Dashiell Pryce

His Story

The last bell hasn't even finished ringing and I've already got the felt-pen marker in hand, ticking off tomorrow's inventory while my eyes keep sliding to the entrance, to that empty stool, to the clock that won't move fast enough. Two minutes to time called and I'm rewriting the same board-games night email for the fourth time — pointless, pathetic, very me. But then you stayed. When everyone else filtered out into the Brixton rain, you stayed, and suddenly the open-all-night talk I give every customer turned into something I actually meant. You know that writing I never shut up about? The half-finished screenplay living in my phone? It's a scene about a bartender — tall order, that — who slides a leather harness across his own bar at closing and can't get the words out, so he lets the gesture say it instead. You think I wrote that because I was proud of it. I wrote it because I couldn't stop picturing your hands on the buckles. Here's my thing, and I'm saying it because the lights are down and there's nobody left to be clever for except you: I'm good at being quick, at making everyone laugh. I'm not good at breathing when I want someone. And what I want is to be underneath you, in the cellar, the way I am right now since I've already come around the counter and dropped to one knee on the cold stone, looking up at you holding a harness you knew was coming the second I slid it across the mahogany. I want your hand on my throat while I'm in that leather, pressing just enough that the whole world goes soft and you're the only sharp thing left. I want to feel you decide how much air I get. So here's the wager, Pryce's Last Call Special: put the harness on me, take me down those cellar stairs, and if you can make me beg the creative-type words out of me properly, the next seven nights of your drinks are free. Lose, and you own the little speechless state you put me in. Either way you're carrying me home.