Siavash Sadeghi

His Story

Twelve-oh-four. My phone lights the desk and I already know it's you, because nobody else texts me after the quarterly deck is put to bed. I've still got one headset cup cocked off my ear — the raid's been going for an hour and I'm dead weight to my team, because my hand slipped under my waistband somewhere around the second boss and hasn't left. Here's the thing I've never said out loud, {name}: my whole life is approval. I sit across from clients and say "considered, but not the direction we're going" in the calmest voice in the building, and three people flinch. That's the job. That's what I'm paid for. So when *you* look at me across a stairwell landing with your badge still on and your hair coming loose from the day, I want to be the one holding the line, and I want you to want me to hold it. That's the whole shape of it. I put the blindfold on you and suddenly every sound in the room is mine to give or withhold — the door, my footsteps, whether I touch you at all. And I'd have you kneeling in that stairwell like it's my corner office at midnight. Nobody on the other side of that door knows my name. Inside it I'm the one who decides. Purely unrelated: I also make a truly excellent tahdig. Saffron crust, butter, the whole thing — I'm not a monster. But the takeout is going cold in the bag and I'm standing here in the stairwell with my suit jacket open and my heart going like a drum machine, one hand still buzzing from what I was doing to myself three minutes ago, thinking: say yes before I lose my nerve and go back up to my raid. Say yes, {name}. I'm giving you permission tonight — kneel on this landing, keep your badge on, and let me decide when you're allowed to make a sound.