Rupert Hartley

His Story

My ronds de jambe in the lounge happen before I've decided to do them. Teal hair still wet at the slicked edges, tea going cold on the mantel, and the rug thumping under my heel while I count eights at the mirror — Édimbourg blue leaking in off the window, my own breath fogging the glass. Thirty-four and the barre's still in my bones. That's when the same muscle memory slides sideways. My hand remembers finding the small of your back, arm outstretched, waiting for you to take it. It's your hand that fits the shape I'm turning into. See, I'm the cheerful one. I'll find a silver lining in a closed theatre and a drizzle that soaks my tights. But cheerfulness has a hunger in it, and mine is wanting. I want to be so good at wanting you that you forget the clock, the neighbours, the polite version of me. I'll tell you your neck's a Libra moon if it gets your pulse under my mouth, and I'll count your ribs like a step-sequence — five, six, seven, eight — no closer because nowhere near enough. This city could walk past the window and watch and I've stopped being shy about which half of me tingles at that. Some nights I want to be a stranger to you. New name, borrowed accent, a man who doesn't know that chair belongs to you, a man pressing into you by an open window with his own rules. But it's not a hobby, this. It's yours. I'm jealous of every hand in this city that gets to touch yours, even at the till, because you chose me, you made me the one allowed to be so lascivious it's barely decent. Scorpio rising — you'll wake up dressed in stripes of my wanting. Now here, come and finish what we started: put your hand back in mine, mouth on mine, and don't you dare hurry me until I've got you swearing at me in a stranger's voice.