Hamartia

by Scarlett Drake

But him…well, he was my inevitability. He was when it started. When everything else ended. Everything I was before. He was the moon and the stars and everything in-between and all I wanted to do was worship at his feet. The band, my girlfriend, my dad, everything that I thought was important to me, just ceased to exist the moment I first saw him. I’m not proud of that. But it’s what it was. There was before him and after him, two sides, and I am two completely separate people on each.

He’d given me a look. A look that shifted something inside me in a way that all those separate parts that made up the whole changed imperceptibly. So that they didn’t fit back the way they were supposed to. Like I no longer fit inside myself. That’s how I’d come to describe it. That was the power of that shift. The power of him. I was like a stranger to my own fucking soul.

It feels like divinity. And he’s my god.

“I do not want to be your friend, Raphael. I do not want to watch sunrises and think of you. I do not want to close my eyes to go to sleep and see the image of your mouth when you smile. I do not want to spend a five-hour flight daydreaming about your eyes or the sound of your voice or the way you say my name. I do not want it. And yet… all of these things I have done just today.”

“I want you. I don’t know what this is but I haven’t been able to think in a straight line since I saw you and it’s driving me insane. I want…to touch you, breathe you in, kiss you, taste you, and I don’t know what any of it means. It’s…it’s like I’m fucking obsessed. I feel obsessed. Have you ever been obsessed with anything? Ever wanted something so much it makes every breath you have to take without it, pointless?”

“I told you, I’m here because I want you. Because if I don’t get to have you at least once I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” Maybe I could have gone with something more poetic, something like I’m here because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for two and a half years. Because I’ve never wanted to touch and be touched by another person as much as I want to touch and be touched by you. Because just looking at you feels like I’m drowning, and I like that feeling more than I should.

But all I want to do now is compliment him, praise him, worship him. Maybe I should kneel?

Why am I fully prepared to move to another continent and learn a language that may as well be spoken with a different body part. It’s ridiculous. We hadn’t even fucked. A blowjob and a hand job and I’m ready to change citizenship.

“Dangsin-eun na-ege neomu keun sangcheoleul jul geos-ibnida. an geulae?”

It’s only half true, that he’s an enigma, because the Jae in my arms right now feels a lot less mysterious than he did a minute ago. This one is soft and sweet and likes to cuddle. It isn’t a Jae I’d seen in any interview or music video, any photoshoot or Instagram story. This was the real him and I’m pretty fucking sure I’m falling harder for him than all the others.

I wasn’t even sure what this was because it’s big, you know? It’s really fucking big, mom. Maybe even blow-my-entire-life-up big and I’m not quite ready to do that yet. I’m scared, I guess. But he makes me feel like maybe the aftermath wouldn’t be bad at all. That what we’d be left with after the dust settled would be all I‘d need. Perfect, actually. I don’t think I’d need that much if I had him. He’s kind of everything…he’s enough. And I’d be enough too, you know?”

“Love cannot bloom hidden away in the shadows, Raphael. Eventually it will wither and die. It would not be fair to offer you a love like that, one that is half in the dark and dying from the start. You deserve something better than what I can give you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper to no one. “In another life I would have chosen you.”

What do you fucking want, Jaehyun? “You.” I whisper to no one. “I want you, Raphael.”

We talked a lot about your asshole.” “My religious, soul-shifting asshole?”

“Is this you fishing for compliments again? Cause I’ll take the bait, happily.”