Chapter 6: Moving On
The heavy door to the street clicked shut behind John, sealing off the world of aged leather and Silas’s knowing hands. The chill London air was a slap after the apartment’s cloistered warmth. He stood on the pavement, adjusting himself in his jeans, the lingering thrum of his release still humming in his veins.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Karen.
He stared at the screen, the name flashing like a warning beacon. He’d let her calls go to voicemail, each one a recording of escalating frustration. He leaned against the brick wall of the shop front, the rough texture grating against his back. He hit accept.
“Where the hell have you been?” Her voice was a jagged shard of glass, sharp and immediate. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Or do you just not give a shit anymore?”
John closed his eyes, seeing not her pinched, furious face, but Silas’s concentrated expression, those thin lips stretched around him. “I’ve been sorting things out, Karen.”
“Sorting what? Your next fuck? Your next wank? You need to come home. Now. We need to talk about this situation. About money.”
A bus roared past, spraying grey slush. He imagined her in their sad, tense kitchen, wiping down already-clean counters. “You were right,” he said, the words feeling foreign but true. “It’s time to move on.”
Silence. Then a brittle, confused laugh. “What? So you’re just… giving up? Just like that? After all my support?”
“Your support?” he echoed, a low spark igniting in his gut. “Your support was a constant fucking commentary on my failure. On my weight. On my hair. On every goddamn breath I took that wasn’t earning.”
“I was trying to motivate you! Jesus, John, you’re so sensitive. Fine. You want to give up? Give up. But don’t you dare blame me. You’re the one who chose to fall apart.”
He saw Silas’s hands, precise and certain, not criticizing but appreciating. Measuring not for judgment, but for creation. “I’m not falling apart,” John said, his voice quieter, steadier. “I’m just… moving. In a different direction.”
“A direction that involves ignoring your wife? Your responsibilities? What’s her name, John? Is there someone else?”
He thought of Silas’s silver hair, his piercing eyes, the worshipful attention. It wasn’t a ‘her’. It wasn’t even a ‘someone else’ in the way she meant. It was a door opening to a room he never knew existed, where what he was, right now, was more than enough. “It’s not like that.”
“It never is,” she scoffed. “Come home tonight. We’ll talk. We’ll fix this.”
“No,” he said. The word was solid, a stone dropped into a well. “There’s nothing to fix. You were right to want me gone. I’m gonna make that easy for you.”
He ended the call, his thumb poised over the power button. Instead, he just slipped the silent phone back into his pocket. The weight that lifted wasn’t the rent, or the job hunt. It was the exhausting performance of being the man he was supposed to be for her.
He didn’t go to their flat. He didn't go for a pint. He didn't wander the streets. He turned and climbed the external stairs beside the tailor shop again, his knock on Silas’s door softer this time, less desperate.
Silas opened it, still in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, a measuring tape draped around his neck like a silken scarf. He didn’t smile. He just looked, his black eyes reading John’s face—the resolve, the weary peace. “The conversation was fruitless, I take it?”
“It was final,” John said, stepping inside. The scent of him, of sandalwood and starch, was a balm.
“Good.” Silas reached out, not for a handshake, but to stroke his thumb along John’s jawline, rough with stubble. “Finality has a purity to it. A clean cut.”
Then Silas kissed him. It was not the hungry, exploratory kiss of their first time. It was deep and languid, a claiming and a granting all at once. Silas’s tongue slid against his, tasting of dark tea, and John met it with a low groan, his hands coming up to fist in the fine wool of Silas’s waistcoat.
They undressed each other without breaking the kiss, a slow, collaborative shed of fabrics. John’s cheap jeans and t-shirt pooled on the floor beside Silas’s expertly tailored trousers. Soon, they were just skin and breath in the dim light.
Silas guided him backward until his calves hit the edge of the worn sofa. He pushed John down gently, then knelt on the rug before him, his hands running up the dense, hairy pillars of John’s thighs. John’s cock, half-hard from the kiss, began to swell rapidly under that intense gaze.
“Such a magnificent thing,” Silas murmured, his breath hot against the tip. “A working man’s cock. Thick. Demanding.”
He didn’t tease. He took John entirely into his mouth in one smooth, shocking plunge, his throat opening around the head until his nose was buried in John’s pubic hair. John cried out, his head knocking back against the sofa cushion. The wet heat was absolute, a velvet vise. Silas held him there, deep, his throat fluttering, before pulling back with a filthy, wet sound.
“Fuck, Silas…”
“Yes,” Silas agreed hoarsely, before diving down again. He set a relentless, deep-throating rhythm, his hands gripping John’s hips, forcing him to stay still and take the service. Each plunge went deeper, each retreat left John’s cock glistening and throbbing in the cool air before being swallowed back into that incredible heat. Spit dripped down Silas’s chin, onto John’s balls.
“Gonna come,” John warned, his thighs trembling.
Silas pulled off with a pop. “Not yet.” He reached for a small, crystal bottle from a side table, slicking his fingers with clear oil. “I want to feel you.” He leaned forward, nuzzling John’s balls, licking the tender skin behind them as his oil-slicked finger circled John’s tight hole.
John tensed for a second, the intimacy profound, before relaxing into it, pushing back against the pressure. “Yeah… do it.”
The finger pressed inside, a slow, burning stretch. Silas sucked the head of John’s cock back into his mouth, humming around it as his finger worked deeper, crooking expertly. The dual sensation was blinding—the intense suction, the internal press against a place that made his vision spark. John’s hips began to stutter, chasing the feeling.
Silas added a second finger, stretching him, scissoring gently. “You take it so well,” he muttered against John’s slick shaft. “So hungry for it.”
“Fuck, more… please, just fuck me,” John begged, the words torn from him. He’d never begged for anything in his life. Not for a job, not for Karen to stay. Here, on this musty sofa, he begged.
Silas withdrew his fingers, his own arousal evident, jutting hard and eager from his body. He coated himself with more oil, his movements deliberate, his eyes locked on John’s. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock nudging against John’s entrance.
“Look at me,” Silas commanded, his rich voice ragged.
John did. He saw the hunger, the reverence, the strange ageless depth in those black eyes.
Silas pushed in.
It was a slow, devastating invasion, a burn that melted into a feverish, full ache. John gasped, his mouth falling open as inch after inch disappeared inside him, filling him completely. Silas bottomed out, his hips flush against John’s ass, and stopped, letting them both adjust, his own breath coming in sharp gusts.
“Christ… you’re so tight,” Silas groaned. “So perfect.”
Then he moved. He started a deep, rolling rhythm, each thrust grinding into John’s prostate with unerring accuracy. The pace was measured, powerful, each stroke a concrete statement. John wrapped his legs around Silas’s waist, pulling him deeper, meeting every drive with a shattered gasp.
The sounds were obscene—the wet slap of skin, their mingled grunts, the creak of the old sofa springs. John reached between them, fisting his own leaking cock, stroking in time with Silas’s thrusts.
“That’s it,” Silas encouraged, his precision unraveling. His thrusts became harder, faster, pounding into John with a force that shook the frame of the couch. “Come for me. Mark yourself. Mark this.”
The coil in John’s gut snapped. With a raw, broken shout, he came, jets of hot release striping his own stomach and chest, his channel clamping down rhythmically around Silas’s driving cock. The intensity of it, the sheer surrender, felt like an exorcism.
Silas followed with a guttural cry, slamming deep and holding there as he pulsed inside John, his body trembling with the force of his release. He collapsed forward, bracing himself on his arms, their sweat-slicked chests not quite touching, their harsh breaths mingling.
For a long time, they stayed like that, joined, the record player in the corner having long since reached its silent end.
Silas finally slipped out, and carefully lay beside him on the narrow sofa, one arm draped possessively over John’s chest. He traced the damp hair there.
“You’ll stay?” Silas asked.
John stared at the cracked plaster of the ceiling, the weight of Silas’s arm a tangible anchor. The ghost of Karen’s voice was gone, replaced by the solid reality of his own breath, his own scent mingled with another man’s. He thought of the tense flat awaiting his possible return, the now silent phone.
“Yeah,” John breathed, turning his face into Silas’s silver hair. “I’ll stay.”
The flat above the shop became his. Not legally, but in every way that mattered. His few belongings migrated from the tense silence of the marital home in a single duffel bag, swapped for the worn comfort of Silas’s world. They fell into a rhythm.
Mornings were all business in the shop below, a world of measuring tapes, quiet consultations, and the steam press hissing. Silas’s clientele was a revolving door of discreet, specific desires.
John learned to assist, to fetch mohair or spy’s-twill, to hold the pincushion. He saw the transactions unfold—currency exchanged, yes, but beneath that, a deeper tariff of acknowledgment. These men came to be seen, in their entirety, by Silas’s piercing black eyes. Their needs were met with precise, non-judgmental hands. It was a thrill, just watching, being part of the secret engine of it.
Then the sign would flip to ‘Closed’, the bolt sliding home. The atmosphere would shift, thicken. They’d climb the stairs, and Silas would shed his proprietor’s aura like a coat. He’d make cocktails, the clink of glass deliberate, before cooking something intricate that filled the flat with smells of garlic and red wine.
John, for the first time in his adult life, wanted to contribute. He fixed the sticking drawer on the escritoire. He re-hung a door that sagged. He cleaned, not because he was nagged, but because he saw the dust on the record player and wanted the space worthy of their evenings. There was an equity here he’d never known with Karen. No silent scorekeeping. Just a man doing things for another man, a mutual upholding of a shared world they were building between them.
Their own preferences solidified in the shadows of the flat. Silas worshipped John’s cock with a devotee’s single-minded passion. He would take John, fully, deeply into his throat, holding him there with a satisfied hum, eyes watering but full of triumph.
And John, with careful, growing mastery, learned the map of Silas’s body. He worshipped the older man’s tight, eager hole with his tongue until Silas was a shuddering wreck of pleas, before finally, slowly, working his hand inside him. Whenever he fully sheathed his fist within that clenching heat, Silas would weep, not from pain, but from a profound, shocking completion, his come splattering the sheets untouched. They traded these surrenders. John receiving Silas’s cock, letting himself be filled and used until his mind blanked white. It was a perfect, hungry circuit.
John learned that Silas’s client book held more than measurements; it contained elaborate, unspoken scripts. The prep was a briefing.
“He’s a count, of some minuscule Balkan principality that doesn’t technically exist anymore,” Silas said, selecting a bolt of midnight-blue fresco wool. “He believes in his own centrality. Your job is to affirm it. Touch him constantly. Make him feel his body is being appreciated, not just his clothes.”
The bell chimed at three. He entered like a weather front, a shift in atmospheric pressure. Tall, blonde, with the tensile strength of a bowstring. He didn’t speak, just gave Silas a curt nod, his pale eyes scanning the shop with an air of bored possession. He smelled of cold air and expensive citrus.
Silas became fluid, leading the way. “Count. The east room is prepared.” John followed, the man’s silence a loud demand.
In the fitting room, the man stepped onto the circular platform before the trifold mirror. He raised his arms slightly, a statue awaiting adornment. Silas gave John a barely perceptible nod. Together, they began. John’s fingers worked the mother-of-pearl buttons of the man’s dove-grey shirt, his knuckles brushing the hard plane of his abdomen. He felt the guy watching him in the glass, eyes like chips of ice.
They peeled the layers away until he stood only in a simple grey cotton thong. The fabric strained against a substantial, half-soft cock, and the man’s muscularity was undeniable—a swimmer’s V-taper, defined abs, skin warm under John’s palms as he smoothed it. John’s own arousal was a low thrum, professional, detached.
“The double-breasted, I think,” Silas murmured, handing John the jacket. They dressed him like a prized doll. Silas would kneel to adjust a trouser break, his fingers brushing an ankle. John would stand close behind to settle the jacket on his shoulders, his chest nearly touching the man’s back, his breath stirring the blonde hairs at his nape.
“The shoulder line is slack,” the Count stated, his voice crisp. He didn’t look at Silas; he addressed his reflection. “It lacks authority.”
John’s jaw tightened. He’d seen Silas pad-stitch that canvas for hours. Silas showed no reaction. “A perception of the mirror, sir. The posture. Let us adjust.” His hands were gentle, firm, reshaping the air around the man’s body until the garment appeared to transform. The Count’s cock twitched visibly, thickening against the grey cotton.
A second suit, a slate-grey worsted, was met with a sneer. “Drab. Pedestrian.” Yet his arousal grew, a dark patch of precum blooming at the thong’s front. Silas caught John’s eye.
“Perhaps something less conventional,” Silas said, his voice dropping into a more intimate register. He gestured. John understood. He stepped closer, his bare arm now flush against the Count’s. He reached around to the man’s waistband, his fingers dipping just below the elastic, grazing the hot skin of his hip. The Count inhaled sharply.
“Yes,” the man breathed, no longer criticizing. His head fell back slightly, his eyes now fixed on John’s reflection with naked hunger. The wet spot on his thong widened, a translucent map of his need.
Silas moved first. He sank to his knees before the man, hands on his thighs, and nuzzled the bulge through the damp cotton before peeling it down. The Count’s cock sprang free, thick and flushed. Silas took it into his mouth without ceremony, swallowing him to the root with a wet, gagging choke that made the man cry out.
John moved behind the podium. He dropped to his own knees, his hands spreading the man’s muscular ass. He leaned in, his tongue finding the tight pucker. He laved it roughly, then pushed the tip inside, fucking him with his tongue as Silas fucked him with his throat. The Count’s body bucked, precariously balanced between their mouths, a string of obscenities and guttural commands falling from his lips.
“Deeper—you fucking animals—yes, just like that—”
John ate his ass with a thorough, slurping intensity, his nose buried in the cleft, his hands gripping the trembling globes. Silas’s head bobbed furiously, spit and precum slicking his chin. The Count’s hand fisted in Silas’s silver hair, fucking up into that wet heat. His other hand reached back, tangling in John’s messy brown hair, holding him painfully close.
“I’m gonna— fuck —” the Count roared. He pulled Silas’s head off his cock with a wet pop and yanked John up by the hair. He crushed their mouths together. “Take it, you greedy cunts,” he snarled, and with a shuddering groan, he came. Hot, bitter stripes of cum shot across Silas’s mouth, over John’s chin, mixing with their spit in the messy union of the kiss.
John’s own cock was a hardened ache, but he stayed perfectly still, swallowing the taste of salt and another man’s release as it dripped into his mouth. The Count held them there for a long, degrading moment before shoving them apart, panting. He stepped down, wiping himself with a towel, dressing in his own clothes with abrupt, efficient movements.
He left a thick stack of notes on the sideboard. “Until next time, Silas.” The door closed. The silence he left behind was dense.
John wiped his face with the back of his hand, trembling with a mix of fury and unslaked desire. “What a colossal prick.”
Silas was already calmly gathering the discarded garments. “He is. And he was also a terrified little boy raised by wolves in a crumbling castle, taught that his worth was the sum of what he could command.” He sighed, a weary, philosophical sound. “It’s systemic. The poison is in the well. Our job is not to drink, merely to draw the water.”
John sat on the fitting platform, the anger leaching away. He looked at Silas, really looked—the precise movements, the absolute lack of personal offense. “How do you not want to strangle him?”
“I compartmentalize.” Silas offered a faint smile. “He pays for a fantasy. He lives in fantasies—boardrooms, Bedrooms, tailor shops. None of it is real to him. This—” He gestured between them, at the quiet room. “The work. The sweat on the cloth. The feel of a body you actually know.” He placed a hand on John’s chest. “That’s the gift. The real life.”
John leaned into the touch, the last of the tension leaving him. He understood. This was their craft, their strange and honest work.
“Now,” Silas said, his voice shifting back to its instructive timbre. “The practice task. That waistcoat I’m working on needs its buttonholes hand-stitched. Twenty of them. As I complete that, I need you to practice the same technique. Each one must be identical. Go. Your evening depends on the quality of your focus.”
The twilight bled indigo through the shop’s front window, pooling in the folds of unfinished garments. John’s fingers, thick and calloused from years of manual labor that had somehow led him here, ached around the slender needle. He pulled the silk twist through the densely-padded edge of the practice waistcoat, his twentieth buttonhole. It was cleaner than his first, the stitches tighter, but still dragged slightly where the thread tension faltered.
Silas laid his own work aside—a perfect, miniature railroad of stitches—and picked up John’s. He turned it over in his thin hands, the material whispering. He ran a thumb across the welt. “Better. The third and the seventh are almost competent. The twelfth is a mess. See how the gimp thread is exposed here? It’s ugly. It lacks integrity.”
John let out a hard breath, his shoulders tightening. “I’m trying. It’s so fucking small.”
“It is,” Silas agreed, placing the garment back in John’s lap. His voice was neither kind nor cruel. It was factual. “And you are improving. Do not be discouraged by the criticism. It is the only way to learn. You must make the mistake to see it. It teaches patience with your own current limits. Your hands want to conquer. This work requires seduction.”
The words, stripped of consolation, were oddly steadying. John picked up the needle again, attacking the flawed twelfth buttonhole with a more focused frustration, picking the stitches out with the stitch unpicker. The silence returned, companionable now, filled only with the whisper of thread and the distant hum of the city.
Upstairs in the apartment, the tension of fine work slowly unspooled from their bodies. John opened two craft beers, the caps pinging off into the sink. He handed one to Silas, who was staring into the middle distance, his expression unreadable. John bumped his shoulder gently against the older man’s.
“You alright? Miles away.”
Silas took a slow drink, his Adam's apple bobbing. He looked at John, and for a fleeting moment, John saw a deep, yearning want in those black eyes that had nothing to do with cock or servicing. It was a hollowed-out need.
“There is something,” Silas said, his baritone softer than usual. “A specific hunger.” He paused, choosing his words with typical precision. “I feel a deep need to continue your… anal education. But not with my cock. Not tonight.” He met John’s gaze. “I want to eat you out. For as long as you can take it. I want to bury myself in that task until nothing else exists. I want to take you to a place of pure sensation you’ve never touched.”
John felt a flush creep up his neck. It was one thing to be fucked, to have Silas’s tongue on him as a prelude. This was different. It felt more vulnerable, more strangely intimate. “That’s… not something I’m used to. At all.”
“I know.”
“But if it’s what you need…” John shrugged, a slow smile spreading. “I trust you. You haven’t led me astray yet.”
A gleam lit Silas’s eyes. “I have something that might help blur the edges for you.” He crossed to a small, lacquered chest and produced a tiny, brown glass bottle. “Poppers. Amyl nitrite.”
John had heard of them, a clubber’s thing, a gay thing. He’d never considered them. “How’s it work?”
“You inhale. Just a short, sharp sniff. It floods your brain with blood, opens every vessel. Your head rushes, your muscles unlock, your inhibitions… dissolve. For about sixty seconds. It makes everything feel more.” Silas uncapped it. The chemical, sweet smell of nail polish remover and sweat hit the air. “We’ll go slow. I’ll guide you.”
They prepared the space with a ritualistic care. John knelt at the edge of their shared bed, his back to the room, a pillow placed on the floor for Silas to kneel on. The lamp cast a low, golden pool of light over the rumpled sheets. John’s heartbeat was a steady drum against his ribs, part anticipation, part naked anxiety.
Silas knelt behind him, his hands warm and reassuring on John’s flanks. “Ready? Deep breath in, then exhale fully. As you empty your lungs, I’ll bring the bottle to one nostril. You sniff, sharp and deep. Hold it. Hold it. Now.”
The liquid burn shot up John’s nose, searing into his sinuses. His head exploded. A tsunami of warmth crashed from his skull down his spine, blurring his vision into a starburst pattern. Every muscle in his body went slack at once, a profound and total surrender. His ass, clenched in subconscious resistance, simply opened. As he exhaled in a long, shuddering gasp, Silas leaned in.
The first touch of his tongue was a lightning strike through the chemical haze. It wasn’t a lick; it was a full, wet, flat press against his hole, as if Silas was tasting the very core of him. John groaned, a sound that came from some primitive place beneath thought. Silas inhaled deeply, the scent of the poppers and John’s skin filling his own lungs, and then he dove in with a single-minded frenzy.
He didn’t coax. He devoured. His tongue lashed at the tight furl, a relentless, pointed pressure that went from a circling tease to a demanding plunge. He fucked into John with his tongue, spearing him with it, rough and perfect. Spit dripped down John’s perineum, onto his balls, a slick trail. Silas’s glasses were off, his silver hair falling across his forehead as he worked, his hands gripping John’s hips to keep them both steady.
“Give me another,” John slurred, his voice thick.
Silas handed the bottle up. John fumbled for it, took another searing hit. The world melted into a pulse of pure feeling—the insistent, wet rasp of Silas’s tongue spearing him open, the scrape of stubble on his sensitive skin, the incredible, shocking intimacy of being so thoroughly known in this one filthy, exposed way. Silas moaned into him, the vibration traveling straight up John’s spine.
Silas changed tactics. He sucked John’s hole into his mouth, pulling the tender flesh between his lips, nibbling gently with his teeth before flattening his tongue against it again. He rimmed him with broad, sloppy strokes, then pushed the very tip of his tongue back inside, fucking in and out with rapid, shallow digs. The sounds were obscenely wet, slopping noises of absolute dedication. John’s cock hung heavy and neglected, dripping steadily onto the sheet below, but that was a distant concern. His entire universe had narrowed to the glorious, ravishing heat between his ass cheeks.
Thought was impossible. Language dissolved. John’s utterances became a continuous, low stream of primal noise—grunts, whimpers, broken syllables that might have been attempts at language, but none of the words made any real sense. He was just a vessel for sensation.
Silas was lost in it too, in the taste of salt and skin and pure John, in the muscular give and take under his mouth. He was mapping him, learning the subtle ridges and responses, the way John’s body fluttered when he hit a particular spot just to the left. He drank the sweat from the crease of his ass, buried his face so deep his nose was pressed against the ridges of John's tailbone. He was a man at work, at worship, at feast.
Time lost all meaning. It could have been ten minutes or a hundred. John took another hit, and another, each one blurring the lines further, welding him to the bed, to the relentless, glorious torture of Silas’s mouth. He was so open, so wet, so utterly used, and it was the most profound peace he had ever known.
Finally, a cramp shot through Silas’s thighs. A shuddering fatigue hit John’s knees. Silas pulled back, his face glistening with spit and sweat, his lips swollen. He crawled onto the bed and collapsed, pulling John down with him. They lay in a tangled, sticky heap, chests heaving. John turned his head and Silas was there, his usually composed face slack with a dazed, boyish delight. They grinned at each other, stupidly, blissfully, and then they were kissing, tasting the echo of the poppers and the salt of each other’s skin, a slow, laughing communion of utter debauchery.
As their heartbeats slowed and their minds drifted back into their bodies, a loud, simultaneous grumble erupted from their stomachs. John laughed, a raw, happy sound.
“You,” he declared, poking Silas’s chest. “Are not cooking after that. You’ve done enough work for one night.”
Silas smiled, reaching for the phone on the nightstand. He dialled, his voice warm and familiar. “Abdul. Silas. The usual, please. But for two. Nothing more.” He listened, nodded. “Twenty minutes. Perfect.” He hung up.
Exactly twenty minutes later, the buzzer rang. John pulled on a pair of briefs and padded to the door. He opened it to a young man holding two massive brown paper bags, fragrant steam escaping the tops. The delivery driver’s eyes swept over John’s bare, hairy chest, the sweat still cooling on his skin, the obvious satiation in his posture. He gave a slow, appreciative nod, a small smile playing on his lips. “Evening.”
“Cheers,” John mumbled, taking the bags and shutting the door, a flush of possessive pride warming him. He brought the feast to the low coffee table in the living room, and they sat on cushions on the floor, containers spread before them—lamb kofta, smoky baba ghanoush, pillows of warm pita, rice studded with pomegranate seeds.
They ate with their fingers, the silence comfortable. After a while, Silas wiped his mouth, his eyes achingly soft on John. “Tell me,” he said quietly. “The experience. What was it like inside all that?”
John paused, a piece of lamb pinched in his fingers. “It was… blank. In a good way. My head was just… gone. No wondering what Karen would say, no worrying about what it means, no thinking about anything except that tongue fucking into me. It was like being unmade. Like I was just this… animal, getting fed.” He looked at Silas, a shy seriousness in his bright blue eyes. “It felt primitive. Ownership. But like… I was the one who owned you, for a while. Because you were so… dedicated.”
Silas nodded, absorbing this. “For me, it was precision. Like working on a perfect, complex garment, but one that breathes and trembles and groans. It was the deepest focus I’ve ever known. Every nerve in my tongue was a tool, reading the texture, the tension.” He took a sip of water. “It was quieter than fucking you. More… devout.”
“Devout,” John repeated, the word settling in him. He tore off more bread, scooped up creamy hummus. “Yeah. That’s it.” He chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve ever let anyone have that… much of me. Karen? Christ, no. She’d have thought it was gross. Wrong.”
“It is wrong,” Silas said calmly. “To them. Their wrong is our freedom.” He reached over, running a thumb over the back of John’s hand. “That unlocking, that ‘blankness’ as you call it… that is a pure place. It is a gift you give. Not to me, but to yourself.”
The food was a perfect anchor, bringing them back to the world of taste and texture, of shared quietude. The emptied containers were stacked, the last of the bread eaten. John leaned back against the sofa, replete in every sense. Silas joined him, their shoulders touching. For a long moment, they just listened to the faint hum of the fridge, the distant sigh of traffic.
Then Silas turned his head slightly, his voice now holding a different, older weight. “This freedom you are finding,” he began, his gaze fixed on the darkened window. “It has a texture of its own. And a history. Would you like to know where this place came from? Why men like the Count, like my other clients, find their way here?” He paused, the silence thickening. “Would you like to know about the man who owned the shop before me? His name was Alistair.”