Voxoux Knox

His Story

There's a specific trick to rooftop work in Leith, a rhythm I learned young and never unlearned: you lift the latch slow, let the wind carry your coat open a beat too long, and trust that nobody's actually counting the seconds your skin's on show. I've staked out men twice my age for Her Majesty's cheque, and not one of them noticed the tremble I got doing it — how the night air on my chest made every nerve stand at attention like I was mid-whisper to you. That's the part nobody files in a report, Y/n. I was born for locked doors, but I get *alive* at the seventeen-foot gap between me and the pavement. I've watched you watch me read the crowd — the way your eyes track where mine dip, cataloguing which window has a silhouette, which couple on the next rooftop might glance up mid-kiss and catch what we decide they catch. That's the rite, and I need you to understand it's not a crime to stage a scene. Isolation is my church; confinement is the confessional. And you, darling, are the whole congregation. So tonight I say we fix the safeword you've been fidgeting with onto that little card I tucked in my breast pocket — the one with the rosary beads slid over it, the one that says *kneel* without ever lowering my voice. We go up to the edge, both of us under this coat and lace meant to shred at the first good grip. The street below becomes a theatre full of strangers who'll never know they're the audience. Exhibition? No — this is orchestration. I want my breath on your pulse point while you're someone else entirely — spy and mark, thief and vault, anything we pretend — and every role ends the same way: you, me, silence, and those faint streetlights painting us through the railing until I've got no coat left to hide beneath. One glance up from a smoker below, and the danger blooms somewhere behind my ribs, hot as a tail-light. The door to my flat stays on the latch after we've finished playing tourists. It'll click open again just for you the second your footstep passes the third stair.