ECLIPSE (2/3)

Six months later, Gravina has become someone indispensable in Jonathan's life, someone who makes him suffer and enjoy at the same time and in equal measure, to the point of causing him uncontrollable crying fits when the professor spends several days not only without requesting his intimate services, but simply without seeing him or leaving his WhatsApp messages on read and not responding to them.

Jonathan is an explosive cocktail of sensations and feelings. He grants his Master and thesis advisor the right to use him whenever he pleases, and he admires him more and more for the way he distinguishes and separates their purely work and academic relationship from the secret encounters in the faculty office.

Gravina is the one who rubs his feet on Jonathan's face, shoves them into his mouth, forcing him to open his jaws until it hurts from holding the tension of forcing his jawbones. Sometimes he delivers a kick wearing the sneakers that Jonathan goes crazy licking. If Jonathan has been good, sometimes his Master lets him clean with his tongue the gobs of spit he has spat onto his sneakers. Jonathan loses his senses when he is allowed to play with the New Balance sneakers of that macho who dominates him. He runs them over his nipples and chest, over his cock and balls. He even whips his own ass with them in front of his Master.

"You're so eager, you fucking dog, that you even save me the work," Gravina has let out on occasion, part of the repertoire of vulgarities and crude remarks with which he addresses the one who will undoubtedly be first in his class.

On Jonathan's birthday, his Master surprised him by giving him another pair of sneakers, from another well-known brand, but already old, which he was about to throw away. Jonathan keeps them in his room in the shared flat with two other students not far from the faculty, along with several sweaty, piss-soaked underpants belonging to his Master. The treasure is completed by a heavily sweat-soaked T-shirt from his Master, on which he and a friend—with whom he had once shared Jonathan—urinated and spat, and which the student wore home that night.

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It is August twelfth, 2026. A total eclipse over part of the Peninsula. The plan was for the two of them to go with other professors and doctoral students from the Faculty to see it. Three days before, Jonathan receives a brief message from his Master.

"Read carefully: Wednesday the twelfth, 4:00 p.m. at my house. Bring what you need to spend the night away. And your little thongs. Mind you, I am capable of going alone if you forget them. The doorman has been notified. He will open the garage door for you. My parking space is the fifth on the right. We will meet there. Absolute punctuality."

Beside the car, waiting for Gravina to appear, Jonathan thinks about how his Master has never allowed him to go up to his house. He sees the doorman in the distance. He se...