Chapter 25
Matej
The cave keeps. Whatever is in it has waited eighty years and will wait longer; there is no rushing it and no reason to. In the days after, the farm goes back to its own rhythm.
The package is on the table when Matej comes in.
He knows what it is — the same address it always comes from, and the box is heavier than its size suggests, which tells him something. Luca is at his desk and does not look up. This is deliberate. He is very obviously not looking up.
Matej washes his hands first.
Then he opens the box.
He goes through it without comment: takes one thing out, sets it aside. Takes out another. Turns it over. Sets it on the table in a line, the way he lays tools out before a job. He is aware of Luca’s silence — waiting, failing to seem neutral.
Near the bottom he finds something in a sealed wrapper and holds it up.
Luca looks over. “I know, I know,” he says, before Matej has said anything. “It was worth trying.”
Matej looks at the item. Looks at Luca. Sets it back in the box.
“Fair,” Luca says, and goes back to his screen.
Matej continues going through the box. He takes out the last thing, studies it a moment, and then looks at Luca with an expression that Luca, to his credit, correctly identifies as significant.
“Tell me,” Matej says, “that you don’t have a list.”
Luca’s response is approximately half a second too slow. “I don’t have a list.”
“Luca.”
“It’s a system.” He says this with the confidence of a man who has prepared for this conversation and is now executing. “It’s an organizational framework. It’s not a —” He stops. Then, with dignity: “It has tabs.”
Matej sets the item down. He breathes out through his nose, asking for patience, and then looks back at Luca.
“Tabs,” he says.
“Colour-coded.” Luca’s chin is up. “One for tried, one for pending, one for” — he pauses, considers — “research.”
“Research.”
“Adjacent categories. It’s a living document.”
Matej is quiet for a moment. “You made a spreadsheet,” he says slowly, “about us.”
“About our —” Luca gestures. “Shared interests. Ongoing —” Another gesture. “Project.”
“Project.”
“It’s very thorough.”
Matej looks at him. Luca looks back. There is a silence in which both of them know this will be available to him, as material, for years.
“I believe you,” Matej says, and leaves it exactly there.
Luca waits for more. More does not come. He turns back to his screen.
He picks up the last item and sets it with the others, very precisely, as if completing a task. He is not smiling. He is, in fact, absolutely not smiling.
He loves him enormously. This is not a new discovery. It remains, each time, slightly startling.
He leaves the items on the table. They will still be there later. This is not an accident.
They make dinner in the way they make dinner now, without deciding to, without assigning roles, moving around each other in the kitchen without collision, without negotiation.
Matej starts something on the stove. Luca opens wine, pours two glasses, does not ask.
The banter continues at low volume, comfortable and unhurried.
Outside the wind has dropped to nothing — one of those still evenings where the plateau holds its breath.
After, they wash up.
Luca dries. Matej washes. This is not a rule — it’s just the thing that happens, like the lamp on the counter and the two cups and the way Luca has started leaving his jacket on Matej’s hook by the door, which Matej has not mentioned and does not intend to.
At some point, his hands in the water, Matej thinks of the ceiling in the other room, of the thing he installed there himself, the right hardware, a good beam, something rated for more than you normally need.
He says nothing. Luca, drying the glass, says nothing either.
He had been there when it went in. He has not asked about it.
They are, in this as in other things, quite well matched.
Matej runs water over the last pan. He is thinking, in a peripheral way, about a discovery Luca made some encounters ago: that if you find the right spot, just above the hip, where the lightest touch makes Matej lose approximately thirty percent of his coordination immediately.
Luca had found this accidentally — or claimed to — and had then, with what Matej can only describe as scientific interest, confirmed it several times.
Matej had been in no position to object.
This is relevant because it sits between them now, unspoken and fully understood by both, and Luca is the kind of man who keeps things for later.
What Luca does not know is that Matej has been thinking about retaliation.
Not the harder slaps Luca likes — the ones that land with intention and make him go briefly, beautifully quiet.
Something worse. Something lighter. Something Luca will not be able to take seriously, which will make it completely impossible to take, which is the point.
He hands Luca the pan.
“The pan,” Luca says, drying it.
“Mm.”
“You’re thinking.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“About what.”
“Nothing,” Matej says, which is how Luca knows it’s something.
It starts — as it starts — without occasion.
Matej turns from the sink and Luca is there, damp hands and all, and they have the same idea at the same moment, which happens more often than either of them would have predicted months ago.
Luca’s hands find the back of his neck. Matej’s hands find Luca’s waist and then lower, palm spreading over him — heat, and hardness, and how much Luca wants this, pressed against his palm — and Luca makes a sound against his mouth, half a laugh, that goes low and breaks open when Matej presses and doesn’t let up.
“The dishes,” Luca says.
“Done.”
“Your hands are —”
“Washed.”
“Wet.”
Matej’s hand moves, deliberately, past the waistband. Luca inhales. His voice, when it comes, is steadier than the rest of him. “Do you think,” he says, “that dish soap on your hands is sufficient —”
“No,” Matej says.
“— as a —”
“No.”
“I’m only raising the —”
“Luca.”
“— logistical question —”
Matej kisses him, which resolves the logistical question.
They are moving — through the kitchen, the narrow hall — Luca walking backward, one hand still twisted in Matej’s shirt, not looking behind him because he knows this floor and Matej’s hand at his back is sufficient orientation. Someone’s shoulder catches the doorframe. Neither of them stops.
Somewhere between the hall and the bedroom the question surfaces, as it always does: who goes where, who asks for what. Not a fight. More like the ongoing negotiation of two people with strong and not entirely compatible preferences — and the pleasure of having them.
“You always —” Luca starts.
“I don’t always.”
“Last time —”
“Was different.”
“How.”
Matej considers this with genuine honesty. “It wasn’t,” he admits.
Luca laughs — short, genuine, his hand inside Matej’s shirt. “So.”
“So,” Matej says.
The negotiation continues into the bedroom.
The lamp on the counter is still on.
A sound — something landing, not breaking. A short silence.
Then: “Cazzo — merda, aspetta —”
A beat. Then Matej’s voice, low, warm: “Come here.”
“I’m —” a rustle, a pause — “I’m here, I’m —”
“That’s not what you said.”
A longer silence. Something shifting.
Someone says: “Make me.”