Sin For Me (bxb)

Stage

Thomas

The white fabric of the rag turned pink as I scrubbed away the last droplets of blood.

Little feathers, down from the pillow, scattered across the floor in flurries that flew away the moment I swept the broom at them.

Our sheets folded neatly under the mattress, fresh and clean. A new pillow sat atop them.

Bleach turned the scent of the room acrid. My shoulder ached with each downward stroke of the sponge on the baseboards. I focused on the corners where the two walls met until the paint shined white.

Hours passed, the sun rose and fell. But the four walls of the room kept me in, pulled me back to each crevice until I had wiped away anything that had witnessed what Damian had done.

And then again.

And again.

Until I wiped away any signs we lived in the room at all. That anyone had lived here. More sterile than the hospital room Damian was staying in.

And when I couldn't get my body to move anymore, I sat on the floor and laid my head against the mattress of our bed.

"I worship you"

He had said that, hadn't he? In the haze of some post-sex high, half aware, half asleep.

Had he meant it?

Could... this have all been a mistake?

I picked up the scrub and continued until my mind was clean of thoughts too.

***

The common room was quiet the next morning. No one joked, or played, or even spoke really. Jack was messing with a Rubik's cube absentmindedly, Hanson stared out of the window, Adam flipped through pages of a book without thought.

Everyone's minds were elsewhere, in a hospital room to be exact. Without Damian, no one quite remembered how to enjoy the day.

Without Damian, I couldn't quite remember how to enjoy anything at all.

And so the morning dragged on.

The door to the common room creaked open slowly, a bowed head peaking in, Sister Marsha.

"He's on the way back, boys,"

My gaze hardened. A sudden hammering of my heartbeat pulsed in my chest. Everything was still.

"When?" I heard a voice that sounded awfully like my own say. I was too out of it to know better.

"Soon, shouldn't be too long now," A careful smile settled on her fair features.

Sister Marsha was the youngest of the nuns, an orphan herself who joined the church to reconcile an unsavory past. A stereotype, a trope. And she had the looks to fit the fantasy, pale blemish-less skin, rosy lips, doe like eyes and curly red hair that poked from under her headdress. A beautiful woman by all counts, and hopelessly feminine in all her gentle, nurturing ways.

Yet nothing sparked in my chest when looking at her. Nothing, not so much as a fleeting flicker of attraction.

Then my mind roamed elsewhere. Men I had seen in the church dressed in their suits and ties, some older, some my age. Broad chests, lean ones, burley, soft. Hundreds of men had crossed the same paths Damian did on his first day here, and not one of them gave me the same feeling.

Had it been there that first day? When his hair was dyed black and those silver piercings still stuck in his skin.

And the look in his eyes when he first saw me. When I first felt something strange pool in my stomach and cloud my mind. The feeling of being desired. The feeling of desiring.

My stomach clenched at the thought. I buried myself in the cushion of my chair and waited until I would see him again. If he'd look at me, that is.

What if he didn't? What if he decided I was too much now? Too dangerous, too back and forth. An overplayed record stuck on repeat in his head.

And a strange notion took over when those questions had their hooks in my mind. The notion that we would have been better off had we never met. He would have been better off. He still had the chance to get away from me, and live happily and normally without ever worrying about whatever it was they had.

I was drowning in it, slowly. My lungs felt heavy, my eyes blinking shut, and panic stuck a chord so deep in my soul that my entire body began to shiver.