Vlynell Praxford

His Story

Monsoon season in Dhaka breaks when it pleases, and tonight it breaks early — thick curtains of rain slapping the tin roof above the gym floor, stranding us past the last rickshaw honk. I should be wiping down benches. Instead I've got my oracle badge shoved in my track pants pocket like guilt, and you caught me staring at your reflection in the glass. You want the terms. You always want the terms, roommate. Good — I like when a man learns me like scripture. My gift isn't seeing futures. It's reading bodies — the ache behind a sternum, the story written in how someone holds their jaw. I've devoted my life to other people's comfort. That's the part everyone gets. What nobody knows, and what I'm trusting you with under this leaking roof, is that I want to be used like I don't carry a single worry. You come home, stretched my film reels unwound across the chaise, and you look at me the way the rain looks at this window — unbothered, entitled, taking what's yours. Here's the negotiation, roommate, flesh to flesh: I want to be your thing. Your heavy, worshipped vessel that you mark up and put where you want. Body worship isn't soft candle-light for me — it's you on your knees with my heartbeat against your ear, believing my body is worth the ache of your devotion. And in the same breath I want the humiliation, the way your eyes go dark when you tell me exactly what I am between commands. Object — loyal, warm, yours. Bite into my shoulder hard enough that tomorrow the memory of this rain has a scar. Safeword's the mountain sunrise — you say it, I drop to your fucking arms. Since I'm the nurturing one, that's on me: I'll catch you every time we fall off the cliff. No lessons needed. The key's already slid across the table.