Chapter 14 Damián #2
He opens the door. Shorts, a t-shirt, bare feet. The apartment behind him is dim. One lamp on.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
I step in and kiss him. The way I’ve been wanting to kiss him since he said the word “pardons” on a metal bench earlier. My hand on his jaw. His mouth opening against mine.
He reads it immediately. His hand comes up to my wrist, his thumb on my pulse. His mouth is patient against mine.
He pulls back. Looks at me.
“Come here,” he says.
He takes my hand. The hallway. Slower this time, both of us walking instead of pulling. He stops at the bedroom door and pulls my shirt over my head. I pull his. His chest in the lamplight. The tattoo from hip to ribs. I put my mouth on the skyline. He breathes in.
The bed. He sits on the edge and I stand between his knees and his hands are at my belt.
He undoes the buckle. He pulls everything down and my cock is hard and the head already wet and he puts his mouth on me without preamble, his hand around the base, slow, unhurried.
The patience is different from Sunday. Tonight there’s no window closing.
I push his hair back. “Wait. I want to be inside you.”
He pulls off. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Then get on the bed.”
I do. He reaches for the nightstand. He lies back. I move over him. His legs open around me and I settle between them, my weight on my forearms, and his face is right there. His hand comes up to my wrist, his thumb on my pulse.
I slick my fingers. I know what to do now. His cock is hard against his stomach, dark, the head wet. I watch his face while I open him and the watching is the thing I can’t get enough of. The way Tobík undone still looks like Tobík, just more.
I kiss his throat, the corner of his jaw where the stubble is rough at the end of the day.
“Now,” he says.
I pull my fingers out. I slick my cock. The head of me against his hole, the pressure, the heat, and I push in slow. His hand tightens on my wrist. His mouth opens. His eyes don’t close.
The first push is slow. The tightness of him around me. I stop halfway because the feeling is too much and if I move I’m going to lose myself.
“Keep going,” he says.
I push the rest of the way in. His forehead creases and his breath catches and I hold still, fully inside him, his hand on my wrist, my forehead against his, both of us breathing the same air.
“Okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. More than okay.”
I move slowly. A pace that belongs to the night, not the morning.
Each thrust deliberate. His legs tighten around me and the pressure of that changes the angle and I feel him gasp under me.
I stay at that angle. My mouth finds his and we kiss between thrusts, his tongue against mine, and the slowness is its own kind of heat.
His hand moves from my wrist to the back of my neck. His fingers grip. The pace picks up. His body takes it, his hips meeting mine, the sound of us together in the quiet apartment, the mattress, the breathing, the small broken sounds he makes.
My composure is gone. It left somewhere around the second thrust and hasn’t come back. There is nothing in me except the feeling of being inside him and the way his eyes are open and on mine and the steadiness of them even now, even while I’m fucking him, the steadiness that says I see you.
I slow down. I need to say something. The words are sitting in my throat and they don’t have a rehearsal and there’s no version of them that sounds like a man being sensible.
I press my forehead against his. My hips still moving, slow, deep.
“Nobody sees me,” I say. Against his mouth. “My whole life. Everyone sees the version. You’re the only person who’s ever looked at me and seen the actual man.”
He pulls me closer. His arms around my neck, his legs tight around me, his whole body pulling me in. Then, quiet, against my ear:
“Damián.”
Just my name. Nothing else. My name the way it sounds when there’s nothing between it and the person saying it.
I bury my face in his neck and I move and the pace is not slow anymore. His hand goes to his cock and he strokes himself while I fuck him and I can feel his hand working between us, the knuckles grazing my stomach on every stroke.
“I’m close,” he says. “Don’t stop. Don’t change anything.”
I don’t stop. His body tightens around me and I feel it happen, the clench, his hand stilling on his cock, his breath cutting off, and he comes between us, hot, pulsing, his whole body arching up into mine.
The tightening of him around me pushes me over.
I come inside him with my face in his neck and his name in my mouth and the sound I make is not the sound of a man who has spent twenty-seven years being the version everyone wants him to be.
His chest rising and falling under me, fast, then slower. His hand on the back of my neck, still holding. I pull out slowly. He makes a small sound. I kiss his shoulder. I go to the bathroom, clean myself off, and get a wet cloth for him. I come back and clean him.
Back in the bed, he pulls me into him, his back against my chest, my arm across his waist. His hand finds mine.
He’s falling asleep. I can feel it in the weight of him, the way his body goes heavy against mine. His hand is still on mine.
I’m not falling asleep.
I’m watching my hand on his hip. The way the lamp makes the tattoo line into a shadow. I can feel my own breathing getting more controlled. Not because I’m choosing it. Because the part of me that controls things is waking up.
The sentence he said at the bleachers. The kid’s mistake is a mistake.
Your mistake is a verdict. He said it like weather and now I’m lying here giving myself the verdict for what happens tomorrow.
Because tomorrow I’m going to walk back to the hotel and put the schedule back on and sit in a room with his brother.
And tonight will become something I carry without showing it, the way I carry everything, the way I’ve been carrying the coffee shop on Moreland.
Another thing I walked to on purpose and can’t keep.
I close my eyes. I sleep for what feels like minutes.
My eyes open. The room is dark but the window has the first pre-dawn blue at the lowest edge.
5:17 on the clock. Tobík hasn’t moved. His hand is still on my stomach.
His breathing is slow and his mouth is slightly open and there is no version of Tobík that is not him. Even the sleeping version is just him.
The weight of him against my chest. The specific shape of his hand on my stomach, the fingers loosely curled. I’m memorizing this.
I move slowly. His arm to the pillow. He makes a small sound and resettles. I slide out of the bed.
My clothes on the floor, found by feel. Pants. Shirt. Shoes in my hand. The belt buckle that I catch before it clinks.
I stop in the doorway. The sheet is around his waist. His back is to me. The cities tattoo visible on his ribs.
I cross the room. I bend over the bed. I kiss his forehead. The kiss is the thing the schedule doesn’t have a line for.
He stirs. His eyes stay closed.
“Are you going?” Quiet. Half-asleep.
“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
His breathing evens out. He’s already back under. I stand up. I leave the bedroom.
Shoes on at the door. The latch as quiet as I can make it. The stairs because the elevator makes noise.
I walk back to the hotel. ?íma is asleep in his bed, still in his clothes. I undress. I get into my own bed. The sheets are cold.
His hand on my stomach. His breathing. The forehead kiss he won’t remember.
I set the alarm for seven. The day is coming. I’ll be ready for it.