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The wolf holds the bunny by the throat, sharp teeth scraping skin through the fur.
"O Lord! Hear my prayer, and let my cry come to Thee. Hide not Thy face from me; in the day of my distress, incline Thine ear unto me."
He hates you. He prays to the Lord for you to take your hands, your teeth, away from him. You ruined the life of someone dear to him, tormented him to death, and you didn't even blunt your fangs. They keep cutting and cutting, your gums itch and itch—you think you're playing, that you're just easing your itch, but you are gnawing, tormenting, scratching, wounding. A decrepit old man, a puppy at heart, unable to comprehend the power of his own grip. You want to play with the bunny, to kiss its neck, and yet—you are choking it between your jaws. When blood wells up, it tastes like pomegranate juice to you; when the bunny's ears drop helplessly, it seems to you that it is surrendering to your will; when the bunny breathes its last, it seems as if it whispers a confession of love.
He has large, cow-like eyes with long black lashes; from the tears they seem even longer, even blacker, and you lay your hand on the curve of his pale, swan-like neck.
"How long will you mourn him, my dear?"
His gaze holds as much fear as passion. As much passion as hatred. That gaze suits his fascia, scarlet as blood, suits his cassock, black as curses. As black as the curses that spill from his lips when you undo his buttons. Thirty-three times he curses you, once for every button, but he clutches your shoulders—God forbid you disappear. The world moves around you, spins, crumbles, reassembles, but you are a constant, the epicenter of a vortex where nothing ever changes. His lips, from which you cannot tear yourself away, do not change; your hands, gripping his naked body, do not change. And his scent—his scent never changes either, he smells of adrenaline, aversion, lust. You never kiss him until he asks, and he asks, time and again, year after year.
"You have a too hunted look. I'll leave, if you want."
He shakes his head, his gaze fixed on the emptiness behind you, detached, as if he suddenly saw the assemblage point behind you, a meter from your shoulder blades, where it would be if you were normal people, but your assemblage point is in him, and his is in you, and you forever plunge trembling fingers and wet tongues into each other, trying to find it, and find only filth (filth on the floor of a hated, abandoned house, a house where a father lashed you with a belt, where a mother dragged you by your curls, where you picked rotten apples from the floor, but a home nonetheless. You always return there).
"No. Please." Finally, he finds his voice, and finds your eyes. And you find his hot mouth.
It's a toothy kiss, merciless—you have never spared each other and have no intention to start. The air between you boils, you both can't breathe, and feverish red spots bloom on his cheeks. He would drown himself in holy water if he could. He wouldn't drown you, because he believes that even if you died, you would come to him at night—like a nightmare spirit sitting on his chest, like a succubus slipping hands under the blanket.
Oh, wolf-cub, you know he is insane, but as if you wouldn't dig his body out of the grave to hold it one more time?
"My days have vanished like smoke, and my bones are burned as a hearth; My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin."
You both lost the race for the papal throne, God poured ashes on your heads, laughed at your ambition, at his aspirations. He repents every day, eats almost nothing—you run your hand slowly over his ribs, you can count them, and you count them with your rough lips. Your teeth itch and ache, begging you to sink them into his emaciated, bony flesh, but you try to be gentler. He has earned a little tenderness; you laid his dearest friend on the altar of your fanaticism, now atone.
"I eat ashes like bread, and mingle my drink with weeping, Because of Thy indignation and Thy wrath: for Thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down."
From tenderness, from pleasure, from shame, from humiliation, his eyes fill with tears again, and you kiss his cheeks, drink his tears, as he falls apart in your hands.