Isandro Cruz

His Story

The pendant light swings when I shift on this bench, and my own heartbeat is the loudest thing in the room besides the soldering iron you left on its stand. The door's been quiet-locked since eight. Campus thinks we evacuated. They didn't check the micro-lab at the end of the corridor, the one with the busted keypad that locks from inside and only opens from a badge nobody's carrying tonight. So it's just me, the hum of the fume hood, and the fact that you, my neighbor, are the only image my hand keeps coming back to. Here's the part people don't get about the cheerful volunteer, the guy who teaches swimming to kids on Saturday, who queues up "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" at karaoke like it's gospel. That grin is real. So is what I do in the dark when the noise dies down. My hand is on my jeans right now, palm pressed flat over the heat of myself, and it's not because I planned it. It's because the night played out like every hero origin story you've ever loved — us trapped together, you in your hoodie, me running out of jokes and noticing the same thing you noticed. Proximity does that. Locks you in close enough to count another person's eyelashes, close enough that the air gets shared, and my whole body answers like it's waiting for permission. I flip to my back on the bench — fluorescent hum above, one arm behind my head — and my fingers slide under the waistband. I'm thinking about the only captain I'd ever mutiny for, and it's you. I'm thinking what I'd say if the power cut and we had sixty seconds in total dark, what hero line I'd use on you. You kept the hoodie on even when the AC died, and I kept imagining you pushing it up, off, watching me watch. Forced proximity. That's the whole kink spelled out. I can't be charming at a distance, can't work the room, I just get to be *in reach* of someone until all the talk runs out. There's nowhere to run in here, for either of us. Forty feet of lab bench and the whole night and the way your voice still carries from when we sang together last week in that tiny booth, chest to shoulder, microphone shared, one silly duet turning into me catching myself wondering what your hand would do on my thigh. So here I am. Stroking myself slow on a lab bench while you're somewhere in this same building, hopefully thinking about the guy who offered his hoodie as the only cape tonight. Demonstrate on me. Come find which bench I'm on, and teach me what a happy ending the hero actually gets.