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It was several hours later, and Luca was still sulking. Not from the expert screwing, with Artair knowing just how stressed and annoyed he was, and taking even longer than usual with his attention—stretching his strokes and staying his slides long into the evening, until his lover was certain that every ache and pressure point on Luca’s body had been massaged.
Nor was there anything in the perfect night that warranted his mood. The fire between them crackled warm and orange, sending a dance of sparks into the sky with each crunch of the coals. Above, that same sky was blooming with each passing moment—filling with the pale-blue brilliance of the stars. Out here, so far from the city, each star glowed like a crystal flare, as layer upon layer of the cosmos fought for their attention.
But what was worthy of Luca’s scowls, were the white lumps of foam that Artair was sliding onto spindly sticks.
Luca scrunched his nose. “Must we?”
“Listen, you’re feeling grumpy. And if a toasted marshmallow can’t cure that feeling, then gosh darn it, I don’t know what will!”
Although Luca’s instinct was to say something back, there was a spark in Artair’s expression that stopped him. He was so genuinely keen to share this dumb ritual that Luca couldn’t bring himself to protest.
Besides, he’d put it off as long as he possibly could. The man had raised it about a hundred times over the last month and a half.
Luca took the twig, scrawnier than necessary given the piles of sturdier sticks, and started rotating it in the echoes of the fire—a few inches away from the flames, where the heat smoked hottest.
If he’d been a poet, there might have been something in that. In the way the most dangerous part of the flame was the spot you couldn’t see.
“Well, isn’t this nice,” said Artair, as he toasted his own candy from freshly driven snow to California fake tan.
“It’d be nicer if I could just finish this damn article.”
“And why can’t you?”
Luca huffed. “Because I know that I’m writing something no one will ever read? That it won’t do anything? Won’t spark any conversation? Won’t change anyone’s mind about anything? That it’s just one big waste of time?”
“Like I said, maybe one day it will get published?”
“But I don’t think it will. I’m not going to wake up in a year or two and have everyone demanding my stories. Maybe this is what I should accept—defeat. I had one shot and it’s gone. No one will ever be able to publish what I want to write. Any reputable company would be fined into bankruptcy if they tried. They’d have people picketing outside their headquarters and be turned into pariahs by the conservative media.”
“So sell it to a disreputable company?”
Luca snorted. “What? Gay porn mags and badly photocopied zines? That’s not what I want, though. These articles need to be read by the mainstream. They need to show a world to people who wouldn’t usually see it. It needs to be shocking. To force conversations. To force change. And I can’t do that if I’m publishing to a tiny audience who already agrees with everything I’m saying.”
Luca sighed and took the marshmallow in his mouth. The warmed, caramel crust gave way to waves of sweet, lightly flavored foam.
After so many years of complaining about them being overrated, even Luca had to admit that it had a certain charm there. Something that made his chest warm beneath the wool. Something which took his mind off the deeper thoughts for just a moment.
Artair rubbed a bare toe against Luca’s. “You’ve never really told me why it’s so important for you to write about sex? Or to have it read by a mainstream audience?”
Luca tossed his stick into the fire and shook his head, trying to rattle out the darker thoughts, knowing that he was being a total fucking buzzkill. “Does it matter? It isn’t going to happen. Look, sorry for bringing the mood down. I’ll be fine. I just need to accept that it will never happen for me and?—”
“It matters to me,” interrupted Artair, looking at him with an earnestness that Luca hadn’t seen before. “Because it matters to you. I know that you love writing, and I can see that this is really important to you. But I don’t understand why. And I hate the idea of you burning up with something you don’t think you can talk about.”
Luca stared at his open face.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Artair—he did. And it wasn’t that Artair wouldn’t understand—he would, or at the very least he’d give Luca a fair hearing. The man was smart, and soulful, and deep, and he didn’t think anything like most people.
And yet... Luca and Artair’s relationship was fun. That was the basis of everything. Their sex was fun. Their hikes were fun. Their interaction and their teasing and their playfulness was fun.
And this issue—the driving force for why Luca did what he did, why he wrote what he wrote, why he wanted to be read by a big audience—wasn’t fun. It was rough and difficult and flowed from some harsh place a million miles from this beautiful forest. It was dark and it was real, and it had already cost him far too fucking much in his life.
The men he’d cared for, who couldn’t handle his drive and his determination.
The man he’d loved who didn’t think him fitting.
And the thought that it might cost him Artair, too?
When they only had a few weeks left together?
