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“You’re the first person I ever fantasized about.”
Akk didn’t know why he said it and he regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
Across the room, Ayan froze. He probably thought it was a trap. Akk had forbidden him from speaking until he finished his essay, but that turned out to be more of a punishment for Akk than Ayan. Akk was bored and when he got bored, his mind wandered.
Ayan looked up from his computer with an amused glint in his eyes. “Was I?” he drawled suggestively. Akk didn’t know how to explain that he hadn’t meant it that way—not really. He had just been sitting on his bed, staring at his boyfriend, and it suddenly felt very important that he know just how much of a disruption to Akk’s life he had been. He had been trying to scold him, not turn him on.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just meant that—before you—I thought I was broken. That my brain didn’t work the same way as everyone else’s. Kan’s always going on about all the girls he’s slept with and I never could understand why he would want to. Until you.”
Ayan huffed out a laugh that didn’t seem to be directed entirely at Akk and then stood, crossed the room, and sprawled out on the bed next to him, homework forgotten. Akk wanted to protest—Ayan had been procrastinating that essay all week—but an even larger part of him was glad to finally have Ayan’s undivided attention. The heat of his body next to him warmed Akk from the inside out. He hadn’t gotten used to this yet. The casual touches. The shared looks. The fact that on nights like this, his bed wasn’t his. It was theirs.
“You might not have made it all the way to the fantasy stage, but I don’t think your mind is as innocent as you think it is,” Ayan said, tilting his head up to make sure Akk could see his smirk.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ayan pretended to think about it. “I seem to remember you talking about a former prefect who somehow convinced you to join a cult?”
It took a second for Akk to realize who he was talking about. “That’s not—He wasn’t—I didn’t…” But he trailed off because at the mention of Mes he suddenly remembered the nights he had fallen asleep thinking about him. The days he had spent hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the hallway. “Oh my god.”
Ayan snorted, sitting up so he could look Akk in the eye. His knee was thrown over Akk’s legs casually and Akk could feel the place where they touched like a brand against his skin. “Thua showed me a picture. He’s cute.”
“I’m leaving,” Akk said, moving to climb out of the bed, but Ayan dragged him back down again.
“Stop. I’ll stop,” Ayan laughed, but he didn’t let go of Akk’s arm. Instead, his thumb began rubbing soothing circles on his skin and it distracted Akk from his own embarrassment. “I’m glad you never fantasized about him. I would be jealous.”
“Yeah, well,” Akk mumbled. “I only just now realized it was an option, so…”
Ayan smacked him playfully, but the smile never left his lips. “So what was it then? This fantasy you had?”
Akk’s embarrassment, which had been dimmed by the softness of Ayan’s touch, returned full-force. Ayan liked to taunt, to tease. He liked to watch Akk squirm.
“I’m not telling you that. Are you crazy?”
“It’s not like wishes on a birthday cake, Akk. You can tell me and it might still come true—in fact, if you tell me, there’s almost a one hundred percent chance it’ll come true, so…”
“I’m one hundred percent not telling you.”
Ayan’s smile turned into a smirk and when he spoke, there was a challenge in his eyes. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
And, well, that was an interesting thought. Akk’s brain short-circuited for only a second but it was long enough for Ayan to realize he had him hooked. His smirk widened.
“I’ll even go first. Do you want me to start chronologically or did you have a specific instance in mind?” And then he just sat there, waiting expectantly, and Akk realized he was actually going to make him say it. It shouldn’t have surprised him—Ayan liked for him to voice his feelings aloud—but it was hard to give voice to the things he wanted when he had been forced into silence for so long.
“Chronologically is fine,” he finally managed to choke out, his voice barely above a whisper.
Ayan grinned, pleased by his acquiescence, but for once, he didn’t tease. “Great,” he said and then scooted closer so that he was half in Akk’s lap. When he spoke, Akk could feel the words against his skin. “My second day of school, you were mad at me—”
“I usually am.”
“—and we were standing out in the yard like this, face-to-face, and there was this fire in your eyes that burned brighter than anything I’d ever seen. I wanted to kiss you—mostly just to shut you up, but also because you looked very kissable.”
He was close enough that their lips brushed on the final word and Akk could feel himself falling into the fantasy right along with him. You punch me, I kiss you. He reached for Ayan’s face, wanting to pull him in, but before he could, Ayan backed away.
“Your turn,” he chirped, clearly pleased with himself. Akk had forgotten that part. “I want to hear about the first one. Your first one ever.”
Akk was sure his cheeks were red and he wasn’t brave enough to look Ayan in the eyes, but he had promised. “I mean, it wasn’t, like, fully formed. It was just—”
“Look at me,” Ayan stopped him, tilting his chin up. “I want to see your eyes.”
Akk’s eyes rolled and Ayan grinned. “There. Now try again.”
Frustration had tamped down a bit of his embarrassment, but he still felt incredibly vulnerable when he spoke. “It was in the bathroom, okay? When I first saw your tattoo.”
Ayan seemed very pleased by this. He lifted up the hem of his shirt, exposing frankly too much skin, and Akk couldn’t take his eyes off of the black ink on his hip.
“This one?” Ayan teased. “Do you like it?”
Akk liked it. He liked it a lot. He nodded, too stubborn to say the words out loud.
“What did it make you want to do?”
“I wanted to touch it,” he said, which was the truth, but he was surprised Ayan had gotten it out of him so easily. In all fairness, he was incredibly distracted. Even now, his fingers were curled into the bedsheets to keep from reaching out.
“Do you want to touch it now?”
Ayan’s question startled Akk enough to look up. They had only been doing whatever this was for a couple of weeks and Ayan had been so patient with him. Hands never strayed beneath clothes and when it became too much for Akk to handle, they stopped. Akk just wasn’t ready yet. But this? This he could do.
“Yes,” he said and he hated how much it made him sound like an overeager child.
Ayan took his hand and placed it on the bare skin of his hip. The muscle twitched beneath his fingertips and, thinking he had done something wrong, Akk attempted to yank his hand away, but Ayan held him in place.
“Your fingers are cold,” Ayan explained and then released him, collapsing back onto the bed so that his skin was pulled taut and Akk had free rein to explore as he liked.
He traced the word in the divet of Ayan’s hip over and over, memorizing the shape of it. And he watched as Ayan’s breath hitched every time he let his fingers drift just a little lower. It was nice sometimes to be reminded that he wasn’t the only one who got excited by every touch. That although Ayan may have done this with other boys before, it still meant something to him that it was Akk he was doing it with now.
Eventually, his appetite sated, Akk laid down next to Ayan, who turned to him with a smug smile. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it? One fantasy down. Shall we do another? Or did you only have the one?”
Akk’s blood was simmering just below the surface and what had once seemed embarrassing no longer was. “I have more,” he admitted.
“Good,” Ayan grinned. “I’ll go first. Let’s fast forward to our first judo practice, shall we? Practicing judo with you is a special kind of torture, let me tell you. For one thing, it’s judo, which I hate, but for another, every time you flipped me—” Before Akk even realized what was happening, Ayan had crawled on top of him and pinned his hands to the bed. His mouth went dry. “—I thought about us in bed like this. You, holding me down, calling me Shortstop.”
“Let me go, Shortstop,” Akk breathed. His voice came out rough and gravelly.
“Yeah,” Ayan agreed. “Just like that.”
But he did let him go, rolling off of Akk and back onto his side of the bed. If he had noticed the tent in Akk’s pants, he didn’t mention it.
Akk propped himself up on his elbow and stared down at Ayan who was staring up at him and he wondered how they had gotten here. How he had gotten this lucky.
“The first night you slept over,” he said, his voice reverent. “When you had that nightmare? I thought about you waking up in the dark and kissing me.”
Ayan nodded as if this wasn’t a completely inappropriate reaction to have when your friend was crying out in their sleep right next to you and then reached up to drag Akk’s face towards him. Akk let himself be led, just as he had done in his mind that night, only this time his heart was pounding in his chest because it was real.
“Like this?” Ayan asked when they were only a breath apart. When Akk nodded, he kissed him.
Akk still wasn’t used to the kissing. Every time felt like the first time and Akk’s blood was on fire. There was something different about doing this on a bed with their fantasies floating in the air around them. It felt more urgent. His hand drifted beneath Ayan’s shirt and found the place where his tattoo lay by muscle memory alone. It felt like his now. Like Ayan had given it to him.
Ayan broke the kiss with an audible pop and it took Akk a second to remember where he was.
“One more,” Ayan said like a child begging for one last piece of candy.
“Ayan,” Akk groaned because what fantasy could possibly be better than this? The real thing.
“Just one more,” he said, cheeks red and lips swollen. He reached up and brushed Akk’s hair out of his eyes. In that moment, Akk would have promised him anything. “It’s my favorite one.”
“One more,” Akk reluctantly agreed.
Ayan smiled, soft and serene, and reached up to cradle Akk’s face in his hand as if he was something precious. “Sometimes at night, I stay awake and watch you sleep. You’re so peaceful. It’s like all of your worries just disappear. I envy that. Sleep isn’t a peaceful place for me. So instead of dreaming, I like to imagine that you and me are somewhere far away from here. In college—or maybe even after that—and every night I get to fall asleep next to you and every morning I get to wake up and your face is the first thing I see. And we’re happy. We’re so goddamn happy, Akk.”
He was staring at him, the fantasy dancing in his eyes, and for a second, Akk could see it too. A whole life waiting for them on the other side of Suppalo.
He leaned down and kissed first Ayan’s nose, then his cheek, then his lips, thinking all the while that this moment was far better than any fantasy he had ever imagined. And it was his to keep.