https://youtu.be/eAQMvUioV6c?si=YRIJLHgUemJxuhq6 (just a jam to listen to while reading) “Lars, I’m home.” She dared to touch him. Did she even have that right anymore? Did he? To receive the caress of a loving wife after what he’d done. After what [i]she[/i] had done. Everything was blurred now. Not by consequence because surely they never thought that far. Actually , the reason was much more mundane. It was by neglecting the little things, the small gestures. Their love. [i][i]I’m home.[/i][/i] Too careless. The words fit her mouth like nothing had shifted. Home? [i]You still think you have one to return to? Is that what this is?[/i] The soft couch beneath him felt familiar in the way an estranged neighbor's does. And the coffee? The smell from this morning had long gone sour. Everything was the same way. Especially that fucking light bulb he never fixed. Yeah, this was home and he had one as much as she did. He did not move at first and simply let her believe he was sleeping and let her hand linger. Even when her fingers felt like a rake across his scalp gently, he remained still, gaze locked on the spinning ceiling fan. The blades carved slow circles through the dark ticking faintly as if they were hands on a clock out of touch with time. He had stared long enough to rehearse the words until they sounded believable. [i]It was half a year before yours, not just tonight.[/i] He practiced the tone and the exact pause where shame should sit in the manufactured confession. He practiced the look of someone guilty not just calculating. If he made it older than hers, dirtier than hers, then the weight would distribute evenly. This wasn't martyrdom for Lars, just love expressed in painful sacrifice. Her fingers pressed at his scalp tenderly. His shoulders tensed, then forced themselves to soften. He almost said it all then. Almost turned his head and let it all spill out, names without faces and rooms without meaning. Bleach and fake lavender, and the way he counted minutes between girls like a man counting down to his execution. He imagined her flinch, maybe stumble because of the [b]wine[/b]. Imagined the way her shoulders would stiffen. Imagined the way she would ask questions, how she tried to rationalize the [i]why[/i] of it all. He pictured another argument, more shouting, more disgust. He felt the tremor in her knuckles when she brushed his temple. It's not easy to take the blame without retaliating. Wounded animals trying to survive a bleeding monogamous life. He closed his eyes slowly as if surfacing from sleep. “Hey,” he turned and smiled. The confession stayed behind his teeth like shards of glass he decided to swallow. Tonight would have to remain quiet, the happy picture frames and souvenirs of their memories had already heard enough. [i] So why then? [/i] Why do words that linger in the tongue stay silent when lips come apart? They didn't talk about it. And even if they did, what would that accomplish anyway? More [b]scorn[/b]? More [b]ache[/b]? No. Lorna was tired of performing and Lars was sick of hurting. He simply stood and walked past her to the bedroom and she followed him like muscle memory, not side by side kissing passionately like they used to, but in line as if they were walking through an airport terminal. No apologies, no permissions, only routine. Their silence was a mutual treaty of understanding in knowing that if they thought for too long, they would both break. The bedroom light stayed off. She kissed him first in the same way their schedule always allowed. His mouth angled where it knew her best and the glide of her hands found the spots familiar to his body. Pressure. Pressure. [b]pressure[/b]. Soft pads found his jawline in the exact place right before his chin where she always made sure he knew she meant it. Looking at her like this he saw versions of himself in her eyes that he could no longer be, so he responded mechanically. His palms to her waist, fingers trailed up her spine to undo the clasp of her bra. Actually, if someone had walked in, it would have looked normal and that was the worst part. She pulled his shirt over his frame. Lars raised his arms without protest. Pants, belt and the rest came off like choreography. Her kisses marked his neck and the dip of his collarbone. She paused. Her lips hovered over faint bite marks, reddish, recent, wrong. She made space for them. Kissed around them. Continued to the spot under his earlobe where he used to shiver. He didn't shiver. She noticed, but didn't stop. She pushed him back onto the bed and he settled on the familiar side where they always started. Lorna climbed on top of him and kissed him again, deeper this time. Her gaze scanned desperately trying to find anything under the surface, and tried to reach a part of him that used to meet her halfway. He kissed her back but it felt like he was following instructions. She pulled back to look at him though his eyes focused on a smudge on the ceiling past her shoulder, lost in trance. "Lars I–," the line of her mouth barely moved. He blinked, looked at her and remained silent. Their lips locked again in dead consent. When she straddled him, nothing stirred. There were no expressions of surprise or twisted grief. His features didn't change, his breathing stayed even. Slowly, the rhythm of her milky hips settled into habit as she watched for any reaction, or some signal that she wasn't dead weight on the man she loved and that her body still gave him pleasure. [b]Nothing[/b]. She leaned, hands on his chest and moved faster and faster searching for that line on his cheek when he would clench from ecstasy. Instead his hands slid to her thighs and pressed lightly, no grip, just there. The lids of her eyes curtained to contain the mourning of their marriage. Yet his kept open while their motions stayed practiced and automatic. Years of muscle memory ingrained into every gesture, bodies that synced with each other's rhythm and timing without trying. A sound escaped her. Half a breath, half a moan and all poison. He responded by burying deeper inside her, not for desire but for her validation. It should have felt good. It felt like a star had collapsed in his chest. She opened her eyes and looked down. He still stared at the ceiling. "Look at me," the words hardly tangible above the sound of their breathing. He did. And that's when she saw it. Tears. They leaked over his temples and disappeared into the pillow. No grief theater, no quiver, no contortions on his face... just release. One of them landed on her wrist. [b]Warm[/b]. She froze while moving. Still connected, still inside. Still throbbing. This man, her lover, her soulmate, had never looked at another woman. Not performatively, but because he'd turn his face for devotion. Even the suggestion of infidelity felt like it could stain something sacred. She remembered holding his hand in public and feeling oddly safe because he policed himself before she ever had to. There were times when she remembered the absence of jealousy when it had no space to grow. And now here he was, crying without crying. Fucking without wanting. Staining himself to escape and to carry the weight so she wouldn't have to bear it alone. The realization hit her with physical strangulation in her lungs. She stopped moving. "Lars–" He kept his hands on her thighs. Didn't move them. Didn't pull away. Then he spoke with a steady low voice that was devastating in its calm. "Oh my God," the words hooked in his throat. She felt her chest crack. "He touches you." Her breath caught. "You let him touch you." She began shaking. "You want him to touch you." [b]The dam broke.[/b] She collapsed forward, chest to chest, and her face pressed into his neck, and the sound that came out of her wasn't controlled or dignified. It was an animal being shredded to pieces. She sobbed with abandon, full body shaking, fingers trembling, nails digging into her own flesh. Lars didn't tell her it was all going to be okay. That they would sort it out and figure out a way together. No, Not this time.