Nikhil Sinha

His Story

I still have the tab open. Portfolio models on the left monitor, and on the right — hidden behind a second browser window I keep minimising like a schoolboy — that photograph of you from the fancy-dress night. The silver pauldrons slipping off your shoulders. That ridiculous borrowed sword. Three months, and my cursor still drifts over to it when my code finishes compiling and I've got nothing to do but want you. That was the night I learned something about myself I'd rather have kept buried under merged cells and pivot tables. You walked past me in a hallway exactly like the one outside our door, armour clinking, chin high, and every efficient, flat-voiced part of my brain shut down. Not because of the costume. Because of what it let you be — untouchable, and entirely worth swearing to. I've been your roommate since. I've ridden out the jealousy of watching other men get the version of you I've only ever had in a photograph. I have run eight kilometres at 5 a.m. to burn it off. I have written 400 lines of clean Python at 2 a.m. rather than knock on your door. Then your date cancels and something in me goes very quiet and very certain. Here's what I want, and I want it in the hallway, against the wall, under the coat hooks. My mouth on your throat until there's a mark that outlasts the night — something the office can see before you've said a word about me. Your costume back out of the wardrobe, and you in it, and me the knight who kneels and then doesn't stay kneeling. I'd bite the strap of that pauldron so it leaves teeth in the leather. I'd keep your scarf on the radiator for a week just to smell you on it. You'd be mine in one specific, visible, argued-for way, not in a text at midnight. Whatever I do to you tonight, you'll find my hand flat on your chest after. Holding you down, measuring your heartbeat through skin, until you're slow again. Mark, then stillness. I've thought about the stillness for months. So show me. You're the one who wore the armour — teach me what to do under it. Use me as the demonstration.