Work Text:
Doors That Stay Closed
He locks his front door here, though no one comes to it but the postman, or Mrs. Pulsifer from up the lane when her garden produces too many aubergines. The bedroom has a door, but he can wank off with it open if he likes. (See above: door, front, locked.) No one slams the icebox shut after looking for diet soda. No one bangs the cupboards or the glass fronts of the bookcases.
Mornings, he translates; he rereads Middlemarch in the afternoons. He cooks the aubergines into too-elaborate dishes and leaves his stereo off.
He sleeps uneasily in the silence.
Because He Can
The first night he goes to the pub and meets a woman. He brings her home after closing, one hand on her ass while he fumbles with the lock. She pushes against him and they fall across the threshold and shag in the hall like two school-leavers, never minding that the door's ajar and his keys are still in it.
Next time it's a man, and they never make it to the door, but bugger each other in the stairwell.
When he spends the night with people who'll stay to breakfast, he still leaves the door unlocked. Because he can.