Creepy Boy.

Who Leads Who?

Cyrus--

There were wolves in my attic. I hunched my shoulders as they padded along my landing and brushed my ankles at the bottom of the stairs. More than my own pair of ears must have pricked at the thumping of water into my stained bathtub, the creaking of pipes against the dry walls.

Galen said he didn't care if the water pressure was shit.

"I'll be quick," he muttered. He wouldn't look at my face, "I have to wash all the.. sweat away."

Sadly i turned away, hand slipping from the bannistair in a flurry of dust motes; the sunlight was golden, blessed by Midas this morning. But I carried the weight of a new morning in very much the same way the Greek King had once he realised his touch was really a curse. 'I hope he doesn't think his touch is a curse,' I thought blankly, pulling the coffee pot out, cracking two mugs together in a preoccupied manner, 'I wonder if Galen really thinks his hands are cursed- he apologised, after all.'

"I am sorry," he repeated, eyes sliding away and refusing to meet mine for the rest of the morning. I hadn't responded because I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know what to think in reply, so how could I have formed words?

All i could register was shock, of sorts. It was if the apology brought into shameful, naked light the night we had just spent together. And the early morning, too-

"Fuck." Red on the neck, I swept up the coffee grounds I had just dropped into my palm. I stared at it for a good moment. I was trembling ever so slightly, as though just about to dive from a great height or having returned from a gruelling run. Such a shaken response to the memory of the dusk til dawn hours was surely understandable; it hit me like increasingly powerful, coercing waves, heating my skin and raising my hairs and rattling my nerves.

That was the main reason I had been at a loss for words, when Galen had apologised so guiltily, so sincerely before staggering up to the bathroom. The day before, he had terrified me. What a beast, shadowing my life, shouldering into my private existence, prying at and opening me up like a storm bruised bud. He was of base nature, as terrible as the wolves he bathed with. Worse than those wolves; they were at least things of nature whilst he, I shivered touching my attacked neck, he was unnatural to say the least.

"Look at me," he had practically commanded last night, more than once.

'But-' something inside me was quick to rebuke, 'but when you did, there was no more malice left in that crying face! That's why, the next time, he needn't have asked-'

"Oh for-" I slammed the pot down and piping coffee sloshed across my wrist, "fuck!" It shattered on the floor, between my bare feet. "For fucks' sake!"

That was right, he'd started crying. Strange thing to do halfway through sex. The way he held me this morning, like he was scared and reduced to jittering at any change in my emotion, you would've thought he was happy.

Trembling, I repeated more softly, "fuck."

Wolves paws skittered down the stairs:

"Cyrus?" He breathed sharply from the door.

Don't use that tone with me, boy, not that gentle, concerned, warm as the steam rising from your damp hair tone. Not on me, not after you scared me in the door like that yesterday. What's with that gaze, those heavy lidded eyes that stubbornly avoid mine, that unhidden trace of weighty guilt, the line of red underneath those brilliant pupils capable of compassion, red that betrays a happiness unhinged? Why do you hold me so gently, so carefully, like I might be something easily broken, creepy boy?

"Keep it under the cold water," he was instructing calmly. Even though his face was close to the burned skin, chapped lips leaning down to my pulse again (thump-thump-thump-) the nervousness leaked into the air and I could guess his expression. "I will clear the glass away." We seemed to have spent enough time together that I could imagine the creases on his brow already.