On Worship
There was poetic irony in the sacrilege they kept committing, god and warlock both.
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It always played out the same way between them, hitting every note with such perfect accuracy that it had become a mantra Kae could repeat even in his sleep.
The barbed words.
The wanting looks.
The feeble resistance.
The tortuous pull.
The triumphant surrender, and the distance that followed.
It was a dance he knew by heart, one with no ending and no beginning. There had been pleasure in it once, pleasure in knowing it needn’t end, that there would always be a next time. Another chance for it to turn out differently, chance for change, evolution, divergence. Anything.
And yet the thrill was still there, all those years later. It made it so much harder to walk away.
He eyed Kajo’s naked form next to him, for once fast asleep, and catalogued every minute detail for later solitary examination. The soft curve of their hips, the tail curling around their ankle. The steady rising and falling of their back, the scarred bumps on their shoulder blades where the wings would normally be. Their hair fell in waves against their skin, the mess of tangles a leftover from Kae’s restless fingers.
That their lovemaking had left its marks on the rose-tinted skin gave him a pause. He looked away before he started feeling something or other about it.
Every instance was a small death, decay, rebirth. He wanted it; he wanted to drown in it. He wanted their worship and wanted to worship in return, wanted it until there was no other god in the universe, no other meaning, no other purpose.
Kae picked up the notebook on the nightstand, found an empty page, and let his gaze linger on his deity for several endless moments before picking up a pen. Once they woke up the moment would be gone. He knew he’d wake up to an empty bed and cold sheets, to distance, silence, until the cycle would begin anew.
On the empty page he wrote,
Ours is a private religion
I its sole priest
Time the offering
Saccharine my prayer
This glorified sin my worship
And your body the temple
He dropped the notebook in his open satchel, waiting next to the bed, and sat up. The bed shifted as Kajo curled up in their sleep, their face perfectly tranquil for once. Kae brushed the loose hair off their face, his touch lingering on the bruises peppering the expanse of their neck just a bit too long.
He stood up and dressed in silence, making his side of the bed before walking away.
It would be two days until Kajo woke and found him gone.