Chapter 123: Chapter 123
””
The sentence on Jonah’s screen was an alien artifact. He belongs to the idea now. It wasn’t jealousy that gripped him; it was a profound, disorienting vertigo. He checked Tom’s location on their shared app. It pulsed in Flingern-Nord, an industrial zone by the river. The video replayed in his mind, not the sex, but the boot, the sawhorse, the erasure of their history.
He grabbed his coat.
The address corresponded to a shuttered auto repair shop. The roller door was slightly ajar. A single bulb illuminated a concrete cavern. Tom was sitting on a low crate, dressed, shivering.He was alone. He looked up as Jonah entered. His face was pale, wiped clean of expression.
“Wo ist er?” Jonah’s voice echoed.Tom shrugged. The gesture was disturbingly light, as if his shoulders held no weight. “Er ist gegangen. Hat gesagt, das war das Ende.” He left. Said that was the end.
“Bist du okay?” The question felt absurd.
Tom looked at his hands. “Es war nur eine Performance. Ich war das Objekt.” It was just a performance. I was the object.
“Das war mehr,” Jonah said, stepping closer. The air smelled of oil and cement dust. That’s more.
“Es war, was ich wollte. Eine reine Idee.Keine Person. Keine Geschichte.” Tom finally met his eyes. “Es hat funktioniert. Er hat es aus mir herausgeholt, und jetzt ist es weg. Das alte Ding.” It was what I wanted. A pure idea. Not a person. No history.It worked. He pulled it out of me, and now it's gone. The old thing.
The 'old thing.' The ghost of Adrian.The circuit. The entire architecture of their shared corruption, condensed into a single, brutal scene and then declared dead by a stranger in a garage.
Jonah didn't touch him. They walked back to the U-Bahn in silence. Back in their Bilk apartment, Tom went straight to the shower. Jonah sat at the table, staring at their two coffee cups from that morning. They felt like relics from another epoch.
That night, in bed, Tom was the one who initiated. He turned to Jonah, his movements deliberate. He kissed him, a dry, closed-mouth press. He guided Jonah’s hand between his legs. He was hard. Jonah entered him in the dark. There was no spoken dynamic, no fantasy, no ghosts in the room. It was just friction, warmth, and a profound, hollow sadness. They came quietly, separately, and slept.
The ‘pure idea’ had indeed vanished. The compulsive hunt ceased. They deleted the apps again. The shared thrill was gone, leaving a vacuum that slowly filled with the mundane sediment of a shared life. They worked.They cooked. They learned German properly, enrolling in a Volkshochschule course. They made a few friends—other expats, a couple of German designers from Jonah’s new job at a small studio.
The memory of that garage never dissolved, but it fossilized, becoming a strange foundational stone in their new, quieter structure.
Years passed. Their bodies, once sharpened by anxiety, filled out slightly with the comfortable routine of their late twenties. They moved to a better apartment in Unterbilk, with a real bedroom and a balcony overlooking a quiet Hinterhof. They got a cat. They bought a proper coffee machine. Their lives assumed a shape that was, by all external measures, stable and even dull.
Leo, the graphic designer from their Portland days, remained a faint, friendly ghost in their digital periphery, a ‘like’ on a social media post, a Christmas card. Ben, the jolly barista from Leo’s stories, was a name they knew, a character in anecdotes. Their own past felt similarly distant, a series of poorly lit vignettes in another language.
Then came the invitation for Leo’s thirtieth. A visit to Portland. A week-long trip. It felt like an archaeological dig into a former self.
The party was at a queer bar called The Tipsy Otter. It was everything their Düsseldorf life was not: loud, sticky, saturated in the communal sweat of a shared native tongue. Leo was rounder, brighter, his laugh a booming, familiar cannonade. Ben, his partner, was exactly as described: a huggable bear of a man with a smile that could power a small grid. They were surrounded by a vortex of friends—artists, teachers, a boisterous rugby player named Marcus who kept clapping people on the back with seismic force.
Jonah and Tom stood by the bar, holding local IPAs. They were outsiders, observers. The English in their ears felt like a cosplay, a costume they hadn’t worn in years and that no longer fit quite right.
“You guys are so quiet!” Leo bellowed, sweeping over, throwing an arm around each of them. “This is wild, having you here!Get drunk! It’s my birthday, you have to!”
And they did. The beer turned to whiskey. The unfamiliar freedom of speaking English without thinking unlocked a rusty floodgate. They laughed at jokes they only half-understood. They danced badly on the crowded floor. Marcus, sweating through his shirt, kept buying them shots of a vile, honey-colored liquor. “For the Europeans! Builds character!”
Tom, who had the tolerance of a bird, was the first to go green. He was leaning against the sticky wall near the restrooms, his face beaded with a cold sweat. Jonah, his own vision blurring at the edges, swayed over to him. The roar of the music pulsed in his teeth.“Hey. Hey. Geht’s dir gut?” The German slipped out automatically.
Tom shook his head, a tiny, desperate motion. “Die Wände drehen sich.” The walls are spinning.
“Wir müssen nach Hause.”
“Ich kann nicht laufen. Mein Kopf…” I can’t walk. My head…
Jonah tried to guide him toward the door, but the press of bodies was too thick. Ben noticed, his jolly face shifting into practical concern. “Oh shit, guys. Okay. Here, through the back. Staff exit. Come on.” He shoved a path, leading them past stacked kegs and a glowing ice machine into a cool, piss-scented alley.
The cold air was a slap. Tom immediately staggered to the gutter, braced his hands on his knees, and vomited violently. The sound was horribly raw, a guttural retching that went on and on. Jonah held his shoulders, feeling the convulsions wrack Tom’s slim frame. Whiskey, beer, and the ghost of a street-hot-dog from earlier splattered onto the asphalt.
“Alles raus,” Tom groaned between heaves, strings of saliva hanging from his lips. “Gott, ich will sterben.” Everything’s coming out. God, I want to die.
Ben hovered, a sympathetic silhouette. “Do you need water? I’ll get a taxi.”
Jonah just rubbed Tom’s back, the bones sharp under his palm. “Bleib einfach da. Atme.” Just stay there. Breathe.
Finally, the heaving subsided to dry, wrenching coughs. Tom spat, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes were bloodshot, streaming. “Das war so viel Kotzen. So verdammt viel.” That was so much puking. So fucking much.
Marcus stumbled out the back door then, holding two fresh shots. He took in the scene. “Oh, mate! The technicolor yawn!Bad luck. Here, this’ll settle your stomach!” He proffered a glass.
Tom looked at it with pure terror. “Wenn du mir das bringst, kotze ich auf deine Schuhe.” If you bring that near me, I’ll puke on your shoes.
Marcus laughed, a great booming sound that echoed in the alley, and drained both shots himself.
The taxi ride was a spinning, nauseous blur. Tom spent it with his head against the cool window, groaning. Jonah focused on the passing streetlights, each one a starburst. They somehow made it up the stairs to Leo’s spare room. Tom collapsed onto the bed, fully clothed, and immediately passed out, his breathing shallow.
Jonah sat on the floor, the room tilting. The adrenaline of caretaking was wearing off, and the full, crushing weight of the alcohol descended. His stomach lurched. He barely made it to the small ensuite bathroom before he was on his knees, his own supper erupting into the toilet bowl. It was a sour, punishing cascade. He heaved until his abs ached and his throat burned.
Spent, he flushed, rinsed his mouth, and stumbled back to the bedroom. He peeled off Tom’s shoes and jeans, then his own. He crawled into the narrow bed beside Tom’s unconscious form. The room smelled of sweat, stale beer, and faint vomit. Tom murmured in his sleep, a slurred, German fragment: “Hör auf… der Boden bewegt sich…” Stop… the floor is moving…
Jonah wrapped an arm around Tom’s waist, anchoring them both. The catastrophic drunkenness, the shared, humiliating physical collapse, felt like a brutal acid that had burned away everything else—the estrangement, the performance, the ‘pure idea,’ the silent meals, the careful Deutsch. All that remained was this: two bodies, ill and vulnerable, clinging together in a dark, unfamiliar room thousands of miles from home. It was the most honest thing they had been in years.
Outside, a siren wailed, a lonely sound in the Portland night. Jonah pressed his forehead against the knobs of Tom’s spine and fell into a black, dreamless void.
Don't try to get him back.
The message hung in the air of the clean kitchen like a chemical trace, poisonous and incomprehensible. Jonah stared at the words until they dissolved into shapeless glyphs. He tried Tom’s phone. It rang once and went to voicemail. The flat, high-ceilinged silence of the Bilk apartment pressed down on him, amplifying the frantic thud of his own heart. He grabbed his keys and jacket, the motion automatic. The video played on a loop behind his eyes: the concrete floor, the boot, the cold proclamation of erasure.
He ran down the four flights of stairs, the echoes of his footfalls chasing him into the damp Düsseldorf night. He had no destination. The message provided none. He traced the possible geography of Tom’s destruction—the industrial yards behind the Hauptbahnhof, the deserted warehouses along the Rhine, the anonymous parking garages in Pempelfort. He walked for hours, the chill seeping through his jacket, scanning every shadowed doorway for a glimpse of Tom’s lanky silhouette. His phone remained stubbornly dark. Just after three in the morning, soaked with a fine, cold mist, he turned back toward Bilk, defeat a lead weight in his stomach.
He climbed the stairs. He pushed the door open. The overhead light in the main room was off. Only the faint blue glow from the streetlamps bled through the large window, painting Tom’s shape on the sofa. He was sitting upright, perfectly still, wrapped in a blanket.
“Tom?” Jonah’s voice was raw.
No response. Jonah approached slowly, as one would a startled animal. In the sodium light, he could see Tom’s face was blank, emptied. He was staring at the far wall, unblinking. He still smelled faintly of concrete dust and a stranger’s cologne.
“Wo warst du?” Jonah whispered, kneeling on the floor in front of him. Where were you?
Tom’s eyes drifted down, focusing on Jonah with a terrible slowness, as if remembering who he was. “Irgendwo.” Somewhere.
“Der Jäger… die Nachricht…” Jonah couldn’t finish.
“Er hat mir das Telefon zurückgegeben. Nachdem er sie geschickt hat.” Tom’s voice was a monotone, stripped of all affect. He gave me the phone back. After he sent it.
Jonah reached out, wanting to touch his knee, but stopped. The space around Tom felt electrified, dangerous. “Was hat er getan?”
A long pause. The tram clattered past below. “Er hat mich benutzt. Dann hat er mir erklärt, was ich war. Während er es tat. Er hatte Recht.” He used me. Then he explained what I was. While he did it. He was right.
“Nein, Tom—”
“Doch.” The single syllable was final. Tom stood, the blanket falling away. He was naked beneath, his skin pale in the gloom. He walked to their bed in the corner of the room and lay down on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Ich brauche Schlaf.”
Jonah didn’t move from the floor. He watched the rise and fall of Tom’s chest, too regular, too controlled. The circuit was more than broken. It had been weaponized, turned inward. Der Jäger hadn’t just taken Tom’s body; he’d infected the narrative, the very idea of their shared project. For days, Tom moved through the flat like a sleepwalker. He went to work at Kännchen, performed his tasks, returned. He ate when Jonah put food in front of him. He showered. But he was gone. The vibrant, sharp-witted man had been replaced by a quiet, efficient shell. He did not touch Jonah. He did not look at his phone.
The video files on their devices became digital corpses. Jonah deleted his entire folder one evening in a fit of nauseated rage. Tom, watching from the table as he scrolled, made no comment.
Sex was unthinkable. The mere idea felt like a violation of a sacred quarantine. Jonah’s own skin began to feel like a stranger’s, his lean body a useless machine. They existed in parallel, two satellites in a decaying orbit, sharing silence and four walls.
The fracture might have been permanent if not for Leo.
The message popped up on Jonah’s phone a month later, on a dull Tuesday afternoon. He’d kept the app, a morbid, habitual tic, but hadn’t opened it. The notification banner glowed: LeoTypes. His stomach flipped. He opened it.
LeoTypes: Hey.Long time. Random, but I’m in Düsseldorf for a design conference. Dripping with corporate swag. You still around? Fancy a real beer, for old times’ sake? No expectations.
Jonah stared.Leo. The graphic designer. The kind eyes. The cat with the Tolkien name. The one who had talked to him, after. A memory from a sweeter, less complicated corruption. He glanced at Tom, who was methodically peeling an apple at the sink, his back turned.
“Was ist?” Tom asked, not turning around. What is it?
“Eine Nachricht. Von Leo. Dem Typen aus dem anderen Leben.” A message. From Leo. The guy from the other life.
Tom’s peeling slowed. He said nothing.
Jonah typed back. Drafter01: Yeah. I’m here. A beer sounds… human. When/where?
They met at a quiet Altbier pub in the Altstadt, away from the tourist crush. Leo looked the same, maybe a little fuller in the face, his smile instantly easing the perpetual knot between Jonah’s shoulders. They hugged, an awkward, sincere thing.
“You look…” Leo searched for a word, settling on, “intense.”
“Düsseldorf,” Jonah deflected, signaling for two beers.
They talked about design, about the city, about nothing. After the second beer, Leo leaned forward. “So. You and Tom. Still the epic love story?”
The question, so blunt and accurate, winded Jonah. He studied the wood grain of the table. “It’s… complicated. We broke something. Or someone broke it for us.”
Leo listened as Jonah sketched the outline—the perfected German system, the recording, the escalation, Der Jäger. He didn’t share the video, but he described its content, its philosophical cruelty. Leo’s face grew somber. “Shit. That’s… that’s not play anymore. That’s something else. That’s annihilation.”
“He’s a ghost,” Jonah said, the admission costing him. “I live with a ghost.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “You need to leave. Not the city. The story. You’ve both become characters in a fucking ugly novel. You need to throw the book away.”
“How?”
“By doing something stupid and normal. By remembering you’re just two guys.Get stupid drunk. Go to a terrible party. Puke in a bush. Something that has nothing to do with any of this.” He finished his beer. “My friend Ben, a barista here, is having his 30th birthday on Saturday at a queer bar called The Tipsy Otter. It will be messy, loud, and full of people who have no idea who you are. Come. Bring Tom. Get him out of that fucking haunted apartment.”
Jonah conveyed the invitation that night, phrasing it as a command. “We gehen Samstag auf eine Geburtstagsparty. Eines Freundes von Leo.” We are going to a birthday party on Saturday. A friend of Leo’s.
Tom, lying on the bed, blinked slowly. “Warum?” Why?
“Weil wir es müssen.” Because we have to.
Saturday arrived, heavy with low, grey clouds. They dressed in clean, anonymous clothes. The walk to The Tipsy Otter was silent. The bar was exactly as Leo had promised: cozy, dim, vibrating with a loud, uncomplicated joy. Vintage posters plastered the walls, and a jukebox fought with the chatter. The air was thick with the scent of whiskey, beer, and perfume. Ben, the birthday boy, was a warmly smiling man with an infectious laugh, instantly pulling Tom into a conversation about a fantasy novel series. A hulking rugby player named Marcus, a friend of Ben’s, clapped Jonah on the back and thrust a shot of cheap tequila into his hand. “Für den Neuankömmling!” For the newcomer!They drank. The first shot was fire. The second was easier. Marcus kept them coming, his enthusiasm a tidal force. Leo appeared, grinning, and handed them bottles of Kölsch. “Drink up. The night is young and Ben’s gift is a karaoke machine.”
The alcohol worked quickly on their empty stomachs and starved spirits. The noise, the warmth, the sheer, undemanding humanity of it was a balm. Tom’s shoulders, perpetually hunched, began to relax. He even laughed at something Marcus boomed, a real, startled sound that made Jonah’s heart clench. They drank to forget. They drank to dissolve. They drank to kill the ghost.
Karaoke was a screaming, joyous disaster. Jonah, propelled by three more shots, found himself on a tiny stage murdering a German pop song with Marcus, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. The room spun in a happy, golden blur. Tom was at a tall table, deep in conversation with Ben and a sharp-faced woman, a genuine, if wobbly, smile on his face. It was working. They were becoming just two guys at a party.
But they had misjudged the dosage. The drinking was not cathartic; it was vengeful. They were drowning the ghost, but also themselves. Hours blurred. Shots of Jägermeister followed beer chasers. Someone passed around a bottle of pepper-infused vodka. Jonah lost count. Tom’s careful containment shattered. He was talking loudly, his gestures broad, his eyes glittering with a manic, unfamiliar light. He stumbled into Jonah, breathing hot, boozy air in his face. “Ich fühle mich… flüssig.” I feel… liquid.
The room’s tilt became a violent whirl. The cheerful noise curdled into a overwhelming roar. Jonah’s stomach, a toxic vat of mixed spirits, clenched hard. He tasted acid at the back of his throat. He saw Tom’s face go pale, the glitter vanishing into a sickly sheen. Leo appeared, his own face concerned. “Okay, I think you two have officially entered the mega-drunk zone. Let’s get some air.”
He herded them toward the back door, into a narrow, brick-lined alley that reeked of wet stone and garbage. The cold air was a slap. It didn’t sober them; it destabilized everything. Jonah’s knees buckled. He braced himself against the damp wall, the world pitching. Tom was a few feet away, bent double, hands on his knees.
“Oh, scheiße,” Tom muttered.
Jonah’s stomach inverted. A violent, unstoppable surge clawed up his esophagus. He turned his head and vomited explosively onto the cobblestones, the contents of the evening—beer, tequila, half-digested bar snacks—erupting in a sour, choking geyser. He gagged, spitting, strings of saliva and puke hanging from his lips.
Next to him, Tom made a guttural, desperate sound. “Ich muss kotzen!” he gasped, and then he was vomiting too, the sound more wrenching, more pathetic. It went on and on, a symphony of wretched excess. He dry-heaved painfully after the liquid was gone, his whole thin body convulsing with each spasm.
When it finally subsided, they were both on their knees in the alley, panting, spitting, the bitter, acrid taste filling their mouths and noses. The glorious, numbing drunk was gone, stripped away to reveal raw, trembling, humiliated flesh. Jonah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, shivering violently. He looked over at Tom, who was crying, tears cutting clean tracks through the sweat and filth on his cheeks. Not dramatic sobs, but a silent, hopeless seepage.
Leo hovered, a steady presence. “Okay.Okay. The purging is complete. Let’s get you home.”
They were incapable of protest. Leo and Marcus half-carried, half-walked them the twenty minutes back to Bilk, a grim, stumbling procession. Up the four flights, each step a monumental effort. Leo deposited them inside their apartment.“Water. Bed. Nothing else.”
The door clicked shut. They stood in the dark hallway, the reek of vomit and sweat clinging to them, a palpable testament to their ruin. Tom began to shake, the crying turning into shuddering gasps. He looked at Jonah, his eyes wide with a horrified, sober clarity. “So viel Dreck.” So much filth.
Jonah stepped forward. He didn’t hug him. He took Tom’s face in his hands, his thumbs wiping at the tear tracks, smearing the grime. Their foreheads touched. They smelled of puke and failure.
“Unser Dreck,” Jonah whispered, his voice cracked. Our filth.
He led Tom to the bathroom. He turned on the shower, steam quickly fogging the small room. He undressed Tom first, peeling the foul-smelling clothes from his trembling body, then stripped himself. They stood under the scalding water, letting it sluice over them, brown rivulets swirling at their feet. Jonah took the soap and washed Tom’s back, his thin arms, his chest. The act was clinical, tender, devoid of any erotic charge. It was an excavation.
Tom turned, his skin flushed pink from the heat. He looked at Jonah’s body, the familiar landscape made strange by their shared abjection. His hand reached out, fingers touching Jonah’s sternum, tracing the ridge of bone. The touch was a question.
Jonah answered by pulling him into a kiss. It was not passionate. It was desperate and searching, a tasting of shared ruin. Their mouths still held the ghost of bile. It didn’t matter. It was part of the truth now.
They stumbled out, dripping, and fell onto the bed, towel-dried but still damp. The streetlight painted them in silver and shadow. Tom rolled onto his back, his breath hitching. “Ich habe Angst, mich zu berühren.” I’m afraid to touch myself.
“Dann lass mich.” Jonah’s voice was low. Then let me.
He moved down the bed, his intention clear. He pushed Tom’s thighs apart, his hands firm. He bent his head and took Tom’s soft cock into his mouth. It was not about arousal, not yet. It was a re-consecration. He sucked gently, wanting to replace the chemical burn with warmth, the memory of violation with this specific, focused attention. He worked him with his tongue, his lips, his own need a secondary, thrumming thing.
Tom’s body responded slowly, a hesitant stirring against his tongue. A soft moan escaped him, the first sound of pleasure in months that wasn’t taped or curated. “Jonah…” His hand found Jonah’s hair, not to guide, but to anchor.
Jonah felt him harden fully, the weight and taste a sudden, visceral anchor in the spinning room. He sucked harder, his own neglected cock stirring against the sheet. He pulled off, looking up the length of Tom’s body. Their eyes met in the half-light.No cameras. No audience of one. Just the two of them and the raw, undeniable fact of their survival.
“Ich will dich spüren,” Tom whispered, his voice ragged. “Echt. Jetzt.” I want to feel you.For real. Now.
Jonah moved up his body, kissing him, their legs tangling. He fumbled for the lube in the bedside drawer, the old, half-empty bottle. He coated his fingers, his movements clumsy with urgency and residual drunkenness. He pressed a finger against Tom, pushing inside. The tight, hot clench was a shock, a homecoming to a place they had both forsaken. Tom arched, a sharp intake of breath.
“Mehr,” he pleaded. More.
Jonah added a second, working him open with a deliberate, almost reverent slowness. This wasn’t a frantic reclamation or a sterile routine. It was a rebuilding. He scissored his fingers, feeling the muscle yield, remembering the pathways. Tom’s hips rocked, fucking himself on Jonah’s hand. “Jetzt. Bitte, jetzt.” Now. Please, now.
Jonah slicked himself, the cool gel a stark contrast to his heated skin. He positioned himself, the head of his cock nudging at Tom’s entrance. He pushed. The breach was slow, immense, a perfect, stretching fullness that made Tom cry out, his back bowing off the mattress. Jonah sank deeper, and deeper still, until he was sheathed completely, their hips flush. He stopped, buried inside him, trembling with the effort of stillness.
Tom’s legs locked around his waist, pulling him closer, deeper. His eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on Jonah’s. “Du bist da,” he breathed. You are here.
“Immer,” Jonah gasped. Always.
He began to move. The rhythm was deep and slow, a piston driving out poison, memory, ghosts. Each withdrawal was an exhalation of the past. Each thrust was an insistence on the present, the physical, the real. The slap of skin was a clean, honest sound. Tom met him thrust for thrust, his heels digging into the small of Jonah’s back. He chanted Jonah’s name, a broken litany, each repetition a nail sealing a coffin shut on Der Jäger, on the videos, on the circuit.
“Fick mich,” Tom sobbed, his hands scrambling on Jonah’s sweat-slick back. “Fick alles weg.” Fuck me. Fuck it all away.
Jonah obeyed. His pace increased, driven by a raw, uncomplicated need. This was not for show. It was for salvation. The coil in his gut tightened, a pure, bright heat. Tom’s own cock, trapped between their stomachs, was leaking steadily, a wet smear against their skin.
“Ich komme,” Jonah warned, his rhythm fragmenting into short, brutal drives.
“In mir,” Tom begged, his body clenching tight around him. “Komm in mir.” Inside me