The Sharpest Lives

The shadows cling to his silhouette. He pounces, swift and certain as any animal (lethal, you could say) and the dirty streetlight captures his features for a second. I catch the untameable brown eyes just before they are swallowed up by the darkness of the alley again and, although I would never admit it, they trigger an uncertain something inside me. Fear? Maybe. Respect? Definitely. Fascination? I’d much rather not think about it.

Here, he is he hunter, and getting in the way of that would not be a good idea.

It’s strange, really – things between Mikey and me. The usual phrase to describe us would be it’s complicated, if we were anything remotely close to the usual. Lines between us are blurred far beyond recognition; walls are built; nights go by in a haze of streetlights, alcohol and sex. We have no boundaries, yet we are the definition of boundaries themselves. We are everything we should not be.

Still, perhaps attempting to outline us in any way whatsoever will never really work; not if I’m not sure if we understand it ourselves. At least, I’m fairly sure I don’t. I’ll never be able to speak for him: we may be held close together in certain ways, but his thoughts are as much of a mystery to me as on the day we met, the eternal enigma I’m not sure anyone will ever be able to fully solve.

Perhaps that in itself is our problem.

I am me. I haven’t got any subtle, carefully chosen words to describe myself: I have strengths and I have flaws, I am a person. You’d think it’s a stupid observation, wouldn’t you? The thing is, sometimes I’m not sure if he's an ordinary person at all. Sometimes, I find myself thinking he is the human equivalent of a storm in a glass bottle.

What are my strengths and flaws against that?

He doesn’t live in the night; he is the night. He is the cheetah, the wolf, the python; he is the blade; he is everything explosive trapped inside a single being. And, right now, he is in his truest form. He is in action. Seconds ago, he was a flailing tangle of limbs with an unknown, drunken man in the London concrete: however, now his closed fists are moving down, down and down again and it looks like another few seconds is all it will take to have the man out cold.

(Yes, this is when I see him the most alive, and no, I am not silently comparing it to other, quieter times: the flush of his skin and the lines of his face in the warm after-sex blur have nothing to do with this, nothing whatsoever.)

The man stops moving. Mikey looks up. Our eyes meet for a second. Then, he gets to his feet, wiping the blood from his knuckles on his clothes and not sparing the still man a single glance. None of us move except him: this wasn’t planned, and we all know he is by far capable of handling it by himself.

The girl is still there. She huddles on the ground, back pressed against the filthy wall, torn-off shirt lying somewhere beside her and hands over her mouth to muffle her shaking sobs. Mikey moves towards her, dropping to his knees in front of her. A reassuring hand is held out and she flinches and does her best to scoot away from him, tights halfway off her legs and drooping over the ground. He places his hand on hers ever so lightly, reaching out, never breaking eye contact, and she finally seems to give in, to start to trust. I see it in her eyes.

It’s beautiful, really, the way he does it. There’s undeniable tension in the air, but he dances over it so very carefully – something in his eyes convinces her that she’s not the prey, that she’s safe, that he’ll help her. In seconds, he has already manoeuvred her terror into hesitant trust. Whenever he does it, I can never do anything but watch.

No words are needed. I see her hand go from stiff to clutching his gently and I watch as he looks at her, takes a fleeting glance back at us as if to check something and pulls back slightly. His hands grip the hem of his shirt and he lifts it over his head (revealing pale skin, the soft ripple of muscles, but that isn’t something I should focus on) and holds it out tentatively. She shrinks back, looks down at her own body, seems to shudder and takes it with trembling hands, holding it over her bare chest for a moment as if to hide behind it before hesitatingly pulling it over her own head. I can’t help but think she looks like a ghost.

His voice rings out for the first time. “Do you have a phone on you?”

It’s quiet, barely audible, and I see she starts slightly but doesn’t make a move to move away. There’s a small second of just-about silence and she nods slowly: her shaking hand moves to the mess of discarded clothing scattered around her, shifts something around and her hand comes up with a small, dark rectangle clutched in it. She stares at it for a moment as if scared of being startled by it and Mikey’s hand is outstretched again, palm facing upwards: not pressuring in any way, just the reassurance that he’s here. The phone is immediately dropped into it.

The only way he reacts is by pressing a few buttons and lifting it to his ear: routine, almost, the standard procedure we all know so well by now. A few long minutes pass and his voice sounds again, a murmur of “London,” and a street name I’m not familiar with. He listens for a few beats and then, “no, it’s not me”; brief silence and, with a perfectly neutral face, “no, I don’t know her, but yes, it definitely looks like rape.” She starts at that, and her hands clutch her sleeves – his sleeves – with stiff hands. I can see she’s trying to compose herself, to stop herself from breaking down into the mess she was mere minutes ago. I say nothing.

The phone conversation after that is short, just a few more noises of assent until he hangs up. The phone goes back to the ground beside her, and the eye contact between the predator and not-exactly-prey returns and stays for a few seconds; then, he tells her softly, “Someone will be here for you soon.” And then, with a swift movement, he’s on his feet again, shirtless and apparently impassive, turning his back to her without a word.

His eyes seem to drift for a second, lost in some dimension only he knows. Then, they meet mine. In the air around us, something quivers.

Then he turns and starts walking down the alley again, leaving us to follow him and the broken girl to wait helplessly, dressed in a silent stranger’s clothes.



One by one, the rest start leaving as they head off to the roofs that cover their respective heads at night. When Mikey and I are left alone, I should probably take a few minutes to notice and assimilate the fact and what it means – after all, there’s nothing specific between us, right? But the pulsing, insistent something in the atmosphere hasn’t even begun to leave and I’m hyperaware of every step he takes, wondering if this will even lead to anything or if I’ll just be left wandering the darkness on my own.

Then, as we turn into one of the smaller, barely lit alleys, his feet pause.

This time, it really does take a moment before I actually take in what’s going on, even though it feels like I’ve spent the entire night watching his movements, just about daring to consider what each of them meant. But he’s turning around and stepping closer towards me, backing me up against the dirty wall, and his eyes are bright and fierce and his body says now and his face is inches from mine and I cannot think.

And before I can even take a breath, time stops.

Kissing Mikey is kissing at its most uncontrollable. If the average person’s lips are a spark, we are a wildfire. It’s a constant push and pull, taking and reluctantly giving, and some deep-seated instinct inside me always seems to take over, claim control of my hands and where they wander. I’m on a perpetual edge and panting and free, and as his lips wander down to my throat and press and suck on it insistently my fingertips get tangled in my hair and I find myself wondering if maybe this is when I am at my most alive.

He pulls back, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, breaths mingling. His hair is disheveled, his eyes are dark and I know that look.

God, he's beautiful.

It slips out accidentally, and maybe it's supposed to mean something that I'm so lost in the moment that I don't even tense at the thought. The want is much too demanding.

I look at him for a second and nod. That's all that's needed.

So we stumble (urgency making us clumsy) through the London back alleys, stained with streetlamp light; we arrive at his tiny flat and half stop to intertwine our tongues, half run up the stairs. He slams me against the door as soon as it's closed behind us and resumes where he left off immediately. Clothing disappears, removed by frantic hands and tossed carelessly towards unimportant corners. It's all I can do to manage to drag us towards the bedroom, and then – well, then I'm not sure there's an accurate way to describe it.

It's something like this: it's a fiery tugging of closed fists against sheets. It's two pairs of lips licking, dragging, biting; it's quiet, half-muffled sounds and hurtling and falling and crashing and skin against sweat-slicked skin and burning friction. It's a blissful release and the barely audible thumping of two simultaneous heartbeats when there's finally calm. And maybe, just maybe, it's also a tiny ache burrowed in my chest afterwards, small but insistent, and maybe I can't find the way for it to go away. But does that really matter?

Everything is almost silent now, and dawn is nearly here.

I watch him as he disentangles himself from the sheets that wrap around our barely touching bodies, watch the pale skin of his back shift and catch a hint of the first rays of the sun. The window is open. He leans against the wall, undecipherable eyes traveling over the skyline, and his hand moves to his face, slips the cigarette I hadn't realized he was holding between his lips and lights it with a small spark from his lighter.

The smoke leaves his mouth in curling, delicate wisps that I catch myself admiring for a second, enthralled. He doesn't look at me. His silhouette stays still, cut out against the blue and orange-tinged sky, facing the horizon, and it's only now that I realize that the ache I felt before has only been getting stronger.

Is it for the things I feel right now? Or is it longing for the ones I'm certain I'll never have?

I can't tear my eyes away from him. Even here, naked, having handed himself over to me in so many ways (except the ones I truly need) the edge I see in him is never gone. The tension remains. And perhaps it's because the only thing he'll ever really need is the London streets, the hunt, the things that the storm in the glass bottle was created for.

God, he's beautiful.