his cap from the nightstand and spinning it on his finger, “most people would’ve let the fire go out. You could’ve left me here to freeze as punishment. But you’re a soft touch, under the uniform.” He watched her reaction, chasing after any crack in the armor. “If I promise to be a model prisoner, will you fetch me a warm milk at bedtime? Or is that strictly against the rules?”

He waited, breath held in his smile, to see if she’d join him in the bit or undercut it.

[writtenindarkness]

Watching his finger along the window, Lorena hummed softly. "I'm told that the former Baron met his end out that window," she mused, as if reading his mind. "People say he threw himself from it in grief at the death of their child. The Baroness doesn't speak of it, but she ordered the window sealed after."

Draping herself across one of the chairs, her legs hooked up over one arm of it, Lorena watched him as he explored the room, before a bright laugh left her. "Jailor? Oh no, definitely not. The Baroness is. I'm just here to make sure you get plenty to eat and don't want for anything. For the time being, you're a guest and the Baroness cares deeply about hospitality."

Blonde hair draped back over her shoulder as she rested her head against the back of the chair, watching him with amusement. "If you're going to die, you'll either have done a grave wrong again, or you'll be informed. So at least try to relax and have fun? Isn't it the dream of most boys to be the only one in a castle full of women?"

Her ankles crossed absently as she watched him, looking him over slowly and giving a sly little smile in return. "Do you want to play the part of a prisoner? I feel as though we could have more fun than that."

[kazveria]

Rome smirked, drifting to the edge of the platform beside the canopied bed, feeling the grain of the post under his nail. He glanced back at Lorena, lounging upside-down in the chair with all the composure of a bored aristocrat’s cat. The fire cast a gold blush across her shins, and for a second he thought maybe she was testing him the way security always did: leave the mark just enough rope, see what he’d do with it. 

He stretched his arms overhead, spine popping, then folded himself into the chair opposite her, boots planted wide and elbows riding his knees. “Honestly,” he said, “I don’t think most boys dream about this scenario. They’d be too busy picturing you and the Baroness in matching leather or something. This place, though,” he added, tilting his chin toward the bricked window and the heavy rugs, “you could do a lot worse. If I’m stuck, I’m stuck here.” He looked her up and down with an insolent, hungry little smile. “Especially if I get a good keeper.”

Rome made a show of relaxing—a careful sprawl designed to display surrender while giving him the leverage to spring. He sank lower in the chair, hooked one hand behind his head, and let the other rest open on his thigh. He watched her without blinking, daring her to make the first move. He leaned back slightly, letting his body melt in the chair, flashing her a grin that was both inviting and mischievous. “I could get used to having a beautiful woman at my beck and call. Maybe you could teach me a thing or two about hospitality.”

He tilted his head, studying her with a mix of curiosity and admiration. “I bet you’re full of surprises. What else do you keep hidden behind that charming smile?”

[kazveria]

Rome rolled his shoulders, savoring how the tailored jacket pulled across his back.

“Still not sure you people aren’t planning to eat me,” he said, grinning crooked as he ducked his head to follow Lorena. His heart was still bouncing unevenly in his ribcage, unsettled by the last few minutes. If the woman ahead of him noticed, she didn’t let on. Her stride was long and unhurried, just enough pace to let him see the subtle tension in her, the little wariness that told him she was sizing him up more than escorting. He appreciated it, actually. Good security never got lazy. Maybe he’d even sleep a little easier tonight, knowing what caliber of baby monitor he was working with.

He caught up by the landing, boots slapping the stone, and matched her pace without letting the silence pile up. “So, you the welcoming committee, or is this just a one-night gig?” Rome tried for easy. It came out a little sarcastic, but that was habit, not strategy. He couldn’t help it—every time his situation tightened, so did his reflex to crack a joke, even (especially) if it was inappropriate.

[writtenindarkness]

"There's only one person in this castle who might," she answered simply, and whether it was a joke or not was up to interpretation. Helene wouldn't put him in the dungeon, so he was free from that fate; that didn't make him safe from Helene herself, however.

Opening a door led into a room with bordeaux parquet flooring, dark and warm. A fire to one side of the room kept the room warmer still, casting an interesting light on the walls that made the warm yellow-gold limewash almost seem to glitter. The fireplace itself stood in detailed stonework, a mosaic painted but peeling slightly, along the mantle depicting deer running amidst fruit trees.

The rug in front of the fireplace was clearly handmade, old but well-maintained, with undertones of red amidst warm browns and golds. The wood furniture was heavy and sturdy, though the pillows on the chairs had clearly been remade somewhat recently. Off to the side of the fireplace was a door that led into the attached bathroom, but opposite the fireplace was a raised platform that housed a heavy writing desk and large, canopied bed with thick red curtains.

Even the ceiling had its ornate details, panels with touches of goldleaf that glittered in the firelight, in a warm, light brown tone. For everything the room had, paintings and tapestries and rugs and details, it seemed strange that it lacked a window. And indeed, it took some searching to find where it should have been. Instead, it was bricked up.

"I'm afraid you're stuck with me for the time being," Lorena responded as she stepped into the room, crouching by the fire to check on it. The room smelled of sweet wood, remarkably lacking the musty, stale smell of a room without a window. "Not that I mind; we don't get guests for long periods of time very often."

[kazveria]

The bed looked like the sort of thing you needed a running start to conquer. He almost cracked a joke about it but reconsidered, measuring Lorena’s composure: she looked focused on the fire, feeding it a small log that sent a fresh whiff of resin into the air and made his throat itch. He tried to picture her in the morning, eyes bleary, stoking embers with the same calm that now felt more like a warning than an invitation. The kind of person who preferred the world orderly and hot and predictable, but ended up stuck as a glorified prison guard to a stranger in a borrowed jacket.

Rome traced his finger along the edge of the writing desk, surprised by the absence of dust. Someone put in effort to keep the place up for a guest who might not last the week, if he’d read the Mistress right. He let his hand drift to the bricked-in window. The mortar was precise, fresh at the seams. It hadn’t been there long enough to gather even the faintest spiderwebs, and he wondered what—or who—had made that particular upgrade necessary.

Then he ran his fingertip over the brickwork—rough, chalky. He wanted to ask about it, the fresh window-cauterization, but couldn’t think of a way to word it that wasn’t deeply pathetic. And anyway, Lorena was already dusting her hands off, turning to face him. He read the question in her stance. What do you want, little man?

Rome dropped his hat on the desk and let out a slow, deliberate exhale. “Guess you’re my jailer, then?” he prompted, voice shaped for banter, but softer than before. He hoped it fell somewhere between charming and lightly desperate, which was honest—starved for novelty, starved for connection, actually just starved in several registers at once.

“You realize,” he said, retrieving his cap from the nightstand and spinning it on his finger, “most people would’ve let the fire go out. You could’ve left me here to freeze as punishment. But you’re a soft touch, under the uniform.” He watched her reaction, chasing after any crack in the armor. “If I promise to be a model prisoner, will you fetch me a warm milk at bedtime? Or is that strictly against the rules?”

He waited, breath held in his smile, to see if she’d join him in the bit or undercut it.

[kazveria]

He waited for the rest of the verdict, bracing for some snark or a test, but the quiet praise clubbed him right in the chest. The words didn’t have a sting, but the even tone and the lack of overplay made his insides tip sideways. Good boy. That was supposed to be a leash, but it fit more like a medal—hard and dangerous to touch, but heavier than he liked to admit.

He yanked the rest of his hair through the back of the cap, twisting it backwards, because if he was going to look like an idiot, he might as well own it. She could bring in her army of domestics and whatever else, but if he had to be ornamental, fine. He’d be a peacock, or a scarecrow, or whatever role open casting called for.

The “Lorena” part, though. That tripped some new wire in his brain, and he chewed at it as he adjusted the collar of his shirt. The blonde from the hallway—taller, lively, sharp around the edges. They’d made a point of letting her have a look without breaking the conversation. Was she to be his babysitter? Handler? Which in itself wasn’t a deterrent. Rome ran the palm of his hand along one thigh, grounding himself in the ache and the rough fabric, listening for footsteps or the movement of shadows in the drafty silence outside the door. He toyed with the word “assigned,” weighed it in his mind. It could mean surveillance, a velvet-gloved warden, but it could also mean company. Possibility. Maybe even entertainment, in a place that so far offered little besides cold tile and the simmering threat of being totally outmaneuvered.

He’d been in worse situations. Technically, he still was, but the prospect of being locked up—pampered, even—by someone like Lorena wasn’t the worst card in the deck. His last “date” had left him in a San Francisco stairwell with a half-bottle of gin and a thumb drive full of useless secrets. That was a different kind of confinement, lonelier, quieter, and it hadn’t come with a view.

“Fair enough,” Rome said with a grin.

[writtenindarkness]

There was some disappointment in her features as he donned his hat, though it was more the disappointment and distaste of a mother than anything else as she simply sighed, turning away again.

"As long as we have an understanding."

There was little more she had to say than that, the door opening a moment later for the blonde in question, Lorena, stepped into the room, looking Rome over for a long moment and slowly raising her eyebrows at his attire, but remaining silent until she was spoken to. "Please take our guest to his room," Helene stated simply, making her way back to the seat by the fire and sitting down without looking at either of them again. "Yes, milady," Lorena responded, her words in English in response to Helene's choice of language. She gave a little curtsey to the Baroness despite that Helene couldn't see it, before she straightened and offered Rome a smile. "Shall we?" Turning away, she made her way back into the hallway, turning on a light there to make her way slowly up the stone staircase towards the room she'd already prepared. "You caused a fuss, you know. I'm surprised you're still walking around on your own two legs."

[kazveria]

Rome rolled his shoulders, savoring how the tailored jacket pulled across his back.

“Still not sure you people aren’t planning to eat me,” he said, grinning crooked as he ducked his head to follow Lorena. His heart was still bouncing unevenly in his ribcage, unsettled by the last few minutes. If the woman ahead of him noticed, she didn’t let on. Her stride was long and unhurried, just enough pace to let him see the subtle tension in her, the little wariness that told him she was sizing him up more than escorting. He appreciated it, actually. Good security never got lazy. Maybe he’d even sleep a little easier tonight, knowing what caliber of baby monitor he was working with.

He caught up by the landing, boots slapping the stone, and matched her pace without letting the silence pile up. “So, you the welcoming committee, or is this just a one-night gig?” Rome tried for easy. It came out a little sarcastic, but that was habit, not strategy. He couldn’t help it—every time his situation tightened, so did his reflex to crack a joke, even (especially) if it was inappropriate.

[kazveria]

Emil's vision blurred at the edges, colors leaching out to a pulse at the center of his skull. Everything else folded into a single, overwhelming afterimage: Maya shivering atop him, sweat trickling from her jaw to curve along her collarbone, her eyes gone heavy and soft as she laughed up into the ceiling. The blood in his neck pounded so hard, he wasn't convinced it wasn't hers, transferred through the bite she'd left just above his collar.

He tried for words, but his tongue was thick with the salt of her skin; the first attempt came out as a hoarse laugh, barely enough to move the air between them. He flipped his arm up over his head, palm covering his face, and basked in the afterglow with mindless, doglike gratitude. Her voice washed over him, the compliment landing in the center of his chest and hit something deep. He turned his head to the side, watching a bead of sweat roll down his arm onto the bedsheet, and grinned, the wire-edged embarrassment sweet instead of sharp for once.

“Crime of opportunity. I move every year or so and don’t leave a forwarding address,” he muttered, still a little wrecked, breath scraped raw. “It keeps the lawsuits and marriage proposals to a manageable trickle.”

He turned onto his side to face her, eyes running along her silhouette—hair stuck to her forehead, bloom of red at her throat, the elaborate jewelry askew on one ear. He felt the strip of lamp-yellow on her skin, the scent of her smeared all over his face, and wondered if he would ever want to get out of this bed again.

She looked so alive it stung. He wanted to memorize it, but he was afraid if he stared too long he’d say something so earnest it’d ruin the flavor of the night. Instead he bit the inside of his cheek and grinned guiltlessly. “If you want to file charges, though, I’ll give you my real address,” he offered. “Or at least the burner phone number.”

His body felt hollowed out, but in the manner of a cathedral after the bells stopped ringing—space echoing with something holy and nervous and brand new. He let his breath slow, following Maya’s gaze into the blank white ceiling, half-listening to the tick of the bedside clock and the little sizzle of static from the lamp’s tired bulb.

He lay there in the hush, letting the world return in increments. Pulse. Lamp. The slow drag of hotel air against his skin. Emil shifted back onto his elbows, propping himself upright, and watched Maya from the edge of the bed. Her breathing had evened out, but her limbs were sprawled in wild abandon, hair a static halo across the pillow. The sight called up a feeling like gravity: sweetness and ache, the urge to hold, to fix, to catalog every new bruise and mark she'd left on his body.

"I'm going to shower," he said, his voice still rough. He stood, peeling the condom off with a grimace, tying it quickly. He turned back to her, extending his hand with a soft smile. "Come with me?" The invitation surprised him—not the wanting, but the asking. He imagined her hair darkened and dripping, her skin slick under his palms, steam rising between them. "The water pressure is surprisingly good for a hotel."

[writtenindarkness]

"Lawsuits, burner phones, moving over and over," she tsked quietly, watching him with a clear sparkle in her eyes of mirth. "I'm starting to wonder if you have bigger secrets than a secret wife," she laughed before relaxing back into her spot, stretching her legs and toes out. "Am I supposed to send you salacious pictures to a burner phone?"

Closing her eyes for a moment, Maya smiled to herself nevertheless. He'd expressed enough that she had questions, but also it was hard to say how much a joke covered the truth. They'd only just met, after all, who knew if Emil was everything he presented himself as?

She was content to relax there for a time, though as Emil moved she opened her eyes again and looked at the hand presented to her with a hum. Taking it, she pulled herself to her feet. "Well, I probably shouldn't lay around just letting myself get crusty, I suppose. Lucky you, I don't usually let a guy see me without make-up for at least six dates."

[kazveria]

Emil watched as Maya got up, tattoos warping along her skin. The languor in her movements drew a line of heat down his spine. He squeezed her hand, thumb wrapping around her knuckles, then led her toward the bathroom. The air in the suite hung heavy with the musk of sex and sweat, the dying topnote of incense barely covering the sharper notes—a tangle of bodies, friction, salt.

In the bathroom, porcelain tiles checkered black and off-white, where Emil guided Maya toward the shower. "Let me," he murmured, reaching past her to start the water. He watched her face as steam began to rise, his attention never leaving her even as he adjusted the temperature.

His lips curved slightly upward. "I was only joking earlier," he clarified, voice softening. "About the addresses and burner phones."

The truth was, Emil wanted nothing more than to take Maya out on an earnest, old-world date—one in which he’d have the privacy to study her under better lighting, watch her finger the menu and make her little delighted huff when the server poured the wine wrong. He wanted her number. Not saved under some encrypted emoji code, not in a vanishing direct message, but with her actual name and a picture of her eating noodles. He wanted to text her first thing in the morning and last thing at night, wanted to know when she was free for him, when he could claim a slice of her day that wasn’t owed to the rest of the city.

But what would he even say to her, after a week, a month? “Hey, let’s check out that tiny Burmese spot in Berkeley, and also, by the way, I may or may not be analyzing synthetic pheromone compounds for a secretive research wing buried deep within a sprawling underground complex.” There wasn’t a non-deranged way to phrase it, not now, not with how much of his workday was devoted to lying, sometimes so exquisitely that he couldn’t tell which parts of himself were the mask and which were the man. Even when he wasn’t on the clock, the habit tugged at him, sneakier than self-preservation, a low hum of “what am I forgetting to hide.”

But he wanted to try. Just for a minute.

Emil reached for Maya’s face—her makeup his problem now, her mouth his territory. He tilted her chin with his thumb, kissing her with none of the previous hunger; this was gentle, exploratory, a press of lips and the faintest scrape of his teeth, tasting her smile along the seam.

He untangled their mouths only to brush his nose along the line of her jaw, then rested his forehead against the temple of hers. The steam carried her scent—salt and white musk, the aftersmoke of burnt vanilla. He inhaled, feeling his own shoulders loosen, the tension in his hands replaced by something softer. He didn’t know how to articulate it beyond holding her there: the simple rightness of their skin sliding together, of her arms twined at the small of his back, of her chest tight to his and anything outside the radius of her body rendered entirely irrelevant.

[kazveria]

Max let the words settle against him, cool and abrasive as ceramic grit. His knuckles whitened against the plinth, bone and tendon rising sharp beneath the unscarred skin. It was unclear which of them had set the rules for this encounter—every part of it felt primed, scripted, a dance he’d failed to learn even after all the repetition. The shape of this place, the scraped-back light, the constriction in his chest, all of it argued for a kind of staged reconciliation. He wondered if the script wanted an outburst. Or forgiveness. Or a performance of moving on.

“You exist,” he said finally, picking at the edge of the display with his thumbnail, relishing the pain. “The way certain objects exist even after they’re broken. They become reference points, you know? No matter how you arrange the pieces, some part of the old structure stays. If you try to remove a fragment, everything else shifts. Sometimes it falls apart completely.”

He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the artifacts or his own insides. “That’s why you stabilize things in situ. Sometimes you just… leave the damage.” He forced himself to look at Sasha’s face. The details resolved with unnecessary precision: the junction of jaw to neck, the way the hair darkened above the lobe, the thread of sweat at the temple. Max wanted to smash the artifacts and spike the sherds into Sasha’s lap, but it would have been a performance, and he’d spent too long surviving performance. What he wanted was to stop the replay, or at least slow it down.

“I tried to get rid of you, you know,” he said, softer. “Packed up everything—that time, that house, the files, your coat, the way you spelled color without the u—threw it out, donated, incinerated. None of it worked. You never left the house, you just shifted rooms. Kitchen to basement, living room to bedroom closet.” He swallowed, folding his arms to hide the tremble in his hands. “Someone told me once that trauma’s like a cat. You can tape its paws, lock it in the shed, but it’ll find the warmest place, burrow in, and when you’re not paying attention it’ll rub up against your throat at night.”

[writtenindarkness]

"Don't be a child." The words snapped out with all the weight of an anvil, and as the dreamer sunk to the ground the dream unravelled in ways. He was smaller. For a moment the smell of old carpet and cedar seemed to fill the air, different entirely from the musk of the museum. Nostalgia that wasn't Cal's.

"Lie to yourself, if it makes you feel better, but don't lie to me. I want no part in your delusions. Am I supposed to step back into your life as a memory? As this memory? As this man who abandoned you?"

It shifted in the way that only dreams did, disorienting if Cal was any less familiar with it. Instead, it spoke in silence. The surroundings may as well have been gaussian, a movie that had blurred the background to such extremes that only the twinkling of light had any meaning. The warm press of bodies—him and the dreamer, tangled in a dance that felt off-puttingly aristocratic, and at odds. There was a knife at the dreamer's back, though Cal couldn't be certain if Sasha was holding it, or something else. A shadow beyond the veil of gauze.

The shift took time to process and assess. "Is this what you're waiting for?"

[kazveria]

Max did not answer, not at first. The background of the room was melting, curling at the edges as if the projector bulb had started to cook its own celluloid.

He felt himself dividing, one part gawking at the pageant of the dream while another folded in deeper, refusing the shimmer, focusing on the pain in his knees, the cut on his thumb, the way Sasha’s cuff couldn’t quite contain the narrow flash of wrist. He guessed that was the point of all this, the reason memory got so ornate: some details you keep, some details keep.

The knife was there, all right—he could feel it. A prop, maybe, or maybe not. Maybe it had always been there, and he’d simply been too tired to remember the danger.

He didn’t flinch. That was the thing. He wanted to; old muscle memory said freeze, or acquiesce, or some other dog-trick. But the bones inside him were wrong; the dream wouldn’t let him cower.

“I know what I want,” Max said. “That was never the problem.” It cost something to say it—he felt the weight shift in the room, Sasha’s shadow growing heavier, denser, coiling itself around the exposed parts of his mind. “What I want is for you to be the person I needed. The one you almost were. The one who said sorry and meant it, even if it was for show, even if you didn’t mean the words, because maybe that would have been enough.”

The air coagulated, thickening like quicksand. The blurred crowd in the wings—curators, lovers, indifferent strangers—vanished, leaving only the two of them in the dimly-lit void.

A damp, animal noise filled the space. Max realized it was his own breath.

Max's voice cracked. "I love you. I need you." His hands trembled at his sides, fingers curling into fists then releasing, over and over.

[kazveria]

Max let the words settle against him, cool and abrasive as ceramic grit. His knuckles whitened against the plinth, bone and tendon rising sharp beneath the unscarred skin. It was unclear which of them had set the rules for this encounter—every part of it felt primed, scripted, a dance he’d failed to learn even after all the repetition. The shape of this place, the scraped-back light, the constriction in his chest, all of it argued for a kind of staged reconciliation. He wondered if the script wanted an outburst. Or forgiveness. Or a performance of moving on.

“You exist,” he said finally, picking at the edge of the display with his thumbnail, relishing the pain. “The way certain objects exist even after they’re broken. They become reference points, you know? No matter how you arrange the pieces, some part of the old structure stays. If you try to remove a fragment, everything else shifts. Sometimes it falls apart completely.”

He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the artifacts or his own insides. “That’s why you stabilize things in situ. Sometimes you just… leave the damage.” He forced himself to look at Sasha’s face. The details resolved with unnecessary precision: the junction of jaw to neck, the way the hair darkened above the lobe, the thread of sweat at the temple. Max wanted to smash the artifacts and spike the sherds into Sasha’s lap, but it would have been a performance, and he’d spent too long surviving performance. What he wanted was to stop the replay, or at least slow it down.

“I tried to get rid of you, you know,” he said, softer. “Packed up everything—that time, that house, the files, your coat, the way you spelled color without the u—threw it out, donated, incinerated. None of it worked. You never left the house, you just shifted rooms. Kitchen to basement, living room to bedroom closet.” He swallowed, folding his arms to hide the tremble in his hands. “Someone told me once that trauma’s like a cat. You can tape its paws, lock it in the shed, but it’ll find the warmest place, burrow in, and when you’re not paying attention it’ll rub up against your throat at night.”

[writtenindarkness]

"That's how memories work," he responded, kicking his legs down from the sprawl he'd been in to sit up. "They don't just disappear. You can't just pack them away. You have to live with them. You have to accept them. They'll stay there until you move on. But you don't want to move on. Not really. You want to cling to the past. To me. To what was."

His hand gestured broadly to indicate the room they were in. "You want to cling to all manner of the past. Surround yourself with it. Give meaning to it. You choose not to face the future because you're afraid of what you might find there. There's safety in what was, there's no security in what could be. And so here we are again. Around and around we go, with you lying to yourself about what you want."

Leaning back in the seat, Cal's distaste for how what he meant came out didn't show, but it sat heavily with him anyway. "Because you aren't trying to lock the cat out. Not really. You're waking every morning hoping that it will be there, warm and safe at your throat. Familiar."

[kazveria]

Max laughed, softly at first, then louder when he heard how hollow it came out. “I don’t want you back.” The words snapped from him, brittle as mica, but the force behind them was already gone. He looked at his hands again, like maybe they’d default back to the proper, ruined version if he stared long enough. A fragment of blood welled up where he’d picked at the sherd, blooming slow and perfect. He pressed his thumb hard against it, hissed quietly between his teeth.

He let himself spin apart for a moment. So what if Sasha was right? So what if all this caution and containment was a farce, if the whole running loop was predicated on his own sick longing for the familiar, even when the familiar was the problem? He tried to scrape up anger, something tidy and weaponized, but all he found was the drag of old inertia, the ache of absence gone calcified and hollow.

He let go of the plinth. Took a step closer to Sasha, closing the space that existed only to be crossed. The thick fugue of the dream dulled the edges of the world; he could hear his own pulse, see the shimmer of sweat crowding his hairline.

Max stopped three paces out. There was no plan, only a ragged thicket of need and uncertainty. Reach for Sasha, and risk humiliation—risk confirmation that nothing in this room could be touched. Hold back, and keep the ache whole and unspoiled, something private to turn over in sleepless hours. The pressure in Max’s chest grew white-hot, a pulse that had nowhere to travel but out.

He said, “I wanted to hate you.” The words came out gray and exhausted, not even making it halfway to accusation. He tried again, quieter, more honest. “I did.” His arms folded, then unfolded. “But you just…” He lost the thread, jaw working as if he could chew the memory into something digestible. He looked away, but Sasha’s outline burned crisp in his peripheral vision, a constant.

He lowered himself to his knees, slowly, like a building giving way to gravity. His hands found purchase on his thighs, trembling slightly as he sagged forward. The museum air—once rich with varnish, ancient glue, the pithy rot of paper—seemed to retreat from him in waves, as if ashamed to witness such surrender. All that remained in Max's mouth was the taste of blood, heat, and something chemical and dry that coated his tongue like chalk.

He tilted his head slightly. "What took you so long?" The question hung between them, both accusation and invitation.

[kazveria]

FIELD NOTE — •

On a Dream That Would Not Stay Whole

@writtenindarkness

Max walked into the dream already lost.

He knew it, knew before he looked down and saw his hands: smooth, unscarred, the thumbnail unbitten, the knuckle of the ring finger fixed and normal and not bearing that pitted ridge of old fracture. His body ran decades behind his mind, and he let it, because the rules here belonged to memory and not the world.

The light was the first wrongness—dawn-bright and the wrong color, like sunlight diluted with cold peach nectar. The space unfurled around him, familiar and too precise: vaulting ceilings, recessed fixtures that guttered out cones of antique yellow, vitrines spaced at respectful intervals on a herringbone floor. The kind of place built to preserve and not disturb. He walked, or dreamt he walked, past a pale wood table splayed with loose fragments—bits of glazed pot, a scatter of bone dice, a small bronze hand with two missing fingers. Their order belonged to someone else’s idea of time, and moving among them felt holy, as if touching anything might shatter the fragile equilibrium.

He reached out anyway and let two fingertips rest on a ceramic sherd, cold and slick with dust. A current ran up his arm: scent of blood under clay, sun warming his nape on the backs of his arms. For half a second the sherd’s pressure drew blood; he set it down trembling.

A movement to his left—he looked, already knowing. Sasha sat on a lounge chair beneath a window paneled in stained glass. The light, that honeyed peach distillate, pinned Sasha in silhouette, face picked out in fine, sharp planes, eyes pale as the underbelly of a moth. He wore a shade of blue so gray it bled into the shadows, suit coat flung open as if in a sneer at protocol, pale wrist angled over the armrest. Nothing about him had changed, or everything had; Max could not trust anything in this room to obey logic.

He tried to say Sasha’s name, but the air left him in a threadbare sigh. Sasha did not look up. He thumbed an invisible crease on the upholstery, fingers long and methodical, watching some far-off abstraction in the crown molding overhead. Max imagined he could follow Sasha’s line of sight and see the same ghost, but all he found was the dense static of his own memory: so many years gone, none of the scaffolding left.

He felt his knees refuse, so he stooped, bracing himself against the lip of a low display plinth, not to faint or fall but to keep from crossing the distance. This, too, was familiar—the exacting violence of restraint.

[writtenindarkness]

There was a difference between dreams like this and others; when he occupied a position that was identifiable there was a cage around him, a limit to his freedom. His movements, mannerisms, and even his speech could be limited by a dreamer with specific familiarity. In this case, the dreamer clearly knew Sasha too well for Cal to override the dreams. He was trapped, in a way.

Trapped being this person until the dreamer loosened his focus.

It meant his curiousity came out differently. His tone came out differently. The words themselves came out differently.

"How many times did I leave and come back? But the one time you left... Am I really the one who left?" His question came with more knowledge than Cal had, imposed by the dreamer. He'd meant to ask how he'd left. He'd meant to ask in what way the dreamer meant to keep him here. That wasn't how the words came out.

Instead there was a taunting tone that made Cal rather dislike the person he was meant to be. "How do you plan to keep me here? All these old memories and broken relics, is this the place I occupy for you?"

[kazveria]

Max let the words settle against him, cool and abrasive as ceramic grit. His knuckles whitened against the plinth, bone and tendon rising sharp beneath the unscarred skin. It was unclear which of them had set the rules for this encounter—every part of it felt primed, scripted, a dance he’d failed to learn even after all the repetition. The shape of this place, the scraped-back light, the constriction in his chest, all of it argued for a kind of staged reconciliation. He wondered if the script wanted an outburst. Or forgiveness. Or a performance of moving on.

“You exist,” he said finally, picking at the edge of the display with his thumbnail, relishing the pain. “The way certain objects exist even after they’re broken. They become reference points, you know? No matter how you arrange the pieces, some part of the old structure stays. If you try to remove a fragment, everything else shifts. Sometimes it falls apart completely.”

He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the artifacts or his own insides. “That’s why you stabilize things in situ. Sometimes you just… leave the damage.” He forced himself to look at Sasha’s face. The details resolved with unnecessary precision: the junction of jaw to neck, the way the hair darkened above the lobe, the thread of sweat at the temple. Max wanted to smash the artifacts and spike the sherds into Sasha’s lap, but it would have been a performance, and he’d spent too long surviving performance. What he wanted was to stop the replay, or at least slow it down.

“I tried to get rid of you, you know,” he said, softer. “Packed up everything—that time, that house, the files, your coat, the way you spelled color without the u—threw it out, donated, incinerated. None of it worked. You never left the house, you just shifted rooms. Kitchen to basement, living room to bedroom closet.” He swallowed, folding his arms to hide the tremble in his hands. “Someone told me once that trauma’s like a cat. You can tape its paws, lock it in the shed, but it’ll find the warmest place, burrow in, and when you’re not paying attention it’ll rub up against your throat at night.”

[kazveria]

FIELD NOTE — •

On a Dream That Would Not Stay Whole

@writtenindarkness

Max walked into the dream already lost.

He knew it, knew before he looked down and saw his hands: smooth, unscarred, the thumbnail unbitten, the knuckle of the ring finger fixed and normal and not bearing that pitted ridge of old fracture. His body ran decades behind his mind, and he let it, because the rules here belonged to memory and not the world.

The light was the first wrongness—dawn-bright and the wrong color, like sunlight diluted with cold peach nectar. The space unfurled around him, familiar and too precise: vaulting ceilings, recessed fixtures that guttered out cones of antique yellow, vitrines spaced at respectful intervals on a herringbone floor. The kind of place built to preserve and not disturb. He walked, or dreamt he walked, past a pale wood table splayed with loose fragments—bits of glazed pot, a scatter of bone dice, a small bronze hand with two missing fingers. Their order belonged to someone else’s idea of time, and moving among them felt holy, as if touching anything might shatter the fragile equilibrium.

He reached out anyway and let two fingertips rest on a ceramic sherd, cold and slick with dust. A current ran up his arm: scent of blood under clay, sun warming his nape on the backs of his arms. For half a second the sherd’s pressure drew blood; he set it down trembling.

A movement to his left—he looked, already knowing. Sasha sat on a lounge chair beneath a window paneled in stained glass. The light, that honeyed peach distillate, pinned Sasha in silhouette, face picked out in fine, sharp planes, eyes pale as the underbelly of a moth. He wore a shade of blue so gray it bled into the shadows, suit coat flung open as if in a sneer at protocol, pale wrist angled over the armrest. Nothing about him had changed, or everything had; Max could not trust anything in this room to obey logic.

He tried to say Sasha’s name, but the air left him in a threadbare sigh. Sasha did not look up. He thumbed an invisible crease on the upholstery, fingers long and methodical, watching some far-off abstraction in the crown molding overhead. Max imagined he could follow Sasha’s line of sight and see the same ghost, but all he found was the dense static of his own memory: so many years gone, none of the scaffolding left.

He felt his knees refuse, so he stooped, bracing himself against the lip of a low display plinth, not to faint or fall but to keep from crossing the distance. This, too, was familiar—the exacting violence of restraint.

[writtenindarkness]

Waking, or dreaming, was always a different experience. Tonight took as much time as any other: identify the dreamer—male, braced as though in unease. His face was indistinct, though he had a certain awareness of himself that at once fluctuated between youth and adulthood, as though fighting with a memory that was at odds with reality, a part of him grasping at lucidity though something emotional refused it.

Identify herself—male, himself then. It took a moment, unspoken and yet said: Sasha. Cal examined himself carefully, taking in the perception of who he was now. In ways he was too large. Too tall. Skewed, likely by the same influence that left the dreamer at odds with his age. It was an interesting feeling to endure, though not new. Commonly it occurred with dreams between parents and children, and so a part of him suspected, at first, that was what he was in this dream: a parent. But something still sat strangely about that concept.

Maybe it was the other details. The details of his body. Someone who spent too long watching him. A crush? An older lover, perhaps? A source of attention and curiousity for the dreamer, at least. But also something else. Something spoken of in his posture. Unease. Uncertainty. Surprise, perhaps.

Identifying the surroundings was more complex. It felt like some kind of museum. Beautiful, but broken in some way. Unfamiliar to Cal, but not to the dreamer.

Rather than speaking, he looked the dreamer over carefully, before reaching out a hand in offering. The dreamer was, after all, bleeding. "Are you going to stand there and bleed, like some frightened fawn?"

[kazveria]

Max looked at the hand for a long moment, half-expecting it to flicker, blur, or otherwise blink out under scrutiny. It didn’t. The dream’s logic rendered every vein and whorled joint with obsessive fidelity. The fingers curled just enough to suggest certainty about the outcome, like Sasha knew he’d take it, like he always knew.

Max wiped the pad of his thumb against his thigh, not wanting to check for blood, then reached out—not for the hand, but the armrest. He leaned in, scanning Sasha’s face for some mnemonic flaw, a stray hair out of place, a warmth to the eye that shouldn’t be there.

“I’m not bleeding,” Max said, but his voice cracked on the last word. He tried to catch his reflection in the glass, but the light was wrong for it. “It’s just—” he gestured at the display, at the fractured ceramics and bone, wanting to say something clever about how maybe everything here was broken, maybe it was all ornamental, but the words ran out before he got there. He let his hand hover in the drift, neither retreating nor closing the span between them.

Max half wanted Sasha to make the decision for him. Always made him do the work—like it was a test, or a lesson, or just boredom, just the pleasure of watching him flounder. The only way out was through. "You're not going to leave again," Max said. He worked hard to keep the question out, but it quivered in his mouth. "Not this time."

[kazveria]

FIELD NOTE — •

On a Dream That Would Not Stay Whole

@writtenindarkness

Max walked into the dream already lost.

He knew it, knew before he looked down and saw his hands: smooth, unscarred, the thumbnail unbitten, the knuckle of the ring finger fixed and normal and not bearing that pitted ridge of old fracture. His body ran decades behind his mind, and he let it, because the rules here belonged to memory and not the world.

The light was the first wrongness—dawn-bright and the wrong color, like sunlight diluted with cold peach nectar. The space unfurled around him, familiar and too precise: vaulting ceilings, recessed fixtures that guttered out cones of antique yellow, vitrines spaced at respectful intervals on a herringbone floor. The kind of place built to preserve and not disturb. He walked, or dreamt he walked, past a pale wood table splayed with loose fragments—bits of glazed pot, a scatter of bone dice, a small bronze hand with two missing fingers. Their order belonged to someone else’s idea of time, and moving among them felt holy, as if touching anything might shatter the fragile equilibrium.

He reached out anyway and let two fingertips rest on a ceramic sherd, cold and slick with dust. A current ran up his arm: scent of blood under clay, sun warming his nape on the backs of his arms. For half a second the sherd’s pressure drew blood; he set it down trembling.

A movement to his left—he looked, already knowing. Sasha sat on a lounge chair beneath a window paneled in stained glass. The light, that honeyed peach distillate, pinned Sasha in silhouette, face picked out in fine, sharp planes, eyes pale as the underbelly of a moth. He wore a shade of blue so gray it bled into the shadows, suit coat flung open as if in a sneer at protocol, pale wrist angled over the armrest. Nothing about him had changed, or everything had; Max could not trust anything in this room to obey logic.

He tried to say Sasha’s name, but the air left him in a threadbare sigh. Sasha did not look up. He thumbed an invisible crease on the upholstery, fingers long and methodical, watching some far-off abstraction in the crown molding overhead. Max imagined he could follow Sasha’s line of sight and see the same ghost, but all he found was the dense static of his own memory: so many years gone, none of the scaffolding left.

He felt his knees refuse, so he stooped, bracing himself against the lip of a low display plinth, not to faint or fall but to keep from crossing the distance. This, too, was familiar—the exacting violence of restraint.

[kazveria]

Emil held fast to her with both hands, not trusting himself not to shake apart under the pressure of her cunt rippling around him. Every move she made felt like a drag against open nerve—his skin was too alive, his breath impossible to keep steady. She rode him with a hunger that set his own animal brain alight, her tattooed thighs a vice, her sweat-slicked chest flushed above him. Her hair fanned over her face, hiding her expression for a second, but he could feel the grin, sense the pleasure that built with every grind. The sound of their bodies together—wet, shameless, relentless—made him want to last, to slow down, but his hips rutted up of their own accord, greedy for more.

She said she wanted him deeper and something in his spine snapped electric. Emil sat up, hauling her toward him, her knees bracketing his hips on the mattress as his dick bottomed out inside her. She was so hot around him it made his head spin. He buried his face in her shoulder, jaw tight, fighting the surge with every ounce of will. The friction, the relentless squeeze, the way her muscles clasped him with every downward stroke—it was too much, too soon, but he wasn’t about to tap out. Not when she wanted more.

He dug his heels into the mattress and thrust from underneath, punching up, their bodies colliding with a messy slap that drew a hoarse, shocked noise from him. Every nerve ending seemed routed through the place where their bodies met. He thought he could hold off, that maybe he could outlast her, but the sensation built with frightening speed—each motion stripped him to raw need.

He needed her to know she’d done him in. “I’m gonna come—” he choked, but he pressure built, unbearable, every clench of her body driving him closer. 

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down hard onto his cock, locking her against him so he could feel every tiny spasm and grind. Emil couldn't hold back anymore—the sensation overtook him, and with a strangled groan, he buried his face against her neck and came hard, the release so blistering it left his hands and feet tingling. 

He pulsed for what felt like minutes, riding out every last electric jolt, his body wound tight against hers, hips snapping up in involuntary aftershocks. 

[writtenindarkness]

She outlasted him, but truly it wasn't by much. Her nails clawed into his back slightly as she held him closer, her breaths becoming hiccupped moans with the force of connecting with him, and as he spoke she tucked her head into the crook of his neck, momentarily forgetting his early askance in her pleasure.

"Do it. Come for me," Maya cooed just below his ear, breathless and shuddering. It was his noises more than anything that told her, those and the sharp shift of his hips and the tension of his body. Her teeth caught down on his neck as she groaned in response, a third orgasm wracking her body without much ceremony. Between the two of them she was more than certain she'd made the biggest mess, but she couldn't be bothered to care.

Her hair was a disaster, her chest heaving, and her body shuddering with the contrast of heat and cold, cool air on a sweat-slick body juxtaposed with the warmth between their chests. Each of his sharp thrusts up against her earned another low noise, stifled against his neck by her teeth fixing there.

It took her a little bit of time to settle enough to release his neck and slowly remove her nails from his back. She was mostly certain the wetness was sweat and not blood, but for a good few moments she was certain she'd clung to him for dear life. Even in sitting back slightly, however, it didn't stop her from leaning in to kiss him, light, gentle, chaste and breathless. Enough space to let him breathe. And then, she slowly removed herself from his lap, flopping over onto her back to catch her breath, the back of her fingers brushing along his hips.

"... how are you not married. I feel like I've done something illegal," she laughed quietly to herself, rubbing her face and brushing her hair back to stare at the ceiling. She glanced over at him. "Not that I'm complaining but how has someone not made sure you couldn't get away...?"

[kazveria]

Emil's vision blurred at the edges, colors leaching out to a pulse at the center of his skull. Everything else folded into a single, overwhelming afterimage: Maya shivering atop him, sweat trickling from her jaw to curve along her collarbone, her eyes gone heavy and soft as she laughed up into the ceiling. The blood in his neck pounded so hard, he wasn't convinced it wasn't hers, transferred through the bite she'd left just above his collar.

He tried for words, but his tongue was thick with the salt of her skin; the first attempt came out as a hoarse laugh, barely enough to move the air between them. He flipped his arm up over his head, palm covering his face, and basked in the afterglow with mindless, doglike gratitude. Her voice washed over him, the compliment landing in the center of his chest and hit something deep. He turned his head to the side, watching a bead of sweat roll down his arm onto the bedsheet, and grinned, the wire-edged embarrassment sweet instead of sharp for once.

“Crime of opportunity. I move every year or so and don’t leave a forwarding address,” he muttered, still a little wrecked, breath scraped raw. “It keeps the lawsuits and marriage proposals to a manageable trickle.”

He turned onto his side to face her, eyes running along her silhouette—hair stuck to her forehead, bloom of red at her throat, the elaborate jewelry askew on one ear. He felt the strip of lamp-yellow on her skin, the scent of her smeared all over his face, and wondered if he would ever want to get out of this bed again.

She looked so alive it stung. He wanted to memorize it, but he was afraid if he stared too long he’d say something so earnest it’d ruin the flavor of the night. Instead he bit the inside of his cheek and grinned guiltlessly. “If you want to file charges, though, I’ll give you my real address,” he offered. “Or at least the burner phone number.”

His body felt hollowed out, but in the manner of a cathedral after the bells stopped ringing—space echoing with something holy and nervous and brand new. He let his breath slow, following Maya’s gaze into the blank white ceiling, half-listening to the tick of the bedside clock and the little sizzle of static from the lamp’s tired bulb.

He lay there in the hush, letting the world return in increments. Pulse. Lamp. The slow drag of hotel air against his skin. Emil shifted back onto his elbows, propping himself upright, and watched Maya from the edge of the bed. Her breathing had evened out, but her limbs were sprawled in wild abandon, hair a static halo across the pillow. The sight called up a feeling like gravity: sweetness and ache, the urge to hold, to fix, to catalog every new bruise and mark she'd left on his body.

"I'm going to shower," he said, his voice still rough. He stood, peeling the condom off with a grimace, tying it quickly. He turned back to her, extending his hand with a soft smile. "Come with me?" The invitation surprised him—not the wanting, but the asking. He imagined her hair darkened and dripping, her skin slick under his palms, steam rising between them. "The water pressure is surprisingly good for a hotel."