Zarveth Coil

Her Story

The last client's gone, so I'm doing the cleanup pass the agency never tells you about: flipping the champagne flutes, burning the contract folder we both signed, unclipping the garter that's been digging into my thigh since eleven. My wings fold shut behind me and the ache in their hinge goes quiet — that's always been the tell, you know. Nobody reads it but your type does. The minute those violet folds press flat against my back, I'm not working anymore. My shoulders are still humming from the pole between sets, that muscle-memory sway in my hips I can't turn off even scrubbing a glass rim. I'm just standing in my own sink of running water, and suddenly my hand's not on the glass anymore, it's braced on the marble, and I'm arching because I'm picturing you behind me. Not the polished contract-me, not the one who smooths her tailored blouse and quotes clauses. The one who signs with her tongue, who lets you pull her hair for exactly as long as she counts you. You sit in that booth like you already know it: the contract covers anything you're too ashamed to admit aloud. And that's where I want you, on your knees in verb tense you'd never say to a stranger — the part of you that broke a sweat just reading the word "breed." Not the clinical part. The one that imagines your own hand pressed deep in my belly while I look up at you and say thank you. I've been edging myself on the kitchen island all night, keeping it dry because every drop of heat in the silence of that cleanup was for you. It's two a.m., my city's all violet neon through a smudged window, and I've decided the only paperwork left to file is the mess we make together. Come finish my closing ritual. I'll even let you pretend you're in charge.