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He maps the back with disdain. There’s not a strip of skin he finds easy on the eyes; it’s a battleground drawn with deep trenches and elevated warpaths, the rippling muscle underneath heaves as if it's well-fed and satisfied after yet another bloody battle.
“What are you doing,” the man murmurs against his tattooed forearm, voice soft from his will to sleep. He collapsed on the comforter some time ago, his body now stretched long like a boneless cat, head keeling to the side, feet crossed at ankles.
“Be quiet,” says the smarter of the two, the better looking, the richer. He’s lying next to the loose body with his clothed arm extended.
Middle and pointer fingers form a pair of legs that traverses the scarred spine like an adventurer in barren wilderness. He crosses hills and stumbles over uneven grounds, peeks out from the ends of the Earth and lies flat for rest. He slides, starfish, in-between the cliffs like shoulder blades.
There’s puddles of blood here, leftovers from the latest war sucked into the surface by hungry mouths. It’s a mystery to the adventurer why he toes them with more disdain than what he felt towards the scarred landscape.
A shadow falls over the sorrowful wasteland.
Adventurer turns back into a hand, into a thumb, that dips harshly into the hickey. The ground underneath sighs, unimportant. The thumb turns into a tongue, into a mouth, that chases the iron as it steals the ownership of the demon's battle wound. When it’s done, it moves to the second one, and the third, all of them.
This is not the will to keep, it’s not jealousy.
In videos of cats walking on snow, they always step into old tracks to deny they were ever there.
This is just a secret third thing.