Chapter 312: Normal
CASSIAN
The photograph caught us exactly like that.
When we got the print later, you could see the sea behind us, grey and wide, and you could see Julian looking right into the lens with his mouth open in a huge, white grin, his eyes crinkled at the edges and the jade pendant hanging sideways across his shirt.
And there I was, half a head taller than him, not looking at the camera at all. I was looking down at the side of his face, my mouth set in a straight line but my eyes completely soft, caught in the middle of realizing how much I loved him.
Julian walked back to the old man, took the camera back with a small bow and a word of thanks, and then stood there on the wet sand looking down at the little glass window on the top of the machine.
He looked like he’d just stolen something incredibly valuable and was checking to make sure it hadn’t broken in his pocket.
"What?" I asked, walking up behind him.
"Nothing," he said quietly. He pulled the camera against his ribs, holding it with both hands like a shield over his heart.
"Just..." He paused, his eyes tracing the line of the cliffs where our little white house sat. "I want to remember this. Exactly like this."
"You have the picture," I said.
"I know," he whispered, his voice dropping until it was almost lost in the sound of the waves hitting the rocks. "I know...."
The nights in that house didn’t belong to the Lorenzo family, and they didn’t belong to the Vincentis.
We didn’t have to watch the door. We didn’t have to listen for the sound of tires on the gravel outside.
There was no strategy to the way we lay down together; it was just the two of us in a room with the windows open and the sound of the Mediterranean coming up through the floorboards.
Julian changed when the sun went down.
The teasing came back, that sharp, quick wit that used to keep everyone in the common rooms off-balance.
He’d lounge on the old linen couch with his legs thrown over the armrest, poking at me until I had to leave my chair just to shut him up.
He took up space in the rooms now. He didn’t tuck himself into the corners anymore; he left his shoes in the middle of the hallway, his coffee cups on the windowsills, his shirts draped over the back of the kitchen chairs.
He was living like a man who believed the house belonged to him.
I used to just sit in the dark corner of the kitchen and watch him move through the rooms.
I didn’t have a clean word for what it did to my chest. It was just the feeling of watching a man who had been drowning for ten years finally get his head above the water and take a full, clean lungful of air without choking on the salt.
We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It didn’t matter if we were in the middle of the kitchen with the soup boiling on the stove, or down by the car with the groceries still in the trunk.
I’d reach out, grab the front of his shirt, and pull him against the wall before he could even finish a sentence.
"Someone’s going to see through the window," he muttered one afternoon, his breath hot against my neck as I pinned his wrists against the cool tiles of the kitchen counter.
"Good," I said against his mouth, and then I bit his lower lip until he let out a sharp, ragged gasp that went straight to my groin.
He didn’t fight me.
He never fought me here.
He just let his head drop back against the wood, his eyes turning dark and heavy as he reached up to claw at the meat of my shoulders, pulling me down until there wasn’t a single inch of space left between our bodies.
When we got to the bed, the quiet of the town disappeared.
The room became hot, thick with the smell of sweat and the sharp tang of the sea coming through the open shutters.
Julian’s skin was always warm and slick under my palms, his slender legs tangling around my hips as he pulled me down into him.
I didn’t use the careful, measured movements I used in the streets. I didn’t have to keep my weight off him. I drove into him hard, my hands gripping his waist until my fingers left red marks on his pale skin.
The sound of his moaning always filled my ears, loud and wet, cutting through the steady thump of the waves down on the shore.
He was tight... so tight he was squeezing against my dick like he was trying to pull the marrow right out of my bones and every time I came out of him, the skin of our thighs hit with a loud, heavy slap that sounded like a whip cracking in the small room.
I buried my face in the side of his neck, biting the soft flesh right above his collarbone until he screamed my name into the pillow, his fingers digging deep into the pillow.
"Harder," he gasped, his voice broken and rough from the heat. "Cassian, please—fuck."
I didn’t give him a choice. I flipped him over onto his back, pulling his knees up until they were pinned against his chest, and I went into him until the headboard banged against the white plaster wall.
He looked beautiful under me.
His face was flushed, his lips swollen and slick from my mouth, and his eyes were wide and wild, fixed right on mine as he took everything I had to give him.
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut; I kept telling him how beautiful he was, using the raw, simple words I’d never say in the light, calling him mine until his breath came in short, ragged little sobs.
Later, he crawled up my chest and stayed there.
He broke apart completely, riding me with his head thrown back and his hands locked behind my neck, his hips moving in long, heavy circles until neither of us could breathe.
The pendant bounced against his collarbone with every shift of his weight, a small green spark in the dark room.
When it was over, he lay flat against my chest, his heart thumping hard against my ribs.
The sweat was drying cool on our skin from the sea breeze and he was looking up at the wooden beams of the ceiling, his fingers idly tracing the old scar on my forearm.
"Is this what normal feels like?" he asked. His voice was small, nearly gone.
"I don’t know," I told him, my hand moving slow through his damp hair. "I’ve never been normal either."
He let out a soft, tired laugh that moved his whole body against mine. "Me neither. But I think I might like it."
"Then we’ll keep it," I said, my fingers tightening on the back of his neck. "We’re not going back."
He didn’t say anything to that. He just reached down through the dark, found my right hand where it rested on the sheet, and locked his fingers between mine so tight it hurt.
