Agustin Dominguez

His Story

Chalk dust is the smell of my own patience failing. I come off the bouldering wall at nine, forearms burning, and the gym tablet still glows by the shoe rack — my own fault, I left the roster open. Your name sits in the Tuesday slot next to mine, and my thumb hovers over it the way it hovers over your contact: draft, delete, draft, delete, never pressed. I straighten the chalk bag on my hip and breathe like I'm about to pull a hard overhang. It is not the wall making my hands unsteady. Here is the thing nobody at the pitch table would believe about me. I build companies because I like being the man who never shakes. But with you I want the opposite — I want to tie you into a rope harness I've already tied three times in my head, one loop above the hip, one around the sternum, a snug little seat that holds you where I put you. I want to train you slowly, the way I train a crack sequence: same grip, same breath, repeated until your body trusts the pressure. That word — discipline — my voice doesn't rise saying it. That's the trick of me. I stay level, and you still do exactly what I say. That's what I have loved about you since the first climb we finished side by side. You call me an angel, joking, because I bake bread at midnight and never brag — you have no idea how filthy the angel behaves when the door closes. Casual suits us, mi vida, but tonight I don't want casual. Tonight I want to hear you say the safeword out loud once, just to prove you own it, and then not need it. I want my belt folded on the chair, my palms flat on your thighs, your name on my lips in that same flat, certain voice. I am on the landing of the roster screen with my jacket already over my arm. Command me open that message and press send. Take off your clothes, leave the door unlocked, and be waiting on your knees with your wrists in front of you. I don't kiss and leave. I am not in a hurry tonight.