A/N: I'm not sure what to call this. I don't think it fits the technical definition of a drabble. In any case, I normally don't like to publish such short works. At one point, I had hoped to do a series of snapshots concerning my favorite smiling sociopath (?), Wolfgang Grimmer. Now I think I've waited too long. It's such a complex series, and the details are no longer quite fresh in my mind. Since this was just sitting in my docs folder, I thought I might as well post.
Wolfgang was not slow in realizing that his marriage was far from the gilded mask he had meant to craft in wedding Lisette. Disappointingly, more masks were required from both husband and wife in order to conceal the varied cracks which appeared from the beginning. He knew that, no matter what Lisette's faults and contributions were, he crushed the bulk of the foundation beneath his heavy, smiling tread.
From the wedding night onward, they had problems in the bedroom. Having lived as a virtual celibate most of his life, Wolfgang had never grown comfortable with his sexuality—especially where it involved another human being. His wife, standing in the soft light, hugging her satin undergarments tight to her breasts, gazed up at him with pink-cheeked anticipation and tenderness. Wolfgang felt no tenderness—only anticipation. Without the accompanying emotions, his sexual response felt like something animal. His desire—monstrous.
Yet he felt desire. His eyes, void of false laughter and ravenous in the shadows of his brow, raked Lisette and found the soft skin of her throat, the flowing spread of her hips, the twin points of her breasts as she lowered her arms for his benefit. He knew he could sweep her plump, quivering thighs apart with a single motion of his foot. He could enjoy her as one enjoys a cigarette or a chocolate, or any other inanimate which sates an appetite.
Perhaps a memory, hidden in the dark closet where The Magnificent Steiner stored the uglier moments of Wolfgang's misshapen childhood, banged its scrawny fists against the door. Perhaps the door rattled.
So, he found that he hated sex. They had taught him to smile. They had not taught him to caress, to nuzzle his nose into her neck, to kiss her legs when he wanted to rip them open and ravish her femininity. In hiding the hideous brute he was in truth, he reduced himself to a trembling, bumbling virgin. Once, she asked if he were a virgin, hesitantly, as if fearing to embarrass him.
"No," he replied, to assume a greater normalcy, knowing he might have saved himself some appearance of failure if he had replied in the affirmative. When he saw her face, the slight fall that took place at the blunt minimalism of his answer, he wondered if he should have said yes.
Somehow, he managed to bring her to orgasm. He never knew how he did it, with his unskilled fingers and narrow hips that seemed to want to get away from him. His brain was in constant battle with his body: to control his thrusts, to pet her now, kiss her now—to remember she was there, in essence. Later, he recalled the way she viewed his nakedness, how her lips parted and her eyes hazed with arousal. There was nothing special about his body. He was not handsome. Any appeal he might have gained by his sex (long like the rest of him) was certainly offset by his generally gangly, skinny physique. He wondered now if she had become aroused through sheer love, climbed to climax on love.
He had accepted her sentiments with little consideration, perusing them through a lens of practicality. Now that he considered, it seemed a dreadful notion, that she should love him.
So much love to Mr. Grimmer.