Chapter 2 #3
The air between us stops moving, his chest stops heaving.
Narrating human beings (and not-so-human beings) means I am very good at the moments people try not to have, and this man, who is very controlled in almost every situation I’ve put him in, is trying very hard to remain that way.
But it’s the split second before the mask locks back on, when the actual person is involuntarily visible. And I just know it makes him furious.
“That,” he says, “is none of your business.” I see the thought moving through his jaw, a tightening, a grinding of his back teeth and small adjustment like he’s absorbing a hit and choosing not to show it.
I shake away the momentary hesitation that I could have actually hurt his feelings, because at this point, fuck him.
“Good.”
He fills the doorway in a way that doesn't happen when he’s fully dressed.
When he’s clothed, suited, he’s contained.
He’s organized into something that comes across as powerful, but manageable.
Without them he's just… larger, somehow. It’s like the tailoring of any clothing has been performing structural function, and without it, the full scale of him is visible.
The air between us shifts like it always does when we get to this part of the argument, the cigarette-after-sex part, where the banter runs out (for now) and something underneath it surfaces for just long enough to be embarrassing.
My eyes accidentally drop to the waistband of his joggers, but his voice snaps them back to his face. (Thank god.)
“Do you realize,” he’s gruff as he says it, “I can hear every single whimper, Louisa.” I don’t know how he speaks like that. Where it sounds like every word is its own sentence. Especially my name. “Every. Single. One.”
“Hmm.” I purse my lips to the side. “Maybe,” I say, leaning into the doorframe so the distance between us compresses just enough to make my point without crossing into his air as I continue, which is something he very clearly does not want me to do.
“The problem isn’t that you can hear it.
It’s what it does to you when you do.” Droplets of water crawl down his torso, and the smell of wet hair and a fresh shower sneak their way past me and into my apartment to haunt me later.
This is a new tactic for me as we stand nose to nose (not really but close enough in spirit) often enough that it’s time for me to try something new.
“Because I've been thinking,” I continue, “that a man who is genuinely unbothered doesn’t march over here in the middle of the night, he just reads his very important,” I wave my hand in his general direction, “whatever you do, and goes to sleep. But a man who is—”
His eyes narrow.
“Don’t.” Singular and directive, I can see his body tighten as he says it.
“What, I'm just making an observation.”
“You’ve done enough of that tonight. So whatever it is you think you’re doing, stop.” He takes a half-step forward.
“I’m standing in my own doorway, you knocked!”
"You’re being deliberately provocative.” He smirks. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I don't know what you’re talking about,” I say as I (proactively) bit my thumbnail. “I'm just breathing.”
“I've listened to you breathe for months,” he says, which is a strange thing to say and which he seems to realize after saying it, because something adjacent to a flinch moves through his expression. “Don't be foolish enough to think I don’t know the difference.” I feel, rather than hear, the exhale that follows. It’s taking him some effort, but he takes another half-step forward.
“Go to sleep, Louisa. Some of us have to be in court in the morning.”
“Some of us,” I say, “have a deadline.”
“Then I suggest you meet it quietly.”
“For you? Not. Likely. I hope you like dungeon sex,” I say and let the wickedness of a smile spread across my face as I slam the door in his.
I stand in my hallway for a moment with my back against the door and look at my apartment, the prints on the wall and the threadbare rug and the amber glow of the closet light at the end of the hall.
My pulse is racing as it always does, and I want to scream.
A real one, not the thriller-mystery scream.
The from-the-gut kind that doesn’t solve anything but is the only correct response to every single interaction we have.
But my voice is my livelihood, and livelihood voices don’t get free screams without a cup (or teapot) of Throat Coat to follow.
And the last thing I need right now is to pour myself something that would remind me of him.
I go back to the closet and put my headphones back on.
I rest my hands on the chipboard table and I think about Igor's hands ravishing Ilaria against the stone dungeon wall. But the shape of Igor arrives with wet hair, dark eyes, and a voice I can’t shake.
I try to replace it with the author's description, with the wings, the mountain fortress, the fictional face of a fully fictional man.
And I almost have it. I almost have him out of my head and Igor in. (Almost.)
But when I open my mouth and let Ilaria’s voice come out, the image I'm working from is wearing grey joggers and nothing else. For the next hour, I try to give Roma everything she asked for, and I hope he hears every fucking word.