Chapter 122: Chapter 122
He sucked him with a reverence that bordered on cleansing, hot water and lips a baptism. Jonah’s fingers tightened in Tom’s wet hair, his head knocking back against the tile. The steam fogged the glass, sealing them in a private, dripping world. When Jonah came, tasting of salt and their shared sickness, Tom swallowed every drop, then rested his forehead against Jonah’s thigh, breathing hard.
They moved to Düsseldorf two months later, a sudden offer from a European publisher for Tom that paid real money. The industrial Rhine city, with its slick brutalism and hidden altstadt, was a puzzle they fitted themselves into. Their bodies, now in their late twenties, had settled into a wiry permanence, the musculature of men who cycled and walked everywhere, who ate with discipline born of habit, not obsession. The landscape of their arrangement shifted with the geography. It became quieter, more integrated, a background app that hummed but rarely pinged. There were Jens, a literature professor, who Tom saw for quiet afternoons of talk and measured, intellectual sex. There was Kira, a towering, non-binary sculptor who fucked Jonah with a tool-like precision that left him feeling beautifully dismantled. They sent photos, sometimes, but the frantic video economy of their twenties had calmed. The files were still there, an archive on encrypted drives, a digital museum of their former, hungrier selves.
Düsseldorf’s queer scene was paradoxically both expansive and insular. They found a small circle, mostly other expats and a few locals who appreciated their strange, symbiotic dynamic. Their friend Felix, a nervy, brilliant sound designer from Hamburg, was turning thirty. His party was in a converted warehouse space near the MedienHafen, all exposed brick and thumping, minimal techno. The invitation said “dress code: shiny.”
Tom pulled on a silver silk shirt that clung to his narrow shoulders. “Are we getting wasted?” he asked, wiping a smudge from his black boots.
“It’s Felix,” Jonah said, shrugging into a jacket with a faint iridescent sheen. “He’s bought three kegs of that craft pilsner he won’t shut up about. So yes. Probably.”
The party was a sea of sequins and latex and sweat. The bass was a physical pressure in the chest. They drank quickly, lost in the crowd, the noise a welcome eraser of thought. Felix’s pilsner was followed by bottles of clear, potent Korn from a makeshift bar, shots lined up like dominos. Hours blurred into a pulsating smear of colored lights, shouted conversations, and the sticky, beer-slicked floor. Jonah remembers laughing uncontrollably at something Kira said, their hand a warm weight on his lower back. He remembers Tom and Jens in a deep conversation by the fire exit, their heads close together. He remembers another round of shots, the burn a challenge that bloomed into a defiant, sprawling heat.
The final, coherent memory is of the chill night air, shocking and brittle on his face, as they stumbled along the Rheinpromenade. Tom was singing something in mangled German, his arm a dead weight across Jonah’s shoulders. Jonah’s own legs were rubber. The streetlights swam, their halos bleeding into the black river. They must have taken a taxi. The ascent to their third-floor apartment was a Sisyphean nightmare of fumbling keys and muffled curses.
Inside, the world tilted. Tom crashed into the hall table, sending a bowl clattering. He laughed, a wet, hacking sound.
“Scheiße,” he slurred, pawing at the wall for balance.
“Du bist der Scheißer,” Jonah muttered, trying to toe off his shoes. He missed, staggered, and caught himself on the doorframe. The room wasn’t spinning; it was lurching in brutal, unpredictable heaves. A sour wave of pilsner and Korn surged up his throat. He stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, making it just in time to empty a vile torrent into the toilet. The violence of it left him shaking, his eyes streaming. He heard Tom in the living room, groaning.
Flushing, he rinsed his mouth, the water tasting metallic. He leaned on the sink, his reflection in the mirror a pale, bleary stranger with hollow cheeks. The cold tap water he splashed on his face did nothing. The drunkenness was a lead suit, a cognitive muffler. He heard a heavy thud from the other room.
“Tom?” His own voice was gravel.
No answer. He walked out, his movements slow and deliberate. Tom was half on, half off the leather sofa, one leg splayed, the silver shirt rucked up to expose his flat, pale stomach. He was breathing heavily, his eyes closed.
“Komm schon,” Jonah said, his words thick. “Nicht hier.”
Tom grunted, waving a dismissive hand. “Lass mich. Bin fertig.”
The dismissal, the slackness of him, ignited something dark and hot in Jonah’s gut. It wasn’t anger. It was a profound, drunken loneliness, a sudden chasm where the intricate architecture of their shared life should have been. The quiet understanding, the circuit of exchanged looks and stolen data, was gone. All that remained was this stupid, heavy meat, this man who belonged to him but felt galaxies away.
“Nein,” Jonah said, the word coming out harder than intended. He grabbed Tom’s arm, yanking. “Aufstehen. Jetzt.”
“Fass mich nicht an!” Tom snapped, eyes flying open, glazed but sharp with irritation. He tried to pull away, his strength uncoordinated.
The resistance was gasoline. Jonah hauled him upright with a brute force he didn’t know he still possessed. They stumbled together, a clumsy, four-legged beast, towards the bedroom. Tom’s elbow caught Jonah in the ribs.
“Hör auf, du Arschloch!” Tom shouted, his breath a boozy blast.
They fell onto the bed in a tangled heap, limbs akimbo. The fight went out of Tom suddenly, replaced by a heavy passivity. He stared at the ceiling, breathing hard. Jonah lay beside him, the weight of the night crushing him. The silence was acidic. He turned his head. Tom’s profile was sharp against the dark wall, a line of tension in his jaw. Jonah’s hand moved, not guided by thought but by a deeper, needier current. He reached over and palmed the front of Tom’s tight black jeans. He was hard. A thick, insistent bulge under the denim.
Tom’s breath hitched. He didn’t look over.
“Siehst du?” Jonah whispered, his voice rough. “Immer noch.”
Tom remained silent. Jonah fumbled with the button, the zip. He pulled Tom’s cock out. It was flushed and heavy in his cold hand. He began to stroke, a dry, rough friction. Tom made a small sound, a sharp inhale through his nose. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary thrust.
“Das willst du doch,” Jonah said, leaning closer, his mouth near Tom’s ear. “Nach allem. Du brauchst es.”
“Hör auf zu reden,” Tom finally growled, turning his head. His eyes were black pools. He grabbed the front of Jonah’s jacket, pulling him into a clumsy, teeth-clacking kiss. It was all tongue and booze and aggression. They wrestled with clothes, a frantic, graceless shedding of fabric. Jeans were kicked to the floor, shirts torn over heads. Tom shoved Jonah onto his back. He was on him in an instant, his weight a welcome anchor in the spinning room.
No lube. Just spit, hawked clumsily into Tom’s hand. He slicked himself, a few rough strokes, then positioned himself at Jonah’s entrance. The pressure was blunt, shocking.
“Warte—” Jonah gasped.
Tom didn’t wait. He pushed, a single, brutal shove of his hips. The dry, tearing burn was exquisite, a bright line of pain that cut through the drunken fog. Jonah cried out, his back arching. Tom was inside, impossibly deep, the stretch a punishing fullness. He stilled, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of control. Sweat dripped from his chin onto Jonah’s chest.
“So,” Tom panted, his voice ragged. “Jetzt hast du’s.”
He began to move. Slow, at first, each withdrawal a fresh agony, each thrust a searing reclamation. The sound was raw, a sticky, rhythmic slap. Jonah dug his heels into the mattress, pushing up to meet him, the pain bleeding into a devastating, all-consuming heat. He wanted to be ruined by this. He wanted to feel owned, branded, stripped of every other ghost, every other man who’d ever been here. This was pure. It was filthy. It was theirs.
“Scheiß auf die anderen,” Jonah gritted out, his hands scrabbling at Tom’s slick back. “Nur du. Immer nur du.”
Tom’s rhythm fractured. He drove into Jonah with a new, untamed violence, his hips pistoning. The bedframe slammed against the wall in a steady, punishing beat. His face was a mask of pained ecstasy. Jonah reached between them, jerking his own cock in a few frantic strokes. It was too much. The friction, the invasion, the sheer, drunk honesty of it.
“Ich komme,” Tom gasped, the words a hot rush against Jonah’s neck. His body locked, muscles cording, and he plunged deep one final time. Jonah felt the hot, internal pulsing, the intimate flood. It tipped him over. His own release erupted in thick, sporadic spurts across his stomach.
Collapse was instantaneous. Tom pulled out and rolled off, a dead weight beside him. The room smelled of sex, sweat, and stale alcohol. The only sound was their ragged, synchronizing breath. Jonah’s body throbbed with a deep, satisfying ache. He felt hollowed out, scrubbed clean.
Tom’s hand found his in the dark, their fingers lacing together, sticky and tight.
“Bleibst du?” Jonah whispered into the darkness, the question from a decade ago, from their very beginning, surfacing through the murk.
Tom’s grip tightened. “Wo denn sonst, du Idiot?”
The morning light was a cruel instrument. It carved through the gap in the blinds, slicing across Jonah’s face. He woke to a jackhammer in his skull and a desert in his mouth. His body was a single, throbbing complaint—muscles sore from the drunken fight, a deep, tender ache between his legs. He groaned, turning his head. Tom was a motionless lump beside him, the duvet pulled over his head.
The bathroom was a crime scene. He swallowed two ibuprofen with a shaky handful of water from the tap. His reflection was ghastly, his eyes like pissholes in snow. Last night’s ritual of mess was a blur, but the physical aftermath was explicit and damning. He showered, the hot water stinging. The memory of Tom inside him, the raw, unlubricated friction, returned with cinematic clarity. He winced, pressing a hand to the tile, letting the water sluice over him.
He made coffee, the sound of the grinder a visceral assault. When he carried two mugs back to the bedroom, Tom was sitting up, staring blankly at the wall. His hair was a disaster. He took the mug without a word.
They sat in the wreckage of the bed, sipping in silence. The taste was bitter, medicinal. Jonah finally spoke, his voice thin.
“Was zur Hölle war das?”
Tom didn’t look at him. He shrugged, a minimal lift of one shoulder. “Wir waren besoffen.”
“Das war nicht nur besoffen,” Jonah said. It had been something else, something feral and fundamental, a system reboot conducted with a meat cleaver.
Tom finally met his gaze. His eyes were red-rimmed, but clear. “Hast du’s bereut?”
The question hung in the stale air. Jonah considered the ache, the memory of that clarifying pain, the absolute absence of any other thought in that moment. He shook his head slowly. “Nein. Du?”
“Nein.”
Another silence, softer this time. Tom put his mug down on the floor. He shifted, wincing slightly, and reached for his phone on the nightstand. He swiped, opened an app. Not Grindr.His contacts. He held the screen out to Jonah.
It was a text thread with Jens, the professor. The last message, sent this morning at 8:03, was from Tom.
Hallo Jens. Ich werde unsere Treffen für eine Weile pausieren müssen. Brauche etwas Zeit. Alles Gute.
A similar thread was open with Kira. An identical message, sent moments later.
Jonah’s breath caught. He looked from the phone to Tom’s face. Tom’s expression was neutral, but there was a faint tremor in his hand holding the device. This wasn’t a drunken promise. This was a morning-after action, concrete and deliberate.
“Warum?” Jonah asked, his throat tight.
Tom took his phone back. He stared at the screen, his thumb hovering over his own profile in another app. “Weil ich müde bin,” he said, and the exhaustion in his voice was deeper than any hangover. “Müde von der Inventur.” He looked up. “Gestern Nacht… das war kein Inventar. Das war…”
“Echt,” Jonah finished for him.
Tom nodded.“Ja. Echt. Und es hat wehgetan. Und ich will mehr davon.” He put the phone down, screen facing the mattress. “Nur das. Keine Videos mehr. Keine Berichte. Nur das.”
Jonah’s own phone, charging on his side of the bed, buzzed. A notification glowed on the screen. It was from Grindr. A message from an unfamiliar profile, a blur of generic greetings. He looked at it, then at Tom, who was watching him. Without breaking eye contact, Jonah reached over. He picked up his phone, unlocked it, and opened the app. He didn’t read the message. He went directly to his profile, to the settings. His fingers moved with a strange, calm finality.
He deleted his account.
The process asked for confirmation twice.He confirmed. The app blinked, then returned to a generic login screen. He placed the phone back on the nightstand, the screen dark.
Tom let out a long, slow breath. He finished his coffee, the sound loud in the quiet room. He swung his legs out of bed, the sheets pooling around his waist. He stood, naked, and stretched, his lean body a pale column in the dusty light. He walked to the window and tugged the cord, raising the blinds fully.
Harsh, sober daylight flooded the room, illuminating every detail: the discarded clothes from the night before, the empty water glass, the two empty coffee mugs, the two dark phones on the nightstands. It was a stark and ordinary mess.
“Komm,” Tom said, not turning around. He looked out at the grey expanse of the Düsseldorf rooftops. “Lass uns frühstücken gehen. Irgendwas Fettiges.”
He sank to his knees in the tub, the water sluicing over them, and took Jonah into his mouth with a singular, worshipping focus that felt like an apology, a thanks, and a promise all at once. This cycle, perfected over a dozen cities and hundreds of shared, digital secrets, carried them from Brooklyn to Berlin, and finally to a quiet, leafy street in Düsseldorf.
The weight they had lost in their twenties never returned. Their bodies settled into a permanent leanness, a catalog of sharp hips and visible ribs that their tailored German clothes hung from elegantly. They were, to anyone who didn't know the basement or the videos, simply two handsome, slightly severe foreign professionals in love. Their sex life continued in its established, intricate pattern, a machine oiled by distance and digital betrayal. But in Düsseldorf, a low-grade fatigue had begun to seep into the ritual. The traded videos sometimes felt like homework. The frantic reclamation sex had moments of rote performance. They were, against all odds, growing accustomed to their own exquisite damage.
Leo’s 30th birthday party was held at a sprawling, noisy Kneipe in the Altstadt. “Ihr müsst komplett abschießen, ihr seid meine Ehrengäste!” Leo had bellowed, slinging thick arms around their shoulders. They obliged. They drank steins of dark, malty Altbier until the edges of the room softened. They shot clear, vicious Korn with Leo’s rowdy friend group. Laughter became too loud. Sentences blurred.
“Scheiße, Tom, erinnerst du dich an diesen Typen in Brooklyn? Der mit dem Dachboden?” Jonah slurred, leaning heavily on the sticky wooden table. His German, usually fluent, was thick and clumsy.
“Der dir das Video gemacht hat, wo du geweint hast?” Tom yelled back over the music, his eyes glassy. “Ja! Das war geil!” He didn’t sound like he meant it. It was just something to say.
They drank more. The night became a smear of shouted conversations, spilled beer soaking their jeans, and a sickly sweet shot of something bright pink that Leo produced with a terrifying grin. Jonah felt the first serious lurch in his gut during a stumbling walk to the bathroom. The tiles seemed to pitch. He braced himself over a toilet, breathing through his nose. Nicht kotzen, nicht kotzen. He didn’t.Not then.
The final hour was a battle of attrition. They were plied with Schnapps. Someone put a ridiculous hat on Tom. Jonah’s vision tunneled. The cheerful, pounding music began to feel like an assault. He caught Tom’s eye across the table; Tom’s face was pale and clammy, his smile rigid. The silent communication they’d honed over a decade was stripped down to a primal, miserable signal: Oh Gott. Wir sind völlig im Arsch.
The walk to the taxi was a shambling, silent ordeal. The cool night air did nothing to settle the riot in Jonah’s stomach. It made it worse. The world tilted with every step. “Ich halte es nicht mehr aus,” Tom muttered, gagging into a hedge.
“Nicht hier, komm schon,” Jonah grunted, pulling him along, his own saliva pooling.
They collapsed into the back of a taxi, giving their address in broken, desperate phrases. The car’s motion was catastrophic. Jonah pressed his forehead to the cold window, squeezing his eyes shut. Tom breathed in short, ragged puffs beside him.
“Bitte fahren Sie schneller,” Tom whispered to the driver.
They stumbled out onto their quiet street, fumbling for euros. The fifty-meter walk to their apartment door felt like a polar expedition. Jonah’s key refused to cooperate with the lock. His hands were shaking. “Gib her,” Tom slurred, snatching it. He missed the lock entirely, scratching the paint.
Finally, the door yielded. They fell into the dim hallway, kicking off shoes. The relative stability of their home was the final permission their bodies needed.
“Ich muss kotzen,” Jonah stated, a flat, horrifying certainty. He lurched for the bathroom.
“Ich auch,” Tom groaned, right behind him.
There was no time for dignity. They crowded the small bathroom, Jonah sinking to his knees before the toilet, Tom braced over the sink. Jonah’s body convulsed, a hot, acidic torrent of beer, Schnapps, and undigested pretzel spewing from him in violent waves. The sound was raw, guttural. The smell, instantly pervasive, was yeasty and sour. He gagged, spitting, tears springing to his eyes from the force.
Beside him, Tom was retching into the porcelain basin, a thinner, clearer stream followed by deep, heaving dry spasms that shook his entire frame. “Scheiße,” he croaked between gasps. “So viel Scheiße.”
They took turns, a pathetic relay of sickness. When Jonah’s heaves subsided to shaky tremors, he slumped against the bathtub, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Tom turned on the tap, splashing water on his face, rinsing the sink with a trembling hand. The room stank. Their clothes were damp with sweat and splatter.
“Das war die absolut beschissenste Idee,” Jonah mumbled, his head throbbing.
Tom didn’t answer. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor, his legs splayed. He looked hollowed out, his skin a ghostly white. For a long time, the only sounds were their labored breathing and the drip of the tap.
Tom finally spoke, his voice a rough scratch. “Weißt du was? Mir ist egal.” He gestured weakly between them. “Das hier. Alles.Die Videos. Der ganze Scheiß.”
Jonah turned his heavy head. “Was meinst du?”
“Ich bin so verdammt müde, Jonah.” Tom’s eyes were red-rimmed, staring at the opposite wall. “Immer jemanden suchen. Immer was filmen. Immer so tun, als wäre das der heiligste Scheiß aller Zeiten.” He let his head thunk back against the wall. “Es ist nur noch anstrengend.”
The words hung in the vomit-scented air. They were blasphemy. They were the unspoken truth that had been curdling for months, maybe years. Jonah felt no outrage, only a staggering relief. The circuit had finally tripped.
“Ja,” Jonah said, the word a long exhale. “Mir auch.” He looked at the mess, at their ruined clothes, at Tom’s defeated posture. “Das ist das Realste, was wir seit Jahren gemacht haben.”
A weak, choked sound escaped Tom. It was a laugh. “Wir kotzen uns zusammen kaputt. Romantisch.”
“Ehrlicher als das andere Zeug,” Jonah said. He pushed himself up, his body protesting. He wet a hand towel under the cold tap. He didn’t give it to Tom. He crawled over and, with a clumsy tenderness, wiped Tom’s mouth and chin himself. Tom’s eyes fluttered closed.
“Komm,” Jonah said. “Nicht hier.”
They helped each other up, stripped off their foul shirts, and left them in a pile on the bathroom floor. They didn’t brush their teeth. They stumbled to the bedroom and fell onto the mattress in their underwear. The spinning room began to slow. Tom curled onto his side, his back to Jonah. Jonah stared at the dark ceiling, the throbbing in his head a metronome.
He thought of the video from earlier that week, a perfunctory exchange with a Danish architect. He thought of the planned hookup for next Thursday, already penciled into their shared calendar. It all felt like paperwork. The only thing that felt real, visceral, and unbearably intimate was the shared, humiliating purge still lingering in his sinuses and the heat of Tom’s back a few inches away.
He reached out. His hand found the sharp knobs of Tom’s spine through his damp t-shirt. He didn’t stroke. He just laid his palm there, a flat, warm weight. Tom’s breathing hitched. Then a bony hand reached back, fingers intertwining with Jonah’s, gripping with a sudden, fierce strength. They lay like that, two wrecked skeletons wired together at the hand, listening to each other breathe in the dark. The silence was total. For the first time in a very long time, it wasn’t waiting to be filled.