Escaping Kherson, a novella - 4. Day Four

With daylight doggedly finding a way into an otherwise fast-shut room, Denys wakes to the unfamiliar sensations of warmth and coziness.

Rotating slightly, he discerns the reason why: Theo is drawn up close, cuddling against his side. Respecting the degree of vulnerability he’s being shown, the man lifts his arm so the sleeping youth’s head can cradle against his chest.

This is as close as the reporter’s been to the teenboy, and Denys can’t resist taking one of Theo’s forelocks and caressing it through his pinched index and middle fingers. Testing it, the light-brown, soft as coarse silk curl he’s stretched flat, returns to its natural bounce the moment he lets go.

Theo half-rouses, smacking his lips a couple of times, but keeping his eyes shut. He’s still partially immersed in his dreamland.

Denys stays motionless – merely allowing the regular rise and fall of his breath-filled chest to rock the boy back to sleep. Only once he feels Theo heavy against him in complete slumber again does he reach out and caress the young man’s stray strands away from the boy’s forehead.

Denys must admit how ‘right’ this all feels, even though the pair had been total strangers to one another a mere day or two ago.

Eventually, Theo inhales deeply. He stretches his limbs rigidly for a few seconds as he wakes, but then allows them to slacken again in an even more intimate gripping of the bed’s rightful owner. Theo moves the covers down slightly with his left foot, and ends up tossing his entire leg over the man’s.

When the boy’s eyes finally open – open upon Denys’ – the man realizes they are the lightest, most beautiful blue he’s yet seen from Theo.

“Good morning,” Denys says. When the kid grins, he adds, “I think, sonechko – my little ray of sunshine – that it’s time you get something like a haircut.”

Theo frowns in annoyance and shakes his head “No.”

Denys uses his fingers again to pinch the young man’s hair at the tips just above the eyebrows. He opens and closes them to mimic scissor blades. “A trim – no more, bunny. A centimeter or two off the ends, just to even things up. I can do it for you – if you let me.”

The young man sucks in a profound draft of air, failing to hide a peevish regard concerning his Pan’s designs on his hair. Reaching out with his upper torso, he pats behind him for his phone.

Resettled upon the man’s arm and chest, Theo types so Denys can read in real time: “As you like.”

But he follows this up with a grimace Denys can instantly recognize as belonging to the over my dead body variety.

“We’ll see,” Denys makes cryptic reply which he punctuates with a quick tickle on the kid’s ribs.

Theo laughs, which is soundless for the most part, and shoves against Denys with both hands. Separated now, the kid also kicks the covers below their waists.

The boy’s giggles dry up as his eyes land on his host’s sweatpants.

Denys suddenly feels self-conscious, rattling off an overly strained, “Morning wood – that’s all. I swear.”

But not only does Theo have no reason to believe the hastily-blurted excuse, all the playfulness the two have so far indulged in evaporates like a mirage on the far sands of the Gobi.

In utter earnestness, Theo holds tight to his phone, kicks the loosened bedclothes entirely to the floor, and straddles his knees across Denys’ lower legs.

The teenboy adjusts his own ‘morning wood’ through his clothes, making sure the man sees how adamant it is, and lies down on top of Denys. His hands grasp Denys’ sides higher up, allowing his left ear to settle over the reporter’s heart. In this position, the one Theo most longs for, he may hear for himself what his touch does to the otherwise war-jaded man. In this position, Theo may easily hear for himself how Denys’ excitement courses below his detached demeanor; he wants the boy, and wants him in the way the boy wants the man.

Denys, for his part, entirely unsure – except for what is racing through his core – moves his fingers gently through the young man’s hair. Soon their caresses are in sync – Theo’s upon the man’s flanks and Denys’ within the kid’s springy locks.

Eventually, the stoic journalist is brave enough to break the spell. Hoarsely, only half-believing the words himself, he says, “It’s circumstances; that’s all.”

When Theo glances up to hold his gaze, Denys continues, suddenly, unexpectedly fighting back emotions. “We’re overwrought with what’s going on around us. We’re running high, but don’t think I don’t want to do stuff with you – that I don’t want you – but think of our age difference—”

Theo rises up suddenly, haunching down to sit on the man’s calves. He blows a strand of hair out of his eyes, already typing.

When Theo gives him the phone, Denys reads: “Bullshit. I’m legal. You know that.”

The young man’s bluntness is admirable.

“Yes”—Denys groans, defending himself from the kid’s overly serious scowl, which, admittedly, he finds overpoweringly adorable—“but just because you’ve reached the age of consent doesn’t mean it’s right – necessarily—” Denys has to stop. He’s quickly losing the reasoning behind any lucid objections he could proffer.

Theo writes: “If you’re worried I’ll be crap at it, don’t. I’m no novice, trust me.”

Mind fails to suppress body, and consequently, the moment Denys reads this, a flaring of true sentiment arises pikestaff insistent between them.

“It’s not your ability, Theo— Oh.”

The young man places his hand on the topic of discussion, massaging it lightly.

A moment later, Denys misses the attention; the boy needs both hands to type: “Then what is it?”

“You should concentrate on someone closer to your age; someone like Rudi. That’s all I mean.”

Heavy with dejection on the man’s limbs, Theo taps out: “I’m not your type, is that it?”

“Oh, Theo – if only you were older, or I younger—”

“Age again? You were 7 to 8 years younger than Fedir, and there’s only 2 or 3 more between you and me.”

“Well, that’s not exactly my point.”

Soon Denys is reading: “What does the number of years matter between us? Ours is an age of war, Denys. What two want is nobody’s business when either of us may never see another sunrise!”

Lightheaded, Denys sighs breathlessly, “Oh, Theo—”

The boy slides back into his old position, pressing his erection into the man’s thigh.

Without any hesitation at all, Denys uses his arm to lift the kid’s face to his own.

Their eyes close; their lips touch, exchanging heated breaths and relieved essences.

Theo’s right hand moves atop the man’s clothes, migrating to the business end of Denys’ passion. It strains for the young man’s grasp, and soon, Theo’s fingers are sliding between fabric and flesh.

As their kissing intensifies to a fevered pitch, with each pressing for primacy over the other’s mouth, Theo’s fingers begin working with expert skill on the man.

A few blissful minutes later, Theo rises once more to a kneeling position over Denys. This time he pulls the lower clothes off the man completely and pleasures what he finds underneath with his mouth.

Gasping, grabbing at the sides of the bedsheets, Theo’s glowing words of “ . . . no novice . . . trust me . . . ” float forcefully through Denys’ head. It had been what felt a lifetime since he’d shared intimacy with his partners, and here, this virtual stranger seemed as dear to him as anyone he’d ever cared for in his life.

Denys’ breathing hitches in his throat. It feels like his heart is in there too; he better warn—

“Theo. Theo, I’m . . . about to . . . . ”

But the young man not only does not let up, he slows his pace to a maddeningly consistent conformity of pressure and release.

Denys attempts to lift the other’s head, but it quickly becomes an exercise in futility.

In the end, Denys gives up; simply locking a loving caress within the curls near Theo’s temples while he allows the orgasm to build.

Denys moans, arching his lower back and crying for vaults high above the ceiling. He climaxes, helplessly, as if an astronaut shot into the velvety black of space.

But still, Theo will not let go. Instead, he makes his own delighted noises from deep in his chest, which, at the end, as he moves off, evolve into an elaborate swallowing sound.

His mind reeling, painting heaven upon every surface Denys’ wild eyes stray upon, Theo returns to embracing the man’s left flank.

They kiss then, deep, Denys tasting the very flavor of their joint exertions, the one pouted upon the kid’s lower lip; the one glossed across the talented boy’s tongue now in the receptive man’s mouth.

Denys rouses and makes a concerted effort to get at Theo’s erection, which presses incessantly against his thigh. But the boy takes the man’s hand and simply holds it.

As they lace fingers together, both are soon overcome with another urge. Linked as if all is right with the world, man and boy fall into a perfect, dreamless sleep.

v v v v

The older a person gets, the more realistic they are about accepting and working with, or around, or through, their shortcomings. Youthful optimism is wonderful. It’s spring, it’s chlorophyll demand for growth and change. While summer, calmer, wiser, settles for steadier maturity, expanding appropriately with the sure knowledge that the sun is now shining at its apogee. And summer progresses safe in the knowledge that things – including oneself – are unfolding as they should.

Denys and Theo’s afternoon found them making another food locker visit and delivery, this time all to one address. As Theo stands in these people’s living room, he tries to define the particular smell this apartment gives off: there’s cooked onions and cocoa powder for sure.

This time, as they are detained to receive the homeowners’ hospitality, Theo uses the reporter’s phone to film the discussion.

“So, Rabbi Bezkrovnyy, and Mrs. Bezkrovnyy, tell us why,” says Denys, “you have elected to stick it out in Kherson.”

The rabbi, a man in a worn-thin cardigan the same drab color as the graying hair along the sides of his head, but no more than fifty-five years of age, first offers his wife a wry grin. Then, he twinkles as he informs Denys, “Because many of my congregants, especially the older ones, do not want to be displaced. For them, the threat of death holds less horror than the notion of having to start all over again: friendless in the world; cut off from those they love; possessing nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

“It’s true,” agrees Mrs. Bezkrovnyy. “That is why we help with necessities, cook meals, wash clothes and clean homes; or gratefully lend a hand with doing anything to help keep people going.”

At this point, Theo unconsciously jostles the camera; he’s struck by the survival of human kindness amid a warzone the Russians had sought to deprive of everything but the basest of instincts.

“I’m sure,” Denys states, patting the religious man’s shoulder, “the good you are doing here will reward you richly.”

The interviewees chuckle ironically, glancing at one another for the briefest of moments.

“Oh, it does already,” replies the rabbi’s wife, “in the here and now. Just like it’s supposed to.”

“Ah-meen,” intones the teacher, “and you, young man”—he means Denys Melnyk—“you are doing your own good in the world, and may your heart always rest easy.”

At this juncture, the talks turn conversational, which Theo feels sure will lead to the typical speculation Kherson’s shut-ins like to indulge in concerning how close the Ukrainian forces are at the region’s borders; whether the important rail hub of Snihurívka is under control of the heroes yet; and conjecture on how bad the city will suffer when the Russians are driven from it, et cetera. So Theo politely ends the recording.

Mrs. Bezkrovnyy notices him lower the device, smiles warmly and rises from the sofa. A moment later, her hand is on the teenboy’s arm. When she speaks, her words come from a soft place within her. “Let’s you and I put the tea on and see what sweets we can find in the kitchen.”

The young man grins and follows the woman.

As she trundles around this food preparation space – the apparent source of the good smells around him – Theo sits where she indicates: at the head of the table.

The electric kettle starts to make its familiar, near-grunting sound as it slowly heats the water for tea.

After using a low footstool, Mrs. Bezkrovnyy retrieves something large and blue from a high cabinet. Cradled in her arm and bosom, she brings a tin of Danish butter cookies over to the table. Prying open the lid, she invites the teenboy to take one.

It's sugary and unctuous, and all other realities fade to the background as Theo meditatively chews on it.

Sitting down herself, the rabbi’s wife tells him, “Denys Zhdanovich told us the circumstances of how you two found each other.”

Theo attempts to make his gesture of crossed-out lips, but the lady gently interrupts him.

“He told us that too – non-verbal communicator – but for what I have to say, you do not need to reply, Theodor Antinovich, for I merely wish to ask you to look after him for us.”

The boy is almost brought to tears.

“You see,” the woman continues, “he is a bit lost and sad, and more than anything else, Theo, he needs a way back to the light. Perhaps you are God’s plan to see him safely there.”

Theo sniffles, but nods slowly.

“And”—she reaches her hand across the table, which Theo grasps—“I have one more thing to ask of you.”

Theo blinks, ready for what may come.

“I ask you, young man, to please – please – let Denys take care of you. Listen to his advice, the advice of one older and wiser. Listen to your elders.”

She smiles invitingly, and Theo finds himself nodding again, but glancing down upon his hand and its half-eaten cookie.

v v v v

With some lingering trepidation of a botch-job, Theo had acquiesced to allow Denys his ‘trim.’

Now, late-afternoon, their chores for the day done, and the pair safely ensconced back in the journalist’s apartment, Theo sits in the chair usually propped against the door, bath towel draped around his bare shoulders and pinned by his hand at the top of his chest. Meanwhile, Denys has comb and scissors, and proceeds to even off the young man’s curls along the nape of his neck.

“Trust me,” Denys is saying, adjusting his angle of approach by tipping the boy’s head forward a tad. “You’ll look better than ever when I’m through with you.”

Confident it will remain unseen, Theo allows a skew-whiff expression to form. In the sometimes more-perfect logic of reading the negative space of an image, the young man takes Denys’ comments to mean the reporter already considers the youth “good looking.”

Chitchatting, content with the task at hand, Denys takes on the role of barber fully. He tells the boy, with a tone halfway between authority figure and pal, “I’m not sure about your decision to wear your hair long – personally, that is.” He chuckles. “And if Fedir were here, he’d get out his clippers and crack ‘a dad joke’ about shearing young rams down on the farm . . . . ”

Theo tenses up. He involuntarily white-knuckles the bottom rail of the chair where the seat starts. His mind and heart are a blur of barbed memories and hurt feelings. For in point of fact, about the most difficult thing in the world is to gift our trust to another human being. Often worn thin in family relationships, where one must grin and bear it for the sake of amicability, no such allowances are forthcoming to those we barely know.

So now, with Theo having ‘handed over’ a literal piece of himself – in the form of his head of hair – to the discretion of a man he’d only recently grown close to, he struggles with his fight or flight instincts.

“ . . . And I can tell you for sure, Fedir would never allow me to wear my hair any longer than the ‘C’ attachment to his clippers. He maintained and shared definite opinions on how I was to ‘always look my best’.”

Theo does not want to be told what to think. He does not want to be told how to look. Consequently, Theo wants to put an end to this whole haircutting business. He resists the strong urge to rise; feels goading frustration that he cannot just ‘say’ what he’s experiencing in real time.

Oblivious, Denys bends the boy’s head to the left, clamping down on the young man’s pate like a carnival arcade grab-it game. Merrily, he chirps in Theo’s ear, “Yes, decisions are so important in how we make our way through life. So important, and perhaps you, young man, my little prostak, better consider how to make better . . . ones—”

Theo stands, ducking out of the grip of the surprised man behind him.

Though taken aback as he may be, Denys is not in any way prepared to see the look of anger-filled hurt the kid turns on him.

Letting the towel drop, the shirtless youth stalks over to one of his notepads lying on top of the coffee table. He sweeps it and a pen up into his hands, writing furiously and walking it back to Denys. His fingers jittering with annoyance as he holds the paper up.

Denys reads the red-ink missive: “Don’t call me that!”

Confused, Denys has to repeat it to confirm. “You mean – prostak?”

“YES.”

“Shit. I’m sorry – I—”

While the teenboy continues to write more calmly – but with steam coming out of his ears – Denys contemplates the term Theo had reacted to so strongly. Its meaning can vary from circumstance to circumstance, depending on the context in which it was used. However, the reporter was confident he only meant it in its neutral sense of “an innocent.” Although, going over it in his head, he has to admit the term can also indicate a range of uncomplimentary concepts, such as lout or neanderthal.

“Look,” Theo writes. “Don’t ever call me that again. Understand?” To Denys’ pitiful nod, tears threaten Theo, quickly deflating his temper. “It’s the worst thing you can say to me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the whole—”

Theo makes a button-your-lip motion. Then he spells it out for the man. “Prostak – dopey; stupid – this is just what my father always says to me.”

Denys wants only to embrace the kid; show him, somehow, how truly sorry he is.

But Theo steps backwards, wiping his eyes with his arm. Writing more, he pauses when finished, staring at the words as if debating . . . . Then, he slowly allows the other to take the pad.

The journalist reads: “I don’t ask that my dad love me. I don’t even ask for him to like me – I get it. People can’t always get along. But, Denys, is it too much to ask that a parent not hate their child?”

Beating back his own tears, Denys glances up from the blue-ink page, and through his obscured vision, sees Theo sign and mouth the words, “Is it?”

“No,” Denys says, “it’s not too much.”

The youth retrieves his notebook and adds: “He always tells me I’m defective. Not right in the head, stupid, not his son. That I’ll never amount to anything in life—”

“Oh, Theo”—Denys’ tears fall freely now; he places his hand over the boy’s with the pen, stopping him from writing—“every child, every person, deserves love and support. You were – you are – no different.”

An odd cast suddenly descends upon the teenboy’s face. After mouthing “Fedir,” Denys allows the young man’s hand to go free. Theo writes: “Fedir showed you that love and support? He treated you well?”

He holds the words up before his lips.

Denys, partially stunned, nods. “Yes, and very well.”

Theo writes quickly. “Like a second father?”

The man nods again.

Slowly, deliberately in black ink, the boy spells out a short message. When he’s through, with the slightest of trembling, he holds it low – just above Denys’ belt buckle. It reads: “Then show me.”

Denys reaches over, placing his fingers along the sides of the boy’s cheeks. He kisses him.

Denys lets his grasp fall, taking the boy by the hand and leading him to the front of the sofa.

Standing there, their lovemaking proceeds from passionate kissing to Denys lowering and removing the remainder of Theo’s clothing. This accomplished, the older man sits the boy down, allowing himself to continue until his knees are rooted on the carpet before the sofa, and he can take the younger man in his mouth.

Theo lolls in lost-world pleasure, helplessly compelled to allow the base of his skull to settle on the top of the sofa-back, but in command of the fingers he sends forward to grip and caress the head pleasuring him.

Then, to the teenboy’s amazement, for it’s something that causes his wrists to sweat in excitement, Denys places open palms on the underside of Theo’s knees and lifts his legs in the air. Scrunching low on the sofa now, he feels like he’s falling through aether, as Denys’ kiss moves along Theo’s inner thigh to the boy’s fundament.

Not merely content to kiss it, soon Theo is re-gripping the man’s head in fervent passion as Denys lays siege to the orifice with his merciless tongue.

Sustaining several eyes-shut minutes of this assault, Theo thinks he’s about to explode. His member has been throbbing in response to Denys’ every move, and now teeters on the edge of unleashing its youthful reserves.

Instead, hoping to stave off the inevitable, the young man tries to get his legs back under his control so he may maneuver his straining digits down and guide Denys’ own beautiful instance up to his lips. He wants to show through no-uncertain actions, not words, how much he longs to take the man inside of him.

But Denys categorically refuses to restore any power to the boy. Knowingly or not, he senses the other’s eagerness to let Denys be fully intimate with him, but resists. The older, wiser man wants the teenboy too; there’s no mistake about that. But Denys considers their ‘first time’ something special, something to be delayed, a thing to be released when a significant word can accompany it. When the term can be easily passed between them – whether spoken or not.

Eventually, the reporter feels all resistance to his wants leave Theo’s straining muscles; he relaxes in Denys’ grip. Now the man can ‘reward’ the boy as he’s always intended.

He settles the teenboy’s legs over his shoulders and returns his attention to Theo’s erection.

Lusciously moistened with the young man’s slick pre-seminal offerings, Denys savors the syrupy taste of it in his mouth, drawing the pressure of his lips into a tightening circle as he descends to the base of the youthful shaft.

The boy’s palms fly out to grip the sofa cushions on either side of him, his head righting itself to desperately let Denys know he’s on the precipice of orgasming.

But the man ignores this visual, preferring to gauge the teenboy’s nearness by the throbbing on his tongue and lips. At the moment the kid’s member indicates it’s about to start bucking like a wild colt against his palate, he withdraws his mouth entirely, but he sets his hand to slide over the skin in an exact match; motion for motion. With his free hand, he clamps thumb and index finger in a constricting ring around Theo’s orbs.

Catching but one quick breath, the youth’s frame stiffens to full alert. The young man ejects liquid snow halfway up his body, some of it glinting softly on the kid’s Adam’s apple as he gasps for a second breath of air.

Denys, parentally, lovingly allows the youth to complete his climax – jet upon jet – upon Theo’s alabaster abdomen until he’s entirely spent.

Then, the young man’s eyes shudder closed, exhausted, and Denys begins collecting the tribute that had been made for him. He scoops it with his lips and tongue, riding over Theo’s satin skin, millimeter by maddening millimeter, until he laves the original globule from the kid’s throat and can kiss him.

Sitting side by side now, they continue kissing until even that too resolves into contented smiles and embraces that refuse to let loose of one another.

_