Milo took off his jacket.
He sat on the counter across from the stove and watched Adrian cook. The ease of his hands, the sleeves pushed past his elbows, the tendons in his forearms when he shook the pan. He tasted from a wooden spoon he’d brought in the bag, his ownspoon, not trusting the apartment to have one, and adjusted. Salt. More oil. A pinch of something red.
They ate on the floor in the living room because the dining table had never been used for eating, the surface carrying its factory shine, and they’d both understood without discussing it that the floor was more honest. The hardwood was cool through Milo’s jeans. Detroit’s skyline through the south-facing windows, no other light on. The pasta was hot and the garlic was in the air and Milo ate with the bowl warming his palms.
“What did you eat before,” Adrian said. He was twisting pasta with one hand, his back against the wall, legs stretched toward the windows.
“Restaurants. The team meal. Protein bars.”
“Every day.”
“Most.”
“How long.”
Milo thought about it. How long since a kitchen had smelled like this. “Since my last billet family. In juniors.”
Adrian looked at him. He didn’t say anything. He ate.
“My mother still cooks,” Milo said. He wasn’t sure why he was continuing. The words coming up from somewhere he hadn’t opened on purpose. “When I’m home in the summer. Which is two weeks.” He turned his fork against the bowl. “My dad built a clock. For the kitchen. Wrong by eleven minutes. He’s been meaning to fix it for six years.” He stopped. The heel of his hand went to his sternum. “Nobody moves it. My mother bought a second clock. He hasn’t noticed.”
Adrian’s fork rested on the rim of his bowl. Hands stopped. He didn’t fill the space.
“She didn’t want to embarrass him,” Milo said.
“Yeah,” Adrian said. Quiet. The word carrying everything it needed to carry.
After: the kitchen cleaned, side by side at the sink, Adrian washing and Milo drying. Adrian’s sleeves pushed up, his hands in the water. The rhythm of it, wash, rinse, hand over, dry, stack, building its own silence. The kitchen smelled like garlic and oil and the window above the sink showed their reflections doubled against the city at night.
Adrian’s hand came to Milo’s jaw.
The warmth of his palm. His thumb at the hinge where the muscle lived, his fingers along the bone toward the chin. The exact placement from the studio, found again without searching. His palm was damp from the dishwater.
Milo let himself be studied. Stood in the dark living room of his empty apartment and let someone look.
“Come on,” Adrian said.
Milo followed him down the hall, through his own apartment, past the spare room where nothing was stored, past the bathroom with its single towel, and toward the bedroom. The hallway was narrow and the walls were bare, and behind him the kitchen smell held. It would be gone by morning when the air system cycled through and replaced it with the apartment’s native nothing.
The bed was correctly made, sheets pulled tight. Adrian sat on it and looked at the room. Bare walls. Closed closet. Nightstand with a single phone charger plugged into nothing. His eyes came back to Milo in the doorway.
He reached for him. One hand extended, palm up. Not pulling. Offering.
Milo crossed the room and took it.
Adrian drew him down. Milo’s knee between Adrian’s thighs, Adrian’s face tilted up, his breath warm on Milo’s chin. Adrian’s hands came to his hips, thumbs in the hollows above the hip bones, the pressure patient. Then his mouth on the side of Milo’s neck, below the ear, and Milo’s eyes closed.
The pace was different from the studio. Adrian’s hands traveled up his back under the shirt, the fabric gathering at his wrists, traveling the length of his spine like he was memorizing each vertebra. Not the confidence of his own space. The care of someone who had come into an empty room and understood what empty rooms needed.
Adrian pulled Milo’s shirt over his head and pressed his mouth to the center of his sternum, the exact place where Milo pressed his own hand when the weight came. Lips against bone. Breath hot through the skin. The sound Milo made came from somewhere behind his ribs, and Adrian’s hands tightened on his hips and his mouth moved lower, over the ridges of his stomach, taking his time the way he hadn’t the first night, the way the empty apartment seemed to require.
Adrian’s thumbs traced the lines of muscle from hip bone to groin, the pressure following the topography. Milo’s fingers dug into Adrian’s shoulders, gripping harder than the moment required.
He knew the grip was different from the studio. In the studio he’d held on because his body was braced for the end of it, every muscle ready for the moment Adrian would pull back. Here, in his own bed, in his empty apartment with garlic in the air because someone had cooked for him, he held on because of how much he wanted it to stay. The wanting was the new thing. Not the fear of losing but the weight of having.
Adrian eased him back. Milo’s shoulders hit the sheets and Adrian followed him down, his weight settling over Milo in increments. The sheets pulled loose at the corners.
Adrian’s mouth on his throat. The scrape of his jaw against Milo’s skin. The glasses bumping Milo’s cheekbone, Adrian reaching up to pull them off and set them on the nightstand by touch, the click of frames against wood. Then back. His mouth on Milo’s chest, his ribs, his stomach tightening as Adrian’sbreath crossed it. His hands finding the places that made Milo’s breathing come apart: the inside of his hip, the skin below his navel, the line where muscle met tendon at the groin. Finding them and staying with them, each place given its own attention, Adrian’s hands reading his body the way his hands read a canvas, the way they pressed and tested and returned to the places that responded.
