Page 92 of Open Water

I can feel his fingers against my skin before I am even fully awake. The little patterns he paints with his fingertips against my arm. Soft flicks of his fingernails against my top lip as his finger trails along my mouth. The way the bed dips slightly as he lays himself down under the covers next to me.

He smells of the outdoors. Of buses and dirt and sweat and rain. Summer smells coming through. Maybe a hint of beer on his breath.

“Did you have a good time?” I ask drowsily.

“Mmm. Missed you, though,” he whispers back, and his hand cups my face. His lips pressing softly against mine whilst he shuffles his body closer to mine.

He’s naked.

There is skin against my chest, his arms pulling me in closer as we do that little shuffle we do to get comfortable, where his forehead usually ends up against my chest, my chin resting on the top of his hair and our arms tangle around until we are tied up in knots in each other. Arms and legs and toes and fingers twisting. Skin against skin. Well, apart from Matteo’s chest which is almost always covered in a t-shirt of some kind. But not today.

He’snaked.

It’s a little dizzying having him like this.

It’s not the first time, but it still throws me. That he’s having a good day and he knows where he has me. He knows how loved he is. How much I love him when he lets me have him like this. All of him. Whole. Him being whole makesmefeel whole. Like we can do this. Like whatever is happening right now will just be a little blip in the great scheme of things.

“How are you feeling?” he asks quietly.

I know why he is asking. And to be honest, I have no answer to give. Nothing concrete to explain. Nothing that I can say to make this easier. Because it hasn’t been a good couple of weeks.

He knows it as well as I do. Dad knows. Lukas knows. They are all watching me like I am about to explode into some kind of human disaster.

I don’t blame them, because all the signs are there. I haven’t slept for a week. I haven’t left the house for days, because I can barely stand up in the mornings, and I am all over things like I am in control, then suddenly I can’t stop crying. I am a fucking master of laying fake wooden flooring. I have tiled half of the new kitchen downstairs, with a mishmash of leftover tiles from some friend of Lukas’s. I have made a fucking mess of Matteo’s carefully drawn plans for the veranda, but I don’t fucking care right now. Right now, he is here. He is here with me. His skin against mine and his heart beating hard against my chest. His heart that is beating strongly enough for the two of us.

“I’m good,” I whisper back. I am. Right now, I am floating somewhere in between being me and being lost and being out of control, so right now I am good. Because he is holding me together. Living for me. Holding me. Kissing little soft kisses into my tired skin.

“It’s okay,” he whispers back. “You know it will all be okay. I’m here. I’m always here.”

“I know you are. And I am here too. I’m right here.”

His hips grind a little against my leg. Just a small movement, but it lights me up like a firework. Like I go from zero to everything in seconds when my body can barely keep up. I am too tired to move, but my fucking cock is apparently ready to roll. Well, quelle surprise really. Especially with Matteo. Because however messed up my life is right now, it’s still good. It’s all good.

There are voices drifting down from upstairs, Dad’s voice mixing with the high pitch tone of Lukas’s laughter.

Lukas never left. He just stayed. Like this is his life now, and we are part of the great Lukas show with no choice whether we like it or not.

One afternoon, we just had another mismatched bookshelf in the living room. The next day it was full of books. The kitchen gained a few more random things. The hallway overflowed with shoes and the hat rack fell off the wall under the weight of coats and jackets. Again.

Then, I came home and almost killed myself tripping over Simon Vasquez standing in the hallway holding the biggest power drill I have ever seen. The hat rack is firmly attached to the wall these days, and the loose plank in the veranda mysteriously isn’t loose any more.

Matteo picked up his things from Brantbacka on a Friday afternoon, and Dad took him to see Social Services to collect the last of his paperwork declaring him a free man. An adult. A human with his own life to live. He cried all the way home in the damn carpool-car that smelled of air freshener and mint chewing gum. Dad mopped up his tears whilst I sat in the back and shivered with held back emotions. I couldn’t. It was big. It was a big day. We had dinner at some posh waterside hotel and toasted with champagne and Lukas raved about some TV show we needed to watch with him. Dad laid out his great plans for starting a new charity and Matteo sat there like someone had died. Like something was seriously wrong.

It took a few days until he spoke to me. Until he sat down at the kitchen table and started laying the papers on the table. Piles of papers, and then, more papers. Bank statements and lawyer’s letters and copies of things with his parents’ names on, and stuff I could barely comprehend.

Yeah and Dad cried again. And Lukas used swearwords that frightened me coming out of his mouth.

It had been weird. Strange. Indescribable. Yet Matteo still held me every night like he was about to fall apart. And I held him back. Like he is holding me now. Like I held him when he needed me. Tightly wound into each other like we were about to crumble to dust if we didn’t hold on tight enough.

That Friday night was the first night I fucked him. I don’t know why it took us so long to have sex, properly, but at the time, we didn’t question it. Just messing around with our hands and mouths had kept us more than satisfied until that night. The night when he needed to be reminded of who he really was. That he was mine. My partner. My baby. My everything.

I don’t remember even asking if it was okay, or if it was something he wanted. I just felt like I needed to claim him. Take him. Make sure he knew exactly where he belonged. Right here. With me.

My fingers had just worked him over, lube everywhere, my mouth clamped over his dick until he didn’t know how to speak anymore, just sounds and grunts coming out of his mouth whilst I fucked my fingers inside him. I didn’t know what I was doing, only that I needed this as much as he needed it. I needed to take care of him and he needed to forget. He needed to be taken away some place where life wasn’t there to remind him of the shit that was now behind him. The humans who had left him behind. The lame attempts to make things right.

He had twisted his legs around my waist, my hands holding his face as I pressed my cock against his hole. Just nudging gently, hoping he would let me. Brushing my lips against his face, tasting tears on his skin.

He took it all with barely a sound as I pressed into him with no hesitation, just slid right home in one foul lubricated slide as his body tensed all around me and his mouth growled into my own.

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