Muse.

Voyeur

[soundtrack: Pretty by The Cranberries]

Venus trails between wet gray rocks. Sun burns out her details, rendering her a silhouette but for the skeins of thin white fabric falling like spider silk from her sleeves and dripping from her hips. She pauses between each step, carefully stalking her prey. As she nears, her face comes slowly into view. Blue-black shadows melt away from her dark eye sockets and her clear, fixated eyes are revealed. Her lips curve, as if she is aware that the camera is watching.

The angle rocks slowly to one side, setting a blur of fair hair into the foreground. A faint scraping sounds in the background, scrape... scrape... scrape....

Here is the object of Venus's attention, though we do not see his face, only feathery blond curls crushed beneath a circlet. Venus keeps walking towards him. The youth's head is bent, and he is engulfed in some activity.

The camera cuts over the goddess's shoulder. The sun glitters off dew drops on her shoulder. Past her, we see Adonis, sharpening arrows with a rock. The sound of scraping grows louder, cutting through the ambient noise of the breeze. It grates and grates. Each strike of the rock is longer and more drawn out. Venus grins. Adonis scrapes once more against his arrowhead, a long drawn out screech. Then silence, he pauses. Suddenly aware of some shift in the wind—the beautiful boy looks up slowly. His face is raptured in awe and terror as befits the vision of a god.

The screen freezes. Armin's face, turned upwards in awe, remains.

I look over at Eren. He sits comfortably, a foot down the couch from me. My eyes catch on his thighs, splayed on the cushion, and between them the shadow of a bulge.

I'm sick!

"This is where the flashback to Mars goes," he offers. I look up. His mouth pauses half open, his eyes hold mine for a moment longer than is natural. He pushes up off the couch, for once not laughing at my expense.

He minimizes the file and scrolls through the continuum of Final Cut Pro. Tiny colored boxes of audio and video sail by on the dark gray background. He drops the needle with his mouse on a new scene and brings it full screen.

"This is your best performance."

The scene rolls. I pull a pillow onto my lap to squeeze, so I won't fidget. I'm nervous.

The camera forgets Adonis. It clings to my slow moving body. My collarbone heaves up slowly then down. My head tips back, setting my face in glistening sunlight. My breath lifts out of my mouth in a cloud of condensation. The sound of the sigh echoes over itself, like a feather falling from great heights.

The erotic scene plays out in details, close to my skin. Macro shots display raw desire—quivering breaths in a trachea, slack open lips and a flushed chest. The camera stays close, capturing a fragmented image of pleasure.

My pleasure.

Eren steady breathing draws me out of his dream world on screen and back into the palpable tension of this living room. Air moves in and out through his noise, so steadily I wonder if he meters each breath. In my peripheral, his head turns to me.

My own breath shallows. He watches me watch myself. Softly, he speaks.

"What do you think?"

On screen, the camera follows my hand as it scathes up my rib cage and caresses my breast.

I take a deep breath. In the stillness of the dim room, lit only by the blue light from the glowing television screen, I look at Eren.

"It's strange to see myself like that."

He regards me with rapt attention. I keep talking just to fill the quiet.

"I was scared to shoot that scene, because... because I thought it would be obvious how inexperienced I was, but you made me look..." I dip my gaze. "You made me look like I know what I'm doing, so thanks I guess."