Chapter 21 Tobík
I’m standing at the kitchen counter eating a peach over the sink.
The last time I stood at this counter eating a peach over the sink, Damián texted about ?íma being loud in his hotel room, and I sent my address before the consequential part of my brain caught up with my thumbs.
That was the night everything started. Tonight everything is starting again, except this time it started when a man said I love you without rehearsing it first.
My apartment is clean. I am not nervous. Or at least I’m doing a very convincing impression of a person who isn’t nervous, which is a different thing.
I hear his footsteps in the stairwell. Not two at a time. Not the rushing pace from the stolen Sunday. Even footsteps. The pace of a person who isn’t afraid of what’s behind the door.
Damián is standing there when I open the door.
Hair down, curls damp from the shower at the stadium.
A clean shirt, dark, simple. His face is doing something I haven't seen before. Something new. He looks like a man who walked here because he wanted to walk here and doesn’t have a secondary explanation prepared.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m late. The press took forty-five minutes. ?íma and Ková? cornered me about the signing.”
“You’re here now.”
“I’m here now.” He smiles at me and steps inside.
He crosses to the kitchen and stops at the window. His hands on the sill. He looks out at the skyline. His shoulders are loose. His reflection in the glass is a version of him I haven’t seen, the expression quiet and new.
“You’re looking at the skyline,” I say.
“I’m looking at my city.” He turns. The small smile, real, costs him nothing. “That’s the first time I’ve said that.”
“How does it sound?”
“Terrifying. Good. A bit of both.”
He turns to me.
“Tobík.” His voice drops. “The text I sent you. I knew it was cruel when I was writing it and I sent it anyway because Tomá? was in my head and my father’s voice was louder than mine.”
“The Damián who sent that text is a different version than I know,” I say. “I’ve been looking at the actual person for six years. I know the difference.”
I step closer to him. “You sent a message that didn’t sound like you and it hurt both of us. What I need isn’t your apology. I need you here. Not the version for everyone else. You.”
“I’m here.” His hand comes to my jaw, the palm against my cheek, the thumb below my ear. The grip from the first night. Except the first night his hand was shaking and the grip was a decision still deciding. Tonight the hand is steady.
“You’re not shaking,” I say.
“No.”
I lean forward and I kiss him. The kiss is warm. Not the first-night flood, not the late-night urgency of a man who drove across the city to avoid his own sensible arguments. This is a man kissing me because he wants to kiss me and has nowhere else to be and isn’t leaving at dawn.
His other hand finds my hip. Not pulling. Resting. His thumb settles against the fabric over the tattoo.
“I’ve been thinking about your apartment,” he says against my mouth. “During the press scrum. A journalist asked about the move and I answered the question about the league and the city and the football and the whole time I was thinking about this apartment and being with you.”
“That’s not professional.” I laugh against him.
“I’m done being professional tonight.”
I pull his shirt up because I need his skin. He lifts his arms. The shirt goes and his chest is in my kitchen in the lamplight, the breadth of him, the planes real and specific. I put both hands on him. His collarbone. The slope of his ribs where his breathing shifts under my palms.
He undresses me with the same unhurried attention. My shirt first, his knuckles dragging up my sides. The blue linen goes on the kitchen floor. His hands are on my hips and his palms are warm.
“We’re not staying in the kitchen,” I say.
“No.”
I take his hand and head to the bedroom. He sees the made bed and looks over at me.
“You made the bed. You don’t make your bed.”
“I made it tonight because you were coming.”
“That’s possibly the most romantic thing you’ve said to me.”
“The competition is limited. I also cleaned the bathroom.”
He laughs. The surprised one. The one that opens his whole face and makes my chest do the thing it always does.
“I want you inside me tonight,” he says after watching me for a moment. “I’ve never...but I want to. Show me.”
“I’ll show you everything.”
I kiss his throat. His jaw. The place below his ear where his pulse is faster than his face admits. My hands go to his belt. The buckle comes apart. His pants pushed down his hips. He steps out of them. I look at him in the warm light, standing at the foot of my bed.
His cock is hard against his stomach, thick, flushed. His eyes are on mine and they don’t drop. The vulnerability of standing here bare and trusting me with this makes my chest go tight in a way that isn’t yearning.
I strip. He watches. His eyes move down my body and stop at my cock, hard, and the look on his face is hungry and open and not performing anything.
I push him gently onto the bed. He goes.
He lies back and his hair fans on the pillow and his legs are open.
I climb over him. My weight on my forearms. My cock against his, the friction making us both breathe harder.
His hands are on my back, fingers spread wide, pressing into the muscles along my spine.
I reach for the nightstand. Lube.
I kiss him. Deep and slow. Then I move down his body. His chest. His stomach. I take his cock in my mouth because I want him relaxed and wanting and out of his head. The sound he makes when I take him in is low and open, a man letting his body respond without thinking.
I pull off after a minute. I slick my fingers. “Breathe,” I say.
My finger circling the rim of him, the slick warmth. He inhales, his thighs tense and then release as he makes himself relax. I push one finger inside him, slow, watching his face.
His mouth opens. His eyes stay on mine.
“That’s…” He swallows. “Different.”
“Good different?”
“I don’t know yet. Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I move my finger slowly, deeper, letting him feel it. His body opens around me in increments. His breathing is controlled the way Damián’s breathing is always controlled, and then I curl my finger and find the right angle and his control leaves the room.
“Fuck.” English. The language crashes first. “What is that?”
“That’s the spot. I’m going to do that again.”
“Yes, do it again.”
His hips push down against my hand and a sound comes out of him I’ve never heard, low and broken and wanting. His cock is leaking against his stomach, a line of pre-come catching the light.
A second finger. More lube. The stretch and his eyes go wide and then settle and his body opens further and I can feel him deciding to let me in. Not just physically. The deciding is in his eyes.
“You’re doing so well,” I say, and I mean it the way I mean everything, plainly.
“If you tell anyone I needed coaching, I’ll deny it.”
“Your secret is safe. I signed a confidentiality agreement with the lube.”
The laugh comes out of him startled and breathless because my fingers are still inside him and the laughing tightens his body around them and the tightening makes him gasp and the gasping makes me harder and the whole sequence is so perfectly us that I lean down and kiss his stomach and I’m smiling against his skin.
A third finger. He takes it. His hand grips the sheet. His other hand reaches for my hair and holds on, not pulling. Anchoring.
“Come here,” he says.
I pull my fingers out. I slick my cock. His eyes are on me, watching my hand on myself, and the watching makes his breath catch.
I position myself. The head of my cock against him. Heat. Pressure.
“Look at me,” I say.
His eyes find mine.
I push in slowly. The tightness of him around me is overwhelming and I stop halfway because the feeling is too much and if I move I’m going to lose something I can’t get back.
I feel him breathe. His eyes are wet at the edges. Not pain. Something else. Something that has been three years arriving.
“Keep going,” he whispers.
I push the rest of the way in. Full. His body around mine. His face open and unguarded and looking at me with nothing between us.
I hold still. I let him feel it. His hand moves from my hair to my face and his palm is against my cheek and his thumb is on my jaw and he’s holding my face while I’m inside him and the holding is the most intimate thing anyone has ever done to me.
“Move,” he says as he leans up to kiss me.
I move. Slow. The first thrust and his eyes go soft. The second and his hips tilt up to meet me. The rhythm finds itself the way it does in athletic bodies, the timing that lives in muscle, except this rhythm is new and ours.
“Tobík.” He says me name with awe. “Christ. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That it could feel like this.”
I lean down. My forehead against his. The angle changes and he gasps. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Full. I feel full. Like you’re everywhere.”
A laugh comes out of him broken and warm and his body clenches around me when he laughs and the clenching sends a bolt of heat through me so sharp my rhythm stutters. I grip his thigh and pick up the pace.
His hand goes to his cock. He strokes himself in time with my thrusts and I watch his hand on himself while I thrust into him. His pre-come slicking his hand. His cock flushed and leaking and his fist working over the head on every stroke.
“I’m close,” he says. “Don’t stop. Tobík, don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I drive into him, deep, the angle right, my hand replacing his on his cock because I want to be the one. His hand falls away and grips my forearm. His cock is hard and slick in my fist and I stroke him in time with the way I’m moving inside him.
He comes. His body arcs into mine, his cock pulsing in my hand, hot, his come spilling between us, his face open and wrecked and beautiful. His body tightens around me and the tightening pushes me over. I come inside him with my forehead against his and his hand on my face and his eyes still open.
I still after my cock stops pulsing. His chest rising and falling.
His hand still on my face. I pull out slowly.
He makes a small sound and I kiss his mouth.
I clean up in the bathroom. I come back and clean him, his stomach, his thighs, between his legs, the careful attention of a person who knows what this means. His eyes are on me while I do it.
“You’re taking care of me,” he says. “You’ve been taking care of me. The whole time.”
“I wasn’t taking care of you. I was watching you and hoping you’d let me close enough to care.”
I lie down beside him. He pulls me against him. My back to his chest. His arm around my waist, his hand on my stomach. The circles begin, slow and sure.
“Tomá? texted me,” he says. “During the press.”
“What did he say?”
“He said: I don’t understand yet. But I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m quiet. His chin is on my shoulder. His breath is warm on my neck.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I say. “Is that enough? For now?”
“For now it’s everything.” His hand keeps moving on my stomach. “What do you need? From me. Right now.”
Nobody has asked me that. Not in bed, not with his hand on my stomach and his breath on my neck and his body still warm from everything we just did. Tomá? assumes I need protection. Mami assumes I need warmth. Marchetti assumes I need books. They’re all right. None of them complete.
“Someone who sees me and stays,” I say.
His arm tightens. His mouth presses against the back of my neck. Not a kiss. A seal.
“I’m staying,” he says. “I signed a contract with a city.”
“You signed a contract with a football club.”
“I signed a contract with a city. The club is the paperwork. The city is the reason.”
I turn in his arms. His face in the lamplight. Blue eyes. The curls against the pillow. The jaw I’ve been thinking about since I was sixteen years old. He looks like a man who is home and knows it.
"I love you. I don't think I said it, but I do." I lean closer and kiss him.
"I love you too. Maybe longer than I ever thought I did." He tightens his hold on me, kissing me softly.
“You’re going to walk the Beltline with me,” I say. “Maria’s going to assign you a name. That’s what she does. She took one look at me and I’ve been Tuesday for seven months.”
“Is Tuesday taken?”
“Tuesday is mine.”
“Then she’ll find another day. I trust Maria.”
The laugh comes out of me warm and full. His eyes track it the way they always track my face and the tracking isn’t covert anymore. The tracking is his hand on my stomach and his eyes on my mouth and his body against mine in my bed in my apartment in the city I built before he walked into it.