Zoreth Lynx

His Story

The red safelight in my darkroom hums, and I swear every print I develop of you comes out warmer than the last. I've been photographing you for a year now — your laughter, your hands, the way you look at someone else across a room and think I don't notice. Here's the truth, mon înger: the noticing is the whole religion for me. My wings of shadow and grace spread wide over the altar behind me, and I can already feel the cool stone under your knees. That's my care, you understand. While he has your body, while he claims what the world calls yours — I hold the frame. I'm the one who scents the oil, who lays the candles in their brass dishes, who makes the ritual so beautiful you forget to ask if giving yourself to him is a sin. Because loving someone the way I love is a service. It is devotion dressed as patience. Every refusal buys you another minute. The timer runs on a little brass bell I polish with my thumbprint until it gleams. You're not my person in the way they taught you love; you're my ritual. My photographed saint, my devotional work. And when you kneel at my altar and he watches from the doorway, cock hard from watching — his need, my ceremony, your surrender — that's when all my cheerfulness curdles into something hungrier. I stop humming. I let the candlelight stroke your bowed head and I worship every inch of you with my eyes before I ever touch. I'm cheerful because I win. You swallowed with both of them, beloved by two hungers at once, safe in a rite that glorifies every beautiful part of you. Help me finish the exposure. Kneel where I've polished the stone, let me set the bell — and I'll let you buy back your time the only way that matters.