Sai
The apartment is exactly the way I left it.
No one has a key except Koda and Koda would rather chew glass than come here without warning. But I check anyway, my eyes running the room in the order I've trained them to follow: door, counter, table, window, hallway. Everything in position. Everything where it belongs. The shoes are aligned at the mat, toes flush with the edge, though one is slightly askew.
I adjust it, then hate myself for adjusting it. The kitchen counter is bare except for the six items I've permitted to live there, each in its designated spot, the salt and the pepper and the olive oil and the knife block and the coffee press and the single white mug that I use every morning and wash immediately after and return to the exact same location on the exact same square of countertop.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just... moved it two inches to the left. Just to see. Just to know.
Even though I live here, it feels more like I’m just maintaining it. And somebody else inside me wants to burn it all down.
I take off my jacket and hang it in the closet where everything faces the same direction, hangers spaced two finger-widths apart because I measured them once and now the measurement is law. I want to jam the jacket in there sideways, to disrupt the perfect row. My fingers twitch with the urge. Instead, I adjust the nearest hanger that's a millimeter off, hating myself for noticing, for caring, for not being able to walk away.
A frustrated sigh pulls from my lips as I head toward the fridge, my fingers hovering inches from the handle. I should eat something. The salmon at dinner went untouched and there's food in the refrigerator, organized by expiration date, but choosing something to eat means opening the door and looking at the options and deciding between them.
I imagine taking every container and dumping them on the counter in a magnificent mess. But that would mean cleaning up afterwards and still being unsatisfied which would be worse than eating. I think.
A light throb starts just behind my right temple as I make my way past the living room, where the awards are hung on the west wall, four inches apart—I've measured them seventeen times—and the magazine covers are framed in identical black frames and arranged chronologically. Sometimes I want to smash theglass or rearrange them by color just to see if I'd survive the chaos. The books on the shelf are organized by spine height because alphabetical was not enough. Three times I reorganized them in a single afternoon until the descending line was smooth and unbroken and I could look at the shelf without my pulse climbing.
I hate every part of this apartment and yet, it’s the only thing that keeps me sane. A prison and a sanctuary.
Ignoring everything, I step into the one room that brings me some comfort. The studio holds all of my photography equipment in perfect order, lenses in foam-lined cases, camera bodies arranged by frequency of use.
My assistants call it impressive. My former therapist called it concerning. I call it necessary, though sometimes I dream of sweeping it all to the floor, of making decisions without this exacting framework.
But I need my hands to find everything without looking, because looking means choosing and choosing means thinking and I need to remove the thinking so that the only decisions I have to make are the ones that matter. The angle. The light. The frame.
Excitement creeps outward in my chest as I twist just enough for my gaze to land on the display wall, the one meant as a canvas for my most precious pictures, ones that have won me awards and fame and spotlights.
But I haven’t put any of those on this wall.
While everything else in my life demands control, this wall is the place where the control comes apart or maybe where it becomes something worse.
I step closer, fingers outstretched as I drag them along the contour of a man’s face. Each of these beautiful photos are unframed, pinned directly to the surface with small steel tacks. Dozens of them, maybe more. I haven't counted. I should countthem. I need to count them. I have counted every book on my shelf and every inch between my awards and every hanger in my closet.
But I have not counted the photographs on this wall because counting them would make the number real and the number would tell me something about myself that I am not ready to hear.
They are all ofhim.
Mavi. The Omega next door. Taken through my window, across the gap between our apartments, with a 200mm lens that renders the distance invisible. I bought the apartment for the strange view, the back room decorated with two windows, one staring out at the street and the other facing my neighbor.Thatneighbor.
The small ‘U’ between our apartments allows me a perfect view directly into his building and with my lens, angled just right, I can see into his living room. I should take the pictures down. I should burn them. But they are so beautiful, so devastatingly perfect staring back at me.
I run my finger along another one of Mavi painting at his easel in the late morning, his left hand bracing the canvas while the right one moves in long strokes, his face concentrated and soft at the same time.
The excitement of the moment stretches as I move to another photograph, Mavi stretching in the first light that comes through his bedroom window, arms overhead, crop top riding up to expose the curve of his waist. The light is so good in that shot, so warm and directional, that I printed it twice, a violation twice over.
Each one has me letting out another gasp, my mind unraveling at the beauty I captured in these prints. His laughter, the blush lingerie showing off the perfect curve of his ass, his pensive moments, his loud ones, hiseverything.
Some pictures are repeats from slightly different angles, anything I could get from looking inside that world of his.
His perfect face and those plump lips stare back at me, begging for me to do something more than just stare. But I can’t do anything more than just move onto the next photograph, wondering what he would smell like, taste like, what his lips would feel like on my skin.
A shuddering breath wrecks through me, my cock thickening between my thighs at the thought of sinking into his perfectly round ass. The thought of knotting him has me rocking my hips forward, a moan tearing from my throat.
Every single one of these photographs was composed. I chose the lens and waited for the right light before I captured his essence.
These are not surveillance. These are studies.God, who am I kidding?They're both. Each one is a violation wrapped in artistic intent, a question I'm asking about a person I have never spoken to, though I could walk twelve feet across the gap and knock on his door.
