Chapter 6: The Phone Call
The snow fell thicker now, a silent, relentless curtain turning the world beyond the windows into a study in gray and white. Inside, the fire had burned down to embers, casting a deep, pulsating glow that painted their skin in shades of copper and shadow. They hadn’t moved from the rug, wrapped in the blanket and each other, Michael’s head still a comfortable weight on Nathan’s shoulder. The peace was so complete it felt like its own entity, a third presence in the room holding its breath.Then Nathan’s phone, discarded on the coffee table, vibrated. It was a harsh, mechanical buzz against the wood, a jarring violation of the silence.
He felt Michael flinch against him.The phone stopped.Started again.It wasn’t a text. It was a call.Nathan knew who it was.Only one person would call him here, now. His manager, Leo.The outside world was a persistent fucker, always finding a way in.
“Don’t,” Michael whispered, his voice muffled against Nathan’s skin.
“I have to see.”
“No, you don’t.”
But Nathan was already untangling himself, the warmth of Michael’s body leaving him feeling instantly, acutely cold.He reached for the phone. The screen glared in the dimness: Leo – 3 Missed Calls.
A text bubble appeared.Then another.Leo: Nat.Call me.Now.
Leo: Label wants you in LA.Emergency meeting.Album timelines moved.Flight info coming.The words were like physical blows. LA.The label.Timelines.The album was a year away, a distant shoreline. Emergency meeting meant they’d heard a demo they shouldn’t have, or smelled blood in the water, or just decided to exert their power because they could. It meant suits, fluorescent lights, fake concern, the dismantling of his creative process into marketable chunks.It meant leaving this.
He looked at Michael, who had pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders, watching him with an expression of pure, unguarded fear.It wasn’t the fear of being found, not exactly. It was the fear of this ending.Of the sanctuary cracking open.
“They want me in LA,” Nathan said, his voice flat.
“When?”
“Now.”
Michael looked away, toward the fire.His profile was a cutout of sorrow. “Of course they do.” He said it softly, but the bitterness was there, a familiar acid they both tasted too often.
Nathan felt it then, a hot, defiant rage boiling up from his gut.It wasn’t aimed at Michael. It was aimed at Leo, at the label, at the vultures who circled Michael’s own life, at the entire fucking machine that demanded pieces of their souls on a schedule. This was their time.Their stolen, sacred time.And they wanted to claw him out of it.
He threw the phone. It skittered across the floorboards and smacked into the baseboard with a dull crack, the screen going dark.Michael jerked his head back, eyes wide.
Nathan crossed the space between them in two long strides.He didn’t speak.Words were for the world outside. Here, now, there was only this—the need to reclaim, to mark, to fuck the anger out of himself and into something pure.
He grabbed the edge of the blanket and yanked it off Michael.The cool air hit their skin. Nathan pushed him, a firm press on his shoulder, until Michael rolled onto his stomach on the thick rug.He understood immediately, a sharp inhale his only protest. Nathan knelt behind him, hands gripping the sharp bones of Michael’s hips, pulling his ass up into the air.He was already hard again, a painful, throbbing ache.
There was no preparation, no gentle coaxing. Nathan spat into his own hand, slicked himself roughly, and guided the head of his cock to Michael’s entrance.
“Nathan—” Michael’s voice was tight, a mix of apprehension and raw need.He pushed in.Not slow, not careful. A single, relentless thrust that buried him to the hilt in the tight, clutching heat. Michael cried out, a broken sound swallowed by the wool of the rug, his back arching, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the woven fibers.
“Fuck,” Nathan growled, the word ripped from somewhere deep and feral.He pulled back and slammed in again, setting a punishing rhythm from the first moment. This wasn’t about love-making.This was possession. A brutal, physical declaration of here, of now, of mine.
Each thrust was a hammer-blow against the outside world.Each one meant fuck LA.Each one meant fuck the meeting. Each one was a nail sealing this cabin shut against them. He held Michael’s hips so tight he knew there would be bruises, and the thought drove him deeper, harder.He wanted to leave a mark. Proof.Michael took it. He pushed back against Nathan, meeting each jarring impact with a soft, gut-punched gasp that gradually morphed into continuous, low moans. “Yes… God, yes… like that,” he choked out, the words smothered.“Harder. Don’t… don’t stop.”
Nathan obeyed. The sound of their bodies slapping together, sweaty and urgent, filled the room, louder than the silent storm outside. He fucked him with a focused, frantic intensity, his own breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The world narrowed to this: the sight of Michael bent and trembling beneath him, the exquisite, torturous friction, the animalistic sounds of their coupling. He leaned over, covering Michael’s back, one hand snaking around to fist Michael’s cock, stroking him in time with his thrusts.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Nathan snarled into the sweat-damp skin of Michael’s shoulder, a promise and a lie all at once.
Michael’s answer was a sharp, keening cry as he came, pulsing hot over Nathan’s hand, his body clamping down convulsively around Nathan’s cock.The sudden, fierce tightening tipped Nathan over the edge. He drove in one last, searing time, buried himself deep, and came with a ragged shout, pouring himself into Michael, a temporary, futile inoculation against the inevitable.
He collapsed forward, his weight pressing Michael into the rug, both of them panting, slick with sweat, hearts galloping against each other. The only sound was their ragged breathing slowly syncing, the faint hiss of the embers.
Nathan didn’t pull out. He kept his weight on Michael, his face pressed into the back of his neck, inhaling the scent of sex and salt and him.
After a long time, Michael shifted weakly beneath him. “You’re crushing me, you big fucker.”
Nathan rolled off, onto his back beside him. They lay side by side on the rug, staring at the dark beams of the ceiling, the afterglow hardening into a cold, dull reality.
“You have to go, don’t you?” Michael asked, his voice small.Nathan closed his eyes. The fury was spent, leaving only a hollow, familiar dread.“Yeah. I do.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, probably.The snow…”
“I know.”
They were silent again. The phone on the floor was a dark, guilty shape.“I’ll come back,” Nathan said. It sounded weak, even to him.Michael turned his head on the rug to look at him. In the near-darkness, his eyes were infinite pools.“I know you will. And I’ll be here.Or somewhere. Waiting.” He reached out, his fingers finding Nathan’s on the rug between them, lacing them together.His grip was surprisingly strong. “Don’t let me go, Nathan.Even when you’re out there. Don’t let me go.”
Nathan squeezed his hand.He couldn’t speak past the knot in his throat.
Later, after they’d cleaned up in silence and pulled the mattress from the loft to lay before the fire, Nathan lay awake.Michael slept curled against him, breath even and deep. Nathan stared at the dying fire, his mind already racing down mountain roads, onto planes, into sterile boardrooms. His left hand twitched at his side, a phantom urge to check the locks on the cabin door. He counted them in his head instead.One.Two.Three. The ritual did nothing to calm the storm building inside him, the one no snowfall could ever muffle.