“Iván,” he says and, God, the sound of my name said like that. The stormy sea of it. I don’t know what hides underneath.
“Hey!” I say, and the smile I give him is a strain on my face. “Isa, you’ve got to meet Jack! Remember I told you about her?” I say with an overabundance of false cheer. Isadoro looks at Jack.
“Hey,” Jack says. “I’ve heard a lot of things about you too.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you,” Isadoro replies. They shake hands like they’ve just finished a business deal. Despite the pain radiating from my gut, I almost roll my eyes.
“Can I talk to you?” Isadoro says abruptly, looking at me. I struggle to keep the panic from my face.
“I, uh, I really can’t right now. I’ve got to, you know, mingle. But later, yeah?” I stutter, pleading for him not to do this now.
I know Isadoro’s sense of what is right will propel him into wanting to talk to me. To let me down easy, check on my wounds as my fall finally reaches its hard landing. He’ll want to diagnose if my unrequited love is fatal or if there’s hope for a cure and I—I can’t.
“You two,” I point between Isadoro and Jack. “I’ve gotta,” I point a thumb over my shoulder. Both of them frown at me as I take a step back. Luckily, I spot one of my ex-teachers on the other side of the room and head towards her.
I avoid Isadoro desperately after that, even managing to get distracted into conversations with different people. Most of them I know, but some faces are new, showing interest in the paintings. They ask for the story behind the collection, and I tell them the bare bones of it.
“Someone I love is a veteran. It’s his eyes you’re looking through.”
I try to enjoy the exhibition, but there’s a peach pit of anxiety in my stomach, its filament roots digging into my intestines, my liver, up to my lungs.
Eventually, Jack finds me taking a moment in a corner.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks bluntly, although not unkindly.
“He knows.”
“Who?”
“Isadoro.”
“Knows what? What are you talking about?”
“He knows! He knows that I…” I make a gesture towards my whole self. The confusion on Jack’s face clears.
“Oh, that you’re ridiculously in love with him and have been forever? Jesus, took him long enough,” she says, rolling her eyes. I almost can’t breathe with indignation.
“Jack, are you not getting it?”
“Are you not getting it? This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I open my mouth to retort, but Iva suddenly comes up to her.
“Hi,” she says, waving at Jack and then looking at me. “Is everything okay?”
“No. He knows.”
“Who?”
“Isadoro.”
“Knows what?” Iva asks. Jack interjects before I can say anything.
“That he’s stupidly in love and stupid and in love.”
“Oh,” Iva says, rolling her eyes. “Good thing it was obvious, or it would have taken Isadoro another bazillion years,” Iva snorts. Jack raises her eyebrows, making a gesture toward Iva as if to say, see?
“You guys are not understanding the severity of this situation,” I grind out.
“Hey. Is everything okay?” Ezra says as he walks up with Joaquin. I cover my face with my hands
“He knows!”
“Who?”
“Isa-”
“Oh my God. We’re not doing this again. Isadoro found out the very well-kept secret of Iván’s totally-secret-not-at-all-obvious, madly in-loveness.”
“Oh. He only just found out? Don’t they…live together? How could he not know?” Ezra says.
“That is hilarious coming from you,” Iva says.
“Hey! We weren’t living together!”
“You practically were! Not that it matters! I just — oh Jesus, I am surrounded by dumb boys. So many dumb, dumb boys.”
“Just you wait. Just you wait until you fall in love,” Ezra says.
“When I fall in love, I’m going to tell them straight away.”
“Ha! Oh, I can’t wait to throw that in your face!”
“Excuse me!” I cut in. “Hello? Remember me? Having a crisis here?”
“A crisis? Wait…what? What’s the crisis?” Ezra asks.
“Isadoro. Knows,” I whisper-scream in frustration.
“Uh…yeah? Not seeing the crisis here. Aren’t you already fucking?”
“No!” I say. Everybody looks at me incredulously. “Not anymore,” I correct. I’m subjected to a Mexican-wave of eyerolls.
“Okay, this is even dumber than the Ezra-and-Joaquin thing,” Iva says. “Just talk to him for the love of God! Is that really so hard?”
“Yes!”
“Urgh. Boys,” Iva says, throwing her hands in the air. Jack pinches the bridge of her nose before putting her palms towards me as if to calm me down.
“Okay. Iván. He already knows. He’s your best friend. You’ve been through a lot of shit together. It will be fine. Concentrate on the fucking fantastic exhibition you’ve put on and when it’s over, talk to your friend and sort it out. It won’t be worse than what you’ve gone through before so…pull yourself together,” she says. I look at her, opening my mouth, before closing it with a sigh.
“Fine.”
“Good. Up and at ‘em,” she says.
It’s going to be a long night.
**********
The light is off in the entryway, but I see the glow of a lamp in the living room. I press my back against the front door for a moment, breathing. I can’t catch up to my emotions. They’re the streaming streak of headlights in the dark, one beginning before the last one ends, until the colours run together and blur.
The living room is an orange, transparent cocoon. I stand in its shadow, stilling as Isadoro gets up from the couch and turns towards me.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” There is a moment of silence. “That picture…”
“Can we do this tomorrow?” I interrupt. He ignores me.
“What were you thinking about?”
“Can we just…we can talk tomorrow, okay?”
“Iván.”
“You. You, you, I was thinking about you. What else would I be thinking about?” I say almost bitterly. He rounds the couch and stands there, feet away from me.
“What about me?”
“I…don’t know. I can’t put it into words, that’s what the damn picture is for,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, protecting myself from the hit that’s about to come.
Isadoro says nothing. The silence lengthens, stretching my skin and tendons until I feel like they’re going to snap.
“Isa-” I start, but he’s walking towards me. Slowly, with that look I’ve seen so many times before like he’s piercing a hole right to my core. I can’t look at him, but when he reaches me his hands cup my face. He doesn’t even tilt it up, just runs his thumb against my cheek.
“I love you,” he says. I close my eyes.
“I know,” I reply, waiting for the ‘but…’.
Instead, “Iván,” he says, a call. Reluctantly, I open my eyes and look at him. As soon as I do, my heart rabbits ahead. An animal part of me recognizes that expression, even if my mind can’t quite believe it.
“Iván,” he repeats, pressing the words against my temple. “How can you not know? I thought you’d always known.”
“Known what? Known what?” I ask, choking on the word always.
“That I love you, and want you, and am…fucking crazy about you. Crazy out of my mind from this, this…this feeling, this wanting and…” I stare at him incredulously. He grasps my face more firmly, pressing his words into my skin.
“I used to watch you sleep when we were kids. Teenagers,” he says, and a burst of laughter leaves me.
“What! Isa…what are you talking about? That is literally the creepiest thing you’ve ever said and trust me, buddy, the lis
t is long on that one,” I say. He laughs.
“I know. I know. But I just…I couldn’t help myself when you slept right there so close and I would just…want. Want to be there on that side, in your bed and…”
“Then why didn’t you?” I ask, clutching at the front of his shirt like I can make him go back and fix all the pain his absence had caused.
“Because I knew that’s not how you felt then. I don’t know when it changed, but-”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Isa, I’ve always been in love with you. I feel like I’ve loved you longer than I’ve known you, sometimes,” I say. Isadoro stares at me.
“Don’t say that,” he says quietly, the shadow cast by a plea. “Don’t say that.”
“Isa-”
“You didn’t. Not like I did. I looked. God, I looked, you didn’t need me-”
“What does that have to do with anything? Need? You went, you left, if anyone didn’t need-”
“No. You don’t know. When I was deployed…you don’t know what having you here gave me. An anchor. And I know, maybe…Maybe you’re right and need shouldn’t come into this and I’m all fucked up. You should be with-”
“Don’t fucking tell me who I should be with. Who do you think you are? I get to decide who I’m with, not you!”
“I’m all fucked up,” Isadoro says, a whisper in a confession box. “I can’t…go dancing with you, or-”
“Isadoro you idiot, I’ve been here every step of the way! I’ve been here, and I’m still here, and I’ll fucking stay here. Do you think I’m blind to the fact that there are going to be challenges? You’re not fucked up. The situation is fucked up, and it's affecting you, yeah. Okay, I get it. But…Isadoro, you incredible dumbass, I don’t want to go out dancing with you. I want to dance here, in our kitchen. I want to…hold your hand and I want you with me. Do you understand? Wherever you are, a part of you should be with me.”
“It has been,” Isadoro implores, but I shake my head.
“You may think so, but…I don’t want to feel alone anymore. And that’s what I feel when I don’t have you,” I say.
I could console myself with the supposition that knowing Isadoro loved me all along, truly being with him during his deployment, could have made it harder. But that’s just not how it works. It was worse, not having him and yet fearing to lose him at the same time. It was so much worse. I didn’t know what fear could do to a person. That constant, background possibility of the sudden, severing blade of death. It’s like a tumour you can’t remove, living with the chance it’s malignant and not finding out until the very end.
“You have me. You fucking have me,” he says and crushes me to him. I squeeze him back, my head still not catching up, incredulous.
“How long?” he asks as if I haven’t already told him.
“Fuck, Isa…you were my first kiss, remember?” I say, my voice a little wobbly.
He’s alive. He came back. He’s here, with me.
Isadoro pulls back, narrowing his eyes.
“Your first kiss was with that mouth-breather, Brandon.”
“Oh my God,” I laugh, rolling my eyes. “I thought spin-the-bottle kisses didn’t count?”
“Hmph,” he grunts, but then his expression clears.
He leans down, pressing his lips against mine. “Iván,” he says, “Iván,” and I’ve heard that exact tone a hundred times before, but this is the first time I recognize it for what it is.
He presses his forehead against mine and we just stand there for a moment.
“This is so sappy,” I say wetly. “I could totally say something disgustingly cheesy about last kisses right now.”
“Yes,” he says as if he’s agreeing with a statement I haven’t made.
I pull him into a kiss.
The kiss is the same familiar, languid pace. The slow drag of tongue and teeth that has me breathless in seconds. But something has changed. I let myself feel the love of it. Not just the want, but the having. The possibility of feeling safe in knowing this isn’t going to just disappear.
I back him up a little blindly towards my bedroom. We bump into the couch and he lifts me up, my legs wrapping around him as we continue kissing. We bump into the door frame as we reach my room, stumbling inside and onto my bed, laughing into each other’s lips.
His hands slip under my shirt, dragging up my sides. My legs are still hooked around his waist and I try to pull him down, but he resists. Instead, he breaks the kiss and I untangle my arms from around his neck so he can remove my shirt, and then his.
I hum at the new playground of skin, running my fingers down his chest, stroking the hair leading down. His abs jump at the light, teasing touch, and he grabs my hand, pinning it next to my head. I smirk at him, pulling him down by the neck to kiss him again.
My other hand sneaks down between our bodies. I press the palm against his trapped cock and he jerks slightly, huffing a moan into my mouth. He grabs that hand too, pressing it onto the bed to mirror the other.
“You’ve got no patience,” he says breathlessly.
“I want you.”
“You have me.”
He lowers his hips and presses me into the mattress, grinding slowly. The pressure offers no relief, only more heat-giving light. I pull at the restraint of his hands.
“No more clothes,” I say. Thankfully, Isadoro agrees and shuffles back on his knees as we divest ourselves and each other of our remaining clothes.
When he presses against me next, it’s all skin and muscle and him. I press my lips to his neck and smell oranges, sparking millions of neurons dedicated to him.
Isadoro grips our cocks in his hand and pulls at us slowly. I move my hips with his pace, feeling the slide of his skin, the wetness of his cock against mine. I grip one of his ass cheeks in one hand, squeezing him tight. He grunts into my neck.
“More,” I say, and squirm from under him to reach the bedside table. When I settle on my back, I squeeze lube generously on my hand. Without preamble, I slide two fingers into my hole.
“Jesus,” Isadoro says.
He sits up, kneeling on the bed with his ass on his ankles, knees pointing towards me. He grabs my hips and drags me towards him, my knees bending towards my chest. He lifts me so my ass is propped up on his knees, hole exposed.
“Fuck,” I say, trembling.
Isadoro watches my fingers disappear into my hole, my arms straining. He holds fast onto my hip with one hand while the other comes to part my cheek further for a moment before a finger presses against my stretched entrance. I pant hard, feeling vulnerable and safe.
He grabs the lube, manoeuvring it so some gets on his fingers before they return to my ass. My arm is burning, fingers tired, but I keep going. I’m rewarded by one of his fingers breaching me alongside my own. A moan drags itself out of me. He joins my pace, pumping in and out of me before I feel the press of another finger.
I whine as it enters me. God, the stretch. The fullness.
Isadoro doesn’t let me slow down. He slides his two fingers in and out, and mine follow. I can’t quite catch my breath, and then Isadoro presses his fingers down and I stop breathing completely. I choke on the pleasure that lights through my body.
I must be making some kind of noise because Isadoro shushes me, stroking his thumb on my hip bone.
“Fuck me,” I say. “Fuck me already.”
I hear Isadoro laugh slightly, but then his fingers are sliding out slowly, and so are mine. I feel so empty suddenly, feeling my hole wink closed. I gasp a little, broken sound, but then Isadoro is hauling me up. He turns us around so his back is against the headboard and I straddle his lap.
I hold the base of his dick and then sit on it in almost one go. The move punches the breath out of both of us, but my hips are already grinding up and down as if untethered from me.
“Oh God,” I moan. Isadoro pulls me into a sloppy kiss and then away just to look at me.
“I, I,” I say, but the words get lost in the momen
t.
I start fucking myself for real. I lift my hips, feeling the drag of his cock inside me, before pushing down sharply. Isadoro holds my hips, following my pace. I tilt my head back, just feeling for a moment, letting the reality of it wash through me.
Isadoro doesn’t tolerate the distance, however. He pulls me close again, wrapping his arms around me until we are pressed close. All I can do from this angle is grind up and down deliciously, so it’s just full to fuller to rubbing the spot inside me that makes my voice fill with pleasure. I bury the sounds in Isadoro’s neck.
He is everywhere around me. I feel him so close.
There was a time when I lay next to him in bed and felt thousands of miles away. During the last night of his first leave, watching him next to me. His eyes were closed, but I couldn’t tell if he was really asleep. His body was foreign to me then. It had widened, filled. His eyes had changed. The quality of his movement had altered. I’d have to relearn this Isadoro, but he wasn’t mine anymore. Not like he had been mine during childhood. It had been him and me, then. But life didn’t care about the plans made by either animal or man.
Now, his body is here to stay. All those alterations in the fabric are being smoothed of their abrupt edges. There is still so much more to learn and figure out. The hard parts of life don’t stop just because you find somebody to spend it with, but we have time. And each other.
“Iván,” he says, and I can feel the pleasure rising. He starts thrusting his hips harder as he grips my cock, stroking me with an uneven, desperate pace.
“Fuck, yes. Yes,” I say, clenching my ass around him, and I feel him come a moment before orgasm hits me too.
My dick spurts over his hand and chest as he pulls me closer. He buries himself in me and I take him, just as he is right now.
We pant against each other. I feel completely sated, down to the quality of my soul. We lay there for a while, sticky and sweaty. We have all the time in the world.
**********
Nights Without Night (Fox Lake Book 2) Page 18