I press my forehead to his and just breathe. “Are you sure?”
“I have never been more sure of anything. In the daylight. Where I can watch you do it. Please, Enzo.”
So I open him. Slow and careful, lube warmed between my fingers first, my mouth on his to catch every sound he makes. One finger, then two, working him open by degrees, learning a part of him nobody has ever been given. He’s tight and shaking and cursing softly and holding my face like an anchor in weather.
“Breathe for me,” I tell him, against his mouth. “You know how to do the hard thing slow. You’ve watched me cook. This is the same. You don’t rush it. You let it open.”
“Since when are you patient?” he manages to ask.
“Since it’s you. Since there’s no morning to beat. Breathe.”
He breathes. His cock is hard against his belly and leaking, and I take it in my free hand and stroke him in time with my fingers, curling them until I find the place that empties his head. He arches off the bed and the most articulate man I know is reduced to please and yes and my name, over and over, loud enough for the whole street.
“Now,” he says. “Enzo. Now, before I lose my nerve.”
I slick my cock and line it up and push into him. Slow. All the way, watching his face the entire time. I stop when I’m seated deep, because he needs the second and so do I. His breath is ragged. His eyes are wet and open and locked on mine.
He chose me. For this. For his first time.
“There,” he says, hardly any voice in it. “God. There you are.”
“I’ve got you.” I start to move, slow and deep, and he arches under me and takes it and gives it back. “I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. Feel that.”
I fuck him slow and deep and unhurried, because there is no clock and no exit and the afternoon is gold and endless. He wraps his legs around me and pulls me deeper and stops being quiet. He has always been quiet. Today he is loud, and I love the noise of it. I love that the neighbors can hear exactly what’s happening in daylight and he no longer cares who knows.
“Harder,” he says against my ear. “I trust it. I trust you. Harder.”
I give him harder. I get a hand back around his cock and stroke him in rhythm with every drive, and I watch him come apart under me. I watch the man who always left arch up off my bed and there is nowhere on earth I would rather be than have him pinned beneath me in my own city.
“Look at me when you go,” I tell him. “You never let anyone watch. Let me watch.”
He looks at me. He holds my eyes the whole way, and he comes hard, spilling hot over my fist and his own stomach, clenching around my cock so tight it drags me right over the edge behind him. I bury myself as deep as I can go and come inside him, both of us shaking and wrecked. Both of us here, in the light.
I don’t pull away after. There is nowhere to pull away to, and for the first time in the history of us, neither of us wants one.
We lie tangled in my bed in the gold afternoon. The city yells its ordinary life through the open balcony. His hand lies flat on my chest, and it stays there.
“Your father,” he says eventually, into my shoulder. “The thing about the coffee. I meant it. I’m not leaving before the coffee.”
“There’s going to be a lot of coffee, Marek. Years of it. I make it strong. My mother makes it stronger. You’ll complain.”
“I complain and drink it anyway. It’s my whole personality now.” He’s quiet a moment. “I don’t have a box for this. Your father. Your bed. Your terrible loud beautiful street. There’s no box.”
“No,” I say, and pull him closer. “There’s no box. There’s just a table. I set it for two, and this time you’re staying for the whole meal.”
The light goes long and gold, and then longer. Somewhere below, a scooter. A mother calling a name. The whole city.
And the man who spent his whole life learning to leave is lying in my bed, in my home, in the long gold middle of a Naples afternoon. He does not leave. He will not leave. He is not going to leave.
I set the second place years too early. Turns out I just set it right.
Chapter 20: Marek
Iwake up in Naples, in a bed that isn’t mine, and I wait for the reflex.
This is the part I know. This is the part I have done a thousand times in a hundred rooms. The eyes open. The light is wrong, and the ceiling is unfamiliar, and the system boots up and starts the count. Where are the shoes. Where is the door. How many steps to the stairs. What time is it and how fast can I be gone before anyone has to watch me go.
I lie still and wait for the count to start.
