Chapter 23 #5
Luca holds the hand. Doesn’t try to still it. Just holds it, the way you’d hold a bird that has flown into a window and is stunned but still breathing — with the understanding that stillness will come on its own, that forcing it would do more harm than good.
Matej looks at the ceiling. The crack along the east wall — it looks different now. Not repaired, not changed in any physical way, but somehow less like a fault line and more like a seam — something that holds the room together rather than pulling it apart.
Luca’s thumb moves against his chest. A slow circle, barely perceptible, the way a cat kneads without thinking about it. The gesture is so casual, so unconscious, that it makes Matej’s throat close.
The difference between their heartbeats is a kind of conversation — Luca’s steady and measured, Matej’s still finding its way back. Matej listens to it. Counts the beats without meaning to. Twelve of his for every ten of Luca’s. Then eleven. Then ten.
He doesn’t know when the numbers stop mattering. The counting dissolves and there is just the sound — two hearts, not competing, not performing, just existing in the same room at the same time.
Luca’s fingers twitch against his chest. A small involuntary movement, the kind that happens in the space between waking and sleeping.
Matej feels it and something in his chest — the place where the cage opened, the place that is still vast and unfamiliar — contracts around the feeling.
Not painfully. The way a hand closes around something precious. Holding it.
The wind shifts outside. A change in direction, a different pressure against the glass.
The snow will be drifting now, piling against the east wall.
Tomorrow he’ll have to shovel the path to the barn.
Tomorrow there will be animals to feed and wood to split and the rhythm of a farm in winter that doesn’t pause for anything — not for weather, not for exhaustion, not for whatever happened in this bed.
But tomorrow is not now. Now is the weight of Luca’s arm across his chest. Now is the warm pulse in his wrists. Now is the crack in the ceiling that looks less like a fault line and more like a seam.
Matej breathes. The rhythm comes easier now, each breath finding its way without catching on the edges of whatever broke open inside him.
Luca shifts beside him — settling deeper, his body fitting itself to the contours of Matej’s side without thought.
His breath is warm against Matej’s shoulder.
Matej can feel the exact moment when Luca crosses from waking into sleep — the change in breathing, the slight weight increase as conscious tension releases from his muscles.
The arm across Matej’s chest goes heavier, more fully present.
Matej welcomes the weight the way a field welcomes rain after drought — not with celebration but with recognition.
He lies there. The lamp still on, casting its amber light across the ceiling.
His mind is quiet in a way he doesn’t recognise.
Not empty — full, but the fullness has no edges.
It holds everything that happened — the belt, the blindfold, the hand at his throat, the tears, the sounds he made that he can still hear echoing in the room like they’ve been absorbed into the plaster — and it holds them without judgment.
His wrists ache. Not badly — a deep, warm throb that he can feel in the bones. A reminder written into his skin of what he asked for and what he received.
He doesn’t try to name what that was.
He notices in the mirror when he goes to wash his face.
He stands there. Just looks at it. The mark on his collarbone, the one on his shoulder. The evidence of last night, which was not like the other nights — Luca’s hands not quite steady, neither of them speaking for a long time, the weight of holding someone who came back.
He goes back to the bedroom. Luca is still half-asleep, one arm across his face.
“You should see the other guy,” Matej says.
Then Luca’s arm moves and he looks up, assembling the context. His hand goes to his own neck, finds the place, presses.
“How many,” he says.
“Four. Possibly five.”
Luca shuts his eyes. “Zoom call at ten. I’ll have to find a turtleneck.”
“I know,” Matej says.
Another pause. Luca sits up, reaches out, puts two fingers against the mark on Matej’s collarbone. Looks at it.
“Good,” he says. Quiet.
Matej sits down on the edge of the bed.
“Good,” he says.
The package is on the table when they come down.
Berlin postmark, the farm’s address, Luca’s name. Helena left it at the gate, which is her way of commenting.
Luca sees it. Stops.
“Your lube arrived,” Matej says. “I nearly ran out of mine. The timing is impressive.”
“Helena handled this.”
“Helena handles everything.” Matej puts the water on. “She had a look.”
Luca picks up the package. Turns it over. The Berlin postmark, the shipping label, his own name printed there.
“She’ll have questions,” he says.
“She’s had questions since the first Friday.”
Luca looks at the package, then at him. The corner of his mouth doing something.
“Impressive timing,” he agrees, and sets it down on the table, between the two keys.