The primary mean of thermoregulation.

Anything gets you wet nowadays. The faintest touch, hell, even when he pushes you around, brutalize you in a primitive show of dominance, you can feel it: the dark spot in your boxer brief. And yet you had not craved sex in months, maybe even years.

The last time you did you were more mad than aroused, fever and desperation guiding your hands like a cat feasting on it’s owner’s tender flesh by instinct after tasting the first drops of blood on it’s raspy tongue. Stress licking, stress kissing, stress rubbing flaccid, rapidly cooling body, as if your burning skin could bring him back.

But the mouth kisses back, and the lips are pleasantly hot, if nearly as raspy as yours. You weren’t calculating anything when you started brewing this piss, neither to attempt an escape or to lower the inhibition of your unwilling housemate for nefarious purposes. Only a bottled up excuse, one to hide behind in case your shoulder lingered a bit too much against his. It’s what drunkards too, that’s all.

You got more than you bargained for. Full, soft chest pressing against your ribcage, heavy weight almost knocking the air out of you, getting lightheaded from forgetting to breath. Swapping spit like teenagers, your tongue runs after his when he pulls away, hands too busy ridding yourself of your underwear to keep him close, closer, anxiety swells in your chest, a pathetic noise escapes your mouth, half moan half cry. Language has long devolved back to the primeval vocalization, like a starving infant begging for it’s mother’s breast, you’ve gone without that skin-to-skin contact for too long, wishes he would rid himself of his clothes already. He doesn’t, but he makes you forget about it, hand disappearing under the fat pressed against your bones. Sparks fly behind your corneas at the first brush, fingers tentatively feeling their way against your flesh, making you bite down hard on your flaky lips, strangled cry shooting straight through his eardrum, but you don’t notice him doing a face, and he doesn’t bicker, or shove you, though you’d let him take you by the neck, call you a bitch.

You can’t focus on anything, toaster dropped straight into your swimming mind, too much and too little at once. You gasp for air, gasp for his mouth, kiss haphazardly, mouthful of stubble and scarred cheeks, tasting sweat and salt and the daily grime, you don’t care, he doesn’t either even though it’s been a while since he threw you in the shower, threatening to forcefully strip you, if only, if only.

He lifts your leg, prosthesis uselessly squeaking, piece of trash like you are, to be soon discarded once you’ve served your purpose. Not right now though, no. You could almost mistake it through the haze of moonshine and the explosion of dopamine in your brain, like it did back then; a cocktail of chemicals that spells feelings you know aren’t there: he hates your guts, probably just felt pent up, cooped up with no one else to look at but you and your stupid experiments, a hole is a hole and you don’t know how you didn’t cry out from the pain when his thick finger slipped in, thumb still teasing you. You smile, just for a second, an annoying factoid about nerve endings wanting to slip through, but all that does is more obscene gibberish, a cry for an entity you never believed in, clinging to his shirt so hard you surely are going to warp the fabric.

Maybe you did get brain damage, malnourished and feverish, huddling in the dark like a feral animal; maybe you’re getting some right now, that brilliant mind reduced to slop with just one hand, the other holding you so tightly you could mistake it for an armlock. Can’t be a hug, could never be with this guy, but you lean into it just like one, cling to his fist like he’s dangling you above the precipice and you’re holding on for dear life. But he coos sweet words into your ears when your voice hitches, barely registered through the mist, and doesn’t even bite back when your teeth sinks into his thumb, swallowing down the wail that’s building at the back of your throat. You don’t remember when he slipped another one in, too soaked to notice; it’s dripping everywhere between your quivering thighs- did you piss yourself ? Or is it all transudate and cervical mucorrhea ? That shit used to leave the inside of your panties discolored, alien queen with a cunt that could melt steel or whatever the hell was this movie your peers at university invited you to watch, the details blur as your mind wanders away from this building itch behind your breastbone and between the legs that desperately want to meet each other because you know once it spills over it’s over, but he’s holding you fast and well while his fingers pound into you with such ease, as if he was holding a rabbit by the legs, or more like a weird, fucked up hare; he must be really shitfaced for willingly going knuckle-deep into someone like you, curling fingers caressing your innermost blindspot as these adolescent thought resurface like your brain purging itself of all the pus that was hiding out of sight, silly insecurities reserved to the simple minds, the pleb, who cares about the body that houses your brilliant neurotic genius, it’s a mean to an end, the vehicle that allows it to transcend humanity again and again and again who cares about jutting bones dull skin huge nose crippled one-eyed FREAK that’s what he usually mutters under his breath but right at this moment as you hyperventilate he’s calling you baby and the sickly-sweet pet name makes a bark of laughter bubble up your throat but all that leave is a sob eclipsed by the scream that blindsights everything: bone-shattering convulsion, throat raw, toes curling, iron on your taste-buds, shorting the connections between your synapses contained by strong arms that barely budge through the climax and for a second you get it, like really get it, not jacking off with your pants around your ankles still sitting at your desk high off your own genius or too late during the night chasing sleep through masturbation but the deep secret to the only study you ever abandoned that still throbs even after your body goes slack, spent and exhausted and utterly empty.

The clarity sets in, dulled by alcohol but present enough to register the kiss he presses to your cheek, not hungry but something else you dare not even hope think. You chase after it though, fighting with the exhaustion that has been clinging to your frame ever since you were dug out of your quarantined grave, missing more than a limb and an eye. Burying your face in his damp chest like the spoiled child you were you resist being put to bed, pleading for just a little bit more, greedy, starving, annoying thing.

He relents, encircling your shivering frame with his maddening warmth, and you pretend it’s sweat, it’s just sweat.