Page 41 of Nights Without Night
Isadoro doesn’t need any more encouragement. One moment it’s his fingers and the next his cock is sliding into me, a thickness that fills me at once. I groan, my head hanging between my shoulders, but Isadoro is done playing around. He sets a pace that has me grunting against the couch, struggling to get a grip on the back cushion as he fucks me slow enough to be good and hard enough to be perfect.
The slap of skin on skin, the noise of our breaths and groans, fill the living room obscenely. The past weeks disappear.
I come untouched. It’s too good, the pleasure too much, and I just tip over the edge. I shoot against the back of the couch, my ass clenching around Isadoro’s dick. He drapes himself on me, mouth pressed against the back of my neck.
The scent and warmth of him are so familiar.
He comes with a deep groan I feel all the way through me, a rumble of the earth.
It takes us a while to come down from it. I feel I’d slide right off the back of the couch and onto the floor if it weren’t for Isadoro’s panting, sweaty body pinning me in place.
Eventually, Isadoro hauls me back with a groan, and we round the couch, collapsing onto it.
“Condom?” I ask half-coherently.
“Uh…on the floor,” he says.
“Jesus,” I laugh.
We lay there, my body sprawled over his. His hand rubs against my back as my brain slowly comes back online.
“Wait,” I say and get up on legs that are still a little wobbly, heading for my bag. I grab what I want and then return to the couch, stretching over Isadoro.
“I made you something,” I say, and hand him the token. He takes it, lifting it up to his face to inspect it. It’s small enough to fit easily in all pockets, made of glazed clay of a deep brown. The design is simple, a circle with the imprint of a paw as if a small creature had passed upon the wet earth and it had been caught in amber.
“It’s for when…if you ever have a nightmare or a bad memory and need to, you know. Remember you’ve been where you’ve been, but this is where you are now,” I say. I don’t want to say the word ‘grounding’ in case it clams him up, but the idea had come from what Mansur had said about techniques to bring a person back from a triggering event.
Isadoro looks at it for a while, passing his thumb over the grooves of the paw print. I watch him until he secures the token in his palm and then closes his hand around it. His eyes are serious and open as he looks back at me.
“Thank you,” he says, voice quiet. I smile, the golden light of relief shining through me.
I kiss him, just a press of lips, and feel him breathe against me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The end of the school year approaches on the oscillating wavelength of good and bad days. There’s no pattern to it I can see. I was hoping that slowly, he would come out of his room more and more, farther and farther, but the tether tying him there will yank back at any moment, refusing to give more lead. Despite this, my collection of drawings grows steadily. Paint, charcoal, water and colour; fragments of memories from another life.
It's late on a Friday. The week has been brutal, and only more work awaits on the weekend. Sometimes I feel the only reason I’m not drowning is that I can’t afford it.
I leave my stuff slumped in the living room. Everything is so quiet and still. I grab the sudden urge to cry by the throat and fling it away.
I don’t have time for that. If I go there, I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back.
My shadow stretches from me. It walks to Isadoro’s room and cracks open the door.
“Can I come in?” it says. Isadoro must recognize its kind because he turns over immediately, looking at the creature. He nods. My shadow walks into the gloom of Isadoro’s room. I follow.
Instead of sitting on the edge of the bed, I get inside with him. The sheets are relatively clean and he smells nice, only the beginning of stubble on his jaw. Isadoro wraps his arms around me. He’s lost muscle mass, infected by the shadows in his own room, but his hold is tight and secure. I almost start crying again. I tamp it down.
“You can say no, obviously, but…can I use some of your pictures for my final project?” I ask, my voice quiet in the strange, malleable air. Isadoro shifts a little against me, moving back just enough so our faces rest on the pillow. We look at the soft outline of each other’s features in the dark.
“How many people are going to see them?”
“The examiners, unless they’re chosen for the summer gallery show, and that would be anybody who went to the show. But I can turn that down.”
“No.”
“Okay-”
