42. Hands
Hands
Rafe
The morning comes in pieces. Hazy light seeps through the curtains, warm and golden, turning everything soft around the edges. Dust motes drift in the air like tiny planets, caught between worlds.
We didn’t sleep much, too many hours spent talking, drifting, kissing until the line between night and morning blurred. The kind of exhaustion that feels almost transcendent. She stirs first, a groggy noise slipping out as she tries to move.
“I can’t feel… something. Probably a limb.”
I laugh, voice rough. “Try being me. I was your mattress all night.”
That earns me a sideways glare. “Keep talking like I’m dead weight and you’ll be lucky if I ever use you as a mattress again.”
Her voice is dry, that effortless wit sharp even half-asleep, and I swear it goes straight through me. She doesn’t even mean it to sound seductive, but it lands like a spark anyway.
Before I can stop myself, I lean towards her, catching her waist. “Maybe I want to be your mattress.”
She laughs, pushing at my shoulder but she doesn’t really resist. “I have morning breath. There’s probably drool somewhere here—” she gestures at my chest “on your nice shirt.” She glances down like she might actually find it.
I catch her face between my hands before she can. “I don’t care,” I say, voice graveled from lack of sleep, meaning every word.
The kiss starts tender, careful. A soft brush, more breath than contact.
Then it deepens. There’s something slow and aching about it, like lust has finally caught up with us.
Her mouth opens against mine and I feel everything ignite.
Her fingers slide into my hair. My hands find the curve of her hips, the line of her thighs, pulling her closer.
I move, adjust my weight, her legs wrapping around me.
From the first second, it's indescribable, the giving in, the contact through thin layers of fabric.
Both of us gasp from it each time we connect, touch.
This feels right, like it was always where we were heading from the moment we met.
My stomach flips, that rush like leaping out of a plane, the brief terror before the parachute opens. Then my phone rings.
The sound slices through the haze, loud and sudden. The ringtone I keep for our manager, Stefan. I groan, forehead falling to her shoulder, laughing into her skin. “Fuck my life.”
She laughs, too, breathless. “Maybe we should’ve taken the hint last night if this was what we wanted to do.”
“It’s still on the cards,” I say, sitting up, already reaching for the phone. “Just one quick phone call, stay right fucking there.”
I glance back at her as I answer. She’s still laying there, hair mussed, lips kiss-swollen, sunlight painting her skin in gold. I know before she even smiles that I’m already hopelessly hers. The call slices through the last thread of stillness. I swipe to answer, already bracing.
“Finally,” comes Stefan’s voice, too awake for this hour. “Tell me you’ve seen Rithy’s feed.”
I groan. “What now?”
“He’s gone cryptic again. Moody shots of whiskey glasses, captions about betrayal and ghosts and blood oaths. It’s like an emo séance over there. Fans are losing their minds, half of them think the band’s imploding, the other half think you’re dead.”
Kasia snorts beside me, muffling a laugh against the cushion. I mouth don’t at her. She grins wider.
“Look, I need you to post something to balance it out,” he goes on. “Something brotherhood-y. Artsy, but reassuring. You know, Obelus and Haima: the yin and yang of creative suffering.”
“Jesus Christ.” I rub a hand over my face. “Can’t you just tell him to delete the whiskey?”
“Tried. He said, and I quote, ‘It’s metaphorical.’ I give up. You do damage control. Make it mysterious but positive.”
“Because that’s easy before coffee,” I mutter. “Fine. I’ll think of something.”
“Good. Don’t take too long. Twitter’s already building theories about witchcraft.”
The line clicks off.
I drop the phone onto the couch. Kasia’s biting her lip, trying and failing, not to laugh.
“Witchcraft?”
“It’s the internet. Everything’s bloody witchcraft.”
She props herself up on her elbow, sunlight catching her hair. “So what’s the plan, Mister Yin to His Yang?”
I glance around the cabin, dusty light beams cutting through the air, the piano half-covered in cloth, the worn wood floor, the lake glinting beyond the window. “Maybe this,” I say. “Something about retreating into nature for creative alignment. Pretentious but enough truth to be real.”
She laughs. “You mean moody, cryptic, masculine despair.”
“Now you're getting it.”
We move around the room, playing at being serious, me adjusting the curtain light, her holding up her phone camera like it’s a professional's. She keeps biting her lip when she focuses, squinting one eye as if she’s trying to divine something instead of taking a photo.
It’s ridiculous and perfect. I can’t stop watching her.
For a second, the whole joke just… falls away.
The room goes still except for the warmth of morning.
“You know, I wish I could just post this.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What, the cabin?”
“You.” I say simply. “Just, you.”
Her cheeks flush, a slow smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You do that, and you’ll have a legion of angry men and women at my door.”
I laugh. “Worth it.”
She rolls her eyes, then takes my hand and tugs me back toward the couch. “Come on.”
The look she gives me is impossible to read and for a second, my brain goes entirely the wrong direction.
“Kasia,” I start, voice hushed in surprise, half teasing but mostly serious. “If this is about to turn into—”
She cuts me off with a laugh, already pulling me down beside her. “We still have to do the picture first, remember? Before your manager sends a search party.”
I’m still catching up when she moves again, stretching out along the couch and settling her head in my lap. For a second, my heart jumps like she might be proving me right after all, and then—
“No post of just me,” she says, holding up her phone. “We’ll do this instead.”
She lifts the phone, the sunlight catching across the lens. I glance up just as she snaps the picture, her head resting against me, my hand sliding through her hair, both of us half-lit in morning haze.
She checks the photo, grins. “Now we have one of us both.”
I look down at her, at the way she looks in the light, unfiltered, unguarded. The kind of moment that could never survive what the internet would do to it.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “We do.”
She starts to sit up, but before she can move away, I reach out and catch her wrist, pulling her gently back toward me.
“Rafe—” she starts, half laughing. “We still have a PR crisis to manage, remember?”
“Later,” I say, and it comes out lower than I intend.
She laughs and tries to twist free, but I hold her there, just enough to make her pause.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. She looks at me, brow raised, like she’s deciding whether to tease or surrender.
Then she exhales, and it tips, that invisible point where humor becomes heat.
She pushes me back instead, reclaiming her balance, straddling my hips before I can process it.
Her hair slips forward over her shoulders, and the world doesn't exist beyond the one she’s just made for us, beneath her canopy.
I can’t help it, my mouth opens of it’s own accord. “No painter could capture you like this,” I say, staring up at her, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “Even Vermeer would’ve given up.”
Her eyes flicker, startled and amused at once. “You can stop seducing me,” she whispers, but her mouth is already finding mine.
The kiss is immediate and deep, opening to each other in all the ways that matter, all the tension from last night collapsing into it.
Both of us are completely lost until her phone slips from her hand, landing with a soft thud on the rug.
Mine’s next. It feels real and unstoppable, when you know you’re past the point of pretending.
Then I pull back, breath catching. She looks at me, eyes wide, pupils blown, lips parted like she’s about to call me a coward.
I brush her hair back from her face. “Trust me, I don’t want to stop either. But we have to get this damn photo uploaded first. The last thing I want is to be interrupted in the middle of that—with you.”
She blinks, caught between frustration and understanding. Then she sighs, resting her forehead against mine.
“Fine, kurwa,” she whispers. “If your manager calls again, I’m blocking him.”
I laugh softly, pressing a kiss to her temple, still breathing her in. “Full permission.”
She pauses for a moment, then stands, dragging me up reluctantly before shoving me towards the piano.
“Hands on the keys,” she says, circling behind me like a director setting a scene.
I raise an eyebrow. “Specific.”
“Artistic,” she corrects, deadpan. “You’re a musician, people need proof.”
Her voice has that edge of teasing that gets under my skin. I settle on the stool, flexing my fingers, and she leans against the frame of the piano, studying me. “Your hands are one of your best features,” she says, pretending to be casual, feigning innocence.
“Yeah, I figured that out when I saw all the videos dedicated to them,” I say.
She blinks, caught between shock and amusement. “You’ve watched those?”
“I’ve been sent those,” I correct, smirking. "Ronan thinks it's fucking hilarious."
She laughs, but there’s a blush creeping up her neck, and I can tell she’s seen them too. She tries to hide it, fiddling with the camera app. I watch her try to look unaffected, and it only makes her look softer, more real.
I look down at my hands, turn them over, study the lines, the veins. “Is it really that big of a deal?”
“Ugh, men,” she says, exasperated. “You don’t get it.”
I tilt my head up at her from the bench. She’s close now, standing over me, and for a second, everything feels suspended. Sunlight, breath, the air between us. Then I do something I probably shouldn’t. Something the old me would’ve done without thinking.
I reach out and slide my hand along her throat, not pressure, just presence, a line of contact that asks more than it takes. She leans into it, I feel the faint pressure build behind my grip. My voice drops, rough and dark. “I thought this was more the reason,” I say, “not the aesthetic?”
Her lips part. She lifts her hand, lays it over mine. Her pulse flutters under my fingers, quick and alive. I squeeze, just a little. Everything condenses in that moment: the flash of heat, the places it could go, the instinct. The blood beats loud in my ears.
Then I close my eyes, trying to repress all the thoughts that threaten to take control.
My body a traitor, straining and hardening.
When I open them, she’s smirking, the challenge written all over her.
Waiting for me to make it real. But I don’t, I draw my hand down, slowly, grazing all the things I'm denying myself along the way.
Her fingers follow until both fall away and we finally breathe again.
I clear my throat, turning back toward the piano, my voice catching in a forced normalcy.
“So. Right. Where should I put my hands?”
She stays still for a long moment, frozen in that line we almost crossed. Then she exhales, stepping closer.
“Here,” she says finally, moving my hands into place, and then the shutter noise from her camera clicks.
“Well?” I ask.
She turns the screen toward me. It’s me at the piano, head slightly bowed, hands resting on the keys.
The light cuts across the room in bands, catching the outline of my jaw, my wrist, the texture of the wood.
It looks candid and posed at once. The kind of shot that makes you think someone knows the person behind the lens.
“It’s good,” she says, proudly. “Looks like something real.”
I study it, then glance up at her. “You’ve got an eye.”
She shrugs, a smile tugging at her mouth. “I like fixing focus.”
The joke barely hides the pulse still running between us. I look back at the screen, thumb hovering.
I type a few words, then show her: Finding the right dial on the static.
She studies it, then nods once. “Post it before you ruin it by thinking.”
I hit upload. The little spinning circle turns, and the post goes live. Almost instantly, the notifications start lighting up, hearts, comments, the usual flood. She leans on the piano, watching, amused.
“Oh no,” she murmurs, reading one. “They’ve already started the detective work. Who took it? Where is he?” She laughs, soft and wicked. “You’ve unleashed chaos.”
I glance back at the photo. “We’ll just… enjoy knowing.”
“A secret between artists.”
I lock the phone, set it down on the piano, and reach for her hand. “Come on. If I’m the one on breakfast duty, I need supervision.” She laughs, threading her fingers through mine.
“What’s the plan, maestro?” she says, stretching like she’s shaking off sleep.
I groan. “You think I have a plan?”
“You have a kitchen, don’t you?”
“Allegedly.” I open the first cupboard, two mugs, a jar of honey fossilized into amber, and something that might once have been rice. “What would your parents make right now?”
She laughs, leaning against the counter, hair still a little wild. “Tata would fry kielbasa and eggs in enough butter to terrify a cardiologist. Mama would pretend to be horrified and then add fruit to the table to balance the guilt.”
“That sounds edible.”
“Yours?”
“My mum made rice porridge with honey when I was a kid,” I say. “My father just drank black coffee and said things like, ‘Breakfast is for people who slept.’”
She smirks. “That explains a lot.”
“You’re saying I look like a man raised on caffeine and bad decisions?”
“I’m saying you are one.”
I laugh and pour over another cabinet. A single dented pan and a bag of oats. “See? Prepared.”
She shakes her head, amused. “You figure out your options. I’m going to see if you have toothpaste to at least rub on my teeth. I wasn’t exactly planning to spend the night.” Then heads off to the bathroom.
“So,” I yell, “update from the field, we might have to forage in the woods. Maybe hunt berries or barter with squirrels.”
She comes back a few minutes later, cheeks pink from the cold water, hair brushed smooth. There’s toothpaste on her wrist and that glow people get when they manage to make chaos look graceful. Before I can say anything, my phone buzzes. I flip it over, Rithy.
Nice lighting for a future breakup song, lover. Tell your “photographer” they’ve got talent.
I sigh and pocket the phone. “Waffle House it is, I lack the enthusiasm required for foraging.”
She grins, leaning on the counter. “We really need coffee.”
“You look way too good for someone who just brushed her teeth with her finger.”
“Skills!” she says.