Marcus booked the cottage because it had no wifi, no television, and a hot tub that the listing described, improbably, as "a romantic experience." Forty-one miles of coastline between them and their phones, which they'd left charging in the car like confiscated children.

"We have to talk about the hot tub," Ivan said, on the ferry deck, wind ruining his hair in a way Marcus had privately loved for nine years.

"We don't have to talk about anything. That's the whole point of the weekend."

"I'm saying," Ivan said, "that I packed for the hot tub specifically."

Marcus looked at him. Salt wind, gray water, the man he'd lived with so long they'd merged sock drawers, and still the looking had weight. It always had. "Noted," he said.

They found the key under a ceramic crab, because of course they did. The cottage was small and white and smelled of salt and cedar. The hot tub steamed on the deck facing nothing but water.

"No wifi," Ivan confirmed, holding up his dead phone like evidence. "We are officially unreachable."

"We're not unreachable," Marcus said. "We're just a ferry and a long walk from reachable."

"You always know the exact right thing to say."

"Nine years of practice."

They made love the first time before unpacking, on the wrong side of the bed so the duvet pooled at their feet, with the window open so they could hear the tide do its work. Slow, unhurried, deep — the kind where Marcus held Ivan's hips still with both hands and made him say please twice before giving him anything.

"That," Ivan said after, breath still ragged, "was the unpacking."

"You're the one who packed for the hot tub."

The hot tub was, as advertised, a romantic experience, mostly because Ivan had planned it. Champagne on the deck. Marcus's back against his chest, both of them watching the dark water go darker. Ivan's hands moving with the patience of a man with nowhere else to be, nowhere to be except exactly here, warming Marcus's skin under the water until the warming became something else.

"I can feel you thinking," Ivan said into his neck.

"I was thinking about you being inside me later."

Champagne nearly went over the side. "You can't just say that."

"That's the whole point of the weekend," Marcus said. "No wifi. No holding back."

Later, in bed, Ivan kept his word. He opened Marcus up slow with fingers and lube and a patience Marcus would tease him about later, because Marcus was the impatient one and they both knew it. He pressed in inch by inch, watching Marcus's face the whole time for the exact moment discomfort became something else — something deep and electric that made Marcus reach back for him and hold on.

"Yes," Marcus said, wrecked. "There. Stay."

"I'm not going anywhere," Ivan said, and he didn't, and Marcus believed him.

The tide clock on the wall ticked against them, and neither of them cared about time anymore.

Saturday was rain. They drank coffee in the tub, walked the beach in raincoats holding hands, and came back cold and hungry for warmth. They warmed each other on the kitchen floor because the bedroom felt too far — Marcus bending Ivan over the table this time, slow and hard, the rain hammering the windows, both of them swearing softly in two languages. Ivan came first, shaking, and Marcus followed, forehead pressed between Ivan's shoulder blades, breathing him in.

"The table," Ivan said, when they could talk again. "We broke the table."

"We dented the table. It's a rental. That's what deposits are for."

"You're a romantic."

"I booked a cottage with a hot tub and no wifi. I'm the most romantic man you know."

That night they slow-danced in the living room to the one radio station the cottage could catch, both of them naked, the fire Ivan had built crackling low. Ivan led, because he always led, and Marcus let him, because nine years had taught them both which one of them needed to lead and which one needed to be led. When the song ended neither of them stopped.

Sunday morning, the sun finally. They lay in bed tangled, the duvet kicked to the floor sometime in the night.

"Same time next year," Marcus said.

"Same cottage."

"Same table."

Ivan laughed into his neck. "I love you."

"I know," Marcus said. "It's in the listing. A romantic experience."

They made love once more before the ferry, lazy and slow and sweet, the way people do when they know they're going home to their real life and want to carry some of this quiet with them. The tide was out when they left. The tide clock said nothing useful about any of it.