Where It Hurts The Most

Days passed.

Something changed between them. Not a label, not a conversation just presence.

She started showing up before her shift. Bringing coffee without asking how he liked it. He started sketching openly when she was near, no longer hiding the pages.

One night, they stayed late again. He was working on a back piece for a client who’d lost his sister a phoenix rising from the chest of a child’s doll. The pain in the image bled through every line.She watched in silence for a while before saying,You don’t know how to draw anything that doesn’t hurt.

He didn’t answer.She moved behind him, close. He felt the air shift.

Her voice was low, brushing the shell of his ear.

Let me see you.

He froze.

Not the ink. Not the work. Just you, Arjun. You never let anyone look, do you?

He turned then, not all the way just enough for his shoulder to graze hers.

I’m not… I don’t know how to be seen without breaking.

She looked at him, eyes dark and unafraid.

And before he could stop himself, he kissed her.

Not perfectly.

Not smoothly.

Like someone starving. Like someone who’d spent his whole life looking for warmth and didn’t know what to do with it now that he’d found it.She kissed him back like it hurt.

And it did.But neither of them let go.

The shop was quiet again.

The night after the kiss, Aksha didn’t show up. Neither did she the day after. Arjun didn’t text. He wanted to typed half a dozen messages, deleted every one. He told himself not to overthink it.But he always overthought everything.

Maybe she regretted it. Maybe she saw too much.By the third night, he was pacing the back hallway like a caged thing, dragging in slow shallow breaths the kind you take when you’re afraid of disturbing the air.

Then the door creaked.And there she was.

Soaked again. Eyes unreadable no words.

She walked past him and locked the front door. Turned off the sign. Clicked the deadbolt into place.

Only then did she speak.

I don’t want safe tonight.

He didn’t move. “Aksha—”

I want truth. And I want your hands.

That broke him.

She closed the space between them and touched the side of his neck, thumb brushing the vein that throbbed under his skin. His hands hovered at her waist, uncertain.I’m not asking you to fix me,” she whispered.I’m asking you to touch me like I’m not broken.

He let out a shaky breath, and when he kissed her this time, it wasn’t starving it was slow deep. Like a confession that had taken too long to form.Her mouth opened under his, soft and fierce all at once. Her fingers tangled in his hoodie. She pulled it over his head, revealing ink and scars that didn’t match.He pulled away just enough to murmur, I don’t know how to do this without falling.She looked him dead in the eyes and said then fall.

They stumbled to the back room the makeshift breakroom where he kept sketchbooks, ink, and solitude.

Her shirt came off first, fingers fumbling with buttons. His mouth moved to the hollow of her throat, tasting salt and something more primal. His hands were cherished her but they shook too like he still didn’t believe he was allowed to have this.Her ribs still bore the fresh tattoo. He traced around it with the tip of his thumb.

You’ll hurt it she whispered.

I don’t care-he said

She laughed softly almost bitter Of course you don’t. You only touch what already hurts.He laid her down across the ratty old leather couch, the one no client ever saw. Her jeans hit the floor. His fingers followed the lines of her hips like he was memorizing the geography of survival.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t delicate, either. It was raw a kind of desperate tenderness that could only come from two people who had stopped pretending to be whole.

She pulled him on top of her, legs wrapped around his waist, breath caught between gasps and curses. Every movement felt like it carried history trauma, need, and something dangerously close to worship.

They didn’t speak much.But his mouth never stopped moving.Throat, Collarbone, the inside of her wrist. The place behind her knee.He left no part of her untouched.

And when he finally pressed inside her slow, deep, holding her like she might vanish she let out a sound that wasn’t quite a moan. It was more like a release.A kind of grief exhaled through pleasure.She buried her face in his neck and whispered,

Don’t leave anything behind.

He didn’t.

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