Chapter 10: Blackout
The silence in Matthew’s own apartment was a different creature than the penthouse’s. Here, it wasn’t curated or expensive. It was just empty. The unpacked boxes in the corner weren’t minimalist decor; they were a to-do list. The hum was the cheap air conditioner, not the distant thrum of a city viewed from on high. He poured a whiskey, a cheaper brand, and sat on his IKEA sofa. The promise of a month felt like a sentence.
A week passed. The rhythms of his actual life reasserted themselves with a stubborn monotony. The docks story ran, with Mo’s searing photos and Matthew’s text side-by-side. Judy had put it on the front of the weekend section. She’d called him into her office, a cluttered space smelling of peppermint tea and old paper.
“This is why I fought to bring you over,” she’d said, tapping the newsprint. “This voice. It’s clean. It’s honest. Don’t lose it chasing flashier bylines.”
He’d nodded, feeling like a fraud.
Mo had said, “Good piece,” with a curt professional nod when they passed at the coffee machine. Nothing more. The distance between their desks felt like a canyon.
It was Thursday, and a last-minute request from Hong Kong had come in. A corruption angle, needing local context. Judy asked Matthew to handle the weave, Mo to source archival shots. The newsroom emptied out, the frantic daytime energy giving way to the late-shift’s quieter, more relentless pulse. By 8 PM, it was just the two of them in their corner, the overhead lights off, their desks illuminated by the cold glow of their screens.
The only sounds were Matthew’s typing, the click of Mo’s mouse, and the occasional rumble of a delivery truck in the alley below. The scent of old coffee was almost metallic.
“Need the 2017 port authority board list,” Matthew said, not looking up.
Mo grunted. A minute later, a PDF landed in Matthew’s inbox. “Sent.”
“Thanks.”
Silence. Five minutes stretched. Matthew’s eyes burned. He leaned back, rubbing them.
“You look tired,” Mo said. His voice was neutral, but in the quiet, it felt loaded.
“Late nights,” Matthew replied.
“I bet.”
The two words hung there. Matthew dropped his hands. Mo wasn’t looking at him; he was staring at his monitor, a black-and-white photo of a shipping magnate from the 90s on the screen. His jaw was tight.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Mo?”
“It means you look tired. It’s an observation.” Mo finally swiveled his chair, just slightly. His face was all hard angles in the bluish light. “How’s the gilded cage? Still worth the admission price?”
“He’s gone for a month. Shanghai.”
“Ah. So you’re in waiting mode. That’s your life now? Waiting for a text from a guy who can’t be seen with you?” Mo’s tone was cutting, each word precisely aimed. “What’s the plan, Matthew? You just sit in your apartment, or his, until he summons you for a secret weekend? Sounds thrilling.”
The frustration that had been simmering in Matthew for weeks—since the docks, since the fight, since the hollow echo of Brian’s penthouse—boiled over. “Why do you care? You made your disapproval pretty fucking clear.”
“I care because you’re better than this!” Mo’s voice rose, sharp in the empty office. He stood up, a sudden, powerful motion. “You’re a damn good journalist. You have a heart, which is more than I can say for most of the vultures in this business. And you’re wasting it letting some actor and a trust-fund brat treat you like a… a boutique experience.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know he’s hidden. I know the other one is chaos. I know you came here to get away from people who used you. Now you’ve just found fancier versions.” Mo took a step closer. The desk lamp cast his shadow, huge and imposing, across Matthew’s keyboard. “You let Henry Lee fuck you and you let Brian Pang keep you like a pet, and you think that’s living? That’s just being a prop in someone else’s story.”
The crude, graphic truth of it was a slap. Heat flooded Matthew’s face, shame and anger twisting together. He shot to his feet, the chair rolling back and hitting the partition with a thud. “And what’s your story, Mo? The reliable, dependable colleague? The one who stands back and judges? What do you do, go home to your perfectly ordered life and feel superior?”
Mo’s eyes darkened. “You have no idea what my life is.”
“Because you never show me! You just dispense your fucking moral commentary and your incredible photos and you stand there with your…” Matthew’s gesture took in Mo’s solid form, his broad chest, the hint of dark hair at the open collar of his shirt. “...your quiet, dependable, infuriating judgment!”
They were inches apart now, the air between them crackling with a voltage that had nothing to do with anger. Matthew could see the pulse pounding in Mo’s neck, could smell the faint scents of sweat and the darkroom chemicals that always clung to him.
Mo’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous rasp. “You want to see what I do? You want to know what’s in my perfectly ordered life? It’s wondering why the smartest, most infuriating man I’ve met in years can’t see what’s right in front of him. It’s listening to him talk about those other men and wanting to…”
He stopped, his breath coming hard.
“Wanting to what?” Matthew challenged, his own heart hammering against his ribs.
Mo didn’t answer with words. He closed the final distance, his hand coming up to cup the back of Matthew’s neck, his touch shockingly firm, possessive. There was no asking. His mouth crashed down on Matthew’s.
It wasn’t like Brian’s polished hunger or Henry’s chaotic fire. This was raw, unvarnished, and years in the making. Mo’s lips were demanding, his tongue sweeping in with a confidence that shattered every defense. The kiss tasted of coffee and frustration and a yearning so deep it felt bottomless. Mo’s other arm wrapped around his waist, pulling him flush against a body that was solid, real, overwhelmingly present.
Matthew melted into it. A sound, half-surprise, half-surrender, escaped his throat. His hands came up, fisting in the soft cotton of Mo’s shirt, holding on as the world tilted. This was nothing he’d planned, nothing from the script of his messy new life. This was a seismic shift, the ground truth he hadn’t let himself acknowledge.
When Mo finally broke the kiss, they were both breathing as if they’d run a sprint. Foreheads pressed together, eyes locked in the dim light. Mo’s gaze searched his, the judgment gone, replaced by a vulnerable, blazing intensity.
“That’s what I do,” Mo whispered, the words a rough confession against Matthew’s lips.
The confession was a live wire between them. Then Mo’s mouth was on his again, erasing the last fragment of a thought. This kiss was deeper, a surrender to a current that had pulled at them for months. Matthew’s hands slid from Mo’s shirt to his waist, gripping the solid heat of him through the fabric.
He broke the kiss just to breathe, his forehead resting against Mo’s shoulder. The scent there was ink, salt, and something purely, essentially male. Without thinking, his fingers found the hem of Mo’s t-shirt. He pulled it up in one urgent motion.
Mo raised his arms, letting Matthew drag the shirt over his head and drop it to the floor. The desk lamp threw the landscape of his torso into stark relief. He was broad, solid, a testament to a physicality that was earned, not sculpted in a gym. A dense, dark shadow of hair covered his chest, trailing down his stomach and disappearing into his waistband.
Matthew was transfixed. This was nothing like Brian’s hairless, polished perfection or Henry’s sleek, manicured edges. This was visceral. Real. A raw masculinity that made his mouth go dry and his blood heat. He let his palms, then his mouth, explore it.
He kissed the space over Mo’s pounding heart, feeling the coarse hair against his lips. He traced the line down Mo’s sternum with his tongue, tasting salt and skin. His hands slid over the dense musculature of Mo’s back, fingers digging into the powerful shoulders. Mo shuddered, a ragged gasp escaping him, and his own hands came up to cradle Matthew’s head, not guiding, just holding, as if he were something precious.
“Matthew,” Mo breathed, the word thick with wanting.
Mo’s hands moved then, frantic and sure, to the buttons of Matthew’s own shirt. He fumbled the first one open, then the second, his knuckles brushing Matthew’s stomach. The touch was electric, a promise of naked skin. The third button gave way.
It was the cool air on his newly exposed chest that jolted Matthew back. The reality of the place—the humming servers, the glow of the exit sign, the ghost of their colleagues’ daily grind—crashed into the moment. He saw the future like a rapid-fire edit: the awkwardness tomorrow, the destroyed professional partnership, the complication of a man he actually had to see every day.
He caught Mo’s wrists, stopping him. “No. Mo, stop.”
Mo stilled, his breathing harsh in the silence. His eyes were black with desire, confused.
“This is a terrible idea,” Matthew said, the words tasting like ash. He took a step back, the separation feeling physical, painful. “We work together. You’re… you’re my friend. My only real friend here.”
“I’ve wanted this since you walked into this newsroom,” Mo said, his voice raw, stripped bare. He made no move to cover himself. “Since you made some stupid joke about the humidity and your hair. I don’t give a damn about it being a terrible idea.”
The confession was a gut-punch, more intimate than anything they’d just done. It laid everything Mo had done—the mentorship, the frustration, the steadfast presence—into a clear, terrifying line. Matthew couldn’t breathe. The weight of it, the sheer goodness of the offer compared to the secret and the chaos, felt like too much.
He bent and snatched his own shirt from the floor where it had fallen. He didn’t look at Mo as he fumbled with the buttons, his fingers clumsy. “I can’t. I’m… I’m a mess, Mo. I’m waiting for a text from a closeted actor. I have a chaotic rich kid who might call any minute. You don’t want this. You don’t want me.”
He was at the door of the newsroom, hand on the light switch. He finally glanced back.
Mo stood shirtless in the pool of lamplight, his expression unreadable. Not angry, not hurt, just profoundly still, watching him go. The image seared itself into Matthew’s mind: the strong, quiet man he’d just kissed, left alone in the empty office he’d worked in for a decade.
Matthew flipped the main lights on, flooding the room with a cruel, fluorescent glare. Then he walked out, the door sighing shut behind him. The elevator ride down was a vibration in his bones. The lobby was empty. The night air outside was a warm, wet slap.
He stood on the sidewalk, the city’s lights blurring. He could still feel the texture of Mo’s chest hair against his tongue, the solid weight of his hands. He could hear the raw truth in Mo’s voice. I’ve wanted this since you walked in.
He had just left the best man he’d met in Singapore standing half-dressed under the office lights. And all he had to walk toward was an empty apartment and a phone that might never ring from Shanghai. The right choice had never felt more like a mistake.
The right choice had never felt more like a mistake. The taxi ride home was a blur of streaking neon and the driver’s tinny radio. Matthew paid without speaking and climbed the stairs to his apartment, his legs leaden. Inside, he didn’t turn on the main light. He stood in the blue-grey gloom, the ghost of Mo’s touch still blazing on his skin, the taste of him still on his tongue.
Brian had been gone barely a week. A single week. And here he was, his lips still swollen from kissing another man in their workplace. The promise of a month of chaste waiting now seemed like a ridiculous joke he’d played on himself. He had one foot poised over the detonator of that careful, secret arrangement.
And Mo. He had reduced something real and steady—a friendship, a partnership—to a frenzied, shirtless grapple under office lights. He’d seen the raw hope in Mo’s eyes and had called it a terrible idea. He had run from the one thing that felt solid, fearing the complexity of its goodness, and had instead chosen the simpler clarity of being someone’s secret. The shame was a cold, sick weight in his gut.
His phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, a violent, rattling sound in the quiet. He flinched. It could be Brian, on a break between takes. It could be Henry, bored and looking for diversion. It could be Mo, with words that would either salvage or obliterate what was left between them.
He walked over, muscles tense. The screen glowed. It wasn’t any of them.
Patrick: Thinking about you. Always thinking about you. What’s Singapore like at 2 AM?
A dry, brittle laugh escaped Matthew’s throat. Of course. The universe’s punchline. The past, eternally attentive, rushing in to fill the vacuum of his present mess. He stared at the name. The hurt associated with it was old, scarred over. Familiar. In this moment of swirling, fresh chaos, that familiarity felt like a landmark.
His thumb moved before his mind could form a protest. He tapped the video call icon. It rang once, twice.
Patrick answered immediately. His face filled the screen, handsome and finely drawn with fatigue, his hair tousled. He was in his home office in New York, a shelf of legal texts behind him. “Matt? Hey. You okay? It’s the middle of the night there, right?”
“No,” Matthew said, the word cracking open. He sank onto a stool, the phone propped before him. “No, I’m not okay.”
Patrick’s expression shifted from pleased surprise to genuine concern. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’ve made a mess.” The confession tumbled out, raw and unfiltered. “A spectacular, comprehensive mess. I came here for a clean start and I’ve just… I’ve collected more complications. A closet. A chaos. And now I’ve probably torched the only good, simple thing I had going because I got scared of it.”
“Whoa, slow down. A closet?” Patrick’s lawyerly mind began parsing.
“An actor. He’s away. For a month. And there’s… someone else. A colleague. I just… God.” Matthew ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it. “I kissed him. At work. And then I left him there. I’m so fucking lost, Patrick.”
There was a long silence on the other end. Patrick’s eyes were intense, absorbing the confession. He didn’t look jealous or angry. He looked calculating, and beneath that, oddly relieved. “You sound like you’re drowning.”
“I am.”
“Okay.” Patrick leaned forward, his face coming closer to the camera. “Listen to me. You need a line back to shore. You need something stable. All this… it’s just noise. You’re better than this circus.”
Matthew said nothing. He just listened, the calm, assured tone of Patrick’s voice a sedative.
“My sister’s wedding is in two weeks. After that, I’m coming. I’m coming to Singapore. We need to talk, face to face. We need to sort this out. All of it. I can help you clear this mess away.”
The proposal should have felt like an invasion. A step backward into a painful history. But in the freefall of this moment, it felt like a harness clicking into place. A known quantity. A life raft, as Patrick had always been, even when he was the one who’d capsized the boat.
“Okay,” Matthew heard himself say, his voice small. He felt no joy, only a profound, weary relief. The decision was made for him. “Okay. After the wedding.”
“I’ll book the flight tonight.” Patrick’s smile was soft, triumphant. “I’ll make this right, Matt. I promise. Just hang on.”
They hung up. The screen went black, reflecting Matthew’s own hollowed-out expression. He sat in the sterile silence of his apartment, the ghosts of Mo, Brian, and Henry receding, replaced by the solid, looming shape of a past he’d flown across the world to escape. It was the easiest decision he’d made in months.