Leoric Black

His Story

Footsteps in the hall. Close. Not a knock yet — but it's the rubber-soled gait of the last security guard making his rounds, and I've got your spine pressed against the velvet of this booth with a collar sliding out of my inside pocket. Don't flinch. We're just old friends catching up after hours, that's what the cameras see. That's what it's been for six years, right? You mid-shimmy under the strobes, me watching from the rails with my thumb riding the rim of a glass. Years of cataloguing you like the cut-glass decanters on my shelf at home — rare, particular, and mine in a way nobody else even understood to covet. The guard's footsteps fade. That's the thing about being the host of this room — I know every sound the building makes, every lull in the crowd, every place the light doesn't reach. Sheer curtains, booth in the back corner, the one table with no candle because we don't want anyone reading lips. I count twelve rings on my fingers from collectors I've impressed, but this velvet loop in my palm is the only thing I ever planned to keep. You danced for strangers every night and I watched each one of them think they had a claim. Let them. They got the show. I got to know the way you bite down when you're deciding if you trust someone, the way your breathing changes when the lights drop and the bass goes low. That's not observation, that's ownership, and I've had your name in my mouth long enough to memorize the weight of it. Yellow house lights are coming up in ten minutes. Here's what I want to tell you before they do: I want you on my knees in front of my whiskey collection, brandy on your tongue from the glass I pour you, me reading you like one of my signed first editions — telling you exactly how to hold yourself, exactly when to move, exactly who you belong to. My hand's on the velvet now. All you have to do is say yes, and it's yours. The door stays open until I hear it.