Page 63 of Rat Park
“Don’t you deal with bodily fluids on the regular? And you can call me, but I won’t always be around,” Dominic said. Flor frowned at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “What’s what supposed to mean?”
“You’re not always going to be around?”
“Well, Flor, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but we live in different states.”
“Yeah, but I’m coming back in, like, a year,” Flor said.
Dominic shrugged, not wanting to argue with him. Flor had no idea where life would take him. He would meet someone worthy of him one day, and they would have to compromise on what path they took and where that ended up.
“Here,” Dominic said, turning back to the engine. “Let me show you how to change the oil.”
Flor seemed to listen as Dominic showed him, but he was stiff and unusually silent throughout the demonstration. He stood woodenly beside Dominic, his body warm and close and miles away.
“There. All done,” Dominic said, closing the hood of the car. The sun glared in the sky, seeming intent on exposing every inch of them.
Dominic turned towards his apartment, eager to get out of the heat and the pressure, but Flor stopped him with a sudden but soft move. Flor’s hand grasped loosely at the front of Dominic’s shirt, near the hem. His eyebrows were lowered in a frown, eyes looking at his own fingers pressing just slightly against Dominic.
Dominic stilled completely. When Flor looked up, even Dominic’s breath stopped short in his lungs.
He’d seen that look before. An age ago, standing close in his kitchen, a premonition of what was to come. Just like last time, Dominic knew exactly what was going to happen before it did.
Just like last time, he could do nothing to stop it.
Flor took a step closer. He leaned up, his head tilting. His dark eyes stared at Dominic until the very last moment before fluttering closed. The darkness behind Dominic’s eyelids, when it came, was filled with sunlight, and then with the press of Flor’s mouth against his.
Dominic couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe, and then he didn’t have to, because Flor’s lips were a soft, pillowy slide against his own, and his hand had clenched on his shirt, trapped between them even as it pulled Dominic closer.
The heat of the day and its light, the thunder of his heart, the panic that seared through. It all fell away. For just a moment there was only Flor and one sweet, painful touch.
When Flor pulled away it was only to leave a few inches between their faces. Dominic opened his eyes to find Flor already looking at him, and what could he do? How could Dominic figure out how to escape the depths of that look, the way it was rich and warm and so much of what Dominic had wanted for so long?
Dominic followed Flor inside the building and up the stairs. He let Flor take his keys and open his front door. Let him guide him to the kitchen and turn on the sink tap. He felt as Flor pressed to his side and covered their hands in oil, breaking away the grease, before washing it all away with soap.
The foam of the moment filled Dominic’s throat, his head. Having Flor so close, feeling his fingers press against the palm of his hand, gentle and caring, was overwhelming for reasons that Dominic couldn’t fathom. His chest burned with the urge to scream or cry or run away or catch hold of Flor and never let him go, not again.
Flor dried their hands carefully. When their eyes met again, Dominic had nothing to defend himself with. Everything had been ripped away by Flor’s simple touch.
Flor let Dominic’s hands go only to trail his fingers down Dominic’s face. Dominic closed his eyes and in the warm darkness, a kiss appeared. It was familiar in the way an old memory is, one that’s been revisited so often its floors are worn with use.
Flor cupped Dominic’s face and kissed him, and Dominic’s hands came up, of their own volition, to clutch at Flor’s sides. How many things did Dominic have to say no to in his life? How much willpower was he expected to have, to keep pushing this away?
Maybe Dominic was allowed to have a piece. Flor had just broken up with someone. He was on the rebound, and maybe Dominic could be that for him. It wouldn’t be something Dominic would have to struggle to quit because Flor would end it eventually for both of them.
They weren’t in the same apartment they had first slept together in years ago, but it was easy enough for their bodies to move together to find Dominic’s room. Their clothes were shed carelessly, without ceremony, and Dominic thought about why he couldn’t just stop with one kiss. Why he couldn’t just pause and regroup for a moment without feeling this urgency to have Flor close before he slipped away.
There was no sensory memory at work here. Everything seemed new. Every touch was a spark in a powder keg, bursting Dominic’s thoughts apart. The air filled with dust, with heat, so that Dominic could only orient himself with his hands, arms outstretched blindly before him. All they found, all they were looking for, was Flor, Flor and the dry skin of his elbows and the slight, almost feminine curve of his waist.
“Flor,” Dominic said, a lost man, and all of Flor’s skin and bones and the trembling muscles of his thighs were there, pushing Dominic down on the bed.
Dominic lay flat on his back as Flor straddled his middle, curving to kiss him, the crest of a wave crashing over Dominic. Dominic could feel the foam of Flor’s eyelashes whisper against his cheek, the tide of his tongue and salt of his skin pulling Dominic into the deep, blue feeling Dominic had forgotten and was now being forced to remember, the painful, unimaginably fragile knowledge of being alive.
Their lips parted, and Flor buried his face in Dominic’s neck for a moment as if he were also overwhelmed by the ferocity of the sea.
There were words being murmured into Dominic’s skin. For a second, he couldn’t make them out until Flor tilted his head slightly and let them breathe open air.
