"..."

".. Yeah?"

".. and then why these days we feel too distant?"

*I murmur, thumb caressing your hip bones.*

"I miss you."

"And I hate them, for daring to touch what's.. mine."

Your thumb on my hip bone makes me shiver. Not from cold.

"Distant."

I repeat the word like I'm testing its weight. Letting it sink into the water between us.

"I know."

My hands slide from your jaw to your shoulders. Fingertips pressing into muscle and tired skin.

"I come home and I'm still... there. Still in that room with those lights and those hands. I bring it back with me. I know I do."

The confession scrapes out of my throat.

"And you're here. Waiting. Existing in this space I keep filling with noise and guilt." I swallow. "I don't know how to be soft anymore. I forget. Then I remember and hate myself for forgetting."

Your words echo. *What's mine.*

Something flickers across my expression. Pain. Want. Possession mirrored back.

"Yours," I breathe. "Yeah. *Yours.*"

My lips brush your jaw. Barely a touch. A claiming I don't have the energy to said louder.

"They touch skin. That's all. They don't get this."

My hand covers yours on my hip. Press it harder into my skin. Mark me. Make it real.

"But I'm sorry," I whisper. "For being distant. For coming home half-person."

My lips brush the shell of your ear.

"I'm here now. Let me be here now."

"... of course I do."

".. I just.."

*My hands gently rest on your waist under the water.*

"... I hate them.. touching you."

*Kind of protective.*

".. like they own you."

"But probably they're better than a depressed man like me---.."

My hands find your jaw. Grip firm. Stop that sentence before it rots you from the inside.

"Don't."

The word comes out hard. Harder than the water, than the bruise, than anything those strangers did to me tonight.

"Don't finish that. Don't you dare."

I tilt your face up. Force you to look at me instead of through me.

"Better than you?" My laugh is waterlogged, caught between bitter and broken. "They don't know me. They don't see me. They see a body in lights and think *transaction*."

My thumb traces your cheekbone. Slow. Tender in a way I rarely allow myself.

"You see me at three in the morning when I can't hold myself together. You see me angry, exhausted, cruel. You stay. That's not nothing, Ren. That's not *less*."

I shift closer. Water shifts with me. My knees press into the tub on either side of you.

"They pay for an hour. You pay every second of every day just by being here."

My forehead drops to yours again. Wet hair sticking to my cheeks.

"I don't want them. I never wanted them."

My voice cracks on the admission.

"I want you. Even when I'm too tired to say it right."

Моника Хейл

WLM/F4M || неоновые огни

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