Page 35 of Rookie Mistake
"Mars would be wrong."
I laugh. The laughing is the relief. The three words are out. Public. They cannot be unsaid. The unsayability is the freedom: the performance cannot recapture territory that has been ceded to honesty. The grin cannot cover a truth that has already been told.
Later. The bedroom. The amber lamp.
I initiate. This is new.
The first time, the initiation was the kitchen fight: mutual, explosive, the control detonating. The second time, the initiation was Nikolai's: slow, chosen, deliberate. Tonight the initiation is mine. Tonight I am the one who puts my hands on his chest and pushes, gently, until his back hits the headboard, and the pushing is not the kitchen-fight pushing (desperate, frantic). The pushing is confident. The pushing is the pushing of a man who said "including me" in a media room three hours ago and who is done asking for permission.
"Eli," he says.
"Shut up," I say, and I'm smiling, and the smiling is the grin except the grin is not a performance. The grin is delight. Pure, stupid, uncomplicated delight at having my hands on this man's body and the right to put them there.
I undress him slowly. The slowly is my pace, not his. The slowly says: I'm driving tonight. The slowly says: your job is to receive.
He receives. The receiving is the variable that changes. The first time, Nikolai was free (the control gone, the hands articulate). The second time, Nikolai was deliberate (the control repurposed, the pace chosen). Tonight, Nikolai is received. Nikolai is lying against the headboard with my hands on his body and my mouth mapping the geography I've been learning for weeks and his only job is to let it happen.
The letting is hard for him. I can feel the hardness in his muscles, the instinct to manage, to calibrate, to maintain the gap between himself and the vulnerability. The instinct fires and I feel it fire and I put my mouth on the scar at his ribs and the instinct dies.
I do something clumsy. My elbow hits the lamp. The lamp wobbles. I catch it with one hand while the other hand is in alocation that makes the catching architecturally ambitious. The catching produces a position that is, objectively, ridiculous: one arm fully extended toward the nightstand, the other arm fully committed elsewhere, my body spanning the distance between the two with the structural integrity of a bridge designed by a drunk.
Nikolai laughs.
Not the fraction. Not the geological event. Not the eye-smile that Marcus identified. A laugh. An actual, full, audible laugh that comes from his chest and fills the bedroom and sounds like a thing I have never heard from this man and that I want to hear every day for the rest of my life.
The laugh is startled and warm and completely involuntary and the involuntary is the thing. Nikolai has not laughed during sex because sex has been serious. Sex has been managed. Sex has been the control applied to the body or the control released from the body, but either way the control was the frame. Tonight the frame is gone. Tonight the frame has been replaced by a twenty-two-year-old who nearly knocked over a lamp while trying to do two things at once and who is now grinning at Nikolai from an impossible angle.
"That was smooth," he says, and his voice is warm with the laugh still in it.
"I am a professional athlete. Everything I do is smooth."
"You almost destroyed the lamp with your elbow."
"The lamp is fine. The lamp will recover."
He pulls me up. He kisses me. The kiss has the laugh in it. The kiss tastes like joy, if joy had a taste, and joy tastes like Nikolai Sokolov laughing during sex because a twenty-two-year-old knocked a lamp with his elbow, and the taste is the best thing I have ever experienced in a bedroom.
The sex that follows is different from the first two times. The first was frantic. The second was slow. This is playful. Twomen learning each other's bodies with curiosity and humor and the irreplaceable intimacy of being able to laugh together while naked. The laughing is the intimacy. The thing the control could never produce, because the control is serious and laughing is the opposite of serious, and the opposite is the medicine.
Afterward, he holds me. The holding is not the first time's holding (tentative, the six inches, the "mistake"). The holding is not the second time's holding (deliberate, the hair-stroking, the two mugs). The holding is easy. The holding is the holding of someone not thinking about the holding.
"You laughed," I say.
"You assaulted my lamp."
"You laughed during sex."
"This is not unprecedented."
"It is for you."
He is quiet for a moment. The quiet is not the managed quiet. The quiet is the thinking quiet.
"It is for me," he says.
I press my face into his shoulder. The shoulder is warm and broad and mine.
The internet is going to be a lot tomorrow. The comment sections are going to say things that the comment sections say. The word "bisexual" has not been spoken yet, not publicly, and the not-speaking means the speculation will fill the gap with whatever the speculation prefers, and the speculation will prefer "gay" because "gay" is the vocabulary the internet has for men who say "including me," and the vocabulary is wrong, and the wrongness is a fight I will have to fight, but the fight is tomorrow's fight.
