Chapter 16: The Morning After
The first thing Matthew became aware of was the smell: sex, stale champagne, and the faint, acrid trace of cigarette smoke. Then came the light, a relentless Mexico City morning slicing through the slats of the blinds, painting bars of white-gold across the wreckage of the bed.
He was on his back. A heavy arm was thrown across his chest, hand splayed possessively over his sternum. Brandon’s. He could feel the rough hair on the forearm against his skin. Pressed along his other side, back to back with him, was Arturo, a line of heat from shoulder to hip.
The night crashed back in with nauseating clarity. The dance. The terrace. The car ride here. The tangled, hungry collision on these sheets. The things they’d done. The things he’d let them do. A visceral ache resonated through his body, a full-system protest.
He lay perfectly still, eyes open, staring at a water stain on the ceiling plaster that looked like a crumbling continent. His mind was a silent, echoing chamber. What have you done? The question didn’t even feel like his own. It was just there, booming in the hollow space.
The arm on his chest twitched. Brandon.
Matthew felt the exact moment Brandon woke up. A sudden intake of breath, a minute stiffening of the muscles. The hand on his chest didn’t move, but it became a weight, a foreign object. The breath held, then released in a long, controlled stream that wasn’t quite a sigh. It was the sound of a man assembling his armor.
Slowly, as if moving through mud, Brandon withdrew his arm. The loss of contact was shockingly cold. Matthew listened to the sounds of him shifting, sitting up on the edge of the bed. The mattress springs groaned. There was a long, dead silence. Matthew could picture him just sitting there, head in his hands, staring at his own bare feet on Arturo’s hardwood floor.
He didn’t turn to look. He couldn’t.
The rustle of fabric. Brandon was locating his clothes. He moved quietly, efficiently, with the precision of a man used to dressing in the dark, in a hurry, maybe after a raid. The soft zip of his fly. The shift of fabric as he pulled on his torn dress shirt, not bothering with the lost buttons. He’d have to walk out into a Sunday morning in Polanco looking like he’d been mauled.
Not a word.
The silence was a physical pressure. It was worse than any outburst. It was the sound of a door inside Brandon slamming shut, a vault sealing. Matthew heard the soft click of a belt buckle.
Then, from the other side of the bed, a lighter flicked. The crisp, sulfurous smell of a cigarette being lit cut through the other odors.
Arturo.
He hadn’t moved, but he was awake. Matthew felt him exhale, the smoke curling up towards the ceiling. He’d been lying there, listening to Brandon’s escape just as intently.
Brandon finally stood. He must have been looking for his shoes. One thudded softly as he found it, then the other.
“Leaving so soon, Agent Weber?” Arturo’s voice was morning-rough, languid, devoid of any real surprise. He didn’t turn over.
Brandon’s pause was a loaded gun. Matthew could feel the fury and shame radiating from him in waves. When he spoke, his voice was sandpaper on stone. “I have to check in.”
“On a Sunday? How dutiful.”
Another beat of silence. Matthew finally risked turning his head. Brandon was standing by the bedroom door, one hand on the frame. He was dressed, but he looked undone. The torn shirt hung open, revealing the dark hair of his chest, a reddish mark from someone’s teeth just below his collarbone. His hair was wild. His eyes, when they flicked to Matthew, were caverns of regret. He looked at him for only a second—a quick, pained glance—before his gaze skittered away, fixing on a point on the wall.
He looked destroyed.
“Brandon,” Matthew started, his own voice a dry croak.
“Don’t,” Brandon cut him off, the word like a slap. He wouldn’t look at him again. He gave a stiff, almost imperceptible nod, not to anyone in the room, but to some private demon. Then he turned and walked out of the bedroom.
They listened to his footsteps cross the living room. The front door opened. A final, suspended moment of street noise—a distant coffee vendor’s call, a car horn—then the quiet, definitive click of the lock engaging.
He was gone.
The apartment settled into a new, heavier quiet. The competition, so violently acted upon hours before, was now laid bare in the vacancy he left behind. The battlefield was empty except for the two of them.
Arturo finally moved. He sat up, the sheet pooling around his waist. He reached for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the nightstand, lit a fresh one off the butt of the last, and swung his legs out of bed. He walked, naked and unconcerned, to the window. He pushed the blind aside with a finger, peering down at the street below.
“He’s walking the wrong way for a cab,” Arturo observed, exhaling a plume of smoke against the glass. “Probably needs to walk off the panic attack.” His tone was clinical. “I’ve seen that look before. On men who think they’ve damned themselves.”
Matthew pushed himself up onto his elbows. Every muscle protested. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Name it?” Arturo glanced over his shoulder, his dark eyes unreadable behind the morning haze. “It’s a little late for delicacy, jefe. We’re well past that.” He turned back to the window. “He wanted it. God, did he want it. You felt it. But he can’t want it in the daylight. He can’t want us.”
The word ‘us’ hung in the air, strange and presumptuous. There was no ‘us’. There was a tangle, a mistake, a complicated Venn diagram of need and poor judgment.
Matthew threw back the sheet and stood. The floor was cool under his feet. He found his boxer briefs and stepped into them, his movements clumsy. He couldn’t find his shirt. His tuxedo pants were in a heap by the bed. He pulled them on, the formal fabric absurd against his bare, marked-up skin. He felt used up. Hollowed out.
“I need my phone,” he muttered, more to himself than to Arturo.
“By the front door, I think. In the ceramic bowl.”
Matthew walked out of the bedroom. The living room was bathed in hard morning light, exposing everything: the empty prosecco flutes on the coffee table, his jacket discarded on the floor, one of Brandon’s black cufflinks gleaming under the sofa. It looked like the scene of a crime. His stomach turned.
He found his phone. The screen lit up with a parade of notifications. Three missed calls from an unknown US number. A text from Laura: So. How was the ball? The gossip is you left with not one but two handsome men. Details, bitch. Immediately. And, sitting at the top, a good morning text from Conrad, sent six hours ago: Thinking of you. Call when you’re up?
A wave of such profound, disorienting guilt hit him that he had to brace a hand against the wall. He closed his eyes. The image of Conrad’s earnest, trusting face—the face of the man he was supposedly trying to rebuild with—collided with the memory of Brandon’s tortured expression and Arturo’s satisfied smoke rings.
“You look ill,” Arturo said from the bedroom doorway. He had put on a pair of black linen pants but was still shirtless, his cigarette between his fingers. “Coffee?”
“I should go.”
“You should have coffee first. You’re in no state.” Arturo padded to the small open kitchen and began filling an espresso pot. The mundane ritual was surreal. “He’s not going to call you, you know.”
Matthew didn’t answer. He scrolled to Conrad’s text. His thumb hovered over the call button. He couldn’t. Not with the smell of Arturo’s cigarettes and sex still on him. Not with the ghost of Brandon’s weight still pressing him into the mattress.
“He might,” Matthew said, knowing it was a lie.
“He won’t.” Arturo set the pot on the stove with a soft clink. “He will bury last night so deep in his psyche that he’ll convince himself it was a fever dream. A moment of madness. You’ll become part of the problem he’s fighting against. The temptation. The thing that proves he needs to be even more careful, even more closed off.” He leaned against the counter, watching the blue flame. “It’s sad, really. He’s a beautiful man. Trapped in a very ugly cage.”
The analysis was cold, but it rang with a terrible truth. “And what’s your cage?” Matthew asked, his voice flat.
Arturo smiled, a thin, humorless thing. “Oh, I built my own. But I happen to like the view from inside it.” The espresso began to perk, gurgling softly. “My situation is different. I have no wife to mourn, no children to disappoint, no agency that would fire me for who I sleep with. I only have a careerist boss who I find very attractive, which is its own complicated problem.” He looked directly at Matthew. “But at least I can name it. At least I want it in the daylight.”
The challenge was explicit. He ran. I’m still here.
Matthew’s phone vibrated in his hand. A new text. Not from Brandon. It was from the unknown number. It’s Brandon. This can’t happen again. I’m sorry. For everything.
The finality of it was a punch to the gut. Short. Absolute. No room for discussion. The door wasn’t just shut; it was bricked over.
Arturo was watching his face. He didn’t need to ask. He poured the thick, dark coffee into a small cup and slid it across the counter towards Matthew. “See?”
Matthew didn’t touch the coffee. He stared at the text, at the brutal economy of the apology. For everything. Panama. Last night. The possibility of them.
He felt a sudden, startling surge of anger. Not at Brandon, but at the sheer fucking waste of it all. At the cages, self-made and otherwise. At his own pathetic bouncing between them, trying to be something for everyone, and ending up as nothing but a receptacle for their conflicts.
“I need to go,” he repeated, his voice firmer now.
“I need to go,” he repeated, his voice firmer now.
He turned towards the front door, his bare feet scuffing against the cool tile. He would walk out into the unforgiving Condesa sunlight. He would go home, scrub last night from his skin, and try to stitch himself back together. He would call Conrad and lie with a quiet, practiced desperation.
Arturo moved. It was silent, fluid, a sudden displacement of air.
He was in front of him before Matthew’s hand touched the doorknob, blocking the exit with his body. The morning light caught the fine lines around his watchful eyes, the dusting of stubble on his jaw.
“Don’t,” Arturo said softly. His hand came up, not to grab, but to rest against Matthew’s sternum, over the pounding heart beneath.
Matthew flinched. “Get out of the way, Arturo.”
“You’re angry.Good. Use it. Don’t run from it like he does.” His fingers pressed, a steady, insistent heat. “Don’t run from me.”
Matthew tried to sidestep, a clumsy evasion. Arturo mirrored him, a practiced dance. The space between them vanished. Their chests brushed. Matthew could smell the coffee on Arturo’s breath, the cigarettes, the scent of their shared sweat from the sheets.
“Stop,” Matthew breathed, the word lacking all conviction.
He was, as usual, unable to resist. The resolve that had formed a moment ago fractured, crumbling under the direct weight of Arturo’s attention. The anger, the hollowness, the confusion—they needed an outlet, a physical resolution. Arturo offered a familiar, incendiary one.
Arturo’s mouth found his. It wasn’t tender. It was a claiming, a seal. He kissed him deeply, his tongue pushing past Matthew’s defenses, tasting the night’s exhaustion and the morning’s regret. Matthew’s hands, which had been hanging limp at his sides, rose. They didn’t push away.
They fisted in the linen of Arturo’s pants.
A low sound vibrated in Arturo’s throat, a hum of triumph. His hands dropped to Matthew’s waist, fingers hooking into the band of his rented tuxedo trousers. He pushed them down, fabric pooling around Matthew’s ankles. He broke the kiss only to yank his own linen pants down, kicking them aside.
They stood naked in the harsh morning light of the foyer, exposed against the vibrant folk art on the walls. Arturo’s cock was already hard, jutting out, and he pressed it against Matthew’s hip. Matthew’s body responded, a traitorous flush of heat, his own erection stirring despite everything.
“My turn,” Arturo whispered, the words a hot promise against Matthew’s ear. “No sharing this time.”
He steered him backwards, away from the door, through the living room. Matthew’s discarded pants tripped him; he stumbled, but Arturo’s grip was iron, guiding him relentlessly toward the bedroom and its rumpled, ruined bed. The site of the crime.
The backs of Matthew’s knees hit the platform. He sat down heavily, the memory of Brandon’s weight, Brandon’s retreat, ghosting across the same space. Arturo loomed over him, his eyes dark and possessive. He placed a hand on Matthew’s shoulder and pushed.
Matthew fell back onto the sheets that still smelled of all three of them.
Arturo followed him down, covering him, a different kind of weight.Deliberate. Focused. He pinned Matthew’s wrists beside his head, not harshly, but with an absolute authority. He looked down at him, studying his face.
“He’s gone,” Arturo stated. “He left you here. With me.”
He released one wrist to reach over to the nightstand. He fumbled for a moment, the drawer sticking, then retrieved a small bottle of lube. The click of the cap was obscenely loud. Matthew watched, mesmerized by the focused ritual, as Arturo slicked himself, his strokes slow and luxurious, his gaze never leaving Matthew’s face.
“You’re mine right now,” Arturo said, his voice a low thrum. “Say it.”
Matthew turned his head to the side, staring at the indentation on the pillow where Brandon’s head had been. A strange defiance rose in him, thin and brittle. “No.”
Arturo smiled. He liked that. He shifted his hips, the head of his slick cock nudging roughly against Matthew’s entrance, still loose and sensitive from the night before. The pressure was immediate, a blunt, insistent reminder.
“You are,” Arturo corrected him. He didn’t ask again. He pushed.
There was no careful preparation, no gentleness. He breached him in one slow, excruciatingly deliberate stroke, stretching the sore muscle, filling him completely. Matthew gasped, his back arching off the bed, a sharp sting of protest giving way to a deep, overwhelming fullness. Arturo was thinner than Brandon but curved differently, hitting a place inside that made stars burst behind Matthew’s eyelids.
“Fuck,” Matthew choked out.
Arturo held himself there, embedded to the hilt, letting Matthew feel every inch. He leaned down, his lips brushing Matthew’s ear. “See? This is what you stay for. This is what you want when the pretending stops.”
Then he began to move. His rhythm was nothing like Brandon’s frantic, punishing pace. It was controlled, deep, and devastatingly accurate. Each withdrawal was slow, almost cruel, each thrust a hard, precise return to that spot that made Matthew’s toes curl. It was fucking as demonstration, a lesson in ownership.
“This ass,” Arturo grunted, driving into him, “is my ass today.” His voice was ragged with effort but utterly certain. “You take me so much deeper than you took him. You know you do.”
Matthew couldn’t answer. He was unmoored. The competing claims of the night had left him raw, and now Arturo was stamping his claim over Brandon’s, rewriting the memory with his own body. He wrapped his legs around Arturo’s waist, pulling him in harder, needing the pain, the clarity of it.
“Yes,” he hissed, surrendering to the narrative Arturo was writing. “God, yes.”
Arturo’s control began to fray. His thrusts became harder, faster, losing their measured precision. He released Matthew’s other wrist and braced himself, fucking into him with a punishing, piston-like drive. The bed slammed against the wall with each impact. Matthew clawed at the sheets, the previous night’s passion replaced by something singular and desperate.
“Come on my cock,” Arturo commanded, his breath coming in hot bursts against Matthew’s neck. “Do it. I want to feel you come around me.”
The command, the sheer physical dominance, broke something loose. Matthew’s orgasm tore through him, violent and shattering, his body seizing as he came untouched between them, his release hot and messy on their stomachs. The clenching of his muscles pulled Arturo over the edge.
With a final, guttural cry, Arturo thrust deep and held, his body going rigid as he emptied himself inside. He collapsed, his weight crushing, his face buried in the sweat-damp hollow of Matthew’s neck.
Silence again, but different. Sticky, possessive, and devoid of regret.
Arturo did not pull out. He remained there, softening inside him, a final act of claiming. He shifted just enough to look at Matthew’s face.
“You’re mine,” he said again, quietly now. It was no longer a question.
Matthew stared at the water-stain continent on the ceiling. He felt owned. He felt used. He felt, for the first time that morning, a terrible, unambiguous clarity. He said nothing.
He said nothing. The claim was a stone in his gut. He waited for Arturo’s breathing to even out, for the possessive grip to slacken. He needed space. To unstick his thoughts from this bed, from the clinging residue of the competition that had just definitively declared a winner.
After what felt like an hour but was probably two minutes, he nudged his shoulder. "Get off. I can't breathe."
Arturo obliged, sliding away with a slow, fluid movement. The loss of his weight was a hollow relief. Matthew felt immediately cold. He stood on unsteady legs, a thin trail of slickness sliding down his inner thigh. He ignored it. He gathered his crumpled pants from the foyer floor, found his shirt bunched under the living room coffee table. Each article felt like evidence. He dressed in a silent, methodical trance.
Arturo watched from the bed, propped on an elbow, a fresh cigarette already lit. He didn't offer coffee again. He just observed, smoke curling from his nostrils, as Matthew located his wallet, his keys, the single errant cufflink that wasn't Brandon's. "So you'll just go back to your empty apartment in Polanco and brood," Arturo finally said, not unkindly. "You'll let his ghost and my actual self haunt you all day."
"I'm going home to shower," Matthew said, his voice flat. He didn't look at him.
"You're a terrible liar to anyone who's paying attention." Arturo tapped ash into a saucer on the nightstand. "But I suppose that's part of your charm."He paused. "He'll avoid you at work tomorrow. He'll be a ghost in the DEA annex. Just so you're prepared."
Matthew's hand froze on the doorknob. That specific prediction, delivered with such calm certainty, was somehow worse than anything else. It felt like a preview of his future. He twisted the knob and left without another word.
The Uber ride to Polanco was a silent, sun-drenched purgatory. He sat in the back, the crisp linen of his passenger seat feeling alien against his skin, which still burned from memory and touch. He watched the Sunday city slide by—families heading to parks, couples at sidewalk cafes, a world of uncomplicated normalcy. He felt like a visitor from a grimy, private planet.
His apartment was a museum of his better intentions. The empty coffee mug from yesterday morning, a book Conrad had mailed him left open on the sofa. The silence was a roar. He walked directly to the bathroom, turned the shower to scalding, and stepped under the spray. He scrubbed until his skin was pink and raw, but the feeling of violation, of being a contested territory, wouldn't wash off.
Wrapped in a towel, he stared at his phone on the bathroom counter. The text from Brandon’s burner number was a fossil, cold and ancient. Conrad’s "call when you’re up?" was a warm, living trap. He needed to talk to a human voice that didn't taste of secrets. He needed the script of a normal life.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and tapped Conrad’s name. It rang twice."Matt!Hey." Conrad's voice was warm, a little staticky with distance, instantly conjuring the clean lines of his apartment in Buenos Airees, his reasonable face, his predictable worries. "I was starting to think you slept through the whole day. Big night at the Italian ball?"
The casual question was a landmine. Matthew leaned against the cool tile wall, sliding down to sit on the floor."Yeah. Big night. Lots of diplomatic... schmoozing. You know how it is." The lie slipped out, greased with practice.
"Sounds exhausting. I'm glad you called. I was just finalizing my flight." Conrad's tone shifted, excited. "I land Wednesday afternoon. Mexico City International, two-fifteen. Got a crazy deal on a last-minute fare."
The information landed with a thud. Two days. Conrad would be here, in this apartment, with his clean love and his reasonable expectations. He would fill this silence with plans and conversation and a kind of affection that now felt, in the wake of last night, frighteningly thin. Matthew closed his eyes. "Wednesday. That's great. That's... really soon."
"You don't sound thrilled." A hint of defensive caution crept into Conrad's voice. "If this is a bad time, with work or whatever, we can reschedule. I just thought, after our talks..."
"No! No, it's perfect." Matthew forced enthusiasm into his voice, a performance that felt like lifting a sack of stones. "I'm just tired. Really glad you're coming. We can... we'll figure it out. All of it." He was suddenly desperate for the call to end. "I'll pick you up at the airport, okay?"
They talked for a few more minutes, the conversation a careful navigation of shallow waters—the weather in D.C., a show Conrad had watched, the vague "catching up" they would do. When he hung up, the silence was even thicker, now charged with the ticking clock of Conrad’s arrival.
Matthew sat on the floor for a long time. The empty apartment held up a mirror, and he didn't like the reflection. He saw the desperate diplomat, clinging to a safe, familiar harbor in Conrad. He saw the thrill-seeker, intoxicated by Arturo's dangerous games and his absolute lack of apology.
And he saw Brandon's ruined face in the doorway, the love that couldn’t speak its name, the man who had, for a few raw hours, stepped out of his cage only to flee back inside at dawn.
Of the three, it wasn't even close.
The realization was a quiet, tragic ache, blooming in the center of his chest. It wasn’t Conrad’s steadfastness. It certainly wasn’t Arturo’s cutting possession. It was the gnarled, impossible want for the one who had looked at him like he was water in a desert, and then like he was poison. Brandon, with his haunted eyes and silent war. Brandon, who was, professionally, personally, completely, out of reach.
Matthew rested his forehead on his knees. A hollow laugh escaped him, bouncing off the pristine bathroom tiles. Of course. He’d traveled thousands of miles, stepped into a new life, and managed to architect the same old heartbreak: yearning for the emotionally unavailable fortress.
He couldn't have Brandon. That door was bricked over, sealed with a text message and the click of a lock.
Conrad was landing in forty-eight hours, a life raft of sensible reconciliation.
And Arturo… Arturo was a problem of his own making, a siren perched in the cubicle next to his, who knew too much and wanted more. Continuing that was a grenade rolled under his professional life, a direct betrayal of the fragile peace he was trying to build with Conrad.
He had to end it.
The decision solidified, cold and clear and terrifying. He had to end things with Arturo. Cleanly.Finally.
He pushed himself up, his body aching. He walked to the living room, pouring himself a tumbler of whisky from a bottle he kept for diplomatic gifts. He didn't bother with ice. He drank it standing at his window, watching the golden afternoon light glaze the buildings of Polanco. He replayed the last twenty-four hours. The masquerade. Brandon's confession on the terrace. Arturo's calculated interruption. The tangle of limbs, the frantic, competitive hunger. The smell of Arturo's cigarettes this morning. The brutal, claiming second round.
He could still feel where Arturo had been inside him.
Ending it would be a surgical strike on his own weakness. It would also be a declaration of war with a man who thrived on subtext and social maneuvering. Arturo wouldn't take a polite dismissal. He’d dissect it. He’d challenge it. He’d ask, with that infuriating smile, if this was really about Conrad, or about the ghost of a DEA agent.
Matthew finished the whisky, the burn a pale imitation of the heat still lingering in his body. Courage felt like a distant country. He had two days to find his passport.