Chapter Text
"Bold in your shift, you bared your teeth, she-wolf. / Your memory of lament is to us a miracle of strength."
In Karel van Mander's 1647 full-length portrait of countess and political prisoner Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, daughter to Danish King Christian IV and wife to Count Corfitz Ulfeldt, Leonora's dark, assessing gaze meets Grace's. Dressed in pearl trimmings and velvet, hair loose after the English fashion, she stands tall, stalwart against an arch of branches. In her right hand, a fan; in her left hand, the head of a black wolf-like hound. Leonora's shadow, the hound sits at attention, muscled body alert but contained. Gentled, only under Leonora's hand.
At Grace's side, Rocky's shoulder brushes against his.
"'Canis fidelis,'" Grace reads aloud from the museum label. "'Faithful dog. Where the fawning dog was a standard heraldic animal of married noble women, the tame wolf became Leonora's personal symbol of fidelity—first to Ulfeldt, then to herself.'"
Rocky hums. "A 'she-wolf,' according to the poem. Fitting, yes? I don't think it's the dog that bites in this painting."
Grace has to agree. From what he can tell, Leonora appeared to have been a clever, dangerous woman in Denmark's history. Her autobiographies established her as a courtly savant, then an unyielding Cristi Korsdragerske—a bearer of the cross of Christ—during her eleven-year imprisonment as a political traitor in the Blue Tower in Copenhagen Castle.
Ambitious, some of the museum labels had called her. Ambitious, as Grace had been called, before he had been blacklisted from academia. Betrayers both.
In the next room in Det Nationalhistoriske Museum, pages from a facsimile of Leonora's second autobiography, Jammers Minde, sit under glass. More oil paintings greet them, dull in the grey light filtering through the windows. Rain patters against the glass. Outside, the Frederiksborg Castle grounds are green and bloated with rainwater.
"'—the six calamities endured by Leonara include: her flight from Denmark in 1651, journey to Korsør in 1656, confrontation in Malmö in 1659, imprisonment in Hammershus between 1660-61, loss of power and property, arrest in Dover in 1663 and, finally, the Blue Tower. 'Verily,' Leonora writes in the preface, 'He has freed me from six calamities; rest assured that He will not leave me to perish in the seventh.' A self-proclaimed female Job, Leonora believed herself chastened and loved by the Lord.'"
Grace contemplates the painting at the far end of the room. Kristian Zahrtmann's 1891 Leonora Christina i Blåtårn, on loan from Bornholms Kunstmuseum. Leonora has aged here, ostentation stripped back to a simple chemise and unadorned hair. She sits on the bed in her cell in the Blue Tower, a maidservant to her right. The colouring is rich, but Leonora—older, lined—sits in half-shadow, her eyes fixed on her sewing. Chastened. Loved.
"I preferred the first autobiography," Rocky comments, walking back from where he had been examining the facsimile pages. "More fun. More political intrigue and court drama. Not this—" he makes an impatient gesture, "—confessional. Too Catholic."
"Why, you got something to confess?" Grace asks. He can't seem to stop tracking the lines in Leonora's face, the straight-backed posture, her hands steady even in entrapment.
Rocky huffs a laugh. In his periphery, Grace sees him adjust the medallion under his sweater, the one of Saint Dominic Savio. The one Grace had gently run his fingers over this morning, Rocky's skin cool in the slats of cold morning light that had filtered through the open hotel room window and over the bed.
"Many things, but that's between myself and my pastor," Rocky tells him, raising a suggestive eyebrow, and Grace rolls his eyes, unfortunately charmed.
"Alright, pal. Keep it in your jeans."
They continue their slow circuit of the room. The waterproof fabric of Grace's raincoat hisses quietly with each step, his sneakers squeaking against the museum's wooden floors. This early in the day, the museum is quiet, with only a handful of visitors meandering in and out of the exhibit.
"I suppose if I must confess something," Rocky eventually continues, when they've stopped in another room showcasing lithographs of the Blue Tower. Grace turns his head to him. "I'm enjoying this much more than I thought I would."
"Yeah?" Grace prompts, softer than he means to.
Rocky glances at him, dark eyes—dark, assured, like Leonora's—flitting to his. "Yes. This is good."
The back of Rocky's fingers brush against Grace's knuckles, slow, deliberate. Grace's ribcage constricts as he looks at Rocky, who looks back. Rocky's hair has dried frizzy and wild from the rain. His peacoat is drenched, his dress shirt sticking to him in places despite the heat of the museum. He's hopelessly dishevelled from the downpour they had gotten caught in, a fact which Rocky had vocally and insistently complained of the moment they stepped into the museum, and Grace can only think, Oh, and then, Oh, shit.
Several rooms before this one, young Leonora places her hand affectionately atop the head of the hound. Canis fidelis.
He catches Rocky's pinky with his own, presses the sides of their palms together. Rocky's skin is warm against his, the hem of his sleeve damp. Real, and here.
"Good," Grace says.
Rocky smiles. Grace smiles back. The rain rattles against the windows. Beyond, the sun fails to peer past the clouds.
By the miracle known as Chairperson Eva Stratt, Doctor Ryland Grace is not asked to leave the UNESCO conference after he had called the leading scholar in his field "a staggering waste of fucking carbon" and had to be physically restrained after launching himself over the panel table at the man.
"Seriously, man," Carl had admonished when Grace had finally started to cool off after his forceful interment in the hotel's security office. "You couldn't have kept it together for one more week?"
Grace had scoffed, rotating his stiff arm where one of the hotel security guards had wrenched it behind his back. "Asshole deserved it."
"I agree. Doesn't mean you can just elbow-drop a tenured prof. C'mon, Ry."
Grace had grumbled, dropping his arm and knocking his head back against the wall. His temples had throbbed under the harsh fluorescence of the office, the persistent blinking of the CCTV screens across from him. He had been wedged into a chair next to the desk, with two of the four security guards that had dragged him out of the Storå conference room posted outside the door. He had no idea how Carl had talked himself inside.
A beat, the distant cacophony of the hotel beyond the security office door the only sound between them. Grace had closed his eyes, had tasted the lingering metal-salt of adrenaline at the back of his throat.
"How bad is it?"
He had heard Carl shift. "Pretty bad."
"Am I getting kicked out?"
"No. But Stratt's already fielding calls and emails." He had heard Carl's hesitation, the pause so minute that only years of working together meant that Grace had even detected it. "Your funding might get pulled."
Fuck. He had squeezed his eyes shut, hands curling into fists on his lap. Carl hadn't said anything else, and eventually Grace had been allowed to leave the security office after a verbal warning from both the hotel's Head of Security and the conference's Chairperson. Stratt's disappointment had stung especially fiercely.
Now, Grace sits at the hotel bar, two watery beers deep and making a concerted effort to ignore the burn of eyes on his back. His anger has since banked itself in the two or three hours that have passed, now only shifting restlessly under his diaphragm. It had been a live thing back in the conference room, bare toothed and rearing. It had thrashed and frothed white at the mouth even as he had been bodily removed from the room, as his peers had pressed themselves to the walls while he had been dragged cursing down the hall. Muzzling it had taken more effort than he had been proud of.
Around him, the foremost experts in bioethics, sustainable development, and climate science are clustered in raucous, busy-bodied cells. He takes a pull from his beer, grimaces at the taste. He wishes Carl was here. The man is too busy picking up after Grace's messes, like he always seems to do these days.
Grace takes another, longer pull from his beer.
Time dilates. The alcohol has warmed him, smoothed the worst of his bristling edges. He hasn't eaten since lunch, but he'd refused to join tonight's conference dinner. He's pretty sure he would have been turned away at the door besides. He can't imagine he'd have been welcomed with open arms to a plate of cod and green beans or whatever the fuck it was that Danish people ate when he'd nearly punched the lights out of a respected colleague. God, he misses the diner back home.
He's picking at the crumbling label on the beer bottle, deliberating on ordering a third one on an empty stomach when somebody slides onto the bar stool next to him.
"For what it's worth," a smooth, accented voice tells him, "I think you should have been allowed to punch Doctor Lambert. His work on tidal dissipation is—hm."
"'Lacklustre'?" Grace offers before he can think better of it. "That's one word for it."
He hears the smile in the person's voice. "You have a better one?"
Grace snorts. He turns his head to look at the person that has, for some ill-advised reason, decided to invite themselves into his space. He's immediately struck by three things in short order. One, the man is tall, made taller by the ridiculous bouffant of dark hair streaked through with grey and artfully swept up and to the side. It's the first thing Grace notices about him, and he's pretty sure the man takes pains to make sure other people notice it too.
Two, the man is older than Grace, by maybe ten or twelve years, with tanned skin and greying stubble and dark eyes touched with crow's feet. He's devastatingly handsome. Grace blames the flush that creeps up his neck on the beers.
Three, he's vaguely familiar. Grace thinks he may have seen the man in passing during the first days of the conference. He also thinks he may have been at Grace's panel, somewhere in the middle. Yes, he recalls with dawning apprehension as the man looks expectantly at him, he was in the third row, next to DuBois and Shapiro. Practically a front-row seat to Grace all but taking a folding chair to Doctor Lambert's skull.
"Well?" the man prompts.
Grace's beer-logged brain staggers back online. "I think I'd be called to a disciplinary hearing if I answered that honestly."
For some reason, the man seems amused by this. A half-grin breaks out on his face, and Grace can't help but notice that his canines are crooked and just a little too sharp. The flush creeps higher, and he almost misses it when the man holds his hand out with a flourish.
"Doctor Ricardo Ortiz," the man says, the name rolling and full in his mouth. There's a glint to his dark eyes as he meets Ryland's, a suggestion at something like intrigue behind the round lenses of his glasses. "Solid mechanics at Politécnica de Puerto Rico."
Grace cautiously reaches for the offered hand. The broad span of his palm engulfs Grace's hand, nearly swallowing his fingers, and it's enough for Grace's mouth to go dry.
"Doctor Ryland Grace," Grace manages to return. "Microbiology at UC Berkley. Though something tells me you already knew that."
Ortiz's half-grin slips into something closed. He squeezes Grace's hand in his. "Yes, I'm familiar with your work, Grace. Very familiar."
The drop of his title is deliberate. Grace's knee-jerk irritation is stymied by the doubly deliberate brush of Ortiz's callused thumb on the inside of Grace's wrist, right below the strap of Grace's watch. He feels the touch like a jolt to his nervous system, startlingly sober, and he drops the handshake with a jerk. Ortiz doesn't seem offended, instead smoothly settling his hand onto the bar top.
"How much trouble are you in for your outburst?" Ortiz asks. He signals for the bartender's attention, shifts in his seat to cross one leg over the other. He's immaculately dressed, all charcoal grey and shined brogues. "Much, I imagine."
Grace presses his hand to his thigh under the bar top, the heat of Ortiz's touch prickling up his wrist, his forearm. "What's it to you?"
Ortiz orders a bourbon. He shrugs as the bartender gets to work. The overhead lights catch the dark metal of his multiple ear piercings, a thin nose ring.
"I like troublemakers," Ortiz says simply.
Grace has no idea what to say to that. The bartender slides a rocks glass of amber liquid over a brick of ice to Ortiz, and Ortiz picks it up, holds it out to Grace. His eyes are lambent in the low light of the bar where he considers Grace.
"Salud," Ortiz says, like it's an order, and Grace, caught in this strange man's orbit, can't do much else but warily raise his drink and knock it against Ortiz's.
They drink. Ortiz's sip is much more conservative than Grace's gulping, who cranes his neck back to drain the last of his beer. His head swims slightly when he straightens again, smacking his lips, not quite in satisfaction. He relishes in the brief flash of disgust across Ortiz's expression at the sound and decides, fuck it.
"Well, to answer your question, Ortiz," Grace begins, catching the bartender's eye and wiggling the empty bottle with a vague another, garçon, and make it your finest piss-water gesture he hopes the bartender understands, "I'm up shit creek, and I'm pretty sure I'm about to lose all my cash for a paddle."
Ortiz's brow raises. His fingers tap along the rim of his rocks glass. "Your funding?"
"Yep." The plosive pop of the "p." Grace pushes the empty bottle away from him. "Turns out assaulting a colleague can get your fellowships rescinded—who knew. Not me, clearly."
"Clearly," Ortiz repeats, wry.
The bartender delivers a fresh bottle of beer and whisks away the empty one. Grace mutters a thanks and pulls the bottle toward him, streaking condensation across the bar top. The ale inside sloshes. It's as bitter and watery as the last two. Not even increasing blood-alcohol levels can stop shit hotel beer from tasting like shit hotel beer, Grace thinks mulishly.
"Mm, well," Ortiz says, taking another sip of his bourbon. "I enjoyed the show. The paper was—" he swirls the glass in a little circle, deliberating, "—fine."
"'Fine'?" Grace repeats sharply.
"Fine. Not as good as your other work. I liked the one on envelope stress responses in catalase-positive bacterium. You called the paper a 'transcriptomic response' to Nicholson's paper." Ortiz chuckles to himself. "Clever. Very good."
Grace stares at him over the tops of his glasses. "You've read my work."
"I did say I was familiar," Ortiz reminds him.
"And you think it's—clever." The word is foreign to him. Halting, misshapen between his teeth, but that could also be the three beers rapidly working through his system. "My work. That I wrote. Me." He points at himself, just to make sure that Ortiz knows who he's talking about. "Guy who probably just fucked up his entire academic career? You think he's clever?"
Ortiz sighs, a great, put-upon gust of breath. He reaches over and pushes the glasses up Grace's nose, then gives Grace's cheek a conciliatory pat, like he's a dog that's learned not to eat its own vomit.
"Beer has made you stupid," Ortiz states. "It's okay. I still like you."
A hot rush of something ricochets up Grace's spine. He sputters. "Listen, asshole—"
"Water for my friend, please," Ortiz interrupts, talking right over Grace and to the bartender. "And another bourbon for me after this one. Tak."
Grace gapes at him. This must be what whiplash feels like, surely. Grace wouldn't know. He bikes to work, and it's not for exercise.
"Look, pal, I didn't come out here looking for some—unsolicited peer review," Grace states hotly, trying, and failing, to grasp the lead on the conversation, and Ortiz is just fucking—looking at him, eyes slightly crinkled, like Grace is something especially entertaining to watch. "If you're planning on sitting here insulting me all night—"
"Is stating a fact an insult?" Ortiz asks, all faux disinterest and knowing eyes. "I thought scientists were meant to be empiricists."
Grace points at him. "Like that! That was an insult! You're literally insulting me as we speak!"
"Stupid. Drink your water, Grace."
At some point, the bartender had dropped off a glass bottle of spring water and a pint glass, strategically placed outside of elbow-range. Grace realises that he must have been gesturing while he talks, and quite expansively at that. To avoid feeling embarrassed about it, he obstinately reaches past the spring water and for the pint glass instead, pouring the rest of his beer into it while making direct eye contact with Ortiz. Ortiz makes a long-suffering sound.
"Stupid and stubborn." Ortiz shakes his head as if in disappointment, drains his bourbon in one go. Grace watches the block of ice bump against the bow of his top lip. The bartender is already pouring Ortiz his second. "I'm surprised you received your doctorate. Did you punch your way through that as well?"
"I'll have you know that I passed the defence with flying colours," Grace tells him archly. "Top of my cohort. Were you one of the youngest candidates to be eligible for the ASM Lifetime Achievement Award? I was twenty-seven when I was selected." He lifts his brows in challenge, takes an obnoxiously loud sip of his beer. "Top that, hotshot."
Ortiz, for some reason, just smiles at that, that private little quirk of his mouth and crinkling of his eyes that he had hidden behind his rocks glass before. It's bare here, the smile, and something about it, the shape of it and the fixed intensity of Ortiz's dark eyes behind his glasses in the dim bar, has Grace swallowing his beer with more effort than normal.
The bartender hands Ortiz his second bourbon. Ortiz's long, long fingers curl around it, and then he's shifting in his seat again, this time with intention. He leans in closer, close enough that the toe of his fancy brogue brushes against Grace's ankle. With this proximity, Grace can feel the heat rolling off Ortiz, can feel the gravity of that dark gaze, the points of those sharp, crooked canines.
"I think you like it when I insult you," Ortiz states, low, challenging. "Your heartrate agrees."
Grace's stomach lurches. "My—what? Bullshit that you can hear my heartrate—"
"Your pulse," Ortiz interrupts again, and Grace lets him, suddenly choking on his own spit. "In your neck. It's like a rabbit's. I can see it beating from here."
As if to demonstrate, he raises his free hand to tap at his own throat, index and middle finger thudding against where his carotid is. Tk-tk. Grace's hand flies to his neck, and he's mortified to find that Ortiz is right. He can feel his pulse under his overly warm skin, quick and thready against his fingers.
"It's the alcohol," Grace argues, but his voice comes out strained, and he's suddenly aware of the sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, the heat creeping up his neck and across his cheeks. Has the hotel always been this hot? "Vasodilation—increased calcium entering into cardiac myocytes—"
Ortiz takes a considering sip of bourbon, the toe of his brogue skimming up Grace's calf in a way that Grace knows isn't an accident. "Certainly. Or you could like that I call you stupid."
Grace swallows noisily, and Ortiz's eyes tick down to the follow the movement of his throat. A half-outraged, half-bewildered noise bubbles out of Grace.
"Are you coming onto me?" he demands.
Ortiz's gaze ticks back to Grace's face. His expression is perfectly amiable. "I would like to. Preferably somewhere private. 'Top that,' I believe you said, yes?"
"That wasn't—that wasn't a challenge!" Grace squawks.
"No? Mm, a localization error, then. Pity. It would be a fun challenge."
Grace casts a desperate look toward the bartender, who has suddenly become very busy at the far end of the bar. Grace's fingers are white-knuckled around the pint glass, and if he's not careful he might just crack it. He looks back at Ortiz, who's expression hasn't changed. Grace wishes he had that kind of composure, because right now he feels like he might combust on the spot. Christensen and Bass have long since ruled spontaneous human combustion as pseudoscience, but maybe Grace's luck will keep on a downtrend, and he'll be the first case of SHC in the twenty-first century in a hotel bar in Copenhagen.
"You're serious," Grace eventually states, only a little hysterically.
Ortiz's eyes narrow, just slightly. "I wouldn't have said anything if I wasn't."
And Grace—doesn't know what to do with that. Sue him, he has no frame of reference for how to gauge sincerity when being propositioned by a very attractive, much older colleague, but Ortiz doesn't strike him as the type to fuck around like that. The guy's blunt to a fault, and he clearly has no qualms insulting and complimenting Grace to his face in equal measure, so surely, surely this would be no different. Whatever this is.
Grace had thought that about Linda too, before.
He licks his lips. Ortiz watches that too. Heat tugs at Grace's abdomen.
"Um," Grace says, and that's when he catches it.
A flash of teal and silver. A band on Ortiz's left ring finger, glinting where he flexes his fingers around the rocks glass. Cold knifes through Grace at the sight, and he stiffens in his seat. At Ortiz's questioning look, Grace glances down at the wedding ring, back to Ortiz, pointed.
"I'm not a homewrecker," he tells Ortiz, firmly.
For some reason, that only makes Ortiz laugh—light, musical, just shy of cruel. "Please," Ortiz says, expression dissolving into one of open amusement. "The only thing you're capable of wrecking is your own career, sunshine."
Ouch. For a moment, Grace is too stung to react. Ortiz either doesn't notice his hurt or ignores it, instead seeming to come to decision and reaching back for a cocktail napkin from the stack by the bar rail. Straightening, he withdraws a pen from an inner jacket pocket. The pen is a slim number, all sleek gunmetal grey and thin nib that probably costs more than Grace's rent. Grace watches him, smarting and thrown, as Ortiz jots something onto the napkin and slides it toward Grace.
"Here," Ortiz says, tapping the napkin twice with his fingertips. Tk-tk. "You'll want this."
He pockets the pen, gets up in one fluid motion. He straightens his slacks, his blazer with neat, precise movements—infuriatingly put-together. It pisses Grace off, and he latches onto the anger.
"What," Grace scoffs, "your phone number?"
"Better." Ortiz knocks back the last of his drink, and Grace does not follow the trajectory of Ortiz's thumb as it wipes the liquid shine of bourbon from his bottom lip. "My room number."
Grace balks. "Excuse me?"
Ortiz gives him that private little smile again, instructs the bartender to charge both of their drinks to Ortiz's room, then leaves the bar without another word. Grace watches him go until the last of his ridiculous bouffant disappears among the swathes of increasingly drunk, increasingly rowdy academics. He has to physically drag his gaze back to the bar top, to the napkin sitting innocuously next to his beer. Across the napkin, scrawled in spidering handwriting, is a single number:
1783.
Grace stares. He's bewildered. He's furious. He's the most turned on he's ever been in his life.
A polite cough across from him. The bartender is too professional to show it, but Grace gets the distinct sense that he's being pitied right now. Face burning, Grace finishes his beer, then chugs the whole bottle of spring water for good measure. The bartender says nothing, gathering the empties and glasses as Grace gets to his feet and fishes out his wallet. The bartender still says nothing when Grace puts down fifty kroner, hesitating at the napkin. The bartender continues to say nothing when Grace eventually, discreetly palms the napkin—clumsily, his hand slapping loudly against the bar top and then all but crushing the napkin into his trouser pocket—and stumbles out of the bar.
Grace makes it back to the hotel room he's sharing with Carl, only managing to clip his shoulder on a doorway once. He's at once disappointed and deeply relieved to find the room empty. He dumps his keycard, phone, and wallet onto the nightstand, nearly chokes himself trying to get his conference lanyard and tie off, then stumbles into the bathroom for a much-needed piss. The ceiling is threatening to spin when he collapses onto his bed, still fully dressed. He valiantly ignores the sensation in favour of unlocking his phone and opening Safari, thumbs clumsily butchering Ortiz's name into the search bar. All the while, the cocktail napkin burns a hole in his trouser pocket.
The first result is Ortiz's faculty page on Politécnica de Puerto Rico's engineering department's website. His headshot is standard if slightly out of date, the grey only just starting to show at Ortiz's temples. He's still got that stupid hairstyle, and the piercings. Grace spends a little too long looking at the picture, his phone held too close to his face. His glasses are—somewhere.
Ortiz's bio is short, basic, listing a PhD in aerospace engineering and several postdocs at multiple universities, including MIT, which, okay, Tony Stark. Grace snorts to himself, tucking his chin to his chest. Ortiz seems to only teach graduate courses now, ranging from general plasma physics to complex mechanical engineering theory—continuum mechanics, structural dynamics. Hell, the man teaches an entire course on thermal metamaterials. Grace is pretty sure there's, like, maybe four published papers on the subject in the field, so to teach a whole class on it seems crazy.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he opens a new tab on his browser and whoomp, there it is. Ortiz has published one of said four papers, and it's in the goddamn International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. Obviously. Of course he's published in a leading mechanical engineering journal, and of course he's listed in the recommended articles section. Twice.
"Jesus," Grace mutters, and tries very hard not to find this knowledge insanely attractive.
More tabs, more scrolling, now through his LinkedIn, his Academia.edu profile, then his Google Scholar profile, then his damn ScienceDirect author entry. Ortiz's publishing history is dense, and well-funded, and probably not complete given that he only seems to have started listing his publications from his MSc onward. Grace finds himself growing more and more flustered the longer he scrolls, his thumb greedily opening more tabs, tapping to the next Google page, and the next.
He doesn't know whether to be disappointed or not to discover that where Ortiz's academic history is prolific, his social media presence is all but non-existent. He finds a Twitter account that may be Ortiz's, though it was last active in 2010, and the posts are primarily retweets of university announcements from the still-active University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez's account.
In amongst the retweeted posts, Grace does find a photo posted by the Liga Atlética Interuniversitaria, an intra-university athletic conference in Puerto Rico. It's a low-resolution team photo of UPC-M's men's soccer league from 2008. The team is lined up in two rows, with the back row standing and the front row kneeling on the grass. The players' faces are boyish, smiling in the photo's soft focus, their arms linked around one another and their uniforms green-smeared and rumpled, clearly fresh off a win.
At the back, to the far right, is a figure with a shock of dark hair and familiar face. Grace pinches the screen to zoom in, and sure enough, a young Ortiz squints back, the sun in his eyes. He's so young here, almost coltish, all spindly arms and long legs. Very nice long legs, Grace thinks absently, cataloguing the way the knee-high socks hug Ortiz's calves, how the soccer shorts show a sliver of thigh. He wonders what position Ortiz played, if he still plays. Maybe in some local league, like some of the older profs at Berkley.
He saves the photo onto his phone without thinking too hard about it.
Outside the window, the sky has gone dark. The lamps in the room switched on at some point, and there's muffled sounds of footsteps and closing doors out in the hallway. Carl still hasn't come back. Grace turns off his phone and lets it fall against his chest. The ceiling has since stopped threatening to spin, and he feels more tipsy than drunk, if uncomfortable in his day-old clothes. His stomach grumbles, but Grace barely notices it, thinking of Ortiz, of the napkin in his pocket.
He glances at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Nearly 1AM.
1738. Ortiz's room is four floors above him. A canal-view room, if Grace's mental map of the hotel is correct. Ortiz should have been able to see the sunset from his window. Maybe he had stood and watched the colours turn from amber to purple to blue and thought about Grace the way Grace had thought about Ortiz. Or maybe he had gone to bed, like a reasonable person at a two-week long academic conference would do.
Grace's hand dips into his trouser pocket, fingertips grazing against the napkin. He looks at the alarm clock, and then at the door.
He shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't.
He should wait for Carl, make sure his friend is okay. It wasn't unusual for Carl to be out so late given his Board member duties, but still. It's the principle of the thing, Grace would argue, especially after Grace had made Carl clean up one hell of a bureaucratic mess today. He should wait for Carl, make sure Stratt hasn't run him too ragged. That's what a good friend would do, and Grace likes to think he's a good friend, even if he's not sure he's a very good person.
—"Nothing more than a staggering waste of fucking carbon!" His hands finding the edge of the panel table, knee already lifted to leverage him up and over. Lambert's outraged expression morphing into one of fear, and then hands are on his collar, his shirt, yanking him back, papers scattering, people shrieking. "C'mon, asshole, say that again to my face!"—
Grace squeezes his eyes shut, jaw clenching hard. Something urgent and jagged rears up in his chest, and he has to breathe through it, fingers seizing around the napkin as he forces an inhale through his nose, an exhale through is mouth, even, measured. Just like his PhD supervisor had taught him when he had been a doctoral candidate, young and flinching. She'd also taught him not to pick fights with senior faculty, but—well.
The breath staggers out of him. He opens his eyes and looks at the door again. The napkin is coarse where it's crumpled in his palm, its edges pressing against the thin skin between his fingers.
Maybe he's not such a good friend either.
Knocking on the door to 1783 feels like an admission of guilt. Grace opens and closes his fists at his sides in the hallway of the seventeenth floor. He prays with a fervour he hasn't had since Sunday School that nobody he would recognize—or, God forbid, would recognize him—passes by. He can only handle so many career-shattering scandals in one day.
"God, hurry the hell up," he mutters, rapping on the door again with his knuckles. "What could possibly be taking you this long to answer the damn door?"
He stands there like an idiot for another minute, half-convinced that Ortiz isn't even in his room despite the light peeking out the bottom of the door. He's just about to call it an experiment failed badly when he hears movement in the room, footsteps against carpet. His breath catches in his chest, and he barely has time to straighten before the door is opening and Ortiz is there, lips already parting.
"Just to be absolutely clear," Grace says, bowling over whatever smug bullshit was about to come out of Ortiz's mouth, "I'm not going to be the other woman, and I'm not looking to sleep my way to tenure."
Ortiz closes his mouth, regards him. He leans a shoulder against the doorway, one hand on the door handle and the other cradling a glass of something clear and strong-smelling. He's since stripped out of his suit jacket, now in just his slacks and dress shirt. The sleeves of the shirt are neatly rolled up to the elbow, and Grace is momentarily distracted both by the sight of Ortiz's bare forearms and the realization that Ortiz has tattoos. A lot of tattoos. Like striations in metamorphic rock, intricate, geometric shapes and lines mark his skin in black ink, creeping up and disappearing beneath his sleeves. Grace has the sudden, wild impulse to push Ortiz's sleeves up, to see how far those lines go.
He's quite possibly still too drunk for this. Or maybe he's not drunk enough.
He snaps his gaze back up to Ortiz, who has caught him ogling. Heat flares up the back of Grace's neck, and he bullishly keeps going.
"I'm a grown man with a doctorate and I can make my own decisions," he tells Ortiz. "So, if you think I'm even considering it because I'm some—some sugar baby or—or you're looking for an easy lay because you're conveniently in another country, then you can take your napkin and room number shove them right up your ass."
It's not the most persuasive as far as warnings go. Grace stutters his way through it and he's moving his hands too much, but Ortiz at the very least doesn't try to interrupt him this time. He is smirking, however, the lift of it caught in the rim of his glass he takes a sip of his drink, eyes never leaving Grace's.
"Is that what you've been thinking about all these hours?" Ortiz asks him, conversational, like they're discussing bike lanes and Copenhagen's public transit system. "My ass?"
Grace flushes to the tips of his ears. "Oh, my God. Did you hear anything I just said?"
"I did." Ortiz shrugs. Unaffected. "I have no objections."
Like it's that simple. Grace goggles at him.
"And your spouse?" he demands.
He says it too loudly, his voice bouncing off the door and across the seventeenth floor. He startles and darts a frantic look up and down the hallway. Still empty. The elevators churn in the distance, the hotel rumbling below. He quickly looks back at Ortiz, forcing himself to lower his voice.
"And your spouse?" Grace tries again, almost enraged on Ortiz's faceless partner's behalf. "I'm pretty fucking sure they wouldn't take kindly to you propositioning a colleague."
"Probably not," Ortiz agrees, and Grace's stomach drops. "They would be upset that they didn't get to proposition you first."
Grace freezes. "What?"
Ortiz looks at him like he's being particularly difficult, then. "Adrian is fucking at least three different colleagues and a TA as we speak. They won't have an issue with this."
Grace's gut lurches at the word "fucking," simultaneously round and coarse in Ortiz's accent. Poleaxed, he just sort of stands there for a moment, his hands hovering at his sides in some sort of awkward, half-aborted gesture of misplaced fury.
"Oh," he says, recalibrating. Ortiz huffs a breath.
"Yes, 'oh.' Does the good doctor understand me now?"
Grace tries to process this. On the one hand, he's still not thrilled at being, what, Ortiz and his spouse's third? On the other, much more pressing hand, his junk is suddenly very interested in this new information. He valiantly tries to ignore the tightness of his jeans as he wrangles his focus back onto the conversation.
"I can call them, if you'd like," Ortiz offers when Grace has been silent for too long, already turning back toward the room. Grace nearly launches himself across the threshold.
"Do not call them, for the love of God—"
Ortiz halts, and Grace is simultaneously enraged and unbearably taken by the small, self-satisfied smile that hovers at the corner of Ortiz's mouth. Grace scowls at him, face burning.
"Fine," he snaps. "So your—so Adrian is fine with this. Great. Spectacular. I still don't really know what 'this' is."
He gestures between the two of them. Ortiz settles back against the doorway, considering.
"Sex? Some kissing?" Ortiz shrugs again. He takes another sip of his drink. "It doesn't have to be complicated."
Again, like it's that simple. Like it really isn't that complicated. And sure, Grace knows that hook-ups can be easy, and fun, and excellent sources of stress-relief. He's no stranger to fucking, well, strangers—even roommates that one hazy, terrible time during grad school—but he's thirty-two. He knows what this looks like. Getting involved with a much older, much more successful, much wealthier scholar after immolating his own career? He might as well slap "Desperate, PhD" onto his conference lanyard.
Even if he is desperate. Even if the thought of somebody, anybody wanting him, career-arsonist tendencies included, makes him so fucking hungry he's aching for it.
In a nearby room, someone turns on their TV. Canned laughter trickles out into the hallway. Grace takes a breath.
"So—this is just casual?" he checks, spreading his hands. "No Murder She Wrote-type situation coming up in my near future?"
"You Americans and your references." Ortiz rolls his eyes and copies his gesture as best he can with a drink in hand, long fingers spread in earnest. The wedding band glints in the light. "Sin compromisos."
Grace slowly lowers his hands. He chews his lip, thinking. He feels a sliver of gratification when Ortiz's gaze drops to his mouth.
"And if I want to call it off?" Grace asks suddenly.
To his surprise, Ortiz's gaze immediately snaps back to Grace's face, his expression turning serious. "Then we call it off."
We, not you. The distinction settles something in Grace, and he feels the taut line of his shoulders tentatively slacken as he really, truly considers the offer. Across from him, Ortiz's fingers drum along the glass. He doesn't interrupt Grace, doesn't push him. He simply leans against the doorway, drink in hand, waiting. Grace sees the tendons shift along the back of his hand, his forearm. His hands are broad, but his fingers are fine, dexterous, a meticulous coordination of muscle and ligament. Grace wonders what they'd look like on his hips. He wonders what they'd look like on his thighs.
Sin compromisos, Ortiz had said. Maybe it can be that simple.
"Okay," Grace says finally. "Okay, yeah."
Ortiz's fingers still, attention sharpening. "Yes?"
The wire-trap trigger urge to bolt is still there, but so is the want, warm and pacing beneath Grace's ribcage. Grace meets Ortiz's gaze, bites back the last of his hesitation.
"Yes."
A flash of something in Ortiz's gaze, mercury-quick and potent. Wordlessly, purposely, Ortiz straightens. He swings the hotel room door open and steps to the side, eyes never once leaving Grace. Skin prickling, Grace casts one last look around the hallway and steps over the threshold.
Ortiz's room, as Grace had guessed, faces the canal, and Grace can just make out the lights of the city from between the gauzy curtains. It's dim inside, the window open. The smell of cigarette smoke wafts up from somewhere below. On the desk sits a bucket of ice and a bottle of clear liquor, half empty. Grace tries to make out the label as his eyes adjust to low light, but then the door is shutting with a quiet sound behind him, and one of those broad hands is pressing against his chest and crowding him into the wall.
Grace's back hits the wallpaper with a thud, and the breath that staggers out of him feels dangerously close to relief.
His gaze flits up. This close, their height difference becomes apparent. It's not significant, but it's enough that Grace has to lift his head, just slightly, to meet Ortiz's stare. And what a thrilling mistake that is, because Ortiz's eyes are so dark in the lamplight, his attention fixed, void-like and consuming, on Grace and Grace alone. Expansive, like the dense, superheated black space around a solar body. Grace feels the weight of it like it's physical.
He swallows. The click of his throat is like a gunshot in the night.
For a moment, Ortiz simply keeps him there, watching, his drink held loosely in his other hand at his side. Grace feels pinned under more than just Ortiz's hand, and some reactive, still-bristling part of him that hadn't left the conference room raises its hackles, the impulse to push, to fight snapping its teeth. He juts his chin out.
"You want me to start charging by the hour?" he challenges.
Ortiz tsks softly. "Impatient. You can wait."
Slowly, Ortiz's hand drifts up Grace's sternum, nails catching on the buttons of Grace's dress shirt. Grace's stomach swoops, his hands twitching at his sides. Ortiz's fingers find the hollow dip at the base of his throat, draw up, up to the side of his neck, where Grace feels him tap lightly against his carotid. Tk-tk.
"Like a rabbit's," Ortiz observes, low, rumbling, the vibrato catching in the space behind Grace's lungs. Grace shudders, his hands finding the belt loops of Ortiz's slacks.
"Please shut the fuck up and kiss me."
Ortiz smiles that private smile. He presses closer, a long, long line of muscled heat against Grace's front. His hand settles on Grace's neck, fingers spanning the circumference of Grace's throat. He nudges his thumb under Grace's jaw, tilts his head back even more, and Grace, lids falling to half-mast and mouth parting, goes willingly.
The first brush of their lips is a glance. Ortiz's breath is sweet and sharp with alcohol, fanning across Grace's face. It's barely there, the contact, but Grace feels it as acutely as a blow, and his fingers seize around Ortiz's belt loops on a high, breathy sound. It comes embarrassingly close to a whine, and the blood rushes scalding and quick through him when he feels more than sees Ortiz's answering smirk. He's given no time to recoil, because then Ortiz is licking into his mouth, a hot, wet drag across his bottom lip and teeth that makes Grace keen.
"Oh, fuck—"
Ortiz kisses him in the way he seems to do everything: with unbroken, single-minded focus and intentionality, tongue and teeth prising Grace open with no room for argument. It's a warm, slick, thorough slide, Ortiz tasting of something aniseed-like and herbaceous. It goes straight to Grace's head, faster and headier than any shitty hotel beer, flooding him with warmth and prickling, grasping want. His hands are shaking where he clutches at Ortiz, and it's all he can do to hold on as Ortiz plunders the roof of Grace's mouth, the spaces behind his teeth, relentless and unyielding.
The ice in Ortiz's glass shifts with each pass of their mouths. The city breathes below as Grace grows lightheaded. Ortiz's fingers flex around Grace's throat with each unsteady inhale, and Grace thinks suddenly of celestial mechanics, of planetary pull—Ortiz's thumb the perigee at Grace's jaw, his ring finger the apogee at the back of Grace's neck, defining their elliptical orbit. This darkened hotel room the ecliptic plane, the space between their bodies the apse line, rapidly, inevitably collapsing.
A scrape of those sharp, crooked incisors against his lip. The blood roars in Grace's ears, and Grace, oxygen-deprived, has no choice but to pull away for breath, knocking his glasses askew. His vision is spotted with black when he sluggishly blinks his eyes open. He doesn't remember closing them.
"Shit," Grace gasps. He stutters when he feels those teeth on his jaw, nipping at flesh. "God, Ortiz—"
Ortiz laughs, his stubble rasping against the thin skin under Grace's jaw. "Mm, that's nice. You should keep saying my name like that."
"Ha, sure. Your ego's inflated enough."
A harder, more pointed bite to the skin between Ortiz's thumb and index finger. Grace jolts, and his hand snaps to Ortiz's wrist holding the glass.
"No marks," he warns.
Ortiz huffs but relinquishes, pressing a soft kiss to the same space instead, and Grace lets go of his wrist. He resettles his hand on Ortiz's upper arm, tipping his head to the side. Ortiz takes the invitation, mouthing at Grace's throat, the hinge of his jaw. His hand drags down to Grace's shirt, fingers pushing inside his unbuttoned collar to touch bare skin, the crest of his collarbone. Grace fists the fine material of Ortiz's shirt. The heat between them builds, gathering low between Grace's hips, a steady, exponential expansion. His glasses barely cling to his face, but he can't bring himself to care. The day's devastation falls from him, and he loses himself to Ortiz's ministrations.
Like in the bar, time dilates, passes muted, syrup-thick and unhurried. Grace only pays attention again when Ortiz shifts in place, hand extracting itself from his shirt. He almost protests the loss until he feels those long, dexterous fingers skim down his front, breath hitching as they travel lower, lower. They come to rest at his belt, and he goes still under Ortiz.
"Alright?" Ortiz murmurs, lips pressed to Grace's jaw.
It takes longer than Grace would like to answer. He works the tightness of his jaw, nerves sparking at the scrape of Ortiz's stubble against his cheek with the movement. "Uh-huh. Keep going."
Satisfied, Ortiz gets to work on Grace's belt, the collision of metal on leather quiet and somehow still deafening in the room. Grace is given half a second to be irritated at the apparent ease with which Ortiz unbuckles his belt singlehandedly before Ortiz's fingers are pushing past the open fly of his jeans and he's cupping Grace over his boxers. The noise that punches out of Grace's chest is guttural and loud, nearly drowning out Ortiz's intrigued hum.
"Full of surprises, aren't you?" Ortiz croons. His index and middle fingers part around Grace, glancing over his clothed clit, and Grace's hips twitch. "You're soaked, sunshine."
Heat flares in Grace's cheeks. "You gonna do something about it?"
Ortiz grinds the heel of his palm against Grace's clit once, retaliatory, and it's enough for Grace's legs to nearly give out. Ortiz wastes no time rucking Grace's shirt out of his jeans, enough for callused fingers to find and push past the waistband of Grace's boxers. Here, Ortiz's touch is damn near feverish, and Grace feels a little hysterical at the knowledge that the span of Ortiz's hand fits both the circumference of his throat and the curve of his pubic mound. Ortiz's thumb nestles in the soft crease between thigh and hip while his fingers curl around and down, dipping between his folds to where Grace is wet and aching. He's huge, his palm swallowing Grace's cunt whole.
"God—fuck." Grace's voice shakes. He clutches at Ortiz, his hunger a baying, starving thing, clawing at the lining of his organs. "Fuck. Oh my God."
"Mouthy," Ortiz chides, but he sounds amused. Grace groans, chasing after Ortiz's mouth.
Ortiz starts a slow, metronomic grind of his palm against Grace, allowing Grace's tongue into his mouth to drag his teeth along its surface, lapping at Grace open-mouthed and dirty and sweet. Grace can hardly breathe for the stellar force of his want, mouth flooded with spit, with Ortiz's taste, hips bucking helplessly into Ortiz's hand. His boxers are damp, the material clinging to the insides of his thighs. And still Ortiz continues his even pace, precise and measured and all the more ruthless for it.
Fingertips graze his entrance. Grace jolts. His next words heave from him, his nails digging into the muscle of Ortiz's shoulder, hard enough to hurt.
"In me, in me," he orders against Ortiz's mouth, near delirious. Saliva clings to his bottom lip, sweat gathering between his shoulder blades. "If you don't get your fucking fingers in me, I swear to God—"
"Cálmate." Ortiz drags his fingers up and gives a merciless, slick swipe over Grace's clit that has white-hot pleasure knifing up Grace's spine. Grace yelps. "What did I say about impatience, hm? Always impatient, always looking for a fight. Like the wolves are after you."
He bites Grace's bottom lip, hard. Grace's knees buckle, and it's only by virtue of Ortiz still being pressed up against him that he doesn't fold to the carpet.
Ortiz leans back slightly, that implacable, dark gaze taking Grace in. Where Grace feels like he's coming apart, Ortiz looks practically untouched, hair still quaffed, clothes still mostly neat. He'd almost believe that Ortiz is entirely unaffected but for the flush at the high points of his cheekbones, the miniscule snag of each breath out of his reddened mouth.
"I want to enjoy you, Doctor Grace," Ortiz continues, and Grace whimpers at the shape of his title in Ortiz's mouth, reverberating and syllabic. Ortiz's hand on him is torturously, terribly still, staking Grace in place. "I'm going to finish my drink, and you're going to let me finger you while I do."
Grace's head thunks back against the wall, eyes squeezing shut. It takes everything in him not to come right there. "Fuck. That's—yeah. Yeah, okay."
Ortiz's eyes crinkle behind his glasses. He slips his hand out of Grace's boxers, tugs at them and his jeans. Grace fumbles to help him pull both down, enough to bare himself to the cool night air. He settles back against the wall, goosebumps breaking out along his thighs from the temperature and exposure both. He sucks his swollen bottom lip between his teeth, placing one hand on the wall, the other seeking out Ortiz's belt loop again, grounding. Patient.
"Good," Ortiz murmurs, hungry, and Grace shivers.
Fingers find Grace's hip, trail a burning path down to the wet curl of hair between Grace's legs, between his folds. Ortiz traces the rim of Grace's entrance, gathering the wetness there. He takes his time with it, middle finger pressing up without pushing in, testing the smooth give of the muscle. Grace's hips rock into the touch, and he bites back the needy little sound that tries to crawl from him.
The first finger breaches Grace. He's worked up enough that Ortiz sinks down to the second knuckle with only a little resistance. It takes a moment for Grace's body to adjust to the intrusion, heart thudding and breath quickening, but there's a nuclear, liquid heat starting to coil at the base of his spine, and he's overwhelmed with the marrow-deep satisfaction of finally, finally being filled.
"Shit, just like that," Grace sighs.
Like before, Ortiz starts slow, measured, careful thrusts in and out. With his other hand, Ortiz brings his neglected drink to his lips. The ice has mostly melted by now, the remnants gliding against the glass as he takes a sip. There's a weight to his gaze where it's fixed on Grace, an analytical, penetrative quality to it as he catalogues each shift in Grace's expression, the jump of Grace's pulse in his neck in time with each thrust. Like Grace is something new; like Grace is something to be taken apart.
Grace thinks he might let him.
"I can take another," he tells Ortiz. Ortiz wordlessly complies.
The second finger slides in alongside the first. The stretch burns a little, the drag against his walls bordering on unpleasant, but Grace hounds after the feeling, rolling his hips down onto Ortiz's hand, encouraging his fingers to sink deeper, further, faster. The heat coils tight at Grace's spine, and he shakes with it, every nerve ending alight as Ortiz builds a scalding momentum. It's obscene, and thrilling, the sounds between them, wet and squelching, slick oozing down Grace's thighs and Ortiz's wrist as he pistons his fingers in and out of Grace. And Ortiz just watches him through it, sipping his drink, eyes black in the lamplight.
A crook of those clever fingers, searching, determined, and Grace's arches up on a broken shout as Ortiz grazes that divine bundle of nerves tucked deep inside of him. It's a stunning freefall through space from there, Grace lost to sensation, to the fullness of his cunt as Ortiz makes two fingers three, his pace turning unrelenting as he fucks up into Grace, finding and grinding against that spot with exacting precision. Grace hardly recognises the sounds coming out of his mouth, half-finished curses and hitching, fevered moans. He scrabbles at the wall, at Ortiz, writhing in place as the heat coils tighter, hotter, the impossible, blistering blackbody radiation of a new star.
Ortiz feathers his thumb over the pulsing head of Grace's clit. The apse line collapses, and Grace comes on Ortiz's fingers with a howl.
The clink of ice against glass, the muted click of a swallow. The susurrus of fabric moving, a muffled thud of something landing on carpet, and then the soft, wet sound of fingers gentling themselves from clenching muscle.
Grace comes to at hands carefully pulling his boxers and jeans up, blinking past the static at the corners of his vision just as Ortiz does up his zipper and refastens his belt. Feeling slowly returns to his body. He watches, dazed and breathless where he's sprawled against the wall, as Ortiz fixes Grace's shirt, tucking it neatly into his jeans and righting his collar. Methodical, thorough. On the carpet sits his empty glass, the ice melting.
Grace works moisture back into his dry throat. His voice comes out as a rasp. "Holy shit."
Ortiz's gaze flits up to his. He straightens Grace's glasses. "Good?"
"'Good'?" Grace repeats, bewildered. "I think I just passed out. That's a little more fucking more impressive than 'good.'"
Ortiz looks pleased at that. He smooths a hand down Grace's shirt and leans in. Grace meets him easily. There's a heavy saltiness beneath the anise on Ortiz's tongue, and Grace groans when he recognises the taste of himself, his hands finding Ortiz's waist, exhausted and sated in a way he hasn't been in a long time.
The kiss is soft, lingering. When Ortiz leans back, he doesn't immediately move away. They're still pressed against one another, and Grace can feel where Ortiz is hard and hot against his thigh. Grace shifts in place, hand drifting to Ortiz's belt.
"Do you want me to—?"
Ortiz nudges his hand away, not unkindly. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Grace's heart skips.
"After my panel." Another kiss, this time to the corner of Grace's mouth. He pulls away from Grace then, and Grace almost chases after him. He forces himself to stay put. "You'll be attending, yes?"
"If I'm not thrown out by then, sure," Grace agrees, scoffing. It's a bitter thing, and the concern from earlier begins to filter back into his awareness as the endorphins fade from his system.
"You won't be," Ortiz says, like it's certain fact. He stoops down to pick up his glass, and Grace raises a brow, watching as he walks over to the desk.
"And you're going to make sure of that—how?"
Ortiz sets the glass down onto the desk, puts the bottle into the bucket of ice. "I'm a strategic donor for this whole summit. They won't say no to me. Or my money. Sencillo."
Cold prickles under Grace's collar. He didn't know that. It certainly hadn't come up during his post-bar research, meaning that Ortiz is either an anonymous donor or important enough that his name doesn't need to be featured on the donor list at all.
"Oh," Grace says, in lieu of anything else. He feels uneasy, suddenly. "Handy."
Ortiz hums in agreement. He walks back to Grace, cups his cheek, thumb pressing to his bottom lip. Grace's mouth parts automatically, and Ortiz kisses him, slow and deep and filthy. It's almost enough for Grace to forget his apprehension. Eventually, Ortiz pulls back.
"Tomorrow at noon. Skjern Å conference room. There's a door at the back—use that to come in."
Grace swallows. He nods. "Tomorrow at noon."
Ortiz smiles, those dark, dark eyes enveloping Grace whole. "Good."
He leaves 1738, unable to shake the disquiet unfurling beneath his ribs. It's nearly 2AM by the time he quietly slips back into his and Carl's room. The room is dark but for the lamp on Grace's nightstand. The AC has been turned on, whirring in the corner. He can make out Carl's softly breathing silhouette under the covers of the other bed, his back turned to the door. Guilt sits heavy and sour in Grace's stomach, and he silently slinks into the bathroom.
He starts the shower, strips out of his clothes. Come and sweat has dried tacky and uncomfortable to the inside of his thighs, and Grace winces as he peels his boxers off, the material sticking to his oversensitive skin. His lower back aches, and there's a headache building behind his eye sockets, insistent and thudding. He kicks the boxers to the side, places his glasses and watch by the sink. He pulls back the shower curtain and steps under the spray.
The water is hot, almost scalding, beating down against Grace's back as the pipes groan and gurgle with effort. Grace hardly feels it, moving mechanically through the motions of grabbing the small white bar of hotel soap, a washcloth. He works the soap into a lather, focusing on the tiny, pearlescent bubbles forming between his fingers as he begins the process of scrubbing himself down. He starts at his face, works his way down to his feet. He tries and fails to ignore the ache between his thighs, the fleeting skin-memory of Ortiz's fingers on him, in him. The water continues its thrum against his skin.
Eventually, Grace stands dripping on the bath mat in the glaring fluorescence of the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. His skin is flushed pink, hair plastered to his scalp, mouth bitten-at and red. He looks tired. He looks well-fucked. There's a small, purpling mark on his neck in the shape of Ortiz's teeth, right above his carotid. He watches his pulse beat in the mirror's reflection. He lifts his hand, taps his fingers to it. Tk-tk.
Tomorrow, Ortiz had said. Tomorrow, like it was that simple. Like it was inevitable.
Steam drifts to the ceiling. Water drips from Grace's hair, down his back, onto the tile. His gut rolls with something like dread, something like anticipation. Copenhagen rumbles beyond, unmoved.