Chapter 6: Obsession
The hollow feeling didn’t leave. It simply became the chamber where Dmitri now lived, rent-free and constantly humming in Matthew’s mind. The obsession was a quiet, insidious thing at first, a background noise that soon became a deafening din.
It started with the texts. They were no longer occasional; they were the rhythm of his day.
Dmitri, 7:15 a.m.: Waking up with a view of grey clouds and a committee on agricultural tariffs. My mind is elsewhere. Picturing the exact shade of pink your skin turns when I’ve had my mouth on you.
Matthew, in the embassy elevator, felt a jolt that straightened his spine. He typed back, a flush creeping up his neck.
Matthew: The committee sounds more stimulating. My day is security briefings. Hardly inspiring.
Dmitri: Everything is inspiration if you know how to look. The way you’d shift in your chair, restless. The way you’d bite your lip reading some classified threat. I’d make you wait. Make you ache through every single slide.
The meetings became unbearable. Matthew sat through interminable discussions on EU regulatory alignment, his phone a live wire in his pocket. He’d craft responses under the table, his blood heating.
Matthew: You’re a distraction I can’t afford.
Dmitri: Then afford me tonight. My place. I want to taste that distraction on my tongue.
They met two, sometimes three times a week. Dmitri’s apartment in Ballsbridge was stark, modern, a diplomat’s temporary shell. The sex was never tender. It was a combustion. It happened against walls, on the unforgiving glass of his dining table, once on the floor of his balcony with the damp night air on their backs. It was exactly what Matthew had asked for: hard, consuming, a temporary obliteration.
One Tuesday evening, Dmitri pushed him face-first against the cold stainless steel of his refrigerator. He yanked Matthew’s trousers and briefs down to his thighs, his own already open. He spit into his palm, slicked himself, and entered him in one brutal thrust. Matthew cried out, his forehead knocking against the metal.
“Quiet,” Dmitri grunted into his ear, one hand fisted in his hair, the other clamping on his hip. “The neighbors have delicate sensibilities.” He set a relentless, pounding pace. Each slam drove a choked gasp from Matthew’s lips. It was raw, almost painful, devoid of any lubricant but spit and need. Matthew clawed at the smooth steel, his knees shaking, his own cock hard and trapped against the cold surface. He came like that, with a ragged sob, spilling over the fridge door as Dmitri fucked him through his climax, finally spilling into the condom with a low, guttural groan against his shoulder.
After, Dmitri would clean up swiftly, always in the bathroom alone. He’d return, often already half-dressed. He’d pour two fingers of whiskey, hand one to Matthew, and talk about the intricacies of Ukrainian grain exports or the latest absurdity from the Russian delegation. The intimacy of the act that had just transpired was sealed away, replaced by cool, analytical detachment. He never stayed more than twenty minutes after. No shared shower, no drifting off together. The door would close with a firm, final click, leaving Matthew in the sterile silence, the scent of sex and expensive cologne already fading.
The longing for more became a physical ache, sharper than any bruise Dmitri left on his skin. Matthew craved a sigh, a unguarded confession, a night spent just sleeping in the same space. He tried, once, to ask a personal question as Dmitri pulled on his coat.
“Do you miss it? Kyiv, I mean.”
Dmitri paused, his hand on the doorknob. He looked back, his expression unreadable. “Miss is a luxury for peacetime. I carry it. It is different.” He offered a slim, humorless smile. “Goodnight, Matthew.”
The door clicked shut. Matthew stood alone, the word “luxury” echoing in the hollow room. He was a diversion, a temporary harbor. The realization should have been freeing. Instead, it felt like being locked out.
He needed to talk to someone who knew the whole messy history. He met Laura for lunch at a cramped, noisy sandwich shop near St. Stephen’s Green.
“I’m in deep,” he confessed, pushing his uneaten salad around. “With the Ukrainian. Dmitri.”
Laura, ever pragmatic, took a precise bite of her wrap. “Deep how? Emotionally or just… anatomically?”
“Both. Neither. I don’t know. I think about him constantly. The sex is… fuck, Laura, it’s unbelievable. But he just leaves. Every time. And I just want him to…”
“To what? Write you poetry? Hold your hand at the Iveagh Gardens?” She wiped her mouth, her gaze direct and unforgiving. “Matt, you knew the score. He’s a haunted guy in a temporary post. You’re a convenient, attractive outlet. That’s it.”
“It feels like more than that when we’re together,” Matthew insisted, hearing the petulance in his own voice.
“Of course it does. Good sex makes chemicals. It doesn’t make a foundation.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping. “And what about Lucas? Have you even spoken to him?”
Matthew looked away, out at the rain-slicked street. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not. It’s very simple. You’re using a sweet, confused kid as a backup plan for when your emotionally unavailable super-spy is busy. It’s careless. And it’s cruel.”
The word landed like a slap. “I’m not trying to be cruel.”
“You never are. That’s what makes it worse.” She sighed, some of the steel leaving her voice. “Look, I get it. Patrick’s across the hall, happily married. You’re reeling. You’re grabbing at anything that makes you feel desired. But Dmitri is a grenade with the pin half-out, and Lucas is a person. You need to close that door.”
Matthew nodded, knowing she was right. He didn’t have the energy to argue. The obsession was a sickness, and he was too far gone to want the cure.
He didn’t close the door.
Two nights later, after a stilted embassy reception where Dmitri had been achingly formal and distant across the room, Matthew found himself typing a different message.
Matthew: You around?
Lucas’s reply was almost instantaneous: Yeah. At my place. Everything ok?
An hour later, Lucas stood in Matthew's doorway. Lucas was in sweats, his hair damp from a shower, his blue eyes wide with concern and hope.
“Hey,” Lucas said softly. “I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you.”
“Me either,” Matthew said, the guilt a lead weight in his stomach. He stepped in, and Lucas leaned in to kiss him. It was gentle, questioning. Matthew let it happen, then deepened it, trying to lose himself in the familiar, uncomplicated warmth. He pushed Lucas’s sweatshirt off, his hands mapping the hard, gym-sculpted planes of his chest and stomach, so different from Dmitri’s leaner, more austere frame.
He led Lucas to the bedroom, his movements deliberate, his mind elsewhere. He was here, but he was thinking of dark blonde hair and sharp cheekbones and the way a certain voice could command him to his knees. As Lucas kissed down his neck, Matthew closed his eyes and pictured another mouth.
He flipped them over, needing control, needing to steer the narrative. He pushed Lucas onto his back, swallowing his eager moans with a kiss. He took Lucas into his mouth, working him with a practiced, detached efficiency until Lucas was shuddering, fingers tangled in his hair.
“Matt, wait… I want to…” Lucas gasped.
Matthew released him, grabbing the lube from the nightstand. He slicked his fingers, prepping Lucas quickly, his motions clinical. He wanted this over. He wanted the physical release without the emotional toll. He wanted to feel wanted, just for an hour.
He entered him, and Lucas arched up with a sweet, open-mouthed sigh of pleasure. “God, yes…”
Matthew fucked him with a steady, driven rhythm, his eyes shut tight. Lucas felt good, tight and warm, but it wasn’t the obliterating fire he craved. It was a pleasant warmth, a bonfire compared to Dmitri’s forest blaze. He focused on the mechanics, on the sounds Lucas made, on the way his own body moved. He conjured up darker eyes, a different set of hands, a voice that issued commands instead of sighs.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” Lucas chanted, his legs wrapping around Matthew’s waist. “Don’t stop.”
Matthew opened his eyes and looked down at Lucas’s blissful, trusting face. A wave of self-loathing crashed over him so violently he almost pulled out. He was using this man as a living, breathing fantasy. He was, as Laura said, being cruel.
Instead of stopping, he drove in harder, chasing his own climax, using Lucas’s body to reach it. He came with a stifled groan, his head dropping to Lucas’s shoulder, the image of Dmitri’s smirk flashing behind his eyelids.
After, as they lay in the sweat-damp sheets, Lucas traced idle circles on Matthew’s arm. “I missed this,” he murmured.
Matthew said nothing. He stared at the ceiling, the hollowness inside him now wider, deeper, filled only with the echoing silence of a departing click and the sickening sound of his own hypocrisy.
He stared at the ceiling, the hollowness inside him now wider, deeper, filled only with the echoing silence of a departing click and the sickening sound of his own hypocrisy. Lucas’s breathing beside him was steady, content. The warmth of his body felt suddenly oppressive.
Matthew’s voice cut the quiet, too loud in the dark room. “Have you been seeing anyone else?” he asked, the question clinical. “Going on dates? Hooking up?”
Lucas shifted onto his side, propping his head on a hand. His expression was soft, confused. “No. Of course not.” He reached out, tracing Matthew’s jaw. “You’re the only person I really want to be with.”
Matthew’s stomach sank, a lead weight dropping through the void. Lucas’s earnestness was a spotlight, exposing every flawed motive. Laura’s word echoed: cruel.
He sat up, pulling away from the touch. The sheets were tangled around his legs. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea anymore,” he said, staring at the opposite wall. “Seeing each other.”
A beat of silence stretched, thin and brittle. Lucas slowly withdrew his hand. “Okay,” he said, his voice flattening. He wasn’t shocked. The hurt was there, in the way his shoulders slumped, but it was wrapped in a weary understanding that was worse than anger.
“It’s not you,” Matthew offered, the coward’s reflex.
“Yeah, it is.” Lucas swung his legs out of bed. He stood, his back to Matthew, and started collecting his clothes from the floor. He dressed with deliberate, quiet movements—jeans, t-shirt, socks. Each article was a period ending a sentence.
Matthew watched, unable to speak, unable to offer anything that wouldn’t make it worse. Lucas paused at the bedroom door, not looking back. “Take care of yourself, Matt.”
The front door opened and closed with a soft, definitive click. It wasn’t a slam. It was an extinguishment.
From his window, Matthew saw Lucas emerge onto the cobbled alley below, shoulders hunched against the misty night. He watched him turn the corner and vanish. Movement across the way caught his eye. Patrick’s silhouette filled the glowing frame of his own door, holding it open. He’d seen it all. Again.
A minute later, a firm knock sounded on Matthew’s door.
He opened it, still in his boxers, not caring. Patrick stood there, dressed in pajama pants and a worn Georgetown sweatshirt. His eyes were concerned, his mouth a tight line.
“Can I come in?” Patrick asked.
Matthew shrugged, stepping back. He didn’t offer a drink. Patrick closed the door and leaned against it, crossing his arms.
“Matt,” he began, his tone gentle but firm. “What are you doing?”
“Living my life. It’s a novel concept.”
“This?” Patrick gestured vaguely toward the bedroom, toward the vanished Lucas. “This parade? You’re better than these… hookups. You need to settle down. Find something real.”
Matthew barked a laugh, sharp and bitter. “Settle down? Like you? Congratulations on the househusband, Patrick. It looks great on Instagram.” He saw the flinch, and pushed harder. “You seem like a different person than the guy I knew.”
“I am a different person!” Patrick fired back, his composure cracking. “I grew up. I committed. You’re just… spinning. You look exhausted. You look lost.”
The observation, its accuracy, was a match to gasoline. Five years of polished silence shattered.
“I’m lost?” Matthew’s voice dropped, low and venomous. “You broke my heart. You chose to walk away from us, from whatever we had, because a twelve-hour time difference was too fucking hard. You chose not to be a part of my life anymore.” He took a step closer, the raw truth laid bare between them. “So you don’t get to stand in my apartment and judge how I put myself back together. You forfeited that right.”
Patrick stared at him, his face pale. The warmth in his eyes had drained away, replaced by a pained comprehension. He nodded slowly, uncrossing his arms.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry. I overstepped.”
He turned, opened the door, and left without another word. The space he left behind buzzed with the ghosts of their old life and the acid of their new one.
Matthew stood alone in the center of his living room. The silence was a physical pressure. He walked mechanically to his bedroom, the scene of both recent transgressions. He didn’t bother with the lights. He lay on the rumpled sheets, which still smelled faintly of Lucas’s soap and, underneath it, the ghost of Dmitri’s cologne.
His mind spun, a carousel of Lucas’s wounded eyes, Patrick’s retreating back, and the dark, knowing smirk of a man who asked for nothing and therefore could never be failed.
His mind spun, a carousel of Lucas’s wounded eyes, Patrick’s retreating back, and the dark, knowing smirk of a man who asked for nothing and therefore could never be failed. Sleep was impossible. The flat’s silence had a predatory quality, waiting to swallow him whole. He reached for his phone, its glow the only light in the pressing dark.
His thumb moved without true volition, pulling up Dmitri’s contact. The text was a simple, desperate ploy to reconnect with something that felt solid, even if that solidity was carved from ice.
Matthew: Fancy a proper drink sometime? Not at your place or mine. A pub.
He sent it, expecting a delayed reply, or a dismissal. The response came less than a minute later.
Dmitri: Name the place. Tomorrow. 9 PM.
Matthew blinked at the screen, a strange tremor of surprise moving through him. Dmitri had agreed. He’d agreed to be seen in public, to share a space that wasn’t a bedroom or a formal function. It felt, improbably, like a step.
The chosen pub was a cozy, wood-paneled spot in Temple Bar, touristy but with quiet corners. Matthew arrived first, nursing a whiskey, his nerves stretched thin. He watched the door. Dmitri entered precisely at nine, a slash of elegant austerity in the warm, cluttered room. He wore a black turtleneck and a long coat, his sharp gaze finding Matthew instantly. He weaved through the crowd with an unnerving grace and slid into the booth opposite.
“You look tense,” Dmitri observed, signaling a waiter for a vodka, neat.
“Long week,” Matthew said, taking a sip. The whiskey burned a familiar path.
“I am aware of some of it,” Dmitri said, his tone neutral. His drink arrived. He lifted the glass, his eyes never leaving Matthew’s. “Za tebe.”
They drank. The noise of the pub swirled around them—laughter, the thump of a trad band tuning, the clatter of glasses. It was a bizarrely normal scene.
“Why did you say yes to this?” Matthew asked, leaning forward.
Dmitri considered the question, swirling the clear liquid in his glass. “Because I find I enjoy your company. Your mind. It is not merely a transaction of flesh.” He said it plainly, a statement of fact. “You have a… wry perspective. It is a relief.”
A fragile warmth bloomed in Matthew’s chest. “Enjoy my company,” he repeated, testing the words. “You could have fooled me. You’re usually halfway out the door before the sweat dries.”
A ghost of a smile touched Dmitri’s lips. “The leaving is necessary. The enjoyment is no less real for being compartmentalized.” He took another sip. “Do not mistake it for more than it is.”
“What is it, then?” Matthew pressed, the whiskey making him bold. “If it’s not just sex, but it’s not romance. What do you call it?”
Dmitri’s eyes became distant, focusing on something beyond the pub’s smoky air. “I call it a pause. A ceasefire in a different war. It is… pleasant.” He shut down the line of inquiry with the finality of a vault door closing. “How is your fisheries negotiator? Still battling eels?”
The conversation continued, threading between office politics and barbed wit. Matthew tried again, subtly, to ask about Kyiv, about his family, about anything personal. Each time, Dmitri deflected with a dry observation or a redirected question. The wall was polished, impregnable. The admission of enjoyment felt like a artifact behind glass—acknowledged, but untouchable.
Matthew was in the middle of a sentence about the EU’s latest bureaucratic folly when he saw a movement at the edge of his vision. A unsteady blur of blonde and green. His blood went cold.
Lucas shouldered past a group of Germans, his uniform shirt untucked, his eyes glazed and red-rimmed. He’d been drinking, heavily and with purpose. He stopped at their booth, swaying slightly, his gaze locked on Matthew with a devastating, drunken intensity. The smell of cheap lager and despair washed over the table.
“Matt,” Lucas slurred, his voice too loud. The band had paused between songs. “You’re here. With him.”
Dmitri leaned back, his eyebrows lifting in mild, academic interest. He took a slow sip of his vodka.
“Lucas, not now,” Matthew said, his voice low and taut. “Go back to your friends.”
“Why wasn’t I good enough?” The words erupted, plaintive and raw, cutting through the ambient noise. A few heads turned. “I would’ve… I would’ve done anything. You just used me. Was I just practice? Was I that fucking easy?”
Matthew’s face burned with mortification. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying!” Lucas’s voice cracked. He planted his hands on their table, looming. “You looked at me like I mattered. And then you just… shut the door. What’s wrong with me?”
Two other Marines materialized behind Lucas, their expressions grimly professional. “Adams, come on. Let’s go,” one said, gripping his shoulder.
Lucas shook him off, his pleading eyes still on Matthew. “Just tell me why. Give me that, at least.”
Dmitri let out a soft, almost inaudible sound. A chuckle. It was devoid of malice, purely fascinated. He watched Lucas with the detached appreciation of a scientist observing a fascinatingly volatile reaction.
The Marines were firmer now, pulling Lucas back. “Time to go, brother. Now.”
Lucas resisted for a second, his strength flagging, before the fight drained out of him. He let them steer him away, his head down, a broken figure swallowed by the crowd. The pub’s noise cautiously resumed.
Matthew couldn’t look at Dmitri. He stared at the wood grain of the table, wishing it would split and swallow him. The humiliation was a physical coat, thick and suffocating.
Dmitri finished his vodka and set the glass down with a precise click. He leaned forward, his voice a low, intimate vibration that Matthew felt in his bones. “That,” Dmitri murmured, his gaze hot and direct, “was unexpectedly compelling. The raw passion of it. The disregard for decorum.” He let the implication hang, a dark promise. “It has turned me on. Considerably.”
Before Matthew could process the words, Dmitri stood, dropping a fifty-euro note on the table. He gripped Matthew’s forearm, his fingers like steel. “Come. Now.”
He pulled Matthew to his feet and through the pub, not toward the front door, but down a dim hallway past the restrooms. A heavy fire exit door yielded to Dmitri’s shoulder, groaning open into a narrow, brick-lined alley. The damp, cold air hit Matthew’s face, smelling of garbage and wet stone. The door swung shut, muting the pub's music to a dull throb.
Dmitri spun him and pushed him back against the rough brick, crushing their mouths together. The kiss was brutal, all teeth and conquering tongue. Dmitri’s hands were everywhere, yanking Matthew’s belt open, shoving his trousers and briefs down to his thighs. The cold air shocked his bare skin.
“Hands on the wall,” Dmitri commanded, his own fingers scrambling with his fly. Matthew obeyed, pressing his palms flat against the cold, gritty brick. He heard the tear of a foil packet, the slick sound of lube. Dmitri’s spit-wet fingers shoved inside him, a rough, quick preparation that burned.
“He wanted a reason,” Dmitri growled against his ear, his body pressing close. “Here it is.”
He pushed in, not slowly, but with a single, devastating thrust that forced the air from Matthew’s lungs in a pained grunt. He was full, achingly, brutally full. Dmitri didn’t wait, setting a punishing rhythm immediately, each drive slamming Matthew’s hips against the unyielding wall. The friction of the brick scraped his forehead.
“This is what you are for,” Dmitri hissed, his breath hot. “For this. For taking this cock when I need to give it. For being this fucking tight while your boy wept in a pub.”
The words were filthy, degrading, and they coiled around the intense physical sensation, amplifying it beyond endurance. Matthew’s cock, trapped against the cold wall, was rock-hard. The exhilaration was a lightning storm in his veins, a violent absolution. He pushed back, meeting each thrust, a raw, guttural sound torn from his throat.
“Yes, you fucking take it,” Dmitri snarled, his composure obliterated. His pace became frenzied, erratic. The slap of skin, their ragged breaths, the distant pub cheer—it was a symphony of depravity.
Matthew came first, with a choked-off shout, his release striping the dark bricks as his body clenched violently around the cock pounding into him. The intensity of it was blinding, a supernova sparked by shame and pure animal need. Dmitri swore in Ukrainian, his hips stuttering, and followed him over, his final thrusts deep and possessive as he emptied himself with a shuddering groan into the condom.
They stayed like that for a moment, braced against the wall, shuddering in the aftershock. The cold began to seep into Matthew’s sweat-slicked skin. Dmitri withdrew, his movements suddenly efficient again. He disposed of the condom in a nearby dumpster, zipped his pants, and adjusted his coat. He stepped close, cupping Matthew’s face in hands that still smelled of sex and lube, and kissed him softly, almost tenderly.
“Goodnight, Matthew,” he said, his voice once more a cool, smooth plane.
He turned to walk down the alley toward the street.
“Dmitri,” Matthew called out, his voice hoarse. He was still exposed, trousers around his thighs, physically wrecked and emotionally scraped raw.
Dmitri paused, glancing back. The distant streetlight carved his profile from the darkness. “Remember,” he said, the words floating back, crisp and clear. “I do not do romance.”
Then he was gone, footsteps fading into the city’s hum.
Matthew leaned his forehead against the brick, the rough surface biting into his skin. He fumbled to pull his clothes up, his fingers clumsy and cold. The emptiness that followed was profound, a yawning void no physical climax could fill. He felt used, thoroughly and expertly, and worse, he had welcomed it, reveled in it. The confusion was a vortex, swallowing the last fragments of his certainty about what, or whom, he truly wanted.