I SIT down and look at my ankle while I listen to the music coming through my headphones. The metro should be here any minute now, but this may be the last one running. That means I’m going to have to take a taxi or an Uber back and it’ll get pricey quickly. That and the fact my ankle is swollen and throbbing and it has started to rain and my clothes are soaked through makes me wonder if I should just give up and go home. But I’m already almost there.
And I just need ten minutes. That’s all I need. After those ten minutes, I’m not going to ever bother him again. I’ve tried calling him again, but his phone is off.
I wish I had some painkillers on me or something. Maybe more alcohol would help. I didn’t notice before, but there’s actually a scrape on my ankle and it’s bleeding, trickling into my shoe. And my jeans are ripped.
I sigh when the metro finally arrives, and I limp inside.
IT TAKES me forever to actually climb the steps to Levi’s floor. Five flights of stairs don’t usually seem that bad, but I’m shivering and bleeding and swollen when I finally knock on his door.
I wait and nothing happens.
Suddenly it dawns on me that he may not even be home. It could be a matter of minutes or hours before he arrives. He could be spending the night with someone else. Maybe that’s why he’s not picking up the phone.
I’m such an idiot.
I decide to just wait for him. I’m still soaked and these hallways are exposed so there’s no heating in them. I don’t care if I get a cold. I’ve already made it here, and I’ve injured myself in the process. I take my phone out of my pocket, put a podcast on, and lean on his door. I fully intend to hide if one of his neighbors arrives. I close my eyes and wait.
I’M SHAKEN awake. My eyes flutter open, and I see Levi in front of me, his eyebrows creased. He’s grimacing.
“Hey,” I say. I’m struggling to speak, because I’m tired. I’m a little disoriented but it’s okay. He’s here and I can talk to him now. “I need to talk to you.”
He shakes his head. “Where’s your coat?”
“No coat,” I say. “I just need ten minutes.”
He grabs my hand to help me up and he almost flinches when he touches me. “You’re so cold,” he says.
“Sorry,” I reply. “I don’t know how long I’ve been out here.”
“Come inside,” he says, taking his keys out of his coat pocket. He unlocks the door, and he’s still holding my hand when I walk in. I close the door behind me and shiver. I guess I didn’t realize how cold I was until the warm comfort of heating settles on my skin. My clothes are sticking to my body, the thin fabric of my shirt feeling like it’s burning my stomach.
Levi takes a second to look me up and down, tutting and shaking his head. “What the hell, Damien? You can’t just show up at my door like this.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I needed to talk to you.”
“Do you want a towel?”
“No,” I say, but he walks away and doesn’t hear me, or he doesn’t care, because he’s back in a second, wraps a towel around my shoulders, and holds me close to him.
“You’re freezing,” he says. “Go take a shower. I’ll lend you some clothes, okay? Give me those and I’ll dry them.”
I wonder if I should get undressed somewhere else, but that’ll probably just make this more awkward than it already is. And while a second ago it felt intimate and domestic, now it just feels strange, with the way he’s looking at me.
I take off my clothes and stand in front of him completely naked, freezing, and waiting for him to say something. He looks down at my ankle, which is still bleeding, though not as intensely as before.
“Jesus,” he says. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Just a tree. Don’t worry about it. I just needed to talk to you, but—”
“I wasn’t here.”
“I know,” I say. I wrap the towel around my waist because this is starting to feel weird. “But I just thought I’d wait.”
He sighs before he touches my cheek lightly with his fingertips. “You shouldn’t be here, Damien.”
“I know,” I say.
He drops to his knees and I can feel his breath on my stomach. For a second I wonder if he’s going to start sucking me off when he hesitates, but he just looks at my ankle. “Fuck, I think you’re going to need stitches.”
He reaches out with his hand and grazes the injury. My ankle is screaming and burning. I take in a sharp breath when he touches me, when he grips the other side of my ankle as he inspects the injury.
“You need to clean this,” he says. “With soap.”
I nod and look down at him. He’s so worried. I shouldn’t have been so horrible to him. He didn’t deserve any of what I did. I kneel down so that we’re facing each other and the towel comes loose and falls off me. “I will,” I say.
He looks at me for a few seconds too long, his eyes trained on mine. His hands aren’t on me anymore.
“I fucked things up,” I say.
He closes his eyes and laughs. “You did a bit.”
“And I wanted to talk to you, okay? Just talk,” I say. I’m freezing and the hair on my arms is standing up. I know I should probably just go take a shower and forget about all this, but it’s too late now. I’m way into it. And I’m going to say what I came here to say, even if it means it’s the final nail in the coffin. I’ve been driving him away for so long now I’m surprised he’s even let me back into his flat. “I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. Ever since I first set my eyes on you, I knew that I wanted you. I just knew. But you were so beautiful and so sophisticated and so—”
“Old?” He’s smiling, but he doesn’t seem amused.
“Experienced,” I say. “But you were amazing. You’ve always been amazing. And then, like, the moment you decided that you wanted to make it into something bigger, I was scared. Because I’d been pushing for so long and I don’t know how I was supposed to know whether it was real or not. I don’t know what it was supposed to be, because you—well, you’re you. And I’m me. And like, literally, I don’t think you ever go out without getting hit on. Do you?”
He looks at me.
“That’s what I thought,” I say. “Remember that time we ran into each other at the pub and—”
He nods. “Yeah, I remember that. Of course I do.”
“I have a confession to make,” I say. “We didn’t just bump into each other, I already knew you were going to be there. I was already kind of drunk when you arrived because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get the courage to talk to you when you were there, not with your friends, who are all scary and gorgeous.”
I swallow before I keep talking.
“I’d looked at your all your online profiles to work out your schedule for a while. Which is really dumb and pathetic, I know, but, I don’t know, I was desperate. So you got there and you looked so fucking good and I thought, It’s going to have to be tonight. Otherwise it’s never going to happen.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not an idiot. I knew that.”
“And do you remember when you went to the bar and you were, like, ordering yourself a glass of wine, and I was next to you and I bought it for you? Do you remember that? Do you remember me just paying for it for you and then reaching out to you and then holding your hand on the bar and you didn’t know what to say? You just looked at me and your eyes got kind of dark and then you jerked your hand away?”
He nods, swallowing.
“Like who orders a glass of wine at the pub? Everything about you was driving me crazy. You were driving me crazy. Just seeing you there with this glass of wine in one of your hands and your other hand paling under my skin, under my touch,” I say. “God, it made it so worth it. It made chasing you for that entire semester so worth it. Because you looked so fucking beautiful and so scared. And honestly that’s when I knew, like that’s the second I knew that I needed to have you. When your eyes were all big and your hand was getting all twisted under mine and you were trying your best to look away from me but you couldn’t. Do you remember that?”
He opens his mouth, I think to speak, but all that comes out is this weird strangled gasp.
I close my eyes before I keep talking because I’m starting to shake, but now that I’ve started to speak, I don’t think I can stop. I have to finish this. I need to get it all off my chest so I can keep living my life, even if he’s not going to be in it anymore. Even if I’ve made it so that he’s not going to be in it anymore.
“And then I told you to meet me in the bathroom, so you texted your friends that you’d pulled. You remember that, right?”
He nods. His breathing has gotten quicker, and even though he’s not saying anything and he’s not doing anything except kneeling there in front of me, I can tell that this is turning him on. Because of the way his eyes are only half-open, the way his grimace has turned into this thin smile.
“So you came into the bathroom but only to tell me that this wouldn’t work because I was your student, and oh my God, I was so drunk and I wanted you to stop talking, so I kissed you and you dragged me into the disabled stall and you started to undo the buttons on my jeans and then—”
“Yeah,” he says, taking a sharp breath in. “I remember that.”
“That was so fucking hot,” I say. “The way you dropped to your knees on that bathroom floor, even though it was disgusting, that was so unlike what I pictured you to be like. And you were so ready, I had to think about anything else, not to come the moment you had your mouth around my cock.”
He swallows and nods. His cheeks and nose turn red. I reach out and touch him, because I can’t help myself, because he’s gorgeous, and his face is so warm compared to how cold my hand is.
He could jerk away or tell me to stop. He could put his hand on mine and move it away from him. But he doesn’t do any of that. Instead he looks right at me before he tilts his head and starts kissing the palm of my hand. He starts sucking my fingers too, and I stop thinking about how cold I am, about how much my foot hurts, about anything but Levi.
I want him as much as I wanted him the moment I first saw him, and he looks at me with his eyes all big and feral before he kisses me.
I’m completely naked, and he can tell how turned on I am just by looking at me. He pushes me down so I’m lying faceup on the floor as he kisses my lips and scratches my shoulder.
He moves away from me, and I can see his eyes and his half-open mouth and his perfect teeth.
“Let me fuck you,” I say. I say it before I think about it, and his eyes widen, and for a second I’m worried I’ve ruined the moment. But he kisses me again, saying nothing, his hands still soft and warm on my skin.
He moves away from me, breaths, and then swallows. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Damien.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t want me to,” I say and kiss him again, this time sticking my tongue in his mouth. I can feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes and his breathing is quick and warm on me.
“I could make you feel so good,” I say, moving my face away from his. His nails are digging into my skin. He’s scratching me and it hurts, but I say nothing. “I know you’ve always wanted me to.”
“Yeah, but—”
I don’t let him keep talking but kiss him instead, and suddenly he’s nodding and my arms and legs are wrapped around him, so he’s taking me to bed with him.