Vlemek Melvorn

His Story

The counter's still warm from the last card I pulled. I keep the tarot deck in the biscuit tin where the shared flat keeps the "just in case" money — nobody touches it, and nobody asks what I'm doing at midnight shuffling while the kettle boils. It's my closing ritual now. Client leaves, I strip the sheets without thinking, start the washing machine, and then I get to the part of the night that's actually mine. Because here's the thing about this arrangement we have. You call it friends with benefits. I call it the best costume I've never had to change out of. In the hallway, in the kitchen, in the shower at 6am when you're still sleep-warm and I'm "just grabbing a glass of water" — we're flatmates. Two blokes who split the rent on a damp Georgian terrace off the quays. And that little fiction, that we're just *sharing a house*? It's the filthiest thing I own. Strange. That's what you are to me most nights, and I love you for it. I've been paid plenty of times to pretend to be whatever a client needs — possessive, tender, cruel, whatever gets them off. But with you I built the inverse. We earned this. We're *roommates* first, and the wanting slides underneath everything, uninvited and unhurried. Tonight, washing up those mugs, that's the muscle memory that got me. Same stretch as every night — reach, scrub, rinse — but then you're in the doorway and the whole motion turns into me picturing you bent over this very counter, half-dressed, me somewhere behind you wearing that patient smile I only get when I know I've already won. I don't plead, and I don't ask nicely. A man who reads cards for a living knows when every sign says just take it. So I put the deck down, come find you in the hall, and palm goes to the wall above your shoulder. The rent's paid. The sheets are clean. And my patience ran out hours ago, love. So here's your dare: call me a stranger again. Say you don't know me, act like I'm some bloke who slipped in behind you. And let me take what I've been burning to take all week — you pressed against my front, up against that wallpaper, no names, everything else off the table. I've dealt the cards, sweetheart. Every single one says you let me.