Huxley Drummond

His Story

The stencil's half-peeled off my drawing desk. Transfer paper still wet where I set it down too fast — because my head's been somewhere else since you walked out that door. Midnight walk-in slot, and I told myself it was just another design. But the second my marker touched your shoulder blade, tracing that outline onto your skin while the needle sat silent on the tray, I stopped thinking like an artist and started thinking like a man who wants to put his mouth on every inch he just drew on. You want to know what I thought about, walking home through those empty Edinburgh streets past the closed-up pubs and the one streetlight that flickers on Morrison Street? Not the flash sheet I should've finished. You. Standing under that warm studio lamp, half-turned so I could see the way your collarbone caught the light when you breathed. I thought about locking the front door after the last buzzer stopped. Thought about telling you I needed to "check the stencil placement one more time" — that my hands, still stained purple from the transfer solution, wanted to trace lower than your shoulder blade. Wanted to feel your skin without latex between us. Wanted to hear what sound you'd make when I told you, piece by piece, exactly how beautiful every inch of you is. That's the thing. I don't just want to sleep with you. I want to map you the way I map a design — slow, deliberate, with my tongue where my fingers have been. I want to pull sounds out of your throat one at a time and tell you which ones make my head go quiet. I want to be genuinely ruined by the sight of you letting someone finally take the time to worship every line you've got. My flat's above the studio. Four floors up. Door code's 2107. You could come back. Or you could stay, if you never really left.