Chapter 26: Night Desk, Closed

On Monday night Dante carried a black coffee across the dark quad to the campus clinic.

It was a low brick building behind the library, with one lit window and a bell on the door.

Javier sat behind the night desk with a textbook open, his glasses on, and the chipped white mug from the room already empty at his elbow.

"You brought me another," he said.

"You drank the first one in an hour."

"Because it was good."

He took the coffee, and their fingers touched around the cup.

Neither of them said a word about the Harbor Street cafe or Tuesday at four.

It sat on the desk between them anyway, as plain as the textbook.

The nurse on duty looked up from her chart.

"I'm doing rounds on the upper ward," she said, to nobody in particular. "Forty minutes. Nobody comes in on Mondays."

She took her keys and left, and the bell rang behind her.

Javier turned the sign on the glass door to CLOSED, and shot the bolt.

"It's my night," he said.

"You said that was Saturday's."

"I changed my mind."

He took Dante by the front of his coat and walked him backward into the dim examination room.

The narrow couch was covered in paper.

A skeleton hung in the corner with one arm raised.

"Sit," Javier said.

Dante sat on the edge of the couch.

Javier stood between his knees and took off his own glasses and folded them into his pocket.

"I'm going to take more tonight," he said.

"How much more?"

"More than you can say. More than you know how to give."

Dante's heart gave one hard knock.

"Take it," he said. "Take all of it."

"Good. That's what I want."

He kissed him, and it was nothing like the careful kisses of the first month.

It was rough and deep, and Javier's teeth caught Dante's lip, and his hands pulled the coat off his shoulders.

He unbuttoned Dante's shirt and shoved it open.

He pushed him back on the paper and stripped the rest away, belt and trousers and shoes.

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