Page 48 of Nights Without Night
The memory of him telling me about that particular accident is crystallized in my mind. I remember Isadoro’s drawn face on the stuttering Skype line, looking young and tired and miles away. It had added a new fear to my long list of fears. I’d hid it deep inside, where he wouldn’t see it. I’d wanted him to tell me these things, to still be the person he could open up to when he needed someone by his side.
Now, though, the stakes aren’t as high. He’s already here with me.
“I’m so glad you came back,” I say softly, feeling the truth of it deeply.
We go back to the boat in a shroud of deep, star-filled darkness. We enter the cave of the boat and turn on a small lamp attached to the side. It’s our small space in this world, an ember glowing in the dark.
Isadoro goes out again for a moment to check on the chafe gear keeping the boat from bumping into the ones on the side. I take off my shoes and clothes, placing them in one of the hanging nets. I wait for him. He pauses at the entrance for a moment when he sees me, before climbing inside. He sits on the bench opposite me and starts unlacing his sneakers, but I kneel at his feet and push his hands away. I undo the knots, loosening the cords carefully before pulling the shoes off. I slip his ankle socks off, stuffing them in each shoe. I kneel up, undoing the buttons and zipper of his board shorts and then slide them down his thighs and off. The rustle of fabrics fills the small space.
When I reach for his shirt, he meets my eyes, expression intense and quiet. I lift his shirt up, sliding my hands across his flanks, his chest, his arms. When the shirt is off, my hands return to his skin, cataloguing him. Despite his weeks in bed, he still has some of his definition, the ridges of his stomach harder to get rid of. I trace them, raking my nails up until my thumbs brush against a nipple. His breath catches in his throat.
My hands travel down again, over his boxers but avoiding the bulge already growing there. I stroke the hair on his thighs, teasing him as my touch turns feathery at the sensitive skin inside his thighs. Reflexively, he widens the splay of his legs and I settle there. I bend down and finally give him the attention he wants. I nuzzle at his clothed dick, running the bridge of my nose against it, my closed lips, before opening my mouth and pressing my tongue there.
He makes a noise, a little, cracked thing, and his hand lifts to my head, simply carding its fingers there. I do it again and again until the white material of his tight boxers is translucent and wet from my mouth. His cock has hardened and the head peaks from the waistband. I lick my tongue against it and then suck tightly. He grunts, shifting abruptly, but I follow the movement. I keep sucking, pressing hard with my tongue at his slit until he’s breathing hard and squirming restlessly.
“Iván,” he says, clutching my hair a little tighter. I hum loudly, letting the vibrations travel. “Jesus.”
He pulls me up and I go. He bends to meet me in the middle and kisses me deeply, our mouths opening at once, eating each other up with hunger. I run my hands across his hair, cut just before we left, and pull him closer.
It’s like I can’t get enough.
We stumble up in the small space, knocking into each other as we shed our underwear and turn off the light. I’m already hard just from tasting and having him so close. We crawl onto the bed and lay on our sides facing each other, tangling our limbs until we are a creature of myth, multi-limbed but hearts conjoined.
My skin knows his hands. It knew them when we were small and we play-fought in the orange-scented earth. It knew them when they pulled me after him or helped me up. It knew them when I was a teenager and wanted him fatally, with hormones and friendship and a coalescing love. It knew them when they turned purposeful and wise to the secrets of my body, to its ripples and its wants and all its warm places. It knew them even when they were gone, imagining them in another landscape but still mine, a phantom limb. And it knows them now, relearning my plains and tides, the depths that are still there for him.
He moves away just long enough to get the lube from one of the hanging nets before he’s back. I roll onto my other side, back facing him. He presses against it and kisses my shoulder, my neck. I stretch to give him more space and he doesn’t hesitate, making my skin his. He uncaps the lube and coats his fingers. He reaches between us and I lift my knee towards my chest as I feel him at my entrance. I shudder as he presses one thick finger inside and then out again, setting a slow pace that is more feeling than pleasure.
He bites at my neck lightly as he slips in another. I can feel the stretch now. He moves his fingers until he rubs against my prostate and I moan low in my throat, pressing back against him. He pulls his fingers back and scissors them open right at my entrance.
“Jesus. Fuck,” I say. He laughs softly into my neck.
He stretches me with a thoroughness that has me feeling every moment. It’s a rare intimacy, having someone so focused on your body without attending to their own, but without the blinding force of heightened pleasure. I become aware of my body, of his, of each of his decisions and movements.
When he adds a third finger, he tilts my head towards him and lifts himself on an elbow, kissing me. I can barely coordinate my lips as he pushes his digits deep inside, sparking the small of my back and the pit of my stomach.
“Please,” I say. He hums against my mouth, against my temple, before moving slightly away. I pant in the starlight of the bed as he goes to get a condom.
“Wait,” I stop him. “I’m clean, if you, if you’re-”
“Yeah, I’m clean.”
“Please,” I say to a question he didn’t need to ask, wanting him bare inside me suddenly, desperately. He bends over and kisses me, an answer of his own.
He presses against me again, his hips tilted back, before fucking into me in a long slide. I bite at the sheets, it’s so much and so good. Despite his slow preparation, his thrusts are deep snaps of his hips. Each hit is a light burst into life. The noises I’m making must travel across the water, across the endless sky, but I don’t care. I’m too lost in this for anything else to matter.
“Isa, Isa,” I pant as the iron band of his arm tightens around me. The pleasure rises. His breath is on my neck, my shoulder. I can feel his teeth and his tongue, his fingers digging into me until I can’t take it anymore.
I close my eyes. For a moment, as I tip off the brink, it’s like I’m melting into him. Like I’m part of what he is, dissolving and solidifying and dissolving again.
I feel him still inside me. Feel him shudder and say my name. I get lost in the sound of it, in its desperate stretch. Of the feel of his warmth spilling inside me.
I make a noise of protest when he slips out of me, but he curls around me again and I hold his arms where they are wrapped around me.
The last thing I know is a kiss to the curve of my shoulder, a press of his lips.
**********
When Isadoro had graduated from his Special Ops training, he had been assigned to one of the Alpha teams—combat teams referred to asA DetachmentsorA-Teams. These Special Forces teams are unique in being allowed to conduct ‘unconventional warfare’, of which the goal is to promote regional stability through interdiction—the use of direct action and reconnaissance tactics to tip the balance by syphoning morale and resources from the hostile forces to the local people. The pamphlet for unconventional warfare describes a wider, political vision instead of being confined by just military goals. A-teams are supposed to run on a philosophy of being aware of the wider consequences their mission’s actions might have. Not just in terms of damage to the enemy, but damage to the relationship between the U.S. and the locals.
