Chapter 10: Drowning in Wool
The deep, satiated quiet of Ilia’s bedroom was a world away from the dining room’s charged scrutiny. Misha lay nestled against Ilia’s side, the thud of Ilia’s heartbeat a slow, steady drum under his ear. His own skin hummed, sensitive and alive, a map of every touch from before. The warm, heavy scent of their bodies clung to the sheets, mingling with the room’s permanent notes of sandalwood and polished wood.Ilia shifted. Without a word, he slid out from under the covers, the cool air rushing to kiss Misha’s skin where Ilia’s heat had been. Misha made a small, involuntary sound of loss.
“Stay there,” Ilia said, his voice rough with post-sex gravity.He padded, naked and utterly unselfconscious, to the walk-in closet. The light inside clicked on, a softer, golden spill that haloed his silhouette.
Misha watched from the bed, the duvet pulled to his chin. He heard the whisper of hangers, the soft thud of something being moved.Then Ilia returned. In his hands was a bundle of soft, heather-grey fabric.“Sit up,” Ilia instructed.
Misha pushed himself up, the sheet pooling around his waist. Ilia shook out the garment—a cashmere sweater, thick and impossibly soft-looking.It was one of Ilia’s.
“Arms up,” Ilia said.Misha obeyed, raising his arms like a child. Ilia guided the sweater over his head.The fabric whispered as it descended, cool and weighty. It was like being submerged in a cloud that smelled distinctly of Ilia—his cedar-and-citrus cologne, something uniquely masculine and clean. The neckline was wide, the shoulders seams dropping well past Misha’s own bony points. The hem didn’t stop at his waist; it kept going, a drape of luxury that settled well past his hips, almost to mid-thigh. The sleeves were comical, the cuffs swallowing his hands, dangling several inches past his fingertips.Ilia didn’t smile. His face was intense, focused. He turned and went back to the closet, returning with another sweater, this one a deep charcoal.“This one too,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Ilia, I’ll boil,” Misha murmured, but he was already lifting his arms again.
The second sweater went on over the first. Now he was sheathed in a double layer of Ilia’s essence, the wool soft but substantial, a deliberate weight on his slender frame. Ilia stepped back, his blue eyes critical, surveying his work. Then he took Misha’s hand and led him, shuffling under the bulk of fabric, to the full-length mirror in the corner.
“Look,” Ilia commanded, his hands settling on Misha’s shoulders from behind.
Misha looked.The reflection was almost absurd. He was a small, pale face floating in a sea of grey wool.His delicate fingers were just barely visible, poking like shy creatures from the cavernous sleeves. His legs, thin and bare, seemed to sprout from a woolen mound. He looked utterly consumed.Swallowed.
“This,” Ilia said, his voice dropping to a husky murmur right by Misha’s ear, “is how you belong to me. Wrapped in my things.Smaller than my clothes.” His hands squeezed Misha’s shoulders through the layers. “You see it?”
Misha stared.He saw a boy lost in a man’s world. He saw a creature made precious by being swaddled. The reflection didn’t show a dancer’s tension, a man’s pride.It showed containment.It showed possession. A deep, rolling wave of warmth flooded his chest, intense and confusing. It was the opposite of the sharp, proud warmth from the dinner table.This was private, tender, almost shameful in its sweetness.
He leaned back against Ilia’s solid chest.“I see it,” he whispered.
Ilia turned him around, his hands sliding inside the sweaters, finding Misha’s actual waist under all the wool.He looked down at him, the stern lines of his face softening by a fraction. “Good.”
Later, he undressed him again.This time it was slow, ritualistic. Each sweater was peeled off with a reverence that felt like unwrapping a holy object. The cool air hit Misha’s flushed skin, raising goosebumps. Ilia’s thumbs traced his collarbones, the faint ridge of his ribs, the flat plane of his stomach. Every touch was a reconfirmation.When Ilia kissed him, it was different. Not the dominating claim from earlier, nor the possessive branding after the party.This was languid, deep, almost searching. It was a silence full of sentences they never spoke aloud. Ilia’s hands were everywhere, but they were gentle.They worshipped.Misha let himself be moved, arranged, opened. There was no performance now, no audience to prove anything to.This was the raw, quiet center of the bargain. He gave, Ilia took, but the taking was laced with a tenderness that cracked Misha open in a new way. He trembled, not from fear or exertion, but from the sheer, overwhelming reality of being known so completely in this altered state.
After, curled back into Ilia’s side, swaddled this time only in sheets, Misha felt the outline of the evening settle into his bones.The laughter of Ilia’s friends.The approving stroke on his neck. The dizzying layers of cashmere.The unbearable softness of Ilia inside him.
He thought of the mirror.Of the small face in the wool.He thought, This is the shape of devotion. It wasn’t a cage. It was a sweater five sizes too big, warm and smelling of the man he loved.It was swallowing him whole, and choosing to drown.
Ilia’s breathing evened out into sleep beside him. Misha lay awake in the golden gloom, tracing the silver filigree on the mirror frame across the room. He wondered, vaguely, what his old dance friends would see if they looked at him now.Then he let the thought go. It didn’t matter.They would see a shadow. The real him was here, in this bed, dissolved into Ilia’s heat.A perfect, pliant void. Finally, he slept.