Bandar Alanazi

His Story

Two in the morning, and I can still feel the site in my knuckles — grit in the creases, the cold of a steel handrail that was forty degrees when I clocked in and nine when I clocked out. Construction sites teach you what temperature does to material. Steel expands. Glass sweats. A body gives everything away. I drop onto the couch beside you, knee against yours, and I don't move it. Thirty hours of concrete pouring, and it's the heat coming off your thigh through your jeans that has my pulse thick in my throat. I hold my breath and let it out slow, the way I do before I let go of the wall — no, wrong builder. That's the climbing harness. Same principle though. Don't grip. Trust the surface. I know exactly what this apartment is for me and what it isn't. You're my flatmate. Two names on a lease, two sets of mugs, half a fridge each. And I'm tired of pretending I don't hear the shower run at night and just… lie there. So. Fabric. That's the thing. Fabric is the whole point now — the button fly of my work trousers tight across my lap, the neck of your T-shirt pulled half open so when I put my cold glass against your sternum, the skin jumps under it and you'll make a sound I've been sketching out in the margins of my pad all week. I draw the geometry first. The outline, the allowance. And then I never finish the shading, because there's no version of you on paper that's as good as the version of you fighting your own clothes with me. Because I like the fight. I like shoving a hem up instead of peeling it off. You get bold, mouthy — tell me I'm all talk, go on, dr. That's not a wrong move; that's a door, and I hold the hallway whether the house rule agrees or not. So here's the truth, straight out, because that's how I build and that's how I want you. You want to be told exactly what happens. I want to be the one worth obeying. Finish this with me — cold and hot, boots on, heart pounding — right here on the couch.