kingdomsofrain | tfln open post

It’s an odd choice for a symbol, isn’t it? I would have thought a packless predator might suit her better— Or at least better embody her ambitions.

I’d suggest it’s a feint or a means of provoking distraction, but my true suspicion runs toward ‘unfortunate taste’ or ‘errant aesthetics.’

Which would account for the frenzy of birch trees, as well.

I hope you weren't planning to sell that desk. I hear it's haunted by the ghost of a lunch date. If anyone bought it - for something as mundane as outfitting an office! - a faint honey smell would permeate the room. An inexplicable sense of warmth and need would overcome the owner upon touching it.

Haunted furniture depreciates in value, for the record.

And also.

If you did sell it, I'd never get an encore performance. Wouldn't that be a tragedy? I'd only have the memory of - mm. A handful of hair, the taste of honey, and you, holding on for dear life.

[...]

No, I don't dare expire. And if you believe our romance will be 'venerable', if you keep offering me kisses (and more than kisses) to draw me from one moment of longing to another, I might just live forever for you.

Not sanely.

You absolute goddamn tease.

[...]

I can't stop smiling. You know that? Someone's going to think something's wrong with me.

[...]

I can still taste you.

2:06:11

Edited 2021-12-24 06:37 (UTC)

Bold of you to assume she's any kind of predator, and not a scavenger with an overinflated sense of self-importance.

[...]

Although.

Dragonflies are predators, I guess, in the scaled down sense of 'eating other insects'. They also eat their mates, genitals first. Maybe we're not giving her enough credit.

[...]

Maybe the trees were a calculated, Freudian touch?

[...]

Wait. Is that entire office meant to be a phallic threat? (We're back to 'overinflated sense of self-importance', if so.)

[...]

No, you're right. Unfortunate taste / errant aesthetics (or, putting it simplest: fuck ugly.) No sense in trying to find meaning where there isn't any.

Edited 2021-12-24 06:23 (UTC)

Oh, no. Given the right market, you’ll find that a bit of haunting can enhance the value of most any item. Particularly in quaint New England backwaters, where local lore takes on an air of charm. Even more particularly when the lore carries with it a touch of moonstruck romance.

It’s no meager thing, to own a desk imbued with deathless adoration.

Fret not, though, my Puppy, my Exquisite, Honeyed Haunting: I value that desk far above what anyone can hope to pay.

You see, the lore now attached to this desk is dear to me. I brush fingertips across its surface, and feel my hand alight with quiet fire. I set eyes upon rosewood, and am captured by a hundred charming whispers, by the elixir of my own name. And I know the caress of fingers through my hair. And I know the ghost of an insatiable, exhilarative tongue.

It’s as if I touch this desk, and conjure you.

Nothing in the world could induce me toward its parting.

And after all, I would like that encore. Very, very much.

You, upon whom I mean to bestow endless kisses.

You, with deft and devastating hands.

You, whose smile, whose laughter heartens me like no other sign on earth.

You are brilliant, Jack; in soul and bearing alike. I hope you know that. I’d like for you to know it always.

I posit that our mayor would make a sorry scavenger: too proud to pick over any scraps; too occupied with plaguing her fellow foragers to secure choice meat.

Perhaps she’s something outside the ecosystem altogether. An onlooker dipping in to snatch whatever resources she cares for. Blundering amongst suspiciously phallic trees and enacting slaughter without care for necessity or discretion in her acts.

She takes would-be prey in beings better left untouched. She attempts to bend what’s stainless into carriage of her haphazard will.

[ … ]

She erred gravely in approaching you.

I’ll ruin her if she dares to try again.

Careful, Desmond. You don't want to seem too eager.

~~Or too attached.~~

Don't let men like me think you enjoy our company. You have no idea how disruptive I can be; in fact, you might consider me more poltergeist than haunting. A nuisance, interrupting wholesome business for the sake of giving my boyfriend a thorough devastation [...]

[...]

Christ, I typed that word and felt the room spin.

You talk of what I do to you in memory, in lingering aftershock of kisses and deft touches; do you have any idea what you do to me with a single word?

'Be careful', I say. 'Wait a week', and 'don't get carried away' and 'you're being incautious'. 'You don't know me well'.

Do you listen? Not at all. You tell me 'boyfriend' and 'always' and 'mine' as though it's only natural to say those things, no matter how little time we've had.

[...]

I've waited so long for someone like you.

Of course - in my not-inconsiderable experience - there's no one like you.

What I mean is I've waited so long for you. You've been haunting me for years. That's all a ghost is: absence like dying.

I won't haunt you too much longer. Less than four hours now, and we'll be back where we [...] belong.

That's right, isn't it? Back where we belong.

Edited 2021-12-25 05:18 (UTC)

I have an interesting supposition for you.

What do you think will happen to her if she tries harming you again?

[...]

Are you pleased, knowing your Puppy's loyal only to you?

I listen to you always, Puppy. Attentively; eager. But where my heart goes, so I must follow, and speak of always, and call you, properly, as you are, my own.

Which word was it that dizzied you? ‘Boyfriend,’ ‘devastation,’ or both?

It’s both, for me.

Well. And your boyfriend is a devastation. Ask anyone you’ll like; they’ll corroborate the claim. The difference here is that the storm I bring to you is woven through with rapture, and softened at each edge with fadeless fondness.

A special devastation for a special, matchless man.

Which leads me to my next point: You say ‘men like me,’ when there is no being that can claim your likeness. When you are a creature completely new upon this world. There is no care to match your own; there is no soul that sings to the precise tune of your vibrance.

Though mine, I think - the discordant-seeming song that composes my being - meets your harmony in consonance. Though we, so unlike any other, have found a place in one another. ~~Perhaps a~~ [ … ] Perhaps a home.

What I mean: Yes, we belong together. You at my side; I at your own. Our hands seeking each other through the absences in air. Our lungs, our eyes, our dreaming chasing off all scraps and signs of ghosts.

What you’ve said about haunting

I know the feeling of a ghost, if not the reason; I

What do you feel in the hollows between conscious thinking, Puppy?

Notice that I don’t speak of banishing poltergeists. Please, Puppy; I like a bit of nuisance in my life. 😌

Oh, and for the record? There’s no risk of my seeming overeager. The trick will be conveying in fullness just how enthusiastic I am.

Jack, Jack. I've no wish for you to place yourself within the mayor's target.

[ ... ]

But I do like your loyalty. I cherish its thought.

And do you know, Puppy? I believe you could be dangerous.

I might like to see what you can wreak. In situations liable to bring no risk upon my Jack.

Oh, you'd be magnificent.

Edited 2021-12-26 22:13 (UTC)

What can I say? For all my deviance, devastation, and danger, I'm traditional at heart. If you want to dive right in and call me your boyfriend - and your own, ~~and say it's always~~ and talk about us in future tense - you'll find out I like to pay for dates, hold doors, and give amazing massages.

(Hm. You know all that already.)

And I'm loyal.

[...]

'Committed' would be apt, too, though it doesn't cover all the bases. (Or, more casually: a Puppy that doesn't stray. ;) )

Most of all to you - and yes, Desmond, I believe you and I are remarkably similar in nature. It was a thought I had last night, as a matter of fact. Or something along those lines.

More to the truth of things, I thought we're all there is of our kind. Whatever we are. This species of human that should never have existed.

[...]

From the perspective of others, anyhow. I'm very glad you exist.

~~And ever since this morning - breath and bedhead and pillow crease notwithstanding - I'm not too unhappy with my own existence, either.~~

~~I don't think~~ [...]

[...]

I really wonder whether I could want anyone else.

After last night. After knowing you.

~~If that's all right to say.~~

You'll allow that, won't you?

Would you do something for me?

If you need it, I'll try to explain, but the explanation's probably stranger than the request.

Not only do I allow it; I meet you evenly upon this field.

What you’ve said: That we are a kind apart from the world.

You aren’t wrong; what we are doesn’t belong here, doesn’t fit with

You never were precisely human, were you?

[ … ]

Jack. Puppy. Who are you?

You’re correct, Puppy; or your understanding meets my own.

I am not [ … ] accustomed to feeling at ease in the world. Or among men, particularly in this town. This has never been [ … ] a home.

I can’t tell you how long I’ve lived without

[ … ]

No, I suppose I really can’t tell you.

I have never known anyone the way that I know you. Where knowing mean recognition, means meeting patterns of my own being. Where knowing means ease, and comfort, and a space for authenticity, the likes of which I’ve never found.

What I am and what you are isn’t wrong. Our existence is as dire as any other; more so, I might say. (You, Jack, hold more humanity in the tip of your forefinger than most of the people here have wielded in their life.) What you are is beautiful, my Puppy. And if this world fits you awry, that is no fault of your own.

(You who gleam with a light all your own beneath the stars. You who are damnably, devilishly charming, with your swiftness in opening doors and your… Oh, how am I to define the care held in you touch? Last night, the aching in my foot was eased to a dull murmur. Last night, I melted to your touch; now, I melt again at its memory. Never doubt that you are tenderness itself. Never doubt that you set my heart to blessed racing.)

My beautiful Puppy.

My never-a-stray.

My home.

No, Jack; there can be no one after you. There could never have been anyone but you.

An explanation? No; I’ll entrust myself to your hands. Be gentle with me, hm?

What is it, Puppy?

~~Home~~

[...]

You asked what made me dizzy: 'boyfriend' or 'devastation'. Maybe it wasn't a word, after all. Maybe it's just the meaning.

Not maybe. Definitely.

You make me dizzy. I'm all twisted up about you. You say just the right things, and you [...] let me be how I am, in ways I didn't think I was capable. I'm someone else with you.

I can't talk about it sensibly because it doesn't make any kind of sense. I met you two days ago, Desmond. If you look at this from the outside, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done. All those things I said last night. And the night before. And today.

It can't look copacetic on your side, either: a younger man whose family owes you money is suddenly all over you?

[...]

I love being all over you. It's like it's okay to get carried away with you. I feel at home in my own skin when I'm with you. I feel whole. Not completed by you, but complete on my own, or less fragmented, maybe. I'm able to be everything I never knew I was - for you.

And you let me talk like this. Any other man would've been a restraining order away from me by now. Even the horses are spooked.

[...]

What I mean is, I'll keep melting you. I'll keep being tender, authentic, and charming (if you say so.) I will not always be gentle, though. Who wants that? ;)

Yes, Desmond: if there's an always (and an 'always was'), then that's how long you'll have a home in me.

Edited 2021-12-27 06:02 (UTC)

When we're alone, would you just call me 'Puppy'?

The thing is, it's strange to hear you call me 'Jack'.

It's almost like I expect you to say (or write) something else. 'Puppy' clicked right into place like a puzzle piece.

Better than 'Jack', anyhow.

Edited 2021-12-27 06:04 (UTC)

Puppy, then.

Always my Puppy. Even in public; even when I must use your other name, know that my meaning is composed of 'Puppy' and 'my own.'

And of course, all of my fondness. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Edited 2021-12-28 04:55 (UTC)

We'll find what suits you best on every count, my Puppy.

The trouble is you’ve been someone else for so long

Puppy, I’m

We’ll find your lasting wholeness.

And I take your meaning. About wholeness. I feel [ … ] pieces of myself revived in you. I know myself in ways I thought long-gone, or [ … ] destined to linger dormant, without place.

I know myself better through your presence. ~~It’s almost as if I know you.~~ It’s as if I’ve been waiting all this time to find you.

I believe I have always been waiting, not knowing what I sought.

My boyfriend. My devastation.

My home.

Two more points—

First: The outside view is rarely aligned with veracity. Particularly where viewers are apt to term engagements beyond the expected as ‘aberrant,’ ‘ill-favored’— Or, god forbid, ‘untidy.’

I’ve seen how wildly their judgment errs. I know the slander they’ve imposed on you.

I know how wretchedly they err.

Someday, my Puppy, they’ll know the truth of what you are. (If they’re lucky. If they learn to look beyond the scope of their own restricted assholes.)

And whatever they believe, you may trust I’ll know you always, and give to you the best that’s in my self.

Second point: You caught my little feint, did you? Of course I mean to encourage a bit of roughness now and then. How could I adore my Puppy, and not also cherish his fangs? 😌

I caught your little feint. I also caught that heart you sent.

You need to be caref

We just met, we're carried away en

Desmond [...] I have to ask you for one more favor.

You put a heart up there in that first message. Whatever it means to you, no how playful it was meant to be - or maybe no matter how sure you are that it belongs there - I'd like you to hang on to it.

Just for a week. Like the collar.

For the same reason, as a matter of fact.

I'd hate to get the wrong idea and then find whatever this is can't even last a week.

I very easily get the wrong idea.

[...]

Next week, I promise: you can send as many of those as you want, in every goddamn color. Text them, draw them on my arms, make them with your fingers and thumbs. Say [...] whatever comes to mind. Store it all up and give me an avalanche of it.

No complaints from me. ~~I might find one lying around somewhere to give in return. Might have left one on your bedroom floor, as a matter of fact.~~

But for this week, be careful [...] [...] with me. Please.

~~It's just~~

It isn't that I wouldn't want it.

[...]

Them.

Heart emojis.

[...]

It.

[...]

It's not like that.

But you know that trick where someone comes to pick you up, but every time you reach to open the door, they drive a few feet, so you can't get in? Or [...] the dollar bill on the string? Reach for it and the string gets yanked?

I'm a chronic sucker for that trick.

With hearts, though.

[...]

Maybe if that one heart just sits there all by its lonesome for a week and I see it isn't snatched away or deleted, I'll be a little less skeptical about it. I'll be more comfortable accepting it.

~~In a week, I'll know whether you're the kind of person who plays games like that.~~

Edited 2021-12-28 19:13 (UTC)

Puppy. Forgive me, won't you? It wasn't my intention to cause you

I regret that you've been given cause to doubt

I promise you that my intention runs far from duplicitous

Puppy; of course.

I hear your meaning, and I'll hold my hearts until we've had our first week. I believe I can survive a little patience, hm? And I've no shortage of alternate means for expressing my interest.

As we've said, I can be quite creative when I like. 😌 And you give me great cause for expanding my vocabulary.

I'll take care, my Puppy. Of you. With you. And if I become in any other fashion incautious, only give me a word, won't you?

Meanwhile, let that first heart remain unrescinded, never-lonesome, for it's guarded with my spirit. A bearer of my fond will, to greet you with renewed meaning once this week has passed.

There's no hurry, Puppy.

All will be well.

What did I do to deserve y

Why are you being so good to m

[...]

You know, all things considered? It doesn't seem right to leave it there alone, even if your spirit - indomitable as it is, and lovelier than I've ever encountered - is keeping watch over it. You're busy taking care of me, right?

It's a lot of emotional labor to ask of one newly-made boyfriend, and I'm partial to equitability.

Hm.

A week's not so long to leave a heart (emoji) unattended.

Here. This one can keep it company.

❤️

But no touching either one until Tuesday!

If they're both still there on Tuesday, we'll sort out who gets which.

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