Chapter 42
They’re fast asleep when the police find them.
Hands pulling him and Danny apart, dragging them downstairs into a van and out again, tossing them in a cell with no windows.
Hands closing into fists that rain down on them until they’re curled up on the floor, begging for mercy that never comes.
Hands holding him down and making him watch what they do to Danny, who screams and screams until suddenly he stops—
Sasha wakes up in a blind panic, thrashing against the sheets. Someone’s arms tighten around him, and he almost yells out—but then a sleepy voice murmurs, “Five more minutes, Buddy,” and he realizes he’s lying in a bed with Danny, half a world away from the Moscow police.
The relief that floods through him is so overwhelming, it sweeps the air right out of his lungs.
He feels sick all over, his body weak and trembling like he has the flu; he can’t stop replaying that dream, can’t unsee the horrible things the police did to Danny.
He keeps glancing over his shoulder to make sure Danny’s there, because the tanned arm slung around his ribcage isn’t enough—he needs to know it’s him.
Eventually, he gives up and turns around, shuffling against Danny until their faces are millimeters apart, his head right on the edge of Danny’s pillow.
Now he can feel Danny breathing and watch his eyelashes flutter as he dreams, still very much alive.
Sasha almost wants to wake him up, just to ask Danny to hold him tighter; but then he’d have to explain, and he can’t go back to that nightmare.
He tries to distract himself, tries to remember last night instead, because last night had been perfect.
Well… almost perfect. At one point, Danny’s check-ins had gone from frequent but fine to every few seconds, as if he’d thought Sasha was too much of a virgin to handle a couple of fingers.
But once Danny was finally, fully inside of him—and once Sasha had gotten used to the stretch—it was better than he ever could have imagined.
He’s almost embarrassed by the way he’d reacted, moaning and swearing like…
like Danny, actually. Not that he minds when Danny does it, but he’s never lost control of himself like that, to the point where he probably would have begged if Danny had stopped again to talk about Dubai or God only knows what else.
Because all that had mattered then, in those frantic moments, was the near-paralyzing pleasure he’d felt as Danny fucked him.
(He can still feel it.)
Afterwards, though, he’d gotten worried, thinking Danny hadn’t enjoyed it as much.
He’s still not completely sure why Danny hadn’t finished—there was some convoluted story about an ex-girlfriend, one that might have made sense eventually if Sasha had about fifteen minutes of patience to untangle every thread, which he didn’t—but Danny had quickly reassured him that he’d liked it, that he’d only been nervous about hurting Sasha.
So Sasha had set him straight, and then set him right, smiling around the cock in his mouth as Danny groaned and said fuck about forty times.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when Danny asked to stay the night, but somehow he was, maybe because they’d never had the opportunity before.
And at first, he’d hated how awkward it felt—he couldn’t get into his normal sleeping position, cuddling all night was just weird and frankly unnecessary, and why the fuck did people in relationships do this, anyway?
But eventually, he’d stopped wanting to crawl out of his own skin.
Stopped being hyperaware of every place where Danny’s body was covering his.
Stopped thinking about escape and started thinking about sleep instead, because he was tired.
And Danny was protecting him from the icy air conditioning, and murmuring like a podcast in his ear, and on second thought maybe he could get used to this after all—lying there warm and drowsy, listening to Danny talk.
As he’d drifted off to the sound of Danny’s voice, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever felt so at peace.
And now he’s shivering in Danny’s arms, trying to shake the terror of that dream.
But it’s not working, no matter how much he tells himself he’s safe here—because in about twenty-four hours, he’ll be returning home, where he isn’t.
Moscow isn’t Chechnya (Yet, a voice whispers in his head), but he knows all too well what the Kremlin thinks about people like him, and how easily it could order the police to start hunting them down.
He’s been avoiding the news ever since he came to California, but now that he’s started thinking about Chechnya, he can’t stop. Even though he knows it’ll be nothing good, even though he knows it’ll only make him feel worse, he finds himself carefully reaching over Danny towards the nightstand.
At the last second, he grabs Danny’s phone instead of his—he doesn’t want this in his search history.
Entering the code, he pulls up an incognito browser window and does a search in English, hoping an international news outlet might have picked up on the story.
It wouldn’t necessarily mean that the reporting was accurate, but at the very least, it wouldn’t just be a blanket denial.
He should have been more careful about what he was wishing for, because the article he finds has details.
Lots of them. Interrogations, beatings, electric shocks.
After days or weeks of torture, the article says, the “lucky” ones get handed back to their families and outed, with the insinuation that their relatives should finish the job—a couple of the victims interviewed had managed to escape that way—while the not-so-lucky ones simply disappear off the face of the earth.
“We don’t have any gays,” the leader of the Chechen Republic scoffs in another article. “They made it up… They are subhuman.”
Subhuman.
The longer Sasha scrolls, the sicker he feels.
What if they start doing this in Moscow?
What if they already have, and he just hasn’t heard about it yet?
If anyone ever finds out why he really went to California—if anyone ever suspects—that could be him in a prison cell.
His family being told to “take care” of him.
His uncles, Dima and Senya at least, being happy to oblige.
There’s not enough air in his lungs. His skin’s too tight, his body burning between Danny and the sheets; he needs to get out of here, needs to breathe.
But when he tries to sit up, Danny’s arm tightens around him, pulling him back down like quicksand and trapping him against the mattress.
Desperate, Sasha wrenches away, gasping as he finally breaks free.
“No, Buddy,” Danny mumbles, hugging himself instead.
As Sasha watches Danny settle back into sleep—alive and safe and completely unaware of what’s going on in Chechnya—a lump swells in his throat, and his vision starts to blur.
He quickly closes the incognito window and returns Danny’s phone, then almost trips over Buddy and Luna in his rush to the bathroom, barely managing to shut the door behind him before the first tears fall hot on his cheeks.
Fuck. Fuck.
He wishes he could go back to last night, when it was just him and Danny and the world didn’t exist outside of their bed.
But now reality’s crashing in with the morning sun, harsh and raw, making him feel far too exposed—like anyone at home could take one look at him and know what he’s done, that he’s had another man inside of him.
The latter the worst of all in their eyes: that he was the one who took it, the one who got on his hands and knees like a dog.
Subhuman.
He imagines how his mother and Kirill would react if they ever found out, and that’s when he begins crying in earnest, his shoulders heaving as he pictures their disgusted faces.
He turns on the vent, trying to cover up the sound of his sobs; but it’s not loud enough, so he turns on the shower, too.
Then he sinks onto the floor, hugging his knees to his chest as he wonders how much longer he can keep doing this.
Danny means everything to him, Danny’s his center of fucking gravity, but he can’t pretend this relationship is remotely safe anymore.
Not that it ever was—he’s been lying to himself for years, stupid and reckless, sticking around even after Danny told other people about them.
And now all the consequences he’s tried to ignore are right in front of him, a warning as black and white as the words in the article.
Subhuman.
He can’t stay with Danny, but he can’t leave Danny, either. Both of these things are true, and he doesn’t know what terrifies him more—the risk of being thrown into prison, or the thought of spending the rest of his life without Danny.
He cries and cries, and the cold, hard tiles don’t offer him any answers.
*
Danny wakes up to an empty bed and the sound of running water.
Realizing that Sasha’s gone, he can’t help but feel disappointed, because morning cuddling is one of his favorite things about sleepovers.
(Well, besides night cuddling.) He’d wanted to wake up with Sasha still in his arms, those soft curls in his face; he’s never been able to do that before.
But now he’s lost his chance, and he doesn’t know when he’ll have another one.
He tries not to wallow over it, reminding himself that they still have the whole morning together, maybe even some of the afternoon if his mom has her way about the art gallery.
For a moment, he considers getting up to join Sasha in the shower; but the guest bed is seriously comfortable, and if he waits until Sasha comes back, then he can make him cuddle some more.
Smiling at the thought, he rolls over to keep an eye on the door. Buddy and Luna are waiting patiently in the hallway, and he says good morning to both of them, promising they’ll get a W-A-L-K after B-R-E… whatever, it’s too early for that much spelling.