Chapter 23 #4
He is hard. Has been since before the mouth moved lower.
The hand that was on him is gone, withdrawn, and it does not come back.
He braces for it with his whole body, strains towards where it was, and it does not come back.
Luca means to leave him like this. The attention stays low, patient, relentless, and Matej understands through the dark that the denial is the point — that he is being given everything except the one easy thing, and that the lack of it is part of what is taking him apart.
He is loud now. He is not trying to contain it. The sounds fill the room, fill the farmhouse, fill the cold air pressing at the window glass, and he doesn’t care, he is past caring, there is nothing left to protect.
“Luca.”
Once. Not a request. The only word left in him, and he gives it without knowing he was going to, the way you give something you didn’t know you were holding until your hand opens.
Luca doesn’t stop. Doesn’t change. The same slow relentless attention, the hands holding him open, and Matej’s body, which has been climbing for what feels like hours, for what feels like years, with no hand anywhere near the part of him straining for one, goes over all at once — the way weather arrives, the way a field of snow lets go from a roof, not slowly but in a single surrendered mass — and it tears through him untouched, nothing holding him but the belt and the dark and the mouth that brought him here, and the sound that comes out of him is long and raw, torn from somewhere with no name, and he is not ashamed of it, and it does not stop until it stops on its own.
The rhythm slows. Holds. Releases.
Luca’s forehead comes to rest against his thigh. A breath — Luca’s own, quiet, not meant for him. Then stillness.
Matej lies in the dark. The blindfold is still on. He doesn’t ask for it to come off, and Luca doesn’t remove it yet, and the not-removing is itself a kind of understanding between them — that the dark is still useful, that the transition back needs time.
Luca pulls back. Matej feels the absence of contact, the cool air rushing in where warmth had been, and then Luca is moving — not away, but closer, lowering himself down beside Matej on the mattress, his body arranging itself along the length of Matej’s side.
The heat of him is extraordinary. Not the focused heat of a hand but the diffuse warmth of a whole body pressed close, shoulder to hip, Luca’s arm coming to rest across Matej’s chest, palm flat against his sternum.
Matej’s body goes still. Not the forced stillness from before — something organic, the way water stills when the wind stops. His breathing begins to find its rhythm again, matching itself to the rise and fall of Luca’s chest against his side.
Luca’s fingers find the edge of the blindfold. With a gentleness that makes Matej’s chest ache, the fabric lifts away from his face.
Light. Not much — the lamp on the dresser, turned low, amber. But after the absolute dark, it feels like standing in a field at noon. Matej blinks. His eyes water. The room swims into focus in stages — the ceiling beams, the plaster between them, the crack that runs along the east wall like a vein.
Luca is above him. His shirt gone, his chest bare and flushed.
His expression is one that Matej has never seen on him before — open, unguarded, stripped of every performance Matej has come to expect.
He is looking at Matej the way you look at something you’ve found that you didn’t know you were searching for.
Matej looks back. He doesn’t try to manage his face. He doesn’t know what’s on it — the tears, the salt tracks, the redness around his eyes, the way his mouth is still open slightly, still catching breath. He lets Luca see it. All of it.
Luca reaches for the belt at his wrists.
His fingers are careful with the buckle, working it loose with a patience that matches everything that came before.
The leather slips free. Matej’s arms drop to the mattress, and the sudden release of tension sends a flood of sensation through his shoulders — pins and needles, heat, the deep ache of muscles that have been held in one position for too long.
He doesn’t move his arms. They rest on the mattress beside his head, palms up, fingers slightly curled. The position feels foreign — exposed, like two open wounds — but he doesn’t close them. Doesn’t turn them over. Lets them lie there.
Luca looks at his wrists. The marks the belt has left are already darkening — two parallel lines of red, raised slightly, the skin around them white where the pressure was greatest. Luca’s jaw works.
Something moves across his face — not guilt, Matej thinks, but recognition.
The acknowledgment of what he has done and what it has cost and what it has given.
Luca takes Matej’s right hand. Lifts it. Turns it so the inside of the wrist faces up, the belt marks visible in the amber light. He presses his mouth to the centre of the mark. Not a kiss, exactly — more like a breath held against skin, warm and damp and impossibly careful.
Matej’s hand trembles in Luca’s grip. He can’t stop it. The trembling has moved from his core to his extremities, and his fingers shake against Luca’s palm like something trying to hold on.