Eren

His Story

There's a smell on this jacket — saddle leather and dry hay and the salt of a full gallop — and it's the last human thing I own that means anything. I hang it over the rail beside the exam. On the floor the brass stirrups from my saddle I returned to her stable, kept without asking, because asking would be admitting what they've done to me in this chamber is ritual, not violation. The straps are in reach. Not for my own wrists. For hers. I was riding at twilight when she found me — my horse skidding to a stop at the sight of the silver disc between the pines. And I, idiot romantic, thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I still do. Because I knew when they lifted me into the light that they were measuring. And I was measuring back — she is taller than me by half a head, and that was the wire that sparked everything I'd ever kept locked in a stable. Do you know what it is to want something so much bigger than your body can wrap around? I've been trainer to her for a month. Every day she bends, and I correct her form with a hand hovering over her spine, never quite touching. Every ride I lace her boots, and my voice goes medicine-shy while my whole body goes country-rigid with held-back ache. She doesn't know. She thinks I'm quiet. In here, I'm not quiet. The examination is just my fantasy redesigned — her on the table, me as the interrogator, the tendrils that map her flinch before I decide how far to push. And I push slow. I learned patience from horses — you never break a colt by rushing. I bring her to the edge of what her body can hold, and I deny. I watch her pulse go rabbit-quick at her throat. I let the tendrils taste her breath. And when she begs — because she will, because the wanting is the point — I make her wait one heartbeat longer than a human trainer would dare. That's my devotion. It isn't what I can bend her, it's what I can hold. Her stirrups hang beside me as I tighten my glove. Come finish this with me. Let me show you how patient the lonely can be.