One Dove

Desire is such a strange feeling. You can desire someone you have only got a glimpse of, a stranger bumping in you on the street or taking a seat next to you on the train. You can desire someone you have never met, too, someone on the picture, in the magazine or on TV. You can ever desire someone you hate – desire has nothing to do with love.

My sudden desire for him, as he was sitting on my bed, water dripping from his hair, the drops sliding down his naked shoulder, had everything to do with love. Because the strange mix of endless tenderness and the urge to protect him that I had felt towards him from the very beginning was exactly that. Those four letters.

I was sitting at the end of the bed, feeling perfectly at peace, a sharp contrast to the nervousness I had felt before, not even an hour ago. Without thinking whether I was doing the right or the wrong move, I reached forward and touched his knee. The touch was light, barely there, but he felt it and looked at me. Without changing his expression, he shifted and lay down, spreading his legs a little.

I didn't want to know what he thought. I don't think I want to know, not really. His thoughts would surely make me feel like one of the people that he let fuck him for money and I didn't want that. I wanted to be something else to him. I wasn't, I know that now. I knew that before, too, but back then I didn't want to admit it. I was a love-blinded fool.

He was naked from the bath and I moved my fingers up from his knee. I traced his inner thigh with my very fingertips, touching and gently stroking the bruises that covered the tender skin; blue, purple, yellow and green bruises, small dots where the needle had broken the skin, scars and scratches. It should have disgusted me, but it did the exact opposite.

I hadn't intended to make love to him. If you had asked me the previous day, I would have laughed; I wouldn't have been able to imagine such thing. I had found him beautiful, I have always thought he was beautiful in his own broken way, like something pretty that was damaged, but you can still see the beauty of it; but I wasn't attracted to him physically.

Not until that moment.

My breath was hitching in the back of my throat as I leaned forward and replaced my fingers with my lips. I brushed them against his thigh in equally butterfly-light kisses as my touches had been. His skin felt dry, and for a second I wanted to go find some lotion and rub it into the skin, to make it smooth, to make it smell something silly like coconut or peach. The thought disappeared when he shifted his leg a little, exposing his inner thigh even more.

I looked up at him, swallowing thickly. I felt like I was taking advantage of him, and when I think about it now, in a way I was. He didn't fight me, he didn't refuse – but he didn't want it. He didn't want anything of it. He didn't want anything of me. That always hurt the most, knowing he never wanted even a tiny piece of me.

I stroked his inner thigh with my fingers, pressing soft kisses on the touches, covering the scars and bruises. Claiming his skin mine.

How much I wanted to make him mine, mine in every sense of the word. So I could keep him, so I could protect him from the world and the drugs and the men who fucked him just because he was willing to. From everything that was destroying his beauty, making his eyes turn grey and scary, making his hair look messy and full of knots, his clothes torn and his skin ugly and bruised.

The bed made a sound when I shifted, crawling so I could reach his face. His eyes were closed and it made it so much easier to lean forward and press my lips against his in a soft kiss. His lips moved back in some sort of instinct and my heart skipped a beat. It didn't matter that from his part it was an instinct almost forgotten, or an obligation; all that mattered was that he kissed me back.

That single fact, that he kissed back, encouraged me more than anything, fuelled my desire more than anything. The next kiss was hungrier, my tongue slipping past his parted lips. I slid my hand around his waist, tracing his ribcage, and kissed him over and over against. Our lips were swollen and when he opened his eyes, licking his lips carefully, there was a sparkle of interest in the blue. And maybe I just imagined it.

“I want to... I want to...” I gasped lightly against the side of his neck, feeling the small bumps cover the tender skin. I felt stupid again, and still so sure at the same time. I have no idea how it could even make sense, but it did.

I needed some kind of approval from him, I needed to hear that he wanted it, too. Which was stupid, because he didn't want it, he didn't care. Yet, for some reason he nodded a little and that was I needed. I chose the ignore the complete disinterest in his eyes, just as I chose to ignore the fact that just hours ago, I had found him with his pants pulled down and semen on his thighs. I feel guilty now, but then, I wasn't thinking.

He lay on the bed, his eyes closed again, as I searched for the lube I knew was somewhere in the night stand, as I took my clothes off with my hands shaking worse than his when he had had the withdrawal fit. He didn't open them when I crawled back on the bed, clumsy and without any grace. He didn't even blink when I slipped my hand between his spread legs. He only whimpered quietly when my fingers scraped some wound in him, old or new I didn't know. I halted my movements for a moment, holding my breath, but he didn't stop me. I felt like I was losing my virginity all over again.

I made love to him as carefully as I possibly could, my eyes shut just as his, my loud breathing and a couple of moans echoing in the room along with his sharp intakes of breath whenever I moved too harshly. I made love to him slowly and gently, trying to pour the love I felt for him in every movement, in every kiss and every touch. And afterwards, when I collapsed next to him and opened my eyes and saw that he didn't even get hard, I felt like a monster.

I still do. I am a monster that took advantage of him, of his vulnerability and his addiction, just like all those other people did and it made no difference that I loved him. No difference whatsoever.

As it was over and I was lying on my back next to him, my heartbeat calming down as the dread from what I had done started to wash over me, he sat up soundlessly. With a strange determination, he looked at me, as if wanting me to do something. A part of me, the part that didn't feel sickly guilty, wanted to pull him down and hold him until everything would be okay and well again. I couldn't do that, though, and suddenly it all clicked. My own words promising him money if he went with me echoed in my head as I nodded towards my jeans pooled on the floor, the wallet showing in the back pocket. I wouldn't care if he took all my money right then.

I sat on my bed, feeling pitifully idiotic as he took the money out of my wallet, all of it, and then shuffled to the bathroom. I could hear the muffled noises as he put on his clothes, his own dirty clothes he had been wearing for fuck knows how long, and still I didn't move the slightest bit. Everything in my was screaming to get up, to stop him from leaving. To make him stay here, until he would be well. Until he would fall in love with me and until we would have our own fairytale right there and then.

I let him leave the apartment without a word, without a single movement, without anything. I let him leave a stranger's apartment in a strange part of city he may have never been in; I let him leave and possibly let him walk all the way back.

I let him leave my place, and my life as well.

Because that was the last time I had seen him.