Chapter Twelve #4
That left Kilian’s shoulders in his grip, so Damir pulled him up into his lap. He wrapped his arms around Kilian’s waist and buried his face in Kilian’s neck.
“Give me a minute,” he muttered. “I’ll get us cleaned up, find some food and drink.”
“You don’t have to. You can just—”
If the next words out of Kilian’s mouth were “go,” Damir would lose his mind. “Let me— Please, Kilian, I’m begging you. That was…intense. I need to feel as though I’ve taken care of you.”
Kilian’s fingers pushed through Damir’s hair. “You did. You took such good care of me.”
Damir melted into him and held on for dear life.
Some part of him waited for Kilian to break the tension with an entirely random question or comment about Islam, hockey, kink, anything, proving he was fine.
He never did.
Eventually, Damir’s breathing slowed to something less quick and panicked.
His heart rate steadied, comforted to normalcy by the scent of Kilian’s ten thousand hair care products.
When it did, he leveraged Kilian into the bed and got up in search of what he needed.
He returned moments later with a towel he’d soaked in warm water, a bottle of something sweet, and a bar of dark chocolate.
He wiped the worst of the sticky, dried come off of Kilian with one end of the towel, then used the other on the tear tracks dried on his cheeks.
Satisfied with the cleanup, Damir settled against the headboard and pulled Kilian up to sit between his legs, leaned against his chest. He fed him half the chocolate in slow bites and made sure he drank the entire bottle.
They talked about tomorrow’s game against Buffalo, the last before Christmas break, and sank lower and lower into the covers until Kilian’s breathing evened out, and he fell fast asleep cuddled against Damir’s chest.
Using his free arm so as not to disturb Kilian, Damir took his phone from the bedside table.
He thumbed past the lockscreen and the notifications—three from Lissy asking if there was any “news” about Kilian—and opened his browser.
He’d left the article open in a tab there, too angry to read it but too worried to close it entirely.
He studied the pictures.
They were grainy and barely in focus, cell phone snapshots under strobe lights.
On the first, Kilian had his head tilted back and his arms raised.
The posture hiked his short crop top higher, exposing most of his ribcage.
An anonymous man whose face was hidden behind Kilian’s neck danced with him.
The man’s hands served as a frame for the lines of Kilian’s muscled abdomen.
In the second picture, Kilian smiled, a little hazy, a little dopey, definitely drunk. His whole face was visible, and Damir could see the unnatural shade of red on his lips, the black smudges around his eyes.
Ordinarily, the sight would have turned him on. Now, after having come, shaky and restless, it made Damir ache. He wanted Kilian to be that person always. No more ill-fitting suits and team-branded gear, Kilian deserved to look as carefree and sexy and utterly himself as he did in those pictures.
Damir turned out the lamp on the bedside table and forced his body to relax, but he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping.
The thoughts raced around and around in his head, Kilian and Mama and Russia and the article and Kilian and proper BDSM etiquette and what it meant to be queer and Muslim, and the vague possible future where Damir could love a man and no one would care, and Kilian.
It was one thing to plan for some abstract potential future when Damir might meet someone who could be forever.
It was another to change the trajectory of his entire life because he had met someone.
If he continued down this path, soon, there would be no summers in Moscow.
There would be no visits to his parents’ cramped apartment.
There would be publicity and journalists and visa issues and so many horrible people on the internet calling him a terrorist and an infidel and a pervert.
If he didn’t want that, he had to stop now, before his heart decided for him.
But he was being honest tonight, if only with himself. Someday and someone were going to have to work very hard to compete with here and now and Kilian.
Damir waited all night for the thought to turn sour. He thought about Kilian’s age, his insecurities, his inexperience with the kind of sex he and Damir had been having. Kilian was messy. He was a terrible cook.
None of it changed what Damir wanted.
He wanted to be the person who cared for Kilian, who gave him what he needed. He would never be satisfied to wait out the storm on the sidelines while Kilian braved it alone.
Just before dawn, Damir took a last loving look at the way Kilian’s eyelashes fanned out over his cheekbones, and then he slipped out of bed and into the bathroom.
He brushed his teeth and then washed thoroughly and in the right order: hands, mouth, nose, face, forearms, head, ears, feet.
When he’d finished, he went into the living room, where he did something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
He took out the mat from under the couch, unrolled it facing southeast, and prayed.
It wasn’t for show in the mosque on a Friday, it wasn’t to make Baba happy, and it wasn’t to assuage his own guilt.
It was because, for the first time in his life, Damir saw a possible future on the horizon in which he could finally make peace with every aspect of who he was.
He found he needed to thank Allah for putting him in the right time and place to make such a decision.