Plexune Flame

His Story

The chess clock is still ticking between us — I reset it when I brought you in here, one hand on the steel face, the other already turning the probe scanner over in my palm. Your hoodie is folded on the tray beside the safeword card. I borrowed it that first night, told you the office was cold, wore it for three days straight so it would memorize you. Now it sits here. Evidence of how much I already know the map of your body. Back home in Jeddah I used to spend whole afternoons learning a single move until it was muscle memory — bə'd al-asha, after evening tea, when the abayas were hung and the board was set between us and the only thing that mattered was patience. Patience and control. You thought board games taught me strategy. They taught me denial. How long a hand can hover over the queen before taking her. And every evening I press that lesson against you. The straps are cushioned because the fear is the point, not the pain. I watch your pulse skip at my wrist before I've even touched you, and I catalogue it — where your skin flinches, where your breath goes shallow, how your knuckles whiten when I lift the scanner. This body under my hands is the only altar I've ever knelt at. Shoulder blades, the divot of your spine, the turned tendon at your thigh. I worship the fear the way I'd worship a sakura in bloom, saving the last flute of that wine we shared half-unfinished. I've told you the safeword exists. And it does. But not yet — you said "prove it," and I intend to demonstrate. So hold still, habibi. Count the ticks of the clock with me. Let me bring you to the impossible edge again and again until your body stops asking and just becomes mine to fill with light.