A midnight snack

Don't worry about it," Max waved his hand dismissively and grabbed my hand. He pulled me towards the north, near a river. The bank was beautifully decorated with small gardens, benches to sit, small aesthetic cafes; undoubtedly it was one of the places made popular by the younger generations. Running my eyes around I found many young couples, influencers dancing and taking videos, children playing around the gardens and people feeding birds. Joining their group, I started taking videos.

"This place was one of the abandoned ones in the town. People would come to throw away their dead animals here. A lot many times human corpses were found too. Then one day people decided to change the face of the river bank. Our master took the initiative."

We spent the rest of the day taking more photos, eating, lazing around the gardens, telling each other stories… "I could get habituated to this life," I said when he brought me a steaming cup of coffee.

"Then don't leave. Stay with me," he said. We watched as the sun, a huge orange lozenge dived under the river. It spilled thousands of colours in the water, red, scarlet, orange, yellow, gold, and many more I never knew existed.

"We should kiss now," I suggested.

He kissed me this time. What started as an innocent touch of affection, soon changed into a heated battle of dominance. I couldn't stop myself from invading him with my hands, my tongue, my breath and with all my being. In a while he pulled away and asked, "Shall we get back to the hotel?"

We almost ran towards the hotel. On our way, we ignored the receptionist, the prying eyes of the elders and the same group of young girls who had taken their fill of entertainment just by following us. Once we reached our room, our skin melted and became one.

In between the hungry kisses Max was telling me his story. While taking off our clothes, he was sobbing. He wanted more, he had wanted more for a very long time, and he wanted me closer. "Touch me here," he whispered and guided me through daze I was in. he said something else that I couldn't understand. Everything around me was foggy, the room was filled in blue light. My heart pumped so fast that I was scared that it might explode at any time. Every cell of my body was on fire, the thrill that ran through my veins made me dizzy. My blood rushed through every inch of my body, and suddenly my mind told me what I longed to hear.

I was alive.

It was not the first time I had felt that way, but it was not the time yet to share that with him. I still needed time, and probably so did he.

A discomfort had woken me up. I left the bed and donned a shirt. The room was chilly. I drank some water and watched him sleeping. Not a good idea, to watch a man sleeping after having sex with him; it felt wrong, yet intoxicating. Like a long forgotten memory, a faraway dream rushed back to my mind.

I was alone, in a place between a dream and a reality, between sleep and wakefulness, between air and earth, somewhere between the flesh, bone and stone. I was floating, drowning, soaring, until I was still. Until I heard a voice calling to me, a voice that whispered sweet nothings to my ears, a voice singing songs of love and lust to me, and I became very still. When I opened my eyes, he was there.

He tossed and turned on the bed restlessly as something was missing. I put my hand over his head and caressed, hoping whatever made him uncomfortable would disappear. Instead, my touch woke him up. "Hi!" he said in a groggy voice.

"Hi, are you okay?"

He smiled and scrunched his nose like a baby. "I think I am hungry."

"Let me see if I can order something." I advanced towards the table where an old fashioned telephone sat. The receptionist told me to make a call if I needed anything. It was one in the morning; a faint guilt built up inside me. I was going to cause a nuisance for them, but I couldn't let him stay hungry the whole night.

"Actually, I can fix something up for myself." He jumped out of the bed nervously and grinned. "The kitchen stays open. Don't bother."

"Kitchen stays open this late?" I raised my brows. "Can I join you? Is it allowed?"

"Sure, let's go." It took him a minute to dress.

The kitchen was in the ground floor, in the opposite direction of where my room was. It was an open kitchen attached with a dining hall. To my surprise, there are people sitting around an oval shaped dining table. Two of them looked like having a really late supper, three had cup of coffee in front of them, and an old man had whiskey. They all looked up at us, quite expectantly.

"Please carry on, we will leave in a while," Max said waving his hand and gestured me to follow him. "I will treat you with the best midnight snack of the world—noodles."

"Let's go and sit on the table," I said, holding two bowls full of steaming hot noodles. Max was following me to the dining table, when a deep voice stopped both of us midway.

"He doesn't sit with us." The owner of the voice was a middle aged woman from across the hall.

"You don't?" I said jokingly. Max returned me an anxious, guilty look. I repeated my tone, now seriously, "You don't?"

"He doesn't, because it has always been that way," the woman cut in. I took a good look at the woman now. She was dressed in a wine red dress, sipping her coffee, reading a magazine on interior designing. The few wrinkles around her dark brown eyes couldn't hide her immaculate beauty. She sat straight, chin up, hands posed properly like a lady. I would have appreciated her if I hadn't heard what she said next. "He knows well that this table is not for him, I wonder what made him come this way."

"We will leave," Max grabbed my arm and pulled me.

"Of course we will, one we have eaten." I ignored Max's pleading eyes and advanced towards the empty seats of the table. The small crowd had gone silent watching the exchange.

"We can eat in our room," Max said, and the woman raised a brow.

"We will do something else there, babe," I said winking, knowing very well that it could make people uncomfortable. Strangely, nobody looked uncomfortable enough to tear their gaze off us.

"You should listen to him. He knows how this house works."

I decided to ignore the woman, and put the bowls on the table. I moved the chairs to make space and extended my hand for him. He waited for a moment, then another, and another, and I saw his eyes tearing up. I heard hearts beating fast, very fast, like a drum, and then another beat was added to it.

There was no sound in the dining hall, except our breathing and the ticking of a huge grandfather clock standing at a side of the hall. When he finally mustered enough courage to raise his hands to put into mine, I felt him trembling. I held his hand tightly and smiled.

"We have come here to have our midnight snack and we will have it as it pleases and comforts us. If somebody finds it difficult to tolerate they can leave, or file a complaint. However, as far as I know, I can invite a guest here." I caught a glimpse of a smirk, a stifled smile, and some disapproved looks. The lady stood up, grabbed her coffee mug and magazine and moved away from the table as though it had something undesirable.

"I will let others know that his master is here," she taunted before leaving.

"His lover," I corrected. I wanted to have the last word.

A man who was smoking a pipe said, "A long time has passed. There is no point of holding on to the old ways, at least not in this case."

"Thank you," Max said with a revering bow and took his seat beside me. Following the woman, three more people left the table. One old man, one young man who seemed to be related to the man, and another man in his middle age. The rest who were left behind looked comfortable soon enough. My glare had followed the woman and her followers until I found the receptionist standing on the doorway. He had seen the entire exchange.

"He will always be treated like that, unless some great secret of his birth is revealed. Given the snob, arrogant bastards they are, I doubt even then they will change." He commented with a yawn.

"Do you know why—"

"It is such a strange word—'why?'. Why this, why that, so small yet so damn powerful." He went back to his normal self and gave me a flirtatious grin. "I know some of the WHYs, not all. You have to find them out yourselves." His eyes stayed on my face a little longer than they should, which told me what was on his mind.

"What do you want in return?"