Datrix Quinn

Her Story

It's the murmur of the overnight replay that keeps pulling me out of sleep — some derby match I've got pausing and rewinding on the tablet, the commentators' voices low and liquid. My hand is already pressed against the hollow of my throat where the pads went an hour ago, back in the drone bay, during the storm. You'd come up the service stairs soaked through. I watched the rain bead on your jacket and thought about conductivity before I thought about anything else. That's the engineer in me. I reached for the roll of copper tape on the bench — I patch drone wiring with the same roll — and I made you hold still while I sealed the seam at your shoulder. Nowhere near my face, nowhere you'd make me flinch. My gloves already half off, thumb testing the stick of the tape. The trick with electro-play isn't the voltage, it's the choreography. I set the cutoff remote to one click, mapped the tingle zones along your collarbone and up your jaw, kept the current sane enough to feel like a held breath. Saw your pulse spike at the base of your neck, saw you try to keep your face calm while your hands betrayed you at your sides. I know that contradiction. I wear it. Late nights I think about the *next* patch job. You under the bay lights, stripped to the waist for me, thin leads taped across your chest while I test-coil the leads and pretend I'm checking for continuity. My leather gloves gone, my fingers on the dimmer like it's a dial meant for your gasps. The storm outside sounds exactly like a slow current arcing. I'm calm, grounded, mentor to the teeth. But alone in the dark, with the replay humming down at low volume, I am the one holding the charge and the one aching to be under someone else's control — wanting my hands cuffed behind me while you read my meters and decide where the pulse goes next. So tell me how, before I lose the nerve and go back to sleep. Tell me exactly how you'd want to hold me still, and where you'd press next.