6. Lucas
SIX
Lucas
I can’t see Roman through the cell door’s small window, but I know he’s in there. I punch in the code that Vitali gave me. The lock clicks. I open the door and step inside, letting it shut behind me.
Roman is sitting in the corner where I couldn’t see him from outside. His head comes up. His eyes widen.
“No,” he rasps.
For once, for the first time, I don’t care what he says.
I also don’t care that it feels awful to see him tense at my approach. I don’t care that he pulled away from me, turned his back to me, even ran from me. I don’t care that every stupid insecurity of my own is twisting me up inside. I don’t fucking care .
I only care about Roman.
He wants to get up. He wants to avoid me, but there’s nowhere for him to go. The door is locked.
When I drop down between his drawn-up legs and curl into him, his body jerks in refusal, but I stay with him anyway, even when he starts shaking. I make him accept me. I make myself accept that his fear and horror are not about me.
It’s really hard to feel what’s happening to his body, how physical his reaction is, how much he’s resisting my presence.
Every sound he makes is harsh and painful, and he hasn’t even put his arms around me.
But I just stay there, wedged against him, my face against his bare chest, one hand curled around his side, the other around his leg.
Roman’s body softens slowly. His arms, eventually, close around me. He’s still shaking, but it fades to a tremble, then to stillness. We stay that way for a long time. There’s no rush. There’s nowhere to go.
Roman’s fingers start feathering over my neck. The touch is light. Hesitant. He’s worried that he hurt me.
He didn’t. Even in his confusion, he kept some control of himself.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says quietly.
“Yes, I should.”
“Vitali brought you. He’ll let you out.”
“I’m not leaving,” I tell him .
I don’t understand exactly why Roman came here, why he would want to be in a space like this again. But at this exact moment, I don’t need to understand. I just need to be here. For him, yes, but for me too. I belong with him.
“Can we lie down?” I ask. “I’m tired.”
Roman starts to get up, half lifting me. I get my feet under myself and walk the few steps to the mattress. I lie down with Roman. I let him put his back to the wall and tug me against his body.
The harsh overhead light turns off, darkening the cell. There’s a lamp glowing in the outer room, turning the cell door’s window into a sort of nightlight. No sound comes from out there, but I’m sure Vitali or Quinn is sitting on that couch. Maybe they both are, since they both brought me here.
No one intrudes. Nothing does.
It’s just me and Roman in the bleak, dark emptiness.
But it doesn’t feel terrible or scary. It feels familiar, even comfortable.
And in the simplicity of it, as everything else falls away, like nothing in the world exists but me and Roman, I feel, once again, his absolute possession of me—and it feels good.
I think it feels good to him too because, for the first time in months, I feel him completely relax.
That’s when I start to understand. I had forgotten, in the clutter of normal life, the clarity, the strange purity, of this kind of bleakness.
I sigh and settle and drift into sleep.
** *
I wake slowly, opening my eyes to a darkness cut through by a square of light. It confuses me at first. Without Roman’s big, powerful body surrounding mine, it would probably scare me, but his presence tells me that I’m safe, no matter where we are.
But then I remember.
I’m vaguely aroused, like I usually am when I wake. Roman’s hand is resting on my lower belly, his thumb inside my waistband. When Roman realizes I’m awake, his thumb starts gently stroking. I shift my hips to adjust my semi-hard cock. Roman’s hand curls possessively over it.
We don’t have lube, so I know he won’t fuck me. Roman would never do that to me. I’m sure he’d make me come if I pushed for it, but I’m content with this. It feels so good to have him with me like this. Fully present. Relaxed.
As my brain wakes up more, worry creeps along the edges of my thoughts, but I don’t let it in. I just let myself exist here with Roman.
When the light turns on in the cell, I brace myself for the door to open, for us to have to deal with reality outside this space.
Dread pools in my stomach. I’m not ready.
But when the lock clicks, the door opens only wide enough for a paper bag to be pushed inside.
I glimpse Quinn’s hand. I know it’s his because I can see the bottom edge of his burn scar, then the door shuts again .
I don’t get up right away. I want to simply stay here with Roman. But soon enough, the thought of food has my stomach rumbling.
Roman unhooks his hands from my torso. He doesn’t remove them, just opens a space for me. He grunts softly, telling me to get up.
I crawl off the mattress and stand. I have to pee, but I ignore it because there’s no sink to wash my hands. I’ll eat first.
But Quinn has thought of that, because when I open the paper bag, I find a bottle of hand sanitizer wedged in with the bagels, topping containers, napkins, and bottled water.
I take the bag to the mattress, where Roman is now sitting up with his back to the wall.
His expression is pretty neutral, his body still relaxed.
I leave the bag at the edge of the mattress and go to use the toilet. Our old cell had a separate bathroom. There was no door, but it still had a sense of privacy. We don’t have that here, but I make myself deal with it. It’s not a big deal to pee in front of Roman. We’ve done more intimate things.
And yet, when I return to the bed and use the hand sanitizer, he’s frowning slightly, like it bothered him. I know him well enough to know he’s bothered on my behalf, not his own. I don’t want him to dwell on it; I want him to eat, so I sit on the mattress and open the bag.
Quinn was right to keep the food simple. I use the toppings, but all Roman will eat is a plain bagel with nothing on it .
After we eat and clean up, there’s nothing to do. This cell has no punching bag or pullup bar. It’s small and empty. No one is meant to live long in here.
I wish we had a book at least, but I don’t say anything about it. I can tell that Roman is thinking, so I just lie on the mattress with him, pulled against his body.
Eventually, he says, “This isn’t what I want for you.”
I don’t want this for him either, but I don’t think he’s ready to hear that, so I just say, “I know.”
“You don’t belong in this place.”
That one I can’t let pass by, so I tell him, “Neither do you.”
He doesn’t reply.
I turn over in his arms so I can see him. His eyes scare me. They’re so, so bleak. I’ve never seen them like this. My throat tightens. I lift my hand to his face and lay it on his cheek. At the touch, tears spill silently from his eyes. I have never, ever seen Roman cry.
It makes tears spill from my own eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rasping.
“It’s okay.”
He doesn’t reply, but his eyes say, No. It’s not.
I press myself closer to him, wrapping my arms around him and smashing my face against his throat, clinging with a frightened desperation that I’m not ready to understand.
He soothes me. He pulls me close. He lies quietly with me until the vague, unnamed fear that’s suddenly gripped me fades into the background.
He starts petting my hair and finally says, “Let’s go home.”