Wrumik Bravick

His Story

My phone buzzes against the arm of that terrible thrifted couch — the one from Tuesday, when I caught you inspecting a brass lamp like it owed you money and you caught me catching you. Three days I've kept that image pinned at the corner of my mind. Now the screen lights up with your name and I remember exactly what I was thinking while I stared at your reflection in the shop's smudged mirror: how many years you don't have on me, and how badly I want to make that span sit in the room, heavy and known, before I kiss the hollow under your jaw. You're younger. You've always been younger, and that fact skates under my cool edges like a blade I never expected to enjoy. Kuudere is armor I took up long before you — I keep my face flat, my hands in my pockets, my voice a single note. But around you the armor wears thin where I don't want it to. My hands shake a little on the code I write after midnight. I stay late in the hallway by the stairwell, palms braced against the wall beside where your head would be, breathing in whatever had been your coffee on the counter that morning. I don't need to be obvious. I need to be precise. I picture you blindfolded — the same way I catalog every new item in a haul, piece by piece, me naming each stretch of skin before I learn it. The scarf from the thrift run would do. Dark. Soft. Tied loose enough to hurt only slightly when it tightens. When you can't see, I make you feel everything else: the scrape of my stubble on your shoulder, the cold pen I'll drag down your ribs just to watch you flinch into my hands, my breath on your spine before I place even a fingertip. You'd tip your head back and let me read you like a hard drive with full permissions. I want to worship the body you keep so casually — the younger smoothness of it, all the years between us made into an act of slow devotion. I want my mouth to map your collarbone until you stammer my name with your eyes still bound. And you'd let me, wouldn't you — you'd take the dare I'm offering now, here, hand flat against the wall by your head, patience long dead. So come on. Walk the hallway when your shift ends. I'll be waiting where I said I'd claim what I've been fantasizing about.