The Restoration of Ruin

This is a very short story (2000 words) exploring dark psychology. Contains sexual themes but not explicit content.

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My Stepson, My Lover - Through Chiara's Eyes

I made my boyfriend fuck his stepmother.

Or maybe I didn't. Sometimes I can't tell what I actually did and what I just wanted to happen.

Mum left with Uncle Marco when I was twelve. Just packed her bags one Thursday while I was at school. Dad started drinking. I got used to stepping over him in the hallway.

Alessandro sat in front of me in Medieval Art. Third row, always third row. I liked his hands. The way he'd twist that rosary when he was thinking. The serious way he'd frown at his notes.

We started fucking after the winter exams. Nothing special at first. He was gentle, which I wasn't used to. But he was mine. My boyfriend. That word felt weird in my mouth.

The Sunday lunch at his family's home was weird. His dad Giuseppe talking over everyone. The American wife, Sarah, trying too hard. Alessandro basically pretending she didn't exist. My boyfriend of two months, introducing me to his family, couldn't even look at his stepmother.

"Your stepmother seems sad," I said afterwards, not meaning anything by it.

He shrugged. "She's fine."

I don't know why I kept bringing her up. Maybe because he'd get this look. Like I'd touched something he didn't want touched.

"Think your dad still fucks her?"

"Jesus, Chiara. She's my stepmother."

"Just asking."

It became a thing. Mentioning her while we were in bed. Watching him squirm.

"What would Sarah think," I'd whisper when he was inside me, "if she could see you now?"

He'd tell me to shut up. But he'd fuck me harder. The way his face would change when I said her name. The disgust that wasn't quite right. That's when I knew.

I started having this dream. Every night after February.

In it, I'm wearing black stockings, heels, nothing else that matters. They're both on their knees in front of me. Leather collars. The leashes in my hands. Sarah breasts exposed, wearing no knickers and black stockings. Alessandro hard and desperate.

"Tell her what you thought," I say to him. "The first time you met her. Your new stepmother. Already a grown man, pretending you didn't notice her tits."

He shakes his head. But in dreams, I always win.

"Seven years of living in the same house. Seven years of pretending she was nothing. Tell her how you used to stroke yourself listening to her moan through the wall."

Sarah looks at him with this expression - disgust and pity and want all mixed together. Her nipples hard despite herself.

"Show her," I tell him. "Show her what you did while Giuseppe fucked her badly in the next room."

His hand moves to his cock. I pull the leash.

"Did I say you could touch yourself? Sarah, do it for him. But slowly. Make him suffer."

The beautiful thing about the dream is how they hate me. How they hate themselves more. How they do everything I say anyway.

"Tell him he's bigger than his father," I instruct her. "Tell him you were thinking about this even before Christmas."

She does. Her American accent making it worse somehow. More wrong. Her hand moving on him while she confesses.

"Now tell him the truth. How Giuseppe can't get hard anymore. How wet you got when Alessandro would walk around shirtless."

In the dream, I make them confess everything. I make them perform their shame for me. Make her stroke him while he fingers her, but never letting them kiss. Never letting them have the comfort of pretending it's love.

"Taste her," I tell him. "Tell me if she's as sweet as you imagined."

"Sarah, tell him what you really want to call him when you come."

I never let them finish. Always stopping just before. Just when they're shaking, begging. That's the power - the eternal almost.

Sometimes in the dream, I'm my mother watching me and dad. Sometimes I'm Sarah. Sometimes I'm nobody at all, just a voice making them dance on their leashes.

I'd wake up from those dreams with my hand already between my legs, sheets soaked. Finishing what the dream started. Not because I wanted him. Not because I wanted her. Because I wanted to be the thing that broke them both.

The dream told me what to do. Give him the collar. Plant the seed. Watch them destroy each other thinking it was their idea.

Christmas Eve, his dad went to mass. Sarah stayed home sick. Alessandro was supposed to come to mine after.

"You should stay with her," I said, not thinking he actually would. "Bit shit to leave her alone on Christmas."

He stayed. Didn't come to mine at all. When I saw him next, something had shifted.

"We talked for hours," he said. About her work. About his mother dying. About his dad's drinking.

"You like her now?" I teased.

He kissed me instead of answering. But it was different. Like he was thinking of something else.

After that, things changed. He'd cancel our plans. Make excuses. We'd fuck but he wasn't really there. I went round for Sunday lunch again in February and watched them not look at each other. It was almost funny. The way they'd carefully avoid touching when passing dishes.

I bought this leather collar on a whim. Simple thing from that sex shop near the station. Black leather, silver buckle.

"Here," I said, giving it to him. "Thought we could try something new."

His face went white. He actually stepped back from me.

"What's wrong? Don't you want to put it on me?"

"No, I... I can't."

But he took it. Held it like it was burning him. I knew then, somehow, that he wasn't imagining it around my neck.

Did I know? I'm still not sure. But that night I touched myself thinking about it. About who he'd rather see wearing it.

When his dad went to Rome in March, Alessandro said he had to study. Didn't see me for three days.

Then he texted: "Got a job in Milano. Starting immediately. Sorry."

That was it. Eight months together and he ended it with a text while his father was still in Rome. Coward couldn't even wait to tell me in person.

But Sarah started calling me. The day after Giuseppe got back.

"Alessandro's gone," she said. Sounded wrecked. "Did you know?"

"He texted me. New job."

"Can we meet? Please? I need to talk to someone who knew him."

We met for coffee. She looked different. Fucked. That's the only word for it. She looked properly fucked. And abandoned.

"Giuseppe keeps asking why Alessandro left so suddenly," she said. "I can't tell him."

We started meeting regularly. She'd talk around it at first. Then one day, after too much wine:

"He fucked me in Giuseppe's bathroom. While his father was at a faculty meeting."

I made the right shocked face. How he'd pushed her skirt up. How she'd begged for it harder. How they'd frozen when they heard Giuseppe's car.

"Against the sink. I could see myself in his mirror. Giuseppe's mirror."

"Jesus, Sarah."

"Those three days while Giuseppe was in Rome..." She touched her throat. "He made me wear that collar. The leather one."

"What collar?"

"The one you bought. He said you gave it to him. For something new, you said."

"I didn't know he'd..."

"You're lying, you knew exactly what you were doing. You were his girlfriend. You saw how he looked at me."

Maybe I did. Or maybe I just got lucky.

She kept talking. Telling me things I didn't ask to know but wanted to hear. All those times he said he was studying? He was with her.

"He left bruises," she said, touching her thighs like they were still there. "Purple ones. Green ones. I'd press them later to remember."

The restoration studio. All those saints watching while she got on her knees for him.

"The Madonna was right above us," she laughed, wine-sick. "This beautiful Trecento Madonna. Watching me swallow my stepson's..."

She didn't finish. Didn't need to.

"He called me Mamma once. When he finished. Then he cried like a child."

"Fuck, Sarah."

"I know. But I didn't stop him. I held him. Rocked him. Then we did it again. Harder."

She tells me she goes to his old room sometimes. Lies in his bed with her hand between her legs. Can still smell him on the pillows even though she's washed them twice.

"Do you think I'm sick?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

We both laughed. What else was there to do?

"We were still together," I said once. "When you were fucking him. You know that, right?"

"I know." No apology. Just fact. "He said you didn't really want him anyway. Said you were playing some kind of game."

Was I? Probably. The truth is, watching him want her was better than having him want me. There's something broken in me that gets off on that specific distance. On being the architect of my own betrayal.

"Did you think about me?" I asked. "When he was inside you?"

She looked at me strangely. "Sometimes. He said your name once. By accident."

"And?"

"And I told him to say it again."

We both sat with that for a moment. Two women who understood something about each other that neither of us should.

"Giuseppe found the collar," she told me last week. "In my drawer."

"Shit."

"I said it was for cosplay. He didn't believe me. Called Alessandro."

"And?"

"Alessandro said I was confused. Said maybe I needed help. Mental help."

She laughed. Actually laughed.

"After everything. After leaving you for me. He throws me under completely."

"He didn't leave me for you," I said. "He left us both."

That shut her up.

There's this new professor's wife I've been watching.

Young thing, maybe twenty-five. Wears these blouses, pearl earrings. Proper. The teaching assistant, Marco, he follows her around like Alessandro used to follow Sarah before I said anything. That careful not-looking. That studied distance that's really hunger.

Last week I sat next to her at the university café.

"Your husband's students seem very devoted," I said.

She laughed, nervous. "Marco's just enthusiastic about the research."

"Is he?"

The way she touched her wedding ring. The way her eyes went to where Marco was sitting, pretending to read. I knew that look. The same look Alessandro had before Christmas Eve. Before I gave him permission.

"You know," I said, "my ex-boyfriend's stepmother was lonely too. Giuseppe never noticed her. Until someone else did."

"I don't... what are you saying?"

"Nothing. Just that sometimes people need permission to take what they want."

I left her there. But yesterday Marco asked me about her. Said she'd been different lately. Distracted. Asking strange questions about boundaries in academia.

"What do you think she meant?" he asked.

I smiled. Thought about Alessandro in that bathroom. Sarah in his old bed. The collar in Giuseppe's hand.

"I think she's waiting," I said. "For someone to stay with her when her husband's away."

He went pale. Just like Alessandro had.

I was Alessandro's girlfriend for eight months. In that time, I got him to fuck his stepmother. Or maybe he wanted to all along, and I just gave him permission to want it.

Sometimes late at night, I think about them. Alessandro in Milan with his appropriate wife. Sarah in America, alone. Giuseppe drinking himself unconscious. The wreckage I made. Or found. Or just noticed before anyone else.

I touch myself to it sometimes. Not to the sex. To the moment I realised what I was doing. That I was feeding my boyfriend to his stepmother like some kind of offering. That making him betray me with her was the only way I could get off anymore.

There's something wrong with me. I know that. The same wrongness that made Mum leave, probably. The thing that makes me need to be outside looking in, even at my own life.

That's something, isn't it?

That's everything.