Giving in, Letting Go

Lisette poses for some semi-candid pictures for her husband.... She just didn't know he was going to post them online. A little shy, at first, but increasingly confident, Lise learns she loves the camera. 

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“My Nightengale… What are you doing with that camera?” Lisette wondered. She slipped her thumb in between the pages of her book to hold her place and let it rest on her lap. Across the room, Gale, her lover, husband, best friend, and more, was fiddling with a relic. It was an old-fashioned camera, the kind that took film, the sort you had to have developed in a photo lab. Gale had been toying with it for the last several weeks. He’d even set up a dark room in the basement. 

He was always picking up hobbies like this. He’d invest himself in them until they had nothing of interest left to offer him, and then he’d leave the discarded husk of accoutrements behind. There were boxes of the stuff in the basement, sealed up, piled up, and collecting dust. Lise liked to tease that it was junk, not knowledge, that formed his dragon’s hoard. She’d laughed hard enough at the joke for both of them. 

The camera was something he hadn’t spoken much about, though. He’d smile his secretive little smile, kiss the top of her head, or her hand, or her shoulder, and he’d take it with him outside and photograph anything and everything. Then he’d come inside and line up random objects under different lamps and just click, click, click. And today he’d brought out the camera, slipped the strap over his head, and then just… stood in the doorway to their livingroom, fiddling with dials and apertures and whatever else you could fiddle with on a camera. Dusk light spilled in through the window behind her, over her shoulder, and made blue and violet and pink out of the lamplight she’d been using to read. 

Gale didn’t answer her question. He looked up, his blue eyes like luminescent moonstone in the low light where it reached his doorframe, and Lise realized in that moment he’d chosen that spot quite intentionally. He was striking, tall, dark, half-hidden in shadow but for the light from his eyes and the white of his teeth when he smiled. His skin was so dark it seemed to pull all the light into it and leave nothing left to bounce back and tell his story, and his clothes were dark too. 

“Put down the book,” he said, simple words spoken with all the confidence of a man who knew she would do as she was told, and did not need to be asked. Lise put down the book. 

“Good girl,” he praised, and the timbre of his voice meant she couldn’t take offense to the phrase. It just felt good, and it gave her an inkling of what was in store for her. A clue to the genre, at least. 

“What are you doing, really, Gale?” She asked again. He just smiled again, fleeting but sweet, and stepped into the room and kneeled beside the coffee table. He held up the camera and pointed it at her. She looked over to meet the aperture’s cold leer with a smile, because that’s what you did when people took pictures of you, but still felt like she was missing something. The shutter clicked. Gale lowered the camera. 

“If you still don’t know when we’re done, then you can ask. No more questions, darling. Lie down.”