Nights Without Night

by Marina Vivancos

  “And I had a crush on your mom growing up.”

  “You jerked off in my bed?!” I shout.

  “Is that your answer?”

  “No, obviously the lie is that you had a crush on my mom—what the fuck, man? Where did that even come from. I am disturbed.”

  “She’s hot.”

  “Stop talking yesterday,” I growl. Isadoro laughs. “Now onto more pressing matters; you jerked off in my bed?! Why!” I say in a calm and collected voice and not at all a screech. Isadoro shrugs, taking the shot. “Asshole. You’re an asshole. Which bed?”

  “All of them.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I say but can’t help but laugh. My life is a joke. “Wait,” I say, “including this one?”

  “Okay, except this one,” Isadoro acquiesces. I sigh in relief. I struggle to sleep already—I would not be able to take it if I had to lay down where I knew Isadoro has jerked off.

  “Do not jerk off in my bed,” I order, pointing my finger in his face.

  “Can’t make any promises,” he smirks. I throw my hands in the air.

  “Uh, yeah you can! Look, read my lips. I will not jerk off in your bed. See? Easy!” I say. His look lingers on my lips and then drags slowly to my eyes. He hums lowly. I feel a flush from the alcohol rush to my cheeks.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I say nonsensically. “My turn. One, I jerked off in your bed,” I snark. Isadoro snorts. “Two, I kind of hated your grandad.”

  “What a revelation,” Isadoro drawls.

  “Three, I’ve been Eiffel Towered,” I say. The easy smile on Isadoro’s face fades slowly as he looks at me, eyes going dark. I wait, but he says nothing.

  “So? Which one’s the lie?”

  “Number one,” he says. I nod, taking my shot. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. When the glass is back on the table, I wait for him to speak but still, nothing.

  “It’s your turn you creepy staring weirdo.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Amazingly enough, you don’t know them.”

  “Did you like it?” he asks. None of your fucking business, my head says. My drunk mouth, however,

  “Yeah. I liked it.” My voice comes out soft, and the silence around us is suddenly apparent. He’s piercing me with his look. I can’t move. My chest is tight, taking half-breaths.

  I’ve seen that look before, an age ago.

  “Are you going to take your turn, or what?” I say, trying to break the spell, but he doesn’t look away.

  “One, I caught a whale shark once.”

  “That is such bullshit. You are so bad at this game.”

  “Two, I don’t actually like your lasagne,” he says. I gasp.

  “Three, I saw you fucking, once. Or, more precisely, being fucked.” His voice is quiet and low, radiating heat across my skin until it burns.

  “What?”

  “Which one’s the lie?”

  “The whale shark one. Iraq and Afghanistan are landlocked and it’s not like you’ve been taking fishing holidays,” I say distractedly.

  “Actually, Iraq is-”

  “Shut up, it’s practically landlocked. What did you mean, you’ve seen me get…seen me fucking?” I ask. Isadoro shrugs. “When?”

  “When I was still in training. I came home early and went to yours. Your parents weren’t there, and you were…” His eyes don’t waver.

  I’d felt guilty about fooling around with that guy when Isadoro had been in training. Isadoro and I hadn’t fooled around in a year, he was leaving for Afghanistan soon, we weren’t and never had been in a relationship and, still. I’d felt guilty.

  I don’t know what to do with the piece of information he’s just given me. It’s in my head now, inerasable, but it has no place. Do I banish it to embarrassment? Anger? Confusion? Disregard?

  “What did you do?” my mouth decides for me. Masochistic curiosity it is.

  “Nothing,” he shrugs, watching me carefully. I’m suddenly reminded of the time I caught him fucking someone. Had that been payback? But that doesn’t make sense, either with the situation or Isadoro’s personality. Then, what?

  I shake my head. I’m way too drunk for this line of questioning.

  “Okay, then. Drink up,” I say, pouring him the drink and pushing it toward him. He knocks it back. “Maybe we’ve had enough,” I suggest, feeling out of sorts.

  “One more each,” he counters. I watch him for a moment.

  “Okay.” I think. “One…I still have dreams about you sometimes.” The words just fucking come out of my mouth. In the context of the situation, the types of dreams I’m referring to is obvious.

  As he watches me, Isadoro’s eyes are darker than the darkness around us.

  “Two,” I scramble, “I love drawing hands and, uh, three, I’ve never dialled a wrong number.” What the fuck am I even saying?

  “Three,” Isadoro says.

  “Yep,” I say, and take the shot. I ignore the way he’s looking at me. I just can’t take it. “Your turn.” There’s a moment of silence.

  “I fucked guys overseas,” he says, voice quiet, but it’s a spark in a powdered keg. My head jerks up, eyes wide. Out of all of them, this is the one that floors me.

  “Two,” he goes on, “I’ve won a pie eating contest. Three, I once had to spend five hours in a tank with a guy who had some bad food the night before and had shat himself during the mission.”

  I know number two is the lie. Isadoro hates pie. It’s an easy win. Still.

  “One,” I say. Isadoro’s lips twitch.

  “Nope. Two. Drink up,” he says, but I don’t move.

  My head is stuck on the image of him fucking some faceless guy somewhere I’ve never been. I imagine the curve of his hand in the way he used to stroke my hip, or that time he gripped the hair at the nape of my neck as we fucked face-to-face. Imagine those wide, wild eyes on another guy.

  For the first time in forever, I feel the full force of jealousy. It almost feels good in a terrible way. I know it’s stupid, to have seen him hook up a hundred times with women and have this tip me over the edge, but I can’t help it. I want to be the only guy he’s ever fucked—just this one, stupid, arbitrary thing for myself.

  “Why are you so surprised?” he asks.

  “I…” I look away for a moment, searching for words. My head is dizzy with alcohol and images and stupid question after stupid question. “I’ve just never seen you with a guy.”

  “We’ve fucked. And you’re a guy, last time I checked.”

  “I just thought you were…experimenting,” I try.

  “We did it a few too many times to call it experimenting, don’t you think?” he snorts.

  He’s right. I struggle to give him an answer. The one I have can’t be said aloud.

  To me, fooling around with Isadoro had been like a dream. It hadn’t felt real. I had known why I was doing it—I loved him and was gay as hell. But him? What reasons did he have if it wasn’t experimentation?

  “Okay, then,” I say. I can’t have this conversation right now. I can’t have this conversation ever.

  I close my eyes and drink the last shot. It doesn’t even burn anymore.

  When I open them again, Isadoro is close, all alcohol heat and a look that could burn through anything. I can hear my heart beating in a distant room like a ceremonial drum.

  “What are you doing?” I say, so quietly it’s just a piece of breath between our faces.

  “Experimenting,” he says and leans in.

  I lean away.

  “We’re not kids anymore,” I say, stronger this time. I can’t do this to myself.

  “I know that,” he says. He’s still so close and I want—fuck.

  “I can’t do this, Isa. I can’t…” I trail off. He looks at me for a piercing moment before he backs off. We’re still on the floor, backs against the couch, the coffee table pushed aside. We sit there for a moment as I study his expression. There’s something odd about it. He doesn’t look spurned
—he looks frustrated. Almost angry, but not at me. Like a familiar scent, it sparks a memory.

  “Isa, what happened with that girl when you, you know, at the bar those weeks ago?” I ask quietly. I feel him tense beside me, and my hand reaches around his bicep, but he doesn’t get up.

  The electric silence stretches. Time passes in the tick, tick, tick of his jaw.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he says, and as quiet as his voice is, the admission startles me. My hand is still pressed against his arm and I leave it there. I don’t say anything, giving him space to continue.

  “I just, I…I don’t fucking know, Iván. I just freaked out. She was touching me and I just…I couldn’t do it. I’ve always been able to just…I don’t know what’s happened. I’m all fucked up,” he says. He rubs his hands against his short hair and then presses his forehead against the balls of his palms.

  “Yeah, it’s almost like you’ve been to war or something,” I say sarcastically. He freezes beside me and then turns his head in his hands to look at me. Suddenly, his expression cracks and he laughs, head tilted back.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he says, a smile in his voice as he looks at the ceiling.

  “Survive, like everybody else,” I say. His expression sobers as he looks at me.

  “Not everybody survives.”

  The phrase makes me cold. There’s not much I can say to that.

  “I just…I need…I want…fuck,” Isadoro says, shaking his head and turning it away from me.

  Suddenly, with the clarity gained from knowing someone this long, I understand. What Isadoro wants is a middleman between him and reality.

  “So…you can’t with a stranger, so you want us to…sleep together to, like, desensitize you. Get you ready for the real world. Like a halfway house,” I say slowly.

  “Sounds kind of fucked up when you put it like that,” Isadoro mutters.

  “Kind of is,” I reply truthfully.

  “Fuck. It’s—I don’t want you to do this out of fucking pity but, just…you’re my—you’ve always…there’s no one I trust like I trust you and I’ve put my life in people’s hands—I’ve fought alongside people I’d give anything to but you…I feel like I’m going to fall into a hole if I don’t keep going. We’ve done it before, so I just thought—but forget it. Forget it.”

  This is the first time in years Isadoro has asked me for any kind of help, that he’s really shared something about what’s going on inside him. I can’t breathe, for a moment, at the sound of the desperation in his voice. This isn’t about sex. Not really. It’s about him feeling he isn’t defective in his definition of the word. About gaining some sense of control over himself.

  I wish I could say all my motivations for wanting to say yes are selfless, but the sudden desire that lays heavy in my stomach says otherwise. I want him to, to—I just want him.

  “Okay,” I say. Isadoro looks at me. “Okay. We can…But we need to sleep on this. Tomorrow, you bring it up if you still want to…do it. And I’ll tell you if I do. Okay?”

  It’s the best I can do to assuage my conscience. Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll have come to my senses.

  “Okay,” he says. We look at each other, electric.

  We let the moment pass.

  All my drunkenness becomes apparent the moment I get up. I sway for a moment before stumbling to the kitchen. I put away what little we left of the vodka and return to the living room, collapsing beside Isadoro on the couch, pressed against him. He turns the TV on and I close my eyes.

  “Why did we drink so much, again?” I groan.

  “Everything sucks.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Isadoro snorts and a moment later I feel the ghost-press of his fingers against my wrist.

  “If you’re gonna hold my hand don’t be fucking weird about it,” I grouse, grabbing his hand. Isadoro snorts again and we stare at the flickering colours on the TV.

  It’s warm, here. I let the night take me under.

  **********

  I shuffle to the kitchen praying for death. Or coffee. Either would do for my hangover.

  I’m just putting some coffee in a paper filter when Isadoro comes out of his bedroom. I turn to look at him. He looks perfectly awake and hangover-free.

  “Bitch,” I tell him, just for how pretty he is.

  “You told me to bring it up today,” he says abruptly, not even giving me a minute to be alive on this horrible morning.

  “God, let me wake up, will you?” I groan. He just stands there, watching me as I put the filter in place, add water, turn it on. The pot fills up slowly and he just stands there, looking at me.

  “Fucking weirdo,” I mutter as I finally pour some coffee into the cup, treating myself to some milk so it cools down enough to drink straight away.

  I take a sip and sigh. I turn to Isadoro, leaning my back against the counter with the mug in my hands.

  “Okay,” I say, giving him the go-ahead.

  “What we talked about yesterday. I still want to, if you do,” he says. There’s no hesitation in his voice. He just looks at me and I know. I know this is a mistake. Unhealthy for the both of us, but it’s difficult not to gorge when I’ve been starved of so much of him for so long. “Do you?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say like I knew I would from the moment the idea was posed. “We can add sex to the many benefits of being friends with me, which include my lasagne, you tasteless cretin. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about…”

  He’s suddenly moving toward me with military purpose. When he reaches me, he takes the mug from my hands, placing it out of reach on the counter.

  “Hey, I need that to live!” I protest, but then he’s looking at me and any further words burn to ash.

  He takes a step closer. His body presses against mine, his thighs and his crotch and his waist. His hand cups my hip, slips under the shirt to rub at the bone there. His other hand wraps against the back of my neck and he just looks, and looks, and looks at me.

  I can’t breathe.

  When he finally leans in, I’m desperate for it.

  I wish I could say it wasn’t good but, fuck. It’s so, so good. The press of his lips, and his body, and the hand on my nape. It’s slow, torturous. He moves his lips and I follow, tandem tides. When I feel his tongue at the seam, my lips part and the kiss turns deep even as the pace stays the same. He presses closer, deeper, until he’s all around me, everything I know.

  I pull away to gasp for breath, to give myself a moment, but Isadoro is on a mission. He bends his knees a moment, putting his hands on the back of my thighs and pushing me onto the counter. Something clatters behind me. I hope it’s not the coffee, but the thought drifts away as Isadoro kisses me again, and again, and again.

  This is my worst fear, given pace and shape.

  He kisses me like he’s devouring me, like he’ll never get enough, and isn’t that a terrifying thought in its inaccuracy. But, for all his urgency, we kiss for an age, pressed hard against each other until I can’t help but start to grind against him. The pressure feels so good I make a small, startled noise of pleasure into his mouth. For a moment, his hold on me tightens, one hand fisting in my hair, the other pressing against the small of my back until I can barely move against him.

  “Fuck, please,” I say, breaking the kiss. The look in Isadoro’s eyes is the pounding of my heart, the race of my blood, the dark desperation inside me.

  I groan as Isadoro yanks my sleeping pants and underwear down enough to release my dick. He slows down again then, dragging the open palm of his hand against the side of my cock, the tip, before gripping it. I make another noise, pressing my forehead against the side of his neck.

  I recognize this feeling. I thought it was just being a teenager, but maybe it’s Isadoro.

  Maybe it’s us.

  “You, you…” I say, pulling at his sweatpants. They’re caught on his thick thighs, but his cock is free. I let out a breath at the sight of it.

  I don’t h
ave Isadoro’s patience. I lick my hand and then wrap it around him. I start jerking him quick, tight, and he twitches against me, moaning. Fuck, that sound.

  There’s nothing in this world I want more than to see him come.

  “Wait, wait,” he says, however, pushing my hand away. For a second, I’m worried, thinking that whatever happened with the girl at the bar is reoccurring, but he just steps closer, wrapping his large hand half around both of our dicks as they’re pressed together. He’s tall enough not to make the angle awkward despite the counter, and the feeling of his cock against mine, his hand sliding and pressing us together, sends a shudder through me.

  There’s not an ounce of hesitation or upset on his face. Quite the opposite; he seems completely enthralled at the sight of our cocks in his hand as I squirm on the counter.

  I run both my hands against his cropped hair, scratching my nails against his scalp. My elbows rest on his wide shoulders, a cradle, as I press my forehead to his temple. He tilts his face toward me. If you’re generous, you could call the touch of our lips a kiss, but it’s more a press of tongue and breath, wet and perfect.

  “Iván,” he says, and it does me in. The orgasm shudders through me, loosening the walls and the barriers of me, crumbling me down.

  I open my eyes and see him come too. Watch the furrowing of his brow, the flutter of his eyelashes, the soft noise that escapes the parting of his wet lips.

  I shouldn’t want anything in this moment, and yet desire still eats away at me, a creature bred to be insatiable by years of neglect.

  We stay there for a while, cooling come and sweat and breath. When we untangle, his expression is steady, devoid of regret. He cleans us up perfunctorily with a dish towel before lifting our pants. Reaching over, he grabs my coffee, handing it back to me.

  “Well, now it’s cold,” I grumble, but it’s just to cover up how shaken I am.

  I’m fucked. I’m so fucked.

  **********

  The summer before Isadoro was finally deployed had run on borrowed time. I hadn’t applied to college but had gotten a summer job in La Portera while I figured out what to do with my life. After work, I would go to the beach with Isadoro, pretending this was any other summer and that adulthood wasn’t looming in September for both of us.